City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the Governing Body meeting of July 7th, 2026. Thank you for being here. This evening, Deputy Mayor Hofer has this evening's invocation. So with that, please rise if you are able and turn your attention to the Deputy Mayor.

Okay.

That's better. Okay, dear Father, thank you for bringing us together today. Thank you for our many and abundant blessings. Let us fully listen to each other, our staff, and our citizens with an open mind. Give the governing body, city leaders, and all of our civil service servants wisdom so that we may solve problems, serve our city well, and bring growth and prosperity to the community. Also, please keep our police, firefighters, public work staff, and utility staff safe. Amen.

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

All right. With that, the clerk would take the roll.

Mayor Duncan.

Here.

Council Members Hiller. Here. Valdivia-Ocala. Here. Ortiz. Here. Banks.

Here.

Kell.

Here.

Miller. Here. Bradbury. Here. McGee.

Here.

And Hofer. Here. All right. We have 10 present.

All right, before we move on with the agenda, unless there's an objection, and it's OK if there is. We can talk about it. We have a number of people signed up for public comment this evening, and the majority of them are here related to one of our presentations, which is our last presentation of the evening. So it would be my request to move public comment up to proceed immediately after our presentations, since there's a natural connection there. Anyone who's signed up to speak will still get to speak, even if it's not directly related to that issue, but we'll just move all of public comment to that time. So I can do that unless there's an objection. So is there an objection or concern with that? Council Member Ortiz.

If that person isn't here, can we keep their name to the end? Yes.

If I pass somebody, then at the end of the evening, I will go back and circle back in case they showed up to the meeting later.

Because they're used to it being at the end. Thank you.

I'll circle their name and call it later. Okay. Well, with that, then we will move public comment up to immediately after presentations. With that, we'll move on to our next item. All right, Kelly, you out there, Bridget, whoever you've got, whoever wants to come up, whatever the crew is. So we have lots of very hardworking people and departments in this city. None these days, though, seems to be as hardworking as our legal department, particularly our prosecution division. And through their work, they've actually earned a recognition that we want to recognize tonight. On June 12, 2026, the Family Peace Initiative honored the City of Topeka Legal Department with its Community Impact Award in recognition of the Department's sustained commitment to reducing domestic violence and promoting safer outcomes for individuals and families throughout the Topeka community. This recognition was awarded for the exceptional work of the City's Prosecution Division, which has developed and implemented domestic violence initiatives focused on accountability, behavior change, and reducing recidivism among offenders. Through a strong collaborating partnership with FPI, the prosecution division has referred hundreds of Topeka residents to FPI's batterer intervention program, providing participants with access to evidence-based education and intervention services designed to break cycles of violence. The city's proactive approach demonstrates a commitment not only to prosecuting offenses, but also to addressing the underlying behaviors that contribute to domestic violence. By working alongside FBI to connect individuals with meaningful intervention resources, the legal department is helping create lasting positive change, strengthen public safety, and reduce the incidence of domestic violence within the city of Topeka. The city of Topeka commends the department's innovation, collaboration, and dedication to creating lasting positive change and strengthening public safety and healthier community for all residents. I will tell you, it was a few years ago now where we took in-house these domestic violence cases that were not always getting prosecuted for a variety of reasons at the county level, and it has made a considerable difference in this community. Domestic violence is obviously a terrible thing, but part of our responsibility is to do the best we can as a community to reduce it. And if it had not been for the work of the people behind me and several others in our department, it wouldn't have happened at all. We wouldn't have been able to manage it, and they have made it work. So kudos to them, and thank you, big thank you to them for the impact they have made on people's lives in this community that might not have otherwise occurred.

Hello. I prosecute the domestic violence cases in the city. We've been working very closely with the Family Peace Initiative, and Dorothy Stuckey-Halley is here today representing the Family Peace Initiative. Her and her husband have created an organization that gives us real hope for change. So we've been working with them very closely to... send offenders to her organization to work with their habits, behaviors, and hopefully rewire connections and set individuals on a better path. So I just want to say without the Family Peace Initiative, we just wouldn't have a whole lot of options of what to do or how do we make changes or actually recommend something so that victims and survivors of domestic violence actually believe me when I say I want to help you. So thank you so much.

I just want to say that the City of Topeka has been a wonderful partner in this whole process. I just looked at our numbers for the first half of 2026 and we provided services to 536 individuals who cause harm. Now not all of those are from Topeka, but I can tell you the numbers jumped considerably once the grant dollars started flowing for those who needed the services and once the Topeka, the municipal prosecutors really got on board and the work that they have been doing has just been phenomenal in turning this around. 536 of those who cause harm and 401 victim contacts in the first half of this year. So thank you.

All right. With that, we'll move on to Item 3, Appointments. City Clerk.

A is a Board Appointment recommending the appointment of Adam Davey to the City of Topeka Board of Electrical Appeals for a term ending July 7, 2028. Items 3B and C are Board Appointments recommending the appointment of David Lemon and Drew Stevens to the City of Topeka Board of Mechanical Examiners Appeals for a term ending July 7, 2028. And D is a board appointment recommending the appointment of John Selbach to the Board of Plumbing Examiners to fill an unexpired term ending December 31, 2026. All right.

Any comments or questions on these appointments? If not, I have a motion to approve from Councilmember Kell. Second from Deputy Mayor Hofer. Please take the vote.

And Councilmember Miller?

Yes.

Okay, we have nine yes, the motion carries.

With that, we'll move on to item four, presentations. City Clerk.

The first presentation is from the Human Relations Commission Annual Report.

City Manager.

Thank you, members of the governing body, Luke Benceman, our human relations commission's chair, and Zach, our HRC vice chair will lead us through this discussion.

Welcome.

I think it might just be me.

Or it's just you.

Well, I appreciate this big crowd coming out for our report today. We will try and keep this short because I do know that you have a long meeting ahead of you. There is a PowerPoint and I will wait for that to pull up. But I am Zach Surrett, Vice Chair of the Human Relations Commission, and I will just give a quick shout-out that we are actively seeking new members. We've had a couple of people roll off of our commission in the last year or two. So if you know anyone in your districts that would be interested in some of the stuff that we're going to talk about, please let us know. It is a mayoral appointment, but it is something that you as city council people have to recommend. I remember going through that process a couple of years ago. Perfect. OK. I don't know if I'm in charge of this slide or not, but I'm going to click some buttons and see what happens. No, I'm not. OK. Well, I'm ready for the next one. So our mission is something that we're pretty proud of, conducting outreach and educational activities that promote justice and cultural understanding and improve relationships among all people in the city of Topeka, which is a pretty broad mission, but at the end of the day, What we aim to do is make sure that we are a connection between the citizens of Topeka and you as the governing body to make sure that everyone feels that they are represented, their voice is heard, and that we're doing plenty of outreach to make sure that the vice versa is true. Next slide, please. Perfect. OK. Now I'm in charge. Who we are, nonpartisan elected body, two terms, two-year terms. We support the efforts to eliminate prejudice and further goodwill among all people of the city, promote positive relations among our citizens and guests through community outreach, promote and facilitate public forums on issues of interest and concern, participate in outreach activities, public education, partner with groups that share similar goals. Kind of the same thing, because on the next slide, we talk about some of the things that we did last year. I know that we're already halfway through this year, but I promise we put this slide deck together months ago. So last year, as many of you may know, we conducted our AARP Age Friendly Community Survey. We did get over 500 responses on that. We got quite a few responses from outside of the city of Topeka, so they were not included in that number, but it was good feedback for those that see the city from the outside. We pulled on quite a few different topics from infrastructure, transportation all the way down to do you feel socially accepted by your community or by the city. We got some pretty mixed results but kind of led us in a good direction. We tabled at things and created really good partnerships with the JALC Area Aging Agency and Midland Care Meals on Wheels. We did build out an ARP report and we have already started doing community meetings where we pulled together people from the inclusive communities office, the police department, and other various agencies around the city to figure out how we can work together on some of the goals that our citizens gave us. We also attended the National Night Out, which is always a fantastic time seeing thousands of people from across the city and giving them our resources. And then we always host the Holiday Posada. The last couple of years has been at the Governor's Row House. We're hoping to continue that tradition, even though they have some exciting new ownership there. 2026 goals, we've already gotten a good start at this. So we have already talked about the community planning for AARP and putting out our report. We are on a timeline with the AARP to make sure that the city of Topeka does maintain its age-friendly city status, which some of you remember approving, I guess it's probably two years ago now, that we are an age-friendly city. We have already started discussions on doing town halls and listening sessions, a couple this year and into next year. We want to really get that community engagement piece. I have already started working with Assistant Chief Cross on how we can do things like the orange pamphlets that the city can hand out on what to do when you're pulled over. It would contain personal information, emergency contacts, some tips, guides, and that is both in English and in Spanish to make sure that we are serving our community. then we're also you know just trying to open the door to more listening sessions what is it that we need to be hearing that maybe we haven't already in regards to public safety we have worked with the city manager and assistant city manager more on ideas of more transparency and obviously we were huge supporters of the police department's new transparency rules with um videos watching those with with family members and related parties but trying to really get active in our role as those in-betweens between the city and the community perfect i told you i'd keep it short so i am open for any questions that you have comments or comments oh didn't pop up first council member heller

Thank you. Thank you, Zach. I've been on the council a while, so I was on the council when there are three of you commissions that are self-directed. And so the way your enabling ordinance is set up is for your group to identify something either in the community at large or within the city government or city staffing process itself and take it on. research it, engage the public, and then come up with proactive recommendations and or activities. And it sounds like you've done that. And so I really appreciate that, the leadership internally, yours certainly, but others have come before you as well to roll that out.

Absolutely. I really appreciate that. And like I said, it makes it easier when we've got a full team. We're supposed to be a nine-person committee, and I think we have five. So we are just barely meeting quorum as it is, because we've had a couple of people leave in the last year. So we always invite people. I know that we've got at least one former member in the house tonight that can vouch for us. But we're always excited to be a part of something. If anyone has any questions about goals of the commission or want to get more involved in the commission, just let me know. We would love to engage the city as much. We could not do what we do without people like Monique and Zana on the staff that makes all this possible. You said research. They do so much of that. They make sure things happen behind the scenes. I think you all know that. But if you didn't, I want to give them a huge shout out. Zana and Monique are fantastic.

Anyone else? Thank you, Zach. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. We'll start looking for some members.

Please do.

All right. We'll move on to our next presentation. City Clerk.

The next one is General Fund Financial Summary.

City Manager. Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, in this presentation, Josh McInerney, budget and finance deputy director, will present our general fund financial summary that will highlight our expenditures and revenue collections to the end of June, or Q2 2026, as well as our year end projections. Adding information to the summary is what we call a six plus six, or where we detail six months of expenditures and revenue collections, as well as our projected ending estimates for FY 2026. Moving forward, going into next year, We'll present a nine plus three this year in October, so basically highlight our expenditures and revenue collections through Q3 or nine months. And then our three month projection for the rest of the year, we'll present that in October. And going into next year, we'll present a three plus nine, six plus six, and nine plus three after each quarter. With that, I'll turn this presentation over to Josh.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, everybody. Kind of like the City Manager said, we're just going to give a high-level presentation on the general fund. We sent out some other funds that are in the pack in the memo, but everything kind of derives downstream from the general fund because that's where the majority of our employees lie. And so starting with that, kind of the quick key points is that revenue comes in the general fund in three main ways, property tax, franchise fees, and sales tax. There are some others on your screen, but the three – The three takeaways are that property tax, 98% of the collections are through the first six months of the year. So we get a majority of our revenue in the general fund in the first six months and the majority of expenses happen in the latter six months. Sales tax through four months this year is basically flat compared to last year. So that's something we need to monitor because It's one thing to come in under budget on expenses, but as you'll see, we have to have revenues to match. And then third thing is franchise fees. Those are also a little bit less than last year. So kind of same thing with sales tax. So as we monitor this, we'll keep the council informed on how our revenues are trending for the year. So all in all, we're projected to end the year around $126 million in revenue. So on the back end, 75% of general fund expenses are personnel. So at the date of this report, we've had 13 pay periods. And now, based off our current headcount levels, so extrapolating out the rest of the pay periods, assuming for holiday pay, overtime, and things like that, we're going to have about $96.5 million of expenses compared to a budget of $101 million. Thing to keep in mind is even though we're coming in under budget, we need to have revenues to cover those expenses. And then just as a reminder, in the latter six months of the year, that's when the majority of the holidays and overtime pay occurs. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Next on your screen are kind of non-personnel expenses into big categories. The reason it's important to break that out is we wanted to highlight, obviously, we didn't budget for the hotel this year, so we had to absorb that cost. And then we have various transfers into other funds, which were desired to hold a certain fund balance in those funds, and those are funded by the general fund. I'm talking about insurance, IT, facilities, our fleet fund, things of that nature. um to where we're going to be over we're going to be over our projected budget this year and that's mainly because of the hotel and then also the the payment of project view which is 2.3 million dollars in october So kind of putting all that together, there's two tables on your screen below. So the first one is kind of like I said earlier, we can look at it through six months on how we're trending through revenues versus expenses, but we like to see where we're going to end at the end of the year since we budget on a yearly basis and we want to see where we're ending up because it'd be kind of misleading to just look at six months in time and say, oh, well, you have a high cash balance now, but we got to see where we're going to actually end the year. That's the most important thing. Putting all this together is we're going to be spending projected $4 million of cash. So even though we're going to be coming in under on the expense budget, we still have to have revenues covering those expenses to where we'll be spending down $4 million in reserves similar to 2025 to where we'll have about $28.8 million if everything holds, which would be about 22% of our minimum fund balance policy. good news is we're under budget but something we'll have to monitor as revenue is sales tax and franchise fees are flat which are significant portion of revenue so um and we thought this would be good to present as we go into budget talks for 2027 next week and onward we can still influence 26 to where we can save more cash on hand to save money in future times so that's just kind of high level overview where we're at and obviously there's an accompanying memo in the in the packet for more detail but We just wanted to brief the governing body on where things stand thus far.

Josh, do we expect the franchise fee to, we don't expect those to go up later in the year, right? They're going to stay flat. So at their pace, they could be over a million dollars lower, right, based on that chart than where they were. Yes. Which is the trend in franchise fees. I'm just making sure I'm reading that right.

Yeah, that is correct. And part of the reason why is last year, we had a huge spike in the first part of the year due to cold spells and that. We didn't really have that this year. So that's part of the reason we're trending down this year compared to last year.

Okay. Councilmember Ortiz.

Josh, what about the fuel fund? Since fuel went up?

Yeah, so you're talking about the special highway fund that funds Tony Trower and his team. So even though the gas has gone up, they have to use their gas to do their job as well. So those expenses happen there, but that overall, That is a flat revenue source still and more expenses. So we'll be talking about that a little bit next week on how we're going to have to subsidize that fund for 27. But we've held some positions vacant for this year to where we're going to have probably a million dollar fund balance in that fund at the end of this year. But comparatively, it was like $3 million last year. So we're spending down cash in that fund too.

Let's talk about that.

Yep.

Okay.

Yep. Any other questions or comments for Josh on this? We have to start the fund budget conversations next week. Can't wait. If there's nothing else, then you're free, sir. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. With that, we'll move on to our next presentation. City Clerk.

The final presentation is Data Center's Overview and Future Considerations.

City Manager.

Thank you, members of the governing body. With this discussion for potential, or with discussions for potential data centers in Shawnee County, in this presentation, Leah Boling, Director of Economic Development, will lead us through a discussion of what are data centers, what are the current conversations regarding potential data centers in Shawnee County, and what are some future policy considerations for data centers in Topeka. Let me clearly articulate that there are no current applications for data centers within Topeka city limits. Given this overview, I'll pass this over to Leah.

Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, Leah Bolling, Economic Development Director for the city. In consideration of recent discussions among public officials and members of the community, staff have prepared a brief presentation this evening for informational purposes. This information that will be shared should not be an expression of opposition or support for data center development. It's just for informational purposes for the background and for the governing body in future discussions on policy decisions. So staff have had preliminary high level discussions with Compass Data Centers regarding the potential for the city to provide water and sanitary sewer service, as well as the possibility of future annexation of a potential data center location in Shawnee County adjacent to the Walmart Distribution Center. Staff have also reviewed records and note that this organization is in good standing and compliant with taxes and code. This afternoon, city staff received a Class A community first checklist from Compass Data Centers, which was promptly distributed to the governing body and attached to the agenda for tonight's discussion. These are the standards by which they develop their facilities and the questions they encourage community members to ask and explore with them. Additionally, Compass Data Centers has informed the city this afternoon that they plan to host a community open house on July 28th to present the proposed project and answer questions from community members and have an open dialogue. The planning for this event is still underway, and so as those details become formal, we will certainly share that information as soon as possible with the governing body. They do, as the city manager mentioned, intend to submit an application to the county for that county location. And with that, I will begin the presentation. So this presentation will provide an overview of what data centers are and the services that they provide. I'll also provide a recap of the recent zoning policy updates that the county has made and some zoning policy updates that the governing body may consider in the future. Further on the agenda, we will talk about what data centers contain and some common concerns. So what is a data center? A data center is a secured facility that houses computer systems, servers, network equipment. It's used to store, manage, process, and distribute data. Anytime a user accesses a website, uses a cloud-based service, an application, or streams content, that information is being disseminated from a data center somewhere. As the expansion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, also known as AI, continue to grow, the need and importance of data centers continue to grow, which is why we've seen an increase in the amount of data center development. So what do data centers contain? As you'll see in the image on this slide, they store high capacity servers that process information. Those are rows of servers. They also contain advanced cooling systems that help regulate the temperature and protect this equipment. Servers obviously generate heat and it's critical to the infrastructure that the temperature is regulated in the facility. Additionally, they have backup power systems. These can consist of solar backup power, generator backup power, wind, and other different types of backup systems that can be established to ensure if they don't, the facility doesn't go down during a power outage. There are also components of physical security and cybersecurity designed to safeguard the critical data in the facilities themselves. That takes us to common concerns regarding data centers. Often we hear concerns regarding noise and frequency that's emitted from the facilities, the water usage and waste water, power and electricity usage, and lighting and illumination coming from the facilities. Additionally, zoning and location in compatible districts and areas for the developments are a concern. There are four images on this slide. The image at the top right shows a data center in the evening, night to depict the types of lighting that some of these data centers can have. Modern data centers' lighting generally is LED. It's hooded to help deter any spillover into adjacent properties. The picture on the upper left is an enclosed white building. That's a type of backup power supply at a data center. That's a way for them to contain the noise that's emitted from those backup generators. In a similar picture there in the lower left, that is a fence. That is an acoustic blocking fence that's built around one of the backup power supplies at a center, just for reference. And then many modern data centers do construct their own substation closer to the facility that allow it to use power directly from its own substation. So moving on to the most recent zoning text amendment updates, the county voted on June 11th. The county noticed that there was a gap in their zoning policy that didn't define energy storage systems and data centers. And they adopted the text amendment to require a conditional use permit and define those two items under light industrial and heavy industrial zoning districts. What that does is that removes the ambiguity of use by right entitlement and ensures that any proposed development has to undergo the conditional use permit process. So use by right can mean that if a proposed developer comes forth with a project, if it's not defined or lacks definition in code, they may be able to claim that it is a subset of a predefined category in the code. which would allow them to claim, for example, that it may be a warehouse or a light utility instead of a data center. And so clearly defining those items in code protects, gives that extra element of protection requiring the CEP process, which I will explain further on what the CEP process requires further into the presentation. Currently, city staff have identified that our code also has that same gap. We do not define data centers or battery storage systems in our code. And so staff are exploring a zoning text amendment to define data centers within light industrial and heavy industrial districts, which would then require the city's conditional use permit process for any proposed development. Again, this would remove any ambiguity in the city's code with a clear definition of those two items and require the CUP public review process. So what the conditional use permit or CUP process has, it has many steps. One of those is promulgated by the municipal code. It's the site plan and site plan review process. On this slide, you'll see eight bullets. Those are not all encompassing of what is outlined in the municipal code and what is required for the conditional use permit site plan review process. These are eight elements that I wanted to highlight for context relevant to a data center. For example, utilities in a site plan review process, they must disclose the number of connections, the amount of anticipated water usage, They must disclose the types of lighting, the direction of the lighting. They must ensure there's no spillover onto adjacent properties and that it doesn't pose any type of safety risk, like spillover into trafficways or like areas. Part of that process requires review of landscaping and buffers, so that could be elements of noise and sound control. It requires a full stormwater management plan be submitted with the developer's application. That ensures any runoff and environmental risk are clearly evaluated and considered for the design and development. Signage, it obviously will examine all buildings, roads, and sidewalks and the designs around those and any parking or traffic impact analysis that would be required for that development depending on the location. So as part of the conditional use permit process, the review process includes the pre-application meeting. the public information meeting, mailers and public meetings, and the planning commission public hearing before coming to the governing body for consideration. Regarding the zoning code text amendment, staff intend to take that drafted text amendment to the Planning Commission for discussion this month in July. In August, it would be the Planning Commission's public hearing that would be conducted regarding that text amendment. And in September, it would likely come to the governing body for consideration. Again, to highlight what that zoning code text amendment would do, it would define data centers and energy storage systems within the light industrial and heavy industrial districts, resulting in the requirements for any development, proposed development, to follow the CUP process so that it would be open and transparent. understand that there are many thoughts and considerations regarding data center developments. This presentation is intended to be for information sharing and to let the governing body know where staff is in the process of reviewing our code and trying to put in safeguards and precautions for areas that we've identified gaps in that zoning code. So with that, I would be happy to stand for any questions or comments.

Questions or comments from the governing body? Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. Leah, did you create this presentation or did you get help with it?

Yes. Help, collaboration with others. Planning, city manager, deputy city manager.

Okay, but only city staff.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. I guess I'm a little bit confused because on June 4th, I sent an email to the city manager saying, Because I found out about data centers not through any information that we received as a full governing body that something like this might be coming down the pipe or that it was being considered at the county level. It was through watching a GTP meeting and seeing one of their slides and seeing that they were courting possibly two to three data centers. At that point, I was very concerned. League of Women Voters had seen that too. And so then the concern started pushing out into community. We all know how it went down at Shawnee County. There was very little time for people to respond to it. And so what I did is I sent an email on June 4th and I asked if anyone in the administration was involved in discussions with the county or any other entity about bringing data centers to Topeka or outside of Topeka city limits in the county. My understanding is that if data centers are approved in the county, that the city would have to become involved because of the city handling the water utilities in the county as well. I'm requesting that that information be provided to the full governing body as well about the above requests. So the response I received was, yes, similar to any business considering relocating to the Topeka area, our team has recently fielded questions regarding data centers on water utility available planning, zoning, et cetera, in Shawnee County. I mentioned that on the Red Couch yesterday. There have been no discussions for any data centers within Topeka City limits. If that would happen, I would bring it before to the governing body. It may be that I read this wrong, City Manager, your email, because my understanding was that meant that there were just general ping-ponging back-and-forth dialogues about what it could mean if the city ended up taking any of this up. But part of the handouts that we received tonight were from Compass. Is that the entity that you're talking about?

Yes, ma'am.

So have there been conversations with Compass?

Yes, ma'am. There have, uh, and Leah spoke to that just a moment ago. So, so yes, there have been conversations, uh, just as I mentioned in the email to you, yes, there's been conversations as far as water availability, planning, zoning, et cetera.

So I would say that, and I would definitely apologize if this is a misreading on my part, you did not come forward with any names. So it left me perhaps mistakenly with the impression that no one had come to us. We'll move along from that. That's disconcerting. But can you tell me that what you're talking about with the zoning code text amendment and the cup that you're talking about, that would be the verbiage that would need to be changed if anything would happen in the way of data centers within Topeka?

Yes, ma'am. If anything were to come to the city level. Right.

Because the county has already done their thing and they say it's still down the road and there's going to be more public meetings, et cetera. So thank you for the presentation. I want to hear what people have to say because I think I'm going to have a little bit more input later from some statistics that I looked up that obviously haven't been addressed yet. But thank you for the information. Thank you, Mayor.

Council Member Kell.

First off, I'd like to say, City Manager, I'd like to see the same verbiage brought up into our city code to make sure that we're not being blindsided ourselves as a city by having a company come in and claim in space and then doing this without any of us being able to do anything about it. Second off, I'd like to say this is not a Topeka issue. The last couple weeks I've been in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, southern Kansas. There's yard signs all over that say Notre Dame. It's in there for the city or the county or whatever. So this is not a Topeka issue. This is something that we're fighting across the Midwest because we have a lot of open land outside of our cities. As of right now, I'm a hard no on data centers. We do not know the short-term or long-term effects of data centers. We don't know the effect of the utility rates, water rates, water sources, pollution, and also the burden on police and fire departments. Just pulling up an article from Yahoo News that was published yesterday, one city in Ohio averages two fire calls a month to their data center, and over a year's worth of of fighting the fires for that one data center was consuming a yearly average just on that data center. So that affects the rest of us as citizens in the area. Even the executives that run these existing data centers cannot answer simple questions on the short-term and long-term effects. They have stated they don't know what what they will be in one, five, ten years, and if they will have harm or benefit on the environment or community that they are placed in. And these executives cannot say if they will benefit the world as a whole or as a man-made disaster waiting to happen. I would recommend any Shawnee County residents that can attend the Shawnee County commissioners meeting to voice their opinions at those meetings. Those who cannot attend those meetings, please send a letter or email to the Shawnee County commissioners. I am with Councilwoman Valdivia on this, that anything that goes on with the city on this, I think we need to be aware of because right now we don't know where this is going as a whole across our whole You know, Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, Midwest, you know, whatever. It's a, you know, there's a documentary out there right now. These executives cannot answer basic questions. And that's the scary part to me. It's one of those things that sometimes it's great to be on the forefront of some technology and be that first hand on it. And sometimes it's best to sit back and wait and see what things happen. And right now I'm in the wait and see mode before anything would happen from my seat over here. Thank you. Council Member Bradbury.

Thank you, Mayor. I do have a couple of questions for you. What is driving the September timeline?

We have a gap right now. If somebody comes to us and they want to do something by right, we don't have anything that defines a data center. We don't have anything that says you have to go through a CUP. They can basically do things by right, and we're trying to get ahead of that. As I've discussed with a number of your colleagues here, we have a gap, and so we're trying to address that gap so that, to Councilman Kell's point, we're not blindsided by anything, that anything that comes to our community within Topeka City limits actually comes through a public process. So right now we're trying to address the gap as quickly as possible.

I think the question relates to the timeline itself, right? Yeah. Because both of those require 30-day notices between planning commission meetings and time. So we start the process in July this month. It's just naturally going to take that 60 days to get us there. So that's why.

But this is prompted by the discussions going on with the county? That's correct.

We're trying to preempt anything in the future.

Okay. Has there been any analysis completed regarding the impacts on electric infrastructure, water capacity, and public safety that we know of for our community?

We haven't received an official application of any sort or plan to be able to review and make an assessment for those. If we did receive an application, we would absolutely conduct a thorough review process for any proposed development, but we've not received anything like that.

Okay. So I have to say that I am not in favor for anything like this happening right now. I understand the need to get ahead of it, but I also feel like we're trying to accommodate another governing body's timeline, which I'm not in favor of. So the county might be ready for a September timeline, but I don't think the city is. We have no information, no analysis showing how our infrastructure can support something like this. And until we have some kind of full impact review and guaranteed cost recovery, I'm not supportive of moving forward, nor am I willing to rush this process.

Thank you. So again, I understand you're concerned with the timeline. What I'm trying to explain is that right now we have a vulnerability within the city. If a company comes to us right now and they say, hey, I have this, I like, zoned location, there's nothing right now in our processes that say you need to go through this. So I just want to make it very clear that what we're trying to get is this governing body's consensus or basically understanding that the timeline is more so so we can identify the gap more than anything.

Would there be any other recourse for the city to take or any other action that the city could take, such as a moratorium or something like that, to prohibit or at least delay any development?

Yeah, I mean, I'll answer that. I would say two things. I think staff is doing what they think they need to do correctly to solve this gap. and fill that. I think anything beyond that, whether it's a moratorium or delay, needs to come from this governing body to direct staff to do that and have that conversation. So yeah. Council Member McGee.

Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I attended one of the meetings with the County Commission where the public was able to provide input. And I heard that loud and clear. I did provide this to council members. It's on the table. It's on my Facebook page. It's just some statistical data. But if you can see on a national level, these have primarily been proposed in the east and northeast and then now down into Texas. Now they're hitting the Midwest. There are currently eight companies working in Kansas to try to find sites. Their proposals are for 10 in the state. According to this data, it says they have three, two of those in Johnson County. None of them with a date determined for construction in anything. And this data, which is came from Clearview, is dated in July, and yet it doesn't mention Shawnee County. It doesn't mention Emporia and some of the other communities that are facing the exact same thing. So this is moving across the country, and especially now in the Midwest, quickly. I think it behooves us to try to get ahead of it. And part of that process is we need open communication with council and public on what's going on, what's being proposed. And if there's somebody that comes up with an application and a timeline, we need to know that. But I'd like for us to be able to get ahead of this. whether that's through what the staff is recommending or for being a moratorium. Because right now it's moving and it's moving quickly and we don't want to be behind it. So that's my viewpoint. Thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the discussion and I appreciate the presentation. It sounds like we You know, the intent is for us to get ahead of it and protect ourselves so that we can have conversation and options if anybody even makes a proposal to us. With that in mind, I appreciate where we are and what's happened so far. I have two key questions about what's in your proposal. One is, does it include the three-mile buffer limit around the city's borders?

I have to defer to Deputy City Manager to answer that question.

Thank you, Council Member. The three-mile ETJ, the city's authority in that is only through the subdivision regulations. What is proposed is changes to our zoning regulations that would be similar to what the county has done for their zoning regulations, which do apply in the county outside of the city limits. So zoning applies only within the city limits. Subdivision regulations apply within the city as well as the three-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction. What are proposed are zoning changes, not changes to the subdivision regulations.

So with that, either we need to also deal with our subdivision regulations or show up at the county ourselves directly to influence what the county adopts.

and our jurisdiction would certainly be with the platting, not with the zoning.

Under the subdivision?

Correct.

Okay. I'm glad you're looking at it. The other question that I had, and it came up in the recent... heavily discussed up-zoning proposals. You mentioned that if we went through the CUP process, conditional use permit, then it works just, I mean, I learned, refreshed on this with the up-zoning and here we are again. It basically is the entire full rezoning process, even though it's a conditional use permit that's on top of a certain zoning. Which I understand the question would be, who gets with as far as you've developed this to date? Who would get those notices?

Again, let me take that question. So again, the recommendation would be to not allow by right development within I-Lite or I-2. Because then if you want to come in and do it and you're in that zoning district, you would be able to do it without the staff or the governing body having any control.

Understood.

So the recommendation would be to do it through a CUP, which would then require, as you'd indicated, the full blown process, which would involve the Public notice would involve the public hearing at the planning commission and then the ultimate action by the governing body in accordance with the golden rules. And so state law would govern as to the notification area for any zoning case and we would follow that as well.

Well, I would suggest that one of the things that came up in the upzoning discussions was that 200 feet just isn't enough when it's something really big that would impact a homogeneous neighborhood, or in this case, something that has that many possible ramifications city and county wide. And so if state law allows it, or if we need an exception to state law to allow it, I would think based on those citizen discussions just recently that we should require community-wide notification, not just 200 feet. Thank you.

Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

A couple of things. I concur with Councilwoman Bradbury in that we need to slow this down and kind of that wait and watch that Kel's talking about. Councilman Kell, but I also think that just like we're having this presentation on how we need to fix this gap, we also need to have a presentation about what it means to have a moratorium. Exactly what that looks like. The other thing that I want to say is just a couple of comments. This is from American Rivers, who is somewhat like a think tank in D.C., and also something very briefly from a reflector article, Kansas reflector. The Kansas power grid is projected by 2035 to increase by 99%. Most of that is going to be driven by new tech development, causing the grid to have a deep strain in it and rolling blackouts unless major upgrades don't happen. Major upgrades probably will happen. Whose shoulders are they going to fall on? They're going to fall on yours. So also, there is indirect water use. When you talk about the cooling systems that don't use as much water, there is still an indirect water use at power plants that generate the electricity for the data centers and has had a huge indirect footprint for water up to 800 billion leaders nationwide as of 2023. Also, what is very disconcerting is we know that so many governments are getting less and less transparent to the stakeholders, to the taxpayer, is that often data centers treat their information as proprietary information and often require confidentiality agreements to be signed by municipal governments. So there's just on and on things that we could go in to say what the deep concerns are about. But this is the deal. It's going to come to us because of the utilities component. And now this whatever, this pocket that we're in, and understanding that we are going to have to slow it down. But no one in this audience cannot expect that this cannot be a people-driven process. Because if it is not a people-driven process, chances are things are going to happen that you're not going to like. And so what you're... What you're seeing right now that you're doing is a populist movement and you saw it occur at the Shawnee County meeting. So you have to look at everything in the way it's stacked up. You have to look at what's looking at the legislature. They've already passed the bill. that offers deep incentives okay so that's in place already we already see what's happening at the county that they didn't give you all a lot of notice and it went down right you all were told that you were given a lot of misinformation while they gave you none practically and now we have it here at the city council so your movement in my opinion should be fast i don't know if you think about a petition i don't know if you think about continuing to do what you do but these are things that are being viciously fought across the country and often data centers will find themselves in place where they know that they can get elected officials to fold and they know that they do not have a community that will fight thank you mary

Any other comments or questions? If not, we will move on to our newly placed for this evening, public comment. For those of you who have not been here for public comment before, you will speak at the podium. You have a timer in front of you right there. You've got four minutes. It will beep at you once, but that doesn't mean you're done. That means you still have one minute, so don't stop. You've still got your one minute left, and then it will beep at you a second time. Again, this is for all public comment this evening, and as is our policy, due to the number of individuals signed up, we will adhere to the four-minute rule. There will not be any extensions. So with that, I had the list.

I didn't see a list to sign up.

The sign-up list was you send your name into the city clerk prior to the meeting.

No country, sorry.

First up, we have Michael McDowell. I appreciate the clapping, but we'd like to get through the meeting. You can clap after if you want, but before anyone says anything. Thank you, sir. Welcome.

Hello. This has nothing to do with that.

You're good. This is all public comment right now.

My name is Michael McDowell, and I'm a resident here in Topeka. I want to start by telling you who I am, and I only have four minutes, so I'm going to do the best I can. First and foremost, I am a God-fearing man, and I give all glory to the Father, and I have been bought by the blood of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who calls me friend. I have with me today the greatest gift God has ever given me, my wife, Casey McDowell. and brothers and sisters that are in Christ. I am a father of three, and I stand before you today with a certain zeal in my heart for doing for the least of these, the ones whom society may see as a stain or a problem, when in all actuality they are truly people with feelings, and have felt the loss and abandonment of love from early onset of life. I have built many meaningful relationships with some, as I have laid down my life to do the will of Christ. Love. What I have noticed in the process of keeping order is the hindrance of my ability to love. I will speak of one instance. I was recently just told after I was asked if I could give a lady a ride to get some dog food for her and her pet that I could not give her a ride due to fear or worry if she comes back and says that I did something to her. I was even in a sense reprimanded from it by a leader of a church. This broke my heart and I cried out for an answer and I received one. Something so simple was the answer, an inward facing camera. I don't have all the answers, but trust me, if we seek an answer based in love with the willingness to commit, we can find one. This brings me to why I am here today. On June 15th, I was at one of our homeless communities. A friend I have known for a very long time was dealing with an overdose, and I called 911 as he was willing to see AMR but was unwilling to go to the hospital. Due to this, per the lead AMR person, two things could happen. He gets up and all is well, or the Narcan that he was given could wear off. And so with me being the only one with the phone, I sat with him all day until he came back to. However, in the midst of this, a good friend of mine who I whose name is Jonathan Billton, lost his life. The very next day on June 16th, I found out about it, and my heart broke for him. But also what happened was a meeting convened by this council about a cleanup of the area, in which in the past I have come to find out means bulldozing, totally removing their homes and removing the people who have since childhood dealt with not receiving the love that they so desperately deserved. This city and state has spent so much on removing the stain, but not spent time and resources of going to the root, just wiping what is on the surface. There are options that stand before you. My suggestion, give them somewhere to throw their trash. I will even help with the cleanup. I know of other people willing to help. If my wife and I lived down there, we would be able to keep our area clean, but not even us would have a place to put our trash. I come to humbly beg you all, please do not inflict more suffering upon them. I pray that you will help seek resolutions that are based in love over anything. This is not just a call to you, those city council members. This is a call to you, people of Topeka, who are of the church. This city has budgets and roads, parks, and amongst other things. It is time to stand up in love with grace at mercy to everyone, not being partial. We have been silent and doing nothing for so long and wonder why everything keeps getting worse and worse. May God touch your hearts to help radiate light in this dark world. Holy Spirit, I thank you for giving me the words to speak on this day. And may God bless and have mercy on us all.

Thank you, sir. Next up, I have Mr. Brian Pete. Brian Pete. Hello, sir. Hello, sir.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. My name is Brian Pete. I am a new resident of Topeka. I live in District 1. And I am here just to say. I'm glad to be in Topeka, and I'd like to just offer my services to the council and to the city. I just want to make sure that wherever I am, wherever every organization or every place that I move into, that I'm just a good citizen, that I'm a good neighbor, that I do everything that I can to make my community better. I'm an Air Force veteran. Currently, I serve as the director of the Riley County Police Department in Manhattan, Kansas. And giving back is something that's always near and dear to me. So with that being said, I will just hand over some information to the city clerk and just, again, offer my services to this board. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Matt Doyle. Matt Doyle. One last chance, just in case. Matt Doyle, they're not online? All right, we'll circle them for later, in case. Mr. Joseph Ledbetter.

It's a welcome respect to get to go early. So I'm not going to speak on the next item that I signed up for. I'll just leave those public comments and those with you. And I'm going to pass these public comments out about utility rates. I know I electronically sent those earlier, but maybe some of you don't have a copy or want to see it. Governing body, thank you for your time. Very interesting topic, these information centers. So it came to me as I was listening, because I wasn't going to get involved in this, that you not only have a gap in zoning, you may have a gap in your water district contracts. And you may want to control that. This is our water. This is Topeka's water. And the county may have some say-so about where they can put these things, but you control the water. So I would suggest you beef those contracts up or look at that. And maybe they need to be a lot more money for these kind of things if they're ever built. And I did send some comments while I was listening also electronically to you about some of those ideas. The utility rates are very interesting to me because... One of the problems that we seem to have in this community is, and it was talked about, lack of transparency. And I actually agree with that, especially with utilities. And even though I got to work on one of these rates a few years ago, there were things I wanted to ask about and work on, but I was hemmed in. I had a contract. I, for instance, was interested in the bonds. And I never got an affirmative answer that I could look into those. I think the amount of debt this community has taken on in the last nine years in our utility funds is horrific. I remember – so I've been involved – this will be the fourth one that I've actually participated in with – the public. I remember Colson only had $10 million worth of revenue bonds when he left in 2016. And after he left, I'm going to leave names out of it, but they started ratcheting up the amounts they wanted. And I mean, they got very astronomical, even $100 million issue at a time. And I'm going, you know, there's prospectuses here. There's things we have to follow. I mean, it's well-founded law. And I just never could seem to convince a majority of the council members to slow down. How many times did I talk about slow down on the bond requests and these bond issues? I think I spoke at least seven times against taking on new debt, especially with revenue bonds, because revenue bonds take so long to pay off, and they're also at a higher rate of interest than your GO bonds. And we got that all in my MPA training at KU. It was very good training. But I didn't forget a lot of it. I actually remembered a lot of it. And I want to help my city. And I want to help our rate payers. But we have got to slow down on this rate increase. This thing doesn't even have to take effect before the end of the year. And I feel very rushed in my comments. I say so. I feel like we're rushing, rushing, rushing about raising, raising, raising interest rates. I mean rates, not interest rates, but water rates, utility rates. And I'm very concerned about where all this bond money went. And I am very concerned that the council not allow this to be some kind of black box budget that we just review every three or four years. But we need to annually review our utilities. Our utilities, let me give you just a snippet of information here. The utility budget's about as large as the whole county budget. And they don't review that just every three or four years. So I would urge you to maybe look at the language in your water district contracts about water use and what they can use that for, as well as the rest. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next person, I believe, is on Zoom. Denae Hayes. Welcome, Denae. You have four minutes.

Hello. My name's Denae Hayes. I am part of the Montero subdivision. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yep, we can hear you great.

Okay, perfect. I'm part of the Montero subdivision, and I also wanted to just kind of advocate for transparency in the sense that During that presentation, it seemed as though, yeah, it's not moving forward, but then at the same time during that presentation it said, they were interested in building adjacent to the Walmart distribution center. So that's concerning to our community. But mainly what I wanted to share is just some data in the sense of the water is already very high out here. So that's a big concern for our community in the sense of who's going to pay that bill when it's already almost 40% higher out here compared to the city. On a quick poll that we did, almost 40% of Those who did the poll, which was about 150 people, are paying $200 to $250 a month in water. So not only do we have to kind of worry about the rate increase, but then we also have to worry about another distribution, another data center, heating the area around. We do have farms out here, so that's also a big concern in the sense of making sure that What's being built is actually being transparent. I do know that our community so far is not interested in that. So I know that going to the county and kind of sharing information there would also be supportive. But I do know at this time that our community seems not on board at all with the data center. And it seems that the transparency is not there. And that's all I mainly wanted to say. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Sinead. Next up, we have Blair Helgeson. Hopefully I pronounced that right. Blair Helgeson.

Good evening, mayor and mayors, members of the city council. My name is Blair Helgeson, Topeka business owner, Waukarusa resident, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight. Like many people in our community, I support economic development. I understand that technology and artificial intelligence are important parts of our future. The discussion around data centers often focuses on jobs and tax revenue. What is discussed far less are the documented health and environmental concerns associated with these facilities. Economic development should never come at the expense of public health. I'm six months pregnant, and I was told that the sleepless nights would come after baby's arrival. But living less than a mile from the Kansa Fire Commerce Park, my sleepless nights have already begun, as I evaluate if it will even be safe to raise the baby in our home. Instead of decorating my son's Winnie the Pooh nursery, I wonder if there's any point given that we will move if a data center comes to my community. Research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has warned that air pollution from AI dentists contributes to increased rates of asthma, heart disease, and premature death. Researchers emphasize that these health burdens are borne by nearby communities rather than the companies benefiting from these facilities. While data centers feel like the new hot topic, they've actually been around in some communities for nearly a decade. So we have empirical evidence to take into consideration. The communities already impacted are warning the rest of us. According to the U.S. News and World Report in April 2026, Virginia communities with data centers describe it as quote, living in hell, end quote, due to the severe noise and air pollution. Why on earth would we knowingly bring hell to our community? Recent studies from Virginia have estimated that proposed data center could result in $53 to $99 million in annual public health damages from air pollution alone. Noise is another serious concern. These facilities generate low frequency noise that produces a constant drone or buzz that travels easily through walls and can be heard up to two miles away. It's not controlled by traditional acoustic barriers. Peer-reviewed research has shown that this chronic environmental noise is associated with elevated stress hormones, poor sleep, chronic headaches, vertigo, cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression. Unlike construction noise, these facilities operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As a health care provider, I believe one of the most important principles in medicine is prevention. We don't wait until harm is proven beyond all doubt before taking precautions. We evaluate risks, consider the evidence, and protect people whenever possible. I ask the council to apply that same principle here. Do not gamble public health for economic growth. I know our Topeka leaders strive to be at the forefront of economic innovation. We have the chance to be the leaders in this space as well. Data centers have the burden of proof that they are safe for our community. I respectfully ask the council to adopt a moratorium on new data center development until health protections are put in place. At a minimum, data center applicants should pay for independent baseline health and environmental studies to be completed. This should include comprehensive pre- and post-construction community health surveys, as well as pre- and post-construction noise monitoring, so any changes to residents' health can be objectively measured. We don't want reactive mitigation efforts. We want proactive action. The people who will live beside these facilities deserve nothing less. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. I'm sure that I will pronounce this incorrectly, but Melodyne Bird. Hopefully I got close. Well, Bird was the easy part.

Melodyne. You're correct. All right. Good evening. My name is Melodyne Byrd and I represent Topeka Jump. We are here tonight in support of the recommendations from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Review Committee. Here are additional letters. of support for those who could not be here tonight. We're glad to see these proposals move forward. 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 sealed with public funding each year per the review committee's recommendations. This could come from a one-tenth of one penny sales tax for affordable housing and homelessness. We urge you to support this proposal by putting it forward for a vote by the general public. And when you do so, please put forward specific well-researched solutions that the city's own studies have recommended. Specifically, invest in half the funds generated directly into the affordable housing trust fund, the top priority from the 2020 housing market study, and the other half into the top recommendations from the 2024 homeless innovation study. Now, I want to address some things that were stated by council members the last time we gave a public comment on this issue. The Pickle Jump is not opposed to private funding and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and there is already a way to do that. As $250,000 of that initial funding came from a private investor already. Our advocacy for public funding is not blocking private funders from giving to the trust fund, but we are focused on public funding because across the country, trust funds generate private funding after dedicated public funding is established each year. Those public dollars are what leverages private dollars. So, to correct the narrative, we're asking for the community, including ourselves, to all share that cost through the one-tenth of a penny sales tax, and then those public dollars can leverage private funding. This progress by the Review Committee can't be sustained unless this governing body decides to act on a continued investment in affordable housing in this community. We need annual dedicated public revenue for this trust fund, and you are the only ones that can start this process. The over 10,000 families that can't afford safe housing in this community cannot wait any longer. We need affordable housing now. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Burke. Next up, we have Amy Gillette. Amy Gillette.

Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Amy Gillette. I am a Topeka resident in District 3, and I am someone who is, like a few of the other commenters, going to be rather close to this proposed data center. So as we heard a little bit in the presentation, on June 3rd, the Topeka Capital Journal reported that Evergy had been in months-long stock with Go Topeka and, at that point, an unnamed company to bring a hyperscale data center to Shawnee County. The initiative, which at that point went by the code name Project Deep Blue, would bring a massive data center to the southern edge of Topeka near the Walmart distribution center. And despite the constant reassurances we've gotten from our county officials that no applications have been submitted, this process has clearly been in the works for months. And as we're going to find out from another speaker later, it's been in the process for years at this point, since 2024 at least. So to quote Rich Eckerd, our county commissioner at the last meeting, he compares data centers to zoning landfills. And I'm one of the people who's going to live by that landfill. Says they're the hardest things to permit in the state of Kansas. They're hard to permit because of people that live close to them. No one wants to live close to a landfill. I don't want to live close to a landfill. A data center, though, is entirely different in that while it has the same limitations that a landfill has, it's also technically difficult. And it requires a level of sophistication that governments simply don't have. Our county official is admitting this, and yet they do not feel like it's time to put a moratorium in place or put any sort of further controls on the process. A conditional use permit is not the only option to stop an application coming in and going forward. A moratorium, as has been mentioned thus far, is the clearest way to put a stop to that and give us time to be able to look at this issue in more depth, to give the public more time to find out what's going on, and to really hopefully approach some level of transparency in this process. As someone who lives close also, I'd like to know what protections are going to be in place to protect the property values of those closest to these data centers. How is the city or county planning to compensate the owners of houses that are in the immediate area that, for all intents and purposes, are going to become unsaleable? No one wants to live next to a landfill. No one wants to live next to a data center. And why would the city be considering extending water service to a data center in Shawnee County when I'm a Topeka resident? I'm not on Topeka water. My water comes from Shawnee County Rural District 3, and every few months, I get a colored sheet of paper in my mail that tells me, I'm going to read from this one, too. Our water system has recently violated the drinking water standard. Although it's not an emergency, you have a right to know what's happened. Our water has high levels of haloacetic acids. And though it says some people who drink this water over many years have an increased risk of getting cancer. But it's not bad enough you have to do bottled water or anything. So clearly we already have a water problem in the county and for us extended city residents. I don't think we're ready to be extending our water out to the data center potentially and bringing even more problems and raises in rates to this entire situation. Just briefly, other cities and counties around have been taking this moratorium process seriously. Just in about the past two weeks, Gary County set a one-year moratorium on data center applications. Jackson County recently established a 180-day moratorium. So let's not feel like we have to be the ones who have to figure this all out for ourselves. Let's look at what informed people are doing and hopefully make the right decision for a moratorium. Thank you all for listening.

Next up, I have Joe Helgeson. Joe Helgeson?

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Joe Helgeson, and I am here tonight to address what appears to be a critical planning gap regarding Project Deep Blue. While local officials have rightly stated that no formal development applications have been filed, the physical and utility level groundwork tells a very clear story. Buried in thousands of pages of raw, highly technical system impact studies is proof of a substantial amount of pre-infrastructure planning by Evergy. While there is no official application on the books, the timeline is clear. The groundwork is being laid for a data center and planning has been happening since at least 2024. A Southwest Power Pool Interconnection Cluster Study from 2024 shows estimated upgrades for our area to support this project. According to the Phase 1 report, there is an estimated $32 million infrastructure commitment to upgrade the Tecumseh Hill to Swissvale Line, which could connect a battery energy storage system to support a data center. In addition, there are verified Kansas 811 dig tickets that reveal contractors have been performing soil borings at these potential data center sites. I hold in my hand a particularly interesting 811 dig ticket executed for Microsoft on September 3rd, 2024. Now, why would Microsoft be interested in soil boring testing at an industrial zone site in Shawnee County, near where a massive electric electrical grid expansion is being proposed? We cannot allow our community to be exploited by resource drains before we even have a chance to vote on proper safeguards. The people of the community deserve to have input. Tech companies intentionally delay filing local permits until after they have locked in their private utility deals. They use utility level upgrades as a legal loophole to bypass early public scrutiny. All of this has been done under the veil of due process and transparency. A conditional use permit is not enough. It is simply plain catch up against a multi-trillion dollar corporation. that has already outmaneuvered local zoning. A CUP will not protect local residents. It merely manages the terms of our surrender. Since there are no official applications pending before Topeka and Shawnee County, we have the opportunity for a moratorium without legal ramifications. and municipal law. Passing a moratorium while a development application is actively on the table can trigger a vested rights lawsuit from the developer. claiming the local government changed the rules mid-game to target them. Because there are zero pending applications, we are currently in a rare safe legal window to enact a moratorium without facing an immediate corporate lawsuit. Our neighbors in Geary County, Kansas and Jackson County, Missouri saw this trap coming and acted decisively by passing strict data center moratoria to halt applications and fix their zoning codes before it was too late. Therefore, I am formally requesting that this council immediately exercise its powers to enact an emergency moratorium on all data center developments and high density industrial load interconnections. Do not let big tech build by stealth. Protect Shawnee County residents first. Thank you.

Next up, I have Tim Zyrowski. Tim Zyrowski?

Yeah.

Mr. Zyrowski, are you here? Yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry. Didn't see you there.

I'm getting a little bit slower.

You're all right.

How are you all doing? Good. Welcome.

Well, that was a hard act to follow. That guy is good. Well, when I heard, the very first heard about a possible data center in my backyard, something broke in my spirit. Something just went upside down. And I don't know how to explain it, but I knew I had to get involved and stop this thing. So I started doing some research. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was bad. I knew it was moving too fast. So I started going on YouTube. Now, when I was young, we didn't have YouTube, right? We didn't have internet. We had encyclopedias. And it was slow. And every year, we would get an update. But now, you get updates within minutes. thousands and thousands of sources of information available. So I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about data centers. And you know what? I couldn't find one, one video that had anything good to say about it. Not one. In fact, a video I saw recently said that it was a poll that was done by a company, I may have this wrong, but Quinnipiac survey, and I haven't researched that, so I don't know the legitimacy of it, but it said 65% of Americans are against data centers in their backyard. And the Chinese are working on underwater data centers, where you have natural cooling from the water, they can generate electricity with the current. There are other things that they can do Whether that's more expensive or less expensive, I don't know. But I made a list as I was going through some videos. Some of the things that we can expect, electricity increases 25% and up, air pollution as Some other people here have already mentioned, which brings in health issues, which is extremely expensive. You get somebody with emphysema or asthma, I had asthma as a kid. I was in the hospital a lot as a child. Very expensive. So you got to calculate that in your cost. Water usage, water usage is extreme for these. And what they do, they have to put chemicals so it doesn't freeze. And they can't get this chemical out of the water. So even if they recirculate it, well, that's fine. They put it back out into our water, we can't get it out. So it's no longer usable, potable water. Now, they might whine and dine you and say, we're going to bring in all kinds of economic development. Well, no, that's not true. You're going to have 1,500 construction jobs right in the beginning. And after a year, year and a half of construction, they're gone. You've got 50 to 500 employees at the most in these data centers. You've got bird migration from Canada down south. And Kansas is a big place where you've got noise, low frequency hum, transfer of wealth. Well, I don't have time for that. Our electric grid cannot support it, right? We know that. You just heard the last speaker say that. So you're going to see massive increases without a data center already at a data center. I'm about halfway through, but I appreciate your time. I think you get the gist. Thank you for doing what's right.

Thank you, sir. Next up, I have Shamika Sims. Shemeika Sims. Shemeika here. Oh, she's back there.

good evening everyone i'm shamika king sims i live in district one before i get started i did want to offer to yield my time we had a neighbor show up who had some comments raywin would you like to

I'll be brief. I don't have anything really prepared. My name is Raewyn Honeycutt.

I am a resident of Topeka. Closer to the mic.

Thank you. My name is Raewyn Honeycutt, and I'm a resident of Topeka. I'm not about to argue against data centers simply for the fact that we know where this is headed. But there's a couple of things I have a question on. Eminent domain. Georgia Power in Georgia has used this to seize property across two counties. Family land is being reclaimed or claimed. Zoning requirements. Is someone with prior experience in the industry and data centers actually looking at the loopholes in other county or state zoning requirements through a legal lens? I know Mr. Ledbetter has said something. Bylaws can be ignored. Fines can be paid. How do you shut down a data center for noncompliance? Who really ends up with the power? Data centers will age, jobs will go. Detroit, Michigan, and Motor City is an example from recent history. What is the environmental impact? This has already been kind of raised. No tax breaks. We are looking at water utility rate increases already, and that's already been addressed earlier in this meeting. We have a river that needs dredged and new sewer lines. Short term perks for residents are short sighted. If you ever look to broker a deal with any of these big companies, you need to hook them put them on the hook, don't put the residents on the hook because we got two or three generations down the track looking at the mess that will be left behind if we don't put checks and balances in place. Realistically we do know that this is coming and I think we'd be foolish to you know just say no it's not going to happen. But realistically, what can we do to mitigate the risks for a pregnant woman, for our children, for our elderly, for our sick people, for anybody that is dealing with housing and food insecurity? Because they will get fed the dregs of what is left over. That's what's happening already. Thank you. Where's she gone?

Thank you.

So I'm going to have to be super brief. The reason that I came out tonight was to really address the public. So this first part is to all of us in the community. I'm going to hold a mirror up to ourselves and just kind of give you a snapshot of my life in terms of how I am complicit in what is happening tonight, how many times I have turned to chat GPT because I was not feeling creative enough to come up with a flyer or didn't have enough money to go to actual therapy, so I turned to ChatGPT to help me to work through my issues. How many times I use Grammarly because I don't feel confident in my own voice, so I'm using AI to help me to minimize my risk of looking silly or like I don't know how to put a sentence or a thought together. Oh, OK. So I will just say this. The mirror that I'm asking all of us to do is to think about how are we complicit in giving these companies our money through using their equipment, how we're giving them our time.

I need you to wrap it up.

I know, but I'm just asking us to also think about making sure that you guys understand that we are just as complicit and we're asking you to help us to be better prepared for what's coming down. Thank you.

Next up, Megan Ryan. Megan Ryan.

All right. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much to the council. Thank you to the mayor for moving this public comment period up. We really appreciate it. I know it'll be a late night. This is actually my first time being here. So exciting. And it's been really interesting to kind of jump in and see how this process works. It's super convoluted and it seems really crazy. I actually have a degree in political science and I still can't keep up with how fast this is going and what's happening and understanding who here can stop it. Because it's my understanding you all have in your power to issue a moratorium to protect us, right? And that's what I'm looking for. And that's what we're all here asking today. And so I really appreciate, of course, the people here in Topeka for standing up for what is right. It is never too late to do the right thing. We're getting a little frustrated, right? This lack of transparency, this, oh, there's no applicants. We just had someone say that Microsoft, Bill Gates' Microsoft, was testing soil in Topeka. We have Evergy and the city of Topeka and Go Topeka, sorry, Go Topeka and Evergy having little secret NDAs and doing this. And then it's this surprise. And I'm just shocked and I'm super disappointed that the importance of having these experts weigh in has been really interesting. But what was disappointing is the experts weighing in were behind me. These people coming to us as health care professionals explaining that vibrations and the frequencies can cause detrimental damage to our organs. We have IT tech guys saying, whoa, we don't have the infrastructure. We have utility folks saying, Y'all can't even handle our water now. What just happened in Oakland six months ago? A wastewater treatment plant spilled sewage everywhere? We have the Mars facility already struggling with water. And who's going to be next door? I don't know, but they're going to take our water, right, and insert chemicals. And when we talk about this kind of circumference, this five mile radius of this danger zone around these data centers, I'm looking at this map right here. We clearly have the little town of Montero, we clearly have a elementary school, right? We have children that are going to be spending all their days next to this poisonous and the vibrations. And so what we're talking about today is saying, hey, we know it's in your power to issue a moratorium. This is what all of us are asking for. We are also asking for the establishment of a committee of experts made up with people of the public and experts that we can assign. We are seeing something so beautiful right now. And it's not the data centers, it's not all this mess. I'm part of a new thing we're starting, and I say it's a bipartisan coalition, and that seems really kind of uptight. My husband, my best friend, he calls it the resistance, right? It's all these random people coming together because we all agree that this is bad. And Topeka is saying, No to data centers tonight. We are demanding increased protections for the people because we don't care about these billionaires in profit. We don't care about these empty promises that our property taxes are going to drop. Because what have you guys promised about the establishment of all those other factories in that area, in the same area? And it keeps rising. Our prices keep rising. Time is tough. It's going to get worse. And we, the people, are asking you to protect us. Thank you.

Next up, I have Colleen Campbell. Colleen Campbell. Colleen, you here? Colleen Campbell. Okay. Next up, I have Marshall Barber.

I want to yield my time to Elon Musk. Oh, he can't be here tonight, but he'd just like to say Topeka needs a data center at Gage Park. Turn Gage Park into a data center for Elon. Distinguished Mayor, distinguished council members, thanks for your good attention tonight. Some of you might already be noticing that I have an unusually sharp haircut this evening. And I would just like to share that this was made possible by the ministrations of the Brink Salon at 309 South Kansas, one of your thriving downtown businesses. And any time you want to turn bad hair into good hair, you go see Brianna and she'll take care of you. Also ask about the receding hairline discount. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to discuss three ways in which Topeka can become a smarter city without data centers. First thing would be to approve the Affordable Housing Trust. As a real estate agent... As a real estate agent, I'm behind that 100%. And there are other people here who can speak knowledgeably on behalf of that. So I don't need to belabor that. The second thing is, can we possibly do something about crime? I was at a little social thing in Lawrence a couple weeks ago with two other people from Topeka and a sad commentary that most of our conversation had to do with instances where we were burglarized, broken into, whatever. One of my friends actually had a kayak stolen. And a rowboat stolen? I mean, who steals rowboats? Well, maybe the same people who just stole all the bath towels from the downtown Great Life YWCA fitness center where I try to work out. I hear or I've heard about presumptive probation. And I cannot speak knowledgeably about that. But it does seem that there is this revolving door of people who do these things. Like the guy that stole my bicycle two years ago, I'm sure he got arrested. And I'm sure he's back out there stealing more bikes or hopefully overdosing on fentanyl so he doesn't steal any more bikes. But the last thing I'd like to talk about, and I know this is going to fall on deaf ears, and many of us literally do have deaf ears tonight because we've been exposed to a non-stop onslaught of extremely percussive loud fireworks for the last three or four days. Okay, a minute left. I'd really like to see this this revisited. I was in a house on the night of the 4th were next door to people who were shooting off quarter sticks. And things were literally falling off my friend's wall because of the sonic effect of these quarter sticks going off. And you think I'm going to walk over to those people and say, would you please quit detonating those fires, those quarter sticks? No, I'm not going to do that. The police aren't going to do that. They've got plenty of things to do. these little fireworks calls. But what I'm saying is the charade that we have now of pretending that we have laws in place about fireworks, which nobody obeys, you know that no one's going to obey those laws and you know those laws are not going to be enforced. So all I'm asking is can we please revisit that issue? Thank you and good night.

Next up, we have Danielle Twemlow.

Good evening. Thank you for moving this up to the front. I think we should make that a permanent thing, by the way. I'm asking you not to obey in advance. Do not treat this like it is inevitable. They're just looking for whomever can roll over. We see this time and time again. They will just move on to the next spot. But you actually have all the power We control the water. We're the ones, even as Ledbetter stated, they can use rural water. They'll just go to the commissioners who rarely listen, tap into rural water. But that comes from us. We control that pipeline. We can control whether we disperse it or not to these data centers. So this moratorium needs to happen in order for us to collect the proper data. We are making things up as we go right now. The CUP has done nothing in preventing absolutely atrocious types of developments over the last couple years anyway, so I have no faith in that process. And we need to look at better ways to protect our community. Some really local facts that I want to remind everyone is that we use water out of the Kansas River. We are not a water abundant state. Shawnee County's municipal and industrial water supply draws heavily on a system that really has to be managed under drought contingency and reservoir release protocols during dry years. And the state has separately been racing to address sedimentation threatening reservoir storage capacities in our region. Layering a new large industrial water user onto that system during period when our regional reservoirs are already under engineering strain raises a very legitimate fact-based capacity question that has not yet been quantified by the county. We talk about these closed-loop systems or ways that they can make it better and reuse water. However, there has been absolutely no data that has been provided on how efficient that really is. It doesn't In some cases, the data that has come forth of centers that have been in development for longer periods of time state that even upwards of 12 times the amount of water is needed to that infill to get that up and running. We know that the electricity grid has been under strain. Just in 2025, Evergy raised the utility rates. We all had these public meetings. I think everybody probably remembers all of that because there is a strain on our grid. And that grid caused our utility rates to go up because they are trying to keep up with the Panasonic plant and other data centers that have popped up in other places. And I'm not sure if everybody's been hearing that part of the way that they're looking at dealing with this is developing a new nuclear reactor site. Several places, even locally, has been discussed in our surrounding areas about proposals to do nuclear sites to assist with this power grid increase. DeSoto is very interested. They also use water from the Kansas River. So we have to be very, very cognizant of the power that we have in this and not just say there's not much really we can do. We can control the water and where that goes. And we need to put a stop to it because we are not in any sort of situation right now to be able to manage our own community let alone be distributing to sites that are not going to really bring us revenue. We have the Senate bill that doesn't allow for certain tax revenues. The property tax revenue is going to be so minimal, it's not really going to impact us in any way that offsets the problematic pieces from having it here in the first place. This kind of communication we don't have with the county needs to end, and we need to be in more discussions about what that looks like to stop it moving forward. Thank you.

We'll circle back. Did Matt Doyle arrive at all? Mr. Matt Doyle? No. All right. With that, thank you, everyone. That concludes public comment. We'll now move on to item six, the consent agenda. City Clerk. No. We can do the consent agenda. I know everyone's leaving, but please do so quietly as we're going to resume our meeting. Thank you very much. You can talk outside all you want.

A is a resolution introduced by Councilmember Karen Hiller granting the Celtic Fox an exception to the provisions of City of Topeka Code section 945-150 at seat concerning those provisions. B is a resolution introduced by Councilmember Karen Hiller approving a special event known as the Tap That Beer Festival. C is a resolution introduced by the Public Infrastructure Committee recommending approval of project number 281298 phase three for the roof replacement at building B of the water treatment plant. D is a resolution introduced by the Public Infrastructure Committee recommending approval of project number 291142 phase one for the installation of a new red bed pump station. E is approval of a utilities department contract amendment for professional services between the city of Topeka and KLM Engineering Incorporated in an amount not to exceed $123,025. D is, or sorry, F is a development agreement between the City of Topeka and Highland Park R-E-O-L-L-C in an amount not to exceed $350,000 from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. G is a development agreement between the City of Topeka and Sint Incorporated in an amount not to exceed $181,750 from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. H is a development agreement and mortgage agreement between the city of Topeka and Weibel Property Development LLC and amount not to exceed $365,197.50 from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I are minutes of the regular meeting of June 16, 2026, and there are no applications.

Mr. Mayor. Point of order.

We have city manager.

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to request that we could remove item 6H in our last discussions on Affordable Housing Trust Fund awards. We discussed that Weibel Property Development still had a couple issues that we needed to address. A couple of those issues include outstanding water bill and code issues have been addressed. They do, however, still have outstanding property tax.

Considerations that they need to address and so for that for that reason I would ask that we can remove 6h until that is addressed gotcha So just to clarify we're not moving it to discuss later It's being removed from the agenda and then you know as follow-up questions can what yeah when it's down staff and figure out what's going right when they resolve it We'll bring it back council member other vehicle.

Thank you mayor. I have a quick question. I thought we were developing a strategy priorities that before approving any kind of agreements, incentives, whatever, they weren't supposed to have code issues outstanding. They weren't supposed to have outstanding taxes. And all of that. Correct. So why is this on there?

Correct, which is why it's being removed now that that information has come through.

I understand that, but we had a meeting in a public, in a council meeting where I think deputy city manager said that that was being worked on, and I asked Leah if that was now being incorporated into these agreements, and she said it was.

Right, that's why they're not.

I understand that, but these should all be reviewed.

They were, Council Member. We basically spoke of these probably about three weeks ago. And so we were given Weibel the opportunity to address those issues. As mentioned, they've addressed the water bill. They've addressed the code issue. The issue of the code is the fact that it's a condemned building, but that's part of the upgrade. And so the last outstanding issue was the taxes. And so we basically gave them up to today to try to address it. I believe the dollar amount's roughly $6,000 or so. And so because they haven't addressed it, I'm asking to remove it from this consideration.

Well, and I definitely agree with that, and I think that's smart. I just don't understand how it got through to this point. But at any rate, it's being removed. Thank you.

Okay, so the motion to approve from Council Member Ortiz is to do so without that item on the consent agenda. Do we have a second?

Second.

Second from Council Member Banks. Oh, sorry. Or Valdeviacola, since it's on the system.

Declare the motion be to approve the consent agenda as amended with this item withdrawn. Correct. Okay. Very good. Okay.

Councilwoman Hill, do you have a specific request to pull something? If not, the consent agenda is not for discussion or debate.

I knew that. I just, Mr. Weibel is here and I didn't know when, I didn't know what time we checked or anything like that.

He's already understood that it was going to be pulled this evening. Okay. Please take the vote, clerk.

Okay. Sorry, shut up. Councilmember Miller? Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay, we have 10 yes. The motion carries.

All right. With that, we'll move on to non-action items. City Clerk.

A is discussion regarding the revenue neutral rate for the Topeka Metro Transit Authority, TMTA.

City Manager. Thank you, members of the governing body, members of the Topeka Metro Transit Authority will lead us through this discussion.

Thank you. So mayor, city council members, city manager, thank you for letting us come tonight to talk about the Topeka Metro budget. My name is Candace Stiles and I am the chair of the Topeka Metro Board and I get to come speak with you tonight because Bob doesn't let me drive buses. that's what i get to do we appreciate your continued partnership and support of public transportation in our community we also want to take time to thank the city for the additional 250 000 appropriation this year which allowed us to avoid eliminating bus service after last year's reduction in our mill levy This city ordinance establishing the Topeka Metro provides for a 4.2 mill levy. That rate remained in place since 2012 until last year when our mill levy was reduced to 3.9 as a part of the revenue neutral rate process. That reduction decreased our operating budget of $317,000. As we present our budget this year, the Topeka Metro Board has prepared it based on the 4.2 mill levy authorized by ordinance. We believe that's the funding level necessary to maintain the service our community depends on. For our riders, for many of our riders, Topeka Metro is not a convenience. It is their only means of transportation. Our hourly fixed route service provides access to employment, grocery stores, medical appointments, school, and other essential destinations. Maintaining reliable service is critical to the people who rely on public transportation. But our board's long-term goal is not simply to maintain service, but to improve it. We want to expand opportunities for the citizens of Topeka by providing more frequent and more reliable transit on our existing routes. However, that cannot happen if our mill levy is decreased from our 4.2 mills. We also believe that Topeka Metro is a responsible steward of the taxpayer dollars. Every local dollar leverage is leveraged with state and federal funding. Our operating assistance is matched through state and federal formula programs. And on our capital investments, we usually only have to put in 20% of local funds to get an 80% match for those capital projects. So we can't... request more state and federal funding because it is a formula however we can leave dollars on the table for our community if we don't have those local funds to match them we believe last year's reduction resulted from confusion surrounding the r r process rather than the intentional decision to take away funding from the topeka metro We recognize that the city chose not to adopt the revenue neutral rate for its own budget because inflation and rising operating costs affect us all. Topeka Metro faces those same increasing costs while striving to maintain our essential public service. We appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. We will be back on September 1st for our revenue neutral rate hearing. I welcome your questions and your comments, anything you need from us on September 1st to help you make your decisions. Thank you for your time, your consideration, and continued support of Topeka Metro. And now Richard, our CFO, will walk you through the details of the proposed budget.

So I'm Richard Applehans, CFO for Topeka Metro. We have a few slides. Go ahead and go to the next one. That's the city. Go one more. So here's Topeka Metro. So as you can see, currently our mill levy rate is 3.999. If you do not approve us exceeding the revenue neutral rate, we would go down to 3.832, which would cost us 261,000. In addition to that, in addition to having you allow us to exceed the revenue neutral rate, we would also like you to restore our mills back up to 4.2. So you can see the additional dollars we would receive if you took us up from 3.999 back to 4.2. And I do want to stress, we had been at 4.2 mils since 2012, never higher, never lower, until last year when the council voted to not allow us to exceed the revenue neutral rate and dropped us down to 3.999. Next slide. This is our city budget. It's a cash budget. These are our expenses. The left column is our fiscal year 26 budget, which ended June 30th. We're on a July to June schedule. The next column is our fiscal year 27 budget. If you look then the next column, it's our variances. As you can see from 26 to 27, we're not asking for very many increases here. An increase to wages, we're asking for, or we've built into our budget just a 3% cost of living increase for our non-union employees. We've also built in an increase for our union employees. We don't know how much that's going to be yet because we're in the process of negotiating that contract. And then we also increased our fringe benefits because with higher wages comes higher fringe benefit costs. So those are the only two categories that are really seeing any sort of an increase other than insurance. The cost of us insuring for property damage has gone up just like it has for almost everyone else if you've looked at your car insurance lately. And then there's our capital. And we'll get to capital in a minute. So if we go to the next slide, these are our revenues. not much change from 26 to 27. our federal and state funds tend to be pretty stagnant the only place we really tend to see an increase is sometimes on the mill levy again because the property tax base goes on so if we stay if you guys allow us to exceed the revenue neutral rate we will sometimes see an increase in our funding of our mill levy and then the only significant increase we have to our revenue budget is in advertising interest and miscellaneous we try to be good stewards of public funds so we try to make as much interest as we can on our balance of funds so our revenue only went up by about 160 000 from 26 to 27 And then we are looking at a deficit of 4.2 million. And that's because of our capital plan. If we go to the next slide. Again, this is a cash budget. We've got some grant funding. So you can see the projects we're looking to complete this next year. We've got some bus stops, some sidewalk improvements. We want to expand our bus parking garage. We need to make upgrades to our HVAC and then our fare box collection equipment. And then we're looking at an aging bus fleet. We're actually still using three buses from 2011 that only had a 12-year life. So they actually used up their useful life in 23, yet we've still got three from 2011 on the road, which we'd like to replace. And then we've got 12 buses from 2014. Our fixed route buses, our big buses, our 35-foot buses, they have a 12-year useful life. So we've got another... I think it's 12 2014 buses that are going to be up this year. So we'd like to start replacing them. We don't want to replace them all at once. We want to do a few at a time, kind of stagger it. So when you look at the columns there, that's 6.2 million. The bulk of it is to replace buses and then expand our parking garage. So with that, I'll open it up to any questions you have about our revenue sources, our expenses, anything you might want to talk about. Council Member Kell.

I just want to kind of bring back up the aspect last year I brought up about advertising at bus stops. I know there are some bus stops that would go against city ordinance on that. but there are plenty that would fit into that as something to help drive revenue and also be able to expand service that way by bringing in extra money through a different route.

Currently, we only advertise on our buses. I know there was a time, you guys probably remember the old wood benches. There would be advertisements on the wood benches. I don't know that, Bob, are you aware of any... advertising at stops or benches?

No, we don't at this point because I think we're getting up against the sign ordinance on a lot of that and I would have to defer to the city to guide us on that. So yeah, we went away. We used to have ads on benches. We used to have benches, ad benches at a lot of our locations. When those went out, I think the sign ordinance went in about the same time. And so now all our advertising is basically on our buses or

okay last year we talked about just the intersections that wasn't talked about like a good example is uh 37th and humboldt right on the trail right there there's benches on both sides or there's even a covered one i believe on the uh north side of that that road there to me that's not an you know that's something maybe you work with us to try to get that worked out to try to drive that revenue rather than say, well, it's against ordinance and we can't do anything about it. So that's where I'd like to see, you know, I brought it up last year. That was sold, oh, it's against ordinance. And it was just told the ones close to a corner, well, there's plenty that aren't right on the corner that we could drive that. And it's one of those things that was looked into and that's when it said, okay, come back to us and say, all right, we need the ordinance change if we want to do this. And that's where I feel like It's not being looked at. And that's my aggravation right there is here's an avenue to generate more money. Fixed advertising on their spots that even if they're not taking the bus, they're going to see the advertisement, just like the ones on the buses. And it's one of those things. Here's another avenue. And it's not being looked at. And I was in support of you guys last year. And now it's kind of aggravating on my side of things, trying to help you guys help more and more. And it's like, well, we're just going to almost blow them off. You know, that's where it's like, if you looked into it, you saw that, oh, it's against the ordinance, you come back to myself or the city manager or whoever and say, hey, is there any way we can get this ordinance changed so we can generate that money? And I believe the city would be more than happy to try to work with you on that situation. But it's almost like saying, oh, it's against the ordinance, we're not going to do anything about it. And that's aggravating on my part.

I would like to, I don't want you to be aggravated. You're my council person. In my day job, I do manage staff and an office. And when you talk about doing advertising, which we don't do the advertising on our buses, that's a company that comes in and does that, and it's a contract service. You're talking about hiring marketing staff that are specialized in that. That's a salary. It's taking us in the wrong direction. And then when you're talking about those non-premium spots... Those spots that are interior and in neighborhoods, those aren't the spots that big companies are going to pay for. And so it has been talked about in our board meetings when you made the comment. And I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear in my statements the two times I've spoken since you did make that comment. But we just don't see it as a way to really drive revenue considering we would be on limited resources. spots where there isn't the traffic and people who buy advertising want traffic and then we would have to add staff to manage something like that i see i see 30 something humble being high traffic area that you know i live right there and i have a hard time turning

off my road on 237th all the time. So I just want to see how that's not considered a high traffic or Adams not being a high traffic road where those are not right on the corners. And so those would be able to work with those. So they're not appealing to anyone's views to drive safely. So that's why I just want to see how those, you know, those aren't high traffic areas.

Yeah, it would be finding someone who could study the amount of money that we could make in those areas and then comparing it to the cost of a salary is the hang up. Would the city help us study that with funding?

When are your meetings? Right, third Monday? 4 p.m.?

Yes.

I suggest Councilman Kell that we go talk to their board. I think it's a good idea.

Two points, too. One, the advertising on the buses only brings in $85,000 a year. So we could check how transit advertising is who we have the contract with for our buses. I could certainly reach out to them and just check with them about advertising on bus stops and benches. Because if anybody would have expertise on it, it would be them. Because if it's possible, if it can be done, I'm sure they're doing it in other cities. So we could easily contact them and just find out, hey, this is how many stops we have. This is how many stops have benches. This is how many stops have shelters. What do you see here? Is there a chance to make money here?

I'll do one better than that. We will do that with our advertising company. We will come back to this body or to somebody here at council and ask if you can make some kind of movement in your sign ordinance or whatever and see where that goes. Okay.

Any other questions or comments? Just to clarify with staff, both of these tonight we're talking about as on next week's agenda or the following week to set the hearing date. And as a reminder to everybody, that will be a vote to decide if we want to hold a hearing. It still gives us the freedom to either stay revenue neutral or exceed revenue neutral. But if you don't do it, you have to stay revenue neutral. So that's why we're having this conversation tonight.

So if we get a hearing, it's next week.

All right. I see no other comments or questions. Thank you very much for coming here, and we very much appreciate it. And if we don't see you before, we'll definitely see you September 1st.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. We'll move on to non-action item B, city clerk.

B is discussion concerning the intent of the city of Topeka to exceed the revenue neutral rate for the city's 2027 budget.

City manager. Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, in this discussion, Josh McInerney, budget and finance deputy director, will discuss our staff recommendations to exceed the revenue neutral property tax rate to capture the increase and assess property values, which would raise our effective mill rate from 35.580 to 37%. This increment equates to about $2.4 million of revenues that we are assuming in our 2027 proposed budget. This discussion will provide an overview of this process to include the public hearing. With that, I'll turn it over to Josh.

Thank you, city manager. Good evening, governing body. Kind of like the mayor just said, I wanted to reiterate, tonight we're just having a discussion on Are we going to notify the county that we do plan on exceeding the revenue neutral rate? And then also too, what do we want to set as our high water mill levy rate? So those are the two policy decisions at hand when we actually vote next week. Now, I will say once you set the high water mark of the mill rate, we can always go down. You just can't exceed it. We're just letting the county know the maximum rate we could possibly do. And then on your screen now is just the timeline. So next week we will set an R&R hearing date for both the city and the TMTA. The cities will be on August 25th, which is a special council meeting, and then for that, and then September 1st for the TMTA. Now, kind of just getting into how does this all financially work? Our total assessed projected value given to us by the county around June 15th is about $1.6 billion. That's a 4% increase from last year. So what you're doing with the R&R rate is capturing that assessed value increase, which is The $2.4 million that was previously mentioned. Now, as we talked about in the first presentation tonight, that property tax is about 38% of the city's general fund revenue currently. Now, a majority of that revenue does cover police and fire because 75% or 70% of our general fund is police and fire. And then the other remaining portions go to the debt service fund to pay any principal and interest payment for bonds. And then a little bit goes into the special liability fund for any claims against the city. So that's how the property tax revenue streams flow throughout the different funds in the city. And then like the resolution says for the city's portion, we're proposing a current mill levy rate. So capturing that R&R and increase of 37.126. TMTA, they kind of already explained it already to where they are going to plan to exceed the revenue neutral rate, but they're also going to increase it from what it was last year. So they'd both be capturing that R&R and then increase back to the baseline since 2012. and then they've already talked about their budget. But big picture, tonight's just a discussion, then next week we'll actually vote on when we're going to have the public hearing date and then if we plan on exceeding revenue neutral and what the high water mark of the mill rate would be.

Is that it? Yep. Okay. Any comments or questions for Josh? So what is, just to verify, what is one mil equal to this year at this point?

So one mil is about $1,565,000. OK. So 1.5 and some change.

Yeah. OK. That's always important for the conversation because it's good to know if you're adding a mil or if you're taking away mils what the budget equivalent is. OK. All right. Anything else for Josh? Got off easy. Good job.

Thanks.

With that, since we've already done public comment, we will move on to announcements. City Clerk.

For the July 14th agenda, we have one board appointment for the downtown business improvement district. We have a presentation on the government assisted inspection report. Consent agenda, we have a noise exception. We have one ordinance for capital city townhomes TIF district termination, and then another ordinance for the College Hill TIF district termination. We will have two engineering professional services contracts. Public action items include a public hearing on the five-year consolidated action plan and one-year annual consolidated action plan and budget. We have an ordinance amending the code for building permits, I believe. related to permit fee waivers. We have a resolution for the TMTA revenue neutral rate and then the city's revenue neutral rate and then discussion on utility rates and we will have an intro discussion on the 2027 operating budget.

City Manager. Deputy Mayor.

OK, I've got a couple things tonight. I'm going to start with about two weeks ago, we had the graduation of recruit class 70 for the Topeka Police Department. So I want to congratulate Colton Bussin, Ian Crone, Jeremy Garcia, Michael Gonzali, Paul Jacobs, and Joseph Miller. And it was a very good ceremony. And I was happy to be there and witness it. It's always good to have our new recruits come in. And they look like to be a good class. OK. The next thing, fire station number 10 is having their open house this Friday from 4 to 7 PM. Fire station 10 has some issues. It would be great. if as many of us as possible can get there to see it. It is located on 37th Street, probably about a half mile east of Burlingame Road. The only issue with that location is parking is a little difficult. So be aware when you're going there to watch out for where you can park. They have limited spaces in the back of their building. OK. And then I want to talk about the fire station planning session we had last night. We had a great turnout. We had about 35 people there. Some of those were city staff. And a lot of questions were asked. I mean, there were a lot of questions. It was good to have the first session and people to see what were What is the possible proposal? So three more sessions to go. The next one is Thursday night at Oakland Community Center. The next one is at the Topeka Shawnee County Library on Saturday morning at, I believe, about 1030 in Marvin Auditorium. And the last one is at Garfield Community Center next Monday, I think, or Wednesday. But it's another one that's 530 to 630. So if you get a chance, go. They have a tentative, what I want to say, preliminary design for the building. At least one of the stations. You can get a better idea what they're looking at building. I didn't get time to look at that. But they have lots of information. And so it's a good time to go and talk to the police or the fire officers and, um, see what they are thinking. And, um, I was lucky last night. We had city manager was there that, uh, deputy chief was there. Um, I cannot remember Ty's position, but he's assistant chief. There were several there that could answer questions. So, Go ask your questions when it's front of their mind. And if you have questions they can't answer right then, they'll get back to you and answer them. And that's all I have tonight. Thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor.

I reluctantly feel like I need to bring up a big issue, and I personally love fireworks. But this 4th of July was just out of control with big, noisy fireworks and days after days of it. And I wonder if we shouldn't be looking at those noise-related ordinances again, both for fireworks, which is its own ordinance, Correspondingly, we've had a growth in people. Apparently, you can even add to a regular muffler something that will make it sound like your car doesn't have one. But between the motorbikes and the cars that are so noisy, we have ordinances against that, but they've just proliferated. Apparently maybe something's still in the works or we need an interpretation, but knowing whether roosters, if they're at their noisiest exceed our noise ordinances or whether, whether we're already covered, just all three of those noise things have really been front and center. And wouldn't it suggest that maybe we need to look at them on a different note altogether. I got to sit in on the luncheon for the police interns. a week or so ago, and for those who didn't know it, they all reported that they had had a fabulous experience. Some were from nearby Topeka and others were from much farther away. At least two of them made up their minds that they wanted to test and stay here in our police department. It was just delightful to spend time with them. So good job, PD, and good for us.

Thank you.

Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you. I just wanted to remind people that the Fiesta Parade is this Saturday, July 11th. If you want to know the times and the route and all of that, go to TopekaFiesta.com. Also, the July 14th through the 18th is the dates of the Fiesta. This Saturday also will be the Coronation Ball, which we're looking forward to. And everybody stayed safe and, um, hydrated. Um, also I want to understand what it is I need to do. I want to request before. If at all possible before this whole next steps with zoning. a presentation to the full governing body on what a moratorium would look like, because I don't on data centers. I don't believe that I understand what it would actually look like. And I think it is something, since there were a number of people that called for it tonight, there were a number of people that called for it at the County meeting. Um, and to have a presentation and have the ability for a public comment on it. So how does that work? Can you tell me, Mayor, or anybody?

Send the city manager an email.

Send the city manager an email.

And they also ask legal for a memo just on the laws and where they would apply, what state law, and then a presentation.

A presentation, for sure. And then I would also just like to give a shout out to my granddaughter, Kennedy. She was on the varsity team for Topeka High for soccer. The second to the last game it was, she completely busted her ACL. So she has gone through surgery and has made the decision to probably be out all next season. So she's in a recuperative state right now. She had her surgery a couple of weeks ago. And just stay strong, Mija, and keep doing your rehab. That's it. Thank you, Mayor.

Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, myself and Spencer, Spencer and I were in the Juneteenth parade, and we were going just fine, then all of a sudden it just stopped. Right at 7th and Harrison? No, Van Buren.

Van Buren.

I mean, there was just roadblocks, and it just stopped, and everybody was confused, and they didn't know which way to go, and... Um, they were trying to get back to the capital. Can we make sure with the fiesta parade that that doesn't happen? Okay. When I say it stopped, it literally stopped. Spencer was trying to pull.

Mayor took his initiative and

The roadblock signs. I mean, you had a band. You had cars. Everybody just stopped. And I just think before that, we need to make sure that the route is clear. I just don't know how that happened. So if Spencer does file a work comp claim, Nick, that's what I was trying to call you about, it is legit. It is legit. I don't know about you guys, I did receive several calls on the 4th of July, but you know I drank that water that guy made into wine and I took my butt to bed, so I didn't hear a lot of that until the next morning. But it's always going to be a problem, and we've talked about this, because the county sells it from this time to this time and we only allow it to shoot on that one particular day. With it raining, I didn't know if we could put some type of clause in there because, you know, a lot of people bought fireworks to shoot off on the 4th, but they couldn't. And so they were shooting them off on the 5th, which was a better day. So I don't know if that's something that we want to look at as well. That's all I really have. Thank you.

Council Member Banks. I would just like to share my appreciation for being able to attend the trip to Madison, Wisconsin. Very, very much a learning experience. And, you know, certainly I've had opportunities to go to others. But just being on that trip and seeing how progressive their planning is to make their city grow, it was very, very appreciative that I was able to go. So thank you, ma'am.

Council Member Kell.

I'd like to agree with Councilwoman Ortiz on the extension of if there's inclement weather on the fireworks. It's something I've thought about in the past because part of my thinking there is we don't want people storing $500 worth of fireworks in their house. They have a fire or something ignites that. That's not something else that they have to and the firefighters have to deal with possibly on that. So... Just to remind everyone, there's some of us up here that are very vocal against data centers. That's only contained in the city limits of Topeka. Anything outside, if they want to build out by Rossville or Silver Lake or something like that, we have zero control over that. We can try to work with the county, but only as far as we can go is the city limits. Finally, we've had a great summer weather-wise with temperatures. It's starting to get hot again. Please look out at your neighbors. Look out at your animals. Take care of people when you see it. It's very hot out. My wife and I were in Wichita this last Friday or Saturday, and we saw a gentleman standing on the corner with a sign. Hand him a bottle of water. Within three seconds, that was gone. I reached back to my cooler again, hand him another bottle of water. Three seconds, that was gone. Next thing I know, it was Gatorade and some M&Ms. People are having a hard time with this heat right now because it's been so mild this spring and summer so far. So please look out for everyone and take the precautions you need on that. Thank you.

Councilmember Miller online. I am not concerned. Thank you. Councilmember Bradbury.

Yes, thank you. I was going to bring up the open house for the fire station, but I will agree with Councilwoman Valdivia Algola about having some kind of legal memo about what the city can do, the steps that the city can take in order to give us time to really evaluate and make an informed policy decision.

Councilmember McGee I Wanted to comment about the 250th anniversary celebration Statehouse, I thought it was a wonderful event. I appreciate the Reception that you hosted mayor I like seeing the community come together for events like that. What I've seen at Evergy Plaza last week has been exciting with the soccer. In regard to the data centers, the one thing we do control and I do have a concern with is our natural resources. And we do control the water on that. And I think that's a concern. Thank you.

All right, I just have two things. First of all, this Thursday I have my first open office hours in City Hall. You can sign up for 15-minute blocks as long as you're a City of Topeka resident. I encourage you to hit me up on my social media pages, pretty much on any platform almost, at Spencer L. Duncan. You can find the Sign Up Genius link or if you email the office tomorrow or even tonight, I'm happy to send that link out to you. Last chance to sign up will be sometime late Wednesday night because they happen all day Thursday. It's a little over half of those slots are already full and I know the rest probably will be. So I look forward to doing that, seeing how that goes. And the other thing I just want to mention is, for the people who probably did not watch the meeting before this, which was our TDC meeting, the Development Corporation meeting, where we took what may be the last vote ever on the hotel, although maybe a few financial things later, so we get some money back. But I just want to take a moment to say, regardless of where folks were on that issue, regardless of whether people were on the council who voted for or against it I think one thing we all agree on is after we made that decision we turned to Braxton and said figure this out man and Braxton doesn't work in hotels Braxton's never wanted to work in hotels it's not his industry and yet for the last two and a half years he took that on not just the helping us through the financial piece of it but through the everyday logistics of it and everything down to when staff doesn't show up and when something broke and so again i think regardless of where you are on that braxton deserves a thank you for all the work that he has put in over the last couple years and what has taken away from him from the other work we then also asked him to do so i really thought it was important to take a moment and give braxton that thank you for navigating us through there so thank you sir very much appreciate it With that, we have need for an executive session. The city attorney would read.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The motion would be to recess into executive session not to exceed 90 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.

So before we do that, I made a promise that I forgot to do. I don't know, is Matt Doyle here? All right. I just want to make sure. I said I'd circle back to what we got to the actual public comment in case he showed up and give him a chance. He's not, so great. Now we'll go back to that. Thank you, City Attorney.

One other thing. It is 8.30 right now, and we are requesting up to 90 minutes. Do you want to suspend the 10 o'clock rule?

Yes, because we're going to take a 10-minute break. So let's do that first in case we need to, so we don't have to do it later. I will make a motion to, if necessary, exceed the 10 o'clock time. I'll second. Second from the deputy mayor. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed say no. Aye. Councilman Ortiz has a no. Then with that, I will make a motion to go into executive session. Do I have a second? Second. Second from the deputy mayor. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed say nay. Nay. One nay. With that, we will take a 10-minute break. And so we will be back in here in 10 minutes at 8.45. All right, we have come out of executive session, and no action has been taken by this governing body. And we are adjourned at 10.04.