Members of a chamber of commerce group aiming to preserve open space and create industrial park development found themselves debating whether their efforts will create taxation without adequate representation.

ECO2 members at a Tuesday meeting agreed to rethink the portion of their plan limiting whom county commissioners could appoint to an eight-member board responsible for spending new tax dollars for open space and industrial development efforts.

Roger Pine, an ECO2 member, told the group he was uncomfortable with the group’s plan requiring county commissioners to choose board members from a list of nominees submitted by select economic development and environmental groups.

“I would rather see these appointments be the responsibility of the people who are elected rather than people who represent one end of the spectrum or the other,” Pine said.

Seeking balance

ECO2 members have proposed limiting the ability of county commissioners to appoint whomever they choose to the yet-to-be-named board. They said it was important the eight-member panel have four members representing open space interests and four members representing industrial development concerns.

Under the current plan, economic development groups, such as the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce and Douglas County Development Inc., would provide a list of nominees to county commissioners, who would select four to serve on the panel. Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Audubon Society and Kaw Valley Heritage Alliance also would provide nominees, and commissioners would select four from that list, too.

A linchpin issue

Group members agreed to consider how they might change the nominating process, but several said they strongly believed guarantees were needed to create a balanced board.

“I think this issue of how people are appointed is a linchpin issue,” Myles Schachter, an ECO2 member, said. “It holds this effort all together.

“I know politically I wouldn’t feel real comfortable about this county commission appointing people who support open space. I think they would skew the board toward the industrial side.”

The new board could control spending of up to $2 million a year in tax revenues. ECO2 previously has proposed a new, quarter-cent, 10-year, countywide sales tax that would produce roughly $1 million a year for both open space and industrial development projects.

The tax, which hasn’t yet been formally proposed to the county commission, would need voter approval.

Keeping politics out

Pine and a few others on the group said they recognized the desire to keep politics out of the new board’s decision making. But they said they worried the proposal may create taxation without adequate representation.

“This is public money,” Pine said. “It is going to be political, and it needs to be political.”

ECO2 members will have a 7:30 a.m. meeting Tuesday at chamber offices to decide the issue. County Commissioner Charles Jones, also an ECO2 member, said he was certain if too many changes were made to the plan, it would kill ECO2.

“You’re simply not going to get the support from the green side unless they think their interests are going to be represented at the table over the long haul,” Jones said.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, group member Kelly Kindscher presented research showing there was about 27,000 acres of publicly owned or legally protected open space in the county.

That number, which includes the roughly 18,000 acres of water and land of Clinton Lake, represents about 9 percent of the county’s 303,000 total acres.

Kindscher said because of Clinton Lake, the county’s open space total was probably higher than several other are counties. Group members said they still believed there was a need to protect other pieces of prime open space.