Supervisor raises concerns about May's Island flood-protection

The City Council here Tuesday evening is expected to call for a May 3 special election to ask voters to extend the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for 20 years, through June 30, 2034. The extension is needed, a majority on the council said last week, to help pay for both-sides-of-the river flood protection and street repairs.

Before the city gets to voters, though, it first must convince the Linn County Board of Supervisors, which by state law approves the ballot language specifying the end and start dates of the tax, to agree that the tax extension should be 20 years. The supervisors usually agree to an individual jurisdiction's request.

However, one of the five supervisors, Brent Oleson, said Monday he won't approve such a lengthy extension of the tax until he gets a better answer to this question: What about May's Island.

What is going to be done, he asks, to provide added flood protection to May's Island, home of the county's courthouse and jail as well as the city's Veterans Memorial Building, if flood walls and levees go up on both sides of the river, which is what the tax extension is designed to help accomplish?

“You can't put two walls up and constrict water in such a way to raise it up in a flood event and not expect the island not only to be flooded, but to be swept away basically,” Oleson said.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett on Monday said flood protection on both sides of the river doesn't mean that May's Island has been forgotten. Temporary measures can be implemented to help better protect the island in an extreme flood event once a new, permanent flood-protection system is in place on both sides of the river, the mayor said.

Such a temporary system would protect the three buildings, not the entire island, Dave Elgin, Cedar Rapids' public works director, added on Monday. He said one such temporary system features aluminum panels. As for protecting the entire island, he said, that could “end up being a little impractical.”

Elgin noted, too, that the flood-preparedness approach being used on May's Island includes moving expensive mechanical and electrical equipment higher in the island's three buildings and buying flood insurance to protect against future risk. Insurance is available because the island, except for its southern tip, sits outside the 100-year flood plain.

Nonetheless, Elgin said Oleson's basic observation is true: Flood walls on both sides of the river will raise the level of flood water on May's Island. In a 100-year flood, the level increase would be inconsequential, Elgin said. However, the water rise on the island has not yet been calculated at the river's 2008 flood level with flood protection on both sides of the river, said both Elgin and Thomas Heinold, program manager on the Cedar Rapids project for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Supervisor Oleson on Monday acknowledged that the Linn supervisors typically set the start and end dates for the local-option sales tax in the ballot language as requested by individual jurisdictions in the county.

Iowa law requires a countywide vote on questions about the local-option sales tax when jurisdictions representing more than 50 percent of a county's population ask for such a vote. In Linn County, such votes are dictated by the city of Cedar Rapids because it has more than 50 percent of the county's population.

Every jurisdiction in Linn County now has the local-option sales tax in place, though end dates differ by jurisdiction.

Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha and Robins, which will vote as a block in any upcoming sales-tax vote, all have the tax in place until June 30, 2014.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller on Monday clarified what he said last week about the likely upcoming vote. Every jurisdiction in the county will vote except three, Coggon, Bertram and Prairieburg, which have the local-option sales tax in place without an end date.

Last week, Miller said jurisdictions could opt out of a vote if they chose.

In March 2009, voters in Cedar Rapids put the local-option sales tax in place for 63 months on a 59-to-41-percent vote. Ninety percent of Cedar Rapids' tax revenue is used to acquire and renovate flood-damaged homes and to match federal dollars for flood recovery and flood protection.

The city's preferred flood-protection system has a price tag of $375 million. The Corps' no-frills system for much of the east side of the river will cost $100 million, 35 percent of which must come from local matching dollars.