“Doing our jobs should not put us in the cross hairs, but it certainly has.”
April Warden, Seward County Administrator, in an email to the Board of Commissioners, October 15, 2025 — the day after Commissioner Stanton told her that her account of his behavior had been “shared with counsel for action.”
It started with a zoning complaint. Whether he actually needed the permit was never decided, because deciding it was the one thing he would not do. What follows is what two County employees got for picking up the phone and telling a commissioner, politely, that he needed to fill out a form.
He told them somebody had fed them false information. He told them to call his lawyer. He told them the call was inappropriate as hell, and he hung up. Within four hours of their boss writing it down, he told her it had been “shared with counsel for action.” Within three weeks his attorney was warning the County that standing behind its own staff would cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars and was probably driven by “personal animus.” Ten months later he was still after the notes those two men had taken.
Every quotation below is from a Seward County record or from his own email. None of it is anonymous, and none of it is our characterization — it is the County Administrator’s, his attorney’s, and his own.
He hung up on them.
Planning & Zoning had a complaint about a business at his address. They could have mailed the certified letter and been done with it. Because he is a sitting commissioner, Albert Gallegos and Kent Hamlin telephoned him first, as a courtesy, to tell him what was coming and that he would need to file for a permit. They never got that far.
“Commissioner Stanton let them know they were provided false information, they needed to contact Lane Frymire, and then told them he found the phone call inappropriate as hell and hung up on them.”
April Warden, County Administrator, email to the Board of Commissioners, October 14, 2025, 5:16 PM
Seventy-two minutes later, he came after the Administrator.
April Warden wrote the Board an account of what her two employees had just been put through. She did not editorialize. She described the call. His entire reply, sent at 6:28 that evening, was two sentences.
“April, Your factually challenged statements below have been shared with counsel for action.”
Todd Stanton to April Warden, October 14, 2025, 6:28 PM. She forwarded it to the whole Board sixteen minutes later.
“This is a very uncomfortable e-mail to have to write as it is regarding the behavior of a County Commissioner and the treatment of two of our employees who were just doing their jobs and could have just sent a certified letter, but tried to provide a courtesy call.”
The email he called factually challenged. April Warden to the Board, October 14, 2025.
He called her account factually challenged and never said what was wrong with it. No correction followed, then or since.
They started calling themselves targets.
The day after he threatened her, the Administrator wrote to the Board again. This time it was not about him. It was about what had happened to the people who work for the County.
“She does not want to be the next target and feels like everything we say or do is being scrutinized and picked apart.”
April Warden to the Board, October 15, 2025, 7:06 PM. The employee she is describing did not file the complaint — that one was filed anonymously — and was afraid of being taken for the person who did. The Administrator sent this email to say so.
“Doing our jobs should not put us in the cross hairs, but it certainly has.”
Same email.
He refused both ways out.
The Notice of Violation gave him two ways to settle the question and twenty days to use either one. He could apply for the permit. Or, if he thought the zoning administrator had it wrong, he could appeal it and have the question ruled on. There was a third way that needed no form at all: he could have sat down with Albert Gallegos, respectfully, and gone through what had happened. He is a commissioner. Planning & Zoning is a county department. The man had already picked up the telephone to reach him once. Instead he lost his temper, and three weeks later his attorney was warning the County that a permit — the same kind of permit he had campaigned against the man he ran against in 2024 for not getting — would cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. He did none of the three, and the case has sat open ever since.
“It is requested that these violations be abated by applying for a Conditional Use Permit no later than 20 days from the receipt of this letter.”
Notice of Violation, Seward County Planning & Zoning, October 15, 2025
“You may apply to the Board of Zoning Appeals for an ‘Appeal from Order or Decision of the Zoning Administrator’ if you feel that this decision is in error. The form and all required material must be submitted within 20 days.”
The same letter. He did not appeal.
“All such proposed applications… for a Conditional Use shall be submitted to the Planning Commission for recommendation. The Planning Commission shall hold a public hearing thereon… Notice of such hearing shall be published once in the official county newspaper at least 20 days prior… Said notice… shall give the name and address of the applicant… and the requested Conditional Use.”
Seward County Zoning Regulations, Article 32-102 — what applying for the permit would have required. It is a real process, not a rubber stamp, and it ends with the Planning Commission and the Board deciding the question.
Both routes end the same way: with somebody other than him deciding the question. He would not use either one.
He put a price on standing behind the staff.
Nobody had sued him. Nobody had fined him. The County had sent him a letter asking him to file an application. His attorney’s answer went past the zoning question entirely and landed on the County’s budget and the Administrator’s motives.
“A lawsuit such as this will undoubtedly cost the tax payers of Seward County tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Given the current financial situation facing Seward County, we feel it best not to further waste tax payer dollars on a frivolous lawsuit that may be motivated by personal animus from within Seward County Administration.”
Lane L. Frymire, Yoxall, Antrim & Frymire LLP, to Planning & Zoning Director Albert Gallegos, November 3, 2025
He paid a lawyer to deny the sign in his own window.
Before any complaint was filed, he had announced the move three times: on Earl Watt’s show, on a sign taped in the window of his downtown shop, and on his own website. His attorney put the word in quotation marks and denied it.
“UNCOMMON is relocating to its Restoration Workshop… Starting in October you can visit the Restoration Shop by Advance Appointment.”
The sign he posted in his own retail window at the Landmark Center, photographed into the County’s case file. The Administrator, a tenant in the same building, had already walked past it.
“We’ve Relocated! We have relocated to our Restoration Workshop in rural Seward County… Hours are by appointment only.”
His business website, saved into the case file October 16, 2025.
“To be clear, Mr. Stanton did not ‘relocate’ his retail business to his restoration shop on his property.”
Lane L. Frymire, on his behalf, November 3, 2025. The whole letter is on the evidence page.
The recall cleared on a Wednesday. The following Monday he went after their notes.
For ten months he did nothing about the zoning file. Then, on August 12, the recall committee received the County Attorney’s letter finding the grounds legally sufficient. Five days later he emailed the publisher who has him on the air weekly and told him what to ask the County for — not just the complaint, but the notes the two employees took. Four days after that the request went in, tracking his language. The two men who made that courtesy call are named in it.
“Can we get that the actual report and all notes taken on it by Albert or Kent?”
Todd Stanton to Earl Watt, publisher, Leader & Times, August 17, 2026, 10:55 AM
Two matters with nothing to do with each other, and in both of them all he had to do was talk to somebody. Once the conversation was already happening — he was on the telephone with the men offering it. Both times he went outside the County instead: to a lawyer in one case, to a state agency in the other. Both times the people he went around worked for Seward County.
What he demands in public and what he does when it is his turn are not the same thing. On the left is what he required of other people. On the right is the same man, the same year, with a rule pointed at him.
The same year, the same commissioner, the same County employees.
He did the same thing to a 37-year employee’s pension.
Greg Standard’s first retirement payment was cut while KPERS reviewed a challenge the Board never authorized. Mr. Standard was found to have earned every day of it. So was the second employee on the list. The Record →
He asked the Sheriff to file criminal charges against the County Administrator.
Three county officials who were in the room on July 29, 2025 say he named April Warden. Sheriff Gene Ward told him that is not how charges are filed, and the KPERS attorney the Sheriff consulted said there was nothing criminal in it at all. He has since given three different accounts of whether he asked. The Record →
During a wildfire, he giggled and egged on the Fire Chief against the County Administrator.
On February 17, 2026, mid-response, the Rural Fire Chief complained from his truck that April Warden wanted radio access to his operations. The commissioner’s answer was “Good man. Good man.” Later in the same call the chief said county officials could “all kiss my ass,” and the commissioner told him to send them a picture. You can hear both. Hear the Calls →
He put his finger in Commissioner Persephoni Fuller’s face and told her, “watch your mouth.”
A deputy was called to the December 15, 2025 Commission meeting. Stanton himself acknowledged holding his finger up at the level of her face and telling her to watch her mouth, and the Sheriff told him he could not speak to her that way. The County’s IT Director wrote to the Sheriff the next day, unprompted, to say he had seen it. The report is three pages and you can read all three. Read the Incident Report →