Panel confirmed for Thursday's CR local-option tax vote forum

Three people favoring and three opposing an extended 1-percent Local Option Sales Tax will be panelists in the Thursday, April 21, public forum on the May 3 vote. The forum, which will cover issues only for Cedar Rapids' portion of the vote, will be co-hosted by The Gazette, KCRG-TV9 and ImpactCR.

Favoring the sales tax extension and on the panel will be Gary Ficken, Cedar Rapids LOST Oversight Committee chairman and a business owner who took flood damage; Jim Lane, whose Cedar Rapids home was flooded; and Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett.

Opposing the vote and on the panel will be Harold Barnes, a Marion businessman and Iowa Conservative Union member; Jim Conklin, a We Can Do Better CR member who lives in Marion and works in Cedar Rapids; and Greg Vail, whose Cedar Rapids home was flooded.

The panel was confirmed on Tuesday, April 19. It took this long to confirm because of some switches in commitments and the availability of people we were trying to bring to the panel.

The forum, “Decision Time: A community conversation on the May 3 LOST vote”, will run from 7 to 9 p.m. at Harrison Elementary School, 1310 11th St. NW.

Original plans had called for this to run from 7 to 8:30 p.m., with the option of going until 9 p.m. but during a meeting on Monday, April 18, organizers of the forum figured it likely will run until 9 p.m. because of the interest.

The forum will be broadcast live on KCRG 9.2 and

www.KCRG.com. You may follow it via a live blog on

www.TheGazette.com, too. Here's a link to a special web page for the forum, where you may submit questions during the event: 

special link.