Rock The River Looks For Your Vote With Entertainment

There's a big effort to get your vote for River Development. It's "Rock the River" and News on 6 anchor Latoya Silmon reports there were bands, free food and drink, but mostly this was a party with a purpose.

The vote is October 9th and many young professionals were out to help those undecided. Tulsa's Young Professionals played host to dozens of Tulsans on Thursday night all in hopes to get voter's in tune with the river tax.

"We have this incredible river here. We're a cool city, we need to develop it and attract more young professionals to the area," said Event Organizer Marnie Ducato. "The more young professionals, the more jobs we'll have, and the more we can increase our tax base, the less we'll have to increase in the future."

Tulsa's Mayor Kathy Taylor stopped by to echo the same. She says it will pump millions of dollars into the economy and create thousands of jobs. For this crowd, a 4/10ths of a penny sales tax sounded like a good investment.

"I just recently moved here," said new Tulsa resident Trey Hickson. "And I think it's a pretty attractive feature, but it could be improved."

Risha Grant, of the Tulsa Young Professionals, agrees, "Tulsa, a lot of times it's hard to find things to do so having the river available and the development they have planned will be great."

Samantha Estes lives in Bixby and think it could help the entire area.

"Living in Bixby, I've seen how Jenks has optimized their river resources so I think it's a good idea to extend it throughout the river," she said.

Those on the ‘yes' side aren't surprised with a lot of positive response, but they say the push to get young people to the polls may not be so easy.

"Our demographic, 40 and under, are the most likely to be supportive of the project," proclaims Ducato. "But there also the least likely to vote so we're trying to change that paradigm and get many people as we can out the polls."

It's too late to register for the October 9th election. Thursday was the final chance. Broken Arrow, Owasso, and North Tulsa have come out against the tax. So we'll see next month if the "Rock the River" really rocked or hit a sour note.