COTTONWOOD FALLS — Chase County isn’t going to give up its Farm Service Agency easily.
Several hundred Chase County and area residents gathered at Swope Park in Cottonwood Falls Monday afternoon to comment about and offer alternative solutions to an agency proposal to combine the Chase County and Lyon County offices in its new Emporia office space.
Bill R. Fuller, FSA state executive director, told the crowd why the Chase County office was one of 11 in Kansas selected to be consolidated with offices in adjoining counties.
He said the closing would save $18,238 in office rent, an unspecified amount in postage and shipping and staff time and would have other benefits.
“The point is, folks, we cannot afford — don’t have the resources — where we can have the luxury of having a … full staff in each county,” Fuller said. “We’ve got to focus it where the workload is.”
Fuller recounted the history of the agency and the federal government’s attempts to reduce its size.
Fuller said that administrative costs for the Chase County office in FY 2005 were $225,808. Chase County had the highest cost in the state — 18 cents — to provide a dollar of benefits. Other counties provided the same services for less than five cents per dollar, and in some instances, one cent or every $1 spent in benefits.
The 2002 census for agriculture ranked Chase County as the second-lowest county in Kansas in the amount of cropland, which totals 82,377 acres, Fuller said.
Chase also has the second-fewest owner/operators in Kansas. Several residents who attended said they estimated the total number of people using agency services at about double the figure used by the state. Fuller said that figures he presented all were based on the same types of information; therefore, if the Chase County numbers were based on other totals, the state’s would be likewise and the ratios would not vary.
Fuller said that Chase County issued the smallest number of program payments in the state during 2004 and 2005 and that the county has the fifth-smallest workload of the state’s offices. The agency now has offices in 103 of Kansas’ 105 counties, and is seeking to close 11 of those offices, and consolidate them with offices in adjoining counties.
The Chase County employees would be transferred to Lyon County, with the exception of the director. Committees from Chase and Lyon counties would need to vote to determine which director would take charge. The remaining director would be placed in another director job at the first opportunity.
Fuller said that farmers and ranchers in Chase County would be able to utilize agency offices in adjoining counties, although Lyon County would be the site of the consolidated office.
Chase Countians said, however, that Lyon County would not be capable of handling the additional number of operators who would come in from their county.
Several complained about the delays they encountered doing business in Emporia, and some said that they had moved their accounts to Chase County in order to complete transactions quickly.
“You make an appointment and you’re lucky if you don’t have to wait more than four hours,” said Bert Glanville, who spoke during the open-comment portion of the meeting. “Chase County isn’t like that. Its employees take care of our people.”
Karen Nurnberg, who lives near the Chase/Lyon county line, made similar comments.
“They’re both great offices, but Lyon County has a lot of clients and you are waiting,” Nurnberg said. “You are asked to make appointments to go in and certify your acres.”
Nurnberg said her family had transferred its land out of Lyon County to the Chase County office because of the time they’d had to spend waiting for service in Emporia.
“With our line of work, you cannot make appointments and expect to be there (for prolonged periods),” she said.
They also said that the agency needed to look at the exceptional expenses and economic damages that would result from closing the Chase County office.
Sue Smith, owner of the Emma Chase Cafe and the Prairie Maid Emporium in Cottonwood Falls, talked about the economic impact on businesses in the area. If Chase Countians have to drive to Emporia to conduct agency business, they “will purchase goods and services in the city instead of keeping it at home.
“It is imperative that as much as possible that everybody’s business be kept at home in order for these small businesses to survive,” Smith said.
“If the Flint Hills area is special enough to be the state’s advertising focus and National Geographic did 22 pages ... then it’s special enough to supply services to the men and women who keep the Tallgrass Prairie the remarkable place that it is,” she said.
Kim Reyer agreed. Reyer and his wife opened a feed store on Highway 50 at Strong City about a year ago. A small business such as his cannot afford to compete with larger stores and elevators, Reyer said. Those will become competition for his store, if Chase County farmers go to Emporia on a regular basis. He predicted that shifting purchases to Lyon would cause business closings in Chase County within a year or two.
“I’ll bet you, Lana and I (will be able to) draw you a graph of the effect that it had on our feed store,” Reyer said.
Several mentioned that added expenses to employees, as well as losses of business in Chase County, would far outweigh the benefits the federal government would receive from consolidating the two counties.
Lyle Burkhart of Cottonwood Falls gave a flip-chart presentation of costs that would be shifted to farmers, ranchers, and agency employees if the office consolidation was done. Because all employees, with the exception of one county director, would be retained, the Chase County employees would drive daily to Emporia to their jobs. That, he said, would increase use of gasoline and add expenses to their budgets, as well as those of the farmers and ranchers would would make repeated trips to Emporia to conduct their FSA business.
The added expenses for clients and employees would significantly exceed any savings benefit for FSA.
“You try to minimize the cost, but it still comes out in a big negative at the end,” Burkhart said.
Gordon Heathman suggested finding a less-expensive building to rent in Chase County. He said the agency currently is paying $31,000 annually for its office space. Heathman said he had found several buildings that would serve the purpose, with costs ranging from $6,000 to $16,800 per year.
Tom Heathman said that the $288,000 savings anticipated from closing 11 offices could be achieved by reducing producer payments statewide by three-tenths of 1 percent, or reducing wages of all FSA employees by 1.5 percent. He said the average FSA employee receives $38,000 per year.
Bob Bell suggested that each producer would be willing to pay an annual fee to help keep the Chase County office open. Some producers already have pledged up to $500 annually to the fund, he said.
“If each operator would pledge up to $100 annually for a membership fee, we could easily offset this $18,000 amount and more,” Bell said. “We would all rather do this ...”
Janet Ayers, teacher and life-long resident of the area, talked about the young children she teaches. An eight-foot-tall wooden Uncle Sam greets them as they come into class and a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol is nearby; they say the flag salute and, at the end of the day, they put their hands over their hearts and sing “America the Beautiful.” She said she didn’t teach them to do that.
“They’re proud that they’ve helped Somali refugees relocate,” Ayers said. “I’ve done all I can to teach them to be proud Americans, but I would like for you to come to my classroom and explain to them ... how we can spend millions of dollars on Somalian refugees in Lyon County, but for the families who have been here ... it’s not worth $1,800 a month?”