| You can thank our County Commisioners from many years ago for this situation. It was brought up then to have a new jail built because the population of the jail was overcrowded and just going to get bigger. They had the option to go in with the sales tax for our High School and new schools, but decided to pass the buck and wait.......and wait....and wait. So here we are, paying outragous amounts of money to other counties, when we could have built a state-of-the-art jail and charged them to house inmates. (It was projected that the amount charged to Sedgewick and Johnson counties alone would have payed for the jail).
You cannot use the WND taxes for the same reason you can't use them to build a new Courthouse, repair streets, upkeep of St. Mary's, etc... They were passed for one reason and one reason only. Allow the Commissioners to pick and choose what that money goes for (at least more than they do now) and then what?
If you make local business' pay the taxes for the jail, than you would have to let them also run it. You want them in charge?
You want tents? Ok. You also going to raise the County budget even higher to pay for the manpower needed to control it? You going to ok the raises needed to hire people to work in it? Remember, the officers have to be out in the tents too, 24/7.
We have needed a new jail for over 20 years now. We have skated by the skin of our teeth up to this point. A 1/4 cent sales tax seems to me to be an optimal situation.
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I refuse to answer that question.....because I do not know the answer. |