Bourbon County Commission Meeting Dec. 5, 2024

(Due to technical difficulties with the meeting recording, the first 6 minutes of this meeting had no sound. Whatever was said at the beginning of that meeting is not in this article.)

Six citizens in attendance asked several questions about the future of the hospital building and the agreement that the county is making with Freeman to get an emergency room back in Fort Scott.

The commissioner read the agreement for emergency facility aloud in the meeting.

The agreement includes a deadline of opening a fully operational emergency room by June 1, 2025. If Freeman fails to meet the requirements of the agreement without “good cause,” all funds will be returned to the appropriate parties. The deadline for completion may be extended up to six month “for good cause,” but no further.

The commissioner state that the agreement keeps Bourbon County’s taxpayer dollars in Bourbon County.

He also mentioned that there is a separate agreement regarding sales tax that “comes later.”

Citizen asked why date changed from April 1 to June 1. No specific reason was given.

Another citizen asked how much money the county has invested in this. The commissioner responded: $2.5 million plus the building and land.

Other county commissioner acknowledged the discussion that has surrounded the county’s actions regarding the hospital, “was it the right decision, or a bad decision?” As a commissioner, his perspective was that we have “so many dollars in the hopper” and the county wasn’t collecting any rent and was paying all the expenses out of said hopper. He projected it would take about 30 months to use up the money in the hopper at the current rate. This would have led to the choice to either tearing the building down or “go after a lot of taxpayer dollars to keep it open.”

“Now that $2 million came from the federal government and Mercy Hospital.” he said. None of it was county tax dollars and there is documented accounting for all of it.

“It was a gamble,” admits commissioner, referring to the relationship with KRI Freeman, “but it worked. We got very fortunate.”

“Legacy is the reason KRI is here,” said another commissioner. “Let’s not forget everybody involved.”

When a citizen asked if the county could not have just sold the building, the commissioner responded, “we tried to give the building away, and no one would take it.” He listed several organizations and groups that the building was offered to before Legacy took over, including KU Medical, St. Luke’s, Freeman, and Mercy, as well as various developers.

“Legacy will fulfill what they said they would, and we’ll have an emergency room,” was his summarizing of the current situation.

In response to rumors that Legacy is holding up the sale of the old hospital building, the commissioner explained his conversation with the lawyer for Legacy in which the lawyer stated that Legacy has been in talks with KRI’s CFO for 2 months and that, “it seems to me everybody is doing everything they can to get that building transferred.”

Motion to accept agreement was unanimously accepted pending discussed changes.

Commissioners also reaffirmed a vote that had not been properly recorded in the Oct. 31 meeting to the effect of signing a resolution rescinding the moratorium on solar projects in Bourbon County and termination of prior agreements with Creek Solar (?) with an effective date of Oct. 31, 2024