Lawmakers gather in Cedar Rapids to support local-option tax extension

Three local state legislators, two Democrats and a Republican, stood Friday in a flood-hit northwest Cedar Rapids neighborhood to urge local voters to vote “yes” on May 3 to extend the city's 1-percent local option sales tax.

All three - Democratic Sen. Robb Hogg and Rep. Renee Schulte, a Republican, and Rep. Tyler Olson, a Democrat – currently are pushing the Iowa Legislature to provide state financial support to help build a comprehensive, $375-million flood-protection system that will protect both sides of Cedar Rapids from the Cedar River.

“We get asked a lot by our colleagues in the Legislature, ‘What is the city doing to help pay for this very expensive project?'” Olson said at the morning news conference outside Pierson's Flower Shop & Greenhouses.

Olson said voter approval May 3 to extend the city's local-option sales tax for 20 years will demonstrate to the Iowa Legislature and to the federal government that the city is willing to help pay to protect itself.

“I think it's important that … the city and community rally together one more time,” Olson said. “We've done a lot in the last two years. … This is the next step in our road to recovery.”

Schulte said she remembered exactly where she was the day of the flood in June 2008 and how she spent the next two weeks working with the Red Cross to help deliver emergency disaster relief. She said it wasn't easy for her to back a tax extension.

“But yet, this is the right thing to do,” she said. “This is what we need to do to build back our community. … Cedar Rapids is the second largest economic engine in the state of Iowa, and if we don't come back, all of Iowa suffers.”

Hogg said those at the Friday news conference would have been all-but underwater at Pierson's flower shop back on the day of the flood crest in 2008. He said the cost of the disaster to the community, which he said has been put at $5 billion to $6 billion, is only part of the reason to build a flood-protection system.

“It's not just the money, but it's the heartache and trauma that goes with a person losing their home, losing their possessions, losing their business, losing their church or place of worship,” Hogg said. “And I don't want our community to ever go through that again.”

Hogg said the tax extension is a cost to people, but he said it was a “small cost” to guard against another flood disaster.

The state senator noted that he is an advocate for better watershed management along the Cedar River, but he added that better watershed management will only do so much. Cedar Rapids' needed flood protection as well, he said.

Mayor Ron Corbett introduced the three state lawmakers at the event sponsored by the Protect Cedar Rapids Committee.

Two other Democratic state legislators from Cedar Rapids, Rep. Todd Taylor and Rep. Kirsten Running-Marquardt, also are publicly supporting the tax extension, Corbett said.

Store owner Pierson, Courtney Ball, co-director of the Block by Block neighborhood revitalization program, and Al Hartl Jr., president of RWDSU-UFCW Local 100 representing Quaker Co. employees, also spoke in favor of the tax extension at the Friday event.

Ball recalled octogenarian Doris Grimm, who returned to her renovated home on Eighth Street NW after the flood because she thought it was a good place to come back to.

“She's been through enough in this life,” Ball said. “She knows when a problem presents itself, you face it head on, you pull together people like your family and friends, you get creative and you do what needs to be done.

“I think May 3 is the chance for us to do the same thing as a community.”