Kansas State University’s Frontier Extension Service #11 will impose a property tax increase of $192,000 on residents of Anderson, Franklin and Osage Counties to replace funding cuts in this year’s USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) budget.
First reported in the Anderson County Review, the tax will fund two “nutrition-education” positions in the SNAP-Ed program, eliminated in this fiscal year’s USDA budget. SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) -Ed provided nutrition instruction and healthy-living education for low-income residents and had been administered locally through K-State Extension.
Frontier Extension Service District Director Rebecca McFarland told the Review that the program had operated in Franklin and Osage Counties since 1995, and employed two “nutrition educators” serving the three-county district after adding Anderson County in 2014. When federal support ended, the district’s governing board elected to continue the program with local money.
The federal budget did not eliminate SNAP food benefits, but it did eliminate future federal funding for SNAP-Ed and made other reductions and eligibility changes to the broader SNAP program.
Enabling legislation in Kansas, K.S.A. 2-625, allows extension districts the same authority to raise revenue as any other taxing subdivision, such as cities, counties, and school boards. As the statute reads:
The governing body of the extension district, in the same manner as provided by law applying to other taxing subdivisions, may make an annual tax levy upon all the taxable tangible property of the extension district for the purpose of raising funds to be used to plan and conduct the educational extension programs of the extension district, to be levied and collected as other taxes, at a rate fixed in accordance with the approved budget and of not to exceed the greater of (1) the rate of 2.5 mills or (2) the rate determined to yield an amount equal to the product of $75,000 multiplied by the number of counties within the extension district.
The tax increase comes with an assessed property valuation increase of 29% since 2025.
McFarland told the Review that higher salaries, benefits, travel, and educational supply costs were necessary to retain the two nutrition educators.
We reached out to Frontier Extension Service Director McFarland with questions about the decision to fund a program locally not considered vital to USDA operations, especially given that property valuations and taxes are contentious issues in Kansas. We did not receive a response.
