Quick Cedar Rapids city council action sometimes leads to remorse

Enough with the plans, it's time to act, said Mayor Ron Corbett, three months into his time at the helm.

The Corbett agenda seems nicely captured in council member Chuck Swore's personal motto - “ready, fire, aim.”

Swore - also a new face on the council and part of Corbett's working council majority - said there's nothing wrong with having to “re-aim” along the way if it means taking advantage of opportunities.

Council member Tom Podzimek, who remains a fan of “strategic planning” and sits outside the Corbett orbit, agrees that Swore's philosophy is alive and well in the Corbett-led council. There's been some misfiring, he said.

Council member Monica Vernon, one of Corbett's staunchest allies, acknowledges, too, that quick action has resulted in some second thoughts and some changes of heart.

Does a plan to buy a local inventor's anti-tip guard for $540,000 to protect residents from their city-issued Yardy carts ring a bell?

A generous “buy-local” resolution for Cedar Rapids businesses remains under attack from metro area businesses.

Most recently, the council expressed support for closing the major arterial street, Second Avenue SE, between 10th and 12th streets SE at the request of Physicians' Clinic of Iowa. PCI has chosen the site for a new multimillion medical “mall,” which is to become part of the city's newly created Medical District between the two hospitals.

Podzimek said the Second Avenue closing surfaced on the council agenda out of nowhere, and within a few minutes, with few questions, the council expressed general support for accommodating PCI's wishes.

Vernon said she started to have strong second thoughts almost immediately. The next day, comments came fast and furious from the public to her City Hall e-mail account, the vast majority of which said the council had gone crazy.

Vernon now says her comments at the council meeting were “more positive than they probably should have been,” and she and Podzimek point to the comment by council member Kris Gulick, who noted that respected city consultant JLG Architects has cautioned against closing streets.

In short, the closing of Second Avenue now sounds far from a done deal.

It remains to be seen if public reaction to the Second Avenue matter will play out like the Yardy case. The public outcry against the Yardy idea prompted the council to yank the spending out of the budget.

Council member Chuck Wieneke calls Mayor Corbett “a great politician” and said part of Corbett's approach is to “step out and do something.”

“He's doing some good things,” said Wieneke, who is not part of the Corbett majority, “but I don't always agree with how it gets done.”

Wieneke said the council's quick, public discussion on closing Second Avenue SE gave “the total impression” to PCI that the council supported closing the street. Wieneke said he needs to see cost estimates and more information from traffic engineers.

“If I were PCI, I'd have an Option A and an Option B,” he said.

Mayor Corbett said he's out in public a lot, and by and large, people tell him that they are glad the council is making decisions, even if they don't agree with all of them.

The mayor said the council quickly picked a site for the new library. It's figured out a way to pay flood victims 107 percent of pre-flood value for their homes, and the council is moving city government back into the Veterans Memorial Building and the nearby former federal courthouse.

As for “ready, fire, aim,” the mayor calls it Swore's “little cliche” and said it's not a good description of the work the new City Council has done in its first three months.

“If you're trying to get out of me that we're a knee-jerk council, I don't buy that one bit,” Corbett said. “We're making decisions. Could we have waited another four months to pick a library site? I suppose you could.”

Corbett still thinks closing a stretch of Second Avenue SE is a fair trade-off for the investment PCI intends to make in the city's medical district.

“Maybe I should ask if (council members) have buyer's remorse to the initial green light (they gave). Let's flush it out now,” the mayor said.