A meeting on extending the one cent local option sales tax in Cedar Rapids draws a crowd at a local elementary school.

The city says it’s the best way to pay for flood protection on the West side of the Cedar River.

That’s because the Army Corp of Engineers has proposed flood protection funding for just the East side.

Most of the people at the meeting are neighbors, but not all of them agree on how to rebuild their community.

“Living on the West side, of course I want to protect what we have left,” said Jeff Stephen, a thirty year homeowner on the West side of Cedar Rapids.  “We all collectively need to repair our city.”

The cost to protect what’s left now falls on the city, since the Corp of Engineers only approved flood walls on the East side of the river.

“I think that’s not right,” said Mona Myhlhousen, another West side resident at the meeting.  “The West side is as important as the East side.”

Not everyone is backing building plans on the west side.  One woman at the discussion said a flood wall on the West side may force her out of her home, and others say too many people have moved out since the 2008 floods.

The city’s plan is to use fifty percent of the LOST money to build permanent flood walls, removable flood walls and levees for both sides of the Cedar River and the other forty percent will go toward repairing 114 roads throughout the city.

Many expressed concerns about where the money is going and how it’s going to be used, Tom McCullough an eleven year West side homeowner, said it’s all part of a long recovery.

“I’d rather move on,” he said.  “We can be here a long time and look at all the reasons, but I’d rather just move on.”

This was the first of twenty meetings Corbett has planned until the LOST vote happens May 3 of this year.  Corbett says the city also considered raising property taxes or franchise fees to help pay for west side flood protection.