A special city council meeting in Iowa City is underway tonight to discuss how to protect neighborhoods from future flooding.
At 5:30 p.m. this evening discussions started at city hall about how to spend two million dollars in Jumpstart Iowa grants.
The goal is to protect homes from future flooding, but not everyone wants the city's help.
Designing a master plan for flood mitigation might be like trying to rebuild a home.
It's takes just the right amount of measuring what might happen, cutting out anything that isn't absolutely essential, and hammering the pieces together.
This is Larry Ormann's approach to rebuilding his home after the floods.
The City Council will likely take a different approach as it attempts to outline a plan to protect homes in Parkview Terrace from future flooding, but only slightly.
The protection price tag for this area is in the tens of millions of dollars.
Not knowing how much money the city will get means tonight's discussion is, at some level, just talk.
"It's very hard for us to go much farther in terms of trying to find actual solutions to recovery buy-outs or mitigation strategy because we just don't know how much funding is going to be available," said Michael Lombardo, city manager for Iowa City.
Larry, who refers affectionately to his neighborhood as Disaster Drive, doesn't want the city meddling with too much mitigation.
"I really don't want them to do anything," said Larry Ormann. "Forty years and this is the first time I've had water in my house. It's somewhat of a gamble that it could happen again but I knew that 40 years ago when I moved on the banks of the river."
Of course, some homeowners want significant flood protection.
As city leaders try to figure out what they can afford they also face a drop in tax revenues.
So more flood protection measures might affect long-awaited projects like a new east-side fire station.