I have been asked why Keith Cooper, Doug Rempp, and myself joined forces to offer Real Change for Salina. While pondering this, I received a flyer in the mail sent out by the GOP of KS. Actually, I have received several. The Flyer(s) promote Commissioners running either for reelection or who have previously served. Let's look at the attributes stated.
#1, Lower Property Taxes. I don’t know about you, but I have not seen my bill go down at all. In fact, it has increased. And regardless of what they say about our Mill Levy, I pay more. Just look at some of the recent decisions made with our money.
#2, Support Small Business. Seriously? Please tell me how. I have 2 words, Cozy Inn. Our City can be difficult to work with, and I have seen no move to be more Business friendly. Well, maybe you can call providing our tax dollars as incentives to bring them in support. I would rather we work to keep our current businesses here 1st and foremost!
#3, Stand with our Police, perhaps. It may depend on who you talk to. We would like to see more updates from our media sources or more details from our Police dept
#4, Cut Wasteful Spending, please tell me what you have done to save tax dollars, because it seems to us that we have wasteful spending. See 1 and 2 above.
Reminds me of saying I heard years ago. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got!” A common buzz around town this past year has been that we need new leadership.
Cooper, Keller, and Rempp branded ourselves as your Nov 4th Trifecta for change. We bring fresh new ideas from 3 vastly different backgrounds. We represent a wide cross section of our Community. We will work to represent our Community to the best of our abilities. The 3 of us have similar viewpoints and some different view points. That's healthy, as we have 46k people in Salina who have diverse views.
We are not radical. We want to see our City grow in a positive way. Tax reduction tools or abated Property Taxes are a tool our Leaders love to use. However, you don’t offer the world right up front. We have a Central US Location and a great Airport. We are getting new distribution facilities, and we should. If we have 25-30% of our City’s Properties not on the tax rolls, the other 70+% have to pay 30% more to make up for them. We want our Leaders to spend our money like it’s coming out of their own pockets, and with transparency.
Everyday it seems we see Business and Industries reducing or streamlining staff due to greater efficiencies. In this day and age, any private business has to be as lean as possible. Governments always seem to take the opposite approach. Every year, they feel they are being good stewards of our dollars if they keep their growth in line with inflation. A private business develops its budget the opposite way. They build it based on need at every level in their organization.
We feel we bring Common Sense and fresh oversight to our City, and none of us is going to go along to get along. We care about Salina, it’s our home. We will work hard for 100% of the Community to the Best of our Ability!
Please Vote Tuesday!
Jak Keller
Paid for by Jak Keller for City Commission