Corbett says speaking your mind isn't arrogance, it's leadership

Ron Corbett on Saturday takes the oath of office this morning as the city's second mayor in the city's four-year-old venture into a new form of government, one which features a part-time mayor and City Council and a full-time city manager.

Though called “a weak-mayor form of government,” Corbett says he will be striving to find that “sweet spot” that allows him to assert his mind all the while as he tries to encourage his council colleagues to do that same.

“Right now, I think the city is expecting to have a mayor that's going to be little more outspoken,” the 49-year-old Corbett says. “That doesn't mean arrogant. It means someone who is going to be a little more assertive. Who is going to put the focus on growing the tax base and trying to create some jobs and trying to bring some closure to this flood-recovery effort.”

 Those are some of things that Corbett talked about in his eight-month mayoral campaign that saw him easily defeat City Council member Brian Fagan for a four-year term as mayor.

In an interview in recent days at his office at trucking firm CRST Inc., Corbett said he intends to deliver on what he talked about in the campaign, and to that end, he says he has shipped some of his campaign position papers to his new council colleagues to remind them of what candidate Corbett had said. Campaign promises aren't forgotten once in office, he says.

For instance:

The CRST vice president for human resources says he will take his council colleagues into closed session at one of the first council meetings in January to discuss evaluations of the three city employees who report directly to the council, the city manager, city attorney and city clerk. Corbett has said he wants a 90-day review of City Manager Jim Prosser.

Corbett, too, says he will ask Prosser to provide him with a list of all the consultants now under contract with the city to see which ones the city no longer needs. Corbett has said the city has relied too heavily on consultants, and particularly out-of-state ones.

Corbett also has said the council needs to make clear that it is running the city, not the city manager, and just this week, a consensus of council members has agreed with his request to create some council committees to see if that might give council members more of a say in what makes its way to the entire council.

Corbett also wants to set more timelines on issues, which he says will bring faster decision-making. This month, he wants the council to pick a site for a new public library, and he also quickly wants the council to vote up or down on building a new city hall or returning to the yet-to-be-fixed and flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building.

Corbett has made no secret of the fact that he wants city government back in the Veterans Memorial Building and that he opposes building what he calls a money-wasting new city hall.

To drive that point home, he is holding his oath-of-office ceremony at 10 a.m. today in the lobby of the Veterans Memorial Building. The two other new council members, Don Karr and Chuck Swore, also will join him there, and others may, too.

In his election campaign, Corbett took some pleasure in creating You Tube videos to make his case on the issues of jobs, flood-recovery and what he said was the city's “culture of delay.”

Corbett says he is working on a You Tube video about returning city government to the Veterans Memorial Building.

“I'm going to walk through City Hall while I'm talking,” he says. “‘Look at these cubicles. They look pretty good, don't they? Here's the Mayor's Office. It's a pretty good office. Here's a conference table to talk about issues. Here's a fireplace to shake hands. Here's a few keys to the city.'”

Corbett says he also will ask the council quickly to adopt some kind of “buy-local” ordinance and to quickly make a decision about project-labor agreements or about a mechanism to qualify contractors as a way to ensure that proper wages and benefits are paid to workers working on large city projects like the new library. Corbett also will ask his council colleagues to consider some back-and-forth with the public during the public comment phase of City Council meetings. Now the council takes comments, but it doesn't respond to them.

Corbett lists flood recovery at the top of his priority list, and the aspect of flood recovery that comes first, he says, is taking care of those impacted by the flood.

“After a pretty intense mayoral campaign, I can tell you my heart has really been touched by people in this community who are going through some very difficult struggles,” he says.

He adds to the list those who now find themselves jobless and in poverty, and he points to lines outside a local mission of people waiting to get something to eat.

“I think to myself, this isn't the Cedar Rapids I dream of,” he says.

Corbett says he will be a mayor with an open-door policy, but he says the open door goes both ways. He's going to walk through it, he says, to get out into the public and talk to people and hear what's on their minds.

“I'm going to make sure I don't get locked in the cocoon,” he says. “That can happen to elected bodies, to Congress, the state legislature, the City Council. They get stuck in the cocoon and all they ever talk to is themselves. I'm not going to get stuck there.”

Among the first issues that will confront the new council is passing a balanced budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Corbett says he's concerned about the current budget let alone the next one.

He says he doesn't want to see a conservative or liberal budget, but an accurate one, and he wants department heads to come up with ways to improve not cut. He wants to see if the city can better tap front-line employees to come up with ideas for how the city can do things better.

Corbett laughs about what returning council member Tom Podzimek has said publicly about letting the new mayor have some rope to see what he can do with it.

“So what, do you think I'm going to be a fish out of water?” Corbett asks. “Or am I going to get snagged on something? Is Podzimek right? He's just going to sit back there, giving the rope and giving the rope until I do some major thing and hang myself, and he sits back there chuckling.”

Come February, Corbett already is imagining his first State of the City speech.

“No PowerPoint presentations, no slide shows,” he says. “Just a heartfelt talk from the mayor to the citizens of Cedar Rapids.”