State Of The City 2006 —
Going Forward Together

Whenever we flip the page on the calendar to move from one year to another, we have a tendency to look back at the year we left behind — and even the years that are long gone. Sometimes we wax nostalgic, and other times we linger on the negative things that we remember from those times. While it is good to learn from the past, it doesn’t serve any good purpose to focus on it — a new year is a time to go forward, and I can certainly say the City of Marion is going to do just that.

Two years ago when I was elected mayor, I sat down with the leadership of MEDCO, the Marion Chamber of Commerce, and the city staff. We came up with some goals and standards that all three organizations should strive to meet. We wanted to increase growth in jobs, attract new business, encourage current businesses to stay in Marion and to assist them in any way we could. We also wanted to encourage capital investment in the city.

The goal for the past two years was to bring in 240 new jobs. Well, we met and exceeded that goal. In fact, 660 new jobs have been created in the City of Marion over these last two years.

Seven new companies have relocated to the city, and we have assisted six existing businesses to continue to grow in Marion. As examples, we provided assistance to Rathje Construction, which is building a new complex on 44^th Street with a capital investment of 1.2 million dollars. Vector Corporation is expanding with a capital investment of over 2 million dollars. Dygert-Peck Company will be building and moving into a new location off Highway 13 near the Linn County Rural Electric location with an estimated investment of over 2 million dollars.

Going forward together, the City of Marion has taken the lead in forming a new alliance with the other five communities and three counties on U.S. Highway 151 between Marion and Dubuque. The goal of this organization is to promote economic development. This will be a long-term project with results coming in over time. We met just this past weekend and will be forming two committees, one to focus on tourism, and the second to work towards bringing in new commercial growth.

The city and the Chamber continue to work well together. One major achievement this year has been the designation by the State of Iowa of downtown Marion as a Cultural and Entertainment District. I also want to thank Swati Dandekar for her efforts in helping us achieve this designation.

We continue our work with private/public cooperation. First on the list is the Lowe Park project. Although we have talked about the importance of this project in the past and will continue to talk about in the future, in 2005 we met a milestone of great importance. We broke ground on the Art and Environmental Center. This project has grown to include the city’s Parks and Recreation headquarters. With a completion date of early April, it will serve our senior citizens by providing a new and improved building to hold all of their activities. It will also provide an opportunity for the City of Marion to rent out space for events such as wedding receptions, graduation parties, and other types of meetings and special occasions. We hope to bring the art of our own residents, as well as those from outside the community, to the Center for our citizens to enjoy.

Our Brownfield project is moving forward. We have already received grants from E.P.A. for $600,000 dollars. These funds are for testing and environmental assessment as well as for cleanup. Although we are still in negotiations with the railroad on the disposition of portions of the right of way, we are working with H.R. Green and our citizens to determine what shape and scope the finished product will take once the negotiations have been completed. The City of Marion presently owns the rail right of way from 9th Street to 22nd Street.

Determining what this portion of the project will look like is very important, as it will set the precedent for the entire redevelopment of the railroad right of way. I want to invite all Marion citizens interested in becoming involved in this project to contact me directly.

We continue to work on our regional bike and walking trail system. We have received a REAP grant from the state to purchase land and an easement, which will allow the city to connect the north-south Boyson trail with the Ce-Mar Trail in Cedar Rapids. Presently the Boyson trail ends at Hanna Park. With the acquisition of this land and easement, the trail will go under Highway 100 and follow Indian Creek to the boundary with Cedar Rapids.

Another important area is the cooperative solution which has been hammered out between the City of Marion, Cedar Rapids, Linn County, and the Linn County-Cedar Rapids Landfill Agency. As you know, this process has been underway for three years and has consumed a lot of time and discussion. After a thorough review of the proposed plan, the council agreed that the agreement was in the best long-term interests of Marion. We are looking forward to focusing on other important projects from this point forward.

Among other important projects the city has accomplished this past year are the siting and the groundbreaking for our new City Hall. This six million dollar project will allow the city to consolidate the Engineering, Planning & Development, Building and Inspection, Departments, as well as Finance and Water Departments into one building. This will enable developers and citizens to streamline the process of development and redesign of new and existing homes and businesses within our community.

The Marion Public Library continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In cooperation with the Library Foundation the Library has purchased the building and land formerly used as the city’s post office. The building has since been taken down and the land will be used to expand parking for the Library. That parking will be completed as the parking lot for City Hall is completed. Since the new library was completed in 1996, circulation has risen from 298,000 items checked out of the library to more than 624,000 today. More than 24,000 customers have used the computer lab just this past year. After only 10 years it looks like we may need to expand the size of the building to accommodate the needs of library patrons. Susan Kling and her staff continue to serve our citizens very well.

Marion remains the safest city in Iowa with a population of over 10,000. Our patrol cars remain as some of the best equipped vehicles in the state. As an example, if you have the misfortune of being involved in an accident, the responding officer will provide you with a hard copy of the accident report at the time of the accident, enabling you to have the necessary paperwork to file with your insurance company immediately. Video equipment in each patrol car has reduced to almost nonexistent the number of law suits brought to court by drivers claiming harsh treatment on the part of our officers.

Cooperation between our police force and both Linn Mar and Marion Independent school districts remains to be an example for all cities and schools throughout the state of Iowa. Where other schools’ D.A.R.E. programs are failing, ours just gets better. Principals, parents, and students continue to praise this officer in the school program. Along with our drug dog, the city now has a dog especially trained to detect bombs and bomb making material.

Marion was the first city in Iowa to require items sold over the counter in the production of meth to be brought behind the counter and regulated. Now, not only the state of Iowa, but the nation as a whole, is following suit. Chief Daugherty and his staff are to be commended for their fine work.

As the city continues to move forward, we have entered into an agreement with Cedar Rapids and the hospitals in Cedar Rapids to form a new 28E agreement to provide ambulance service to the citizens of Marion and the metropolitan area. We did this after looking very closely at reports from our city firefighters and Area Ambulance, setting out the pros and cons of such an agreement. So far we are pleased with this decision. Area Ambulance continues to lower its response times by stationing an ambulance in the city. However our fire department continues to be the first responders for all 9-1-1 emergency medical calls.

In fact, this past year our firefighters have responded to more than 1,400 medical emergency calls. Medical calls remain the highest percentage of 9-1-1 calls. Almost 80 percent of our requests for service are medical in nature. As expected, our senior citizens are the largest percentage of those calls.

Our Public Services Department continues to provide outstanding service to our citizens. During the December snow events they again did a great job of clearing over 280 lane miles of streets. I really enjoy getting called or being stopped on the street by our citizens telling me how glad they are to live in Marion when it snows. They feel confident in their ability to go about their daily routine with little or no interruption. It is the city’s policy to have a primary snow route within three blocks of each city street.

Our Parks Department is looking forward to moving into its new building this spring. We continue to see growth in all of our youth activities: basketball, baseball, and soccer, and our other programs have had a great deal of participation. The cooperation between the Parks Department, the Y.M.C.A, and both school districts is at an all-time high. However, Richard Fox, our parks director keeps telling me we still have a shortage of playing fields and gym space. -- How do you like that? He’s getting a new Parks building, and he still wants a recreation center. Richard, good luck!

We continue to grow our residential base. Over 650 units were built in Marion last year, which includes 312 new single family residents. We also had excellent growth in commercial and industrial projects in 2005.
It is great to announce that our total taxable valuation, after the rollback has been figured in, is almost $890 million. Last year it was just over $830 million, which is an increase of 6 percent in total net growth. With our sister city reporting a growth of about 2 percent and many cities in Iowa showing no growth or even shrinking in size, we in Marion should be proud of where this city is going.

I look forward to working with our county supervisors, the new mayor and city council of Cedar Rapids, as well as Marion’s city council and our city staff to ensure that we continue to grow and prosper.

Now that we’ve had the opportunity to look at the past year, it’s time to go forward together. The council sits down each year and establishes its priorities for the coming year. I’d like to share our goals for 2006
·        Support economic development in Marion.
·        Support substance abuse education, prevention, and enforcement programs.
·        Develop and maintain land use policies — Zoning Ordinance update and update of Comprehensive Plan
·        Build effective inter-governmental relations
·        Develop the trunk sanitary sewer improvement plan and a financing strategy
·        Implement 7^th Avenue corridor Brown fields project
·        Implement railroad abandonment plan
·        Develop and implement storm water management program.
·        Implement 29^th Avenue extension project between North 10^th Street and Indian Creek Road
·        Implementing the housing improvement program
·        Develop the central business district streetscape plan
·        Explore the use of tax increment financing for city infrastructure projects
·        Develop A plan for inter-connection of the city --building computer network