City officials challenge KDOT's interpretation of a 1999 agreement and state law regarding connecting links.
FORT SCOTT — Fort Scott officials and KDOT are at odds over financial responsibility for state highways within city limits, citing conflicting interpretations of a decades-old agreement and state law.
The conflict centers on a proposed update to the city's City Connecting Link (CCL) agreement with the state. A CCL agreement is a formal maintenance agreement between a city and KDOT that establishes each party's responsibilities for a city street carrying a state highway designation.
KDOT Engineer Darrin Petrowsky informed the City Commission during their March 17 meeting that under a revised agreement, the city must assume full maintenance responsibility for U.S. Highway 54 (Wall Street) and a significant portion of U.S. Highway 69 within city limits.
According to the current CCL maintenance agreement, originally signed in 1999, KDOT currently maintains 10.912 lane miles of these highways—the "inner lanes"—in exchange for the city managing the outermost parking lanes. For those 2.4 miles of parking lanes, the city currently receives an annual payment of roughly $12,000.
City Manager Brad Matkin said this shift places an unfair burden on local residents.
"Is it really fair to rural Kansas cities that the state highways go through?" Matkin said. “Is it really fair that we have to take citizens' taxpayers' money to pay for a state highway?"
Matkin said that while KDOT has historically handled all maintenance on U.S. 69 within city limits, the state is now attempting to transfer responsibility for the stretch between Briggs Corner and Walmart to the city. He expressed frustration over the logistics of state plows lifting their blades at the city line.
“So they will come (south) down the highway, and once they hit that imaginary line at Briggs corner, they're going to lift up their plows and keep on going and then put the plows back down at Walmart and go,” Matkin said.
Mayor Kathryn Salsbury challenged the policy during the March 17 meeting, citing K.S.A. 68-416A, which she said mandates that the state "shall maintain" these links unless a city explicitly consents to take them over.
Salsbury also pushed back against KDOT’s claim that Fort Scott is required to pay for the maintenance because its population exceeds 2,000, noting that while such a barrier existed in the State Highway Act of 1929, it was removed by an amendment in 1949.
Matkin said that KDOT’s current interpretation of the 1999 agreement is a departure from how the city has historically understood the document. Matkin said that Petrowsky said during a recent meeting that the state’s obligation to maintain the "inner two lanes" was only ever intended to apply to Highway 69, despite both Highway 69 and Highway 54 being listed in the agreement’s maintenance table.
Matkin said this distinction is "very misleading" and noted the document's "very small print" makes such specific interpretations difficult to verify.
Matkin estimated that damage from heavy truck traffic on Wall Street will cost the city $180,000 to mill and overlay. While the needed repair work could potentially be covered by future grants from the state's City Connecting Link Improvement Program (CCLIP), Matkin said time is of the essence.
"Phase one and two [of the CCLIP grants], which we're supposed to start this year, we have been waiting [on]—we started that process before I became City Manager four or five years ago," Matkin said . "So by the time we get phase four, phase five done, we're going to have a dirt road over there".
City officials are pushing for a meeting with state-level representatives to discuss the updated agreement. During the Commission’s April 7 meeting, City Attorney Bob Farmer said the city has not yet received a copy for review.
A copy of the original 1999 CCL agreement can be accessed below.
