Homeowners with houses built on ground leased from the City of Council Grove, Kansas, around a city-owned lake, are being threatened with having their leases canceled unless they pay $25,000 and agree to the land being annexed. While the city owns the lake — which is a few miles outside the city limits — it remains part of Morris County and has not been annexed.
According to resident Ryan McDonald, when the leases were redrawn around 2012, the sorts of homes built around the lake shifted from fishing cabins to more expensive houses.
McDonald said annexation has been an off-and-on conversation for decades, but it kicked into high gear in the last two years after Debi Schwedtfeger — who was a council member in 2012 — was elected to her third two-year term as mayor.
“She is hell-bent on annexing the lake, and that was one of the reasons she ran this last term,” McDonald said. “She wasn’t going to, but she thought she had unfinished business, and she was elected a year ago for two years, another two-year term, not necessarily because of this issue, but because of a lot of other issues.
“I ended up running at the last minute 10 days before the election on a write-in campaign for mayor. I lost by 8 votes. It was very evenly divided. A lot of people weren’t happy with what was oing on. In my opinion, and a lot of people’s opinion, there’s a severe lack of transparency.”
That lack of transparency was highlighted by testimony at the November 5, 2024, city council meeting from leaseholder Don Moler.
Moler is president of the Council Grove City Lake Association and — crucially — a former president of the Kansas League of Municipalities as well as a local government attorney.
“Under the guise of attorney/client privilege, the governing body of the city has gone into executive sessions with Mr. Riordan [Patrick Riordan is an attorney hired by the city to work on the annexation issue] no fewer than 11 times since March 19, 2024,” Moler told the council. “It would appear that the sessions have been used specifically to avoid all public knowledge of the development of a letter by the city governing body which was sent out a few weeks ago to the Lessees at the city lake. After a cursory review of the letter my wife and I received from the city, I found at least seven specific actions which had been taken in executive session by this governing body and which violate the Kansas open meetings act.”
That letter, obtained by the Sentinel, demands every lake resident agree to purchase the land their home sits on for $25,000 and agree to annexation — or face legal action.
“As for those leaseholders who do not agree to move forward with a sale and annexation, the City will move forward with a lawsuit to terminate the leases as to those leaseholders,” the letter reads. “If a court allows for the termination of the leases for those leaseholders, the City will simply terminate the leases, and the City will not sell any lots to those leaseholders.”
Indeed, the letter states that the leases can be terminated “because the current city council is not bound by leases made by prior city councils.”
Moler contends that most — if not all — of the demands in the letter were decided in executive sessions because no action was taken in open session.
“The entire letter was obviously approved in executive session because there has been no official action of any kind to ratify or approve any of these points in an open meeting under the Kansas Open Meetings Act,” Moler wrote. “I find it sad that this governing body feels that they are above the law and do not have to have reasonable discussions in front of the citizens of Council Grove and the people that their decisions are impacting. There is nothing in this letter that rises to the level of attorney-client privilege which means that all of the discussions, and all of the ultimate decisions, should have been made in an open meeting which was open to the public. The idea that the city of Council Grove believes that ambushing people it has had a business relationship with, some for decades, is really upsetting.”
KOMA expert and First Amendment Attorney Max Kautsch agreed.
“Each of the council’s motions recess that fail to include the required information violates the law. Moreover, failing to include such information keeps the public in the dark about matters of public concern,” he said. “Here, the public has a right to be surprised that the annexation plan is so far along, given the vast majority of the progress toward that goal was made behind closed doors.
“The council should review its recess practices and make sure that going forward, it provides information about its recesses to executive session as required by law.”
Schwerdtfeger has refused to answer questions about apparent violations of the Kansas Open Meetings Act by the Council Grove City Council.
The council appears to have routinely violated KOMA by repeatedly going into executive session — usually for “attorney-client privilege” without the proper justifying statement required by law.
For example, on October 1, 2024, the minutes show that “Councilperson Sharon Haun made a motion to go into Executive Session for Attorney Client Privilege with Pat Riodan regarding the City Lake to include the Mayor, City Council, City Administrator and City Attorneys for 20 minutes.”
However, according to Kautsch, simply saying “attorney-client privilege” is insufficient.
“Under the Kansas Open Meetings Act, public bodies are required to make a written motion when they want to recess to executive session,” Kautsch said. “That motion must contain a “statement describing the subjects to be discussed during the closed or executive meeting.” Moreover, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office has interpreted that law to mean that ‘The statement describing the subject(s) to be discussed must be more than a generic or vague summary, or a list of the subject(s) to be discussed.'”
In other words, it is not enough to simply repeat one of the “justifications” for recessing to executive session that are listed in KOMA, such as attorney-client privilege. The body must also record in its minutes a short, plain statement about the purpose for the executive session in order to ensure an “informed electorate” in this state.”
The Sentinel emailed Schwerdtfeger to ask why the statements in the council minutes were sufficient for KOMA, but as of publication, has not received an answer.
