Response to ICPC editorial

Our View: City needs to be realistic when asking for funds

Ideally, Iowa City and Coralville city governments should reverse the bad decisions they made decades ago and work to buy out buildings constructed on land that would better serve as flood buffers -- areas like Idyllwild, Parkview Terrace and Edgewater. At the very least, cities need to examine their ordinances to ensure that they don't worsen the problem as they aid the recovery from this year's "500-year" flood.


But Iowa City and Coralville aren't the only cities guilty of an overly optimistic faith in the power of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep rivers and creeks in their banks. In fact, their previous shortsighted decisions are the rule rather than the exception. And that means dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's buyout program need to be stretched to cover flood-prone developments throughout the nation.

Where their counterparts in the 1950s and 1960s were so blindly optimistic, the current Iowa City Council and city manager are right to be realistic about the long-shot odds against a full buyout of the more than 250 homes affected by the recent floods. As the city prepares its buyout notice of interest letter, the debate is whether city officials should include all of the affected homes or just the ones most likely to fall within the cost-benefit threshold that FEMA uses to select homes for a buyout. (For those homes selected, FEMA would cover 75 percent of the cost, with the state chipping in 10 percent and the homeowner or city chipping in 15 percent).

The city attorney said that asking FEMA to help everyone wouldn't hurt the chances of FEMA eventually deciding helping out the most flood-prone of the homes. But the new city manager wisely is counseling against offering more false hopes to homeowners who need to make a decision soon about what to do with their homes standing in areas that never should have been developed.

"Are we going to be forestalling the rebuilding process for people if we include them in the notice?" Iowa City Manager Michael Lombardo asked. "How well is that information going to sit two years from now, when they're expected to be bought out, only to find out the dollars only go so far?"

In its initial request, the city should use a generous reading of FEMA's cost-benefit analysis system -- just in case more funding becomes available. But it should only include those homes with a good chance of eventually being covered. Past government officials haven't been upfront about the risks these homeowners faced. Current city officials shouldn't repeat the shortsightedness of their predecessors.