Cameron Proctor, shown with his dog Muuttaa on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, moved into his Wellington Heights home in February in southeast Cedar Rapids. The house is one of the 28 properties rehabilitated so far through the Four Oaks’ Affordable Housing Network initiative. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — To get the concept, think Cameron Proctor.

Without seeking it, Proctor — a 21-year-old master welder and brand-new homeowner with a good credit history and a 30-year mortgage — has become something of a poster boy for a multimillion-dollar neighborhood transformation.

It is a change fueled by Four Oaks’ Affordable Housing Network Inc., which is buying up 100 or more residential properties in 18 challenged blocks of the Wellington Heights neighborhood with the plan to renovate the homes and sell them at attainable prices to families and individuals like Proctor.

“I’ve got a three-stall garage, a pool table in my dining room and I’m paying $200 a month less to own than I’d pay to rent,” said Proctor, 1439 Bever Ave. SE, who grew up in Springville and has called Wellington Heights home since February. He says he has friends interested in following his lead.

“Everybody who could would. Everybody who could should,” he said.

Targeted intervention

The intent of AHNI — and those who are donating some $5 million in private funds and the banks that are extending some $6 million in debt to the project — is to sell to people like Proctor who will live in the home, keep it up and help increase the percentage of homes in neighborhood that are owner-occupied, rather than rentals.

The program believes that the neighborhood needs a targeted intervention, which includes, in part, attempting to buy homes from what Jim Ernst, longtime president/CEO of Four Oaks, calls “a small segment of slumlords” while beating them to the punch when troubled properties come up for sale.

One year ago this month, Ernst and Joe Lock, AHNI’s executive director, and city, community and neighborhood leaders celebrated the start of AHNI’s Wellington Heights initiative in front of an excavator as it tore down a rundown, 12-plex apartment building at 1415 Bever Ave. SE that had become a focal point of police calls, arrests and neighborhood instability.

A year later, the program has purchased 54 properties, with 11 more purchases now pending. Of those, 28 have been fully renovated, eight other renovations are in the works and another eight are scheduled. Four have been demolished, another will be and five properties are vacant lots.

Of the renovated homes, five have been sold to owner-occupiers like Proctor; seven are occupied by families in a rent-to-own program; and another 10 or so are available for sale or for the rent-to-own program. Eleven properties, including four multifamily ones, are operating as rentals.

Ernst and Lock have their eyes on an additional 36 properties to buy, though some of the landlord owners won’t sell to them or are demanding too much for the homes.

Neighborhood support

Justin Wasson, the new, 25-year-old president of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association, says the association “generally has a pretty positive feeling” about the AHNI initiative. He says it has “a lot of potential.” In particular, he says the association has wanted to see the “density” in the neighborhood reduced, and he says AHNI’s effort to covert big old homes that had multiple apartments into single-family homes is achieving that goal.

Wasson, who is vice president of operations for a power-washing firm and who ran for the City Council in 2011, says AHNI’s initial effort in the 1400 block of Bever Avenue SE has resulted in a reduction in police calls to that block by 50 percent in the last year.

“Look at the crime stats,” says Wasson. “To say there hasn’t been an impact would be a ridiculous statement.”

Wasson, who now owns his home at 1621 Washington Ave. SE after fewer than four years of payments, says AHNI is active in the neighborhood and those moving into AHNI renovated properties are coming to neighborhood meetings.

“Those are the people we want in the neighborhood,” he says.

At the same time, Clark Rieke, a board member in the Mound View neighborhood across First Avenue East from Wellington Heights, has some reservations about the AHNI effort and its scope. He says he would prefer smaller grants, in the $20,000 range, going to existing property owners to fix up properties rather than AHNI’s approach.

AHNI’s Lock says the agency typically is spending $65,000 on a property renovation, has about $100,000 in it in total, and sells for $70,000 to $75,000. Yes, the Wellington Heights neighborhood is in “crisis,” says Rieke, a retired Realtor and landlord. But he says the AHNI investment distorts the housing market and will make non-AHNI properties more difficult to sell.

Four Oaks’ Ernst says he agrees that some fix-up money for existing property owners in the neighborhood makes sense, and he says AHNI’s program will include money for that. Cedar Valley Habitat for Humanity’s Brush with Kindness program, he said, also is working in the neighborhood with a plan to improve the exteriors of 40 homes over the next two summers.

However, Ernst notes that other housing agencies in their day have tried to take on blighted housing, a house or two at a time, without success. Private market forces haven’t helped either, he says.

“If the market was going to take care of Wellington Heights, it’s had 30 years to do it,” says Ernst. “And it hasn’t.”

“What we’re trying to do is to stop it before it has to be taken to the ground,” Ernst continues. “So we literally made the decision, that the way this neighborhood was going to turn was we were going to do 100 houses, and we were going to change the spirit of the neighborhood to say, ‘We have hope now, we’re not just trying to survive.’”

Ernst and Lock this week showed off one of AHNI’s newly renovated houses at 513 16th St. SE and one they recently purchased at 1422 Fourth Ave. SE. It was day and night.

The Fourth Avenue SE property, which a previous landlord had carved into three apartments, was empty but for litter on the floors, smells of dog feces, cat urine and filth in the air and a message written in pencil on a wall for the new owner, AHNI. It called AHNI “dream stealers,” “money mongers” and more.

TotalChild project

The AHNI housing initiative is part of Four Oaks’ TotalChild project, and Four Oaks has gotten itself involved in affordable housing because the agency doesn’t want families and children it works with living in squalor like that 1422 Fourth Ave. SE.

“It’s a travesty that kids are living in places like this, have landlords that don’t keep it up to city code,” Lock says.

The long-term hope beyond Four Oaks’ AHNI effort in Wellington Heights, Ernst says, is a brand-new City Hall nuisance abatement ordinance, championed by City Council members Pat Shey and Monica Vernon, which will put five new nuisance-abatement employees on the city payroll. The new law also will require tenant background checks and fines for landlords whose properties attract too many police and nuisance calls.

Ernst says the city for too long has permitted slum landlords to thrive with an economic model that allows them to rent without checking on tenants and to take rent money without putting any of it back into the property for repairs.

The city’s new nuisance abatement law must make sure the slumlord model no longer can work in Cedar Rapids, he says.

“We own fixing this neighborhood up,” says Ernst. “The city’s nuisance abatement has to prevent the rest. We’re not taking responsibility for that.”

Bruce Vander Sanden, Sixth Judicial District

Bruce Vander Sanden has been named the new director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, Allan Thoms, chairman of the agency’s board of directors, reports.

Vander Sanden replaces Gary Hinzman, who retired this week.

Vander Sanden has been with the agency 24 years, the same length of time as Hinzman, who had served as Cedar Rapids police chief before being hired for the correctional post.

Vander Sanden started with the department as a residential officer and was promoted through the ranks to his most recent job, the department’s assistant director.

The department serves six counties, Linn, Johnson, Benton, Iowa, Tama and Jones.

Vander Sanden has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

He is president of the Iowa Corrections Association and serves on the executive board of the American Probation and Parole Association.

Vander Sanden is the brother of Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate, on a vote of 83-14, approved the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2013, which authorizes the Secretary of the Army to construct flood protection systems and other waterway improvements across the country.

Both Iowa senators, Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, voted with the majority.

Congress authorizes most flood protection construction projects via WRDA bills, but it has not passed one since the WRDA bill of 2007, according to Ron Fournier, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers in Rock Island, Ill.

As a result, Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz on Wednesday said that securing federal funds to construct flood protection in Cedar Rapids had a long way to go despite Wednesday’s Senate action.

“But for us, it’s an important step forward in terms of securing long-term flood protection for the city,” Pomeranz said of Wednesday’s vote.

Mayor Ron Corbett said the large, bipartisan backing for the Senate bill should help the bill’s chances in the House of Representatives.

In a statement on Wednesday, Sen. Harkin said he was “pleased” that the Senate bill approved on Wednesday – S. 601 – authorizes the Army Corps of Engineers to move forward with the construction of the Cedar Rapids flood control project.

“Of course, now we must work to provide adequate funding for this category of work …. (B)ut I’m encouraged by the passage of today’s bill and will continue to work to rebuild areas of Cedar Rapids that require flood protection,” Harkin said.

The senator said the bill was important, too, because it will allow improvement projects to continue on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, which he said are vital for drinking water and recreation and to Iowa’s farmers and shippers.

Jeff Giertz, communications director for Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Waterloo, was quick to note on Wednesday that the “general climate” in Congress, with the Democrats in a majority in the Senate and Republicans in the House, has translated into “slow movement on important pieces of legislation.” Even so, he noted that the House Transportation Committee held a meeting on WRDA legislation in April, a move which Giertz said was promising.

In a statement, Braley on Wednesday said the House needs to immediately consider the WRDA legislation now that the Senate has passed its measure.

“This law is incredibly important to Iowans, whether you’re a homeowner who depends on the Army Corps of Engineers to provide flood protection, a farmer who relies on the Mississippi River to get your products to worldwide markets or anyone in between,” Braley said. “… I’m committed to working to bring people together to send this bill to the President’s desk.”

Both the city officials and the Corps’ Fournier said they knew that the legislation not only must pass the House of Representatives and be signed by the president, but Congress also must appropriate money to pay for the work.

Corbett said the city had been informed in recent weeks that S. 601 would authorize projects with completed Army Corps of Engineers’ “chief’s reports” and a letter of referral from the Corps to Congress. That list consists of 19 projects, including the Cedar Rapids project, plus three additional ones awaiting letters of referral, according to information provided to the city.

The Corps’ plan for Cedar Rapids calls for flood protection on the east side of the Cedar River from the Quaker plant above downtown to the Cargill plant below downtown. The price tag for the plan has been $104 million, which includes $12.5 million in preconstruction engineering and design, work that is now underway though only partially funded. Non-federal funds must pay 25 percent of the preconstruction work and 35 percent of the construction work.

The city’s more ambitious “preferred” flood protection plan includes west-side protection, more extensive protection on the east side and more attractive, more expensive removable flood walls through the downtown.

Under federal rule, the Corps was limited to a plan that provided at least as much benefit in protection as the cost to the put the protection in place as determined by a federal formula.

Also on the list of 19 projects is a plan to protect the Fargo, N.D., and Morehead, Minn., metro areas across from each other on the Red River.

“One down, one to go,” Pat Zavoral, Fargo’s city manager, said on Wednesday upon learning of the Senate vote.

Cedar Rapids’ Pomeranz said Wednesday’s Senate vote and the positioning of Cedar Rapids to obtain flood protection funds “didn’t just happen.” He said the city, its Congressional delegation and the Corps have been working for more than four years now to get the city funds should they become available.

“Obviously, this has been a tough time from an economic perspective, but due to the tremendous need in this country, we were able to get Cedar Rapids on the list, which is an achievement,” Pomeranz said. “We’re in an elite group. It’s not over. But it’s a step forward.”

The 14 who voted against S. 601 included one Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and 13 Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

A Marion woman feeds geese at Manhattan Park in Cedar Rapids in June 2012. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

The City Council unanimously agreed on Tuesday to impose a ban on feeding geese and other wildlife on public property in the city, in a new effort to manage the overpopulation of geese and so reduce the amount of waste they leave behind.

Those caught feeding will be subject to a $75 fine for a first violation, $150 for a second within a calendar year and $300 for a third within a calendar year.

Daniel Gibbins, the city’s parks superintendent, proposed the feeding ban with fines in recent months, and the measure was approved by the council’s Public Safety Committee last month and sent on to the full council.

Council member Justin Shields, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, on Tuesday said the amount of geese feces in certain parks in the city is a “serious problem” with potential public health ramifications.

“We got to get this under control,” he said. Shields said the local population of geese, predominately Canada geese, can get aggressive with people and in the way of traffic.

Council member Ann Poe agreed that the geese “are not wonderful, warm, engaging animals. They’re not always a lot of fun,” she said.

Al Weaver, a local Realtor and duck enthusiast, told the council that he was not opposed to the feeding ban, but he thought the fines pretty stiff for the violations. Gibbins noted they are similar to fines for people who violate the city’s leash ordinance for dogs.

Weaver also suggested that the city employ other tactics to control the geese.

Gibbins said the city will continue an annual roundup of geese, which typically occurs in June and which the city has undertaken since 1996. He said the city also continues to expand a program of planting vegetation along bodies of water, which helps keep geese away. But he said a program to oil geese eggs would have limited effect and he said the use of border collies to scatter geese was impractical.

Council member Don Karr said Canada geese were nearly extinct and seldom seen in Cedar Rapids until geese lovers, including his father, worked to bring geese back to the city some 40 years ago.

Karr said the feeding ban was fine, but he suggested both an urban goose hunt and finding a place where youngsters could go to feed geese without breaking the law.

Gibbins said Linn County has venues just outside the city limits of Cedar Rapids where geese can be fed. The liability associated with an urban goose hunt with guns was too great, he said.

Gibbins said the city hoped the public would catch on to the feeding ban. He said the goal wasn’t to fine children.

A rendering of the proposed $90 million redevelopment project for Westdale Mall. (image via Frew Development Group, LLC)

CEDAR RAPIDS — The City Council on Tuesday sorted through the risks before unanimously approving City Hall incentives for the $90-million plan to transform the long-beleaguered, half-empty Westdale Mall into a new commercial/residential center around the existing anchor stores.

The largest of the risks comes at the start, a $5 million upfront grant to permit developer John Frew and his Frew Development Group to demolish much of the existing mall and prepare the 71-acre site for new construction, Joe O’Hern, the city’s executive administrator for development, told the council in a lengthy discussion of the Westdale project at Tuesday’s council meeting.

Joe O'Hern, executive administrator for development

O’Hern explained that the city rarely provides upfront grants for development project, but he said the Westdale redevelopment project would not have gone forward without the upfront money.

The city also provided upfront money to build a parking ramp for the Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa’s new medical facility, which opened in April, O’Hern noted.

In both the Westdale and PCI projects, the City Council will recoup the upfront costs from the increased revenue from property taxes — an incentive called tax increment financing — that comes to the city because of the increased value that comes with investment in a project.

O’Hern said the Westdale project will need to see $17.5 million in private investment for the city to recoup its upfront costs. In a worst case situation, where there is no investment by the developer, the city’s $5 million will still have prepared the site for future development, O’Hern noted.

In total, the council-approved development agreement with Frew Development Group LLC calls for the city to return to the developer 100 percent of the incremental increase in property-tax revenue from the project for 12 years, which may amount to $20 million, the city estimates. Part of that amount will stay with the city to cover the initial $5 million grant.

Council members Pat Shey, Kris Gulick and Scott Olson all asked O’Hern questions, wondering what the city’s recourse might be should Frew Development Group default on the agreement.

O’Hern said the property owner, which is a group of investors led by local Realtor Scott Byers, could step in and find a new developer or the city might seek to attract another developer with the City Hall incentives still in place on the project.

“It’s not a slam dunk by any means, but it’s a good opportunity and a good investment for the city,” O’Hern said.

He noted the city has built into the development agreement a requirement that a certain amount of investment must be made at certain periods over 10 years to continue the city incentives.

Council member Olson, a commercial Realtor, said the Westdale redevelopment project was “not the normal deal,” but he added that many local investors have joined Frew in investing in the redevelopment project and so they have an interest in seeing it through, he said.

Council member Justin Shields noted that developer Frew — who is the city’s project manager on its hotel and convention complex project — has been in the city for two years all the while looking at the transformation of Westdale Mall as his next project.

“He’s not coming into this blind,” Shields said. “He’s taking a chance and we’re taking a chance on a very good project.”

Byers, the Cedar Rapids Realtor who purchased the Westdale Mall in December, told the council that the development agreement between city and developer likely would need “course corrections” over the life of the project, in which he said there could be hundreds of millions of dollars invested at the 71-acre mall site.

Frew noted that his firm, which unveiled plans at a public meeting last week, has signed contracts to lease the property for 80 years to develop and manage it.

John Frew, Developer

“We’re committed to the project. We’re ready to go. And we’re not going to waste any time,” he said.

After Tuesday’s meeting, he said the demolition of the former Wards store, now vacant, could start next month.

Council member Chuck Swore said Tuesday that City Hall has been dangling incentives to developers like those offered Frew for six or seven years in hopes of finding someone.

Mayor Ron Corbett noted that Westdale Mall was valued at $25 million 15 years ago, and now it is valued at $7 million. The city has lost a huge amount of property-tax revenue for years on the property, he said.

“The community wants something done about this property,” Corbett said. “They have wanted something done about this property for a long time. That’s why they always ask us, ‘What are you doing about Westdale Mall?’” … Now we have it. We’ve put it all together.”

Corbett predicted that the project would surpass $90 million in investment.

“I think they’re going to blow the numbers away,” he said.

A rendering of the proposed $90 million redevelopment project for Westdale Mall. (image via Frew Development Group, LLC)

A rendering of the proposed $90 million redevelopment project for Westdale Mall. (image via Frew Development Group, LLC)

Cedar Rapids City Council member Monica Vernon (from left) and Joe O'Hern, City Flood Recovery and Reinvestment director, look over property maps at the J Avenue NW and Ellis Boulevard NW location as members of the Northwest Recreation Center Task Force take a bus tour of the five possible sites for a new recreation center in Cedar Rapids on Thursday, February 23, 2012. (Stephen Mally/Freelance)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Can the talent pool for congressional candidates extend to City Hall?

City Council member Monica Vernon is all-but-certain she is going to try to find out.

Vernon, the city’s mayor pro tem and a two-term council member, on Tuesday said she is nearly ready to announce a run to become the Democratic candidate to replace Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Waterloo, in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. Braley is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Tom Harkin, who is retiring.

Vernon said she hoped to formally decide about her candidacy by month’s end.

“I’ve talked to my family, and my family is extremely supportive,” said Vernon, who is married to Bill Vernon, a Cedar Rapids attorney. “And my three daughters are extremely supportive. And my friends are very … I’ve just gotten a lot of support from more places than I anticipated.”

Vernon is the owner of Vernon Research Group, a market research firm, and twice has easily won election to the City Council, defeating an incumbent in 2007 and winning re-election with 64 percent of the vote in 2011.

In both campaigns, she won the endorsement of both the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce (now called the Metro Economic Alliance) and the Hawkeye Labor Council.

“They knew me, they knew I’d be progressive, they know I want to build a better Iowa,” Vernon said of the broad backing for her City Hall campaigns.

Democratic voice

In May 2009, she changed her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

“I think there are a lot of Iowans who are looking for someone who will listen to them, who is just like them, who makes up her own mind about the issues, who is somewhat in the middle,” Vernon said. “A lot of Republicans feel the party has left them, and I am certainly one of those.”

Five of her six-plus years on the Cedar Rapids City Council have been focused on bringing the city back from its historic flood of June 2008.

“Some say we’ve made 20 years of decisions in five years,” she said. “It’s been intense. But I’ve enjoyed it, and I think we’ve gotten a lot to show for it.”

History of service

Before her time on the council, Vernon served for a number of years as chairwoman and vice chairwoman of the Cedar Rapids City Planning Commission.

In her time as president of the Junior League of Cedar Rapids in the mid-1990s, Vernon led a $1.7 million campaign to build the Madge Phillips Center for homeless women and children.

Vernon on Tuesday called herself a moderate and a progressive and said she has “common sense on budgeting.”

“I’m 55 years old, and I’ve spent my life getting enough education, building my family and my business and working hard on the community and the region,” Vernon said. “Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican or independent, I think you’re looking for someone who is going to study hard, work hard and reach across the aisle. I think you’re looking for someone who really cares, who wants to make a difference. And that’s where I am.”

Vernon, a Catholic, graduated from Regis High School in Cedar Rapids and has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Iowa. Her daughters are ages 23, 24 and 26.

To date, Pat Murphy, a Democrat and former Iowa House speaker from Dubuque, has said he will seek the 1st Congressional District seat, and former Democratic state Sen. Swati Dandekar of Marion last week said she was forming an exploratory committee as she considers a run.

The Republican field, so far, consists of businessmen Steve Rathje of Cedar Rapids and Rod Blum of Dubuque.

One of the clarifying tanks at the J Avenue NE Water Plant on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, in northeast Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Rivers in Iowa are experiencing high nitrate levels, though the city of Cedar Rapids does not anticipate that high nitrate levels will impact the city’s drinking water supply.

Levels must reach 10 milligrams per liter to prompt a health advisory, and the city has not had to issue such an advisory in the past. It does not expect to now either, Megan Murphy, communications director and education coordinator for the city’s Utilities Department, said Tuesday.

Murphy noted that the city of Cedar Rapids does not draw its drinking water directly from a river, and so is better protected from high nitrate levels than cities like Des Moines, which gets its water from a river. Cedar Rapids draws water from shallow wells along the river.

The city of Des Moines, she said, began operating its nitrate removal facility last Friday for the first time since 2007. The city of Cedar Rapids has not needed such a facility.

Murphy said nitrate levels were measured at 18.5 milligrams per liter in the Cedar River at Blairs Ferry Road, which she termed one of the highest levels ever recorded in the Cedar River.

Nitrate levels in Iowa rivers, she said, typically rise during rainy periods in the spring as nitrogen fertilizer that has been applied to farm fields washes into streams and rivers.

“We do not expect to exceed the limit, but we saw this moment as an opportunity to start talking … about nitrates and how the quality of our source water is connected to the quality of our drinking water,” Murphy said.

This is a rendering of the city’s new parking ramp plus skywalk over First Avenue East that will connect the ramp to the city’s DoubleTree by Hilton at the U.S. Cellular Center complex, which will consist of the hotel and arena, both under renovation, and the new convention center, under construction next door. Construction on the ramp is expected to start this summer and be completed in the spring of 2013.

First Avenue East in downtown Cedar Rapids will close for about five days to allow a new skywalk to be put in place between the DoubleTree by Hilton at the U.S. Cellular Center and the new parking ramp going up across the street.

The work is expected to start Wednesday and should take about five days, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation and city officials.

Eastbound traffic will be diverted at First Street SE to Third Avenue SE, Fifth Street SE and back to First Avenue East while westbound traffic will take the reverse route, Fifth Street SE, Second Avenue SE, First Street SE and back to First Avenue East.

Downtown Cedar Rapids is seen from the air on Monday, May 6, 2013. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

For the 41st year in a row, the city of Cedar Rapids has secured the top Aaa bond rating from Moody’s Investors Service.

City Council member Kris Gulick, chairman of the Finance and Administrative Services Committee and recent past president of the Iowa League of Cities, said Friday that the city’s ability to retain a Aaa bond rating for general obligation debt is an “exceptionally positive” accomplishment.

Gulick said only 8 percent of cities in the nation — about 190 — have earned an Aaa bond rating from Moody’s Investors Service, and many of those are smaller than Cedar Rapids. In Iowa, only Ames, Iowa City and West Des Moines have Aaa bond ratings in addition to Cedar Rapids.

Only two dozen American cities with populations between 80,000 and 200,000, including Cedar Rapids, have Aaa bond ratings, Gulick added.

“It’s a pretty exclusive class,” he said. “I don’t think people understand how exclusive a group that is.”

A top bond rating translates into a lower interest rate on debt issued by the city.

In its bond-rating report, Moody’s pointed to three of Cedar Rapids’ strengths: the “solid economic indicators” that the city enjoys as a “regional hub of economic activity and employment;” the city government’s ability to maintain “sound financial operations and overall liquidity despite multiple years of spending to repair flood damage;” and the city’s “moderate flexibility” in raising revenue.

The Moody’s report comes with the same caveat as last year — “a negative outlook” — which the rating agency attributes to the city’s link to the federal government and the federal government’s “weakened credit profile, as well as the “risk” that the city has taken on by owning a hotel and convention center. Gulick said Moody’s doesn’t like cities owning “non-core assets” such as hotels and convention centers.

Gulick said the city is in better shape now than a year ago because the renovation of the hotel and arena and construction of the convention center are nearly complete, so the risk associated with the project is nearly gone. In addition, he said the city is securing annual revenue commitments for naming rights and sponsorships for the complex at a rate above what has been projected.

Even so, he said it will be difficult for the city to move beyond the negative outlook as long as it owns the hotel. The city wouldn’t have bought the hotel in 2010 and closed it for renovation if it hadn’t been in serious decline, Gulick added.

City Finance Director Casey Drew on Friday said the city will sell $35.5 million in general obligation bonds and $12.5 million in revenue bonds next week.

As in recent years, the city has secured a bond rating of Aa2 — two steps below Aaa — for its upcoming sale of revenue bonds. Revenue bonds, which are supported by revenue of a particular enterprise such as the water or wastewater operation and not by the full backing of government, typically come with higher risk and a lower bond rating.

With next week’s debt sale, the city will have $341.7 million in outstanding general-obligation debt, all with an Aaa bond rating and negative outlook, the Moody’s report notes. The city is not permitted to have outstanding debt in excess of 5 percent of its valuation. Cities’ revenue-bond debt is not counted in that requirement.

A rendering of the proposed $90 million redevelopment project for Westdale Mall. (image via Frew Development Group, LLC)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Four post-flood, public-sector construction projects will do their part to change the face of the city when completed this summer: the hotel and convention complex project, the new downtown library, the new central fire station and the new riverfront amphitheater.

This week, though, City Hall is pushing ahead on four private-sector projects that similarly should have an impact on the city.

Those four are the $90 million redevelopment of the long-struggling Westdale Mall; the proposed construction of a $100 million casino; a $20 million, multistory office building on the site of the former First Street Parkade; and a new, $4.5 million, three-story office building in New Bohemia at the site of the former Iowa Steel plant.

“We’ve seen a flurry of private-sector investment in Cedar Rapids in the last 18 months,” Mayor Ron Corbett said on Monday. “And I can tell you, just looking ahead in the pipeline, this type of activity is going to continue throughout the balance of the year for sure and most likely well into 2014. … These four projects alone are $215 in investment. It’s huge.”

Corbett said public-sector investment in flood-recovery construction projects has convinced investors to follow with their own projects.

“We’re seeing exactly what we thought we would see: Public sector investment that is leveraging private-sector investment,” he said.

He noted that a ribbon-cutting is slated for Wednesday at Intermec’s new facility, another example of post-flood, private-sector investment in the downtown.

Council plans

On Tuesday, the council is slated to approve a development agreement with Frew Development Group, in which the developer agrees to invest at least $90 million over 10 years to transform the long-struggling Westdale Mall with a plan to demolish much of it and replace it with a new retail, office and residential center.

In exchange, the City Council will return 100 percent of the property-tax revenue — a tax incentive called tax increment financing — for at least 12 years that the developer pays on the increased value that comes to the property from the new investment. The property-tax revenue that is returned — arguably revenue that wouldn’t exist but for the development — could reach $20 million, city officials estimate.

Similarly Tuesday, the council is slated to approve a development agreement with Geonetric/Agile Ventures, in which the company agrees to invest $4.5 million to build a three-story office building on a city-owned brownfield property that once was home to the Iowa Steel plant in New Bohemia.

In exchange for the investment, the city will return 100 percent of the property-tax revenue to the company from the new investment for 10 years. Geonetric, a health care software and services company, now operates out of leased space in a northeast Cedar Rapids office park. The development agreement calls for the company to pay $50,000 for the former Iowa Steel property.

Other projects

The two other major projects, the casino and the CRST Inc. headquarters projects, are at an earlier stage in the City Hall development process.

For both projects, the City Council on Tuesday is slated to seek competitive proposals for the purchase of city-owned property.

In one instance, a local group of investors, led by Steve Gray and Drew Skogman, has asked to buy 7.5 acres of city-owned land across the Cedar River from downtown on which they want to build a $100 million casino. In the second, the real estate entity of CRST’s John Smith has asked to buy the site of the former First Street Parkade in the 200 block of First Street SE. Smith wants to build a $20 million office building, part of which will house CRST Inc.’s headquarters, Smith has said.

The proposed deadline for proposals on the property sought by the casino investors and by Smith is June 17.

City Council member Don Karr on Monday said bringing the Westdale area back to life, adding a new office building to the downtown skyline and one in New Bohemia and building a casino will all increase the city’s tax base in the long run and add jobs to the economy.

“It’s all jobs, jobs, jobs,” Karr said.

Karr agreed with Corbett, saying public dollars that have gone into the city’s flood recovery have helped attract private investment.

“Where do you think we’d be now if we hadn’t done the things we’ve done?” Karr asked.

The hydroelectric dam sits on First Street on the northeast side of Cedar Rapids under the Interstate 380 bridge in April 2010. (Julie Koehn/The Gazette)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency should not pay, or should require the city of Cedar Rapids to return, $13.8 million in hard-fought-for federal disaster dollars awarded to the city for the loss of the city’s disabled hydroelectric plant at the base of the 5-in-1 bridge.

That is the conclusion of a report published by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The OIG report urges FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., to speedily address the OIG recommendation because FEMA has agreed to allow the city of Cedar Rapids to use the disaster funds for an alternative project.  That project, a new parking ramp being built near the new federal courthouse, is now underway.

In its report, the OIG notes that the city of Cedar Rapids only succeeded in securing FEMA disaster funds for the city’s hydroelectric plant after a second appeal. FEMA’s regional office in Kansas City, Mo., had denied a first appeal, but FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., subsequently sided with the city of Cedar Rapids and granted the funds upon the second appeal to the national office.

The OIG report concludes that the Cedar Rapids hydroelectric plant is not eligible for FEMA disaster funds because it was inactive at the time of the June 2008 flood and it did not meet any of three regulatory exceptions need to fund the project.

The report says this as well: “… (T)he city included materially inaccurate information in its appeal documents that FEMA headquarters relied up to make its favorable ruling. Further, the weight of the evidence that we obtained shows that the facility is not eligible for FEMA funding.”

In a statement released on Friday, Joe O’Hern, the city’s executive administrator for development services, said the city of Cedar Rapids is “disappointed” with the conclusions of the OIG report and its recommendation to reverse FEMA’s decision and deny funding for the hydroelectric plant project.

“We have been working with Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management and FEMA for years to secure the funding we need,” O’Hern said.

FEMA headquarters now must decide if it will comply with the OIG recommendation and stop the FEMA grant to the city of Cedar Rapids or if the agency itself will ask the Department of Homeland Security to adjudicate the matter between FEMA and the department’s OIG.

Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz on Friday said city has not received any of the funds in question, though in June 2012, the City Council decided to program about $12 million expected in federal disaster dollars for the hydroelectric plant to pay for a new parking ramp.

The broken hydroelectric plant was mothballed instead of fixed, with its ultimate future to be decided at some later time, Mayor Ron Corbett said in June 2012.

The hydroelectric plant had been damaged and was not functioning at the time of the 2008 flood, a fact that prompted FEMA to refuse to pay the city for flood damage to the facility. However, the city appealed the matter to FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in April 2012, FEMA reversed its decision and agreed that the city had been “moving in the direction” of repairing the facility at the time of the flood.

Under FEMA rules, the city gave up 10 percent of the $13.8 million FEMA disaster award so it could use the funds for an “alternate” project other than the hydroelectric plant. Corbett said using about $12 million of the award for the city’s new parking ramp in the 600 block of Second Street SE meant the city would not have to take on debt for the ramp project.

The City Council had indicated in 2010 that it did not intend to renovate the hydroelectric plant and, instead, wanted to use any disaster dollars that came to the city from the hydroelectric plant for an alternate use under FEMA rules.

In a similar matter, an OIG recommendation to deny funding on three major University of Iowa disaster grants was overturned via an internal federal adjudication.

Read the full report: http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/GrantReports/2013/OIG_DD-13-09_May13.pdf

Wright Brothers Boulevard from Kirkwood Boulevard to Ely Road received a new concrete overlay that was paid for with local-option sales tax funds. Photo taken Thursday, May 9, 2013, in Cedar Rapids. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

LINN COUNTY — It’s easy to hear grumbling about Cedar Rapids’ city streets, but not so much so about Linn County’s rural roads.

That may be in part because the Linn County Board of Supervisors and the county’s Secondary Road Department have been using 90 percent of the revenue generated by the county’s piece of the existing 1-percent local-option sales tax in Linn County for road improvements, while the city of Cedar Rapids has been using 90 percent of its revenue from its much-larger piece of the sales tax revenue for flood recovery work, and none for street work.

The local-option sales tax, which expires on June 30, 2014, in Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, Robins and Fairfax, has been raising about $4.5 million a year in unincorporated Linn County for road and bridge work, with much of the money being used to improve roads already paved in one form or another but in need of fixes.

Most of the new paving work — 15 to 20 miles on average for each of the five years that the sales tax is being collected in the metro area and countywide — has involved the road-building process called “whitetopping,” best understood in relation to blacktopping.

Whitetopping

Whitetopping overlays existing pavement with concrete while blacktopping uses asphalt, said Steve Gannon, Linn County engineer and head of the county’s Secondary Road Department.

Gannon — who is a structural engineer with a bit of a self-professed bias toward concrete — reports that Linn County began using concrete overlays over existing asphalt, seal coat and concrete roads some years ago as price disparities between concrete and asphalt that once favored asphalt began to vanish.

Gannon says his approach to whitetopping adds a 6- to 8-inch layer of new concrete over existing pavement at a cost of between $250,000 and $300,000 a mile, which he says is less than half the cost of building a new concrete road from scratch to the same thickness. The savings comes, in part, because of the ability to use what already is in place. There is no extra expense, for instance, to grade the road bed, and the work proceeds quickly because construction machinery can set up on existing pavement, Gannon said.

“You can see there’s a huge savings in going over what is there,” he says.

A big advantage, too, is that he says the new layer of concrete will last up to 50 years with minimal maintenance, while he says a new layer of asphalt would require more maintenance and a new surface in 15 or so years.

The cost-benefit analyses over time between concrete, asphalt, seal coat, gravel and dirt can go on and on, Gannon said. But for Linn County’s current road-improvement work, whitetopping has come out on top of the analysis to fix already paved road, he says.

“And when you’re done, there is little a guy can see to think that you’re not on a brand-new concrete road,” Gannon said.

County differences

The calculations in rural Linn County, he said, are different from those in cities like Cedar Rapids, where street fixes often can require removing the pavement to get to water or sewer infrastructure beneath streets that needs upgrading at the same time as the street.

Even so, he points to a stretch of Edgewood Road SW south of Highway 30 in which Linn County used whitetopping in a project with the city of Cedar Rapids right next to a stretch of road that was constructed from the ground up. The whitetopping cost half as much, Gannon said.

John Harris, chairman of the Linn County Board of Supervisors, says the concrete overlay program brings with it low, long-term road maintenance costs while revenue from the local-option sales tax is in place to pay for the work.

“If LOST goes away, it’s not catastrophic because we’re not creating a future maintenance requirement for these roads,” Harris said.

Supervisor Brent Oleson, whose supervisor district like Harris’ covers some of the rural stretches of Linn County, says federal stimulus money in recent years also has provided some road construction money to go along with LOST funds.

“There are areas in the northern part of the county where long stretches of roads have been redone,” Oleson says. “So, I’m pleased with the progress. People have noticed. The roads are good and getting better.”

Rural road plan

Harris, Oleson and Gannon talk about the county’s approach to its rural road grid, which some years ago was designed to put every rural resident within three miles of some kind of paved road. The idea now is to get everyone within about a mile and a half of a paved road. In the process, the county also is seal-coating some rock roads when traffic counts warrant, a move that means less maintenance as well, Gannon says.

Linn County is responsible for 1,157 miles of road, 800 miles of which are rock roads, 50 “mud” roads, as Gannon puts it, and the rest paved roads. Some of the paved, which can include seal coating, are in rural subdivisions, he notes.

Gannon, a historian of a kind when it comes to Linn County’s rural roads, talks about the commemoration in recent years of what he calls the “seedling mile” — the first mile of pavement put down in the county in 1918 and 1919 outside of Mount Vernon as a demonstration of what the future might bring.

It took until this February for Linn County to reach the milestone of 100 miles of concrete roads in the county, a distinction that brought an award from the Iowa Concrete Paving Association and the Portland Cement Association, Gannon said.

LOST future

The award isn’t blurring Gannon’s view of the future.

Most of the local-option sales tax revenue that comes to jurisdictions in Linn County comes from the tax collected in the Cedar Rapids metro area, where the tax ends on June 30, 2014, after a 63-month run even as the tax has been extended elsewhere in the county.

As a result, Gannon figures the $4.5 million a year in sales tax revenue he now gets for rural roads and bridges will drop to $500,000 a year in mid-2014. (Voters in unincorporated Linn County also have decided to use 50 percent of any ongoing LOST revenue for roads, down from the current 90 percent that is in place until June 30, 2014.)

But Gannon says he has taken note of rumblings at City Hall in Cedar Rapids.

Last week, City Council member Don Karr stated publicly that some on the council are considering taking another run at extending the local-option sales tax for Cedar Rapids and the metro block, money which Cedar Rapids might use, at least in part, to fix streets.

A successful vote in the metro area would mean additional money ahead for Linn County and its roads and bridges program.

Voters in the metro area defeated the tax extension in May 2011 — by 211 votes out of some 32,000 cast — when Cedar Rapids wanted to use its revenue for flood protection and street repairs. Metro-block voters defeated the tax extension again in March 2012 by 576 votes out of about 27,500 total votes.

Voters in Warren County turned down casino gaming in the county by a large margin, 6,545 to 4,327.

A casino development proposal there now dies and won’t make its way to the state commission along with a proposal from a Cedar Rapids casino investor group.

There are 18 state-licensed casinos, and some owners believe a new operation would significantly hurt their venues.

Lamberti on Tuesday said that commission members already have discussed the casino proposal for Cedar Rapids. Linn County voters on March 5 approved casino gaming by a 22-percentage point margin, 61 percent to 39 percent.

He said he expects the commission to conduct at least one and probably two simultaneous studies by different companies of the Cedar Rapids casino market.

Lamberti said he expected the studies to focus on the Cedar Rapids casino project and its effect on other casinos nearby, not on casino gaming across the state. He said the commission also may conduct a separate study or studies to address the impact of a new casino in Central Iowa on existing casinos in that market.

Development interests in Greene County west of Des Moines, he noted, also have suggested that they might ask voters to approve casino gaming.

“We’re trying to get the best evidence because we know as we look at some of these new markets that are out there as potentials, the overriding single most important factor is the impact on existing facilities,” Lamberti said. “We just want to make sure we’re being fair to everybody and that we’re getting the best evidence and information.”

He said the commission intends to make the studies “tight and as specific as possible” to the particular markets where new casinos are being proposed.

He said, too, that most of the five-member commission “don’t think there’s a whole lot of market share left in this state.”

Steve Gray, who is heading up the Cedar Rapids casino proposal as part of a group of 60-plus investors, on Tuesday said he expected the commission to announce in June when it would be ready to take new applications for casino licenses.

In the past, Gray has estimated that a Cedar Rapids casino would bring in $80 million a year in adjusted gross revenue, with $18 million coming from existing casinos. Half of the $18 million would come from the non-state-licensed casino on the Meskwaki Indian Settlement west of Tama, he has said.

Gary Hinzman, Director of the Sixth Judicial District of Iowa, Department of Correctional Services sits at his desk Monday, May 6, 2013 in Cedar Rapids. Hinzman is retiring from the post after 24 years of service. Hinzman has also previously served as the Cedar Rapids Police Chief. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

Gary Hinzman, who became the city’s police chief at age 37, is winding up a 24-year-run this month in his second career — as director of the 6th Judicial District Department of Correctional Services.

In a break from taking photos off his office walls this week, the 65-year-old Hinzman said he was leaving, in part, to make sure he wouldn’t stand in the way of change.

He never has been one to assume a top post and sit.

In 1989, the community corrections department’s board of directors hired Hinzman away from the Cedar Rapids Police Department at a time when the prevailing statewide correctional philosophy had been to put halfway houses for offenders in neighborhoods. However, the department had been rebuffed repeatedly by neighbors as it attempted to open a new halfway house. Hinzman quickly convinced the department’s board to build a correctional campus in an area zoned industrial on 29th Street SW where there were no neighbors to protest.

Today, the department’s campus has two residential facilities, a classroom building, central office, central kitchen and a new residential center that provides outpatient mental health services for offenders even if it still lacks state funds to house that clientele.

Some years ago, Hinzman also created a non-profit entity called the Community Correctional Improvement Association (CCIA) to work alongside his state-funded, six-county corrections agency with the idea that he and his citizen boards of directors could go on the hunt for grant money not available to the agency.

Allan Thoms, president of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services’ board of directors, this week said he had no other word for Hinzman and his work “other than phenomenal.”

Thoms pointed specifically to the CCIA’s program called Children of Promise, which provides mentors for children with a parent in prison, sponsors a foster grandparents program for at-risk children with math and reading problems and runs a youth leadership program for at-risk children from fifth grade through high school.

“It’s the only one in Iowa,” Thoms said of the CCIA. “And it’s been a great assistance to the 6th Judicial District’s programs. … I think Gary’s a visionary, and I think this community owes him a lot.”

In recent years, the CCIA also has raised funds to build a four-building, 26-unit residential complex next to its correctional campus where offenders and their families can readjust to the community together.

Hinzman joined the Cedar Rapids Police Department in 1970 and rose to the position of police chief in 1985 at age 37. As chief — the youngest at the department since 1916 — he said he raised educational requirements for police officers, established an officer mentoring program for police rookies and expanded the department’s use of what was then its signature helicopter fleet. Hinzman, who holds a master’s degree in public administration from Iowa State University, had flown copters for the department.

By 1989, Hinzman and the city’s new elected public safety commissioner, who had been serving as a police patrol officer under Hinzman, had a falling out. Hinzman was returned to the rank of captain, the City Council continued to pay him as if he were still police chief, and he soon departed for the corrections post.

Today, the 6th Judicial District Department of Community Corrections, which serves Linn, Johnson, Benton, Jones, Iowa and Tama counties, has 190 employees and between 4,200 and 4,500 clients in the programs of pretrial release, probation, parole, pre-prison residential treatment and post-prison residential treatment.

In his 24 years at the helm of the department, Hinzman said community corrections departments have learned much about working to change the behavior of people who have committed crimes.

“When we’re done with somebody, if you want punishment, they get it because they’ve been here or in prison,” Hinzman said. “But when we return them, (the public) wants us to do something with them to return them safely. They don’t want them worse.”

Hinzman said reducing crime requires that communities take note of the “school-dropout-to-prison pipeline” and the higher risk for children of prison inmates to end up in prison, too.

“I think crime will always be with us to some extent,” Hinzman said. “But I think to throw up our hands in disgust and say, ‘Well, let’s just … lock them up for a few years, that will teach them a good lesson …. I think we need to figure out how we prevent crime victimization in the first place.”

Hinzman has served as president of the American Probation and Parole Association and vice president of the National Association of Probation Executives.

He plans to continue his work with the non-profit Community Corrections Improvement Association. He also will do some teaching and has been asked to help Mount Mercy University establish a master’s degree program in criminal justice.

Mayor elect Ron Corbett speaks during an informal council meeting in Cedar Rapids on Monday, December 28, 2009. (Crystal LoGiudice/The Gazette).

CEDAR RAPIDS – Mayor Ron Corbett made it official on Monday: He’s running for a second four-year term as Cedar Rapids’ mayor.

Corbett’s announcement came as no surprise: For months, he has he has said he almost surely would seek reelection.

Another four years as mayor, he said, will allow him to continue to push an agenda of economic growth for the city even as the city completes its work on flood recovery.

In making a case for reelection, he pointed out that the city’s jobless rate is now at 5.1 percent, the lowest since the national recession hit prior to the start of his mayoral term in January 2010. He said local home values are up, the city’s population is climbing and significant private investment is now following the the public investment that has come with the city’s recovery from the June 2008 flood disaster.

In the latter regard, he ticked off a long list of private investment projects that have taken place in the last couple of years or are now in the works, the new Intermec and Raining Rose facilities and the $90-million plan for Westdale Mall among them. The new $100-million casino, which voters overwhelmingly approved in March, will put vacant flood-hit land back on the city’s tax rolls if approved by the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission, he said.

“I think four years ago I set out to run for mayor and one of my goals was to make decisions to move our city forward,” he said. “ And I think we’re starting to see the positive results of those decisions. In the big picture, I think Cedar Rapids is on the right track.”

Corbett said not all of his decisions or those of the City Council have been popular with everyone, but he said it couldn’t have been otherwise.

“If you try to please everybody, you just won’t get anything done,” he said. “But I think I’ve been fair-minded. I listened to all the different sides of the issue. But in the end, you have to make a decision. And sometimes you have be tough to get things done. … But we just didn’t have the luxury to sit back and hope things worked out. We really needed to get in there, grab the reins and move our community forward.”

One focal point of criticism has been the decision by City Hall to buy the failing downtown hotel, close it along with arena attached to it and renovate them while building a new convention center next door. The DoubleTree by Hilton at the U.S. Cellular Center is slated to open on June 1.

“The hotel and convention center have probably received the most criticism (of the city projects),” the mayor said. “But I think the public is going to be pleased and proud to have this upgraded facility.”

Corbett said he wants to help guide the project beyond the ribbon-cutting stage to make sure they become successful operations.

In November 2009, Corbett easily won election as mayor after campaigning that City Hall had come to embrace a “culture of delay” at a time when he said the city needed to accelerate its flood-recovery work.

At the time he took office in 2010, the city had not made one property buyout as part of the city’s flood recovery, he said on Monday. Now, after some 1,400 property buyouts, the city is finishing up the program, he said.

Corbett said his past experience in the Iowa Legislature, where he rose to be Speaker of the House, and his tenure as president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce (now the Metro Economic Alliance), have helped him lobby both the Iowa Legislature and the federal government as the city has sought funds for flood recovery and flood protection.

Among the most significant victories, he said, was the 2013 decision by the Iowa Legislature to set up a state fund for flood protection projects using a funding mechanism designed in large part by Cedar Rapids city officials. The fund allows cities to compete for the state money if they have local matching dollars. The state fund, Corbett said, will help the city eventually complete its proposed flood protection system on both sides of the Cedar River.

Corbett for Mayor signs are seen along 1st Avenue in Cedar Rapids on Monday, October 19, 2009. (Randy Dircks/KCRG-TV9).

“It’s just going to be a continual slog for federal and state dollars to fund flood protection,” the mayor said. “But we’re making steps at both the federal and state level.”

He pointed to other major projects that have transformed the city like Interstate 380 and the modernization and expansion of the Eastern Iowa Airport. Both took years to fund, he said.

“But they’re economic assets that people wouldn’t think of us not having,” the mayor said. “I kind of see flood protection in that light.”

At 52, Corbett is the youngest of the nine members of the City Council. He is married with five children and works on special projects for CRST Inc.

Bob Bembenek (center) and Rita Robinson use yellow stickers to indicate what strategies they think are appropriate for Wellington Heights during a meeting to develop the neighborhood plan on Thursday, May 2, 2013, at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. Bembenek is a former president of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association, and Robinson is the treasurer. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

Improving an old, image-challenged neighborhood like Wellington Heights takes more than rolling out of bed or throwing darts at a board.

Some heavy lifting toward change already is taking place in the southeast Cedar Rapids neighborhood, and more is in the offing.

Last week, city officials convened public get-togethers over two days at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in the neighborhood for residents and those otherwise invested in the neighborhood to shape their thoughts into an action plan for the years ahead.

On Thursday, the second day of the public discussion, participants had identified these key issues to take on: vehicle traffic flow; personal safety; property maintenance and code enforcement; crime prevention; aesthetics like parks, lighting and litter; a lack of family-oriented activities and spaces; an imbalance of rental v. owner-occupied housing; and population density.

Terry Bilsland, the longtime president of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association who stepped down from the post in February, on Thursday said the planning exercise was a welcome addition to good things already happening in the neighborhood.

The most revolutionary of the neighborhood changes already under way, he noted, centers on the year-old initiative of Four Oaks and its Affordable Housing Network to buy 50-plus rundown properties, renovate them, convert some to homeownership and manage others as rental property.

“They’re making a big difference,” Bilsland said.

Bob Bembenek, a member of the neighborhood association’s board of directors and a local Realtor, said Wellington Heights is faring better than it had been several years ago when he said drug dealing on certain corners was not uncommon. Even so, each time a new police incident happens in the neighborhood it reinforces a perception about Wellington Heights as a problem neighborhood, he said.

Part of the neighborhood effort is to change the perception, and Bembenek said small matters, like cleaning up litter, can provide a big help.

“We can’t put a necktie on everybody … but if we could keep the place cleaned up. … It’s an image problem,” he said.

Jeff Capps, executive director of Cedar Valley Habitat for Humanity, on Thursday said his non-profit group is working in Wellington Heights in a program called “A Brush With Kindness.” The program has improved the exteriors of 20 owner-occupied homes since 2010 and will provide fix-ups to exteriors of 20 more homes this summer.

Capps said better code enforcement, an improved sense of personal safety and a larger percentage of owner-occupied homes in the neighborhood will benefit the neighborhood.

Former Mayor Kay Halloran, a Wellington Heights resident, said the neighborhood is progressing, but the progress has been “slow.”

“There’s no point in throwing a bunch of money into what isn’t going to work,” Halloran said. But she said steps like the city’s success some years ago in convincing Hy-Vee Food Stores to build a new grocery store on the edge of the neighborhood can help make a big difference.

Nadine Borngraeber on Thursday said she is helping her son, a recent Coe College graduate, who is fixing up a second foreclosed home in Wellington Heights in his spare time. He lives in one of the houses and is looking for a quality renter for the second.

Borngraeber, who recently moved to Cedar Rapids from Wisconsin with her husband, said Wellington Heights is an ideal place for revitalization because it is close to the city’s new Medical District, close to downtown employers and downtown night life and has properties available to fix up and call home.

“If you’re willing to put in some elbow grease, you’re going to come out with a gem,” she said. “Wellington Heights has seen its rough times, and it’s on the verge …”

John McGovern of McGovern Mowing cuts the grass at Boulder Cemetery near Central City on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

LINN COUNTY — Put me in Boulder Cemetery when I die.

Surely that demand has been heard over the century and half since the first farmers planted their lives in and around this tiny graveyard on a little hill with the wide vistas a few miles east of Central City.

Earlier this week, Boulder Cemetery in Buffalo Township couldn’t have seemed much prettier when the sun was out, the temperature up and spring finally showing itself in all its green and glory.

The look, though, was a little misleading in that it obscured the challenges that have come with keeping up this cemetery and that can confront many of the 70 or so other rural cemeteries in Linn County and the countless ones throughout a state that has been losing its rural population for decades.

Tree troubles

Ron McGovern and the three others on the elected Buffalo Township Board of Trustees have had their particular troubles with Boulder Cemetery, one of three that they take care of, because of what McGovern says have been dead, dying and lightning-hit evergreens that once helped beautify the cemetery and defend it from the wind. Of late, too, the simple, attractive front gate to the cemetery took a beating from a fallen tree.

“When the tree ended up on top of the gate, we had everybody calling us, like it was our fault,” said McGovern, the clerk of the township board.

In the end, the board of trustees, which had removed 11 dead trees in the last couple of years, decided to take down the few remaining ones, some damaged by lightning, for fear the next windstorm would drop them on to the gravestones, McGovern said. Not everyone, he added, applauded that decision.

Jon Gallagher, a soil conservationist at the Linn Soil & Water Conservation District and the county’s weed commissioner, says part of his job is to conduct a quick inspection of the 70 or so cemeteries in Linn County to check for noxious weeds and otherwise to note the maintenance level of the graveyards.

One of the duties of township trustees, he said, is to solve arguments between landowners over matters such as fence lines. But he says they also are in charge of maintenance in their townships, and cemeteries typically fall to the trustees to take care of.

Upkeep varies

The upkeep of rural cemeteries varies, Gallagher said. Some, he says, need better weed control, some are in need of perimeter fence repair and a few are even difficult to find.

He points to Bertram Township, where Ilene Wright has been clerk of the township board of trustees for 26 years, as one of the county’s townships with the best-tended cemeteries.

Wright says the township trustees contract out the mowing and maintenance services at two cemeteries, which is work that includes taking out dead trees when the time comes. She calls herself an “active naturalist” and so she says she systematically buys two trees a year for the two cemeteries. Some of the trees are additions to the cemeteries, some replace trees that die, she said.

Gallagher says it is “not uncommon” for rural cemeteries to “start over” once trees die off and fall into decline. But, he says, the question at Boulder Cemetery was whether all the trees needed to come down right now.

In any event, he says he is available as a resource to help the Buffalo Township trustees decide what kind of trees they now might want to use to repopulate Boulder Cemetery.

“These are all local farmers, and they know a little bit of everything,” Gallagher says.

Boulder Cemetery off Sawyer Road east out of Central City remains an impossible-to-miss spot of hillside beauty for those driving by. But without trees, the cemetery also stands out as a testament to thriving Iowa farming. It is surrounded on three sides by a farmer’s tall, formidable, guardrail-like fence to keep his cattle away from the graves.

The Buffalo Township’s Board of Trustees, McGovern said, plans to plant new trees to blunt the look of the fence. “But you can’t do it in the middle of the winter,” he says of the tree planting.

By way of perspective, McGovern recalls his boyhood days when he rode the bus past Boulder Cemetery to school in Central City.

“Back in the 1960s, it was surrounded by a junk yard,” he says. “They kept the grass mowed, and that was about it. There was always a bunch of dead trees that needed to be taken out.”

Boulder Cemetery still has an area for new graves, but McGovern says that many of the apparent open spaces are spoken for as a part of deeds that came with the original farmers who put down stakes in the township. Many of those original properties long ago changed hands, and so the deeded grave spots are just sitting there, unused.

What those first farmers were thinking is clear, too, from where they decided they wanted to be buried.

“It’s a typical location for a cemetery,” McGovern said. “They usually tried to put them on top of a hill opened to the rising sun.”

Olson, a commercial Realtor who told the ethics board that he continues to work on contract with the Cedar Rapids school district, cast a crucial vote with the majority in the council’s 5-4 vote in March to put the city’s recreation center on the Harrison school site.

On Wednesday at a Board of Ethics meeting requested by Olson, Olson pointed to amended language in the city’s ethics ordinance, which the council approved last week, that now alerts council members to take into account the “appearance” of a conflict of interest when federal dollars are involved in city projects.

Federal conflict of interest regulations are more stringent than the city of Cedar Rapids’.

Without Olson’s vote to put the city’s rec center next to Harrison school, the council vote would have been 4-4 and not sufficient to move the Harrison site forward as the place to build a replacement for the Time Check Recreation Center. Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds are being used to help pay to replace the former Time Check center, which was destroyed in the 2008 flood.

On Wednesday, Olson did not say that his March council vote represented any appearance of a conflict of interest. He only said that he would forego future votes, which he characterized as more-final votes on the Harrison site, because of the appearance issue.

His future votes on the rec center may not matter since a subsequent City Council vote, of 7-2, sent the Harrison school site plan to FEMA for the federal agency’s approval.

Apparently, the ethical question for Olson on the rec center project derives from the appearance that the school district would benefit from having a city recreation center next to its elementary school on school property.

Federal rules about the appearance of a conflict of interest have long been in place and were in place at the time of the March council vote.

Before the March council vote, Olson had recused himself from voting on the Harrison school site in his role on a City Hall Site Selection Task Force because of what he said was his business relationship with the school district.

At the council meeting in late March, though, he shifted gears and announced that he did not believe he had a conflict on the project and so cast his council vote on the Harrison site.

Olson recounted for the Board of Ethics on Wednesday why he changed his mind, saying that he did not believe he stood to financially gain from the city’s decision to put the city rec center on school property and that the vote was too important to avoid. The two most recent proposed sites for the city rec center, the Harrison school site and one next to Ellis Park, are both in Olson’s District 4 council district, he explained.

Olson sought Wednesday’s meeting with the ethics board to talk about the difficulty that council members can have because of murky language in the city’s ethics ordinance related to “indirect” financial benefit. The new language about the more stringent federal standard related to conflict of interest made the ethical landscape even more difficult to figure out, Olson said.

Both he and the five members of the Board of Ethics seem to agree that a council member should vote as often as possible, and as board member Amy Johnson Boyle put it, should not avoid voting because of some extreme, “fear-based” reason.

Olson led the Board of Ethics through an assortment of relationships that he has as a commercial Realtor and as a person who sits on numerous non-profit boards of directors. For instance, he said he works as an independent contractor for Skogman Commercial, not as an employee, but, nonetheless, has been recusing himself from votes related to Skogman even though he said he does not gain financially from them. Likewise, he said he has been a board member with Four Oaks for 40 years, but recuses himself from the non-profit’s Affordable Housing Network’s projects with the city though he stands nothing to gain financially.

The City Council’s three-member Development Committee on Tuesday pushed ahead the proposed city ordinance to the full City Council for a May hearing, but not without serious questions.

Council members Pat Shey and Scott Olson both wondered if such an attempt to place restrictions of payday lending shops represented an overreaching City Hall policy of “social engineering.”

“We are making decisions about who is a good tenant and who is not a good tenant, who is good for the neighborhood and who isn’t,” Olson said.

Olson, a commercial Realtor, said tenants like payday lenders fill hard-to-fill commercial storefronts, and he said the interests of those property owners needed to be taken into consideration.

Shey said not everyone living in certain parts of the city can qualify for bank accounts, and so they must depend on lenders like payday to provide them loans.

“Not everybody has all the options we have,” said Shey, adding he didn’t want to sound like an apologist for the high-interest operations. But he said a mother who needs formula for her baby might need access to a quick loan. Some don’t have cars to drive to out-of-the-way places where the city might end up requiring payday lenders to locate, he added.

Council member Monica Vernon, the committee chairwoman, said the proposed city ordinance, which restricts the concentration of payday lenders and limits their visibility in high-traffic areas like First Avenue, is a way to support city neighborhoods.

Vernon noted that some on the City Council in recent weeks have talked about how they don’t want certain types of “predatory” businesses in New Bohemia or the emerging Kingston Village area. Scott Crosby, president of the Uptown District and owner of EnCompass, 1420 First Ave. NE in the district, has been among those pushing for the city to regulate payday lenders, she pointed out.

Crosby on Tuesday said he understands that some property owners have bills to pay and so are willing to lease to the likes of payday lenders and tobacco and alcohol sales shops. But one shop like that that opens in a commercial district invites others to follow to the detriment of existing businesses around them, he said.

Crosby said the Uptown District and other neighborhood leaders also hope to push the city to limit the concentration and location of tobacco and alcohol outlets. A third tobacco or alcohol store has opened within two blocks in the Uptown District near Coe College, he said.

Thomas Smith, a planner in the city’s Community Development Department, reported to the council committee that the proposed new Cedar Rapids payday lender ordinance mirrors similar ordinances now in place in Iowa City, Des Moines, West Des Moines, Ames and Clive. He said Cedar Rapids now has 13 payday lending shops.

Those existing stores could remain under the proposed new ordinance, but then might not qualify to remain under the restrictions of the proposed new ordinance should the existing stores change ownership.

Council member Olson said he wanted to know if any of the 13 properties could continue to house a payday lender if the existing shop closed. Olson said he also wanted to make sure places in the city still existed for payday lenders under the proposed new ordinance.

The proposed ordinance would restrict payday lenders to less visible commercial districts and require the businesses to obtain a conditional use permit and to not locate within 1,000 feet of similar stores or child care centers, schools, parks or churches.

McGrane, 73, served on the council from 2006 through 2009 from District 3, the council district with some precincts in southeast Cedar Rapids and a smaller number across the Cedar River on Cedar Rapids’ west side.

He was defeated in his run for re-election by then-at-large council member Pat Shey, who decided in 2009 to compete for the District 3 seat.

Earlier this month, Shey announced his bid for re-election in District 3, and McGrane this week said he will compete for one of two at-large seats up for a vote in November.

“I think I can be more of a voice for people who flip hamburgers at Hardees,” said McGrane. “I’ve been a neighborhood leader for 18 years, and I think I can reach out to some who aren’t comfortable talking to some of the other council people.”

McGrane gained a political footing as president of the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association, a post he used to launch his run for the City Council in 2005 when the city moved from five full-time council members to nine part-time ones with a full-time city manager.

As a council member, McGrane said he was a driving force behind the council’s Enhance Our Neighborhood initiative, a neighborhood-improvement concept that has become part of the city’s new nuisance abatement effort, which the council put in place this year.”

“I feel like I planted a seed,” McGrane said.

He applauded the new effort by the Affordable Housing Network to invest in the renovation of properties in the Wellington Heights neighborhood, which he said is the kind of approach he has pushed for some years. McGrane has his own small non-profit entity, the Neighborhood Revitalization Service, which has renovated some homes.

In 2008, McGrane was both a council member and, along with wife Judy, a victim of the June 2008 flood. Their home at 1018 Second St. SE was bought out in the city’s flood-recovery buyout program.

McGrane now lives in a new home at 1105 Eighth St. SE, which was built with city flood-recovery incentives while he was a City Council member. He said he has gotten some criticism for participating in the city program, but he said he was a flood victim eligible like other flood victims for flood-recovery programs.

“I just don’t pay attention to it because it’s all BS,” he said of the criticism.

McGrane said the City Council in 2008 and 2009 did a good job of setting the “tone” for flood recovery. He added that Mayor Ron Corbett, who took office in 2010 and is seeking re-election this year, has done “a great job of pulling people together” to get things done. He credited Corbett with making tough decisions, like buying the downtown hotel, which he said is now encouraging the private sector to invest in development projects.

“We’re recovering form the flood a lot sooner than anybody expected,” McGrane said.

His biggest worry, he said, is the next flood and the city’s absence of a flood protection system. He supported an extension of the city’s local-option sales tax, which was defeated, to help build the system.

McGrane worked as a warehouseman back in the 1980s, injured his back and ended up in the federal disability program.

Two of the council’s at-large members, Don Karr and Chuck Swore, face re-election in 2013. Neither has said publicly what his plans are.

The Ellis Boulevard A&W, 1136 Ellis Blvd. NW, shown on Friday, July 22, 2011. (Cindy Hadish/The Gazette)

The flood-damaged, former A&W Family Restaurant on Ellis Boulevard NW is back in play.

The city of Cedar Rapids on Friday said it is seeking proposals from developers who want to redevelop the A&W property at 1126 and 1132 Ellis Blvd. NW.

Proposals are due at City Hall by 11 a.m. June 10. Interested parties can attend a meeting at 4 p.m. on May 1 at City Hall to discuss the property.

The City Council had agreed to work with local developer Baron Stark, who planned to renovate the A&W and reopen it as an A&W. However, Stark missed a deadline this week to gain financing for the project, and the city terminated its arrangement with him for the property.

Those with questions can call the city’s Community Development Department at 286-5041.

Mike Engelken

CEDAR RAPIDS — Cedar Rapids did it, so why can’t Linn County?

That’s the thought of two retirees, Richard Bice and Mike Engelken, who say they will launch a petition drive to create a charter commission and examine Linn County’s form of government.

State law requires a minimum of 10,000 signatures in Linn County.

“I think it will take a little bit of work,” Engelken said, “but I also know there’s a lot of frustration out there, and once they see what we’re trying to do, I think we’ll get the petition easily enough.”

Bice and Engelken want Linn County to replace its full-time supervisors with a county-manager form of government that features part-time supervisors and a full-time, professional manager.

Fueling Bice, 80, a retired businessman, and Engelken, 59, a retired financial controller for Rockwell Collins, is the Linn County Board of Supervisors’ decision in March to move to full-time status and raise their pay by 25 percent.

Some, including Bice and Engelken, say they understood the supervisors were permanently cutting their pay when they went from a three-member board to a five-member board in 2009. Supervisors say they agreed to temporarily adopt the cut in pay. They now say they work full time and so want to be paid as full time.

Bice, 2980 First Ave., Marion, and Engelken, 7625 Normandy Dr. NE, also express support for Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, who has been tangling with the supervisors for a year or more. Engelken’s son is married to Miller’s daughter.

Richard Bice

In Bice’s mind, Linn County voters agreed to go from three to five supervisors to get better representation and with the idea that people who work full-time jobs could represent Linn County in part-time supervisor positions at the same time.

Engelken said people who run for supervisor typically are residents with varied backgrounds, not experts in matters of county government.

“Let’s get somebody who is an expert to run all of that,” he said.

In June 2005, Cedar Rapids voters overwhelming approved a similar change at City Hall after a petition drive and the deliberation of a charter commission.

Cedar Rapids’ shift to a part-time council with a full-time professional city manager moved the city into the mainstream. Most cities of some size in Iowa and across the nation have the council-manager form of government.

None of Iowa’s 99 counties, however, have a county-manager form of government, even though Iowa law spells out how counties can adopt such a government.

Scott County, where Davenport is the county seat, has for years had a professional administrator to whom department heads report, said Larry Minard, chairman of the part-time Scott County Board of Supervisors.

However, Scott County has not adopted a charter with the county-manager government. So the supervisors could eliminate the administrator position at any time.

“We’re not elected to the job with any particular depth or skill in all the complicated things that are involved in managing 460 employees and a variety of county departments,” said Minard, a retired teacher and former Davenport City Council member.

In Polk County, where Des Moines is the county seat, the full-time Board of Supervisors had set up a county manager operation without changing the county’s form of government, but then the five supervisors eliminated the office about a decade ago.

Tom Hockensmith, chairman of the Polk County board, said the manager’s office was top heavy. So the supervisors traded that for a single administrator who reports to the supervisors, he said.

“We didn’t need a county manager and two or three assistant managers,” Hockensmith said. “That’s what we get paid for.”

Under Iowa law, if sufficient signatures are gathered to convene a county charter commission, each of the county’s elected officials — five supervisors, auditor, sheriff, attorney, recorder, treasurer — selects two representatives to the commission, as do each of the representatives in the Iowa Legislature whose districts have most of their constituents in the county.

In Linn County, there are seven such legislators. That will make for a Linn County Charter Commission of 34 people total.

Once organized, the commission will have a year to present a final report. The report may call for no change in the county’s form of government, or it may create a charter for a new government and submit it to residents for a vote.

The charter could even give voters a chance to revolutionize county government. State law, for instance, permits the commission to eliminate elected county offices and turn the duties over to people appointed, for instance, by a county manager.

Rick Sanders, a member of the Story County Board of Supervisors, said a seven-member Story County Government Restructuring Committee issued a report in 2012 calling for a charter commission in Story County, where Ames is the largest city. The committee recommended a county-manager government, but Sanders said no one has begun a petition drive.

Linn County Supervisor Ben Rogers said Linn County’s current form of government is “the most efficient, responsive and effective form of government,” he said.

His fellow Supervisor Linda Langston said a county-manager government wouldn’t save Linn County money, because a county manager would have a salary in the $150,000 to $200,000 range and the supervisors also would have salaries.

County Auditor Joel Miller said Engelken is strong-minded and comes up with his own ideas. For his part, Miller said he’d like to see a charter commission study if certain county elected offices should be eliminated or combined or the duties turned over to appointees.

“Why not? Start with mine as far that goes,” Miller said. “I don’t think we have the right county government for the future.”

The intent of the form is to make public the financial relationships that city officials and their immediate families have with companies and entities that do business with the city.

City officials must recuse themselves in cases of conflict of interest, and the ordinance amendment notes that such recusal is “an absolute lack of involvement.” That means that officials with a conflict should not vote, discuss, deliberate or otherwise participate in a matter under discussion or being acted on.

In fact, Judi Whetstine, the chairwoman of the city’s Board of Ethics, told the council that the amendment’s expectation is that council members and city officials with a conflict of interest leave any discussion of a matter that has come or is coming before City Hall even in a private setting where the matter comes up.

The city’s ethics ordinance — Cedar Rapids is the only Iowa city with a local Board of Ethics — is limited, as is the state of Iowa’s law in that it applies only to direct conflicts of interest.

However, the amendments to the city ordinance alert city officials to “the appearance” of a conflict of interest in matters involving the city’s receipt of federal funds. Federal regulations require the reporting of actual conflicts of interest as well as “any appearance” of a conflict of interest.

City Council member Scott Olson, a Realtor with Skogman Commercial, asked the council Tuesday night to defer action on the new ethics amendments so there could be additional work done to define “indirect economic benefit” and to provide some assurance that a council member would not face repercussions if a council member acted on city business not knowing that it involved a client.

Olson said he has over 200 clients and he said it was impossible to know, for instance, when voting to approve the thousands of regular city bill payments if one of his clients has been a vendor that week for the city.

“Maybe I’m a little paranoid,” Olson said. He said his goal when he ran for the council in 2011 was to prove people wrong and to show that a council member could be a business person and not be in front of the ethics panel repeatedly.

Whetstine noted that the language of “indirect economic benefit” has been in the city’s ethics ordinance since it was first adopted in 2007.

Council member Pat Shey encouraged the council to act on the ethics amendments now, saying it could take weeks trying to seek new and still imperfect definitions.

Shey noted that the amendments really create a stiffer standard for city projects with federal dollars attached to them, adding that definitions of “appearances” of conflicts can vary.

Whetstine noted that the city’s Board of Ethics decided early on not to include appearances of conflict in the city ordinance because the board majority thought such a standard was too subjective.

Back in 2009, Bill Quinby, then an ethics board member, suggested that the board try to find a way to include some language about appearances of conflict. The issue at the time involved a contractor on the council who intended to do work on a local project after it received economic incentives from the council. Quinby didn’t think it would look right to the public for a council member to get business from someone getting city help. The board’s majority disagreed.

Council member Don Karr joined Olson in voting against the ethics amendments as written.

In that effort, the City Council last night agreed to seek sealed bids from adjacent property owners to determine which lots adjacent property owners might want and which owners want the lots most.

The City Assessor’s Office will determine valuations for each of the lots, city officials noted.

The lots have been deemed “non-conforming” for development, a criteria that means each lot is less than 4,200 square feet in size or does not have at least 30 feet of width

The lots on the sale block are at: 819 Eighth St. NW; 523 Fourth St. SW; 274 12^th Ave. SW; 1016 B Ave. NW; 831 Third Ave. SW; 728 Ninth Ave. SW; and 341 15^th Ave. SW.

Others are at 912 Sixth St. SE; 525 Sixth Ave. SW; 1105 K St. SW; 209 Seventh St. SW; 806 Fifth Ave. SW; and 900 Sixth St. SW.

Also, at 420 Fifth Ave. SW; 354 Eighth Ave. SW; 333 13^th Ave. SW; 830 Third Ave. SW; 710 Sixth St. SW; and 1766 Mallory St. SW.

Also, at 1002 Second St. SW; 711 Sixth St. SW; 320 Ninth St. NW; 820 Fifth Ave. SW; 819 Eighth St. SW; 1617 Second St. SW; and a lot in the 200 block of 12^th Avenue SW.

One plus in selling the lots is that the city won’t have to mow them and shovel snow from in front of them, city officials said.

A Marion woman feeds geese at Manhattan Park in Cedar Rapids in June 2012. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — The City Council decided Monday night to hold a public hearing on May 14 to consider a change in a city ordinance to ban the feeding of geese and other waterfowl and wildlife on city property.

The council’s Public Safety Committee earlier this month recommended the change at the urging of Daniel Gibbins, the city’s parks superintendent.

The proposed feeding ban would include a system of fines like those now in place for leash-law violations and failing to clean up after pets on city property. The first offense in a year would cost $75, the second, $150, the third, $300, under the proposed new ordinance.

Gibbins noted this week that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has recommended that the city impose a ban on the feeding of wildlife on city property and a series of fines to put teeth into the ban. Feeding makes it easy for geese to crowd certain city parks where feeding is common and leave an accumulation of feces behind, Gibbins said.

The city will continue to round up and relocate geese in June, an effort designed to take young geese into rural Iowa in hopes they will come to call that home.

The former A&W restaurant along Ellis Blvd. Monday, April 22, 2013 in Cedar Rapids. The restaurant was destroyed in the flood of 2008 and has yet to be redeveloped. (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Don Gallagher now owns the tasteful corner storefront, long a brake and alignment shop, at Ellis Boulevard NW and K Street NW at an intersection that neighborhood leaders say holds great post-flood commercial promise.

For now, almost five years after the June 2008 flood, the promise is still in the making.

Gallagher and partner Dave Keese, both retired Rockwell Collins electronics engineers, have yet to find the right renter for their renovated storefront at 1200 Ellis Blvd. NW, which Gallagher said on Monday would be perfect for an insurance agent or, perhaps, an artist or small art store.

On Monday, too, Gallagher looked out one of his storefront’s big plate-glass windows, across K Street NW to the flood-damaged, former A&W Family Restaurant.

Local developer Baron Stark has had a plan to renovate and reopen the restaurant for more than a year, but at 5 p.m. Monday, a City Hall deadline passed and Stark lost his chance to follow through on his plan, Caleb Mason, a housing redevelopment analyst for the city of Cedar Rapids, reported early last evening.

Stark did not return a call on Monday, but Richard Luther, owner of Creative Development Solutions and a development consultant for Stark, said on Monday that he didn’t think Stark had given up on his plans for the A&W.

“I think it would be wonderful if it could (be renovated),” Gallagher said of the A&W. “People have stopped in here and have told us how they used to go there when they were kids.”

Linda Seger, the president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association, on Monday said she hoped that another developer will now step in and figure out something else for the former A&W property. Stark’s proposal, and his development agreement with the city, had taken the property out of play, but now others can submit proposals to redevelop it, she said.

The city’s Mason said City Hall will see if there is other interest.

City Council member Don Karr, who grew up in the Ellis Boulevard NW neighborhood, on Monday said that some kind of restaurant should be able to make a go of it at the Ellis Boulevard NW site, but he said he’s not sure that the A&W concept can generate enough revenue to work.

Neither Karr nor Seger on Monday were about to give up on the idea of a future vitality for Ellis Boulevard NW even if little commercial activity has yet taken place there as part of the city’s flood recovery.

Both pointed to the city’s plan, which Karr said has made it on to the city’s near-term construction list, to extend Ellis Boulevard NW east to First Avenue West and Sixth Street SW. Seger said such a connection will make Ellis Boulevard NW more inviting for motorists to use, which she said should help neighborhood businesses to sprout up along it. The extension is apt to happen, Seger added, because it also will provide easy access to the proposed new casino on First Avenue West.

Seger said she especially has not given up on the intersection of Ellis Boulevard and K Street NW where Gallagher and Keese have their storefront for rent and, who knows, another proposal may surface for the A&W site, she said.

“It’s one of the vital intersections on Ellis,” Seger said.

On one corner is the renovated Flamingo restaurant, which is open on Friday and at other times for special events. Across K Street from it is yet-to-be-renovated, one-time corner pharmacy, which Seger and Gallagher said would make a nice restaurant.

The 86-year-old Gallagher said he’s been trying to recruit an area owner of a Mexican restaurant to look at the property.

Then there is the A&W site and Gallagher’s and Keese’s building, which had been Chirp’s brake and realignment shop.

In truth, a central interest of Gallagher, who lives close by in the Methwick retirement community, and Keese is to use the shop area in the back of the storefront for their own ongoing hobby shop work. Gallagher said they only hope to get enough rent for the storefront facing Ellis Boulevard NW to pay the taxes.

“They are such good, interesting people,” Seger said of Gallagher and Keese. “Which is a plus for the neighborhood. They’re involved now in the neighborhood association. It would be nice if something like an accountant or a candle shop of a nice secondhand store located in their building.”

Gallagher said he and Keese have turned down inquiries from those who have wanted to open a tattoo shop, a tobacco shop and a rent-to-own shop, saying that’s not what he and Keese are looking for.

“We want this to be a good neighborhood,” Gallagher said.

Retired Rockwell Collins electronics engineer Don Gallagher stands in the former Chirp’s brake and alignment shop located at 1200 Ellis Blvd. NW, as he looks out the window towards the former A&W restaurant Monday, April 22, 2013 in Cedar Rapids. Gallagher and his partner Dave Keese, also a retired Rockwell Collins engineer, are looking for someone to rent the storefront space in the old shop while they use the rear of the building for their hobby shop. (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG)

Then-Cedar Rapids Recreation Superintendent Sven Leff (from left) shows a property map to City Council member Scott Olson as members of the Northwest Recreation Center Task Force take a bus tour of the five possible sites for a new recreation center in Cedar Rapids in February 2012. Leff was named Monday as the city's new parks and recreation director. (Stephen Mally/Freelance)

Sven Leff, the city’s recreation superintendent since 2011, has been named the city’s new parks and recreation director.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz selected Leff, 42, after a national candidate search, which attracted 47 applicants from 18 states. Six of those were interviewed in Cedar Rapids by a City Hall evaluation team and met with the public at an open house earlier this month. Leff was the only current city employee among the six finalists.

Pomeranz called Leff “the best-qualified” of the candidates.

“Sven’s done an outstanding job in the recreation function, he’s well-liked in the community, he’s extremely well-liked by the employees and I think he’ll do an outstanding job,” Pomeranz said.

Leff joined the city’s Parks and Recreation Department two years ago this month. Previously, he worked as recreation supervisor for the city of Reno, Nev. From 2007-2011 he served on the board of the Nevada Recreation & Park Society, and he was president the group from 2010-2011.

“Sven has over 16 years of experience within the recreation profession,” Pomeranz said. “… He truly impressed those who interviewed him. … What is most impressive is Sven’s commitment to the city organization and to our community.”

Leff replaces Julie Sina, who retired as the city’s parks and recreation director at the end of March.

John Smith, board chairman of trucking firm CRST International and president of Cedar Rapids Real Estate Group LLP, has told the city of Cedar Rapids he wants to compete to buy the city-owned riverfront lot between Second and Third avenues SE and across the street from the Alliant Tower where the city’s First Street Parkade was until it was demolished in 2011.

“I really have become over the years more and more convinced that we need to put more emphasis in the core city and get that built up,” Smith said Saturday. “And I think this will give it a little bit more buzz if we’re successful doing this building.”

The Parking lot on 1st Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue in downtown Cedar Rapids may become the site of a new office building downtown. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette-KCRG)

Smith, who retired as president/CEO of CRST International in 2010, has written the city that he and his wife, Dyan, and their real estate entity want to build a “significant downtown office project” that would house the Cedar Rapids trucking firm’s corporate headquarters plus provide leased space for other companies.

In the letter, Smith states that his expectation is to build a $20 million, “signature-quality, Class A” structure that would provide between 75,000 and 100,000 square feet of office space.

In addition, he states that the building could contain lower-level parking for 200 to 350 vehicles in up to an additional 90,000 square feet of space. The proposed building also would be designed to fit into the city’s flood wall protection system.

“We plan on creating a building of lasting importance to the city, and this site is perfect for that endeavor,” Smith writes.

On Saturday, Smith joked that Tom Aller, president of Alliant Energy’s Interstate Power and Light Co. and part of long-standing downtown development group, “has been on my case for 25 years to come downtown.”

“And it just seemed like a good time to think about it,” Smith said. “I think it would be good for the city. I just seems like the right thingto do.”

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said Smith approached him about the idea of building a new downtown office building several months ago. Pomeranz said he stayed in touch with and encouraged CRST International and its representatives to move ahead on the project, he said.

“We have a local company — one of our most successful local companies — that wants to develop a corporate headquarters on that site,” Pomeranz said. “It is truly exciting to see that kind of commitment of jobs and financial investment in our city.

“We think it’s going to be a signature building, meaning it’s going to be a very attractive addition to the downtown skyline.”

Pomeranz said the building may stand eight to 10 stories tall, depending on how many levels of parking it features.

City Council member Scott Olson said Smith has suggested to city leaders that his proposed office building will be of a similar height to the GreatAmerica Building on the city’s riverfront at 625 First St. SE. The temporary surface parking lot, which opened in late 2011 on the proposed CRST building site, always was intended to give way to “a higher and better use” such as an office building, Olson said.

An aerial view of the Great America building alongside the new federal courthouse. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette-KCRG TV9)

The City Council on Tuesday will set a public hearing for May 14 to initiate the city’s property-disposition process for the site.

In his letter this month to City Hall, Smith said his interest in building a downtown office building for CRST’s headquarters was being driven by two forces — CRST’s need for more office space and the downtown’s ongoing effort to recover from the June 2008 flood.

Smith’s commitment to the city’s flood recovery has been noticed before.

In July 2009, he and his wife donated $1 million as seed money to the Block by Block neighborhood-rebuilding initiative, a joint flood-recovery effort. Block by Block renovated 270 homes in 25 flood-hit city blocks and leveraged the Smith’s donation to raise a total of $7 million in private and public funds for the work, said Clint Twedt-Ball, co-executive director of Matthew 25.

Subsequently, the Smiths also donated $100,000 to the city’s post-flood riverfront amphitheater project — which doubles as entertainment venue and a flood levee — to help the project get close to its private fundraising target.

Pomeranz and Olson emphasized that the Smith proposal will have to compete against any others that might come forward for the riverfront site, which Pomeranz called “a very important piece of undeveloped property in downtown Cedar Rapids.”

“This property is not promised to any one company,” Pomeranz said.

Under the city’s proposed timeline for the sale of the property, proposals would need to be submitted to the city by June 17.

A city evaluation team will make a recommendation to the City Council for its consideration June 25.

Smith said he would like to break ground this fall if his proposal moves forward.

Scott Olson

Olson noted downtown employees now using the existing surface lot will have to scramble a little to find parking if and once construction starts.

Olson, a Realtor for Skogman Commercial, said a similar effort is under way to convert a newly vacant lot next to the Paramount Theatre into a temporary parking lot for about half the vehicles that now park at the proposed Smith project.

Pomeranz and Olson said the parking levels under the proposed Smith building could include some for the building’s use and some for general city use.

Olson said some downtown employers might be willing to sign commitments to use some of the spaces.

Cedar Rapids’ downtown has seen two other new private-sector buildings go up since the 2008 flood.

In terms of recent skyline-changing buildings, the GreatAmerica Building was built in 1998 and the Town Centre building, at 223 Third Ave. SE, was built in 1991, according to the city assessor’s website.

Mayor Ron Corbett, who is employed at CRST to work on special projects, on Friday referred any comments on Smith’s building proposal to the city manager, saying he had distanced himself from any involvement in the project to avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest.

In January, CRST received an economic-development incentive from the City Council to support what the company said will be a $3 million investment to expand its training facility at 3930 16th Ave. SW.

Flooding on Indian Creek in the Sun Valley neighborhood has prompted the Cedar Rapids City Council’s Flood Recovery Committee to recommend the city use some of the remaining revenue from the city’s local-option sales tax for flood recovery to build to berm. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

City Hall also is planning to remedy two west-side spots that cause water troubles at times of heavy rains and flooding, Mayor Ron Corbett said on Friday.

Corbett said the city plans to use some of the remaining revenue from the city’s local-option sales tax designated for flood recovery to make improvements on an existing flood-protection berm near Ellis Park and along the Vinton Ditch.

On Thursday, the mayor and other council members announced their intention to use about $1 million in sales-tax revenue to build a berm along Cottage Grove Parkway SE to protect the Sun Valley neighborhood against repeated threats of flooding from Indian Creek.

Corbett on Friday said the berm near Ellis Park and the Vinton Ditch, like the Sun Valley matter, have caused repeated problems that now need resolved.

“All of this is in line with how we wanted to use remaining sales tax dollars for flood protection,” the mayor said. He noted that the council anticipated some months ago that it would have about $13 million available for such uses once the tax ends on June 30, 2014.

Rob Davis, the city’s engineering manager, this week put the cost at between $50,000 and $100,000 to raise a low spot in the berm near Ellis Lane and Eighth Street NW. The improvement, which would include the ability to pump water back over the berm to the Cedar River, would help prevent flooding problems like the one that occurred in March when an ice jam forced water out of the Cedar River near Ellis Park and the neighborhood around it.

“I think this will give some comfort to people on the west side who deal with water coming down Eighth Street NW,” Corbett said.

Davis said it would cost about $500,000 for bank stabilization work along the Vinton Ditch and to relocate a problem sanitary sewer west of Edgewood Road NW in Cherokee Park.

In addition, the city will spend an estimated $100,000 for additional work on the flood-protection piece of the city’s outdoor riverfront amphitheater, which is slated to open across the Cedar River from downtown in late summer.

The city’s Flood Recovery Committee on Thursday recommended the use of the city’s sales tax for the Ellis Park, Vinton Ditch and amphitheater work as well for a berm in Sun Valley.

In that regard, the board on Friday took on a little piece of the world of conflicts of interest to address times when City Council members and other city officials sit on non-profit boards for agencies and entities that make requests of City Hall.

In short, the ethics board concluded that members of non-profit boards typically receive no compensation for that service, and so City Council members and other city officials do not violate the city’s conflict-of-interest ordinance if they sit on a particular non-profit’s board and then take an interest in or vote on that non-profit entity’s request that comes to City Hall.

City Council member Kris Gulick asked the ethics board to weigh in on the matter.

Gulick this week said the city ordinance calls on council members to recuse themselves from votes in which they may have a personal financial gain. But he said there is no financial gain for sitting on a non-profit board that does not pay board members.

At ethics board member Laura Behrens’ suggestion, the board decided to recommend that council members and other members of city boards and commissions use specific language to publicly acknowledge membership on a non-profit’s board when the non-profit has an issue in front of the city. The language then would state that such membership brings no financial gain to the council member or other city official and, as a result, it is not necessary for a recusal in the discussion or vote on the matter under consideration.

Board member Sister Susan O’Connor asked if there were just such “magic words” that council members and other city officials could use to spell out what the city’s ethics ordinance prohibits and what it doesn’t. The ethics board wants council members and members of city boards and commissions to vote when possible, O’Connor said.

“The more you recuse yourself, the less value you are … ” she said.

A “fear of an appearance” of a conflict does not equate to an actual ethical conflict under the city ordinance, Behrens said

O’Connor said the language a council member or other city official uses to provide a conflict-of interest explanation at a public meeting should go into the official meeting minutes for the public to see. Each time that happens will serve as a “little piece of education” on the city’s ethics ordinance, Behrens added.

In the board’s discussion, Behrens said she sits on non-profit boards and sometimes attends the non-profit’s events for free, when others must pay for admission.

Judi Whetstine, the ethic board’s chairwoman, said instances in which a non-profit board member’s presence at an event may be required by the board would not represent a financial gain and so would not create a conflict of interest for any subsequent city business with the non-profit entity.

The city’s conflict-of-interest ordinance, like the state of Iowa’s, is limited and does not address an appearance of conflicts of interest.

However, Whetstine noted that the city is preparing to amend its ethics ordinance to alert council members and other city officials that they could violate the federal government’s more-stringent conflict-of-interest rules when they vote on city matters involving federal funds. Federal agencies have prohibitions against certain appearances of conflicts, Whetstine said.

She said the federal government, not the city’s ethics board, would enforce such violations.

This is a "€œcharacter sketch"€ provided by contractor Ryan Companies US Inc. in Cedar Rapids of what the proposed Cedar Rapids casino will resemble. The sketch shows that the casino with parking ramp will sit in a one-by-two-block area, which Cedar Rapids casino investor Steve Gray says will be between First and Second avenues SW and First and Third streets SW across the Cedar River from downtown. The casino will face the river with the ramp behind it. The investors also want to purchase land between First Avenue West and Interstate 380 for green space and future expansion, Gray says.(Credit: Ryan Companies US Inc.)

The casino investor group led by Steve Gray formally asked via letter to City Hall to purchase to 7.5 acres of city-owned land directly across the Cedar River from downtown for an $80-million-plus gaming casino.

“This officially is kicking off that (land purchase) process and getting done what needs to be done,” Gray, founder of Gray Venture Partners and one of 60 or so in investor group Cedar Rapids Development Group, said Thursday afternoon.

Mayor Ron Corbett on Thursday said the City Council on Tuesday will begin the city’s property disposition process for the land being sought by the casino investor group.

The process, which the city has used routinely to sell property acquired through the flood-recovery buyout program, requires the city to seek proposals from individuals or entities that may want to purchase a particular piece of property. A City Hall evaluation team then evaluates the proposals and recommends the best one to the City Council. The city manager then enters into negotiations with the entity selected by the council to hammer out a development agreement as part of the property sale, an agreement which the council must approve.

In his letter to City Hall on Thursday, Gray said the investor group needs to secure land for the casino site before it can complete its application to the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission for a license to operate a casino. The investor group hoped to submit that application within the next several months, he said.

Gray said the site sought for the casino is the area that the investor group made public before the March 5 referendum in which Linn County voters overwhelming approved casino gaming in the county.

The proposed three-story casino will sit on property between First and Second avenues SW and First and Third streets SW, while a parking ramp is proposed to be built across First Avenue West from the casino site with a skywalk connecting the ramp and casino, Gray has said.

In his letter to City Hall on Thursday, Gray said:

• The investor group is asking the city to make the 7.5 acres of city property available for purchase to allow for the construction of a casino should the investor group acquire a state gaming license.
• If the license is secured, the investor group would invest more than $80 million in the casino, hire more than 350 employees at a “competitive wage rate and build a casino with a building plan that includes flood protection for the site.
• In addition, the investor group will guarantee the use of a certain number of room at the city-owned DoubleTree by Hilton at the U.S. Cellular Center.
• The investor group also will “work with” city officials in a possible public-private partnership to construct the casino parking ramp in such a way that it can be available for non-casino public use, for instance, by those attending events at the city’s new riverfront amphitheater down the street from the casino.

Gray on Thursday said the estimated purchase price for the 7.5 acres of city-owned land will be about $2 million. The casino group has signed purchase contracts on another 1 acre of property owned by private owners on the proposed casino site, he said.

Earlier this month, Gray said he hoped to have his casino application into the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission by July. He thought it would take the commission six to 12 months to make a decision and another 12 to 14 months to build the casino should the commission grant a license.

Jon Jelinek lost his son, Sam, to a heroin overdose March 22. Jelinek keeps his son's ashes in an urn in his apartment. Photo taken Thursday, April 18, 2013, in southeast Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Jon Jelinek wishes he had been angrier and little less brokenhearted when he found his son, Sam, dead on the Friday afternoon of March 22 — on his knees, face in a pillow on the bed, a syringe needle stuck in his hand between two fingers, some heroin still in the syringe.

“I should have taken a picture and taken it over to ASAC (the Area Substance Abuse Council’s treatment program) to show it to those kids,” Jelinek said this week. “ ‘Look. This what happens to you: This is my son. I understand addiction. But this is what you do to your parents, and brothers and sisters and your best friends. This is how you’re going to end up if you don’t quit.’”

A few words can be worth a 1,000 pictures.

Jelinek, a former building contractor and a bedrock believer and business owner in the city’s up-and-coming New Bohemia arts and entertainment district, says his 23-year-old son’s entanglement with heroin in Cedar Rapids stretched over 18 months and featured a couple inpatient drug-treatment efforts to get him off the drug and away from the drug’s local suppliers.

Jelinek said his son, a 2007 graduate of Xavier High School, had wanted to be a writer, but his drug struggles had gotten in the way. So the son was working alongside his dad in dad’s ongoing post-flood renovation work on commercial buildings next to and near his Parlor City Pub & Eatery in the heart of New Bohemia.

In the end, Sam Jelinek was more than himself, say his dad, local law-enforcement authorities and the Area Substance Abuse Council. He, too, had become part of a quiet trend — a trend of young Cedar Rapids adults using heroin, some of whom also end up in an obituary that usually doesn’t spell out a cause of death.

“Was he proud of that? No,” Jelinek said of his son, one of four children. “Did he hate himself for being that way? Yes. … But as parents you do everything you can to help.”

Even now.

“The thing is I don’t want to have that happen to some other parent, to have them have to bury a child because they said, ‘It can’t be my kid,’ ” he said.

Numbers rising

Dedric Doolin, senior deputy director at ASAC in Cedar Rapids, said this week that the number of those who come into treatment addicted to heroin or having used heroin is increasing. He added that the majority of heroin users entering treatment are young adults and, as often as not, middle class and upper middle class ones. And he said some of them are dying from heroin overdoses.

“It’s an unfortunate reality,” Doolin said.

In total numbers, those entering ASAC’s treatment programs who cite heroin use are a small percentage of the agency’s overall caseload. But even so, the increase in the drug’s use is “significant,” said Doolin. He said a decade or so ago, few people came to treatment because of heroin, but now that is not the case.

In 2009, 25 people from Linn County entering ASAC treatment cited heroin as their primary problem drug, and by 2012, the number had grown to 69. In 2009, 56 from Linn County cited heroin as one of the top three drugs they used, and by 2012, that number had grown to 104, according to ASAC figures.

“We’ve been discussing this (at ASAC) for the last few years,” Doolin said. “We continue to see the numbers rise of people (using heroin) coming through our doors.”

He had no hard numbers on the number of heroin deaths. But he said he and his staff know those numbers are up because of clients and former clients who have died.

Crack cocaine, methamphetamine and an assortment of synthetic drugs all are making their presence felt in the Cedar Rapids area, Doolin said. But he said heroin continues to live up to its reputation as difficult to get off once on it because “you get sick, you start feeling like you’re going to die” if you go without it.

Police response

Cedar Rapids police Sgt. Dave Dostal, who is heading up the department’s on-street drug team, pointed out this week that heroin overdoses often don’t kill people because they are rescued by friends or family before they die. It’s particularly difficult, Dostal said, in getting heroin users, even those who overdose and survive, to name their drug suppliers because “they don’t want to make their sources go away,” he said.

Dostal said heroin use in the Cedar Rapids area picked up in the mid-2000s, but he said a federal prosecution of heroin dealers in Cedar Rapids back then sent some dealers to federal prison and resulted in a drop in local heroin sales. The presence of the drug has now increased again in Cedar Rapids, he said.

Dostal said some who begin to use heroin first have used opiate-based prescription pain killers like hydrocodone and oxycodone that make their way to the street. Sometimes a hit of heroin can cost less than the pills — as little as $20 to $25 for one-tenth of one gram of heroin — which can help a drug user try heroin, he said.

Police Capt. Steve O’Konek, who heads up the department’s Investigative Division, said a problem with heroin is that levels of drug purity on the street can change from deal to deal, leaving users at a loss to know what they are taking on. Overdoses result, he said.

A death like Sam Jelinek’s, O’Konek said, becomes an incentive to investigators and a window into the local drug trade.

Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner, whose department is handling the Jelinek death case because it occurred in the Jelinek home just outside of Cedar Rapids, agreed this week that heroin abuse is becoming more prevalent in the Cedar Rapids area. As a result, a law enforcement Heroin Task Force has now been set up in the Cedar Rapids metro area to try to curtail heroin sales and use, the sheriff reported.

Technology impact

Jon Jelinek, ASAC’s Doolin and the Police Department’s Dostal all said that the day of the addict driving over to the street corner to buy drugs has been replaced by texting and smartphones and suppliers coming to the user.

“Those dealers are customer-friendly,” Doolin said. He said they also can pick up when an addict leaves treatment and may be a high risk to be lured back into drug use. Sometimes the first new hit of drug can be a free one, said Dostal.

Dostal said most heroin coming into Cedar Rapids comes out of Chicago, and Jelinek said his son told him that his supplier got the heroin from Chicago — “Highway 30 heroin” from Chicago, Jelinek called it.

He doesn’t worry for a minute, he said, that a heroin dealer will seek reprisals against him for talking publicly about his son’s death.

“You just can’t let the death of your child go without doing something about it,” Jelinek said. “If I got to die making this crusade, then that’s the way it is. At least there’s somebody up there waiting for me.

“My son wasn’t an under-the-bridge heroin addict. He was a good kid. He was trying his hardest to kick it, and it killed him. He was a good kid, and I got to make his name stand for something.”

City of Cedar Rapids workers Dan Greg (right) and Mike Hazewinkel (left), along with other city workers build sections of tiger dam flood protection system along Cottage Grove Parkway SE on Thursday, April 18, 2013, in southeast Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — The city’s need on Thursday to once again rush emergency flood protection to the Sun Valley neighborhood along a flash-flood-prone stretch of Indian Creek may have brought to an end an 11-year discussion.

The City Council’s Flood Recovery Committee on Thursday recommended that the city use some of the remaining revenue from the city’s local-option sales tax for flood recovery to construct a berm to protect the Sun Valley neighborhood from Indian Creek.

“We need to get this under control as soon as possible,” council member Don Karr, chairman of the three-member committee, said after a handful of neighbors from Sun Valley urged the city anew to quickly get protection in place for the two dozen homes in the neighborhood.

Last night, Mayor Ron Corbett weighed in: “Sun Valley has been studied long enough. We need to move forward. The Indian Creek watershed continues to have more development, and as a result, more storm runoff.”

On Tuesday of this week — before Thursday’s flash flood — the council’s three-member Infrastructure Committee also backed a berm for Sun Valley, Chuck Swore, the committee chairman, said last night.

Jim Sines, a Cedar Rapids attorney and neighborhood resident, was one who asked for city action on Thursday as he has repeatedly since June 4, 2002, when a flash flood on Indian Creek damaged some 25 homes in the neighborhood.

“We think it’s time for the city to take action,” said Sines, who along with the other neighbors applauded the city’s work on Thursday for rushing pumps and temporary flood protection in the form of water-filled tiger dams to the neighborhood to hold back the flooding creek.

Neighborhood resident Neil Anderson, 4276 Cottage Grove Pkwy. SE, said Indian Creek threatens the neighborhood two of every three years, a threat that he said had become a “near-normal” state of life.

“We need a berm to protect us,” he said.

His wife, Dee, said the neighbors have been living in limbo, wary of the creek and unsure what they can or can’t put in their basements for fear of another flood.

“It’s ridiculous how the creek has come to color everything we deal with,” she said. “… I don’t want to keep living this way. I don’t have any joy.”

Council member Ann Poe, also a Flood Recovery Committee member, agreed with Karr that the city should use some of remaining revenue from the city’s sale tax to get the berm built.

Rob Davis, the city’s engineering operations manager, on Thursday estimated the cost of the berm at $700,000 to $1 million.

He noted that the city had sought funding from the state I-JOBS program after the 2008 flood on the Cedar River, but the project was not awarded funds.

The berm design, he said, has changed a little over time, with the plan now to build it 20 feet closer to the creek and so farther from Cottage Grove Parkway SE and the homes across the street from the proposed berm.

As now envisioned, the berm would stand about six feet in height at its tallest, though he said upcoming neighborhood meetings would need to help determine if the neighbors wanted protection to the 100-year flood level or to higher level of the 2002 neighborhood flood. Also to be determined is how much of the berm would wrap around the west side of the neighborhood to prevent water from entering there, Davis said.

He noted that the design work will take into account what would happen to the creek flow with a berm so a berm wouldn’t put properties on the other side of the creek or down stream at greater flood risk.

He noted that the city already had contracted for the design work, and Dave Elgin, the city’s public works director and city engineer, added that the Army Corps of Engineers already has completed a hydrology study for the berm.

At the same time, Davis said it could take a year to secure permits from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to construct a berm, to which Poe urged Davis and Elgin to try to move faster if the City Council agrees to build the berm.

Davis said the city also is planning to relocate a storm sewer in Sun Valley this year at a cost of $100,000 to $150,000 and to do other backyard work to cut down on water in backyards.

Late Thursday afternoon, Sines called Thursday’s council committee recommendation a promising sign.

“The proof is in the follow-up, and we have a ways to go,” Sines said. “But it’s encouraging at this stage that there may be funds available (for the work).”

CEDAR RAPIDS – Heavy rain over 48 hours has taxed the city’s sanitary sewer system and its wastewater treatment facility, forcing the city to send partially treated wastewater into the Cedar River, Steve Hershner, the city’s utilities director, reported Thursday afternoon.

In addition, Hershner said that stormwater has seeped into the city’s sanitary sewer system at certain spots in the city, which has required the city to pump effluent out of the sanitary sewer system and into the storm sewer system, sending it directly into waterways and ultimately the Cedar River.

At some spots along Indian Creek, stormwater has gotten into the sanitary sewer system, filling it up and forcing its way out of manhole covers and onto the ground, he said.

As required, the city has notified the Iowa Department of Natural Resources of the bypasses at the treatment plant and at spots in the sewer system.

Hershner predicted that the problems would end on Friday or Saturday with a reduction in the amount of rain.

All the wastewater entering the city’s sewage treatment plant at Bertram Road and Highway 13 is undergoing primary and secondary treatment, just not final treatment and disinfection, he added.

Craig Hanson, the city’s public works maintenance manager, reported Thursday that about 30 homes experienced sewer backups in basements during the heavy rain, which he characterized as a once-in-every-10-year rain.

Mike Leaven with the Cedar Rapids Public Works Department fills a Tiger Dam flood protection barrier with water in a garage at the the Public Works Department in March 2010. City employees were practiciey arng deploying the temporary flood protection devices. Each tube contains 740 gallons of water and displaces the need to make 500 sandbags. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

So far, so good: The city’s new temporary system of flood-protection barriers — called tiger dams — are going up along flash-flood-prone Indian Creek in the Sun Valley neighborhood.

All is going well with the effort, Craig Hanson, the city’s public works maintenance manager, said Thursday morning.

City crews, he said, are getting ready to construct the barriers at a second flood-prone spot along Indian Creek, at 31st Street Drive SE at Sydney Street SE.

On Cottage Grove Parkway SE at Sun Valley, some 2,000 feet of the water-filled tiger dams are going up, which is the equivalent of 40,000 sandbags, Hanson said. The same level of protection is slated for the 31st Street Drive SE location, he added.

He said the creek’s rise is expected to be lower than in August 2009, when the city also wrestled with the creek at Sun Valley, he said.

Bluestem Solid Waste Agency Landfill Site #1, 2250 A St. SW, near downtown Cedar Rapids Saturday, May 30, 2011, in southwest Cedar Rapids. (SourceMedia Group News/Jim Slosiarek)

Work to cap the Mount Trashmore landfill near downtown for the second time will begin shortly and should be completed by July or early August.

The Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency board on Tuesday awarded the landfill-closure contract to Connolly Construction Inc., Peosta, Iowa, for $1.732 million.

Connolly was the lowest of four bidders for work that had been estimated to cost $1.89 million.

Mount Trashmore — which opened in 1965 along the Cedar River in what had been the Otis Quarry and which the agency calls its Site 1 landfill — had closed for good on July 31, 2006, leaving the Solid Waste Agency with just one landfill, Site 2 at County Home Road and Highway 13.

However, the agency received special permission from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to remove the cap and reopen Site 1 when Cedar Rapids needed a nearby place to bury all of the debris from the flood of 2008.

The agency closed Site 1 again on Nov. 30, 2012, but has continued to accept a small amount of flood-recovery demolition debris at the site to even out the ground.

According to the agency, some 430,000 tons of flood debris have gone into Site 1 since the flood, adding 32 to 34 feet of height to the mountain of trash. It now stands about 216 feet high, though it is expected to lose 30 feet in height over the years as the garbage in the landfill continues to decompose.

The new capping and closure work will include some repairs to piping in the landfill’s methane collection system, though additional upgrades to the system will need to be made before the gas can be sold, Karmin McShane, the agency’s executive director, told the agency board on Tuesday. For now, the gas is flared into the atmosphere so gas doesn’t collect at the site.

The landfill’s footprint comprises about 65 acres at its base, but only about 13 acres at the top was uncapped to take in flood debris, the agency has reported.

In January 2008, Cedar Rapids City Council members skied down the side of Mount Trashmore to suggest that the place could be a ski and sled hill with trails at some point in the future.

Traffic makes its way though high water covering Dubuque Street near the Grace Community Church Wednesday, April 17, 2013 in North Liberty. Heavy rains have caused flash flooding around the area. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

UPDATE: City crews here will be keeping an eye on the flash-flood-prone Indian Creek and Prairie Creek through the night, Craig Hanson, the city’s public works maintenance manager, said early last evening.

“The creeks are in their banks for now,” Hanson said.

At midafternoon Wednesday, city crews moved one of the city’s temporary flood-protection systems — called tiger dams — to two spots along Indian Creek, the Sun Valley neighborhood and the area at Sydney Street and 32nd Street Drive SE.

Hanson said heavy rainfall to the north of the city and examples of flash flooding in Iowa City on Wednesday prompted him to go to the “next level of preparations” in the city’s updated flood-response plan and get the tiger dams into spots where they may be needed.

The tiger dams will be taken off a truck, filled with water and connected side by side to provide a few feet of flood protection if Indian Creek begins to flood.

“It is good so far,” Hanson said last evening. “It will depend on the rain tonight.”

If Boyson Road in Marion floods, the creek will crest at Sun Valley about six hours later, he said.

Hanson said Prairie Creek acts a little more like a river and doesn’t rise as fast as Indian Creek. He said more rain just to the west of the city may force Prairie Creek over its banks on Thursday. This normally impacts J Street SW near Hawkeye Downs Road SW, he said.

The city also has moved pumps to the Sun Valley neighborhood, has other pumps at the ready and was deploying filled sandbags at spots in the city.

As for the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service was reporting that the Cedar River at Cedar Rapids would reach 8.95 feet at noon on Friday.

Otis Road SE is among the first places in the city to take on water, and that occurs when the river reaches about 9.5 feet, according to the National Weather Service’s prediction website.

The river reached 31.12 feet in the city’s historic 2008 flood.

Get more details on Eastern Iowa flooding issues at KCRG.com

Workers with Rathje Construction Co. lay mesh and aggregate to create a bed for future paving at the Cedar Rapids Linn County Solid Waste Agency Site #2 Landfill near County Home Rd. and Highway 13 on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006, in Cedar Rapids. (The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Solid Waste Agency’s Site 2 landfill at County Home Road and Highway 13 is taking in less garbage than it expected for the fiscal year ending June 30.

Karmin McShane, the executive director of the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency, told the agency’s board on Tuesday that the drop in the amount of garbage coming to the landfill was part of a trend that landfills across the state are experiencing.

McShane said the Solid Waste Agency’s diversion programs — for shingles, construction and demolition debris, wood products, carpet and other items — is partly responsible for less garbage going into the landfill. But part of the reason is unknown, she added. It might relate to a downturn in the economy, she said.

“Our goal is to divert as much as we can, and I’d say we’re seeing a real drop in the numbers,” McShane said after Tuesday’s meeting.

At the same time, less garbage means less revenue for the agency, to which McShane said means the agency will have to adjust if the trend continues.

In the fiscal year ending June 30, the agency had estimated that it would take in 190,000 tons of garbage in addition to solid waste it continues to take in from the city of Cedar Rapids’ flood-recovery property demolitions.

However, the agency will take in only about 170,546 tons of non-flood garbage, McShane said.

In fiscal year 2012, the agency took in 192,607 tons of non-flood garbage and the year before, 194,588 tons.

Most of Cedar Rapids’ flood-related solid waste will have been placed in the landfill at the end of this fiscal year, which will see about 27,200 tons of flood-related garbage enter the agency’s Site 1 landfill near downtown Cedar Rapids by June 30.

Rick Fosse, public works director in Iowa City, said on Tuesday that tonnage coming into the Iowa City Landfill peaked about two years ago.

“It’s not clear if this is a result of recycling efforts or a slow economy or some combination of the two,” Fosse said.

In Dubuque, Chuck Goddard, administrator at the Dubuque Metropolitan Solid Waste Agency, said on Tuesday that his agency has seen 20,122 fewer tons of garbage — 70,974 tons down from 91,097 tons — come into the landfill through March of this year compared to the same period the previous year.

“It may be a combination of things, including the economy, construction and weather,” Goddard said.

Both the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency and the city of Iowa City could see even more sizable amounts of solid waste diverted from their landfills in the years ahead if proposals that have been in the works come to pass to divert some part of municipal solid waste into energy and into insulation.

The city of Marion continues to court Plasma Power of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and its plasma-arc technology and the company Fiberight still is planning to convert solid waste into ethanol at a plant in Blairstown, Iowa, in Benton County.

The first-annual Marion marathon will require the closing of County Home Road in Linn County from Alburnett Road east to 10th Street and east to Lucore Road for the race’s first hour or two and require County Home Road to remain closed from Alburnett Road to 10th Street from the start to the end of the event, 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

On Tuesday, Steve Gannon, the Linn County engineer, estimated the cost at $840 to rent the county’s road-closed signs, get them to the right spots on County Home Road, have a county superintendent review how volunteers place the signs and get the signs picked up on Monday.

Cody Crawford, the race director and Marion City Council member, said on Tuesday that the event expected to pick up the county’s cost.

Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson suggested to Crawford that the race apply for a grant from the county next year to see if race can secure money to cover the road closure.

The services provided to help the mentally ill live independently will be taken over by non-profit and private-sector providers that provide the service for less cost than Linn County.

Supervisor Ben Rogers on Tuesday thanked those in positions about to be eliminated who proposed downsizing the department to try to “save” it. But he said “the reality is” that the county would need to absorb about $500,000 in costs to keep the program open what with new state funding cuts.

The state has been providing Linn County with an exception, allowing the county to charge $78.62 an hour for the service. The state has shifted to a for-profit program management firm that will not continue the exception. The rate for the service will be capped at $46.70 an hour, which is not sufficient to cover the costs of the existing county program, supervisors and county officials have concluded.

Mechelle Dhondt, director of mental health and developmental disabilities program for Linn County, noted this week that Linn County created the Supported Community Living Program in the 1970s when no other entity was providing the service in the county. Now, several programs provide the service in Linn County, she said.

The transition of the county program’s current caseload of 108 clients to other providers will take place over a number of months, Dhondt has said.