The Reno County Commission Republican primary candidates are visiting the KWBW Morning Show to talk to Nick Gosnell about their campaigns. Below is a transcript of Randy Parks answers from July 25, 2022.
Nick Gosnell:
Randy Parks is our first guest. Cris Corey will join us at 7:45, but Randy, thank you for coming in and good morning.
Randy Parks:
Well, good morning. Thank you for having me.
Nick Gosnell:
All right. So first of all, just let people know who you are, where you come from and why you want to be a county commissioner.
Randy Parks:
Well, I'm Randy Parks. I was born and raised here in Hutchinson, Kansas. Basically have raised our kids here, wife of 41 years. We've had a vested interest in the community for a long time and our church families that we've been with and other people around us in the neighborhoods and we were out of town for probably about 12 years off and on, pursuing some other endeavors. We moved back in 2012 because we had a death in the family on two sides and needed to take care of parents. And so when we got back, I began to pay a lot more attention to what was going on in the local government. I really hadn't until I got married when I was real young at 18 years old. And I started to realize as a family man, you need to have more vested interest in what goes on. But, in 2012, I really had this burning in my heart to start getting more involved in local government. And it just didn't really surface until this year. And I decided this was the year to run. I felt like it was a thing that needed to happen. There was some things I see that go on that I just felt like we probably need to address a little bit further.
Nick Gosnell:
So, this is a big question, but hopefully you'll be able to condense it down into kind of your philosophy, which is what should county government do and what should they let the private sector and families and churches and those kind of folks do.
Randy Parks:
That's a good question. I believe county government basically is funded by the people to oversee the infrastructure and take care of and maintain that infrastructure. Then also to fund emergency services, which I think probably needs some help as well. We'll talk about that probably here in a minute. You talk about the private sector and the churches. I know that county gives an awful lot of money to charitable organizations in the county. I don't know how many there was somebody told me at last count, I don't know how many they fund a hundred twenty some of 'em, I think it is. I don't know how many that we participate in as a county, but I've been involved in a board of several of those organizations over the years. I know that there was a time when their mission was to enlist funds from people privately and probably some grants from the state, but it appears to me as I've watched over time that we continue to fund more and more of those things and the voices that I've heard back from people, they're not very happy with some of the funding going to some of those organizations, because they're beginning to stand for some of the things that people just morally don't care for.
I think we need to revisit and look at some of those things. I do believe that that there's a lot of great faith-based organizations that do great work, but I think there are some that need to be examined and looked at just a little bit more.
Nick Gosnell:
All right. So explain how you understand the role of the county administrator. I know what the current three kind of have left for him, but what do you think?
Randy Parks:
Well, I got some information on that right after I got into the campaign. I had worked at the county some years ago when they brought the first county administrator on, and I think the role of that county administrator has kind of changed a little bit since I was there. As I understand it, he has the authority over the directors of the departments and the county employees to the degree of, basically hiring recruiting and possibly terminating if it need be at some point. He is the liaison between the county commissioners and the employees.
Nick Gosnell:
So, basically the county commissioners..as Ron Sellers who currently holds district one has explained it in public meetings, what he's said is that the commission hires the administrator, the administrator runs the day to day. Is that how you understand it too?
Randy Parks:
That's how I understood it as well. I've sat in on several meetings since I've been in this. I decided to get involved and listen, and I've watched it. He does a lot of presentations as well for the departments, helps work up the budget and things like that. I, you know, in my opinion, I think the commissioners need to be more involved, on a level to communicate at times with the directors. I've had some feedback from several of them that feel like that it would be a good thing to communicate just a little bit more with them.
Nick Gosnell:
A lot of departments in the county are controlled, not by county officials, but rather by state statute. Let me give some examples. One of them that I know you're going to talk about is the county sheriff, but also the treasurer and the county clerk are some other examples of those, so talk about just how you help those departments. And to what degree you just have to say, okay, this is what statute says and how do you deal with them?
Randy Parks:
Well, I understand, yeah, some things are statutory that have to be funded. That's handed down from the state, but having visited with, again, like I said, several of the directors, and then I spent some time visiting with the Sheriff's department, the captains down there, and they have some real concerns about some funding issues as well. I know that that the sheriff is an elected official. However, we do fund equipment. We do fund the personnel and they're very short at this time right now, very stressed. And I think that is something we need to be involved with, seeing that the times that we're in are really a different time. And I think there's a lot going on that demands from that department. And they they're short on help. They're long on hours. I sat in a meeting one night where they were all yawning because they'd worked a very long shift and they had a tough time paying attention. Not to bag on 'em at all of not doing that, but I felt really sorry for 'em to have to sit and listen to all of us, talk to 'em that evening when they needed to go home and rest. And I think it's a security issue in that particular sense for the people of Reno County and certainly for them that they need to be protected.
Nick Gosnell:
Well, and the thing about the Sheriff's department specifically is Reno County is one of the largest area wise counties in the state. So getting somebody out to, if something happens out in the county can be difficult, especially when you have relatively low staffing levels.
Randy Parks:
That's exactly right. You take communities like Nickerson, Kansas, you take, 'em like Sylvia, Kansas. You start looking at some of the small communities that don't have police forces anymore. They have to respond to all that stuff at any given time. I understand there's only about four patrol officers in the largest land mass county in Kansas. And in my opinion, I don't think we want to just spend county money frivolously, but I think that's not a frivolous expenditure. I think we need to probably have twice that many or a little more on the road at any given time, they'll respond within the city to help as well. If you're at both corners of it, it's virtually impossible to help the other officer in need.
Nick Gosnell:
Well, and that's a big issue as things go along. If there's more than one thing happening at once out in the county. Now, speaking of kind of taxes a little bit more generally in the budget, given the truth in taxation law the past in recent years in the legislature. We've talked about this several times, the phrase revenue neutral rate is basically what people will remember from that. The county can't just keep the mill levy flat and count on increased valuations to help them keep up with inflation. Because now there's additional reporting that basically tells people the valuation on your property has gone up and the valuation on all the property in the county has gone up. So the county is either going to, or not going to collect more actual taxes, more dollars from you. So, with that in mind, do you believe trying to be revenue neutral? In other words, keep the dollars the same even valuation goes up is a goal you should try to reach, or do you think that keeping the mill levy flat is the primary goal and revenue neutral, you know, would be something that would be nice to do?
Randy Parks:
Well, I think it'd be a great thing to do. I've talked to, I can't tell you how many people across the county that know that their taxes are going up, some of 'em pretty significantly and mine did as well. I mean, I don't, I don't mind paying my fair share, but sometimes people feel like it's not their fair share. It's too much. I talked to a couple of commissioners the other day before the meeting, and they talked about the fact that they didn't think they'd probably be able to hold the revenue neutral this year, that they may increase the taxes. And I advised them by the, the feelings of the people that I visited with. They want it to stay the same and in fact go down. I think there's ways that you can adjust that down. I think there's cuts that can be made. And that just has to be examined to see what we can do. I mean, after all, look at the expenses of things are so extremely high right now for people and their cost of living is up. And then we want to tax 'em again and burden. 'em a little bit further. I, I think they're having a tough time swallowing that.
Nick Gosnell:
So any specifics that you would know about that, where you'd start or something like that?
Randy Parks:
Well, it's difficult to cut road and bridge type repairs. We don't want them to go on for several years beyond that and become, uh, to a point where they can't be maintained and they have to be replaced. There's certain things in that that just have to be a given from year to year. Having had a maintenance background, I certainly understand those things completely. However, I think we need to look at outside agencies. I think we need to look at some other expenditures that we do that are things that are not essential actual county functions within the framework of either employees of Reno County, the equipment, the departments, and, and look first there, whether there's some cuts that can be made and certainly with insight, not to not to compromise services at all.
Nick Gosnell:
Well, the one major endorsement we posted on Hutch Post that you received, Randy, is from City Councilwoman, Sarah Bagwell. Are there any, is there anybody else that has said, hey, we wanna support you in district one.
Randy Parks:
Yeah. I've had several people do that. I don't know if you're familiar with the Hedricks and Nickerson. I know you are. Aaron has been a great proponent of it. I've had actually Andy Fry, which is in State Farm Insurance, which has really come alongside me and helped me with fundraising and things like that. Mark Steffen has been a great proponent of mine. He's in fact, these folks have all commented on my site on Facebook and one of the state representatives has really cheered me on as well to do that. And so there's many other people on there. If people go to that site and look, you can find those things.