WESTMORELAND, Kan. — The Pottawatomie County Commission is inching closer to having its 2020 budget finalized for submission.
The proposed budget for 2020 was approved for publication last week, with a projected mill levy at 28.246 mills, compared to 29.983 mills in the 2019 budget.
“We’ve had increased valuation, so we took that into consideration and went to where the tax lid would allow,” Pottawatomie County Commissioner Dee McKee said Tuesday on KMAN’s In Focus.
During Monday’s commission meeting, the board discussed the public works budget and appropriations moving forward. Public Works Director Peter Clark informed commissioners that the proposed budget lacks adequate funding for bridge replacement and maintenance as well as for upgrading equipment. Commissioner McKee says several line items can be looked at.
“We have some equipment that is old and the repair costs are getting higher than the idea of getting a new one. The landfill is doing much more receive and transfer with HAM over at Perry. Construction adds to that and other trash hauling for more people and so we have more repairs needed at the landfill,” McKee said.
A wet spring and winter have caused a number of issues along the miles of roadway in Pottawatomie County for repairs, which McKee says might be covered somewhat by FEMA dollars. She says, they need to be ready though in case those dollar dry up.
“The repairs are going to be largely on local government again and this becomes a challenge. As we did with fire trucks, we’re trying to put together a budget so we replace things on a rotation of six to seven years and we are building a facility for road and bridge. Ours is still one of the W.P.A buildings and it’s not adequate to lift and carry and take care of safely the work we do on equipment,” McKee said.
The proposed 2020 budget allows for $34.4 million in general fund budget authority. That’s an increase of nearly $4 million over the 2019 budget. The assessed value of property in Pottawatomie County also spiked to nearly $95 million in 2019.
With that said, the county faces challenges from retailers using the dark store theory, or hypothetical leased fee value — appraising commercial properties as vacant buildings to lower the amount of property tax owed to counties. The Kansas Board of Tax Appeals earlier this year ruled in favor of Bass Pro Shops in Johnson County, valuing the property at $102 million rather than the $157 million appraised by county assessors. County officials statewide fear it could result in a shift of the tax burden to property owners should counties be forced to write reimbursement checks.
“The concern is that schools and other people have not saved the money to make those reimbursements that may come about and we’ve had one on an elevator recently in Onaga,” McKee said. “Others are in that protest mode and mostly the challenge is whether that opens up changes in appraisal issues.”
Pottawatomie County won a protest from Menard’s in 2018. Many more Kansas retailers are expected to have their cases heard by the state Board of Tax appeals this year.
In other business, the Green Valley Plan continues to push forward along with the county’s comprehensive plan, looking ahead to 2040.
McKee on Tuesday continued to lobby for a bridge connecting the northern part of Manhattan to Blue Township via Marlatt Ave. and Junietta Road over the Big Blue River. Doing so would create a a north route into Manhattan as an alternative to the Hwy 24 corridor which leads to the heart of the Manhattan shopping district. McKee says the need was highlighted even more last month when part of Hwy 24 had to be closed due to flooding.
“The operation and success of the whole region that we need to have a safe and secure highway bridge in a second location to allow if a truck wreck or something else stops traffic that people can go from Wamego to Manhattan. It’s comprehensive planning, collaboration between communities,” McKee said.
The commission has disagreed in the past on the ultimate need for a north route and there’s also been push back from Riley County on wanting to share in the cost of a major bridge project. McKee contends its in Pottawatomie County’s best interest now to acquire the right-of-way and establish the route before houses are built up in that region of the county. She says 75 percent of Blue Township residents have expressed an interest in having a bridge on Junietta Road and many have stated they’d be willing to pay for it. One way to help pay for a bridge, McKee says would be to make it a toll bridge.
“We have the Bluetooth studies of transportation traffic numbers already. So if you can put in a toll bridge and pay for a large part of it that would be an answer and it isn’t well known by a lot of people that a possibility (like that) exists. It will be sad if we become like Wichita where they needed a southwest passage but didn’t hold the right-of-way and the cost of buying properties became enormous,” McKee said.
Commissioners will hold a joint meeting Thursday with the Pottawatomie County Planning Commission to discuss their countywide comprehensive plan. That meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Sunflower Room in Westmoreland.
