The Council Returns from Hiawathian Exile

After a 13-month road trip, your flood-displaced Cedar Rapids City Council is back for a permanent home stand, starting tonight.

Good seats are still available.

The city's council-in-exile officially returns to Cedar Rapids for a 5:30 p.m. meeting at the old Federal Courthouse. It may not be as dramatic as, say, de Gaulle leading the free French back into Paris or Charles II retaking the British throne, but there will be an afternoon open house and news conference. Refreshments?

The full council hasn't convened in the city proper since March 2010, when Mayor Ron Corbett led the wandering nine to the friendly confines of Hiawatha City Hall. They've been Tuesday night houseguests at the neighbors ever since.

Hiawatha deserves our thanks. Sorry about that whole GoDaddy thing.

Before we get caught up in homecoming hoopla, we should reflect on the council's road trip, which I like to call its Hiawathian Era.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. There were chickens.

It was a period marked by hearty hellos and, uh, hearty goodbyes.

Former City Manager Jim Prosser was sent on his way with a sack of separation severance. New City Manager Jeff Pomeranz was hired in June and welcomed in September.

It was how-do-you-do for events center czar John Frew. But it was hello-I-must-be-going for very brief fire Chief Stephen Reid.

Welcome, city-owned hotel. Goodbye, Sinclair smokestack, and your sturdy plinth. “What do you call it, the flint?” asked Council member Chuck Swore. Sheesh.

Two city budgets were approved. In 2010, Council member Tom Podzimek, concerned about inadequate spending, inadvertently coined a new tourism slogan.

“If this continues, Cedar Rapids will be a great place to die,” Podzimek said. A sixth season, perhaps.

Hiawatha is the birthplace of legal backyard chickens. But a dog licensing ordinance was hounded to the scrap heap. “I think there is very much more important things we have to deal with in this city,” Council member Justin Shields barked.

Yet historians may have trouble deciphering the Hiawathian Era.

They might wonder why, exactly, did PCI need a TIF to build a mall of medicine, or is it a pavilion? And what of this PLA, which the powerful GOV declared DOA in Executive Order 69? And why did the city work so hard to get a GRI, a LOST and a slice of federal WRDA just so it could build some sort of three-legged flood-protection stool? Very curious.

Well, you had to be there. Now the council's back here. Feels like progress.