Wyandotte County pitches higher tax bills, revamped services after year of cuts
Wyandotte County residents may have to hand over a bit more cash when property tax bills go out this year, local government documents show. And those extra dollars just might re-fuel area services after a year of cuts.
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, announced plans to collect additional property tax revenues — meaning residents will see higher bills — in the coming fiscal year. The county’s resolution of intent came a year after it decided to put a cap on extra property tax dollars in an effort to suppress residents’ concerns about gradually rising bills, but also at a time when many goods and services are more expensive.
County commissioners are scheduled to discuss plans to collect new revenues in an effort to restore struggling local services during a July 10 board meeting. They will also set a public hearing that would allow residents to weigh in on the topic, according to board documents.
The agenda item, as of midday Wednesday, did not specify exactly how much more in revenue the Unified Government plans to collect. The notice meets the commission’s July 20 deadline to inform government staff whether they planned to freeze those property tax revenues for a second consecutive year. They’re likely to adopt a specific tax rate in August.
The 2024 decision to go revenue neutral, or not collect additional property tax dollars based on increased home and business valuations, prompted government-wide cuts and directly harmed local services and agencies. Public safety, transportation, services for aging residents and public works all saw funding cuts that affected day-to-day operations.
Adopting a tax rate that would collect new revenues from rising valuations would increase the amount of money channeled into various government programs that were affected.
What’s the most the UG could collect?
Since home values increased across Wyandotte County this year, the Unified Government may be able to collect 9% more in property tax revenues in 2026 than in 2025 without changing its current tax rate.
Should the commission vote to collect that full 9%, it would generate $12.6 million in added revenue across the city and county, according to the Unified Government’s chief financial officer.
David Johnston, county administrator, told commissioners earlier this summer that his team plans to propose collecting less than the full amount it could if it kept the tax rate the same. That means that tax rates could go down but bills would still go up on the Unified Government portion of residents’ property tax bills, just not as much as they could have.
How does the UG affect my bills?
The Unified Government doesn’t make up the entirety of someone’s property tax bill. There are several local taxing entities — including school districts, municipalities, the community college, the state and more — that pay for their operations using public property tax dollars.
Each year during the budgeting season, those entities adopt a tax rate that they apply to the value of residential and commercial properties within their taxing districts. This means that unless a property owner has an exemption, the higher a property is valued, the more the tax bill on that property will be.
Those public dollars allow school districts, local governments and other institutions to finance their general fund operations, or the everyday things it takes to keep services running.
When an entity freezes those revenues, it refrains from collecting new dollars generated by increasing property values in the area.
Governments with healthy surpluses can freeze revenues and keep up with the day-to-day. But, when the budget is already strained – like the Unified Government’s – a revenue-neutral budget can defund services.
Values have consistently increased across Wyandotte County in recent years, plaguing cash-strapped residents and becoming particularly difficult to foot in the post-COVID-19 pandemic years when values skyrocketed.
And while values are continuing to increase, the Wyandotte County Appraiser’s Office said the rate at which those values are increasing has started to slow down.
According to a Unified Government breakdown of 2025 tax bills:
The Unified Government accounts for 44% of property tax bills paid by KCK residents living in KCKPS and Turner Unified School District;
Bonner Springs residents living in USD 204 pay 22% of their property tax bills to the Unified Government. Edwardsville residents living in the same district pay 21%;
Piper residents living in USD 203 pay 21% to the city and 20% to the county.
