City's annual flood-insurance bill on 50 at-risk buildings, $84,330

CEDAR RAPIDS - It will cost the city $84,330 for the next year to continue to buy flood insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program to insure 50 at-risk city buildings and facilities.

The city is required to obtain flood-insurance through the federal program on these structures. The program provides up to $500,000 of coverage per building and up to $500,000 of coverage per a building's contents.

The state insurance commissioner has granted the city a waiver, which exempts the city from purchasing flood insurance in addition to the insurance available through the national program.

Just what future flood-insurance costs will be is unclear. In the past, the city's finance director, Casey Drew, has said the state insurance waiver is temporary.

At one point, city officials had suggested that insuring some city buildings could cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year per building.