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By: JOHNNIE A. KELLER
I have been asked about why myself, Keith Cooper and Doug Rempp joined forces to offer Real change for Salina? Each of us brings new ideas, and proven ideas to the table that we feel will work to meet the needs of our city and its citizens as well as help to encourage the growth in the local industry that we need. Now saying that each of us has different styles of leadership would be an understatement. But we all know that we can make a positive difference for the city of Salina and our citizens.
One of the giant “in your face” problems that we face, and we hear from every demographic group of people in Salina is: IT COSTS TOO MUCH TO LIVE HERE! Our current leaders tell us that they didn’t raise the mill levy yet everyone I have spoken with has told me that their property tax is still increasing. Now, why is that you might ask? It’s simple, when the city government grows and the city raises the budget for 2026 about FIVE Million dollars more than last year, your property values go up and now you pay more property taxes.
Any honest economist will tell you that property taxes should run within 3-5% in parallel with inflation. Since 1997 Inflation has risen at a steady average rate of 2.5-2.7% for this part of the country. So, doing simple math tells us that inflation should be in the low seventy percent range. Unfortunately, during Covid inflation got a bit worse and we are around 83% higher inflation from 1997 till today. So, following the rule of thumb of being between 3-5% higher property taxes to inflation, your property taxes should be around 88-90% but if you look, they are not. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Kansas Dept of Revenue, Salina property taxes are over 159% higher than they were in 1997. Why is that? The cost of city government has grown, and it’s grown at the tax payers expense.
We are not against responsible growth as any citizen (we would hope) would like to see. The mission of the government and those elected by the citizens to oversee and manage the city is to provide for the safety, security, infrastructure and communication of the city. We feel that many of these private/public partnerships are not in the best interest of the taxpayers, and we feel that the taxpayer can spend your money better than any government agency or entity can spend it. We feel that our city has been too liberal with our tax dollars and the middle class, blue collar citizens are the people who are suffering the most.
We will bring common sense and oversight to this city and none of the three of us are going to go along to get along. We will work for you, the voters, the citizens and your families. We will work for all of Salina to ensure that the future generations will have a
future that they can afford and will want to stay in Salina to raise the next generation. We want to see this manufacturing and agriculture hub right at the Crossroads of America grow and flourish. But we will do it with all Salinan’s in mind and work to make it far more affordable to live here which in turn will make Salina far more inviting to people to move here, because they can afford to.
My background in Education, the military and manufacturing, Doug’s background in private business and management, then Keith's small business and construction background brings those bare-knuckle blue-collar skill sets to the table. We will be the stewards of your tax dollars, and we will treat those tax dollars like we were spending our own hard-earned money.
We care about Salina, this is our home, and we will work hard to earn your trust and confidence to do the RIGHT THING FOR ALL OF SALINA.
A bit more from Johnnie “Jak” Keller before Nov 4th:
I have been asked why Keith Cooper, Doug Rempp and myself joined forces to offer Real Change for Salina. While pondering this, I received a flyer in the mail sent out by the GOP of Ks. Actually, I have received several. The Flyer(s) promote Commissioners running either for reelection or have previously served. Let's look at the attributes stated.
#1, Lower Property Taxes. I don’t know about you, but I have not seen my bill go down at all. In fact, it has increased. And regardless of what they say about our Mill Levy, I pay more. Just look at some of the recent decisions made with our money.
#2, Support Small Business. Seriously? Please tell me how. I have 2 words, Cozy Inn. Our City can be difficult to work with and I have seen no move to be more Business friendly. Well, maybe you can call providing our tax dollars as incentives to bring them in support. I would rather we work to keep our current businesses here 1st and foremost!
#3, Stand with our Police, perhaps. It may depend who you talk to. We would like to see more updates from our media sources or more detail from our Police dept
#4, Cut Wasteful Spending, please tell me what you have done to save tax dollars because it seems to us that we have wasteful spending. See 1 and 2 above.
Reminds me of saying I heard years ago. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got!” A common buzz around town this past year has been that we need new leadership.
Cooper, Keller, and Rempp branded ourselves as your Nov 4th Trifecta for change. We bring fresh new ideas from 3 vastly different backgrounds. We represent a wide cross section of our Community. We will work to represent our Community to the best of our abilities. The 3 of us have similar viewpoints and some different view points. That's healthy as we have 46k thousand people in Salina that have diverse views.
We are not radical. We want to see our City grow in a positive way. Tax reduction tools or abated Property Taxes are a tool our Leaders love to use. However, you don’t offer the world right up front. We have a Central US Location and a great Airport. We are getting new distribution facilities and we should. If we have 25-30% of our City’s Properties not on the tax rolls, the other 70+% have to pay 30% more to make up for them. We want our Leaders to spend our money like it’s coming out of their own pockets, and with transparency.
Everyday it seems we see Business and Industries reducing or streamlining staff due to greater efficiencies. In this day and age, any private business has to be as lean as possible. Governments always seem to take the opposite approach. Every year they feel they are being good stewards of our dollars if they keep their growth inline with inflation. A private business develops their budget the opposite way. They build it based on need at every level in their organization.
We feel we bring Common Sense and fresh oversight to our City and none of us are going to go along to get along. We care about Salina, it’s our home. We will work hard for 100% of the Community to the Best of our Ability!
Please Vote Tuesday!
Jak Keller.
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