photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The Douglas County Courthouse is pictured Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022.

In their first meeting of the new year on Wednesday, Douglas County commissioners are slated to select a new chair and vice chair for their three-member board.

Typically, at the start of each year, the vice chair becomes the new chair, meaning that 3rd District Commissioner Karen Willey is likely to replace current Commission Chair Patrick Kelly. The commission chair is generally given authority to preside over meetings.

Willey has served as commissioner since September 2022, when she replaced Shannon Portillo, who resigned in the middle of her term. During the selection process, Willey touted her prior experience as a small business owner as potentially being useful in the county’s budget process.

In other business, commissioners will:

• Consider approving, in the consent agenda, the purchase of five 2024 Ford F-150 police responder vehicles for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Patrol Division in the amount of $251,589.

The Sheriff’s Office currently has 27 patrol vehicles; according to Undersheriff Stacy Simmons, 25 of them are Dodge Durangos and two of them are recently purchased F-150s. Depending on the amenities selected for the vehicle, the purchase price of the F-150 — which is a pickup truck as opposed to a sedan or SUV — is $3,000 to $9,000 higher than a new Durango, but Sheriff’s Office Patrol Captain Josh Kellerman said the Durangos that the department uses would soon stop being manufactured.

“The Durango will no longer be manufactured, in and around 2025,” Kellerman said. He said that the five F-150s would replace five vehicles in the patrol fleet that are older or have high mileage.

• Consider amending a contract related to a planned renovation of the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center. The amendment to the contract would ensure that architectural firm TreanorHL gets paid for work that requires additional study of the commission’s selected set of variations for the remodel. The contract also covers the remainder of the work to get the project designed and documented for construction, pending the commission’s authorization of any specific project.

Recommendations on the scope of work and any potential phasing associated with the work are scheduled to be presented to commissioners in February. The projects under consideration would all involve an expansion to the current Judicial and Law Enforcement Center near the County Courthouse at 11th and Massachusetts streets. Many options also would potentially relocate the Sheriff’s Office, Emergency Management and the Emergency Communication Center to county-owned land near the Douglas County Jail in eastern Lawrence in the next 10 to 15 years.

The contract with TreanorHL doesn’t have a specific dollar cost, but instead TreanorHL would be paid a percentage of the total cost of construction. The new contract calls for that fee to be 8.1%, which is down from a previous agreement of 8.4%. County officials said the reduction was possible as the scope of the project has become clearer.

• Consider in the consent agenda, authorizing Public Works Director Chad Voigt to solicit bids for dust control chemicals for gravel roads. The measure would also allow Public Works to continue offering its dust control program to rural residents. Homeowners who live along gravel roads can ask the county to apply the dust reduction chemical to the section of road in front of their homes. The county charges a fee to the homeowner for the service. According to materials in the agenda packet, the user fee is not to exceed $1.65 per linear foot of road treated, and also would include a $60 administrative fee per application and a late fee of $15 per application.

The commission’s regular meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at the County Courthouse at 11th and Massachusetts streets. The meeting can be viewed via Zoom. The agenda packet can be found on the county’s website, www.douglascountyks.org.