In booming western Johnson County, commission race heats up over spending, property taxes
Shirley Allenbrand, a moderate first-term commissioner representing Johnson County’s booming western district, faces two challengers to her political right in the Aug. 6 primary race focused on property taxes and county spending.
Allenbrand is seeking reelection in the district transforming with industrial growth, including the development of the $4 billion Panasonic plant in De Soto. She’s running on the promise of helping the county appropriately manage that growth in its last rural areas, while keeping property taxes low — touting that she’s voted to lower the mill levy each year of her term.
Her opponents are calling for a more conservative approach.
One challenger is Tony Bergida, a small business owner who serves on the Olathe Planning Commission. He argues Johnson County has a spending problem and should cut back the budget to offer greater tax relief to residents. He also feels municipalities should stop offering developers tax incentives, especially for “mega apartment complexes.”
The third in the race, Mike Storm, a business owner who previously ran for the community college board of trustees, has called for the most extreme change. He’s promoted eliminating or “privatizing” the county’s mental health center, the homeless shelter under development and other programs, plus taking extra money out of reserve funds, to slash taxes.
With a moderate platform, Allenbrand in 2020 defeated now-Kansas GOP Chairman Mike Brown, a conservative who came under fire at the time for telling his constituents to “buy a firearm” and prepare for a “coming war.” Her reelection campaign comes as she’s fallen out with the Johnson County GOP as the party moves further to the right, reshaped under former President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the county overall trends increasingly blue.
It’s a crucial election for residents in unincorporated areas and neighborhoods near sprawling development in Olathe, Edgerton, Gardner and De Soto, as leaders expect the region to see thousands of new jobs and an influx of traffic and businesses. And it comes as county staff warn the budget will be unsustainable if nothing changes over the next five years.
The Johnson County commission race is technically non-partisan, but candidates have made their political alignments clear. The 6th District race is the only commission seat on the Aug. 6 primary ballot. The two top vote-getters will advance to the November election.
Johnson County voters on Tuesday also will cast ballots in competitive primaries for sheriff and district attorney. Early voting has started in Johnson County, allowing registered voters to cast ballots in person until Aug. 5, except on Sunday.
On Aug. 6, polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
To learn more about the other Johnson County primary races, read our voter guide.
Tension with Johnson County GOP
Allenbrand, an Olathe native who previously owned senior care facilities, has called the primary the ugliest race she’s ever been in, as she has splintered with the Johnson County Republican Party in recent months.
A lifelong moderate Republican, Allenbrand said she’s had an increasingly turbulent relationship with the local party as it has moved further to the right. She attributes the tension to her work to help make the COVID-19 vaccine available during the pandemic, as well as her speaking out against Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s years-long and fruitless election fraud investigation, which she has called a waste of taxpayer dollars.
She also has been critical of the sheriff’s spending requests, saying he has not been transparent with his budgetary decisions while asking for increased funding.
“I have been very vocal about the sheriff. But if you are going to be a good county commissioner and show leadership, you have to look at the hard choices and decide how to do the right thing,” Allenbrand said.
Political cartoons shared among the GOP in recent months also have depicted Allenbrand, along with Chairman Mike Kelly, standing next to the proposed homeless shelter in Lenexa, labeled as a “migrant camp,” with people jumping over a fence. The county is purchasing a hotel in Lenexa with federal COVID-19 relief dollars, which officials plan to convert into a homeless shelter.
One cartoon about the shelter says “Welcome gangs, crime and drugs.”
Allenbrand said it’s all led her to recently switch her political affiliation to Democrat. Some of her campaign messages since have read: “Same Shirley. Same values. New look.”
“I’m not going to be a part of that. I felt like I had to do something. There’s probably problems in both parties, but I don’t deal with those issues now,” Allenbrand said. “Call me all the names you want, but I’m not going to be a part of that. I’m tired of it.”
Allenbrand in 2020 won 52% of the vote, defeating Brown. She ran for commission chair in 2022, but did not advance past the primary. Kelly won the seat in the general election.
Property taxes and budget cuts
The election comes during difficult budget talks, as county staff warn that the budget will become unsustainable over the next five years, as previously soaring property appraisals start to level off, sales tax revenue declines and other pressures including rising costs and inflation take a hit.
Johnson County commissioners intend to exceed the revenue neutral rate and collect additional property tax revenue to help buoy next year’s $1.8 billion budget. Officials said if the county were to forgo those added dollars, it would collect $23.5 million less in revenue.
For the next year, commissioners plan a quarter-mill reduction in the tax rate, saying they hope to ease the burden on taxpayers. Commissioners highlight that they have similarly lowered the tax rate in seven of the past eight years, but tensions have remained high as residents struggle to pay higher bills as home appraisals climb.
With county staff warning about the future, budget cuts or a tax increase are possible options in the coming years.
“It’s going to be difficult and we’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do,” Allenbrand said.
Allenbrand said because only a portion of the budget is funded with property taxes, commissioners will need to find creative ways to tighten their belts, such as seeking more grant funding and partnerships with community organizations to fund programs. She said, for example, state grants allowed the county to add more positions to the mental health center and establish a youth crisis center for young people experiencing an emergency.
She’s proud of voting with the commission to lower the mill levy each year during her term, while the budget has increased, she said, due to growing population and an increase in needs for mental health and other services. Johnson County, for example, provides crisis intervention, counseling, substance abuse recovery and other programs through its mental health center.
But her opponents argue the work hasn’t been good enough in providing residents with property tax relief.
Bergida argues that the county’s budget has increased too quickly and by too much in the past decade, while residents have suffered from rising tax bills.
“The county manager has said the budget is not sustainable in the long-term. Because of that, I think some folks might try to use that as an excuse to try to raise property taxes,” Bergida said. “We don’t have a revenue problem in Johnson County. We have a spending problem to a certain extent.”
He believes the county could save money by getting vacant properties back on the tax roll and finding ways to trim across departments, such as by using more efficient technology. Bergida also believes the county should rely on resident surveys to determine what programs have the least impact, and evaluate areas to cut from those budgets first. He said core programs should be prioritized, and the county should focus on addressing problems including the need for mental health services.
Bergida has been critical of the hefty tax incentive package offered to developers, including for the Panasonic project which received state and local subsidies. Kansas officials awarded Panasonic $829 million in incentives from a new program designed for the firm. Johnson County committed $15 million, half for a new fire station near the plant and half for road improvements.
“I’m for smart growth in this county,” he said. “I understand that oftentimes the government needs to work with the chambers of commerce and businesses to make sure we’re prosperous here in the county. But I think it’s time for us to rethink some of our policy positions in terms of automatically giving away incentives.”
Storm is also critical of the incentives for Panasonic, and has pushed back against recent apartment development, saying residents of his districts want a “slower life.”
On the budget, he has called for the toughest approach to lowering taxes.
“The pet project stuff ... the mental health facility, the homeless shelter, some of this can be not just eliminated, but at least be privatized,” he said during a debate put on by a local podcast. “We have opportunities everywhere to cut money back. We have money in reserves ... carrying more than what’s allowed on county policy. ... We can get that money back and give it back to the people.”
He argued that the mental health center, for example, is over-funded.
“The commissioners, they are crazy, spending money like drunk sailors,” Storm said during the debate. “We need to learn to privatize some of the services that we offer. I’m not saying we can’t incentivize those services, but we need to privatize them.”
Homeless shelter
Allenbrand feels the county was smart to use federal COVID-19 relief dollars to establish a new permanent homeless shelter at a hotel off of Interstate 35, something that advocates have long pleaded officials to create.
The county is spending more than $10 million in federal funds to purchase and renovate the property. Officials this spring selected Kansas City nonprofit reStart Inc. to operate the shelter. Stephanie Boyer, CEO of reStart, said the $1.7 million needed annually to run the shelter would be funded mostly by grants and private donations, as well as revenue generated from services. But she said the shelter would also need public support.
Officials are considering a plan where the county and each city could put in money to help close the annual $500,000 funding gap in the shelter’s first years.
Allenbrand said she would like the public funding to be over a shorter time frame, but otherwise has supported the shelter, saying it’s been a positive partnership with faith groups and organizations to address a major need.
Her opponents have criticized the project and its rising costs.
Storm views the shelter as a place where the county could make cuts and save money.
“I think we can claw some money back, put that to rest and use our money wisely,” he said during the debate.
Bergida said while he believes something should be done to help vulnerable residents, he feels the commission has failed to set up “guardrails” to keep the community safe after the shelter opens. He worries the project will increase crime and result in homeless people from across the metro and beyond flocking to Johnson County.
“I foresee that with this project, we will have more people who are homeless in Johnson County afterwards than we do currently,” he said. “I vehemently disagree with the proposed solution because I think it’ll make the problem worse and it doesn’t actually necessarily help the folks here in Johnson County that we are morally responsible for.”
Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara and other conservatives have recently made remarks that the shelter will bring immigrants to Johnson County and will not be dedicated to serving those living in the county now. Other officials have called out the claims as baseless fear-mongering.
Officials with the county and reStart have said the shelter will not be a place where there is a line out the door, but they instead are planning for a system where Johnson County Mental Health, law enforcement and other agencies refer residents to the shelter. They also expect the shelter to fill up quickly by Johnson County residents.
The homeless services center could include an emergency shelter with as many as 50 beds, with the other half dedicated toward transitional housing for up to 40 people. Officials envision providing an array of resources for residents, including mental health support, housing assistance, workforce development and more.
Johnson County’s Point in Time Count this year — a count of all people experiencing homelessness on one night in January — showed there were 250 homeless people in the county, up from 180 in 2020. The majority, 85% were single adults, meaning they did not have children with them. Johnson County currently has some beds for families and women, but no permanent shelter for single adult men.
Allenbrand countered that the shelter will serve residents in Johnson County, and that the county is working with law enforcement and reStart for security and other safety protocols.
“People living here need help because they don’t have a home in Johnson County right now. They may be working here, but they don’t have a home. That’s why they need help,” she said. “There’s so much misinformation out there. I feel there’s so many people committed to getting this done that I feel it’s going to be very successful.”
This story was originally published August 2, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
