Mr. Meara came through with a cart with all the tax foreclosure cases. He was taking them up to file in court. He wanted to show he commissioners what 193 foreclosure cases looked like.

Potholes

Jennifer Miller-Connet works for Fort Scott broadcasting and lives in Vernon County. She says she was headed into Bourbon County at 4 am to open Radio Shack up for Black Friday. She hit potholes that caused $803 worth of damage near the state line. She feels like as a tax payer the road should have been taking care off. She said there was no way to drive around the holes.

Chairman Endicott asked how many miles were on her car. She said 125,000 miles and that the car is a low riding Mazda Protege. She felt that there should be some type of compensation from the county. The commissioners said that she should file an insurance claim and the insurance company would make a determination.

Roads

The commissioners decided to buy 50 culverts from Judy’s Iron and Metal. The rock crusher came in Monday. They are looking at getting a couple Ricoh G700 SE GPS cameras to give to the road crews to take photos of things that can be placed on the GPS maps. The cost of the two cameras will come to $2,901. The county has sold some data to a mapping company so the funds are available for the purchase.

They are also planning on buying a label gun to put labels on signs so if one is found in the ditch, the county will know where it came from.

The date for the lawsuit related to the sewer district has been bumped back. The County Attorney pointed out that this is an existing case–not a new lawsuit. They date has been bumped back as further discovery is done and it is expected that it won’t actually go to court until next year.

Tax Sale

Mr. Meara came back at 10:30. Defendants of foreclosure lawsuits that live in KS will be notified by the sheriff. Defendants out of state will be notified by certified letter. Everything has been filed that Mr. Meara was given that was possible to file. He is going to give the commissioners a list of the properties that have not yet been published and that he was unable to file. Those will need to be published. There may be some from 2008 and 2009 that need to be published as well.

Mr. Meara said there were 17 to 25 properties that were not published in 2007. He said that it was probably just an oversight on the part of the Treasure’s office and that there didn’t appear to be any pattern. They did not appear to all be payment plan properties.

Terri Johnson (County Attorney) said it appears that the redemption period starts at the date of publication and that the publication must occur for the property to be property “bid off.” So properties that were not published for 2007 taxes will need to be published before the three year redemption period can begin. Commissioner Endicott said that it didn’t seem right that someone could have not paid their taxes for three years and then they get another three years if they were left out of the publication. The law does allow for there to be errors and omissions in the publication. However, this allowance seems to be more aimed at preventing people from saying their property was improperly foreclosed on due to a printing smudge or mistake and may offer less protection for the county if proper procedure wasn’t followed.

Partial redemption cannot be invoked once the county files the foreclosure. So once the county files the foreclosure paperwork, those properties must have their taxes, fees, and interest paid in full in order to avoid a tax sale.

There was some discussion as to whether or not a non-homestead property could be partially redeemed before the county files for foreclosure. The scenario would be a business that had unpaid taxes since 2007 that paid their 2007 taxes in order to remove it from foreclosure lawsuits that Mr. Meara filed this morning. The statutes appear to only mention partial redemption under the section that applies to homestead properties. The other sections seem to indicate that once a property is bid off to the county, the entire amounted owed on that property must be paid in order to avoid foreclosure. It appears that non-homestead properties have been allowed to partial redemption in the past and the attorneys were not clear if the statues indeed prohibit partial redemptions for non-homestead properties. They are going to look into it to see.

Clarifications

The lawsuit summons from last week was not a new lawsuit.

Executive sessions

Back in October, we looked at whether or not an executive session was illegal. Part of the argument was that attorney client privilege can only be used when no one other than the client is present.  The County Attorney gave me a copy of Attorney General Opinion 92-56. The opinion relates to KPERS, but it does establish that the “client” can include any employee or elected official off the county.

With regard to whether KPERS staff or investment managers may be present in an executive session called pursuant to K.S.A. 75 – 4319(b)(2), K.S.A. 60-426 addresses the attorney client privilege and subsection (c) of that statute recognizes that this privilege may extend to staff or officials of a corporate client. K.S.A. 74-4903 creates the KPERS as “a body corporate. . . .” Thus, KPERS staff meet the definition of client. Such staff may therefore be permissibly present during an executive session without destroying the attorney-client privilege.

So the executive session was legal from the standpoint of falling within attorney/client privilege and our suggestion that the County Treasurer  wasn’t allowed in the meeting was based on a misunderstanding of whether Attorney Dan Meara was representing the Commissioners or the County. Since he is representing the County, any County employee or official can be present.

Special thanks to County Attorney Terri Johnson for taking the time to explain this and point out the section of the Attorney General’s Opinion.

Unpaid Taxes

On November 15th, we looked at some of the other forms of unpaid taxes in the county. I had a few people point out that some of the businesses listed with unpaid taxes have been sold and are owned by different owners now. So don’t stop supporting someone just because the business name is on the list. It might be the previous owners who didn’t remit their sales tax to the state.

The Commissioners and Marty discussed the roads. There was some discussion with the County Attorney about an antenna to be mounted on a water tower and how to handle the electrical meter.

Lawsuit Summons

The commissioners were served some papers regarding a civil suit with the sewer district. The County Attorney said that the lawsuit revolves around actions taken by the commissioners under 1927A 01.

Generator

At 10am Allen Warren moved $46,079 to purchase a generate from Cummings. The generator will be used to power the rock conveyers at the quarry. Chairman Endicott seconded it. A second motion was made to finance the purchase at a rate of 4% through Citizen’s Bank. Barry tractor offered a rate of 3.99%, but the Commissioners decided that with such a small difference, they should keep the note local.

Vacation

There was some discussion about the county vacation schedule. Since New Years day falls on a Sunday, the County should be closed Monday, January 2nd.  Instead New Years Day was listed as being taken on December 27th — the day after Christmas.

Tax Sale and Convenience Store

Marty Rivers with Eagle Fuels wants to buy the convenience stores at either end of town. He asked to visit with the commissioners about the taxes. He talked to the people who had the first mortgage and Tom Hill. He wondered if he paid a lump sum payment if some of the taxes could be dropped.  Commissioner Warren said that the only way the Commissioners could drop some of the property taxes or interest is if the bankruptcy court works out an agreement with the commissioners.

One of the pieces of property is 2191 Soldier Rd. It has unpaid taxes back to 2006. Mr. Rivers asked if he could pay part of the taxes to keep them from going to the tax sale. He was informed that the current tax sale only covers property that is delinquent from 2007 and prior so if he were to pay the taxes through 2007, the properties would be pulled off the tax sale. It was mentioned that only homestead properties can be partially redeemed and once a non-homestead property was delinquent and sold to the county, the entire amount of due taxes must be paid to keep it off of the sale.

Mr. Rivers was told that from a procedural standpoint, paying through 2007 would buy him some time before the properties that were delinquent from 2008 could be sold.

Mr. Rivers bought the gas station near Frontenac and leased it out to a local person who has been running it. He hopes to do the same thing with the stations in Fort Scott.

County Attorney’s Parking Spot

Keith Jeffers wants to take County Attorney Terri Johnson’s parking spot and put in a storage shed. The shed will be paid for by a grant for emergency preparedness.  He is working on getting a grant to put in a generator. The Commissioner’s approved to buy the building and put it on Terri Johnson’s parking lot. They plan to assign her a different spot.

Dump Account

James Maine and Kimberly Alexander want to setup an account at the dump. They have a contract to do demolition on several trailers at the KOA camp from Jeff Michael. They want to be able take the debris to the dump and use the money from selling the scrap metal to pay the dump fees. The commissioners decided to give them a small amount of credit with the dump so they can proceed.