Reno County commissioners approve two forensic workstations and sign MOU to design road serving Evergy plant

Reno County commissioners voted unanimously to approve two separate items during their business session: a consent-agenda purchase of two digital forensic workstations for the Reno County Sheriff’s Office funded by an Attorney General grant, and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Growth Incorporated that makes the county the grant subrecipient for engineering and design of roughly three miles of road to serve a proposed Evergy plant.

The sheriff’s office told commissioners the upgraded systems are needed to handle much larger phone data transfers and speed forensic processing. “What we're running into is the size of phones now,” said Keatonberger, Reno County Sheriff's Office, describing cases where investigators must move hundreds of gigabytes from a device to a single computer. Keatonberger said the two workstations on the agenda are roughly $10,200 each and that the county received a $25,000 grant from the state attorney general to cover both systems, monitors and additional storage.

County staff presented the Growth Inc. MOU as a way for the county to act quickly to begin engineering and design work so the county can later bid construction in 2026. The work would cover about three miles — McNew Road for roughly two miles, then Mills Avenue and the section that ties into K-96 — currently township roads that would be brought up to state specifications for expected heavy loads related to the Evergy site. “We could get the job done, and we're gonna try to get it in the time frame they need. But to start the process, we can't start until this MOU is approved,” said Randy (county staff).

Staff and commissioners said the project will be paid through a reimbursement grant held by the Chamber of Commerce/Growth Inc., with the county acting as subrecipient for the design work and likely advancing invoices that would be reimbursed. County staff said the net cost to the county is expected to be zero, although the county would assume long-term maintenance responsibility for any road converted to county ownership and would seek a development agreement and contributions from Evergy to offset future maintenance costs.

Both items passed without further discussion. During the consent-agenda vote that included the forensic workstations, commissioners answered “yes” in roll call: Commissioner Parks; Commissioner Vincent; Commissioner Winger; Commissioner Hurst; and Commissioner Boatner. The same five commissioners later voted “yes” to approve the MOU with Growth Incorporated.

The meeting packet also included the county appraiser’s annual written report (County Appraiser Michael Plank was not present) and routine monthly financial and departmental reports; commissioners did not take separate action on those reports.

The commissioners discussed transparency and use of press releases during their reports, with several commissioners urging residents to review detailed agenda packets and archived meeting video on the county website for full context rather than relying only on opinion columns.

No public comments on off-agenda items were offered at the start of the meeting.