Opinion: Prices are up, especially at the assessor’s office

By Gina Long

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Like many Reno County residents, I received a revised property tax increase statement, and I am puzzled by the 11% valuation increase over last year.

I am gobsmacked that my property’s valuation has increased a whopping 68% over its 2018 purchase price.

I live in a small house on a postage stamp-sized lot in College Grove. The house is undergoing some renovations, primarily due to age and breakdown (plumbing and electrical) and some from severe weather (two big limbs on my roof in May and June).

I have considered protesting the valuation, but taking time off work and adequately investigating the price per square foot on sales of comparable properties in the last 1-2 years is daunting. Demand and supply are driving the insane price increases. Reno County’s housing stock is shrinking because new buildings are not keeping pace with condemned properties and demolitions. Faceless out-of-state investors buy available properties, raise rents, and disregard neighborhood cohesion and aesthetics. Hutchinson is near the tipping point of more renters than homeowners, and higher property taxes mean higher rents.

The average Hutchinson family has been trying to keep up with 30-40 percent increases in food prices over the last two years due to multibillion-dollar corporations controlling the food supply literally from the ground to the table. Two of the largest meat producers are foreign-owned. Of the three largest grocery chains in Hutchinson, two send their profits out of state, and one is foreign-owned.

Agricultural land is also a hot commodity. Corporate and foreign investors are on a buying spree, particularly for land on the country’s largest underground aquifer. Hostility to alternative revenue streams, including wind energy, has not broadened the tax base. The county commission did relent on commercial solar power, but only after a loud public outcry.

Meanwhile, city and county budgets are trying to catch up after four decades of economic stagnation and a shrinking tax base. The people who keep the roads paved and the water flowing, who answer the phones and face the public daily, have finally seen higher pay after a long stretch with no pay increases. Years of deferred maintenance are catching up with infrastructure—the Woodie Seat Bridge and the city’s fragile water mains are prominent examples.

Property taxes have increased exponentially as the traditional three-legged stool of taxes toppled working families during the Brownback tax “experiment” from 2014 – 2017. That balance has not been restored, although state sales tax has declined slightly and is heading towards zero on food. Rural depopulation shrinks sales tax revenue, tilting the burden towards landowners. Agricultural land net rental income drops, lowering the local economic ecosystem’s multiplier effect.

What is the solution? A surge in new locally-owned small businesses broadens the tax base and primes the economic pump. However, the positive benefits will not show overnight.

It would help if the assessor slowed down on eye-popping property valuations just long enough for the rest of us to catch up.