BOONEVILLE, Mo. - City officials Monday night rejected an offer from a group led by the founder of a controversial association of boarding schools to buy the former Kemper Military School.

The Booneville City Council, with little discussion, voted 7-0 against selling the property to a group led by Utah businessman Robert Lichfield, founder of World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools.

The city also will return a $100,000 earnest-money deposit, ending a courtship that began last summer.

"From the outcry the public had given me about this, my mind was made up," said Morris Carter, the city councilman who made the motion to reject the offer. "If the rest of the council had gotten the same information I had, there was no point in discussing it."

Despite an agenda item that said the council would go into closed session to discuss the proposal, the body decided instead to go right to a vote.

"I didn't even know they were going to vote," said Randall Hinton, who with his brother, Russell Hinton, had planned to lease the facility from Lichfield and run it themselves. "I'm sad for the city. Who doesn't want to help kids?"

Members of World Wide Association, which works with troubled teens across the country and in Jamaica, have been the subject of several child-abuse allegations. One member of Congress was so concerned that he asked the Justice Department to investigate the organization and its members.

Randall Hinton, who has worked at several of the association's schools over the years, said he had no intention of making Kemper a member of the association, but instead wanted to market Kemper as a military school.

When it closed in 2002, Kemper was the oldest military academy west of the Mississippi River. The city has owned the property since April 2003.

The Hinton brothers, who were at the meeting Monday night, said they were surprised and disappointed by the council's decision.

Dan Painter, a newly elected council member, said his constituents had made it clear that they opposed the proposed sale.

"It was overwhelming at times," he said.