3 better than 5, critics tell Linn County Supervisors

CEDAR RAPIDS - Now the hard part starts - getting 8,695 petition signatures.

Rural Coggon retiree Kevin Kula delivered on his promise from last Friday and told the Linn County Board of Supervisors on Monday that he and a group of supporters were launching a petition drive to cut the number of supervisors from five to three.

The move is needed to cut costs and to better align the costs with the work that the supervisors do, said Kula, who regularly attends supervisor meetings.

The signature drive includes a second petition, which asks that voters decide if they want to continue to have supervisors reside in districts and be elected only by voters who live in a district. Other options are to allow voters countywide to vote for all the supervisors and to decide if there should be supervisor districts or not.

Linn County moved to supervisor districts with only voters in each district voting for their supervisor as a result of a petition drive and referendum in 2007. That referendum followed a petition drive and referendum in 2006 to increase the number of supervisors from three to five.

Kula said he and others who voted to expand the number of supervisors from three to five in 2006 did so with the expectation that the five supervisors would pay themselves what the three would have been earning.

In 2009, the new, five-member board agreed to lower its pay to 80-percent time in the face of public criticism, but the board returned to full-time pay in 2013.

Kula asked the supervisors to put the question of cutting the board from five to three members on the ballot without a petition drive, which he called the 'easy way.”

However, the supervisors said they wanted to see the signatures, and Kula said he would do it the 'hard way.”

Supervisor Brent Oleson said he and others worked hard in 2006 to obtain signatures that forced the vote to expand the board from three to five supervisors.

Oleson of rural Marion said the voters' decision to move to five supervisors and to elect them in districts accomplished what was intended - to provide representation to the rural parts of the county at a time when the county's three supervisors all lived in Cedar Rapids.

'I think I've been a positive counterweight to (what had been) a Cedar Rapids dominated board,” Oleson said.

Dave Machacek of rural Alburnett, who led the 2006 and 2007 petition drives, said Friday that five supervisors are better than three, though he said they should pay themselves less as he said had been the intent when he pushed for the change.

Kula, a former truck driver, criticized the board for past statements that he represented a 'small group of people.” He said he represents 'working class people” with stagnant incomes and rising health care costs and retirees on fixed incomes.

'To me that's not a small group of people,” he said.

Larry Lacey of Center Point, who is helping on the petition drive, said he was optimistic that the petition backers could get the required signatures, and he said the sooner the better.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, who supports the petition drive, told the supervisors that Iowa law allows them to change how supervisors are elected, whether in districts or at large. Miller favors at-large voting.

Oleson said Miller, a Democrat, favored making a change to allow all county voters to vote in all the supervisor races to increase the chances that all supervisors would be Democrats. He said voting within supervisor districts has resulted in two Republicans on the board, Oleson and John Harris of Palo.

Any referendum on changing the number of supervisors would occur in November 2016 if the petition drive is successful before then.