Area economy likely to benefit from USD 489 bond

On this episode of the Post Podcast Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams shares thoughts on the economic impact of the USD 489 bond issue.

 

Transcript:

EDITORS NOTE: Transcripts are provided by an automated service and are not verified for accuracy.

 

James Bell 

The Hays USD 489 bond issue that passed this week will have significant impact on the area economy. Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams stops by to talk about that and more on this episode of the Post Podcast. We had a bond pass this week, we're going to talk about some of the economic impacts on that good and bad. But first, from what I understand you just got back from a pretty big trip, right?

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, I did, there was a western Kansas delegation that went to Washington, DC to visit our elected officials and talk about what's going on in our communities, what challenges we have and potentially what they might be able to do to help those issues. And so we had, I believe they're about 42. And all from Hays, Dodge City, Garden City, Great Bend, liberal. So had a good group. And it was a good trip. Awesome.

 

James Bell 

Although I think for my understanding you you left behind the mayor, he's still sitting up there and try to figure out how to get back to

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

I guess I'm not 100% sure that he was supposed to go to San Diego, and I don't know where he ended up. But he bears constant watching, that's for sure. Because you just never know where he's gonna be.

 

James Bell 

For sure. Yeah. Just they were they were scheduled to be on this morning. And we got that word for last minute. They're still traveling. So okay,

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

yeah, I think we had to go to San Diego for business reasons. So I don't think he's still in DC, unless he wasn't able to get on his flights or whatever. But who knows. But it was a good trip, we were able to meet with some of the representative Mann's staff. And then we also got to meet with Senator Marshall and Senator Moran, and talked about Essential Air Service and things like that, those kinds of issues that that impact our community that they may have some bearing on. And then we talked about a lot of issues that they they don't have any direct impact on our housing situation on our childcare situation, workforce. But we did talk about those things and make them aware of kind of what's going on in our communities.

 

James Bell 

Very good. Oh, and what kind of reception when we were they were they pretty taken aback? Or were they did they already know this? So this was just kind of filling in the details. While

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

they know most of it, you know, they spent some time out here, they know what's going on. Sometimes it's just good, good to get on their turf and talk with them in their environment. And so, but we did share some things with him some concerns that that exist in our communities. And, you know, Hayes is not unique when we talk about childcare when we talk about housing, when we talk about workforce, all of those things are all communities are facing those, not only in Kansas, but pretty much across the United States. Absolutely.

 

James Bell 

And we owe as we talked about here, on the on the segment to the collaboration, the working together figuring out these problems, you know, so we're not it's not the competitive us versus them. It's we all got to get through this. We do.

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

And it takes a lot of people involved. And it takes some time, unfortunately, never happens as fast as you would like.

 

James Bell 

Absolutely. So moving on to this bond issue. Speaking of things that are going to take a while. It's past, we got the we got the go ahead from the voters to go ahead and revamp some of the schools build a new haste High School. I wonder what your initial and first thoughts are on the economic impact of this thing as it's moving forward?

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, as I said before the bond issue, it's my belief, it's our belief that schools are critical infrastructure to a community. And as we work with companies, as well, as individuals who are looking to relocate to our community schools play an important role in that. And I can tell you that we have any number of retailers, you know, 610 12 that we talk to on a consistent basis. And all of them have been keenly interested in what's going to happen with that bond. I'm not saying that now that we've passed a bond, all these people say, this is where we're going to go, and this is what we're going to do. But they have been concerned about it. And they have had the attitude that if we're not willing to invest in our own community, why should they? And so, and the reason they're concerned about it is they have to have a workforce, they have to attract and retain a workforce and schools are important when it comes to a workforce as his housing as his childcare. You know, all of those things are critical aspects of attracting a workforce. But schools are an important part. And I know consistently Hayes Medical Center has struggled to attract physicians, when they look at the conditions of our schools, other health care providers. And the retailers we talk about that we would like to get into Hayes, we'd love to have more retail than we do. Schools are of concern to them. So you know, I said prior to the to the bond vote that there is a cost of not passing the ball On that I believe over time is greater than the cost of the bond. And the cost of the bond is high, no doubt about that. But not passing, it would have put us in a difficult position when we start talking about recruitment of people and businesses. And it's a good thing. That's fast now, now, it's up to USD 49. To execute. I know, not everybody supported it, not everybody thinks it's a good idea. But from an economic standpoint, I will be very positive for our community.

 

James Bell 

You know, you mentioned people move in here and the workforce piece, which I think is on a lot of the business owner minds here in Ellis County. But one of the things that was pointed out to me was the online rankings. And when you go to online rankings, so if you're looking at maybe job boards, job postings, and you see something and he's like, Oh, hey, that looks interesting. The first thing you're going to do is look at Hayes. And if you have children, schools are going to be important. And what was pointed out to me it was if you go to several these ranking websites, where should you live kind of websites, the high schools were D's and F's. And it wasn't based on the education because I think everyone understands, we have a great education system here in the district. But the facilities drag that score down. And I think that'll automatically cut off a lot of people, when they were looking at thinking about hate.

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, I agree with you, we do a great job of teaching kids, we just haven't provided a very good learning environment. And when you when you read the data, and it suggests that in the next 10 years, five to 10 years, there's going to be 20 million Americans who choose to relocate away from urban areas. And they're going to look at the choices that they have, because many in almost all those cases, their remote workers or their retirees, and they can decide where they want to go. And so and these are a desirable demographic that we want to recruit to our community. And so we're competing with lots and lots of other communities for these people. And we have so much good going on, and really very little, that's negative, but the schools were one of them, and it's a big one. And so now that we can say we check that box for people, I think we've got a much better story to tell them we did before. And the one before was good. It's just we didn't have all the boxes checked, but I think we do now. So I think that'll make a difference as well over the next five to 10 years in our ability to attract people to our community, whether tase Ellis Victoria, wherever it might be, we've got a better story to tell now.

 

James Bell 

Very good. I'm also curious about your thoughts on the impact, you know, the short term impact because they're going to be spending a lot of money building the schools and doing the construction work. And of course, there's everything that goes along with it. There's the administrative work and the architectural drawings and the all of that that's got to have some sort of impact on the local economy, right?

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

It absolutely does. I mean, obviously, local contractors will be involved in the construction of the schools and the improvements. They hire people, they pay wages, materials, a certain percentage of them, I don't know what and I don't know what we can supply locally, but a lot of those materials will be supplied to the projects from local vendors. And so it will have a positive economic impact for our community, you know, that the $143.5 million is doesn't go out out of town and never come back. I mean, a lot of that is spent locally, to create those jobs to build those buildings. It creates jobs, heating and cooling people, plumbers, electricians, all of those people will be participating in some of that spending. And it will have a positive economic impact from that standpoint, as well.

 

James Bell 

There's another piece on this that I've heard people talk about, and that's the the the folks that will be running this whole thing is a Kansas City based company. And I think some folks were kind of I mean, maybe annoyed is the right word, but they had concerns that it wasn't a local group that took on the project on in whole. And I wonder if you want to speak about that because there are some really good reasons why someone say like Glassman here, maybe couldn't do that right?

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, the size of the bond eliminates local contractors from being the general contractor, you know, there are no local contractors that can bond $143.5 million job. That doesn't mean the local contractors won't participate just means that a larger contractor has to be the general contractor, I believe the manager at risk or whatever the term is. And so that is one aspect of it. The other aspect is you know, DLR Group, which is the architectural firm. And I've had people say, you know, do you they questioned them in a lot of different ways, their motivation and their, their capabilities. And you know, they built hundreds, if not 1000s of schools across the country in the world. I mean, they're a large organization. They do this all the time. There's nobody locally that that has that level of expertise. So you have to bring in those type of resources to make this thing happen and manage these projects. And you know that they'll do a good job, I have no doubt. I mean, this is this is what they do. And I have a lot of trust and faith in that organization. And NAB Holtz, who is the general contractor, and then our administration locally, you know, some people have questioned their ability to handle this type of stuff, and I just don't see it, I see a very engaged, capable group of administrators at USD 489. I think it's gonna go well, yeah, there'll be some hiccups. There always are

 

James Bell 

always gonna Yeah. I mean, it's dealt with construction understands that. Yeah, exactly.

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

I mean, nothing ever goes quite as planned. But you just you just roll with the punches, when that happens, and make it make it happen. So I have a lot of confidence that this will come off and three years from now, or whatever that timeframe is, we're going to look a whole lot different than we do now.

 

James Bell 

You know, I wonder maybe two there's, there's a piece that I've been hearing a lot of rumblings about on this thing, and it's the even supporters of the bond friends of mine people are speaking to were very supportive. And they they voted yes. They weren't happy to share that they had voted yes. But they did have concerns about the way that the planning was going. So I wonder if you want to talk a little bit about that, why these why some of the fine details are now being considered after the vote after the fact after the election, because that was their thing was like, why are we voting on we don't know exactly what we're doing until after? Why is that?

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, it's because you, you can't nail down all those fine details without doing a tremendous amount of work. And spending a significant amount of money with architectural drawings and actual, the actual nuts and bolts of a project, you know, no school bond anywhere that has ever passed, particularly this magnitude. You ever knew everything about what exactly was going into each aspect of it prior to the bond passing. I mean, that's part of the planning and the design phase, you have some broad ideas, you present those broad ideas, you pass the bond, and then you dig in on all the details, doesn't mean it's going to cost more doesn't mean that anybody's got any ulterior agendas. It just means that you can't know all those answers before you actually pass the bond and, at that point, are willing to invest the money to nail down all those details. And it's a significant amount of money. I mean, I don't know if any, if you've ever seen James, the plans for a large building that goes on, but there, it's a roll of hundreds of sheets, technical drawings, and that just doesn't happen before you commit yourself to doing that stuff. You never spend that much money before you even knew that something was going to pass. So that's very much the way these things work. It's not unique to our community at all. It's just the way this process works.

 

James Bell 

You know, on the cost piece, I wonder if you want to talk a little bit about that as well. For my firm, but let me let me back that up. The way that some folks seem to approach this was that the cost was not locked in when we talked about the 143 point 5 million. Yes, that's what we voted on. But that doesn't mean it's actually when it goes what it's going to end up costing the district in the end the taxpayers here, I wonder if you want to speak a little bit to that. Is that a real concern? Or is that just maybe under misunderstanding the circumstances?

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, as my understanding the manager at risk has said is not going to cost more than $143.5 million. And so, and they're only going to bond $143.5 million. So that's that's all they've got to spend. So they've got to come in within those parameters. Now. None of us has a crystal ball. We don't know what the future looks like, specifically. And so there may be adjustments and whatnot along the way, I have no idea what those might be. But the hard number is 143 point 5 million. That's what the taxpayers agreed to do. They agreed to have a new high school to have the improvements to these middle school and junior high or the grade schools and that kind of thing. And so those numbers are pretty much locked in stone. It's not like this could go to 170 million, because we just the voters had not approved that. So they've looked long and hard at it. As I said, these people do these kinds of projects all over the country all the time, they know what costs are going to be and it won't be over $143.5 million.

 

James Bell 

Okay, now there's one last piece on this we got to talk about and this is an impact that I think everyone can agree on taxes now that we voted on this are gonna go up and that does have some negative and positive impacts on the community and wonder if you want to speak to those.

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well, that's the Tough part nobody wants their taxes to go up including me including the superintendent to USD 49 I'm quite sure. But we sometimes have to make investments and the only thing I'll say to that is that I hear a lot of our taxes are way too high and Hayes

 

James Bell 

highest taxes in the country right here in Hays Kansas. I've heard

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

that's simply not true. You know, our mill levy is the second lowest in the state of Kansas by like two hundredths of a 10th compared to Overland Park. So our tax our mill levy is not high now our valuations, I will be the first to admit our real estate valuations are higher than a lot of places. But this this, the same house in DOD city or garden city, as in Hayes, their taxes are higher than ours by a significant amount, even though their valuations may be a little bit lower. Their mill levies are considerably higher in our mill levies, 110 or 109, point something Mills garden or dodge cities 181. And people all the time say, you know, we're tired of these comparisons and that type of thing. But when you say my taxes are too high, you begged the question, compared to what I mean, what do you base that on? And, and I've heard people compared to maybe other states. But that's really difficult to compare to other states, because taxing systems in other states are much, much different. They may have higher income tax, they may have different types of taxes that are charged. So it's really difficult to compare from state to state, but within our state, we can compare and we're we compare very favorably in terms of our mill levy versus everyone else's. Now, the real estate values, that's a that's a component of supply and demand, we don't have enough supply. And as a consequence, the demand is high and values have run up. We're trying to fix that by adding more inventory to the market. But unfortunately, that didn't happen very quickly. You know, we've got the houses going in the Tallgrass second edition, there's what 18 to 20 of them under construction right now, every little bit helps, we've got apartments going up, that'll help but it takes time to do that. But in time, if we add inventory, we will we will see valuation soften as opposed to continue to rise.

 

James Bell 

Very good. And I'm sure a lot of people are excited to hear that.

 

Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams 

Well you know, I don't have a crystal ball either. So I can't guarantee that but I do know if we had enough supply, we'll even out this balance of supply and demand and properties will not sell for way over the list price and that type of thing like they are now on occasions. And that's not really healthy environment for anybody but the guy who's selling and moving to someplace else. But then again, he's faced with whatever those values are