Knowles Adkisson/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF/kadkisson@pbcommercial.com

Voters go to the polls today for a special election on a five-eighths cent sales tax to fund what supporters hope will be an economic revival of Pine Bluff, while opponents organize to defeat the proposal and make changes.

The Go Forward Pine Bluff task force estimates the tax will cost each household a little more than $15 per month, while raising roughly $4 million per year for seven years. The group hopes to raise roughly $20 million from business groups and grants. Private donors have already contributed $6 million to Go Forward, with the latest, the Trinity Foundation, announcing a $2 million contribution last week.

Simmons First Foundation Chairman Tommy May introduced the plan in January, following a year of meetings by a task force of 100 members.

A total of 2,213 voters cast ballots on the tax measure from the start of early voting on Tuesday, June 6 to the end of the day Monday, June 12, Jefferson County Clerk Shawndra Taggart said. 526 voters cast ballots on Monday alone, Taggart said.

Outside the courthouse Monday, Pine Bluff voter Shondra Eldridge told the Commercial she voted against the tax because she felt the plan was not specific enough, it focused too much on downtown and it would hurt poor and middle-class people. She questioned why owners of buildings downtown could not pay to improve their own properties.

Theres another way to do it without taxing us, Eldridge said. A vision is supposed to [show] exactly what youre targeting. They cant tell us what theyre targeting. Thats not a good vision.

Eldridge said she didnt necessarily feel that Go Forward was a bad plan, but that it needs to be revised.

Another voter, J.D. Smith, said he had lived in Pine Bluff for 68 years and knew when this town was booming. Smith said he voted in favor of the tax because he trusted the Go Forward leaders to use the tax money to improve the city.

It used to be a very popular town, Smith said. And it can be that way again. But we cant just sit around and do nothing.

Michael McCray, a spokesman for a group of opponents to the measure organized around the theme A Better Way Forward, said he feels good about the response hes seeing from community members to their campaign message to table the tax to negotiate changes.

Were getting our message out every day, and people are responding to it, McCray said. It feels like a lot of people were waiting to make up their mind, on both sides of the argument, and were gaining in support every day.

McCray and others have criticized the Go Forward Pine Bluff task force for creating the plan in private meetings and for requiring participants to sign non-disclosure agreements. The plan also lacks detailed budgets and timelines for projects, which McCray believes could lead to administrative bloat and outsized consultants fees. With the Go Forward Pine Bluff non-profit corporation placed in the role of executing the plan, opponents also argue there is not enough accountability to taxpayers.

People are responding to our videos, our messages, were starting to hear essentially our arguments, our talking points, repeated back to us, McCray said.

Supporters of the plan argue there is enough accountability, pointing out that according to the plan, the GFPB non-profit would request funding for a particular project, and the Pine Bluff City Council could either approve, deny or modify the request.

McCray also criticized the scheduling of the election in June rather than on a November general election ballot, when turnout would typically be higher. He believes the Pine Bluff Commercial, which has supported the plan in its editorial pages, has not given enough coverage to opponents of the plan.

There are a number of voices that are respected in the community that havent been represented in the editorial pages of the Commercial, but the message is definitely getting out in the community, McCray said.

A Better Way Forward had good turnout at a forum to discuss the Go Forward plan on Thursday last week, McCray said. The forum was hosted by the Pine Bluff branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at Kings Highway Missionary Baptist Church. McCray said Go Forward was invited to the forum but declined to send anyone. Go Forward Pine Bluff Chief Executive Officer Ryan Watley said Go Forward was not invited. A Better Way Forward asked to speak to the NAACP because Go Forward had spoken to the NAACP, Watley said.

Watley said he has been surprised by a higher-than-expected turnout during early voting, which began last Tuesday, June 6.

I think were around 2,000 [votes cast], looking for around 2,500 by the time early voting ends, which would be good, Watley said. Speaking with people on the streets, Watley said the support has been overwhelmingly positive and diverse in age, race and gender.

Starting on Tuesday last week, Watley has been running most mornings from the Jefferson Square mall to the Jefferson County Courthouse and uploading video of the runs to social media. On Monday, June 12, he said he was joined by former Pine Bluff High School track and field athletes Sam Glover and Ellis Jones.

That running, people have really been responsive to the line, Take your souls to the polls, Watley said.

Watley said Go Forward supporters will be working to get voters out and waiting for results at the groups headquarters at 204 South Main Street, about a block from the courthouse.

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Decision day for Go Forward Pine Bluff - Pine Bluff Commercial

Where were you in 2007? Maybe you were rendered grief-stricken by the end of The OC. Maybe you lived in a velour tracksuit and Uggs, because Paris Hilton taught you. You may well have been skipping through the good primary school years. Or maybe, like a load of people (and me), you split your time between lying on the sofa at your mate's house, watching System of a Down videos and going on MySpace on your family's desktop, posting passive aggressive bulletins to get your crush's attention when signing out and back into MSN didn't work.

If your life revolved around the latter, you may have identified somewhat as "Emo Under the Cork Tree, while 2006 belonged to My Chemical Romance's Welcome to the Black Parade. And then, in 2007, came Riot! by Paramore.

From its scrawled cover art which could well have passed as a page of a high school art sketchbook, to the power chord-heavy breakdowns over which powerhouse frontwoman Hayley Williams wailed fatalistic lyrics, Riot! captured that mainstream emo zeitgeist perfectly. For many of us, listening to it now is like an exercise in going back in timeit was so intrinsic to UK emo culture at the time that it's hard to separate the songs from the experiences you had to them (probably while wearing a studded belt). To celebrate Riot! turning 10, we asked some of our friends to tell us about their memories of the tracks on the record. There is nail polish, there are tears, there is rain and, of course, there is a lot of being underage and cheap cider-drunk in public parks. Thank you, Paramore.

Is there a more fire emoji album opener than this in the whole of emo? To this day, when it all kicks in I feel like I could mosh through a brick wall, and those fills throughout are air-drum gold. Even the title is perfect MSN screen name foddera sort of deep, meaningful statement on emotions and, like, stuff, which in reality means sweet fuck-all. Glorious. TOM CONNICK

Remember when a Saturday afternoon used to involve little more than loitering outside a prominent high street shop, playing with your fringe and sneering at adults? That's the entirety of the "That What You Get" video. It's literally just a bunch of people stood around awkwardly for an entire day, poking their Nokias and sending 'XD' faces to each other, and yet I still want to be in their gang. TOM CONNICK

When I lived in halls (or what all of you outside the UK know as on-campus housing/where all your teen posters hopefully go to die), all the sad boy stoners boys had just discovered Jeff Buckley, despite him being dead a decade. There were so many "just listen to this bit" 4AM moments in hazy rooms I lost count. No, put that guitar down and just listen to Hayley Williams belt everything into how hard she's going to try to make her teen love last forever, go away. I still remain that this is the superior Hallelujah, FIGHT ME. KIRBY PARTINGTON

In 2007 I worked at the local ~alt club~. Fridays were both indie night and hell for all of us moshers who worked there. When this song blew up, it managed to penetrate even the indie nights and singing along to that iconic middle 8 was a welcome reprieve from The Pigeon Detectives or whatever crepey, dry-as-woodchips-in-your-mouth act was big, while pouring WKD into plastic cups. On reflection, wow, how gross is this song lyrically? In fairness though, 17-year-old Hayley's internalised misogyny is on a level with 30-year-old Drake's now so I guess I'll allow her. KIRBY PARTINGTON

As a teen I had a propensity to take things fairly literally, and as a specifically emo-leaning teen I had a moral responsibility towards feeling #misunderstood. So of course I have a very distinct memory of walking around my local area, alone, in the rain, listening to "When It Rains," my dodgy side-fringe stuck to my face by the wet. I usually reserved Bright Eyes, the sad girl's premium choice, as my music for feeling sorry for myself when it was pissing it down, but this more downbeat Riot! cut also did the job nicely. I learned about being a drama queen early thank you Paramore. LAUREN O'NEILL

Some people would suggest that "Let the Flames Begin" is filler, coming as it does during Riot!'s admittedly slightly saggy middle. Thirteen-year-old me, however, would have had to respectfully and loudly disagree. "Let the Flames Begin" has some of the most emo lyrics on the whole of this gloriously extra record, and that's what real #heads care about. It begins, "What a shame we all became such fragile broken things / a memory remains, just a tiny spark," and I'm fairly sure I had a school exercise book with those very words scrawled across the front, bookended by 'LAUREN O'NEILL.'

This, lads, is what you call a flawlessly constructed emo/pop punk crossover belter. This is having your heart broken in the middle of the summer, thrashing around with a hairbrush in your bedroom and then writing a really good poem about it with a pen and paper and then taking a picture of it next to some sentimental items and then uploading it to emopoetsociety.livejournal.com. It's exactly the sort of tune that would cause me to smash a half-full can on the floor and flip a table over before the vocals even kick in.

At the time, Paramore were usually compared to lighter mall punk bands like All Time Low, You Me At Six or, such was the state of rock criticism, Avril Lavigne, but when you break the arrangements down, Riot!and "Miracle" in particularbelongs more toward the darker, fuller side of the spectrum alongside Taking Back Sunday's Where You Want To Be or Bayside circa Bayside. There. I said it. Fight me, purists. Tenuous connections aside though, the greatest thing about Paramore is the fact that they simply don't sound like anybody else (at least they didn't before they released an album that is extremely *listens to Carly Rae Jepsen's EMOTION once*). Have the emotions of longing, frustration, hope and determination ever culminated in a more satisfying song (that you can fully pit to) than "Miracle"? The answer is, passionately, no. EMMA GARLAND

"Crushcrushcrush" may be about the dark side to having a crush but emo lyrics are essentially formulated to be applicable to anything utterly miserable tbh. I remember the power in angrily singing the mantra crushcrushcrush; to destroy boys I fancied, parents who only had bile in their throats for each other, the sexual power I suddenly had over older men who I was both enamored with and disgusted by, enemies real and imagined, my body running on next to no sustenance, and my mind, already regulated by antidepressants. Listening to that song, I could crush it all. Especially for someone who spent all their time alone as a teenager, the lines "we're all alone now, give me something to sing about" and "nothing compares to a quiet evening alone" soared. This was one last defiant monologue on the album, before the catharsis of admitting that we're all broken. "Crushcrushcrush" doesn't mean all that now but it's still the best Paramore to do pissed karaoke to. HANNAH EWENS

I was lostlike, alone in a crowd, quirky-teen lostwhen I heard this. I was searching for myself. Or God? Either way it was clich. This song snagged on customary teen snark. Lyrics that usually rolled over me locked into me when it played. I cried when I first heard it, like I was in an angsty CW show. It's a hymn. It's praise, it's faith. It's anger and it's a reminder, comfort and catharsis. I wasn't alone, clearly. BOLU BABALOLA

This brings it all back tbh: flailing braids, remote as a mic, a mirrorbeing a teen who didn't relate to what she was meant to. Essentially, a precocious art hoe. WIth my attitude flagrant, this song was assurance. I didn't need people to get me. I got me. You don't need to let them in if you don't want them in, or to be seen as someone you're not to fit in if you see yourself. Art hoe vindication. I was insufferable and empowered. BOLU BABALOLA

One of the best things about Paramore and this album both being so objectively great is that Hayley Williams is a woman. Emo as it existed back in 2007 was dominated by men, and as a young girl who loved it, it meant a lot to me to hear Hayley smashing seven shades of shit out of a song better than any guy I could (and can) think of. "Born For This" is an excellent example of how important she was, not least because even when I hear it now, I think the exact same thought as I did when I first got hold of it ten years ago. When the chorus hits, I have this fantasy where I am Hayley, on stage head-banging my orange hair, one foot on an amp, mic cord round my neck, singing to a crowd. On Riot!, which saw Paramore arguably at the height of their powers, Hayley made emo girls realise that they could be rock stars toothat they could be "Born For This" tooand that alone is an enviable legacy. LAUREN O'NEILL

You can tell Lauren, Emma, Bolu, Kirby, Hannah, and Tom about your 2007 memories on Twitter.

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Track-by-Track of Paramore's 'Riot!' Read Through Emo Teen Memories - Noisey