New round of home demolitions begins with questions from Corbett, Karr

CEDAR RAPIDS - A new round of demolitions - this one poised to take down 281 of the as many as 1,300 flood-damaged homes slated for the wrecking ball before it's all over - is a year or more late and is coming too quickly, all at the same time.

At 914 Ellis Blvd. NW, homeowner Kim Perez was sitting on her front steps in Monday afternoon's warm sun, watching demolition crews take down a house a few houses down the block from hers. Another had been taken down earlier Monday a few houses away in the other direction.

“I'm glad to see them go,” said convenience store employee Perez, who has renovated her flood-damaged house as have most of the owners in her block on her side of the street. “I wish it hadn't taken them nearly two years.”

At the same time, Mayor Ron Corbett and City Council member Don Karr on Monday had taken the part of a group of flood victims who worry that the city has not taken sufficient care to make sure owners really had signed away their homes.

Corbett's concern was one of form: The city, he said, has promised owners awaiting buyouts of their flood-damaged properties that they can back out of the deal with the city right up until the moment before the buyout occurs.

How, Corbett wondered, can someone back out of a buyout deal if the house has been demolished? About 25 people have backed out to date, he noted.

At the same time Monday, City Manager Jim Prosser jumped in to assure homeowners that the demolition of their homes will not impact the amount of money they are offered in a buyout.

In 2009, the city demolished 139 of the most-damaged homes, ones wrecked to the point that they were too dangerous to enter after the June 2008 flood.

Prosser said city officials now have determined that the new group of 281 homes are nuisances as defined in the city ordinance, pose an “imminent threat” to the public health and safety and must come down.

The city's demolition contractor, D.W. Zinser Inc. of Walford, is on pace to take 18 homes down this week and next week with the hope of getting all 281 “imminent threat” homes down within 10 to 12 weeks, the city said Monday.

For his part on Monday, council member Karr questioned whether all of the 281 homes really needed to be demolished or if some might be candidates for renovation.

Corbett, who will ask the City Council about the demolitions at its meeting tonight, said he would like the city to move the homes on the demolition list up the buyout list so they can be bought out before they are demolished.

The City Hall staff on Monday said all 281 property owners involved in the latest round of demolitions has given the city prior written permission, and, most recently, oral confirmation to demolish their properties.

Corbett said he's heard instances of people not recalling what they might have signed at some point in the past.

At tonight's meeting, Corbett also will ask the council if it would agree to hire a flood “advocate” to help flood victims “wade through” the buyout process and demolition.

“As elected officials, we have to make sure we're not violating anyone's right to due process and we're acting in as compassionate a way as possible,” the mayor said. “And there's no way around it, it's hard to put compassion into demolishing someone's home, but we're going to try.”

Over at Kim Perez's house on Ellis Boulevard NW, Perez was trying hard to imagine what would come after many of the houses across the street and closer to the Cedar River came down. She hoped some new houses would be built to bring more children into the neighborhood. She's heard, too, of the city's plans to create a parklike greenway along the river.

“I'll believe it when I see it,” the 38-year-old mother of four said.