photo by: Elvyn Jones

Douglas County 3rd District Commissioner Michelle Derusseau is pictured, Jan. 8, 2017.

Surely you all have started to have election withdrawal by now. The symptoms include a smile on your face and giddiness. Well, fear not, 2017 is going to have plenty of local elections. In fact, in some ways, it may have too many.

As part of my series of conversations with local leaders, I met recently with new Douglas County Commissioner Michelle Derusseau. The big takeaway from our chat is that Derusseau is not yet convinced it is a good idea to have an election in 2017 to seek taxpayer approval for a jail expansion and mental health crisis center.

“I don’t know yet,” Derusseau said when asked whether 2017 was the year the approximately $40 million jail and crisis center project should be put to voters. “It is going to be a tough year to do it. I can say that.”

There are at least two factors that may make 2017 particularly challenging for the jail issue. The first is that there are already visible signs of opposition to expanding the jail. There are two groups actively working to convince leaders that a jail expansion shouldn’t be undertaken now, but rather alternative efforts to incarceration need to be further explored. If you are keeping track at home, they are the faith-based group Justice Matters and a separate group that is affiliated with the nonprofit Kansas Appleseed Project. Organized opposition before an election date has even been set is always a red flag, but certainly not insurmountable.

Issue No. 2, though, is that by the time Douglas County commissioners conceivably could be prepared to put this on the ballot, Douglas County voters may already be tired of supporting tax increases for projects. That’s because the Lawrence school district is positioned to beat everybody to the punch in asking for a tax increase. As we have reported, the Lawrence school board has authorized a May 2 election for an $87 million school bond issue that likely would increase property taxes by about 2.4 mills.

If the county decides to ask voters to support a tax increase for the jail project, it won’t happen before that May 2 school election. So, the county would be at least second in line, and that usually is not the best political position to be in. If voters approve $87 million in school funding, are they going to be eager to approve another tax increase in such short order?

A wild card in all of this is that it is possible there might be yet another tax issue for voters to decide. The city has three sales taxes that will automatically expire unless voters in a citywide election agree to extend them. There is one sales tax that helps fund the city’s road and infrastructure repair program, and two taxes that provide the bulk of the funding for the city’s public transit system.

The taxes are not set to expire until early 2019, but conventional thinking is that city officials will want to know well in advance of that date whether they can count on the sales tax funding for the future. City officials will start putting together the 2019 budget in about May 2018. That has caused some people to wonder whether the city would ask voters in late 2017 to extend the sales taxes, giving the city more time to plan in case voters reject the sales taxes.

I haven’t heard anything definitively from the city on what its plans are for a sales tax election, but we’ll start asking more questions about that soon. Regardless, whether it is this year or early next year, it seems likely Lawrence voters will be participating in a sales tax election. To summarize, that would be three big taxing decisions for voters to make in a short time period: $87 million in school bonds, $30 million to $40 million for jail and mental health improvements; and a decision on whether to renew sales taxes that total 0.55 percent.

Derusseau, who took office in early January, said she’s not sure how voters would react to so many taxing issues in such a short time. Instead, most of her comments were focused on how she thinks many members of the public still need more convincing on the jail expansion.

“I know we are going to need the time to make sure we educate voters on the need,” Derusseau said.

Derusseau said there are unanswered questions about both the jail expansion and the construction of a mental health crisis intervention center. How that mental health facility would be staffed and how it would operate are key questions. Some of the answers are still fluid. Case in point, if Lawrence Memorial Hospital decides to become more involved in mental health care, that could cause the crisis intervention center to look different. Derusseau said county officials are having discussions with LMH.

“How the hospital could be involved could change everything,” Derusseau said. “We really need to look at everything. I think there is a lot of work to do to make sure the right message is out there.”

Other takeaways from my conversation with Derusseau included:

• The city has been going through a strategic planning and visioning process, so I thought it would be interesting to get Derusseau’s take on what Douglas County’s vision ought to be. Derusseau mentioned several things, but came back to the idea of using the county’s diversity to its advantage.

“There ought to be a way for us to market that we are a community for everybody,” Derusseau said.

She noted that the county has a variety of city types, ranging from the almost 100,000 population of Lawrence to the approximately 600 people in Lecompton. She also noted that Douglas County still has a much different feel than many places in the Kansas City metro.

“There are a lot of places in Johnson County where it is a 20- or 30-minute drive to get out into the country,” she said. “It is not that way here.”

• On economic development, Derusseau said she does have concerns about local governments adopting a bunch of new policies that may cause potential companies to scratch Douglas County off their search list early in the process.

“Getting businesses to come to your community is not like it was in the old days,” Derusseau said. “They start with such a large number of communities now. You have to get the site selectors here to visit. You don’t want to do something to get yourself eliminated early on. We have to figure out a way to get people here to see our communities. We have nice communities. We have safe communities.”

Derusseau said she thinks there is a lot of good growth going on in the community, and she said it is important to keep that growth continuing. Growing the county’s tax base will become more critical as state resources continue to become less certain.

“The more business-friendly we can be, the better,” she said.

• Derusseau said the county will soon have to figure out how to deal with the state’s new concealed carry law, which will allow people to carry concealed firearms into many public places beginning July 1. Governments can prohibit concealed carry, if they take adequate security measures, such as metal detectors at the entrances to public buildings. Derusseau said figuring out how to secure the Bert Nash Mental Health Center and other agencies that are in the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department building is one of her priorities.