FORT SCOTT, Kan. — The city's monthslong standoff with the Kansas Department of Transportation over highway maintenance sharpened Tuesday night.
KDOT Engineer Darrin Petrowsky came before the commission with new paperwork reassigning maintenance responsibility on Highways 54 and 69.
Commissioners rejected it outright, arguing it contradicts the city's signed 1999 maintenance agreement.
The dispute traces back to KDOT's March 17 announcement that a revised agreement would shift highway maintenance responsibilities back to the city.
Petrowsky told the commission KDOT determines maintenance responsibility through a series of standardized forms.
Form 443 calculates payment, he said, followed by Form 329 or Form 330 depending on a city's population and access-control status.
“You're over the 2,500,” Petrowsky said, confirming Fort Scott's population (7,552 at the 2020 census) exceeds the threshold in Form 329.
Under that form, cities below 2,500 residents can choose between a state payment or direct KDOT maintenance; above it, KDOT's access-control designation governs instead.
Petrowsky said Fort Scott's designation puts the city on the hook for Highway 54 in full, while KDOT keeps a 24-foot maintenance strip on Highway 69.
Commissioners disputed that reading immediately, arguing the 1999 agreement never gave KDOT room to reassign Highway 54 this way.
Commissioner Matthew Wells read directly from the contract's text.
“The secretary has provided and agreed to maintain all the previously mentioned streets in accordance with the provisions of K.S.A. 68-416 … in lieu of a payment to the city,” Wells said.
Wells said the agreement's own numbers back that up: 10.912 of the contract's 13.380 total lane-miles are KDOT's responsibility, with only 2.468 (the Wall Street parking lanes) assigned to the city.
Petrowsky maintained that the city's payment for Highway 54 implied full city responsibility for it, a point commissioners repeatedly disputed.
“They may have had that wrong, then,” Petrowsky eventually conceded, of the paperwork he'd been given.
Mayor Kathryn Salsbury argued the paperwork's accuracy was beside the point.
“Under contract law, you were to maintain that, and you have not,” Salsbury said. “We do not have to take it back until you have brought it up to code.”
Petrowsky told commissioners that if the city wanted KDOT to keep maintaining Highway 69 rather than take a payment for it, the city would need to formally consent to new terms, or KDOT would pay the city and let it handle the road instead.
“It sounds like an ultimatum,” Commissioner Tracy Dancer said.
City Attorney Bob Farmer stepped in, arguing the conversation had outgrown KDOT's district office and needed to happen directly with the Secretary of Transportation in Topeka.
Farmer said any errors in KDOT's forms were the state's problem to fix, not the city's, since both parties had signed the original contract as written.
Later, asked whether KDOT could simply let the dispute lapse into a new arrangement by default, Farmer said the secretary has wide discretion, but doubted the state would let it come to that.
“KDOT prides itself on being one of the best highway organizations in the country,” Farmer said. “If you don't think Kansas is proud of their highways, go to Missouri.”
Wells noted the timing complicates things further: Highway 54 is slated for conversion to three lanes, which the current paperwork doesn't account for.
“That changes the entire dynamics of the paperwork that you sent us,” Wells said. “So when it goes three-lane, all that changes as well.”
Mayor Salsbury said she intends to bring a motion directing the city to file a formal notice of claim against KDOT, citing the agency's alleged failure to maintain the highways under the 1999 agreement.
“I would ask that the city commission consider that we file a formal notice of claim under K.S.A. 12-105b, documenting KDOT's failure to maintain those travel lanes as required by the agreement and by K.S.A. 68-416a,” Salsbury said.
She said she could not commit the commission to the filing unilaterally but intends to bring the motion as soon as possible.
Commissioners agreed to send a small delegation (City Manager Brad Matkin, City Attorney Bob Farmer, Commissioner Wells and Mayor Salsbury) to meet directly with the Secretary of Transportation.
Petrowsky said he would help coordinate scheduling; no vote was required to proceed.
A vote on the notice-of-claim motion had not been finalized as of Tuesday's meeting.
