Government

CEDAR RAPIDS — A paved bicycle trail connecting Marion and Cedar Rapids got a $2.5 million funding boost Thursday from the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization. The CEMAR Trail was suggested 10 years ago by then-Cedar Rapids Streets Commissioner Don Thomas, but it’s never been completed. A month ago, that fact helped prompt the Cedar Rapids-dominated [...]

President Barack Obama will return to Iowa on Thursday to meet with supporters, deliver an economic address in Newton and, perhaps, make an announcement about wind energy production. Few details have been released other than Obama will make a presidential visit to Newton and a campaign stop in Des Moines. It will be his first [...]

A nonprofit organization is ready to start a fundraising campaign for a new Iowa City animal shelter. Friends of the Animal Shelter Foundation sent a letter to City Manager Tom Markus this month, saying that it plans to begin a $1 million capital campaign this summer. The city is in the design phase for what [...]

  A pair of Republicans who hope to challenge Rep. Bruce Braley are calling his support for a balanced budget amendment an election-year conversion. Braley, who is seeking a fourth term in the U.S. House, announced May 16 he is signing on to a Republican-authored plan to amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget. [...]

The City Council Tuesday night adopted the final two pieces of a set of three ordinances aimed at limiting the number of new large apartments near downtown and the University of Iowa campus. The council voted 6-0, with Terry Dickens absent, to pass an ordinance preventing the construction of multifamily dwellings with more than three [...]

The City Council Tuesday night gave its OK for a mural to be painted on the side of a five-story tall parking ramp downtown. The mural, by Iowa City artist Eliezer Sotillo, is to depict more than a dozen arms and hands that interlock and hold each other. Sotillo plans to spend a month starting [...]

  CEDAR RAPIDS — Mayor Ron Corbett’s intervention and the offer of $300,000 aren’t enough to save a historic church from the wrecking ball. Protesters continued this week to picket the planned demolition of First Christian Church, 840 Third Ave. SE. Laura Rainey, a spokeswoman for St. Luke’s Hospital, which bought the church as part [...]

DES MOINES — Gov. Terry Branstad told reporters Monday he will “never give up” on efforts to cut commercial property taxes and to limit the growth of taxes for residential and agricultural property owners. The governor also said he believed belt-tightening efforts that he and the Legislature undertook during the past two sessions will make [...]

A persistent City Hall has been trying for nearly three years to secure a status as a bicycle-friendly community from the League of American Bicyclists. On Monday, Cedar Rapids officials announced that the League has awarded the city the bronze-level designation in a rating system that runs from platinum to gold and silver and bronze. In [...]

  On Tuesday in Iowa, Mitt Romney will deliver what’s being billed as a major policy address on the “out-of-control spending and debt” under the Obama administration, according to U.S. Rep. Steve King. Romney, who is hitting back on a new round of attack ads by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, will speak at 2:05 [...]