As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Ellis County and throughout northwest Kansas, what should be the role of the county commission in community health decisions and how is that role best accomplished?
The best way to answer this; we do have a plan. We have a plan for pandemics. We have 26 contact tracers in Ellis County. As far as I know, per capita that might be one of the highest in the state. We actually just started paying for and allotted some of our grant money toward paying for more contact tracing. So we should be a source of information for people so that they know how to protect themselves and we should be a source of testing for people as well. We have a health department; we allot money every year because we are statutorily obligated to control and monitor the spread of infectious diseases.
So we have a plan, we have a highly qualified, highly talented individual in Jason Kennedy to administer that plan and as well we will be distributing the CARES act money through the SPARK program to all of the organizations around Ellis County in terms of helping them finically with the impact of the coronavirus on their organizations, their businesses. I believe that should be the role of the county commission. That has always been the role of Ellis County government because we are statutorily obligated to do that. In terms of mitigating measures, at some point there might have to be mitigating measures that are added from what the governor did with the shutdown, although I believe that shouldn’t have happened to us out here because of our complete lack of cases at that point. I believe now is the time that we need to be closely monitoring and doing our best.
Should the Ellis County Commission be more or less proactive in economic development in the county and if so what is the best way to attract business to the area?
First of all, I just would like to say, I am an economic developer. I was on the Ellis County Economic Development Coalition a few years back. I’m and entrepreneur. I invest in businesses and I’m a retailer so I know how to attract these people. The best way to attract business is to make sure our pull factor continues to stay strong. That happens by adding selection and by bringing in more ways for people to shop. The old adage is that a lot of people don’t like competition, but what they don’t realize is that we become the destination to shop and the pie gets bigger. They think they are going to lose a portion of the pie, but the pie gets bigger. I do believe that we need to be more proactive in economic development and that’s why we have been at the county level. When I started as a commissioner, we were funding Grow Hays at zero dollars and zero cents a year. Now I believe we are at $30,000. Grow Hays is our economic development arm and many counties in western Kansas — Finney for example — I believe they throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at their economic development arm each year and they really are trying to become a retail destination for the western part of the state. We need to be proactive in that. I think we will continue to see successes in economic development, mainly because we are projected for growth in Ellis County. We are one of the only counties in all of western Kansas that had a projection for growth from the Wichita State study that was done. They are expecting us to grow 10-15 percent over the next 20 years. Unfortunately as small towns in western Kansas get smaller, we will likely see an influx of people moving from those towns, into little mini-metros like Hays. So that’s exciting news for us, we just have to continue to keep our eye on the ball on that.
Several high profile disagreements have occurred this year with other county level elected officials and the county commission. Going forward, what is the best way to ensure that all county departments work in a cohesive manner?
So I image this question is written mainly about the disagreement that happened between the treasurer and the chair of our commission. Unfortunately as much as I would like people to maintain professionalism in meetings, this is the hard thing with county government. These are two co-elected officials that are having disagreements about the utmost important thing we do as a commission — budgeting. It’s one of those things where I can’t choose for the voters who they elect. I think they should definitely look at disagreements like this and expect professionalism, but when those types of things happen, all that a commissioner can do in those cases is hope to lessen the impact of the disagreement, but also to make sure that we are keeping the lines of communication open.
We have had no other disagreements with any other elected officials that I can remember. At least not something like there where someone was removed from our chambers. But in that discussion, we did make some decisions about the treasurer’s office and the appraiser’s office. We found out that we were over staffing the treasurer’s office by about two positions and under staffing the our appraisers office by about two positions. So in the 2021 budget, we have taken an employee from the treasurer’s office and moved it to the appraiser’s office. So the vibrant discussion did at least make it so that we were discussing important things and making sure that the county is running as efficiently as possible. As far as mitigating that in the future, I think that is the public’s responsibility. I think the public when they go to the polls they should expect people to be professional and I hope that they see that professionalism in me. I am not perfect. I never will be perfect. We will always have disagreements, that’s the nature of government, but as long as in those disagreements we don’t allow things to escalate like that and we continue to stick to facts and questions in a budgeting process, we will get the answers that we should get and we will make the decisions that we think are best for the county in the future.
In what ways would you improve communication between city governments and the county commission?
I actually think this is a great question and right up my wheelhouse. I am personal friends with multiple city commissioners in Hays. Hays is approximately 22,000 of our 28,000 people in Ellis County and being personal friends with them helps because I get to have discussions with them and they are open with me because they know I won’t take that discussion and use them against them. We can have good open dialogue because of that. As far as that goes, we have done multiple things along with the city commission. Right now, we are working with Victoria because we have a big road project that is going to be going on Cathedral Road. In just the recent past, we have done some work on the bridge in big bridge in Ellis that will be expensive in the end if we have to do any replacement to it.
We always want those lines of communication open and I think that the beauty from me is, I would say four of the five I could call at any time and they would answer and we would be able to have good dialogue about what is going on. I think that the city commission of Hays should get a little more involved in the Northwest Business Corridor project. I think with that project they are the biggest beneficiary of it and, being the biggest beneficiary of it, I think you should financially get involved. I have said that openly and have requested that they get financially involved and I think they will. I think that it is just right now they are just as concerned, like everybody is, with their budget and the effects of the coronavirus. Luckily, they have been having good numbers from the sales tax issues, but they didn’t know they are actually getting better numbers than they were projecting. So hopefully that cash streams up for them and they can continue to do a little more contributing toward what I think is a vital project to the growth and economic prosperity of Ellis County.
This year, two sales tax measures passed by the voters helped to alleviate strain on the county budget, but long-term concerns remain. How best can the county commission stabilize their budget for the foreseeable future?
The best thing that can be said is with these two sales taxes we were actually able to lower property taxes this year. We ran the first balanced budget in 10-plus, I believe it's 12 years. When I took over this job, we were on what you could call an asset burn. We had cash in the bank in 2012 — I believe it was around $12 million in unencumbered cash — and we had dwindled that dollar amount way down to a point where we were uncomfortable with our unencumbered cash and we needed to make some drastic changes. That’s when we decided as a commission, I actually made a motion earlier last year to do a quarter-cent sales tax for health services.
Right now in Ellis County, we run one of the most robust EMS units you can have. We are at a four and a half minute response time, we run three stations, 24/7 365 with paramedic-level staffing. Every ambulance that goes out has a paramedic on it. That’s the highest level of service that can be offered on an ambulance. Essentially a paramedic stabilizes a person to the same condition that an ER would before they take you to the ER saving you valuable minutes in cardiac cases, trauma cases and things like that. So we run a very robust system. Because of that system being so robust we had to start looking at the possibility of closing stations, lessening our full-time status at other stations in order to spend less money, essentially. When I made that motion, my suggestion was that we did not have a sunset on that quarter-cent sales tax. The other two commissioners voted that down and eventually I had to figure out a way to find a compromise with them. We compromised on two quarter-cent sales tax, one that we have now allotted straight to road infrastructure. We are in the process of a $5.4 million bond to take care of a lot of road projects. And then with the healthcare tax we put a ten-year sunset on that. That health care tax is going to net us about $1.6 million a year because the whole tax goes to Ellis County and it can be used for our paramedic service and it can be used for our health department. It can also be used for things like High Plains Mental Health and DSNWK. things that could be considered health services in the county.
I am concerned about the future. I think that the citizens of Ellis County are probably about eight to ten years into this sales tax are going to have to make a decision about their paramedic services again. I don’t have any intention of just trying to throw a lot of unencumbered cash into the bank so that we can drag this out another three or four years beyond that sunset and then have future commissioners put into the same mess that I was put into when I was put in this position. At some point, you have to decide as a populace are you willing to pay for something and, if you are willing to pay for it, you don’t just decide on an amount of time — you just decide you are willing to pay for it. That will be the choice of the voters. In the meantime, I am going to try and keep property taxes down and get our unencumbered cash to around 20 to 25 percent of our total budget. That unencumbered cash is there for emergency situations, things like floods, tornados, fires and pandemics. Things like that can cause financial strain on a county and we should be able to ride that out with our cash before we wait on state and federal funding to get that cash back. There have been counties in serious situations in the past because they didn’t have those reserves and so I think that is good governance to have at least around that amount of money in reserves.
The other things thing that could help us out tremendously in Ellis County is if the oil price goes up, mainly because we are the largest oil-producing county in the state, about 2.5 million barrels of oil a year, which is a staggering number. Because of that the ad valorem, value-added taxes that coincide with our property taxes we can have huge swings in the amount of money that we are bringing in off that. That’s what happened this year. We saw a big dip in that because of the set oil price for that ad valorem tax.
If re-elected, in what ways would you be a better servant of the public interest than the other candidates?
That’s a tough question. I really do think that the other two candidates are wonderful, wonderful people. But I will go on record and say that I absolutely bring a different perspective to the commission than the two older retired gentlemen. I’m investing in businesses, I am a 34-year-old man with two young children and a wife and I am a recent first time home buyer. I am invested, I am involved. I am a member of the DHDC, I have served on the Ellis County Economic Development Coalition, which is now Grow Hays. I am heavily involved in the county and the community. I am a commissioner now with two years of experience and I think a record that I am willing to stand on; lower property taxes and a balanced budget. The first balanced budget in a decade.
If that is what people want, I think that’s who I am and I think that’s the perspective that I bring. I feel like service to the community is just co-mingled in that. I am involved in so many things, every single day it seems like somebody walks into my business and asks me to donate and my policy is, if they are willing to walk in and ask I try my best not to turn them down. We try to do something for everybody. That heavy involvement, that knowing the people within the community that I deal with is something the other two candidates don’t bring. I am at all of these things, I am heavily involved with the Chamber of Commerce and I think that that involvement is what makes me a different candidate than the other two.
What do you see as the top concern of Ellis County voters over the next few years and what would you do to alleviate that concern?
I would say road infrastructure is probably one of the bigger concerns for Ellis County residents. The extraterritorial jurisdiction around Hays has kind of become a mess, for lack of a better word. People don’t know when they are on a county road, on a city of Hays road. We have bridge infrastructure issues. We have bridge infrastructure that needs to be monitored. We do a bridge inspection every two years. It is scheduled to be this year, to make sure our bridges are safe, but bridge infrastructure I believe is the No. 1 concern of our voters. Good infrastructure adds economic development. If people can get around in our county well, whether it be oil, farming retail businesses, the new travel plaza where I think we will catch an exuberant amount of traffic from our I-70 corridor, and now the Northwest Business Corridor that some of that truck traffic to alleviate that Vine Street congestion. I think that’s our No. 1 concern and that’s why we are addressing it. I think that is the only reason that they passed this quarter-cent general sales tax. They want us to take care of these things and I want to continue doing it.
How do you plan to address road and infrastructure concerns in Ellis County?
This is a good question because I think that is some of the last forum questions I answered it asked about the quarter-cent sales tax for general purposes and I don’t think that they understood that the commissioners and I have already earmarked that money mainly for road and bridge infrastructure needs for the next 5 years. It’s a $5.4 million bond that will go to address all kinds of road and bridge infrastructure problems. It will finish the Northwest Business Corridor. One way that I think a lot of my constituents in the Second District know this, I don’t think they realize is actually a county and city road is 48th Street over from Roth Avenue to Hall street across the bridge. That is half a city road and half a county road, that road will be fixed with this money. We have a big project in Victoria that I talked about earlier, that’s Cathedral in Victoria.
Victoria got a large grant for their water infrastructure they are doing that right along Cathedral Road and Cathedral road is a major thoroughfare through Victoria and most people don’t realize that county government when a city is rated the way Victoria is, is really responsible as a county for their major thoroughfares. That’s why we are responsible for a bridge in the middle of Ellis, but not responsible for any bridges within the city of Hays because of our classification as a city. We will be working a bridge project way up north of Ellis and that is a relatively large project. We will be taking care of a couple of other smaller bridge projects, a lot of blacktop resurfacing.
So we have tied up $5.4 million of that tax money which is basically the entirety of that quarter-cent sales tax for general purposes to road infrastructure and my intention was when we went and talk to the voters at the town hall’s that is what we promised them and that is what we are going to do. It’s not going to go toward raises to our county employees as much as we love and care about our employees and what they do. This is going to go directly to infrastructure, and I believe that that is important for the future of Ellis County.
In what ways does your personal and professional experience qualify you to serve as an Ellis County Commissioner?
As I said earlier, I am a retailer. I own a retail business and I now am investing in somewhat of a service, an event center business. I believe that professional spirit as an entrepreneur and as a person that bootstrapped themselves from a 300 sq. ft. office to a 6,000 sq. ft. building on Main Street, everything I touch I try to make it better. I never want to leave something worse than I found it and that’s the way I treat county government, that’s the way I treat my businesses, that’s the way I treat my home, that’s the way I treat any organization I ever become a part of. We are going to fix them, we are going to make their finances better, we are going to make everything that we touch needs to get better.
That has been my professional life. I started a business very small. I am now in a completely different financial situation than I was then and it has been through work and by putting my nose to the grindstone and problem-solving. The unique thing about being a small business owner is every day I am going to spend the entire day problem solving for my customers, for my staff and for myself. I have honed my skill with problem-solving by simply having to do it for the last nine years of running my own small business.
In your view, what is the primary difference between how you would serve as a county commissioner and the other candidates?
I have lived in Hays for around 15 years, give or take, and left for about a year or so. Hays is my home now, but the unique thing for me being in Hays is that I choose Hays. I wasn’t born here. I lived in a tiny little town in Ness County. I chose Hays because I wanted to live here. This is a great city. This is a great county and I think that my perspective as a businessman is incredibly important on that commission. I think that a commission with two 30 year employees on it would not have the impactful interest at heart. As far as the professional careers of my competitors, I imagine they were both extremely hard working and very accomplished in what they did, it just isn’t what I am doing which is working right in the middle of the free market every single day. The rent is due and success is only going to rented not earned. I am a workhorse and that’s what I want to give to this community.
What decision made by the county commission in the last few years did you disagree with and what would have been your decision?
You can see my voting record. I am typically the only one that dissents on votes. You can see the things that I disagreed with and why I disagreed with them. Most importantly, I would say the No. 1 thing that I think we have done wrong was that we should have asked for a quarter-cent sales tax for health care services, and we should have had it in perpetuity. That way we could continue to drive down property taxes, but we would have our robust EMS system to be paid for in perpetuity until some other commission deemed it non-necessary anymore and took it off. That was probably our biggest disagreement as a board. I still think I am right, but I’m sure the other two still think they are right, so I have to just let any future commission coming up here in about 10 years know that a large portion of your revenue source will go away in one fell swoop and if they should be cognizant of that.
I think the preparation should be two-fold. It should be that you should prepare to cut EMS services or cut other services to get back to the level of what are you bringing in and work within your means, or you should prepare to ask the folks of Ellis County to put that quarter-cent sales tax into perpetuity at that point. It’s a decade away, I don’t plan to be a career politician on the county commission. I think I have done a good job this round and I would love to see what I can do with four years of problem-solving and growing, now that it is not just problem solving the budget, it's talking about growing and investing in the future.
Many county staff members received raises this year bringing them closer to the market average for their positions, but remain under the average. How would you ensure that county employees are paid an equitable wage now and into the future?
We pay relatively adjustably in Ellis County. There are some division within the county that are underpaid, that is mainly at road and bridge. All road and bridge compete directly with the oil market in Ellis County and that is why there is a large drive for truck drivers, dirt work, movers and mechanics. That kind of stuff is driven by an industry in Ellis County that makes us less competitive in that group. Frankly, I think we need to get better at allowing our road and bridge department to see talent when it comes to their department and aggressively increase their pay in order to maintain that talent.
As a county on the whole we pay at least fairly. For example, if you become a full-time Ellis County employee you are only going to pay about 11 percent of your whole family health care. The average for employees across the country according to the Kaiser Family Foundation is 17 percent for a single employee and about 20 percent for a family. So we have an aggressive benefits package.
The other beauty is that we just renegotiated our health care and when we did that it was a win for the taxpayers and a win for our employees. So even though we had lessened our contribution as taxpayers, our employees are now going to get better health care coverage, lower deductibles and they are not going to see an impact on their pay. It was a win-win situation and it was a wonderful job by our benefits committee to go out and do this negotiation. But in most other departments when we have an employee that moves on from Ellis County, we have a lot of applications and frankly, I think that we also need to do a little better job, especially out at road and bridge of explaining how we pay. We have somewhat of a convoluted way that we pay our employees, which I think needs addressed. We have cost of living adjustments, we have a wage step increase from a step study that was done a few years ago that we work with as well as a longevity bonuses. So you add all those things together and it’s kind of a convoluted way to pay employees.
I believe that pay should be based on merit. I don’t believe it should be based on longevity. If you are bad employee, just because you around for a long time I don’t think you should be paid more than a good employee. But a lot of times because you have been around for a long time, you have institutional knowledge that new employees don’t have and you are better at the job. So I think there should be better reasons for why we give pay increases. I think we should stop make cost of living adjustments, except for low-level staff where I believe a cost of living adjustment makes sense. A lot of times when we do a cost of living adjustment increase, the biggest beneficiaries are higher-paid employees because if you just do 2 percent, 2 percent of a higher-paid employee is a much bigger number than a lower-paid employee. I believe that those lower-paid employees are the ones that we struggle to keep around. Our department heads are not a struggle to keep around. We pay them right within the average of what they should be paid anywhere and I think we offer a very stable position. That’s the thing that I think we should think about at road and bridge. We talk about the stability of the job because the oil industry goes up and down and when it goes down we get a lot of employees, when it’s up we lose them. If we can figure out a way to tie those employees into the long term in Ellis County as our employees they end up being in good financial shape by the time they need to retire and I think that can be seen from some of our long term employees out there of which there are a lot and they benefit came from when they had been around a long time.
The Ellis County Attorney has repeatedly asked for additional staff to be hired in that office. Do you agree with that position and how would you address that as a commissioner?
When I first came on the commission, that was the first time Tom (Drees) came to us with his concern. He wanted us to see if we could fund another full-time position at the attorney’s office. At the time, we were in no financial shape to do that and we turned him down. Since Tom is now in his last budget cycle, he actually came with a budget that took a position away from him, which I thought was interesting since Tom wasn’t running for the position anymore, but also the two candidates that are running are both running on saving money in that department. So, I have less concern about this as I did initially when I had 20-30 people in the room telling me that we were leaving murderers on the street and things like that. I since found out that that is not the case, that most of these were in review of the office and they were deciding whether they were going to prosecute or not. That wasn’t the case from what I was told.
Both of the gentlemen that are running for county attorney are running on lowering the budget for the attorney and running more efficiently. There are all kinds of ways that you can do that in an attorney’s office and I would expect that the people that are going out to vote would look at those ways. I think that these two guys are laying out a good plan for making that office more efficient and catching up on that case log. As of now, Tom has submitted a budget that is an employee down and it did save us around $40,000 comparative to what we would have been doing in the last budget cycle. I thank Tom for all of his service, but I don’t believe the new county attorneys are going to be requesting more money. Maybe when they get in that office it will be a different situation and we have to have our eyes open and be willing to listen to their concerns and we're will always do that, but I don’t expect that to be an issue in the future. I believe that desire of these two gentlemen, that desire to be our prosecutor, is great for Ellis County and should really help the court system for the future.