photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

Douglas County leaders this week will hear an update on the county’s ongoing racial equity initiatives.

At Wednesday’s Douglas County Commission meeting, county staff will discuss two ongoing initiatives concerned with advancing racial equity in the community: the county’s membership in the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) and the ongoing actions of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. County staff will also present information about the “Structural Well-Being Framework,” an approach to addressing racial disparities that the county has been considering.

The county has been a member of GARE since early 2020, when county staff identified areas like organizational and employee development, criminal justice programs and services, and open-space preservation and planning as focus areas for the county to analyze internally through a racial equity lens. Since then, according to the agenda for this week’s meeting, the county has expanded on that partnership to engage in capacity-building activities and participated in GARE’s Employee Racial Equity Survey in 2021.

The county intends to administer the survey again this fall and weigh the value of maintaining its GARE membership, according to the agenda.

The CJCC, meanwhile, has a racial disparities work group, which most recently led an effort to complete a study of traffic stops in Douglas County from the start of 2020 to the end of 2021. That study found that Black drivers were nearly three times as likely as white drivers to be pulled over for a traffic stop during that period.

As for the “Structural Well-Being Framework,” it’s a product of the W. Haywood Burns Institute, a Black-led national nonprofit working toward establishing a community-centered approach of justice administration anchored in structural well-being. The framework helps organizations, communities and county governments to “design and build new systems of public policies, institutional and inclusive practices, cultural representations and other norms to ensure belonging and strengthen families, communities and individual well-being for positive life outcomes.”

According to this week’s agenda, Douglas County shares a history of similar initiatives and efforts related to criminal justice reform with other counties who have worked with the Burns Institute to implement the framework, such as participating in the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative and the aforementioned traffic stop study.

In other business, the commission will:

• Consider a pair of conditional use permits, one for an outdoor recreation facility just south of Eudora and the other for a vacation rental south of Lawrence.

The first permit request is for “Well Wilderness Kids,” a therapeutic nature center that appears to have been operating out of Olathe since at least 2017. The permit for here in Douglas County — for a parcel of land just south of 1128 East 2100 Road —  would be intended to help the nature center establish an off-site location where children will be taken for small-group activities. According to the permit application, there are already private small-group activities at the property three days each week. It’s unclear how long the applicant has been operating here without a permit.

The second permit request is for a home at 1017 East 1600 Road. The applicants want to rent it out when they are away.

• Hear an update from a government relations firm following the end of the Kansas legislative session in late April.

Wednesday’s meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St. The meeting will also be available by Zoom. For meeting information, visit the county’s website: dgcoks.org/commissionmeetings.