Operation Finally Home and Governor Brownback

Yesterday, Allen, Frankie, and I had the honor of speaking with Kansas Governor Brownback at a meeting in his office set up by Dan Vargas and Operation Finally Home.  It was a great opportunity for us in many ways and we can't say thank you enough to Dan Wallrath and Dan Vargas of Operation Finally Home.  They have done so much for us and we are so excited to be a part of their family!  It was so great to see them both and get to spend a little bit of time with them.

Operation Finally Home is an organization started by Dan Wallrath.  Dan is a custom home builder and was asked to help remodel a house for a wounded warrior.  Well, needless to say, he did that one and still does them today.  They started in Texas but have now expanded into 5 other states as well.  Part of this is also that they want to help these families succeed and do a great deal to insure this happens.  For us, not only did they play a huge part in our build, they also are paying our insurance and taxes for the first 2 years on our house.  This is how the meeting with Governor Brownback came into play.

Currently, a handful of states have great legislation that make their state a fantastic place for veteran's and their families to retire due to the benefits they offer.  For example, if a 100% service connected disabled veteran retires in Texas, they pay no personal property tax.  This is a huge draw for these families to retire in Texas, which in turn means they are spending money in Texas.  It is a win-win situation!  So, for Operation Finally Home who is paying taxes for the homes of disabled veteran's, it is important to get more states with benefits similar to Texas.  Obviously, this would mean that the money Operation Finally Home is paying in taxes, could potentially be used to build more homes.  Therefore, any state Operation Finally Home goes into to build a home, they try to set up meetings with the Governor's to start the conversations on getting the valuable legislation into that state.

During our build, Governor Brownback came out to help with our house.  During this time, Dan Vargas was able talk to him and make the connection that led to our meeting yesterday in Topeka.  We appreciate the fact that Dan V and Dan Wallrath both took the time to come up from Texas for this meeting.  One of the corporate sponsors of Operation Finally Home also came to the meeting from Texas, so thank you to Mark from LP.

We all feel that our meeting went really well.  We were excited to see that members of Gov Brownback's   office had already pulled some numbers relative to our discussion.  This makes us hopeful that they are really considering and looking at the possibility of giving some tax breaks to disabled veteran's in the state of Kansas.  Gov Brownback had also invited our state's adjutant General to join us and it was great getting to meet him and have him involved in our discussion.  Hopefully this will get the ball rolling here in Kansas to pass some legislation to help our veteran's.

Thanks again to Operation Finally Home for bringing us into your family and doing so much for us and all the veteran's you serve!!

Even Now.....Gina