Q&A with Cedar Rapids City Council candidate Dan Bahan

Dan Bahan is running for the District 4 seat on the Cedar Rapids City Council. He is not an incumbent. Here are his answers to a survey we sent to all of the candidates.

Occupation & Employer: Senior Technican Nordstrom

Why are you seeking a seat on city council?

I've lived all over this city since my family relocated here in 1994. Over time I've watched certain areas of town get a lot of attention and care while areas with great potential are left to crumble. I want to bring a new perspective to our cities leadership that is representative of your average working person instead of the small percentage of people that can afford to be landlords or real estate developers.

What are the three largest issues facing the community and what will you do to address them?

1. Potholes over politics: Fixing the roads and expanding the efforts to update all of our cities roads isn't a partisan issue. Everyone knows the areas of town that get ignored and I want to give them a voice.

2. Bring back our trees: Our city is still recovering from the Derecho storm that destroyed 60% of our tree cover. This summer has been one of the hottest on record and the lack of trees has never been more apparent. I want to expand the tree replanting effort so we can all sit in the shade again.

3. Walkable Infrastructure: I want to see our community spaces take priority over suburban development. Recent studies show that large suburban neighborhoods are a drain on city revenue with the increased cost to maintain roads and a lack of businesses so people can access basic necessities. We also need to bring back the concept of a place where you can just go to meet people. Our priorities have built a lot of very nice houses, but communities that don't even know their neighbors names.

What do you see as the greatest affordable housing needs, and how could the city facilitate more affordable housing options for homeowners and renters?

We need to embrace mixed zoning regulations so that businesses and homes can intermingle again. We also need to prevent large private equity firms from hoarding all the available houses causing artificial scarcity and driving up prices.

As homelessness increases in Linn County, what solutions would you plan to explore to expand or streamline services and housing access for those experiencing homelessness?

I would explore options into rezoning for lower-cost housing options, meet with local leaders in the various industries that actually control that stuff because as an IT technician, I won't pretend I know everything. But I do know that we have a large swath of people that know way more about these things than I do, and I just want to be in a position to put them to work in the best possible ways. I also want to do things like increase our public transportation or increase access to public transportation and make it so that once they do have homes, they can actually get to the jobs that are in our area because it doesn't do you any good to have a house if you don't have a way to continue to support yourself.

What do you see as priorities when it comes to the city's economic development? In what areas do you think the city has growth potential? What's most at risk and what would you do about it?

We need to embrace walkable neighborhoods and the food deserts. I want us to embrace more community spaces with corner stores and local businesses. If I am elected I will push to have a section of land put aside for another Newbo style area on the southwest side near all of the new apartments that have gone up recently. Smaller community oriented spaces like that help increase revenue in areas of the city by 10-30% without forcing it on residents. People will shop if you give them places to congregate.

As local partners work to finalize the updated Downtown Vision Plan, what would you say are the greatest needs to revitalize Cedar Rapids' downtown? How would you propose taking action?

We need to prioritize building spaces that you don't need a car to navigate. We need to bring back the walkable city center where people can shop with local businesses instead of big chains so the money stays in our communities.

Since passing its community climate action plan, which calls for net zero carbon emissions by 2050, Cedar Rapids has taken steps to implement the plan such as creating community gardens. Are there other things you'd like to see the city do to address climate change?

In the short term we need to embrace walkable infrastructure. One of the easiest ways to cut down on carbon emissions is to utilize space near where people live and make a place they can walk to and hang out. In the long term I want to get our city to an electric bus fleet like they have in larger cities that utilize food waste to produce the power. The second one is a long ways off, but I believe our city can do it.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz is 65, and has not indicated any plans to retire yet. It seems possible the council members elected this year would be involved in appointing his successor sometime during their term. How would you approach the task of selecting the person who runs day-to-day operations of the city and implements the policy you set on council? What traits are most important to you in the next city manager?

I feel our next city manager should be on board with mixed zoning and zoning to build more houses to lower the cost of housing. Walkable infrastructure is also incredibly important to me. If the next manager wants to just build more suburbs that cause a net drain on city revenue then they won't be high on my list of choices.

Recent state legislation has challenged local governments' budgets. If you had to cut the city's budget or reduce proposed spending, what areas would you look to for savings and why?

I would look to the budget proposals for the next few years and cut out wasteful projects that don't have any planning behind them. If you want $120 million from the people you had better come to the council with at least an idea of where the project is going to be built and what it will look like.

What options do you think the city could pursue to fill gaps in the transportation network (buses, bikeways/trails, streets), especially to support low-income households, those without easy access to a vehicle, and/or people with mobility issues?

We need to expand our bus routes and run the buses later. We have an entire community of hard working people that get off work long after the buses stop running for the evening. If public transportation meets the needs of everyone then we solve a lot of our cities goals.