Nick Gosnell: With us this morning is another candidate for Reno County Commission. Ron Vincent is running as a Republican. He'll be on the ballot for a portion of the county. Again, that is coming up on November the 5th. Good morning, sir.
Ron Vincent: Good morning.
Nick Gosnell: All right. Ron, give folks a little bit of your background, but much like your opponent, you've been in the county a long, long time, so a lot of folks probably know you already, but just for those that don't.
Ron Vincent: I was born here and I've never moved away. Spent my whole life here. Raised our children here. I've been in Reno County ever since I can remember.
Nick Gosnell: All right. So, what we, what you, what you've done for the, as your career is have a business that helps with getting wells taken care of, and so there's a piece of what the county does that, or I guess I should say the state does, and the county did some, that is something you are a whole lot more knowledgeable about than I am, and that's the the sanitation code and the way that that works when you dig wells and do work and all those kinds of things. And, and so from the county, from the County Commission seat, that got changed here, oh, was it earlier this year or late last year? And just talk a little bit about what the, what your background will lend to being able to pay attention to that side of policy that maybe a lot of county commissioners don't know about.
Ron Vincent: Well, that policy, you know, got changed. We were, the state has what they call Bulletin 4-2, which, which regulates all these water wells and wastewater systems. And then Reno County elaborated from there, which basically made it quite a bit more restrictive, in fact double separation distance, lots of things that, you know, that was making everything cost a lot more. So on that aspect, you know, we tried to tune that down to where it was, you know, it was affordable, but yet safe. It's still safe. KDHE ain't gonna let you do anything, it's not gonna let you do anything that, you know, it's not gonna affect the environment. That part's already taken care of.
Nick Gosnell: Sure. And that's one of the situations I touched on this a little bit earlier this morning, but the, a lot of what the county does is be, for want of a better way of putting it, and I say this often, a branch office of the state government. By that I mean most of the county elected officials other than the county commission. In other words, the ones like the county treasurer and the county clerk and the county sheriff and so on, they're chiefly governed by state statute more so than even something that the county commission does. So often their, their stuff is just things that you have to say, okay, yeah, I understand that, that you don't have a choice in doing what you, what you're doing right now. One good example that was before the county commission here recently was a county treasurer, Calvert, came in and wanted to add an employee to her office because it was taking every time, taking forever for people to get their tags. Well, Daniel Friesen, who is stepping aside and it's his seat that we're talking about, basically said, why are we still doing tags the way we've done tags forever? And though that's a great question to ask, that's not, the county commission doesn't get to decide that. The state legislature gets to decide that. So when you come up against those situations where you say, this isn't, this isn't quite the way things maybe ought to be done, how as a county commission can you, can you give voice to figuring out how to make processes at this level better when it, when it's statute-based and you don't get to make the individual decision?
Ron Vincent: That's really hard. You know, like I said, that the state does control that and, you know, I think the people down there do the best they can with what they got. We can, we can always try and push for that, but it's, now like on property taxes, you know, we could, you know, if we don't like what it's costing to pay for property tax, we'd always lower the mill levy and make our taxes less. The TAG department, you know, you hear that, you know, that it's state-run, and the state, I've noticed the state and the government are very good about starting programs, setting policy, and then they're, you know, then they're outfunding it. They're not funding it anymore. So, you know, that needs worked on and find out a way to, you know, to try to get them to fund more of it, being said, you know, they're the ones that are regulating it.
Nick Gosnell: Fair enough. Ron's running for County Commission for the seat now held by Daniel Friesen, but he's chosen to step aside, and so Ron is running as a Republican on the ballot in the November 5th election for the northeastern portion of Reno County, and Ron, you talked about potentially cutting the mill levy if that's what the County Commission wants to do to continue to give property tax relief to taxpayers, but if you're going to do that, then you got to cut the budget, and are there any particular areas that you say to yourself, these are the areas I think we maybe need to take a closer look at if I make it on the Commission?
Ron Vincent: I would say one part that I would take a closer look at it is us funding money to the nonprofits. The nonprofits come in every year wanting some money. Basically, I feel that's taking everybody's tax money and donating it to nonprofits of, say, my choice or the Commission's choice. I'd be more careful about that. I would, on this economic development, I believe we need to define what we need to spend the money on on the economic development. I didn't know economic development could get so broad. So basically, watch what we spend. We have needs, we need to fund them, we need to look at our wants really hard.
Nick Gosnell: Economic development, it's hard to know where that line really lies because you can say, just like you can say most anything has to do with taxes, you can say most anything has to do with economic development because you you're trying to bring infrastructure to places so that you can have industrial activity. But then you have to bring people in to work that industry, and then you have to then be able to take care of all those pieces. So when you talk about what economic development is, where do you want those lines drawn? Are we talking about water lines and tax abatements, or are we talking about incentives to get people to move here? Or what's the framework that makes sense there?
Ron Vincent: Well, tax abatements would be a good start because it's actually not giving cash money to someone to start a business. I'd rather do that than the cash. And if the business comes and you let free enterprise take care of itself, I believe the people will follow. That the housing will, the people that are in the developing and house building business will get on the bandwagon, and it will take care of itself if we become quite a bit more friendlier with these people that are, you know, to get them to come in.
Nick Gosnell: Now, one of the tough issues is you can bring jobs to a community, but just because the jobs are in a community doesn't necessarily mean that the people are going to live in that political jurisdiction. I'll give you just an example, my own life. My wife and I live on the other side of the county line, so I'm not a Reno County taxpayer, but I work in Reno County. How do you get those people, when you bring jobs in, like the new electrical plant that they're getting ready to start, or any of these other places that are this economic activity, how do you get that to translate into residents that are taxpayers here, as opposed to people that can drive in 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, because it's not like it used to be. You don't have the horse and buggy, you don't have to live 10 miles away anymore.
Ron Vincent: Well, get the jobs, you know, that pay good, that people want. You know, they want to come here and build a home. You know, there's a lot of people from Reno County go work in McPherson County. I mean, that just goes on and on. But, you know, bring the business and companies here that can support these people, and give them, you know, the pay that they think they deserve, and, you know, I believe that, and a place to build a home, or buy a home that they desire.
Nick Gosnell: All right, and how difficult is it for the County Commission when most of the revenue you guys get is from property tax? There's a little bit of sales tax in there, but it's mostly property taxes, and everybody gets frustrated with the property tax valuations going up. But again, like we talked about with the Treasurer's Office earlier, the Appraiser's Office is controlled a whole lot by statute. They've got to value things according to what the statute says. So, how can the County Commission help to affect that? Maybe even other than just cutting the budget, is there anything else policy-wise that the County Commission can do to say, hey, we don't want to make this worse on people than it has to be?
Ron Vincent: I don't think there's much that the County Commissioner can really do about that. I believe that would be the representatives and senators to do that. I, you know, I don't know the whole structure of the state on these mandates, but obviously geographically it's different. You know, I would hope that we're not compared to, you know, Wyandotte, Johnson County, or that we're not compared to Kiowa County. But if the state is more generalized in things, it needs to be more geographical and a little truer value, I think. But again, the Commission can say, well, you know, the valuation's gone up. You know, revenue neutral will make you stay at the same taxes you're paying, not make you pay more taxes. We can always work with the mill levy.
Nick Gosnell: Fair enough. Ron Vincent is with us. He is running as a Republican for County Commission, and he'll be on the ballot for the northeastern portion of the county on November 5th.
The audio interview is below.