Gravy Train Derailed

If it had come in a suspicious e-mail, we'd never have believed it.

“Greetings! The government of America wishes to provide to you many millions of U.S. dollars to tear down a flooded and charred packing plant. It would also like to forward to you nearly $30 million more to make up for your most regretful losses. You can spend that money for uses of your choosing. The limit is in the sky.

“Please send your bank account numbers ...”

Maybe we should have been more skeptical when FEMA kept telling our leaders that the Sinclair plant, the old Quality Chef site and the hydroelectric dam were potential piles of federal bucks. There's gold in them there ruins, we were told. Where we see rubble, the feds claimed to see solid value worth compensating.

While the Cedar Rapids City Council marveled at its good fortune and made its Christmas list of “alternative projects,” paid for with the windfall, I wondered if Ashton Kutcher might leap from the bushes to say we'd been Punk'd.

Turns out it was FEMA that told us last week the previously promised gravy train had been derailed. Lots of money turned into virtually no money. It's a bureaucracy's prerogative to change its mind, after all.

It hit local officials like a ton of smokestack bricks.

They had plans, big plans for all that money. There's a list of 14 potential projects - including trails, parking structures, an amphitheater, the year-round farmers market, public works, animal control, a new Westside fire station.

It was easy to get caught up in the grand possibilities. I was as guilty as anyone. When the gloomy recovery process actually yields good news, you grab it and hold on. Now the bubble is busted.

But really, deep down, doesn't this make more sense? Did the idea of our federal government paying millions to reimburse us for the “value” of decimated warehouses sit well with you? I think the answer is no.

You can't tell me that with all of our other recovery needs, not to mention flooded-out Nashville, the oily Gulf Coast and future calamities looming, that this scarce disaster money could not be better spent.

The city is going to appeal FEMA's pullback, with the support of the state and Iowa's congressional delegation. I understand they're trying to hold FEMA to its word. But I say the agency shouldn't have dangled this carrot in the first place.

FEMA is already paying to clear the Sinclair brownfield. That is a big deal. Once, the city owned a decaying plant. Now it owns land that can be developed.

And for that, we can still be thankful to the government of America.

Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@gazcomm.com