Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Ewing featured in New York Times!!

May 13, 2008 – New York Times

Ewing Journal

A Tax Quirk Holds Out Promise for a Hard-Pressed Town

By ERIK ECKHOLM

EWING, Ky. — Leaders of this town in the bluegrass country of northeast Kentucky are facing a problem any mayor would envy: how to spend a windfall.

Well, a small-town windfall at least. Ewing, population 300, has limped along for decades with no independent revenues, and its residents are fed up enough with having to pay county property taxes. But later this year, it will start collecting a grand total of $12,000 a year or more from a new tax that came about through quirks of fate and law.

For a place with dreams of recovering its former bustle, or at least staying on the map, the revenue opens enthralling new vistas.

“We hope it will be $18,000, but we’ll take $12,000, since we’re not used to having anything,” said Elzie Price, 53, the town treasurer, who works for a farm supply company by day and raises tobacco, hay and cattle on evenings and weekends — and now will be happily busier in his city job, too.

Should the money be used to create a park, where families could picnic and regain some of the social space lost when the barber shop, the beauty shop, the grocery store and the pool hall all closed? Or should it be used first to build sidewalks along streets to the elementary school?

At some point, many agree, Ewing must replace the tattered Christmas decorations that it took as hand-me-downs from the county seat, Flemingsburg, six miles away.

“We used to have a lot of history here,” said William Jolly, 71, a retired logger now on disability who recalled when the trains stopped here several times a day and the town had a lumber yard and a coal yard along with the other lost businesses.

Ewing remains a place where the keys to the volunteer firehouse hang outside the home across the street and where two tidy churches provide community. Its residents, virtually all white, range from prosperous farmers and businessmen to poor families living off disability and a few elderly people who never learned to spell their names.

But the town has visibly ragged pockets. Like many other rural towns, Ewing, founded in the late 19th century as a railroad stop in tobacco and cattle country, has seen most of its shops close and its doctors and dentist move out. In the 1970s, a factory making teddy bears to sell at truck stops employed 50 people, but business sagged and the owner died.

Amid tailored white houses are some crumpling old structures that no one has bothered to tear down. Even if officials wanted to force demolition of hazardous eyesores, “we wouldn’t have money for a lawyer,” Mayor Wally Thomas said.

The lawns are emerald these spring days, but a few low-lying spots are a little too lush: there is no sewage system, and when it rains, wastewater rises to the surface from overworked septic fields. Everyone knows when a certain woman does her laundry because her washing machine drains right onto Main Street.

When Fleming County decided in 2007 to impose a 6 percent tax on insurance — home, business and car insurance and the first year’s premium of life insurance, basically anything but health insurance — town officials discovered they could turn this to their advantage.

Luckily, because of a previous odd twist, the town had officially incorporated itself years earlier. Under state rules, by adopting the same tax for the town, they could pre-empt the county. So later this year, Ewing will start receiving all insurance taxes collected from its residents. Since the residents would have had to pay the tax anyway, local officials feel they got a political pass.

“If we tried to adopt a tax, there would be a rebellion,” said Mr. Thomas, who runs a construction and renovation business.

“But the county passed it, and we just diverted it, so we weren’t the bad guys,” he said with a hearty laugh.

The prospect of unrestricted income “feels terrific,” he said.

As for the county executive who will lose expected revenue, “he was not exactly pleased,” Mr. Thomas wrote in an account of the maneuver on a rural affairs Web site, Daily Yonder.

The biggest single need is a sewage system but that will cost at least $6 million. Ewing is applying for federal and state grants and may have to consider (shudder) borrowing part of the money.

One thing Ewing does have is reliable street lights, an unusual story in itself.

When Champ Clark, a prominent local businessman, died in 1978, he left Ewing a trust of $109,000, on the condition that it incorporate and spend the earnings from the trust on electricity for street lights. (He left similar amounts to the Masons, who built a new lodge, and to a few other pet causes.) Now the mayor, the four commissioners and other residents are pondering how to spend the stream of unrestricted revenues.

Mr. Price said the first project should be sidewalks to the school, and he is also sure that the town will prudently save part of its income.

Some residents encountered on a stroll said the first need was better control of the traffic that races through Ewing.

“We need more law enforcement; they’re speeding through here at all hours of the night,” said Mr. Jolly, who lives with Linda Miller in a large, borderline-decrepit wood house they have been trying to sell for two years because they cannot keep it up.

Officials say, however, that a town police officer would cost too much.

Susan Flannery, a town commissioner whose parents used to run a grocery store here, said: “People say they’d like a community park, a place where you can have a picnic and kids can ride bikes.” Many talk of somehow luring back a beautician and barber.

Despite the needs, many residents say they love the town for its intimate and unfrenetic feel.  Mr. Thomas, the mayor, often drives out of town for work but said, “There’s no better feeling than coming back to a small town like this to lay your head down at night.”