By KATHY HAGEMAN
For Dickinson County
Brad Homman could write a book about all the things he's seen or done during his nearly four decades with Dickinson County.
As a member of the sheriff's department, he worked accidents, investigated crimes - and while undercover - purchased drugs and busted dealers.
As the head of 911 Dispatch, he built and staffed the county's emergency communications center and was onboard as cellular technology was changing faster than government entities could afford to purchase it.
And during the last 16 years as Dickinson County administrator, he has been at the helm through the good and the bad: Two tornadoes (in 2008 and 2016) and recovery efforts, building a new jail and remodeling the courthouse (which included emptying the building and moving staff to other facilities), dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic - one of the most uncertain times in modern history - and a plethora of other challenging and rewarding situations.
Homman will retire Dec. 17 after 38 years as a full-time employee, but he’s been with the county 40 years if you count the first couple when he worked part-time.
“Thinking back on when I first came to work here, I see how far we have evolved since then,” Homman said.
Homman was a reserve officer with the Solomon Police Department when he went to work for the sheriff’s department in 1982 as the weekend dispatcher/jailer.
“I was responsible for the hourly jail checks, booking in prisoners, feeding them, giving them medication, things like that. That’s a really scary situation for a kid who’s 19, 20 years old. Looking back, I’m thinking ‘geez, what a liability’,” he recalled with a laugh.
At the same time, Homman was pursuing a degree in electronics technology at Salina Area Technical College, spurred by his interest in radio and electronic communication. After graduation, he went to work at a radio shop in Salina.
“I cut my teeth in communications working on two-way radios. The shop owner would say ‘I need you to go to Thayer, Garden City, Holton or even Manchester to fix a tower’,” he remembered.
His interest in communications led him to start his own business, Homman Electronics, which he continues to operate in his spare time.
On Jan. 12, 1985, Homman joined the Dickinson County Sheriff's Department full-time. Over the next 20 years, he moved up the ranks from patrol deputy, to undersheriff and even interim sheriff. He worked for five different sheriffs, including Dale Ogran, Kenny Moore, Steve Britt, Carl McDonald and Curt Bennett.
Under McDonald’s watch, Homman started the I-135/I-70 Drug Task Force, which included Dickinson, Saline and McPherson counties. The cooperation of the other counties was necessary, Homman said, because of the drug trade’s overlap in surrounding areas.
“It became very obvious that every time we’d arrest somebody or they were willing to help as an informant, they were going to Salina or Junction City to get their drugs. I didn’t know anyone at either place and that’s where the case ended. It didn’t solve the problem,” he recalled.
Having out-of-county officers work the cases was effective since the dealers did not know them.
“Everybody in Dickinson County - especially the drug people - knew me so we’d have the Saline and McPherson guys make the undercover buys here and I'd work in their counties."
“We eventually were able to 'cut the head off the snake.' We saw the availability of drugs in Dickinson County drying up and we knew we had made an impact," he said.
Although the job was fascinating and rewarding, the inconsistent work hours – any time on any day – eventually led him to change careers.
“When my wife, Michelle, and I decided to start a family I said I would change careers because I wasn’t going to be an absentee father. This isn’t the lifestyle for a family," he said.
Moving to dispatch
As the end of the 1990s approached, then-Sheriff Curt Bennett asked county commissioners to take over 911 emergency communications from the City of Abilene, which was dispatching for both the city and county. The commission agreed and implemented a 2-mill levy to cover 911 services.
“Bennett approached me about building the 911 center. I had already talked to him about leaving the drug task force because I wanted to be a parent for my kids,” Homman said.
In late 1999, Homman was re-assigned as captain over the newly-created communications division and spent eight to 10 months designing and building the 911 Center in the basement of the courthouse. Soon, his title was changed to Emergency Communications director.
“I had brought over a few employees from city dispatch and hired some new staff and in April 2000 we took over the communication responsibilities for answering 911 calls and dispatching,” he said.
Cell phones problematic
When 911 became the universal emergency phone number in the United States, the system was dependent on landline telephones to locate callers.
However, when cellular phones came out and people started abandoning their land lines it created a big problem for 911 centers because early cell phones could not pinpoint locations.
“We knew the big challenge was going to be locating people on cell phones,” Homman recalled. “If the people calling 911 can’t talk or don’t know where they’re at, the benefit of calling 911 goes out the window.”
As technology evolved into Phase 1 and later into Phase 2, cell phones were able to send GPS coordinates into the data stream allowing the tower system to triangulate the caller's location. However, that technology was expensive.
"Congress had passed a law telling cell phone providers that if a government agency provides a formal request for Phase 2 technology it has to be provided, but there was no provision in the law about who pays for that," Homman said.
"The technology was there but a lot of cellular providers drug their feet and didn’t want to put in the extra cost,” Homman explained. “There was real fear on our part, as a government agency, that if I put that request into Verizon, Sprint or AT&T they’re going to come in and bill us for that service and what if I can’t afford it?”
But as things often do, a situation occurred locally that caused Homman to make that request.
He had received a call from a woman who wanted 911 dispatch to be aware her elderly father was living alone north of Chapman. His family had purchased a cell phone for him that dialed 911 by pushing one button. Unfortunately, those phones did not display the caller's phone number, but a phantom number.
Some months later, Dickinson County Dispatch got a call from Geary County Dispatch that its emergency center was getting 911 calls from an unknown number, and from the towers it was coming through, they knew it was located somewhere on the west side of their county or in Dickinson County.
“The person was mumbling, ‘help me, help me;' they had gotten 10 or 12 of these calls and the signal would fade and cut out. They had deputies driving around looking for something and wondered if Dickinson County had any addresses that sounded something like what they thought the person was saying. This guy was in dire straits and getting worse.”
One of the local dispatchers told Homman they were trying to track down the phone and with the bits of information gleaned from the brief call, he pieced together that the call might be coming from the man his daughter had called about several months ago.
“I told Sherry Massey, who was my assistant director, to look at the location alerts and get that guy's address. She came up with a name and we sent our deputies who had also been out looking. We had an ambulance out there waiting too and dispatched them to that house. We got there just in time. The responding paramedics later told me if it had been another five minutes he would have been gone,” Homman remembered.
“I got really pissed off that morning and I typed out the very first request letter to AT&T asking that Phase 2 technology be delivered to us. I told commissioners I didn’t care what it costs because we are not going through that again. I said, 'if it costs, we’re just going to have to bite the bullet. Otherwise people are going to die',” he recalled.
Soon after, Phase 2 technology was installed in Dickinson County - and surprisingly - at no cost.
“We were the first agency in Kansas that took the risk to do it. Once we did it, everybody else across the state did too,” Homman said. “That was one of the most remarkable things to happen in my career.”
County administrator
In early 2006, then-commissioners Joe Nold and Sheila Biggs asked Homman if he would be interested in becoming county administrator. The county previously had an administrator for a short time in the 1980s, but after that person was gone the position had never been filled.
"I was surprised," Homman recalled. "I remember Joe making the comment, ‘if we come in and sit here three or four hours one day a week and think we’re running things we’re kidding ourselves. We need some organization. This isn’t a business, but we need to run it like a business.'
“It was a big decision, but I decided to jump on over,” Homman said.
Initially, his title was director of administration and emergency services, but that soon changed to county administrator.
Over the 16 years, Homman has served as county administrator, he has been at the tip of the spear when it comes to getting things done.
“One of the best things we did was when we took over EMS from Memorial Hospital. The hospital was going to expand and needed to get EMS out of their garage area,” Homman said. “We built the addition onto the health department, took over responsibility for EMS and created a professional department to be proud of - one that saves lives."
That was the first of many building projects, which has included an EMS building in Herington to serve the southern end of the county, the environmental services building at the Transfer Station, the PPE (personal protective equipment) building, constructed during the pandemic and an addition at Sterl Hall,” he added.
Perhaps the most adrenalin-driven time of his career was serving as the spokesperson for the City of Chapman after an EF-3 tornado roared through town on June 11, 2008. He took on that role because city officials and council members had either lost their own homes or were busy working to save lives and responding.
When another tornado came through the rural areas in the northern part of the county on May 25, 2016, the county paired with the National Resource Conservation Service to clean up tree debris that would have damaged bridges and impacted streams.
The biggest project of his career was the recently completed jail addition and courthouse renovation, completed earlier this year.
COVID
Not surprisingly, the most challenging time was during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The frustration came from the lack of knowing what to do and then doing what we thought was right and the criticism that came with it. COVID was new to everybody and we didn’t have the historical time and experience to know what the right move was. Everybody worldwide was shooting from the hip.
“There was the fear of the virus and the fear of what was to come, while doing our best to protect the public, students, our staffs, health care workers and then dealing with the level of personal criticism and personal attacks,” Homman said.
“I know in my heart we did everything the best we could to prevent people from getting sick, and for those who did, that was beyond our control," he continued. "I don’t know that I’d do anything different looking back.”
Radio upgrade
Even as he prepares to leave, Homman has been busy doing the groundwork for a new 800 MHz radio project that will let local law enforcement, fire and EMS communicate better and with other agencies outside the county.
Dickinson County is at a disadvantage when first responders need to communicate with outside agencies. For example, whenever sheriff's officers need to talk to Kansas Highway Patrol officers during high speed chases.
“Our current system has served us well, but now it's outdated and needs replaced. We’ve put it off (moving to the 800 system) as long as we can. Now, our surrounding counties have switched to it and we can’t communicate with them," Homman said. "I hope to be able to help out the county with this when I leave."
Earlier this year, the county's 911 Advisory Board asked commissioners to consider asking voters to consider a one-fourth cent sales tax for public safety, with monies going toward transitioning all of the county's emergency responders to the State of Kansas' 800 MHz system. Commissioners are expected to act on the request in early 2023, possibly putting the question on a mail-in ballot.
Retirement
One thing Homman says he won't miss about the county administrator job is the stress.
"I always felt I didn't let stress bother me, but my wife says I do," he said with a chuckle. "We may travel a bit since it's just Michelle and I now. It will be nice to be able to pick up and say 'let's go'."
However, don't expect Homman to ride off into the sunset permanently. He plans to continue operating Homman Electronics, which nowadays is less about radios and more about security systems.
"Everybody that used to rely on two-way radios pretty much just uses cell phones, although there's still a few that have radios, but the big thing now is security cameras and alarm systems because of the state of our society," Homman said. "I'll continue doing that as long as I can."
For the time being, he also still plans on serving on the Solomon USD 393 Board of Education.
"I think it's helped me tremendously as a person to be on the school board and see what it's like on the elected side of things. By overseeing an organization you get to see first hand what it's like as an elected official and some of the pressures that go with that," Homman explained.
"I've tried to think what it's like for the commissioners."
Homman said he is leaving with a good conscience.
"I think I'm leaving things in good shape for the commissioners and Janelle (Dockendorf, incoming county administrator). We're not in debt, the budget's not in trouble and I don't believe I'm leaving any big problems," he said.
"I told staff I wanted to get the jail and renovation project done. I wasn't about to leave in the middle of that. Otherwise, I probably would have left a couple years ago."
Working for the county has been a fulfilling experience, he said.
"I couldn't be more appreciative of the county commissioners and how they've supported me and the county staff. I don't know that there's anything I ever asked for that they haven't approved or given. However, I also didn't ever ask for anything that wasn't needed and researched," he added with a laugh.