I think this local sales tax would be a good thing for our community. But people will get a chance to vote on this in July. We will have a plan in place that clearly defines exactly where the money will go.

A lot of people can barely afford it before the sales tax came in, and now it makes it more expensive.

This thing would pay for itself to the city over time. This will generate new sales tax. I don't think anything would have happened on that site. It would have sat there and decayed without the help the city has provided through this redevelopment district. If the project would have worked without the city investing $3 million, then that site would have been developed a long time ago.

Every week the state puts out a new sales tax permit report that you can ask for sorted by ZIP code. We get a copy of that report to make sure that new folks coming into the city are reporting to the correct city. Every week there's an error.

Over twenty years, we expect to generate about $80 million or more in sales tax revenue.

What the town agreed to do, was share 45% of the sales tax revenue generated by the businesses there, with the developer, for about 14 years.