FORT SCOTT — Five motions to buy a backhoe for the county transfer station died without a second at Monday night’s Bourbon County Commission meeting, and a personnel motion that came out of more than an hour of closed-door discussion failed with three commissioners opposed.
Chairman Gregg Motley presided, with Commissioners Joe Allen, David Beerbower, Mika Milburn-Kee and Samuel Tran, County Counselor Bob Johnson and County Clerk Ann Clarkson. The posted agenda listed a 6 p.m. start; the meeting began at the commission’s usual 5:30.
Routine business
The board approved the agenda, the Sept. 28 minutes, accounts payable and the August financials. The packet lists an accounts-payable batch of $463,336.56 due Oct. 2, about $302,000 of it in Blue Cross Blue Shield medical and dental premiums for August through October. The board also approved corrections to the Sept. 18 accounts payable and a set of tax roll corrections. (On Sept. 28 the board had approved $15,421.96 that was left off that week’s accounts-payable report.) Motley noted that documents executed the previous week were in the agenda packet. No public comment cards were turned in.
Three executive sessions, then a failed motion
The agenda listed an executive session on employee performance, requested by Tran, to include Dr. Cohen of HR Solutions On Call, the county’s human resources contractor, Johnson and the commissioners. On Sept. 28 the board had given Tran authority to ask Cohen to come handle personnel matters in person.
Tran moved three executive sessions in a row under K.S.A. 75-4319(b)(1), for non-elected personnel matters dealing with job performance, each including the five commissioners, Johnson and Cohen. The first lasted 25 minutes and the second 20, and the board came back from both with no action.
Returning from the third, 20-minute session with action, Milburn-Kee moved to “give that authority to Dr. Cohen to make those changes.” Tran asked her to “define the changes a little bit more.” Milburn-Kee said several changes had been suggested, and the motion meant “the very last one that let Mr. Allen work with Cohen to make the payroll change forms.” Tran seconded. The motion failed on a voice vote, with Allen, Beerbower, and Motley opposing.
Under future agenda items, Milburn-Kee asked whether the personnel matter would come back. “To me, it’s until it’s resolved,” Tran said, and asked that it go on the agenda.
No budget update; asbestos results pending
The agenda had financial consultant Matt Lawn down for a budget update, with the certified 2027 budget in the packet. Lawn was not at the meeting, so that item was skipped. The board adopted the 2027 budget, not to exceed 56.678 mills, on Sept. 28.
On the asbestos inspection and courthouse move, Beerbower said the inspection has been done but he has not received the results. He said crews would start IT and window work at the new court location Tuesday morning.
Transfer station: Allen reports KDHE answers
Under Tran’s transfer station item, Tran called Kevin “Skitch” Allen, a local commercial hauler who uses the transfer station, to the table. At the Sept. 28 meeting Allen had suggested buying a pressure washer for the station’s equipment, and Beerbower had raised concerns about state rules on wash-water runoff.
Allen said he had emailed his report to four commissioners and had tried several times to call Beerbower. Beerbower said he had not gotten a phone call. “On my personal phone, you’re blocked,” he told Allen. After Allen asked him to repeat it “for the crowd at home,” Beerbower added, “because it’s my personal phone.”
Allen then reported on two questions he had put to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. He said KDHE told him the station can use a pressure washer, because the grate at the municipal solid waste area already drains to a catch basin and what he understood to be a 1,500-gallon sludge tank, and that it would only need an addition to the county’s state permit. He said two roll-off dumpsters at the top of the construction-and-demolition hill, one for tires and one for trash, would also only need a permit addition, as long as the trash is brought down and emptied once a week. He said the county owns about six roll-off boxes, two of them now full of tires, and that KDHE suggested 20-yard boxes, whose shorter sides make it easier to throw things over the top.
Beerbower said he had found the same thing about the wash rack: the tipping floor meets the standards for one. He called the roll-off idea “a very good and doable suggestion,” said it should be passed on to Public Works, and suggested starting with at least one dumpster. Allen said landfill employees had been led to believe the roll-offs were illegal: “So it’s not illegal. It’s good to go.”
Who pays for the transfer station raise?
Beerbower then took up his item on the 5% wage increase in the 2027 budget. Transfer station employees are paid from fees, not property tax, he said, so their 5% in the 2027 budget has to come from the station’s existing budget, from a rate increase, or not at all. On Sept. 28 his motion to raise station rates and give station employees 15% died without a second.
Beerbower said the budget figures showed a 2025 carryover of about $96,000 for the station that “sure didn’t go back into the transfer station.” (On Sept. 28, Motley reported that the audit showed a $96,000 surplus for the station in 2025.) If it had, he said, “we wouldn’t be talking about” the backhoe, “because we had $96,000 we could have purchased it.” Beerbower also pointed to $35,000 that he said had been applied to the bond, and Tran asked what happens to the $35,000 the station is no longer paying toward its building; Motley said that had been accounted for in the budget. Motley said the carryover stays in the station’s cash reserve and that fee increases could pay for the raise.
Tran said his understanding was that the 5% was already in the station’s budget. “If it’s in their budget, they can do whatever they want with their budget, not come back to the table and ask for more money,” he said. Rather than ask the public to pay more, he said, the county should look internally for the money. Beerbower agreed to ask Lawn how the raise will be paid. No action was taken.
The packet for the item also included a written memo from Milburn-Kee calling for a formal compensation survey and a structured pay plan, a 1.5 to 2% cost-of-living increase plus a performance-based pool of up to 5% in total, before wage decisions are made position by position. The memo was not discussed. The packet also included a Linn County job listing for an equipment operator at $15.09 to $18.91 an hour.
HR proposals close Wednesday
Allen said the county’s request for proposals for human resources services closes Wednesday, Oct. 7; he said he had mistakenly written Oct. 5 as the deadline. He said he believed there were three responses so far, two from corporations and one from an individual, and that the board would decide next Monday.
Milburn-Kee asked whether applicants must meet the RFP’s requirements, and said changing them afterward would be “setting yourself up to make deviations” for someone already chosen. Motley and Allen said no one had been selected; Allen said he had not read the responses, on purpose. Milburn-Kee said she had seen them. She and Beerbower said the board had not used an RFP when it hired an HR provider a year ago. Tran said he brought the RFP idea from the contracting world he works in. “If you put out an RFP, that’s your guidepost. That’s what you should use,” he said, warning that deviating for one bidder could open the county to a protest or a lawsuit. Johnson recommended the board “look at them and deal with it next Monday because you don’t know what you have yet.”
After the vote to adjourn, Tran asked where the RFP had been advertised. Allen said it ran in the Tribune; from the exchange that followed, it appears to have been placed in the Help Wanted section.
Backhoe bids get no second
The backhoe bids had been held over from Sept. 28 while Public Works confirmed the quotes were still current. Beerbower said the public works director had gathered five bids, as the board had instructed, and that the vendors had re-dated them to Monday at the same prices. He moved to accept the bid from Foley Equipment for a new 2026 CAT backhoe. The motion died for lack of a second, as did his motions for the 2025, 2024, 2022 and 2018 machines. Beerbower said the transfer station was getting by with an excavator borrowed from Public Works at this time.
Joe Allen said that when he talked to Public Works Director Kenny Allen the week before, the director planned to ask Murphy Tractor for a bid as well. Beerbower said nobody had told him that and the board had given no such direction.
When future agenda items came up, Beerbower objected that Murphy could now see the competing price: “They know Foley’s bid. So it’s real easy to underbid.” Milburn-Kee replied that the bids had not been sealed. Beerbower said the board had approved a backhoe bid, then repealed it, then asked for five bids and done nothing with them. Johnson advised that “if you’re going to re-bid them, you should probably have everybody re-bid them, and not add a bid to an existing RFP.” Tran suggested a market analysis, which he said is not binding, before going out for a formal bid. Beerbower asked that the backhoe go back on next week’s agenda.
Letter of support for tobacco distributor
Dr. Roger K. Harris asked for a county letter of support, which he said the state requires because he plans to distribute cigars from his lake home through his company, Eagles and Osprey LLC. He said his state application and bond had already been submitted; the packet includes a $1,000 Kansas tobacco products distributor’s tax bond for the company. Harris said he set up the company in the county because it is a federal HUBZone, and offered to help the county pursue HUBZone contracting, saying a contracting company he worked for had half a billion dollars in government contracts, 5% of each of which had to go to small-business set-asides. On a motion by Milburn-Kee, seconded by Beerbower, the commission authorized Motley to sign the letter on behalf of the board.
Next week
There is no county commission meeting scheduled for next week, Oct. 12, because it is a public holiday.
No commissioner had comments. Items named for future agendas were the backhoe, the transfer station pay raise, the HR proposals, the personnel matter from the executive sessions, an auction, Becky Gray letter of support for transportation. The posted agenda’s future-topics list also included insurance and the purchasing policy. The meeting then adjourned.
Editor’s note: The county’s video stream of this meeting malfunctioned and showed a still image for its duration; this story is based on the meeting audio.