At-large CR candidates talk about rec center for youngsters

CEDAR RAPIDS - In a year when the city has felt unnerved by an increase in gun violence, four City Council candidates Tuesday night did not focus on a need for more police officers or cracking down on crime.

Instead, candidates Carletta Knox-Seymour, Ann Poe and Wade Wagner talked about building a recreation center or centers to give youngsters something to do.

They said a rec center for young people might double as a senior center.

Susie Weinacht, a fourth candidate, said ideas like a rec center need to be weighed against the financial ability of the city to pay to build a center, and then to pay to operate it.

Even so, Weinacht said she is a board member at the Horizons family service agency, which she said is discussing ideas for a senior center or a multigenerational center. She said she also 'championed” the city's decision this year to direct revenue from the city's hotel/motel tax to the proposed Prospect Meadows ball field complex north of Marion if it attracts people to hotel and motel rooms.

Poe, 63, and Weinacht, 52, are incumbents and Knox-Seymour, 62, and Wagner, 57, the challengers for two at-large council seats on the Nov. 3 ballot. Knox-Seymour ran for the office in 2013 while Wagner was the parks commissioner on the City Council from 2002 through 2005.

A fifth at-large candidate, Bridgett Wood, 27, was not able to attend the forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Linn County.

Poe said the city is building a recreation center in northwest Cedar Rapids to replace the neighborhood center destroyed in Time Check during the 2008 flood. Federal disaster dollars are paying much of the bill, she said.

However, Poe said the city needs to try to build a rec center in every quadrant of the city, which could be a place for youth and for seniors.

'We have to get creative,” she said.

Wagner said it was 'shameful” that the city continued to be satisfied with the Ambroz Recreation Center in a century-old school house on Mount Vernon Road SE. He said the city has spent a small fortune on studies about the need for a larger recreation center over the years, but the plans have never turned to construction. It was time to build one, perhaps in New Bohemia, that could serve youth and seniors, he said. Perhaps, the city could partner with Mount Mercy University or Coe College, he said.

'It's not rocket science,” Wagner said. '…We can talk and study it to death.”

Knox-Seymour said a multigenerational center could make sense where seniors could work with youngsters. At the same time, she said seniors and youngsters might prefer places of their own.

Last night's forum was held at the 2-year-old Cedar Rapids Public Library downtown. All four at-large candidates said they supported the 27-cent tax levy for library operations that also is on the ballot.

Among other points:

Knox-Seymour said she wants the city to push economic development and job training so those who haven't been able to find work can secure a good job.

Wagner, whose wife is from China, said China is expected to increase investment in the United States and he said the city should see if it can direct some of the investment here.

Incumbents Poe and Weinacht said the city has made progress since they have been on the council, and they said they want to continue work on economic development, growth and flood control. Poe is in her fourth year; Weinacht in her second.