The Oread Hotel, 1200 Oread Ave.

The great thing about property taxes is they give you options to complain. One day you can complain that you are paying too much of them.

Another day, you can complain someone else is paying too little of them.

The complaint of too much happens when you get your tax bill. Even if your property tax rate didn’t go up, many years your tax bill has because home values have been rising.

As for the complaint that someone else is paying too little, that most often involves an argument of tax abatements, or economic development incentives in general. I’m talking about the various types of tax breaks that governments give businesses in hope of convincing the businesses to locate or expand in their communities.

There’s definitely a segment of the taxpaying population that contends Joe and Jane Average would have lower tax bills if governments simply would stop handing out those tax breaks.

Well, the first step in having that argument really should be figuring out how much a community is handing out in tax breaks. The point of this article, by the way, isn’t to determine whether the amount is too high or too low. Instead, I just wanted to figure out the amount. That’s not always easy to do. The city, to its credit, puts out an annual economic development report that goes a long way in answering that question. But it doesn’t quite capture all of the incentives. The city’s annual financial audit — which was recently completed — fills in a few more blanks, but not all. I’ve tried to fill in the last pieces by gathering some information from the Douglas County Treasurer’s office.

So, how much is it in Lawrence? Just more than $4 million in 2023.

More specifically, I’ve calculated the value of tax breaks or tax rebates given to projects that are located in the city of Lawrence at $4.34 million in 2024. Notice I didn’t say that the city of Lawrence had given $3.99 million of tax breaks. Not all the tax dollars are coming out of the city’s budgets. For example, when one project receives a tax abatement, it is receiving a tax break from the city, the county and the school district simultaneously.

Here’s a breakdown of the different types:

• Tax abatements, which involve forgiving a certain percentage — usually 50% to 100% — of property taxes: $1.93 million.

• Tax increment financing, which is a program where some percentage of new property taxes and sales taxes that are generated by a new development are rebated back to the developers for specific purposes: $1.18 million.

• Neighborhood Revitalization Act, which is a program where some percentage of property taxes is rebated back to a property owner who has improved a blighted property: $759,062

• Transportation Development District, which is a program where a special sales tax is added to the sales made in a development. The developer gets the proceeds of the special tax to fund the development’s transportation infrastructure, like parking: $469,901.

It also is interesting to look at what types of businesses are getting the largest abatements in Lawrence. For years, state law pretty much limited tax abatements to industrial projects. The idea was that industrial projects often produced good-paying jobs, produced unique products that weren’t in direct competition with other businesses in the community, and the sales of those products often were to entities outside the community. But, the state over the past couple of decades has greatly expanded the types of businesses eligible for tax breaks. Now, industrial companies don’t top the list of the largest recipients of tax breaks in Lawrence.

Instead, a hotel does. The Oread hotel, located at the northern end of the University of Kansas campus, was the largest recipient of tax breaks in 2023, with just under $600,000. Its next-door neighbor — a student apartment complex known as HERE @ Kansas — is next on the list at about $560,000. That multistory building at 11th and Mississippi streets technically is a multi-use building, but nearly all of its ground-floor commercial space is empty.

Next on the list is Rock Chalk Park, which is the unique public-private partnership between KU, the city and a private entity. The fact a private entity is involved means the athletic complex has to pay property taxes, but the city has granted it a 100% tax abatement. Through that abatement, it received just more than $475,000 in tax breaks in 2023.

Another hotel is next on the list. The Marriott at Ninth and New Hampshire Street, plus its ground floor commercial space, received about $385,000 in tax breaks. Next is the Bauer Farms shopping center at Sixth and Wakarusa — the one with CVS, Sprouts, Theatre Lawrence and other users. It received about $372,000 in tax breaks.

That takes us through the five largest projects with tax breaks in Lawrence, and none is industrial. The No. 6 project, though, is industrial. It is the US Engineering building in VenturePark in eastern Lawrence. The new plant produces complicated heating and air conditioning duct work systems and other such products. It received a tax break of about $350,000.

I’ll share the full list of projects at the end, but those six projects offer some interesting points.

First, Rock Chalk Park. It doesn’t show up as a project receiving a tax abatement on the city’s economic development report. But it did show up on the city’s 2023 financial audit. Why it doesn’t show up on the more public economic development report, I don’t know. But past city officials made it sound like the tax break for Rock Chalk Park was more of a technicality than anything else. The argument is that KU property automatically is tax exempt under Kansas law. If not for the private partner, these uses would have been automatically exempted from property taxes. But, of course, the private partner did exist, so the city had to approve the 100% tax abatement to make the project tax free.

Rock Chalk Park will soon turn 10 years old. It opened in October of 2014. By state law, tax abatements expire after 10 years. Britt Crum-Cano, the city’s economic development manager, told me she is aware of no efforts to get an extension for Rock Chalk Park. She is assuming the project will be fully on the tax rolls at some point in the next year or two.

We’ll see. KU could seek a special exemption from the Kansas Legislature. Or KU and KU Endowment could seek to buy out the private partner, an entity led by Lawrence businessman Thomas Fritzel, who has been one of the city’s biggest developers of the last decade but also served a federal prison sentence related to fraud charges. Due to the nature of this public-private partnership, it is tough for me to see through ordinary land records how the ownership is structured today. But I’ll do more checking, as we probably should do a 10 year look-back at Rock Chalk Park.

Lastly, it is worth looking at the list in terms of types of projects that are receiving tax breaks. It is worth noting that even though there was no single industrial project in the top five projects, industrial projects do make up the largest dollar amount of investments. That was a hard fact to find, though. Neither the city’s economic development report nor the city audit listed the amount of taxes abated for several of the industrial projects. Instead, it listed the amount of taxes — or technically payment in lieu of taxes — the projects made. However, I thought it was important to get a total amount for the value of tax breaks in the community, so I used valuation information from the Douglas County Treasurer’s and Appraiser’s offices to approximately determine what those projects would have paid in taxes without any tax breaks. The projects with asterisks are the ones in which I used that method.

Below is the list of all Lawrence projects that either received a tax abatement or tax rebate in 2023. The dollar amount is the value of the tax break. I’ve listed them by the industry that I’ve categorized them in. Some of the projects are mixed-used buildings. In those cases, I determined the majority use for those buildings, and put it in that category. There are also many nuances to each project. For example, some of the apartment projects — primarily the ones in the Warehouse Arts District — are state-designated affordable housing projects, while other projects, like Here @ Kansas, are not. So, take the list for what it is, a broad look.

INDUSTRIAL ($1.32 million total)

• Sunlite Science and Tech: $22,423

• VanTrust warehouse VenturePark (Berry Plastics)*: $319,129

• Plastikon expansion: $117,399

• Grandstand glassware and apparel: $95,306

• Standard Beverage: $133,600

• Hershey’s/Pretzels Inc*: $286,566

• US Engineering*: $353,619

APARTMENTS ($995,217 total)

• 900 Delaware Warehouse Arts District: $37,679

• 826 Penn Warehouse Arts District: $19,786

• Here @ Kansas: $561,326

• 800 Penn Warehouse Arts District: $75,471

• 9th and N.H. North: $272,870

• Downtown 2000 900 block N.H.: $28,085

HOTELS ($977,498 total)

• The Oread: $592,264

• Marriott on N.H.: $385,234

SPORTS/RECREATION/ARTS ($501,956 total)

• Rock Chalk Park: $476,310

• Cider Gallery Warehouse Arts District: $25,646

RETAIL ($371,975 total)

• Bauer Farms: $371,975

HEALTH/OFFICE ($171,143 total)

• Heartland Clinic*: $131,989

• 8th and Penn: $26,548

• Hernly Architects Studio: $12,606