The commission began the meeting with a number of executive sessions.
Executive Session K.S.A. 75-4319 (b)(1) – Lora Holdridge, Leslie Harran, 15 minutes. Returned to session and then reentered executive session for another 15 minutes with the same people. Returned with no action.
Executive Session Pursuant to K.S.A. 75-4319 (b)(1) – Samuel Tran. 5 commissioners, Kenny Allen, Terry Halsey. 25 minutes. Returned to session with action. Tran moved to accept the exemption to policy letter from Public Works in regards to take-home vehicles. Motion passed. Tran then moved to accept the exemption to policy vehicle for EMS. Motion passed with Milburn-Kee voting against. Tran then moved to allow the county appraiser to continue to use the county vehicle as a take-home vehicle. Motion did not pass, Milburn-Kee, Tran, and Beerbower voting against.
Bourbon County Comprehensive Plan — Tran with Brian Ashworth
Ashworth, from the planning commission, came to make himself available to the commission. The first step to zoning a county, per Kansas state law, is a comprehensive plan. The commission has been consulting with Mel Hoss to walk them through creating one for Bourbon County. In order to get the comprehensive plan going, they must solicit proposals from planning firms. Ashworth asked for the commission’s input on the document.
Ashworth outlined the timeline for soliciting plans from planning firms. He then asked the commission to publish the Request for Proposal (RFP).
Cost estimate for the RFP is $100,000, based on what Cherokee County paid for its plan. It will take about 6 months for the planning company to develop the comprehensive plan through extensive research and information gathering throughout the county.
Tran thanked the planning commission for their hard work and complemented their teamwork.
Milburn-Kee then moved to allow Ashworth to work with the county clerk to publish the RFP and distribute it to the list of possible planning firms the planning commission has collected.
Commissioner Greg Motley asked where the funding for the plan creation would come from. Milburn-Kee said that counselor Billenburg had negotiated $200,000 in payments from the solar panel people. It has not been collected.
Clerk Susan Walker said they needed to book the expense at the time they agree on it, according to cash-basis law.
Motion passed unanimously.
IT Services — Tran
Tran invited Jason Rinker from Stronghold to speak at the meeting. Rinker updated on the project Stronghold is working on for the county. They are at the half-way mark and anticipate finishing within the six-month timeline. He asked to bring the project manager and account representative to the commission to give a detailed update. Milburn-Kee told him that arranging to speak to the board as a whole would be preferable and he agreed to do that.
Rinker then addressed technology changes that were brought up at the last commissioner meeting by the county clerk. He said there are three areas of her letter that Stronghold finds concerning. He also said it was positive in that some hardware that needed to be updated per Stronghold’s analysis in 2025 is being updated.
The three areas of concern include several ongoing security concerns. He said the last 60 days of data that Stronghold has contain no security concerns generated by the county. “We would really like to know what these concerns are so they can be addressed,” he said
The letter also stated that the county offices involved had experienced “significant issues,” but there were no notes given to Stronghold in the last 60 days about those issues.
“As with any partner, I would assume that it would be reasonable to at least notify us of those significant issues and allow us an opportunity to correct those,” Rinker said.
The third issue is that the letter said that the transition they are planning will ensure that the various offices’ data is protected in transition.
“This is kind of insinuating to us that your data is not being protected,” he said. In the last 60 days there’s only been one ticket that required addressing by Stronghold in that regard.
He also said that the complaint about backups causing problems was not brought up with Stronghold in the last 60 days.
Milburn-Kee asked what types of requests the county is generating at Stronghold. Rinker read off examples of creating email addresses, connecting scanners, and updates from the State of Kansas, as well as others.
Tran asked what the average response time is for a ticket. Rinker said they usually respond with a couple of hours, depending of the severity of the issue.
He then explained what had happened at Stronghold and how they handled giving authority to department heads for needed software updates.
Tran asked if there were any threats or vulnerabilities to the county’s firewall. He also asked if Stronghold had discovered any more of the county’s information on the dark web. Rinker said that while there are no specific threats he is aware of at this time, constant vigilance is required.
Tran also asked what the bottom issue with CIC (the county’s accounting software) is and what is causing problems with the staff. Rinker said that when he reached out to CIC, they told him that they are not allowed to speak with Stronghold unless given specific permission by Bourbon County.
Tran asked who is the gatekeeper for CIC in Bourbon County. Walker said she is and is willing to give Stronghold access if Tran is present during the call. He agreed to be present. They agreed to get the conversation done before the next week.
Rinker said that the changeover to .gov email addresses is a good thing that the whole county should do. He said it should be registered to the county so the county can control the domain.
Walker said on of her security concerns is missing emails. She reiterated her hope that the commission supports her office’s desire to move to a new server.
She also wants to know who else can access the emails in their offices.
“There’s just a lot of trust issues, I think,” she said.
She said that when they called in to Stronghold to have things done, they were denied access without Milburn-Kee’s approval.
Tran said that as far as he is concerned only Stronghold has access to emails in the county.
He agreed with Walker’s trust issue, but said that uncontrolled admin rights in the county are not secure.
Walker said they only want admin rights to their own systems to update their accounting program that they control in the offices at the courthouse. She said she has called several times to get that fixed and further issues have arisen.
“I don’t think it’s asking much for us to be able to update our CIC software,” she concluded.
Tran asked that they give a report on the increased vulnerability of the county with the addition of more servers and a cost analysis as part of Stronghold’s quarterly report.
Rinker said he his company hasn’t been given the information by the departments in the courthouse that are purchasing a new server, so he cannot accurately address those questions.
Rinker also said that cyber-liability insurance carriers have started asking that those entities they cover have one set of eyes on everything to avoid the trouble of “too many cooks in the kitchen,” or the opposite problem of no one really overseeing.
Citizen Comments
Michael Hoyt said he personally contacted Dr. Cohen and told him his was unhappy with how long it’s taking to get the county employee handbook updated and implemented. After pointing out that Emerson is the new payroll handler for the county and Dr. Cohen’s company became the HR department through Emerson, Hoyt asked how Stronghold became the county’s IT department.
Hoyt concluded by asking what the commission plans to do about the contention that is evident in the courthouse.
“You all are the ones in charge. If we have personnel that are infighting, we need to get to the root cause and find out why. You all are the peacemakers, not to drive a further wedge in by attacking anybody,” he ended.
Susan Walker came with several questions.
She distributed a noise complaint form draft for the commission to amend and approve.
She also asked that the commissioners get the information for resolutions to her by noon on Fridays, per the commissions own stated procedural steps, in order to give people time to look them over before the meetings.
Old Business
Handbook-Tran
Tran asked for a status update. Milburn-Kee told him that KCamp sent a sample back to HR. “As far as I know, they haven’t got all the edits done,” said Milburn-Kee.
Tran said that all suggestions have been accepted except for reducing the introductory period for new employees from 365 days to 90 days. In Kansas, if someone is fired at 91 days, and they can file grievances.
“The only individuals that are not protected in the state of Kansas in labor law are white males below the age of 40,” said Tran. Going to 365 days protects the county.
Milburn-Kee said that after receiving notes from HR and other business owners, she has changed her mind about some of the requested changes.
Motley said that in his experience 90 days requires employers to make an evaluation on the employee, which is best for the county. The first 90 days will give you what you need to know. He also said they also already voted on it as a commission.
Commissioner Joe Allen agreed with Motley, saying that all his jobs in the past had a 90 day introductory period.
Beerbower said he likes it as it stands. No changes were voted on.
Fractional CFO-Tran
At a cost of $5,500 per month split between the sheriff’s department and the county, Tran moved to have Baker Tilly serve as the CFO for the county.
Motley said that on the surface, this appears to be a solution looking for a problem.
Tran said that the county seemed to lack congruency in how it handled the budget. He also said there was a lot of unneeded inputs in the formulation of the budget.
Motley pointed out that the City of Fort Scott, which uses Baker Tilly as financial advisor, has no elected officials to deal with like the county does. Fort Scott also does not have any accounting experts as part of their government, as Bourbon County does. He also said the Dr. Cohen from HR called him and asked him to run these processes and the commission appointed him to do that.
“So this seems like a vote of no-confidence in me,” Motley said. He said that there are three accounting experts elected as officials in Bourbon County, of which he is one. The other two are the County Treasurer and the County Clerk.
He questioned the idea of spending money on an outside source, (based in England with offices in Overland Park, KS) for services he and the others in the county can provide.
Milburn-Kee said that by voting to terminate the liaison positions of the commission, they also ended Motley’s finance position.
“What you’re saying is this is no confidence in me for the budget process,” said Motley. He went on to say he is trying to avoid the situation the commission created last year in which they asked for a budget committee to advise the commission on making a budget and then did not take any of their suggestions. He said that no one from that committee was happy that all their work was pushed aside.
He said that hiring Baker Tilly would make any strategic planning or budgeting help from him unnecessary and he will not facilitate that for the county if they are hired.
“All you’re going to get with Baker Tilly is a monthly report,” said Motley. They will not be auditing or checking data, just compiling and reporting what they are given.
Tran said this issue is a continuance of the decision made in 2025 to hire a fractional CFO for 2026.
Allen said that while he is not an expert in this field, he trusts the in-house expert. He also said he doesn’t want to spend the county’s money to pay for what the county already has.
Beerbower said there are benefits to having an outside eyes on the county budgets.
Motley said the commission needs to wary of taking actions that send a message of distrust to those they work with.
Milburn-Kee said she talked to Ben from Baker Tilly about what services he would be providing. He said he would help find inefficient patterns in the county. He also said he would follow the direction of the commission regarding the spending limits dictated by tax rates and mill levy.
Tran said that the disparity between the budget given by the committee and what the commission wanted was the commission’s fault for not communicating more clearly with the committee.
County Clerk Susan Walker spoke to the commission saying they cannot cut the mill without cutting services.
“The problem has been, in the past, we have not been a part of the process,” said Walker. The department heads and elected officials are only asked to bring to the table what they think they need to operate.
“I don’t feel like we’re being heard, because the costs are going up,” said Walker.
“Our biggest expenses are people and publications. We don’t even hardly have enough money to train,” she said. “There were not a lot of questions asked during the budget process and when I would bring things up, I would get accused of withholding information. But that’s not what was happening. I didn’t know what you didn’t know.”
“Mr. Motley is right. The three of us together can build the budget. So, I think this is an unnecessary expense,” said Walker.
Tran called for a vote. He read the resolution.
Motion failed to carry. Tran and Milburn-Kee voted for it, Beerbower, Allen, and Motley voted against.
Performance Audit-Samuel Tran
Baker-Tilly cannot perform the audit because they are already employed by the county. The issue was tabled.
DMV Lease Agreement-Samuel Tran
In order to lease the space to the DMV, electrical has to be run to their equipment, which will cost the county about $1,000.
Milburn-Kee pointed out that the rent the DMV is paying will cover the cost of running the electrical and will allow the county to sell the building that has housed them in the past, which they are now moving out of.
Motion to sign carried.
Employment Action-Samuel Tran
A resolution brought to the table last week, was read by Tran. The resolution give the commission authority in the hiring or change of employment status of county employees when it impacts the county’s budget by increasing benefit costs. This resolution gives fiscal oversight to the commission, but leaves authority to hire and fire in the hands of elected officials.
Motley completely agreed with the intent but had problems with definitions in the resolution. He had concerns about various “what-if” situations. He suggested they make each elected official and department head responsible for the employee benefits budget for their departments.
Milburn-Kee said that she had been trying to make those changes, but they weren’t approved. The resolution provides guidance for the payroll administrator.
Walker spoke up and said her concern was that the payroll department get a correct number of employees. She was also concerned that departments would have to budget for employees to choose the biggest benefits package, which costs the county the most, and would lead to inflated budgets and budget creep.
Motion carried and resolution 15-26 was passed.
Payroll Administration-Samuel Tran
The resolution clarified the duties of the executive assistant regarding payroll.
Motley asked the clerk if the resolution was in accordance with state statutes as she understands them.
Walker expressed concerns about coding for the general ledger and clarity of communication. She also asked for responses to her questions.
Motion carried, passing 16-26.
Flex Spending Discussion — Milburn-Kee
Walker explained what happens when an employee takes the flex spending option. She also asked to be given a report for auditing purposes.
Resolution 622 — Milburn-Kee
Commission found out about this resolution last week. It was to have been added to the handbook, but the handbook hasn’t been updated since 2002. The resolution front-loaded sick leave due to the pandemic.
Resolution was repealed. Accruals will be referred to the HR department.
New Business
Employee Recognition – Allen
Allen asked that department heads and elected officials come to the first meeting each month and recognize one of their department’s employees. He offered to contact each department and set it up.
Noise Complaint — Beerbower
The noise complaints that the county has received have brought up the issue of who is going to look into the complaints. Beerbower looked at applying the American National Standards Institute’s information to the county’s resolution. He also found some training for the noise inspector and vendors who sell standardized equipment.
Beerbower’s recommendation will be to replace the existing resolution and declare the assignment of inspection in the new resolution. He believes the assignment should go to the sanitation inspector from the appraiser’s office.
One member of the audience spoke up and asked that noise inspections not be at the same time each day, but at random times.
Culvert Permit – 2433 Locus Road
Motion approved
There will be a special meeting on February 12, 2026 from 5-6 PM for Interviews and a work session immediately following until 8:00 PM.