• FLOODS of '08 VIDEO
It’s been two months since flood waters poured through Cedar Rapids streets, and a lot has happened since then. So how do council members rate their performance?
"The initial response I think has been what we were expecting -- certainly we would like to be able to move faster," said Kris Gulick.
"We're trying to do the best we can,” said Chuck Wieneke. “A bad decision now that might make people happy might make them worse off down the road."
“We've always tried to get the residents the information as quickly as possible," said Brian Fagan.
These three members point to several successes so far: getting financial counseling services up early, working to get new housing options to flood victims, and building a strategy for future flood prevention.
"It's going to take some serious work to get the solutions that need to be in place," said Fagan.
"It's difficult to tell people they need to wait for a response but it's also difficult to provide them with false hopes and false information,” said Gulick.
"I know people like to get more answers from us," said Wieneke.
But they all say they can only give those answers when they have the information -- and they stress the solution will take time.
“We on the council are frustrated with it," said Wieneke, who would like to have a lot more information from other government agencies working on the flood prevention efforts.
"It is very, very complex and there's no other way to describe it other than that," said Fagan.
"Hopefully by being upfront with people today with the unknowns that we have, they're going to have a better understanding of what happens in the future," said Gulick.
Grading the CR Council: 2 Months After Flood
