01
Nov
2005
Conventional wisdom says that incumbents are in trouble in Davenport's November 8 election.
In primary competitions for nine seats on October 11, incumbent office-holders fared poorly. Steve Ahrens, an at-large alderman running for mayor, finished second, trailing Ed Winborn by more than 900 votes. Ward 2 Alderman Donna Bushek got less than half the votes of challenger Shawn Hamerlinck. In Ward 8, Brian Dumas doubled the vote total of incumbent Tom Englemann.
Englemann and Bushek voted for the city's dreaded stormwater-utility fee, and many people think they paid for it at the polls.
But there were anomalies. Ahrens voted against the stormwater fee. And incumbent Jamie Howard - who doesn't apologize for her vote in favor of the fee - was the top vote-getter among candidates for one of the city's two at-large seats.
So what's going on here?
Election-watchers feel that Davenport voters are going to "vote the bums out," mostly because of unpopular stormwater and garbage fees.
It's not that simple.
As many candidates have pointed out, there's a deep-seated mistrust of the Davenport City Council - and Davenport city government - on the part of the public, and there has been for a long time. Whether it was the initial effort to build a golf course and park at 53rd Street and Eastern Avenue, or the stormwater fee, or the Isle of Capri's riverfront hotel, or the stewardship of city-owned riverfront, the public feels that its input doesn't matter.
Citizens think that by the time important issues come before the council, the outcome is already assured. And it doesn't matter who the mayor is or who is on the council. Whether that perception is accurate is irrelevant; its existence gives it the force of reality.
There are also major performance issues. The city runs the RiverCenter/Adler Theatre, which loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In 2002, the city council granted Compass Facility Management a new three-year contract in the wake of an audit that revealed $14,000 in misappropriated funds at the facilities, but the new agreement did nothing to encourage Compass to reduce the RiverCenter/Adler operating deficit.
The city has been a key player and financier in the Eastern Iowa Industrial Center, which has not come close to meeting occupancy goals. The performance of the industrial park has long been blamed on the lack of a rail spur at the site - a convenient excuse that suggests management of the site has had no role in its poor results. (Congress appropriated $3 million for the spur earlier this year.)
Furthermore, two new city-owned parking garages downtown (built for $14.5 million) opened in 2003 have underperformed. And Craig Malin, who was hired in 2001 partly for his energy and dedication to communication, has been unable to help the city staff or council build community consensus on contentious issues. And Malin was given such a sweet exit package by the city council that getting rid of him would be an expensive proposition.
So while next week's election could very well become a referendum on the stormwater fee, it should be something larger: an opportunity for citizens to take back their city government.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of candidates this year is weak - with the typical assortment of reactive incumbents and familiar entrants, with a few people representing organized efforts to shift the council toward special interests.
Dan Vance, running for an at-large seat, has served four terms on the council and been voted out twice. Doug Cunningham (also an at-large candidate) ran (and lost) in 2003. Mayoral candidate Ed Winborn is a veteran of Scott County politics, having served on the county board for 19 years. Pat Gibbs (running for the Ward 1 seat) is the former mayor who was defeated in 1997.
Among the newer candidates, Brian Dumas (running in Ward 8) is a vice president at Victory Enterprises, the conservative political-consulting firm run by former state legislator and former GOP state-party chair Steve Grubbs. Victory has ties to the Grow Davenport PAC that has pledged to re-make the Davenport City Council in its image. Ian Frink is a former DavenportOne board member and a graduate of its leadership program.
As a whole, the candidates don't seem to offer voters any real alternative to the status quo. Sure, many of them pledge to repeal or reduce the stormwater fee, but there's a dearth of new ideas and thoughtful plans with clearly articulated action steps. Many candidates seem as interested in a steady paycheck and health benefits as changing the city for the better.
But the city needs vision right now. For all that has gone right in Davenport in recent years - particularly destination attractions downtown - the city faces difficult challenges that go far beyond the traditional caretaker role of the city council. The city must find a way to rein in unsustainable commercial and residential growth on its north side, and redirect resources to the central city. Older parts of Davenport will wither if current development trends continue.
And the city needs to find a way to connect with its citizens - to listen to their feedback and ideas and actually incorporate them into its plans.
Over the past few elections, the River Cities' Reader has given candidates an opportunity to speak to voters through surveys. Our experience, however, was that no matter the issues or positions, the results were always distressingly similar: When the council was seated, it took actions that alienated the public.
This year, rather than do candidate surveys - which mostly allow candidates to get on their platforms and evade the questions asked - the Reader decided to take a different approach. We interviewed the six remaining citywide candidates about their campaigns, their issues, and our issues. What follows is not a recitation of their positions but an analysis based on our discussions - what's really wrong with Davenport.
Some issues can and probably will be addressed in the next city-council term. The trouble is that it's going to take a better batch of candidates to overcome the larger obstacles.
Who's in Charge?
Every citywide candidate acknowledges that much of the problem in Davenport can be summed up in one word: Trust.
Mayoral candidate and current at-large alderman Steve Ahrens: Citizens in Davenport have become "critical and cyncical" about city government.
Mayoral candidate Ed Winborn: "The processes that the city has been going through have not been up to standard."
At-large candidate Ian Frink: "A lot of citizens feel disconnected from Davenport. ... Small problems become large problems. Large problems become nearly insurmountable."
At-large candidate Doug Cunningham: The city staff constitutes an "unelected bureaucracy. ... They have too much power."
At-large incumbent Jamie Howard: "We have an issue with customer service. We forget who we work for."
At-large candidate Dan Vance: "I think mistrust is a lot of it."
One obvious source of discontent has been that the City of Davenport has been participating in many big-ticket projects while at the same time crying about a tight budget. The stormwater-utility and garbage fees levied on Davenport citizens in the past two years were enacted to alleviate general-fund shortfalls, while the city has poured money into the Prairie Heights development and River Renaissance projects, as well as assisted the Isle of Capri with financing of its planned riverfront hotel and parking garage.
That should be an easy enough problem to solve. The city's failure in this respect has been its inability to teach citizens how the budget works. Capital-improvement funds that build skybridges and parking ramps are separate from the general fund, which pays for city services such as police and fire protection and garbage pickup. The city budget, in other words, is not a choice between the skybridge and more cops.
The irony is that Davenport often does a good job of engaging citizens in a public process. Every year, for example, staff members host meetings at which citizens have the opportunity to cast preference votes for budget priorities. When the Isle of Capri proposed its riverfront hotel, the city held public meetings that were packed.
Yet citizens don't see their input reflected in final action. "We have one or two of those [meetings] and call it done," Ahrens said. "We don't carry it through."
"Soliciting input is one thing," Frink said. "Listening is another."
The result is that when there's a disconnect between what the public expresses and what actually happens, the public naturally assumes that its input was token, or that it was corrupted at some point between the end of the last public meeting and the time a proposal is voted upon.
Another issue is that the City of Davenport often seems to be in a position of weakness when it comes to proposals under consideration. The garbage fee was created in the context of a budget crunch. The stormwater fee was the result of both a federal mandate and continued budget struggles. The Isle of Capri, in proposing the casino hotel, essentially threatened to leave its unsightly operation exactly where it was if it didn't get what it wanted; when asked about alternative locations, the casino said, "Not interested."
And with business incentives, it often seems as if requesting companies are holding the city (and taxpayers) hostage - saying they'll take their business elsewhere if the city decides it's not interested in playing ball with the requested incentives.
Davenport has a strong-council/weak-mayor form of government, which means that the city council should be the driving force behind city government. The city administrator reports to the city council. The mayor is a symbolic leader and a tie-breaker.
But that's not how it works in Davenport. Depending on to whom you talk, you'll hear that Davenport is run by the staff or special interests such as DavenportOne, select realtors, and their attorneys.
That's too simplistic, but it's an understandable conclusion. Because of a lack of vision on the council, the body's agendas are dominated by staff and companies or individuals who want the city to approve something - by their nature, special interests.
There are progressive elements in Davenport government - major initiatives such as River Renaissance and River Vision seem strong suits - but generally it's a reactionary animal. "The city is kind of operating with a culture of crisis," Winborn said.
One problem is Davenport's term structure. With two-year terms, it often takes council members a year to understand the process and the workings of government. By the time they've got that figured out, it's election time again, and the council is typically paralyzed.
In that context, it's no surprise that the public feels city staff runs the show. It is staff, of course, who teaches the council about city government. There's no doubt that the vast majority of the staff has the best interests of Davenport at heart, but - like any bureaucracy - one of its defining characteristics is stability, a resistance to change.
Voters have themselves to blame, too. By voting out large swaths of the council every two years, the public ensures this vicious circle. High turnover ensures that power and knowledge reside in staff rather than the council.
One solution is simple, and supported universally by citywide candidates: changing terms to four years.
But there's a danger in that move. A skeptical public will likely view the change as self-serving, as a way for council members to keep their seats without having to go to the trouble of consulting voters every two years. And citizens would likely be angry about having the only clear accountability for elected officials reduced.
Until the city council seriously addresses the trust issue, it will change terms at its peril.
No Apologies
The stormwater fee, a $2.50 monthly fee assessed to each homeowner that the council passed in March, is an excellent example of the failings of Davenport city government.
The fee stems from a federal mandate, but the mandate does not require the fee. City staff structured the fee proposal to cover not only federally required monitoring and capital projects, but also administrative costs related to stormwater management. Because those administrative costs were at that point covered by the general fund, the proposed fee freed up money in the general fund, allowing the city to alleviate its budget crunch.
In other words, city staff put out a fee proposal that would both meet the federal mandate for stormwater activities and accomplish goals unrelated to stormwater management.
But the public was confused. It had questions that were not clearly answered: Is the fee mandated? (No.) Is the fee greater than the costs created by the mandate? (Yes.)
Winborn pointed out that Moline, Rock Island, and Bettendorf passed stormwater-utility fees with much less controversy than Davenport. "The city hasn't been communicating well," he said.
Frink said citizens were "just as frustrated with the way it [the fee] was presented" as with the fee itself.
"The council compromised the integrity of the organization" with the stormwater-utility fee, Howard said. "We had council members confusing people. The delivery [to the public] probably wasn't sensitive enough to the issue. ... Our PR stinks."
Howard is an eloquent defender of the fee, and she doesn't mince words about the amount raised. "It could be a whole lot less" if it only covered mandated activities, she said. The fee "did free up money" in the general fund, she said.
The key thing to understand is that Howard claims that citizens understand the need for the fee when it's explained properly to them. They might not agree with it, but at least they're no longer angry, she said.
What Howard represents is a different way of approaching problems. She doesn't try to sugarcoat them, or fudge them to make it seem as if the council had no choice, or apologize for the way she voted.
Although she says the city council was in a no-win situation with the Isle of Capri - "The boat was not leaving," she said - she didn't use that to defer responsibility. At the time of the vote, she said, the council could have turned the casino down. Personally, she said, she was satisfied with the design concessions the city got from the casino company on its riverfront hotel. "I think we did do our due diligence," she said.
Make Big Plans
Being up-front is one small step. A larger issue is that, looking at the citywide candidates, there are few innovative or thoughtful plans dealing with the city as a whole. Citywide candidates are addressing individual issues and talking about their philosophy in general, but they're not thinking big or delivering detailed proposals to guide Davenport's future. In short, the problems are larger than the solutions the candidates are offering.
Winborn wants to make sure that staff and council are better prepared for meetings and better informed. "A lot of these questions [asked at council sessions] can be answered before the meeting," he said. Furthermore, he said, council and staff need to agree to a "no surprises" policy, and need to further agree not to criticize each other in public forums.
But Winborn seems to think that smooth meetings equal a good relationship with the public. As mayor, he wants to meet with the city administrator on a daily basis and with individual alderman weekly, but he doesn't propose anything to reach out to the public. His Web site (http://www.winbornformayor.com) includes three vague statements on his positions, and a press release calling for police officers to patrol 15 minutes of every hour on foot.
Ahrens said he views the mayor as the agenda-setter for the city, but his agenda is vague. Economic development is his top priority - particularly helping existing businesses in the city. He wants the city to become a resource center for businesses, with services such as GIS that might be too expensive for an individual company. It's boilerplate stuff.
He also believes that city goal-setting sessions need to include "specific, actionable items" - not just generic goals - and that those agenda items be tied to the city's Capital Improvements Program budget. "Everyone would see that you're setting the agenda," he said.
But he's not selling his plans. He contrasts himself with Winborn in terms of his youth, vitality, and his experience in city politics.
Among the at-large candidates, Howard represents the status quo, and also claims the High Performance Work Group - which is exploring the way the city delivers city services and communicates with the public - will address many of the city's problems. "It's not the same old, same old," she said.
Vance is positioning himself as a fiscal conservative and a consensus-builder, but offers little in the way of concrete plans. He suggests that the city needs to hire an additional 20 police officers and 20 firefighters, and falls back on that old political chestnut of cutting middle management to help pay for it. He said that abandoning Prairie Heights and selling the commercial frontage property at 53rd and Eastern could help pay for the some of costs created by the stormwater mandate.
Cunningham, like Vance, wants to sell the commercial frontage of the 53rd and Eastern property to at least cut the stormwater fee. He also wants to make a priority of reducing the RiverCenter/Adler operating loss. And he wants to shift the city from self-insurance to a premium-based outside carrier, again to save money.
And then there's Ian Frink. He's easy to peg as a DavenportOne puppet, and he sounds tired of the criticism. "I'm not going to be a follower of DavenportOne," he said.
But he's at least trying this whole idea concept. Last week, Frink unveiled what he called the "Davenport Neighborhood Alliance [DNA] Initiative" - a sketchy plan to "connect neighborhoods with city hall." The concept is modeled after an effort in San Jose, California, and it tries to get at one of the core problems in Davenport - that disconnect between citizens and municipal government.
In Frink's formulation, some of Davenport's roughly 80 neighborhood organizations would join together. (San Jose has 20 groups, Frink said.) The resultant groups would each have liaisons to the city in the areas of public safety, public works, and city council. "It gives people an opportunity to take ownership in the city," he said. "People belong to their neighborhoods" rather than the city or its wards.
"Everyone is really good at identifying problems," Frink said during his press conference. "I don't see anybody bringing anything to the table."
The DNA Initiative is "something," but it's not much. The concept is maddeningly vague - more idea than plan. Frink couldn't say how many staff positions would be dedicated to DNA, and he's couldn't say how much it would cost or from where the money would come. "It's hard for me to grasp that right now," he said of the staffing question.
But what's appealing about Frink is that he's at least open to ideas, and willing to think about the bigger picture. He suggested that the "new urbanism" concept of Prairie Heights be shifted from prime residential and commercial real estate up north and attempted instead downtown, where it might have more of an impact. He's willing to talk about looking at the Quad Cities as a whole, rather than provincial units of government competing with each other for businesses and residents.
In short, he's interested in discussing sustainable development, which is the great unspoken issue in this year's election. I talked with six citywide candidates, and nobody but Frink was able to connect with me when I brought up this issue.
Look at the amount of residential, retail, and restaurant development in northern and western Davenport, and one thing should be abundantly clear: The city is cannibalizing itself.
Our population is stable but not growing. Yet we're building hundreds of residences and dozens of retail stores and restaurants. Are we eating out that much more? Are we shopping more? What happens to the older houses/stores/restaurants? What's passing for economic development in Davenport is a financial shell game with no long-term benefits for the community. When Youngstown Café and R.J. Boar's closed on Utica Ridge Road recently, it represented a trend: These new stores and restaurants are killing each other. If suburban Davenport restaurants can't survive, how can we expect central-city businesses to compete?
Sure, Frink is tentative and young and doesn't have the answers, but he seems to want to be a "vision" person. He's willing to consider ideas. And that's in short supply in this year's Davenport election.
Englemann and Bushek voted for the city's dreaded stormwater-utility fee, and many people think they paid for it at the polls.
But there were anomalies. Ahrens voted against the stormwater fee. And incumbent Jamie Howard - who doesn't apologize for her vote in favor of the fee - was the top vote-getter among candidates for one of the city's two at-large seats.
So what's going on here?
Election-watchers feel that Davenport voters are going to "vote the bums out," mostly because of unpopular stormwater and garbage fees.
It's not that simple.
As many candidates have pointed out, there's a deep-seated mistrust of the Davenport City Council - and Davenport city government - on the part of the public, and there has been for a long time. Whether it was the initial effort to build a golf course and park at 53rd Street and Eastern Avenue, or the stormwater fee, or the Isle of Capri's riverfront hotel, or the stewardship of city-owned riverfront, the public feels that its input doesn't matter.
Citizens think that by the time important issues come before the council, the outcome is already assured. And it doesn't matter who the mayor is or who is on the council. Whether that perception is accurate is irrelevant; its existence gives it the force of reality.
There are also major performance issues. The city runs the RiverCenter/Adler Theatre, which loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In 2002, the city council granted Compass Facility Management a new three-year contract in the wake of an audit that revealed $14,000 in misappropriated funds at the facilities, but the new agreement did nothing to encourage Compass to reduce the RiverCenter/Adler operating deficit.
The city has been a key player and financier in the Eastern Iowa Industrial Center, which has not come close to meeting occupancy goals. The performance of the industrial park has long been blamed on the lack of a rail spur at the site - a convenient excuse that suggests management of the site has had no role in its poor results. (Congress appropriated $3 million for the spur earlier this year.)
Furthermore, two new city-owned parking garages downtown (built for $14.5 million) opened in 2003 have underperformed. And Craig Malin, who was hired in 2001 partly for his energy and dedication to communication, has been unable to help the city staff or council build community consensus on contentious issues. And Malin was given such a sweet exit package by the city council that getting rid of him would be an expensive proposition.
So while next week's election could very well become a referendum on the stormwater fee, it should be something larger: an opportunity for citizens to take back their city government.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of candidates this year is weak - with the typical assortment of reactive incumbents and familiar entrants, with a few people representing organized efforts to shift the council toward special interests.
Dan Vance, running for an at-large seat, has served four terms on the council and been voted out twice. Doug Cunningham (also an at-large candidate) ran (and lost) in 2003. Mayoral candidate Ed Winborn is a veteran of Scott County politics, having served on the county board for 19 years. Pat Gibbs (running for the Ward 1 seat) is the former mayor who was defeated in 1997.
Among the newer candidates, Brian Dumas (running in Ward 8) is a vice president at Victory Enterprises, the conservative political-consulting firm run by former state legislator and former GOP state-party chair Steve Grubbs. Victory has ties to the Grow Davenport PAC that has pledged to re-make the Davenport City Council in its image. Ian Frink is a former DavenportOne board member and a graduate of its leadership program.
As a whole, the candidates don't seem to offer voters any real alternative to the status quo. Sure, many of them pledge to repeal or reduce the stormwater fee, but there's a dearth of new ideas and thoughtful plans with clearly articulated action steps. Many candidates seem as interested in a steady paycheck and health benefits as changing the city for the better.
But the city needs vision right now. For all that has gone right in Davenport in recent years - particularly destination attractions downtown - the city faces difficult challenges that go far beyond the traditional caretaker role of the city council. The city must find a way to rein in unsustainable commercial and residential growth on its north side, and redirect resources to the central city. Older parts of Davenport will wither if current development trends continue.
And the city needs to find a way to connect with its citizens - to listen to their feedback and ideas and actually incorporate them into its plans.
Over the past few elections, the River Cities' Reader has given candidates an opportunity to speak to voters through surveys. Our experience, however, was that no matter the issues or positions, the results were always distressingly similar: When the council was seated, it took actions that alienated the public.
This year, rather than do candidate surveys - which mostly allow candidates to get on their platforms and evade the questions asked - the Reader decided to take a different approach. We interviewed the six remaining citywide candidates about their campaigns, their issues, and our issues. What follows is not a recitation of their positions but an analysis based on our discussions - what's really wrong with Davenport.
Some issues can and probably will be addressed in the next city-council term. The trouble is that it's going to take a better batch of candidates to overcome the larger obstacles.
Who's in Charge?
Every citywide candidate acknowledges that much of the problem in Davenport can be summed up in one word: Trust.
Mayoral candidate and current at-large alderman Steve Ahrens: Citizens in Davenport have become "critical and cyncical" about city government.
Mayoral candidate Ed Winborn: "The processes that the city has been going through have not been up to standard."
At-large candidate Ian Frink: "A lot of citizens feel disconnected from Davenport. ... Small problems become large problems. Large problems become nearly insurmountable."
At-large candidate Doug Cunningham: The city staff constitutes an "unelected bureaucracy. ... They have too much power."
At-large incumbent Jamie Howard: "We have an issue with customer service. We forget who we work for."
At-large candidate Dan Vance: "I think mistrust is a lot of it."
One obvious source of discontent has been that the City of Davenport has been participating in many big-ticket projects while at the same time crying about a tight budget. The stormwater-utility and garbage fees levied on Davenport citizens in the past two years were enacted to alleviate general-fund shortfalls, while the city has poured money into the Prairie Heights development and River Renaissance projects, as well as assisted the Isle of Capri with financing of its planned riverfront hotel and parking garage.
That should be an easy enough problem to solve. The city's failure in this respect has been its inability to teach citizens how the budget works. Capital-improvement funds that build skybridges and parking ramps are separate from the general fund, which pays for city services such as police and fire protection and garbage pickup. The city budget, in other words, is not a choice between the skybridge and more cops.
The irony is that Davenport often does a good job of engaging citizens in a public process. Every year, for example, staff members host meetings at which citizens have the opportunity to cast preference votes for budget priorities. When the Isle of Capri proposed its riverfront hotel, the city held public meetings that were packed.
Yet citizens don't see their input reflected in final action. "We have one or two of those [meetings] and call it done," Ahrens said. "We don't carry it through."
"Soliciting input is one thing," Frink said. "Listening is another."
The result is that when there's a disconnect between what the public expresses and what actually happens, the public naturally assumes that its input was token, or that it was corrupted at some point between the end of the last public meeting and the time a proposal is voted upon.
Another issue is that the City of Davenport often seems to be in a position of weakness when it comes to proposals under consideration. The garbage fee was created in the context of a budget crunch. The stormwater fee was the result of both a federal mandate and continued budget struggles. The Isle of Capri, in proposing the casino hotel, essentially threatened to leave its unsightly operation exactly where it was if it didn't get what it wanted; when asked about alternative locations, the casino said, "Not interested."
And with business incentives, it often seems as if requesting companies are holding the city (and taxpayers) hostage - saying they'll take their business elsewhere if the city decides it's not interested in playing ball with the requested incentives.
Davenport has a strong-council/weak-mayor form of government, which means that the city council should be the driving force behind city government. The city administrator reports to the city council. The mayor is a symbolic leader and a tie-breaker.
But that's not how it works in Davenport. Depending on to whom you talk, you'll hear that Davenport is run by the staff or special interests such as DavenportOne, select realtors, and their attorneys.
That's too simplistic, but it's an understandable conclusion. Because of a lack of vision on the council, the body's agendas are dominated by staff and companies or individuals who want the city to approve something - by their nature, special interests.
There are progressive elements in Davenport government - major initiatives such as River Renaissance and River Vision seem strong suits - but generally it's a reactionary animal. "The city is kind of operating with a culture of crisis," Winborn said.
One problem is Davenport's term structure. With two-year terms, it often takes council members a year to understand the process and the workings of government. By the time they've got that figured out, it's election time again, and the council is typically paralyzed.
In that context, it's no surprise that the public feels city staff runs the show. It is staff, of course, who teaches the council about city government. There's no doubt that the vast majority of the staff has the best interests of Davenport at heart, but - like any bureaucracy - one of its defining characteristics is stability, a resistance to change.
Voters have themselves to blame, too. By voting out large swaths of the council every two years, the public ensures this vicious circle. High turnover ensures that power and knowledge reside in staff rather than the council.
One solution is simple, and supported universally by citywide candidates: changing terms to four years.
But there's a danger in that move. A skeptical public will likely view the change as self-serving, as a way for council members to keep their seats without having to go to the trouble of consulting voters every two years. And citizens would likely be angry about having the only clear accountability for elected officials reduced.
Until the city council seriously addresses the trust issue, it will change terms at its peril.
No Apologies
The stormwater fee, a $2.50 monthly fee assessed to each homeowner that the council passed in March, is an excellent example of the failings of Davenport city government.
The fee stems from a federal mandate, but the mandate does not require the fee. City staff structured the fee proposal to cover not only federally required monitoring and capital projects, but also administrative costs related to stormwater management. Because those administrative costs were at that point covered by the general fund, the proposed fee freed up money in the general fund, allowing the city to alleviate its budget crunch.
In other words, city staff put out a fee proposal that would both meet the federal mandate for stormwater activities and accomplish goals unrelated to stormwater management.
But the public was confused. It had questions that were not clearly answered: Is the fee mandated? (No.) Is the fee greater than the costs created by the mandate? (Yes.)
Winborn pointed out that Moline, Rock Island, and Bettendorf passed stormwater-utility fees with much less controversy than Davenport. "The city hasn't been communicating well," he said.
Frink said citizens were "just as frustrated with the way it [the fee] was presented" as with the fee itself.
"The council compromised the integrity of the organization" with the stormwater-utility fee, Howard said. "We had council members confusing people. The delivery [to the public] probably wasn't sensitive enough to the issue. ... Our PR stinks."
Howard is an eloquent defender of the fee, and she doesn't mince words about the amount raised. "It could be a whole lot less" if it only covered mandated activities, she said. The fee "did free up money" in the general fund, she said.
The key thing to understand is that Howard claims that citizens understand the need for the fee when it's explained properly to them. They might not agree with it, but at least they're no longer angry, she said.
What Howard represents is a different way of approaching problems. She doesn't try to sugarcoat them, or fudge them to make it seem as if the council had no choice, or apologize for the way she voted.
Although she says the city council was in a no-win situation with the Isle of Capri - "The boat was not leaving," she said - she didn't use that to defer responsibility. At the time of the vote, she said, the council could have turned the casino down. Personally, she said, she was satisfied with the design concessions the city got from the casino company on its riverfront hotel. "I think we did do our due diligence," she said.
Make Big Plans
Being up-front is one small step. A larger issue is that, looking at the citywide candidates, there are few innovative or thoughtful plans dealing with the city as a whole. Citywide candidates are addressing individual issues and talking about their philosophy in general, but they're not thinking big or delivering detailed proposals to guide Davenport's future. In short, the problems are larger than the solutions the candidates are offering.
Winborn wants to make sure that staff and council are better prepared for meetings and better informed. "A lot of these questions [asked at council sessions] can be answered before the meeting," he said. Furthermore, he said, council and staff need to agree to a "no surprises" policy, and need to further agree not to criticize each other in public forums.
But Winborn seems to think that smooth meetings equal a good relationship with the public. As mayor, he wants to meet with the city administrator on a daily basis and with individual alderman weekly, but he doesn't propose anything to reach out to the public. His Web site (http://www.winbornformayor.com) includes three vague statements on his positions, and a press release calling for police officers to patrol 15 minutes of every hour on foot.
Ahrens said he views the mayor as the agenda-setter for the city, but his agenda is vague. Economic development is his top priority - particularly helping existing businesses in the city. He wants the city to become a resource center for businesses, with services such as GIS that might be too expensive for an individual company. It's boilerplate stuff.
He also believes that city goal-setting sessions need to include "specific, actionable items" - not just generic goals - and that those agenda items be tied to the city's Capital Improvements Program budget. "Everyone would see that you're setting the agenda," he said.
But he's not selling his plans. He contrasts himself with Winborn in terms of his youth, vitality, and his experience in city politics.
Among the at-large candidates, Howard represents the status quo, and also claims the High Performance Work Group - which is exploring the way the city delivers city services and communicates with the public - will address many of the city's problems. "It's not the same old, same old," she said.
Vance is positioning himself as a fiscal conservative and a consensus-builder, but offers little in the way of concrete plans. He suggests that the city needs to hire an additional 20 police officers and 20 firefighters, and falls back on that old political chestnut of cutting middle management to help pay for it. He said that abandoning Prairie Heights and selling the commercial frontage property at 53rd and Eastern could help pay for the some of costs created by the stormwater mandate.
Cunningham, like Vance, wants to sell the commercial frontage of the 53rd and Eastern property to at least cut the stormwater fee. He also wants to make a priority of reducing the RiverCenter/Adler operating loss. And he wants to shift the city from self-insurance to a premium-based outside carrier, again to save money.
And then there's Ian Frink. He's easy to peg as a DavenportOne puppet, and he sounds tired of the criticism. "I'm not going to be a follower of DavenportOne," he said.
But he's at least trying this whole idea concept. Last week, Frink unveiled what he called the "Davenport Neighborhood Alliance [DNA] Initiative" - a sketchy plan to "connect neighborhoods with city hall." The concept is modeled after an effort in San Jose, California, and it tries to get at one of the core problems in Davenport - that disconnect between citizens and municipal government.
In Frink's formulation, some of Davenport's roughly 80 neighborhood organizations would join together. (San Jose has 20 groups, Frink said.) The resultant groups would each have liaisons to the city in the areas of public safety, public works, and city council. "It gives people an opportunity to take ownership in the city," he said. "People belong to their neighborhoods" rather than the city or its wards.
"Everyone is really good at identifying problems," Frink said during his press conference. "I don't see anybody bringing anything to the table."
The DNA Initiative is "something," but it's not much. The concept is maddeningly vague - more idea than plan. Frink couldn't say how many staff positions would be dedicated to DNA, and he's couldn't say how much it would cost or from where the money would come. "It's hard for me to grasp that right now," he said of the staffing question.
But what's appealing about Frink is that he's at least open to ideas, and willing to think about the bigger picture. He suggested that the "new urbanism" concept of Prairie Heights be shifted from prime residential and commercial real estate up north and attempted instead downtown, where it might have more of an impact. He's willing to talk about looking at the Quad Cities as a whole, rather than provincial units of government competing with each other for businesses and residents.
In short, he's interested in discussing sustainable development, which is the great unspoken issue in this year's election. I talked with six citywide candidates, and nobody but Frink was able to connect with me when I brought up this issue.
Look at the amount of residential, retail, and restaurant development in northern and western Davenport, and one thing should be abundantly clear: The city is cannibalizing itself.
Our population is stable but not growing. Yet we're building hundreds of residences and dozens of retail stores and restaurants. Are we eating out that much more? Are we shopping more? What happens to the older houses/stores/restaurants? What's passing for economic development in Davenport is a financial shell game with no long-term benefits for the community. When Youngstown Café and R.J. Boar's closed on Utica Ridge Road recently, it represented a trend: These new stores and restaurants are killing each other. If suburban Davenport restaurants can't survive, how can we expect central-city businesses to compete?
Sure, Frink is tentative and young and doesn't have the answers, but he seems to want to be a "vision" person. He's willing to consider ideas. And that's in short supply in this year's Davenport election.
