Best neighborhood plans come from within

The tiger dams recently assembled in the Sun Valley addition appealed to the media and the unknowing. To residents who know better, they seem more a political display. This dam does not provide any significant protection. It is mostly costly inconvenience.

The neighborhood has seen too many unusable plans that have been laid, incubated and hatched in city government with insufficient opportunity for neighborhood input. This city government does not recognize that the best plans for a neighborhood can come from within a neighborhood.

A committee of city council members now wants to start by telling us their plans for us as relayed by the media. We don't want to start that way. We want them to start with a meeting with us where we present information, concerns and ideas that we want considered.

The nature of government is that it too often thinks it has all the answers. It doesn't.

For example, a couple of years ago, the writer got a contractor's cost estimate for a reinforced concrete flood wall in front of his house of $90 per lineal foot. The wall's top elevation was one foot about the 2002 flood level. Using a $100 per foot cost, a 1,400-foot neighborhood flood wall would cost $140,000. Even if the final cost was three times that amount, why are city officials only mentioning a berm option that is lower in elevation, far more costly ($1 million), and has far greater encroachment on the creek's flood plain?

Let's think this over.

Marv Rops

Cedar Rapids