(KAIR) -- Atchison County Commissioners Wednesday morning held around one hour of open and sometimes heated discussion with a handful of small business owners on the assessment of a solid waste fee on their most recent property tax statements.

This followed a similar discussion with a lot of the same business owners that began during Monday’s meeting.

The fee has drawn the concern of leadership at one private school.

Phil Baniewicz  is the President of Maur Hill-Mount Academy.

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Baniewicz plans to schedule an appeal hearing with Solid Waste Project Manager Chase Brunick.

One of the first small business owners to comment was Jack Bower.

He said he could have kept his fee lower if he had more knowledge on how long the fee was being assessed for.

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Brunick then responded to Bower’s inquiries.

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Brunick says they are willing to work with everyone but will also need that kind of commitment from taxed entities.

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The discussion got a little more contentious later on as another small business owner, Derek Franklin believes the solid waste fee addition makes people face double taxation with the already in place one cent sales tax.

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Commissioner Tom Wagner then explained to Franklin the original intention of how the withholdings started.

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Franklin then said there may be a possible lack of communication between the city and county and Commissioner Jeff Schuele says they have plans to close any gaps in communication.

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Bill Murphy says the fee goes against voters from the 1990’s that intended the one cent sales tax to fund the solid waste and joint communications.

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One of the last speakers in the discussion was Kurt Porter.

He serves on the council of his church and says the fee for the church is in addition to measures they are already taking to reduce bills.

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County Commissioner Mike Bodenhausen then re-iterated his no vote on the fee itself, citing his desire to issue the fee to church property as one, instead of for the church and their other property, such as a parsonage, separately.

Any person that has a dispute on their solid waste fee is encouraged to contact Chase Brunick at 913- 367-4400, extension 113 to request a form for an appeal hearing.