‘We’re at the end’ on sales tax decisions

CEDAR RAPIDS - Without comment or mention that the matter was on its agenda, the nine-member City Council Tuesday night unanimously approved how it will spend most of the remaining revenue from the 1 percent local-option sales tax.

In approving the spending measure along with an assortment of minor matters as part of the consent agenda, the council divvied up the final $30 million the tax is expected to raise before it expires on June 30, 2014.

Of that amount, $15.635 million will go to fill spending gaps on flood-recovery building projects. Another $1.2 million will be used to pay part of the city's share of the pre-construction design and engineering work that's being carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers for a proposed east-side flood protection system. And $13.165 million will be used to cover unknown project costs and as local matching funds needed to secure money from a newly created state fund to help communities build flood protection.

After the meeting, Mayor Ron Corbett said he had commented publicly late last week about what the council intended to do with the final $30 million, so there was no need to discuss it at Tuesday night's meeting.

The tax was put in place for 63 months beginning April 1, 2009. With the first three years past, Corbett said, the council has spent what it has taken in to date as it said it would - to help flood victims, to help with the renovation of flood-damaged homes and to match federal dollars for flood recovery.

He called Tuesday night's vote on how to spend the remainder of the money “the closing of the book” on the local-option tax.

Twice in the last year - last May 3 and this March 6 - voters turned down a request to extend the tax to provide local funds to help build flood protection on both sides of the Cedar River. Corbett said some of the vocal opponents of the tax extension had called on the City Council to spend some of the remaining revenue from the current tax on flood protection.

“So we're responding by spending revenue from the fifth year of the tax on flood protection,” he said.

The sales tax has been bringing in about $17 million a year for flood-related programs; another 10 percent of the total goes to property-tax relief.

Member Kris Gulick said Tuesday night's vote was an important one even if it did not generate council discussion. He said members had talked long and publicly from the start that it would use some of the tax revenue to fill funding gaps to pay for what the Federal Emergency Management Agency wouldn't.

“That was one of our plans we had from Day 1,” Gulick said. “We knew we would have gaps, and rather than use property taxes, we knew the local-option sales tax would be one of the options.”

Colleague Chuck Swore said the council has discussed the tax enough.

“Every time we've talked about LOST (in public) we're in trouble,” he said. “So why toss it out for something else for somebody to say, ‘Oh now, they're ... .'

“We've been accused of taking the money ourselves and we've been accused of having a corrupt government, all because of LOST. You get to the point where, what do we want to talk about LOST for? It's a lost subject. We're at the end. We're going to get it done and we're going to move on.”

Of the $15-million-plus set aside for city building projects, $10.9 million will go to new public works facility. The rest will be spent in various amounts to fill funding gaps for the Ground Transportation Center bus depot, the levee portion of the riverfront amphitheater, City Hall renovations, the new Time Check Recreation Center and the demolition of the First Street Parkade. The NewBo City Market is getting $500,000 of the total as well.