Nancy Thellman Questionnaire Response
1) The City of Lawrence, Douglas County and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce have a long history of working together on the promotion of economic development. What actions would you take as a county commissioner to make this partnership more successful in the future?
The community as a whole needs to see visible signs of renewed confidence and positive working relationships between Chamber, City, and County and, I would add, Kansas University. My sense is the Chamber’s new CEO, Thomas Kern, will play a large part in building these bridges. I was very pleased at the Chamber’s announcement of Mr. Kern’s hiring and, as a County Commissioner, would look forward to working with him. He has a wealth of experience, a genuine love of the Midwest,
and projects a leadership style that is both upbeat and welcoming.
As a County Commissioner I would encourage conversations that go beyond the perennial question of what portion of the City and County budgets will be allotted for the Chamber’s economic development work. Deeper conversations that will result in a unified vision of how and where we want to grow our business and industrial sectors would be beneficial. What kind of businesses can survive and even thrive in this rapidly changing world with its ever advancing technology
yet finite natural resources? How can we better support our established small businesses while we court new businesses in hopes of broadening our tax base? Given the active role the public plays in most local projects, how might the Chamber and governing bodies improve relationships with citizens so that divisiveness decreases and a positive spirit prevails? These are some of the challenges ahead that need fresh, visionary thinking.
I am very supportive of the work of the Growing Green Committee of the Chamber whose work focuses on advancing the agenda of sustainable practices in business and recruiting “green collar” industries, a promising new business sector. Other promising areas of growth to pursue are alternative energy industries; biosciences; sustainable agriculture industry with local and regional food production; ecological and heritage tourism; music and entertainment industry; sports and recreation; and senior-related industries
such as durable medical equipment manufacturing and in-home senior services.
Of course, to ensure that the economic development partnership achieves measurable success, regular public progress reports that include financial accountability from all parties is essential.
2) Do you support the use of tax abatements as a recruitment tool for new industry, or the expansion of existing industries, if the applicant can demonstrate that the remaining taxes paid by the industry are sufficient to cover the cost of local government services rendered to that industry?
In an ideal world, an industry would locate in a community based solely on its compatibility with the community, not on the tax breaks it can broker. However, we are far from an ideal world. We must be able to compete with neighboring communities, the rest of the state, and region. Thus, we must have a comprehensive tax abatement policy that will enable us to both recruit and retain industry that is compatible with our community.
A comprehensive tax abatement policy must include consistent, clear expectations of our community for the new or expanding business; set a finite time the abatement is available; and outline an expectation for the number of jobs and level of wages expected over the course of the abatement agreement. In order to ensure the abatement is in the tax paying public’s interest, there should be a performance-based annual review of the contract and, if the company’s performance fails that review, the abatement
should be withdrawn. Transparency and accountability from all parties are key to regaining the public’s confidence in this now common business practice.
3) What would you do as a County Commissioner to ensure that all development rules are clear, consistently applied and provide an incentive rather than a deterrent for quality economic development?
While it is not a set of “rules,” our Comprehensive Plan is an important policy guide that goes a long way to set out clear community goals for future growth and development. Applying the principles of the Comprehensive Plan to all new projects in a transparent public process will provide a fair and consistent framework that, when followed by all parties, should result in timely, quality decisions.
The Comprehensive Plan is the work of many citizens over many years in conjunction with the Planning Department and city leaders. The community goals set out by the Comprehensive Plan are not simply wishful thinking, but actual planning goals that should stand firm except in extraordinary cases. Frequently amending the Comprehensive Plan to fit the particulars of a development not only undermines the purpose of the plan, but renders the plan and the process of planning nearly useless. The relevance of the Comprehensive
Plan should be evaluated regularly (every 5 years), which is a component of the plan.
As a commissioner I would hold to the conviction that planning should precede development and, as the Comprehensive Plan sets out in its first pages, “It is the goal of the planning process to achieve a maximum of individual freedom, but public welfare must prevail” (Horizon 2020, 1-3).
4) Do you support the South Lawrence Trafficway 32B alignment as endorsed by the Federal Highway Administration and approved by KDOT?
This proposed alignment is expected to go to litigation very soon over the sufficiency of KDOT’s environmental impact studies (EIS). As such, this project will not come before the County Commission for quite some time, if at all. Litigation aside, though, I would not support building the 32nd Street alignment given our nation’s current economic crisis.
Earlier in the year when the Federal Highway Administration endorsed the 32nd Street alignment and KDOT approved it, our nation was not in an economic tailspin. As it stands, the completion of this regional truck route will only happen if state legislators choose to fund a new highway bill, legislation which will be taken up in their 2009 session. My hope is that whatever limited funds state legislators can find will be devoted to maintenance and repair of Kansas’ many deteriorating roads and bridges. Even
those funds, I believe, will be few and far between.
The estimated cost of the 32nd Street alignment is $144 million; the 42nd Street alignment, $167 million. These estimates are in 2007 dollars and do not reflect the cost two years from now, when anticipated litigation examining the sufficiency of KDOT’s Environmental Impact Studies may be finished. If the court’s finding should be that the EIS work is sufficient, the cost in 2011 dollars may very well be in the range of $170 million or more for the 32nd Street alignment and nearly $200 million for
the 42nd Street alignment.
With neither route promising more than modest improvement of our congested streets, and with the preferred 32nd Street route mixing local residential traffic with heavy truck traffic at highway speeds (a condition the Long Range Transportation Plan, T2030, hopes to avoid), it seems the more relevant question is: How can we afford the SLT?
5) Recently there were two annexation and rezoning requests (Farmer’s Turnpike and Airport) that dealt with transferring agriculture land to other uses. What are the key issues and priorities for you in deciding future land use of agricultural land? In addition, where in the County would you support development of land for industrial development?
Not all soil is equal. More to the point, not all agricultural soil is equal. There are eight classifications of soil identified by the USDA Biological Soil Survey ranging from Class 1 to Class 8. Class 1 and 2 soils are identified as prime for their ease of growing, their water availability, and their natural nutrient content. As the classification number rises, the soil’s quality and productivity lowers.
Class 1 and 2 soils are typically located in the river bottom so developing on these flood prone soils is both difficult and costly. But precisely because these soils are flood prone, they are unusually rich in nutrients; silty and loamy, they are extremely productive for growing crops with minimal need for irrigation or fertilizer. Add to this their ability to soak up flood water and they become a very cost effective flood barrier for neighboring communities.
Rising fuel costs, concerns about food safety and food security, worries over environmental degradation and increasing consumer demand for local production underscore the need to preserve our best prime agricultural land for the future welfare of our community. We not only save unnecessary expenditures in flood protection at taxpayer expense by staying away from such flood prone development, but we keep open the opportunity to exploit the economic development potential of value-added, high end local and regional
food production. Sustainable agriculture is a growing industry that, if it replaced even a small percentage of the $2.2 billion spent on food imported into Kansas annually, could add millions of dollars in revenue to our local economy while at the same time enhancing our natural and cultural environment.
Where do I support industrial development? There are eleven future industrial locations identified on the Comprehensive Plan’s future industrial map for Douglas County (Chapter 7). Nine of these are not conflicted by the presence of Class 1 and 2 soils and the concurrent flooding issues this kind of soil carries, though each of these sites must be evaluated individually according to the Comprehensive Plan’s general and specific locational criteria. Of the eleven sites, only the land around the airport
and site at Midland Bend have significant contiguous acres of Class 1 and Class 2 soils. In fact, both of these sites are almost completely Class 1 soils. Both of these sites carry significant flood risk, requiring numerous levees on the Maple Grove Watershed and massive pump stations in North Lawrence for downstream stormwater management and flood protection.
The North Lawrence Drainage Study, published in 2005, specifically states even modest development on the Maple Grove Watershed will require $41 million in flood protection projects both inside and outside North Lawrence. It follows, then, that I cannot support traditional industrial development around the airport or on the watershed at Midland Bend given the enormous cost to the taxpayer for flood protection, and the loss of economic development potential of that highest quality soil for future agricultural purposes.