Voters will decide on local-option sales tax extension

Voters here will go to the polls on May 3 to decide if they are willing to extend the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax - now in place primarily for flood recovery until July 2014 - another 20 years to help pay for a flood-protection system and to fix city streets.

The City Council Tuesday night voted 7-0 to call the special election, with council members Kris Gulick and Tom Podzimek absent from the vote. For the seven who voted, it was an easy call.

In an impassioned plea for the tax extension, council member Justin Shields said the city could not simply sit back and do nothing and wait for another flood. He called the 2008 flood “a terrible disaster.”

“I still remember it like it was yesterday,” Shields said. “When I saw friends and neighbors out at Prairie High School sleeping on cots because they no longer had a home. They no longer had anything. And we're going to take a chance on telling other folks, you go through the same thing … That's wrong.”

Council member Chuck Swore said it's not good enough as a community to think that the federal and state governments are going to foot the entire bill for the city's preferred, $375-million flood-protection system that protects both sides of the river.

“We have to step up to the plate and take on the situation ourselves,” Swore said.

Mayor Ron Corbett, who began advocating in public for a tax extension a week ago, said the city was calling the special election for May to show the U.S. Congress and the Iowa Legislature - both of which will be addressing proposals to partially fund the Cedar Rapids flood protection system in the weeks and months ahead - that the city was working to come up with the local match money that will be required of the city. A 20-year tax, he said, will mean that those who enjoy the benefits of the flood-protection system and improved city streets five, 10 and 15 years from now will have played a part in paying for them.

Council member Pat Shey said Tuesday night's council vote for a May 3 referendum would prompt the community to look at itself and ask, “Where do we want to be as a city?”

“We knew this time would come ever since the floodwaters receded,” Shey said. “How are we going to pay for this?”

Shey said the cities in Iowa, by and large, are limited to revenue from property taxes and the local-option sales tax unless they have gambling revenue, which Cedar Rapids does not. Federal and state dollars coming into the city for a new library, Convention Complex, fire station and other projects can't be diverted to levees and flood walls, he added.

The Army Corps of Engineers has recommended a no-frills, $100-million flood-protection system for the city with the city responsible for 35 percent of the cost. The council supports the Corps plan as a partial solution, but it only protects most of the east side of the river, and does so with a concrete flood wall. The council, though, wants a system that protects both sides of the river, and one that uses more attractive, more expensive, “removable” flood walls.

Council members Chuck Wieneke and Don Karr said Cedar Rapids is one community, west side and east side, and both sides need protected from flooding.

“We either stay protected together or we're going to go down together if another flood occurs,” Wieneke said.

Corbett made reference to a 1967 story in The Gazette in which the Army Corps of Engineers warned the city that it was “ripe” for a major flood. Should the city sit back as it did then, Corbett asked, and say that flood protection is too big a job, it costs too much and it's not going to flood again? Corbett asked.

The council's call for a special election on May 3 prompts a new local-option sales tax vote countywide except in Coggon, Prairieburg and Bertram, which have the tax in place without an end date. The other jurisdictions have the tax in place with an end date.

By state law, the Linn County Board of Supervisors sets the start and end dates for the tax in the language that will appear on the referendum ballots. The board, though, typically honors the requests of individual communities.

Corbett appointed Wieneke and Shields to help him, the city attorney and city manger craft Cedar Rapids' ballot language.

Three people spoke out against the tax extension at last night's council meeting, including longtime critic of council spending, Carol Martin. Martin said she wasn't a fan of more taxes, wondered what the rush was all about to extend a tax that doesn't end until 2014 and said she wasn't sure that the existing tax has been spent as it was intended.

Walt Simmons said he already is paying too many city taxes on a fixed income, and Bill Dahlsten said the local-option tax appears as if it now will be here forever. What happens if the city's investment in the downtown hotel flops? Will this money be used for that? he asked.