Past mayors Pate and Halloran lead Cedar Rapids’ Charter Review Commission ahead

CEDAR RAPIDS - Two former mayors Thursday night convened the city's Charter Review Commission, which will take the next 90 days to review the city's six-year-old Home Rule Charter and, perhaps, recommend some tweaks or changes to it.

Both Paul Pate, mayor from 2002 through 2005, and Kay Halloran, mayor for four years after Pate, noted to their fellow commissioners that the 13-member commission did not have to recommend any changes to the charter once its review is complete.

The City Council created the Review Commission as required by the charter, which calls for such a review in 2011 and every ten years after that.

Pate acknowledged the hard work that the city's citizen Home Rule Charter Commission did back in 2004 and 2005 to draft the existing charter, which voters approved by a large margin in June 2005 and which established a city government with a part-time mayor and council and a full-time city manager. The former commission government had a full-time mayor and council with no city manager.

“It's not our intent to do all that heavy lifting again,” Pate suggested.

“This is just a review,” Halloran said.

Commission members Jim Craig, Carleton Whiting and Scott Overland all said they wanted the Review Commission to hear from what Overland called a good “cross-section” of the community to hear how they think the current city charter is working. Craig said he wanted to find out if people think the existing charter is producing a government that worked with “efficiency and responsiveness.” Overland thought the commission wouldn't change much about most of what's in the existing charter.

Pate said he also wanted to hear from some members of the City Council to see how they think the current charter works.

Pate, who called himself a recovering politician, told commission members that their lack of expertise in politics would be no impediment to their contributing to the commission's work.

Two Review Commission members, Nancy Bruner and Robin Tucker, served on the Home Rule Charter Commission back in 2004 and 2005.

The Home Rule Charter Commission created a charter with nine, part-time council members, five of whom are elected in a council district. In 2005, the commission spent some time working over alternatives before it picked a map of the five council districts to recommend to the City Council. The existing council districts will need to be redrawn based on the 2010 Census, but the commission won't address that job, City Attorney Jim Flitz noted.

Any recommendations from the commission now are expected to go to the City Council in August. Small changes will be addressed by a council vote, though larger changes could go to a vote of the public, Mayor Ron Corbett told the commission in introductory remarks.

After the meeting, Tucker said one charter feature he wants to talk about is whether council members in districts should serve two-year terms with the mayor and three at-large council members serving four-year terms. All serve four-year terms under the existing charter.

The Review Commission meets again May 19 at 5:30 p.m. at the city's temporary city hall.

Comments: (319) 398-8312; rick.smith@sourcemedia.net