Last call for Cedar Rapids flood buyouts

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Hall is making a last-ditch effort to identify owners of some 400 homes and 170 businesses in flood-hit parts of the city who have not signed up for a buyout but might want to do so.

The survey is a prelude to the city shutting the “voluntary” buyout program down, and the City Council's Flood Recovery Committee on Friday voted to set July 1 - three years and two weeks after the 2008 flood - as the deadline for applying for a buyout. The full council now will vote on the matter.

Committee member Justin Shields said the deadline made sense because they city is trying to get from “this side to the other side” - from flood recovery to the construction of a flood-protection system.

The committee also suggested that the city end a program that provides interim mortgage assistance for those in the city's buyout program who have not closed on the city's purchase of their home.

Committee member Chuck Wieneke said a few people getting the assistance have been languishing in the buyout process as they get their mortgage payments paid with public funds.

Those few people, he said, were “taking advantage” of the program and, he added, “I want it brought to an end. ... This is taxpayer money ... It's time to call a halt to those who take advantage.”

Figures released to the committee show that the city has closed on the buyout of 836 flood-damaged properties to date with another 454 closings to be held. An additional 266 properties in the buyout program now have opted out.

The city's final effort to identify those who might want a buyout is fueled, in part, by the fact that federal Community Development Block Grant disaster funds are available to make the purchases.

Some of these properties that do not join the current buyout program ultimately may need to be bought out as the city builds its new flood-protection system, for which there is not yet any money.

In fact, the city's $375 million flood-protection plan, which will pay to protect both sides of the Cedar River from a flood like the one in 2008, includes $52.6 million for real-estate purchases and related costs.

The city is working to secure federal and state funding for the flood-protection plan at the same time as the City Council is asking voters on May 3 to extend the city's 1-percent, local-option sales tax for 20 years to provide local funds to help pay part of the cost.

David Scanlan, project engineer in the city's Public Works Department, reported that the Army Corps of Engineers has begun to design the flood-protection system for the east side of the river, a design that should be complete by the fall of 2012, he said.

Construction, he added, should be ready to begin on that part of the system in 2013 with completion in 2015 if Congress funds it.

Scanlan noted, too, that two parts of the total system already are funded and are moving ahead with construction. One part will provide protection to the Quaker plant - Quaker is paying part of the cost - and other part is the west-side riverfront amphitheater, which is both a levy and an entertainment venue designed to flood.

Shields said state legislators have asked him why the city is spending money on an amphitheater when it needs flood protection, and Shields said the city needed to do a better job of explaining that the amphitheater is part of the city's flood-protection system.

Both he and Don Karr, the committee chairman, said people keep asking them what the city's Plan B is should the city not secure funding for its preferred flood-protection system.

Karr said the Quaker and amphitheater projects show that the city isn't thinking about a fallback plan.

“We're moving ahead with Plan A,” Karr said.