MARCH - 2008

County Commission to begin airing business sessions on March 6

Lights, cameras, action! The weekly business sessions of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners will begin airing on Thursday, March 6, through two cable television channels and the Internet.

The Board’s Thursday business sessions will be televised on Comcast Channel 7 in the Olathe area and Time Warner Channel 2 covering much of northern and central Johnson County. The meetings also can be viewed through webcasting with a link on the Board’s webpage (BOCC) located on the county’s main website www.jocogov.org.

The weekly meetings start at 9:30 a.m. in the Board’s Hearing Room located on the third floor of the Johnson County Administration Building, 111 South Cherry Street, in downtown Olathe.

The new broadcasting system was designed to improve public accessibility and general awareness about issues affecting county government.

“I’ve said many times that my personal goal is to bring the county government to the people, and the people to county government,” Commission Chairman Annabeth Surbaugh said. “We’re better achieving that goal by publicly broadcasting our meetings to keep citizens informed about their county government.”

The system is designed to broadcast the Board’s public meetings live with an approximate 30 second time delay to the viewing audience.

Archived copies of the recorded meetings will be available on demand.

The county’s new broadcasting system has been in the works for more than a year, beginning in December 2006 when the Board authorized $650,000 for the project. The funds were used to purchase the required audio-visual equipment, cameras, computer software, and other system components required to set up the webcasting/cablecasting system; establish a broadcasting link through cable TV providers and the county’s Web to the viewing audience; and remodel the Hearing Room.

The remodeling work began in mid-July and was completed in mid-November. It involved one-time physical modifications to the Hearing Room. The modifications were needed because the room, which hasn’t changed much since the Administrating Building opened in 1992, was not configured for multi-media presentation or broadcasting.

Changes to the room included the addition of production lighting, placement of cameras on walls, two large viewing screens to display materials during presentations, and creation of an adjacent broadcasting control room.

Testing of equipment in the new broadcasting system and control room has been under way since completion of the remodeling project.

On April 12, 2007, Johnson County approved an interlocal cooperation agreement with the city of Olathe for county use of the city’s television production facility in City Hall. The agreement authorizes linking the equipment being installed in the Hearing Room to the City Hall facility in providing a county broadcasting network through cable television to Johnson County citizens.

Olathe has had its television production facility for more than a decade. It includes cable TV facilities, cameras, a recording studio, editing suite, and closed-captioning equipment. The facility is regularly used for cable television broadcasts of Olathe City Council meetings and other city programs to the community.

City and county governments have been using cablecasting since the 1960s to increase public awareness to municipal/government activities, programs, and services. Aside from Olathe, Shawnee Mission, and Blue Valley school districts also have such systems in place. Others jurisdictions with cablecasting services include Kansas City, Mo. and Jackson County, Mo.

Webcasting is a newer, but increasingly popular technology that was well suited to the county’s website (jocogov.org), which had more than 1 million visits last year.

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County picks new date for public hearing on petition to incorporate the City of Stilwell

The Johnson County Board of Commissioners has rescheduled a public hearing on a petition to incorporate portions of Aubry and Oxford Townships into the proposed City of Stilwell in the southeast corner of Johnson County.

The hearing originally was set by the Board on February 29 for April 9. The Board today approved a new resolution that rescinded the February 29th resolution, canceled the April 9th hearing, and rescheduled the public hearing on the Stilwell petition for incorporation at 7 p.m. Monday, April 14, in the gymnasium at Blue Valley High School, 6001 West 159th Street, Stilwell. The hearing will allow the Board to hear a presentation from Stilwell petitioners and other public comments.

A petition for the requested Stilwell incorporation was filed with the Board on February 4, 2008. The petition has been certified as valid by the Johnson County Department of Records and Tax Administration and the Johnson County Election Office.

The petition seeks to incorporate the City of Stilwell from the remaining unincorporated portion of Oxford Township, roughly located between 154th and 167th streets and east of Mission Road to State Line Road, and from the unincorporated portion of Aubry Township east of Antioch Road to State Line Road and south of 167th Street to 215th Street, the boundary between Johnson and Miami Counties.

The April 14 public hearing will address an amended area for the proposed incorporation, omitting a section of land roughly between 183rd and 204th streets and Antioch Road to U.S. 69 Highway. That area was recently annexed by the city of Overland Park.

Petitioners for the incorporation of Stilwell have been requested to file an amended petition, excluding the land annexed by Overland Park, with the county by April 7.

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County establishes Criminal Justice Advisory Council

With a goal of looking for alternatives to incarceration without compromising public safety, the Johnson County Criminal Justice Advisory Council was established Thursday, March 27, at the urging of Johnson County Commission Chairman Annabeth Surbaugh.

The new advisory panel was created through a resolution approved by unanimous vote of the Board of County Commissioners.

According to the resolution, the council will serve as “an advisory body to support and enhance collaborative efforts between key justice officials, agencies, and departments and to provide a forum for public participation with respect to improvements to the criminal justice system.”

Creation of the council caps a year-long effort by Surbaugh, who announced her plans to form the Criminal Justice Advisory Council in her 2007 State of the Council Address.

The advisory group will serve to promote public safety, to address the root causes of criminal behavior involving all ages of offenders, and to help create a better community.

“We must begin with preventative measures that reduce the number of juvenile offenders in our system. We must also help offenders get back on track while they’re in our custody,” Surbaugh said. “And finally, we must provide adequate support for all offenders—both juvenile and adult—after they’ve paid their debts and have been released so they can return as productive, healthy members of our community.”

The goals of the Criminal Justice Advisory Council include:

• Study and evaluate the county’s criminal justice system;
  
• Oversee the collection of criminal justice data for use by the council and, as required, the Board or other council officials, agencies, departments, and operating units;
  
• Identify causes for past and current increases in the county’s jail populations, analyze the flow of processes in the criminal justice system, especially those directly impacting the county’s jail populations, and make recommendation for process improvements that will directly impact the jail population;
  
• Identify gaps or deficiencies in the criminal justice system and make recommendations that will eliminate duplication of services and fill service gaps;
  
• Evaluate and recommend crime prevention programs and early intervention and prevention programs or other initiatives/programs that will reduce recidivism; and,
  
• Increase community support for the criminal justice system, strategies for reducing the need for jail beds, and the overall goals established by the Board of County Commissioners.

Over the past two decades, Johnson County’s inmate population has more than tripled while the county’s population has only almost doubled. The two county adult jails have been overcrowded for years with daily inmate populations averaging more than 300 offenders beyond the current jail capacity, requiring the cost of daily housing Johnson County inmates in other Kansas jails. The county currently is expanding its jail at the New Century AirCenter with completion scheduled in mid-to-late 2009.

Surbaugh hopes the advisory council will help bridge the delicate balance of providing recommendations that offer alternatives to simply jailing offenders, most of whom are classified as low-risk or medium-risk and represent roughly two-thirds of the inmate population. Less than 10 percent, on average, of the inmates require maximum security.

“No one—absolutely no one—wants to be accused of being soft on crime. But there has to be a better way,” she said.

The Criminal Justice Advisory Council will have up to 20 members, who will be appointed by the Board of County Commissioners. Appointments will include representatives from the Sheriff’s Office, District Attorney’s Office, Tenth Judicial District Court, Public Defender’s Office, Mental Health Center, Juvenile Corrections, Community Corrections, Johnson County Bar Association, and Kansas Reentry Policy Council.

Other members will include County Manager Michael B. Press, a representative from the Johnson County Council of Mayors, Johnson County Schools Superintendents Group, and Johnson County League of Women Voters.

The council also will have an en-offender, representatives from faith-based or nonprofit organizations, and community leaders with experience or knowledge of state government.

Surbaugh will appoint the chairman and vice chairman to the Criminal Justice Advisory Council.

The council will meet at least bi-monthly and file a biannually report with the Board of County Commissioners about its activities and progress.

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Chairman Annabeth Surbaugh to present 2008 State of County Address on April 8 in Overland Park

Annabeth Surbaugh, chairman of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, will present her 2008 State of County Address on Tuesday, April 8, at the Ritz Charles, 9000 West 137th Street, Overland Park.

The event, which is being co-sponsored by the Johnson County Public Policy Council, will begin with registration at 11:30 a.m. Lunch will be served at noon with the program and State of County Address to follow.

As part of the program, Surbaugh will accept a “Clean Air Kansas City” flag on behalf of Johnson County Government for its efforts to impose smoking restrictions and protect the health of the public in county facilities and businesses in unincorporated areas of the county. The flag will be presented by Roderick Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Johnson County is the first county in the state to receive the flag from the Clean Air Kansas City Coalition.

Her address will focus on the county’s sustainability efforts, past, present, and future, and the need to renew an existing quarter-cent sales tax as a designated funding source for future capital projects and operations involving public safety.

The Board of County Commissioners has placed a countywide question on the August 5th Primary Election ballots asking voters to approve renewal of the sales tax with no sunset date, effective January 1, 2009. If approved by voters, revenue from the sales tax would be used to fund construction of a new Crime Laboratory for the Sheriff’s Office; a new Juvenile Services Complex for the Corrections Department; and future operations of public safety facilities serving the entire county.

Tickets to the State of the County event are available by contacting local Chamber of Commerce offices. Cost, which includes lunch, is $30 per seat or $300 for a table with eight seats.

The address will be Surbaugh’s fifth keynote address since changes imposed under the county’s charter, which was approved by voters in 2000. The charter created an at-large, publicly elected chairman to serve as the presiding officer of the Board of County Commissioners and as the chief elected official of Johnson County Government.

A resident of Overland Park since 1968, Surbaugh has served on the Board of County Commissioners for 16 years, representing the Third District from 1992 to 2002 prior to being the first popularly elected chairman in 2002. She was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2006 General Elections.

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