Council yanks local inventor's Yardy anti-tip guard out of new city budget

CEDAR RAPIDS - A local inventor watched last night as the City Council, on a 6-2 vote, yanked his $540,000 plan to protect residents from their Yardy yard-waste carts from the city's proposed new budget.

It was something of a change of heart from a month ago when a consensus of the council expressed support for including Kim Brokaw's anti-tip CartGuard in the budget.

But council member Justin Shields pointed out last night that he had fielded a bevy of phone calls and e-mails about the council proposal to buy the anti-tip guards, and not one person favored the city spending money on the device, he said.

Council member Kris Gulick noted that Brokaw had agreed to give the city 1 percent of any future sales revenue, but in the end, Gulick said the product needed to be tested in the marketplace first.

Mayor Ron Corbett and council member Pat Shey voted to buy Brokaw's invention, which the city would have installed on each of 54,000 Yardy carts in the city.

Shey and Corbett said they wanted the city to ask vendors about safety when they buy more yard carts in the future.

In the end, council member Chuck Swore said he couldn't justify spending $540,000 for Brokaw's product when the council cut $580,000 out of the budget for a new fire truck