A look at Prosser from outside City Hall; maybe it had to come to this, says Dan Baldwin

CEDAR RAPIDS - Clay Jones says maybe someone else could have done a better job of leading the city's flood recovery than the person who he says, by and large, led it – just-departed City Manager Jim Prosser.

“But I would like to see them try,” says Jones, chairman and CEO of Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids.

“ … (G) iven the extraordinary volatility of the circumstance, I think Jim actually did a yeoman's share of holding the community together during an extremely chaotic time, a very turbulent time and a time of high emotion,” Jones continued. “He was one of the few people who was a calming influence in the crowd.

“You can tell I'm a big fan, and obviously I hated to see him go. But that wasn't my choice.”

Even so, Jones, the head of the city's largest employer, acknowledges that he and others in the private sector in Cedar Rapids grew increasingly anxious as time churned on and too little seemed to be happening too slowly as the city worked to recover from the flood of June 2008.

Prosser was talented. But was that enough? Or were some of his strong points actually getting in the way?

The concern that those in authority were doing too little, says Jones, was not simply directed at Prosser and his professional staff and the city's elected officials. He says the same complaints were aimed at the state and federal governments, too. And Jones himself made a point of telling President Barack Obama, face-to-face, of the need to help in the Cedar Rapids recovery at a White House meeting of business leaders captured on C-SPAN.

“As is always the case when you're relying on government to do the job – whether it's Katrina or here or earthquakes or Haiti or whatever you want to do – why can't more be done?,” Jones says the question is. “ … And, yeah, and I think Jim got a significant dose of that criticism from all quarters that wanted to see things happen faster.

“Now whether they could have happened faster is a separate conversation. But that's typically not what's on somebody's mind when they see immediate problems that need relief.”

Dan Baldwin, who left his post in March as the president/CEO of the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, says a concern about the direction and pace of the city's flood recovery surfaced in some parts of the community very early after the flood.

An initial conflict arose, he says, when some in the private sector suggested that flood recovery required a “communitywide” solution in which the private sector would work with City Hall to lead the effort. The idea wasn't particularly embraced at City Hall, either by Jim Prosser or the City Council, says Baldwin.

“And I think there was this perception that Jim thought this was more a city disaster and that the planning and solutions would be driven by city government,” Baldwin says. “So there was kind of a disconnect there. It seemed like there were people who wanted to get involved and wanted to be part of solutions and bring resources to it, and, correctly or incorrectly, they were made to feel it was not their problem. That the answer to all our problems was going to be driven by a city solution.

“This wasn't Jim alone, but a lot on the City Council agreed – that this was in their wheelhouse. … They were getting tired of this suggestion that there was more could be done.”

At some level, says Baldwin, it boiled down to a matter of style.

Rockwell Collins' Jones gives Prosser high marks for his strong belief in the planning process and in getting people to focus on the long term and on a vision for the city, “rather than fighting fires, which typically happens in the political domain,” he says

Baldwin, though, says this very same quality – the belief in a methodical, multiple-step process of making decisions after a lot of public meetings and a chance for a lot of public input – came to be seen as detriment in some quarters.

“Quite a number of people felt we needed to accelerate some things and deviate some because of the urgency that was on top of us,” Baldwin says. “And Jim felt these were long-term solutions, and that you wanted to make sure in your haste, you didn't lose opportunities.”

In particular, he says Prosser wanted to make sure that the city painstakingly documented its disaster damage so it didn't loses tens of millions of dollars in federal disaster payments that the city deserved.

“So you really had this little bit of a conflict of style,” Baldwin says. “It was a clash of styles and orientations as to how you problem-solve after the flood.”

This very issue would become the focal point of the 2009 City Hall election race, the result of which brought three new faces to the City Council – Mayor Ron Corbett and at-large council members Don Karr and Chuck Swore – who did that very thing: They clashed with Prosser's approach.

By late 2008, some in the private sector – including John Smith, the president/CEO of trucking firm CRST Inc. where Corbett works – stepped up with private funding to create the Economic Planning and Reinvestment Corp. as a vehicle to focus private-sector energy into the community's flood recovery.

Smith was the corporation's board president, the city and county provided it a little money and had seats on the board, and Baldwin, who represented the non-profit community, was on the board, too. Doug Neumann, president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Downtown District, took on the additional role of EPRC director.

Rockwell Collins' Jones and others in the private sector thought another approach was needed.

“Yes, I was an advocate for creating a position (inside City Hall) that would be laser-focused on nothing but flood recovery,” Jones says.

In June 2009, the City Council agreed to create the city position of flood-recovery director, a position to which the private sector, in an unusual move, contributed some of the funding. Greg Eyerly, who had been a manager for the city's utilities department, got the job.

Jones says City Manager Prosser liked the idea.

“In fact, what I found in Jim was a very receptive audience because he understood his own work flow and how crushing it was at the time,” says Jones. “He understood some of his own shortcomings because he was in the background and because of his personality, that he may not be the best point of contact or spokesman for that.”

In short order, two of the nine council members, who were disgruntled with Prosser and who thought the council had abdicated its leadership role to the city manager, argued that Eyerly should report directly to the council, not to Prosser. The council majority dismissed the idea out of hand. Prosser was the boss. Employees reported to him, and he reported to the council, the majority said.

The two council members, Monica Vernon and Justin Shields, now form a five-member majority along with Corbett, Karr and Swore, and two weeks ago, the council voted to strip Prosser of oversight duties of Eyerly and told Eyerly to report directly to the council.

By last Monday, Mayor Corbett was announcing that Prosser and a City Council majority had reached a “separation agreement” in which both sides accepted Prosser's resignation.

“I thought he did a splendid job, and I would have hoped he would have stay some while longer, continuing to use the talents I saw he had to continue to move the city forward,” Jones says. “I'm disappointed he's gone, and obviously wish him well, but hope we can get someone at least of his stature and capability to take his place.”

Baldwin remembers a trip a handful of local leaders took to Grand Forks, N.D., soon after the June 2008 flood to see how Grand Forks got back on its feet after its flood of 1997. One thing learned there, he recalls, was that most of the elected officials got bounced from office in the election after the flood.

“Given the circumstances and the nature of the decisions that had to be made – it was a disaster on a scale that no city in the state ever had to deal with – and so maybe that same mantra about what would happen to an elected official maybe is true with the city manager,” says Baldwin of Prosser.

“He simply had to follow his compass point and do things the way his training and his personality told him to do things,” he says. “And it was almost a given that at a certain juncture, it was going to lead to this.”

“ … There are clearly people on the City Council – the City Council is very divided on his effectiveness and on his style,” Baldwin says. “And some council members were very outspoken that they really didn't think he was the right person for the job.”