Cedar Rapids council campaigns hit the home stretch

Voters in Cedar Rapids are picking among 10 candidates for three seats on the city's nine-member City Council.

Two of the three races are wide open - an at-large race with three candidates and the west-side District 4 race with four candidates - since no incumbent is on the ballot.

Incumbent Monica Vernon, the council's mayor pro tem, is seeking re-election in the east-side District 2 race against two challengers.

A candidate must win 50 percent of the vote plus one vote or the top two finishers in a race will face off in a runoff election on Dec. 6.

Residents in three of the five council districts will vote only in the at-large race.

AT-LARGE RACE

At-large City Council member Tom Podzimek is not seeking re-election after six years in office, and three candidates are vying to take his place.

Two of the candidates, Carl Cortez, 66, 4118 Paradise Ct. NW, and Justin Wasson, 23, 1621 Washington Ave. SE, generally have been critical of the current City Council, while candidate Ann Poe, 58, 2560 Country Club Parkway SE, says the city has made good progress since the June 2008 flood and is headed in the right direction toward a bright future.

Cortez is a retired IBM service technician, a member of the city's River Recreation Commission and vocal advocate for the Ellis Harbor community of boat house owners and boaters.

He remembers a Cedar Rapids when it was known as “The Parlor City,” and he says the city needs to clean up, fix its streets and mow grass on city property.

“There's no pride in the city anymore, and that comes from the top, from all of the City Council,” Cortez says.

He thinks the city has focused too much on downtown, questions city support for an outdoor riverfront amphitheater, convention center and hotel renovation, and says the city can build a flood-protection system more cheaply than it thinks.

Wasson graduated from Iowa State University in December 2010 and now helps operate a cleaning company once owned by his father.

Wasson says the city needs to “get back to the basics” - good roads and public safety - and it needs to stop raising taxes and spending so much. Like Cortez, he questions the city's support of a new convention center and a renovated hotel and says the city is building a new library that is too big and fancy. He thinks the city can build a flood-protection system with the revenue it takes each year from property taxes.

Poe was a constant City Hall presence for nearly three years as the state of Iowa's post-flood liaison between the city and the state's Rebuild Iowa Office. Poe says the part-time City Council has done a good job coming to grips with a multibillion-dollar flood disaster when there was no handbook to guide it along the way. Recovery should have been faster, but it's going in the right direction, she says.

Poe, director of business development at M. Hanson & Co., a furniture and design firm, says she will work for “one, positive community.” She notes that she grew up on the city's west side - the family home was destroyed in the 2008 flood - and now lives on the city's east side. To critics who say the city has paid too much attention to downtown, she says downtown is part of the city, and she says much of the city's flood damage was in the downtown and so part of the recovery is taking place there.

All three candidates talk about fixing city streets.

DISTRICT 4 RACE

District 4 Incumbent council member Chuck Wieneke is not running for re-election, and four candidates are running to replace him in the west-side council seat.

Wieneke had endorsed candidate Cloyd “Robby” Robinson, but in recent days has moved his support to candidate Scott Olson after Wieneke said Robinson wrote a newspaper column critical of the current City Council.

Jean Leaf, 70, 1605 30th St. NW, and Steve Rhodes, 59, 1835 Greenlefe Dr. NW, also are in the race with Olson, 65, 6467 Quail Ridge Dr. SW, and Robinson, 73, 404 Cherry Hill Rd. SW. Leaf and Rhodes, like Robinson, also have been critical of the current council.

Leaf works in retail at the local Gordmans store and has worked in retail, accounting and as a nursing assistant in her professional career.

She thinks the city needs to curb spending and stop “throwing money” at big projects. Cedar Rapids doesn't need to try to become a big city like Chicago, she says. “Let's make our town nice,” she says. “It was nice once.”

She says the city also needs to focus on its infrastructure, fix sewers and streets and clean out the river.

Olson, a Realtor with Skogman Commercial and an architect with a bachelor's degree in architecture from Iowa State University, was narrowly defeated in a run for mayor in 2005.

He has a long resume of community involvement and serves on the board of directors of family services agency Four Oak of Iowa, Discovery Living, the Ecumenical Community Center Foundation and the Meth-Wick Community. Olson came up with a successful idea to create a new home for the Green Square Meals program when they city decided the program needed to move from the city's Greene Square Park building.

Olson also has served on City Hall task forces and commissions over the years, including the Veterans Memorial Commission. He had business property, both downtown and in northwest Cedar Rapids, damaged in the 2008 flood, a predicament that he says led him to participate in many meetings on flood recovery and flood protection.

“So I don't have to be educated (on flood-related) matters,” says Olson.

Olson says flood recovery is taking too long, the city needs to reach a consensus and get behind a flood-protection plan, and City Hall needs to embrace a development climate that says “open for business” so businesses expand and relocate here.

Rhodes is a real-estate appraiser, landlord and income-tax preparer, who says he is running for office to give back to the city because he says he has received money from the city's local-option sales tax to renovate a few flood-damaged rental properties.

He's running for city office, too, because of what he sees as an “accumulation of poor decisions” by the council.

“I just see the council as seeming to believe there's a money tree somewhere and there's a never-ending supply of tax dollars,” says Rhodes.

Rhodes says the council should not have purchased the downtown hotel, but instead should have considered tearing it down and waiting to see what the private sector would want to do with the property. He says cities shouldn't “prop-up” failing downtowns, but they should let the private sector decide how it wants to shape them.

“I'm not a downtowner,” Rhodes says. He wants to fix streets and infrastructure.

Robinson is a retired Quaker Oats factory worker who served in the state senate for a decade in a tenure that ended 30 years ago. For many years after that he served as a legislative lobbyist for the conservative Iowans for Tax Relief group.

Back in June, Robinson said he wasn't running to “beat up” on the current council, and he gave the council a grade of B+. In interviews and public forums in recent weeks, he said likely would have supported all of the city's downtown building projects and he noted that he backed the push to extend the city's local-option sales tax on May 3 to provide local funds for flood protection on both sides of the river. In a column he wrote for The Gazette a week ago, though, he said the council “victimized” flood victims after the flood had already victimized them, pressured people and businesses to support the sales-tax extension and diverted funds for flood recovery to “a giant urban renewal project.”

Robinson says he can provide some “balance” to the council and look for ways to cut spending, which he says may include fewer city employees. He thinks the city needs to help find a better future for the struggling Westdale Mall, and he has suggested setting up a special taxing district there to attract investors.

Robinson dropped out of school at 14 to start working, but he was proud to announce in recent weeks that he had just earned his high school general equivalency diploma at age 73.

DISTRICT 2 RACE

Incumbent Monica Vernon, who has been on the council the last four years, faces two challengers who couldn't be more different.

Paul T. Larson, 54, who has worked as a phone operator, telemarketer and customer-service representative, is in his fourteenth consecutive run for a seat on the council, hoping this time will bring victory.

Taylor Nelson, 19, a Kirkwood Community College student, is in his first run for public office.

Larson, of 220 28th St. Dr. SE, spends little time criticizing the current City Council and most of his time offering ideas for how the council can do a better job. His central campaign theme is what he calls “POP” - pinpoint policing, option-tax honesty, public transit authority.

In pinpoint policing, he wants to see the Police Department better target its resources, and he wants to see more citizen police reserves brought on to help police coverage in areas where there is the most crime. He also envisions a time when video cameras in crime hot spots might assist police in solving and deterring crime.

“How closely do they monitor the Duane Arnold (nuclear plant near Palo)?” asks Larson, who has a bachelor's degree in speech and theater from Bemidji State University. “I'm just asking for a little of that on our streets.”

Nelson, 7700 Hampshire Ct. NE, is critical of the current City Council and says the city needs to “get back to the basics.” He wants the council to fix streets and infrastructure, pay more attention to neighborhoods, control spending and hold people accountable.

Nelson, who declined a face-to-face campaign interview with a Gazette reporter and also declined to appear in front the The Gazette editorial board, suggests in an election-eve mailing to residents that he is running against the "establishment." He has criticized the current council for favoritism and cronyism.

He says City Hall “spending really has gone through the roof,” and he has called on the city to better inform the public about its budget and spending in a form that is clear and easy to understand and access.

Nelson thinks the city might have enough in its annual budget to build a flood protection system without a need for a sales tax.

Vernon, 54, is founder and president of her own company, Vernon Research Group. In the past, she served for a number of years on the city's City Planning Commission, and at one point, was the commission chairwoman. She is past chairwoman of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce's board of directors. She was president of the Junior League of Cedar Rapids when the group raised funds to build the Madge Phillips Center Shelter for homeless women and children.

Vernon, 326 23rd St. Dr. SE, says she has gained “important knowledge” in serving on the council at the time of the 2008 flood and in the flood's aftermath and can help the city as it continues to recover from the disaster.

“It does make a difference to have that knowledge,” she says. “And I really do believe we have an economic and a disaster recovery we're working on here, and I want to make sure we see them through and continue to move in the right direction.”

Vernon says the city's finances are “extremely strong,” and she points to the city's top Aaa bond rating as proof.

She says she, too, wishes that the city's flood recovery had gone faster, but she says the city is on track for a brighter future. She points to the large amount of federal and state disaster funding that the city was able to secure for both the neighborhoods and the city's public buildings. And she says the renovated Paramount Theatre, U.S. Cellular Center arena and hotel and the new library, riverfront amphitheater and year-round farmers market will attract people to Cedar Rapids from across Eastern Iowa. People and businesses will move here once they see what the city is accomplishing, she says.

Vernon has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Iowa.