City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the October 6th, 2026 meeting of the Topeka Governing Body. I will now call this meeting to order. This evening, Council Member Ortiz has the invocation, so if you could please turn your attention to her and please rise if you are able.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would like to call up Reverend Jonas Franco to the podium. He is an ordained minister and member of a mistorial body of Pentecostal Church of God International Movement. He has served in ministry for 19 years and has had the privilege of serving in pastoral leadership within the Topeka community. Most recently, he served for five years as senior pastor of Roco I'm sorry, during his pastoral tenure, which means strong rock, becoming actively engaged in the community, serving and supporting individuals and families through a variety of outreach efforts and community incen

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it

All right. Ask the clerk to take roll call, please.

All right. We'll move on to item two, appointments. City Clerk.

All right. We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Kell and a second from Councilmember McGee. Any questions or comments? If not, I ask the clerk to take a vote, please.

All right, I believe I see Colleen out there. I think Michael's here. I don't know if Fatima's here, but if you'd stand, please, you'd be recognized. Thank you very much for willing to serve. It is much appreciated. With that, we move on to item three, the consent agenda. City Clerk.

All right. We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Miller and a second from Councilmember Bradbury. If the clerk would take the vote, please.

All right, we're going to move on to action items. Start with 4A, city clerk.

Well, I don't have any questions. I just want to give a shout out to the neighborhood reps. The leadership is standing in the back there, and they've worked really hard, had a lot of meetings with a variety of people through the neighborhood and the staff as well to get this cranked out. And the vision that they have in terms of looking at really the variety of housing and other amenities that are in the neighborhood, and what could work to fill and revitalize the blocks that need it, including the mixed use that Dan talked about. Those are really visionary, and it's really some great work. Al

What safety features were looked at around the hospitals? Because I know that's been a big issue for the last few years to try to improve some of the safety with all the foot traffic that happens around there, plus all the accidents, people blowing through stop signs, things like that that keep on happening around the hospitals.

All right. Any other comments or questions from the governing body? We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Hiller. Councilmember Ortiz.

It's always good to see an updated plan. It's always good to see a park go in. What's the location for the park, Dan?

Okay. Just make sure those high school kids stay at school and not in the park like they do at home.

Any other comments or questions? We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Hiller. We have a second from Councilmember Banks. Before any vote is taken, this does require anyone to indicate if they've had any ex parte communication. Prior to proceeding with the vote, each member of the governing body who is engaged in ex parte communication with any individual either in favor of or against that matter being considered must state that the communication occurred and indicate that even in light of having engaged in the communication, they were able to fairly, objectively, and impartially cons

I was not at most of the work sessions, but I've had conversation with staff as well as with the people from the neighborhood, and I do not think that will negatively influence my vote.

Anyone else? All right. There are no other comments or questions on this matter. We will ask the clerk to take the vote, please.

All right. With that, we will move on to item 4B.

Do we have any comments or questions for Dan? I do want We do have a motion, but I'm going to need some clarification because in these cases, as you know, we have three options in front of us. We can approve the Planning Commission's recommendation, which requires six votes. We can reject the recommendation, which is seven votes, or we can remand back to the Planning Commission, which requires six votes. So what is your motion, Council Member Kelly? I motion to approve the plan as presented. Okay. Is that what you seconded, Council Member Kelly? Okay. Perfect. All right. Now do we have any com

Thank you, Mayor. Dan, I just wanted to make sure you said no current code violations, but the rest of that too, no back taxes, any of that that should be part of that that they do not owe that we're taking up now.

Okay. You left that out, but I just want to make sure we're consistent across the board as we're bringing all of that forward as new policy. Thank you.

Yep. All right. Once again, you get to hear me repeat that which I've already repeated, but I am required to do. Prior to proceeding with the vote, each member of the governing body who is engaged in ex parte communication with any individual either in favor of or against the matter being considered must state that the communication occurred and indicate that even in light of having engaged in the communication, they were able to fairly, objectively, and impartially consider the measure based only upon the evidence provided on the record. The record includes the planning commission minutes, th

All right, to move on to action item 4C, city clerk.

Questions or comments from the governing body? Councilmember Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. Dan, you had told me when I sent the email to you this afternoon The price point that they're looking at is what, again, between $200 and $230?

And is that comparable to single family around their price point?

Do you have any, I barely scanned the letter from the NIA that I think Shamika had written, and you said they didn't, they stood neutral on it. Was there any discussion about the price point on the house and that more being constructed in that area? And look, I'm just totally asking this off the cuff. I don't know if it was talked about, but I just want to understand. is that with this rezoning and higher end price points, was there discussions of any concerns about gentrification?

I do not want to speak for other people, but in reading the material, I think the concern was less the specific price point of the house and more about how that specific price point being different from the other homes factors into how we calculate healthy neighborhoods in terms of values of homes. In other words, if people can't move into those homes, does that harm their rating over time to keep them down? And that's a very oversimplification. And I think there's a valid concern in there and something that as we deal with this issue more because to Dan's point, the cost of homes is just basi

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Mayor.

Dan, it looks like it is one platted parcel. What happens if one of the houses decides to be sold? Are they going to have to come back and replat it?

So if they go to, when they go to build it and get their building permit, it's going to be set up so it is within those, say, two of the four.

Yeah, I couldn't tell which I saw the house there, but I couldn't tell the orientation of the new one, so that's why I was questioning what they were going to do.

And will they have to have a drive that is not on 10th Street?

I just want to make sure we don't have any problems going forward.

Thank you. I was at that neighborhood meeting. It's in my district. There is a tea alley, so it's no problem for access from the back. I would say that Dan has pretty accurately described the mixed feelings that we have, and it's throughout District 1, but other neighborhoods that need revitalization, we don't want to... On the one hand, this neighborhood has really advocated for keeping the housing, and so getting a reversion of two from C2 to M1 on 10th Street is a big deal. On the other hand, having a brand-new house go in at that size and price was a little scary for them, and it's somethi

Any other comments or questions for Dan on this issue? If not, the motion is always in order. We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Hiller. Do we have a second? Second from Councilmember Bradbury. All right, here's the bad news. You get to hear me say this one more time. Good news is it's the last time I have to say it tonight. Prior to proceeding with the vote, each member of the governing body who has engaged in ex parte communication with any individual either in favor of or against the matter being considered must state that the communication occurred and indicate that even in lig

Council Member Hiller is on the record already. Anyone else? All right. If not, if there are no other comments or questions on this matter, I will ask the clerk to take the vote, please.

With that, we move on to action item 4D. City Clerk.

Questions or comments for Dan? I see none. Council Member Kelley.

If I'm trying to read this right, there is concern of teachers' system capacity for high-density or intense commercial development. Here's my phone. Oh, sorry. It says, located in the primary service area, there's a concern for future system capacity for high density and intense commercial development. The San Jose Mains to the west will need to be upsized to handle the greater capacity.

And this was to allow them to connect to our system. Are we paying for any of that cost or are they paying for all that cost?

I just wanted to make sure we didn't have extra, you know, if it was on the east side of the road and now we're having to run stuff over the west side towards them, I'll gauge there. So I just want to make sure we're not incurring cost on that. Thank you. Council Member Bradbury.

Yes, thank you. Can you speak a little more about the cemetery portion? That was neat of me.

So with that, is there like a maximum size that that can be? I'm just trying to wrap my head around the cemetery going in the middle of that housing area.

With it being an accessory development, does it still have the same type of requirements as a standalone cemetery?

Any other comments or questions from the governing body? If not, I guess I will move to approve. We have a second from Councilmember Banks. Any other additional comments or questions? Let's not appear. So clerk would take the vote, please.

I pushed my button, but it said yes. Yes? OK. All right.

All right. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. We'll now move on to action item 4E. City Clerk.

All right. Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you. Thank you, Carrie and City Manager, for bringing the presentation forward. I had requested it because I think that it's been... A minute since we have had me this is really a high overview because my belief is that as we start talking about the ballot initiatives in this one-tenth of a sales one-tenth of a percent which for homelessness Some of that should be going to, and obviously that would be the Built for Zero program. I believe that we have to even be a little bit more expansive about what Built for Zero is in the future as we talk through this. We need for the public to under

Thank you. I have maybe four questions, five maybe. When you spoke of the program taking a targeted accountable approach, can you talk about that, about what that means?

OK. And when you were talking about the scorecard questions and that there were about six other questions remaining that you still had to get to yes, what were those questions? What are some of those targets?

OK. The tiny home village, when you're talking about, I think it was $4.7 million to build, how many tiny homes are in coverage?

And we say, what is the approximate square footage of those homes? How much would that approximately be to come up with that?

They were based off the Eden Village. 300 and something square feet, I want to say. They're a bedroom, a bathroom, a living space, and then a closet. It's 300 plus. But yeah. It's between 300 and 400. I can't remember the exact number.

And then if we were able to get the 110th sales tax initiative passed the council to a vote from the public and that approved, if that happened, what would that mean for this program?

And would that help with those remaining six questions that

Thank you. I thought I understood where this $300,000 fit, but based on what city manager said, I have a question. My understanding was that the $300,000 would cover that right now we don't have an outreach team, so this would help us recreate an outreach team itemized by whom you said would be in it. But that was $300,000 for one year. of operation, is that correct? That is correct. And that I was, my understanding was that, okay, that's about a third of the amount of money that we have in the fund right now, but that we were going to continue to get money into that fund so that we could cont

Okay. That unfortunately confirms what I thought I heard. Thank you.

Council Member Kell. Totally for the tiny home idea. I've been saying for years, about two, three blocks away from my house is a nice open field that used to be a trailer park back in the day at 37th and Kansas. Perfect spot. My issue is I think we're kind of going about this the wrong way. We're doing the outreach first, then possibly maybe building, I think we should build what we're going to build first, then be able to go out and outreach and be able to put someone in. Can we go out and touch, talk to people and do all those kinds of, but if we're not really accomplishing anything and we'r

Yeah, just two quick things. So first of all, I know you didn't mean to discount, but the Built for Zero program really has nothing to do with moving towards any kind of specific shelter model.

It says it on there. Actually, Built for Zero discourages low barrier shelters and says they should never be your first construction model. The Build for Zero program is all about how a city and how the community and the nonprofits in that community and the service providers work together in a very centralized manner to give you sort of an organized path for getting people from homelessness off the street and into a more constructive model, which is one reason why we wanted to go into it so much because we spent so many years with that shotgun approach. Maybe this will work. Maybe this will wo

Now on your partners, your outreach team, you have the Sheriff's Department. Does that include the jail or is that just the on the street officers in the management of the Sheriff's Department?

I'd like to see the KDOC involved in that also because you're going to have people walking out of the jail, walking out of the prison and if we can kind of maybe catch them on the way out and transition them easier that way than letting them be out on the streets for whatever amount of time. Because as you said, the services take a long time. You only usually get released with a month's worth of medication. So if you have any mental health medication you're on, you run out by the time you get back on disability, you're having issues. Same with the jail. If you have nowhere to go, you're going

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say that the foundation that Carrie is talking about, If we don't do this, it doesn't matter if we have a tiny village. It doesn't matter if we have 200, 300 apartments. It doesn't matter if we have 200 or 300 houses available. Because if this serious foundation is not built, which takes time, because like she said, it took a tremendous amount of time just to get out of the silo mindset. And then when they go into that outreach, they go by name. They learn every individual on the streets' names. So without that foundation, it's like trying to build something on

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think we're slowly moving, but we are moving. I want to express, I don't know how many times a week I contact Carrie and say, Can you give me a call? I have another person that's homeless. Deputy Chief Holcomb, he's my number one guy. I call him and I run things by him. Brett, I want you to hear this before you leave. I want you to hear this. Because at the jail, they now have a special spot for the mental health. And Breakthrough has their own social worker that works there several hours. So when they get there, they're not with the other people in jail. They go into t

If they are 18, Carrie? Yes. And their parents have asked them to leave? Or I don't know what the situation is, but I know there's four of them.

You just saved me a call. Okay, I'll get you that information. But in all reality, I'm grateful that Councilwoman brought this up, and I think it's slowly moving, and I think... Once the ball gets to rolling, we'll get more people on board once they see that it's working. But it's hard. And I will say this to Mr. Kell. I have a gentleman, and he has diabetes, and he has both of his legs amputated, and he's running around here in a wheelchair. And I took this... This same gentleman and I talked with Deputy Chief Holcomb and he advised me that he's surprised he's still running around here becaus

Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Kell. Well, we can focus on recovering, can't we, on that aspect also? So that's what I'm saying, where we need to watch out for the recovering addicts of opioids and not put them with an active user because that can run into situations. Speaking of programs, I've worked at DCF, I've worked at the prisons in Kansas, worked at the Halfway House. Programs can be great, but sometimes they... Don't really offer anything tangible there are some great programs that there's one of the the kids part of correction runs called brothers in blue great getting guys in strai

I just wanted to punch in briefly on it. Some of the pieces that I like hearing the most, built for zero and housing first is important, but when you're out there, it's people first. You've got to make those connections with the people and build that relationship, and it takes some time. We also don't have to be the first provider. We've got a tremendous community network, including the private landlord sector, who sometimes go by the term of second chance landlords. And it's a very strong sector in this community. The thing I like the most about where we are right now, and I agree with Counci

All right. I've moved to approve. We have a second from Councilmember Bradbury. Any other comments or questions? If not, then I'm going to ask the clerk to take a vote, please.

Brenda, my application went down, so I'll vote yes.

All right. With that, we'll move on to item 4F, city clerk. Thank you.

No, but I don't know. I didn't hear her.

Yeah, on number six here, the combat human trafficking, I almost on top of that title like to put the child sex abuse. I think that is just as important or if not more important than human trafficking because a lot of child sex victims end up in human trafficking. So that needs to kind of be in that title work also. So that shows that the predominant of the of what the issue is there.

I've thought about it because just yesterday, or Sunday, excuse me, the thought that came to me is what our teachers are dealing with, with safety in the classroom right now, and how teachers and other students are constantly being victimized by having students get sent out of the room and get sent right back. And the student may throw a chair across the room, hit two students and a teacher in this scenario. They go to the officer right back. There's nothing out there that helps the teacher. And there are scenarios out there right now in real life where a teacher breaks up a fight and they've

This is a living document, and if at some point you want to bring anything to the council to include, you're welcome to do that.

Thank you, Mayor. I've got three things. One, that I would like to see as an amendment. I've mentioned it before. And two, that I guess I want to make sure in the record and that people consider. I've been advised by the mayor, and we've seen that, that this is a living document. So it doesn't have to be exactly what we're going to do or what our representatives will do. But I do believe in creating the language that's appropriate. So the one that I'd like to see changed, I think that the section on housing is very good. And what it says right now is recognizing that residents have a right to

Okay. So, Council Member, can you give us the page number, the line number, what language you want to strike?

That section is lines 54 to 59. So you want to strike 54 to 59. Okay. No, it's only a phrase. So it would be to substitute from require mandatory inspections for landlords accepting public funds to replace that with assist renters in asserting their rights for safe affordable housing.

Okay, so the motion is to remove require mandatory inspections for landlords accepting public funds and replace it with assist renters in exercising their rights.

Okay, so there's a motion on the floor. Is there a second? I do not see one. One more chance.

Well, if it comes back, then I'm happy to punch in. I didn't want to push it right away. The other two that I have, I just would like to be on the record for supporting the vegetation abatement. The abatement section that our lobbyist mentioned, if we need to do more study on it, fine. But because we have added all overgrown vegetation to our property maintenance ordinance, so it could be whole rows of shrubs or trees and things like that, unless there's a reason not to change the state law, right now it requires that any vegetation that we write up, if we're going to write it up, we have to a

I just wanted for the record that we had discussed it and would encourage staff appropriately to research that and see if it is something we would want to move forward. And the last one is we've discussed LLCs and the fact that people are wanting it to be a little easier to find out who the stakeholders are in limited liability corporations. And so it may be premature to put this as a specific thing in the agenda, but I would like to see folks research further whether we could ask what they call foreign LLCs Right now, Kansas, the state of Kansas, asks any LLC that files in the state of Kansas

I'll just follow up. Kayla and I have talked about the vegetation, which is the moving it from May to shall and all that. We think that could be an easy fix, but we're going to kick the tires on that and see what that looks like and make sure that there's not some... huge implication that we didn't see, you know, ag comes to us and says, whoa, you didn't realize the ag. That doesn't make it insurmountable. Maybe we can carve out an exception. So we're going to take a look at that. And then your second one, I think, again, we are going to look into that. I think we, as you and I mentioned to yo

And that's fine. We had that discussion. I just wanted to make sure I mentioned it here so that it was on the record that it was an issue we were looking into.

Well, since it's a living document, every year I come and talk about the boarded up houses and we just don't get any traction anywhere. Can you throw something in there?

It's in there. That was a trick question. Okay.

Thank you, Mayor. I am just like beyond grateful that nobody took up a second on that motion to strike out the inspections. That is, I mean, just to be really blunt, silly, in a name, because it takes the knees, it just like strikes us at the knees on everything that we have been trying to work with to help with the slumlords that we have and help to try to build a coalition that is not going to be busting down doors, demanding inspections. But we saw what happened at Timberley. We've seen what has happened at other housing that has not been inspected adequately. So I am very grateful that no

So I'd like to make that formal amendment on line 81 to do the sex trafficking slash child sex abuse amendment.

Do you want to add to just say the motion would be to change the title from human trafficking to human trafficking and child sex abuse? Yes. Or sexual abuse, which is referenced in client 82.

To me, that almost highlights just the human trafficking. If someone's just skimming the document, I think it needs to highlight both.

I will second that. So we have a motion and a second to change line 81 from human trafficking to human trafficking and child sexual abuse to reference that it's also in the line 82. Any comments or questions on that motion? If not, I'd ask the clerk to take a vote on that, please.

All right. We do have someone signed up for public comment on these issues. I'm going to go ahead and move to that before we take any other steps now that we've had some discussion. I've got Mr. Joseph Ledbetter.

Thank you. I can't hit my button here, but that's all right. Any other comments or questions on the legislative agenda? I was trying to make a motion to approve, but I can't. My button's not there. There we go. Motion to approve from me, and we have a second from Councilmember Valdivia-Alcala. Any other questions, comments, or discussion on this item at this time? If not, then I will ask the clerk to take the vote to approve, please.

All right. Thank you very much, Cale. Thank you. With that, we now move on to non-action items. We'll start with 5A, city clerk.

Questions or comments for Carrie? Well, that was easy. Sounds like it went pretty well this year. Great. That's always good to hear. Appreciate all the work that went into it. All right, last call for questions or comments. If not, I'm going to let her lose. All right. Thank you, Carrie.

All right. As we are approaching close enough to 8 o'clock, and then we've got several issues that have some presentations, we're going to go ahead and take our 8 o'clock break, so 10 minutes. So be back here a few minutes after 8 o'clock, please. All right, we are back from recess. With that, we are going to move on to our next non-action item, B, city clerk.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple of questions first a couple of comments based on specific record cameras understanding that they are not flock cameras and I think a lot of the emails and we have received a large amount of emails over the past I would say I don't know four to eight weeks or so maybe I think all of them were referring to flock cameras so it's good to have the differentiation there. When it comes to the record cameras, though, there does seem to be some of the same concerns as with the flock cameras. One of the main ones is the AI component, and we know how AI is becoming

Bumper stickers, roof racks, surface damage, anything of that. I feel a little bit dubious about asking that, but I want clarity. I can see where that would be beneficial, but I also see with what they are saying is that critics argue this enables suspicionless generation searches where law enforcement can track everyone driving a specific type of vehicle in a region without a targeted warrant. So with these specifics that we're talking about that some recor systems use with bumper stickers, roof racks, surface damage, is that what our recor is able to analyze?

Okay. Thank you. And you've gone down from 90 days to 21 days, correct?

Okay. It says here that ReCore has been publicly calling for national standards, but there have been concerns about privacy experts noting that vendor contracts can contain ambiguous fine print where a city claims to own the data, but the company retains the right to license. share or store it in aggregated clouds available to external agencies. Is that in our contract at all?

Okay. So I'm not meaning to press the issue, but your belief that there is not should equal their certainty that there is not, correct?

Okay. I would just say with the number of concerns that we've been having, I'm really glad that we had this presentation. I understand that there's going to be, you know, that the city wants to invest in continuing to use this. I think that we really need to take a hard look at the AI component, the privacy component, where if there's any kind of inequity that's involved in this going into communities, more disenfranchised communities. I don't know what we were using before ReCore, but I believe that just because there is the newest, better, bigger technology, whether it's in law enforcement,

I did get a little ahead of myself when I called on Councilwoman, which is not a big deal, but we do have several people signed up for public comment. I want to give them an opportunity to come speak. So first up on this item, I have jolene Grable.

Thank you very much. Next up, Ms. Danielle Twimlow.

Thank you very much. All right. Now we'll go back to City Council. Council Member Kell.

How many cameras does the city actually operate within the city limits total? Or just of like that works with a real-time crime center?

Okay. So just trying to point out something here, like going to finding flock.com, it says we have 126 in the city limit. So that would be untrue, correct?

Do you know anything about the cameras that were placed on 470 and I-70 about the time of the World Cup that they went up on the highways? At first, I thought they were just traffic cameras trying to work the flow of the World Cup, but they've been up since then. So I think there's one right off Gage, just east of Gage. It's a temporary camera right there. And they're all up now on I-70. Now, when it comes to the AI aspect, one thing that I learned going through one of the citizens academy, a lot of the AI aspect is more for like traffic, and Jason may be able to talk more about this, but to m

I thought it was tied into the real-time center. The utility part of it, the street start.

All right. Thank you. How many of our LPRs or any of those cameras helped solve crimes? Like, let's say, for instance, was one used in the Noto shooting a couple weeks ago?

And that's kind of the point I wanted to bring up and kind of lead you into was how the positives of this, how everyone wants to look at the negatives, but there's great positives in this. Yes, it's not 100% accurate. There's been issues where maybe a department didn't go through the proper investigations and just – said someone did something and didn't do it, but that's not here in Topeka as far as I know of. But I kind of want to lead you in the positives because everyone's, to me, all the emails and everything, it's this big brother mentality right now, but you don't realize, no one's reali

Thank you. I have a couple of questions on the systems audit. When it talks about systems that are audited regularly, can you define regularly?

Okay. And what does an audit of those systems look like?

Okay, good. And then the next question I have is regarding the LPR retention being reduced to 21 days. How does that data get deleted? Is that a manual process or is that system?

Curious, does anybody ever go check? That it's actually deleted after 21 days?

Thank you. I was going to ask about how often you are audited and you say 30 days. How many officers have the digital key or access to the system?

Just how many officers have access to the system?

Okay, but your patrol officers can actually access the system?

We had one other individual signed up for public comment. And I'm sorry I missed him. Megan Ryan.

Thank you. That was really good. I have not done a deep dive into this, but I've been around, as my colleagues have, when people have asked for it. And so I want to ask you a couple of questions about how it's being used right now. The first one that I remember was when people started running red lights at 6th and Topeka. Could we just have cameras out there to catch those people so they don't run red lights anymore so that we can catch them. People were kind of thinking about the police force being a little short and using cameras instead or whatever. Are we doing that now? Are we using for t

Okay. Another place that came up, I represent downtown and people wanted cameras to watch the homeless folks behaviors in downtown. We do now have them up in downtown. How are those being used? What are we getting out of those?

Okay. And those were with the city cameras. A lot of people have their own cameras as well.

Just wanted to check. I think one of the, also thinking back to the ways rules get broken because there seems to be a good reason to do that. And so if, for instance, you had a serial killer, you don't necessarily know, you don't begin to build the case for that person and wondering where they were, sometimes for a couple of months, let's say, is people can break the rules and say, you know, this got used by somebody to catch someone who'd been on the road for two months. Maybe we should keep our stuff for 90 days after all. Something like that. Maybe it's too early to know if...

Well, thanks for the answers. The anxiety that people have done a good job of describing, it's like, well, but if you could put it someplace else and just do it, it's scary. I get that. Thanks. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions for staff on this issue at this time? I'm sure this will not be the last time we discuss this. Thank you very much.

All right. With that, we'll move on to item 5C. City Clerk.

All right. We have several people signed up for public comment. We're going to go to them first. First up, Mr. Joe Ledbetter.

Thank you. Next up, I have Jane Williams.

Thank you. I'm going to open this up to the governing body. I guess I think I'm going to go first, just so everyone kind of knows where I stand. I've been asked about a lot, and there's no secret that I've struggled with this and gone back and forth since we've been talking about it off and on for the last year. I do have concerns and still unanswered questions about kind of where we're headed and what the end result of this is going to be. I do have general concerns about what an increased sales tax means to the residents, to the future growth of this city, to the businesses in this community

I know you mentioned a little extra work. I think if we actually do this the right way, that extra work will already be done before that date when we have both plans to give to the public to show them what our options are going to be. When it comes to cuts, we've done a lot of cutting already. If we cut any more, we're going to be hurting our citizens and we're going to be hurting our staff. We're going to have overworked firefighters that are going to have an accident on the job trying to do something because they're stressed and tired and overworked. We're going to have an officer possibly h

Well, I would have broken down kind of almost maybe like every $25,000 for a house value so people can understand what their house is. And then break it down, and I just broke down some numbers when this first started here, just looking at using U.S. Census and then a couple different grocery tracking websites. that we're looking at based on household size, I think it's 2.21. We're looking at about $1.60 a month per person per household that a sales tax would cost. So I'd like to see how much 10 mils would cost a household of $100,000 and be able to break that down and show people. what the di

There's some sort of bill like that every year.

So in essence, people outside the city could vote to shut this down so they don't have to pay it. But we as citizens have to pay more because we have to increase the mill levy. So that's something to look at long term because that right can be taken out of our hands as citizens and allow people that aren't citizens to vote on what we have in our city on a tax. I think we just need to look long and hard at this and look at the numbers and be very transparent and open to the public about this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. I agree with you. I think that a committee coming forth is important because my really deep concern is that if anything would go out for March, I don't think I don't think the half set will pass. There's so much irritation and frustration out there by voters. I think that we need to get somebody hired as soon as possible in the auditor position. We need to put good faith forward to constituents, to residents, and we need to start the new year hitting the ground running with an office whether it goes by departments, forensic thought in some of the most concerning departments.

I agree with everything that's been said. I just want to say that I think two weeks is rushing it. I'm glad to see it go on the ballot so that we can put this to rest because residents in Oakland and East Topeka, Southeast Topeka, we pay for a tax. We pay for some service that we don't even get. And I'm talking about the existing. when it comes to the streets. We can't get anything like that. We have to have our streets put back the same way that they were tore up. And that's really a shame because I feel like, and a lot of my constituents feel like, we pay for something that we don't get. I d

Thank you. I feel this is a very important issue, and we don't want to rush into making a decision. I do think we need to take the time to gather public input. I think we need to be very, very clear in defining exactly how the, you know, if we put this together, exactly how the funds can be used. And define that, set very clear boundaries. And, I mean, then we're... The public's going to hold us accountable. When we say how it's going to be done, then that's the way it's going to be done. And give us a little time and have the opportunity to have the proper staff, have more staff involved with

Thank you. I, too, agree with the comments that have been made so far. Respectfully, I would point out that the four-fifths cent is not really four-fifths of a cent, it's four-tenths of a cent. And so for credibility, it's important to get the numbers right. So for next time. As far as the affordable housing and homeless services, I think that's the name right now. I'm actually comfortable with getting that going. I think people have waited. If there's enough of a general consensus that that's where the money should come from, we're eager to get started. But I don't know if it's cost effective

I'll just offer a piece of clarification. The auditor position is in our 27 budget. We've already been talking to staff about we can hire that individual and work out and arrange it with the city manager's office to make sure that until we get the charter change, they would still report to him but give us some ability to direct what projects we want to put them on. So we don't need to wait for that vote to happen to at least get that person in here based on our budget.

Thank you for that clarification. I still think that in part, whether we have staff, whether it's a full-time staff or contracted out that the contracting out especially would put us in a position of having to decide what it was we wanted to see audited as a body in plenty of time to get the person

Understood. I just want the public to understand that we are moving forward on that piece of it, at least in some form.

Thank you. to your discussion that it's in the budget, we're also holding a lot of positions vacant. And I think the internal investigator was one of them. And so, you know, if we could start to step-by-step finalize some of those things, that's why I brought it up again. Thanks.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the information that we're gathering from our colleagues tonight. Something that's been a continuum for this council and certainly my district is no different than any other about concerns on certain things that we do as a governing body. Last night at the NIA meeting, We were talking about the possibility of a tax or mill levy increase. And a few things keep coming up. Go Topeka keeps coming up. And $5 million. We've been hearing that from constituents for the last three years that I've been on this committee. So... I think in anything we do for budget concerns,

Thank you. I understand and appreciate the need to take some additional time for the language on the half-cent sales tax. I don't necessarily agree that moving the tenth sales tax for homelessness and affordable housing should wait until August. Yet I also understand that the costs involved with having two different elections. And I guess really what I'm trying to say is that even though I wouldn't support something like that, I do understand if that's the decision that we need to go because of needing to refine the language for the half cent. I guess if that's making any sense. No, that makes

Yeah, I think that's part of the discussion we can have the next couple weeks is whether we bifurcate this thing to move one forward or we think it's better to do them at one time. I think that's a very valid conversation. Council Member Hiller.

Question out of that point. Apparently it would cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to do this special election in March.

Okay. If we wait until August, which is a broader election, then do we have to pay at all?

Other comments and questions from the governing body at this time? Any other comments from staff? Questions?

So I would also request, because I think there's at least some interest in having the information so we can have a discussion about it, that we also have what I would call the best final language we think we could have as it relates to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund question and the auditor question, and then the exact cost, again, of what that's going to be, the $115 million, so we know what that looks like. So if the council wants to have that conversation about, okay, if we really do want to bifurcate these and do the one in March and we at least know what that would look like and just g

Council Member. I think it's been I don't know, six weeks, seven weeks maybe since a request was put in to have Go Topeka come forward so we can ask questions. Questions that I can tell you I'm getting from constituents that I have no idea how to answer. Some of those I have sent forth already to Go Topeka and received responses. But I think that even though the comments keep getting made that people can attend the JATO meetings, we know that that's probably not really a reality. And I think that since these taxpayer dollars that OJPICA slash JATO is utilizing, they need to come before this go

We haven't heard back from them, but I will follow up with that tomorrow and let you know. I'll make this request again tomorrow. All right. Anything else on this issue? All right. If not, we're going to move on to public comment. But first, I'm going to make a motion to go beyond 10 o'clock. I get a second. Second. Second from Deputy Mayor Hofer. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say no. No. Council Member Ortiz is a no. With that, we're going to move to public comment. First up, I have Natalie Allen.

Thank you very much. Next up, I have Joseph Ledbetter. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, I have Reverend Julie McCullough.

Thank you. Next up, I have Marshall Barber. Is Marshall still here? Oh, there he is.

Thank you, sir. Next up, we have Jeff Fogg.

Thank you. Next up, I have Cynthia Guerrero. Cynthia Guerrero is still here. No. Last call, Cynthia Guerrero. Next up, Henry McClure.

Nope. There's no extensions this evening due to the number of people we have signed up to speak.

I do treat everyone equally. Thank you for the acknowledgement of that. Next up, Ms. Danielle Twemlow.

Thank you. Next up, I have Lizone Grays.

Thank you. That is everyone I have signed up for public comment this evening. All right. With that, we will move on to announcements. City Clerk.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's late. It's time to go home. But before we do, I just want to say October is National Fire Prevention Month. And City Manager, I hope that my good police chief or fire chief would come up and give us a little tit for tat. He's not here tonight. He can do it tomorrow or next meeting.

He can prepare himself and do it for next meeting. at the next council meeting. But I will remind everybody to get your smoke alarms. I will be bringing applications to the next meeting to pass out, and we really need to push these to help. As you've heard, we need two fire stations. We need to really help our guys, especially in different parts of the neighborhood. But, you know, I'm going to throw District 9 in there because they don't have a fire station in their area. So if we could do that Get those passed out and get some fire alarms up. That would help them. They always have a little qu

Thank you, Mayor. If the Chief can't be here, I'll give the fire education message. I did it for over a decade.

Well, I have to ask for compensation. Nothing tonight, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Kell.

This past weekend, Saturday night, I was privileged to be a part of the Celebrity Waiter Soiree held by Child Care Aware of Eastern Kansas. Last year and this year they've had me kind of help run the silent auction and the auctions side of things and it's really fun but it's a great organization that helps find child care and do a lot of things with child care but The biggest thing that they do is with the lack of child care, it doesn't just affect the household. It affects businesses. It affects our economy with people not being able to get to work, with people not being able to stay home and

Thank you. Council Member Miller. Nothing, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Bradbury.

Thanks, Mayor. I just wanted to remind folks that know and those that don't know that on Saturday, this coming Saturday, October 10th from 11 to 3 p.m. at the Oakland Community Center, the Oakland neighborhood will be celebrating its 100-year annexation. 1926 is when the community requested annexation into Topeka. We are going to have the Oakland NIA has been working really, really hard with getting all kinds of activities and vendors and history of the annexation and of the community, so all are invited to attend. Also, I just wanted to speak real briefly on the Lyman Street issues that conti

We both got confirmation back for general public comments fourth one this evening So we'll talk about that. I am very sorry about that. There's really an issue today All right with that we have a need for an executive session if the city attorney would state the motion and

I will move to approve. Do I have a second? Second. Second from the Deputy Mayor. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. No. Council Member Ortiz and Miller are nos. With that, we will go immediately into executive session. All right, we've come out of executive session. No action is going to be taken by this governing body. That concludes our meeting this evening. And at 10.36 p.m., we are adjourned.