Cedar Rapids City Council holds fast on key priority areas

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids City Council’s top priorities will remain unchanged for the year ahead, with members signaling their intent to pursue those goals with an eye for population growth through intentional investment.

Council members discussed those priorities this week at their 2025 goal setting session. The council reviews its priorities annually as a means to guide high-level discussions around city investment and development.

“We really feel as staff that the goal setting sessions are absolutely critical to the success of our organization,” said City Manager Jeff Pomeranz. “The goals and priorities we talk about here find their way into the budget process, which is obviously extremely important as we apply our resources” and staff time.

The council’s current list of priorities was established in 2023, and members renewed their commitment to those initiatives at last year’s goal setting session. City staff provide quarterly updates on each of the council’s priority areas, which include:

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In maintaining the list for a third year, District 4 Council member Scott Olson said the city can focus on ensuring measurable, cumulative change.

“These aren’t things that are going to get done in one year. They’re all multiple year projects,” Olson said. “Our stress should be on how we advance each one of these (goals) forward. … We need to just keep tackling these problems and getting better at them.”

Council eyes population growth, regional connections

The Tuesday goal setting session involved a personal visioning process and facilitated discussion among council members. Members were asked to think about where they saw the city in five years, as well as how that vision aligned with current council priorities.

By and large, the overlap was substantial. Members envisioned the completion of the city’s ongoing flood control projects and the neighborhood revitalization it will allow in areas devastated by the 2008 flood.

Council members also espoused a shared vision of Cedar Rapids as a regional driver that could attract new residents to Eastern Iowa through a mix of employment opportunities, municipal offerings and other amenities.

“We do an incredible amount of work on any given day (as a city) on so many incredible projects — new projects, long-running projects” and everything in between, said District 5 Council member Ashley Vanorny. “I really think that we have what it takes to be really special, to be really unique.”

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To achieve that vision, the council unanimously recognized the need for continued population growth, and given that reality, Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell floated the possibility of making that growth its own priority area.

She highlighted ongoing efforts around resident recruitment and retention such as the Collaborative Growth Initiative, a resident recruitment initiative being completed in partnership with the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, as well as the cities of Marion and Hiawatha.

Through that program, the three cities and the alliance have partnered to fund a report on the region, identify strategies for growth and to hire Jodi Schafer as a talent attraction director to address the region’s workforce challenges and recruitment efforts.

“We are spending significant dollars and significant effort on an initiative to grow our population and market our city, so as we look ahead to next year, it could be very helpful to know that the council has that as a very specific priority,” O’Donnell said.

Council members discussed the idea but ultimately opted not to create a new priority area. Instead, they signaled an intent to put a focus on population growth through the lens of the existing priorities.

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Several members also noted that growth likely will occur on a regional scale, necessitating concentrated efforts toward strengthening partnerships with other communities and organizations within the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City Corridor.

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Council member David Maier noted the importance of intentional investment in supporting those efforts and partnerships, as well as the need to balance regional collaboration with an ongoing focus upon Cedar Rapids’ unique character.

“I think we can do both,” he said. “I think we can have that economic growth in the region, and also have more intentional investment into our urban core and into our neighborhoods — especially for our small business owners and local nonprofits.”

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