Linn County mayors supportive of Corbett local-option proposal

Mayor Ron Corbett is looking to ask the City Council to hold a special election, perhaps as soon as May 3, to see if residents are willing to extend the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for 20 years to provide necessary local-matching funds to build a flood-protection system on both sides of the Cedar River.

Some 400 local households got an inkling on Tuesday and Wednesday that City Hall is exploring the idea of asking for a local-option sales-tax extension because they have been subjects of a telephone survey.

Corbett said Wednesday that he is using his leftover campaign funds to pay for the survey, not city tax dollars, and he said he intends to do a phone survey once a year as mayor.

The survey's questions focus on flood protection, but also ask residents about the city's streets and traffic-enforcement cameras. He's eager to see the results, he said.

As of now, the mayor said his idea would be to ask voters to extend the 1-percent local-option sales tax for 20 years, with 50 percent of the revenue to go to a flood-protection system and 50 percent to residential road repair.

Any call by the city of Cedar Rapids for a sales-tax referendum requires contiguous cities in the metro area to vote with Cedar Rapids as a voting block. Other jurisdictions in the county likely also will vote, except for Bertram, Coggon and Prairieburg, which have the sales tax in place without a sunset provision, said Linn County Auditor Joel Miller on Wednesday.

The mayors in Marion, Hiawatha and Robins on Wednesday said Corbett had met with them and made a good case for Cedar Rapids' need to extend the option sales tax. All three mayors said they, too, would welcome the extended life of the tax because it would help them pay for basic city projects and hold the line on property taxes.

“I can see where he's coming from,” Marion Mayor Paul Rehn said of Corbett and his hunt for flood-protection dollars. “And we wouldn't have any problem using the additional funds. So I'm not going to oppose it.”

Corbett on Wednesday said that the city already knows that the Army Corps of Engineers is recommending a $100-million, no-frills flood-protection system for the east side of the river only, a plan that leaves the west side of the river and the Cedar Lake area on the east side of the river unprotected and forgoes more attractive, more costly, removable flood walls downtown.

The Corps requires a 35-percent local match for its project - a local match generally includes city and state dollars - which the mayor said means the city with the help of the state needs to come up with the Corps' match and with all the funding for west-side protection, for extra protection on the east side and for more attractive protection on both sides of the river.

The city's preferred flood-protection plan has an estimated cost of $375 million.

“So the choice in front of us, from an equity standpoint, is do we protect both sides of the river,” the mayor said. “I'm in the camp that, yes, we do need to protect both sides of the river. And I think the City Council is in general support of that.

“But it all is lip service unless we put together a funding plan to do that.”

Corbett said the city is no different from a homeowner with a plan to add a deck or remodel a kitchen. Without a funding plan, “all it is is wishful thinking,” he said.

“We're coming up on the third-year anniversary of the flood this year,” he continued, “and we have to move to the point of putting together the funding for this protection system.”

Even now, the city is pushing for Congressional funding of the Corps' recommended plan as the city works to convince state lawmakers to agree to a city plan that calls for the state to divert the growth in the state's portion of state sales tax collected in Cedar Rapids and Linn County to help fund the city's flood-protection system.

But federal and state dollars, the mayor said, won't do nearly all of it.

“I've been studying this issue for quite some time, trying to rack my brain on the best way to come up with local funding,” Corbett said. “I don't think there are too many citizens that think the federal and state governments are going to pay 100 percent of the flood-protection cost.”

Having a local commitment to use the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for flood protection over 20 years should help secure federal and state dollars, he added.

The local-option sales tax in Cedar Rapids now is in place until June 30, 2014, with 90 percent of the money - in total, the tax brings in about $18 million a year for Cedar Rapids - going for the acquisition and renovation of flood-damaged housing and for the local match for federal dollars for flood recovery and flood protection. Ten percent goes for property-tax relief.

Over the 20 years after 2014, the tax would bring in about $360 million to the city at the current rate of collection.

Annually, the option tax now provides the city of Marion with about $4 million, Hiawatha, $880,000, and Robins, $250,000, the cities said.

Corbett said collecting the tax over 20 years for flood protection and roads allows people in the city at the time to pay for the benefit they are receiving from the protection and road improvements.

He said residents never tire of telling the City Council to fix the city's streets.

“And the response traditionally has been, ‘I guess there isn't any money. There's nothing we can do.' Well, that doesn't sit well with taxpayers,” the mayor said.

Corbett said a referendum on an extension of the local-option sales tax is the right way to go. The nine-member City Council shouldn't make the decision about a comprehensive, both-side-of-the-river flood-protection system; voters should, he said.

“The citizens of Cedar Rapids should have a voice on whether we move forward with what would be one of the largest public works projects in the state of Iowa,” the mayor said. “I never have had a problem in letting people have their voice.”

Robins Mayor Ian Cullis said Wednesday that one benefit of the option sales tax is that shoppers who shop in the metro area and live outside Linn County pay the tax, too, though the tax revenue stays in the county.

As for Cedar Rapids' flood-protection needs, he said, “Cedar Rapids has a mammoth debt to come up with. … I don't know, if anyone has any other bright ideas, bring them along.”