Flood victim Kathy Potts files complaint at City Hall against flood-recovery director Eyerly

CEDAR RAPIDS - Kathy Potts, a flood victim who follows City Hall closely and who ran for the City Council last fall, has filed a formal complaint with the city, charging that Flood-Recovery Director Greg Eyerly made an inappropriate, “crude” sexual comment in her presence.

Potts said City Manager Jim Prosser called her on Wednesday to apologize for the city.

Eyerly said this on Wednesday: “If someone has the perception that I said something wrong, I apologize.”

Potts and Jon Galvin, a flood victim who also follows the City Council closely, said on Wednesday that the comment in question came outside the Tuesday evening City Council meeting when Eyerly, Galvin and Potts were standing together.

The 70-year-old Galvin said he had told Eyerly that he had decided to put his flood-wrecked home in the Time Check Neighborhood back on the city's list of homes to demolish. Galvin said he was doing it to “get some peace” at home because his wife had decided it was time to get the house down and for them to move on.

Potts said Eyerly responded by asking “what kind of” peace, which Potts said was intended as a sexual reference to the word “piece.”

“It was totally inappropriate,” Potts said. “And he just stood there laughing.”

Galvin said he realized that Potts did not like Eyerly's comment, but he said he “let it go in one ear and out the other.”

For his part on Wednesday, Eyerly said, “We're working to ensure that we have all the facts. We want to make sure everybody's heard. … I don't think there's an issue here. I think we have an issue of perception.”

Prosser did not comment directly about the Eyerly matter, but did say that the city had received information about the conduct of an employee.

Generally speaking, Prosser said, “We take very seriously the responsibility of employees to conduct themselves in an appropriate and professional fashion in the workplace, and we certainly consider meetings to be the workplace.”

Prosser said he did call and apologize to Potts on Wednesday whatever the facts of the matter are.

“If she was offended, that was good enough for me because it's not our purpose to offend anybody,” Prosser said.

As she has said publicly in the past, Potts on Wednesday noted that she is a past victim of sexual abuse and she said, because of that, she is sensitive to remarks like the one she said Eyerly made to Galvin in her presence. Such a comment might pass in a bar with a bunch of buddies, but it doesn't when someone is representing the city in a professional role, Potts said.

“This type of thing really, really gets to me,” Potts said. “Not in an angry way, but in a nervous, shaken-up sort of way.”

Prosser currently is Eyerly's boss, but a City Council majority decided Tuesday evening that in the near future it wants Eyerly to report directly to the council so the council can take more control of flood recovery and give Prosser time to focus on economic development.

In recent weeks, Potts also found herself in the middle of the council's debate on spending $540,000 to buy a local inventor's anti-tip guard for the city's Yardy carts. Potts worked along with the inventor, Kim Brokaw, on council member Pat Shey's election campaign last fall, but Potts subsequently was unhappy to see the council on the verge of buying Brokaw's device. She reported that Shey had a picture of Brokaw on his refrigerator that showed Shey, council member Kris Gulick and Brokaw on a hunting trip together. The council didn't buy the Yardy guards.