There will be a South East Kansas Job Fair held in Pittsburg, KS on March 16th.
Employers can register for a table here and potential employees can register here.
If you’ve driven by Espressly For You recently, you may have noticed the sign saying that it is closing. The good news is that the store has been purchased by Mike Giordano and he’ll be taking over on Tuesday February 20th.
Mr. Giordano is a Fort Scott local. He said they plan to be open from 6 to 2 and may consider staying open later for a dinner special on Wednesdays. Be sure to stop by and Welcome Mr. Giordano in his new endeavor.
Marty Pearson showed the commissioners details on a training program on roads that KCAMP will pay for. The commissioners voted for him to take the classes that will be paid for by the state. The classes are offered through KU and are part of the Kansas Roads Scholar Program.
There still isn’t a date on the tax sale and the county is still waiting for Mr. Meara to put together the press release. There are a few dates in March and April when the Register of Deeds office will be gone to a conference so the the tax sale can’t be scheduled for those dates. The commissioners asked that these dates be communicated to Mr. Meara.
Sheriff Gray presented a request from Uniontown asking about putting a flashing light on K3 and Maple Road. There have been two fatalities there recently. They have permission from the state, but the state said they didn’t have funds to pay for it. Uniontown is asking for assistance from the county for the approximately $5,000 cost of installing it. The state doesn’t have any money to pay for it, but they were hoping the county could pay for 75% of it. The commissioners acknowledged the request and said they would approve it, but didn’t have the funds to add it at this time.
The county has been asked for a Bourbon County representative for the Kansas 6th Judicial nominating committee.
The commissioners spoke with a company that will help audit the counties phone bills to see if they can recover any overpaid funds. The company will split the refunds with the county. The Commissioners made and passed a motion to use the service to look at their phone bill.
Some time back, FortScott.Biz requested a copy of the details from the audit showing the individual under and overpayment information. The commissioners were concerned that they might not want to request this information (and make it subject to Kansas Open Records Act) until any investigation by the the Attorney General was complete.
This information has now been made available and is being used to send refunds back to tax payers that overpaid. The commissioners said that they still hadn’t heard anything back from the Attorney General, but decided it was in the best interest of the county to request the information in order to issue refunds to those that overpaid.
Keep in mind that underpayment doesn’t indicate any type of problems on the part of the tax payer. They paid what they were told to pay. If there were inaccuracies, in the amount of tax they were told to pay or how the interest was calculated, that wasn’t the fault of the tax payer.
Based on previous conversations, it does not appear there is a way to recover underpaid taxes from the tax payers if their accounts were marked paid in full. This seems reasonable as it would be very disruptive to businesses and individual if the county could go back several years and say “oh we made a mistake, you now owe more money.”
Here is the pdf of the over/underpayments. If your name shows up as having overpaid, you should be receiving a refund in the near future.
The commissioners discussed the best time to plant fescue on some county land and the reclamation project at the old quarry. There was also some discussion about moving the scale. The county is getting the old crusher ready to go to the company where it was traded in on the new one.
The commissioners wanted to clarify that the East side of Cedar Creek Lake is still open and you can drive in there. The West side is closed to traffic now, but you can walk in to go fishing. The restrooms are also being removed from the West side. The decision was made by the rural water department because of the vandalism that was taking place.
The commissioners are still waiting for a list of properties and what day they will be sold from Dan Meara for the tax sale.
Joanne Long asked the commissioners about a money transfer from the general fund to the sewer fund, but they decided to hold off until they had more information.
In January Commissioner Coleman was voted in as chairman. Evidently Commissioner Jingles Endicott had made a motion to make Commissioner Allen Warren the new Chairman and the motion had been seconded by Commissioner Coleman. After some discussion Commissioner Warren convinced then Chairman Endicott to not vote for his own motion and the two of them voted Commissioner Coleman in as the new Chairman.
Jake “Jukebox” Johnson was born in Fort Scott, but raised in Iola. He was attending FSCC when he decided to stop by Boone’s Barber Shop to ask about careers as a barber. Encouraged by what he learned, Mr. Johnson enrolled in Wichita’s Old Town Barber College. After graduating 11 1/2 months later he took a job at Boone’s Barber Shop.
Now he is starting his own business with the Jukebox Barber Shop at 15 E. Wall Street where he offers $10 haircuts and $10 shaves. On a recent visit a record player in the corner was playing Johnny Cash and there were a number of guitars on display on the wall.
Mr. Johnson said the guitars are for sale. He also has strings, picks and other supplies that he said are hard to find in Fort Scott. He also offers guitar lessons. His goal with the guitar, lessons and supplies isn’t to make a large profit–he just wants to get more people interested in music.
The Jukebox Barber Shop is open from 8 to 7 Tuesday through Friday and 8 to 1 on Saturday. The telephone number for voice and text is 620-224-7798. The shops website is: http://jukeboxsbarbershop.com/
Carter Stegall from Running Foxes Petroleum can to discuss buying right of way to put in pipeline. They need to drill under a road and wanted to know what issues there were with going under roads. Marty Pearson said that they would be responsible to fill in any settling the happens afterwards. Commissioner Warren suggested a type of mix that had a good history of not sinking.
There was a discussion of what type of permits would be needed and if a bond was needed
The water district has voted to close Cedar Creek Lake to vehicles and take the bathroom out because of too much vandalism. It will still be open for fishing, but people will have to walk down to the lake and the dock will be removed.. The plan is to move the bathroom to Elm Creek Lake.
Ron Center from the landfill came to discuss a request to the state about going 10 foot higher in the landfill. There are some changes that need to be made to meet the state requirements. Mr. Center has a flat fee bid for $1000 to do the work that is required.
The Commissioners were asked if the press release detailing the status of the tax sale had been created and they said they were waiting on Dan Meara.
They were also asked about the status of the request for a listing of the people who had overpaid and underpaid as determined by the audit. Joanne Long said that this information had been emailed to Fort Scott Biz, and the Commissioners indicated that the Treasurer was going to start sending out refund checks for the approximately $800 that had been overpaid. They pointed out that $300 was the Treasurer’s overpayment.
The commissioners voted to go into executive session for 30 minutes to discuss non-elected employees.
The National Weather Service out of Springfield is forecasting a surge of Arctic airmass in Southeast Kansas starting Friday evening with temperatures falling into the single digits by Saturday morning followed by snow and sleet fer the next several days. With the low temperatures road surfaces are projected to be very slick.
Joanne Long clarified that the approximately $1.5 million spent on healthcare for county employees included about $800,000 of employee contributions. So the total amount spent on health care per county employee is around $7,000–not $15,000 as was previously suggested.
There was some discussion about the need to purchase a used truck. A suitable truck has been located, but it was slightly more expensive than expected. Marty said that the cost of used trucks is very high that this one represented one of the best deals he could find. They are going to check to see if the truck is still available.
The crusher has been moved to the new quarry. The county is working on making sure the brakes are good and all the equipment is ready to begin operation. People are coming in to train county employees on the new equipment. There was some concern that there were some maintenance issues with the loaders so it was discussed the need to have a backhoe available as a backup plan if the loaders were down when the training was taking place.
There was a firm coming in to discuss the possibility of building a new jail at 9:45. (I wasn’t able to stay for that part of the meeting.)
There was also a planned discussion of the new sewer district, planned for later in the morning.
The map below shows properties that are on the list for the Bourbon County Tax Sale. Properties are being redeemed by their owners so some of the properties on the list may have already been redeemed. The Bourbon County website has a list that is more up-to-date. Also it is possible that some of the properties didn’t get geo-encoded correctly so they may not show up as expected. The locations are probably close, but not all of the mapping information is accurate so it probably wouldn’t be wise to use this map as a basis for bidding or not bidding on a piece of property.
There area lot of properties to show, so you may need to zoom in to view the details. Clicking on a red marker will give you the address of the property and give you a link to see just that property on a map.
If you are reading this in an email, you may want to click on the link for “View Larger Map” to see the details or visit FortScott.Biz directly.
Boeing has announced plans to close their Wichita plant which will cut over 2,000 jobs. According to Senator Moran, less than a year ago Boeing had pledged to add 7,500 jobs to the Kansas location as part of the tanker contract they were awarded.
City officials from Wichita helped Boeing in their efforts to win the tanker contract based on the new jobs it would create, so they feel a bit betrayed that the aviation/defense company chose to not only move the tanker jobs to Oklahoma City and San Antonio, but also shutdown the rest of their Kansas operations.
Officials were also disappointed that Boeing didn’t talk to them about the changes before making the announcement so they weren’t able to offer any incentive for the corporation to stay.
Matt Harris on Indian Road has a spot right in front of his house where the water is running over the road when we get a lot of rain. He is concerned that the way the water is flowing is coming up around his house.
There was some discussion about the vacation policy for the people working on road & bridge crews. Too many employees are taking vacation all at the same time–particularly at the end of the year. Marty is also concerned that some employees are wearing improper footwear.
Allen Warren made a motion to go into executive session with Marty to discuss non-elected personnel issues (not related to vacation or attire).
At 10 am, the budget amendment hearing started. Employee benefits and road and bridge are expected to exceed the budget. The proposal was to adjust the budget to meet the expected expense. In order to avoid a budget violation the Commissioners will move some money from the general account where they had more income than expected to the accounts where they spent more. Exceeding the budget without amendment would put the county in violation of state law.
All objections were heard and a motion was made an passed to accept the amendment to the budget.
There was some discussion about the increase in employee benefits and if there was a plan to keep the cost of insurance from continuing to climb. The amended budget for health insurance in 2011 totals $1,557,560. With 100 paid county employees this works out to over $15,000 per employee. Some employees do not take county insurance, so the actual cost per employee is higher. (It was unclear if this figure includes the amounts that employees contribute to cover their families.)
The commissioners expressed concern that since they have not given raises for the past four years, health insurance is one of the main reasons people will work for the county. Chairman Endicott said, it is hard to get people to apply for jobs as it is.
The Commissioners were asked if there was a long term plan for dealing with the increasing costs of employee benefits. They said there wasn’t. They were also asked if the plan was to just raise the mill levy as needed to cover the increased costs of employee benefits. The Commissioners asked if there were any suggestions for dealing with other increases such as gas prices pointing out that other costs were going up as well.
There was some discussion about capping the amount that the county spends on employee benefits.
This is the first payroll that the county has done direct deposit. Employees that work in the court house will get the receipts for their payroll check in the office, but the ones that don’t work in the court house will get it in the mail.
The County Attorney (Terri Johnson) clarified that the attorney that the AG office did get the first letter requesting that they look into allegations against the County Treasurer. The letter that they didn’t receive was the second letter where the AG’s office had requested additional information from the County Attorney.
Dan Meara has yet to provide the list of people who have property that could be sold, but will be held off because it wasn’t published correctly. The Commissioners asked the Clerk’s office to request the lists from Dan Meara for the meeting on January 6th.
FortScott.biz has previously requested a copy of the list showing which property owners overpaid and which underpaid on their taxes. This information is not in the Commissioner’s hands so they could not provide it. FortScott.Biz took the position that the data belonged to the county and that the whether the physical bits reside shouldn’t matter and if it was simply a matter of requesting the data from Terry Sercer, it should be subject to a Kansas Open Records Act Request.
Terri Johnson (County Attorney) has contacted the Attorney Generals office to find out if there is any reason not to release the data and if it is indeed subject to KORA. She said that she thinks that list doesn’t actually belong to the County, but that they can request it. She suggested that the Commissioners need to request that information eventually in order to refund people who overpaid. She also pointed out that if the information is published the community needs to be careful not to vilify citizens who may have underpaid even though they were acting in good faith and paying what they had been told they owed.