It was a fairly close election, but Hutchinson voters approved a 0.75% sales tax increase. The tax increase doesn’t go into effect until October, but the City of Hutchinson shouldn’t wait seven months to start showing taxpayers that they are getting their money’s worth.
The first step the city should take is also the easiest: discontinuing the stormwater fee on utility bills. The City Council could reasonably leave the stormwater fee in place until it starts receiving the revenue in December—there is a two-month lag between when sales tax is paid and when cities receive it.
But the city doesn’t have to wait until then. As we heard during the sales tax campaign, the stormwater fee can’t pay for everything involved in drainage projects, like repairing a street that had to be torn up during work. Instead of waiting until December, the City Council could eliminate the stormwater fee effective in October, when people start paying the sales tax, or even sooner.
Whenever the city decides to discontinue the fee, City Council should vote on it at its next meeting or shortly afterwards. Send the message that utility bill relief is on its way.
Beyond the stormwater utility fee, change will likely be harder to see. The sales tax initiative was largely about balancing the city’s budget without making major increases to property taxes or drastic cuts to services. Over the past few years, the city has used its reserve funds to stabilize property taxes, but it couldn’t continue that much longer. The sales tax will make a real difference there, but one that the average person doesn’t see.
Last week, the Hutchinson Community Foundation released the results of its second Love Where You Live survey, and one of its findings was that people want to see signs of progress, including active storefronts, revitalized downtown spaces, and removal of blight.
In a news release about the survey results, Hutch CF advises communities—not just local government, but also non-profits, civic groups, and activists—to tackle a small, visible improvement that can be accomplished quickly, then another, and another, to build a sense of progress, confidence, and pride among residents.
The Hutchinson Tribune echoes that advice. Big, dramatic projects certainly have an important place—the Meyer Landmark Apartments project wouldn’t have been suited to incremental improvement, for instance—but a sustained series of smaller, quicker improvements can have an outsized influence on public sentiment and doesn’t require years of studies or approval from the state.
We hope that officials at all levels of city government are able to spend more time now thinking about what they can accomplish for the community with a lighter, quicker, cheaper approach, to borrow the parlance of placemaking. Look for the low-hanging fruit. Do the little things until they add up to be big things.
Fortunately, we’ve seen the city doing that in places lately. When the draft floodplain map showed big swaths of the city potentially being added to the 100-year floodplain, Public Works started identifying projects they could do on their own, without needing to acquire property or right-of-way, to mitigate the floodplain.
The city has also shown interest in partnering with and encouraging nonprofits and businesses to make improvements, helping the public’s dollars go farther. Last month, the Hutchinson Planning Commission awarded about $35,000 in matching grants to businesses for improvements to their facades. And just last Thursday, the city revealed a partnership with Interfaith Housing & Community Services to replace old, broken, unsightly sidewalks on a corner lot—donated by the Hutchinson Land Bank for the project—where Interfaith is building a new house.
If the city builds on that approach—looking for the lighter, quicker, cheaper projects and encouraging, supporting, and partnering with organizations that share its goals—it has the chance to improve how our community sees itself.
– The Hutchinson Tribune Editorial Board