Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
The discussions currently taking place over the funding Butler Community College is receiving from property taxes are framed in a dishonest way that ignores people in favor of pure numbers.
Kansas’ 77th District Representative Kristey Williams is currently pushing for Butler’s funding to be cut by demand of frustrated taxpayers in what she calls “funding fairness.” The “fairness” coming from lower taxes for Butler County taxpayers and an increase in out-of-county tuition to a majority Sedgwick County populated college, but how is that fair to the 80 percent of students outside of our county? Are we expected to throw them under the bus because they live across some arbitrary border someone thought up who knows how long ago?
When discussing matters like this, it’s always important to look past just the numbers and see the people who will be affected by this cut, the most affected being students. Students who are increasingly overworked, stressed and in debt. Let’s help spiral them further into debt because they live just a few too many miles away from us.
How about we instead look to making Sedgwick County taxpayers pay their fair share before we potentially devastate the college? There’s no reason to immediately jump to the nuclear option while other, more sensible options exist.
And do these supposed upset taxpayers even know what they are spending on Butler per year in the first place? I would bet that many don’t and are just raising a fit because they have this concept that taxes are the work of the Devil.
Newsflash! Taxes keep our country going! Without taxes, we wouldn’t have a country. I’m not an economist, so I don’t know all the intricacies of our tax system and how much we pay and the breakdown of where that money goes, but maybe the reason people don’t have the money they want isn’t because taxes are too high, but because wages aren’t raising with the inflation of the dollar, which is what recent research by the Pew Research Center suggests. We can’t keep reducing taxes, that’s trying to solve a symptom while ignoring the root cause.
Oh, and as a final “by the way,” taxpayers are spending about $250 a year on Butler and Williams’ cut to Butler’s funding would save those same taxpayers around $60. People are upset they are having to pay $60 a year to pay the wages of over 1,400 employees and help pay for the education of the future generations, the future generations that will be taking care of the country and the world while these people complaining can’t.
With how expensive a college education has gotten recently, Butler serves as a place for any student to gain an affordable education that will get them out of minimum wage-hell. Maybe it’s because I have yet to pay taxes, but I personally believe, as a Butler County citizen, that the wellbeing of the nearly 15,000 employees and students at Butler is worth more than $60 a year.
