Aaron Saylor, 28-year-old commercial Realtor, seeks an at-large seat on the City Council; says he's 'new energy;' glad he's not an incumbent in the aftermath of a flood

Aaron Saylor, a 28-year-old commercial Realtor who has served on City Hall and communitywide citizen committees, is running for an at-large seat on the City Council in the Nov. 3 city election.

Saylor says the City Council needs “new energy,” and he adds he's glad he does not have to run as an incumbent in the aftermath of the June 2008 flood.

“What I'm suggesting is that there is no way to come through a catastrophe of this magnitude and do everything right,” Saylor says. “We know the incumbents are going to have to defend the decisions they made, and some of those are going to be very difficult for them.”

The council, he says, needs to start taking action. “We've been talking for too long,” he says.

Saylor, who works for Iowa Realty Commercial, says the ongoing recovery from the June 2008 flood will continue to have a “devastating impact” on the community and on City Hall's budget. He says the city is looking at a long recovery and a recovery, “honestly, we can't afford.”

“We are going to have to prioritize and we are going to have to make some tough choices … to make sure that we are still growing as a community as we recover,” Saylor says.

He puts job creation, job retention and neighborhood redevelopment at the top of his priority list.

Saylor grew up in Davis, Calif., and attended Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., where he earned a bachelor's degree in theater and met his wife, Jennie, a Cedar Rapids native. They have been in Cedar Rapids together for five years.

Since arriving in Cedar Rapids, Saylor has served on two committees as part of the community's Fifteen in 5 initiative - one committee focused on trails and the other on the Third Street arts and entertainment district. He was a board member of the young professionals group, Access Iowa, which is now ImpactCR. He participated in City Hall's four-month-long neighborhood planning process. And he currently sits on the City Hall task force on smart growth and infill development.

He says his work with those groups has helped him become part of a network of people who care about the community.

 “I've found a lot of really great people and a lot of really great ideas that I'll be bringing into my work,” Saylor says.

As for infill development, Saylor says a current proposal to build 81 homes along Zika Avenue NW, which has been approved on a 5-4 council vote, might meet a definition of infill, but it's not what he has in mind.

“In my mind, infill shouldn't require that much new infrastructure and shouldn't require that much tax on existing infrastructure,” he says. “What I really want to see is single-family homes back in our neighborhoods. And I want to see a slight increase in density in our existing neighborhoods. That is the infill that is right for us.”