ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Seward County’s valuation, mill levies and levied taxes have remained stagnant for the last 20 years, and Administrator April Warden said with that sluggishness and a lack of growth on tax rolls, as well as higher costs and expenses, the county in recent years has had to dip into its reserves to keep from raising taxes on property owners.
However, Warden said reserves only last for so long, and eventually, county leaders will need to find other ways to balance the budget including alternative revenue streams and making cuts.
This year, the county is in the middle of a Board of Tax Appeals (BOTA) case in which the taxpayer claimed officials with Appraiser Angela Eichman’s office appraised their value at a higher rate than it should have.
Currently, the case has yet to be settled, and the taxpayer is asking for close to $6 million to settle the case, and county property owners recently received a letter stating this year’s mill levy could be raised close to 26 mills.
At last week’s town hall meeting in Liberal, though, Warden reminded property owners that number is a worst case scenario, and should the case be decided by Oct. 1, the date by which the county is required to certify a budget for Fiscal Year 2026, the $6 million represents 21 out of the nearly 26 mills proposed under that scenario.
“This potential payback has been going on for quite a while,” she said. We had a Board of Tax Appeals case where a taxpayer was protesting their value. Those years started out as ’18, ’19 and ’20.”
Part of the money from the county’s budget is distributed to other local taxing entities such as the City of Liberal, USD 480, USD 483, Seward County Community College and libraries in both Liberal and Kismet, as well as the county’s Rural Fire District. Warden said the BOTA case affects not only the county, but those entities as well, as they try to budget around what has yet to be decided.
“It’s very difficult to figure out a budget when the unknowns are that huge,” she said.
Warden said after the case was heard by BOTA, it was appealed by the taxpayers to District Court, but with the taxpayer being from Seward County, court officials felt there was a conflict of interest. Therefore, the case was passed on to Sedgwick County District Court.
Warden said a judge who was supposed to retire in June is hearing the case, and he recently asked for an extension due to not having a final decision on the case and other cases.
“We have been expecting to have a ruling from many weeks now,” she said. “We still do not have a ruling on that.”
No matter what happens in Sedgwick County, Warden said there are still other appeals processes the case could go through before a final decision is reached.
“With that being said, if we happen to find out if we got a ruling, if we knew that case was going to be settled before budgets have to be certified on Oct. 1 to the county clerk’s office, it would definitely allow your commissioners to be able to set a more realistic budget knowing what that would be,” she said.
Unfortunately, though, with a decision yet to be made, Warden said county leaders are having to look at a worst case scenario with this year’s budget.
“This amount does include statutory interest,” she said. “The statute rate of interest is 8.25 percent right now. The number we’ve provided you with tonight does include interest.”
The case could potentially be appealed two more times, but Warden did say either the county or the taxpayer could decide to go directly to the Kansas Supreme Court where a final decision would be rendered. She said until that ruling, the county only has proposed estimates for its mill levy for FY 2026.
Commissioner Tammy Sutherland-Abbott said the large amount is due to previous commissions not setting aside funding to help pay back the taxpayer.
“They were spent each year, so we’re having to make up for years past for funds that should be put aside,” she said. “That’s why it seems such a huge hit to us now all at once. This would be a one-time hit.”
Warden said Eichman would be required to enter the eventual decision in her system, and the county’s valuation would then be lowered by that amount.
The taxpayer’s protested value came in at the end of a 10-year abatement when the business’s valuation came on the county’s tax rolls at its full value. Warden said what was appraised was equipment that is not permanently in place and as such should not be part of the appraisal.
“A lot of plants are protesting their taxes saying they can up and move the equipment, and it’s not permanent, so they are not seeing as real property or real estate,” she said. “Unfortunately, when legislation got involved and made a ruling, it set the precedent.”
Warden said with that case and a recently settled case with DCP National Helium, the county is getting attention across the state.
“There are other taxpayers in our community that could be looking at the same thing,” she said. “People are looking at how this is going to be ruled on, and that could have an effect on future people paying under protest and us going through the same scenario. There are other communities within the state that are watching what could happen and if they’re going to have this happening in their communities as well.”
Warden said the final payment was made to DCP National Helium this year, and she said this affected how previous commissions looked at the current case.
“We were able to negotiate with DCP National Helium, and they allowed the taxing entities that were involved in that particular case to pay it back over a five-year period so people weren’t having to come up with that money,” she said. “The taxing entities weren’t having to come up with that money all at once.”
When faced with a BOTA case such as the current situation the county has, Warden said the county is responsible for all taxing entities.
“These commissioners are faced with the question of do we fight them, do we try to settle this, and they look to experts,” she said. “We have outside legal counsel on this who specializes in this area. They don’t have a crystal ball. They don’t know how it’s going to come out either, but they try to advise them if they feel there’s a good case, if they feel we would be wasting taxpayer dollars if we continue to fight this.”
Sutherland-Abbott said county leaders must weigh out whether to extend and fight the case, as with each passing day comes more interest.
“You have to weigh the whole thing out, whether it’s worth the battle or not, and part of it is not even up to our discretion,” she said. “If they decide they want to fight it, they’ll drag it out, and we have no choice, but we’ll still have to pay the interest.”
Warden said the taxing units the county distributes money to often face different situations amongst each other and from the county itself.
“One agency might be able to go down one year because they’re having a better year,” she said. “There might be another taxing agency that’s not having a good year. This year, it’s the county, and we’re looking at having to increase ours.”
Warden said commissioners were presented with an initial budget proposal earlier this year, but department heads were told to comb through their budgets and find more possible cuts.
“Some departments cut their hours,” she said. “Their employees were willing to cut their hours to 32 hours a week. The jail did agree to a cut of six potential officers, which is something we will have to monitor.”
Warden said many questions need to be answered before a budget is approved, and she said this year’s budget talks have featured some firsts for her.
“Do we know we’re going to be able to function at that level right now?” she said. “We don’t, but it’s something her and her employees were willing to try. The clerk’s office gave up an additional employee. Road and Bridge shifted their hours. Everybody is shifting their hours. The commissioners talked about layoffs. In the 25 years I’ve been here, we’ve never had to talk about laying off employees before.”
Warden said department heads were able to cut an additional three mills from the initial budget, and she said more cuts could prove more severe than those.
“There are other areas we can cut, but it would mean cutting services to the community,” she said. “Are you as taxpayers willing for those services to be cut?”
Sutherland-Abbott said counties are mandated by the state to provide 18 services regardless of funding.
Warden said county staff face funding situations every day, and they are trying to educate constituents about budgets too.
“We try to get information out there,” she said. “Oftentimes, it’s a constant thing, but until you’re sitting in their shoes, you have no idea what you’re dealing with or the challenges you’re going to face.”
Warden said other communities are facing similar situations to the county’s, as are other states across the country.
“Anytime there’s a change in leadership, good or bad, things change, and things are unsettled, and we’re just going through a lot of that right now,” she said.
At times such as these, Warden said all of the county’s taxing units seem to be working together.
“It’s good to know you have that support when others are reaching out to you,” she said. “It’s good to know we support one another in times like that.”
Some in the town hall audience felt the county was purchasing high-priced vehicles for some of its departments, but Commission Chairman Scott Carr said commissioners and staff try to be frugal with taxpayer money.
“You look at our vehicle fleet,” he said. “We’ve got four old vehicles for the appraiser’s office. We use the hand me downs at the sheriff’s office or the landfill. We use them in Planning and Zoning. We’re not going out and purchasing new vehicles for all the departments. Even our health department has used vans.”
Sutherland-Abbott encouraged constituents to examine the county’s budget and its expenditure, but she added a large cause of the current situation is due to normal maintenance projects continuously being pushed aside.
“It’s going to cost more the longer we put it off, and this is a one-time thing we have to address,” she said.
Commissioner Presephoni Fuller said some of the county’s newer vehicles have been paid for with grant money, and grants such as the Kansas Department of Transportation’s High Risk Rural Roads grant have helped pay for some road and bridge projects in the county.
Fuller too praised the work of Seward County Health Department Administrator Brie Greeson at getting grant funding to help pay employees of the local Women Infants and Children program at the health department.
“We’re doing the best we can and trying our best to figure out a budget for our employees to make sure they’re healthy and happy,” Fuller said. “It’s $7 million. We cut that down. I can’t tell you the amount of time, the hours we have spent trying not to increase your taxes. We’re all having to pay. I know for some people, abatement is a bad word, but we’ve got to get some businesses here.”
Warden said she feels the current commission has tried to be more transparent than any previous commission.
“We’ve had the town hall meetings,” she said. “We’re getting the budgets out there. Every decision goes before a commission meeting for a purchase even if it’s a capital expenditure purchase that was approved at budget time. They still make the department heads come back to a meeting, make sure they follow the purchasing policy and the bidding procedures to make sure we are being wise with our money. It’s just a really unfortunate time we’re in.”
Fuller said county leaders will find a way to make a budget that works despite everything that has taken place up until now.
“We are a resilient community,” she said. “We’re going to figure this out. With economic development, we have some things in the pipeline, and while it won’t bring a lot of revenue in, it is helping some people be employed. It is helping some folks get some income, liveable income, liveable wages. We need the big box businesses to really make a difference.”
Warden said while many people want growth in the community, others differ, and this puts road blocks to the wanted growth.
“They’ve heard for years we have these businesses that are wanting to come in,” she said. “However, there’s always some sections of the community that want to shut down growth.”
Warden said this presents another list of questions for local leaders to answer.
“Do we really want to grow as a community?” she said. “Do we really want to have the services we’re getting know? Are we going to question a lot of the things we’re doing to better our community? That’s something we have to answer, and as a community, we have to come together and answer those questions. What I may be in favor of, the next person may not be in favor of, and unfortunately, we’re hurting ourselves by not being open to things and trying to shut things down no matter what it is. We’ve had some things in the works, and we’ve had some people pull out due to different things in the community that ended up preventing them from coming.”
Carr agreed, saying new growth is a must for the county.
“We’ve got the wind farms, we’ve got the solar farms that want to come,” he said. “We’ve probably got a split commission on it. It doesn’t just affect Seward County. It affects the city too.”
Typical of republicans,they mismanage things for years and then blame other republicans for the problems. When will you learn that the people you are electing are not good at this. If you all think that this will ever be made right by these same incompetent people, you are wrong.
If you think that there is growth to be made, wrong again. A solar farm is growth? How will that grow the community when the county is going to lay people off? Any jobs created by a solar farm will go to people who already live in the community.
Wait until 2027, when Medicare and Medicaid cuts happen and SWMC closes. There will be plenty of people looking for work then. Can’t help people who vote against their own best interests.