Mayor Ray Baker’s widow endorses 1% prepared food tax
by October 28, 2011 4:52 pm 75 views
Nancy Baker, the widow of the late and former Fort Smith Mayor Ray Baker, has endorsed passage of the 1% prepared food tax.
Her endorsement was first posted as a video on the Forward Fort Smith website. The video can be seen below.
“Let’s go to the polls on November 8th and support the 1% food preparation tax. I know Ray would,” Nancy Baker said in the endorsement. “Let’s continue the progress that we have been making in Fort Smith. Let’s not turn the clock back.”
Proceeds from the 1% prepared food tax, which is on the Nov. 8 ballot, would support operations of the Fort Smith Convention Center. A 1% prepared food tax is estimated to raise about $1.8 million annually.
Mayor Ray Baker championed passage of the half-cent sales tax in the late 1990s that helped expand the convention center, expand the city’s library system and expand the riverfront park area.
Nancy said the former Mayor envisioned the convention center as being a place to bring people from outside Fort Smith to the city, and in being a place for social gatherings of the community.
Using the former Mayor’s trademark phrase, Nancy closed her remarks by saying supporters of the convention center “help make life worth living in Fort Smith, Arkansas.”
Jeff Smith, one of the leaders of the Forward Fort Smith group promoting passage of the 1% prepared food tax, said Nancy Baker represents the missing voice of the popular former Mayor.
“We were thrilled to hear her response, the result of which is this video. Throughout the shoot, she referred to it as the ‘food preparation tax.’ We chose not to reshoot the video simply for the sake of rephrasing because we wanted the purity of her comments to be the impact on those who view it,” Smith explained. “The more our team reviewed the clip, the more we actually grew endeared to the rawness and the realness of what she said.”
The City Wire has sought response from Liz Armstrong, a leader of the group opposed to the 1% prepared food tax. We will update this post with her response.