We need city leaders who put citizens first

By Michael L. Richards

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Good leaders build trust and unite disparate interests to reach common goals. Present Cedar Rapids city leadership has failed to build trust and unite our community to rebuild and prevent future flooding. What we observed with Tuesday's defeat of the local-option sales tax extension was a crisis of confidence.

Deep roots of disunity can be traced to how this city has operated for decades; a small elite group of economic interests that use financial clout to control political power has called the shots for a long time. This entrenched status quo will no longer work with a citizenry now awakened from apathy by a major disaster.

After the flood, we needed a transparent process of citizen engagement to plan out a bare bones/frugal approach to disaster recovery and flood prevention in an era of tight city, state and federal budgets. The city government took the opposite approach - pricey consultants were brought in from faraway states for an attempt to shape public opinion to manage the flow of disaster recovery funds to best serve the elite economic interests that assume they are entitled to control this city.

The “Neighborhood Planning Process” orchestrated by expensive outside consultants was loaded with city employees and short on flood victims. I participated in every single meeting of that “public” process. A 70-year-old woman from Rompot at my table was sharing her tearful story of total loss, when one of the Chicago consultants abruptly interrupted her, stating “that is not on the agenda … we're here to plan for the future of the city riverfront.” The deep pain of our citizens was “not on the agenda”, so it was clear that city leaders” had other plans - The Preferred Plan.

Instead of inclusive, authentic grass-roots citizen involvement, we started seeing “top down” control of the process. The Economic Planning and Redevelopment Corp. was formed by John Smith, president of CRST International Inc.; Monica Vernon, Cedar Rapids council woman; Linda Langston, Linn County supervisor; and Dan Baldwin, then-president/CEO of the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation. Downtown District Manager Doug Neuman was hired as executive director.

Trust was further eroded as political patronage deals were struck with political insiders such as Gov. Chet Culver's then-Chief of Staff John Frew and state Sen. Jack Hatch. The political system was used for private economic gain.

Some downtown property owners (TrueNorth and Armstrong Realty) were given inflated deals on city land purchases with prices far beyond their fair market and officially assessed value. The large majority of citizens were against closing Second Avenue, but developers of the medical mall got their way. Government funds were used to acquire hundreds of lots in flooded zones, and then just given away to Skogman, Hatch, et al.

The people of Cedar Rapids have now stepped forward with a resounding (and repeated) “no.”

Real grass-roots citizen involvement can pull this city back together. We need new citizen based leadership and a new way of doing business in Cedar Rapids.

That's the way forward.

Michael L. Richards of Cedar Rapids is founder, Soyawax International, Inc., an author and a community activist. Comments: phytotech@aol.com