Barton County property owners received their tax statements earlier this month, along with a flyer from the treasurer’s office with information about the 2025 anticipated taxes levied. However, a single page can’t tell the whole story.
Great Bend City Councilwoman Jolene Biggs had her own tax presentation at the Dec. 15 council meeting, saying she thought a pie chart in the county’s mailing was misleading.
Barton County Commissioner Shawn Hutchinson and County Treasurer Jim Jordan were at the meeting and invited to respond. Hutchinson provided a sheet showing 46 funds that receive property tax money, including the county, cities, townships, schools and Barton Community College. There are also two fire districts and the Ellinwood Hospital District.
The sheet he provided is seven columns wide, as it lists the 46 funds by type, where they go, the valuation, mill levy, budget amount for 2021 (on the 2020 tax statements), budget amount for 2026 (on this year's tax statements) and the difference.
The page taxpayers received in the mail featured a pie chart that shows school districts and recreation commissions receive the largest portion of taxes levied, $17.1 million*, an increase of $957,187 from 2024. A red arrow pointing upward on the chart indicates an increase in taxes.
* Note: Numbers are rounded throughout this story.
Barton County is next in taxes collected, with $11.9 million, a decrease of $45,647. It gets a green arrow pointing down to highlight the decrease.
That is followed by cities and townships at nearly $10.5 million, a red-arrow increase of $115,979.
Barton Community College received nearly $9.6 million, which was $26,337 less than 2024 and deserving of a green arrow.
Special districts and the State of Kansas were the smallest slivers on the pie chart. Both had red arrows. Special districts levied $2.56 million and the State $529,063.
For another way to view tax information, visit the Barton County website at https://www.bartoncounty.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/County%20Clerk%7CTax%20Levies.
Great Bend, Hoisington and Ellinwood levied less this year
There is additional information on the flyer, printed outside of the County’s pie chart. In that, three cities are shown seeking less money from taxpayers in 2025 compared to 2024:
Great Bend’s $5.9 million is a decrease of $294; Hoisington’s $881,442 is a decrease of $8.46 and Ellinwood’s $562,273 is a decrease of $42.03. The reason cities showed an overall increase was due in part to Claflin’s $312,126 levy, an increase of $31,821.
At the Great Bend City Council meeting, Biggs suggested the City should ask the County to try a different format moving forward.
“The citizens of Great Bend look at that visual, the pie chart, and it shows cities and townships at $10 million and that the tax levy is up,” she said. “I believe that’s deceiving somewhat to the community here. You hear a lot of people complaining about their taxes, and I think that a pie chart is good for some of those reasons, but I would like to see a way for it to be better divided.”
Hutchinson said an alternate pie chart presented by Biggs, in which Great Bend gets a green “down” arrow while “other cities and townships” are lumped together for a red “up” arrow, illustrates the difficulty.
“I think you answered your own question when you started talking about what it would look like when you were to break this out. Do you know how many taxing entities there are?”
“There are a lot of taxing entities,” Biggs agreed. “My concern is, do you have to do a pie chart? Can you do some kind of a graph?”
“We did put something else together,” Hutchinson said, handing out folders with the information about all 46 entities. “So one thing, not to criticize you guys – you guys are all my friends – but in 2023 we offered an invitation for an all taxing entities meeting where the city of Great Bend declined. ... One of the topics on the agenda was the pie chart for input. So I don’t know when else we would have gotten that input.”
Jordan told the council, “We are the county. We don’t isolate just Great Bend better than anybody else. So when we put the pie chart together, it’s all the cities. ... We have Galatia, Ellinwood, Claflin. ... If you folks need a pie chart, you need to do that yourselves.”
The meeting takes a turn
Hutchinson said the pie chart shared by Biggs was equally unfair to other cities.
“I have the proposed (chart) that you sent here – the thing that I kind of find hypocritical about this is that you put Great Bend with a down arrow and then you lumped all the other cities together to create an up arrow – when the one that we already sent out gives three cities down arrows and one an up arrow. (This was printed on the side, but the cities were lumped together on the pie chart.) So didn’t you do the same thing you’re complaining about?”
“Well, actually, I wasn’t really worried about the other cities ...” Biggs began.
“We’re not really worried about you, either. No, actually, I take that back ...” Hutchinson said.
At that point, Mayor Cody Schmidt broke in to indicate Hutchinson no longer had the floor. “This was Jolene’s topic to be on the agenda. She voiced her concern.”
“You gonna shut me down too, Mayor? That’s good, two Second Amendment violations in two weeks,” Hutchinson said. He later said he meant First Amendment. He appeared to be referring to the Dec. 1 City Council meeting, where an audience member was not allowed to address an item on the agenda during the public comments portion of the meeting.
“Good job. Anyway, we did break out ...” Hutchinson continued but was interrupted by Schmidt.
“This is my meeting,” the mayor said. He asked for Police Chief Steve Haulmark, who was in the audience, to escort Hutchinson out of the meeting. The chief stood up but he and Hutchinson then sat down as Hutchinson said he is “looking forward to the new council coming on” in January.
Schmidt asked Biggs if she intended to make a motion.
“I make a motion that we send a message over to the county and request to see if there’s a way that they can separate these out for future reference,” she said.
Councilman Cory Urban asked for clarification. Did she want the tax report broken down by municipalities?
“I’m not saying that this is the answer,” Biggs said, referring to the version of the pie chart that was created at her request from County data. “I’m just saying that it would be nice if the communities, in one way or another, knew what was occurring with their taxes, up or down. I think that’s fair.”
Jordan spoke again. “I got one quick thing,” he said. “I welcome any one of you up here on the board, the council members, to come sit in my office at tax time for two days and listen to the comments that we get about ‘our taxes are too high,’ and the belittling my staff takes from people. This is one reason why I did the graph, because I’m tired of us taking the beating for taxes. That’s one reason we put it out there, is trying to stifle that a little bit. (If taxpayers) have problems, please go to your entities that are raising your taxes. We split out the cities because we were proud of the cities that tried to hold tight and lower their budget. So kudos to you folks for doing that.”
The mayor called for a vote on Biggs’ motion, and it passed 5-3. Those in favor were Biggs, Kevyn Soupiset, Rickee Maddox, Alan Moeder and Tina Mingenback. Those voting no were council members Cory Urban, Gary Parr and Davis Jimenez.
Others who cut taxes
The seven-column, 46-entry list of taxing entities did show 18 entities that reduced their tax budgets from five years ago. In addition to the county reduction of $283,575, those listed were:
• Hoisington USD 431 by $81,942
• Fairview Township $16,174
• Buffalo Township $14,831
• South Homestead Township $11,713
• Grant Township $11,031
• City of Galatia, $10,750
• Albion Township $7,295
• Beaver Township $5,137
• Cheyenne Township $4,939
• Walnut Township $4,579
• Liberty Township $2,257
• North Homestead Township $1,406
• Hoisington USD 431 (on behalf of the Hoisington Recreation Commission) $999
• Eureka Township $691
• City of Olmitz $664
• Logan Township $114
• City of Susank by 1.95
Those who raised taxes
Going by the same list, some of the entities that reduced taxes this year are shown to have collected more taxes than they did five years ago.
• Great Bend’s increase was $337,169
• Hoisington’s was $165,826
• Barton Community College’s was $847,748
Over that five-year period, the biggest increase was for Great Bend USD 428. This year’s $8.27 million tax request is $1.8 million more than in 2020.
