• By GREG GARLAND
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 13, 2009 - Page: 1A

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Those campaigning for and against Mayor-President Kip Holden’s $901 million capital improvements tax package are putting out yard signs, knocking on doors and calling voters in a last-minute push before Saturday’s special election.

Todd Teepell, of Progress Is, a group of young professionals backing the tax proposal, said volunteers are canvassing neighborhoods with fact sheets, putting out signs urging people to vote “yes” on the bond issue, and calling friends and neighbors to remind them of the election.

“The response is tremendous,” Teepell said Thursday, adding he thinks momentum has shifted in favor of the bond issue.

Dwight Hudson, of Baton Rouge Tea Party, which is campaigning against the tax, said that group’s volunteers are also putting out signs and fact sheets — encouraging people to “beat the bond.” He said the group’s volunteers will man phone banks on Saturday as well.

“We want to make sure people are aware of the election and that they go out to vote,” Hudson said. “The outcome depends on who gets out the most votes. It could be a very close election.”

The tax package, like the one that narrowly failed last year, consists of a half-cent sales tax increase and a 9.9-mill property tax.

If approved, the taxes would fund drainage system improvements, a new public safety complex and parish prison, traffic light synchronization and riverfront development.

The taxes also would pay to build two new parking garages downtown, to expand and modernize the River Center and to construct the Alive riverfront attraction project.

A similar bond proposal failed during last year’s Nov. 4 presidential election, with 90,464 voting against the proposal and 87,393 voting for it.

Sharon Bankston, chief deputy in the parish Registrar of Voters Office, said the office expects a relatively heavy turnout Saturday.

She said a tax issue on a special election ballot ordinarily would be expected to draw a low turnout of less than 20 percent of the parish’s 267,667 registered voters.

But Bankston said the office is looking for a turnout of 40 to 45 percent, based on the large number of people — 6,410 — who voted early.

“There just seems to be a lot of interest in it,” she said.