On this episode of the Post Podcast, Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams shares the latest from Grow Hays.
<br>Transcript
James Bell
The economic future of Ellis County is up to all of us, Grow Hays executive director, Doug Williams stops by to talk a little bit about some of the initiatives going on in the area concerning economic development on this episode of the Post Podcast. The first one I think we want to talk about, and this was this is topical, this came up last night at the city commission work session, they're talking about a sales tax initiative, as part of their bond issue you want to, before we get into it, just tell everybody a little bit if they don't know what what this entails,
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, obviously, the USD 49 is exploring the possibility of a bond issue to build new schools or improve the schools we have. And there are a couple of ways they can pay for that they can do a bond issue, and that can be levied via property tax, or they can do a combination of property tax, and also, with the city's permission, and with the voters' approval, put it out a portion of it on a sales tax. And so they were approaching the city of Hayes about the concept of a half a cent sales tax locally, within the city of Hays or 49. District, I'm not sure exactly how that works. But that would be a half-cent sales tax levied for 10 years. And the proceeds from that sales tax would go towards retiring the bond issue, along with property tax and that kind of thing. And they illustrated what the property tax would be on a typical home in Hays with the sales tax in place, and then without the sales tax in place.
James Bell
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they tried to do this on the bond issue about eight years ago as well. Right. And if I remember correctly, the sales tax piece did pass it but the Bond didn't.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Right. And so it was moot at that point? Because you've with this one the way they explained it last night and I don't want to steal USD 49 stander, I know they come on here as well. But I'm sure we'll be talking the way they explained it last night was it if the sales tax would pass and the bond issue wouldn't, the sales tax would not go into effect. If the bond issue passed, and the sales tax did not the bond issue would still pass and be carried out. And they would build the new schools and make the improvements and that type of thing. So but the sales tax would be conditioned upon the bond passing? Sure.
James Bell
Now, I think we've talked about this enough in the past, I think both of us I think our opinions are pretty clear that generally, whether it be this bond or a different bond or some way or another, we're going to have to fix those facilities. But what I'm curious about is your thoughts on is the sales tax, a good way to do that? Because I think about the trade area or the 1.7 pull or pull factor that we have for the local economy. I wonder, do you think of that impacts that?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
I think it is a good way to do it? Does it impact that maybe a little bit. But if you look, the thing you have to look at is regionally how our sales tax compares to other places where people would go and shop. And we're right in line, even with a half a percent bump, we were below our peer communities in western Kansas, in central Kansas, before the city, the county passed their half-cent sales tax that took it from 8.25 to 8.75. This would take it from 8.75 to nine and a quarter. Still within the norm of communities our size, so I don't see a lot of harm in that. And it would soften the blow for the property taxpayers have within USD 489. So I think it's a good way to do it. There will be some complaints from remote areas and local areas. You know, I I just because it's a sales tax doesn't mean you're not going to pay something, you're just gonna pay it in smaller increments and that kind of thing. And so but that, you know, as we've talked many times before, and we will many times in the future until this is playing itself out. We have kicked the can down the road as far as we can kick it in regard to our schools, and we have to do something. And this is a good way to do it. It makes it more affordable for the typical taxpayer. And, and it does spread the cost of those schools over some other communities of which, you know, when we pay our state property taxes here, we pay for other community schools because they get some funding that we don't. So it's not like we're picking on everybody from out of town. We're just kind of leveling the playing field. And I think Ron Wilson pointed that out last night.
James Bell
Okay. You know, I think about too, you know, part of the discussions that I've heard is, you know, the facilities, we don't have the facilities we need to do, you know, tournaments and things where we'd bring groups of people in and those kinds of events. You know, they do have a regional impact. I think about people stopping for gas in Russell or walking on the way here, hopefully, they spend their money here. But you know, they're going to some of those folks hit those little towns coming into Hays.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
They are and then more people we get into the community for all types of events, the better, you know, potentially fills up hotel rooms that people buy gas, they buy dinner, they maybe go and buy things at Walmart to the mall or wherever they shop and Home Depot. So activity generates additional dollars and facilities help that for sure. And then just the general overcrowding situations we have within our schools right now, you know, we're over capacity in a couple of them. And, and, and the fact that the way people, the way teachers teach and the way kids learn today is much different than the traditional classrooms. And unfortunately, we're still stuck in that traditional classroom mode because of the facilities we have. But yeah, I think I think all of that would add to economic activity for the area.
James Bell
Yeah. And we talked about this in the past, I mean, the economic impact to these bonds is is huge, both on the front end of the people, we can't get into Hayes, because of the status of the facilities or the way that they look. And, you know, into the future, that workforce, the how that all comes together into one thing, and it's all not good if we can't get people here?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, exactly. It's a key component of our economy and our local community. And, you know, we have to make investments. And as I said, Didn't will continue to say, in my opinion, the cost of not passing a bond is far greater than the cost of the bond itself. And I think if we look at what the consequences are if we don't pass a bond and improve our schools, we will suffer accordingly. And it's harder to quantify for sure. But we will suffer and we will end up, in the long run, paying more than what we're paying for the actual bond term.
James Bell
Now, I know I imagine one that this is going to be one of the topics of conversation of this town hall that's coming up on Monday, the Imagine Ellis County, town hall, right, get the right word. But that's gonna be an opportunity for folks to come in and talk about issues like this, right?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
It is, Imagine Ellis County was formed to try and take a look at Dallas County, what we want to look like in 510 2030 years, and to identify areas where we may have some challenges and as well as identify our strengths. And we have spent some time talking to business owners and community leaders, organization leaders as to what their challenges are, and, and obviously, educational facilities come up all the time, as does housing, as does childcare, and workforce and all of those things. But now, we're trying to engage the community members to see if they have any specific thoughts and ideas, basically. And so that's what our town hall meeting is about. We want to share what we have found from the business community and the organizations we have talked to, and then also get feedback from community members as to what they would like to see what their vision might be. And put those two together. So this is our first town hall meeting, we plan to try and have them in Victoria analysis in the coming months. And then we're putting out a community survey this summer, that will try and address some of these issues and get input from the community. And so we're kicking it all off Monday evening from 530 to eight o'clock at the Hilton Garden Inn. And we would like great attendance, we need feedback. So I encourage anybody to attend, we'd like you to register at either our imagine Ellis County Facebook page, we've got a link or the Grow Hayes, Facebook page, or call us or what have you. If you don't get registered, that doesn't mean we don't want you to come because we would like you to come out as well. But we're trying to get a headcount because we're going to feed you.
James Bell
Hey, do you know how many people have signed up already?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
I think we're somewhere between 40 and 50. Maybe know something not bad. But we'd love to get 100 people there, we really would we want feedback, the more the better. And you know, no ideas necessarily too small or too crazy. We're trying to keep you know, a blank slate and see what we can come up with. So I would encourage anybody that has an interest in Ellis County in our future to come out and offer their input.
James Bell
Yeah, this is a wonderful opportunity to do so because I can't have you know, all the places I've been over the last, you know, 25 or so years of my professional life. I don't ever remember a community doing something like this, like asking people to come together and tell us what do you want our community to be? And I think that's just huge. And I hope that a lot of people take advantage of this and just breaking down the doors come Monday night to share their ideas and thoughts.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, we hope so too. You know, I think it's important that we get feedback and that people get to give us their thoughts and their ideas as opposed to you know later on saying, well, nobody asked me what we're asking, you know, we want to know. So hope, more people, a lot of people can come out and we look forward to a productive session Monday night.
James Bell
Very cool. And the other thing we want to talk about we hit this up a little bit last week, I think, well, I should, I think it was our main topic of conversation, the housing report that's coming up, you've set a date on that, I believe, of the 15th, that's coming out, right? That's correct.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
And I don't want to oversell this, it scares me a little bit that we've talked about it too much. But this is our just our look at the 2021 housing activity and what happened in our local market in 2021, kind of what's happening so far in 2022. And just comparing it to years past and, and highlighting the fact that this is a serious challenge that we face with housing. Now, the city will be coming out with a housing study, in the next few weeks or months, or sometime here soon that the docking Institute is performed. And that will dig into more of the long-term aspects, it'll look at population trends and that type of thing. And, and our, our report will do a little bit of that, but it'll be more time specific to what's going on right now. And, and in the immediate past. Whereas the housing studies typically look at, you've got this many people in your community, you've got this many homes, if you grow at this rate, you need to build X number of homes and, and that's all valuable information. But it may not be completely applicable to what's going on right at this instant. And so ours is going to look a little closer at that, and try and identify exactly what's happening right now where our shortfalls are and what challenges that's producing because it is producing some significant challenges locally.
James Bell
If I remember correctly, the number was hh 14 houses for sale and I was counting.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
The other day when I checked, there were 12. And five of them were in excess of $499,000. So really seven houses, so seven houses. And so the problem with like reports that look back as an example of Wichita State provides the local real estate, realtors with data. And it will tell you that at the end of last year, there were 40 homes available. Well, the metric they use is either active or active under contract. So at any one time, there may be 20 to 30 homes in our community under contract waiting to be sold or closed. But that doesn't mean somebody coming in today who's going to go out and they want to relocate here and they want to go out and look at homes, they've got basically seven to look at unless they want to spend over $500,000. Now that doesn't count for sale by owners and some things like that. And there are some of those, this is just Multiplus data. But the bottom line is we just don't have any inventory at all. And that's one of the reasons why we're working feverishly out in our Tallgrass edition, you know, with getting some homes built, because for every home out there that's built potentially, somebody buys that and it frees up their house becomes available on comes on the market. And so we have to add inventory that way, and we've got 10 of them under construction out there right now.
James Bell
There's a pretty long waitlist for those already isn't there?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
There's a lot of interest, I'm not sure. The builders, I'm not sure they're really wanting to sell them right away when they're under construction, because that creates a whole set of circumstances where that becomes kind of a custom home. And when you're building at that price point, it's very difficult to do a custom home for that where you start having people that want to change where this wall is, or add this or do this differently. And it becomes much more labor-intensive for the builder. So they're resisting, I think, to some extent, selling them ahead of time. But there's tremendous interest. I've had them tell me 20 3040 people have expressed interest and wanted and, and so we've got 10 under construction, and I think we'll have another 12 Under Construction within 30 to 60 days. So I'm hopeful by year-end, we could have 25 homes available out there and be working on the next phase, which is the streets and the sewer and the water and that kind of thing for the next phase, which would be another 27 to 35 Lots.
James Bell
Wow. Yeah, that'll help. And there's and we talked a little bit about this last week, too. There's some development up north going on private development, as well as I think over-analysis or some homes going up and in a program over there as well. Right.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, we're working on some of those, but there are Ellis estates, I believe that's 40, 32 or 40 units that are going up as an addition to that development and we're still working on our concept for the retiree community north of the hospital on that large tract of ground at that location and, and we feel like that will serve a very critical demographic of 55 and older community. So we have a number of we have an aging population If we don't cater to them with housing solutions for their needs, they're going to go someplace else. And so we want to make sure that we retain those people as well as be attractive to people that are looking to relocate from rural communities, communities or urban areas, that we've got good solutions and housing, it really does all start with housing. If you don't have that, you just can't go on to the next step. You can't recruit, retain or recruit a workforce, you've got to have housing. And so that's why we spend so much time working on it.
James Bell
Okay, Doug, we've got under a couple of minutes left, but I know you've got an article coming out or an article that you're going to send to a he's post anyway, want to talk a little bit about that.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
I'll talk a little bit about that. And it's certainly nothing earth-shattering, but it goes to this concept of what we need to be doing here and growth. And I hear a lot of people come to me, I have friends and that kind of thing we like he's just the way it is. And the title of the article is we have to grow to stay the same. And my point in the article is simply our trade area is shrinking. And we're growing at a dismal pace and haze, you know, point one 7% per year, the last from 2010 to 2020. We're not keeping pace currently with even what we're losing in our trade area. So as a community, we have to be really focused on growing our community at a minimum faster than we're losing people in the outlying areas. Now, some of those people are moving here and that kind of thing. And that's all fine. But we need to be cognizant that, you know, Nothing ever stays the same. But in this particular case, if we want to attract new retail, and we want to keep the retail we have and we want to keep a lot of the things that we currently have. We have no choice but to grow and to pick up the pace a little bit and what we have done in the last 10 years. And so we're really focused on that. And that's another reason why housing is so important.