FORT SCOTT — The Bourbon County Commission voted unanimously Monday night to levy a property tax rate above the revenue-neutral rate, and in the same meeting committed $116,500 to write the county’s first comprehensive plan and zoning code, a document aimed squarely at wind farms, solar fields, battery storage and data centers.

The commission will levy a total of 56.678 mills for 2027. The revenue-neutral rate calculated by the county clerk — the rate that would raise the same amount of money from existing property as last year — is 54.661 mills. The difference is 2.017 mills, which budget consultant Matt Lawn of Baker Tilly put at roughly $294,000 (video, 5:01).

The levy is not an increase over the current year. It is the same 56.678 mills the county is levying now, and down from 59.900 mills in 2025. Kansas law requires a public hearing and a recorded vote whenever a county intends to levy above the revenue-neutral rate, even when the rate itself does not change, because rising property valuations would otherwise raise more money at the same rate. The county’s assessed valuation rose to $143,767,695 for 2027 from $138,681,091 the year before, a gain of about 3.7%. Applied at the unchanged rate, that growth alone brings in roughly $288,000 — very nearly the whole difference between the two rates.

Deputy County Clerk Michael Hoyt was the only person to question the numbers at the hearing. He asked why the published notice showed a total assessed valuation of zero for 2026 (video, 7:32). Lawn said there was an error in the spreadsheet and that he was correcting it; the figure was given in the room as $138,681,091. Hoyt also questioned an increase in the law enforcement fund, where Lawn acknowledged the published figures were wrong, and Chairman Gregg Motley told him that belonged in the budget discussion rather than the rate hearing.

After Motley read the resolution, the roll was called and all five commissioners voted yes: Joe Allen, David Beerbower, Mika Milburn-Kee, Motley and Samuel Tran (video, 13:03).

The 2027 budget itself was not adopted. Motley asked the commission whether it wanted to vote that night or hold the matter open, and the commission chose to hold it open (video, 20:33). Lawn said the county has until Oct. 1 and could adopt on Sept. 21st or 28th. Milburn-Kee said she wanted time with the comparison documents he had prepared, which the commission had received that evening.

Lawn walked the commission through the fund-by-fund changes behind the flat total: a reduction of about half a mill in the general fund, a 2.313-mill increase in the employee benefit fund covering a 5% rise in benefits and health insurance estimated at 18% to 20% higher, and decreases in law enforcement and road and bridge. Smaller movements included a 0.02-mill cut for noxious weeds, a 0.03-mill increase for emergency medical services and about a tenth of a mill more for elections. He had reduced the road and bridge levy by 1.134 mills, he said, because the county will not be able to transfer the full amount of federal disaster reimbursement money he had originally planned because part of it was already committed to pay other costs. Total law enforcement spending still rises, from $2.584 million to $2.851 million.

There were no comments or questions from the public on the budget in the meeting.

A comprehensive plan built around wind, solar and data centers

Commissioner Samuel Tran brought the comprehensive plan back to the table, saying that after Lawn’s budget work the money was there (video, 1:05:11). He then read a resolution approving a planning services agreement with Confluence Inc. for a comprehensive plan and zoning code regulations.

The agreement is for a total fee of $116,500, which includes reimbursable expenses of no more than $5,000. The county will pay $36,000 from the 2026 general fund and the remaining $80,500 from the 2027 general fund, subject to appropriation. The work is split into four phases, the largest being $68,000 for drafting the plan and the zoning code.

The resolution ties the work directly to Resolution 24-26, the temporary moratorium the commission adopted on large-scale power generation, crypto mining, data centers and waste disposal operations. The zoning code, the resolution says, is anticipated to address “utility scale wind and solar energy systems, battery energy storage systems, data centers” and other areas identified as the plan is developed.

Motley said he had understood the plan would be paid for by solar payments and asked whether that was any closer. Beerbower said that was why they had asked Lawn to find the money in the general fund instead. “That was a stretch asking the solar companies to put up money before it was… I mean, it doesn’t start until… It’s on a timeline,” he said (video, 1:12:35).

Motley also asked how the county would enforce the rules once they exist. Tran said enforcement cannot begin until there is zoning, and that the commission would get updates as the process ran so future commissioners could work out who enforces it. Milburn-Kee said she had brought the board numbers a few months ago on what enforcement had cost a neighboring county.

The resolution passed unanimously on a voice vote, and the commission then voted to authorize the chairman to sign the contract (video, 1:14:10).

Earlier in the meeting, resident Kyle Parks had used public comment to urge the commission to fund it. “I think this county commission is going to be remembered for a lot of things,” he said, “and I think one of them ought to be that you guys are the ones that passed the comprehensive plan and zoning.” (video, 24:24).

Appraiser hire authorized after a day of interviews

The commission spent the afternoon in a special meeting interviewing candidates for county appraiser, entirely in executive session. Monday night it took the action in the open, as Milburn-Kee had told the public that afternoon it would.

After a 15-minute closed session on non-elected personnel, the commission returned with action and voted to authorize Milburn-Kee to contact human resources and give authority to hire “appraiser A or B, considering their responses” (video, 45:05). The candidates were not named in open session.

Tran later said that the candidates the commission was looking were all familiar with zoning and came from counties that have it.

A second closed session, 10 minutes with county counselor Bob Johnson on pending litigation, returned with no action.

Burn ban lifted

Commissioner Joe Allen moved to lift the countywide burn ban, saying he had spoken with fire chiefs and emergency management and that the county had received upwards of five to six inches of rain over the past few days. It passed (video, 1:14:47).

A long argument over who gets to talk, and for how long

The sharpest part of the meeting came under an agenda item titled citizen involvement, sponsored by Milburn-Kee and brought by Kevin “Skitch” Allen, a local trash hauler, who was joined by Clayton Miller. It ran for roughly half an hour and picked up where the previous week’s public works work session left off.

Allen read a prepared statement for about 10 minutes. He traced the dispute to a request he and Miller made months ago to open the transfer station for half a day on minor holidays at double pay for the landfill employees, which he said never got an answer. Shortly afterward, he said, Public Works called Miller to collect his dumpster, and a week later called Allen to collect two portable toilets that had been at the site for years. “We felt as if it was either weird timing or possibly retaliation,” he said (video, 1:15:57).

He said one commissioner stopped taking his calls, and quoted him as having said publicly, “there’s 13,997 people that I will answer calls to, but you ain’t one of them.” He said that when the purchase of a new backhoe was put on hold pending a look at the finances, the same commissioner proposed substantial raises at the transfer station, including one plan under which a commercial driver with less than two years’ tenure would go from $17 to $30 an hour and out-earn the supervisor. Asked directly whether that was true, Allen said, the commissioner told him he would not answer.

Allen asked the commission to study a three-year profit-and-loss statement before raising dump fees at all, to hold local rates where they are and put any increase on out-of-county customers, who he said do not pay county property or sales tax. He also argued the county does not need a new backhoe: for under $20,000, he said, it could foam-fill the tires on the one it has for less than $5,000, repair the air conditioning in both machines and buy a $6,000 hot-water pressure washer. “Their equipment is filthy. They can’t see out of that stuff,” he said (video, 1:27:09).

He then turned to the three-minute limit on public comment. He said he had been reading fast to fit inside it the week before and had to be told to stop before he was finished. “It made me sick. I don’t like that,” he said, asking the commission to consider raising the limit to five or eight minutes (video, 1:31:42).

Beerbower answered by reading the county’s own meeting rules back. Resolution 21-26, he said, reserves a portion of each meeting for public comment limited to three minutes per speaker, and draws no distinction between a regular meeting, a work session, or a special meeting (video, 1:35:47).

Allen had called each commissioner individually before that work session last week to ask whether it would be an open back-and-forth, and said all three told him it would. Beerbower said that put them in a position of making a unilateral decision, and that nothing in any of the county’s meeting resolutions provides for open discussion at all. “So when they said that, they gave you a non-binding agreement that they’re not legally bound to do,” he said.

Beerbower also said he had been in error the week before when he called the work session his own. The floor had been yielded to him because it was his presentation, he said, but under Robert’s Rules of Order the chairman keeps control of the meeting.

It then turned personal. Beerbower said Allen had accused him of cronyism. Allen said he had never used the word. “You referred to me… basically said that I was giving a friend of mine that went on vacation with me, that I was giving him a $13 an hour raise,” Beerbower said, adding that the wage plan was a proposal for the board to work out and that he has no authority to give anyone a raise on his own (video, 1:40:00).

Beerbower said he had told Allen he did not owe him an apology until Allen apologized to him. He referrenced to an issue dating back to 2025 when Allen and others attended a commission meeting and protested separating the landfill from public works, which was part of Beerbower’s plan to make changes to both departments. The protest was based on information circulated in an email which Beerbower said he had nothing to do with. Beerbower said that as a county commissioner, there is no law obliging him to speak to anyone he doesn’t want to.

Allen said he had already made his apology. “I do not appreciate the accusations. I don’t think Clayton does either,” he said.

Johnson, the county counselor, interrupted to say the exchange was “probably more of a conversation for the two of you to have outside of a meeting. This is more personal.” Motley agreed it was not commission business. Beerbower’s answer was that “it became commission business when it happened in the commission” (video, 1:44:20).

“I’m just glad everybody at home got to see it,” said Kevin Allen as he left the table.

Also before the commission

Care to Share. Board members Cory Bryars and Teresa Davenport gave a semi-annual update. The all-volunteer group historically puts about $8,000 a month, or $100,000 a year, back into the community for people fighting cancer; that is up about 50% this year, Bryars said, and the group is now spending more than $12,000 a month. “We haven’t had to turn anyone down,” Davenport said, “and it’s because of the community support we get from Lynn, Bourbon and Crawford Counties that we’re able to help everybody that asks us. And I just want to thank the communities that we are serving that your money is being well spent and we just really appreciate it.”

Care to Share’s big fundraiser, the fifth annual Fort Fest, is Sept. 25 and 26 at Riverfront Park, and a benefit trap shoot follows Oct. 10.

Sheriff’s radio project. Under Sheriff Kevin Davidson appeared in place of the sheriff and patched in Darla Hout of Lexipol’s grant-finder team by phone. Hout said Lexipol has worked with the sheriff’s office for about 10 years and helped it secure nearly $500,000, but that this year has been unusually hard: the change of federal administration, last year’s government shutdown and a review of every federal grant program have left grants delayed or not opening at all. She said she needs a cost estimate for the full radio project, and that she and Sheriff Martin are still approaching grant programs. “It’s a hurry up and wait type of game,” she said. “You’re lucky to find two or three grants that are available and a good fit to fund any given project.”

Regional planning. Motley reported that two Community Development Block Grants are pending through the Southeast Kansas Regional Planning Commission for Bronson’s water treatment upgrade, one covering the bulk of the cost and one the matching funds, an investment he put at about $3 million in western Bourbon County. On 46 acres south of Fort Scott, he said, Equity Bank appears likely to prevail on its lien.

Fence viewing. Johnson advised that a fence-viewing request the commission had received was really a livestock and negligence dispute rather than a boundary question, and so falls outside what the statute is for. He noted he has represented counties for 29 years and Bourbon County is the only one that has ever brought him a fence viewing.

Human resources. Joe Allen brought a request for proposals for human resources services and the commission voted to issue it, after agreeing to leave the deadline at Oct. 7 to allow time for publication.

The commission approved the agenda as amended and minutes for Aug. 31, Sept. 2 and Sept. 9, had no accounts payable to approve, and postponed an item on a KC Crown Inc. project in Fort Scott for a week. It adjourned at about 7:25 p.m. Future agenda topics include a purchasing policy, an update from Joe Allen on the county auction, the county’s contribution toward employee insurance, a reorganization of the phone system so fewer calls land in the clerk’s office, and a Kansas Open Records Act policy.