Howell restates commitment to joint training center

After recent events casting doubt on whether the city of Wichita and Sedgwick County would agree on a new joint law enforcement training center, it was encouraging to hear County Commission Chairman Jim Howell say at Wednesday’s meeting that “we’re committed to that as much as we ever have been.” Howell said the county “wants to hopefully agree with the city,” which went public last week with its preference for building a new $9.5 million city-county training facility at Wichita State University’s Innovation Campus. The county is going through a separate bidding process for the project, and on Monday extended negotiations with bidders for another two months. The two governments need to not let current political differences get in the way of continuing the 30-year tradition of training officers jointly. – Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 7:07 PM.