Most Cedar Rapids candidates favoring flood protection system

In a first round of public forums this election season, it was easy for some of the 10 candidates running for three City Council seats here to back-burner the issue of flood protection as they worked to portray the current council as big tax-and-spenders who are willing to buy a downtown hotel but can't fix potholes.

Now, as the short-run campaign has matured and as candidates have heard each other's sales pitches, nine of the 10 say the city does need to build a flood protection system that protects both sides of the city from the Cedar River.

West-side District 4 candidate Steve Rhodes still has questions about the city funding west-side protection when the Army Corps of Engineers has decided not to.

The only incumbent on the Nov. 8 ballot, District 2 council member Monica Vernon, is the only one of the 10 candidates who stands sturdily behind the city's “preferred” flood protection plan approved by the City Council three years ago.

At-large candidate Ann Poe and District 4 candidate Scott Olson both generally support the plan, though both note that it is now three years old, needs refreshed and needs to be realigned in places to try to take into account some owners who have returned to their properties close to the river.

District 4 candidate Cloyd “Robby” Robinson - like Vernon, Poe and Olson - voted May 3 to extend the city's local-option sales tax to support the city's preferred plan, but he says he still has questions.

“I'm not an engineer. I'm not a hydrologist. I'm an old retired factory worker,” says Robinson.

From there, the candidates' views about what flood-protection system to build and how to pay for it diverge as widely as the two-mile width of the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids when the river reached its historic flood crest in June 2008.

In addition, several of the candidates don't seem to know the particulars of the city's “preferred” plan, while others seem to suggest it's too fancy or too expensive.

It's hard to imagine a flood protection system would ever get built with a few of the candidates' ideas.

To talk flood protection, it's easiest to start with Vernon since she helped create the city's preferred plan, voted for it and remains a strong proponent of it.

At a candidate forum last week, Vernon made the case that the city's preferred plan didn't just fall from the sky nor was it hatched in some backroom away from public review, she added.

Vernon recalled how the City Council and the city's professional staff convened a team of expert consultants and the Army Corps of Engineers in the first months after the June 2008 flood to study a long list of flood-protection options and to conduct a series of high-profile open houses to allow public review and comment on the emerging plan. The options considered and rejected included dredging the river - It brought a couple of inches of flood protection, she said - and building a canal around the city - the cost was in the billions, she recalled. The preferred plan, approved by the City Council and supported without council dissent since, consists of a system of levees, permanent flood walls and more-expensive, removable flood walls in the downtown and at Czech Village. The system will protect to the river level of the city's historic 2008 flood.

“We have a really good plan,” Vernon, founder and president of Vernon Research Group, said without pause. The cost to build it is now estimated at $375 million.

Vernon, 54, 326 23rd St. Dr. SE., has said the council will continue to seek federal and state funds to pay some of the cost and she supports a citizen effort now under way to ask local voters in March to approve an extension of the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for 10 years to provide the required local funds for the project.

In a first public forum with Vernon, her District 2 challengers, Taylor Nelson, a 19-year-old Kirkwood Community College student, and Paul T. Larson, 54, who has run unsuccessfully for a council seat in the 13 previous elections, did not bring up the issue of flood protection. Only she did.

At last week's forum, both supported a flood-protection system for both sides of the river.

Larson, 54, 220 28th St. Dr. SE, called flood protection “important,” and in an earlier interview, said the city needs “the right plan” with the “right fiscal plan” to pay for it.

Nelson's view on paying for flood protection is shared by the other younger candidate on the Nov. 8 ballot, at-large candidate Justin Wasson.

Nelson, 7700 Hampshire Ct. NE, said last week that the city needed to see if he could pay for the flood-protection system with the property-tax revenue it raises each year for its $99-million general operating budget. The current City Council has pushed for an extension of the city's local-option sales tax because the budget at the current level of taxation doesn't have property-tax revenue for flood protection, the council has said.

Nelson said the “wording” on the ballot for a sales-tax extension, “if that's what it takes,” is all important so the City Council doesn't use money inappropriately. He also said the city needed to make it clear how sales-tax funds are being spent and it needed to give the public easy access to the information.

At-large candidate Wasson, 23, 1621 Washington Ave. SE, said he does not support a sales-tax extension, that City Hall “doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem,” and that he believes the current annual city budget has funds to pay to build flood protection over time. Wasson, a December 2010 graduate of Iowa State University who is a hands-on vice president of operations for a pressure-washing and cleaning company once owned by his dad, said the city pays a lot each year on interest for debt. He said the city needs to pay down its debt so it can use money now paid for interest for flood protection.

At-large candidate Poe, 58, 2560 Country Club Parkway SE, said she supports the city's plan to use removable flood walls downtown so the downtown isn't cut off from the river. Poe, who worked for three years as the Cedar Rapids flood-recovery liaison to the Rebuild Iowa Office, wants to see a citizen volunteer corps put in place and trained so removable flood walls can be quickly put in place at the time of a severe flood. She also supports a new vote to extend the city's sales tax with revenue going to flood protection. Without it, she's not sure how flood protection on the city's west side will get built.

The third at-large candidate, Carl Cortez, 66, 4118 Paradise Ct. NW, supports flood protection and has pointed out the number of first-floor building spaces in the downtown that are still unoccupied more than three years after the flood. Flood protection is needed before if many of those first floors are to fill up, he said.

However, Cortez, a retired IBM service technician and member of the city's River Recreation Commission, thinks the city can build a flood-protection system much more cheaply than the cost of the city's preferred plan. For instance, last week he wondered why the city couldn't simply add to the existing flood wall in the downtown rather than building a new one, and he also has looked at the new flood wall at the Quaker plant just above downtown and wondered why the city couldn't build a wall as inexpensively. The Quaker wall, for one, is only designed to hold back a 100-year flood, not one in excess of a 500-year flood like the city's 2008 flood, city officials have noted.

In the west-side District 4 race, Jean Leaf, 70, 1605 30th St. NW, has said that businesses will not relocate or build near the river until a flood protection system is in place. Leaf, who works in retail at the local Gordmans store, also said the city needs to make sure its sewer systems work better so flood water doesn't back up into them and flood homes and businesses. She has said “she might consider” a sales-tax extension of 10 years to pay for flood protection.

District 4 candidate Olson, 65, 6467 Quail Ridge Dr. SW, wants to refresh the city's preferred plan. He said the city's annual operating budget can't - as Wasson and Nelson suggested - pay for flood protection without a hike in property taxes. Olson, a Realtor for Skogman Commercial who was defeated in a close race for mayor in 2005, favors the sales tax, which he said can raise money quickly and get flood protection in place in a relatively short period of time so the city can get on with rebuilding.

Rhodes, 59, 1835 Greenlefe Dr. NW, said he still has questions about flood protection. Last week, he pointed out that the Army Corps of Engineers has concluded that it can only support a plan to build flood protection on most of the city's east side. The Corps, he noted, uses a cost-benefit analysis, which requires cost of flood protection not exceed the value of property protected. Is the Corps correct? wondered Rhodes, an appraiser, landlord and income-tax preparer. Does it make fiscal sense to protect the west side and fund it with local tax dollars? he asked. He said the city needed to debate the questions and it needed to study how “land-use policies” might help in flood protection.

Robinson, 73, 404 Cherry Hill Rd. SW, a state senator 30 years ago who for many years lobbied for the conservative Iowans for Tax Relief, put it this way last week: “Deep down, I don't know about it (the city's plan.)” He said it's hard to imagine another flood like the 2008 one, but he said the city probably needs to protect itself in case.

On May 3, residents in the metro area narrowly voted down a proposal to extend the existing 1-percent local-option sales tax for 20 years, revenue from which the city of Cedar Rapids would have used for flood protection, street repair and property-tax relief.

Vernon, Poe, Olson and Robinson voted for the tax-extension. The four said they would vote for the tax-extension for 10 years if comes to a vote in the months ahead.

Wasson, Nelson, Larson and Cortez said they voted against the measure and Rhodes declined to say how he voted.

All the candidates did vote May 3 except Leaf, according to records at the Linn County Auditor's Office.