<table> </table> Where county government once provided local police, road maintenance and development planning services to a majority of the territory in the county, it now is responsible for these services in less than half of the county remaining unincorporated.</p><p>The administrative borders of our cities contain nearly 60 percent of land in the county. Today&#8217;s division of responsibility between the county and our cities is the inverse of the 1980 reality.</p><p>Has Johnson County government adjusted to its diminished local administrative responsibility?</p><p>Johnson County reached a milestone eight years ago.</p><p>In 2000, 51 percent of the county land was incorporated within the boundaries of Johnson County&#8217;s 20 cities. For the first time, the county government was no longer responsible for providing local services for most of the land in the county.</p><p>The county government is now responsible for local police, road maintenance and development planning services in only 42 percent of the county.</p><p>Yet county government has not adjusted to its diminished local administrative responsibility in terms of who pays for the city-like services provided outside the cities.</p><p>For the second time in four years, I am proposing that Johnson County adjust the tax responsibility for the local services provided to a shrinking minority of the land within the county.</p><p>Unfairly, the residents of cities totaling more than 95 percent of the county population are being taxed twice for local services.</p><p>It is time Johnson County creates a distinct property tax in the unincorporated area. The tax would begin to pay for part of the more than $15 million it costs the county to provide city-like services to unincorporated areas.</p><p>Countywide property taxes can be cut by more than half a mill if an unincorporated service area tax rate of approximately 22 mills is created.</p><p>The distinct tax should be affordable. Therefore, it should not exceed the median mill levy assessed by Johnson County cities.</p><p>For example, the tax rate would be about what a property owner in Leawood pays, less than in DeSoto and more than Overland Park. The revenue would cover about a third of the total costs of the services.</p><p>This year county commissioners have heard two groups of residents in unincorporated Johnson County compliment county government on the quality of the local services compared to city services.</p><p>Some residents were willing to impose a 20-mill property tax on themselves to avoid being annexed by Overland Park.</p><p>Their testimony, and the geographic reality that all of Johnson County is being taxed to pay for local services delivered to 42 percent of the county, should drive the commission to act and create the fair taxation of the unincorporated service area mill levy.</p><p>Johnson County taxpayers living in cities should urge the commission to act now to cut the countywide property tax rate for 95 percent of residents.