Jeanette Browning Faubion
Citizen Staff
The Platte County sheriff and prosecutor outlined the needs of their offices at a lengthy meeting of the county’s commission-appointed tax committee Tuesday night.
The nearly three-hour meeting was held at the Platte County Resource Center and featured presentations by sheriff Mark Owen and prosecutor Eric Zahnd. Both reiterated previous statements that their staff salaries are non-competitive, leading to a large turnover. The sheriff’s office is also facing additional demand for services, with school districts asking for resource officers and municipalities seeking law enforcement support. At the prosecutor’s office, the physical office in the county courthouse is out of space, with attorneys stacked into a common room.
Committee members — of which only about half were present — also continued to disagree about the scope of the committee’s work and its true mission. According to the Platte County Commission order approved in October, that mission is to “make a tax structure recommendation concerning dedicated funding for long term predictable financial stability that prioritizes law enforcement operations and supports parks and stormwater operations and maintenance.”
Committee member Gordon Cook said there are 52 levies collected in Platte County, for entities ranging from fire and ambulance districts, school districts and the Mid-Continent Public Library (MCPL). Cook recently served on the MCPL board and has questioned its spending.
Commissioner John Elliott and Owen pointed out the county has no control over taxes set by other entities. Cook argued that the commission questioned MCPL’s levy increase when it went before voters in 2016, and that the public should be aware of spending.
He also took issue with Elliott’s statement that the committee’s purpose was to determine how to best split up a potential half-cent tax.
“If we’re here just for splitting a half cent I don’t know why this committee exists, because that’s the commission’s job,” Cook said.
Committee member Shane Bartee said Cook seemed to have a different idea for the scope of the committee’s work than he did.
Cook said he believed the information on other taxing entities was relevant to the committee’s work.
“I’ve got other, better things to do than talk about the library tax,” said committee member Aaron Schmitt, who previously served as the county’s director of planning and zoning.
When Schmitt suggested the committee needed more information on the potential need for a new jail facility, committee chair Sandra Thomas — herself a former county auditor — said she believed that was outside of the scope of the committee’s recommendations.
Elliott confirmed that any potential law enforcement tax would be for operations only and not capital improvements.
Owen reiterated that the county will need a new jail facility within the next 10 years. A proposed law enforcement sales tax on the April ballot failed on a nearly two-to-one margin. The tax would have paid for a new jail facility and sheriff’s office, and relocated the county prosecutor’s office.
Thomas said she wished for presiding judge James Van Amburg to speak to the committee about future needs for the Platte County Circuit Court at the next meeting, but a meeting date was not set.