Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance pushes support for sales-tax extension

The policy board and staff of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance on Thursday announced their support for the 10-year extension of the city's existing 1-percent local-option sales tax to provide local funds to help build a flood protection system through the city.

In so doing, Dee Baird, president and CEO of the Alliance, noted in a statement that the flood of 2008 caused more than $5 billion in damage in the city, damage to the city's core neighborhoods and to its central business district that ranks as the worst natural disaster in Iowa history and one of the worst in U.S. history, she said.

The designed flood management system for the city calls for protection above the level of the 2008 flood, Baird said.

"Business and property owners who have already invested - as well as investors who are considering new investments in the flood area - need this kind of assurance to drive job growth and capital investment," she said.

Baird said the Alliance also believes that using revenue from a local-option sales tax rather than property taxes is "the most fiscally responsible option" to fund "our local share" of the flood-protection system.

Voters in five Cedar Rapids metro cities - Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, Robins and Fairfax - vote as a block on Tuesday to extend the existing local-option sales tax for 10 years. Each community will use revenue from the tax for its own projects. The outcome of the vote for each of the five cities is based on the vote of the block. Cedar Rapids will use the revenue to build and maintain a flood protection system.

Residents in unincorporated Linn County also vote for the tax extension on Tuesday, as does the Linn County portion of Walford. All other cities in Linn County have the tax in place without an end date, or they extended their existing tax for 20 years in the tax-extension vote last May 3.

The extension failed in the metro block - by 221 votes out of 31,932 cast - and in unincorporated Linn County and Walford in the May referendum.

The existing local sales tax in the metro block runs until June 30, 2014. A tax-extension would continue the 1-percent tax for 10 years beginning July 1, 2014.