Janet Baker has to say “no” more often than she would like to the aging Kansas Citians her organization serves.
Even to a woman newly confined to a wheelchair who called a couple of weeks ago requesting Meals on Wheels, Baker, executive director of KC Shepherd’s Center, had to say “no.”
“This makes me sick,” she said. “There’s just no money in the system and it’s a little terrifying.”
Rachel Ohlhausen, director of program operations with Jewish Family Services, said her organization is also seeing seniors turned away because funds are scarce. Since early summer this year, seniors who need rides to doctors’ appointments or the grocery store but can’t afford them are being placed on a waiting list.
“It’s a growing list,” she said.
Baker and Ohlhausen said a senior tax levy that Jackson County voters will consider on Nov. 5 could help. It would raise about $8 million a year for programs that give older citizens free meals, rides and other services.
“There’s no reason,” Baker said, “that we should not be investing in seniors in our community.”
Passage of Question 1 would let Jackson County charge homeowners an additional 5 cents for every $100 of assessed property value. The tax dollars that would raise would go in a special fund spent on services — like Meals on Wheels and rides to doctors’ appointments — provided to people 60 and older.
A seven-member board appointed by the county Legislature would manage the fund.
SeniorsCount Jackson County, a coalition of senior citizen service organizations backing the new tax, estimates the cost to the average Jackson County household would be about $20 a year.
“I hate to say it’s not a huge amount,” said Jackson County Legislator Donna Peyton, who co-sponsored the ordinance to place the levy on the November ballot. “But I think we should look at it in context. …For me, the value outweighs the cost.”
Supporters of Question 1 may have a tough sell.
In April, Jackson County voters shot down a $2 billion sales tax to fund new sports stadiums. And last year, voters rejected a proposal to add a sales tax on online purchases.
The county’s property assessments, which determine the size of homeowners’ tax bills, jumped dramatically this year, resulting in a lawsuit from the state tax commission demanding that nearly all increases be thrown out.
David Stokes, a policy director with the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri anti-tax group, said property tax shouldn’t be supporting philanthropic causes.
“I’m troubled by mandating charity through taxation,” Stokes said. “We all have a responsibility to pay our taxes, and we all have a responsibility to donate to charities in our community. But mandating and mixing the two, I think, is not a great idea.”
He also questioned the timing of the ballot proposal raising property taxes to support seniors, coming so soon after the county established a program to freeze property taxes for people 62 and older.
“Jackson County wins the irony award on this one,” Stokes said.
Question 1 supporters said the county’s hands were tied when it came to what kind of tax it could ask voters for. The 2003 state law that paved the way for a senior tax states that the tax should be on property. Fifty-five of Missouri’s 115 counties have already passed a senior tax levy. That includes neighboring Clay and Platte counties.
Clay County Senior Services, which is supported by that county’s 20-year-old senior levy, brings in $2.6 million a year. The levy funds transportation to medical appointments, meals for seniors, safety modifications to homes and other services that help seniors remain connected to the community.
“Every day, you hear the impact and the gratefulness of older adults,” said Tina Uridge, executive director.
Without a source of public funding, providing all of those services would be a struggle, Uridge said.
It is a struggle in Jackson County, nonprofits said. They said federal aid that had been helping during the pandemic is drying up. Meanwhile, the charities that had supported their work aiding seniors are also going away.
Ohlhausen said Jewish Family Services and KC Shepherd’s Center saw a combined drop of $350,000 in philanthropic support last year.
And the Mid-America Regional Council, the area agency on aging serving Jackson County, in April temporarily suspended accepting new clients for its home-delivered meals service line. Those funds had gone to organizations like KC Shepherd’s Center for Meals on Wheels. MARC said the suspension is tied to declining federal dollars that had come primarily through the American Rescue Plan Act.
“Dollars that we used to expect to come down to us are harder to come across,” Ohlhausen said.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.