Remarks by Jim Howell
146 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 6
- Play at 29:59
“2002 or three. And I think my calculations is, if you want to round it off, it's close to a billion dollars. It's not quite fair to say it's a billion, but it's closer to a billion if you want to round it to the nearest big number. I think it's over $800 million is my calculation that they've collected to modernize the system. And again, if they want to rename that fee, that's fine. But I think there are things we can do to modernize this entire system. Some of the things I've talked about in the past is I think we should have... And multi-year registrations is a good example. So people have…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 47:25
“Yes, sir. Commissioner Howell. Just doing some quick math on this. Looks like the five staff have an average cost of $50,515 per staff. If you did 775, you have a surplus of $48,228. I should say the bottom line, the column between those two columns would be bottom line of $48,228. So, again, if you wanted to do 775 and do six FTEs, it's almost break-even. It's basically within about $1,000 or $1,800 of zero. Okay. Is that something that you guys would want to consider? Does that help you to have six versus five?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 48:21
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 1:01:18
“Commissioner Howell. I think the comments of Commissioner Beatty and Meisner were fantastic. I agree with what they've said. I'd just like to add to that. I think one of the things I've talked about for years is maybe the state laws should allow a municipality to opt out and let the other one or two go forward. The schools typically don't get involved in public votes and discussions about these types of things, but cities and counties typically do. We have a default, by the way. We don't have to talk about these. We can simply let them go on without discussion, without a vote. There is a…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 32:43
“Thank you, Chairman. I'd be remiss if I didn't share a few of my thoughts about you. You're a friend. You're an extreme professional. I think you could do anything. You have a can-do attitude, and we've given you some very difficult things to do, and you just mastered them beyond our imagination. So you've done a tremendous job. I can't tell you how much I appreciate just getting to know you a little bit. You're one of the few people I've ever met that I don't think I've ever seen you angry about anything. You're always kind. You always have a smile. You always have a good word. Those are…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 54:48
“And this will be read by Commissioner Howell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate the chance to read this one. It says, whereas September 17, 2026 marks the 239th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention, and whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate the occasion, and whereas Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 56:13
“And this is supposed to be received today by Mary Jo Drury. Thank you for being here. I also know that Karen Oliver is also here with you today. They are members of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution. So you're welcome to make some comments and I also have some comments after you. Good morning, ladies.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 57:51
“Well, I'm knowing that's going to be read at the courthouse. That's fantastic. Thank you for that. And you might wonder, how long does it take to read the Constitution? I'll just tell you, it's 4,400 words. And if you read somewhat thoughtfully and slowly, you can finish the Constitution with the Bill of Rights in about 30 minutes. So I would encourage us all to read the Constitution at least once this week if we can. And with that, I will give a few copies of the Constitution to my good friend Nicole. And I'll just say this. I don't have enough for everybody, and I apologize for that. If you…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:12:42
“Chairman and Commission, good morning. Tom Stolz, County Manager's Office.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:27:54
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I always appreciate this report. It gives me some time to think about what's going on. A couple of questions for you. Did you state how many suicides happened in 2025? You did say that already. It's on the slide, I believe. 90. I'm looking at slide number six. And just trying to do the math here. It looks like they had about... If I was going to interpolate that graph, I would say he had about 35 per 100,000 times our population of Sedgwick County. He'd be about 160. So I'm wondering why those numbers are so different.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:28:35
“Look at 2025 right there. If I extrapolate those numbers, about 26 or 27 plus about seven or eight, to add that together, say it's about 35 times our, that's per 100,000 population. That would give us about 160 versus 90. This is per 100,000. Right.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:29:04
“You see, just the males alone are about 26 or 27 on that chart.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:29:23
“I'm not sure I'm communicating well. What I'm saying is this slide seems to indicate we had about 160. You take the males and females, add them together, times 5.26, let's say, or 5.3, because we have about 530,000 people in Central County. That would be about 160 deaths for Central County, if those numbers are right. The other one shows a much lower number. That's why I'm trying to figure out which one of these slides is correct.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:29:58
“I guess I'd like to have someone review that slide right there, make sure that those numbers are, in fact, right. One of the questions I have is, again, there was a previous comment about firearms, but what wasn't stated was the increase due to drugs. There's a large increase on slide seven. It's due to drug overdose and poisoning.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:30:21
“Now, I'd like to know whether this is only unintentional deaths or does this include accidental overdoses? Someone who takes drugs on their own, maybe they did not intend to die, but again, they were alone when they died. I'm not sure how you define that as whether that's considered a suicide death or not.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:30:48
“I understand they died by drugs. One question is, we don't know from the coroner if it was intentional or unintentional. If it was drugs, we understand that. The question is, is it called suicide if it was unintentional? They're just messing with bad drugs and killed themselves by accident.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:31:11
“I guess I don't understand how the coroner would know. They don't understand whether they left a suicide note or whether there was some type of financial problems or relationship problems or whatever, health problems, maybe that they were depressed because of health problems. Looking at the life stressors slide... You have relationships, legal problems, financial problems, job issues, school problems, physical health, gambling, and then there's other. And again, I don't think a coroner would have any idea. Based on the physical evidence of someone who came in and did an autopsy to find out…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:32:39
“And again, I understand they died by drugs. I get that. I see Rusty's up there as well. My only question is, so I'm going to include, I'm going to say these were everybody who died by drugs, and if they had some intent to do this or not, if they were by themselves, they did drugs, they died, they would be included in this list. That's what I'm trying to find out.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:33:19
“That's what I want to get to. So, again, I think there's another number that we're not seeing here. That's people who messed around with drugs that died, maybe not intentionally, but there's a number of people who died alone or maybe with someone else. But the cause of their death was drugs. And it was something that they self-administered. So they did something that caused their own death.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:33:42
“Okay. And so I would assume that every other item on here, we don't know what other means exactly, but firearms, if someone died by a firearm, but it was unintentional, that would be not included as well. Right. Okay. All right. Another question here on the slide eight. Are these overlapping statistics? In other words, can someone be included in the mental illness that also has suicidal ideation, someone who also has suicide attempts, for example? Are these numbers overlapping numbers, same population? What I'm getting to is how many people actually end up completing suicide that are on any…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:35:04
“When did we start the 988 line? Do we know what year that started?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:35:09
“Have we seen any change in our data before and after that date? Has our data had any type of a knee in the trend lines? Go ahead.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:35:46
“I understand that. I believe that that's absolutely true. We've done a good job promoting the number, and people do know about that. The question is, for those people that complete suicide, have we seen a change in the trend lines on that specific data before and after that date?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:36:09
“Okay. I guess a final question. Our trend lines we have here in Central County, I'll just classify it. I mean, there's a chart here. We've seen over... really since 2011. I'm actually going even further back than that. These trend lines are increasing somewhat slowly, but I don't see a trend line change really anywhere on that entire graph on slide number four. What I would say is, I don't know, it's just because there's a larger population. I don't know. Our data is more dynamic. The blue line there is quite a bit more dynamic in terms of up and down. The orange line is much flatter, and…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:38:02
“Okay. I look forward to seeing another few years of data on this. Hopefully we will see that drop. I hope so. That would be our goal. I guess I just have one other thing I would notice here is on slide nine, the number of people who complete suicide that are elderly because of physical and health problems is notably high. That is something we should pay attention to. A lot I could say about that. I think there's opportunities there for us to help. And trying to find things to help people address their issues that's causing this type of decision, I think we have maybe the greatest opportunity…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026