5 years & 2 rejections later, Kansas town approves new high school sports complex
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Voters approved a 10-year, $4M lease-purchase for two school ball fields.
- District will pay about $4.8M with annual installments of roughly $400K.
- Project ends years of failed efforts; school gains on-site turf for teams.
Five years and several false starts after the project was first pitched, Louisburg, Kansas, is finally getting a high school baseball and softball complex.
Voters on Tuesday narrowly approved a ballot measure authorizing the Louisburg school district to enter into a 10-year, $4 million lease-purchase agreement with First Option Bank to construct two new ball fields on existing school property.
Unofficial Miami County election results show the ballot question received 140 more “yes” votes than “no” votes in a contest that 2,358 residents weighed in on.
“I appreciate our community supporting the new ball fields,” Louisburg Superintendent Brian Biermann said in an email statement on Wednesday. “We definitely hit a home run for our kids! I am excited to get moving forward with the much needed improvement to our community.”
Adding in interest, the fields will cost about $4.8 million, which the district plans to pay in annual installments of more than $400,000.
The vote brings an end to a yearslong saga in Louisburg over whether the community can afford to invest in new facilities for the high school baseball and softball teams.
Varsity teams currently play home games at city-owned Lewis-Young Park. But those fields are in poor condition, and the arrangement forces the junior varsity teams to travel well out of their way to play home games on the road.
Head softball coach Nick Chapman said the new turf fields will be a major upgrade for student athletes and other groups that plan to use the facilities, including the marching band.
“Our softball and baseball teams have needed a place to call home, on our own school grounds, for a long time,” Chapman said in an email. “This finally gives us the ability to practice on surfaces that we routinely play and do it safely, being able to take solid, fundamental reps every day.
“There are so many other programs that are going to benefit from this as well,” he added. “This was just a huge win for our community.”
Pushback against sports complex
In August 2020, 69% of Louisburg voters opposed a school bond issue that included the construction of new ball fields.
A smaller bond without the fields was approved later that year, but when the Louisburg Recreation Commission sought permission in 2021 to raise its levy in support of a $6.7 million baseball and softball complex, 69% of voters again rejected it.
This time around, school officials emphasized that the scaled-down project would be paid for entirely out of the district’s capital outlay budget. That meant construction wouldn’t require a property tax hike — an important factor for residents whose valuations have spiked in recent years.
But some residents took exception to how district officials went about making the long-coveted project a reality.
Without dedicating time during a meeting for public input, board members directed Biermann to solicit a design and competitively bid the construction job in October 2024. In May, six out of seven board members voted to finalize the lease-purchase agreement and award the contract to Sands Construction.
Officials didn’t believe they needed to ask voters’ permission to enter into the funding agreement because costs were covered with existing district resources, Biermann told The Star in August.
But Miami County Attorney Kenton Harding stepped in to inform board members that under his interpretation of state law, residents had to be given an opportunity to lodge a protest petition.
That’s exactly what happened after the board agreed to publish a notification in the local paper of record. In July, a petition with 568 signatures — more than twice the number necessary to trigger a referendum vote — was filed with the Miami County clerk.
State Sen. Doug Shane, a Louisburg Republican, helped collect signatures for the protest petition. He said even though he didn’t support the proposed version of the ball field project, he accepts the outcome of the vote.
“The important thing is that citizens were given the opportunity to have a say,” Shane said.
“And the vote outcome was that the Louisburg community, a majority support the proposal, and so that’s the process, that’s our American way. I certainly hope that the project goes off without a hitch and it’s everything that the district hopes that it can be.”
