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Bourbon County Commission Minutes of Feb. 15

The north wing, east side of the Bourbon County Courthouse.

February 15, 2022                                Tuesday 9:00 am

 

The Bourbon County Commission met in open session with all three Commissioners and the County Deputy Clerk present.

 

Susan Bancroft, Clint Walker, Matt Crystal, Bill Martin, Ben Cole, Shane Walker and Matt Quick were present for some or all of the meeting.

 

Clifton made a motion to approve the previous meetings minutes. Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

Eric Bailey presented a permit for Eric Gray at 208th & Katy for an entrance tube.  Lynne made a motion to approve the permit.  Clifton seconded.  All approved.

 

Eric stated they are prepping for possible storm this week.

 

Eric stated that they had Emshaw training last Thursday at Buck Run.  We had some employees that were getting into the time frame of needing renewal so we got that done.

 

Eric started that Schaub Eaton has started the annual bridge inspections.  We have 139 bridges along with 30 low water structures to be inspected.  We will receive a report when completed.  The bridge at 180th & Birch is being worked on.  Guard rail got hit, the stringer is hanging and the bridge decking is rusting away.  We’ve got the stringer back in place and they’re working on getting the bridge decking back in place.

 

Eric will meet with Jeff Spangler this morning to drive back around looking at the roads following the road use agreement.  Making certain everything is met.

 

Jim asked Eric if he had looked at the road at 230th.  Eric said that would be this morning.

 

Jim gave Eric some information on rock crushers if Eric decides to get a larger one.

 

Clifton made a motion to amend agenda to move the County Counselor time to the bottom of the agenda.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

Susan Bancroft presented resolution 07-22 (ROZ) Rural Opportunity Zone Student Loan Repayment Program Calendar Year 2022.  It is a state program created in 2012 under the Brownback Administration to help those relocating to rural areas.  They have an opportunity, if relocating to KS and have never lived in KS, in an area where there is a ROZ county they have the opportunity to have some of their student loan debt forgiven.  They also have 100% of their state income tax that can be waived for 5 years.  The county has the opportunity to contribute toward this but in the past we’ve always done zero dollars because we haven’t budgeted for it, but we still have to approve the resolution so that we can be considered a ROZ county so that cities and employers can participate in this because we are a ROZ county.  We are not tying ourselves to any funding but have to have the resolution in place.  Jim asked if we could contribute and Susan said that is something that needs to be looked at in the future as we doing our planning.  It could definitely be an economic development incentive.  Clifton made a motion to approve resolution 07-22.  As an FYI he stated that the county is allocating zero dollars per year for the purpose of matching.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

Susan mentioned that next meeting we will be bringing back the County Appraiser’s contract.  The state has a certain requirement that they want it in a resolution form.  We just found that out late last week so we will be bringing it back once Justin has a chance to go over it.

 

SEK Regional County Meeting will be March 17th in Garnett.  We need a head count for registration.  Please let me know this week if you plan to attend.

 

Susan stated that she had met with Ashley Shelton and Patty Love.  We have had some really good meetings to talk about structure and reporting.  The commissioners, county treasurer and county clerk all are required to do quarterly reporting which we have been a little lax on in the past.  We’ve put together a schedule of when this reporting is to be completed.  To save on publication costs we would like to do one report that gives cash, revenue and expenditures and that meets on the obligations we have to statutorily.  Patty and I also talked about doing monthly financial reports due on the 15th of each month.  We are very close to having end of year finished.  By next meeting we are hoping to bring all of that to you.  I’m meeting with Terri Sercer today to go over some entries that have to be made.  I feel things are going very well.  I want to give a shout out to Rhonda Dunn.  She has been a huge help with this process.

 

Susan handed out articles to the commissioners that are helpful as legislature starts to go through.  One is talk about food sales tax being zeroed out.  If the bill passes that will be just the state tax of 6 1/2%.  You will still have to pay local tax on food items.  The other article is regarding bipartisan infrastructure law.  A lot of federal funds coming to KS.  They encourage long-term capital planning which I think we have already started.  We have a work session set up.  We want to make sure we put together a really good plan.  It helps us when we are looking at some of the funding that’s coming down.

 

House Bill 2619 would require all compensation of elected officers to be posted on the county’s website.  I’ll watch this bill as it goes through legislative session and let you know when/if that passes.

 

Susan stated that there is grant opportunities.  The first is due by February 28th.  It’s called a Base Grant.  We can do three different applications for this grant.  It is driven by industrial parks, new business.  I sat down with Rob Harrington yesterday and I feel like the best project that we have that could potentially apply for this grant is the Spyder expansion and the parking lot that we want to build over there.  There is $100,000,000 dollars available.  It requires a 25% match.  You have six months to begin the project and two years to complete.  It has to be driven toward economic development and business.  The city will also be applying for this grant as well.  There will be another webinar tomorrow that I will be listening to on this subject.

 

Susan stated she met with city staff to talk about the north side parking project.  We are going to work together on that and renew some lines that we think are causing some water issues.  One of the things discussed was this could create another issue going forward because when we put the troths in for surface water it’s going to go to Judson and cause more issues because there are no storm drains to take it.  They are working on their side to see what they can do to address that.  I feel it needs to be engineered for ADA compliance and AG Engineering is about 4 to 8 weeks out before they can get to this project.  Do we wait for Ag Engineering or do we look for another firm to help with this?  Jim stated that he would like to keep it local.  Susan said she would get with Frank and see when they can work on this and then coordinate with the city as well.

 

Susan gave copies of Ashley Shelton’s training schedule just to keep them in the loop.

 

Susan met with Ashley and Patty regarding issues of grants and other funding coming into the county it sometimes isn’t identified very well.  As we develop new policies and handbook, I would like us to develop some kind of administrative policy book that talks about how we handle certain things.  When a payment comes to the county there is a form we would like the department head to complete that states we know this money is coming and this is where we want the money to go.  So there are no issues or delay in getting that information posted in the general ledger.  That is one of the things that Patty and I worked on and we’ll be talking about that in our next department head meeting.  As we develop those procedures we will bring them to you.  We’ll talk to department heads about them first.

 

Public Comment: Clint Walker stated it was nice to see Susan on the ball on the rural opportunities.

 

Elected Official Comment: No comment

 

Clifton made a motion for executive session KSA 75-4319(b)(6) for the preliminary discussion of the acquisition of real property for minutes including 3 commissioners, Rob Harrington, Susan Bancroft, Justin Meeks returning at 9:43am.  Clifton made a motion to return to normal session at 9:43am with no action.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

Clifton made a motion for executive session KSA 75-4319(b)(6) for the preliminary discussion of the acquisition of real property for 7 minutes including 3 commissioners, Rob Harrington, Susan Bancroft and Justin Meeks returning at 9:50am.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.  Clifton made a motion to return to normal session at 9:50am with no action.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

Clifton made a motion for executive session KSA 785-4319(b)(1) to discuss personnel matters of individual nonelected personnel to protect their privacy including 3 commissioners, Justin Meeks and Susan Bancroft for 15 minutes returning at 10:12am.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.  Clifton made a motion to return to normal session at 10:12am with no action.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

At 10:13am, Clifton made a motion to adjourn.  Lynne seconded.  All approved.

 

 

THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

OF BOURBON COUNTY, KANSAS

(ss) Jim Harris, Chairman

(ss) Lynne Oharah, Commissioner

(ss) Clifton Beth, Commissioner

ATTEST:

 

Doretta Neville, Bourbon County Deputy Clerk

February 22, 2022, Approved Date

 

 

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