Remarks you leave at city open houses mean more than you might think

CEDAR RAPIDS - Consider filling out a comment card if you attend one of the public open houses this week about the future of the city's key flood-damaged buildings.

Your thoughts could hold more sway that you might imagine.

In August, 150 people filled out cards at open houses to tell city officials if they should return to the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building or if they should build a new City Hall.

Forty of the comments came from city employees, only three of whom said City Hall ought to return to where it has been for some 80 years - in the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island.

Of the 112 comments that seemed to clearly address where to put City Hall, city staff and consultant OPN Architects Inc. in Cedar Rapids concluded:

l 28 wanted to return to the Veterans Memorial Building.

l 56 (including 18 city staffers) wanted a new City Hall.

l 17 wanted city offices at Westdale Mall.

l 11 wanted either a new City Hall or city offices at Westdale.

It's not clear who submitted the 112 comments. What is clear, though, is that those 112 comments have taken on influence far beyond their small number.

At the City Council's Oct. 21 meeting - in preparation for the third set of city open houses this week - city consultant Dan Thies, president/CEO of OPN Architects, began his presentation on the options for City Hall by saying “the idea of a new building ... was a preferred option.”

Thies went on to say that those who commented at the August open house “shared loud and clear” their concerns about future flooding of the Veterans Memorial Building. The city's nine council members did not comment and - with the exception of council member Monica Vernon, who has pushed to hear about options other than building a new City Hall - have yet to say much publicly about what they want to do about City Hall.

Vernon, who owns and runs a marketing research firm, says the comment cards provided by citizens at public open houses are useful but should not be misused.

“Those cards should never, ever have been considered a vote,” Vernon says. “ ... From a scientific (polling) perspective, that is really unacceptable. And if that is the purpose, then we need to set up a polling booth and call the county auditor and run an election.”

City Manager Jim Prosser, who became the city's first city manager in August 2006, brought with him the concept of the public participation process. The city's open houses are now a defining image - with white poster boards of information and city staff and consultants at the ready to answer questions - of the current city government.

Prosser agrees the written comments that people leave at the open houses don't amount to a scientific vote and should not be used that way. The quality of comments matters, not the number, he says.

The intent of the public-input process, he explains, is to develop options, to evaluate them and to let the public provide feedback. Along the way, he says, the options “narrow down.” They do so, he added, “not just because of public information, but as you gather data.”

Some of that data, no doubt, includes the fact that two just-elected council members, Mayor-elect Ron Corbett and council member-elect Chuck Swore, have not hesitated to publicly declare their opposition to a new $50 million City Hall.

A Gazette Communications scientific poll on the eve of the Nov. 3 city election found that only 18 percent of the respondents in Cedar Rapids favored a new City Hall.

OPN's Thies says it remains clear the City Council ultimately will pick the preferred option for a City Hall, as well as the preferred options for other key flood-damaged buildings like the library, central fire station and animal control shelter.

At this point in the public input process, though, how does the city try to assess public sentiment? Thies asks. The comment cards, he suggests, help do that.

“How much of the public is speaking or offering insight or perspective on it in a public way?” he asks. “And, unfortunately, all we can do is use the information that is provided.”

Council member Pat Shey says he, too, understands the written comments from the city's open houses do not make for a scientific sampling of opinion.

Nonetheless, he says, the open houses are valuable. He points to the Linn County Board of Supervisors' effort to secure state I-JOBS funds to help pay for renovating the flood-damaged Administrative Office Building. That effort, he says, was initially rebuffed by the state because of a lack of a public participation, which the supervisors are now pushing ahead on.

For his part, council member Brian Fagan, who was defeated this month by Corbett for mayor, sees the open houses as a way to get people involved in “community building.”

“It's about moving forward without surprises,” Fagan says. “It's part of the transparency of government.”

At this week's open houses, the public will get to evaluate options for a City Hall/City Services Center that would consolidate many of the current city offices in a new building; an option that would align similar city services in existing buildings; and an option that would basically return city offices to where they were before the June 2008 flood.

“At the end of this, what we want to do is provide good solid information so council members see the pluses and minuses of each one of those options,” Prosser says. “But you rarely get - and I'm not seeing it here - crystal clear that there is all advantages to one option and none to another.”

For her part, Vernon thinks the open house process can be refined and streamlined.

But more importantly, she says, she would like to see more candid, public comment among elected officials about the issues earlier in the process. Otherwise, she says, open houses have the potential to become a way for elected officials to hide on controversial issues.

“Anytime we spend money and we take people's time,” she says, “I want to make darn sure it's not to cover anybody and that it's not to create an end result that we are desiring.”

It's a suggestion Prosser rejects.

The city's open houses, he says, are not "a guide to a specific outcome. We don't do that."