University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, January 24, 1990
9
Bonds approved for East Hills
Kansan staff writer
By Chris Siron
The Kansas Department of Commerce on Jan. 8 approved the sale of $6 million in industrial revenue bonds to develop manufacturing facilities in the shell building in East Hills Business Park.
The sale's proceeds would be lent to Penn Plastics of Creighton, Pa., which would use the money to customize the building, said Ri萍 Bailey, department economic development representative.
Penn Plastics manufactures plastic containers for herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals. Since November, the company has been interested in leasing the building, but needed the $ million from bonds to adapt the shell building, said Bill Martin, chamber director of economic development.
'I hope we can sell the bonds by the deadline, but I don't know. They (Lawrence officials) have a bond attorney, financial adviser and a slew of bankers working on it.'
Bill Martin
Chamber director of economic development
The $1 million, 81,000-square-foot shell building is east of Lawrence on Kansas Highway 10. It was built on speculation by Douglas County Development Inc., a non-profit organization affiliated with the chamber.
Lawrence officials are responsible for completing a public hearing on the project and for selling the bonds by March 8, or they risk losing state support for the bond sales, Martin said. The officials may apply for a
30-day extension if they cannot finalize bond sales before the deadline.
"I hope we can sell the bonds by the deadline, but I don't know," Martin said. "They have a bond attorney, financial adviser and a slew of bankers working on it."
a working on it
A hearing on the bond issue will be Feb. 6 at the Lawrence City Commission meeting.
Bailey said the bonds could be sold to corporations, banks or private investors. Penn Plastics would repay
the loan and 7.5 percent interest to the investors.
The bonds would be drawn from Kansas' $150 million bond fund, which is tax-exempt under federal law. Bailey said.
If the leasing agreement is completed, Martin said, Penn Plastics' assurance operations employ up to 100 workers. The company could occupy the building by June.
Project coordinators also have applied for up to $350,000 in low-interest loans from the Kansas Partnership Program to pay for a railroad loan. But Jim Tin said he had not received an answer from the program.
He said Penn Plastics had not established hiring procedures but students might be able to work part time for the company.
Amendment would limit property taxes
The Associated Press
TOPEKA - Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit local property taxes told a legislative committee yesterday that the measure would save small businesses from extinction in Kansas.
"Small business is struggling for its very existence." George Puckett of Wichita, representing the Kansas Restaurant Association, told the Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee.
The proposed amendment, introduced by Em. Eric Yost, R-Wichita, would place a cap on local mill levles so homeowners would pay no more than 1 percent of the market value of their houses in property taxes and businesses would pay no more than
1. 5 percent.
rost said the amendment would reduce property taxes statewide by about 33 percent, although that figure would fluctuate from county to county.
"The property tax is too subjective, it is inefficient to collect and the amount of tax levied against individual txpayers bears no relationship to those taxpayers' ability to pay," Yost said.
Yost was critical of local officials who he said have come to rely too heavily on that method of taxation.
"Local officials, and many of them are very good friends of mine, have become addicts, and their drug of choice is the property tax," he said. "Like other addicts, they should welcome a cure to their addiction,
According to the amendment:
■ Residential property would be assessed in 10 percent of market value and commercial property at 15 percent.
The effect of the cap and the assessment rate would be a 1 percent tax rate for residential property and a 1.5 percent rate for commercial property.
The owner of a $100,000 home would pay at most $1,000 in property taxes, and a commercial business with the same value would have to pay $1,500 under the proposed amendment.
Gene Baldwin, chief financial officer for the Restaurant Management Co., which manages nine Grandy's
restaurants in Kansas, said the firm had scratched plans to open 30 more stores in the state during the next few months because of the property tax increases.
"We're in a world of hurt," said David Aull, chairman and president of ClubHouse Inn, a motel chain in Kansas.
He said he could not increase the room rates enough to compensate for the property tax increases.
"Property taxes are too high because they are used to pay for too many things," said Karen France, lobbyist for the Kansas Association of Realists. "The local units (of government) should have more options for funding than they currently have," she said.
Confessions of a Law Student
"I committed a crime..."
"You see, as a law student, I feel the need to give everything a fair trial. So I did. One night while my roommate was out, I snuck into his room to try my hands at what he calls his "personal computer." Well, I found nothing personal about it. It didn't communicate with me like my Macintosh does.
When I sit down at a computer, I don't want to be sentenced to hard labor. I expect it to make my job easier.
Macintosh. To use anything else would be a crime."
Mac Pac Savings Are Herel Burge Union 864-5697
-Name Withheld.
Macintosh .
The power to do your best at KU
© 1990 Apple Inc. and Apple Media are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
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