A truism in business, large or small, is that you must spend money to make money. A farmer must plant, fertilize, weed and harvest before a crop can be sold and money put in the bank. No need to repeat the specifics for a builder, a merchant, a manufacturer, artist, physician, paper-hanger or newspaper publisher. Investments must precede profits.
A comment overheard on the upcoming Allen County Hospital vote prompts this recital of an obvious truth.
“I won’t vote for the hospital if it will be built in my part of town. It would make my property more valuable, drive my taxes up and I can’t afford it,” the worried lady said.
Truth is, of course, that investing all those millions to build a new, modern hospital in Iola is exactly the kind of spending that will make it possible for the cities and the county to provide the services they provide without raising taxes. Growing communities, stable communities, have stable taxes which provide the money it takes to keep schools open, streets paved, police and firemen paid and public parks inviting. (And, dear lady, it will make your house a good investment rather than a losing one.)
As many Kansans who live in shrinking communities have discovered, when houses and business buildings lose value, taxes must rise to bring in the same amount of money to provide public services.
It isn’t possible to calculate the exact economic effect that a new Allen County Hospital will create. But the impact will be substantial; it will be long term and it all will be positive. Unfortunately, it is possible to forecast the result of letting the present hospital dwindle to first aid station status. Without a modern hospital, Iola will shrink dramatically and every property owner in the city and the area will suffer.
For a community of our size, losing our hospital would have the same devastating effect of losing our public schools. A thriving hospital attracts and supports physicians, nurses and technicians and an entire administrative team.
While it sounds overly dramatic, failure to build a new, first class, hospital in Iola and allowing health care services here to decline to levels found in much smaller communities would all but guarantee that Iola would become a much smaller community.
If that happened, property values would sink, taking tax revenues with them and the downward spiral would become unstoppable. Wouldn’t happen week after the election; wouldn’t happen next year. But it would happen, sure as God made little green apples.
So Iolans who have homes here, businesses here, loved ones here, rich memories here, fond hopes for the future here — did we leave anyone out? — all of us have more reasons than we can count to put a YES, ALLEN COUNTY HEALTHCARE sign in our front yard. And make a promise to yourself to be a cheerful booster right up until the last vote is cast on Nov. 2.
Every election is important. This one can make all the difference for the place we all call home.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
