Fagan and Corbett give Downtown Rotary two views of the same city; Larson rails about 'million-dollar consultants'

The city's two front-runner mayoral candidates on Monday gave the Downtown Rotary two distinctly views of city government.

Council member Brian Fagan said City Hall has worked hard, has done a good job and is headed in the right direction while Ron Corbett, a former president of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and former state lawmaker, said the city has fallen off track.

The mayoral race's third candidate, P.T. Larson - who has run poorly in 12 previous City Council elections - summed up his remarks with a question: “Are you better off now than four years ago?”

Fagan, 37, at attorney at Simmons Perrine Moyer Bergman, said the City Council has put the city government on a strong foundation and that the council needed to remain “disciplined to the vision and the strategic plan” it has created for the city.

Fagan said the city would lose its competitive edge if “we turn back” and if the city gets “sidetracked and makes decisions out of political expediency.”

The reference to “political” seemed directed at Corbett, who won seven elections to the Iowa House of Representatives in the 1980s and 1990s. His last race was in 1998.

Fagan said he cared “deeply” for his hometown, and he said he viewed the mayor's job as a way to give back to the community. He called it “servant leadership.”

Fagan said he has been involved in the community the last four years in the middle of the city's flood recovery. His, he said, was not a promise in “future tense,” which seemed a reference to Corbett.

Asked what processes of city government he might change, Fagan said the better question was the “purpose” of government, not the process of government. The purpose is to build “one great Cedar Rapids,” he said.

Corbett, 49, vice president at trucking firm CRST Inc., promised to be “an active leader” as mayor. He said, if elected, he wouldn't “squander” the opportunity as he said he did not when he was Chamber president for six years or when he was a state lawmaker for 13 years and, while there, Speaker of the House for five years.

He also said he would run the City Council differently, creating committees so individual council members could gain expertise on issues and build trust among one another. Right now, part-time council members seem to be working 40 hours or more a week, each one going to a lot of meetings, he said. Current council members themselves have called the council as it now operates “dysfunctional,” he said.

Corbett said Cedar Rapids a decade ago was seen as the city in Iowa that was on the move for innovation, culture and job growth. No so now, he said. He said it was time to get back up and start running again.

Corbett said the city once again had to adopt “the eye of the tiger” and a “can-do” attitude to attract jobs and expand the tax base. The city government's charter specifically assigns an economic development role to the mayor, and he said he intends to fill that role.

Corbett said talk of “vision” without a plan “is just happy talk.”

Larson, 52, said he would be a full-time mayor if elected. He called for an “adopt-a-block” program in which volunteers, city staff and City Council members would examine individual blocks twice a month and document what problems needed fixing and in what priorities.

Larson wanted to see more police substations and he said he would stop taking what he called the “easy way” with “million-dollar consultants.”