I want to urge all our citizens to vote for the additional quarter percent sales tax that is on the ballot in Nash County for this primary election.

Please remember to turn over your ballot and vote "Yes" for the "county sales and use tax." This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide more than $2 million in revenue per year – most of which has been pledged to building and improving our school facilities.

This tax is also not new in that it is basically reinstituting at the local level the same amount of sales tax that had been added several years ago during our last state budget crisis and that expired in July 2007.

It means you would add back one cent for every $4 of goods purchased, and the additional tax does not apply to food or cars.

While I normally would not support additional sales taxes, in this instance, I think this is an important opportunity for all the citizens in the Nash-Rocky Mount School area to support education.

Through this sales tax, citizens in both Nash and Edgecombe counties will be significantly supporting the Nash-Rocky Mount Schools along with the sizable appropriation that the city of Rocky Mount makes every year from its taxpayers in both counties as a part of the school merger arrangement.

Therefore, it is incumbent on the citizens to demand, and the school board and commissioners to ensure, that all school facilities are maintained in a fair and equitable process whether the schools are located in the county area or in the Nash or Edgecombe/Rocky Mount inner city,.

Through this sales tax funding initiative, neighborhoods with fewer landowners and property tax-payers, can stake their claim and entitlement to school facilities as good as any other area in the district.

In addition, the N.C. Department of Commerce estimates, that over the past four years, approximately 14 percent of Nash County sales tax was paid by tourists and visitors to the county.

Let's vote "yes" for quality educational facilities for our children and recommit ourselves to an active partnership with the school board and the commissioners to achieve successful outcomes for all our students.

Angela R. Bryant

N.C. House

of Representatives

Rocky Mount