Keep explaining, Mr. Mayor

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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Mayor Ron Corbett appealed to heads and hearts in his State of the City address Wednesday. He referenced race car driving, President Ronald Reagan, Mother Teresa, the Bible, even songs by Queen and Michael Jackson.

All of it aimed at supporting the speech's title: “Are we our brothers' keeper?” Yes, and it should include flood protection, the mayor insisted.

The capacity crowd at The Hotel at Kirkwood center listened intently and warmed to the mayor's message. But the bigger task for Corbett and the City Council lies outside that banquet room: convincing enough voters to support major flood protection by approving a 20-year extension of the current five-year local-option sales tax.

The mayor's speech was one of his best since taking office just over a year ago.

True, little of it was new. It did not mention some criticism of how the sales tax for flood recovery has been spent during its first two years. However, he continued to broaden the case for being prepared next time we face anything that resembles the epic flood of 2008.

Commitment to building such protection, he said, also will build businesses' confidence to invest more in the downtown area.

It will protect and grow the city's largest segment of property tax base, thus avoiding more burden on businesses and homeowners elsewhere in the city. It will protect cultural treasures and property values in nearby residential neighborhoods, encouraging people to repopulate the city's core instead of abandoning it for more sprawl, which raises the cost of public services.

It will brace the unfolding vision of the future, a rebuilt city center “that we can all be proud of,” the mayor said. And it will ease some worry about Mother Nature, whose recent track record features bigger storms and elevated flood risks, with experts predicting more of the same well into the future.

Citing President Reagan, Corbett said the first duty of government “is to protect people, not run their lives.” And in Cedar Rapids, that means protecting both sides of the river, not just the east bank that the Army Corps of Engineers' formula recommends.

The city's race car to the future turned the corner on several public and non-public projects during the past year, and now is heading into the straightaway, the mayor opined.

But without the protection issue settled, that progress may stall out or never reach the critical mass needed to reach the city's flood recovery needs and goals.

The mayor is right that local voters should decide whether they want flood protection or prefer to risk without. He's right that the city must commit first in order to leverage major federal and state support so critical to funding the $375 million preferred plan.

As for linking the May 3 referendum to being our brothers' keeper - keep explaining, Mr. Mayor.