Sedgwick commissioner alleges behind-the-scenes maneuver to kill K-State drone school
Sedgwick County Commissioner Richard Ranzau accused colleague Dave Unruh of maneuvering behind the scenes to try to crash Kansas State University’s plans for a school to train drone pilots southeast of Wichita.
Unruh said Ranzau’s comments were misdirected and that he hasn’t tried to shoot down the school — and he would have preferred that K-State partner with Wichita State University instead of Butler Community College to provide the planned curriculum.
The school is planned for Cook Airfield, a small private airstrip on 143rd Street east of Derby.
K-State would provide hands-on flight training for unmanned air vehicles, with Butler College providing general-education classroom instruction at its Rose Hill campus a couple of miles to the east. Students will be able to earn an associate degree in drone systems.
All five commissioners have publicly expressed support for the school. But the issue flared up as they discussed a $70,000 project to pave a half-mile of dirt road to the airfield.
Unruh and Commission Chairman David Dennis said they wanted to wait to pave the road until after the flight facility is built to preclude possible damage from construction trucks.
Ranzau and Commissioner Jim Howell were adamant that the road needs to be paved now or the airfield owners won’t go through with the project.
Commissioner Michael O’Donnell ultimately joined Howell and Ranzau, casting the swing vote in favor of moving ahead with the paving project now.
“I made a commitment a while back to Commissioner Howell that I would support this,” O’Donnell said. “I would contest some of the things that were said by Commissioner Ranzau about what was happening behind the scenes, but they weren’t directed to me so that’s not my issue.”
At the height of the debate, Ranzau accused Unruh of raising the road issue to try to delay and ultimately kill the project.
“One of my colleagues (Unruh) has been trying to kill this project for months and if he was so worried about tearing up the road, that should have been brought up months ago,” Ranzau said.
He then turned and addressed Unruh directly, saying he had tried to get the state to revoke a grant to fund the project.
“You’ve got people calling Sen. (Susan) Wagle to try and kill this project and calling KDOT (Kansas Department of Transportation) to try and kill this project,” Ranzau said. “Somebody was going to call the governor. I don’t know if he did.”
“Don’t tell me this is about tearing up the road,” Ranzau continued. “It’s ridiculous, commissioner. This is what needs to happen for this community, and stop the behind the scenes shenanigans that goes on. It’s been going on for a year and a half and longer for a variety of things. This really sickens me the lengths people are going to to try to kill this project.”
Unruh didn’t address Ranzau’s complaints at the commission bench, but later said Ranzau had the wrong target.
“I think he was so agitated he was just saying whatever came to his mind,” Unruh said. “I wouldn’t deny that there was some people that may have made a call to KDOT or whoever else he said, but it wasn’t me. He made some implied accusations about me and they’re just misdirected. I wasn’t involved . . . I’m not saying I wasn’t aware, but I wasn’t involved in it.”
Unruh would not identify who was involved in efforts to quash the project.
“I would tell you I knew about it, but I didn’t make the call,” he said. “And I don’t know why he (Ranzau) would even bring it up. Trying to kill the (paving) grant? I mean the grant’s already given. It’s already awarded. They can’t go take it back or whatever.”
But Unruh and Dennis said they were uncomfortable that an out-of-county college is acting as K-State’s partner instead of WSU Tech, formerly the Wichita Area Technical College.
“(WSU Tech) and all the community colleges, they really guard their areas closely,” Unruh said.
But he said he would have supported the road paving if it were scheduled for after the construction is done.
“I would vote for this even though I find it somewhat of a challenge to my rationale to support it in light of the fact we have a good institution in Sedgwick County that could provide the gen-ed classes and they’re not included in this solution,” he said during the meeting.
Dennis also expressed concern about supporting an out-of-county institution after investing millions in WSU’s aviation program.
“We have a very large fiduciary responsibility to WSU and WSU Tech,” Dennis said. “We put $12 million of Sedgwick County taxpayers’ money into WSU and WSU Tech.
“I would rather K-State would have partnered with WSU and WSU Tech to provide these gen-ed courses because that’s where we’re providing our money today.”
This story was originally published July 18, 2018 at 5:07 PM.