City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the June 16, 2026 meeting of city council. We are going to start with our invocation. And Murray, it is your turn.

Thank you. Please stand. For our invocation, we have Father Dan Coronado. He's the pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church here in Topeka. He's originally from Costa Rica, was ordained in the U.S. for the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, previously served in three different parishes, Good Shepherd in Kansas City, St. Joseph, St. Catherine in Emporia, and now here in Topeka. He has done bilingual ministry since he was in seminary, and tonight he's here to provide our invocation.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, we place ourselves in your presence today. We give you thanks for all the blessings that you bestow each day, each moment on us. Loving God, you who are the source of all wisdom and knowledge, we ask you to bestow your graces upon this council. Help them to be attentive to your will so that they can be always true to you. We ask you to guide their actions, decisions, so that in the midst of the different opinions, they can always find the best ways to serve you and one another. May they always strive for justice and peace, to foster the dignity and respect for every person, to seek the common good and look for prosperity and peace for the whole community. We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Okay, let's call the roll. Mayor Duncan. Council members Hiller. Here. Valdivia Alcala. Here. Ortiz. Here. Banks.

Here.

Kell. Miller? Here. Bradbury? McGee?

Here.

And Deputy Mayor Hofer?

Here.

Okay. We have seven present with Mayor Duncan, Council Members Kell, and Bradbury both being out.

Okay. Tonight we have two mayoral proclamations. So we're going to start with Topeka Day of Play. So if you want to come on up. And. Let's get started. Whereas play is essential to the healthy development of children supporting cognitive growth, physical health, creativity, resilience, and emotional well-being that prepare children for success in school and life. And whereas play strengthens families by building connections across generations, contributing to a more connected and vibrant community where families choose to live, work, and visit. And whereas ensuring access to safe, inclusive, and welcoming opportunities for play is essential to that all children and families in Topeka can learn, grow, and thrive. Whereas for the Kansas Children's Discovery Center, Topeka's nonprofit children's museum celebrates its 15th year of operation this month, and in that time has served as a champion of play, creative joyful play, and hands-on learning for local families. And whereas the Kansas Children's Discovery Center proudly works alongside educators, child care providers, caregivers, and community organizations across Topeka in supporting play and creating enriching experiences for children and families. And whereas Topeka joins communities around the world in recognizing the importance of play in alignment with International Day of Play. And now, therefore, Spencer L. Duncan, Mayor of the City of Topeka, Kansas, does hereby proclaim July 17, 2026, as Topeka Day of Play. In the City of Topeka, Kansas, I urge all children and former children within the City of Topeka to seek opportunities for joyful play. And a witness thereof, Spencer L. Duncan, Mayor of the City of Topeka, Kansas, does hereby affix his official signature and official seal of the City of Topeka, Kansas, on the 16th day of June in 2026. So, Denae Mosher from the Kansas Children's Discovery Center. We'll say a few words.

Thank you very much. Thank you. On behalf of our Board of Trustees, our staff, the Kansas Children's Discovery Center thanks you. We are so excited to celebrate 15 years of service to the community, celebrating joyful play and curiosity. And as the mayor said in his proclamation, we invite all children and former children to experience joy and play. Come to the Discovery Center tomorrow for our day of play. Thank you.

you need to come and see the new addition that almost doubled the amount of space that there was at the Children's Discovery Center 15 years ago.

Yeah, I didn't know where it was.

Okay, our second proclamation. Would Mary Thomas come up? And I'll warn you, this one's a little bit long. No, they have done a lot in our community, so we want to recognize.

Thank you.

Okay. Whereas the City of Topeka is proud to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Community Resources Council... And whereas over the past 100 years, the Community Resources Council has grown and evolved, yet in its founding spirit remains unchanged. When it emerged in the mid-1920s, the Topeka community needed a unified force and organization capable of connecting local governments with the people they served. And whereas in 1925, The Topeka Council of Social Agencies, TCSA, was formed to focus on community social services, community planning, and public welfare. In 1969, the organization adopted the name Community Resources Council. Since its founding, CRC has fulfilled its mission by bringing partners together, strengthening collaboration, and maximizing resources to to support those in need. And whereas, during the 1930s, CRC received IRS approval as a 501 charitable organization and partnered with the University of Kansas as an advocate for social legislation. And whereas, in 1943, CRC established the first Topeka Christmas Bureau, serving hundreds of families despite limited resources And throughout its history, CRC has played a pivotal role in reshaping community services, including, and this is a few of them, in 1915, sorry, 1958. Need better glasses. CRC collaboration forms the United Way of Greater Topeka. And in, I was seeing one here, 1986, CRC co-founder of Project Topeka. And in 25 and 26, CRC celebrates 100 years of service to the community, Topeka community. And now, therefore, Spencer Duncan, mayor of the city of Topeka, Kansas, does hereby recognize June 2026 as the 100th anniversary of the Community Resources Council. We encourage all citizens to join in celebrating this century of service. and to honor the people, past and present, who have dedicated themselves to building a stronger, more connected Topeka. And this is signed, in witness thereof, I do hereby affix my official signature and the official seal of the City of Topeka, Kansas, on the 16th day of June, 2026. Spencer L. Duncan, Mayor.

very few and there really is more than me but we have three resource centers care centers and i can guarantee you there are several meetings in each one of those buildings tonight staff is taking care of everything so that i could be here for a moment of thank you to the community for letting us serve thank you for your grace and patience in walking with us in partnership to form solutions for issues that almost didn't seem like we could find a way through. But through the several decades that are listed here, every time the city rallied, we pulled the people together, we crafted solutions in partnership, put them into play, and then set them off to either continue their work or to make sure everything was done that was needed and let it go. So we will continue our work with our three care centers with all the events that we do with our city and our county that we partner with and many of the programs that they need taken care of. We look forward to another 100 years. Thank you for your support for us.

OK. Yep, they're there. OK. Next on our agenda are the appointments. The clerk will read.

A is a board appointment recommending the reappointment to Nick Zetas to the Downtown Business Improvement District Advisory Board to fill a term ending June 30th, 2028. B is a board appointment recommending the reappointment of Stephen Smith to the Downtown Business Improvement District Advisory Board to fill a term ending June 30th, 2028. C is a board appointment recommending the appointment of Isabel Huckins to the City of Topeka Citizens Advisory Council for a term ending June 23rd, 2029. And D is a board appointment recommending the appointment of Michaela Saunders to the Topeka Sustainability Advisory Board for a term ending June 30, 2028.

And I would like to recognize those that are here. I see Stephen. I saw Michaela. And Isabel, I believe, is here. So if you please stand and let's thank them for their service. OK. Next is to vote on accepting them, for which I forgot. So let's vote. I have too many things to look at.

And Mayor Duncan, what was your vote? Never mind, you cannot vote on this. I apologize. Councilmember Valdivia-Aqua? Yes. And Councilmember Bradbury? Yes. And Councilmember Kell, I see you are online. What was your vote for this?

Oh, yes.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. We have nine yes. The motion carries and the mayor cannot vote.

Okay. Okay. Next up, our presentations.

A is the presentation for the Money Management International.

Good evening. I am Andrea Clements. I'm with Money Management International. We are the... partner selected by HCCI, the merge partner selected by HCCI. I'm, like I said, Andrea Clements. I'm the development director. I have been with money management for four and a half years. I Oversee fundraising primarily through grants in the grant administration and I home office here Well down the road in Atchison, Kansas My partner co-worker is with us today Jackie boys. She's the senior director of Housing operations and she will lead you through a presentation Jackie I don't know if Jackie can hear us. Jackie, can you hear me?

OK. Yeah, can you all hear her? All right, very good. Thank you all for having us tonight. This deck has a good bit of information on it. I'm going to blow through it pretty quickly, but at the end, our contact information will be there for you. I'm happy to have one-on-one conversations with anyone, answer any questions that you might have about this information. As you know, HTCI merged with MMI. MMI has roots back all the way to 1958, so we've been around a long time. We have nearly 270 employees who are dispersed across the US, providing all sorts of services. We have two contact centers, one in Phoenix and one in Houston, Texas, which is our headquarters. And we support counseling 24-7 for most of our services, 24-7 online or through some of our support centers. We also provide counseling in both English and Spanish. And then all other language, we request it through a language line, which is not a cost to the consumer. We put the bill for that service.

Sorry, it's not advancing.

There, got it. This is just a quick view of the office locations in Kansas. In Missouri, we do have a office geographically dispersed east to west. As far as reach, MMI is a large company. We handled 1.2 million calls, texts, and chats last year, helping consumers through a variety of financial concerns. When it comes down to counseling, we did 242,000 plus counseling sessions. That's one-on-one conversations with consumers in financial need of some sort. And then you can see the rest of the things. We are diverse, and we have good ratings with all of the BBB, Trustpilot, Google, all of those kinds of things to be looking for. In addition, we're accredited by the National Council on Accreditation, which HCCI was as well. We're a member of the National Foundation for Consumer Credit. We are one of HUD's largest community areas, meaning that we can provide HUD counseling nationwide. And we're approved by the EOUSD to provide bankruptcy counseling. And then some of our other associations are listed here. This is our board of directors, Jim Treggs. We have a volunteer board of directors who serve without compensation. To keep us on the right track, you can learn more about them at moneymanagement.org. When it comes to counseling, we provide the services that the consumer needs. We meet them where they are at that point in time. These are the kinds of consumers that we work with every day. We don't turn anyone away. Everyone can obtain counseling at NMI. And we'll try to work with them through whatever their financial problem might be. We also have financial education, some done in person, some done virtual, and then self study online for a variety of topics. And then specialty counseling services. Our primary counseling effort is credit counseling and debt management plans. Debt management plans are designed to help consumers who are having difficulty paying down debt, typically credit cards, get a structured plan to pay that debt off. We also do bankruptcy counseling and education. We do disaster recovery counseling, and we've worked with a number of folks from Kansas who've been impacted by disasters over the years. We also do credit report and credit repair. When it comes to housing, we do home buyer counseling, home buyer education, and online home buyer courses for those folks who are looking to purchase homes. We do reverse mortgage counseling to help seniors determine if they want to obtain a reverse mortgage. We also have foreclosure and rental eviction counseling to support the households of those people who are having instability issues. And then the things that you're most interested in. The services that HCCI brought to VMI that were new to us were the Topeka Opportunity to Own program, the TOTO program, which is fully supported by the City of Topeka and other local partners. And this program is designed to help low-income Topeka residents become homeowners. I hope that you're all familiar with this program. If you're not at a future date, we'd love to tell you more about the program and how it works. Then there's the tenant landlord program, which is also for Topeka area clients who are either landlords or tenants and are needing some information, help, direction on their rights and responsibilities under Kansas law. We're not a legal advisor, but we offer practical solutions and options for them to work through their issues. And this is just a quick snapshot of the work that we've done in your area since the merger. This is all of Kansas. It's not just limited to FECA. But as you can see, we've continued to offer all of the services that MMI provides, plus the new services like the landlord counseling in your area. And so far, 617 Kansans have received counseling through MMI this year. And here's our contact information. As I said before, Andrea or either one are happy to address any questions or concerns that you have. I'm not sure if there's time for questions today, but please reach out to us if you'd like to have more information.

Thank you. Thank you. Council, does anyone have any questions? Marcus, go ahead.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. That next to last slide that you just had right there with the numbers to Kansas clients, although I appreciate those figures, I am curious on what specifically Topeka's numbers look like.

Um, sorry, I'm gonna let Jackie into that because she put that together. So I'm sure and she has her desktop at her hands. So I'll let her.

And I, you know, later on after I sent this in, I thought you probably were going to go to Pacific. So I'm sorry to say I don't have that tonight. I do think that about 52% of this total population was Topeka area in Shawnee County. But I need to verify that. You look at that line item that is tenant landlord counseling. That is all Topeka. your service area for that particular program. So it's not dispersed across Kansas. But I can get you that information. I'm sorry I don't have that tonight.

I will just say anecdotally, I do the reporting for all of it. And vast majority of that, as Jackie said, is going to be the Topeka clients because most of the other clients are, the numbers were much smaller. But like Jackie said, we can get you those exact numbers tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you.

Thank you for your time. Michelle, Deputy Mayor, I had a question. I didn't see my hand. No.

Question. Yeah.

Sorry, I did not see that. Go ahead, Christina.

Yeah. Thank you. Okay my question and I think we've talked some and expressed my concerns at the public health and safety meetings but what is happening to educate the Topeka community that MMI is now the replacement for HCCI and to get the word out other than the website and social media how are you all getting the word out or is it just waiting for people to come by calling the number and then telling them the change that has occurred?

For the most part, we're dependent upon those agencies that previously referred clients to HCCI to continue to refer them and those numbers now ring to MMI. However, we are participating in all of the local meetings that we can participate. Just this afternoon, Andrea and I participated in the Tuesday collaboration. We continue to try to be present where we can. We still have educators who are providing education in the Topeka area. So every opportunity we have to be present, we are.

Okay. And the Topeka educators, again, are who and how many?

The Topeka local educator is Ginger S. Bellman. She came from the HCCI merger. And then we have our own internal training department who is doing all of the virtual classes now. Okay.

Okay. And then one more question. So when somebody calls for, say, eviction questions, do you do like HCCI classes? I assume that this is the way they did it because I've never called it, but I refer people to them. You follow them through the process they're going through until you have like case closed or they no longer need any assistance?

Yes. And it depends on the individual how many times they want to engage with our counselor. Some get what they need in one conversation. I've seen a few others who have ongoing conversation and are still in communication with Ginger. So it really depends on the consumer.

Okay. And I would just say for city manager or whoever, I don't know if it would be Carrie with housing services that oversees the money, they do get My understanding is the money that was going to HCCI from the city, which I think is two or three different from grant fundings or pockets of funds, that those earmarks are met and that warrants the continued giving of money, the providing of funds from the city to this new process that is going through no longer HCCI but now MMI.

Yes, Councilwoman. When the contracts are up for renewal, we will look at renewing those. Two of the grants that we give to MMI now are HUD requirements for some of our different plan programming. And it is a total of three grants, three contracts. The total for all three combined is $134,793. Okay.

And I think you let me know that before, and I forgot what the number was. So thank you, Carrie. And I'm sure MMI is a good organization. I'm not sure what all happened that HCCI decided to fold. I will tell you I do have concerns about a third-party out-of-state entity being the replacement for HCCI. But, you know, we'll just have to see how it goes along moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Karen. Along the lines of letting the public know, we've had some questions and we've watched some social media posts where people were announcing they're closed and so on. Can you share with us whether HCCI's old phone number works and if people Google MMI and get something different, will they still get to the services?

They will.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

I can say that if they call HCCI, it's going to transfer to money management. And Jackie, want to answer the rest of that?

Yes, so those phone lines now ring directly to a queue that allows the consumer to go through an IBR and choose a total program or tenant landlord services, and they are directed to the providers of those services. If they Google and just come up with MMI, if they're not really specific about what they're looking for, honestly, they could land with a counselor who does not do the TOTO program or tenant landlord, and they'll have to have a bit of conversation to get them redirected to the right person. That is kind of the nature of what we do. There are so many services provided and everybody calling from Topeka or Kansas is not necessarily looking for just those two programs. If you look at the stats are provided, you can see that there's plenty of other services that are being accessed as well. So by all means, if you're making referrals using those existing phone numbers is the best way for folks to get there most expeditiously.

Thank you. So when people are asking or when there's some string going on social media or whatever, the thing to do is say that they can use either the old Topeka number or the 1-800 or 888, whatever you are. But they should just say, I'm calling from Topeka, Kansas, and I need X.

Yes, it would be wonderful if they can name the program they're looking for. It gets them there much quicker. And as far as the social media post and the misstatements made earlier on, our marketing team has really worked hard to overcome those and address them and respond to them. And they'll continue to respond when it's appropriate. Great.

Thank you. It just matters.

Thanks again. Yes. We understand. It matters. Thank you. Okay.

Mayor Duncan, do you want to ask any questions? No. Okay. Then thank you. Yes. Thank you all. OK. Next up, we have another presentation.

The next presentation will be the homeless encampment and right-of-way cleanup.

City Manager?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor and members of the governing body. In this presentation, the multi-departmental team will discuss the collaborative efforts undertaken and funded by utilities, public works, co-compliance, and homeless teams to clean up our city's rights-of-way and homeless encampments. With that, I'll turn this over to Sylvia Davis, Director of Utilities, Jason Tryon, Director of Public Works, Kerry Higgins, Director of Housing and Homelessness, and John Shardine, Director of Co-Compliance. Team?

So I'll get us started tonight. Like the city manager said, this is a cumulative effort amongst several departments across the city. So I'll be speaking to the efforts that are made within Public Works. And I don't think I'm advancing the slides. There we go. So within Public Works, the primary group that performs our cleanup duties is our blight crew. That's six individuals who operate in two crews of three with a passenger van and trailer. Cleanup is not their only duties. They also, in addition to removing trash and debris, are responsible for mowing, cleaning up around roundabouts and some of the other landscaping around the city, and then snow removal when applicable. For trash and debris, one of our primary duties is going to large item location removals. We call them illegal dumping sites. These are places we know that it's possible to back up a truck into a secluded spot and drop off a large item like a couch or tires or appliances, things like that, that a property owner wouldn't be able to get rid of on their own. So this crew goes around to each of those sites once a month or more if reported. They also go to trash, debris, paper pickup locations. These are places that we know just because the contours of fences, rights of way, it collects a lot of trash, debris, styrofoam, things of that nature. They visit those 22 sites quarterly or more as needed and they visit them a total of 110 times in 2025 on a scheduled basis. Also 32 more unscheduled visits. They also do miscellaneous blight work orders. So if we get a report of somebody dumping or trash building up in a particular area along the right-of-way, this group would go out and clean up those areas. So those individuals make an average of $18 per hour. We factor in the cost of their equipment and the supplies used in their work. Based on an audit of their work order hours, we estimate that approximately 30% of their time was spent on trash cleanup. So in total for this service between January 1st, 2025 and March 31st, 2026, the total cost that was budgeted for the city was $121,933. I do want to note that while in the past Public Works has been involved in some of the larger encampment cleanups, we specifically were looking at 2025, and there were no cleanup efforts that involved Public Works within that time frame. With that, I will turn it over to Carrie.

Thank you. So for housing services, our costs come from outreach efforts with those individuals that are residing in those encampments. We will go out and we will connect those individuals to different resources and services. We also do an assessment with each individual so that we can get them put on the appropriate housing list. We have a team of two EAS team members who respond as needed and engage with those individuals. And for 2025 through the first quarter of 2026, we averaged roughly 248 hours of outreach with a total cost of just under $6,000. And I will turn it over to utilities.

All right. Utilities frequently assists in large camp cleanup initiatives with our collections crew. Those managers and heavy equipment operators work in areas around the levees, around streams, and large waterways. Much of that work goes to help cleaning up campsites or other dump sites where we have water quality impacts or it has a threat to the open and flow, the open flow of our waterways and channels. The camp cleanups that we do assist in, again, we have a lot of the skilled equipment and laborers to do these efforts and maintain those stream channels. That is separate from the work that we do to just make sure that we are trying to keep all of the city's streams and waterways open and flowing. It is also separate to the work that we have to do to maintain regulatory requirements with stormwater. One of those examples is erosion and sediment control. So if we have somebody that's not compliant, it can absolutely add to the blight that someone may experience around town. In 2025, work done with the utilities efforts and the camp cleanups totaled approximately $87,562. And with the bulk of that cost associated with labor and equipment, And landfill fees, those fees alone totaled over $33,000. So far in the first quarter of 26, we have hit approximately $24,000 in our efforts. Again, we do try to take some of that waste, if possible, as long as it's not contaminated to the forestry's recycling facility so that we can reduce the amount spent hauling to the landfill.

So as Sylvia said, all of the divisions that partake in this effort, they play a key role. It starts with PMU because that's where the calls originate from. It comes through our office. And it's there that I dispatch an inspector to identify the encampment, specifically if it's risen to a sanitation violation. Nevertheless, we send out outreach teams to meet with the occupants because that's who we care about the most. So while we're meeting with the occupants, we evaluate the camp itself. If it's not risen to a sanitation violation, we monitor it. There's times where we spend an enormous amount of time in the outreach effort. And the goal for that is to find a safe, secure housing for the occupants, right? So property maintenance works collaboratively with the Topeka Police Department, Water Pollution Control, and community partners to address complex needs of individuals experiencing homelessness. Prior to any cleanup, occupants provided with the access to outreach services, resources, and referrals aimed at helping them transition from encampments to safe, stable housing and ongoing support. Despite these efforts, encampments often leave behind substantial amounts of trash, waste, and hazardous debris, creating unsafe and unsanitary conditions. In 2025, PMU abated 65 unsheltered camps, removing more than 190 tons of waste that would have otherwise contributed to citywide blight. To date, in 2026, PMU has completed the removal of 16 unsheltered camps, disposal of more than 44 tons of trash and debris. And you can see the chart there listed below. In 2025, we committed 420 hours, man hours. In 2026, so far, it's 103. The Topeka Police Department plays a critical role in abating each camp as well. An officer will begin educating and helping individuals living in a location scheduled to be abated several weeks in advance, spending up to eight hours per location. The officer will be on site during the abatement to ensure safety in city workers, individuals moving their items, all spending up to 16 hours during each abatement. In 2025, it appears that we spent 1,560 workforce hours. In 2026, so far this year, 384. This summary illustrates not only the cost to the City of Topeka for PMU to abate these locations, but highlights the amount of time taken away from primary duties to focus on these issues of sanitation and unsheltered camp locations. In many instances, the abatements involve the same individuals in a different location as they have been moved from previous camp abatements. This is a photograph of an encampment that was located on the southeast Kansas and 27th Street. I had the opportunity to escort Councilwoman Valdivia Alcala to this location. Can you see this, Councilwoman?

Yes, I can. I remember it. Thanks, John.

Okay. This second set of photographs is afterwards. You can see what an outstanding job Sylvia's department did on this. They're very critical to our success as in all of our divisions. This is why it is a collaborative effort.

John?

Yes, ma'am.

John. Yes, ma'am. I just want to say thank you and thank you to all the directors and all of the staff. because when we went to visit that particular encampment I was absolutely floored with how large it was and all the debris and all of the hoarding that takes place and just the effort that every worker does that is involved in that is owed a really big thank you in addition to their duties because From what I could tell from being there and, you know, the individual that you were talking with, it's not easy, I understand, for the unsheltered folks, and it's definitely a challenge for city workers to go in there and clean this up. So, I mean, a really huge thank you to the workers that are getting in there and the collaboration. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'll open it up to any questions.

Does anybody have any questions or comments they'd like to make?

I have a comment please, Deputy Mayor. I just want to say thank you for putting this together and for the collaborative effort between the departments. I know it's a lot of work that goes into this and I just wanted to say thank you about that. I also think this shows that as a city, we need to commit to a sustained multi-year funding for homelessness outreach and support. Clearly, this presentation shows that our spending is substantial and fragmented, and I think we need to take a more proactive approach. to this and dedicating some amount of budget to help with this and take a more proactive approach in how we address these issues. Again, thank you for all your work in this. It's truly appreciated.

Councilwoman Hillard. Thank you. I have two questions. One, I don't know if there's a uniform answer, but if Looking at the dollars and the hourly rates, the rates that were used to come up with some of those totals, are those dollars and the hourly rates just what people make per hour, or how are they built if they are more than that? I think Jason's coming.

I'll let you answer for these ones.

I think you're going to get a little bit different answers here.

I wondered. So for our department, we calculated the hourly rate and then also added in additional costs for the benefits and the total cost of employment, and we gave you that total calculated number.

And you may not have it exactly, but what kind of ratio was that?

Typically, if you add in the total cost of benefits, it's roughly 30% higher than the person's hourly wage.

I've done some consulting with staff along the way because, of course, we need to cover supervisors and driving to and from the site and things like that. So I wasn't sure. Is that the same way in the other departments, just wages?

I can't speak for the others, but for utilities, that is wages, benefits, everything that would go into what we would charge out for other people that we might be doing services for and then trying to recoup the total cost for that labor equipment, all of that. Okay.

We add in the dump fees in addition.

For housing, it is just their salary amount. Outreach is part of their job description, so it's kind of included into that.

Not for any more discussion tonight, but the actual cost of having somebody out there on site is a lot more than that. We've talked about it before at the city level, and we may want to look at a standard formula or something that people use. The second question I had was, is there any plan emerging to reduce that amount of effort? No. No? No.

Okay. Thank you. Councilman Banks.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. John, you know I call an awful lot about some of these encampments and Every time we clean one up, another one pops up, maybe just a few areas or a few spots away from the one we just cleaned up. And what I can see is that they're becoming – the campers are becoming increasingly dangerous. more dangerous, and my concern is with the investment, the amount that we invest in cleaning up these camps. Are we seeing a significant reduction in the amount of camps throughout our city?

I would like to give you a positive answer on that. But as word gets out that we are a resource rich city, I find that the occupants are increasing from out of town And the ones who have established, I hate to say residency because they really don't, they seem to revolve around the city. They'll move from one location to another until we're made aware of the location and it's escalating to a sanitation violation. As you know, it's not against the law to be homeless. But the byproducts created by the encampment is unacceptable. So we're trying to address all the issues universally and help. Cary's got a great, great plan for finding these folks resources and places to live, a great success rate. When I interview them, they tell me their contact number, who they're working with from her department, and how close they are, where they're at on the list. So I know they're being informed, and I know it's successful. It's just there's so many of them. So we're doing the best we can with what we got. Thank you, John. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Does anyone else have another question or comment? Councilwoman Ortiz.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I don't know if any one of you guys can tell me this, but what's the percentage of people that want to live like that?

I'll take that. Oh, good. The percentage is actually that choose homelessness is actually very low. It's a common misconception. You may find individuals who say, yes, I want to live out unsheltered in a place not meant for human habitation. But more than likely, they are saying that because that's what's easier. It is when you are unsheltered and you are living in crisis day after day and you hit roadblock after roadblock and are asked to jump through hoop after hoop, you give up hope. And it is easier to give up hope and just accept this is my life and this is how it's going to be than it is to continue to have that hope and aspire for something different. You may not get everyone saying that they do want house, but I would bet about 90 to 95% of them do want to be housed and we've done some interviewing and we did some questionnaires with the unsheltered. It's been about two years now and the results of those surveys also showed that the majority of them do want to be housed.

Well, the reason why I say that, and, you know, Carrie, I call you quite frequently, too. I think I have you on speed dial. It's because we get people houses, we get them settled, and then they're right back out there. You know, the lady that was at Hummer, she had the income and everything, but she chose to be in that truck. She chose to be like that. That wasn't her first rodeo either. So that's the question that I've always thought of and people ask me all the time when you try to help them and then they go back to that. How do we cure that? I'm just saying, thinking out of my head, I agree with John. I can almost tell you, we've cleared this camp out, but I tell my constituents to keep checking that area because they're coming back. That's all they're doing is rotating, is rotating, is rotating. I don't know how they move so much junk because I can't move something from my living room to the front door. And I don't know how they get all that stuff. But they do. They do. And so that's that's why I asked the question. We can pour as much money is as we want to in it. But unless they're willing to get help and the help that they need, whether it's mental, um, physical or whatever, we're gonna, we're gonna have, we're gonna have this problem. It's a nationwide problem. It's not just a Topeka problem, but it's a nationwide problem. Thank you.

Anyone else? OK. I want to thank you for all your hard work. It's a job that I don't think I could personally do. I've had to make a few calls and ask for help for people. But I also know it's something that a lot of people just do not want to see. And they want to ignore that it's happening, that it is happening. So thank you for coming and presenting to us tonight. That tells us a lot.

Thank you, council.

Okay, next up is the consent agenda.

All right. A is a resolution introduced by Councilmember Karen Hiller granting Randy Wheat an exception to the provisions of the City of Topeka Code Section 945150 at SEEK concerning noise prohibitions. B is a resolution introduced by Councilmember Sylvia Ortiz granting Randy Wheat an exception to the provisions of the City of Topeka Code Section 945150 at SEEK concerning noise prohibitions. C is an ordinance introduced by city manager Dr. Robert Imprez removing certain real property from the dynamic core redevelopment district. D is an ordinance introduced by the city manager Dr. Robert Imprez removing certain real property from the capital city townhomes redevelopment district. E is an ordinance introduced by City Manager Dr. Robert M. Perez allowing and approving city expenditures for the period of May 2, 2026 to May 29, 2026 and enumerating expenditures therein. F is a resolution introduced by City Manager Dr. Robert M. Perez authorizing the City Attorney's Office to initiate litigation. G are the minutes of the regular meeting of June 9, 2026. And then I have also supplied you guys with a list of applications for the cereal malt beverage off-premise applications. And staff is recommending approval. OK.

I have a motion. Does anyone have any changes they'd like to make? OK. So we will move forward. I have a motion to approve from Sylvia Ortiz and a second from Marie McGee. Please call the vote.

OK. And Mayor Duncan, what will your vote be?

Yes.

Councilmember Valdivia-Alcala? Yes. OK. And Councilmember Kell? Yes. OK. All righty. We have 10 yes. The motion carries.

Okay, next up are the action items.

A is an ordinance introduced by City Manager Dr. Robert M. Perez amending the district map referred to and made part of the zoning ordinances by Section 1850 of the Topeka Municipal Code by providing for certain changes in zoning on 3.09 acres of property located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Southwest 21st Street and Topeka Boulevard from M1 two-family dwelling district to PUD with C4 use group limited to automotive uses. City Manager?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, members of the governing body, Dan Warner, Director of Planning and Development will lead us through this item.

Thank you, City Manager. Deputy Mayor, Governing Body, so the proposal here is to amend the existing zoning for the car lot to the east. I'm sorry, to amend the existing zoning for the car lot to the east to include the property to the west. That property is zoned M1 to family dwelling and it will be rezoned to C4 PUD with C4 automotive uses just like the property to the east. The applicant intends to store cars on that property in support of the car sales operations to the east. This particular corporation is in good standing with the Kansas Secretary of State. The applicant held a neighborhood information meeting and answered questions at that meeting. The Planning Commission held a public hearing last month on the rezoning and recommended approval. Staff recommends approval as well. Be happy to try to answer any questions.

Okay. Does anyone have any questions? I do. Hello? Okay. Councilwoman Valdivia Alcala, please.

Thank you. Dan, so if the community, when the community meetings were held, what was the attendance like and what were the concerns? If any.

Councilwoman, I don't believe there were concerns about that project. I believe the NIA membership or the leadership showed up to that meeting and were in general support of the project. I think that's the gist of the neighborhood information meeting.

Alright, thank you.

You bet.

Any other questions? OK. Next I have to do is ask if there is any ex parte communication from any of the council members.

Go ahead. Yes, I've had ex parte communications by telephone, in person, and at a meeting. And I can still make a fair decision.

Anyone else? Seeing none. Are we doing public comment? I have a note that says I didn't think so. Okay. I have a motion to approve from Councilwoman Ortiz and a second by Councilman Miller. If there's no further comment, let's call the vote.

Mayor Duncan?

Yes.

Council Member Valdivia-Alcala? Yes. And Council Member Kell? OK. OK, we have 10 yes. The motion carries.

OK, next up is item 6B.

B is a resolution introduced by City Manager Dr. Robert M. Perez in accordance with Section 186010 of the Topeka Municipal Code, approving a conditional use permit to allow for a short-term rental type 2, non-owner occupied, that is within 500 feet of another short-term rental on property located at 1171 Southwest Medford Avenue and zoned R2 single-family dwelling district, all being within the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas. City Manager?

Thank you. Deputy Mayor, members of the governing body, Dan Warner, the Director of Planning and Development will lead us through this item.

Thank you, City Manager, Deputy Mayor, governing body. So this proposal is to operate a short-term rental type 2 on property at 1171 Southwest Medford. That's a single-family house. Conditional use permit is required because the property is within 500 feet of another type 2 short-term rental Type 2 short-term rentals are not hosted by the owner of the property One of the standards for type 2 rentals is that they must be 500 feet from another type 2 Can we bring up the presentation Okay, so staff is supportive of this CUP because the other Type 2 short-term rental is not on the block as that particular application. It's on a street that's to the east of that property. One other thing to note here with this short-term rental is that the state of Kansas approved a bill this past legislative session that prevents a city from limiting the number of short-term rental permits during the World Cup, and more specifically from May 15th to July 25th. So this resolution adopting this CUP, assuming that you do that, will not go into effect until July 26th. So in other words, this operator can have its short-term rental currently because we're now in that May 15th to July 25th period. So again, in other words, the two-year permit for this application will not start until July 26th. So if you approve it, this permit won't technically kick in until July 26th and it would be good for two years. So the applicant held a neighborhood information meeting for this project. There were folks that came to that meeting and so we answered questions about the project. I know we got an email from a neighbor and we and I believe the applicant answered questions and I think that satisfied that neighbor. Planning Commission held a public hearing on this conditional use permit and recommended approval. Staff recommends approval as well. Happy to try to answer any questions.

uh councilwoman bradbury um thank you um i'm actually reading that email right now that's in the packet with the questions can you tell me what the city's response was to those it's the email from jim davis number two

I believe the responses are in that email, Councilwoman. So the response is bolded. So you can see, so for instance, what specific measures will be in place to ensure ongoing compliance with occupancy limits, et cetera. And then the response from Mr. Jacobs, the property is a two-bedroom residence, maximum occupancy of four guests. So I think it's all in there. must be looking at a different one then because I don't see that in the one that I'm looking at okay it's it would be at least in what I'm looking at it would be after the neighborhood information meeting notice there's an email from Jim Davis that Anne Marie It's like an email chain, basically, that was attached. I will say that Mr. Davis did not, I believe he was satisfied with the responses.

Those are my questions. I'll continue to look through these emails. I apparently overlooked these. Thank you.

Are there any other questions? Seeing none. OK. Then.

Deputy Mayor, you may want to ask for expert take communications on this one as well.

OK. OK. Do any of the council members or the mayor have any expert take communications on this case? Seeing none, we are ready for a motion. Okay, I have a motion from Councilmember Bradbury and a second by Councilman Miller. If there's no other comments, then we'll vote.

Mayor Duncan?

Yes.

Councilmember Valdivia-Oklah?

Yes.

Ann Kell? Okay, we have 10 yes. The motion carries.

Okay. Now we're going to move into the non-action items. Number 7A, City Clerk will read.

A is a discussion of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Committee recommendations.

City Manager. City Manager.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor, members of the governing body, in this item, consistent with one of our FY2026 strategic goals, to activate the $1.2 million in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, we will discuss recommendations provided through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Committee. As we shared with the Policy and Finance Committee on December 11th, 2025, and the governing body on December 16th, 2025, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Committee has been meeting since June 2025. and strategizing on how to activate these dollars and identify a sustainable funding source for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. While a sustainable funding source has not yet been finalized, ultimately the committee moved to issue a request for proposals in February 2026, and a total of six proposals were received for this funding. This evening we will discuss the committee's recommendation to award funding for three proposals totaling $932,000, and on July 7th ask the City Council for approval of these three awards. Given this introduction, I will turn this over to Carrie Higgins, Director of Housing and Homeless Services, to lead us through this item.

Thank you. Good evening. I am thrilled to be here tonight to give you the Affordable Housing Trust Fund recommendations. Just a little background reminder, the purpose of the Housing Trust Fund is to expand the availability of affordable housing in Topeka according to Ordinance 20554. The current balance of the fund is $1,242,149.35 and all application requests were capped at 20% of the total project cost. This is a list of the review committee members. As you can see, it is a mix of city staff as well as community members. So the review committee process started on February 2nd when the request for proposals was issued and it closed on March 31st. There were pre-proposal meetings conducted on February 19th and March 12th. And then following the close of the RFP, each committee member scored the applications individually. And then the committee convened on April 15th and April 29th to discuss the scoring results and develop final recommendations. Here you can see a list of the criteria that the applications were scored based on. You'll notice the three on the right hand side of your screen are labeled bonus. The projects could receive extra points if they either utilized workforce training, created revenue for the trust fund, or utilized a land bank property. So the committee received six project applications. After review, the committee determined that three of those applications were non-responsive due to not submitting all required documents. The remaining three applications were evaluated and scored, and the committee is recommending proceeding with the three projects, which are to Scent Inc., to Weibel Property Development, and to Highland Park REO. The three projects total $931,947.50, with just over $365,000 of that being repaid back to the Housing Trust Fund. And the three projects in total will create, preserve, or rehabilitate around 229 housing units in our community. Scent Inc. is the first project tonight. The project title is Five Infill Homes Initiative. The requested funding is $181,750, which goes towards buyer subsidies for home purchases with two homes being at 50% AMI, two homes at 80% AMI, and one home at 120% AMI. You can see the addresses listed there are where the properties would be located. And the team has verified that they owe no fines or fees, no taxes are owed, there are no code violations, and they are in good standing with the Secretary of State. The second project is Weibull Property Development. The project title is Old Town Cooperative. The requested funding is $365,197.50. This is for renovations of 24 units at 817 Southwest Tyler. And the property will become a cooperative housing structure with units targeted at 80% to 120% AMI. And this project has full repayment of the just over $365,000 back to the Housing Trust Fund within 12 months of closing on permanent financing. Mr. Weibel is in good standing with the Secretary of State. He is working through a few situations but expects to have everything resolved before a developer's agreement would be signed. And additionally, the property at 817 Southwest Tyler was purchased condemned with the intention that he would be rehabbing it and bringing it back up to code and thus applying for the housing trust fund. And then the third project is Highland Park REO. Project title is Highland Park Townhomes. The requested funding is $385,000 for renovations at Highland Park Townhomes. The funds would go for hard construction cost only in order to preserve the affordable housing project there. And they are in good standing with the state. They have no open code violations, no owed fines, fees, or taxes. additionally all three projects legal has created developer agreements which outline the specifics of each projects and funding agreements and those were attached with your agenda this evening.

Really quick before Carrie finishes, I just also want to acknowledge the members of the Affordable Housing Trust Committee. I see a couple of them here. So I just want to thank you all, as well as the folks who are not here, for all your work on this. I know we met a lot, and we did a lot of great work. So I appreciate you all. Thank you. Okay. If you want to stand up and be recognized, that's totally up to you. Yeah. Okay. I see some blushing in the crowd. Thank you.

We also have all three developers here, either in person or online, in order to answer any questions you might have.

OK. I am going to start. We have one person signed up to speak tonight on this, and then we'll open for questions. So Jane Williams, are you here and ready to speak?

Good evening. My name is Jane Williams, and I'm representing Topeka Jump tonight. We are here to urge you as council people to approve recommendations from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Review Committee. We are so excited and so pleased to see that this initial $1 million has the potential to be used to preserve and create nearly 230 affordable homes and apartments. We appreciate the review committee and staff for the work they've done to this point. We also want to highlight that now is the time for securing additional public funding for the trust fund to sustain this progress. Across the country, successful affordable housing trust funds are seeded with public funding every year. Per the review committee's recommendation, This would come from a one tenth of one penny sales tax for affordable housing and homelessness, which was a topic you just talked about. We urge you to support this proposal by putting it forward by a vote for the general public. And when you do so, please put forth specific well-researched solutions that the city's own studies have already recommended. Specifically, investing half of the funds generated directly into the affordable housing trust fund. This was the top recommendation from the 2020 housing study. And half of it also goes into top outcomes from the 2024 homeless innovation study. Last year, at around this time, now Mayor Duncan shared at a candidate forum we held that he believes that affordable housing trust fund would not exist without JUMP and that there wouldn't be a million dollars in it had we not gotten him on stage on our Nehemiah action and urged him to get it done. We appreciate the work of the mayor and others who have tried and worked to get initial investments into the trust fund so we could be at this point. However, the progress can't be sustained unless this governing body decides to act on a continued investment in affordable housing in this community. So here we are again tonight to urge the city council to get it done. We need annual dedicated public revenue for this trust fund and you're the only ones in this community that can get that process started. We appreciate the conversations we've had already with members of this council and particularly with the policy and finance committee on this matter. Specifically, we appreciate council members Bradbury and Banks who attended our most recent Nehemiah action and committed to over a thousand people that they'll advocate for this proposal. We look forward to the conversations with the rest of the council on this matter as well. Remember, there's over 10,000 families that cannot afford the safe housing that's needed in our community. We need affordable housing now. Thank you.

Next up, Councilwoman Valdivia-Aklah.

Thank you. It looks to me like there is just a huge amount of work that went into this. I was so impressed when I looked through all of the information and the application process and the meetings that were had. I do have A couple of questions though. Carrie, can you explain to the public? I understand what it is, but just to the listening public a little bit more about what it means for the Weibel Property Development LLC when it says the property will become a cooperative housing structure. Can you expand on that just a little bit?

Councilwoman, if I may, I will have Mr. Weibel speak to that.

Okay.

Oh, council. So, and everybody, this is a cooperative housing structure is set up to be a reliable, like a sustainable, affordable housing project. project so what we do is the entity itself is actually the building in which it stands so there is no outside entities no ownership outside of the community or anything it stays in there so then people buy in shares to that LLC which is the building itself so therefore there is no I'm doing really bad here. There is no chance for an outside entity to raise prices or do anything in there. It gives everybody equal share in what happens in the co-op. Everybody has equal say. Everybody has equal votes. It's a nonprofit structure. So as it goes forward, what it does is allows for what we're doing, what we're focusing on is keeping everything into an affordable structure today so that it stays affordable then. It grows equity over time. I believe it's a 3% growth every year on the share value. It's not like a condominium where you buy the actual unit. It's a share value itself. So therefore, it stays not only affordable today, but then affordable tomorrow and for 100 years from now.

Thank you for that explanation. I think that the cooperatives, is something that Topeka needs more of, because I think that there's only one that exists right now in Topeka. Kerry, can you confirm that? It would be four? How many? There's four.

There's four of them. There's two that are actually in, is that? Central Park. I believe it's Central Park neighborhood off of 13th and Fillmore. Those are two different entities. Those are the only privately owned ones in town. The rest are HUD funded. One is behind Central Highland Park and the other one is Fox Ridge over up by Washburn Tech.

And I have heard from a number of people from Fox Ridge that have lived there for a very, very long time. I think cooperatives are fantastic, and it is good to know that that is what you are using your funds for, so I appreciate that. Then I have another question, Carrie. Can you explain to me, because I don't understand When it says all three projects on page six total $931,947.50, with $365,197.50 eventually being repaid to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, can you explain what that is in that repayment process back?

Yes. So the total going out initially will be the $931,000. And then as Mr. Weibel's project is completed and they have 12 months to close on their permanent financing, at that point they will be repaying that $365,000 back to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. So it will go back into that fund to be able to be reused for another project.

Okay, I think you might have said that already if I missed that, but is that something that we may also see again in the future? This type of, it's almost a little bit like blending, isn't it? Not really?

It is. We allocated three bonus areas for each of the applicants, and one of those is if you find a way for your project to generate revenue in some form back to the trust fund, you get bonus points for your application. So, yes, we are hoping to see more of that.

Okay. You know, this is something I definitely feel when the vote comes up I'm going to be supporting, and I would just say good work by everyone. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

Next up, Councilman Ortiz.

Thank you. Good to see you, Tyler. I just have a question for you, though. FoxRisk has a $6,000 deposit to move in. Yeah. And you are buying into escrow, and you get your money when you leave, providing everything is in shape. So is that what you're going to do with yours? You're going to have a huge deposit that, you know, people love to move out there in Fox Ridge, but they can't afford the $6,000 deposit.

Yeah, so right now, we're actually really working on the financial side of it, trying to figure out how to make it the most affordable as possible. There will be a deposit that ought to be made, which is for a percentage of the overall share amount. What that does is allows us to get a higher share value. to grow equity at a larger rate so when people do decide to move or anything like that they gain they gain a higher value we want to see people be able to get into this not only an affordable monthly rate which is what we're really kind of focused on uh to be able to keep that sustainable but also when they go on to move on to another property or they want to buy go into a bigger home or you know assisted living whatever needs to happen they do have a bit of a nest egg that they've been able to build up so not only the affordability now you gain equity and then be able to move forward out of the property eventually.

And I agree with that. You do gain equity, but you've got to have that money up front. And a lot of low to moderate income people don't have $6,000 for a deposit. Yeah, it goes by your income. It continues to go by your income. And people, it's hard to get in there because people just don't move. But people also with three or four kids or even one nowadays, they don't have that. So I will be looking at that, you know, because I've always said, do they just not want us out there? Or what's the deal here? You know, it's a good thing, but everybody can't grasp onto that. Everybody doesn't have that deep of a deposit. And, you know, some people just don't even have the rent, you know, what the rent is for that deposit or the matching. So that's a concern of mine. I'll go to Carrie now. Gary, a couple years ago, Highland Park Apartments were having very, very much trouble. It was to the point where the owner was, remember, he was in jail, on his way to prison, and then we had his attorney that was going to buy the apartments, and then we had that in court, and we all know how court goes. Well, some of us know how court goes. Did that ownership ever get straightened out?

Yes, and we have Mr. Abbas here tonight with us that could share a little bit more. I believe he is on Zoom.

Because I agree it needs to be renovated, but I'm just concerned with the ownership since we had that problem two years ago.

It did go into receivership and went into different hands, and I've worked fairly closely with Highland Park over the last few years. I know that. And it has been very different management, and they've been very great to work with. But I will let Brett share a little bit more about that.

Of course, thank you, Kerry. I just want to thank the City Council for inviting me to this meeting and having the opportunity to discuss the project today. I'm grateful to the Trust Fund Committee awarding us this grant. I think, as Kerry had mentioned a little bit, I think we have a shared vision of what Highland Townhomes has the potential to be, and so I want to thank you for helping to facilitate that. To answer your question, we are, you know, the ownership is an affiliated entity to Excalibur Capital. We're actually the lender of record. So like you, we shared in, you know, the issues that were present with previous ownership. And so I definitely feel that, you know, that sort of frustration with the project. We were able to take over the project through foreclosure in 2025. And since then, we've been dealing, as you can imagine, with a lot of deferred maintenance that the previous owner had caused. And so we've been spending the better part of the last year trying to remediate a lot of the units that were really in disrepair. I think when we took over, we inherited about 85 or 90 of the 200 units were unrentable and disrepair. We're now down to about nine. And so we fixed up, you know, call it 75 or 80 of the units and made them rent ready. And so, you know, our goal is to really reposition this asset, renovate it, because Today, we've fixed the deferred maintenance, but there are systemic issues at the project that we're looking to remediate and perform a very large-scale rehab in the amount of you know 14 or 15 million in total um hardens off costs uh to uh renovate the units the exterior uh beautify and modernize the the clubhouse to make it a community area and so that that's our goal and and we're thankful that uh that the committee and carry have recognized that

Thank you. I will speak for me and hopefully my colleague next to me will get on board but I'd like to come and go through it and to see what kind of shape it's in now because I know what it was a couple years ago and I know what kind of work that you had to put into it. And I would hope that with the work that you've put into that that you've gotten some type of security over there that management has done that because that's going to be very, very important. with with with their property. But a lot of people moved out because of what was going on and I mean the grass was high. I've never seen the grass like that and I I told David this when he first got on board that we need to make sure that the crime and and how it looks is in acceptable shape. So we will tour that, go over there and tour that, just to make sure and make sure that the management company that, just to check it out, I'd like to do that, and I'm going to invite him to come with me as well. That's his district, but I do get a lot of calls from constituents. Thank you. I appreciate that.

And good luck to you. I'd be happy to join you on the tour. We're putting in more cameras. I think with the project that over the last four years has had a bit of an absentee ownership, it does take... a little bit of time and effort to show the tenants that we care and that we're really looking to change the culture around there. And so as we move forward, we're finding that tenants are more responsive, seeing that we care, that we're going to fix stuff. And so that's the goal to continue that going forward.

It's good to hear because our officers have put in a lot of manpower over there, and they would love to hear that as well. I thank you. My next comment is to Ms. Jane Williams that spoke with Jump. I appreciate you coming up. I appreciate you speaking, and I appreciate just your enthusiasm about this. But I do want to say this, and I continue to say this. This problem is a Topeka problem. And I like the way that JUMP has come forward and they've pushed forward. And I will continue to say, you've said over and over, we have over 7,000 members. And this is and she said it right. This is a partnership. You have over 7000 members. And if we all gave a dollar to this fund, that would be another $7000. And you know what? Everybody says, but that's not our problem. That's the city's problem. But it's not. It's a partnership between Topeka and their citizens, all of our citizens and the city. So I appreciate that. And I just want to continue to say that. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Councilman Miller, did you have a question?

I did, but Councilwoman Valdivia-Ackley, she brought the information up that I was looking for.

Thank you. Okay. I'm going to go to Councilman Miller, since you haven't had a chance to ask a question.

Okay, thank you. First, I'm just excited about this first package, particularly that includes homeownership. I know it wasn't necessarily intentional, but it worked out to have a homeownership third, rental third, and then co-ops. I think one of the lessons we learned out of that, and Tyler, it's been fun to work with you, is that, you know, it's not always just money or just location or just zoning. It's thinking about what would fit. I know that in every one of these is a fit. The infill throughout that CENT is doing, bringing Highland Park back, which has been such a great place that people have worked together as tenant organizations and helped each other raise their families and live their lives for a long time. And it's just, it's nice to see that brought back. And then in Old Town where the real desire is to begin to shift away from just super intense, dense, big apartment complexes down to a little less density in their case in that particular part of the neighborhood. And then to kind of struggle with, well, how do we do that? How do we transition? And to come up with this unfortunate burnout in this building, but then the idea that could really be a great transitional development and really good for everybody looking at you know developing more ownership if you will into that neighborhood so really kudos to everyone with these three projects and the staff and the board that worked on it In terms of the comments for future, I've mentioned to a couple people already, I mean, overall, when it's a voter-elected sales tax, I don't see it as, quote, public money as much as allowing the citizens of Topeka to decide if they want to contribute. And so with that, if that's the way it goes. I can support that. I also really appreciate the fact that Jump suggested that we be very specific about what the money would go for, if and when we put it up for a vote. And I would suggest, I wrote to Carol, but I haven't said anything to everybody, that what we talked about at first, I remembered, was rehab and weatherization and small home repair for low and moderate income homeowners and perhaps similar to some of the things Carrie's department does with facade and facility, could be facade improvements, weatherization improvements, whatever for rental properties to keep them safe and up to date and also still affordable. I hope that we can I guess it's up to us to put together that final language, but if we can include the homeless services in a way that people understand where it's going to go, these innovative big projects like we have this time, but also a clear set aside for LMI homeowners, I think will help because people are going to want to know where the money is going to go. So just put that on the table right now. I guess it's not our subject today, but... It's good to get this going and appreciate everybody's effort. Thank you. Okay.

Council on Women Valdivia-Alcala. Do you have another question?

No.

Okay. Is there any more discussion on this? We will vote on it.

I did. I just had a comment. My app is not working, so I wasn't able to indicate that I want to request to speak. I just want to applaud the use of this fund. I think it's really exciting, the projects that are getting ready to happen with this fund. And this is, I think, a very good example of public-private partnership. There are private entities using their own funds as well. And so I think this is a really good wait to address this and I hope that we can sustain this moving forward.

Councilwoman Heller. One more thing on the structure for future. Jump's preference has been to encourage us to support going after the sales tax at the end of the day. But I do hope that people can figure out some way to provide for private donations as well. That's something that I felt strongly about at first, and many trust funds do that. Since the last, actually since Nehemiah, I guess, I've been approached by people from the private sector that would like to donate to these services. And without some sort of structure, I didn't have any place to send them. So I hope that either through the board itself or on the side that people can come up with some way. Actually, and prior to that, I had an individual who wanted to create a GoFundMe account. who was particularly concerned about homeless folks. And so I've talked to Barry and Brett, but if there's some way that either there could part of the affordable housing trust fund could be designated for private contributions and or there could be some sort of chart that kind of like colleges do where you can give to the general fund or you can target to X, Y, or Z. With so many partners involved in this, if there was sort of a roadmap that people who wanted to make a contribution could go, okay, this is where I want to put my money. I think most of us would be willing to carry that information out and get people connected. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor? Sure.

Go ahead, Mayor.

I just want to say one thing. I'll push back a little. This trust fund does have structure. Staff has put together a system. These are citizens and members from the community have come forward and put together these programs. And if there are individuals, if anyone comes in contact, regardless of who the council member is, they need to go to the board. That is why the board is there. They need to go to one of those committee meetings, board meetings, and they need to sit down with the board, and they need to talk to them about what it is they're interested in doing. And I know that these folks would be able to sit down and have that conversation with them about the best way to involve them and utilize those dollars. So that will be my suggestion, too, is that those speaks need to connect with our board and its members because they're there and they're doing the work and they're ready to take on these challenges. So thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Okay. Since this is an on-action item, we will continue asking questions and getting ready for our next meeting. So please contact Carrie if you have anything you want to know about. Anyone on the... Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board. And we will move on to the next item. City Clerk.

B is a discussion regarding proposed utility rates.

Okay, city manager.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor and members of the governing body, this item is a continuation of the utility rate adjustment discussions we've held in the last city council meetings. The last discussions have included operational capital funding levels as well as rate models with across the board percentage increases or higher increases on commercial industrial customers with lower increases on our residential customers, which would actually bring commercial industrial customers closer to the same unit costs of residential customers. This evening we'll discuss staff recommendations and ask for council feedback on these recommendations. I will then ask for continued discussion going into next month with council consideration of a vote by the end of July. With that, I'll turn this discussion over to Sylvia Davis, Director of Utilities, and Nicole Malott, Deputy Director of Utilities. Ladies.

Thank you. All right, tonight we are going to talk a little bit more about financial viability, debt management and service. We're going to talk about where does the money go, especially related to capital investment. We will dive into a rate proposal that we have for your consideration. And then we will open it up for additional discussion and more questions and answers. And I will share at that time. Some some time on so as we walk through this I don't want anybody to feel like We're going to be asking for a decision to be made after this presentation We know you're just seeing this and it's a lot to take in again We're trying to and piece this out so everybody can wrap their heads around something that that we continue to look at and study every day and So I want to start by talking about financial viability. I think that we, as a utilities department, as the city of Topeka, we should be striving for financially viable utility. What does that mean? Best practice is established rates that reflect the full cost of service. That means protecting our reliability efforts, protecting our ability to reduce future rate shock by making sure that we are assessing the costs. To your point earlier, Councilwoman Hiller, what is it really costing us to do business? It's not just an hourly wage. accounting practices, making sure that we're following established procedures. Perhaps we have not done the best job of highlighting what those are and how we abide by those. That would go a long way towards transparency and having people feel a little bit more comfortable. I don't know that anybody has ever tried to hide anything. It's just sometimes lost in translation or in the everyday hustle and bustle. So making sure that we're following those practices that are well established across our region and the country. We want to make sure that we have fees associated with those added costs that shouldn't be borne upon all of our customers. For instance, we've talked about high-strength waste fees and how those should be assessed to our partners that are contributing to that excess strength. Connection fees, so that those are assessed to people making connections to the system. And again, not everybody. We will talk a little bit more here about reserves and debt management and how important that is, and then the creation of additional revenue streams. The more we can look to that, examples are wholesale rates, and there's lots of others, but additional revenue streams to, again, give us some flexibility, allows us to not be so dependent on just a single rate that our customers have to bear. So with that being said, all of this is an effort to build a rate plan that you all feel comfortable with that we can continue to build on moving forward so that this isn't a political issue. This isn't a what are we going to do to get it passed and then move on and the next people can deal with the problem. It really needs to be well thought out and planned and something that we can continue to build on so that our generations to come aren't bearing the costs of some of the decisions that have been made in the past as we're dealing with today. With that being said, our debt management policy requirements. To start this discussion, resolution number 8818 establishes our city's policy for debt management. The combined utility fund, meaning stormwater, wastewater, and water, that combined utility fund shall maintain a debt service coverage ratio of at least 125%, with a target exceeding 200%. We want to target exceeding 200% each year. Also, we want to, I guess we shouldn't say we want, we shall maintain at least 185 days cash on hand. Those are our established debt policy requirements. And complying with these helps mitigate the cost of this debt. The more we plan this out now, the more we can smooth rate increases for the future. And we're not looking at sharp, steep increases as we're trying to continue to play catch up. We also know that 125% is consistent with our bond covenants, so we can do a better job of managing that debt as financially feasible as possible, as reasonable and economical as we can. So this is going to be a lot of numbers. And I would be lying to you if I said this was simple to wrap your heads around. It's not. So we're just going to walk through these. I'll follow up with a memo that details them more so that when there's questions, we can have additional conversations one-on-one or as a group collectively. But, like we just said, our day's cash on hand at year end is based on, these numbers are based on a proposal that we have handed out to you tonight. You all ask us for something to start looking at. And that's something, the feedback that we've gotten to date is we want that to look like option two where we're trying to assess as much of this increase as equitably as possible and perhaps try to minimize the impacts to our single-family residential customers as possible, as much as we can. So with that in mind, and we'll dive into what we've sent you as a proposal, but these numbers are based on that proposal. You can see over all three utilities, we are well within that goal of What did I just tell you? 185 days cash on hand. Of course, we said we want to have a target of exceeding 200 days cash on hand. When you look at those numbers from 27 through 2030, The proposal we've given you is a four year rate proposal for consideration. That lines us out to be able to maintain those days cash on hands with a combined rate of 207 days in 2027 up to 248 in 2030. You might ask the question, this is more than the minimum? Is that good practice? Is that bad practice? Where do we want to be? And that's important, again, to maintain flexibility to account for anything that we might face, whether that be other emergency work that comes up that we weren't planning for. Perhaps it might be a reduction in revenue that we were not anticipating. This allows us to have some buffer against that, but also it prepares us for the end of 2030 as we're moving into 2031. If we don't have a well-established practice and we don't get rates established, what does that look like? With a continued rate after 2030, that does not include any increases. You can see how we start to drop off very quickly, and in 2032, we do not meet those minimums. So that's important to know and keep in the back of your head. Debt service coverage ratio, DSCR. Again, we have goals to maintain a minimum of 125, that target exceeding 200%. I'm kind of confusing some of these, but... We're doing well to maintain that range, too. The combined for 2027 across all three of those utilities is 169%. Again, this is the proposed rate structure that we've handed out. And then up through 2030, again, you see the impacts of what happens if we then do not have continued rate increases following 2030. You start to see a decline there to 157% and 150% in 2030. Okay. So what does this look like on an annual basis? Debt service. 2026, this was a question that has come up during these discussions. In 2026, our annual operating budget is $120.3 million. just over 25% of that operating budget goes to paying off principal and interest on that debt. So our annual debt service payment for 2026 is $30.7 million. So that's a big hit. We need to decide where we're at. Again, that all plays into these proposals, what information is put into our rate model, et cetera. To give you a picture of where we have been, the total debt at the end of 2025 was almost $403.5 million worth of debt. the projected debt that we are looking at is $386.2 million. We are not issuing any debt this year, hence this reduction in 2026, that projected debt reduction. So that's a very positive thing. But as with everything, there's pros and cons to it. As we have built this proposal to the investment levels that we spoke about the first night we came in front of you, these numbers are based on between 20 and 25% cash that we are funding projects in 2027 through 2030 for water. between 40 and 50% cash funded projects for stormwater. I have an asterisk there because 100% of our work in 2027 will be cash funded. So we have made that commitment and have allocated those funds. So again, I'm trying not to incur excess debt where we can. And then wastewater over those four years between 20 and 25% cash funded. You can see our bonded debt and the amount of cash that we are paying for all of the work that we have in queue and proposed through this rate package that we're presenting to you tonight. Stop me if I'm missing anything.

Just average.

That was just the average investment per year.

Got it. Yeah. Not total bonded debt or total cash. That's just the average amount per year over that four-year period for those utilities.

Don't hesitate to jump in. Again, we talk about cash funding versus debt bonding projects. What impact does that have? So what is the true cost of $1 million? Again, this is something that Nicole can talk about in her sleep. For me, I'm trying to figure this out too because it is something that changes a lot. It's been a lot of education on my part as well. And I think that helps a little bit because it helps explain these things to our customers and to you all as we're trying to collectively establish where we're going to be. So if we wanted to increase funding for cash projects, increase by a million dollars, That means we would need for water 1.7% increase or 13 cents for every 1,000 gallons of water consumed to be able to establish $1 million worth of cash today. The debt service on $1 million is $75,000. What does that mean? We can pay $1 million for a project today in cash. Or we could leverage our funding and pay for start funding $13 million worth of projects using bonds. It's confusing. The long and short of it is we need to decide we may pay more in the long run, but the trade-off is having lower rates today. If we want to owe less later on, we need to pay more with cash, which means increased rates today, if that's making sense. So we're taking all this into account as we try to do the best we can to propose a responsible level of investment and gradual increase to you all for consideration. So where does this money go? Currently, our capital investment, you can see projects from 2024 and 2025 and then are active. So I'm calling that current because that is what has been funded through the last round, that last rate package that we had established. We have approximately 96 projects over water, wastewater and stormwater in 2024 to the tune of almost $72 million of investment. In 2025, We see 37 projects completed for a total of $30.4 million. And then currently active projects, again, these might mean projects that were started in 25 and haven't been finished yet, or projects that are really slated for 2027 that we've been able to start working on today. But we are currently in the middle of 141 projects to the tune of $186.3 million. Some of those projects, I have a few here, and I'll just name off a couple. We've talked about them at the Public Infrastructure Committee meetings. We've talked about them here. But we have active water projects, water line replacement projects in the Westboro and Montero neighborhoods. We have work at Stony Brook and Mound View. 29th Street from Kansas to Adams. Again, this is all water funds. The West intake for the water treatment plant. We have work at our chemical building there and work on our River Weir to ensure that we have adequate water supply. From a wastewater standpoint, we have active projects at the North Topeka plant in regards to our nutrient removal project that is still continuing, a pump station that needs replaced there at North Topeka. We have digester repairs that we have begun work on at Oakland, work on the sanitary sewer system on Huntoon. I could go on and on, Central Park Odor Control. From a stormwater perspective, we have Fairlawn that we're working on from 22nd to 28th. We have work at Minniger Road and Stony Brook. We have a stormwater pump station master plan that we are in the middle of and work at 29th from Kansas to Adams. Again, that's just to name a few that are coming out of those utility funds. That's a lot of work. We don't have the largest staff, as you can imagine. So some years we may not have as many projects as we're gearing up for another year that has a lot. And that's where we are at today. But there is a lot of work that has gone into planning, preparing, spending money on work that is much needed, and then preparing to turn around and do it again because it doesn't stop. So what does future capital investment look like if rate increases are supported? So you can see that our current, with the existing rates in place today, Our current funding levels, we have an approved CIP of almost $48 million in 2027. And then you can see the respective rates for 28 through 30 to a four year total of $112.2 million worth of proposed capital investment with current rates. With the proposed rate increases, that level of investment is increasing. with a four-year total of $260 million plus after 2030 collectively. So you can see the additional money that we can invest into the system, into those projects in 27, 28, 29, and 30 with the revenue that we would see from rate increases associated with that proposal that you all have in your hands tonight.

Anything I'm missing there?

So specifically projects, what does that fund? We know we can and we would love to be able to complete our east plant basin work at the water treatment plant. We need to construct a zone, a tower in our southeast zone. With this level of increased funding, we would be able to do at least one neighborhood water line replacement project. From a wastewater standpoint, we have some primary clarifiers. We desperately need to start improving lots of cost and work associated with that, and that is integral to treatment. We have roof replacements at both Oakland and North Topeka plants, a lot of deferred maintenance there. It's just beyond time to start doing this and getting them knocked out. We have secondary clarifiers. We have work at our wastewater. pump building in our aeration basin that needs done, that these increases would fund. Again, I could go on. I have additional work that we are planning to do if these levels are supported. From a stormwater perspective, this increase, again, we'll get into what that looks like for each utility. These stormwater increases would allow us to keep up with street projects. specific work that needs to be addressed at Cherokee and Jewell Drury Lane detention basins and a potential detention basin on Huntoon. It might not be lost on many of you with the volume of rain that we've seen over the last couple of weeks and the amount of localized flooding that we've seen. There's a lot of very expensive work that needs to be done in our system if we are going to try to be able to relieve some of our citizens from some of this flooding. To be able to say we can take care of all of it would be very unrealistic. We need rates to be able to start doing additional improvement projects to help relieve those impacts that people are facing downstream. So I don't expect you all to be able to read this very well and again digest it all today. I'm just highlighting this slide as our retail water rates for inside the city and this is just a snapshot of what you will see in the proposal and that you have been given tonight for consideration. We took the option two that we've heard feedback on, more consideration put into that. So these rates that you see here, maintain, you can see 2026 rates and then 2027 compared. So you can see those meters, five eighths inch meters, one inch meters, one and a half inch meters, see no change to that base charge. You do see a slight increase in volume charge per thousand gallons for a single family, but we did that to offset the lack of increase to that base charge. All of those things that we have previously discussed are reflected in these individual numbers. So when it comes to what are we actually considering here, I wanted to make sure that we go through this and highlight what it is that you're looking at, what information you have. That way you can be better equipped to ask us what you need to fill in blanks that you might have after you go through all of this information. Over that four years of proposal, you see no increase to those base charges for meters under two inches. You start to see increases at that two inch and greater. Again, to the previous discussions, that's really going to impact our large meter sizes and that hits our commercial and industrial customers. What does that look like? You see, as we've talked about stair stepping into one common rate across all classifications, these proposed numbers you see here walks us to that point in the next four years. Wastewater. We said this was a little bit easier, so there's a little less information here. But you see base charges again remain flat for those customers with meters under two inches. And then you see the increases over the next four years for those larger meter sizes. And then we only have one volume charge per 1,000 gallons for wastewater. So you can see the volume charge that would change per 1,000 gallons on your bill. I'm going to give you a little bit more information here too, so bear with me. Stormwater, those are not volume-based. That's based on an ERU rate. These are all inside the city. So the package that you have also has outside city rates. But again, I'm trying to bite this off in chunks tonight. But the stormwater ERU rates, you can see a slight increase from 2026 to 2027 of $0.09 a month. That is a flat rate for residential customers. it's a monthly charge. It's not a volume charge so it's not going to be multiplied out. And then in 28 it's proposed to go up 10 cents and you can see how that changes through 2030. Based on square footage of impervious surface, this absolutely impacts commercial and industrial properties that have large parking lots, large roofs, etc. So the same percent increase will have a much different result for somebody that has higher ERUs. So what are the actual impacts here? This page 13, slide 13, this information is the actual impact of those rates without including increases to base charges for those meter sizes that are two inches and larger. Again, it's a lot that goes into this. I'm trying to make it simple, but this is consumption. When you look at single family consumption, the proposal that we've given you reflects a 3.5% increase only on their consumption. So if a customer really wants to keep their rates as low as possible, the less water they consume, the better. Again, that was the intent behind keeping those base charges flat. then you see the impact on the rest of our customer classifications. As we walk through the next four years with multifamily, commercial, industrial one, industrial two, we show a proposed increase of 13% in 2027 for irrigation rates. And then you see five plus in 28 and then five in 29 and 30. Wholesale rates, you've heard some discussion on wholesale customers and again, depending on your perspective, the need to increase those rates. So we have a proposal to increase wholesale rates at 12% in 2027, then 9% in 2029, 7.75 in 2030. Wastewater volume increases across the board of 8% in 27, 6% in 28, and then 5% in 29 and 30. And then from a stormwater perspective, 2% in 27 and 28, 3% in 29, and 4% in 2030. OK. Now. It's a lot of numbers. What does that mean? What does that look like? As promised, I'll be following up with a little bit heftier memo that has additional details, answers to some additional questions or things we want to clarify that have been said or asked and making sure that we're all on the same page. This is simply a proposal we heard from several of you that we just want something to consider. And we want to give you time to do that. So as the city manager said in his introduction, We propose coming back after we give you that memo with additional information, let you guys have ample time a few weeks to consider this proposal that we've put in front of you. This will allow us to meet with our large commercial and industrial customers and make sure that we are sharing those potential impacts to them. So if they have a need or desire to reach out and have additional conversations, we can do that. You all can do that. And we want to make sure that there's time that we can either meet with you all one-on-one or through email or through additional conversations where we help answer more questions that you might have after you consider this. We want to make sure that at the end of the day, you feel comfortable with understanding what this includes and what impacts that might have, good and bad impacts that it may have on our customers. We want to make sure that we're giving you that very clear information too so that you feel, again, as educated and as equipped as you can be. We would potentially have a vote on July 21st. That gives us a little over a month to have that dialogue back and forth and make sure you all are prepared and then we can go from there. Before I open it up for comments and questions, I want to say and emphasize the fact that I know you've heard and there's been discussion on why now is this important? Do we have to do this today? We've proposed a four year increase because the more people can plan, the more the city can plan, the better. And our goal, our overarching goal from a utilities department and a collective goal that I think we all have for our community is to have a responsible, financially viable utility. And the more we can put into that effort, the more we can smooth out these increases for our customers. This information will be included in your memo, but we've been doing a lot of work to go back and look at what things have changed and what impacts those have had. And in 2000, I just want to bring it to everyone's attention so you can see. again and take what you want from it, but in 2009 to 2011 there was rate increases of just over 1% combined each year. Just over 1%. From 2012 to 2014 there were no rate increases approved. So those six years, we really had very, very minimal to zero rate increases. That feels good in the moment, but that absolutely has hampered our efforts to invest appropriately into the system. We talk a lot about deferred maintenance and volatile rates going up and down, and that just shows you that then we have to catch up. in 2015. I'll give you all this again. We then started to see some changes to the structure where we went from that minimum where everybody had to pay 1,500 gallons a month whether they used it or not. We went to a different structure where we started implementing that base charge and then volume charges on top of that. And then we saw combined increases that were reflective of 655 for the next three years and then the following three years after that. What that has done again is over that 15-year period from 2009 to 2023, the average customer in Topeka saw a blended rate increase of 3.9% annually. So you can imagine the impact that everyone would have felt with that gradual increase of about 4% a year for that 15 year period as opposed to zero for these three years and then a spike maybe a little bit less and then another spike. So again, We want to make sure that you see the benefits and start asking more questions that might pop up into your heads as you get this information and start considering it and then look at our proposal and what concerns and questions you might have. So if we We end up getting to a point where you're just not ready to do a four-year rate increase. And we want to work with you all to see what we can establish so that we can continue to fund immediate needs in the next two years and then do what we have to do internally to get everybody comfortable with perhaps a little bit longer stretch of rate increases that are more stable for everyone. With all that chatter, I'll shut up and let you all ask whatever questions you have of me.

Okay. We have one person signed up for public comment, and we'll take that right now, and then we'll go into questions for the council. I have Joe Ledbetter signed up to speak.

We're going to follow that because there's so much thrown out to you and then the rush, rush, rush, demand. We've got to do this in a month. We've got to do this in a month when these rates don't have to be actually increased for next year until about November. So don't fall for that. The more things are rushed, the less you understand what's being presented to you. I just got a fire hose of information. I'm used to this stuff. So I know that we have not sufficiently plumbed the depths of all these so-called projects that are being done and the capital improvement. I love the way we just kind of gloss that over. Because I still am waiting on the email that tells me the four district or distribution projects we're supposed to do this year. I never got it. And I was at Crestview and I asked for it. I still do not have a map that's readable of the clusters of breakage that are occurring in high rates in our distribution areas. It's the neighborhoods where the breaks are occurring folks. That's what's been neglected. There's about five to six square miles of this city that has high breakage, and we have not addressed it. In all those years of borrowing, which has not been addressed, $400 million to utilities? We're crying out loud. What could we have done with that if it had been correctly spent? Instead, we're sitting on cash. and that amount continues to fluctuate that's fine but i've got a memo that says we earned 15 million dollars just in dividends on cash with the city city cash and a lot of that is in utility funds i'll be i'll email that to you later some of you have already seen it i want to know where the increases are in the sewer and the water outside the city limits I proposed three years ago that that should be 90% more, not 75% more. I'm glad that we are finally, I guess, addressing the wholesale rates of people that live outside the city that are benefiting from the taxpayers of PECA. And we're finally addressing that. I asked Steve to raise that substantially three years ago. I said they're not paying their fair share for all the pump stations and extra capacity that's required to provide the water and services for these out of city districts of course that's where the growth has gone in this county over the last few years in single family residents we are supporting that as city taxpayers we support out of city development It's ridiculous. I'm asking that, and this was not mentioned, that we raise the tap fee on sewer to $12,000 a house outside the city limits and $20,000 minimum on any commercial building. We have a lot of developers that want to develop in Topeka, but they're tapped on the shoulder. Why don't you just build me across the line because I can connect to city sewer. And there's no real extra charge other than a monthly fee. They don't pay the city taxes. They don't pay the city sales taxes on utilities. They don't pay the personal property taxes. We in the city pay double. We pay to the county and we pay the city. And they're not paying city taxes. So I think it's time we had some parity about how these rates are done, including out-of-city people that benefit from it. That's fine if they want to benefit. I don't think it's right. I can't find one city municipality in this state that extends sewer services outside the city. In fact, they told me when I called several of them, they said, if you want city services, then be annexed into the city. Simple as that. Well, I see my time is up. I don't want to belabor this, but you're in no rush, folks. You're not in a rush. And the more things are rushed, the more unclear things become. Thank you.

Okay. City Council members, is there any discussion tonight? Or do you have any questions?

Councilwoman Hiller? I really appreciate the presentation and the explanation and the time. I think it sounds like you really heard what we were saying and I appreciate that a lot. If you covered whether this base charge includes whether you're using water or not, I missed it. So can you cover that?

This proposal that you have does not take into consideration changing the way we are currently applying base charge to vacant properties. So if we want to stop applying base charges to inactive accounts, we would need to revisit some of those numbers.

Do you know what the number is that would have to be reallocated?

It's approximately half a million per utility. Per utility?

Yeah.

Water and wastewater. They have base charges, which, you know, works out to anywhere between a percent, I'm sorry, yeah, around a percent. 0.8% to a percent.

I'll just stick with the million. Thank you.

One million, one percent.

Councilman McGee.

Thank you. First of all, I appreciate the information. I wish you had put your last comments onto a chart where you were talking about in the past years, between this year and this year, you didn't have an increase. Then there was a spike. Then there wasn't. Now there is. Seeing that history, being able to visualize, that would have been a benefit. Because now I mean a lot of this you're talking specific dollar amounts and then we get to the actual impacts page and it's a percentage. So I'd like to see the dollar amount for actual impact on the average customer of what they pay for water. and wastewater. I think that would be good for people to be able to visualize. But just like on water, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm reading between 26 and 27. You're looking at a 27 cent increase. And then the next three years, 4 cents. So one year, you have a huge spike again. And then you go down to four cents.

Correct. As I say, um, again, from the deferred investment, unfortunately need that larger investment upfront, um, to be able to hold it more consistent further on that was to include some, contribution from the residential customers as opposed to placing everything on commercial and industrial. Felt that 3.5% might be considered reasonable.

It's tough to ride those big waves. It's tough to ride those big waves. So if that could be spread out more Kind of eases that pain a little bit, if you can do that. My other comment is we talked about a lot of residential and we talked and started, we finally, towards the end, started getting into the consumer part of it. In the beginning of this, it was really geared towards CIP and budget. And you mentioned a lot of projects that need to be done. And I know there's a CIP list and all of that, but it'd be nice to go back and look at that list and prioritize it as to what we're having to throw money at now, regardless of where it sits on the CIP, and start plugging some some holes there. I mean, they'd say that we're talking about water, but get some things addressed that are costing money now that could save us as we move forward. And I know those two thoughts are contradictory when I'm talking about let's not ride the wave on rate increases. But at the same time, we need to address the things that are costing us the most and set some priorities, not so much based on where they sit on a timeline, but where they sit as far as overall priorities for the whole system. That's just my thoughts. Thank you.

Are there any other questions or comments? OK, seeing none, we're done with this for tonight. And please get a hold of Director Davis if you have any questions in the meantime. And we'll be discussing this, I'm assuming, at the first meeting in July and second meeting, third meeting. OK, next up is public comment. I have four people signed up for public comment tonight. I'll let the ladies get settled. OK. The first one on the list is Joe Ledbetter.

JOE LEDBETTER. Good evening, Governor Marotti. Remember, you people out there watching the show, send those emails to your council members about rate increases that you don't want. And copy them to city clerk. That way they become part of the record. I want to talk about a couple things here. I did talk to infrastructure committee this morning and It's my proposal, this is an exact wording, but that if a sidewalk is going to be put in a residential neighborhood, there should be 90 days notice. before any approval would ever be granted. And that approval would need to be granted by the council. I don't want it done by just the manager. I don't want it, and no offense to him, but I don't want it done by some consultant from out of state. I want these sidewalks to have to go in a public hearing and certainly a public notice to the residents. A lot of people don't want a sidewalk in their front yard. I don't. My sister doesn't. The Willard sister, we've talked about her, living on McAllister. The sidewalk to nowhere that nobody wants. But we need to have notification for our residents. She's lived there 41 years and never heard of a sidewalk going to be built in her yard, in her front yard. And so imagine that to other people. I mean, I'm not just talking about her. I mean, this could happen to anybody. A lot of people don't want sidewalks in their front yards. Some people do. That's fine. They can move those areas that have them. I mean, there are nice areas that have them. There's nice areas that don't. It's a preference. I don't believe we have the budget to fund unwanted sidewalks anyway. And I think we need to be focusing on our major road projects and getting finished what's already underway. And You know, I heard tonight about Fairlawn, and there's obviously a problem with another entity, and that definitely should be dealt with. If you have to deal with them legally, then do it. But we have to get these main thoroughfares open. You know, it's not just consumers that are dependent on this. Those businesses are dependent on it. And we as taxpayers are dependent on it. We have to have that sales tax to fund city operations. So when we shut those arteries off, well, we kind of cause a heart attack to those businesses. Just thought of that. So anyway, I think we do need lots of public discussion about items like that. Just like we do utilities, we need clear, transparent proposals. that include where did the bond money go? That's a good idea to look back at all the utility money that was spent or at least taken out in debt. And the way you look at that is look at the prospectuses. So if somebody has some spare time, they might want to start looking at the prospectuses that went with each of those bond issues because that will tell you where that bond money was supposed to go. And then you match it with actual construction, CIPs that were actually met, and it might be interesting or it might not. don't have time to do it but i just threw it out that would be a possible route of interest for people who are interested and wanting to know where 400 million dollars went okay thank you folks okay next up on the list is carla brooks

Hello. My name is Carla Brooks. I live at 3534 Southeast Humboldt. As you see these people that have decided to stand up, I'm speaking on behalf of them as well too. We are the High Crest neighborhood in which for 17 years I've lived there. My aunt has lived there for 50 years. We continue to have flood after flood after flood. Our homes are being swept away. Our properties are being swept away. And we're being swept up under the rug. I have pictures of numerous properties in which I took the liberty to walk my neighborhood and my creek beds to see what the problem is because I feel like we're not being heard. I ask you to listen to us today to do something for our properties. Our livelihood is at stake. In the last three months, our houses have flooded every month. I have five feet of water. I stand here five feet tall, brave. Mr Nate, four feet of water. Vanessa Brooks, two feet of water. This is month after month. Every time it rains We have been told it's not a creek problem. I reached out of my son's upstairs bedroom window on my main floor and I touched the creek water. But you said it's not a creek problem. It's a sewer problem. I asked for the city to help us, to accommodate us with a large trash dumpster so we could throw away our hard-earned money into this dumpster. I was accommodated with a small dumpster that sits at my curb. We, as the Hillcrest community, most of us are home owners. in a flood plain. We cannot sail. I watch my property, the lot that sits next to the creek at 3532 erode every day. I have to pay taxes on that lot. I have to insure that lot. And I've been told, no, you can't put a privacy fence up. I have to walk that lot and pick up syringes from homeless people. No, you cannot put a fence up. It's the easement. I have spent $2,000 and a better dollars of keeping that creek bed cleaned. Can I have a few more minutes? I can repair these. I can replace these items. One thing I can't repair and replace is something that I hold dear to my heart, and that's my oldest born child's ashes that was lost because the city does not hear our cries. I had to bury my child twice. Those are things I cannot get back. This morning, as I heard the rain, I realized how traumatized I was I jumped up and I went running to make sure my sub pump was working. Sub pump is not going to work when you have rushing water coming in through your back door. I'm just asking the city to look into this and please help us in the High Crest neighborhood. I thank Councilman Banks because he took the liberty of coming to my residence

Ms. Brooks, do you want to speak a little bit longer?

Oh, you can't hear me?

No. Do you want more time?

Sure.

You move for two minutes. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay, two more minutes.

Okay, I'm just asking. Like I said, I have done the footwork. I have walked the creek beds. I see the blockage. One thing we know raging water is going to do, it's going to keep raging. If there's something blocking it, it's going to go around it into our homes, into our basements. Just this past week, I had saved money so I could buy another home for me and my family. I spent that money rebuilding this only for next month it to happen again. We say, when is enough? We're asking the city to come in. Honestly, come in. Stop making us promises that you're going to do this, you're going to do that, and stand on what you say. I believe in Topeka. I am Topeka. And I'm here in this building every Tuesday and Thursday cleaning for Topeka. only to have to clean my home and I got a phone call that this building flooded and could I come in and clean it? I want to bring the pride in the dignity back to Topeka and to our neighborhoods because we are law abiding citizen taxpayers and we have voted for lots of people into these offices. So stand with us and not against us. Thank you. Would you guys like to see these pictures? I made these copies exclusively for you guys. Thank you. I have a second copy, and I also took the liberty of making a flash drive, which I was told that it was not credible. Thank you, guys. Yes, sir.

I believe those were the ones on the flash drive. Some of them, if you want to have them.

Oh. And this is another one of the residents. He's been here a year. Thank you. Okay.

Next up is Henry McClure.

Thank you.

Good evening, Deputy Mayor. How are you tonight? Thank you. BuildForce is a name that I've thrown around here before. BuildForce. I brought it to JETO. I brought it to the city. And I heard zero. It got about as much attention as that $7.6 million offer on the hotel. You know, The comment that I'm always getting, it's not, Henry, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. But what people don't really like is the truth just thrown right back at you. Build force. They're real. My daughter took a job there today. She got an employment letter, signed it, moving on up. I'm so proud of my daughter. She'll be working, right now she lives in Legends, so we get to see the success of Wyandotte County, how the consolidated government made Wyandotte County successful. Now, BuildForce currently is in northern Kansas City, and I'm trying to get them out of Missouri, and the Department of Commerce is so nice. They're pleasant. They're open and receptive. Build for us. You know, I can't fathom my daughter staying in Topeka, Kansas. I can't. I got out for 18 years and lived in lovely places. And I come home, this is the same stuff that's happened since I was born July 13th, 59. It's the same stuff. Now, you know who I feel sorry for today? Again, we're gonna give Sylvia a little hug. Let's remember brother Jack Alexander. When he turned over the water department, it was a going Jesse. It had all sorts of positive cash. It was run right. But it hasn't run right since Jack. So quit blaming her for all the problems today. There was some more stuff I wanted to talk about. But it's... It's a shame. Well, whatever you do, if I had to come down here and just be the anti-Joe Ledbetter, but you can't go giving fees to homes and builders. It's a bad idea. I guess I didn't need to mention it. Build force. I can't fathom my daughter you know, becoming part of Forge and sloshing around in the common, you know, the common consumption area. It's just the same old stuff. When are we going to change? Thank you.

Okay, next up is Danielle Twemlow.

Good evening. So tonight I was hoping to just leave you all with some data points, some information that I hope stick with you because I've heard a lot of good conversations and questions we had over the last few months inquiring about cost and living wages and those types of things. And it is hard as council members. I know you rely on the information that is provided to you to make your decisions and then you take the brunt when things don't go the right way. But we need to recognize that we're not always given accurate information or complete information and sometimes just outright erroneous information is provided to you. And so I'm urging you to stay quizzical about these things, to question the information, to be persistent, get out of the mundane status quo that we've been living in that's really held our community back from growing and thriving, and to set in a mindset of policies and procedures that really invest in human infrastructure. And I'm someone who I really need visuals. So I'm going to make visuals for us. We often have different definitions and different data sets that work for different things. And that all has its place. For Topeka, the city, our median household income is $56,956. We often hear Topeka be referred to by its MSA, which is the Metropolitan Statistical Area. What most people don't realize when we say Topeka, if we mean Topeka MSA, we're using data that includes Jackson County, Jefferson County, Osage County, Shawnee County, and Waubonsee County. five counties are included in whatever data set is actually using Topeka MSA. And sometimes that's appropriate, but oftentimes it's not, at least in the ways that we use it quite often. Affordable housing means that rent and mortgage plus whatever utilities, and often we average that at about $300, must be less than 30% of that individual person's median or household income, their income specifically for them. So it's not universal. So it'll be different from every household. Because then we also have the workforce housing, which is about 60%, anywhere to 120% of the area median income. So for Topeka, using our area median income, that's going to be about $854 a month, all the way up to $1,709 a month. That means that half of our population cannot afford 120%. workforce housing area median income, half of our population. There are different things that we need to be looking at too. When we hear things that are placed out, market rate, that's just whatever is average in the area. We have statistics that are put out that are shared by the city or shared publicly by places that we provide money to do development in our community that say things like, we're number eight in best air quality out of 400 cities internationally. That sounds amazing and great, yet the source is autotrader.com, a car magazine. That's the source that an economic development organization we give millions of dollars to used to put this data source out. Where our state health rankings, just a couple months prior to that statistic, dropped our county health rankings for Shawnee County because... Can I have two minutes? So moved. It won't take me two minutes, I promise.

Okay.

No, I don't promise.

Those against? Go ahead. Two minutes.

So our county health rankings actually dropped Shawnee County's health ranking in the state to the bottom 25%, specifically because our air quality is so bad. That was one of the deciding factors. We're way worse than the national average and the state average in Shawnee County. So autotrader.com was very selective, and it was something that... our development organization used as well as Topeka poverty drops to 12.7 percent and they said Topeka poverty but there's no date that you can find Topeka poverty in the recent statistical time frame being 12.7 percent that comes up for Shawnee county but not for our city because our city poverty rate is 15.7 percent and has been even more than that in the last few years. So I am encouraging you to keep asking these questions and demanding answers and seeing proof. As we make these decisions, it's really important that we are making the right decisions for our community and not what looks right on paper or might look best. So I encourage you to keep doing those things as I've heard you doing recently. So thank you.

Okay, that concludes our public comments. It's time for announcements. Megan, would you please?

I actually have nothing tonight. We just will have our next governing body meeting July 7th here in the city council chambers at 6 p.m.

Thank you. City manager, any announcements?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. So just wanted to dote a little bit on our PMU group out of police. On June 6, Saturday, a couple Saturdays back, we had our first tire take back event. It was held at the City of Topeka Utilities Yard, southeast Lakewood and 21st Street. We had actually budgeted to bring in about 1,000 tires between the two events. We have another event that's scheduled for July 11th. But in that one event, over a two-hour span, we took in about 1,200 tires. And so John Chardin was like, hey... um yeah a little bit better turnout than what we had originally thought and our i guess our rationale for the event was we'd rather have the public bring us the tires than us have you know to picked them up out and about. Great event, but I just want to give kudos to Commander Stewart and Director Chardine and the code team on that event. As again mentioned, we'll have another event July 11th from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. It was a good time. When I pulled up, there was traffic backed up on both sides of 21st Street, so it was a great event, so just kudos to the team. The other thing that I want to highlight is our city city team response to our storms last Tuesday. Whether it was the police department, the fire department, utilities, public works, just hats off to the team for the response. I know that our forestry team had received as of last Thursday 300 C click fixes to address downed trees. And I know there were some questions on when the city picks up limbs and whatnot. And so We're actually going to have a, we'll hold a discussion item on the council agenda for July 14th to discuss that policy. But again, just wanted to say thank you to the teams for the response. That's it. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay. Next up, Councilman McGee. Nothing tonight? Okay. Next up, Councilwoman Heller.

Thank you. I just wanted to mention that the Ben Crump event that was a couple of weeks ago for the 72nd anniversary of Brown v. Board ended up getting featured in Ebony Magazine. I think that's pretty cool and worth knowing. Also, this is sort of random, I guess, but I've ended up spending quite a bit of time at Stormontville Hospital lately, and I just wanted to shout out to them because the the, the spirit and the service and so on have, have really been excellent. And we're really fortunate to, to have them here, uh, as well as the network that they're building and continuing to build in the area. and I already spoke a little bit earlier. I'm excited about what's happening in historic Old Town neighborhood. The co-ops that were discussed earlier is just one piece, but with Shemeika Sims and Laurie Ann Rogers, they are really getting private grants. They're working on things that just involve people and events and so on in the neighborhood, and I just wanted to shout out to them in terms of just the spirit and the movement.

That's it.

Okay, thank you. Next, Councilwoman Valdivia Acqua.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Just real quick with the storm, you know, I'm grateful to the media department and to Dan and to all of those that helped. Right after the storm, I had been encouraging that a press release go out because I was starting to get texts, phone calls, with the immediacy of what had happened with the wind, even though it was not as bad as it was in 2024. I mean, the devastation was nothing compared to back in 2024. And one of the main questions that people were having is that, you know, or they were assuming that there was going to be pickup at the easement of branches. And so, After talking with Dan, city manager, et cetera, Braxton, et cetera, asking for updates, they got those press releases out, which I'm sure they would have done anyway, but I was already starting to get calls and concerns. And then telling folks through the press release that there was not going to be any easement pickup. And we started driving through Oakland, into North Topeka, a little bit over... by the Salvation Army areas, et cetera, into the Chandler, southeast Chandler, and we started seeing especially that there were branches on the easement already, even after it had gone out on social media, even after it had gone out on press releases. Then it was, can we push this out to the TV stations to make sure that they're doing their part to let citizens know So, you know, one of the things that I asked the city manager, Avery and Braxton, is that there could be some kind of protocol because we know we do not have an emergency management director, but if we can have some protocol that can be presented so that we can be educated as council people and then in turn help educate the community On what level of storm it has to be, and I know that may be kind of challenging, but you know the storms are getting worse so that we can educate ourselves and start educating the community on things like pick up on things, how flooding will be dealt with, etc etc. So I think that the media team did a really good job and I'm looking forward to that presentation next week or the next Council meeting. Thank you.

Councilwoman Ortiz.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I've received calls and I did ask Braxton I wanted to make sure and I've been receiving emails that we're still not picking up limbs. Is that correct? Okay. And The last big storm that we did pick up the limbs, we thought we were going to be able to get some return money, some FEMA money, but we didn't, but it cost us over $600,000. Is that correct? And so that's a big part of why this time it didn't rise to that level and that's a big part of why we're not picking it up because some people think we are, some people think we aren't. Some people are dipping in and dumping them in the streets. You know, I thank Braxton and his crew for picking up all those that have just dumped them in the streets and I had a man call me and said to ask this question and so I am and he said well our surrounding counties they're doing it and I said well okay that might be correct but we have to pay for it so I think citizens need to know that we don't have a forestry a city forestry that we can take it to we'd have to pay somebody to take it there is that correct?

The forestry disposal site is operated by Garrick. It is a for-profit company. It's not owned and operated by the city of Topeka. In the past when we've had huge storms, the ones that we spent six, $700,000 of taxpayer money to hire contractors to come in from out of town to help with the cleanup because roads were impassable. We had conversations with Garrick in terms of whether they were willing to waive fees. That is purely a private decision by that company about whether or not it's willing to forego revenue to help the city out.

Thank you, Braxton. I just wanted to make sure that that was mentioned tonight. In our remarks, I do want to thank the citizens. There's a couple of people, the fire department and the police department. I didn't thank them last week for getting out there for those people that were floating away. And the police were there helping a lot of people. And I think a lot of other people. But I wanted to make sure that I came back and thanked our first responders because they helped quite a few people. And I wanted to thank the citizens of Topeka. There were so many people out there that took their chainsaw out and was helping people, you know, just get things clear for their neighbors or down the street or whatever. And I think that's just who we are, Topeka, and I appreciate that regardless of what's going to happen. So I finally got upset with my washing machine and I went out to Lowe's and I said, hey, I bought a new one. And I met some people over in Highcrest that I told them that I was going to bring this up. This same flood, the same set of people that they're in that area as well. I know this is not my area. I know it's district number five. But they want to know, and you guys can get with Mr. Councilman Kell. I was going to talk to him, but I didn't know he wasn't going to be here. But they want to make sure that we check to make sure the sewers are clear and have somebody come out. Have we done that? I promised them that I would bring this up because... The lady that talked, Ms. Brooks, her ceiling, it was way up to the ceiling. And if it's something that we need to correct or if it's our part, I want to make sure that we're doing that. and I want you to get with Councilman Cal and he needs to get with those people as well because you know they're starting to call me, they've called David, they're starting to call other people. They're panicking. I get it, I get it, but they want to make sure that we've done what we need to do and what they told me was that creek has not been cleaned out in several years. And I know there's several creeks that need to be cleaned out. And I don't know if that makes it any worse or if the sewer line is clear or what. So I just want to make sure that we listen to them and we move forward with that.

Will do.

And please involve Mr. Cal. Thank you.

Councilman Banks.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I'd like to talk a little along the lines of Councilwoman Ortiz. I've never in my life seen anything like what I saw at Ms. Brooks' house. And I did walk the creek a little bit. It's kind of scary down under there with all the traffic that flows through there. But, you know, in talking to our public works and utilities people, I know that we're doing things that we can do, but they are trying to reach out to anyone that will have our city leaders hear them. seeing the water flow from the ceiling from the floor to her ceiling and then walking the area. The creek needs to be something needs to be done to the creek. I don't know if it's going to fix their issue or not, but I know that there is probably something that we could do just to reassure them that they are part of our community like Anyone else? I really have sympathy for the families that are living there because it is a flood zone. So there are things that bind us as a city government to what we can do. But we can at least assure them that we're doing those things that we can do. And I think that's all they want. I watch Ms. Brooks talk about getting a dumpster just to throw her things away. Those are things as a city that we can say, hey, why don't we help these people with that? That's something we should be able to do. I know it may be a minimum cost, but that, to me, that's something that we can do just as a special, hey, we care about you too. Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Is Councilman Kill online?

Yes, not tonight.

Okay. Next. Deputy Mayor? Yes. Can I just interject about this real quick? Sure. Ms. Carla reached out to me. This is not my district at all. And I let Councilman Kell know. I've also talked with Councilman Banks, Deputy City Manager I've been talking with and also Jason Tryon about this. And so far, so far there has been, there is not a lot that we can do. But I, and I told Ms. Carla this, I'm pushing back in that, in that I want research done on how flooding was handled in 2006 or 2007 when the Shunga flooded back at that time off of Arrowhead. And there was actually a house or two that were purchased because of how bad the flooding was by the city. because of that overflow from the Shunga. There has also been houses that have been purchased because of the floodplain that is off of Furman Road and the same issue with flooding that has been happening. So when I got that kind of answer, you know, there's not a whole lot that we can do or it's going to be long term before we can do anything. I've asked for research to be done because, like, I told miss Carla, I've wanted equitable treatment. For those folks in the Southeast humble area. She sent pictures to me that initial I called banks. I talked with him about it. I heard that banks sent them a claim form. you know pictures that she sent me I've sent on to Public Works I've received additional photos and she has gone to all of the neighbors which I told her would be passed on tomorrow so I've also told her that this is not my district and I've informed Councilman Kell and I have not received a response But I can move away from this at any time if there is not the satisfaction of the way that I am trying to push forward on it or if Councilman Kell wants to take over. Ms. Carla just told me she wants me to continue, so I will do that as per her wishes. But I've informed the mayor because I think we're going to have problems here. Thank you.

Okay. Councilman Miller.

Nothing for me. Thank you, ma'am.

Okay, Councilwoman Bradbury, do you have anything?

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to say happy Father's Day this weekend coming up to all the fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers, foster fathers, and father figures in the community that do so much and sacrifice so much to strengthen families. So anyways, I just wanted to say happy Father's Day to everyone.

Okay. I'm going to step in before the mayor gets his chance.

Deputy Mayor, I actually have nothing this evening, so you can do your thing and then keep moving us along. Thank you.

I just want to remind people that Friday is Juneteenth. The city will be closed as it's a holiday. Okay. So there are celebrations going on in different parts of town, so I hope you'll get out and go to one of those. Okay. We are done with announcements. There is a need for an executive session, and I'm going to pass it off to the city attorney next.

Before I read the motion, Deputy Mayor, I did see the time. It's 9 o'clock and this is a 60-man executive session.

Do you want to do that first to extend?

Why don't we go ahead and do that now if you'd like.

We will be right at or just after 10 o'clock. So I need to ask for a motion to extend past 10.

Okay. Second.

I have a motion from Councilman Miller and a second from Sylvia Ortiz. Councilwoman Ortiz. It's getting late. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay. Now.

Okay. With that, I will read the motion. The motion would be to recess into executive session not to exceed 60 minutes to discuss matters concerning the performance evaluation of non-elected personnel as allowed under KSA 75-4319B1. The open meeting will resume in the city council chambers. Staff members or other individuals may be invited to attend a portion of the executive session as requested by the governing body to assist it in its deliberations.

Okay. On this one, do I need a... We'll need a motion and a second.

Just a voice vote.

Just a voice.

A voice vote. Okay. I didn't understand. Those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? Okay. We will take a five-ish minute break.

We do need a motion and a second to recess. I thought we did. Okay. Sorry. Okay.

I need a motion for... The executive session.

Second.

Councilman Miller's motioned, and Banks has seconded. Those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. Thank you. That passes, and I'm going to ask for a, what, five minute, ten minute? Let's go as close to 5 as you can. It is currently 9.02, so if we're back here by at least 10 after 9, and we will start the executive session. Okay. We are finished with our executive session. Nothing has been decided. If there is any seeing that there is no further business in front of the governing body, I want to make a point. We finish with the executive session at 10.07 p.m. And the meeting is adjourned.