Half of council candidates say City Hall focuses too much on downtown

Beating up on the downtown is a recurring theme among half of the 10 people running here for three seats on the City Council.

“I'm not a downtowner,” declares District 4 candidate Steve Rhodes, 59, a real-estate appraiser, landlord and income-tax preparer.

“People are really sick of the downtown,” adds at-large candidate Carl Cortez, 66, a retired IBM technician.

It seems something of a localized version of presidential races in which candidates distance themselves from Washington, D.C.

The candidates who think the current City Council has focused too much on downtown and spent too much money there also include at-large candidate Justin Wasson; District 2 candidate Taylor Nelson; and District 4 candidate Jean Leaf.

The only incumbent in the three-race field, District 2 council member Monica Vernon, as well as District 4 candidate Scott Olson and at-large candidate Ann Poe, all make the case that City Hall has had to pay attention to the downtown because that's where public buildings - including the library, the bus depot, the Paramount Theatre, the U.S. Cellular Center, the Veterans Memorial Building and the former federal courthouse that is now the new City Hall - were damaged in the 2008 flood.

Poe, 58, who worked for three years as the Rebuild Iowa Office's liaison to Cedar Rapids, says it shouldn't be the downtown versus the rest of the city, but all of Cedar Rapids against the world as the city works to recover from the 2008 flood.

District 2 candidate Paul T. Larson, 54, who has unsuccessfully run in the 13 previous City Council elections, calls the downtown “important,” while District 4 candidate Cloyd “Robby” Robinson, 73, who is a former state senator and former lobbyist for Iowans for Tax Relief, says the anti-downtown sentiment is real, but something the city needs to get beyond.

Lost in the campaign back-and-forth about the downtown is how much public flood-recovery money - federal, state and local - has been spent in the neighborhoods outside of the downtown since the 2008 flood. A running partial tally stood at $157,274,286 last week, according to figures provided by City Hall.

The public dollars have been used to buy out and renovate flood-damaged homes with much more spending to come in the purchase of flood-damaged businesses outside of the downtown; to demolish what has been ruined; and to provide direct payments to flood victims for personal possessions lost in the flood as well as down payment help on new homes and interim mortgage assistance.

Candidates Cortez, Taylor and Wasson also have questioned the city's use of flood-recovery revenue from the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax, with Taylor questioning the $4 million in sales-tax revenue going to the new library project and Wasson doing the same with the $3.55 million planned, though not yet spent, for a new animal shelter.

To date, the city has spent $38.8 million for flood recovery from the sales tax, with all but the library's $4 million going to fill funding gaps to acquire and renovate flood-damaged residential properties or to make direct payments to flood victims, according to the latest City Hall figures.

Nowhere is the anti-downtown sentiment more of a campaign issue than in the west-side District 4 race.

Candidate Robinson is a veteran of past political wars and his experience shows: He's quick to suggest that the anti-downtown feeling hurts the best known of his opponents, Scott Olson, 65, a Realtor with Skogman Commercial who works from an office in the downtown.

“They see Scott as a downtown guy,” says Robinson. “… We got to get past this,” he adds. “You've got to have a strong downtown.”

Robinson ticks off the city's building projects downtown - the library, central fire station, the convention center and hotel renovation - and says, “I can't think of one I wouldn't have supported. … The hotel will make some money to cover what the convention center doesn't make. The convention center will bring people to the community. We got to have the attraction.”

Olson, who was narrowly defeated in the mayor's race in 2005, says the city needs to improve on its delivery of basic city services citywide, particularly with street repairs. But Olson says much of the criticism about the downtown is a matter of perception. “That's where the damage was. That's where the projects are,” he says.

Rhodes, a third candidate in the District 4 race, seems quite aware he is running against Olson as well when he says, “I'm not a downtowner.”

Rhodes says the current City Council has made a series of bad decisions, including buying the downtown hotel from its creditors. He says the city might have been better off to tear the hotel down and see what the private sector might do with the land. Cities spend too much money, he says, to “prop up” downtowns that may be in decline for good reason.

District 4 candidate Leaf, 70, who works in retail at Gordmans, says the city should stop “throwing money” at big projects, and she says Cedar Rapids doesn't need a downtown like Chicago.

In the at-large race, Wasson, 23, an Iowa State University graduate who works for a cleaning company once owned by his dad, says the City Council has moved “from the real needs of this town to wants.” The city is building a “monument” of a new downtown library that is too large and expensive, he adds.

Cortez agrees that the city should not be building a new library, but should have returned to the flood-damaged one on First Street SE that TrueNorth Companies Inc. is now renovating and moving into.

“It appears everybody wants something new,” he says. “But they want something so fancy.”

Poe, the third candidate in the at-large race, now lives in southeast Cedar Rapids but grew up on the city's west side where her family's home along the river near Ellis Park was destroyed in the 2008 flood.

“I don't even know how to answer that other than to say we're one community,” says Poe when asked about candidates running, in part, against the downtown. “ ... And the downtown is part of it and we need for it to come back strong. ... It's really hard to have a good apple when you have a rotten core.”

In the east-side District 2 race with incumbent Vernon, challenger Nelson, 19, a Kirkwood Community College student, says he will focus on the district more than downtown and on the district's infrastructure needs. Nelson says the city spent too much money for the property for the new library.

A second District 2 challenger, Larson, has focused his campaign on a public safety concept he calls “pinpoint policing” and on improved public transit.

Vernon, 54, founder and president of Vernon Research Group, agrees that the city needs to focus on street improvements all across the city.

At the same time, she says the city's new library, riverfront amphitheater, convention center and year-round farmers market and its renovated Paramount Theatre, U.S. Cellular Center and hotel will attract people to Cedar Rapids from all over Eastern Iowa, and she says some of those people will move here and move their businesses here as a result.

As for the new library, Vernon says the price tag for purchase of the TrueNorth site for the facility - which Nelson has criticized - included relocation expenses. She says it was not just a property purchase. And she says the agreement with TrueNorth was part of a larger economic-development investment in which TrueNorth agreed to buy, renovate and transform the city's former library into a new office building and retain and add jobs in the downtown.