Just who’s up for election in C.R.?
Council candidates aren’t shy about critiquing city manager
Reprinted from The Gazette, Sunday, November 4, 2007, page 1A

By Rick Smith
The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS — There is a certain nicety in City Hall elections here that makes it hard for one candidate to smash-mouth another.

It’s gotten a bit testy in the east-side District 2 race, where incumbent Sarah Henderson and challengers Robin Tucker and Monica Vernon have mixed in a little innuendo without naming names.

Henderson has said she isn’t the candidate of “special interests’’ and “cliques,’’ an apparent reference to Vernon’s time on the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors and endorsements from the chamber’s political action committee and from local labor. Tucker has talked about “partisan politics’’ at City Hall and the chamber, an apparent reference to Henderson’s active role in the county Republican Party. And Vernon has said being a council member requires more than showing up at meetings, the suggestion being that Henderson should have been doing more to champion community initiatives.

What has become, though, a far more central target in the three City Hall races is someone who is not on Tuesday’s ballot -- City Manager Jim Prosser.

A sentiment heard repeatedly from most of the seven challengers in the three races, and to a degree from incumbent Henderson, is that the City Council in the 22-monthold council/ manager government has allowed itself to take a back seat to Prosser, Cedar Rapids’ first city manager.

“We are still in the adjustment phase where I believe the City Council needs to step up more and lead, not defer to the city manager,” Henderson says.

Or as Vernon puts it: “We have a strong city manager on board. This is a good thing if the city council can get out in front and lead. ... We need the council to set the agenda and the priorities and make some more progress.’’

In the west-side District 4 race, challenger Chuck Wieneke says the same: “The council needs to give clear direction of their desires, and the city manager’s job is just to carry it out.’’

And then there’s P. Thomas Larson, who is trying for his 12th consecutive time to win a seat on the council: “I think we need to generate more top-down leadership, with the council being on top and the manager carrying out the wishes of the council. I think there’s been a little too much bottom-up leadership.”

Only three of the 10 candidates — at-large incumbent Tom Podzimek, District 4 incumbent Chuck Swore and one of the three at-large challengers, Larry Sharp — have strongly endorsed Prosser.

Podzimek calls him “great.” Swore says, “We’ve got the right city manager here.” And Sharp adds, “I think Mr. Prosser is a good man and has done a good job.”

Interestingly, eight of the 10 candidates, when asked for yes or no answers, say the city is not progressing. Only incumbents Podzimek and Swore say the city is progressing.

Manager as surrogate?

This is a first election of its kind for Cedar Rapids -- the first in which a city manager has been in place -- and so it is the first race in which candidates can run against the city manager.

Prosser, who has had a long career as a city manager in Illinois and Minnesota and as a financial consultant to local governments in the Upper Midwest, takes any suggestion that he’s the problem, that’s he’s been leading the council around by the nose, in stride.

If the allegation is that he shouldn’t be setting city policies, Prosser says he can’t agree more. The city manager is not the policy leader — the council is, he says.

“All I can do is my job,” Prosser says. “And I’m not going to change what I do based upon political debate dialogue. If the council wants me to do something different, they will tell me.”

One item of interest -- which has surfaced on City Hall’s Web page as several candidates have suggested that the city manager has been doing too much leading and the incumbent council members too little -- is an entry labeled “Information frequently requested by city council candidates.”

The first item of “requested” information addresses the question, “What is the role of staff and the City Council in decision-making?” The second asks about the city manager’s priorities, and the answer begins this way: “With council direction, the top five priorities are as follows.”

Prosser says the entries on the city Web page were suggested by a staff member and are not intended to defend the city manager or any incumbent council members. Instead, he says, the intent is to make sure incumbents aren’t in exclusive possession of information that is denied to challengers.

“It’s just part of a kind of code of ethics thing with me,” the city manager says. “But it’s also making sure everybody’s on the same page. ... And sometimes you’ll say something and somebody will interpret it differently. And here’s what we actually said.” Prosser says he doesn’t know whether he has become a surrogate for those trying to throw out council incumbents, but, if so, he says, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to a city manager.

“Some people don’t like the fact that I’m raising issues,” Prosser says. “But that’s part of the job. And if, at the end of the day, people say, ‘You know, we don’t like that,’ they’re going to get a new manager. That’s the price I pay. I don’t worry too much about it. I can just do what I can do.”

Not a hobby

At a luncheon Monday in front of a crowd at the Downtown Rotary Club, Prosser talked about what makes great cities great and how Cedar Rapids had the assets and resources to become great. Prosser said voters overwhelmingly opted to change its form of government in 2005 because they sensed “a mystery” -- that Cedar Rapids should be great but wasn’t.

Cities, he said, can’t wish themselves to progress. He said they need a vision, a game plan and a city government to play an important role in bringing the vision and game plan to reality.

“You need to believe in the role of city government,” Prosser told his audience.

The crowd laughed on cue when Prosser beat up on himself, peppered him with questions when the time came and applauded warmly at the end.

But it can be chilly out on the campaign trail, even for someone like Prosser who isn’t on the ballot.

“The city manager tends to be the point person in many cases in terms of people who do have a concern about change that is occurring or a lack of change,” Prosser says. “That’s just what happens.

“Some of that is just because I’m in the position I’m in, hopefully, and not because I’m taking a policy lead from the council. I don’t believe in that — that’s not consistent with my management style or my code of ethics. They have a role, I have a role.”