L&T Publisher Earl Watt

It’s amazing to see how people come together when faced with adversity.

Seward County rallies when facing challenges like fires, or even in fun when we put our best runner against the best runner of Olney, England in the International Pancake Race.

But it’s not very often when the public rallies to fight an injustice of an unneeded and unwarranted tax increase like the one passed Sept. 15 by the Seward County Commission.

There is no need to rehash what we already know — the tax was unpopular and supported by elected officials who refused to listen to the public.

There has been so many good outcomes form the public’s perspective after facing such an uphill battle.

The old adage tells us you can’t fight city hall. That’s a bad analogy here because Liberal’s “City Hall” has been doing an amazing job of involving and responding to the public and its concerns. It’s not an issue at the city or city hall.

The challenge here was challenging the Seward County Citadel where the edict was issued against the will of the people.

The point of the saying is that the elected leaders who hold the power over the community will always win, and the people can do little about it.

Don’t believe it.

The people engaged in a way I have not seen in my lifetime in Seward County.

They challenged  what they were being told. They found misstatements, flaws and flat out provable inaccuracies, and they brought that to light.

David Box went to work researching Kansas law and whether or not the process was properly being followed.

I did not know Mr. Box prior to this effort to right a wrong, and I have come to enjoy conversations with Mr. Box and his insight on issues of government and public involvement.

Dave’s research and data has been very helpful in making a case against the previous commission — a case that led to the current commission voluntarily returning to the Revenue Neutral Rate rather than trying to defend the massive tax hike in front of the Kansas Board of Tax Appeals where the case filed by Box and I has been in process.

What we wanted was the massive 17-mill increase to be removed and a budget to reflect reduced spending that would not spend the surplus that has been built by past commissions before three members of the 2025 commission started to spend it.

Had we made our case to BOTA, that was our target. We got 100 percent of that.

That’s why this week Dave Box and I agreed with Treasurer Mary Rose that refunds have been made and the tax properly rescinded and signed a release of our case.

But that wouldn’t have happened without the research and work of Carolyn Huddleston.

Carolyn invested countless hours looking into county budgets, payrolls, benefits packages, bonuses and more, and she has shared that data as it compared to the statements made.

It is my hope that the current commission will utilize the data compiled by Ms. Huddleston.

While Carolyn attended the same church I do, we rarely spoke before this injustice. Since then, we have visited on a regular basis, and she has provided me with so much data that it has made me a much better journalist when covering the county.

If there is one lesson to be learned it is to make sure that the horse’s mouth of the county must be fact-checked, and it is not enough to just accept a claim or rhetoric without supporting documentation.

Over and over Carolyn has proven the administration statements wrong, and only the commission can hold its staff accountable. Or, they can reject the obvious facts being presented by the public and continue to accept flawed information at face value. Whether or not the commission chooses to do so will determine whether or not we are able to move forward with the public being able to trust the information it receives. The public owes a great debt of gratitude to both Box and Huddleston for verifying claims that continue to mislead.