Iowa City Council Candidates: Pros and Cons

Captions, from left: (1) Jim Throgmorton, the only incumbent progressive on the Iowa City Council; (2) Pauline Taylor (on left) and Rockne Cole (on right); and (3) (on left) John Thomas.

Jim Throgmorton is the only incumbent progressive candidate on the Iowa City Council. His main virtue is that he beautifully articulates the principles that he doesn’t always vote for.

Take the Chauncey building, for example, which is now tied up in court. Marc Moen won the bid for an energy-inefficient skyscraper in a transitional area of Iowa City that was not supposed to have a tall building in an area located between residential property and downtown. The city’s comprehensive plan said so. But gee, it was millionaire developer Marc Moen. So more energy-efficient bids offering housing for New Pioneer Coop, with organic produce and 160 employees and the Bicycle Library were turned down and Moen’s bid was accepted. He was awarded $14.2 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF), which is supposed to be awarded for things like projects to avoid urban blight. Moen’s five ”affordable” housing units in the Chauncey cost $200,000 apiece.

Throgmorton voted against the Chauncey but for the $14.2 million TIF. He should have known better.

We need the progressives running for election now to build Jim Throgmorton a spine and give him company in his lonely and half-hearted pursuit of a progressive vision for Iowa City.

Rockne Cole, a progressive attorney standing in firm opposition to the “Shadow,” as many call the Chauncey, is one such candidate. He has confidence and energy to burn. Would that he could inspire Throgmorton to have confidence in his principles and stand behind them more often.

John Thomas, a mild-mannered landscape architect from San Francisco, is an informed supporter of tree-lined, pedestrian and bike-friendly streets. His vision of Iowa City could dovetail nicely with Cole’s.

Pauline Taylor, a nurse and former Service Employees International Union steward (as am I), has lived in Iowa City for some 40 years and seems to be a firm leftist. I’d vote for her or anybody rather than Rick Dobyns, the incumbent and her challenger, who wrote a fairly vapid column in Sunday’s (October 11, 2015) Gazette. It is as devoid of substance as Dobyns’ presence on the council has been. I can’t think of a thing Dobyns has said that I’ve agreed with or that even seemed sensible.

Then there’s the Chamber of Commerce types: Matt Hayek, a lawyer and Mayor of Iowa City, who is no longer running for office. Michelle Payne, a Mid-American executive, is running again, and while I like her the best of any of the Chamber of Commerce types, she’s not a progressive and I can’t vote for her based on her voting record. Her signs are paired with those of Scott McDonough, and Tim Conroy on torn-up farmland and woodland habitat with bulldozers on top.

I’m tired of downtown entrepreneurs in Iowa City running Iowa City for their benefit and no one else’s. Aren’t you?

Whether the Chamber of Commerce types give millions of dollars in TIFs to a millionaire developer to build an energy-inefficient, out-of-scale building in a transitional area of Iowa City, a building that creates a shadow blotting out the sun for shorter buildings in the area, including Trinity Episcopal Church, which has beautiful stained glass windows that now will no longer have sun streaming through them a good share of the time, or vote to tear down historic Civil War-era cottages to accommodate Ted Pacha, a landowner who evicted his small business owner tenants in order to maximize his estate for his heirs, the Chamber of Commerce city council has had its day. It’s time to give them the boot and not replace them with more of the same.