Wieneke says Corbett shouldn't be making offers to companies without council input; Corbett says he just hasn't gotten to Wieneke

CEDAR RAPIDS - In an unusual move, an angry Chuck Wieneke, council member from west-side District 4, called a news conference Friday morning to object to Mayor Ron Corbett and Corbett's effort to recruit a new company to the downtown with city incentives without telling him.

Wieneke, who attracted plenty of media on short notice, said Corbett should not be offering any firm incentives to Go Daddy, an Internet domain registrar and web hosting company that also sells e-business related software and services, without the entire nine-member council considering the matter and voting on it. He called any offer that Corbett is making to the firm “invalid.”

This is the second time in a week in which Wieneke expressed displeasure with Corbett. Wieneke said he learned from the media last week that Corbett intended to ask the City Council to make a bid to buy the city's only downtown hotel, the long-struggling Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel, from its creditors. The council approved the idea, 6-1, on Tuesday with Wieneke casting the “no” vote.

Corbett on Friday pointed out that city officials in Hiawatha made public the city of Cedar Rapids' bid to get Go Daddy to bring 500 jobs to downtown Cedar Rapids rather than to Hiawatha. And Corbett said the hotel announcement last week was made public by someone else. He had not intended to make the negotiations about the hotel or Go Daddy public until he talked to every one of the eight other council members, he said.

Wieneke acknowledged on Friday that the city's City Charter specifically assigns economic development tasks to the mayor.

For his part, Corbett said negotiations with private firms about locating in communities are usually confidential matters. He said, in this instance, he, his council colleagues, Kris Gulick and Justin Shields, and

Allan Thoms, interim city manager, all met with Bob Parsons, founder and CEO of Go Daddy, recently to discuss a possible bid from Cedar Rapids to steer Go Daddy's jobs away from Hiawatha and to downtown Cedar Rapids.

Corbett said, in total, he had discussed the negotiations with seven of nine council members, but simply had not gotten to Wieneke.

Corbett said, too, that any final offer to Go Daddy has yet to be formalized, and when it is, it will involve a public-private effort to get Go Daddy to come to downtown Cedar Rapids. It won't be a matter of simply handing over public tax dollars, the mayor said.

In his first five-plus months in office, Corbett has pushed ahead on his agenda with something of a certainty that he has the backing of a majority of council members on key matters. Council members Monica Vernon, Justin Shields, Chuck Swore and Don Karr have comprised a Corbett working majority.

“All I'm trying to do is open the door and see if Go Daddy is interested,” the mayor said on Friday. “Now I've got one of the council members saying the offer is invalid. Why is he doing this if he really cares about jobs and about revitalizing the downtown? I can come to only one conclusion: He's trying to undermine me as mayor of Cedar Rapids.”

Council member Chuck Swore on Friday said he was “disappointed” with Wieneke's comments.

“If Chuck Wieneke can go out and do something progressively on his own and come back and say, ‘Here's what we ought to do,' great,” Swore said. “He doesn't have to tell me ahead of time. He's just not used to getting things done.”

In the end, every council member will have a chance to vote on any Go Daddy offer just as council members did on the hotel bid, Swore said.

Former City Manager Jim Prosser brought potential deals to the council in the past, now the mayor is out working on it, Swore said.