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Residents urge continued crisis-intervention support; team owner credits hockey with economic boost
Summary
Public commenters urged stronger local crisis-intervention efforts and highlighted community benefits from a returning pro-hockey team; speaker Dennis Bosley recounted starting crisis-intervention training while Don Lewis said the team drew more than 114,000 attendees in its first season.
During the public-comment period on June 18, two residents highlighted separate community issues.
Dennis Bosley addressed the board during Men's Mental Health Week, recounting his decades of work to bring a crisis-intervention team (CIT) model to the county and Topeka Police Department. Bosley said the county now has co-responder capacity and that roughly 36 trainings for police and about 10 for jail staff have taken place. "We want to make people's lives less of a living hell," Bosley said, urging continued support for programs that he said save taxpayers money and reduce suffering.
Don Lewis, identifying himself with the Topeka Scarecrows hockey organization, told commissioners the team's inaugural professional season drew more than 114,000 attendees across 29 home dates (an average of just over 4,000 per game), used roughly 500 hotel-room nights, and produced more than 150 community appearances by players. Lewis said youth hockey registrations grew from roughly 15 to about 100 participants during the season and invited commissioners to a June 30 press conference with further announcements.
Commissioners thanked both speakers; no formal board action was recorded on either topic at the meeting.
