FORT SCOTT — The Fort Scott City Commission abandoned a planned closed-door session on Aug. 4 after the city attorney and two commissioners said they could not confirm that the outside group named on the public agenda actually exists.
The published agenda listed an executive session with the “Bourbon County Development Group.” Commissioner Matthew Wells moved to recess into that session under the exception in KSA 75-4319 covering the financial affairs or trade secrets of corporations, partnerships, trusts and individual proprietorships.
City Attorney Bob Farmer stopped the motion with a question. “Is that the name of the group? Are they incorporated? Do we have that information?” he asked. Wells answered: “That I cannot answer.”
Commissioner Tracy Dancer then said he had checked. “There is no LLC registered with the Kansas Secretary of State called Bourbon County Development Group,” he said. He added that the statutory exception Wells had cited did not appear to fit, because there was “no corporation, partnership, trust, or individual proprietorship” to discuss.
Farmer pointed to the commission’s recent open-meetings training and to a past complaint. The commission had been “challenged by a citizen that, what we did and talked about was later considered to be inappropriate,” he said. “I’d rather not put us in that position again. I don’t know what we’re gonna talk about and I shouldn’t.” Later in the exchange he was blunter about the stakes: “that’s the problem is that we got in trouble with the Attorney General’s office for very similar stuff.”
Commissioner Tim Van Hoecke said residents had already noticed that “on the agenda, the public agenda, it says with the Bourbon County Development Group of which it doesn’t exist anywhere.” “So I don’t know where that name came from, but that is absolutely a valid concern because I’ve already had a couple of people call me.” Commissioner Julie Buchta said she had fielded the same question.
Wells defended the request, arguing the identity question would have answered itself behind closed doors. “Had we gone into an executive session, you would have found out who they were and what they were offering to do,” he said, adding that he was not the authorized representative for the organization and could not speak for it.
No commissioner seconded the motion. “Mayor, the executive session failed for the lack of a second,” Van Hoecke said, noting that “the guest that was going to attend is left.” The commission moved on to unfinished business without discussing the proposal in open session.
Wells returned to the question later in the meeting to put a formal objection on the record. Citing the same statute, he said “a specific company name is not required for an executive session,” and told colleagues: “So what we did was wrong. The executive session was called the correct way according to the KSA.”
FortScott.biz reached out to Clifton Beth, who had asked for the session, to find out what he wanted to discuss. Beth said it would have covered two unrelated projects: a residential development and a larger commercial one.
The housing proposal involved land now outside the city that the owner was willing to have annexed, Beth said, with 40 or more units — most likely duplexes aimed at the rental market rather than single-family houses, which he said are hard to build in Fort Scott and sell for more than they cost to put up. The plan depended on connecting to the city sewer system, which would allow more units per acre than county lateral-field requirements permit, and on pursuing a Rural Housing Incentive District, a state program that puts the increase in property tax revenue toward infrastructure such as sewers. Annexation would also have brought the property and adjacent buildings onto the city tax rolls, he said.
Beth said he asked for a closed session because the investor did not want his name made public and because the discussion would have covered costs and the location of the site. He says he was using Bourbon County Development Group as a DBA, and would have set up a separate entity for the project if it advanced. He disagrees with the reading of the statute offered at the meeting, he said, because the exception also covers an individual proprietorship. He said he did not accept the commission’s stated reason for refusing, attributing the decision instead to friction between himself and members of the commission.
Beth said he couldn’t discuss the commercial project in detail, saying only that it involves an out-of-state partner and that Fort Scott is one of several communities being considered. The housing project is now on hold. He said his partner’s response was that they could build somewhere else.
Confusion on voting outcome
Later in the meeting the commission twice recorded 2-2 votes with one abstention, then could not agree whether either motion had passed.
Both concerned items where Dancer had stepped aside. When Dancer began to move a rewrite of the city’s alcohol ordinance, City Manager Brad Matkin interrupted to raise a conflict. Dancer said he does not own an establishment but is the owner’s husband, and confirmed the business was the Green Lantern. “I think that’s a conflict of interest,” Matkin said. Dancer replied: “Okay, I will abstain.”
That left four voting commissioners. Salsbury moved first, asking the city attorney to draft an ordinance matching state terminology so that businesses serving alcohol pay the licensing fee once, either to the state or to the city. Wells voted against it, Dancer abstained, and Salsbury and Buchta voted yes. It wasn’t clear what Van Hoecke’s vote was on that motion.
Wells then offered a competing motion, to amend section 5.08.040 to include drinking establishments and keep the city’s occupancy tax in place. That was the motion that split evenly. City Clerk Lisa Lewis recorded it as passing, saying the abstention “goes toward what the motion was in favor of.” Wells agreed: “the rules clearly state that in the case of a tie, an abstention is a yes vote.” Van Hoecke read the commission’s code of procedure the opposite way. “The way I read it, if it’s a 2-2 and an abstention, it dies,” he said.
The same split recurred on a motion by Buchta to require every contractor working inside the city limits to hold a city license and show proof of insurance, with homeowners still pulling their own permits. When the tally again came out 2-2 with one abstention, Van Hoecke said he had run an AI search on the question, which told him the motion failed. Wells objected that the answer carried no authority: “Right, but that’s the AI’s interpretation.”
Van Hoecke acknowledged the point and said the city’s own code of procedure runs long enough that he had not finished reading it. Both motions were left standing as passed for the time being, and he said he may bring motions to reconsider at the next meeting once he has read the rule in full.
Also at the meeting
The commission approved Ordinance No. 3800 renewing the electric franchise with Evergy Kansas South at a 6 percent franchise fee, on a 4-1 vote with Wells opposed. Matkin told commissioners that “6% is as high as they will go,” and confirmed the revenue goes into the general fund.
Commissioners approved a proposal from Fort Scott Police Lt. Jason Eastwood to convert the city-owned Gunn Park House into a child services center, so investigators no longer have to drive child victims out of the county for forensic interviews and so children taken into protective custody have somewhere other than the police station to wait. Eastwood, a 16-year veteran of the department, asked for approval and permission to chase outside money rather than for city funds. The motion authorized the department to pursue grant funding and other financial resources.
Commissioners also approved the July 7 consent agenda they had tabled at the previous meeting, after the finance office traced an inflated expense figure to a duplicated date range. Dancer said the total presented in July had been $1,112,893, roughly $670,000 too high; the corrected figure is about $442,000. The July 21 meeting had tabled the item over a duplicated rescue-truck expenditure appearing on two financial reports.
On investments, the commission approved placing $250,000 in a certificate of deposit with Union State Bank and authorized Matkin to place up to $2 million more with the other bidder at 3.85 percent, subject to confirmation from the city’s financial staff. The action closes out a question left open on July 21, when the commission rescinded its own motion accepting Union State’s bid and tabled the matter after learning the bank would take only $250,000 rather than the full $2 million.
Cory Bryars and Teresa Davenport of the cancer-support nonprofit Care2Share told commissioners the group has paid out more than $72,000 so far in 2026 across more than 1,500 separate payments, a figure Bryars said is up about 50 percent year over year. The group gave out $118,000 last year and is tracking toward almost $150,000 in 2026. Bryars said the organization needs volunteers, particularly drivers.
The commission also settled a dispute over $15,000 for economic development. Commissioners concluded the city could not simply withdraw the money from the land bank, which operates as an independent agency. Wells compared the idea to telling the public library the city was taking $15,000 without asking. Matkin proposed an alternative and no commissioner objected: rather than a formal vote, he said he would have the finance manager “take $15,000 out of general fund reserves” and move it into the land bank, adding, “I’ll take care of that tomorrow.”
In closing comments, commissioners returned to a tension between two of the city’s biggest ambitions. The commission backed a $4 million rodeo arena project in July. Dancer said the Bourbon County Commission’s vote not to spend money reclaiming the hospital building worried him, and argued the rodeo arena should not be the top priority while the hospital’s future is unsettled, because “nobody will book in a venue where there isn’t ready access to a an emergency room.” He suggested the city consider building a facility it could lease or sell to Freeman to keep an emergency room and a 10-bed hospital in town.
Matkin pushed back, saying that delaying the arena to build a hospital would mean the arena never gets built, and that people are already stepping up to fund it. He said he meets with Freeman next week and wants to hear the company’s plans directly rather than secondhand. Dancer answered that the city “didn’t hear it from Mercy either until it was too late to do anything about it.”
Consideration of the blighted property at 118 E. Wall was pulled from the agenda, with commissioners citing personal circumstances involving the owner. Farmer discussed receivership and land-bank routes for addressing such properties.
Earlier the same evening the commission held a work session on building a written performance evaluation for the city manager, comparing forms used by other Kansas municipalities and discussing how to weight categories and whether to include a self-assessment.
