My Thoughts on LOST

UPDATE: I wrote my post before seeing today's Press Citizen. Their article has a good summary of how the county-wide aspect of the vote will work. Here is a link to their story about the Iowa City Council passing the ballot initiative last night:

Iowa City Council approves sending sales tax to voters

As I posted earlier, it appears we will have a Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) vote this coming November.

I think it will be important for our citizens to vote YES on this issue. If the measure is passed in a total county vote, we will pay this tax on non-exempt items anywhere we shop in Johnson County. If the measure is passed overall but we as a city vote NO we will not receive any of the revenue. If it is passed and we vote YES we receive a portion of all revenue generated county-wide. If approved the tax would be collected for 10 years.

We as a city will have to decide how to word our ballot measure, explaining how we would use any money received. My strong feeling is that we should earmark this revenue to pay for the community center structure being proposed for One University Place. There has been much discussion about how to pay for this, with TIF (Tax Increment Financing) or bonding being really our only two options. There are people opposed to both choices for various reasons.

I think LOST would be the perfect way to pay for this and an excellent use of what could be one time (10 years) money.