Corbett moves to shift Wednesday council meetings to Hiawatha City Hall on Tuesdays

Mayor Ron Corbett has taken steps to move Cedar Rapids' Wednesday evening council meetings to Tuesday evenings and to a new temporary home, Hiawatha City Hall.

Hiawatha Mayor Tom Theis on Monday said his City Council will vote on Wednesday to give the Cedar Rapids City Council permission to use Hiawatha's City Hall on Tuesday evenings for its meetings.

Theis expected his council would grant the permission in routine fashion. He noted that the Hiawatha council chambers features a dais that can handle all nine Cedar Rapids council members as well as audio and video equipment to tape meetings. The city of Hiawatha won't charge the city of Cedar Rapids for the use of Hiawatha's building, Theis said.

Soon after he took office at the start of January, Cedar Rapids' Corbett said he wanted to find a new, temporary home for Cedar Rapids council meetings, which have been held in an auditorium on the AEGON USA business campus since shortly after the June 2008 flood damaged City Hall on May's Island.

Corbett on Monday said it is difficult at the AEGON USA venue for some council members to see presentations on a screen behind the tables at which council members sit.

Council member Monica Vernon, the council's mayor pro tem, on Monday thanked AEGON USA for providing the city with space, “but we're eager to get into something built for a city council,” Vernon said.

The AEGON USA venue, she noted, is designed like a theater, with the council sitting on a stage and the public and city staff sitting in rising rows of seats. She said the Hiawatha venue would put the council closer to the audience.

If the Hiawatha council approves his request, Corbett said he will wait until mid-March to move Cedar Rapids' meetings so Cedar Rapids council members have a chance to work the new meeting day of Tuesday into their schedules.

Corbett continues to advocate for getting City Hall back into the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island, and he has hinted that he will ask the City Council in the coming weeks to vote, once and for all, on whether it wants to build a new city hall or not.

This week's Cedar Rapids request for assistance from the city of Hiawatha comes just a couple weeks after the Cedar Rapids City Council approved a buy-local resolution that favors Cedar Rapids businesses on some Cedar Rapids city contracts over businesses in Hiawatha, elsewhere in the metro area and outside the metro area.