Things turn ugly in District 3 as one council incumbent tries to unseat another

And we thought having one City Council incumbent running against another was going to be pretty.

Turns out, District 3 incumbent Jerry McGrane assigned the City Clerk's Office to provide him with a report on the number of meetings at-large council member Pat Shey has missed since McGrane and Shey were elected to the council in 2005.

McGrane violated no campaign rules; he was simply seeking public records, Iowa's Ethics and Campaign Finance Disclosure Board noted on Wednesday.

McGrane now is out with television campaign ads that say the attendance numbers show Shey has been away from his part-time City Hall duty station more than McGrane has been.

The attendance numbers in question are sort of a fog because the City Council has a lot of meetings. And as importantly, the numbers go to the heart of the question, what do residents expect from a part-time City Council member?

The 70-year-old McGrane is retired. Shey is 50, owns and runs two small businesses and is raising three school-age children.

The most-important council meetings are the Wednesday evening ones, which often stretch on for three or more hours. This year, the council will hold 47 of those, and to date, Shey has missed two, McGrane, three.

Shey said Wednesday he was on vacation with his family for at least one of the two misses. One of McGrane's misses came a week ago: He was in the hospital.

McGrane, though, notes the other meetings that the council has had this year, which consist of special sessions, briefings, budget meetings and brown bags. In total, that is more than 85 to date. Shey has missed 21 of these additional meetings, McGrane 7, according to the City Clerk's numbers provided by McGrane's campaign.

For all of 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, Shey has missed 12 Wednesday evening meetings, McGrane six. That's from a total of some 160 Wednesday evening meetings for the period.

In the nearly four years, with all types of meetings, Shey has missed 93, McGrane 31, through Wednesday, according to the city figures.

McGrane on Wednesday said he didn't buy the notion that Shey should be expected to miss more meetings than a retiree because Shey is holding down a career and raising children.

McGrane pointed to council colleagues Brian Fagan, an attorney, and Kris Gulick, a business owner, and said they attend more meetings than Shey. McGrane did not have figures for their attendance.

“And he (Shey) is a business owner. Don't they sort of set their own time schedules so, if you're elected, you can do what you have to do?” McGrane asked.

In response to the questions about attendance, Shey on Wednesday started this way: “Isn't it really the quality of the decisions we make?” he asked. “And at the end of the day, I'll put my votes up against Jerry's any day of the week. I think that is the important thing: What is the information you get, how do you process it and what's the decision you make?”

Thirty-four of the meetings that Shey missed in four years were “brown-bag” lunch meetings, and he noted that, as a contractor, lunch is often the time he is meeting with clients. He said the information presented at brown-bag and other special meetings comes to council members in written form, too.

Shey on Wednesday recalled the first months after the June 2008 flood when the City Council was meeting early Monday and Friday mornings as well as Wednesday nights. At one point, he sat through most of one of the morning meetings before standing up and asking what was being presented that couldn't be sent via e-mail to council members.

“They had become make-work sessions,” Shey said. “And you might remember, those morning meetings came to an end pretty darn quick after that.”

McGrane disagreed. He said most meetings are providing council members with important information, and he, a flood victim himself, said Shey missed meetings related to flood recovery.

McGrane said his talking about attendance does not mean he's running a negative campaign.

“If the truth is negative, then I've been doing the wrong thing for a long time,” he said.

McGrane also is emphasizing a need for city government to “buy local,” an initiative that the City Council has talked about for many months without adopting. McGrane said Shey opposes the idea, but Shey said he does not.

The third candidate in the District 3 field, Kathy Potts, also is firing away.

Potts, 50, a housewife who ran as a Republican for the Iowa House of Representatives a year ago, said she has been left to scratch her head over a new McGrane campaign flyer in which McGrane says that City Hall needs to stop using so many outside consultants. McGrane voted for all the consultants, Potts said.

McGrane on Wednesday admitted as much, but he said that he has voted based on information “we've been fed” by the city manager and city staff that local experts have not be qualified to do much of the city work.

“And now I just don't believe that,” he said.