Halloran leaves office, feeling good about tough mayoral term

Mayor Kay Halloran's four-year term at City Hall closes out next week. She will preside over her last formal council meeting tomorrow night.

And with the last meeting, there is little dispute that the past 18 months of her time as mayor have been tough ones that would have challenged anyone.

Even friends, she said, have put it to her this way: “Gee, Kay, you never signed on for this flood.”

“And my response has been, ‘When you put your name on a ballot, you sign on for whatever shows up,' ” the 72-year-old says.

Steeled from years of government service to withstand the criticism that comes with elective office, Halloran gives herself a grade of B or B-plus as mayor, as she prepares to hand the part-time mayor's job to Ron Corbett.

In an interview late last week from her artfully designed modern home on the edge of the Wellington Heights neighborhood, Halloran, a former state legislator, former state executive and retired Cedar Rapids attorney, recalled that she ran for mayor four years ago because she thought her training and experience would help get the city's new government - with a part-time council and full-time city manager - off the ground.

She said her intent was “to guide and direct” those new to elective office “without having a heavy hand on the tiller.”

Mayor-elect Corbett, in his successful campaign over Halloran-supported Brian Fagan, said Halloran made a mistake to insist that she was only one among nine on the council.

“I don't need to be the biggest,” Halloran said. “I didn't want it to be (all about me).”

Among the silliest of allegations, the mayor said, has been the one made by Corbett and others that City Manager Jim Prosser, the city's first city manager, runs the city, not Halloran and the council.

“In spite of the accusations, I think he's terribly professional, and most of the other council members do, too,” she said of Prosser. “He's very experienced and extremely competent.”

In her four years in office, Halloran was the council member who said the least during public council discussions on issues. Instead, she saw her role as that of conductor, orchestrating the comments of others.

Even so, Halloran was at the heart of a working council majority that has been willing to take on debt, add new taxes to make improvements and embrace a vision for the future that aims to enhance the quality of life in the city.

Halloran, who from the first day on the job was committed to working full time in the part-time mayor's job, admitted that she began to sleep much less after the June 2008 flood. It was in those first months of long meetings after the flood that Halloran was caught dozing, to some ridicule by KGAN (Channel 2).

She was diagnosed with sleep apnea, and, with treatment, the problem vanished. A more recent bout with early-stage breast cancer, for which her post-surgical radiation treatments are now over, persuaded her not to seek re-election.

Halloran dismissed Corbett's notion of “a culture of delay.” Rather, Halloran said, she helped create “a culture of deliberateness” at City Hall. It was an approach that involved hiring consultants to make sure the city wasn't wasting time and money on hasty and bad decisions.

“Those who know ‘how' always work for those who know ‘why,' ” she said, quoting an unnamed former legislative colleague. “We didn't know the ‘how' - whether it was saving the wells or fixing the wastewater treatment plant - but we certainly knew ‘why.' ”

West-side council member Chuck Wieneke credited Halloran with much behind-the-scenes work, using the political capital she had built over the years to get assistance from the state and federal government. She was mayor “at a very rough time in this town,” he said.

At-large council member Pat Shey said he appreciated that Halloran “was very inclusive of all of us to bring our issues forward.”

For her part, Halloran thinks she has accomplished one of her central goals - leaving the city's new form of government on a healthy footing.

Mayor-elect Corbett said Halloran likely faced the biggest challenges of any mayor in Cedar Rapids history. “I hope she leaves office feeling that she did her best,” he said.

Halloran said she hopes Corbett, in the mayor's role, isn't overly “authoritative.”

“Of course, I'll miss it, but that doesn't mean I'm walking away,” she said, saying she wants to focus now on improving the federal government's responses to disasters and its policies related to immigration.