Sedgwick County commissioners debate property tax relief amid coronavirus pandemic
Sedgwick County commissioners are debating how to provide property tax relief amid the coronavirus pandemic, but found out Wednesday what they can do is pretty limited — if they can do anything at all.
Citing concerns over how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the general economy and individuals’ financial solvency, commissioners considered multiple proposals for tax relief at their meeting Wednesday.
Ideas included rolling back property valuations to 2019 levels, pushing back the deadline for property owners to pay their taxes, and/or giving people more time to appeal their tax valuations.
Each of those was dropped in turn because of conflicts with state laws, or practical considerations of delays in distributing the money to cities, school districts and other agencies that the county collects taxes for.
The one idea that did survive the first cut was the possibility of waiving interest on late payments.
That interest starts at a rate of 11 percent per year and tops out at 15 percent, depending on the size of the tax bill.
Commissioners Jim Howell and Michael O’Donnell both argued that the interest rates on taxes are excessive at a time when other interest rates are near historic lows.
They made a motion to move forward with interest forgiveness, despite advice from county Counselor Mike Pepoon that an attorney general opinion says they can’t do it and Johnson County considered and rejected it as being outside its authority.
“If we legally can’t do that, I understand, but I do think we need to try,” O’Donnell said.
Other commissioners were skeptical of the plan.
Commissioner Pete Meitzner pointed out that of the total taxes collected, only 24 percent actually goes to the county and the remaining 76 percent goes to other agencies.
He said he’d want to see at least some consensus from the affected cities and districts before moving to forgive the interest.
County Treasurer Linda Kizzire argued vehemently against the proposal, saying the computer system can’t handle it and that it would either have to be reprogrammed, or the interest waivers would have to be manually processed.
“I think it’s going to be very costly for us to even ask our vendor to look at changing how we can post our payments,” she said.
She also said that the 11 percent interest rate is annual, not monthly, so the gain for an average taxpayer from a 30- or 60-day pause would be minimal.
“It’s like .92% a month,“ she said. “It’s not 11 percent a month, it’s less than 1%.”
Commissioners agreed unanimously to delay the issue until next week to give Howell and O’Donnell more time to try to drum up support from the affected cities and counties.
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 5:06 PM.
