Jackson County legislators focus on taxes, put off plans for replacing decrepit jail
Plans to replace the decaying Jackson County jail were put off indefinitely Monday by a county legislature that once considered it a critical priority.
Legislators now have a new priority as they are beset with angry phone calls from constituents worried that the 2019 reassessment will send their property tax bills soaring.
“We’re getting too many emails. I mean I’m getting emails that start at 1 in the morning,” legislative chairwoman Theresa Galvin said after the meeting.
The two issues have no direct connection — the county has been setting aside money for jail construction and the need to replace the Jackson County Detention Center hasn’t changed.
But during a more than two-hour meeting Monday that focused largely on reassessment issues and tax levies, legislators said it was not a good time to be spending $9 million on a jail project management contract. Not when people’s taxes might go way up for other reasons.
The jail contract has mysteriously been on hold for more than a month and the subject of little discussion at four previous weekly meetings.
If individual legislators have specific objections to the contract with JCDC Partners LLC, they have not stated them publicly. Nor did they offer much other rationale Monday than being uncomfortable with moving forward on a big spending measure under current circumstances.
But several also said the jail remains a priority.
“I’d like to see something happen,” legislator Tony Miller said in summing up that sentiment.
Galvin told The Star she’s not sure when the project will move ahead, but noted during the meeting that internal security problems at the jail seem to have eased some in the past year. Diana Turner, who heads the county’s corrections department, told legislators last week that it had been that long since she last notified them of a major problem.
In recent years, there have been numerous reports of violence against guards by detainees, as well as sexual assaults of inmates by other inmates, escapes and problems with the building’s plumbing.
Legislators were focused Monday on the tax levies they will set next week ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline and what effect reassessment will have on those levies.
At the center of that discussion was County Executive Frank White’s proposal Sunday night to voluntarily roll back the county levy beyond what the state requires. His plan for a $3 million cut in tax receipts (from $69 million down to $66 million) would help lessen the blow of a countywide reassessment process that has been criticized for its alleged ineptitude and big increases for certain neighborhoods.
White said that under his proposal two-thirds of property owners likely would owe county government less this year than last, if their home value held steady. For those whose values went up, the reduction would mean their taxes would go up less than they might have otherwise.
According to the county finance department, the owners of a house valued at $200,000 would see a $43 reduction in the county government part of their tax bills if the value of their house hadn’t changed since last year.
But Dan Tarwater, the longest-serving member of the legislature, said that example distorts reality because only a minority of properties saw their real estate values stay the same or decline.
The truth is that people’s taxes will likely go up, Tarwater said.
“The people that have gotten hurt the worst are in affluent areas,” he said.
White’s chief of staff, Caleb Clifford, said in a text after the meeting that under White’s proposal 70 percent of taxpayers would see a decrease in their county taxes.
The county has previously said that about half of all homeowners — 54 percent — saw increases of 15 percent or less during the 2019 reassessment. Nearly a third saw much larger increases, double and triple what they were on the tax rolls for a year ago, leading to tens of thousands of appeals.
If approved by the county legislature, White’s tax cut would only apply to county government’s levies, which account for about 8 percent of the tax bill for someone who lives in the area served by the Kansas City School District.
“The County executive is proposing the maximum amount that the County can rollback their property tax levies that will still generate the revenue necessary to support the County’s 2019 budget,” White’s Sunday night news release said.
State law forbids most taxing districts from receiving a big windfall from the reassessment process. After subtracting revenue from new or improved real estate assessments, tax revenues received from existing properties in the aggregate can go up no more than 1.9 percent this year. However, individual tax bills can go up much more, while others could see declines.
Dozens of other taxing districts have yet to set their levies, but White said he hopes they will follow his lead.
County legislators were not impressed with White’s proposal, saying his administration should have fixed the reassessment process on the front end so that his proposed tax reduction wouldn’t be necessary.
“There were obvious mistakes made, and instead of fixing them, we just continue to roll,” Crystal Williams said.
Her colleague Ron Finley said the amount being proposed would have little impact on an average homeowner’s tax bill when the levies from all taxing districts were added on.
Time had been set aside on Monday’s agenda for discussion of last week’s release of an audit that alleged mismanagement of the Community-backed Anti-Crime Tax, commonly known as COMBAT.
But because White was out of town on business, Prosecutor Jean Peter Baker asked that her discussion on the audit be rescheduled.
This story was originally published September 23, 2019 at 6:01 PM.
