The heart of the matter
Greg Bachman
Thursday, November 2, 2006
THE EMPORIA Area Chamber of Commerce is a business organization. The chamber has 500 member businesses that represent thousands of employees. The mission of the chamber is to promote a positive business environment and to represent the concerns of their members. The No. 1 concern of the members is the unfavorable tax rates in our community.
The chamber has actively pursued changes in county government. Many of the opponents have asked why the chamber is getting involved. Why is the chamber sticking their nose into the county’s business? The answer is really quite simple. Taxes, taxes, taxes! Lyon County and therefore the city of Emporia have a very unfavorable tax climate. In examining our peer cities in Kansas, our county mill levy is the second highest of any county with a first-class city in Kansas. The city and the school district mill levies are close to the middle of the pack in the same peer group. It is reasonable to assume that to control taxes that you should focus on the area that is out of line.
Taxes are a major concern of all businesses. Unfavorable tax rates affect large and small businesses alike. This is a fixed cost that must be paid before anything else. Taxes affect capital expenditures, equity, growth, expenses and your wages. Excessive taxes can prohibit employment growth and wage increases. Many small retail businesses struggle to make those payments each year. Many large industries consider other locations for expansions and employment growth.
Our county commissioners say that we don’t need professional management. We have good quality managers and an excellent commission that run the county business. We agree that we have quality people in the courthouse, but it is impossible to ignore that the taxes levied have increased by 59 percent in the last six years. If we continue on this pace your county taxes will double in the next five years. Have our commissioners and managers lost sight of the taxpayer? Are we running out of control? How many of the residents of Lyon County have increased their standard of living by 59 percent in the last six years.
The opponents have tried to make this a city versus county issue. We believe that we will all benefit from lower taxes. County residents share in the pain of high taxes as well as the city residents. Why should city residents be concerned? Sixty-five percent of all taxes paid to Lyon County are paid by the residents and businesses in the city of Emporia. As a comparison, only 10 percent of the taxes paid are from agriculture land. Commissioner Myson Van Gundy was recently quoted saying, “Maybe we should ask the city.” We are sure that the commissioner was saying that in jest, but if 65 percent of the bill is being paid by the city folks, maybe he should.
Emporia and Lyon County need growth. We have been stagnating for many years. Our population has not seen any significant growth for the last two censuses. Our employment numbers have remained constant but have shifted more to manufacturing and government. Our per-capita income is one of the lowest in the state. Our biggest growth areas have been in local government and government-owned entities. Five of our top 10 employers are now local government or government-owned entities. We have had modest gains in sales tax collections, but we are still behind the numbers that we had in 2001. If you figure in inflation, we are considerably short of where we were just five years ago. Our pull factor, which measures the amount of dollars leaving our community compared to those coming into our community, has continued to drop. We are now in a negative position. Positioning ourselves with favorable tax rates will allow this community to expand and grow.
Nov. 7 is a very important day for our community. We get to exercise our democratic right to vote. The questions are, do we need professionally trained management to oversee our $24 million budget and can we the tax payer be better represented by five people instead of three? We urge every registered voter in Lyon County to study the issues and make your vote count.
johnsie (anonymous) says...
This is no more than another McKenna canned speech. It reminds me of something I would pull out of my little file box during a 1950's high school debate.
November 2, 2006 at 9:30 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )