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.

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.

View Larger Map

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.

According to the audit report by Mr. Sercer, most individuals on the payment plan overpaid their interest by $800. Now that the County is aware of this error, it would seem that they would be required to send refund checks to the individuals who paid too much in interest.

It doesn’t appear that this has happened. The information about who overpaid is not in the report. It would be part of the details of the audit. These details have not been made available because they have not be requested from Mr. Sercer. The Commissioners, who ordered the audit, are hesitant to request the audit details because they feel that the Attorney General’s office may conduct an investigation and the release of the audit details would compromise the investigation.

On the other hand, the county has something of an obligation to quickly give people their money back if they were charged interest they did not owe. Even if this isn’t a legal statute it is surely an ethical requirement. In some situations, it might just be a matter of taking the overpaid interest and applying it to any outstanding tax bill for current years, but in others it may be a matter of issuing someone an $800 check.

Without the audit details, it is impossible to know who needs a refund, but there are some complicated scenarios that may to arise.

First, if someone has overpaid in the past, how is that money applied to other delinquent taxes? It would seem that their interest would need to be recalculated to keep from penalizing them for money they had been incorrectly charged.

Second, if someone is owed money due to an incorrect calculation by the county, they may be entitled to receive interest on that money. Federal taxes have a provision where the IRS can owe tax payers interest in certain situations and their may be a similar state laws.

The third scenario that may complicate things for the county involves a tax payer who has overpaid on the payment plan, but currently has property in the process of being prepared for sale for other unpaid taxes. If they have money owed them by the county and the property is sold, what happens to the extra money? If the amount was more than what they owed (unlikely), then the county would be in the position of foreclosing on someone who had paid all their taxes.  If it is for less, then the county would be in the postion of foreclosing on someone without telling them how much they actually owed.

Now it is impossible to say if anyone is in any of these situations or not. At this point, Mr. Sercer and his firm are the only ones who have the information, but it seems like it would be in the best interest of the county to make  the details public before that tax sale. Otherwise there is a chance that it will put the county into a very tricky position.