Could public-safety drones land in Cedar Rapids?

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Council member Justin Shields was the lone opposition in a 2007 Council vote that ended the 35-year run of the city's fleet of police copters.

This week, Shields - who chairs the council's Public Safety Committee - said it may be time for the city to look to a new aerial assistance effort via public-safety drones.

Shields said drones are now being used or considered in the agriculture sector, by Realtors and by photographers, and that the technology can offer police and fire departments some help as well.

He called recurring shooting episodes in the city among 'the most frustrating thing” he has experienced as Public Safety Committee chairman, and that aerial support in the form of drones might provide the Police Department some help.

Drones also can help with search and rescue, finding Alzheimer's patients who have wandered off and directing firefighters at a fire, he said.

'All I'm saying is we need to start thinking about those things,” Shields said.

City Council member Kris Gulick said Wednesday that the arrival of public-safety drones in Cedar Rapids wasn't far-fetched.

A volunteer mentor for the new Iowa Startup Accelerator center in Cedar Rapids, Gulick said he has referred one startup firm - which is working on docking stations that will charge drone batteries - to the Cedar Rapids Fire Department's regional Urban Search and Rescue team.

Shields' drone idea emerged during the council's annual goal-setting session this week, in which the nine council members took time to identify what the city is doing right and what it needs to add to next year's goals.

Among the ideas:

Council member Pat Shey said he would like the city to establish a free Wi-Fi demonstration project in the Wellington Heights neighborhood, in concert with the Cedar Rapids Community School District. The project would allow low-income children to have free access to the Internet through computers provided by the school district.

The city is working to establish a free Wi-Fi zone downtown in a program that could be expanded into a neighborhood demonstration project.

Council member Ann Poe said the New Bohemia district is flourishing and the new Kingston Village district across the Cedar River from downtown is seeing progress, but the commercial district envisioned for Ellis Boulevard is not. The city needed to explore what might serve as an 'anchor” entity there that could spark further investment, she said.

Council member Susie Weinacht said the City Council needed to figure out a way to find more revenue for its Parks and Recreation Department now that the department is assuming responsibility for more park land in the newly created greenways along the Cedar River.

Several council members said creating jobs in the city should remain a top priority for the City Council. Several also said the city should continue to invest in its own economic-development initiative even as the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance works on bringing growth to the metro area and the region.

Council member Ralph Russell said the city's willingness to provide incentives for business investment has worked to keep and attract jobs rather than seeing them go to neighboring cities such as a Hiawatha. 'We've pretty much ebbed the flow of jobs to Hiawatha,” Russell said.

Council member Scott Olson said it made sense for the city to take control of its on economic development destiny. But he said the council needed to use some caution so it does not hand out too many incentives in a way that hurts the 'free-market system.”

Mayor Ron Corbett said the City Council and city employees have achieved a top grade on a central focus - that is, that the city is 'open for business.”

Corbett said the city remains committed to infill development; to bolstering new districts like New Bohemia, Kingston Village and Ellis Boulevard; and to expanding housing in the downtown.

Council member Gulick took out a sheet of paper he had saved from the time of the city's 2008 flood, which listed the 'lessons learned” in Grand Forks, N.D., from its flood of a decade earlier.

Gulick said his top priority for Cedar Rapids remained the construction of a new flood protection system as soon as possible.

'The clock is ticking,” he said. Not having flood protection, he said, is something that can keep him up at night.

Several council members counted three big achievements for the city in the last year: obtaining substantial funding from the state of Iowa for the city's flood protection system; getting voter approval to continue the local-option sales tax to fund the city's Paving for Progress program; and creating the SAFE-CR nuisance abatement program.