{"id":20069,"date":"2015-05-04T12:43:14","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T17:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=20069"},"modified":"2017-08-14T10:47:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T15:47:32","slug":"talking-democracy-2015-episode-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=20069","title":{"rendered":"Talking Democracy 2015 (Episode #1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"su-vimeo su-responsive-media-yes\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"280\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/125983317?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=0&dnt=0&muted=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nKent Steward, I think it&#8217;s probably safe to say one of the more recognizable folks\u00a0around this town, both at Fort Hays State University and in Hays, having been at\u00a0Fort Hays State as our University Relations Director. You&#8217;ve been city\u00a0commissioner for more than nine years, stepping away now. It seems like if\u00a0there&#8217;s anyone to be able to talk about things that are going on here in Hays and\u00a0in Western Kansas, you&#8217;re one of the guys that we should come to. Thank you for\u00a0joining me and agreeing to talk about what&#8217;s a really momentous time in\u00a0western Kansas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI hope I can live up to that introduction. Chap, you and I have known each other\u00a0for a long time, and so I&#8217;m looking forward to this. Another opportunity for you\u00a0and me to kick things around a little bit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nAbsolutely. When we&#8217;re around playing poker, we don&#8217;t get to have this kind of\u00a0conversation. I think I concentrate on the &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong> \u00a0[inaudible 00:01:47] interrupted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong> Far too frequently. You&#8217;ve decided this year you&#8217;re going to step away from both\u00a0the Director of University Relations position and from your Hays City Commission\u00a0post. A time of great change, especially at Fort Hays State with Ed Hammond&#8217;s\u00a0retirement and Richard Martin coming in, Graham Glynn being hired on as a new\u00a0provost. Your position is changing over, and then obviously what&#8217;s going on at\u00a0the city commission. Did it just feel like it was time to do both at the same time,\u00a0or &#8230; ?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, though I need to clarify that a little bit. There&#8217;s a date certain for me\u00a0leaving the city commission, and that&#8217;s two days from now. The new\u00a0commissioner will be sworn in, and I&#8217;ll turn over my seat. At the university, I&#8217;m\u00a0tentatively thinking of retirement at the end of this year. At the very least It&#8217;ll be\u00a0sometime soon, but President Martin and I haven&#8217;t quite nailed that down yet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nGot you. Let&#8217;s talk about what&#8217;s going on in the City of Hays. Obviously, anything\u00a0that&#8217;s going on with the government in Kansas right now, people are on high\u00a0anxiety about whether it&#8217;s a local government that&#8217;s well managed or it&#8217;s a state\u00a0government that seems to be, if not completely, at least on the brink of disarray.<\/p>\n<p>As you look back over &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong> \u00a0[inaudible 00:03:14] interrupt you &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8230; and say I don&#8217;t happen to believe that it&#8217;s in the state of disarray that is\u00a0commonly believed. We can come back to that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong> Let&#8217;s talk about that a little bit first off. We can always come back to the city. You\u00a0look at a six-hundred-million dollar budget hole. You look at political tricks that\u00a0were used by both of the moderate and conservative wing of the party to get us\u00a0into this kind of situation with the 2012 tax deal that really wasn&#8217;t a deal. You\u00a0look at consensus revenue estimates that are now being brought down another,\u00a0I believe, four-hundred-million. News just came out, it hasn&#8217;t quite stuck in my\u00a0head yet exactly where it is, but it&#8217;s at least two-hundred-million if not four-hundred-million. Somewhere along the way, the state governments backed out a\u00a0billion dollars. Schools are closing early all across the state. It looks pretty dire.\u00a0Why do you think we&#8217;re not quite there?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI would stipulate to your facts, but I reach a different conclusion. All you see in\u00a0the media is what is the narrative that you just described. The facts, again, are\u00a0true, and I&#8217;ll come back to them as I talk about it, but when Governor Brownback\u00a0was elected a little more than four years ago, he made a decision, and you never\u00a0hear any credit given to him for the sense of it, which is that Kansas hasn&#8217;t been\u00a0declining in population, we&#8217;ve been growing a little bit, but we&#8217;ve falling farther\u00a0and farther and farther behind &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nNot nearly as fast as especially states around us like Colorado.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nExactly. You look at our representation in Congress, we keep getting\u00a0Congressmen lopped off. Similarly, our economy has been at best muddling\u00a0along, and that&#8217;s trying to account for the federal kinds of things that come into\u00a0play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nAbsolutely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe Kansas economy has not done well in a long, long time. He said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s try\u00a0something new.&#8221; What he proposed to try, I&#8217;ll tell you, I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s the right\u00a0thing. That&#8217;s not my assertion. What I&#8217;m saying is you could muddle along the\u00a0same old way and think things are going to somehow miraculously get better, or\u00a0you can try something bold to see if you can turn it around. He tried something\u00a0bold. You said we&#8217;re hurting for money right now. What you said is absolutely\u00a0right. I work at Fort Hays State University. We&#8217;re in a really tough situation right\u00a0now. No way do I want to downplay that, but does any rational person believe\u00a0that you make major changes in your taxing structure, and within two years\u00a0you&#8217;re going to see the results of it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nLet&#8217;s give some blame where it&#8217;s due on that, because I agree with you about the\u00a0Governor deserving credit for having a plan. We were just kind of sliding on\u00a0towards oblivion, and it was a bad circumstance under his predecessor. He did\u00a0have a bold plan. That&#8217;s great, but it seems like he oversold it, because it wasn&#8217;t\u00a0me saying that it was going to be like a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the\u00a0Kansas economy. Of course, Paul Davis didn&#8217;t say much else during the\u00a0campaign, but he definitely made a lot of hay out of that particular statement\u00a0that it was going to come more quickly. Maybe did the Governor oversell it? If\u00a0so, that&#8217;s going to be on him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nOn that fact, I don&#8217;t agree with you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nOkay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nHe did say it would be like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. Worst thing he ever\u00a0could have said. It&#8217;s fair game for people who are his political enemies or people\u00a0who disagree with him politically to throw that in his face, because he did say it.\u00a0It was a terrible analogy to use. What he was saying is we&#8217;re going to jolt the\u00a0system and we&#8217;re going to get it turned around and moving again, but using that\u00a0metaphor makes you think it will be sudden. I heard a presentation right at that\u00a0time by the State Treasurer. I heard statements from any number of government\u00a0officials for people who were listening and, again, who aren&#8217;t just totally ignorant\u00a0of economics, you&#8217;d know that changing the taxing structure, if it works, and I&#8217;m\u00a0not saying it will, but if it works, it&#8217;s going to take several years. We&#8217;re literally\u00a0only two years out from when those things kicked in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>*** PROGRAM BREAK ***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nHow long do you think it would take? Let&#8217;s say that we continue along this path.\u00a0If things continue the way that they are, how long do think it&#8217;s got to go before\u00a0people say, &#8220;Maybe this wasn&#8217;t the right way to go&#8221;? Of course, that assumes\u00a0that it is going to continue the way that it is. That shot of adrenaline may kick in\u00a0at some point, I&#8217;ll accede to that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nFirst of all, reasonable people at some point reach a point where they say, &#8220;This\u00a0is a failure.&#8221; You&#8217;ve got to admit that at some point. I don&#8217;t know exactly what\u00a0the time frame is, but the public has now been convinced that this is over, it&#8217;s\u00a0buried, and his political opponents have been saying that for eighteen months.\u00a0The new laws were in effect for six months, people hadn&#8217;t even paid their taxes,\u00a0and they were pronouncing it a failure. Again, people who are talking about it in\u00a0a serious way talk about the fact there was going to be this very difficult\u00a0transition period where the revenues were going to fall way down, and then it\u00a0was going to take a while for the economy to grow as a result of the lower taxes,\u00a0and then the revenue would recover. I would say four, five, six years after, we\u00a0should begin to have a true idea of whether this looks like it&#8217;s succeeding or\u00a0failing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nLet&#8217;s also be very honest about it and give the Governor credit where this wasn&#8217;t\u00a0the one-hundred percent plan that he had pitched. He had some revenue make-goods in that that got stripped out by the State Senate, and he was kind of\u00a0forced to pass a bill where there was a ticking time bomb in there, wasn&#8217;t there?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s fair of you to bring that up, but he did sign the bill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nHe did sign the bill, yeah. It would have been incredibly hard for him to campaign\u00a0on that in 2010, get it through, and then get a bill delivered to his desk and veto\u00a0it, though.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, it went farther than what he had passed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. This is no ideal circumstance for him, for the legislature. Certainly, we see\u00a0school boards locally dealing a lot with that, but you probably didn&#8217;t have too\u00a0much of an impact on how the City of Hays operated and things you were doing\u00a0day-to-day as a city commissioner, though, did it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s going to have tremendous impact on local government. Not just city, but as\u00a0you say, school boards and county governments, because the less able the state\u00a0is to do some of the revenue sharing and things they&#8217;ve done in the past, then \u00a0the local governments need to find some way to make up that money. Yeah, it\u00a0will definitely have an impact. In the case of schools, it&#8217;s very clear what it is, the\u00a0local option budget, however that keeps getting tweaked and changed. What\u00a0people may not like but realistically should expect is that they&#8217;re going to pay\u00a0more local taxes at least until this plan succeeds, if it does.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nFor a community like Hays, and I&#8217;ve said this, and some people certainly disagree\u00a0with me, but we&#8217;re in a stable enough economic circumstance where if we have\u00a0to raise the mills and we have to supplement on the local budget, we can\u00a0probably do that with a minimum of pain. Then I think about the rest of Western\u00a0Kansas, and I think about smaller counties, I think about Gove County or Wallace\u00a0County, Sherman. I think you&#8217;re dealing with populations in the thousands, not in\u00a0the ten thousands. In normal and good economic times they&#8217;re wondering, &#8220;Are\u00a0we going to have to consolidate schools?&#8221; Then they see this, and they see\u00a0schools with some good, stable economic footing like Concordia, and now some\u00a0of the further east schools in the state are saying, &#8220;We&#8217;re going to have to close\u00a0early this year because of our budget shortfalls.&#8221; I wonder, what do those\u00a0communities do? Because they&#8217;re getting hit harder than we here in Ellis County\u00a0are.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYes, they are. You&#8217;re absolutely right about that. Again, what it requires right\u00a0now is some belt-tightening. It&#8217;s interesting, even if the law gets changed, that\u00a0relief is not going to come &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nVery true. Yeah, might not come for another year or two.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8230; for another year or two at best. No matter what happens at this point, we&#8217;ve\u00a0got some rocky times ahead of us for at least a handful of years. Yeah, in the\u00a0case [inaudible 00:15:14] the City of Hays a little bit that about eight years ago\u00a0we changed to we&#8217;re the only city of first- and second-class cities in the state\u00a0that fund our general fund from sales tax. We made that change so that we were\u00a0forced to be responsive to what the local economic situation was. With property\u00a0taxes, you can just keep sailing along completely impervious to the fact people\u00a0can&#8217;t pay it and they get their home foreclosed, but with sales tax, you have to\u00a0deal with whatever actually comes in from the sales tax. We thought that was a\u00a0good thing to do, and it has really played out well for us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt must have made your job at least a little bit tougher, because sales tax income\u00a0is much more variable. Property tax is really stable. You can budget easily from\u00a0it, you know what&#8217;s coming in. With sales tax &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s [inaudible 00:16:13].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen we went through the economic downturn from &#8217;08 to about 2010,\u00a0obviously discretionary income&#8217;s going to drop, not as many people are going to\u00a0be buying things, and so that&#8217;s going to be harder to make adjustments to the\u00a0budget than had you just decided to do a property tax.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nExactly. We accounted for that by creating greater reserves than what we kept\u00a0when we had just the property ta- &#8230; We didn&#8217;t have just the properties tax, but\u00a0when it was the main [inaudible 00:16:44] the general fund. Anyway, so we&#8217;ve\u00a0had those reserves. In good conscious as an elected official, you shouldn&#8217;t collect\u00a0a whole lot more taxes than you actually need. By collecting more, which we did\u00a0to have those reserves to cushion for a really bad year, that left us with a lot of\u00a0money on hand. What we&#8217;ve done is, in the past, projects that we would have\u00a0bonded for, we paid cash for. I think the taxpayers can feel good about that.<\/p>\n<p>When we replaced the runway at the airport, major project, when we last rebuilt\u00a0Vine Street, we paid cash for all these things. Not too many cities will pay in cash\u00a0for those kinds of projects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. I was going to say, that&#8217;s pretty rare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYou save all of those financing charges that you pay when you bond, so you\u00a0spend less taxpayer money doing projects than you would have otherwise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe first thing I want to say is I really appreciate you bringing up those\u00a0colleagues, and there are a lot of others besides those, including the city staff,\u00a0city manager.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nMm-hmm (affirmative). Pretty darn good people on both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, and these good things that have happened are attributable to a whole lot\u00a0of people besides just me, and definitely the credit needs to be passed around. It\u00a0wasn&#8217;t practical for me to run for the legislature. I thought about it. It was\u00a0something that definitely interested me because of my interest in public service\u00a0and government and so forth, but it would have meant me being gone during\u00a0one of the semesters, basically, and the two semesters are the biggest part of my\u00a0annual work schedule. Actually, under state law, I could do it and it has to be\u00a0allowed, but I didn&#8217;t feel in good conscience that I should walk away from my job\u00a0during that time of the year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nGot you. That&#8217;s something else that people don&#8217;t really realize when they think\u00a0about their state representatives, is that you kind of have to have the right job\u00a0situation to be able to make that happen, just the amount of time that you&#8217;ve\u00a0got to spend. You&#8217;re spending months in Topeka. Looks like we may for the\u00a0current session have them go into overtime. Every time I mention that to a state\u00a0representative, they seem to act like I&#8217;ve just tased them, but with the courts\u00a0coming, it certainly looks that way. It keeps, I think, civic-minded citizens like\u00a0yourself from getting into that pool. That&#8217;s an unfortunate thing if someone\u00a0wants to run for office and the stipulations of the job mean that they can&#8217;t, or\u00a0the requirements of that job mean they can&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, that&#8217;s unfortunate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt is unfortunate. I think we&#8217;re very much aware of that on a national level. You\u00a0pretty much have to be a millionaire to run for a national office. As you say, at\u00a0the state level, you don&#8217;t have to be a millionaire, but you have to have\u00a0circumstances that allow you to be free to do that service, so not just every- &#8230;\u00a0We lose out on a lot of potentially great people that just cannot do it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. You don&#8217;t have that much of an issue with the city commission. You&#8217;ve\u00a0been able to keep your job, hold onto the city commission position.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThanks to the forbearance of, first, President Hammond, and now President\u00a0Martin, because there are conflicts at times. I know they&#8217;ve both been\u00a0uncomfortable here and there on a vote I&#8217;ve passed or whatever, and they&#8217;ve\u00a0both just been great in being supportive and allowing me to not feel a bunch of\u00a0pressure to do what I think is right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nNow you&#8217;re handing off the reins to, there are two new city commissioners,\u00a0because you and also Commissioner Mellick decided not to run again. Does it\u00a0feel odd handing off the reins, especially considering that you&#8217;re leaving people\u00a0in a pretty good situation? Is there that sense of, &#8220;Good luck, boys, don&#8217;t run it\u00a0into a ditch&#8221;? I&#8217;m playing a little silly with it, but I think you understand the\u00a0question is, is there trepidation about saying, &#8220;Gosh, I really busted my back end\u00a0to make things good &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, there&#8217;s some of that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8220;&#8230; I hope these guys don&#8217;t mess it up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8220;Don&#8217;t mess it up.&#8221; There&#8217;s some of that, to be honest, but as you already said,\u00a0you could not find a more experienced public servant than Eber Phelps, so it&#8217;s\u00a0not like the commission is lacking. Or, Henry Schwaller&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong> For that matter, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8230; who&#8217;s been there a long, long time, and Shaun has a little experience under his\u00a0belt. James and Lance would be the first ones to tell you they&#8217;ve got a steep\u00a0learning curve ahead of them, but I think they&#8217;re equally good. They&#8217;ve both\u00a0bring a lot of experience to it that they&#8217;ll be able to quickly apply to what&#8217;s\u00a0required in that job.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nThere was a proposal in front of the state legislature this past cycle. I think it kind\u00a0of died in committee. It&#8217;d do two things. I want to unpack them, because there&#8217;s\u00a0one part I want to focus on. It would change elections and it would make those\u00a0school board and those city commission elections, in addition to changing the\u00a0date, it&#8217;d make it partisan. One of the things that thoroughly consistent\u00a0observers of the local government point out is that, without the party labels on\u00a0those city commission offices, it&#8217;s let folks that are otherwise on opposite sides\u00a0of the aisle &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who pays attention knows that you identify Republican. You support\u00a0Republican candidates, you&#8217;re conservative yourself. Eber Phelps and Henry\u00a0Schwaller obviously are on the record as having run for Democratic partisan\u00a0spaces before, but a lot of the great successes that have come out of the city\u00a0commission&#8217;s work had been when the two of you or the three of you, or more,\u00a0have crossed the aisle. Do you think that it would change it for the worse if we\u00a0went to partisan elections for city commission?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI definitely think it has that potential, for the reasons you just described. I don&#8217;t\u00a0know that political parties have to be the kiss of death to being able to work\u00a0together. We can look at any number of situations in the history, I don&#8217;t know\u00a0about currently, where it works just fine to have political parties that are\u00a0[inaudible 00:26:48] &#8230; It&#8217;s like everything in life, there are trade-offs. If you go\u00a0from one way of doing it to another, you gain some things, you lose some things.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you&#8217;re right, I think if city officials have to run in partisan elections, there will be some tendency to create some rifts there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>***PROGRAM BREAK***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<br \/>\n<\/strong> One of the big rifts that it seems there is in the community &#8230; We&#8217;ve achieved a\u00a0lot of consensus on a number of things, but &#8230; In the interest of full disclosure, I\u00a0probably contribute a bit to this myself, and I think we&#8217;re going to be pretty\u00a0much on the same page here. When the government starts getting into the\u00a0business of being in business or being, as people commonly say, in bed with\u00a0business, I think it can be a recipe for disaster unless it&#8217;s done very, very\u00a0carefully. We&#8217;re seeing a number of things come through the city commission of\u00a0late, and controversial, and people aren&#8217;t quite sure if these are the right ways to\u00a0go. It&#8217;s a long set up to talk about CIDs and TIFs, community improvement\u00a0districts and tax increment financing.\u00a0A couple of months ago, the city voted in favor of a community improvement\u00a0district that&#8217;ll raise the sales tax at the mall to pay for improvements the Dial\u00a0Properties wants to make on it. Then, just this past week, the USD 489 school\u00a0board agreed to support a tax increment financing district for some land they\u00a0own northwest of town that&#8217;s going to be a new truck stop. You&#8217;ve been very\u00a0vocal about your general opposition to those, and I get that and for the most\u00a0part I agree. There have been times, like when we brought the Home Depot in,\u00a0that I thought that the tax increment financing plan was a good plan. Do you\u00a0think that there is some good in the judicious use of districts like that, or do you\u00a0pretty much think that across the board it&#8217;s a bad way to go?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kent:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s not just a bad way to go, it&#8217;s an abomination.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nOkay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nWould you like me to elaborate?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nNo, you can just leave that there. Yes, I would, especially considering that there\u00a0have been some times where I&#8217;ve thought, &#8220;Hey, that was a proper way to go.&#8221; I\u00a0was kind of expecting you to disagree, not to that level of intensity, so, yeah.\u00a0Convince me why I&#8217;m wrong about the Home Depot deal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong> \u00a0I think there&#8217;s a single situation where it&#8217;s defensible. First of all, if a\u00a0businessman wants a handout from the city, the City of Hays [inaudible\u00a000:31:33], they drive down to city hall in their Lexus or their Escalade, and they\u00a0tell them, &#8220;I need money so I can do this wonderful thing,&#8221; there is no way for us\u00a0to confirm that what they&#8217;re telling us is true. At best, we could ask to audit their\u00a0personal finances, their professional finances, whatever. Ask Toby Dougherty\u00a0what he thinks of that idea. He doesn&#8217;t want anything to do with it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nSure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nEven if you did that, even if they gave you every record that they have [inaudible\u00a000:32:10] &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nThey wouldn&#8217;t want their records to become public anyway &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. [inaudible 00:32:12].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<br \/>\n<\/strong> &#8230; because once they go into your hands &#8230; Yeah, exactly<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\n[inaudible 00:32:13] can&#8217;t in many instances, but if they go into a bank they have\u00a0to divulge all kinds of information like that. Even if you looked at those records\u00a0and said, &#8220;Oh, yeah, you&#8217;re short two-million dollars,&#8221; that doesn&#8217;t prove that\u00a0they couldn&#8217;t have gone to a bank or gone and got other investors. There&#8217;s no<\/p>\n<p>way for a government to prove that these people need this money.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;m really glad you mention that, too, because a lot of what I heard when the\u00a0public forum was held at FHSU for these commission candidates right before the\u00a0election, a couple of people said, &#8220;Well, have you tried to go to a bank to get a \u00a0loan? It&#8217;s nearly impossible.&#8221; I thought, &#8220;You&#8217;re a multi-million dollar business &#8230;\u00a0&#8221; Let&#8217;s put it on Dial Properties now, the owner of the Hays mall. They&#8217;re a multi-million dollar business with locations all across the US. They can&#8217;t get a three-million dollar loan? That seemed crazy to me that someone would say that a\u00a0company like that would struggle to get financing for what a business would look\u00a0at as a relatively small amount of money.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kent:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt&#8217;d make you wonder about their financial viability overall, wouldn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nMake you wonder what a banks doing, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nIs this the company you want to be investing in? Plus, when they go and get\u00a0investors, the investors either get equity in the business that&#8217;s being created, or\u00a0their money gets paid back to them with interest. For the taxpayers of Hays,\u00a0neither of those things. They just give it away. Then, the thing, being a believer in\u00a0free enterprise, any time you prop up one business, you hurt another. The\u00a0example I gave with the mall is, we gave them three-million dollars plus. It was\u00a0more than three. If our intent was to help the mall, we certainly succeeded. I\u00a0don&#8217;t know how a business couldn&#8217;t be better off when they get a gift of more\u00a0than three-million dollars.<\/p>\n<p>If the intent was to help the Hays economy, it&#8217;s just the opposite. We hurt the\u00a0Hays economy, because what we did was, people like whoever the construction\u00a0company was that built the new building for Hibbett Sports, they&#8217;re not going to\u00a0get a Hibbett Sports coming to them because the mall got a gift.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s right, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nSame with Vanderbilt&#8217;s. They moved from the malls to where they could get a\u00a0better deal, a better businessman that could offer them a better situation. Now\u00a0they&#8217;re not going to go shopping for that better situation. What we&#8217;ve done is\u00a0taken an inefficient business, propped them up, to the harm of the people who\u00a0are operating good businesses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nI assume that you&#8217;re no fan of the 489 deal to build a new Oasis-style truck stop.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nSome guy from [Colby 00:35:09] is coming in here to run a business, and in\u00a0addition to the way you finance a business, he wants the taxpayers of this\u00a0community to give him millions of dollars. No, I&#8217;m not in favor of that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>***PROGRAM BREAK***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen we see communities that have been doing this, I think about the\u00a0southeast Kansas community where the Amazon distribution center is about to\u00a0move away. The reason it&#8217;s moving away is that their tax deal, they have one of\u00a0those sweetheart tax deals &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\n[inaudible 00:38:55].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s exactly right. It becomes this thing where businesses become transient.\u00a0They only short-term help their communities. Obviously, it&#8217;s harder to move a\u00a0truck stop than it is this, or a mall, but the same thing applies, is that now there\u00a0really isn&#8217;t much of an incentive for Dial Properties, the next time that they want\u00a0to improve that property, to do anything on their own. They just come to the city\u00a0with their hand out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s right. If anyone&#8217;s really interested in getting down into the nitty gritty of\u00a0this, they can contact me. I can give them URLs for a couple of studies. Actually,\u00a0they&#8217;re not studies, they&#8217;re reviews of literature. They represent multiple studies\u00a0showing that none of this stuff works.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. It certainly seems like that, and I was just kind of shocked that we&#8217;d gone\u00a0in that &#8230; For things where you&#8217;re building infrastructure and you&#8217;re paying the\u00a0city back, water, sewer, roads, it seems to make a bit more sense than\u00a0something like the mall deal, where it just seemed like a real handout. One of\u00a0the things people always say in this town is, &#8220;Gosh, I wish we had more retail\u00a0options. I wish we had this store that&#8217;s at the central mall in Salina.&#8221; They said\u00a0that about Hobby Lobby for years until it came here. Dial Properties&#8217; response\u00a0was, &#8220;We&#8217;ll dangle a couple of vague properties. We won&#8217;t name them, but have\u00a0said they might come in if this deal gets done.&#8221; That seemed the strangest thing\u00a0that convinced people. I was utterly unconvinced by that. I assume you were to?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI was unconvinced.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nDo you think that we&#8217;re going to see not just the physical improvement? Do you\u00a0think we might see some improvement in the Hays Mall? Do you think it might\u00a0bring some of that in?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kent:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, I think we&#8217;ll see improvements there. I&#8217;m a little surprised it hasn&#8217;t started\u00a0yet, but it takes some work. They have to get the engineering done and have the\u00a0architect do the drawings and all that sort of thing. I would expect to see\u00a0something happening out there fairly soon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nOkay. We talked enough about that. One of the things that we should probably\u00a0talk about as well, because it&#8217;s just so front and center on everyone&#8217;s mind, if it&#8217;s\u00a0not the economy, people are talking about water, and you&#8217;ve got a lot to hang\u00a0your hat on for the changes we made to water consumption here in the city of\u00a0Hays. But it&#8217;s something [inaudible 00:41:29] the city of Hays, or is there a\u00a0collective action problem in the rest of western Kansas that&#8217;s even bigger than\u00a0anything we do here?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, that&#8217;s a good question. I&#8217;m think how I&#8217;d respond to that. A lot of people\u00a0don&#8217;t realize that the city commission has made a definite decision to pursue\u00a0water rights that we own in Edwards County. The answer to your question would\u00a0be, yeah, we need to do more. We don&#8217;t have an immediate need for it. We\u00a0were able to fight quite a difficult political battle not too many years ago and\u00a0renovate our well field on Smoky Hill River ten miles south of town. That bought\u00a0us a bunch of time. All that time that we have, by the way, another point you\u00a0touched on, is contingent on people continuing to conserve. If we were to\u00a0suddenly start consuming per capita the amount of water that&#8217;s average in the\u00a0state of Kansas, we&#8217;d be in trouble, but thanks to our citizen understanding\u00a0where they live and the need to conserve, that&#8217;s been a huge help [inaudible\u00a000:42:39].<\/p>\n<p>For our city to grow and have the water we need in the future, we have\u00a0concluded that we need to go to Smoky Hill, which will require, for the very first\u00a0time, invoking the Water Transfer Act. The Act has existed in Kansas law for a\u00a0number of years, but nobody has ever actually used it, and to bring the water\u00a0that far, we&#8217;re going to have to do that. That is quite a process. City attorney\u00a0John Bird and Toby Dougherty, the city manager, have been working diligently\u00a0on that for about a year now. I think people will start seeing and hearing more\u00a0about it publicly before too long. Another point you raised, and you&#8217;ve written\u00a0seriously a very good question, is not just Hays as the lone ranger, but what\u00a0about western Kansas?\u00a0I can&#8217;t offer a lot of hope for the entire western half of the state, but we have a\u00a0partner in the city of Russell, and we&#8217;ve also talked to rural water districts\u00a0around here. We&#8217;ve extended offers to Ellis, La Crosse, Victoria, a number of\u00a0communities, to be part of this, truthfully, because it will help our case if it&#8217;s a\u00a0regional solution instead of just for our city, but it also makes sense, that we\u00a0have rights to enough water down there, more than we can use, so why not\u00a0solve other people&#8217;s problem while we&#8217;re solving our own?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nSince there is kind of a collective action problem here. I was talking to an\u00a0individual who lives in another country in the northwestern part of the state who\u00a0I will not identify because it&#8217;s a small enough county you probably &#8230; I tell you\u00a0the county, I tell you who it is. The thrust of his comment to me was, &#8220;You can do\u00a0whatever you want with residential water and business water here in the City of\u00a0Hays, but the rest of this chunk of the state is so dependent especially on pivot\u00a0irrigation agriculture, which uses a lot more water than most residences and\u00a0here in this county &#8230; &#8221; Their basic point was, &#8220;You guys with your oil production\u00a0and your less agriculture production than us get on your high horse, talk about\u00a0water as much as you want, but we need water for pivot agriculture. Leave us\u00a0out of your restrictions.&#8221; What do you say to that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI think they&#8217;re too excited. Listen, I&#8217;m sympathetic. People might want to imagine\u00a0farmers being rich or whatever, and actually, agriculture&#8217;s been pretty successful\u00a0for a few years now, but it&#8217;s just like buying equipment if you have a business or\u00a0paying for your home, you take out a mortgage. These farmers have invested\u00a0tons of money into these wells and the irrigation equipment and so on. They\u00a0can&#8217;t just stop using it, then they can&#8217;t pay the payments on them. They&#8217;re kind\u00a0of in a trap, many of them. I think most of them, I don&#8217;t know about this one\u00a0individual, but most of them realize that the overall aquifer is dropping\u00a0precipitously. It cannot sustain the current rate of usage. Something needs to be\u00a0done, not for the City of Hays, which doesn&#8217;t even get any water out of the\u00a0Ogallala, but for the sake of the people who are using it.<\/p>\n<p>Another really important point most people don&#8217;t realize is that &#8230; Actually, I was\u00a0at a state water meeting here, and they were singing the praises of the City of\u00a0Hays, because what we&#8217;ve done over the last thirty years or so really is\u00a0extraordinary. Some agricultural people objected. They drive through town and\u00a0they see the water running down the gutter somewhere and then they want to\u00a0act like our consumption per capita isn&#8217;t half what it is everywhere else. There\u00a0are abuses, obviously, but, anyway, they were talking about, &#8220;Well, what you&#8217;re\u00a0doing, are you really saving much of anything?&#8221; I asked the question, knowing\u00a0the answer, to the state officials, &#8220;How much of the water consumed in the state\u00a0of Kansas is consumed by agriculture, and how much of the water consumed in\u00a0the state of Kansas is consumed by municipalities?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All the municipalities together, Wichita, Topeka, Hays, Dodge City, everybody, six\u00a0percent of the water consumed. Agriculture consumes eighty-seven percent of\u00a0it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nWow. Eighty-seven?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI like to eat, that&#8217;s not a criticism, but if you want a little perspective, that\u00a0agricultural interests are consuming by vast majority of the water in the state. I\u00a0think they&#8217;re the ones that need to find the solution to the problem they have,\u00a0which is that the water is flowing away underground.<\/p>\n<p><strong>***PROGRAM BREAK***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe Governor&#8217;s gotten involved in that. There&#8217;s a new state-wide water initiative.\u00a0He&#8217;s come out here to the western part of the state, had a few meetings there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat was part of the meeting I alluded to.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nMm-hmm (affirmative). He hasn&#8217;t obviously released a plan yet, but do you think\u00a0we&#8217;re on the right track to getting the water consumption down to a level that&#8217;s\u00a0going to be sustainable?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI see nothing but false starts so far, but I think the necessity is so clear that\u00a0eventually we&#8217;ll start taking some meaningful steps.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong> Why the false starts? Is it just that they get pushed back and so they decide not\u00a0to go forward with aggressive plans, or is there something else at work there?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI think it&#8217;s &#8230; I started to say desperation. That&#8217;s probably too strong, but need, I\u00a0think. You&#8217;ve got this investment in equipment, seed, fertilizer, the land you\u00a0purchased. If you&#8217;re still paying for all of that, you&#8217;ve got to generate crops so\u00a0that you have a money stream and you can pay for it. If reducing your water\u00a0consumption by x amount is going to reduce your income by x amount and you\u00a0can&#8217;t make your payments, it&#8217;s tough.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt is tough, and tough choices have been one of the things you&#8217;ve shared as a\u00a0theme of making those tough choices during your time. Is there anything you\u00a0look back on your tenure in the city commission and you say, &#8220;I wish I had a do-over on that&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe thing I was most disappointed in myself was my inability it seems so often to\u00a0convince enough of my colleagues to vote the way I thought they should. You\u00a0know what? If you take a specific issue, I probably wouldn&#8217;t change my mind on\u00a0it, although there were a couple I would. I do always try to remind myself there\u00a0are four other good people up there who studied and who work smart and so\u00a0on, and if they prevail against my position, it might well be because they&#8217;re right\u00a0and I was wrong.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYou said there may have been one or two of those as you&#8217;re looking back?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nOne thing I would have voted differently on was, oh, boy, twelve years ago, or\u00a0it&#8217;s about ten years ago, whatever, because there was a little interruption of my\u00a0service, but there was a move to ban smoking in restaurants in the City of Hays. I\u00a0voted against it, and the reason I did that was mostly because we were down to\u00a0literally about a dozen restaurants that allowed it at that point. The trend was,\u00a0one after another, they were banning it on their own, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Why does\u00a0the city need to step in when this is already happening?&#8221; As I look back on it, I\u00a0think I was wrong. I think it was enough of a health issue that that should have\u00a0overwritten every other consideration. If I had it to do over, I would vote\u00a0differently on that. Of course, now it&#8217;s banned anyway, so fortunately I don&#8217;t\u00a0have to feel too guilty about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nWhat&#8217;s the opposite of that? Is there a crown jewel in your retrospective on your\u00a0time in the commission? Is there something you&#8217;re proudest of?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong> Yeah. One we already talked about, and that was Randy Gustafson&#8217;s idea to pay\u00a0for our general fund with a sales tax. I think that&#8217;s just turned out wonderfully for\u00a0us. The other one, which I initiated, I take personal credit to an extent, and that\u00a0is the terrible, terrible odor that used to hang over the City of Hayes from the\u00a0Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center. When I brought this up, I\u00a0said, &#8220;Whatever is done, it should not be done if it&#8217;s going to harm them in any\u00a0way.&#8221; I don&#8217;t think people chose to hear that part of what I was saying, and I was\u00a0kind of public enemy number one for a lot of the agricultural interests.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Bob Gillen, the head of the Research Center, and Dr. John Jaeger, who&#8217;s the\u00a0beef cattle scientist out there, they agreed with me. Because my point was that&#8217;s\u00a0what you exist for, is to do research, and all across the country we&#8217;re seeing this\u00a0happen, the urban sprawl, agricultural operations, they&#8217;re coming up against\u00a0each other. Wouldn&#8217;t this be a good thing to do research on and figure out some\u00a0ways to handle this? John, he just did such a marvelous job of &#8230; One of the key\u00a0things he did was to extend the concrete apron about six or eight feet so that\u00a0when the cattle were feeding and relieving themselves, all that could be\u00a0captured instead of going into the dirt. Just a simple little mechanical thing.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, he did a lot of other things too. Every once in a while you&#8217;ll catch a whiff\u00a0of that under just the wrong circumstances &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nCertainly not the consistent level it was, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nFor those of us who have lived here for awhile, it used to just about take your\u00a0breath away.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, and it was pretty consistent throughout the summertime, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. They&#8217;ve just done marvelous things out there so that we&#8217;re better\u00a0neighbors than we ever were.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nI think that&#8217;s about all the time that we&#8217;ve got. I need to let you get back to\u00a0campus and so on. Thanks so much for joining me. I always, as much as I study\u00a0this stuff, I learn a lot when I get a chance to pick your brain a little bit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nThanks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapman:<\/strong><br \/>\nThanks again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steward:<\/strong><br \/>\nI enjoyed this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapman: Kent Steward, I think it&#8217;s probably safe to say one of the more recognizable folks\u00a0around this town, both at Fort Hays State University and&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","hentry","category-talking-democracy","post_format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20069"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20089,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20069\/revisions\/20089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}