City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome to the April 14th, 2026 governing body meeting. I will now call this meeting to order. Tonight, Council Member Miller will give the invocation. Please rise if you are able. Thank you, mayor. For the second time this month, it is my pleasure to introduce Pastor Delmer Allen White, who currently serves as senior pastor for the new Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church and has done so since 2014. As a young child growing up at Antioch Baptist, Pastor White was the one who made religion interesting for me and has helped me keep my faith in fullfledged ever since. His wife, Carmen White, and their kids, shout out to my dog, Courtney, were also important to me in that time. One of his honors of note was that he received an award for who's who among young gifted clergy. I won't mention or ask him to tell us when he got that award, but we can just say it was recently. Okay. Thank you for being here, pastor. You have the floor. Mayor, council, city manager, and all present. Almighty God, we humbly come before you seeking wisdom for today's local government meeting. We lift up our city council, school board, other legislative bodies striving to steer our public institutions in the right direction. Bless our officials bless them with wisdom, insight, compassion, and understanding. Let the deliberations of this body stir thought-provoking ideas that

positively shape our local government. As we embark on this journey, may your guiding hand be evident in every decision they make. Grant us steadfastness and respect for diversity as we serve together for community development. In thy name we pray. Amen. Amen.

I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, the clerk would take the role. Thank you. Mayor Duncan here. Council members Hiller here. Valdivia Aquala here. Ortiz here. Banks here. Kell here. Miller here. Bradberry here. McGee here. And Hoffer here. Okay, we have 10 present. All right. Hello. Hello.

Oh, it is on. All right. We have several proclamations this evening. First, I will ask Megan Lynn to come up and anyone else who may be with Megan, please feel free ARP and anyone else you've brought.

Come on over here. You have to stand behind me and be seen and everyone gets to see you. All right. So, this month is fraud prevention month. Proclamation by the mayor. Whereas Americans lose billions of dollars each year to fraud with older adults disproportionately affected, making prevention, education, and strong consumer protections more important than ever. And whereas the Federal Trade Commission estimates fraud losses in 2024 were as high as 196 billion nationwide with up to 81.5 billion stolen from older adults. And whereas older adults who experience fraud have a life-changing amount of money stolen from them, average of $83,000, four times that of the average across all ages. And whereas older adults are often affected by fraud when they are no longer working or already financially strained and unable to recover the money that was stolen. And whereas public awareness and education are critical in helping consumers recognize the common red flags of scams and keeping them informed about emerging fraud trends. And whereas our communities, which include nonprofit organizations, law enforcement, and public officials, are working to strengthen consumer protections, provide victim support, and advocate for stronger measures to prevent and prosecute fraud at the local, state, and federal levels. And whereas preventing fraud is a shared responsibility, and increasing awareness during fraud prevention month empowers all Topekans, especially older adults, to protect themselves, their families, and their financial security. Now therefore, I, Spencer L. Duncan, mayor of Topeka, Kansas, do hereby proclaim the month of April 2026 as fraud prevention month. I encourage all Topekans to learn the red flags of scams, and to support the community and

advocacy efforts that help prevent scams, protect consumers, and assist fraud victims in the city of Topeka, Kansas. With that, I will let one of you come up here and say whatever it is you'd like to say. Uh we just wanted to thank uh the mayor and city council for recognizing how important it is to educate the public on fraud prevention. So thank you. Did I anyone else?

Uh my name is John Warser and I am I am a fraud watch volunteer with AARP in Topeka. If you have any local community groups who would like a presentation on fraud and scams, doesn't have to just be old people. It affects all ages. just give Edith at ARP a call and we'll set something up for you. Okay.

I will say that this month, this year I am now a member of AP. Well, lucky me. So, so I guess I'm one of these now in this group. So, thank you very much for being here. I was hoping when I said that I would say no way. There's no way you joined there. That can't be. So that was a down. All right. All right. With that, I would ask Addie Lman to come up here and anyone else. These guys are going to look really tall once they stand up here. Um, I will say all these proclamations are always important or else I wouldn't stand up here and put my name to them and read them. I will say as someone whose family experiences what we're about to discuss, it has a little more importance to me this month. Whereas Topeka Kansas is committed to fostering a community that is inclusive, supportive, and empowering for all individuals, including those with autism. And whereas Easter Seals Midwest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, has been a beacon of hope and assistance for countless families across the region. And whereas the month of April is recognized as Autism Acceptance Month, a time to promote understanding, inclusion, and support for individuals with autism. And whereas the Take Action for Autism event held on the last weekend of April will serve as a powerful initiative to raise both funds and acceptance for those with autism in

Topeka, Kansas. And whereas this event organized and run by Easter Seals Midwest will bring together individuals, families, and supporters from all walks of life to champion the cause of autism acceptance and awareness. And whereas the funds raised through Take Action for Autism will directly benefit programs and services that empower individuals with autism, enhancing their quality of life and helping them to thrive in our community. And whereas the dedication of Easter Seals Midwest and the success of the Take Action for Autism event will have a lasting impact on Topeka, furthering our commitment to creating an inclusive environment for all. Now therefore, I Spencer L. Duncan, mayor of Topeka, Kansas, do hereby proclaim the last weekend of April 2026 as Take action for autism in the city of Topeka, Kansas. Good evening everyone. and my name is Addy Lman and I have the pleasure of representing Easter Seals tonight. Um, Easter Seals Midwest is the largest provider of disability services within the state of Missouri and we're very new to Kansas so we're very excited to be here. Um, but we're just creating this initiative to get out into the community and create inclusion and awareness for um, individuals with autism. And so we ask you all to get out and take action for autism the last weekend of April, April 24th through 26th. Um, and thank you all so much. Just uh one thing to add uh thank you to Topeka for hosting and being where we have done our third annual autism summit here in Topeka, Kansas. And it'll be taking place tomorrow uh at the uh Bishop Professional Development Center. So I really thank the Topeka community and uh the the Topeka public schools for that partnership. So thank you.

Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. All right, with that we will move on to agenda item three, appointments. City clerk.

A is a board appointment recommending the appointment of Tony Emerson to the Metropolitan Top Pika Airport Authority Board for an unexpired term ending November 30th, 2027. All right, I have a motion from council member Kell to approve. Second. I have a second from council member Banks. Oh, and then Ortiz walked in or Ortiz cuz she hit the button. Any questions or comments? If not, I would ask the clerk to take a vote.

And Council Member Valivia Aqua, what will your vote be? Yes. Okay. All right. The mayor does not vote on this one. We have nine yes. The motion carries. With that, I believe former council member Emerson is here. Will you stand up? Thank you very much for willing to serve. Thank you.

I also just wanted to see where you guys meet. Now he knows he gets to go home and we have to stay. So, they don't. Done. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. All right, we will move on. Agenda item four, presentations. We have several this evening. City clerk. Uh A will be the ADA advisory council annual update.

City manager. Thank you, mayor, members of the governing body. Joe Shereé, the chair of the ADA advisory council, will lead us through this discussion. I'd also like to recognize Michelle Selby uh who is actually online providing our sign language interpretation as part of this uh as part of this discussion. With that, Joe, welcome Joe. Thank you. Um Dan, would you mind advancing the slides for me, please? Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep.

Okay, good. Thank you governing body for letting the ADA council present to you this evening. My name is Joe Shereé. I am the chair and Steve Shoenberg, our vice chair, is joining us via Zoom. Steve, go ahead. Steve, this is Steve here. Good evening, everybody. This is Steve Shaenberg. I'm the assistant vice chair and our goal tonight is to advocate for civil rights, full inclusion for those in the city of Tfica uh and all of those who have disabilities. Improve committee awareness and recognition for people who have disabilities and provide access and accessibility for buildings, projects, services, activities, and work. and for all people to have being able to have equal participation in everyday life within the community.

Steve, you have this slide. So, we are wanting to talk about pedestrian safety, emergency preparedness, accessibility to city buildings, access to city programs, and access to equally effective communication for all city of Chapika meetings, documents, and publications. Thank you, Steve. our accomplishments for 2025 and we held our strategic planning meeting in January. We updated and formally adapted our bylaws. We had a national night out tableabling. We did city of Topeka trunk or treat tableabling. We had a presentation at the East Topeka Senior Center. We did pre we had presentations from our partners uh the public works department. We received and managed 12 ADA complaints in 2025 with infrastructure and malfunctioning signals being the reports issues that were reported. Our goals for 2026 are to continue to increase visibility within the community, position accessibility as a community value, not just a legal requirement, help residents understand how access decisions are made and how to participate effectively. Support city council and partners with clear, practical ADA guidance and normalize accessibility as part of downtown life, events, and tourism. Are there any questions for us?

Any questions from the governing body? Okay, a couple. Joe, first of all, I I at one point we had talked about and maybe partial one was done of doing some kind of ADA audit not for for our buildings that would then be incorporated. Did we ever do that? Have we done that? I think it got started and then we had some staff changes and then nothing but I don't know that. Director Trion can speak. Okay. That would be a Zena question. Okay. Or so a survey was conducted of our public facing buildings. So our four major office buildings and fire stations. We have received those draft reports, but we do not have final reports. Those inspections and assessments were done over the past 6 months or so.

Okay. No, that's great. I'm just glad we we were able to get them done. Thank you. Thank you. And then my second question is I or I guess I have three. The second thing is I believe is there currently a vacancy on the board? I believe we have three vacancies. Is that correct, Zena? Okay. So, I think that's important for everyone to know. There are vacancies. We need to fill them. So, anyone listening if you're interested, contact my office at mayorpika.org or reach out to one of these council members or council members if you've got some people out there, beat the bushes a little bit because we'd really like to get that filled back up and and make them a full compliment. So,

and I'd also like to add to that you can find out more about the ADA council on the city website under programs and or no under boards and commissions. And I guess my last question is could you just talk to people about if a citizen is out there and says yes I have a concern and I want to bring it forward to not us to you. How how do they do that? They can reach out to Mon'nique La or Zena who is in the audience today. They field all of the ADA complaints with it for the council and then we discuss those at our meeting each month. We have a segment or a a part of our meetings where we discuss ADA complaints.

Perfect. Any other questions or comments from the governing body? Yes, this is Steve. I do want to add something. Yes. Uh we meet the second Wednesday of every month. If anybody is interested in showing up, they are welcome. And are those where are those meetings held? Holiday or those are held via Zoom? Oh, via Zoom. Okay. So, if they contact the staff, they can get them the Zoom link to participate. Yes. And there is an option for public comment too. So, if there's anything that uh the public would like to address with the council, there is that opportunity during our meetings as well.

Great. All right. There's nothing else. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Steve. Very much appreciated. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to our second presentation. City clerk. Okay, the uh B will be the Friends of the Topa Zoo update. All right, city manager. Thank you, mayor, members of the governing body. Christina Castano, uh chief executive officer of Tika Zoo will lead us through this discussion.

Great. Thank you. Can everybody hear me? Great. Great. Mayor Duncan, council members, Dr. Perez, thank you so much for having me here tonight. Um, I'm thrilled to give you an update on our 2025 year. It was a year of immense growth, progress, innovation, and of course, we're here to serve our community. Uh, deepen community impact. We are now reaching more Topekans and canons than ever before through our informal science education programs. In 2025, we conducted over 400 programs reaching close to 13,000 people in our community. We doubled our Discovery homeschool offerings, reintroduced our preschool classes, and even launched our first ever adult camps. We are very dedicated to expanding educational opportunities for lifelong learners. We strengthened our internal capacity. We reorganized our biofax collections. We renovated our education spaces and we successfully passed our annual KDH license inspection, maintaining the highest standards of safety for our youth. last year. We also continue to serve as a regional resource for membership and community engagement. We believe that we are a zoo for all. The zoo's role as a community hub continues to strengthen. We grew our active membership households to nearly 5,000. Accessibility remains a priority for our team through the Museums for All program. We um we gave our guests reduce admission over 2,000 guests reduce admission. Our library passport program,

we had over 2,000 people come in for free through that program. And we have free community days where over 10,000 people entered our zoo free of charge. We also expanded our impact through the inaugural Topeka Zoo license plate program that generated over $5,000 for animal care and for guest services. And we are so grateful to our business community here in Topeka. Our business partners, more than 115 of them, contributed nearly a million dollars in monetary and inind support to our mission. And our love your zoo giving day rallied canons to peakans to raise over $30,000 in 24 hours. We are just so honored that people believe in what we do. The zoo's signature events continue to bring families, tourism, and economic activity to our city. We highlighted last year dinosaurs alive, Roar and Poor, Brew at the Zoo. We did two weekends of Boo at the Zoo and we even did a special fundraiser last year called an afternoon with National Geographic's Joel Sartori where we brought a National Geographic photographer here and we filled we nearly filled an auditorium of people who are interested to learn more about conservation. We also have evolving evening experiences that we're offering to our community. summer nights, late night at the zoo that you'll see this year as well. And last year we did zoo lights holidays around the world. We had over a million lights, over 200 displays. And what was even more incredible is that that event gets put on with the help of

over 200 volunteers in our community coming together to support Zoo Lights. Last year was our fifth year and overall we had more than a quarter of a million people come through those gates making lasting memories with friends and family. We are just thrilled with Zoo Lights. Over the 2025 year, we also strengthens our position as leaders in animal care and animal well-being. We welcomed 17 new animals to live at our zoo, including cheetah, orphan black bear cubs, and an orchid mantis, which is a really cool insect. I had to throw that in there for staff. We celebrated the birth of two critically endangered golden lion tamarinds, and successfully expanded our population of death fainting beetles to more than 60 individuals. That's pretty significant. We are also home to two exceptional senior animals. We feel very privileged that we are known for caring for seniors. The oldest llama on record at age 29, potentially a world record. We're trying to get Gertie into the Guinness Book of World Records and the oldest living lion within our Association of Zoos and Aquariums at 21 years old. So, the oldest lion in North America. These accomplishments highlight our zoo team staff, their the dedication, their um commitment to high quality animal care for the littlest animals, the largest, the youngest, and also the elderly. We are so proud of our team. Our conservation programs elevate to peakans and canons as a leader in global wildlife protection. We participated in 20 programs that work at the forefront of endangered species conservation. We are proud partners with our local

blind tiger brewery to support a ranger in Sumatra. Boots on the ground protecting one of the world's most endangered species. Locally, we lead the effort to recover blackfooted ferrets. And within our community, we lead programs for pollinators, clean waterways, and we support our local ecology. In 2025, we funded 19 new um monarch way stations and expanded nine existing ones, which created an additional 6,000 squaret of new habitat across Topeka and Shauny County. We also celebrated 10 environmental awareness days and conducted five major cleanups at Caw River State Park. We make sure that we get our boots on the ground and in the field. And we're so proud of our impactful community support initiatives. For many for many um they don't realize that we also are dedicated to reducing food insecurity in our community. In 2025, we collected over 4,000 pounds of food and distributed it locally. And since we started collecting uh non-p perishable food items in 2023, we've collected over a,000 pounds of food and distributed it locally. And again, we can't do this on our own. We are so proud of the power of our volunteers. We have dedicated dosens that contributed 11,000 hours of service in 2020 2025 alone. And since the program was started in 2017, they have amassed over 80,000 hours of community service. We are so proud of that. And at the end of last year in December, we ended the year off by successfully

completing our multi-day inspection by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which is the gold standard for accreditation in our profession. It's a rigorous review that evaluates every aspect of animal care, our vet programs, our conservation initiatives, safety practices, our facilities infrastructure, and we performed very strongly, reinforcing that the zoo's operations meet the highest national standards and provides our community with confidence that our zoo is operating safely, effectively, and responsibly at every level. We also began making major strides in capital projects. One of our most significant milestones was the official groundbreaking for our new Tiger Trails and Denm experience. And I know that many of you were there for that groundbreaking. This innovative habitat will offer our community uplose experiences with these beautiful, powerful Sumatran tigers while providing children with hands-on science learning experiences. Tiger Trails and Denm is the first project in our new 5-year master plan. I shared um hard copies of our master plan for you to view. Our master plan is ambitious. It's forward-looking, but it's also something that we feel is very needed for our campus. Our goals are to reimagine our spaces, to renew our infrastructure, but to also reconnect with our community, and to continue to make our zoo a source of pride for Topekans and everybody who comes to visit.

You all know that the zoo is more than a place to visit. We believe that we are a place for everyone. That we are a place that helps to reduce social isolation in our community. We are a gathering space. We connect people with nature and with each other. We are so proud to be an educational resource for Topeka, an economic driver, and we're a leader in global conservation right here in Topeka. We are so proud to be a community anchor. I thank all of you for giving us the privilege to serve this community and for your continuing support through as we move through our new master plan and continue to invest in our future.

All right. Thank you. Oh, it's not. All right. Council member Kell,

uh, just wanted to comment on as you talked about the elder uh elder animals that are there. I think the the staff there has a great compassionate cause there. You'll see on the news and one of the animals passes or has to be put down and people, oh that's where animals go to die. If you actually look at the age of the animals to what their captivity age or even their wild age is is life expectancy is lots of times exceed those both of those. So, uh, I believe they do an an amazing job on taking care of of especially the elder animals. And I know there's some some there at the zoo now that my daughters grew up with. So, I just love going back and seeing the ones I knew that I've seen my daughter's whole life and and it's great to see.

Speaking of things that are no longer there, the gorilla exhibit. Yep.

Is there any plans to get a new gorilla or gorillas or is there any plans to do something with that exhibit space? Absolutely. So, you'll see in our new master plan, our third project, which we've just launched our fundraising campaign for, is called Discovery Forest. And Discovery Forest, that name is a play on our past with Discovering Apes. We will tell that story, and it also marries um our building now, which is called Lyanna's Forest. So, we're going to tell that story of apes as we move forward. But when you look through the booklet, you'll see that we have big plans for that building. We're going to be renovating the space for orangutans. We're not going to move that family. They do really well here at our zoo and our staff love them and so do our guests. But we're going to be bringing in two new species into that space. The first is red panda. And I always say that red panda were actually voted the cutest animal on earth um along with clouded leopards which are one of the most beautiful animals. So, we're very excited to build on our past with great apes, but also to move into a new space where we're bringing new animals to our community, young animals that we hope we can participate in the breeding program as well.

And then one more thing, I I brought this up with staff at a few different events. Uh I I would like to see a aspect of as you're stepping into the future with the zoo using social media as an avenue to help with enrichment for the animals because I believe if for example you give give one of the animals a Facebook page, people get involved with it. Then you start putting out posts involved with that animal and then you get so many followers you start now with every post making money. So now they can in essence make money to be help buy their extra enrichment toys which rolls into more videos. So, it's one of those things I' I've looked at and other zoos do it.

And it's one of those things if you can also build that connection now with with people and those animals and you see it in other other zoos where and even here in Topeka when we had some of those those baby cams going. Yeah. And worldwide you you build those those connections where someone's now seen that that animal born through the baby cam and they live in California and they can't wait to a year or two from now come to Topeka and see that animal in person. So I believe the social media would be a great aspect to be able to make those connections especially with our younger audience that we have in Tika and then like I said you can also monetize it where it helps pay for the enrichment which like I said rolls into more uh content for them. So thank you.

Well I appreciate your suggestion. Thank you very much. Council member Hiller, could you talk a little more about camps? both the camps for kids, what's offered these days, and also you got my attention with camp for grown-ups.

Yeah. So, we have so many different types of camps for kids. Our education team is amazing at staying at the forefront, making it relevant, um picking topics that are excited for that get kids excited, whether it's around superheroes or something that's popular. Um, at the moment we have a young education team and they're very connected to what connects to young people now. So, our camps follow different themes, but overall they're all about building that connection with nature, increasing that knowledge of wildlife. They're all year round. Our summer camps are so incredibly popular that they fill up within um just a couple of days of when we first offer them. What was happening though were parents were dropping their kids off and they didn't want to leave and they said, you know, this is so much fun. These kids are learning so much. They come home and they share what they've learned by being here at, you know, during the zoo at the zoo during the day. Is there an opportunity for us? And our education staff thought that that would be just a such a great idea. So, our adult camps are taught in the same way that they are for kids. And um it seems to be really popular. people will come and do it as a a date. Um they'll do it at with friends. So uh our adult camps are becoming more and more popular. And again, we are about lifelong learning. Um we want adults to keep coming back to the zoo and enriching their lives in the way that we do for children.

Thank you. if you could describe just a little more because I now have grandkids that might maybe I could get here but are those weekl long half-day summer camps and you're you know or weekends or just a class or what what are we talking about in terms of

it it all depends on the time of year. It could be weekl long camps over spring break over the summer. It could be dayong programs. So, we really can tailor them based on what what people find um can fit into their schedule and what that looks like. I'm with you. I have a 5-year-old son. I can't wait for him to get a little bit older so he can actually come to our camps. Um but there really are so many different options that really fit most families. Um so, yeah, it could be you can participate in a in long camps or short ones and um it's really up to what you think is best. Okay. Well, didn't know what the variety was. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

And and we do have them all listed on our website so that you can see the what we offer at different times of the year, different lengths of the programs and the topics as well. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Hoer. Okay, I've got one question because I keep forgetting when it is. When does Tiger Trails and Denm opening?

Yeah, we are have been so fortunate uh with the weather and our construction team. We're working with KBS. They have been moving right along. Um I was saying the other day they were putting tiles on the roof of one of the buildings and it literally sounded like the 4th of July with all the nail guns that were going off. They are moving so quickly. We are currently on schedule to open at the end of July. Our goal is to open on Global Tiger Day, July 29th. Um I have staff in the audience. They probably are want to kill me because I've actually just said a day. But um in actual fact, we're moving right along and we're we're pretty thrilled that this summer we're going to be opening Tiger Trails.

Okay. Then the other thing I'd like you to talk about is Earth Day.

Oh, is Earth Day? Earth. Earth Day is one of our best celebrations in that we invite people onto our campus to talk about different aspects of preserving the environment, what that looks like, how you can take local action. We're doing something really fun this year as well. Uh along the theme of Earth Day is we have a seasonal exhibit coming to uh coming to the zoo. I believe it opens at in miday. It's called washed ashore. And washed ashore are six sculptures that we're bringing to Topeka. And the sculptures are made out of plastic that was washed ashore on beaches and volunteers collect it and they make these sculptures. We were really fortunate to have so much support for washed ashore that instead of having these six sculptures at the zoo, we actually offered them to different locations in Topeka. So there'll be a sculpture at the discovery center, at Washburn, in Nodo, at the library, and at the zoo. And it's married to the theme of Earth Day of how what the actions that we take locally to protect our environment really protect environments not just here in Topeka but all around the world particularly how single-use plastics move from the Kansas River through to the oceans. So Earth Day is a combination of activities about learning about the environment but also learning actions that we can all do as Topekans to protect our local environment. And then I'll put a plug in for the new mural that's currently being painted right now. If you drive into the parking lot at the zoo, you'll see it on the um concessions building.

The whale I believe is done.

Yeah. We we were again really fortunate. We have a great relationship with the Rotary Club of Topeka and I know that me that you're many of you are are part of that club and the Rotary Club really came on board with helping communicate the messaging around reducing the use of single-use plastics and what they did is they supported um a really outside of the box um project around getting people excited to learn more about that and that is a mural project. So, we brought in a mural artist and when you come to our zoo, it's on the wall that's actually not even inside the zoo. We wanted to make sure that the mural was accessible to everyone. So, you don't actually have to pay to get into the zoo to see the mural. It's in our parking lot. And it tells the story of single-use plastics entering the Kansas River, how it moves through the environment using different iconic species, whale shark, we have a diamondbacked terrapin, bald eagle, and what that looks like for takans. So it's a a way for us to connect takans to our local environment and also all the way to the ocean. And anybody can come see it. You don't have to pay admission to get into the zoo. You just have to drive into Gage Park and park in our parking lot. It's so big. You don't even have to park in our parking lot. You just have to be engaged park.

Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, thank you very much for being here this evening. Again, thank you so much for your time, your support of the zoo, and allowing us to serve this community. Thank you. All right, we move on to our third and final presentation of the evening. City clerk C is the Oakland Wastewater Treatment Plant Remediation Review. City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, Sylvia Davis, our utilities director, and Jason Tryion, our director of public works, will lead us through this discussion. All right. Good evening. Tonight, um we just wanted to do a quick overview of an incident and resulting actions um that happened at the end of last year and beginning of this year. Um, diving right in. Um, as background, I've advanced one slide two. Give me back. Okay. As background, um, on December 6th, there was a large sanitary sewer overflow from a digtor out of the Oakland wastewater treatment plant. That same day, that was a Saturday. That same day, um, utilities called in Chavez Restoration to initiate emergency services cleanup work for us. um in accordance with ANIE standards for professional water damage restoration. The next day they came to do an inspection and then December 8th we called them back to perform final cleaning efforts, minimize odor uh in an effort to minimize odors that staff were experiencing and conclude the mitigation efforts at that time. Then on January 23rd, our city sponsored healthc care clinic reported a concern related to a potential health hazard after treating five of our employees with an advanced respiratory illness. These employees all worked out of U building which is an old building on the plant facility. Um they reached out to our HR team as a precautionary effort and felt the need to investigate further. So at that point a joint effort was made to proactively close UB building and relocate those employees temporarily while we con uh performed further testing and and investigation.

Uh the Shauny County Health Department and KDHE was notified of the concerns and then our plan of action moving forward. And then following that, as we awaited testing, um we were attempting to manage access to that facility. So we took additional measures to secure the building, installed some manual locks, um to ensure that only limited personnel were allowed in there under supervision. Um just out of an abundance of caution, the city reached out. We worked with our facilities team to contact environmental consultants to schedule air quality testing of several buildings at the facility. So UB building but also several others to see um if there were other cause for concerns at that time and then we can compare some of those results. Uh those results once we finally got those back were provided to the Kansas Department of Labor Industrial Safety and Health Division. I might add um as we receive those results, we've shared those with all of the employees that report out to that division um and work out of Oakland and the folks that work out of North Topeka and Shwood as well as they do u move back and forth um through those plants. The different buildings that were assessed were again U building the building in question at the time. That building is an part of the original uh plant. So constructed in the late 20s very early 1930s. Uh it was an old pump station that was converted to office space at some point in history. Uh we house our or we did house our collections team out of that building. There was conf conference space, their lunch area, break room um and then some offices out of that space. We also um

assessed sea building which is another older part of the plant where we not only have offices and and old bathrooms, locker rooms, but it also houses some functional components of the plant. So we have some large um equipment in there, polymer machine, etc. uh our GHI building, what we refer to as GHI, that is where our 24-hour operations team is uh offices out of. So, uh there's some management offices up there, but the SCADA control system is up there and then that's where they monitor the system and report to. They have a lunchroom up there, locker rooms as well. Um, we also assessed our administration building which um has over the years been expanded and we have a lot of administrative staff that work out of that area as well as our lab that processes um storm water and wastewater um for sampling and things like that. So the testing that was performed um both a visual inspection and internal and air external air sampling for fungal uh microbes. Um so the reason you do that is there's no such thing as no spores or microbes in the air. You compare that to the outside air and determine if it's elevated over what the background is. uh also some uh adenosin triphosphate readings, luminometer readings for bacteria and then some actual direct uh bacteria air and surface sampling where they take swabs of designated surfaces. Uh you've all been provided copies of that report. Also the uh representative of the testing company who performed those tests is available if there's any um additional questions. Some of the key findings um we did see that there was um some fungal growth and some bacteria in areas uh that corresponded with moisture. Um emphasis being that these are aging buildings that infrastructure does have some damp and dark environments places where it is

conducive for those things to happen. Um we did see elevated fungal levels in multiple buildings uh including HVAC systems like on some of the registers and ducts walls ceilings um mostly due to elevated moisture and again aging infrastructure and also some elevated ATP levels and bacteria that was above um thresholds that are considered clean. There is no exact threshold for what is considered elevated or dirty depending on the environment you're in. Um but we did see some areas that had higher counts than are considered normal. Um these included both areas that were directly affected by the backup, but then also other surfaces with within the building. Uh specifically in some hightouch areas like handrails, break rooms, microwaves, things of that nature. All of that indicated to us we had some um some gaps within our cleaning and hygiene program. Uh so the actions that were taken uh first of all uh UB building has been closed and will stay closed indefinitely. So as you know that building was already scheduled to be mothballled. We are in the midst of a renovation to move all the staff out of that facility. Um so that facility will remain unoccupied until we can perform a complete remediation and demolition. C building maintenance building we moved employees out of that area and we're going to do uh full remediation with a qualified contractor. uh that's scheduled to take place next week. Uh the GHI building, we've introduced some additional increased cleaning regimen and safety protocols. And then also in the administration building as well, we noticed that there are some elevated humidity readings in the basement. We're doing some additional assessment to determine if maybe there's some water that's building up around the exterior of the foundation and then if we also need to do uh some additional dehumidification measures uh through our HVAC systems. Um, as Jason noted, uh, we do have and are almost finished with the renovations of BB building. So, additional action items would be to finish that project, which is slated for the end of this

month, so that we have that permanent location for this uh, group of collections operators. And then since we've had to temporarily move those maintenance uh mechanics out of SEAB building, uh we have some additional space there for them that they can move into because right now they're reporting to our North Pika plant. So um at least that will give everybody a little more um local um reporting space and uh we are very excited to show you the results of that building expansion. Staff are excited to move into that um new facility there. Um once we complete that and get everybody situated uh and finish the mold remediation out of Seab building, we will do testing on occupied buildings out out at our North Topeka plant. Uh again, an older facility much newer than Oakland. Um but still old and we want to assess that as well. Um if we have other facilities, for instance, out at the water plant, we will plan to test those if we have some that have some of the same characteristics. Um we are also partnering with the industrial safety and health division of the Department of Labor. So, um, we had planned to review our PPE requirements, our standard operating procedures, but, um, we're going to be working with the Department of Labor so that they can help, uh, reinforce the expectations and the, um, need for increased uh, general hygiene practices such as how often are we cleaning surfaces? How often are employees advised to wash their hands? um things like what kind of gloves are they or should they be wearing, face masks, things like this. Um it's a reminder that while some of our team have been doing this work for 20, 30 years, um we can't be complacent and we have to keep in mind that it is a

wastewater treatment facility, so exposure is higher than uh your average industrial um facility or general workspace. Um, so we're we're happy to partner with them and uh that's a great service they provide and then we're also uh developing those relationships so that we can work on them with some other safety uh initiatives that we have uh plans for. So, additionally, we are going to, like Jason said, do additional remediation if it is required if we decide to demo or do any other reconstruction on some of these buildings. And then, uh, it really highlights the need for increased funding for facility maintenance, uh, repairs, upgrades, etc. Uh just like the rest of our infrastructure, the pipes out in our system, the operational components of our water and wastewater treatment facilities, um we have a need for the the maintenance and upkeep of those buildings where our staff is housed out of and oftent times that gets pushed in priority based on the other needs. So, uh, we want to make sure we're doing a good job of reflecting all of our needs so that we can adequate adequately fund those and ensure that we're keeping up on that. So, um, without further ado, uh, on the call with us is Glenn Robinson. He's a senior project manager with Axiom Service Professionals. um some of the notes that we took away from our conversations with him after we got the testing results. Um I'll walk through but then you can hear it um from Glenn himself. So there was an assertation that cleanup efforts following that overflow in December were not adequate and the testing results provided uh proved otherwise that that there was real no real concern that there was

inadequate um restoration services by our contracted provider. Sebuilding was not impacted by that SSO yet. Those testing results found elevated fungal and bacterial levels similarly to that found in U building. So that highlights the fact that um there's less concern of anything in Ubuilding being caused by directly by that overflow. Uh the results do indicate long-term issues due to age and condition of these buildings and results from this testing do not support that u building andor that overflow again directly rec directly caused any of those reported illnesses. Um, we have advised all of our employees that if there are concerns, um, they should feel free to take these reports to their medical providers, their doctors, share them with them, discuss those results, and, um, as with all the communication that we've put out since this has happened, um, advise them to reach out to our risk management team and HR, uh, if there's concerns of a workman's comp claim, etc. So with that again, um Glenn is here. Uh he can introduce himself and his credentials and then answer whatever questions you all might have.

Glenn, you're muted. You're muted, Glenn.

Thanks everyone. Um yeah, I'd just like to say uh I've spent my majority of my career. I started out with Burns McDonald engineering uh in the environmental consulting division. Uh there I did a tremendous amount of work with aspesus lead and then mold become a very big issue as we moved along. Um this is something we do quite a bit of at Axiom. Um mold, bacteria and so forth. So, um, when I arrived on site, there was a sense that maybe the cleanup wasn't sufficient in the U building and, um, some of our testing in the actual areas where that occurred. um really showed that it was actually fairly successful and we used a technology called ATP which is a brief screening um of surfaces much like we did CO was a big issue. We would did a lot of testing in schools um trying to determine you know high contact areas what needs to be cleaned and the the result of our testing at CO timing was very similar to here. It just comes down to really boots on the ground and and cleaning regiments and that becomes more and more difficult. You know what we did in 1930s is not what we are doing today. And um I think it's important to understand that bacteria and mold are everywhere, but what we're finding are some molds that are indicative of long-term elevations of moisture. Um we're seeing some bacterias that are potentially um antibiotic resistant.

um these molds and bacterias will evolve like we do over time. And um I think that's what we're looking at tonight is the the uh severity, if you will, or the significance of some of the things we found. And with that being said, um I think uh our speakers have kind of notated this fairly well and and our position at Axium and how we felt about what we seen. So all right, thank you for that. We'll now take questions from the governing body. Council member Valdivia Alkala.

Thank you, Mayor. Um I'm going to have questions for both since I've been doing uh some research and some help with research. I'm going to have questions first for Axion. Um because I think that we all know I don't know how many of you actually went through the reports. The reports were like Greek. There's no way unless anybody on the governing body is a scientist or a doctor that they're going or environmentalists specialist that they're going to be able to understand that. So that's what the employees were expected to understand as well. So what I'm going to try to do is the baseness of the research that I did and I'm going to try then to ask some questions that are concerning when I look at the presentation and when I look at the paperwork that has been uh uh given to me. So for you sir, we can see from the report that there were multiple locations tested in the U building that contained sewage related bacteria along with other forms of bacteria where in some cases levels measured hundreds of thousands of colony forming units per square in above hospital safety benchmarks. On their own, these bacteria are all potentially harmful. But what is not something covered in the Axiom report specifically but is important to note is what happens with the combination of these different brand negative bacteria together and what occurs when they linger in an environment over a period of time. for our knowledge and please make this to a level where we all can understand what are endotoxins and the impact they have on the health of the environment say within you building

right well where often where you find mold you will find bacteria mold likes to digest bacteria um you're referring to the hospital levels that's part of the difficulty in Miss Christina is that the only published guidance documents right now are particularly developed for hospital or the medical industry. So when we're talking about a wastewater treatment plant, it's really hard to compare that information. Um what you have to do is really for us what we tried to do is look at the types of bacterias and mold that were present and is that something that's common in our environment or is it more uncommon? Um and what we found is that some of the molds and the bacteras were not commonly found indoors. Um the levels they varied uh different you know it's just like contact points um contact points on a table much may be much higher than a refrigerator handle or something of that nature. So, um I will say there was another statement in our report that was tested out of Dubai in a shopping mall where those counts were commonly much higher in 150,000 colony forming units per per grain. So, with that being said, um there's just like mold right now there really no one that is going to stick out their neck and say this is too much. The CDC is not doing it.

Um the state's not doing it. OSHA's not doing it. Um what we have to go on is just really at our point in time is is the types of material or types of bacteria and molds present and uh are they are they unusual and in this case with the age of the building and the structures that we're dealing with, we determined that yes, they were unusual.

Okay. So, I don't think you really answered my question, but let me let me just I'm going to take over from here for now. What I want to make sure that everybody knows as far as the research that I've done, when gram negative organisms are no longer actively infectious, they release lipopolysaccharide endotoxins. Endotoxins are basically, I guess you could say, pathogenic uh bacteria. Endotoxin is a major driver of cough, chest, tightness, wheezing, bronchitis like illness, flu-l like symptoms, airway inflammation, reduced pulmonary function. This is a wellestablished occupational hazard in wastewater facilities. Importantly, workers can become ill even from dead bacteria because endotoxins remain biologically active. This is widely known to contribute to a condition as and it's called occupational lung disease in wastewater utility workers. There is something that I just wanted to point out because you say in the presentation seabuilding was not impacted by this sewage level event yet the testing results revealed elevated fungal and bacterial levels. And I just want to point out because I have the reports here on building C out of eight of the swabs that you did in building C and building U is what we're worried about where people are saying that they got sick and the nurse clinic nurse was worried or whatever. Out of the eight swabs that happened, only two of them, it looks like there out of the eight

swabs that were done, the majority of them state no sewage related bacteria detected. So my understanding of this sir would mean they were different types of bacteria because the bacteria found in the U building was specific to sewage sewage bacteria. Is that correct or is that not correct? Because again I'm I'm looking for you to for insight that can give me a yes or no answer. Yeah, you're you're correct there. And you know, one thing I will say is that it doesn't always have to be a gram negative. Many gram negositive bacterias also cause staff infections and other things. So when when it says no gram or no sewage related bacteria, the labs right now are looking for colifform. That's the number one culprit. That's what they consider sewage. So if they don't see a colifform type bacteria, they'll report out whatever bacteria that that is like the lluria that is a that is a antibiotic resistant bacteria

that um was found in and I believe both buildings. I know for sure in your building. So um no, I'm on board with you. I understand what where you're going with that but

Okay. Right. So, let me ask you this other question. You have said that results from the testing do not support that you building and or or directly caused any reported uh illnesses and you said and and I heard that you said that in a meeting with employees today. But all through these forms and I'm looking specifically at UN and C building you have in your conclusions that bacteria swabs there is no threshold. There is no known threshold that you all can define whether it makes something safe or unsafe. And that is the frustrating part. And it's all there in a high stakes environment like hospitals. A surface is often considered dirty or potentially contaminated if it exceeds specific colony forming units, CFUs. And those CFUs go anywhere from 2.5 to 5 CFUs per centimeter or roughly 16 to 32 CFUs per square inch. So you're saying two things in my opinion. One, there's no threshold. one, there's no real standard that you all can go by to determine if something is safe or not safe. But yet, you say that none of the illnesses by the employees, which the nurse stated, she did not believe were seasonal or flu related. So, that's the other thing. And the and the part where you mention the hospital standards in the 16 to 32 CFU per inch. We are looking at hundreds of thousands of of levels. Hundreds of thousands were the numbers if you look at the reports for the level level of

the sewage type bacteria. So it's a hu it it I mean it's just an astronomical level. And so how can you state when you came in and did your testing, you also give information about mold from from New York State Health Department and how mold can be very very risky and a health hazard, right? But yet you are stating you are sure that none of these illnesses were caused by what was found in the building with the sewage spill uh spill. I I'm I'm wanting to understand that. Well, I will I will talk I will say right now, Christina, I had no discussions with the people of Topeka today. So, I'm not sure where that you got that information, but I was uh I I had no discussion with anybody from the city of Topeka today. As you

I'm not saying you you just told you just said that. I said in the presentation you said was there did Okay, that's my apology. with the staff of Topeka. I stated that. I did not state that. I will go on record. I did not state that. Okay?

And that's my I make an apology, but there was someone from Axion that was present at an employee meeting that basically stated what is exactly in this presentation and I don't know who that is. I made a mistake and I thought it was you. Uh I I don't know that anyone from Axiom would come out and say that for first of all because that that's ludicrous. We couldn't we couldn't determine that Christine. We're not medical doctors. We could not we could not go out we would not go out and jeopardize you know ourselves by stating something so wild. But that's in the presentation.

I'm sorry. Help me understand. I'm sorry Christina. I did not develop that presentation.

Council valu I will point out staff made that presentation not Axiom. Okay. So then there is obviously a miscommunication here and there are some wide assumptions being made on whatever the reports say and I've looked through all of them mostly C and you and so sir with your name above and then all of this information after and you were here to answer questions. I was assuming that you listened to the presentation and we're ready to answer questions on that. So that's my apologies. And so I think that what we need to do right now is just back off on on that because this PowerPoint is a cluster. I have a question for the city though and I don't know if it would be the city manager or the deputy city manager. Um, Representative Alkala and myself and some advocates went to go meet with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment representatives to discuss the findings of this report, uh, the, uh, Axiom reports and their role in the situation. We found out that KDH's responsibility is to monitor the safety of the water that the public consumes. So the processing treatment of the water and ultimately any exposure the public would have to potentially contaminated water. And that means and this is an important point. KDH does not investigate whether sewage spills or contamination within a city building impacts the safety of utility workers, their own community. That is a Kansas Department of Labor issue. Additionally, we found

out that KDHE classifies the U building as an administrative building and not a treatment facility. Therefore, they would do no kind of inspections at all on that. On December 9th, 2025, the city spokesperson told the newspaper, and I'm quoting, "There are no health risks of the spill and there was no danger to the community." And here I'm sure they meant the larger community, the public, but we also have to look to our community of city of Topeka workers. That statement was made to the public on the exact same day. A representative of the city of Topeka signed a document acknowledging that you building could become biologically contaminated and cause toxic illness due to the spill on the same day. One statement to the public, a different acknowledgement in private. The company that the city of Topeka hired to clean up the sewage spill in building U was Chavez Incorporated. Classified this event the first day they came in as a category 3. For the people listening today, category three is the highest level of sewage contamination in the professional restoration industry's own standards. It means the water is grossly contaminated and can contain pathogenic pathogenic agents or pathogens or micro or they are micronisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that invade the body causing infections, damage and disease. That's not my characterization. That's from the receipt the city paid on. The city ultimately chose to sign a statement of understanding and release

of liability documenting that they defined full remediation steps and I quote Monday 128 2025 and this is Chavez. We spoke with the property owner regarding the remaining steps required to remove affected materials in compliance with state and federal regulations. We explained the requirements of collecting samples for lab analysis of any materials that could potentially contain asbestous prior to removal. Upon closer inspection, because I do believe they went out there twice, we provided additional recommendations, including full cleaning, decontamination, and sealing of affected drains and concrete due to the strong residual odor. The property owner declined these services and opted to address all remaining steps independently. I know the waiver was forwarded up the chain of command. I know it because I've talked with people that I'm not going to name that know that it went. So that either the deputy city manager or the city manager would have to provide authorization. This is not an underling authorization to sign the waiver. So my question to whoever wants to answer it is were the additional remediation steps done that I have a copy of from Chavez and what qualifies either the city manager, the deputy city manager or whoever made the decision to, you know, have the liability to determine that they could do these remediation steps that you have to have special

lensure for. And if there was that additional med uh remediation that needed to be completed because of the high hazard risk, who was it that did it? That's my question.

Somebody city manager.

I guess I'll take that one. Um, obviously, council member, we we have folks that that monitor these situations. I mean, immediately uh during the event, deputy city manager was on site uh basically there uh doing the cleaning um or not doing the cleaning himself, but overseeing uh the cleanup. Uh obviously, we brought the rest of the team on. As far as the approval of of who may have declined additional work, I mean, I'll definitely have to look to the team to fill in that blank. Um, but I I mean, I can't say that it came to my level to accept or decline um that that additional work. I I think we did do some due diligence as far as uh um why uh the additional work was not completed. I think we've shared that with you. can ask the team to fill in some of those blanks from here.

Well, let me let me just say let me just say this before the the rest of the team answers so the governing body will know. This is what Chavez said stating under their state and federal regulations which are in a manual which have thresholds that what needed to be done that was signed off on that would not be done is remove all porous materials that were saturated with a category 3 sewage water. Thoroughly clean. Apply disinfectants. Dry and seal as necessary all remaining structural components such as drains, framing, and concrete. Prior to disturbing certain materials, we are required to test for asbesus regardless of the building age. Per your request, we have removed our equipment and the remaining steps will be handled independently. when I asked about this and why if if it was or was not done because I found out this through social media that there were concerns about workers going back in there or being asked to go back in there. I was provided an email from Deputy City Manager Copley saying Chavez did provide the city with its standard form to protect itself from future liability offering additional services such as removal of drywall etc. The city did not elect any of the additional services since they were not warranted. The drywall had already been removed near the floor in a flood event that had occurred earlier. Since the recent flood event did not rise to the level of the drywall, there was no need to remove more of it. And I want to specify in that labor in that liability waiver nowhere does it mention removing drywall or any other standard services. It is clear from the document that

specific remediation services were required because of the hazard level and according to the standard for professional water damage restoration and list specifics to the situation in U buildings. Again these are requirements by state and federal law. Okay, council. I'm gonna have staff answer that and then I'm happy to circle back to you, but I got many other council members with questions. I'm gonna let them start to ask their questions also. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you.

So, uh the short answer is uh Chavez follows those professional standards. There are additional services they offer just like they would at your home. Do you want me to do X, Y, and Z? When it discusses sealing up drains, they're specifically talking about a very large inlet that is outside of that building. It's right at the base of the basement of UB building. We cannot seal that up because that is a large storm water drain where the majority of the sewer overflow ended up going. Um what didn't end up in that building went down that drain. That's a functional part of the plant. We cannot physically seal up. That's just one example. Um there's pictures in their reports highlighting the areas that they're referring to. We did have another spill of the similar nature, just not the same volume back in 2003 or four um where as the um communication um from Braxton uh mentioned that we had already done some of that removal. So any other removal of porous surfaces would have been studs uh to those walls and we're talking about the basement and subb areas of that facility where we don't have regular um employee access to at that point. So that's why some of those services were declined. Um to your question about the authority to sign that paperwork. Uh so we did have a question emailed through the management through through the chain of command. Um is this a form that we can sign or that the city manager should sign legal advice that the city manager should sign that? As we were working through that process, we found out that a frontline supervisor that day had went ahead and signed that. So he didn't know he did not have the authority to sign that. he

was the representative on site talking to Chavez the second time they came back. So, um I don't know that he was really understanding the magnitude of what he was signing. Uh however, if that it's not maybe the best answer, but that's the reality of the situation. Council member Banks. Oh, sorry. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to respond to that, please. And then I'll I'll stop until my next round. Go ahead, council member.

Okay. So, I again I have information from an individual that said that it went up the chain of command and there were there was concerns by a number of employees that the person that signed off was told to do so and that was concerned afterwards. There were a number of employees concerned that he would end up being thrown under the bus. I have to say the explanations make no sense because on the one hand you are saying that uh almost this is what it sounded like. I'm not I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. This is what it sounds like. They were trying to sell additional services. They are by state and federal regulations and I have the paperwork of what they have to abide by. I have the link to the standards that they have to abide by which are on that paperwork. So, I do not believe from what I'm hearing that there was actually anything done. Uh, count or um, Mayor, I'll defer.

Council member Banks.

Thank you, Mayor. As my question is going to be to you, Director Davis. As we're sitting here, of course, we all appreciate the precautions that were taken uh to secure the buildings, but as we are all human and humans and certainly those employees have to take first priority in my thoughts, I don't see when we hear words like the testing was fairly successful to me that lends credence to the fact that maybe we could dig a little deeper or we don't have the tools that we need needed in that process to be accurate. as I'm listening to all of the information that was given by Councilwoman. Uh if some of those things come to f fruition, how do we tell our public that we're being transparent when they're hearing and it sounds like this information is pretty factual. I think as a a city, as a department, we have got to be concerned about be concerned about some of the issues that could come a year from now from employees. And I know having served on the fire department, there are situations that could arise later that may affect what we're doing right now. Um, I don't understand a lot of the terminology that's being used, but I do know it's important for us as a

governing body to be concerned. So I would say certainly we need to have more information from um your your department and then maybe make some decisions about what could come next. Okay. Can I respond? Uh yes,

briefly. I'll try to keep it brief. So um I want to highlight the fact that uh category 3 sewage spill it sewage it is partially treated sewage. It is a large volume of that. Our employees work with sewage every single day. So as part of our training as part of our monthly safety trainings we have a safety committee. We have lots of things put in place and established to protect our employees. However, it is a fact. That's the reality of the work that we do. We encourage vaccinations. We train about bloodborne pathogens, contaminants, etc. We have a lab on site with biologists, senior biologists who are qualified. They handle this material every single day. Um, we talk a lot about complacency. So, while this is a large volume of sewage, it's no different than a small volume of sewage. If you're going to work with the equipment, if you're going to be in proximity, you want to wear the proper PPE. We have laundry uh services that we all of the WPC employees are provided um uniforms and laundry service with that. That's a service that we have provided for decades because of the nature of the material that they're working with. They don't want to take that home on their clothes. They can change in the locker rooms. We have showers in many of the buildings at the plant, both North Pika and less at North Pica, but more at Oakland um that are there for them to shower off if they are exposed again before they go home every day. Um we offer them PPE. Sometimes that PE PPE is not a favorite of them to wear. That's some of the work that we're going to be doing with the Department of Labor. At what

point do we say it might not be comfortable for you, but we are going to require it because it's in your best interest. Those are some of the the discussions that we have had and will continue to have uh as we look to again our practices, training, and then holding that level of expectations for all of us. Um, I'm down there today talking with the team. I'm touching the same handrail that was swabbed in these reports. So, I have to know that uh it's probably in my best interest to use hand sanitizer after wash my hands, etc. Um, one of the refrigerator door handles that was swabbed, uh, it was a inside joke for some of the team that there is a sign on that refrigerator that says, "Wash your hands before touching this refrigerator." because of the nature of the work that they're doing. Um the same as if you're out in the field and you're working on a vac truck, you're pulling hose, you you can expose yourself to that. If you choose to smoke a cigarette out there afterwards, have you cleaned your hands not or not? Are we equipping our vehicles with sanitizer, um soap, etc. So, we want to make sure that we have that proper PPE and that we set those expectations so that everybody knows even if they've been there 20 or 30 years that hey, we do work in a hazardous environment. This is part of what we do and we need to be mindful of that.

So, I understand the door if someone uh happens to come to us with an illness the door is still open so that they will be taken care of.

Absolutely. Yes. Um because it's not just these employees in Ubuilding, those collections employees, it's it's all of our employees, our operators, our maintenance mechanics, our lab techs who receive those samples and process those samples. All of those uh employees have potential exposure to any illness and bacteria that can be found in the sewage material samples. Again, um a glove laying on the ground that someone picks up, somebody that's handling uniforms, etc. It also helps remind us that we need to be communicating with our cleaning professionals. Hey, this is a in special environment. This isn't your normal office building. So, we need to make sure that we're um getting proper cleaning. If we need to up that regimen, we'll do that. Uh again, some of the bacteria, some of the pictures that you'll see in those reports are old moldy tiles and ceilings. I mean, that's something that you can find in almost every building that that has been around for some time. So, we need to take the time to dispose of those things so that we can really uh know whether this is old damage or new damage and can address those maintenance items too that are often overlooked because uh the the exciting work or the bigger um pressing priorities are more functional areas of the plant. We we need to provide that same level of attention to these facilities that people office out of as well.

Thank you, Director Davis. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council member Kell,

I just want to start off with um you know, my father was a master plumber, dealt with wastewater, freshwater. So, I I've been alongside working with him and realized that as Director Davis pointed out, one of the big thing I was going to talk about is crosscontamination. Um, not blaming any worker out there because it could just be something as simple as I could walk out there, go tour the facility, walk into the admin building, I could have something on my boots and I now infected the building by walking in with whatever on my boot. Um, the age of the building uh is can be a big factor on that which that is an older building 90 almost 100 years old. So, and I've seen that been out to that facility and uh actually marvel that we were still using a building that old. Uh question on on that building. Was the extra services that Chavez was offering or whatever else they wanted to do, was that denied due to the fact that the building is going to be shut down? I do believe that that was some of the thought process from some of those more intensive services that were being offered in terms of sealing along cracks and things of that nature. Again, this is an old dilapidated building. It is freezing cold in the winter. It's really warm in the summer. It has uh I mean, the walls that are put up in that facility were done by employees years ago. Um, so, so it's served its purpose very well, but we've known it just doesn't serve its functionality anymore. It we cannot make it ADA compliant. So, we've had plans to figure out a different place that we can move these employees before all of this came to fruition. So, um, so yes, I do think that that was part of the rationale by that employee at the time to say, "We're good here. you've done all the other cleaning, that's great. But some of

these um other services we we don't need right now. I I do believe I can't I don't want to speak for him, but I do believe that that was part of the process. I talked about crosscontamination.

Is there any plans in place? Like I don't remember when I toured the building. Are there like like I've worked in in some food factories. There are step pans like before you can even like once you step into the building, you step in and and it disinfects your shoes. hand sanitizer right there, things to mitigate, you know, like bringing in your work gloves, a spot they can put them so they're not taking them all the way into the building. Uh, is there any plans in place to maybe start addressing some of the issues where especially when it comes to maybe an admin building that has shouldn't have any any stuff in it but has it because of crosscontamination. Mhm. So, uh we we have a lot of things that are currently available, but then again, we're looking to have a lot of changes as we bolster some of those SOPs and look at uh what is industry standard for again normal everyday interaction at a wastewater treatment plant. Um so, we have boot covers. So, if if people are out and they uh some of our equipment operators are out in the field working on a sewer line, um we offer uh boot covers that they can pull up over their normal leather boots uh so that they can protect them a little bit further from any potential inundation of of sewage that they might uh come into contact with. uh we don't have step pans but again um that's why we have facilities in lots of our buildings so that they can stop and and change out of their equipment. We offer boot allowances um so that they can buy boots and make sure make sure that they are in good working condition. We don't want people walking around with holes in their boots and things like that. Um gloves. We have lots of variety of gloves depending on the efforts that they um are needing them for. Uh face shields. Um if any of

you have been out to the wastewater plants, uh it is not unusual to take a a group of people up on our aation basins where uh you might get a fine mist of water in your face that many of our employees uh myself included, we have been up there a number of times and that is uh treated to a level that most of us aren't too worried about that. But again, should we be required to wear some sort of shielding? Um, those are the the things that we need to determine, it's going to be painful. Not everybody's it's not going to be a popularity contest, that's for sure. Um, just like with COVID and requiring people to wear masks, it's a big change in habits and and that's some of those extra measures that we need to put into place to prevent um that crosscontamination. Another example is um while we provide laundry service, do we require people to use it? Over the years, we've had um some employees say the um the soap that they use, the the chemicals that they use at the laundry facility, um I'm allergic to those. So, they may opt out of those services or they might get frustrated if uniforms are lost and just say, I'm going to deal with it at home. Uh we need to make sure they're aware of those risks in doing that. Yeah, I I'm not trying to downplay this at all. I I feel for the employees because like I said, I've dealt with it personally myself and work with my father and I just know crosscontamination can be a a huge thing. Uh you know, uh growing up with him and I know there are several times we probably walked in the house and spread it all throughout our house, family members that are farmers. I know I've walked through the fields and then walked right into a house before. And uh so a lot of this can, you know, be attributed to that. I know with when Mr. Robinson to action talked about hospital grade, you know, hospital testing

standards. We have a hospital in our area that has actually shut down a floor in a working medical building due to mold. So, it is not something that is uh a rare occurrence. It happens a lot and and you know, we're looking at a place where you know, sewage happens or crosscontamination and I'm using the example of a hospital. So, it's it's everywhere and it's just something I think we need to look at some of our standards maybe uh looking at equipment to test um with swabs and air more often and and not just in the sewage but all of our buildings because uh we don't need to be uh reactive, we need to be proactive and I just know certain things that when you get in a high um bacteria and mold area as as a sewage plant would be that that's something we probably need to look at a little bit more of the like I said the set pans as as an option and other things like that but also more testing more often.

Thank you council member McGee.

Thank you mayor. Um obviously health and safety of our employees has to be our priority and our residents. Um I appreciate you mentioned that you're doing ongoing training. Um other communities I've been in we we've done that. It's helped send a good message. It keeps some of the newer staff of, you know, aware of what's going on and it reminds some of the staff that have been there for a while of what needs to be done. We also had annual inspections from Department of Labor and they always had recommendations. I don't what we always had recommendations every year. Uh, and those, you know, you mentioned face shields, step bands, things like that. they always had a list for us. Um my my other question though is going going forward and I know we've got more questions coming up. Are there any internal testing tools that we can use to do ongoing testing of all of our facilities so that we can, you know, some of these things are things that have died and gone dormant, but then they start causing a new problem. as they lie dormant, we need to be testing on an ongoing basis to catch those when they start causing or before they start causing serious problems. So that that's a question.

Yes. Yep. That's great.

Uh so we have a testing program that we we do not have it specifically scheduled on a recurring basis, but many of our buildings have been tested in the past few years. anytime there's an issue of any kind of water penetration, we would do something like that. Also, we would do testing if there's any um issues that we saw from any kind of buildup um or when we're doing any kind of uh construction. Testing is always done in those environments as well to make sure that we're not exposing anything when we move things around old materials. We do work in a lot of old buildings, so we do testing anytime that happens. Uh the biggest key that we always want to maintain is making sure that you have good HVAC systems. Obviously any as you said things can build up over time. As long as you're getting good air changes per hour and you're not working in a damp environment, that's the number one thing you can do to make sure that the air quality that people are interacting with is safe.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Valdi Alcoa.

Thank you. Just one more um thing. I I wanted to reiterate on January 23rd, 2026, the governing body received the email from HR director Alicia Guerrero Chavez stating the city sponsored health clinic reported today a concern related to a potential health hazard involving the U building. In the past four weeks, they have treated five employees with an advanced respiratory illness they are confident is not due to the seasonal cold/ flu environment. So then we start seeing more movement after this. I will say and I do not know who the individual is. One of these employees was in the ICU. So you know we can say this has happened before. It happens all the time etc etc. But I also want to understand if Mr. Robinson did not come up with stating that none of this was none of these readings were responsible for those illnesses of those employees and if the clinic nurse said she believed that they were not seasonal or flu related who is stating this who is signing off on this that's what that's what I want to understand and before that the bottom line is Miss Davis is you are the director and If you cannot get your employees to wear equipment that is meant to protect them that my understanding is not in the contract that they do not have to wear, then that is on you because you are talking about taking care of your employees. And if we don't have them wearing the basic PPE equipment after all of these years, that is saying something more about the administration than it ever is about any worker. because supposedly allegedly the workers have been told the issue is they need to wash their hands more and that is a slap in the face to the workers. So

if you could please answer that question and I'm done mayor and thank you for extending me the time mayor. So to respond to the question about this statement in this presentation and I would ask also for some support from the deputy city manager and the city manager. And these this is not this last bullet on slide 10 is not a direct quote. And we spent quite a bit of time with this language, especially after I talked to those employees down there today because we spent a lot of time talking about medical professionals. What is um what is a summary? what is uh a a factual statement and again if they want medical guidance that needs to come from their healthc care provider not from us not from Axiom. However, um in a discussion that we had with Glenn after we got these results back and he was summarizing them, part of one of the questions that we had asked was is there any concern that the uh bacteria the the fungus the fungal um results that you have seen through this testing and that based on your experience is there concern you feel like there was I'm again I'm paraphrasing here. Do you feel like there is any cause for concern that this spill or the um results of this investigation would lead you to believe that it would cause sickness among multiple employees in this facility? So he did not say I promise you that nobody um could have gotten sick from this type of bacteria or

fungus/mold. However, um there was a generalized state statement that the testing results did not uh raise any alarm bells with him as something that he would normally see in in something that would cause widespread illness. But again, I I

and and the question the question that I I would like to ask Mr. Robinson to weigh in on is there was an assertion that this overflow caused the findings uh or the samples that you found in in your swabs. And the question that we asked during during our conversation with you, sir, was is that is that a thing or is this something that was pre-existing to to the event? And um can you weigh in on that?

Yeah, as we spoke earlier, that building is extremely old. Um that concrete is porous. It's been scoured by many years of water damage. Um you know in part of that conversation I asked the question you know I've been working with mold for 25 years and not till just the last 10 years has anyone really taken it seriously and bacteria is even shorter than that. So I'm talking the evolution of what we're talking about today. We know much more today as Christina has talked about endotoxins. We never had that discussion 15 20 years ago. So we're learning more as a as a society about these things. The other thing I want to go into is the reason why they have standards in the hospitals and nowhere else in the workforce is because they're looking at people who are immune compromised. And to the director's response, I asked her, and this is something that is out of my realm of actually being able to discuss because it's medical records. The problem we have and in the hospitals with their concern is being immune compromised, not that they exposed. The the bacteria piece is more significant as well as mold when you're immune compromised. That's the problem with the hospitals. That's why they have such a tight standard in the hospital because most of the individuals that are coming in there potentially immune compromised and become susceptible to these things and mold. We also found types of mold in the administration building.

Sir, I'm done. I'm not going to see anymore.

That um could equally be considered harmful. Uh we found chronic moisture molds in the admin building as well. So, you know, and and furthermore, I want to state that the sewage cleanup, the ICRC, as we talked about, that is not a state and federal regulation. Those are those are recommendations. That's not regulated by the state or the federal government. The only thing on this project that Chavez, I believe, is referring to, and I've worked with Chavez several times, is they're talking about if they wanted to remove additional drywall or they wanted to remove some floor tile, then they would have to test that for asbestous. That is the only federal, state, or local regulation that would apply here. The sewage cleanup recommendations are recommendations by IICRC. That's what most inter that's what the companies go by. So yes, they have three categories, you know, gray water, black water, and and this is a Blackwater situation. So it's not uncommon. Um, but I I just want to go on statement saying that the IRC those are not federal rec federally regulated recommendations. is I'm a Kansas and Missouri le risk assessor asbestous project designer and the only thing that would be governed here by federal regulation would be the asbestous testing that Chavez would have done had they removed additional materials in the building.

Any other questions or comments? I'm going to wrap us up on this. I think that clearly what's happened here is an unfortunate situation. I do think the fact that we're having this conversation in public is the right way to go about it as difficult as it is and I think this is what the public asks of us is when these things happen to have these conversations and present this data. I think where we've misstepped here a little bit on both sides and I will tell you that every employees who have reached out to me I have been very clear with them. Go to your doctor, get the tests you need, get some answers that you can get as to what may or may not be causing any symptoms or issues you have. And if you believe and they believe that there is some correlation, then bring that back to us. And we are here to take care of you and take responsibility. You are our employees and we want to make sure that if anything has been done to you because of the work you do for us, we're going to take responsibility for that. I think where if you read through the Axiom report, it's very clinical. It's very factual. It's very straightforward. It does not draw any specific lines in the written report as to what may or may not any of this have caused definitively in terms of any any health issues. I know KDH may have weighed in in some form or fashion on that, too. And so I think it's difficult for us to sit up here also on the other side and definitively be able to say that none of these issues are directly related to any work that these five individuals did for us whether it was because of one incident whether because of this specific mold or it's because they were longtime employees and this happens and so I think what folks want from us is some assurance that we are open to that possibility if that is the case and we have not shut that door definitively. But we also want to continue to follow the facts, look at the report, discuss it with the professionals, whether that's Axiom, whether that's KDHE, whether that's Department of Labor, and continue to bring them into this

conversation. And so I hope that through all of this, that's sort of what's been heard also by our employees is that we are we're looking at the facts as we can follow them. We are going to take follow-up steps as director Davis has said and we need everyone to take those seriously so we don't wind up here again. Whether that's using equipment properly, whether that's doing what you're asked, you know, in terms of we're not kidding. Wear the PPE. It's not a recommendation. It's a it's a requirement. And so I think that's what all of us simply want for all of our employees is to make sure we're taking care of them. Make sure they do know that we are taking it seriously and that we're going to continue to to not drop the ball on that fact. And so I very much appreciate this conversation from everyone. Thank you both of you directors for sitting here and and answering the tough questions and and listening to us and it's very much appreciated. So with that we are going to move on. All right, we'll move on to item five, the consent agenda. City clerk. A is the approval of a public works contract between the city of Topeka and Alfred Vanesh and Company for professional engineering and design services in an amount not to exceed $174,560. B is the approval of its utilities department contract between the city of Topeka and Alfred Benes and Company for professional engineering and design services and an amount not to exceed $56,600. C is the resolution introduced by Deputy Mayor Michelle Hoer cancelling certain governing body meetings and scheduling a special meeting for calendar year 2026. D are the minutes of the regular meeting of April 7th, 2026 and there are no applications. All right, we have a motion from council member Miller and a second from council

member Kell. Council member Hiller. Sorry, I missed that. Sorry, I missed that. This was on the consent agenda. I had wanted to ask a question about the special meetings for budget. Which which consent item are you referring to? The governing body meetings. So C. Yes. Thank you. So are you asking to be pulled off and made an action item?

Yes. Okay, then we will move consent item C and make it action item where we at G. With that, Council Member Miller, would you amend yours to approving the consent agenda as amended? Council member Kell, you okay with that? Yes.

All right, I'll ask the clerk to take the vote, please. Okay. And council member Valdivia Aqua, what was your vote? Yes. Okay. We have 10 yes. The motion carries. All right. We will move on to action items. Action item A, city clerk.

A is an ordinance introduced by city manager Dr. Robert Empere, amending Topeka Municipal Code section 8.6110, local amendment 10942 to the 2024 International Property Maintenance Code and repealing the original section to the Topeka Municipal Code. City Manager.

Thank you, mayor, members of the governing body. John Shardine, property maintenance director, and Matt Mullen, senior attorney, uh, will lead us to this discussion. Thank you, city manager, mayor, and council. Um, as the clerk indicated, this is an amendment to the 2024 IPMC local amendment 109.4.2 um into municipal code 8.60110 uh for the method of surface service. This aligns with the language in state statute for additional methods of service including door hangers, posting, electronic communication, or first class mail. uh property maintenance director John Shardine will discuss that certified mail has become costly and inefficient and so this is going to help help out uh their unit to move forward and getting those notices out.

Good evening uh governing body. Uh tonight's discussion involves um our current practice of uh notifications. Notifications required a valid method of service. Currently, our method of service is certified mail and personal service only. Um, since the 44 years that that was adopted, we've had technology advancements that allow us to send uh notices via email and our uh current um technology with um different advancements including uh the programs that we use. So now we had a technology to not only create the notices but we can also immediately send those uh via uh with the current technology that we have. This includes uh better pictures uh more information on the notices and enables immediate response from the recipient. So not only can we do it immediately but there's so much more information that we could give the recipient. And this is the big ask tonight. I'm asking to consider um not only first class mail but uh electronic and it's a big get. So imagine yourself as a recipient and receiving our notices as they come now. Black and white pictures, limited information. Now you're going to get it via email. And not only will you get it via email, our prosecution team uh has the capability of knowing who opened it, when they opened it, where you were at when you opened it. And that serves as due process.

Council member Kel. So for clarification, you're saying you want to dump the certified and go with Okay. No. No sir. I don't want you to remove anything from the ordinance. I want you to add first class mail and electronic.

Okay. cuz I'm looking at thinking about certified because I would much rather have the first class because it it it's actually going to get there because there's lots of certified mail that if you're not home you don't get it. You have to go to the post office. Well, if you work 9 to 5 or 8 to 5, when are you supposed to get to the post office and so people are not getting that mail? And so, uh, on that, are you also putting, um, like whoever you might be addressing or resident because as a a rental property may change things and all a sudden if I see, you know, if I see David Banks and I knew he used to live there, I may just toss that to the side. So, are you putting like or or resident on there on any of that information there?

Yes, sir. The resident receives first class mail no matter what. Okay. So whether it's owner occupied or rental, they receive first class mail. Okay? So they're aware of it also. Okay. And I might add that uh your certified mail nowadays costs $8.60. Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but my little division, property maintenance, we send out 8,000 notices. So do the math. It's about $70,000. Council member Ortiz. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So John, how will this work? So will they say this is how I want you to contact me and they'll give an email address or what?

The best practice would be obtain that information especially from our our big players in the city that own multiple uh multifamily housing. They're on board with this. As a matter of fact, when I interviewed I didn't just interview the people that actually get along with me. I went to the folks that don't and I asked them what can we provide to you to get better service because it's not it's not about what we can do as a individual it's what we can do as a team

and so their biggest response was can you bring me a copy of the notice that you that you uh generated because what I have is black and white it's limited information I said I sure can matter of fact I'll show up and we'll discuss it in person, which you've seen me do. So, with this technology, not only do we deliver a better product, we can track it cheaper and better. So, our prosecution team, which is a last resort, has that availability to pull it up and introduce it as evidence.

Thank you, Council Member Hiller. Um, John, just because I we you you had us ask and answer this question at public health and safety, could you talk about whether or when you would continue to use certified mail?

Absolutely. So, certified mail is still required certain aspects. It's it's very critical when it comes to billing and invoices. Uh, the state statute requires that we use certified mail for that. So, let's just say that everything we've done failed. We've got no response from a recipient. We still post the property. So if nothing if it comes back undeliverable, say first class mail, which is our current process, we take that notice and we go right to the front door and we post it on the front door of the property that's in violation. That typically gets a response. So we exhaust all efforts of making contact with the responsible party or the property owner. And if that fails, we post the property. I do not want you to change that part of it.

Any other comments or questions? It's It's on. Oh, is it on now? Sorry. Any other comments or questions? I have a motion to approve from Council Member Kell and a second from Council Member Hiller. There's no other questions. I will ask the clerk take a vote. And council member Valdivia Okla, what was your vote? I voted to Yes. Okay. All right. We have nine. Yes. Um the motion carries.

All right. Thank you, John. We will move on to action item B. City clerk. B is the Oh, hold on one moment here. Uh B is an ordinance introduced by city manager Dr. Robert M. Perez adopting the 2024 International Building Code with local amendments amending sections 142010 and 142060 of the Topeka Municipal Code and repealing original sections. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the governing body. Richard Faulner, our division director of development services will lead us to this item. Mayor, Council, thank you for your time. Uh re presenting a request to adopt the 2024 International Building Code uh for construction. The city has several codes that we use for the develop to guide the development in our community. Some of those codes are residential, some of them are commercial. This particular code is a commercial code. It's only going to address the commercial building in our community. Uh some of those codes are used for commercial and residential. Uh the governor body has requested that we keep our codes uh as current as possible. This is the 2024 international building code. It is the most current code that that we have. We generally adopt uh or go through the code process and reviewing the codes with the fire code and the building code because they have some chapters that overlap. Uh unfortunately, we weren't able to do that this time. So, we will be in the short term uh reviewing the international fire code 2024. uh updating the codes is an important part of staying current with the current industry, building industry. So that's why we adopt new codes as they go along. Also, the codes will help us to provide a safe and environ environment for our community and uh increase the quality of life. As you can see, these are the cities that we compare ourselves to when we look at our codes. As you can see, none of them are in the 2024. uh quite a few of them in the 2018 which is not a bad place to be. Most codes our codes that we use change every three years and best practice is to be within six or 3 years

of the code. So even though some of them were in 2018 uh that's still not a bad place to be but we're looking at adopting the 2024. The code review was done by the board of building fire of appeals. Uh we had a subcommittee of that committee and the people that were on there or the the industries that we had on that committee. We had contractors on there, we had architects on there, we had engineers on there. Uh also the city staff, fire marshall, myself and the uh permit uh manager also sat on the committee as liaison to help uh provide information that they needed. We took this uh request to the uh policy and finance committee and they recommended that we move forward with bringing it to this body to see about having it adopted. Notable exceptions, uh we kept the uh continue the sprinkler requirements for up to two dwellings and mixed uses. That's particularly addressing uh buildings downtown. A lot of those buildings down there have commercial businesses at the bottoms and housing at the top. Uh so and that we didn't want to have them have to put sprinklers in. So what we did was we increased the uh fire resistive construction that's required around the residential structure and required that there be an integrated uh alarm system. So the alarm system isn't just in the residential part or just in the commercial part. It's it's all the way around. So that's how we kept that requirement there. Uh we continue the exemption of the sprinkler requirements for up to four units. That's for treating town homes as single family homes. As long as they're in a rural, we not requiring them to be sprinkled. We're considering them single family

homes and they they have the same requirement. uh we increased the uh fire resistant rating in the construction of those and but in that case each of the alarm systems can be separate and with that I'll sit for any questions any comments or questions from the governing body council member Hiller thank you um in in one of your earlier slides you you talked about having to reconcile between the building code and the fire codes and Is that done? You you've talked about some things just now.

Yeah. No. Yeah, we I'm sorry. Ask your question again. I want to make sure I answer correctly. Well, when it was mentioned early in the presentation, I thought that was maybe still pending. There were some more things you needed to look at. Then toward the end, you were giving examples of fire codes. So,

yeah, the the at the end that's those are the amendments that we brought forward from last time from the 2021. So those amendments are still in there. I was just noting that they were there. So we haven't the fire code still needs to be reviewed, but a lot of the stuff that the the fire code and the building code that overlap, we don't foresee it being a problem at this time. Our next review will be the fire code to make sure that we bring them up together to keep them.

Okay. So I I just didn't want to prematurely run this through if you were getting ready to do that. So, you're going to look at the fire interface in a few months and then either just go with a fire code or maybe have some amendments to this one. Yeah, we're going to look at the 2024 international fire code. We're going to look at that code and we're going to make sure that the amendments that we made in the building code where they overlap in the fire code are the same. Okay. And so, we're just going to wait on that. Yes, thank you.

Yeah, because the building codes and the fire codes are independent of each other. They overlap because you have to incorporate them, but there's a whole separate set of fire codes. It's a separate set of building codes. And so when you update one, you you may be in different years because of when they come out. So then you have to make those amendments as you move as you move through that process. Well, I'm asking particularly because on the changing our culture of property maintenance, we have figured out that even though the the property maintenance code updated mention of CO monitors, when you lace it through the various fire codes, they don't really have to be in every property after all. They only have to be in the ones that have gas fired appliances. And so we're realizing the reconcil reconciliation and making sure that we've got the language in each one that flags what the what the requirement really is. Um and so sensitive to that one because we've got we got some cleanup to do on the IPMC side.

Any other comments or questions? If not, a motion is always in order. Move to approve by council member Ortiz. Second by council member Miller. Ask the clerk to take a vote. And council member Valdivia Aqua, what was your vote? Yes.

Okay. Okay. We have nine. Yes. The motion carries. Uh, one correction because the agenda I have is not the same as all the agendas that you have. So, we moved it. You were correct not to action item G, but that will be action item F because apparently I have an extra agenda item this even. So with that, we will move on to action item C. City clerk.

Okay. C is an ordinance introduced by city manager Dr. Robert M. Perez amending section 61580 of the Topeka municipal code regarding obtaining pet permits after deadline and repealing original section. City manager. Thank you mayor, members of the governing body, Matt Molden, our senior attorney and Jessica Bowers animal control supervisor will lead us to this item answer questions.

Thank you, city manager. As city clerk stated, um the fee schedule was adopted in January of 2026. It changed the pet late fee uh permit to a $4 flat fee after review by animal control. Um they thought this wasn't warranted and wanted to go back to what it was before, which is a $2 a month um late fee, not to exceed $24 per year. Um supervisor from animal control is here to answer any questions you have on that change back.

Hi. Um sorry. Hi, Jessica Bowers. I'm the supervisor for animal control. I am going to be completely honest. I did not know I was going to speak on this part of the part of the agenda, but I was informed kind of in the email on how this kind of transpired. Um, so I will speak on a little bit of what I found out with records, but what happened was when I introduced the chicken and rooster ordinance, we kind of realized that cuz I mimicked it from what it said in our ordinance with the late fees to it was not the correct ordinance anymore and that there was a change. And so when records found out about this, they're like, well, we don't really agree with that. So, um, what we came to was I believe that nobody really knew that the ordinance changed and wanted it just changed back. I guess someone came in and stated that there's been a lot of miscommunication with records and how there was a lot of late fees sent back. Well, they investigated that there was no reimbursements. There's maybe like one or two of a late fee that was sent back. And so they didn't understand the the the issue with the they were unaware that this was a problem. So, um, with that being said, it has worked for a while. I've never I've been out in the field, you know, I make sure that, you know, I always talk to them about getting their animals license, things like that. It has never been brought to me that the schedule was an issue. And so, um, we still want to adopt that back in and just keep it the way it is. How it is is it is 12 consecutive months. And then after that, we have a little 30-day window to, you know, hey, come get your animal licensed. And if they do not come get their animal licensed, then it's going to be where they get the $2 for that month and then that month that they were currently laid in. So, it's going to be where they're not charged

any more than $24 for a late fee, if that makes sense. Um, the wording is a little confusing because they don't charge them until that second month. So that would already be the $4. So if you break it down, it's $2 a month that they're late. So uh Council Member Miller, I think your committee heard this. Is it safe to say we made clerical error and we just didn't get this corrected the first time we updated this and this is a correction to that? That's my understanding. Error the first time around. Yeah, that's my understanding.

Perfect. All right. Any other questions or comments on this? Deputy Mayor Hoer.

I had asked when we had the policy meeting about the possibility of getting a way to charge it. There were a lot of people who got their animal at helping hands and the first year's license is included when they buy that animal. But when they come back to pay for it, there's a problem. So many of them only use a credit card and they said there was not a way to pay by credit card that it had to be a check or cash. Did we check into that and see what was possible?

Yes. Uh senior attorney Brandy Ray Bachmann checked in on that. And the reason we can't do um credit card off uh over the phone is for security reasons. They can come in person and pay with credit card, cash, check or money order. Is there any way to do something like through Venmo or um I'm not sure what the options all are, but are there any other options besides that? because some just don't have time to get in to do it in person.

I don't know specifically about Venmo or those options. Um I think we'd have to check with it on those capabilities whether we could make that happen.

And deputy mayor after I think it was after speaking about the item for uh e uh and policy and finance uh we talked about the whole idea of not being able to pay even for the fire pieces, right? And so what I've asked the team to look at is how we can look at a consolidated pay center um probably at Holiday Building. Um because right now if you look at it like you have to go up to the second floor to pay for parking uh parking citation if it's issued through uh parking enforcement. You have to go to the courts if it's issued through through the PD. And so what I'm trying to do is is look to see how we can consolidate um a one a one-stop payment center and looking at something online uh something we can do as we move forward. Um and and again I I just really want to consolidate payments. If it's any city service, you can pay for it at one location. Uh but we'll look at online options as well.

Okay. Um I I do want to point out um that I have got a lot of comments on why we cannot do it online. Um so if that is an option maybe down the line, I do think that you know that would help a lot of a lot of those not being able to come in and deal with that. So, and to add to that means very similar to, you know, being able to pay our water bills online. So, you know, we already have that capability. So, we might be able to expand that to other areas, but we'll make sure we look at that as we look at a consolidated payment center as well. Council member Kell, uh, to your point of the payment kiosk, these, if the ones were to pay in person, they're going to pay at at the law enforcement center, correct?

Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry. I was going to write that down real quick. Um, so yes, we when you go into the police department, there's a window to the right and it says animal control and you can pay there and they are open 8 to 5. Yes. So I I would I would want myself because of my hours. I work during the day that payment center be more to be at the law enforcement center rather than the holiday building which closes down at 5:00. So I think that'd be more if we were going to do something like that. That's more of the um I think uh availability aspect of things. Plus, that's where if you were going to pay in person, that's where you're going to pay. So, I think that would help out a lot better to have a law enforcement center than at the holiday building.

So, um along those lines, uh Councilman, um it it wouldn't be that we would necessarily move, you know, functions. I mean, if somebody wanted to, you know, go specifically to police department or something to pay for that, we could do that. I was thinking more along along the lines of being able to train the staff that's at holiday right now to be able to take multiple types of payments. Well, we're talking about the kiosk. You're talking about the holiday building. I thought you mentioned the holiday building kiosk.

No, the payments the the the folks that we have at the front desk that take water bill payments, etc. to see if there's an opportunity there. And I mean, this is not necessarily the place that I was ready to put it out, but but again, just just kind of looking along those lines uh as far as how we can have a consolidated payment center. and your your point is noted as far as being able to still be able to make payments for at the locations of the departments. So, but we'll look at that as we look at this whole opportunity to consolidate. Yeah, I thought you mentioned the kiosk and then the holidays. So, I was I was trying to, you know, look at people that work during the day that can't get to the our office buildings are closed by 5. So, is animal care like 24-hour operations though where somebody can go in and pay for

I thought they were saying a payment kiosk there would be a good idea. Okay, we'll look at that. Thank you, sir. Council member Hiller, I just wanted to chime in and really support online. It hasn't been that many years since animal control, I think, through a third party vendor. Yeah. Um, took payments online for a long time and that was really, really convenient. and anymore people pay with online for almost everything, even birthday presents to their kids, right? So, and and I do just want to point out as well is they're just not coming in and paying. They're showing us proof of vaccinations and so having like an upload file would really be helpful so they can upload the proof of vaccinations to get that tag sent to them.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And there might need to be documents with anything else too. Or at least that option to send a photo or send a bill copy of an invoice or something. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. All right. There are no other comments or questions. There's a motion to approve. Council member Ortiz, a second from Council Member Miller. Ask the clerk to take the vote, please. And council member Valdivia Aqua, what was your vote? Yes.

Okay, we have nine. Yes, the motion carries. I um I also wanted to point out on this next item for the chickens and roosters um the presentation somehow was not added to the agenda. So um I wanted to point that out. Um it was realized once we got to the meeting. So I do greatly apologize about that. No worries. As it is after 8:00, we're going to take a 10-minute break. Everyone, please be back here in 10 minutes. I'm going to start. So, if you're not here to vote, too bad, so sad. I'm going to start without you. Um, but it is after 8, so we need to take a little break.

All right, welcome back. I will bring this meeting back to order. With that, we are on action items and we will move on to action item D. City clerk. D is an ordinance introduced by the policy and finance committee concerning chickens and roosters, amending section 63010 and section 63020 and adding new section 63030 through 6 through section 63090. All right, city manager. Thank you, mayor, members of the governing body. Matt Mullen, our senior attorney, Jessica Bowers, our animal control supervisor, will lead us through this.

Thank you, city manager. Just a few notes to make. This adds section 030 to 6.30. So this limits the number of chickens to eight on a residential property. Um roosters are not allowed on properties less than 3 acres. Um the other sections require a chicken permit. Um talks about the fee for that permit and then uh the late fee that we is going to be similar to the other animal permits. Um, animal control supervisor Bowers is here to give a presentation on the reason for these changes and the um, facts behind them.

Hi. Um, again, I'm Jessica Bowers, the supervisor. So, this is going to be the same presentation that was also at the safety committee. Um, so I was unsure since it was already submitted. I know we kind of worked on it and changed a little bit of the numbers. I will tell you what we kind of talked about. I believe um and I honestly thought that um I would have the legal adviser here with me to kind of go over these changes. So I do apologize. Um if you have any questions just let me know. Um so we are going to talk about the chicken ordinance and about um the limit of chickens and also the limit of roosters which is um pretty critical when it comes to sanitation and things like that. So if you have any questions let me know. Um I just want to go over the presentation overview. So, we'll go over our current process, um, our current ordinances, why the amendment is needed, uh, number of foul and poultry calls of service. Again, this is going to be around, I believe, October when this was presented, October, November. So, the numbers have gone up for that year, but I can kind of show you how many, you know, foul and poultry calls we are getting. Um, ordinance outline. So the new ordinance outline that has been proposed uh new proposed chicken ordinance with that outline number chickens chicken permit process household data compliance and how we will follow through with that new ordinance and then a little question at the end. Um so our current ordinance right now is we do not have a limit on roosters and we do not have a limit on chickens and our foul ordinance is pretty broad. So, we we have ducks, um, chickens. It doesn't even specifically say roosters. So, we would have to kind of clean that up a little bit, make sure that it is stated that male chickens cannot be uh on property under 3 acres. Um, we'll

look for violations if there is any. If there is any concerns, um, if the violations are not fixed by that given time, uh, citations can occur. And sorry, I kind of jumped over it. So, um, with our fowl and poultry ordinance, we have it, it's not very strict, but we have it to where the the enclosure can be 50 ft from everybody's dwelling but their own. So, it can be right onto your property, but it has to be 50 ft away from everybody else's. Um, and the chickens, the poultry, the foul, they have to be in that enclosure. uh and it has to be securely enclosed which we don't have per se a definition for that but it also mean to us it means that it has to be enclosed to where predators cannot get to the foul the poultry all of that so we need to make sure it is secure we have to make sure that is it is enclosed if an animal if a poultry is running at large running at large technically means that even on its own property if it is not within that enclosure it is running at large so if you let your chickens out in your yard and they're running, that is technically running at large for poultry. So, I just want to point that out because it is a little different than another animal. Um, so again, when we're talking about looking for the violations, you know, we will give you a certain amount of time to fix those violations to make sure that you are within ordinance. Um, court can also give it. We haven't went far with the so this this is where I'm going off of other cases of dogs, cats, things like that, but court can give a directive to fix that violation. Pay a fine and or remove animals from the property. Um, again, we haven't had severe cases like that for our chickens and roosters, you know, foul. However, that is how it is based off of our other ordinances and what we have went through a court. Um, assist with rehoming if owner asks or directed by court. Um, I

do want to point out because this has also been brought up uh when we had the um where we had some other employees uh present this at city council a while ago. Um we do not have a holding facility for any type of livestock at all or fowl or poultry. So it's been very hard because we have been very open to other types of animals other than what helping hands can take including snakes. That's a different story. So, um, a helping hand is very limited to what they can take. And so, what I did was I did ask the community for help in that situation because if we do pass an ordinance on like this, we don't have anywhere to take them. So, um, right now, if a rooster was running a large in your area, that's a little different. We can have Shaunie County assist us on holding that animal through the stray hold. Um, but only if it's running at large. Only if that animal is not on their property will Shaunie County assist and take that rooster, goat, pot belly pig, anything that helping hands does not take. Um, so there is some fine lines with that. So when it came down to this ordinance, I was like, okay, we can we can put this ordinance out there and a lot of people at that time would be within violation. How are we going to help the community rehome if needed? Um, so I did get with um I made a Facebook post because we have a Facebook page now asking the community if they're outside of city limits um if they would be willing to take in these animals and go from there. I did get with Matt Mullen. We got um the legal paperwork done. So it would be a chain of custody surrender. they would surrender to us and then we would surrender to the person who wants to take them outside of city limits within

that reason. Um there is no obligation to that. So that is just out of the kindness of their hearts and us trying to at least give a solution if this does go through at the absolute if it's needed and if they've went through all options. So um just pointing that out there. So, um we can assist with rehoming, but it it's very limited. Um no permanent holding, like I said, no permanent holding facility for chickens, things like that. Um so, our current foul poultry ordinance, like I said, no current limit. Uh we no permit needed to be housed on property. So, um the only ones that need permits at this time is a pot belly pig, dogs, and cats. Um, I have talked to a lot of other municipalities. If you wanted to do the chart, I made a chart and Dan helped me with this chart. I want to show that I have talked to other municipalities and tried to see what they would also charge for the um for their permit. And so this is a lot of information, but I just really want to point out um there is some that needed a permit for no more than, you know, they didn't need one till later on after no more than 20 chickens and then it went into agriculture things. So sometimes they just cut it off completely. But some were $90 for the initial and then 45 for the renewal, 100 for the first year, 50 for the renewal. So, we did try to when we did this kind of go in line with what other municipalities also charged. So, if you did you guys need a couple more seconds on that

question? Yeah. Council member Kell on our new ordinance, are we going to have a the space requirement on there or is that

um I put into consideration of numbers in case later on we wanted a space requirement. Um so I really kept that in mind when I thought about how many I feel should be approved for the city of Topeka. Um so I did put that in consideration if we did want to move forward with that. I didn't want to say a number and then us move forward and be like, "Oh, I didn't put in the spacing, you know, and we just went through all the trouble of that ordinance." So, I did keep that in mind and I did research a lot about that. Um, just in case we did want to go forward with that later on.

So, um, I don't think it touches base now on that, but later on it's definitely something that could be done with our number that we were approved on. So, or what we are trying to get approved on. You want to take that off, Dan? Thank you. got to enable editing.

Um, so

it's all good. So, um, I also I'll just go back to it. I have it on my tablet. So, um, or so I thought I did. Okay. Okay. So, um, like I said, we can assist with rehoming if asking permit has been not been required in the past. Um, no. Okay. Yeah. Here. Nope. You're right. You're right. We'll get there. We'll get there. Um so um in our ordinance, yeah, our enclosed pin would be considered um an enclosure that they're not running freely. Sorry, I got all off track, guys. Um and then also our ordinance uh currently covers, so it's just a very broad ordinance. Like I said, we don't have where it says male chickens, it just states chickens all in general. So I do think that that does need to be cleaned up just a little bit. So we are a little bit more specific. Um and then uh again ordinance includes all the above when it comes to restrictions and running a large. So that is our current ordinance. It is very broad pretty much don't let the chickens or the roosters run freely in your yard and keep them 50 ft away from everybody else but your own dwelling. So again just very not much to it. Um the reason why I believe that amendment is needed is um we are getting an increased number of households having chickens and roosters. It is becoming very normal, very normal now. And um I you know there's people who want to have the eggs and there's people that but I feel like sometimes there just needs to be a limit on that since we are in the middle of Topeka and the houses aren't as far away as they would be in other smaller city uh smaller towns things like that. So um we have gotten I mean our biggest case was in the middle over by Fairlon uh just right off of 29th in Fairlon. So I mean having about more than 50 plus chickens and even if you are keeping them in

pristine condition that's a lot of work but also it can cause a lot of unsanitary condition issues and what we've seen a lot of is aven flu and so it's one of those things where if you're not picking up and going through the proper channels of the cleaning the disinfecting that it can turn into where a lot of animals can be affected and also humans um zunotic diseases things like that. So, it is something that is very important I feel in the sense of it's getting so big and chickens are great. They are. However, cleaning them, even having one, the the smell is you can walk on a property and you can smell that, especially when they are not being taken care of. So, um, with the health and sanitation, I think it's a very big deal that we keep it to a limit and that we're able to maintain that limit so we can also make sure that we are within the sanitary conditions standard of our ordinance as well, which is the smell and not being able to just, you know, spread disease. Um, another big one is is the noise and uh, nuisance complaints. When we get a complaint about a rooster or the chickens, because chickens are loud, too, when they're laying eggs, I they're very loud. So, when we get those complaints, we will do a welfare check. We will check on the animals. If they are within our ordinance, we forward them on to PD because that would technically then be a noise complaint. Um, and people don't like per se hearing that in a sense, but if they are, if they pass everything through us and there's no, you know, neglect issues or there's, you know, no other issues on wondering why they're going off, which we know why, but I'm just stating this is how we deal with all the animals. We always do a welfare check first and then we see if it is where they are within ordinance and then move forward with that. So, when we're getting many

roosters on a property and with many hens, things like that, they they do tend to fight. They do tend to have a pecking order and they can be loud when they're when they're roosting, things like that. So, it is definitely a issue where we have gotten a lot of noise complaints because of too many either chickens on a property or they do have roosters. Um, inadequate shelter. So, if pets are not up to ordinance, wildlife can get inside of the coupe. We we again have a very broad statement of what an secure enclosure is. And so we do have people tend to get pretty upset because their enclosure did not keep an animal out. Um and if they think that they can go back and unfortunately get get another chicken or a rooster, they they tend to bring friends. And so that also causes wildlife to migrate more into the city more than they already are, unfortunately. And that can cause other issues with other diseases. And so I feel like if we have more set in place and then less on a property to where it's easier to maintain the fall and poultry, then it would be it'll be a lot easier just altogether instead of trying to house 10 20. Maybe if we had that limit, it'd be a lot easier for them to house. Any questions on that? I don't know if I can ask that or not, but

you know, keep keep going. We'll we'll get the questions. Okay, we also have some public comments, so issue. So,

okay, perfect. Okay. Um, this is a little chart about our foul related calls. Again, I feel like if I would have done this at the end of the year and at just January 1st, it would have been up a little bit higher. Um, it's pretty much being the average, but it's not really the average that we're really looking at. it's how many per household when we're going to these calls. So, just like anything else, I feel like we have kind of themed weeks. Uh sometimes we're dealing with Yorks a lot. Sometimes it's we're chasing chickens in the middle of the road quite literally. Um and then sometimes it's just all roosters. So, we do kind of get a cluster of calls just like really anything else. But we are seeing more of mini roosters or you know mini uh roosters in separate cages or chickens as well and then they're trying to produce more and so there is a lot more calls where we're getting just many on a property. Um, so the new ordinance outline, um, we figured we would keep the the fowl and poultry the same and just make a separate for the chickens and the roosters. Um, and then make, yeah, just make the addition to the roosters to the ordinance for the chickens and roosters, add the chicken permits. Um, and then also if the house is out of compliance, we can we can have something set in stone, which would just kind of be what we would be doing for all of our other violations in a sense. Um we would if they are out of violation after we've tried to assist them, they've tried to rehome or they just don't want to comply with um trying to rehome, we would write citations just like we would else. And then we would go to court. We can also talk to um our city attorney about, hey, this is this is this case, this is what's going on. And then they can

do as their end on how they feel would need to be done just by what their their thing. It's hard to explain but like what they can do on their end. Um looking into how other municipalities um kind of deals with how they they deal with it the same as well. And it's kind of just like a case by case basis. And so I wasn't able to really get like a very hey this is how we deal with it. first offense, second offense, because even when I was finding those things, they still stated that they would take it to court and they would still just do it as a case by case basis by if they wanted to go to trial, if they're going to pay a fine, if they wanted to order to get the animal off the property, if we needed to go with a judge's order, things like that. Um, so, um, if a house is out of compliance, we would just kind of base it off of how we are dealing with our other animal complaints right now. Um, process on assisting with number of chickens and roosters. Like I said, if we have the ability to assist, we will. I won't say that that will always be there. But if we do have someone who is willing to take some chickens, take some roosters outside of city limits, we have made it to where if there's an agreeance for us to just, you know, go drop them off, check out where they're going to be. I feel like that would be our best option on being able to rehome safely because there's not a lot of chickens and roosters, livestock, fowl, really any type of rescues around or any vets that would want to house. Okay. Um Okay. Uh so so this would be our new ordinance. shall be unlawful for any person um with no requirement of vote. So, pretty much we're just going to be changing that. We're going to have I believe how we stated eight chickens per household. This says six, but this is what was

given to us to kind of look over and then it just was not changed after we agreed on it. And then so eight chickens under three acres and then no roosters under three acres. If you go over 3 acres, then there in the actual ordinance, you would be having to go through um I had the code number, but it would not be through our code. It would be going through like agriculture, you would have to be under a business. So, if you're selling something, you would have to be under there if you are um if you are over three. Um so again it would be unlawful for anybody to keep um keep chickens over so eight eight of them and then um no city no uh roosters in the city limits under three acres. Um so I do you want me to stop there because this is long. I mean, this is the one we did the other. Uh, so I mean, I can go on and talk about why I believe we should only have eight, but if we are short on time, I'm more than happy to stop if you need me to.

Do you, city manager? Would you like her to continue? Just just highlights on the next few slides.

Okay. Um, well, I looked into this just to I wanted to be fair and so I talked to other municipalities and I believe with us looking into how many should be on property, the requirements if we do do that later on, I do believe my number was 8 to 10 and I think eight is a good number because you would not have too much of a noise problem and then I feel like that's just enough eggs for everybody as well and the family because I know that would be something that would be brought up. Um I so I wanted to also bring out that I feel eight would be sufficient if that was what their concern was. Um the chicken permit we already kind of went over that. That's what I wanted to um that's what I went off of with the first um permit that we talked about and that's how we kind of figured out that the permit changed. So we would just be going by they have to go to the office. they would have to pay first the initial $40 and then after the $40 every year would be $20 if they want to keep chickens on their property and then the late fee would be the same. and then the household out of compliance, we would go through court, but we would go through other um that would be the last option. And if we exhausted everything else, um again, we kind of already went over these. Um we aren't going to just pick up roosters and be able to throw them in the back of our vehicle. Uh we would need a place to take them. And so again, we would have to just work with the work with the owners and we would have to get surrender forms and go through the chain of surrender and go from there.

So that is it. All right. We do have one individual signed up for public comment for this. I'm going to go ahead and David Peterson. Welcome, Mr. Peterson.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city council members, and staff. My name is David Peterson. I reside in the Auburnale neighborhood. I'm here today in support of the proposed legislation. This proposed legislation and ramifications contained here in have been thoroughly examined, questioned, debated and guided by multiple city departments and representatives. A measured is a measured and sensible approach that protects the rights of all citizens. Uh I consequently I appeal for your support with a vote of approval for this ordinance for the passage of this ordinance. That being said, I would like to express my gratitude to several city officials and personnel that were instrumental in bringing this forward for your consideration. Mayor Spencer Duncan, Deputy City Manager Braxton Copley, Council Members Karen Hiller, Marcus Miller, Michelle Hoer, David Banks, and Michelle Bradbury, senior city attorney Brandy Roy Bachmann, and animal control supervisor Jessica Williams. Thank you very much, Jessica. A special thank you to each one of you for your consideration of this matter. That's all I had to say. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Council Member Kell.

All right. So, I I think 3 square ft is too small. Just what I was looking earlier. I I was looking that's more for the indoor. So, opine that's climate control. Um so, a large chicken can take up one square foot in essence with its overall body. I mean, you went up with those lines. So, I think three square feet is too small of an area. So, I I'd like to see that fee bumped up per chicken or per per square foot per chicken. Um, now on the permit, uh, I know I'm not sure if they still do this in 4, but then they used to have an aluminum band that they put around their leg. is that how will we permit each chicken or are we just going to give them a permit for eight or are we going to ban each chicken so that this way when that one chicken is used for uh let's say for for for dinner one night is that is that permit gone for that chicken or do they just have a permit for eight chicken all year round?

It would be for the property. Okay. Um, speaking of property, this I don't see anything that addresses indoor. So, someone could convert their garage into a chicken coupe in essence. Uh so uh that's an enclosed space that you know so I just wasn't sure for health and safety reasons if that would be uh a you know something that we address in this where um

so animals are allowed to be in a garage if it is cooled and heated. So heated in the winter, cooled in the summer if it has ventilation. So I feel like it would fall underneath that. However, when we did the three square foot, we also put in consideration chickens need to also be outside. So, um that's why that is kind of small. However, the sanitation is going to be the same. You know, clean. Make sure that you are keeping yourself keeping it separate from where you are at and no one can smell the odors. Those are going to be the same guidelines we're going to follow. Just like if you had a garage and you had a kennel in there, if it's cooled, cleaned, things like that.

I just think, like I said, the three square feet that that was in the slide there, that's indoor. So, if we're if we're expecting them to have outdoor, I would like to see that number bumped up because they they need area to move. Uh, you know, not every coup's going to be in the shade all day long.

Uh, and with our Kansas temperatures and that body heat coming off each chicken, uh, I I was in for several years. I used to be on the China County Fair Board. There's, you know, I'm looking at the animal safety of this aspect of of in the hum humaness of this. Uh I'd rather, you know, see um that square foot per chicken kind of be more to the I think it was recommended 8 to 16. I'd rather see it much to the 8 foot range for a uh per chicken because uh to me that's that goes to the health and safety aspect of things of of the animals and uh you know I wouldn't want to be locked up in a little box in the dead of the summer in Kansas. So,

and I think that's where we're kind of getting confused and kind of for like we're going a little bit too much because again they need to be outside as well. So when we're talking about them being in that square foot, we're talking about having it to where they're temporarily in there. So I don't think any animal I think animals should be outside in this situation definitely. So that's why I kept it at that minimum per se. That is a minimum, but if you are also putting in the fact that they'll be outside and having an outside area, it it's not as small as you would think.

I've seen a lot of chicken coops that are really small and you put eight you put eight chickens in there and that's some that's someone's personal judgment. They're going to sit there and say, "Oh, they're perfectly healthy and fine in there."

And you go to the neighbor who's raising chickens also, and they're going to sit there and say, "That's that's inhumane. That's that's unethical. That's everything." So I think we kind of almost need to have that standard in writing so we can enforce that. So when we see a chicken, you know, eight chickens in a a 10ft area that we can sit there, this is wrong, outdoors, indoors, whatever it is, because you cram all in there, they don't have that ventilation of the air flowing through. I mean, that's the reason you go to almost any any county fair in Kansas, they're openired chicken coops, chicken barns, because they want to have that that air flowing through. They have large cages that they keep them in. So, and that's just temporarily. Most of those birds are free range during during the rest of the year, but

you know, I I want to see something that shows that they're just not bunched up together in 100°ree heat outside and not so well, it's only temporary. They're going to be most people are going to keep them out all day every day 365 and they're going to care for them however they care for them. But like I said, that's a judgment call. Each person is gonna have a different judgment on what's humane and what's ethical. So, I think we kind of needed to put that out there, what we want as as a limit because we're going to be held to that standard for having this ordinance. So, I think an actual square footage per chicken needs to be in there that that is a a recommended outdoor size.

Yeah. So, um that is not in the ordinance today. That again was something I just put into consideration if we wanted to do it in the future. And so I do apologize since I did kind of put that in there. I just wanted people to understand that I am considering that. I don't want to sit here and be like, "Yeah, 15 chickens." And then we go down the line and like, "Oh, well, they're requiring this much per chicken. That's not realistic." So that is why with our number, that's why I put in at least that if we do touch base with that later on in the future, if that makes sense. So we're not voting on that today if that helps you at all. That's something I think we really need to consider though in the future to look at. Council member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, I I I I like that you have thought about some future things that we need to put into consideration, understanding that this is an ongoing issue. Not ongoing issue, I would say it's just more prevalent now than it used to be, and it's going to be in the future most likely. Um I agree with uh council member Kale that uh it's maybe some continued education could be beneficial for the community. Yeah. Um you know this is I'm not saying that we need to have uh continued education every time they put a permit or renew their permit but I think something would be beneficial for the future. So I appreciate you looking for that. Um

I all I really wanted to do was tell you that um I appreciate all your effort on this cuz I know how much work you put on this. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um coming to the policy and finance committee many times on this and I'm sure we will in the future with some of the considerations. Um you've done a really good job. Thank you. Good work. Thank you.

So my first concern which I expressed to the city manager was I'm not sure this should have been an action item this evening. I think it should start as discussion item. Now that's just me. I don't get a vote for whether that's worth to everybody. Um I did bring some amendments this evening. Although after this presentation I I'd like to rethink one or two of those slightly uh based on size. My personal opinion is the eight is too few. I also think the implementation date needs to be pushed back a little longer because when and if this passes we're asking people to give up animals and I think they as we as we heard there's not a lot of places to just take your rooster and so asking to do that within a 90day or less period I think is a little too restrictive because of that challenge. So there's I have no issue with the rooster piece of this at all. Um I just had a personally a few concerns with the other piece. Um so I'm happy to I'd like to tweak one of my amendments, but I mean I'm happy to bring them up if you guys want to continue with this this evening versus giving everybody another week now that they've heard it as Council Member Kell's had some some questions about it um before we make any decisions. um if we'd like to push it back a week, I'm I would suggest that, but again, I don't get a vote at the end of the day on this ordinance. So, but I wanted to throw that out there that that had been expressed by several. So, Council Member Miller, first and Council Member,

um thank you, mayor. Uh we have another policy and finance committee coming up May 7th that's already booked up pretty big. Um and I would like to be able to discuss some of this um at committee level if we're going to be some of the things that that they've done so far. Um, I mean, obviously we don't have to, uh, but if we would push it to after that one so that we, the policy and finance committee can have a little in-depth conversation about it, whatever the amendments may be. Um, that would be my preference. Um, if that's your preference, then you could make a motion to refer it back to committee. And I'm going to I just wanted to say it out loud first before

Okay. And I wasn't tell just for I wasn't trying to push it off months or a month they're back to committee now that everyone's heard it in public we're probably going to get some feedback from the public and just be good to have a week at least but if we need more that's fine too but council member Kell unless there's a legal reason of why we have to go right now that I'm more than happy of making a motion to move this to to June and

I'll second that and that's what the motion I was going to make is is I'd rather have it done done right and we go through the process rather than just do something and then go back and make changes. So, if it needs to go back to committee and committee wants to take it back to to go over this, I'd much rather go back to committee. We do this the right way and we're not confusing people this way and we're not confused up here and and we're getting everything done correctly instead of constantly changing and making confusion.

So, and and I think this is close. I want to echo council member Miller's comments. You've done a great job on this and I think it's very close. Right. So, we're not far. It's not off the cliff or anything. I think there's a couple of us who just now that we know what it looks like and what the final version would be, give us a chance to just come in with a couple suggestions and even the ones I have are not like way off the radar. They're very in line with what you're trying to do. Um, so I will ex I will say that council member Miller made a motion to refer this back to committee and that it was seconded by council member Kell. I don't think we need to give it any kind of date if you have a meeting. Correct. Yeah, we'll get that figured out. And I'm just wanting to ensure that I have the motion down correctly. We're wanting to motion to move this to a policy and finance committee in June or are we wanting to hear this?

All All we need to do is refer this back to committee and then committee can decide what the next step is. Okay. Yep. Give me just a second here. And would that be just the majority would that be majority of members or majority of membership to refer that? Yeah. Yes. Okay. I just wanted to ensure that. Thank you. Yeah, I think I get to vote on that one. You do actually. It gets very confusing tonight. What do I get to vote on? Don't get click the motion button.

Oh, okay. Um, I'm going to actually have to go to this item here and then we will make a vote on that. So, I apologize for the confusion. Give me just one second. Okay. So, as long as everybody does everybody see Miller motion to refer back to policy and finance on their screens? No. No. Our screens are not working very well. Okay, awesome. We trust you. Okay, it's on ours. The one screen that's working says yes. Okay. And then we had a motion from Miller. Who was the second? Was that Kel? Okay. Perfect. All right. We got it figured out, guys. Okay. All right. And it is should be ready for you to vote now. Yeah.

I don't think you cleared the votes from the previous one. Okay. Okay, I can go. Well, then maybe explain it. Let's just I'll just to if it's okay do a voice vote and just go through. That's fine. Don't worry about it. We voted for you. It's fine. Okay. Council member Hillary, what was your vote? Yes. And Valdivia Aqua. Yes. Yes. Okay. Ortiz. Yes. Banks. Yes. Kell. Yes. Miller. Yes. Bradberry, yes. McGee, yes. And Poper, yes. Okay, perfect. Yes. Um,

Mayor Duncan gets to vote on this one. Yes. Yeah, you got to vote. All right, guys. We have 10. Yes, that was going to um pass to go back to the policy and finance. And I just had a couple of uh You said 90 days. I guess I was um I I I was told it was not going to be implemented until October 2026. We were going to give like 6 months from when So that's what I heard. We're going to give 6 months for them to complant. It's a pri we have to we have to once it's passed it has to be published and so there there's a time period built in there. Okay. Okay. I was asking we are close. We're going to get this home.

Yeah. I just want to make sure that cuz the person I originally had here was not here. So, I just wanted to make sure that I just heard that correctly. So, so we we promise we'll get there. You you have done good work. We are very appreciative. We just couple more tweaks and then we'll we'll bring it home. Okay. Thank you. All right. With that, we will move on to action item E. City clerk. E is a resolution introduced by city manager Dr. Robert M. Perez amending the city of Topeka fee schedule and rescending resolution number 9755.

My question here would be if we pass this Yeah, we haven't passed the other ordinance. Does that create a problem because we're not yet ready to start charging chicken permits yet at this time? And and mayor, that's exactly what we were just discussing right now. So, we can defer this item or we can make an amendment to remove the items that are regarding the chickens and still pass it with the commercial burn permit change and the late animal regular animal fees from the $4 flat fee to the $2 per month if we want to do that.

Okay. Then I then that's I would make a motion to defer the chicken permit items to a later date to be determined by legal staff. Um, and pass pass it out as otherwise un amended. That didn't make any sense, but it kind of did. So, are you is your is your motion, mayor, to remove the chicken fees? Okay. Yeah. Which I guess at this time that's all we have to do. I just would make a motion to at this time remove the chicken permit fees from the ordinance. Yep. I think we back in time from the resolution. second by council member Miller.

But then we still do have an issue in there. So, city manager, what would be the issue we are addressing? Thank you, mayor, and members of the governing body. Uh, we are also looking at um reducing our commercial burn permits from 110 to $100 to align with other operational construction permit fees that are currently set at $100. This also went through the policy on finance uh committee last last month. Um, we'll stand for any questions that you have. It's pretty basic, just aligning the permit cost with the same other permits along the same lines in the same trade. So, we'll ask for your consideration. Any questions you may have? Motion to approve. I already have a motion to approve without the chicken fees with a second. So, now we're just discussion.

I know. I know it's not on there. Any questions or comments? If not, let's take that vote. One second. I Yep. Just one second here, please. Thank you. Okay. So, um, Mayor Duncan's motion to amend and remove the chicken permit fees from the resolution. It is on the discussion now, so it should be showing up on your screens. Who was the motion in the second on that? Unless you wanted to. I No, I I my motion was to approve as amended as amended with with omitting the chicken permit fees. So, we're ready to vote on it. That was the discussion.

Okay, we're ready to go. So, am I just I'm I apologize, guys. I'm still kind of learning here. So, are we going to just go ahead and vote on the current item or am I needing to make a separate item that is voting? No, the mot the motion was to approve with the removal of the chicken fees. So, yes. Okay. Thank you for clarification. I appreciate it. Not a problem. All right, let's get back to Okay, so we are voting to approve as amended and the motion and the second was from here. I made the motion. Council member Miller made the second.

Okay. All right. It is ready for Yeah. There none of our It's all automatically voting yes for everybody. Okay. which is only cool if that's how you want to vote, but may cause some other legal issues down the line. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Um, can council member Hillary, what was your vote? Yes. Valdivia Aqua, yes. Ortiz, yes. Banks, yes. Kel, yes. Miller, yes. Bradberry, looks like you're locked in. McGee, yes. And Hoer, yes. And the mayor does not vote on that as recommended.

Bradberry and yes, I get to vote on this one. Yeah. Did you want to change your vote to yes? Mine says yes, but okay. It's Yeah, it's not it's not working. I got it changed now. I apologize, guys. All right. We have 10 yes. The motion carries. All right. We will move on to what is now action item F, which was on the consent agenda regarding governing body meetings. City Clerk. The uh F is a resolution introduced by Deputy Mayor Michelle Hoer cancelling certain governing body meetings and scheduling a special meeting for calendar year 2026. Uh Council Member Hiller,

I asked to for conversation on that just because we have established without much talking about it doing extra Tuesday night meetings for either doing budget as an addendum to a Tuesday night council meeting and also adding extra Tuesday night meetings to do that. In the past, we have done those on Saturday mornings and really had just a concentrated 8 to noon meeting, whether it was a CIP or the city budget. And I just wanted to throw that out and let people know that that was has been another option. We've also had our budget the real focused budget meetings on a night other than a Tuesday night so that the meeting time was just for budget. Um, also it's been really I I personally like having the fourth week free and not having every Tuesday night covered so I could plan a vacation or time off and so on. So, I just wanted to throw out that discussion in terms of whether we could simply do cancel um on the primary election day and the primary and the actual election day. Um but not necessarily add a meeting the last week of August. Um, and then if we needed a a special work session that was just targeted on the CIP or the operating budget, whether there was interest in in doing a Saturday morning instead of a Tuesday night. So, I'm I'm just open for feedback. I wanted to raise it. That's all.

Council member Kell and Council Member Miller. Uh, question. Is was this for a special work meeting or is this for a just a special open to the public meeting? this the the one on August 25th is to ensure that we retain three meetings in the month of August since we're canceling one especially right before budget period. All right. I I just I like the aspect of having it up being an open public meeting if we're going to have a meeting rather than it works. It's just to me it's a lot the budget meetings have always been open meetings. Work sessions are always open meetings. Yeah.

So it's not you know the Saturday gets more comp. I'd like to keep it more of the Tuesday nights where it's more to what people are used to. uh to be more open and let everyone see what's going on um versus a Saturday morning situation. Okay. But just to clarify, if we did a Saturday morning, it's still an open meeting that's televised that everyone gets to come to. I don't want the impression to be otherwise. Council member Miller,

thank you. Um I think I appreciate what you're saying. Um but just you know speaking for me personally my 11year-olds in two or three sports at any given part of the year them Saturdays are no goes. Thank you. partly if if I can just respond the um when we've done these here at the end of the council meetings they've often been pretty short and sometimes people are kind of fatigued I think by the end of the business meeting itself so whether it was a weekn night evening or a Saturday morning the idea of having a a pretty intense three or four hour block where we we arrive fresh and focus just on that during the course of that meeting was something I just again wanted to put out for consideration.

Council member Kell, I I prefer the these these little short sections we're getting because it when you get into those four, five, six hour long session, yours is so brain deaded at the end of it. And I like having this short and to the point and then I can ask questions later on, follow-up questions about those specific items from that presentation rather than having a, you know, four, five, six hour long presentation all day long just getting hammered with numbers. I said three or four.

Well, three or four. And I'd rather have the 30 minutes, an hour we get here than getting blasted with all those numbers for for that long and and just to the point of you're just exhausted from that point and you're not even sure what you're understanding and looking at. I'd rather have the the short little tidbits we've been getting. It's a lot more to the other end. I'm going to circle us back to what's in front of us, which is a resolution to cancel two meetings on election days and add a third meeting in August. So, I think it's a worthwhile conversation as we get into the budget if we need additional meetings to decide if we want to do those on a fourth Tuesday or on a weekend. So, I I think we've heard that's something that is an option that we can talk about later at that point. Otherwise, I'm going to move to approve the item in front of us.

Second unchanged. Any other comments or questions? Discussion. Yep. Council member H. Just clarification. So, leaving the August 25th date in there

at this time. Correct. We can always change it. The beauty of that is at least right now we can it's better to have it on our calendars now a month before we have to vote on a budget. And I'm going be real honest with you. 9 days from now, we may know that that process is going to be extremely more complicated because the Kansas legislature passed House Bill 2043, which will fundamentally alter the way we can do this budget, and it will include things like a petition for citizens if we just make certain budget decisions. There's no guarantee she's going to veto that at this time. So, I think we have to start operating until we know what the path is that that's going to be the new law of the land. And we're going to need that meeting on August 25th if that is the case to be quite honest with you. And so that's something we also are going to have to start having conversations about starting next week if that law if if the governor does not veto that bill.

Thank you. Yep. All right. Okay. I have a motion from Mayor Duncan and a second from Council Member Ortiz. Yep. Take the vote if it's working. We all just have to start taking voice. All right. Sounds good to me. Okay. Mayor Duncan, yes. Council members Hiller, yes. Valdivia Aqua, yes. Ortiz, yes. Banks, yes. Kell, yes. Miller, yes. Or Bradberry, good. McGee, yes. And Hoer, yes. Okay, we have 10 yes. The motion carries.

All right, with that, we'll move on to non-action items. Item A, city clerk. All right. A is a discussion on the proposed 2027 to 2036 capital improvement plan and 2027 to 2029 capital improvement budget.

City manager mayor and members of the governing body. Josh McInney, our deputy director of finance, and Jason Tryion, director of public works, will lead us to this item tonight. As we continue our CIP and CIB uh discussions uh this evening, we'll be focused on the citywide house and sales tax programs and projects that you'll find in those uh in those plans. That I'll turn over to Josh and Jason.

Um good evening, mayor, governing body. As city manager said, um we'll jump right into it tonight. We're going to talk about the citywide housing sales tax. So kind of segmenting this out by funding source. So what is our citywide absent um sales tax? So that was a special use tax that was voted in for 10 years and on your screens are the exclusive uses of that funding source. So it can be used on existing streets um gutters, curbs, sidewalks, alleys, and street lighting. Um there's the time frame for the sales tax. And then just to give you an idea um of the policy decision at hand going forward is that that fund usually brings around $20 million a year in 2025. Now we have a huge unencumbered cash balance amount of about 25 million. And so how did we get to that such high fund balance? So back in co there was a natural bubble of sales tax accumulation but also at the same time we thought um sales tax was going to fall. So we reduced the number of projects we've done. So over the last 3 or four years there there was bubbles from 21 to 23. And so actively going forward, the goal is to spend that fund balance down um down to get um more work out on um those types of assets. So that's what um Jason will get into a little bit later on on the details of that. Um and then finally, uh if we didn't have that funding, obviously we'd have to fund that $20 million we spend a year somewhere else and that would either have to come out of our operating budget via general fund transfer or we'd have to issue uh debt financing to fund those or we'd have to reduce the service of that. So that just gives you an idea. This is a very important funding source to get all those um streets, alleyways, curbs, and gutters done in the city. So this is a special use funding source for that. So I'll turn over to Jason on primary uses.

So just so everyone's aware, the citywide HSN sales tax that the primary use of that is for pavement preservation. The halfsent sales tax can only be used to repair, replace, or do um do um preservation activities on existing assets. This does not build new assets. This only works on assets we already have. So the primary things that are done with this are things like a full reconstruction, rehabilitation of a street mill and overlay, uh ultra thin bonded asphaltic surface, which is a thin uh layer, u microsurfacing or crack sealing. Now, I can tell you that I could talk for hours about pavement preservation. I have done it before. I'm deciding not to do that right now. But I will say that at next Tuesday's public infrastructure committee, we're going to have a much more in-depth conversation about how we do pavement preservation, how we make the decisions that we make and when we choose what type of treatment on each type of surface. I'd invite anybody who wants to know more about that to watch that committee meeting. Uh, and to ask any questions at that time. Um, so pavement preservation methods, that's where we go out and look at a number of factors to determine what's the best way to make sure that street stays in the best condition it can. That's looking at our PCI, the traffic volume on that street, whether it's concrete or asphalt, how long that street's been in use, how long it's been since we've done a previous treatment method, and what that treatment was. And also, we will do core analysis where we actually look below the surface of the street and see if we have good base under that street. Uh, each road is assessed and assigned a recommended treatment based on those above factors. One of the things we touched on last week was if you look at the overall asset network in the city, if we were to take every single asset and bring it up to a good condition, that would cost $740 million plus to do that. Obviously, we don't have the level of funding to do that. We have to make hard choices uh with our citywide halfsent sales tax money on how those funds are spent and

where to allocate those dollars. So, uh, this covers all the different programs that are funded out of this tax. Uh, we'll go over each of these in more detail, but that gives you an idea of how much of each of these dollars are allocated to those different programs. Uh, so the first one to cover is our, uh, ProAg sidewalk grant program. That stands for public rideway accessibility guidelines. So, making our, uh, sidewalks ADA compliant, making sure that they're accessible. Um, we have 6,998 ramps within the city of Spika that are currently not compliant. With this level of funding, we can do approximately 90 to 120 ramps a year, bringing them up to that PROWAC compliance. Obviously, there's a much greater need than $300,000, but we do as many as we can within a given year. So, the curb and gutter program, uh, this is a program where we actually go out proactively, look for places where the curb and gutter is broken. We also respond to requests from our constituents if they notify us of an issue. Um we currently have 226 backlogged requests. Um with $900,000 a year, this these funds are typically spent very quickly. We had in the past have had a backlog of up to 6 to 8 years. We've got that down to down to about 1 to three years right now. So we made a huge improvement on getting those requests fixed faster. The alley repair program is also funded with this money. Um so a the we have approximately 450 paved alleys within the city. Uh this uh program is funded at a million dollars a year. It costs about $170,000 to repave an alley. Uh what that means is out of those 450 paved alleys, we can only do about five per year. There's obviously some other issues that get done in in L of just repaving an entire alley. Sometimes we'll do a partial replacement. Um but uh in 2027 some of the alleys that we plan to uh repay with these funds 1300 South Pico to Harrison, 900 uh west

between 6th and 7th, 1,400 South Tyler to Pika and 1500 South Tyler to Pika and also the 12,200 block of South 5th to 6th. So our pavement preservation program obviously at $14 million this is the largest uh portion of where these funds go. So this is about the rehabilitation and recon reconstruction of existing streets. So we have six 1622 lane miles costs on average about $250,000 to do a mill and overlay on a lane mile of pavement. That's one of the treatment methods that we use in this program a lot. Um we have some tenative projects listed here that we'll go uh into more detail on. Um so these are some of the projects that we've got. um 37th Terrace, Southwest 10th Avenue, gauge to McVicker, 21st Street, Wanomaker Road to I470, Southwest Waker Road, 21st Street to Hon Street, and Southwest 6th Avenue. So those would all be examples where we're doing a partial rehabilitation of the street. We also have a street contract pavement preservation program. So this is where we look at the streets that have a pavement condition index of goods. So these would be streets that we're trying to keep in a good condition. We go throughout uh and we crack seal those streets in one year and then we come back the next year and uh place a a very thin surface on it called microsurfacing or sometimes that Ubass or ultra thin bonded asphaltic surface that keeps those streets in a good condition, keeps the moisture off of them, keeps the sun off of them and keeps the underlying street in a better condition longer. In 2027, we'll be doing crack sealing in the northwest quadrant of the city. So that's 21st Street and North and Topeka Boulevard and West. And then we'll follow up the following year with doing crack sealing in the northwest part of the city. So we'll be crack or we'll do be doing microsurfacing in the northeast quadrant of the city this year. Uh and then following behind in 2028 doing that microsurfacing in the northwest quantum of the city. And that's budgeted for $4 million. So we also have our sidewalk repair

program that's funded out of this these funds. Um this is commonly referred to as the 50/50 sidewalk program. If you have a sidewalk that is broken or damaged in need of repair, uh you can apply for funds to have the city cover half the cost of that. Uh for certain incomequalified individuals, that will pay up to 100% as well. I encourage anyone if you have an issue with your sidewalk uh to reach out about uh whether or not you would qualify for that program and get part of those costs covered. So, these funds also replace street lights. There's $100,000 budgeted for that. Unfortunately, that only covers about 10 street lights a year. A lot of the replacements that we're doing now are solar. if we can uh if there's if it's a good condition that uh limits the amount of um installation cost. We don't have to run wires to it. Uh but obviously it has to be in a in a situation where it's going to get enough light throughout the day that we're confident that street line can illuminate all night long. So some of the major citywide halfsent sales tax projects that are currently in the C CIB. Uh we'll go into a little more detail on each of these projects. These would be projects that' be a little bit more invasive than just a simple uh rehabilitation. So, South Kansas Avenue, 10th to 17th. Um, so this would be um just one second. Um, so this would be a milling overlay improving the medians on this section. Reconstruction of the intersections at 10th and 17th. This is planned for 2028, but with uh design in 2027. This is a very wide roadway right now, so we're probably looking at a road diet in this situation, but we wouldn't have to acquire any additional rideway adjacent to the street. Another big project that's coming up, Southwest 29th Street, Ringling Game Road, Topeka Boulevard. This will be curb replacement, some localized base patching, and then Millan overlay. So, what we'll be doing there is taking off the top two inches of pavement, looking at the surface underneath, patching, doing some full depth replacements where necessary, and then after we've made those improvements, putting a new 2 in of asphalt on top.

Another big project, Southwest Pico Boulevard, 29th Street to 38th Street. This will actually get started later this summer. Uh so this is including Milan overlay base patching and select curb replacement. We'll also be upgrading the intersections at Southwest 29th and Southwest 37th, the traffic signals at those two intersections and completely reconstructing the intersections at 29th Street and 37th Street with concrete. Uh we'll have some minor rightway acquisition that's already taking place and then like I said we're going to get started on that work later this summer starting at 37th Street and then heading north. So 37th Intigga Boulevard will be the first intersection uh that you'll see work taking place at. And then the next project Southeast 21st Street um bridge repair over Butcher Creek in the Burlington North uh Santa Fe Railroad. So when we every two years we do a ban annual bridge inspection that was done in 2025. It identified that there's some issues with this bridge that we need to take care of. Also, anyone who's driven over this area knows that the surface of the bridge itself uh is in need of some patching and replacement. And then we'll also be looking at the drive approaches to the bridge as well because we have some uh pretty uneven pavement as you come on and off this bridge that we'll take care of as part of this project. So, with that, that's a quick overview of the citywide halfsent uh sales tax, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions or comments from the governing body?

Council member Kell on that first street that you you had 37th Terrace, Mold Vein, all that kind of stuff. I I'm still going to be pushing. I I think we need to work on our arterials. That 37th area there has been done seven, eight years ago. I know it's wasn't done right because no drainage was put in that area, but we have 37th from Kansas or from Adams all the way to California. Is this falling apart? And we're looking at side streets almost on some of these. And it's we we need to look at projects where people are dra traveling the most. And doing a a little side road to me is is not where our citizens want. They they want our 10th, 17th, 21st, 37th, our Kansas, uh to Pig Boulevard, California, Water Maker. They want those all the roads because we can do an area that sees 30 40 cars a day a strip of road or we can do what our majority of of what's happening and right now that that 37 from like I said Adams to California is falling apart and and I think that's something we need to look at drastically right now to to look at and it's it seems like that 37th project from from Gage age all the way to California. It's been it's been patched together over the last couple years. And we need to look at longer stretches, not just doing a block here, a block there on 37th because that's what's been happening over the last few years. We we need to look at long stretches of roads that are highly traveled to get our our citizens taken care of and get them what they want because they're if we're trying to do this in the future, we're not going to get anything done with a half cent sales tax. if we're not taking care of arterial roads and then where we're going to be as as a

city trying to pay for these projects. So, uh I I just I I want to see our our main roads be be the ones that are that are desperately in need of stuff to be taken care of first before we look at any side roads or even roads that have already been done but maybe done five years ago and need some stuff done. We need to look at the ones that are falling apart drastically. Thank you. And just to respond, so I I want to make sure that I um do address that we are aware that 37th Street is in need of some some repair as well. We currently have a project this summer that's working on 29th Street, Kansas to Adams, and we also have a project that's working on 37th Street east of Adams. Um so this is that is one of the challenges that we always have to do. You cannot be closing streets that are the detour path for each other. You have the water has to flow somewhere. You can't shut the water off. It's going to find a way. Same thing with traffic. So that is an area that we know needs to be addressed, but we have some current projects right now and we can't have roads that are uh close together closed at the same time. Um so we have to work on phasing those things out,

but it seems like I can mention the same road year after year after year and it's just not being addressed. And it's it's not even a road that's in my district. It's on the right on the edge of my district going east and and it's it's it's been mentioned by myself, by by other people up here in the past, by citizens that there are certain roads that just are not being taken care of. And then you look at 37th just in general, we're just doing little small patches. And I know when the bridge was closed at 37th in Kansas, the traffic flow just perfectly fine to get around when we need to get around for that two weeks that it was shut down. Uh because that's that's an area I I travel every day to go to work. and we were able to go through a off 45th or down to 29th and we're able to get out of that neighborhood. But it's we're we're just to me we're just not looking at it's almost like certain spots of town are almost like well not no big deal and it's how many times can we do wom maker? It see it seems like every two three years we're doing something with wan maker and then look at what we're doing to to some of our main roads cuz those are the people that come from out of town that see they don't see all the side roads and then they're when they're like well the roads are trash I want to bring my car in here cuz I don't want to blow out a tire and all this I'll go to Lawrence I'll go to Manhattan and we need to look at some of these projects and say what's best for longterm for Topeka and what's needed the most. I cuz I I know it got brought up, oh, we'll just we'll kind of do a mill overlay on that on that uh 37th and all a sudden it's like it got someone brought it up and then it's like well the road's trash we can't do a mill overlay. So uh on that area. Uh so it's I I just want to you know I I I can only bring up so many times that that 37th has been totally was sortly neglected for over a decade now on the aspect of

long-term road what needs to be done there and uh it just keeps on getting worse and worse and it's something that I'm going to keep on fighting for and keep on bringing up and I I just I just want to see why we every year just keeps on getting pushed back or not even looked at as aspects of things as a priority to to our city and to our citizens. Thank you, Council Member Hiller.

Uh thank you. I've I've got three questions. One of them kind of includes a followup to Councilman Kell's. Um, at the beginning of your presentation, you talked about spending 4 million a year to spend down an accumulated balance of the halfsent sales tax, but in the book it continues all the way across the plan. So, um, so we get money every year until 2029. And so if we get if we have a builtup fund balance of 25 million and we get 20 million a year, we're going to have to program more each year to spend that down.

And so I think to Josh's point when he mentioned it earlier when we were facing the situation with CO where we were concerned sales tax receipts were going to drop and we also had an issue of construction delays at that time. There was still money that was coming in but work was delayed because we chose to pause some projects while we waited to see what happened with the sales tax. Unfortunately, when you pause a construction season, you never get it back. It's very difficult to make up a lost season of construction because you can only close so many streets at a time, as I've said. So, we've got to be very careful about how many projects we do at any given time.

I understand that. Um, but the issue is you you named the big number last week and again this week in terms of the total. Um, if we're using what used to always be in the operating budget for the preventive maintenance and we're taking it out a half cent sales tax when we have that much worth of streets that need major repair. Um, I'm concerned about that and I made a proposal last year in budget cycle to be able to if we're going to start migrating, we borrowed money out of the debt service fund, moved it over to operating for 2026 that instead of moving it back into debt service that we move it into a maintenance budget so that we weren't having to spend the extra bond money on on various projects. So I I are we still going to get a chance to see at least a map that shows where we are with all of our arterials, which ones have been redone and maybe what year, so that we can see how far we've gotten.

So that's not how we look at improving the roads. We don't look at one road and say, "Well, that's done. Now we're going to make sure we do all the other roads before we come back to it." We have to look at what roads need it the most. That can be based on the rate of deterioration which is going to be different for any street. One street we may do a mill and overlay and that mill and overlay may still be in good condition 12 to 15 years later. Another street we may do a full reconstruction and find that 10 to 12 years later there was a situation that developed that we need to get back on that street sooner than we would have liked to. So we're not systematically going around and just doing the streets in a numerical order. We're constantly reassessing what streets are being done. I'd also say when we talk about how we do pavement management, I encourage you to um view the presentation next week um where we're going to talk a little bit more about what can we do to get out of the fact that it takes $740 million to bring our streets up into a good condition. How can we possibly ever get all of our streets in a better condition when that's the situation we're facing? and we're going to talk through some of the methodologies that can get us out of that mess that we're in.

Thank you. I I still think it would help all of us because it is so huge and so complex. Um, as Councilman Kell, for instance, was able to describe the ones he drives on all the time to see if they were done before or not. Um, or if they've not been done yet since since we started the first halfet sales tax program now going on 20 years ago. I think rather than some long long list and a PCI measure and whether it was a mill and overlay or a full rebuild, it at least could help us have a picture uh no matter how long we've been around. Um, so I would respectfully request, you know, at first I think I just asked Josh for an accounting of it and realized that maybe a map would be easier and accomplish what I had in mind just for us to all have a shared snapshot of where we are on those major streets and even if shading we, you know, began to start earlier than we'd planned and I understand that of going through residential neighborhoods and doing the mill and overlays and patching and so on just so we see what kind coverage we've made.

But we have we have a PCI map, right, that shows all of that data of for all of our streets. Regardless if it was, you know, Milton overlaid like 20 years ago or if it was Milton overlay like 5 years ago, the condition is going to tell us uh where it's at. So, I mean, well, you've heard the request. I just think it would be really helpful. I mean, one of the things we talked about two weeks ago was Tent Street, which got mill and overlaid, but because underneath didn't get done, it's fallen apart underneath. And now we're debating whether whether mill and overlay is a good idea for a next round. And so

yeah, I I and and again I think I think your request is is good, but to the councilman's point, um if we go just based upon, hey, like we did a street 5 years ago, then it could be like, okay, well, we did a street 5 years ago, so you could maybe try to make the assumption that it's still in good condition. But if for whatever reason it doesn't, it wasn't done properly or whatnot, the PCI is going to tell you, you know, the PCI is going to give you basically a more in-depth understanding of the condition of each of the streets if that if that would be the best. I just think it would help us all have some some context and be able to look at this. Thank you.

And I still I remain concerned and if next week's presentation resolves it of moving $4 million a year out of the major reconstruction queue into prevention. Obviously, we want to go ahead and do microsurfacing promptly. So, we're we're maintaining what we've got and doing just mill and overlay where the street doesn't get that much travel and and or andor the underllayment is in good shape. I get all that. Um, but I I worry about taking 4 million out of that rebuild um queue in the in in the piece that you've got up. Well, I think you switched the slide, but um where you were talking about the um the major what do they call them? The full pavement reconstruction redoss. Anyhow, it said I70 This one.

Um. Oh, almost. Wrong way. That one. There we go. Southwest 6th Street, I7 to Fairlon. Is that meaning east of downtown all the way to Fairlon? No. So, that would be Southwest 6th Street um near the governor's mansion, right? I7 to Fairlon Road. I mean, there is an I70 exit on Fair Line, so it's about three blocks from So, this would be this would be on Southwest um 6th Avenue between the bridge over I70 and the intersection of Sixth and Fair.

So, so if you're if you're at Sixth and Fair and you head west, you then pass over I7. Again, this would be from that bridge from the bridge over I7 east on Sixth Street to the intersection of Sixth and Fair. So, this is still not addressing Sixth Street then. So, Sixth Street is currently under construction on Golden from Rice Road. That's a project that's currently underway. I understand that, but I mean it's a mess from McVicker/Oley all the way out to Fairine.

So, there is a project that is proposed for 2028 that is addressing Southwest 6th Avenue from Oakley to McVicker. So that is one of the projects that's scheduled for 2028. Tonight I was just covering the 2027 projects, but we have those future years programmed out as well. All subject to change reality bats last and we have to re-evaluate each year which which streets are the biggest priority. Well, when I saw the I70 to I thought if that's all the way across town, that is not enough money. So that's that's where I was going with that. I had a question. I had I had one more, but if she needs to go first, that's fine. Council member OD Alkala.

Um, can we go back to the one that has the side or the alleyways that are paved? And this is just a really general question. Um, obviously over here in Oakland, our alleyways are hardly any of them are paved. And I'm wondering what when they get, you know, repaired, might it just be a small section or it might be the whole alleyway is totally redone for those that are paved.

So for an alley that is paved, uh, as I as you can see on here, we have 450 paved alleys in the city and we only do five per year. the five that we're doing are probably in need of repair of the entire alley being replaced. In order to be at the top of the priority, it's very likely that entire stretch of pavement would need replaced.

Okay. So, let me ask what is it in the Topeka history, this is a general question, that warrants an alley being paved and one not being paved. So, I can't speak to when that was constructed. I can say that um when we have an alley that is unpaved, the maintenance on that alley is much easier. Um we can go in, regrade that alley, provide good drainage with the equipment. It's not a capital project. We don't have to tear it up. I'd also say that our utilities uh department um likes when that happens because they have better access to the infrastructure of any utility lines that may be in the alley. So where possible we do look to convert those paved alleys to aggregate. Um but that's a conversation that has to happen with the homeowners in the area if that's appropriate for the type of use that that alley sees.

So then so if I would say okay Jason why wouldn't we consider not paving these and just turning them into like the majority of the alleys that are around Topeka, you know, taking care of them. uh it would be easier, it would be, you know, a minimal savings in the budget, but then would you in turn tell me all of that has to be determined by the neighbors? Is is that what you're saying?

So, what I would say is we've had conversations and we have had alleys that we've converted from paved to an aggregate material. Uh when that has happened, we've discussed that with the neighbors to make sure that that's something they're comfortable with based on the use. Um but I think that's definitely worthy of a broader discussion of should we be um investing more time and energy into converting some of those paved alleys as they wear out to aggregate material. Um, that's definitely a policy discussion that I would welcome

because again, not being proficient in this realm, what you're basically saying like if you have a paved alley and say something goes wrong underneath and you know it has to something has to be dug up a line or something like that, then that would all all that cement or whatever it is would be taken up and then by the city and then have to be put back in by the city. Correct. That's correct.

Okay. So, I don't know how we have that discussion as a governing body, but I think that it's it's worth having the discussion to save some money because I can tell you since I've been on council, at least it public works has always been very um receptive and quick about getting alleys dealt with that get turned in by constituents or by me. So I feel like at least here in Oakland, our alleys are in better shape because they're being more aggressive with them. And so if that kind of if it stays at that level, unless there's other council people that go, "Oh no, you know, my alleys look like crap, blah, blah, blah. You know, they're not moving on them." You know, I I I would encourage that we have further discussion on it. I know none of these alleys are in my district. I do know that we have, you know, a handful of paved alleys in in district 2. But even even if these alleys were in my district, I would I would want to still have that dialogue about the change over. So, I don't know what you want to do with that, Jason. I'm just putting that out there. I think that's a future conversation that we should bring to the infrastructure committee uh and talk about some of the numbers behind that.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Hill, you had one more question. I did. Um normally it it seems like we've always done bridges with some federal exchange money or something like that. And so, um I was a little surprised to see the Butcher Creek Bridge on the halfsent sales tax list. And in fact on the on its page it still says geo bond. So what what's

absolutely so we get about $1.3 million a year from the federal funds exchange program. Uh historically that has been used for some smallcale bridge repairs also for our bianual bridge inspections. So what we're proposing to do here is that we would do the pavement surface of the bridge with the halfsent sales tax money. the underlying repairs to the bridge structure would be geobonded at $1.3 million a year. That is absolutely inadequate to fully fund the total amount of repairs that are needed on the bridges across the city network. We have about 110 bridges. Uh and bridge repairs are very expensive. As you know, we have some bridge repairs that are coming. We've uh recently done on the Kansas Avenue bridge. Uh we recently did some repairs on the Briner bridge. Both these bridges that we're proposing and the CIP that were recently took the infrastructure committee are heavy need of repair and $1.3 million a year is inadequate to cover those costs.

Okay. I was just again kind of trying to protect the streets still and look for other we've had grants before also sometimes. So we there is a bridge improvement program that is offered through the state. We have received a grant for uh construction of a bridge on 57th Street. That is a very competitive program. It's funded through KOT. Um they have a lot of bridges out in rural areas that typically take priority for those grant funds, but we absolutely apply for those funds every year. Just checking. Thank you. Thank you,

Council Member Kell. I know PCI scores brought up, but we we need to start doing some eye tests because there's there's some of in the past we've been showed PCI scores of certain areas and it says it's a good road, but you drive it, you look at it and it's not. So, I think we need to look putting the eye test back into some of these PCI scorings and going out there and looking ourselves because sometimes when I know we're getting to a statistical world, you know, a saber metric world, but sometimes the eye test is the is the best test out there to actually see what's going on. And so, those are I think some of the things we need to be looking at when we're looking at some of these projects is where what what it visually looks like, not just what the PCI score is. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments? All right. Well, if there are none, then we will move on. Thank you very much. We will now move on to public comment. First up, I have Mr. Steve Vogel. Pardon? Yeah. After Steve actually, we'll just do right. While he comes up here, I'm going to make a motion to extend beyond 10:00. Have a second from council member Miller. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. Nay.

Nay. All right. Thank you, Steve. Floor is yours.

All right. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Steve Bogle. I'm the president of the Shauny County Landlords Association. I want to talk about the landlord registry draft proposal. You should all have received a copy of it. First, I want to share a couple of stories that may highlight how something like this could go terribly wrong. In 2019, when Brent Trout was the city manager, a vacant property ordinance was introduced. Despite our opposition, the ordinance passed. A few months later, I started getting a lot of texts and emails. Many landlords were telling me that they got a letter telling them they needed to register their vacant property and pay a fee. The ones they were complaining about were vacant lots and properties that had tenants in them. These complaints went on for a few weeks. The city was harassing some of these owners, saying they had to get building permits, prove occupancy, etc. The city hired a company called ProChamps to administer this ordinance. Prochamps had no office or physical presence presence in Topeka and no employees in Topeka. This turned out to be such a debacle that the city stopped enforcing it a short time later. The ordinance is still in effect, but I haven't heard a complaint about it for years. Around the same time, I had a conversation with Mike Hogan, the former PMU director. He and other city officials had recently visited Wandot County, which has very strict landlord regulations. He said they drove through neighborhoods quote five times as big as High Crest end quote where most of the cities most of the houses were boarded up. The point of this is how our city makes important decisions. Where were their critical

minds when the vacant property ordinance was introduced? Why didn't more council members ask the obvious question? How can a company with no physical presence in Topeka manage this ordinance? Also, why didn't the authors of the landlord registry include any possible risks of their proposal? One of which is discouraging investment in vacant properties. I think anyone who is writing any kind of proposal should actively seek out dissenting opinions. Check your theory against critics. See if it will hold up. What I know from the landlord registry proposals is that Cedar Rapids, Minneapolis, and some other cities have landlord registries. I don't know how they are working. I think the people working on this proposal should do a deep dive and find out how it is working. Is it really reducing the number of substandard properties? Has the number of vacant properties changed? Have any landlords had their licenses revoked? If no, why? If yes, were their tenants displaced? If so, what happened next? Talk to critics as well as supporters of the registry. I have been consistent in my criticism of the city's approach to code enforcement. what they are doing isn't effective in curbing the behavior of the serial violators. If the landlord registry becomes law, is there any reason to believe the city will do a better job of enforcement? Will the city really levy the substantial fines that are in their proposal? What will happen if the landlord doesn't pay? Is a city really willing to revoke a landlord's

license and displace their tenants? Could I have two more minutes, please? Sure. Any opposition? Go ahead.

Okay. Here are some of the programs the city will have to administer in their proposal. Keeping track of all landlord registrations, sending out invoices, administering a landlord training course. in the first phase doing inspections on 10,000 units in multifamily properties and keeping track of all the results. This proposal says that should only require two additional inspectors. Keeping track of all evictions in the city, publishing a tenants rights brochure and distributing it to tenants. requiring certificate of compliance for the sale of four plus unit rental properties, keeping track of all individuals that have more than 25% ownership in an LLC, maintaining a bad actor database that will be accessible to the public. Item 4.4 in the proposal is mandatory tenant rea relocation assistance if the tenants are forced to move. There are very steep payments for the landlord to cover. If the landlord landlord doesn't pay, the city will maintain a rental assistance reserve to cover the payments. This is just a partial list. Do you really think that the city will be able to do all this? In the research that I have seen lists the benefits and risks of landlords registries, failure to properly administer their program is one of the risks. Failure to do so leads to a lot of problems for all parties involved. I hope you take all take a critical look at this proposal and its p possible benefits and risk before you make a decision. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have Danielle Twimlo.

Good evening. Um I do want to quickly make a comment about a presentation earlier before my prepared statements um just to follow up on the statement um of the fact that we don't have overarching uh state or federal laws um or regulations to look at when we're talking about standards for uh remediation services. And I think that that is absolutely the reason why that it is so important to use professional standards to have some sort of baseline. So if we don't have an overarching regul regulatory entity that is making sure that employees are safe um then I think it's even that much more important that there are standards used across the country by professionals where they have certification on evidence-based practices. So, I do want to follow up and make that point. Um, but tonight I want to address the ongoing discussion regarding um the core request and more importantly what that situation reveals about our transparency, oversight and stewardship of our taxpayer dollars. First, I want to be very clear that this has never been about creating conflict. This has always been about accountability, which should be a priority for everyone, especially in the midst of a budget crisis. Over the course of multiple council meetings, concerns were raised regarding the volume, frequency, and apparent irregularities in work orders and payments involving a certain contractor that the city has paid significant funds for utility related work. These concerns were not speculative. They were based on observable discrepancies in publicly available records and issues that in my view warranted internal review. When no meaningful review occurred, I exercised my legal right under the Kansas Open Records Act and submitted a record request seeking contracts, bid records, procurement logs, invoices, work orders, payment history, and related

communications. As noted, I was charged $400 for that request to gather information that should be easily retrievable. There were zero pieces of paper provided. All of this information was provided digitally. I want to also be clear that many communic community members reached out offering to chip in money to assist with that cost. The fee was paid because they believe the public deserves transparency even when public dollars are invol especially because public dollars are involved. However, after receiving the records, it became clear that the concerns made public were not not only valid but amplified. So half of the files that were sent were duplicate files. So they were already included in the other set of documents. Spreadsheets appear to have been created specifically for the request because they contain so many errors not only spelling employee names five different ways throughout the document but included information about other companies. Documents provided by the city and then on the website in some cases contain different dates and numbers on each one providing very different references for the same job. So the key is that we need more efficiency in order to make sure that the work that we're doing makes sense, is getting paid for in the way that we say we're paying for it, and so that it isn't taking such an astronomical amount of time to be able to retrieve documents and accountability measures that should just be digital or they're readily available. So I want to make sure that we are looking at ways to streamline these processes, do a deeper dive into what is currently happening and how we can better make changes to the process. Um so when there are not sufficient internal controls, we should never be depending on other people bringing it up

this many times, especially when we're looking at ways to be cost-effective within our community um and government. So, at the very least, I would suggest, and this is 5 seconds, that we look deeper into the citizen government committee's recommendations of an auditor that is reviewing the way that we do business. Thank you. Thank you. That we will move on to announcements. City clerk.

Okay. Just to provide a quick overview of the April 21st agenda. We have two proclamations. um a presentation for the Topeka Sustainability Advisory Board. We have two noise exceptions on the consent agenda as well as three special event resolutions and a the ordinance for the sanitary sewer rehabilitation project eminent domain. Um on the action items, we have the ordinance for the Koopia Investments LLC um zoning ordinance and then we also have the resolution setting the June 2nd public hearing date for Winward Wenward Estates RHID. Um, we also have a public hearing and ordinance for Capital City Town Homes redevelopment tiff district. And then to follow with that, we have the resolution for the NRP standard plus 20 rebate. And then we will also have the development agreement for the capital city town homes redevelopment neighborhood um NRP. Um, and then for the non-action items, we have the discussion for the 2027 to 2036 CIP and 2027 to 2029 CIB. And that is all that I have. Thank you. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh just wanted to announce and invite the public out to meet uh our Topico Police Department recruit recruit class 70 um our six uh recruits that are in the current academy. Um as Chief Ajo uh started last year, he's uh providing the opportunity to the community to come and meet our new recruits. Uh this next event will be uh Thursday, April 16th uh from 3:00 to 5:00 at West Ridge Mall. West Ridge Mall Food Court uh at 1801 Southwest Wermaker. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Miller. Nothing for me, sir. I want to go home.

We have an executive session after this. Council member Bradberry. Nothing. Council member McGee. Uh, nothing. Council W. Mayor Hoer, nothing. Council member Hiller, nothing. Council member Valdivia Alkala, I have nothing. Council member Ortiz, nothing. Council member Banks, nothing tonight, Mayor. Thank you. Council member Kell. All right. Um, threatening my life by talking, but um,

you're right. The mayor talked earlier about fraud mails and ARP. That is something that's happening all over, not just not the elderly. We need to watch out for ourselves. We as a council have gotten fraud mails from a fake mayor in the last couple days. Road crews are going to be out. The weather's warming up. Road crews, please be careful around the road crews. Speaking of warm weather, if a neighbor needs help with their yard, it's a lot easier to take care of it now. Please reach out to your neighbors who need help with their yard maintenance and then get scarecrows start their playoff push tomorrow night. The arena is over 75% sold out sold so far. So if you're looking for a event to go to tomorrow night, scarecrows start the playoffs. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, I do have two quick things. First is simple shout out. Thank you. This week is National Public Safety Telecommunications Week and even though we are not the county, we are the city. It is the county dispatchers who do a great service for our police, fire, and EMS systems. And so I want to thank them for all the hard work that they do over at the Shauny County Dispatch uh during this week. Second thing is which needs to go mentioned is there is an artist by the name of he's an illustrator and an artist and his name is Tom La Padulla and he is the only person who has ever taken the 80 kills by the Red Baron and painted them each of them all 80 kills into 80 pieces of art and he's gotten some national renown for this and he wanted didn't want to break them up. He wanted to find a home for them somewhere in the country. And a little while back, his daughter and her wife went to Kansas City just to eat barbecue. And they decided to trek down to here in Topeka, Kansas to take a look at the um at the museum out at Forbes. Um and in doing that, the Combat Air Museum. And in doing that, they they enjoyed their conversations. They liked the work that that museum had been doing. They went back home and said, "You need to send your artwork over there to showcase it in Topeka so the people can see it." So he brought those last summer and the experience was so great that he has decided to donate all 80 of those artworks to the Combat Air Museum here in Topeka, Kansas. And so it will be a tremendous draw for this community, for that museum. It it's really great art. It's actually going to leave us for a few months to go visit somewhere else, ironically, but then when it comes back, they're going to redo it. Nice. So, I wanted to give a shout out to to he and his wife were here to present those 80 pieces of artwork which are going to be again the only 80 illustrations of any kind in the world of those Red Barons all all in one place. And so, just just another thank you to him for that and and it's it's a heck of a donation to our community. So, it will continue to bring people here to Topeka. With that, I believe I'm going

to ask the deputy mayor if we have a executive session this evening as she thinks about it. There's not a wrong answer, but Well, how long do we think next week's going to last? Not as long as this evening. Okay, I will send out an email. I need one answer from I've heard from a couple of you, but I need definite answer on something. I will send it and we'll push it off till next week. Well, then with that, if there's no other business before this body and I will double check with staff to make sure, then this meeting is adjourned.