FORT SCOTT — Bourbon County commissioners spent part of their Sept. 21 meeting trying to work out when they had agreed to shift money between funds in the 2027 budget. They never voted on it, and they did not agree about what their earlier discussions had settled. Meeting video and the county’s own minutes show how the idea moved forward over four meetings without a vote.

Aug. 24: a stated goal, no vote

Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee described what she wanted from the budget: “keep everybody exactly where they’re at, revenue neutral, but us take the assessed valuation increase of that two mil and put it in the reserves in the general fund” (video, 52:45). She put that growth at “approximately $300,000, a little bit less.” The only vote on the 2027 budget that night authorized publishing the hearing notice. The minutes, approved Sept. 9, record the idea as “the Commission’s overall objective.”

Aug. 31: a new recommendation, with Tran absent

A week later, budget consultant Matt Lawn of Baker Tilly recommended “lowering that mill levy” for Road and Bridge “by about four mills and then essentially pushing those mills back into general fund and the employee benefit fund,” using one-time FEMA reimbursement money in the road fund (video, 23:20). He said the plan was based on “some requests that I’ve got from you guys.”

Commissioner Samuel Tran was absent. The commission took no vote on the recommendation. County Treasurer Jennifer Hawkins cautioned that part of the road fund’s balance predates the FEMA reimbursements and that some is needed to match bridge grants. The minutes say the commission directed that her reconciliation of those funds “be completed before any mill reallocation is finalized.”

Sept. 14: the shift shows up in the numbers

After the revenue-neutral rate hearing, Lawn walked through how mills had been moved between funds while the total levy stayed flat: up 2.313 mills in the employee benefit fund and down 1.134 mills in Road and Bridge, among other changes. He said the Road and Bridge cut was smaller than first proposed because some of the FEMA money was “already spoken for” and some had to stay in its special project fund, and that the changes were made “based on council priorities.” The commission voted 5-0 to exceed the revenue-neutral rate but did not adopt the budget. Later that night, all five commissioners, Tran among them, voted to approve the Aug. 31 minutes describing Lawn’s recommendation.

Sept. 21: “When and where do we change our mind?”

When Lawn described moving Road and Bridge money into the employee benefit fund, Tran objected. “That’s the last thing I remember the five of us talking about,” he said of the general fund plan. “We agreed to that, all of us, unanimously” (video, 12:26). “I just want to know when and where do we change our mind on this.”

Milburn-Kee said she was “fine with general.” Lawn said he was “merely saying what Commissioner [Milburn-Kee] asked me to consider” and was open to whatever the board wanted. Tran asked who had directed the change. “Projections. Nobody directed,” Milburn-Kee said, explaining that Lawn had projected what Road and Bridge would overspend in 2026 and carried that forward (video, 13:20).

About 25 minutes later, Commissioner David Beerbower said he did not remember that discussion at the table. “Did we vote?” he asked. “No,” Tran said. “We never voted because we weren’t voting at the time. It was just a consensus like, hey, that’s a good idea” (video, 37:42). He said two commissioners had liked the idea, “so I kept it in the back of my head.”

“To be fair for Matt, we’re throwing him all over the place because we haven’t voted on a single thing,” Milburn-Kee said.

Tran then told Lawn that direction should come only from the full board. “Any marching orders that you get should come from the table,” he said. “It should always come from the table where there’s a consensus. … We rule as a body, not as a single person” (video, 38:35).

“To be fair to him again, we haven’t made any motion here,” Milburn-Kee said of Lawn. “He’s just listened to all the conversations and tried to build something.”

What’s next

The allocation also bears on raises: the draft includes a 5% wage increase across departments, and Milburn-Kee pressed Lawn on whether it rests on one-time money. Lawn agreed to bring about four versions of the budget. The budget must be adopted by Sept. 30, and the commission’s next regular meeting is Sept. 28. Full coverage of the Sept. 21 meeting is also available.

The Bourbon County Commission voted 5-0 Monday night to keep the county’s property tax rate exactly where it is: 56.678 mills. Before it could do that, state law made it hold a public hearing and vote, on the record, to exceed what the law calls the revenue-neutral rate, the rate that would bring in the same dollars as last year.

Why would keeping a rate flat need a hearing about exceeding a rate? Because property values in the county went up, and a flat rate on higher values means the county will be raising the amount of taxes collected.

Start with the mill

Property tax is figured in mills. One mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value.

Kansas does not tax a home on what it would sell for. It taxes a home on 11.5% of that figure, which is called the assessed value. A $100,000 house has $11,500 of assessed value. To get the tax, multiply the assessed value by the mill rate and divide by 1,000. At the county’s rate of 56.678 mills, that is $11,500 times 56.678, divided by 1,000, or $651.80 a year going to the county.

That $651.80 is only the county’s line. The school district, the city and the township each set their own mill levy, and they are separate lines on the same bill.

The revenue-neutral rate is a calculation, not a decision

Every year the county clerk takes the property tax dollars the county collected last year and asks one question: with this year’s property values, what rate would bring in exactly the same dollars? That rate is the revenue-neutral rate. It is based on simple mathematics, and it moves every year because property values move.

For 2027 it came out to 54.661 mills. Last year the county’s property tax levy, the total it charged, was $7,858,151. For the 2027 levy, the county’s total assessed value (the sum total of the assessed value of all the property in the county) is $143,767,695. Multiply that by 54.661 and divide by 1,000 and you get $7,858,486, last year’s money within a few hundred dollars. The small gap is only rounding.

“Flat” does not mean taxes don’t go up

The commission adopted 56.678 mills, the same rate the county is levying this year. Budget consultant Matt Lawn of Baker Tilly called it “a flat mill levy”.

But the same rate on higher valuations raises taxes. Put 56.678 mills on the same $143,767,695 and you get $8,148,465, within a couple of hundred dollars of the $8,148,297 the 2027 budget asks for in property tax. The revenue-neutral rate is 54.661 mills. The commission kept 56.678. That 2.017-mill gap is worth about $290,000 more in county tax.

Where did the extra come from? The tax base grew. One mill is $1 per $1,000 of assessed value, so last year one mill in Bourbon County raised about $138,700. This year since valuations have gone up, it raises about $143,800. Higher values on property that was already there, with only a little new construction, added about $5.1 million of assessed value to the county’s tax base (the total assessed value of everything in the county). At the flat rate, that growth raises about $290,000 a year, roughly the gap between the two rates.

Your bill can go down while the county takes in more

Back in 2025 the county’s rate was 59.900 mills, and the county share on that $100,000 house was $688.85. At the 2027 rate of 56.678 mills the county will charge $651.80. The hypothetical $100,000 home that didn’t increase in value would have seen its county tax bill fall about $37 from 2025 to 2027.

At the same time, the county will collect about $290,000 more in 2027 than it would at the revenue-neutral rate. Both things are true, because the county is now taxing a higher total valuation of property. If that were because more homes and businesses had been built, more people would be sharing the load. In Bourbon County that is mostly not what happened. The county’s population has been flat to slightly down since 2020. The county appraiser’s market study for 2026 found home values rising 6.92% a year and commercial property 4.97% a year. Homes are nearly half the county’s tax base and businesses about a fifth, so those two trends together add about $5.8 million of assessed value, more than the whole $5.1 million increase, before counting anything newly built. The growth is mostly the same houses and businesses valued higher, not more of them. When that is what is happening, a flat rate means most county tax bills go up, because most valuations did.

While the rate is down 3.2 mills since 2025, property tax dollars the county levies are up about $170,000, from $7,977,466 to $8,148,297.

To be clear, your bill only falls if your own valuation did not go up. If your house followed the appraiser’s residential trend, a $100,000 house last year is valued at about $106,920 this year. Its assessed value is $12,296, and at the same 56.678 mills its county share goes from $651.80 to $696.90, up about $45 with no change in the rate. That is also $8 more than the $688.85 it paid in 2025, even though the rate is lower. Whether your own bill went up or down depends on the valuation notice you got this spring, not on the rate alone.

Why the law makes them hold a hearing

Since 2021, Kansas law (K.S.A. 79-2988) has required any city, county or school district to hold a public hearing and take a recorded roll-call vote if they intend to increase the total amount they are taking in taxes. It doesn’t matter whether the rate goes up or down. The hearing is triggered whenever the rate is above the revenue-neutral rate, the rate that would collect the same dollars as the year before. That applies even when the rate itself has not changed, which is Bourbon County’s situation this year.

The reason is the arithmetic above. Before that law, a county could adopt the same rate year after year while rising valuations raised the dollars it collected, with no separate vote on the increase. The rate was voted on. The extra money was not. The hearing and roll call require that extra money to be approved in public, with each commissioner’s vote recorded.

What happened Monday night

Commission Chairman Gregg Motley opened the hearing a few minutes into the Sept. 14 meeting, Lawn laid out the two rates, and Motley asked for public comment.

The only person to question the numbers was Deputy County Clerk Michael Hoyt, who asked why the published notice showed the county’s 2026 assessed valuation as zero. 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.

Motley asked twice more for comment. “Going once, going twice,” he said. There was none.

He read the resolution, and the clerk called the roll. Joe Allen, David Beerbower, Mika Milburn-Kee, Motley and Samuel Tran all voted yes. The 2027 budget itself, about $20.1 million in total spending, was not adopted that night. Our story on the full meeting has the budget details, and the Sept. 11 work session on wages and transfer-station rates covers the spending behind those mills.

FORT SCOTT — Bourbon County commissioners voted at a special meeting Wednesday evening to hire an environmental firm to inspect the courthouse for asbestos, two days after competing proposals to test the building failed to produce an authorization.

What changed in between was the commission’s understanding of a federal rule. Commissioner David Beerbower, who asked for the meeting, said research he did after Monday’s meeting showed the county cannot begin its planned elevator modernization — or any wall removal or demolition in the courthouse — until an asbestos inspection is done.

“So before we can even begin with this, we need to have these inspections done,” Beerbower said (video, 6:06).

Four of the five commissioners took part in the 5 p.m. meeting: Chairman Gregg Motley (District 4), Beerbower (District 2), Joe Allen (District 3) and Mika Milburn-Kee (District 5). Commissioner Samuel Tran of District 1 was not present. The amended agenda the county circulated that afternoon listed the asbestos item under Motley’s name; the commission’s first vote of the night moved it to Beerbower’s, because the meeting was his request.

What the commission approved

Milburn-Kee moved that Motley contact Apex Environmental and arrange the scope of work the county needs — the elevator, a walkthrough of the third floor, the pipe insulation, air-quality testing, and whatever else the firm judges is required or recommends (video, 19:13).

Motley seconded, but with an amendment: rather than run the testing himself, he wanted one commissioner coordinating all of it — the testing firm, elevator contractor Otis, and the remodeling work — and proposed Beerbower. “I think we need one person in charge of this whole process,” he said (video, 19:41). “I would gladly help Commissioner Beerbower, but I think it just needs to be coordinated.” Milburn-Kee amended her own motion to match.

The commission then added a not-to-exceed cap of $5,000, after Beerbower pointed out that Apex’s quote covered three hours of work with no stated rate for anything beyond that. “We’re right where we were Monday night, when we didn’t know additional cost,” he said.

The motion carried on a voice vote with no opposition heard. Motley announced the result as “5-0,” though four commissioners were present (video, 26:38).

Milburn-Kee said she was referred to Apex by a superintendent at construction firm J.E. Dunn who she said had verified, first-hand experience of the firm’s work. A representative quoted her roughly $1,800 for travel and three hours of work, plus $35 per sample tested, and said the firm could fit the county in within about two weeks. An elevator mechanic would have to be on site to shut the shaft down so it can be inspected.

She stressed that Apex tests and inspects but does not do remediation. “They’re not coming in to test something and turn around and sell us the work to fix it,” she said. “I know that was a worry” (video, 16:45).

“We need to lean on and rely on the experts in this situation,” Milburn-Kee said. “If we hire people who know this work and understand the requirements, we can make decisions based on facts, testing, and documentation, and professional recommendations, not just what we think we need to happen” (video, 17:30).

Milburn-Kee had made the legal point herself, before Beerbower’s research came up in discussion. “The biggest point I want us all to understand is that testing of the elevator is required by law before the work can move forward,” she said. “This is something that Apex brought to my attention” (video, 16:08).

The rule that stopped the elevator project

Beerbower said both federal and state rules require an asbestos inspection, but only when it is triggered by renovation, alteration or demolition — a building in routine operation needs none. The federal standard, he said, is the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, which he said requires an owner to thoroughly inspect an affected facility before any renovation, elevator modernization, wall removal or demolition begins. Kansas enforces it under authority delegated by the EPA, he said.

That, he told the commission, is what rules out doing the job in pieces.

Motley said it changed his position. “So I think what’s changed for me is Mr. Beerbower pointing out that we simply can’t start, we can’t do it incrementally,” he said. “We can’t start the elevator project without a full inspection of the courthouse” (video, 17:52). On Monday, Motley had argued for testing the known material in the basement first and deciding about the rest of the building afterward.

Beerbower also said the county is obliged to notify Otis that asbestos is suspected in the building — a suspicion is enough, he said, and a positive test is not required — and that doing so may send the elevator work back for a new bid.

He described what the construction would do to the building. “When you start the construction of the elevator, when you start that modernization, the elevator shaft acts like a chimney, and it’s going to suck air from the bottom, and air is going to go through the top,” he said (video, 11:08). Crews would have to “basically bubble in” the first floor on each side of the elevator, he said. He also said the county would have to run air-quality monitors that people entering the courthouse can walk up to and read for themselves, and raised remote work and shortened work weeks as options for courthouse staff while the work runs.

What removal would cost, if any is needed, is still an open question. Beerbower said mitigating the whole building would run somewhere between $50,000 and $250,000 — “that is the light side of it” — and that extensive building-wide mitigation can exceed $500,000 (video, 4:29).

No regulator, contractor or environmental firm was at the meeting. The commission acted on Beerbower’s account of his own research and Milburn-Kee’s account of a phone call she made to Apex about an hour beforehand. Nothing in the building has yet been sampled or tested.

Allen: eight spots in the basement

Allen said he had come in early Wednesday and gone through the basement himself. “I saw eight spots that I think need to be checked on the old side of the building,” he said (video, 9:39). He said the elevator is on the annex side, which he said was built in 1971, and asked how work there bears on material elsewhere in the building. He also noted that a wall has already been built downstairs around pipes on the annex side, and that the wrapping there does not look like the wrapping in the older part.

Beerbower’s answer was the chimney effect — and the pipes. The wrapped pipe in the basement was most likely a boiler pipe, he said, and anywhere that same pipe and the same wrapping is exposed elsewhere in the building would have to be inspected too. Allen noted that some pipes in the basement have been stripped or painted over at some point. Beerbower said that does not settle anything: if the work was not done by a qualified contractor, the material may still be a risk, and it is the inspection team’s job to say.

Whether to put it out for bid

The commissioners also disagreed over process. Beerbower questioned hiring Apex without competitive bids.

“I don’t know Apex Environmental any more than I know the company that you were talking about, and I know there’s other companies out there,” he said. “So, I mean, if we’re going to go this route, I mean, shouldn’t we do a bid process?” (video, 22:15)

Motley said he was hesitant about bidding because of the timing. Milburn-Kee said she was “really not particular,” but that going out to bid would be a lengthy process and she did not want to push the courts back further. Allen said he had made the same point Monday: the commission needed to move.

Beerbower gave way. “If you guys are okay with this company, I’m okay with this company,” he said. Motley replied that he was inclined to vote for the motion because of timing, and added that a bidding process “would, I’m sure, kind of drive you nuts.”

“It would, yeah,” Beerbower said. “Because that’s how government’s supposed to work” (video, 24:50).

Milburn-Kee agreed that spelling out what the county wants and putting it out to bid would be ideal — and said the county had passed the point where that was practical.

“But we’ve already scheduled the elevator rebuild. We’ve already moved the courts,” she said. “We put the cart before the horse here” (video, 24:57).

Beerbower kept pressing on cost after that. He asked whether Otis would have to send people to the courthouse on the day of the inspection, and what that would cost: “Otis isn’t going to come down here for free.” Milburn-Kee answered that the county already has a service agreement with the company. “They are our service company for the elevator,” she said (video, 26:20).

The court move may get bigger

The commission voted last month to move district court to the county-owned building at 108 W. Second St. while the elevator is out of service, and to close the courthouse’s second and third floors to the public from Oct. 21 through Nov. 20. Under the plan as it stood, only part of the court’s operation was to move.

Beerbower said Wednesday that may no longer be enough, and that moving the county attorney and the courts across the street entirely may be the better and safer course. That pushes the timeline, he said, because 108 W. Second cannot be made ready that fast — and because the building may need an asbestos inspection of its own. Tran, who Beerbower said has a background in this kind of inspection, flagged a couple of items there as suspicious when commissioners walked through it.

Beerbower said he asked for a special meeting rather than waiting because the commission’s next regular meeting, Sept. 14, was too close to the construction timeline.

Background: the June walkthrough

As FortScott.biz reported in June, asbestos in the courthouse — a 1930s building at 210 S. National Ave. — came before the county after a former maintenance director circulated photographs of deteriorating pipe insulation in the basement. He said he was fired the day after asking in writing to have the material tested; county officials declined to comment on his departure at the time, and the county cited his probationary, at-will status in ending his employment.

A Kansas Department of Health and Environment representative walked the building afterward. The preliminary finding, relayed then by Bourbon County Emergency Manager Lou Howard, was that nothing looked hazardous. It carried a caveat that has now become the whole question. The walkthrough was visual and no samples were taken, and Howard said the representative told her it would be a different matter “if there was active construction going on at the time.”

Construction is now scheduled.

Also Wednesday

The commission held two closed sessions on the salary of a non-elected employee, both under K.S.A. 75-4319(b)(1). Deputy County Clerk Michael Hoyt joined the first, along with the county’s HR consultant, Dr. Cohen, by phone; the commission returned from it with no action.

After the second session it voted to authorize a salary change, in effect until the new county clerk is sworn in and approved by the governor, at which point it can be revisited. That vote was not unanimous with Milburn-Kee voting against it (video, 52:14). At Milburn-Kee’s reminder, the commission also directed the chairman to complete the payroll change form the change requires.

Related coverage: State walkthrough finds no immediate asbestos hazard at Bourbon County Courthouse, Bourbon County Commission enacts two-week burn ban, clears disputed Aug. 17 minutes, Commission chooses 108 W. Second for court during elevator outage, Courthouse elevator shutdown set for Oct. 21–Nov. 20.

The Bourbon County Commission meets Monday, and one of the first items is a set of minutes it already sent back — the Aug. 17 minutes, tabled on Aug. 24 after Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee said they needed “extensive revision.”

That is not unusual. The commission has sent minutes back over the past ten months, and not always for the same reason. Members have never agreed among themselves on what the minutes are supposed to be.

The county has used AI software to help produce its minutes since at least the fall of 2025. The current program, HeyGov, was demonstrated to the commission in January 2026 by then-Clerk Susan Walker. It offered three levels of detail, she said then — “a simple level, a medium level and a detailed level.”

Acting County Clerk Michael Hoyt described the current process: after a meeting is uploaded to the county’s YouTube channel, the video is downloaded as a file and run through a program called HeyGov, which transcribes the meeting and matches what was said to each item on the agenda. Hoyt then proofs the draft against his own notes.

“All I have to do is go through and proof to my notes — you know, who made the motion,” he said. “Even sitting there as close as I am, you sometimes don’t hear who seconded, or if two second at once, who wants to take credit for it.”

The draft then goes into the agenda packet for the next meeting. The commission either approves it, or gives corrections and approves it later. Once signed, it is the official record.

Hoyt said he checks requested corrections against the video before making them, because “I’m the keeper of the records. Even though it’s their meeting and it’s their minutes, they still can’t make things up after the fact.”

The method is not new. In October 2025, Walker described nearly the same pipeline with different software. “I take what’s on YouTube and I take that link and push it into this software,” she told the commission. “And then it can produce a full transcript, but it was 145 pages long.”

The alternative is doing it by hand. Walker said a full-length meeting took her office about eight hours, “because you have to sit up there and listen to everything and then try and figure out who the speaker is.”

The commissioners’ requests have not pointed the same direction.

At the Oct. 20, 2025 meeting, with the commission ten sets of minutes behind, then-Chairman David Beerbower read out his view of what belongs in them, and argued against detail.

“They are official, they are permanent, they are legal record,” Beerbower said. “They are distinct from a full transcript, though. Details that should be in there is motions and resolutions, voting outcomes, summary of discussions — but it is not a direct quote.”

A week after Beerbower’s speech, Chairman Samuel Tran asked for more — and what happened to that request is instructive.

The minutes he objected to covered an Oct. 22 special meeting on the county’s decision to move payroll out of the clerk’s office. Walker had read a prepared statement, and the minutes record its sharpest line: “The decision to remove payroll responsibilities from the clerk’s office was portrayed as a cost savings, improved processes. I must say plainly that it was not an operational improvement, it was a political move.”

The minutes give Walker five bullet points, ending with that accusation. They give the commissioners five, all procedural — reach out to the vendor, get everyone to the next meeting, discuss the timeline, review the noise ordinance, “Commissioner Beerbower will contact legal counsel.” Nothing the commissioners said in reply appears.

They said a good deal. Tran answered at length: “In everything I’ve ever done in my life you either help or you hinder — if we have a problem, come to the table with the solution or a possible solution, not hindrance.” And: “We’re sitting here, I’m listening to a speech that does not paint us well in a public forum. We are elected by them. We are their voice. And I apologize for being terse, but I’m very frustrated.”

Tran did not dispute Walker’s cost figures or her account of how the decision was made; his objection was to the speech being delivered in public. The closest thing to an answer on the substance came from Beerbower: “And that’s a decision that we made at the time. And I’m going to stick with that.”

At the Oct. 27 meeting, Tran asked for those replies to be added, but the version the commission went ahead and signed on Dec. 1, 2025 appears to have been unchanged.

By June 2026 the software was producing longer minutes, and Tran objected to how they read. At the June 15 meeting, citing the May 11 minutes, he singled out phrases like “attempted to,” “push back gently” and “echo this point forcefully.”

“Minutes should be very bland. It should not have narratives in it,” Tran said. “I think we need to go back to just reporting what people say and leave it alone and not paint certain commissioners in a bad light.” He said the concern was not about any one commissioner.

The June exchange showed some differing opinions about what the commissioners think they can ask for.

Walker responded to Tran by explaining that the software produces long, medium and short versions, and that she had already changed which one she used.

“Before, I was being ridiculed for not doing enough, and so I went to the long version,” Walker said. “And now I’m being told the long version is [wrong], so now I need to go back to the medium version or the short version?”

Tran declined to say which he wanted.

“I’m not telling you anything, Madam Clerk. I’m not telling you anything. You’re an elected official. You do your job the way you see fit,” he said. “I’m just saying the final product does not meet my expectation of what minutes should be.”

On July 6, Beerbower put the question on the agenda to settle it: pick one of the three versions and move on.

He argued for the shortest, because “it provides just what is necessary by law to have.” Minutes “shouldn’t be about what you say,” he said, “it should be about what was done in the meeting.” Motley agreed: “My vote would be the short version.” Joe Allen said he had no preference, noting school boards “keep a shorter minute.”

Milburn-Kee’s answer was again about accuracy rather than length. “I’m happy with whichever one you want, Mr. Beerbower. I will read and correct whatever I need to do,” she said. “If they don’t send them to me with mistakes, I won’t have to make any corrections.”

County Counselor Bob Johnson gave the legal standard. “You shouldn’t have editorialized minutes,” he said. “It should be a concise description and summary of what was done. And I think that’s the law.” He added that the county’s minutes run “generally three times longer” than those of other boards he works with.

Tran said length had never been his concern. “That’s all I’m asking for, whether we vote on the long, the medium, or the short version,” he said. “To me, it’s always been one adjective in there changes the narrative.”

Then Tran made the motion: “So I move that we approve the short minute version of our minutes.” Motley seconded. The minutes of that meeting record that it carried unanimously.

Six weeks later, Tran asked for something the short version does not produce. At the Aug. 17 meeting, reviewing minutes that condensed Walker’s resignation statement, Tran said the full text should be in the record.

“I think it would be a disservice to the county if we did not include the whole verbiage of that resignation statement,” he said. Asked by Beerbower whether the letter would already be in county records anyway, Tran said the minutes are what people actually go to: “Very few people go back through and look at the actual documents.”

The commission agreed. Walker’s full three-page statement was attached to the Aug. 10 minutes, which were approved Aug. 24.

Running alongside the disagreement over length is a separate one about accuracy, and that request has been the same throughout.

Walker told the commission in June why speakers get mixed up: “It doesn’t pick up your voices because you don’t announce when you’re talking, and so therefore sometimes it might get Beerbower and Allen mixed up.” She added, “Oftentimes it says Mrs. Milburn is a man.”

Milburn-Kee has raised the same point at least three times. In October 2025 she asked that “great attention be paid before they’re sent to us in the first place.” A week later: “It’s important for me not to have extra things that are untrue in there, mainly.” On Aug. 24 she said it again: “Please, please make sure the right speaker is notated in there before sending it out as the minutes. I think I’m the only one bringing back edits for that.”

The commission takes up the Aug. 17 minutes again Monday, with corrections, and will review the Aug. 24 minutes.

Hoyt is doing the work alone. He said he is the only person in the clerk’s office, “replacing three people and doing it all.” He is seeking appointment as county clerk at the Bourbon County Republican convention on Sept. 1.

Four weeks after narrowly enrolling the old county landfill in the state’s walk-in hunting program, Bourbon County commissioners unwound the deal Monday. The sale of the land is dependent on environmental paperwork the county has owed on the property for years.

“I’m making a motion to withdraw our contract with the walk-in hunting on the old” landfill, Commissioner Joe Allen said. “The reason why is the city has opted out on their portion, and this was a package deal, and so we need to opt out on our side.” (video, Aug. 24, 65:54)

The board then voted to list the roughly 24-acre parcel — southwest of Oak Grove Cemetery at 225th Street and Native Road — for sale, but only after groundwater testing and only with a restrictive covenant filed against the deed. Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee supplied the conditions in her second: “pending water testing and restrictive covenant.” (video, 68:22)

Chairman Gregg Motley explained: “The big one is groundwater, because if that groundwater travels, we can’t expunge ourselves from liability.” (video, 67:12)

Four weeks, four meetings

The walk-in hunting idea arrived on July 27, when Justin Harbit, a wildlife biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, pitched enrolling the parcel in the Walk-In Hunting Access program: about $10 an acre per year — roughly $260 for the tract, by Chairman Samuel Tran’s math — with the state posting, patrolling and publishing the ground in its hunting atlas, and covering liability — Harbit pointed commissioners to a state recreational-use statute. (video, July 27, 30:09) Commissioner David Beerbower moved to enroll the same night, and it passed 3–2 — Beerbower, Motley and Allen in favor — over objections from Milburn-Kee and Samuel Tran that the public had not been given notice. County Clerk Susan Walker flagged another issue in the same discussion: the county has “an obligation” on file from the landfill’s closure, and the ground cannot be used for anything that disturbs the soil for 30 years, a restriction that runs to 2039. (video, 46:53)

On Aug. 3, as the contract came back for signature, Tran read aloud an email reply the clerk had obtained from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Walk-in hunting itself was fine, KDHE wrote. It is considered an “acceptable post-closure use” that would not disturb the landfill’s cover soil. But on the restrictive covenant required on closed landfills under state regulation, “our files do not represent that [a] restrictive covenant has been filed, and Bourbon County has been notified several times that this is required.” KDHE gave the county until Sept. 30 to file one, noted the covenant “runs with the land so any further buyer is aware that a closed landfill is on the property,” and pointed out that under state law a buyer inherits the site’s post-closure care. Commissioners agreed to hold the matter until the county attorney returned mid-month to review the deed issues. (video, Aug. 3, 123:05) Beerbower, who had made the enrollment motion a week earlier, said he was still weighing other ideas for the property, “I’m not done researching some options for that land,” though when Motley asked whether he opposed signing the hunting agreement, he said no, “it wouldn’t impact that anyway.” (video, 120:54)

On Aug. 10, the neighbors arrived. Oak Grove Cemetery’s caretaker, Phillip Pavey, asked how the plan came about (video, Aug. 10, 26:50), and Milburn-Kee read a letter from Richard and Alyssa Cronemeyer, whose land adjoins the parcel: 24 years of trespassing hunters, cut fences, game cameras and deer stands on their trees, calls from out-of-state hunters wanting access and a reminder that roughly a decade ago a county commissioner had personally posted the ground against hunting. (video, 28:52) The same night, Milburn-Kee pressed the other unfinished obligation: “I ask that we fulfill our duty to the legalities of testing the water on that old site, which have not been fulfilled as to this point.” (video, 32:23) The board authorized her to draft a proposal directing Public Works to conduct the testing with KDHE and file the deed restrictions. (video, 55:22)

By Aug. 24, with the city out, the county withdrew. Beerbower reported one more wrinkle from his research: under the closure restrictions the land cannot be dug or built on — but “somebody that wants to use it for private hunting land” could buy it. (video, 67:21) Milburn-Kee offered the other possibility: “Or an adjoining neighbor that wants nobody to touch it.” (video, 67:46) Either way, one use that would survive a sale is the same one the county just declined to lease to the state. And the delinquent paperwork was on the commissioners’ minds as they voted: “we are delinquent,” Beerbower acknowledged. “We have until September or something.” (video, 68:06)

The city’s half of the deal

The county’s 24 acres were never the whole plan. Harbit told commissioners the City of Fort Scott owns “20 some” adjoining acres — 22, he said at a later meeting, that KDOT owns roughly 45 acres to the south, and that the goal was “one big contiguous block” of public hunting ground — but he would not enroll the city’s piece without the county’s, “just because of access and the size.” (video, July 27)

The city is no stranger to the program. It has held a walk-in hunting agreement with the state around Lake Fort Scott for years. City staff cited the agreement, which runs through 2027, as far back as October 2021, when staff raised it as the commission weighed — and tabled — an unsolicited $350,000 offer on 80 lake acres. The city’s 2018 comprehensive plan describes “many acres of walk-in hunting” around both Fort Scott Lake and Rock Creek Lake, and Harbit noted the city also has “a big chunk across the river at the wastewater treatment plant” — the reason the county tract was proposed as archery-and-shotgun only, to match the rules already posted next door.

Harbit and KDWP’s Don George were on the city commission’s Aug. 18 agenda for walk-in hunting contracts and a wildlife-parks grant. By Monday, Allen reported the city had opted out, but what the city decided, and when, is not yet in the public record: no recording of the Aug. 18 city meeting has appeared on the city’s YouTube channel, and approved minutes are not yet available.

The program the county walked away from

Kansas’s Walk-In Hunting Access program, started in 1995, leases more than a million acres statewide from landowners, mostly private, and opens them to public hunting on foot, no vehicles or camping, from fall through spring. Enrolled tracts are posted with the program’s signs, patrolled by the department, and published in the annual hunting atlas and a statewide GIS map. Harbit told commissioners the program is thin in eastern Kansas, where access is hardest to come by: “citizens and everybody … they’re just being priced out of hunting and fishing.” In Bourbon County, he said, the program already includes “all the city property and a handful of others.” (video, July 27, 41:56)

Contracts run September through May; long-term deals, historically 15 years for government-owned land, can pay up front in a single check, with a prorated refund owed if the land is sold or withdrawn mid-term. A federal Farm Bill grant, expected to be decided this fall, would have allowed such a long-term contract to be paid up front here. The program also offered habitat cost-sharing to knock down the Johnson grass on the county site.

What has to happen now

Before the parcel can be sold, two obligations from the landfill’s closure have to be met: the groundwater testing and the restrictive covenant KDHE expects filed by Sept. 30. The 30-year no-disturbance restriction runs with the land to 2039 either way, which is why, as Motley observed when the idea first surfaced, “landfills are hard to sell.” (video, July 27, 44:40)