The 6.1 increase in the mil levy for the county budget for 2017 was not met with warm regards – though the vote was unanimous by county commissioners, 3 to 0, there was clear dissent amongst the commissioners.

After expressed anger by many citizens, one of the commissioners, Ben Bennett spoke out about his opposition to the increase – now, County Commission Chair Florence Whitebread responds.

Whitebread was a guest on 1420 AM – The Talk of JC on Tuesday morning where she discussed the budget increase.

Whitebread says there are a number of factors that drove the mil levy increase up to 6.1.

“A part of it is the Sheriff’s Department and things like ATA Bus is a little over a mil, it’s just issues like that across the board; Public Works did not go up, however we need some new equipment and some of our equipment is very old,” said Whitebread.

Whitebread complimented the Public Works department on their maintenance of city and county buildings saying that if these buildings weren’t maintained and properly kept up then the county would be running in to a similar situation as the School District with Junction City High School.

The Sheriff’s Department was cited more than once as a large factor in the property tax mil levy increase.

“One of the departments that takes a lot of funds is our Sheriff’s Department, and in comparison to Riley county right now we are running double what we ran last year when we budgeted in the jail because we were running 70 to 80, now we’re running 150 to 170 people in the jail, and Riley county runs between 70 and 80 people in their jail,” said Whitebread.

Why are our jail populations so much bigger than Riley county – a county that arguably has more residents.

“Part of it probably is because we’re on the interstate and we’re on [Hwy] 77 and a number of [inmates] are picked up traveling on the highways…I do know that we serve civil process on Fort Riley, Riley county should be serving it and a lot of times they were sending it to us…and when Fort Riley calls for arrests, we’re the ones going out and making the arrests,” said Whitebread.

Whitebread cited a newspaper article from the past year to speak on the amount of criminal activity in Geary county.

“September 2nd: In the past 24 hours the police had gone out on 101 calls, the Sheriff’s department had gone out on 104 calls and there had been a total of 12 arrests made in those 24 hours – that’s just one 24 hours in a month,” said Whitebread.

Whitebread said that she doesn’t know why Riley county is making the number of arrests that Geary county is, but the lack of assistance in dealing with Fort Riley, as previously mentioned, was one reason.

Outside of the Sheriff’s Department, Whitebread says there are many agencies funded that aren’t necessarily “departments” in the county.

“There are so many things that we fund that are not departments; we are in collaboration with Pawnee Mental Health, we fund there, we fund with Big Lakes, the developmental center…and these were regional areas that were put together years ago and so we are required, or asked to fund because we are part of that – and that’s just a couple, there’s just numerous areas that we fund,” said Whitebread.

And choosing not to fund these entities would be immoral according to Whitebread:  “When you’re looking at for instance Three Rivers out of Wamego, you’re looking at 24,000 and that’s a very small thing in your budget; and they had like 40 people here in this area they had helped in that past year, they kept 40 something people in their homes – that’s 40 people that are still owning their home and paying taxes and helping us out…these are almost a moral issue to help someone.”

Whitebread added that many of our woes are not necessarily self-imposed expenses.

“Many of these have come on in the last years because of the state cutbacks; we now give $1000 a month, and I think next year it’s a little more than that, to the Open Door because at one point several years ago we had people sitting up at the hospital at night,” said Whitebread.

Again, Whitebread cited a moral obligation to help citizens in need.

Though the expenses for Public Works did not go up in the 2017 budget, according to Whitebread, there is a big strain on the roads.

“We are a county that so much traffic goes through…our roads are in high demand all the time, and our count on our roads is really high compared to a lot of the counties,” said Whitebread.

It is worth noting that Riley county, which may see just as much if not more traffic, approved a mil levy increase of .767 for 2017.

The full audio can be accessed here and here.

Geary County Clerk Rebecca Bossemeyer talks about the Tax Lid Bill that will go in to effect before next year’s budget proposals in Segment 2 of that audio.