Hoping to get more people talking and thinking about what a 1-cent sales tax would mean to Lyon County residents, city and county commissioners decided at their quarterly joint luncheon to put together an upcoming release containing facts about the potential tax on the Aug. 5 ballot.
It was decided at Wednesday’s luncheon that Mayor Bob Agler and County Commission Chairman Scott Briggs will draft either a joint news release or separate ones detailing the implications of the sales tax for both the city and county. Commissioners agreed to make sure the release or releases would not be attempts to sway the voters toward or away from voting for the sales tax; the release would, Agler said, contain “concrete facts.”
Commissioners from both the city and county will look over the release or releases before the final draft becomes public. Agler said there’s a good case to be made for either a joint release or separate ones.
“It really probably depends on whether there’s minor points of fact that we can’t get together on or something,” he said.
At Wednesday’s luncheon, City Commissioner Jeff Longbine said he wasn’t hearing as much discussion on the sales tax measure as he wanted to hear. He said he didn’t know if the voters were informed enough right now to make a “great decision” on whether to vote for the tax.
“I think somehow we need to spur some community discussion, whether we’re for or against, in the next couple of weeks to get the community discussing the issue,” he said.
Also Wednesday, County Commissioner Bob Davis alerted the city to deteriorating pieces of the west wall on the south side of Soden Bridge. Davis distributed pictures showing three slabs of the bottom of the wall that have broken away from the rest of the wall. The affected section of the bridge is held up by a rock slab that’s perpendicular to the pieces of the wall above it. Davis said time was of the essence to save the bridge.
“If and when that bottom rock breaks, and you can see what it’s holding, we’ll lose the whole wall,” Davis said.
City Manager Matt Zimmerman said he appreciated Davis bringing the bridge’s deterioration to the city’s attention and said he would have the city engineer’s office take a look at it.