photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Douglas County commission candidates for the general election in 2024 attended a candidate forum hosted by the Lawrence Board of Realtors and Lawrence Home Builders Association on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Candidates for Douglas County Commission shared their views on affordable housing, economic development and property taxes on Wednesday at a forum organized by the Lawrence Board of Realtors and the Lawrence Home Builders Association.

All of the candidates for the County Commission’s four open seats were in attendance Wednesday at Maceli’s except for incumbent 2nd District Commissioner Shannon Reid, a Democrat. Instead, Reid prepared a statement with her answers to the questions in advance, which was read aloud at the forum.

Reid will be up against independent candidate Brad Chun for the 2nd District seat, and the candidates for the other districts are as follows: Incumbent Democrat Karen Willey and Republican Pam McDermott in the 3rd District; Democrat Gene Dorsey, Libertarian Steve Jacob and Republican Timothy Bruce in the 4th District; and Democrat Erica Anderson, Libertarian Kirsten Kuhn and Republican Rich Lorenzo in the 5th District. The 4th and 5th districts are newly created this year, and thus have no incumbents.

The question that drove much of the discussion at Wednesday’s forum was what role the county should play in providing affordable housing.

Lorenzo said Lawrence used to build hundreds of new homes a year, and that number has tumbled since then. He said the county needed to be more involved in conversations with the City of Lawrence about how to prioritize building more homes.

“We talk about affordable housing, build all of these homes,” Lorenzo said. “Housing prices will become affordable, and I think we got to make it easier for the developers. The process has to be easy and simplified, and let’s work together.”

Jacob said that renters are being hurt by rising costs, and that $1,400 a month for a rental with three bedrooms and one bath is now considered to be a cheap option in the county. He said he wanted to make it easier for Lawrence and Douglas County to move forward with building projects that will extend housing options for everyone.

McDermott, meanwhile, looked back to when she and her husband bought their first home, remembering it cost around $90,000. She said she wanted that to be a reality for other people when they’re looking for their first home, and that a good idea would be to eliminate government actions that create unnecessary barriers to housing development.

“Let developers do what they do best, (and) the housing supply will grow,” McDermott said. “Maybe we don’t need so much help and interventions.”

Reid’s written response said that the affordability crisis many residents face is the result of a number of factors, including low vacancy rates, insufficient wages and inflation. She said the housing market could be more regulated at the federal and state levels to help prospective homeowners and renters.

“As a county commissioner, I have worked to stay primarily focused on what is within our local authority and have tried to think about the problem from a different perspective,” Reid said. “I expect us to develop strategies with other local governments and community partners alike, which will help us build a diverse inventory of more housing options.”

Additionally, candidates discussed:

• Their views on the county’s efforts to encourage economic development.

Several candidates highlighted the upcoming Panasonic battery plant in De Soto, which is expected to attract a significant influx of people to the county. As the Journal-World reported, the plant is expected to hire at least 100 new employees each month for the foreseeable future. Production is set to begin in the first quarter of 2025, with Panasonic officials estimating that it could take up to two more years to reach the projected workforce of 4,000 employees. The company anticipates that most of the new hires will be local residents living within a 45-minute commute of the plant.

Bruce said that as a resident of Eudora, he is just 3 miles from the Panasonic plant. He acknowledged that economic development often presents challenges, but emphasized that the county needs to take a more proactive role in driving economic growth.

“That’s actually why I originally ran for Eudora City Commission,” Bruce said.

Anderson said that the county can do a better job at supporting Panasonic when it comes to what their needs are. Additionally, she said she met with several commercial and social service entities such as Peaslee Tech, which told her that they had been meeting with Panasonic to help set them up for success.

“Peaslee Tech can’t do it alone,” Anderson said. “It’s going to take many community-based organizations and commercial entities to actually (provide) multiple resources to support Peaslee, but it’s going to take a landscape analysis. We really need to partner with Panasonic to really understand what their needs are and what they’ve already fulfilled.”

Willey said there needed to be a greater emphasis on the companies currently in Douglas County that would benefit from manufacturing of all kinds nearby. Additionally, she said it was important to invest in more housing to be able to support any new workers coming into the county.

• Their stance on the county’s property tax rate.

Chun said it’s not enough to just lower the mill levy to where it’s fairly offsetting the rise in home valuations. He also said it could be lowered a lot more than that.

“If we could produce budgets that more align with our actual spending, there’s a lot of money that would be saved right there,” Chun said. “A lot of burden that can be taken off the taxpayers without cutting any jobs or any programs by producing a budget aligning with spending.”

Dorsey said that if elected, he would support mill levy reductions to obtain a revenue-neutral rate or less for 2026, and he said the way to get there would be by looking at cost. He said he’d attended every single budget hearing for the last two years, and this year he thought that there needed to be different considerations.

“(This year), nobody discussed why Douglas County should be paying above-average salaries to county employees rather than average salaries,” Dorsey said. “… I’m not suggesting we cut anybody’s salary, but I think more care needs to be taken and certainly more discussion in public.”

And Kuhn said that she would absolutely want a mill levy reduction, and that the county could save some money by looking at the County Commission’s own salaries.

“There is no reason why this position should pay close to $50,000 a year,” Kuhn said. “This is supposed to be a service position. Many of the folks who serve on the commission retain their full-time jobs, and we should not be taking your money to fill our pocketbooks. It’s too much, and it needs to get cut.”

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The deadline to register to vote or update your voter registration for the 2024 general election is Oct. 15. In-person advance voting begins on Oct. 16, and the last day to request an advance voting mail ballot is Oct. 29. All mail-in advance ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 8. In-person advance voting will conclude on Nov. 4 at noon. The general election will be held on Nov. 5, with polling places open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.