A small group of Minatare residents gathered Friday evening to hear about Proposition 1, a one cent sales and use tax that will appear on the city’s ballot Tuesday.
Jordan Diedrich of Twin Cities Development joined the Minatare Proposition 1 Committee to pitch the ballot measure to those in attendance.
Half of the funds raised would go toward infrastructure, with the other half split evenly between downtown revitalization and public safety, all of which Diedrich called an investment.
“If the city doesn’t want to invest in themselves, it’s going to be hard to find somebody else to come in here and do that, and that’s the same for any city. So, I think voting for Proposition 1 is investing in yourselves,” said Diedrich. “It’s putting money into your local economy. This one percent sales tax isn’t going to Lincoln or Omaha, it’s not going to Washington D.C., it’s going to the roads that you drive on every day, it’s going to the stop signs that you stop at every day.”
One resident asked repeatedly how much money would be raised, which Diedrich said was hard to know since the city has never had such tax revenue, and that led to a passionate exchange among attendees.
“If you don’t want to vote on it, don’t vote on it. And if you do, then do. So, why argue about the situation?” asked one woman, to which the skeptical resident replied “Because there’s no numbers associated with it.” The woman responded “Well, if you want to make a change, let’s make a change. Just like everything else, you got to take…” which the man then interjected “Why didn’t we make a change 50 years ago?” The exchange ended with the woman responding “Because nobody wanted it! Look at what the (city) council did. We’re in the same ‘ol boat as everything else, nobody wanted to make a change.”
With a limited number of businesses in the community, Diedrich said the tax might generate between $1,000 – $2,000 a month, but that was a very rough estimate because financial figures were not available from the businesses that would be required to collect the tax.
