How would you do?
Staring a natural disaster square in the eye.
How would any of us do?
How about if we were in charge of cleaning up the mess?
How would any of us do?
This is how it is going in Cedar Rapids, Iowa …
With the city’s flood-recovery effort now stretching beyond the 7-month mark, City Council members last week were dickering among themselves, with some members saying decisions are coming too slowly.
“I hear it constantly from people,” council member Justin Shields lamented to his council colleagues last week. “They say they’ve never seen a council more dysfunctional than ours.”
Council member Jerry McGrane, fresh from a lobbying trip to the Statehouse, said lawmakers, lobbyists and others in Des Moines volunteered the same assessment.
“Right to my face,” he said Friday in an interview. “They sort of said we were incompetent, non-decisive nincompoops. And I didn’t hear it from just one person. I heard if from a bunch.”
… On Friday, (Council Member Brian) Fagan said democracy isn’t always pretty. But he says the council is not dysfunctional, it is just open in its use of public dollars for all to see.
As for any kind of building public displeasure with City Hall, Fagan says something would be wrong if there wasn’t criticism.
“It’s a consequence of a huge natural disaster, and it’s a symptom of a recovery effort, and I think if you went through any community you’d see this kind of debate is going on,” he says.
How would any of us do?
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