Supervisors Nix Early Childhood Development Participation
Questions on how this penny will be spent continue to swirl in regards to LOST funding projects.
Oskaloosa, Iowa – On Monday, the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors effectively pulled their support for a project that would utilize a portion of the one cent Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) for a project being developed to bring early childhood development and recreation to the county.
The project, currently estimated to cost 24 million dollars would take the cooperation of the City of Oskaloosa, the Oskaloosa Community School District and Mahaska County to help fund.
All three entities have worked on projects in the past, but Mahaska County Supervisor Willie Van Weelden said in the most recent Supervisor meeting that he has reservations about the project.
“I think there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s hard to be supportive of something we don’t know,” said Mahaska County Supervisor Chairman Mark Doland. “Originally, I had favored putting it on the ballot as a measure on its own.”
Doland said he had concerns that if the question was asked on a ballot, it would fail. He didn’t see the need to have another election because he believes the proposed project would be defeated by the voters. Doland said that looking at the priorities of the county, the need for additional dollars for county roads, “that really needs to be first.”
Doland also talked about offering property tax relief from the LOST funds.
“As the needs of the county, and with the function of county government is, I just don’t see our role in it,” said Doland of the early childhood development and recreation center.
“I think the function of the county should first look at those things,” said Doland of looking at roads. A recent ten-cent increase to gas tax has been making its way into the county secondary road department, and will see an estimated increase for Mahaska County of $511,019 for secondary roads, $153,112 for farm-to-market roads, and $6,796 for Transfer of Jurisdiction.
“I agree with a lot of that,” said Supervisor Mike Vander Molen, who said he believes that putting the early childhood development project and the new environmental learning center on the same ballot would doom the environment learning center. “I don’t think it’s fair to those folks.”
In October, the Supervisors held an open meeting to allow “rural residents” of the county to speak about what possible LOST fund projects they would prefer. In that meeting, the constituents were nearly evenly split between the early childhood development center and the environmental learning center.
Mahaska County Supervisors sent no representative to a meeting held at William Penn University this past week to further refine what levels of commitment each entity could potentially bring to the table.
After the meeting, Oskaloosa News spoke with Chairman Mark Doland about the LOST money, and who the county government represents. Doland said that he represents “Everyone in Mahaska County.”
Of the approximately 22,000 residents in Mahaska County, nearly half of them live in Oskaloosa itself. We asked if he took those constituents into consideration when he was making his decision not to move forward with the early childhood development and recreation center. “Yes,” Doland said he sees the approximately 11,000 people in Oskaloosa as his constituents.
Doland said that no official vote was made that said the county was not going to support the project. “We had a public forum, there was obvious supporters from other competing projects as well. Some of them are not being taken into consideration that didn’t fit the operations of county government.”
Doland explained that they as Supervisors have had others, who couldn’t make it to the meeting, contacting them about their projects. “It [meeting] ended up being when a lot of people were out harvesting. So we’ve heard a lot from rural residents as well afterwards, and overwhelmingly the sentiment has been that they don’t want to put this part of the proposal from the child care and the recreation learning center anyway on the local option sales tax.”
“They are worried that will be cause for the whole measure to fail,” said Doland. “They don’t see that the role of county government would be for us to be involved in child care nor recreation,” said Doland.
Doland also said he is interested in utilizing the LOST funds for property tax relief, a practice that the county already does. This takes tax dollars generated from sales tax, and gives those dollars to property owners in the form of property tax relief. Fewer dollars are then available for county government operations, such as secondary roads.
“If we don’t put more money towards it, it will essentially be a property tax increase,” explained Doland, who says that he’s gotten feedback that it’s a measure that voters would be in favor of.
“We are talking about people voting on the county side of this,” Doland said.
Doland said he favors property tax relief, the environmental learning center and money going towards secondary roads in the county.
“The overwhelming sentiment for county government is for them not to be involved in the childcare center or the recreation center,” said Doland.
Mahaska Community Development Group (MCDG) took on a failing YMCA and the childcare it provided with an injection of $150,000, knowing that childcare and quality of life issues are important factors in attracting and retaining employees.
Then, MCDG took the lead, with the YMCA board to begin a needs assessment by hiring Walker|Coen|Lorentzen to help assess the needs for childcare and recreation opportunities in the county. Several meetings were held throughout the county, and an online form was utilized to help county residents share their thoughts about their needs for childcare and recreation.
During those meetings and focus groups, a large amount of support was expressed for the project, with support lessening the further away from Oskaloosa the residents were. Those residents further away from the center of the county said that options for them may also be in nearby counties.
During the focus groups, held in Oskaloosa, New Sharon and Eddyville, area residents helped to define and drive what the proposed project would look like. “This really is a whole community issue that we are looking for your feedback on,” said Matt Coen, as he outlined the processes that have taken place to this point. “It’s really about a community service and quality-of-life within the community.”
Andrew Jensen, Director of Mahaska Community Development Group spoke with Oskaloosa News about where the project will be going after the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors expressed their lack of support for the early childhood development and recreation center.
MCDG is an economic development corporation funded by private businesses formed nearly 11 years ago. Jensen said the group was formed to help promote and enhance the business environment in Mahaska County. Currently there are 16 members that are part of that board, that represent businesses throughout the county.
MCDG is located on the second floor of the Oskaloosa Area Chamber & Development Group building, but isn’t a part of that organization. Instead, they rent office space from that organization in an effort to be as near to the other development partners as possible.
Jensen said that the group went though a strategic planning process this past year in order to better define the top needs of the county and to grow the economy in Mahaska County.
According to Jensen, in expanding the manufacturing base, “our biggest constraint by far is workforce,” which is a symptom of the low unemployment rate in Iowa. “So, when it comes to competing with other areas for new businesses, it’s actually a very difficult position to be in. So we have to look at workforce development issues and attraction issues. So, rising to the top of that has been housing, workforce training opportunities.”
MCDG has also been an important voice in growing local infrastructure, like the Highway 63 improvements, which include the proposed northwest by-pass and the southeast connector.
“Most of our industries are in growth mode,” said Jensen. “They are trying to expand. They continually say we would expand faster if we had the right people. Being able to recruit people in Southeast Iowa is always a challenge.”
Jensen said that doing “what we can to help create those amenities for people, to create a good quality of life is important. Certainly, recreation and early childhood education are core to those issues.”
Jensen said that when they were approached by the YMCA, when they were having difficulties, it fit into their quality of life issues to be able to recruit and retain employees. “That’s why MCDG has gotten involved.”
Vermeer in Pella started and built Yellow Iron Academy child care center in an effort to better recruit and retain its workforce. The nearly 25,000 square foot facility includes an art studio and science lab, and provides healthy eating options for its students. Vermeer employees get a discount at the facility, but community members are also welcome to utilize the facility.
The Yellow Iron Academy can host 136 students, and Vermeer has nearly 3,300 employees.
We posed the question to Jensen if the MCDG members have considered such an option for their employees. “It has been a conversation,” says Jensen. “Our community as a whole differs quite a bit from Pella.”
Oskaloosa has good employment opportunities like Musco and Clow, which each have approximately 500 employees. The issue would be that because of the smaller employment sizes, the financial feasibility for a private only center like that could put strain on the companies bottom lines.
The question then is, why would government get into funding childcare and recreation when private entities already offer those services.
Jensen said that smaller communities like Oskaloosa need to be competitive “in the world today economically.” Having the high quality of life and understanding how people choose their places of employment. “It’s much different than it was a generation ago.”
“People move to where there are those high quality of life amenities and then find a job,” said Jensen. “Rather than being, wherever we can find a job that’s where I’m going to plant my family and we’re going to live there the rest of my life. People move often. People are mobile.”
Jensen said that he has fielded the comments that government should not be involved in daycare. Jensen said that the childcare looking at being provided in the center would be “curriculum based education for our youngest children, and education has always been an interest of the American government, and local government participated in that.”
Jensen said that private entities can do it, but in order to compete in the economy, early childhood development is something that local governments do participate in. “If we want to compete, we should participate as well.”
With the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors stepping back from the project, the question posed to Jensen was if the MCDG board would be looking further into private fundraising options to help reach the projected 24 million-dollar cost of the project.
Jensen said that it was always known that a significant amount of private fundraising would be a part of it. “The business community understood there would be some significant asks of them to make this happen.”
Our question then for Jensen was that if tax revenue is going towards funding the facility, will those residents being required to pay for usage of the facility?
Without knowing all of the funding parts to the equation, Jensen speculated that there would likely be a fee involved. The nearest example would be a city pool type facility that still charges users for use of the facility, but may give a discount to city residents.
As for Mahaska County Supervisor Mark Doland’s suggestion that the sales tax revenue be used for property tax relief, Oskaloosa News asked Jensen about that possibility since his members could potentially own high value pieces of real estate and it would be a benefit for them.
Jensen said that having a significant portion of sales tax revenue go towards property tax relief “is a poor decision. Small communities, rural communities are limited on the number of revenue streams, the amount of revenue they have, and so simply to take sales tax and pass it over to property tax relief, I think it’s a big missed opportunity.”
“The community in the past has used these funds to do big, great things for the community,” said Jensen of the past projects like the law center, library and school buildings. “Those are big things that benefit thousands of people. And to simply have it go to property tax relief, I think, would be very unfortunate.”
Our focus then turned towards the price tag for the proposed project. With early estimates putting the cost near 24 million dollars, voters in Mahaska County could potentially balk at the amount.
Jensen said that dollar amount is a direct result of the master planning process, which came from the earliest phases of the discussion. Those discussions include, what do we need, what will the building look like and where it would be located.
Since the master plan isn’t a construction document, the cost for the finished product has yet to be determined. That final determination is part of the process the different government entities were taking part of later in the week. “It gets us to a close number that we can be working with,” added Jensen.
During the discussion with the architects and designers, Jensen said the committee expressed their desire to have a quality building, but didn’t need all “the bells and whistles,” Jensen said. “A quality building that meets the needs and is something the people are proud of.”
At a meeting later in the week, members from the City of Oskaloosa, Oskaloosa Community Schools and MCDG met together with other members of the community at William Penn University.
Missing from the discussion was the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors, who were invited, but couldn’t find a representative to be at the discussion.
Ultimately, the group decided that the discussion needs to involve Mahaska County and to continue a history of working together on projects that impact the Mahaska Community.
The language for a ballot initiative awaits the final official word from the county.
