Matt Harris on Indian Road has a spot right in front of his house where the water is running over the road when we get a lot of rain. He is concerned that the way the water is flowing is coming up around his house.

There was some discussion about the vacation policy for the people working on road & bridge crews. Too many employees are taking vacation all at the same time–particularly at the end of the year. Marty is also concerned that some employees are wearing improper footwear.

Allen Warren made a motion to go into executive session with Marty to discuss non-elected personnel issues (not related to vacation or attire).

At 10 am, the budget amendment hearing started. Employee benefits and road and bridge are expected to exceed the budget. The proposal was to adjust the budget to meet the expected expense. In order to avoid a budget violation the Commissioners will move some money from the general account where they had more income than expected to the accounts where they spent more. Exceeding the budget without amendment would put the county in violation of state law.

All objections were heard and a motion was made an passed to accept the amendment to the budget.

There was some discussion about the increase in employee benefits and if there was a plan to keep the cost of insurance from continuing to climb. The amended budget for health insurance in 2011 totals $1,557,560. With 100 paid county employees this works out to over $15,000 per employee. Some employees do not take county insurance, so the actual cost per employee is higher. (It was unclear if this figure includes the amounts that employees contribute to cover their families.)

The commissioners expressed concern that since they have not given raises for the past four years, health insurance is one of the main reasons people will work for the county. Chairman Endicott said, it is hard to get people to apply for jobs as it is.

The Commissioners were asked if there was a long term plan for dealing with the increasing costs of employee benefits. They said there wasn’t. They were also asked if the plan was to just raise the mill levy as needed to cover the increased costs of employee benefits. The Commissioners asked if there were any suggestions for dealing with other increases such as gas prices pointing out that other costs were going up as well.

There was some discussion about capping the amount that the county spends on employee benefits.

This is the first payroll that the county has done direct deposit. Employees that work in the court house will get the receipts for their payroll check in the office, but the ones that don’t work in the court house will get it in the mail.

The County Attorney (Terri Johnson) clarified that the attorney that the AG office did get the first letter requesting that they look into allegations against the County Treasurer. The letter that they didn’t receive was the second letter where the AG’s office had requested additional information from the County Attorney.

Dan Meara has yet to provide the list of people who have property that could be sold, but will be held off because it wasn’t published correctly. The Commissioners asked the Clerk’s office to request the lists from Dan Meara for the meeting on January 6th.

FortScott.biz has previously requested a copy of the list showing which property owners overpaid and which underpaid on their taxes. This information is not in the Commissioner’s hands so they could not provide it. FortScott.Biz took the position that the data belonged to the county and that the whether the physical bits reside shouldn’t matter and if it was simply a matter of requesting the data from Terry Sercer, it should be subject to a Kansas Open Records Act Request.

Terri Johnson (County Attorney) has contacted the Attorney Generals office to find out if there is any reason not to release the data and if it is indeed subject to KORA. She said that she thinks that list doesn’t actually belong to the County, but that they can request it. She suggested that the Commissioners need to request that information eventually in order to refund people who overpaid. She also pointed out that if the information is published the community needs to be careful not to vilify citizens who may have underpaid even though they were acting in good faith and paying what they had been told they owed.

According to the audit report by Mr. Sercer, most individuals on the payment plan overpaid their interest by $800. Now that the County is aware of this error, it would seem that they would be required to send refund checks to the individuals who paid too much in interest.

It doesn’t appear that this has happened. The information about who overpaid is not in the report. It would be part of the details of the audit. These details have not been made available because they have not be requested from Mr. Sercer. The Commissioners, who ordered the audit, are hesitant to request the audit details because they feel that the Attorney General’s office may conduct an investigation and the release of the audit details would compromise the investigation.

On the other hand, the county has something of an obligation to quickly give people their money back if they were charged interest they did not owe. Even if this isn’t a legal statute it is surely an ethical requirement. In some situations, it might just be a matter of taking the overpaid interest and applying it to any outstanding tax bill for current years, but in others it may be a matter of issuing someone an $800 check.

Without the audit details, it is impossible to know who needs a refund, but there are some complicated scenarios that may to arise.

First, if someone has overpaid in the past, how is that money applied to other delinquent taxes? It would seem that their interest would need to be recalculated to keep from penalizing them for money they had been incorrectly charged.

Second, if someone is owed money due to an incorrect calculation by the county, they may be entitled to receive interest on that money. Federal taxes have a provision where the IRS can owe tax payers interest in certain situations and their may be a similar state laws.

The third scenario that may complicate things for the county involves a tax payer who has overpaid on the payment plan, but currently has property in the process of being prepared for sale for other unpaid taxes. If they have money owed them by the county and the property is sold, what happens to the extra money? If the amount was more than what they owed (unlikely), then the county would be in the position of foreclosing on someone who had paid all their taxes.  If it is for less, then the county would be in the postion of foreclosing on someone without telling them how much they actually owed.

Now it is impossible to say if anyone is in any of these situations or not. At this point, Mr. Sercer and his firm are the only ones who have the information, but it seems like it would be in the best interest of the county to make  the details public before that tax sale. Otherwise there is a chance that it will put the county into a very tricky position.

County Landfill

There was some discussion about the issues with people dumping the wrong materials at the landfill with roll off loads. The problem is that the workers can’t really see the entire load until it gets dumped. Construction and demolition waste is charged at a lower rate and is handled differently, but if regular trash gets dumped in the C&D pile it becomes a big problem to deal with.

The commissioners discussed making all rolloffs pay the trash price. They also talked about making rolloffs go to Arcadia.  Marty is going to call the state and see what options exist. He questioned why they can accept furniture and fiberglass boats as C&D, but not clothes.

Gas Usage

Gas usage for January through November has been 127,443 gallons. Last year it was 185,807 gallons at this point. Even though the average cost has gone from $2.497 in 2010 to $3.365 in 2011, the county has spent $35,190.51 at this point

Radios

There was some talk about trying to work with the city to buy radios at the same time. Keith Jeffreys said the county has been trying to coordinate with the city to get better purchasing power.

There was some discussion about how to make sure that the radios are compatible between the city and the county. There is a requirement to switch to a new type of radio that uses a narrow band spectrum, but the new radios and the old radios are not compatible. Because of this the county and the city need to make the transition at the same time.

The county pays $50,000 per year from the 911 funds for the city to handle dispatch for the county.

Budget Hearing

The commissioners scheduled a budget hearing December 30th at 10am. This may involve making minor changes to the budget to balance between accounts that might be slightly overbudget with those that are underbudget.

Fence Viewing

The commissioners passed a motion that the fence they viewed was not sufficient to keep cattle in and that both land owners on either side should share the cost of putting in a new fence.

Sewer District

The engineer had a few issues that needed to be discussed and decided on. There are two and possibly three grinder pumps at the lake that are installed too high for the home owner to connect to them. The engineer said that in those cases the grinder pump was placed where the homeowner or their representative specified to put it. They previously lowered Leon Culvertson’s in the past, but it cost $1,000. Some of the remaining ones are likely to cost $1,800.

The engineer feels that the contractor did what they were supposed to do based on the plan and what the homeowner specified. He said the commissioners need to decide if the cost is to be absorbed into the project or if it needs to be billed to the homeowner. He said that every additional $1,000 spent will cost about 2.8 cents per homeowner per month.

Commissioner Warren asked if it was the engineer’s responsibility to know where the sewer line came out. The engineer pointed out that there wasn’t a way for him to know where every sewer pipe comes out of every house. Commissioner Endicott said that if they knew where the holding tank was, why couldn’t that be used to determine how deep the grinder pump should be placed. The engineer pointed out that some of these were buried up to 5 feet deep.

Part of the problem is that some of the homeowner’s plumbers recommended specific places to put the grinder pump saying that it would work and after it was dug, they found out that it wouldn’t.

The sewer bill is estimated to be around $37.00 per month which is less than what had originally been projected.

The houses where there is a problem, some of the sewer lines coming out of the house are lower than where they need to go into the grinder pumps. A homeowner mentioned that since the engineer and contractor observer approved the location of the ginder pumps it seems like it should be their responsibility to move them. The engineer pointed out that when you start building things underground there is always going to be a risk associated with things that you can’t see until you dig.

The Commissioner’s decided to go ahead and do what needs to be done to make it operable and charge it to the project.

There were some questions about how to handle the short term financing of the overages and asked if the county could front the additional cost for 3 to 6 months until the longer term finances come into place. It was estimated that this would be $50,000 to $75,000. This would keep the county from needing to issue temporary bonds which would incur a cost.

There are some individuals who are refusing to connect. The holding tanks can’t be demolished until they are connected. Terri Johnson said that if they still refuse to connect after a certain date, it may be a matter of using police power to force the connection.

The engineer said that in at least once situation, the cost of hooking up is going to be very expensive so the county may need to front that money. The engineer said that a few homeowners appear that they are going to fight hooking up to the sewer until they are forced. The engineer doesn’t want to tie up the construction workers if they can’t finish demolishing the tanks.