By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
As Ellis County governments work to finalize next year's budget, Grow Hays is seeking a different way to fund the organization they believe will positively impact economic development in the county.
“It’s that time of year — all of the local governments are going through their budget process,” said Grow Hays Executive Director Doug Williams.
“This year, we have a different spin on it.”
Currently, he said they receive about half of their funding from private the public sector and the rest from Ellis County, along with the cities of Hays, Ellis and Victoria.
But he argued if Hays wants to fully benefit from economic development efforts — the way other western Kansas towns have — more funding is needed.
“Our budget is about half of what comparable communities are that have done a good job of economic development,” he said. “We have not had the level of investment to do some of the things that we would like to do over a long sustained period of time.”
So this year, Williams said the approach to funding requests has changed.
He has proposed each taxing agency implement a one-half mill levy specifically for economic development.
“We felt that that would get us to a budget level that would be comparable to other communities our size, but also more importantly, fund the plans that we have,” Williams said.
But even if the mill is not the chosen method of funding, the important part of the proposal, Williams said, is increasing the financial support for economic development.
“We like the idea, we believe it’s a sustainable way to do it, but we are just asking them for additional investment that we think will get the taxing entities a good return,” Williams said.
Using Ford and Finney counties as examples, he said budgets for economic development are around $500,000 and that investment has led to growing local economies.
Grow Hays’ budget is approximately half of that amount.
With that money, the group can employ more staff and overall can accomplish more development, he said.
“They can get a lot more done, and they have,” Williams said.
While many in Ellis County may note the desires of the local population are different than those counties, the return on investment, dollars could potentially create a strong economy and tax base, which will help Ellis County continue to be a regional economic hub.
Using their natural resources and with their investment into development, other counties have brought in industry and created jobs.
“It’s a great lesson in using the resources you have and leveraging those into growth,” Williams said.
He said local resources are different, but just as valuable, pointing to the Interstate highway that runs by Hays carrying 15,000 to 20,000 cars a day, Fort Hays State University, NCK Technical College and Hays Medical Center.
“These are resources that we can leverage,” Williams said. “And we need to do that and take the lessons from these other communities.”
If given an increase by local governments, he said that money would be used in a variety of ways, but increasing staff who could be used to identify and source economic development opportunities would be the most costly.
“We want to add a couple of people,” Williams said. “We want to add somebody that is completely focused on recruitment and retention of business to our community — whether it be retail or otherwise. We want to expand our programming offerings in the area of entrepreneurship and do more programs and get more people involved.”
He said that would help delve into areas of development that are currently untapped.
“We are coming out of this pandemic, we are in a competitive world, we have lots and lots of urban migrators leaving metropolitan areas, we think we have a great story to tell,” Willams said.
“Hays is a great community, but we need to get to those people and make sure they understand what we do have to offer. We just can’t do that if we are short-staffed. We don’t want to miss that opportunity.”