Podzimek, Wieneke will exit Corbett-led council

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's a City Hall election year, and two of the three City Council incumbents up for re-election have decided not to run.

At-large member Tom Podzimek, who won two previous elections and is into his sixth year on the council, said Thursday that he's something of a believer in term limits. You arrive with fresh ideas, you work at those for a time and then you let someone else take your place, he said.

“It's good to have turnover,” he said. It's important, too, to let people know early that you don't intend to seek re-election so quality candidates step up to run.

District 4 council member Chuck Wieneke, who unseated an incumbent in November 2007, said Thursday that he campaigned with the promise of holding the seat for one term, and he's following through on the promise.

The third council member up for re-election, District 2's Monica Vernon, is expected to seek re-election, perhaps running for the at-large seat that Podzimek will vacate.

Podzimek and Wieneke were on the nine-member council at the time of the June 2008 flood, and they've been there through all of the city's flood recovery. Wieneke's council district includes the hard-hit Time Check neighborhood.

Both acknowledged that the current City Council, which has been under the leadership of Mayor Ron Corbett since January 2010, is different from the council before Corbett's arrival - different in a way that they aren't entirely pleased about. Generally speaking, Corbett has had a go-to working majority on the council, and neither Podzimek nor Wieneke has been a part of that.

Podzimek, 53, a carpenter and contractor, said the council now features “a lot more politics,” which Wieneke, 66, a former career military officer and state government executive, called “personal agendas and private beliefs.”

Podzimek said the council has shifted its focus to growth and economic development and is less concerned about creating a sustainable quality of life for future generations. He cited national polls showing that top cities focus on quality, not “growing the biggest, fastest.”

“Sustainability is one of those areas I thought we could make a lot of progress in,” he said. “But you have to have the will of the council. When you don't, it doesn't matter how much you talk, it doesn't happen.”

Corbett ran for office in fall 2009, saying that the City Council, with Podzimek and Wieneke as members, had embraced “a culture of delay.”

Podzimek and Wieneke said they, too, wished that the city's flood recovery had been moving faster.

Wieneke credited Corbett with being a mayor of action, though he cited instances in which the mayor moved ahead with ideas without informing him about the plans. Wieneke said all the flood-recovery experts had said it would take 18 months after the flood before the federal government began to fund the bulk of the city's recovery, and he noted that Corbett took office at the 18-month mark.

Wieneke said major federal funding to buy out 1,300 flood-damaged properties in the city wasn't in place for use until the spring of 2010; less than a year later, more than half of the job is done, he said.

Wieneke said he has heard plenty of resident complaints about flood recovery, which he said is part of the job of being in public office. But he said some of it has been unreasonable and some even disappointing.

“It's taken a long time,” he said of the recovery. “But don't ever tell me that the city has not been fighting for you.”

Disappointing, he said, has been the one-third of his phone calls that come from Cedar Rapids residents unaffected by the flood who complain about city spending for flood recovery and protection.

“It's made me re-look at the city,” he said.