Baldwin ? Backers of a plan to boost sales taxes to buy industrial land and preserve open space took their case to the public Wednesday night, anticipating plenty of criticism of the financing plan.

They got it.

“There are only two things we know for sure,” said Kelvin Heck, co-chairman of the ECO2 committee that developed the plan. “The only good tax is something someone else pays, and nobody likes taxes.”

Heck and other committee members welcomed about 40 people to an auditorium at Baker University for the opening meeting to gauge public sentiment for a proposed countywide 1/4-cent sales-tax increase that could be put up for a public vote in November’s general election.

The money would generate an estimated $22.6 million in 10 years. It would build an inventory of job-creating industrial development while also preserving farms, prairies and other natural areas as open space, proponents said.

But the prospect of digging deeper into the public’s collective wallet didn’t sit well with several folks in the audience.

“I don’t believe that we should be allowing the tax dollars to increase,” said Rita “Peach” Madl, who owns The Sandbar in downtown Lawrence and a lodge in Baldwin.

Madl suggested using existing groups, such as the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission, to encourage development of business parks and protection of open space.

“The tax increase is nothing but a $2.5 million (per year) middleman,” she said.

Don Cashatt, a longtime opponent of tax increases, criticized language in the ECO2 plan as too “broad.” The document a copy is available for review at www.ljworld.com/section/eco2 backs an increase in taxes, he said, without adequate safeguards to be sure the money would be spent as promised.

“Frankly, it scares me,” he said. “This document is so broad, in the hands of the wrong people, that it’s scary.”

But Todd Cohen, a member of the Baldwin City Council, thanked ECO2 leaders for putting together a consensus plan that advocates two laudable goals: creating jobs and protecting open space.

He said he just hopes whatever plan survives ends up pumping jobs into Baldwin, and not just Lawrence or the Kansas Highway 10 corridor.

“This is one community that needs more industrial development,” Cohen said.

Leaders of ECO2, a committee formed two years ago by the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, say they want to collect more public input before settling on a final plan. They hope to get a sales-tax question on the ballot in November, a move that would require support from the Douglas County Commission.

With upcoming meetings in Lawrence, Lecompton and Eudora, ECO2 members say they are confident they can find a plan that works economically and politically.

“We’re looking for ideas,” said Shirley Martin-Smith, co-chairwoman of ECO2. “We really want some feedback. It cannot be a countywide plan unless people really tell us what they think.”