League of Cities wants presidential candidates to listen to city needs

CEDAR RAPIDS - Cities want presidential candidates to pay attention to their needs.

That was a message Thursday from the Iowa League of Cities as leaders from across Iowa convened at The DoubleTree by Hilton for the league's convention.

At an afternoon news conference, Iowa officials helped to launch a national initiative of the National League of Cities - Cities Lead 2016 - that calls on presidential candidates to address the needs of cities in public safety, the economy and infrastructure.

Waterloo Mayor Buck Clark said the Iowa League wanted the next president to increase federal funding to support community policing efforts and to bolster training for police officers.

Clark, a retired Waterloo police officer, said some measures of crime are dropping, but he said the trend is troubling and in the opposite direction in one particular area - gun-related crime and gun violence in local communities.

That is true in Waterloo, Clark said, as police officials in Cedar Rapids have been saying all year about Cedar Rapids.

Clark said Waterloo police officers today encounter more guns on the street in one month than he did in his entire 23-year police career.

More federal support for community policing - getting officers out of squad cars to interact with community members - is a key to trying to lessen the gun problem, he said.

At the same time, he said the league was calling on the next president to enact legislation that makes it more difficult for criminals and the mentally ill to have guns and lengthens prison sentences when a gun is used in a crime.

'More guns in the hands of more irresponsible people does not make us safer,” Clark said.

On the economic front, Cedar Rapids City Council member Kris Gulick, past president of the Iowa League of Cities, said the league wanted the next president to increase federal funding for workforce development so cities have the skilled workers that businesses need.

He also said the league wants the next president to support initiatives to ensure that youth have the opportunity to graduate from high school and to be prepared to go on to postsecondary education or to the workforce.

Gulick said the federal Community Development Block Grant program has been instrumental in helping provide funding for Cedar Rapids' recovery from its 2008 flood, and he said the league wants the next president to support the CDBG program.

After the Thursday event, Waterloo's Clark said there are times when he's watching local TV news at night and a report starts about another episode of violence in an Eastern Iowa city. He said he holds his breath to see if it is Waterloo. But sometimes it is Cedar Rapids these days, he said.

He said young people got into fights in the days when he was on the police force, but today's young people think they are 'tough guys when they have a gun.”

He said he has created a monthly roundtable of community leaders to discuss how to bring about changes.

Cedar Rapids is looking at similar concepts.

Clark said he gets phone calls all the time from residents telling him it is his fault for not fixing the problem.

He called the gun violence 'a real danger.”

The annual conference ends Friday.