First Checks Go to Flood Victims for Possessions

By Rick Smith, Reporter

Last week's flood dropped a boat on the front porch of a Fourth Street NW home in the Time Check neighborhood in Northwest Cedar Rapids. Photographed on Friday, June 20, 2008. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

Tools

By Aaron Hepker

Story Created: Aug 3, 2010 at 6:18 PM CDT

Story Updated: Aug 3, 2010 at 6:18 PM CDT

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - The first of an expected 1,300 or more checks for up to $10,000 have gone out to flood victims to pay for personal possessions lost in the June 2008 flood using local-option sales tax revenue.

Mayor Ron Corbett and four of his eight City Council colleagues quietly delivered the first two checks last Friday, Corbett said on Tuesday.

The paperwork in what is a City Hall program with little red tape already is in place to issue checks to 400 of the 1,300 households that have applied for the personal-possessions benefit, Corbett said.

The mayor said most will see checks in the coming weeks.

The program has been designed by the City Council to require little documentation of loss, though all who had federal disaster funds or insurance paid to them for personal pssessions will have those amounts deducted from the maximum payment of $10,000.

Corbett said one of the first two checks went to a single mother who had been forced to replace some of what she lost in the flood with credit-card debt. The second of the first checks went to a couple with one son coming home from war in Iraq and other in the war in Afghanistan, the mayor said.

“I don’t know who crying the most, me, him or her,” council member Don Karr said when the check was given to the couple. “This is the right thing to do. We want to get these people healthy again.”

Corbett pushed for the personal-possession payments to flood victims, in part, because the city had yet to spend very much of the local-option sales tax revenue it was accumulating and, in part, because the city’s home buyout program with a tangle of federal requirements has moved so slowly.

“This is something that is really going to happen and in a more timely way than the buyout money.”

Next Article Family of Murder Victim Files Lawsuit Against Killer's Estate

Conversation Guidelines

Be Kind

Don't use abusive, offensive, threatening, racist, vulgar or sexually-oriented language.
Don't attack someone personally. Keep it civil and be responsible.

Share Knowledge

Be truthful. Share what you know and what you are passionate about.
What more do you want to learn? Keep it simple.

Stay focused

Promote lively and healthy debate. Stay on topic. Ask questions and give feedback on the story's topic.

Report Trouble

Help us maintain a quality comment section by reporting comments that are offensive. If you see a comment that is offensive, or you feel violates our guidelines, simply click on the "x" to the far right of the comment to report it.

read the full guidelines here »

Commenting will be disabled on stories dealing with the following subject matter: Crime, sexual abuse, property fires, automobile accidents, Amber Alerts, Operation Quickfinds and suicides.