Linn supervisors willing to return to the table with City Hall to review options for 'co-location;' city turns to county, schools as it faces 'financial realities' of building new city buildings

The Linn County supervisors are willing to sit down again with the Cedar Rapids City Council and reconsider an idea of joining together to build a new public administrative office building or buildings.

Both public entities as well as the Cedar Rapids Community Schools had their administrative buildings damaged in the June 2008 flood, and all three are still working to sort out the damaged buildings' futures.

The three had spent some time discussing the idea of “co-location” in a new building or on a campus of new buildings, but the county and school district withdrew from the process earlier this year to pursue their own solutions.

On Wednesday evening, the City Council, though, decided it would ask the county and school district to sit down anew to discuss co-location. Driving the request are the significant costs the city faces if it wants to build a new City Hall even as it contemplates building a new library, new central fire station, new animal shelter, new fleet maintenance building and, perhaps, a new public works building.

Three of five Linn supervisors, Linda Langston, Ben Rogers and Brent Oleson, on Thursday said it makes sense to sit down with the city again. Rogers and Langston voted earlier this year to continue “co-location” talks though the three other supervisors decided to quit the talks. The central issue at the time was the pace of the discussions. The city was on a slower timeline than the county.

Rogers said sitting down with the city of Cedar Rapids won't stop the county from pushing ahead with plans it already has in the works to compare costs to return to the county's Administrative Office Building with costs to remain in the county's temporary setup at Westdale Mall.

In fact, the entire issue might be moot at this point if the county had received $8 million it had sought from the state's I-JOBS Board to help pay to renovate the Administrative Office Building. The county is still interested in seeking those I-JOBS funds.

Oleson said sitting down anew with the city of Cedar Rapids is fine with him if, in the end, it results in an outcome that makes sense for Linn County taxpayers. Without I-JOBS funds, the county is “kind of back on the drawing board” with the Administrative Office Building, he said.

Langston said any discussion about co-location with the city and/or schools will involve a “big sum” of money.

Earlier discussions late last year had most leaning toward a campus of public buildings and not one building to be shared by city, county and schools, she said.

Langston said one quirk in state law makes it easier to pass a bond referendum if jurisdictions join together rather than if they seek to be pass a bond issue for a public building on their own. A unified vote requires 50 percent plus one vote to pass a bond issue, while a vote of just one public entity requires 60 percent plus one vote to pass a bond issue.

Langston said the assumption has been that funding to co-locate in a new building or on a campus of new public buildings would come from local tax dollars approved in a bond vote.

On Wednesday evening, the city's Sandi Fowler, assistant to the city manager, told the City Council that the state of Iowa can seek a waiver from the federal government to allow some future allocation of federal Community Development Block Grant funds to be used for “civic buildings.”

Langston had never heard that before.

“I suspect we (city, county, school district) would all be interested in that,” she said.