District 3 candidates square off with varying reads on city health; none pushes for new City Hall

The District 3 council race features two council incumbents and the only woman among 15 candidates on the Nov. 3 City Hall ballot.

Kathy Potts put it this way to a Gazette-sponsored candidate forum at Metro High School last night: A vote for her is a way to guarantee two members of the current council don't return to office.

Potts, 50, told the audience of about 30 that city government needed to be more customer-friendly and more user-friendly and she said City Council members needed to be more in touch with their constituents. She imagined a day, if elected, when District 3 residents would know she was their representative.

District 3 incumbent Jerry McGrane, 69, said he believed that the health of the city was “fairly strong,” but he said he did not think the city's still-new council/manager government is working like he envisioned when he was on the city's Charter Commission that designed the government back in 2005. The city manager right now has too much power, and the city needs a stronger mayor than the present one to fix things, he said.

Pat Shey, 50, the at-large council member who is running for the District 3 seat because it's the city's geography he says he knows best, said the financial health of city government is “very strong” even with the city in the middle of a recovery from the June 2008 flood. He noted that the city recently retained the top Aaa bond rating, proof he said of fiscal soundness.

Shey, too, agreed that the city's form of government could work better and he said a stronger mayor than the current one can improve the communication between the entire council and the city manager.

McGrane, of 1105 Eighth St. SE, and Potts, of 1118 First St. SW, said they support Ron Corbett for mayor while Shey, of 501 Knollwood Dr. SE, called mayoral candidate Brian Fagan, an at-large council member, and Corbett both strong candidates.

Potts, as the City Hall outsider, said the current council has not made enough decisions fast enough.

Shey, in particular, defended the council's work, dismissing the suggestion, coined by mayoral candidate Corbett, that the council had adopted “a culture of delay.”

In the first days after the June 2008 flood, Shey said officials in other disaster cities told Cedar Rapids leaders that it would take about 18 months before any large federal payments for home buyouts would arrive. That's proven true, he said. Shey said the city will buy out between $200 and $245 million in flood-damaged property, and most of that amount will come from federal money. He said he was “sorry,” but waiting for that money to arrive made sense.

None of the three candidates spoke in favor of building a new City Hall, what Potts called a new Taj Mahal.

Shey, interestingly, picked up on a comment made a week ago by his council colleague Monica Vernon. Shey said most city employees - many of whom never see the public, as Vernon pointed out - don't need to be under one roof, which has been one of the driving forces behind a new City Hall. Shey said some likely can go back to the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building.