Bourbon County names Louella Howard emergency manager, moves accounts to new EM office

Bourbon County commissioners passed a resolution appointing Louella ("Lou") Howard as the county’s emergency manager and authorized IT steps to establish her office account.

The resolution, introduced and adopted in public session, names Louella Howard to the position effective 02/13/2026. Commissioners authorized staff to transfer historical emergency-management emails from the prior account and to create a county Microsoft account (BourbonCountyEM@bourboncountykansas.org or similar) so the emergency manager’s records persist when personnel change.

The board also approved providing Lou with a county phone and asked IT to work with the vendor (Stronghold) to retrieve and migrate relevant documents from the shared drive. Commissioners praised Howard’s early outreach efforts (fire and EOC coordination) and directed staff to provide keys and EOC access as requested.

Next steps: IT will coordinate account migration and provide access; emergency management will begin public messaging and an emergency‑management Facebook page approved by the board.