Cedar Rapids flood victims disagree on Tuesday’s tax vote

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's one tough call to decide who has deeper ties to the flood-hit, working-class Time Check Neighborhood, Jim McKiernan or Don Karr.

Both grew up among the modest homes between the Cedar River and Ellis Boulevard NW and both can swap stories about diving into the river from the neighborhood railroad bridge and defending boyhood turf with the best of them.

How could it be now, though, that the two, with the same roots and the same fondness for this old riverside neighborhood, see Tuesday's vote to extend the city's 1 percent local-option sales tax for 20 years so differently?

The extension will raise about $20 million a year to provide what city leaders, which include City Council member Karr, say is necessary local matching money if the city is to secure state and federal funds for a comprehensive, $375 million flood-protection system for both sides of the city from a repeat of the city's historic 2008 disaster. Forty percent of the tax revenue will be used to fix streets and 10 percent will go for property-tax relief under the city plan.

Last week, McKiernan, 66, was continuing to renovate his flood-damaged house at 908 Ellis Blvd. NW and had just finished the one he rents out next door, at 906 Ellis Blvd. NW.

The tiny front yards of both of his places feature yellow-colored “Vote No” signs in seeming contradiction to the fact that McKiernan has invested his own sweat and money - he's gotten no public help for the two renovations - and despite City Hall's stated desire to find funds to protect investments like his from another damaging flood.

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‘I'll protect myself'

“If I'm worried about a flood, I'll protect myself,” declares McKiernan, who worked as seasonal help for the city's Parks Department for years while renting out a few homes for additional income. He has benefitted from the city's buyout program on a couple of flood-wrecked properties closer to the river, he reports.

His reasons to vote “no” on the tax-extension referendum center on an active skepticism and distrust of City Hall.

McKiernan says the city hasn't used the revenue from the existing local-option sales tax, 90 percent of which goes to flood recovery projects, correctly. He says the city should not have bought the downtown hotel. And he asks, why doesn't the city dredge the river to solve its flooding threat?

“I want the city to be accountable for what they're doing,” says McKiernan. “They're out of control.”

Karr, 65, a retired business owner and plumber and one of four west-side residents on the nine-member City Council, ticks off his responses to the points made by McKiernan, whom he has known since boyhood: The city is using the current sales-tax revenue correctly to help flood victims and the city's flood recovery. Dredging doesn't work for flood protection. The decision to buy the struggling hotel from its creditors doesn't involve local-option sales tax revenue.

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Yet, Karr says he's not surprised to hear some of the flood-impacted residents in and near his old boyhood neighborhood talking against the extension of the city's local-option sales tax to help pay for flood protection. He says many of these are “hardworking, blue-collar” people who have lived near the river all their lives, don't fear floods like others do and like the way it has been. The city's plans for flood protection mean a change, which some don't like, he says.

“I think it has to do with comfort,” says Karr. “And (the city's plans) will take them somewhere they've never been before, and it's uncomfortable.”

‘Investment in future'

He says tax-extension opponents like McKiernan are right about one thing: City government isn't perfect. But Karr says it's not enough to stop there.

“Some feel something is being taken from them,” says Karr. “They don't see if as an investment in the future. But I don't want to live in the past. I don't want my children to live in the past.”

Up and down the river, it isn't difficult to find businesses owners, who were hit hard by the flood and are now back on their feet, say they support the extension of the local-option sales tax for flood protection.

Jon Jelinek, owner of Parlor City Pub & Eatery in the heart of the flood-racked New Bohemia commercial district on Third Street SE, says the 2008 flood “wiped the slate clean” and now has turned the district into a whirlwind of construction activity. It only makes sense to protect all the reinvestment - some of which has come from public dollars in the form of state I-JOBS grants and the use of historic tax credits - with a new flood protection system, Jelinek says.

The Army Corps of Engineers has said its rules require it to follow a prescribed benefit-cost formula, which the Corps says allows it to recommend basic flood protection in Cedar Rapids only for most of the east side of the river. Such a limited system would protect Jelinek's property, but “that's shortsighted,” he says.

“I think the mayor is right,” says Jelinek. “We've got to protect both sides of the river. One cent to protect all the millions of dollars of investment makes sense.”

Even so, across 12th Street SE in New Bohemia, Dave Fountain, one of the owners of the just opened restaurant and bar, Capone's, says he doesn't have an opinion on the extension of the local-option sales tax. “We've been so consumed with this. We just opened it,” he says of the business.

Similarly, Tom Kinney, 30-year-old owner of Andrews Collision Center, 815 Eighth Ave. SE, says the 8 1/2 feet of floodwater his business took on in 2008 still hadn't convinced him one way or another about the tax extension.

“I think in theory it's a good idea,” Kinney says of the tax extension. “But where the money ultimately will go is a good question.”

Support in Czech Village

John Berge, the owner of the Two Star Detective Agency in Czech Village and the longtime president of the village's association, says most of the businesses in the village support the tax extension, but the support comes with a hope that they will have some say on the exact line of the new flood protection system once it gets to Czech Village.

At the village and through the downtown, the city's plan calls for a system of more-expensive, “removable” flood walls instead of a system of towering, less expensive, concrete flood walls.

“I'm not a fan of concrete walls,” says John Rocarek, owner of the Sykora Bakery in Czech Village, who adds, “I'm all in favor of the tax extension.”

Erwin Froehlich, vice president and director of operations at the Penford Products plant that employs 220 workers along the river near downtown, says the city's plan to extend the tax to help pay for flood protection is important for the company's future in Cedar Rapids.

He puts the cost of the flood damage and recovery at the Penford plant in the $60-million range, and he says potential business partners today always say, “'But wait a minute, show me how high the water got. And tell me, what are you and the city and the state doing to make sure it doesn't happen again?' In a nutshell, we want to continue to be here. … We just need some security to do that.”

One spot on the front lines of the tax-extension debate is Al Pierson's flower shop and greenhouses, 1800 Ellis Blvd. NW. Pierson has the blue “Vote Yes” signs outside of his business, while a line of homes across the street and stretching out toward Ellis Park have the yellow “Vote No” signs in their front yards.

Mistrust of city

In part, the standoff has to do with where the city's proposed earthen levee in this part of the city is expected to go.

Most of the preliminary ideas have put Pierson's business on the protected side of any levee and this group of homes right at the river on the unprotected side. One of those homeowners, Mike Augustine, 1865 Ellis Blvd. NW, says he's voting “no” because he does not think the city is apt to have a repeat of 2008 and because no plan can protect people against everything.

“But first of all, I just don't trust anything the city does right now,” says Augustine, a retired Cedar Rapids district fire chief. “I think the planners and developers see this as an opportunity to redo a lot of stuff and they basically want someone else to pay for it.”

Flower-shop owner Pierson, who is on the board of the Northwest Neighbors group, says the proposed flood-protection system has given him the confidence to hire back two of the 12 people he had to let go after the flood and he says he has plans to tear down a flood-damaged home attached to his business and to add a new entrance and other improvements.

He says he's just like those in the homes with the “Vote No” signs across the street - “You're independent, you work hard, you take what you're dealt and you deal with it.”

At the same time, Pierson says much of the old Time Check Neighborhood of which he considers himself a part was taken by the flood and is gone for good.

“I prefer to look forward, to look the future. I want to see the city put together better than it ever was,” he says.