WHAT BURDEN OF EXPENSES HAS OUR COUNTY COMMISSIONERS AND ATTORNEY, BOURBON COUNTY REDI, AND NOBLE/LEGACY IMPOSED UPON THE TAXPAYERS USING BOURBON COUNTY, STATE AND FEDERAL FUNDS?
We lost our Hospital. We lost our emergency room services. It was devastating to a community who always took pride in a community who had medical services that were compared to and addressed as “the little Mayo of the Midwest.” Those of us who worked in the medical field took pride in being a part of these organizations.
I would like to remind you that it is the good people that we elected and appointed that we depend on to make good sound decisions for our community. It is disheartening when a decision was made that has taken our community down a rabbit hole at the expense of the taxpayers. What is more disheartening is that the good people elected have got caught up in the process of those who have come into our community with previous exploited actions that have affected other communities. We should have been more diligent when jumping into the decision making process that was made and researched the backgrounds and possible repercussions and consequences of those who were offering us an Acute Care Hospital and ancillary services which to date we still don’t have two years into the Legacy Donation Agreement.
Article 1, Donation of the Property
1.4.4 The Monetary Donation may only be used for: (i) building maintenance in connection with the Real Property and the improvements thereon; (ii) paying for other reasonable operating costs and expenses in connection with the Real Property including development of an Acute Care Hospital and ancillary services; and (iii) providing reduced rents to potential future tenants at the Real Property which provide a legitimate community benefit;
Article 7.1 General Provisions
7.1 Remedies. In the event of any breach or default by Donor or Donee hereunder, Donor and Donee’s sole and exclusive remedy shall be to terminate this Agreement with a return of the property and one million dollars to the Donor during the first year of operations. Years 2-4 the Donee will return $750,000.00 to the Donor along with the property and before the completion of the 5 year of operation return the property to the Doner with $500,000.00. Following the fifth year. Donor will have no remedies to terminate this Agreement with either return of funds and/or property.
Decision after decision has been made regarding the need for a hospital. The amount of time and money and effort in coming up with a solution seems to always fall back on the taxpayers of our community. The following figures reveal the amount of money that has been invested in the past, present and future of our community. It is staggering!
Feasibility Study $1 million dollars (City 200k & County $800K)
Mercy Hospital’s assets assessment of the building $19.6 million dollars
$2 million dollars
($1 million dollars from citizens donations)
($1 million dollars donation from a foundation.)
Mercy monetary donation of $600 thousand
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Grand Total – 23.2 million dollars
Bourbon County REDI
(established on August 9, 2021)
Expenditures reports from the City and County for the years of 2021 thru 2024
Was given $855,017.68
County ¼ cent sales Tax effective October 1, 2024 to help “attract” Emergency Services by funding approximately $750,000 thousand dollars annually over the next 5 years.
Estimate total $3,750,000.00
Taxes on the Mercy/Legacy No Hospital Building
2024 showed that no taxes have been paid on any of the donated“Real Property” for 2023-2024
Balance $409,828.23
Application of Tax Abatement submitted on March 11, 2024, by Legacy for years at issue 2022
A Tax Abatement request was granted by the Board of Tax Appeals State of Kansas on September 9th, 2024.
Eliminating $354,131.35 dollars off of our existing tax records for the next 10 years.
Estimated Total $1,805,131.90
(May I remind you that the 2025 budgets are already in place and the County, City, School Districts, and Fort Scott Community College will be affected)
Total of all figures above $30,019,977.81
This does not include the legal funds and ancillary funds surrounding the process.
What happens if Legacy sells the hospital building? What happens to the land that was divided up into three lots? (2023-2024 taxes have not been paid to date.) Do the new owners receive the tax abatements? Where is our return? My last question is who is the one that prevailed?
Deb McCoy
11/16/2024
$30,019,977.81
This is a staggering sum of money! I don’t know how this came to be. I only know that as a former city commissioner who voted for the 200K donation for the “feasibility study”, I was a victim of false and misleading information furnished by people whom I looked up to as “leaders of our community” and boy was I wrong. In every discussion (and we had many), we were never told the 200K was for a feasibility study. Indeed, it was emphatic that we were going to have a hospital…plain and simple. I believe the “feasibility study” came about as a face-saving effort by the county commissioners.
Bourbon Co. Economic Development was formed by a group of those same leaders, and we all looked up to those same leaders for guidance, and again we were led down the same path. We were bamboozled, mislead, lied to, and all the other things I cannot say, but I am embarrased to admit that I was a part of that development. If the other 4 former commissioners would follow suit, I would agree to pay back the 40K that would be my share of the funds wasted. The commissioner who was appointed our liason to the group, assured us that we would have a hospital, and we got a meaningless feasibility study- a study that certainly did not effect the county commissioners who were determined to spend $30+ M of taxpayer money. What a legacy this commission will carry to their graves.
A sidenote… I want to thank Deb McCoy for her tireless efforts to bring this information to us. I believe except for voter fraud, Deb would have been a city commissioner aligned with Skitch and me. She was ahead in the balloting until the voter officials took the “uncounted votes” into an unobserved room and came back with the decision that she lost to a hand-picked candidate, picked by the city manager.
Thank you, Deb, for summarizing this in a way that clearly shows the cost to the citizens. It appears that the property tax exemption was also approved based on fraudulent information with parties attesting to there being a qualified hospital as the primary use of that building – which there is not and no plans nor expectation that there will be in the future. As Deb pointed out, that alone is costing us $354,131 every year in lost tax revenue. While it is terrific that we now have KRI, and Freeman will be coming in a few months, it is unfortunate that our county commissioners used deception and secrecy to achieve these goals.
Thank you, Deb! The efforts put forth by many to make the governing bodies in our local governments transparent and accountable are exhaustive; and we still fail! We need more citizens to be involved and educated and participate regardless of party to assist and spread all words that at fact far and wide.
We have been scammed so often regarding the future of this building!