Excerpt of story “Boone County Sheriff’s Campus Additions are Built for Heroes by Jenn Johnson, published in the January 2026 issue of COMO Business Times

“Even as the Boone County Sheriff’s Office opens its new Regional Training Center and prepares to add a first-of-its-kind Public Safety Childcare Center to the sheriff’s campus later this summer, there are strong hints that additional construction – possibly a new and much larger jail – may follow a few or several years down the road.

The $16 million training center and firing range officially opened with its first Law Enforcement Training Institute academy class on Monday, January 5, followed by a public open house and tour of the new facility on January 10. The $5 million childcare facility, which is expected to be operational this summer, will be available initially to staff from Joint Communications (911), the Sheriff’s Office, and the Boone County Jail.

The childcare center could eventually serve first-responder personnel from throughout the county, providing care for up to 90 children. While the training and childcare centers will be celebrated as crowning achievements for Sheriff Dwayne Carey’s long-planned public safety campus, the economic realities of what it is costing the county to house its prisoners in other counties will likely push officials to seek the solution of a new jail. That concept has not moved beyond “very preliminary” discussions, said Presiding Commissioner Kip Kendrick.”