Community members and UNI students gathered in anticipation this past Wednesday at Cedar Falls’ City Hall to witness a debate between the candidates for Cedar Falls City Council and Mayor. The debate was hosted by Northern Iowa Student Government in partnership with Women of Action, Cedar Valley Activate and the Cedar Falls-Waterloo Branch of the American
Association of University Women. The debate was moderated by Jayme Renfro, University of Northern Iowa political science professor and Andy Milone, a City Government Reporter for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.
Northern Iowa Student Government president, Micaiah Krutsinger, hosted the event and emphasized the importance of student involvement in local elections.
“These debates are very important to students because as a university that is located in Cedar Falls, they deal a lot with our rental policies, with our landlords and they also work on improvements to The Hill. Hopefully we will be able to have a good student turnout in this election to really tell the City Council what UNI students need.”
Krutsinger also noted Election Day will be November 7, and if students are registered to vote in their hometown they can still vote in the upcoming election in Cedar Falls.
Ward 2: Chris Latta
Ward 2, which encompasses Lawther Hall, Hagemann, Rider, Noehren, Shull and Panther Village on UNI’s campus. Ward 2 has one candidate running for the seat. Chris Latta answered questions about various topics related to the city and UNI at the debate from moderators. Below are a few topics Latta discussed.
Relationships between Cedar Falls and UNI
“Our young college students bring so much to this community, and sometimes I think that is an afterthought. It’s great that we already have a student city council liaison, I think that’s a wonderful start but I don’t think that should be where it ends. I think we need to make every effort we can to engage with our students. They live in our community, they work in our community, they spend money in our community. We don’t want them here for four years, we want them moving forward. We need to give students the reason to feel engaged.”
College Square Mall
“That mall was vibrant at one point in time, and then it stopped being vibrant. It’s very sad to see the amazing progress we’ve made to make University Avenue drivable again, and now there is nothing to drive to. I really hope we are engaging with owners and developers to see what we can do. We need to do something before it becomes an even bigger eye sore.”
Rentals
“We absolutely need rentals, but what we absolutely don’t want is rentals and rentals only. Or we need rentals that are maintained well by the property owner. You shouldn’t be able to drive through a neighborhood and say ‘that’s a rental’ and ‘that’s a citizen.’ I do think there is some ownership with the city as well in terms of code enforcement and to make sure our landlords are partners with the city. Yes, we absolutely need rental properties, but we want them to be properties we are proud of.”
Ward 4: City Council Candidates
Ward 4, which encompasses Dancer and Bender Halls as well as a good portion of the College Hill neighborhood, has two candidates vying for a seat on City Council. Gabe Groothius, a 2019 UNI alum, and Aaron Hawbaker, a 1991 UNI alum. A few key issues they debated are included below.
Relationships between Cedar Falls and UNI
Hawbaker: “I want to better the city around the University of Northern Iowa and work in conjunction with University of Northern Iowa, to make it a more attractive university for students that are coming. Those relationships between UNI administration and those relationships between the students are important to foster. It is a bit disappointing that it doesn’t seem that we’ve done better in the past. But if I’m on the council, I will certainly work to improve those relationships.”
Groothius: “I was going door to door the other day on Walnut Street, and there was a renter who was there. And just to clarify, renters are citizens and they have a voice to be heard. He said he’s lived here three years, and he’s never had one political candidate knock on his door, and he said he votes every election. I think that’s terrible. Young students right now don’t feel like their voice is being heard. And if you want to get to know him, you got to go knock on their door. You got to go to the Hill. You got to go to the University of Northern Iowa. It’s important that we listen. I think as a young voice on council, I would represent those students well.”
College Hill
Hawbaker: “When I came here in ‘86, there was a grocery store there, a pharmacy, there was a florist on The Hill. It was a place for students to be able to walk from campus to a small town that was full service. And I think that vision, if we adopt those changes, we can get there. The vision plan has been in place since 2021, and nothing’s been done. No action was taken. And so it’s not that it’s impossible. It’s not that we don’t have the tools, but we have to have the willingness to move forward and work together. And that’s what’s been absent over these last two and a half years.”
Groothius: When you go to College Hill, you can see that there’s not really anything happening. The city has said it’s important that we have a vision there, but we haven’t funded any changes. Are we serious about this or not? The city needs to be clear on what we expect. And we are not doing well on communication right now. We need to set a vision and we need to make that easy for development to happen. Communication is the start of that. If we’re not listening to the negative feedback from developers, landlords and business owners, how are we doing our job?”
Pride Month Proclamation
Editor’s note: Candidates were asked by Milone how they would have voted and handled the proclamation that garnered controversy when Mayor Rob Green initially refused to sign a proclamation declaring June as Pride Month, citing his religious beliefs.
Hawbaker: I would have signed it right away. The reason why I enjoy living here is the opening and inclusive community. I understand that Mayor Green had his issues with it, but the interests of the city have to come first. And the interest of the city has been opening and welcoming, caring and loving to all people that want to live here. And that’s one of the ways that we grow. I think that hesitation was extremely unfortunate and certainly sent the wrong signal.”
Groothius: “I’m not running for mayor so I’m not going to be signing any proclamations. City Council is elected to make policy, not proclamations. Proclamations don’t change anything. So, I would ask the mayor to make a decision. Divisive issues will come up over and over again, and the council will be asked to vote on it and it will divide the community. I would not vote for any proclamations.”
At-Large City Council Candidates
Three candidates are up for election to represent the entirety of Cedar Falls as At-Large City Council members. Hannah Crisman, a quality assurance analyst and College Hill Partnership Board member, is vying for a seat, as well as University of Northern Iowa senior media specialist Patrick McEleney. Donna Bash is also running for an At-Large seat. A few key issues they debated are included below.
Relationships between Cedar Falls and UNI
Crisman: I think that that relationship really needs to be much deeper. There are a lot of opportunities for us to connect with the university be that projects or further working on the Hill specifically. I just think that the university is full of people who are passionate about Cedar Falls just like we are. And so we really need to tap into that group and let them know that we’re listening and support them.”
McEleney: “We as a city need to sell ourselves to those students. They’ve already made the step to either stay here in Cedar Falls. While they’re here, we need to put our best foot forward. I have students come to me and talk about how they’re getting accosted by a parking representative on moving day. That’s terrible. What are is the value of that? Those things change their perception, and we need to make sure that we are, like I said, putting our best foot forward.”
Bash: “I graduated proudly from DePaul University down in Chicago, Illinois. I’m used to connecting from a large university. Yes, I didn’t go to UNI but I walk that campus. I have a connection there even though I’m a proud graduate of DePaul University, and I see the connection that needs to be made between the city and for the university. And I would bring that healthy communication.”
College Hill
Crisman: “College Hill is one of my biggest passions personally. The first step is really connecting the upper and lower hill. The needs of college students have really changed over the years. I know that there’s been some talk about how we attract families to the hill, but I think what we first need to do is attract college students to the hill. There’s a lot of opportunity for diversifying businesses that college students want to spend time at while looking for new opportunities for them to have places for them to live.”
McEleney: “First and foremost when students want to go to the Hill, they want to feel safe. I can’t harp enough on safety on the Hill. We want to get new businesses out there. How do we do that? The students are all going downtown. They’re not spending time on the Hill. We need to reach out to them and ask why they are going there. They don’t want to take an Uber across town, they would love to have that in their backyard and what are we doing to to keep them away?”
Bash: “I know the ins and outs about the Hill and I would like it to be revitalized. For business down there, parking is an issue for putting just one limit of one hour. You cannot park in and out safely there for one hour. So that’s an issue that needs to be addressed. And just for the college students, where can you go on the hill and live if you’re a college student? I would love to see businesses that can thrive there for the college students as well as people in the community that could walk to.”
Mayoral Race
To conclude the night of debate, mayoral candidates Walter Burtis and Danny Laudick took their turns to discuss their future visions for Cedar Falls. Burtis has lived in the Cedar Valley since 2000 and opened the Brass Tap restaurant on Main Street with his brother in 2017. Laudick moved to Cedar Falls at just two months old and has held a variety of jobs and positions in the field of economic development. The two candidates were not asked any questions directly related to UNI.
Hopes for the future
Burtis: “I would say for Cedar Falls we need to continue focusing on certain areas in the city that need development as well as attention. We have done a great job in transforming our downtown district. We’ve spent a lot of attention down there, and as a small business owner, I can tell you, I think we’ve done a great job, but we need to focus on other areas. For me, I would like to continue to see the city of Cedar Falls as a quaint and beautiful area for your family to be raised in as well as finding ways to continue to evolve and grow appropriately.”
Laudick: “I think for me, it comes down to love the phrase quality of life. It’s kind of a buzzword we use a lot, but I think here in Cedar Falls we genuinely do know we have an amazing quality of life … ….I think that image of Cedar Falls and the quality of life that we want to maintain for residents is something that we’re in an incredibly good place to focus on. But we have that because we had decades and decades of leadership that knew how to work together and create that vision. I would like to see us focus on continuing to build on that quality of life, and that starts with leadership who understands the vision that we have for ourselves as a community and working together toward making sure we’re making progress on that.
Racial disparity
Editor’s note: In the question asked, Milone referenced a recent 24/7 Wall St. analysis that ranked the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area as the sixth worst place for Black Americans to live.
Burtis: “We’re looking at how we got on that list and addressing the key factors that put us on that list, and some of those are incarceration levels, income disparity, the homeownership differences, and I think we have to be able to attack that challenge head on … The Cedar Valley collectively is a community that we thrive together. Certainly Cedar Falls has its own image along with Waterloo, but at the same time, we need to be able to work effectively together to solve these problems.”
Laudick: “I helped start the Black Business National Accelerator in Waterloo working with 24/7 Black, so I’ve had a lot of work with the Black community, with the grassroots community working to address a lot of these issues. Cedar Falls and Waterloo always have very different cultures. We are different communities, but we are sister cities. We can’t take on all the burdens of solving every problem that Waterloo has and Waterloo can’t take on the burden of solving every issue that we have, but we do need to look at ourselves as one community because people looking to move here think of us as one area, and we can’t divorce ourselves from the overall image that we have as a region … A lot of these issues have taken centuries and decades to become big issues and it won’t just happen overnight to fix them, but we can start driving that conversation.”
Parking downtown
Laudick: “We need a plan in place that allows us to accommodate [more people downtown on the weekends]. A parking ramp has been studied multiple times and discussed. I think if the plans continue growing downtown, we’re likely going to need a parking ramp because we were constrained on space, but that needs to be part of an intentional plan to say how do we focus on parking? How do we simplify the current process? How do we make sure we’re not limiting ourselves for growth in our downtown in that district based on parking as a major issue.”
Burtis: “As a downtown business owner, I can tell you first and foremost, this discussion has been going on well over a decade, and the fact that we haven’t even provided the long term plan is very concerning … I think we need to simplify parking. I think we need to address the long standing issue of a parking garage and that comes with a multi-use commercial parking garage to be able to help facilitate the payment of them.”
