This is a continuing series of related to local candidates ahead of the Aug. 4 primary.
A former Manhattan mayor and city commissioner is hoping to win a seat on the Riley County Commission.
Republican John Matta is challenging incumbent Republican Ron Wells in the primary for District 3. Matta previously served on the Manhattan City Commission from 2011 to 2015 and says he felt the desire once again to get into public service.
“I did enjoy the public service and even back then I kind of thought, having been on the city commission, trying for the county commission, and I have a few key things I want to try,” he said.
Those key areas for his campaign are county efficiency and affordability, economic development, and regional cooperation. When it comes to county efficiency and affordability, Matta says his business background saw him lowering costs, while improving services.
“I did that managing operations much larger as far as staff and budgets compared to Riley County. Since 1997, Riley County taxes have gone up 290 percent while inflation has gone up 52 percent and population growth has gone up 15 percent, and obviously that’s not a sustainable formula,” he said.
Matta says while he wants to drive things regionally, he also wants to target rural economic growth, citing a desire to set up a rural development advisory board, if elected.
“I want to make that a focus of the county commission,” he said.
When it comes to economic development, Matta says the county has been struggling in this area even before the pandemic, stating that sales tax revenue and property valuations had flattened out, rental vacancy rates were rising, stagnant job growth and a falling enrollment at K-State.
For regional cooperation, Matta says this item is the driver of the other two and is key moving forward. Under Matta’s proposal, the county would work more with other counties, the city, and the school district to combine forces. The only way to get to the other goals he says, would be to drive those initiatives and groups together as much as possible.
An area Matta says hasn’t had good cooperation is the EMS service.
“We don’t have agreements with other counties to be able to get ambulance service across county lines. Also our main EMS building which is something that really needs to be addressed,” he said.
Matta says this issue needs to be the top item when it comes to capital that needs to be spent.
In terms of the COVID-19 response, Matta says the health department is doing a good job with the orders it’s putting out to the public. He agreed with the commission’s desire to opt out of the governor’s face mask mandate.
“The key going forward really is how well the county is going to be able to manage the city and everybody else here as far as any crisis budget management because the revenues aren’t going to be what they were. The county needs to be as wise as they can be with money, because no one can afford any tax increases right now,” he said.
Matta says one positive that may come out of the pandemic is that more people may be wanting to move to more rural areas.
“I think that does offer us a marketing focus to try to bring people into our community because we really do have a great community and a lot to offer. Taxes compared to a lot of places aren’t as high and our cost of living isn’t as high, so I think we’re going to have to use some of that to pull people in,” he said.
To hear the full interview with candidate John Matta, listen below. Coming up next week, KMAN will air candidate interviews in their entirety as part of In Focus.
