Cedar Rapids flood plan hopes to follow Fargo success

CEDAR RAPIDS - Flood-prone Fargo did it, why can't we?

Such civic envy is surfacing in Cedar Rapids these days among proponents of the plan to extend the city's existing 1 percent local-option sales tax for 20 years, a move designed to provide local “matching” funds needed to secure federal and state help for the city's new flood protection system. The tax extension, which residents vote on May 3, also will help fix streets and provide property-tax relief.

Fargo, N.D., and Cass County of which it is a part already have put a local sales tax in place as they seek federal and state funds for their flood protection system, a fact of which Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett is well aware.

“We're not looking for a handout from the federal or state government,” Corbett said Tuesday. “Fargo understands that. They put skin in the game.”

In June 2009, three months after Fargo's record flood along the Red River of the North, 91 percent of Fargo's voters approved a one-half-percent sales tax for 20 years for flood protection. Cass County, of which Fargo comprises the largest part, did the same in November 2010 with a 64-36 percent margin of victory.

For those in Fargo, the effect is a 1 percent sales tax for flood protection, and overall, in city and county, the sales-tax levies are expected to generate $20 million to $22 million a year for 20 years.

The 20-year period and the revenue amounts are similar to the Cedar Rapids' tax-extension proposal, although only half of Cedar Rapids' total revenue would go for flood protection with 40 percent going to streets and 10 percent for property-tax relief.

Pat Zavoral, Fargo's city administrator, says Fargo wanted to be ready when the federal and state governments came calling.

“We think if we approach it that way - that, yes, we have the local match already to go - what's going to hold us back?” explained Zavoral. “If the feds were to come in and say, ‘We're ready to go, but we need a local match,' and we're going to say, ‘Wait, we got to go out and get a vote,' I think that could stall the project.”

Cedar Rapids voters went to the polls in March 2009, about nine months after the city's 2008 record flood, and passed a 1 percent local-option sales tax primarily for flood recovery for 63 months. The success of the vote was by a more modest margin, 59 to 41 percent, than the successful votes in Fargo.

Fargo's Zavoral noted that the successful sales-tax votes in Fargo in 2009 and Cass County in 2010 came even though the city already had a one-half percent local sales tax in place at the time. What has helped to easily pass sales taxes in Fargo has been timing, he said.

“Human psychology is really interesting,” Zavoral said. “And what we find up here after every flood event, is that people, two years away from the event, don't think it will ever happen again.

“And so it's as much timing as it is building up the merits of why you want it (the sales tax) to be voted on.”

Fargo - as well as Moorhead, Minn., across the river from Fargo and a 10-percent local partner (to be paid by the state of Minnesota) in their joint flood-protection plan - finds itself in a similar pickle to Cedar Rapids as both cities prepare to vie for congressional funding to help pay part of the bill for their permanent flood protection systems.

Part of the process of lining up for congressional approval is to win approval from the Army Corps of Engineers, which approves projects and submits them to secretary of the Army for submittal to Congress.

In January, Cedar Rapids' project secured the important approval of the Corps' Civil Works Review Board, a step in the process that the Fargo-Moorhead project doesn't start until July 2011, Zavoral said.

One big difference in the Cedar Rapids and Fargo-Moorhead plans is cost: Cedar Rapids' preferred plan comes with an estimated price tag of $375 million. The preferred Fargo-Moorhead plan, which features a diversion ditch around Fargo, is estimated to cost $1.7 billion.

The Corps' has recommended its own, less-costly plans in both Cedar Rapids and Fargo-Moorhead.

Fargo's Zavoral and Michael Redlinger, Moorhead's city manager, said the governors of both North Dakota and Minnesota have said their states will contribute to the project.

Cedar Rapids is not so far along.

In addition to asking voters on May 3 to extend the local sales tax here for 20 years, the city is lobbying Iowa lawmakers and the governor to approve a plan that would provide state funds to the project.

State Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, said Cedar Rapids needs to provide local matching dollars if it intends to secure state money.

“It is essential,” Hogg said. “There is no scenario under which the state will pay for flood protection for Cedar Rapids without a local match.”