'Separation agreement' with City Manager Prosser accepted on a 6-2 vote; upset council member Podzimek, a Prosser backer, leaves before the vote

CEDAR RAPIDS - Mayor Ron Corbett's go-to City Council majority last night matter-of-factly passed a “separation agreement” with City Manager Jim Prosser that brings to a close Prosser's 44-month run as the city's first city manager.

The final vote was 6-2 to accept the 58-year-old Prosser's departure, which Corbett made clear was a “resignation” and not a “firing.”

Council member Chuck Swore, who voted with the majority, noted that he was on the council in 2006 when the council hired Prosser. “He was what we needed,” Swore said. “ … But that's when we hired him.”

He said Prosser's devotion to “consultants, continual research, looking deeper” ended up conflicting with the composition of the new council that wanted to move on things more quickly.

Council member Justin Shields noted that several longtime top managers in city government lost their jobs in the Prosser-led reorganization back in 2007, and he said it wasn't easy for those employees. He said at least Prosser was resigning under “pretty favorable conditions,' which was a reference to the agreement with the city that pays Prosser one-year of his $165,000 annual salary in a lump sum and up to a year of health insurance.

“We need to move on as a city,” Shields said.

Council members Kris Gulick and Chuck Wieneke voted no. An upset council member Tom Podzimek, who opposed what he has said was the council majority's push to drive Prosser out, left the meeting shortly after it began. And council member Pat Shey said he voted with the majority because it was a resignation. He said he never would have agreed to a firing.

Wieneke asked Corbett and his working majority of Swore, Shields, Monica Vernon and Don Karr, to reconsider and keep Prosser. He said the city faces a multitude of problems and he said Prosser, “the consummate professional,” was the “right person” to help solve them.

Gulick asked Corbett not to use the word “we” in public when talking about the City Council unless the council actually meets and decides an issue. The entire council never met and discussed the Prosser matter, he said.

The next City Council battle will center on the process the council uses to find Prosser's replacement. For now, Casey Drew, the city's finance director, will act as city manager.

Gulick said the council received good grades in the community back in 2006 for the extensive national search it carried out with the help of a search firm.

Swore and Corbett said they did not think the city needed to use a search firm, and Corbett said Conni Huber, the city's human resources director, could handle the search for the council.

A short time before, the mayor had to recess the meeting because a city employee collapsed. It was Huber, who was taken from the council room on a stretcher, though Corbett said last night he did not think it was a serious matter.

Corbett said he would be open to city manager candidates who have managed in the private sector, and he noted that Prosser, who had served as a city manager, was a financial consultant to cities at the time the city of Cedar Rapids hired him in 2006.

For now, Casey Drew, the city's finance director, will act as city manager.