FORT SCOTT — Bourbon County commissioners voted at a special meeting Wednesday evening to hire an environmental firm to inspect the courthouse for asbestos, two days after competing proposals to test the building failed to produce an authorization.
What changed in between was the commission’s understanding of a federal rule. Commissioner David Beerbower, who asked for the meeting, said research he did after Monday’s meeting showed the county cannot begin its planned elevator modernization — or any wall removal or demolition in the courthouse — until an asbestos inspection is done.
“So before we can even begin with this, we need to have these inspections done,” Beerbower said (video, 6:06).
Four of the five commissioners took part in the 5 p.m. meeting: Chairman Gregg Motley (District 4), Beerbower (District 2), Joe Allen (District 3) and Mika Milburn-Kee (District 5). Commissioner Samuel Tran of District 1 was not present. The amended agenda the county circulated that afternoon listed the asbestos item under Motley’s name; the commission’s first vote of the night moved it to Beerbower’s, because the meeting was his request.
What the commission approved
Milburn-Kee moved that Motley contact Apex Environmental and arrange the scope of work the county needs — the elevator, a walkthrough of the third floor, the pipe insulation, air-quality testing, and whatever else the firm judges is required or recommends (video, 19:13).
Motley seconded, but with an amendment: rather than run the testing himself, he wanted one commissioner coordinating all of it — the testing firm, elevator contractor Otis, and the remodeling work — and proposed Beerbower. “I think we need one person in charge of this whole process,” he said (video, 19:41). “I would gladly help Commissioner Beerbower, but I think it just needs to be coordinated.” Milburn-Kee amended her own motion to match.
The commission then added a not-to-exceed cap of $5,000, after Beerbower pointed out that Apex’s quote covered three hours of work with no stated rate for anything beyond that. “We’re right where we were Monday night, when we didn’t know additional cost,” he said.
The motion carried on a voice vote with no opposition heard. Motley announced the result as “5-0,” though four commissioners were present (video, 26:38).
Milburn-Kee said she was referred to Apex by a superintendent at construction firm J.E. Dunn who she said had verified, first-hand experience of the firm’s work. A representative quoted her roughly $1,800 for travel and three hours of work, plus $35 per sample tested, and said the firm could fit the county in within about two weeks. An elevator mechanic would have to be on site to shut the shaft down so it can be inspected.
She stressed that Apex tests and inspects but does not do remediation. “They’re not coming in to test something and turn around and sell us the work to fix it,” she said. “I know that was a worry” (video, 16:45).
“We need to lean on and rely on the experts in this situation,” Milburn-Kee said. “If we hire people who know this work and understand the requirements, we can make decisions based on facts, testing, and documentation, and professional recommendations, not just what we think we need to happen” (video, 17:30).
Milburn-Kee had made the legal point herself, before Beerbower’s research came up in discussion. “The biggest point I want us all to understand is that testing of the elevator is required by law before the work can move forward,” she said. “This is something that Apex brought to my attention” (video, 16:08).
The rule that stopped the elevator project
Beerbower said both federal and state rules require an asbestos inspection, but only when it is triggered by renovation, alteration or demolition — a building in routine operation needs none. The federal standard, he said, is the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, which he said requires an owner to thoroughly inspect an affected facility before any renovation, elevator modernization, wall removal or demolition begins. Kansas enforces it under authority delegated by the EPA, he said.
That, he told the commission, is what rules out doing the job in pieces.
Motley said it changed his position. “So I think what’s changed for me is Mr. Beerbower pointing out that we simply can’t start, we can’t do it incrementally,” he said. “We can’t start the elevator project without a full inspection of the courthouse” (video, 17:52). On Monday, Motley had argued for testing the known material in the basement first and deciding about the rest of the building afterward.
Beerbower also said the county is obliged to notify Otis that asbestos is suspected in the building — a suspicion is enough, he said, and a positive test is not required — and that doing so may send the elevator work back for a new bid.
He described what the construction would do to the building. “When you start the construction of the elevator, when you start that modernization, the elevator shaft acts like a chimney, and it’s going to suck air from the bottom, and air is going to go through the top,” he said (video, 11:08). Crews would have to “basically bubble in” the first floor on each side of the elevator, he said. He also said the county would have to run air-quality monitors that people entering the courthouse can walk up to and read for themselves, and raised remote work and shortened work weeks as options for courthouse staff while the work runs.
What removal would cost, if any is needed, is still an open question. Beerbower said mitigating the whole building would run somewhere between $50,000 and $250,000 — “that is the light side of it” — and that extensive building-wide mitigation can exceed $500,000 (video, 4:29).
No regulator, contractor or environmental firm was at the meeting. The commission acted on Beerbower’s account of his own research and Milburn-Kee’s account of a phone call she made to Apex about an hour beforehand. Nothing in the building has yet been sampled or tested.
Allen: eight spots in the basement
Allen said he had come in early Wednesday and gone through the basement himself. “I saw eight spots that I think need to be checked on the old side of the building,” he said (video, 9:39). He said the elevator is on the annex side, which he said was built in 1971, and asked how work there bears on material elsewhere in the building. He also noted that a wall has already been built downstairs around pipes on the annex side, and that the wrapping there does not look like the wrapping in the older part.
Beerbower’s answer was the chimney effect — and the pipes. The wrapped pipe in the basement was most likely a boiler pipe, he said, and anywhere that same pipe and the same wrapping is exposed elsewhere in the building would have to be inspected too. Allen noted that some pipes in the basement have been stripped or painted over at some point. Beerbower said that does not settle anything: if the work was not done by a qualified contractor, the material may still be a risk, and it is the inspection team’s job to say.
Whether to put it out for bid
The commissioners also disagreed over process. Beerbower questioned hiring Apex without competitive bids.
“I don’t know Apex Environmental any more than I know the company that you were talking about, and I know there’s other companies out there,” he said. “So, I mean, if we’re going to go this route, I mean, shouldn’t we do a bid process?” (video, 22:15)
Motley said he was hesitant about bidding because of the timing. Milburn-Kee said she was “really not particular,” but that going out to bid would be a lengthy process and she did not want to push the courts back further. Allen said he had made the same point Monday: the commission needed to move.
Beerbower gave way. “If you guys are okay with this company, I’m okay with this company,” he said. Motley replied that he was inclined to vote for the motion because of timing, and added that a bidding process “would, I’m sure, kind of drive you nuts.”
“It would, yeah,” Beerbower said. “Because that’s how government’s supposed to work” (video, 24:50).
Milburn-Kee agreed that spelling out what the county wants and putting it out to bid would be ideal — and said the county had passed the point where that was practical.
“But we’ve already scheduled the elevator rebuild. We’ve already moved the courts,” she said. “We put the cart before the horse here” (video, 24:57).
Beerbower kept pressing on cost after that. He asked whether Otis would have to send people to the courthouse on the day of the inspection, and what that would cost: “Otis isn’t going to come down here for free.” Milburn-Kee answered that the county already has a service agreement with the company. “They are our service company for the elevator,” she said (video, 26:20).
The court move may get bigger
The commission voted last month to move district court to the county-owned building at 108 W. Second St. while the elevator is out of service, and to close the courthouse’s second and third floors to the public from Oct. 21 through Nov. 20. Under the plan as it stood, only part of the court’s operation was to move.
Beerbower said Wednesday that may no longer be enough, and that moving the county attorney and the courts across the street entirely may be the better and safer course. That pushes the timeline, he said, because 108 W. Second cannot be made ready that fast — and because the building may need an asbestos inspection of its own. Tran, who Beerbower said has a background in this kind of inspection, flagged a couple of items there as suspicious when commissioners walked through it.
Beerbower said he asked for a special meeting rather than waiting because the commission’s next regular meeting, Sept. 14, was too close to the construction timeline.
Background: the June walkthrough
As FortScott.biz reported in June, asbestos in the courthouse — a 1930s building at 210 S. National Ave. — came before the county after a former maintenance director circulated photographs of deteriorating pipe insulation in the basement. He said he was fired the day after asking in writing to have the material tested; county officials declined to comment on his departure at the time, and the county cited his probationary, at-will status in ending his employment.
A Kansas Department of Health and Environment representative walked the building afterward. The preliminary finding, relayed then by Bourbon County Emergency Manager Lou Howard, was that nothing looked hazardous. It carried a caveat that has now become the whole question. The walkthrough was visual and no samples were taken, and Howard said the representative told her it would be a different matter “if there was active construction going on at the time.”
Construction is now scheduled.
Also Wednesday
The commission held two closed sessions on the salary of a non-elected employee, both under K.S.A. 75-4319(b)(1). Deputy County Clerk Michael Hoyt joined the first, along with the county’s HR consultant, Dr. Cohen, by phone; the commission returned from it with no action.
After the second session it voted to authorize a salary change, in effect until the new county clerk is sworn in and approved by the governor, at which point it can be revisited. That vote was not unanimous with Milburn-Kee voting against it (video, 52:14). At Milburn-Kee’s reminder, the commission also directed the chairman to complete the payroll change form the change requires.
Related coverage: State walkthrough finds no immediate asbestos hazard at Bourbon County Courthouse, Bourbon County Commission enacts two-week burn ban, clears disputed Aug. 17 minutes, Commission chooses 108 W. Second for court during elevator outage, Courthouse elevator shutdown set for Oct. 21–Nov. 20.
