City Council - Special Meeting

welcome this evening's august 25th 2026 governing body special meeting of the budget i will call this meeting to order please rise if you are able for the pledge of 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. The clerk would call the roll, please.

Mayor Duncan.

Here.

Council Members Hiller. Here. Valdivia Acala. Ortiz. Here. Banks.

She's in the hallway right now.

Kell.

Here.

Miller.

Here.

Bradbury. Here. McGee.

Here.

And Hofer. Okay, we have eight present with Council Members Valdivia, Acala, and Hofer absent.

All right. With that, we'll jump right in to our first action item. Action item A, City Clerk.

It is a public hearing to consider comment for the public concerning the governing body's consideration whether to exceed the Topeka Metro Transit Authority's revenue neutral rate of 3.832 and oppose a proposed tax rate of 4.2 mils and a resolution introduced by the city manager, Dr. Robert Perez, to elevate property tax rate on behalf of the Topeka Metro Transit Authority, TMTA, that exceeds the revenue neutral rate.

City manager. Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as introduced during our city council meeting on July 7th, the city of Topeka is responsible for levying a mill levy on behalf of the Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority. Given the process for exceeding the revenue neutral rate, the purpose of this item is to hold a public hearing to consider comment from the public concerning whether or not to exceed the Topeka Metro's revenue neutral rate of 3.8320 and oppose a proposed tax rate of 4.00 mills and to vote on the resolution to exceed the revenue neutral rate. Please note that this is only the vote to exceed the revenue neutral rate and cap it at 4.00 mills. The final vote to approve the mill rate will be on September 15th when we adopt the budget. I do recommend approval of this item. With that, we do have representatives from TMCA here and Josh here for any questions that you may have.

So two quick things. First of all, I want to clarify, it's 4.2 mils, correct?

Yeah, so 4.2, that is what we approved back for July 20th. And that's what we would, if we eventually approve this back on September 15th, that's what we would restore to what it was prior.

And that's what the resolution says. I'm just clarifying that. My second thing is I just want to remind everybody, because we had some confusion last year, that this discussion at this time is only about Topeka Metro. It is not about the city of Topeka. We'll do that next, but I want to make sure that all conversation or any comments directed at us at this point are just about Topeka Metro before we move on so we don't have some of the same confusion we have experienced in the past. So I just want to once again clarify that point. All right. I think first, if there's any questions for Josh or TMTA, you can ask those, and then I'll open up the hearing. Councilmember Hiller.

I just want to double check again with the city manager. That's not a change in recommendation on your part. It's just a mistake.

4.00 mills. 4.2 is what we have in our. 4.200, sorry. Yes, 4.200.

Okay, you said zero. Apologies, 4.200. Thank you.

All right. With that then. At this time, I will open the public hearing and ask if there was anyone present who would like to speak to the matter regarding the Topeka Metro's revenue neutral rate. If you do want to speak on this issue, you can come up to the podium. Just remember this is specific to the bus system. We'll talk about the city next. Please state your name so we all know who you are.

Thank you, Mayor. My name is Jack Calcutt. I'm a resident of Shawnee County, property owner in Topeka. I'm also a candidate for the Shawnee County Board of Commissioners. And I have a longer comment prepared for the city, but I did want to just briefly say I don't think you should increase the mill rate above the revenue neutral rate for the MTA in this case. Our taxes are too high. They need to be going down, not up. More comments to come, but I wanted to say that about this one as well as the city. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else present who would like to speak to this matter? Welcome, sir. Please state your name.

Hi. My name is Daniel Bailey. I'm a property owner here in Topeka. And I can't agree more that we do not need to increase taxes. My effective tax rate this year was 12%. My property taxes were $8,000. What we pay here in Topeka is nuts, and for everybody to sit around proposing that we increase them to me is ludicrous. Thanks.

Thank you, sir. Anyone else who would like to speak to this matter relating to the Topeka Metro? Welcome.

Hi. I'm Claudia Elkins, and I too am a property owner in Topeka, and I agree that we should not exceed the revenue neutral rate for the buses. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else here who would like to speak on this matter?

Hi. My name is John Ortiz. I am a resident of Topeka, and I do not think we should raise the revenues of the bus. Public transportation is a great source of transportation in this area, so please, please do not raise the bus prices. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this matter? May I? Last call.

I'm not sure I understood the gentleman's testimony. Was he saying not to raise the taxes or not to raise the prices?

I thought I heard both. But if he wants to. Yeah. OK.

Thank you.

All right. Anyone else out there? Last call. All right. With that, I will open the floor up to the council members for any comments, questions at this time. Council member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. I know the team from MTA is here. I was wondering if they would mind giving me any update on any service that might be going up to Montero's Way. I know that you don't have to because Obviously, you don't necessarily have to because of city limits, but curious to see if there's any future thought to that.

No, we haven't really considered anything more to Montero right now. We've got a pretty static budget. We're looking to probably increase service where there's existing service to try to make it even better for people to use, not really extending it past. The board has been pretty much standing on that for several years now because of just our ability to maintain service with the budget we have.

Council Member Ortiz. Thank you. Oh, sorry.

Thank you. So I'm trying to think of the little buses that went. They're no longer existing, right? The ones that went from the store to the home?

Right, yeah. We discontinued that earlier this year in May. That was Microtrans, the mod service.

The mod, yeah. What are we looking at in the way of electric buses? I thought there were some grants and stuff, Ted.

Yeah. We actually have four 35-foot electric buses right now that we're still testing and trying to get in service. The most we've had on the road at any one time has been two out of the four. It's a new technology. Yeah, we've still got to get some bugs out of it. We were using electric vehicles for the mod service. We do have seven electric vans, which are those smaller Ford Transit-sized vans, which holds basically one wheelchair and maybe up to four or five So we have been operating some electric vehicles for quite a while now, the electric vans for over a year. The buses, we're assigning as much as we can every day. So you'll see them out there. They're taller than every other bus out there. You can definitely tell the difference between them, and you can definitely tell when they go by because they're a lot quieter.

Okay. One more question, if I may, Mr. Mayor. I know... that the kids could ride to school free. Is that still?

Yes.

Available to them this year?

We do the kids ride free during the summer. Right. And we extended that to the end of August because when we offered up the students, high school students can ride with an ID, they were having a hard time getting their IDs made before the end of August. So we extended our ride free during the summer so they would have their IDs and they'd be able to ride.

But they can now ride the school free, right, with their ID?

With a school ID, right.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Kell. Just curious. There's no part of the mod that's working anymore? Correct. Okay. Just wondering, because I deleted the mod app the other day. I was cleaning up my phone, and I deleted it. So I'd be a recommendation to maybe take that off the application storage, so that way it's not even a thought process.

One of the things that we're still holding onto the mod is with all the construction going on, We knew that with the viaduct going down, it would cause us some problems with our service, with people coming off trying to go through town and actually cutting through the city streets. So we're kind of keeping the mod alive just in case we have to throw it out there as a stopgap to fix some service issues. And now we have stuff that's going on in the south side of town around 37th and Topeka. So once again, we're looking at maybe the mod to being a way to address that. So we really haven't done away with it yet, but as far as the mod microtransit service, the way it was operating before, no, we're not doing that right now.

Well, at least having a backup plan and having stuff like that is reassuring on that whole program because I thought it was a great program. I use it myself a few times, and it's sad to see it go away.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor. Because time passes between these events, I wanted to maybe back up and get you to just refresh a little bit on the history. For those of us who were here, your mill levy has been 4.2 for probably 20 years.

Since 2012. Okay.

12 years. Yeah. Been pretty static, and so when you use the mill levy, it kind of – ebbs and flows as the economy does. Last year, because of some confusion, you got cut back to 4.0, which was worth, if I'm recalling correctly, $200,000? I was close to about $320,000, but I think

you know, the council agreed to put a quarter million back in to cover some of our expenses. We found ways of reducing some stuff.

Well, I wanted to, you know, if it was short, I wanted you to talk a little bit about how you made that up and then what the plans are for this year that would require the mill levy to go back up at this point.

Well, one, our cost continues to go up. We just completed a contract negotiation with our labor union. So costs, of course, go up with any negotiation with the labor union. We were trying to stay competitive in the market. We found out several years ago, maybe five, six years ago, that our wages for our operators were not competitive with at least the region. with similar sized properties that we have. So we were having a really hard time. And it's back during COVID, too, where we were having a hard time recruiting and retaining people because of the wages and also because our work is not the easiest. I mean, you've got to be available from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, six days a week. You know, that's a difficult job sometimes for some people. So that has caused a little bit of an increase for us in our cost of operation. uh we are we're continuing to see more and more issues with with the investments we've made and amenities and stuff and the cost of keeping those up and maintaining those we put out we put out we have what out of our 600 stops we have 300 stops that have some kind of amenity at them a lot of them have garbage cans we've had to hire people to maintain garbage and pull trash and all that stuff maintain the shelters uh glass which we get blown out probably Once a week, it seems like we're always having glass blown out of them. So our cost to maintain some of that stuff has gone up too. So our savings and how we kind of pulled it out for last year is one that we did pull back on the mod. The mod was operating at over $100 a trip, which our regular service is operating about $6 to $8 a trip. So you can see where it was extremely expensive to operate that service. It was getting more expensive over time. It's one of the ways we found to pull back a little bit and to not spend, you know, maybe another $50,000 or so.

We also provided $250,000 of revenue to help. Understood.

That's why I wanted him to kind of fill in the blanks in terms of the need for, I realize that you don't have to go to 4.2, but we're setting a cap at this point. Correct. So I just wanted you to help fill that in a little bit about what, Thank you.

Council Member Bradbury.

Thank you. I do have a couple of questions. You had talked about the electric buses and if I remember correctly there was two out of the four in service and you were still testing.

With the new technology and new platforms, and it's typically the case with electric vehicles now, we expect a lot of our vehicles. I mean, when we put a vehicle out in service, usually they're out there for 12 hours. I don't think many of our cars could go out there and operate for 12 hours any time without having all kinds of problems. The problem we're having, usually when you get electric vehicles, the biggest problem you have is usually charging. matching up and getting them charged right and all that stuff. We haven't had that problem. We've had other problems. We had one battery pack that was sent to us in a vehicle we found out later. All kinds of connections and things that we're having to work through. Warranty issues and delivery issues really that our personnel really don't have the ability to do that work yet. So we're working through some of that. We hate to put a vehicle out and then have it dead on the side of the street in midday because then we've got people trying to get to work and what they need to. So uh you know we haven't done an official roll out of those vehicles yet but they've been in service since probably may um do you have a timeline when all four of those uh we hope to get them all for and before cold weather because the other thing that we're going to have to overcome is with cold weather batteries don't operate well in cold weather So we want to get all the bugs worked out of it during warm weather so we know that they're functioning right. When we get into winter, typically what happened with our electric vans, if we thought we were going to get a couple hundred miles out of them in a day, we were getting about a half that during cold weather. So hopefully our vehicles will do better. Our vehicles are equipped with a diesel warming system on it, so it's not fully electric in that it does have the ability to to keep the batteries warm and to warm them up before they start service at the beginning of the day. So that'll help because whenever you're using electricity, that big drain to try to warm something up, like if your house, if you turn your furnace on after it hasn't been on a while, it works really hard. That's what happens when you do that with a battery. If you have a cold vehicle and you're trying to start it up, now you have to warm it up to 70 degrees or whatever, which drains the battery really quick. And that causes a problem. Thank you.

So my next question was going to be, are you seeing any cost savings with these electric buses? But I don't know now, since you've talked about the issues that you've run into, that you've actually realized any savings.

We really haven't. And we've put some things in place to see how much we're paying for electric now compared to diesel. But we really don't have a good comparison yet. Sometimes the vehicle will go out four hours, sometimes it'll go out 10 hours. One of the things that is different about a diesel vehicle to an electric vehicle is our vehicles have regenerative recharging. So every time you put on a brake, it helps recharge the battery. So one of the things that we're still trying to work out with our operators is how they drive the vehicle. If they use the regenerative process, it will recharge the battery pretty well. But if you're using the brakes more often, then the battery gets drained faster. So we're still trying to figure some of that stuff out. We're getting there. We're definitely getting there. I think it's going to be a good fix for us.

Okay, and then I have two more questions. Are you seeing an increase or decrease in the number of writers, the people who use services?

Our lift service is probably back to where it was pre-COVID. Our fixed route, no, it hasn't came back completely where it was pre-COVID. We were at about a million, million one, a million two or so prior to COVID. We're at about 900,000 to a million now is where we're operating. So it's down a little bit. As you know, people have changed how they work now. A difference of if somebody's riding five days a week and now all of a sudden they're riding four days a week is a big hit on our ridership. in the long run if they do that 52 weeks out of the year. So there is some changes in our community and how we do business now. So it's reflecting in our ridership too.

And is there any consideration for increasing fares?

No, not at this point.

And why not? Just curious.

One, we have probably one of the highest fares of a small system like this in this region. We expect a lot out of our customers now. We have raised rates. I think the last time we raised rates was there was a slight change in some of it back in 2019, I think the end of 2019, but it was just on one element of our of our fairs, but I think it was probably in 2014, 2015 is the last time we did a real fair increase. Okay. But that's something that, you know, one of the things that we're looking at right now is where we have we're having to replace our whole fair collection system, which is a really expensive system. uh in in that process we're also going to be going to the board and asking them what do we do about about fares and do we change our fair structure because it's a very complex structure right now do we simplify it and if we simplify it do we raise it when we lower it how do we do that i mean sometimes you get more ridership by lowering the fares and you end up getting more revenue as a result of it so that's a decision i think they'll have to wrestle with probably in the next year or so all right thank you

Any other comments or questions from the governing body? If not, is there a motion to approve the resolution? We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Hiller. I will second it. With that, this vote requires a voice vote by state statute.

Mayor Duncan?

Yes.

And you guys can go ahead and cast your vote on your tablet if you want, but you have to state your vote verbally. So council members Hillard? Yes. Ortiz? Yes. Banks?

I abstain.

Okay, and Kel?

Yes.

Okay, I apologize. Taylor, you were a yes. Ortiz, you were a yes. Banks abstained. I apologize. Okay, Councilmember Kell, you were good. Councilmember Miller?

No.

Councilmember Bradford?

No.

Councilmember McGee?

Yes.

And Councilmember Hofer?

Yes.

Okay, we have six yes with council members Miller and Bradbury voting no and council member Banks abstaining. The motion carries.

Yes, council member Ortiz.

I reluctantly voted yes and I hope that you guys will get those little buses back on the road, and I hope we will look at the districts and maybe shrink them down to the low to moderate income. I've been saying that for years. I think they're, especially to here, if they're electric, there are so many people right there at 13th and Golden, those, Paradise Plaza, Pine Ridge, Frankie Barr's place that could really, really benefit from that if we would just take it over, bring it over, extend it over the interstate. So I hope that we can find a way to do that, even if it's two or three times a week. You know, I heard you when you said, Mr. Nugent, it's $100.00. per trip. Maybe if we said, okay, we're going to pick up all day in the morning on these three days to kind of get something scheduled. But I would hope that we could do something like that because they really, really struggle with that. And I think that would be a great thing to do. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Nugent, I want you and your team to know that I don't dislike you or what you do for our city. I have asked for a while now that I want some real opportunities to Montero, and I'm sticking on that. I've talked to those people for years. I would like to know from your end, not just from your internal conversations, that you don't think it'll work. I would like to have you talk to the people of Montero and see if it's something that they want and then we can come back and talk about what kind of funds that I would like to support to be able to help them out. I'm tired of that area being forgotten. I get it. I understand. But please just reach out a little olive branch to try to figure something out there. Thank you.

All right. With that, We will move on to action item B. Yes.

Close the public hearing.

Oh, thank you. With that, I will now officially close the public hearing. I don't want to get in trouble on that one. Not even a little bit.

Please don't.

All right. All right. With that, we will move on to action item B. Thank you.

B is public hearing to consider comment from the public concerning the governing body's consideration of adopting a budget for 2027 that exceeds the revenue neutral rate, which is 35.8580, and a resolution introduced by city manager Dr. Robert Perez to levy a property tax rate that exceeds the city of Topeka's revenue neutral rate.

City Manager. Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as introduced during our city council meeting on July 14th, as part of the process for exceeding the revenue neutral rate, the purpose of this item is to hold a hearing to consider public comment concerning whether or not to exceed the city of Topeka's revenue neutral rate of 35.580 and impose a proposed tax rate of 37.126 mils and to vote on the resolution to exceed the revenue neutral rate. Similar to the last item, please note that this is only the vote to exceed the revenue neutral rate and cap it at 37.126 mils. The final vote to approve the mil rate will be on September 15th when we adopt the budget. I do recommend approval of this item. With that, we're here for any questions that you may have.

Are there any questions for Josh before we open up the hearing? Josh, could you just go through the numbers real quick? So we've already established at top end we would stay at what our current mill rate is. The revenue neutral rate is 35.580 per revenue neutral. What is that?

That Delta is about $2.4 million. So that $2.4 million goes in three places. Our debt service fund, our general fund and special liability, about 80% of that 2.4 goes in the general fund. And as a reminder, of the general fund, 70% of that's public safety. And property tax of our general fund is about 33% of our revenue. So it's a big ticket item on both ends.

Any other questions or comments for staff before we open up the hearing? All right. Well, then at this time, I will open up the public hearing. And I will ask if there is anyone present who would like to speak to the matter. If there is, just please come to the podium. And you'll have your four minutes, as we do with all public comment. And again, please make sure when you come up, you identify yourself.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council, City Manager Perez. I'm Jack Calcutt, resident of Shawnee County. I'm a property owner in Topeka on almost a million dollars worth of property in Topeka. And I'm a candidate on the ballot currently this November for Shawnee County Board of Commissioners. Today's hearing is happening because truth in taxation legislation from 2021 forces local taxing authorities to notify the public of an intent to increase property taxes above the previous year's revenue. Today, the City of Topeka and Metro Transit Authority, as we heard earlier, are proposing to give themselves permission to increase the mill levy above that revenue neutral rate and increase taxes on all property owners by about 4% for the city portion and about 9% for MTA for anyone who had a positive valuation adjustment on their property. In the city's case, the mill levy is staying the same as last year, but the taxes collected and what everyone pays is still increasing. This is after a year where the population of Topeka has declined about a half of a percent. Topeka has declined a little bit every year for the past five years. Property taxes have been increasing both due to valuation and several mill rate increases over that time. This trend is disturbing on at least two levels. One, the size of our government budget shouldn't be increasing while the number of people we serve is decreasing. The high tax rate in Topeka pushes people out into county territory where the city still has obligations to serve but in a less efficient way. Others are giving up on the county altogether. I can say from personal experience that I've watched family members move to Waubonsee County. I've knocked on doors of people who said they couldn't vote because they were going to move before the election. They thought their taxes were too high. They had given up. We've lost them. No government department head wants their budget to decrease. I get that. No one wants to lay off employees. I get that too. And I also know that our tax increases are not all your fault. The board I'm running for has proposed a 12% increase and their hearing is next week if anyone would like to speak at that one as well. We have many tax entities in our area, particularly the school boards who have also proposed increases. All of this affects our taxes and I acknowledge is not all in your control. However, you should not use this as an excuse. Topeka is the capital city of Shawnee County and another large area that we call Kansas. What we do here is on display for our entire state. Topeka needs to be an example of the type of fiscal discipline and risk-taking that promotes growth. We need growth in population, growth in property value, growth in industry, economy, jobs, and income. And with that growth comes growth in services that our government can provide as well. To achieve growth, investment is required. If we want development to happen, we need to invest in roads. And if we want people to come to visit, we need to invest in amenities. We need to invest in a competitive tax rate so that people make cost-benefit judgments and choose Topeka over their alternatives. Right now, population data suggests that this is not happening on the margins. It needs to happen. I would also point out that candidates for state office give property tax as their central issue. And at least one of the proposals last legislative session threatened to limit local control through revenue caps on this body and others. If we don't want that to happen, and I don't want that to happen, we need to be disciplined. So please, members of the City Council, vote no today. Then go back to that budget. You know the priorities. Go to the non-essential services first and determine where we have some room to get below the revenue neutral rate. It's an investment in a very bright future. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this matter? Yep, come on up. Oh, we're fighting each other.

Once again, I'm Claudia Elkins. And I'm not going to be quite as polished as Jack. But anyway, I too know that property owners are screaming about property taxes going up yearly. And it's the taxing subdivisions that need to trim their budgets so property taxes don't go up. I too oppose the city exceeding the revenue neutral rate, and I know it's difficult to manage a budget with dwindling tax revenues coming in. City leaders must make hard personnel decisions to trim budget, to trim city staff, especially mid-managers, that's my personal opinion, without touching public safety, public works, and roads. And I've been in Topeka since 1980 and Topeka has gone downhill in my opinion. We're losing people. There's nothing to do here. Also, I think the city must seek out non-revenue streams. Grants being one of them. There are models out there that other cities and states are using to bring non-tax revenue into the cities and the state. You just have to look for them. And also, I want to know, what's the city doing to bring in businesses that will stay and pay property taxes without giving huge tax breaks? OK. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, sir.

My name is Ignatius Brown, and I'm not going to be as polished as Claudia. I am a recent homeowner, bought my house a year ago, and because of the proposed increases, I'm already having to talk to my wife about us possibly returning to being renters. Beyond that, I'm a precinctman here. I'm local. I've lived in Topeka for years and years. I've been out on the campaign trail during the primary and now during the general, talking to hundreds, probably thousands of Kansans at this point. And I've been talking to Democrats, Republicans, independents. And one thing that they are absolutely united on is that they are sick and tired of seeing their property taxes go up. I wouldn't say they're disgruntled. I'd say they're disgusted. It's already hard enough to live and make ends meet in Shawnee County. Why are we trying to make it harder? If you are a populist, you might get excited to see everyone across the political spectrum uniting on an issue like this. But if you're just a hardworking Kansan who's trying to make ends meet and doesn't want to lose their house, this is not at all what we're looking for.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Welcome.

Hi, I'm Deborah Olson. I live within the bounds of the city. And in May, I paid off all of our specials in preparation for my husband retiring at the end of the year. Now I look, and it looks like it was all for naught. Because if we raise our taxes, then I haven't accomplished what I wanted to. I hope we will take a deep consideration of these issues. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Good evening, council members, mayor. My name is Linnell Griffith, and I live in Topeka. And I am opposed to property tax increases like most people are. I have suggested before different methods to bring down government spending, such as zero-based budgeting and some of the other things mentioned here today, taking a hard look at amenities that we can pet. Because all in all, people are just trying to stay in their homes and, in many cases, just afford the basics. And I, too, have talked to people who have said, Hey, Linnell. I'm moving out of the county. I just can't afford the taxes anymore. And you've heard many, many stories I won't repeat about people in true angst about ever increasing property taxes. I just got to say, you need to compare diesel to electric when you're making these decisions, because every little thing helps. Just like an individual trying to trim their budget, you got to do the same, please. So do those analysis. But anyway, I will say I have fought this at the city level. We had the petition, which was ignored, at the county level and at the state level. And I'm optimistic that the vote is not over at the state level to put some guardrails on property taxes. Five years after Kansas became a state, the state legislature allowed for local governments to impose a property tax on citizens. And I know this isn't the direct topic of tonight, but I'm an advocate for some guardrails to get that in. And that leads me to say this. Everybody here today and listening at home, elections matter. Do your research. When somebody is running for office, do they have a record of fighting property tax increases, or do they just say that they will? And I want to thank our current mayor for last year voting to not go beyond the revenue neutral rate. I will concur that this is a topic, a hot topic of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians. We all just want to stay in our homes, right? And afford the basics. So please do the tough work of reducing the government budget so that we don't lose more of our population and that people can truly have a good life here. We don't, if it comes to it, we just don't need the amenities. We need a home. So thank you for your time and may God give you wisdom on your decisions.

And I will say one other thing though, sorry.

Do your research about who is running for office and who has advocated for lower property taxes and who is running.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, once again, my name is Daniel Bailey, and I am a property owner, homeowner here in Topeka. And I moved here three years ago to become part of this community. And I got to tell you that with property taxes 150% higher than where I came from, I don't see that happening. It's ridiculous what we have to go through. The courtyard in front of my house, the court, is cracked. It's got weeds growing through it. Every school or all the schools that I've been to within the city limits of Topeka need to be dozed and rebuilt. What are we spending our money on? I think you guys really need to take a deep, deep look at where our money's going. And, you know, search your conscience about what's happening. Because where I moved from in Nevada, I had two homes. I owned the home that my mother lived in and I owned my own home. And those property values were more than a million dollars and my property taxes were $3,000 and it's over. Douglas County, Nevada is an awesome community. I moved because we got 66 feet of snow in 2022 and 2023. I come here and, you know, frankly, I'd rather shovel some snow. then lose all that money. And it hurts. I don't make nearly as much here as I made there as far as income goes. And to me, to hear that you guys want to raise taxes again, it is. To me, it's obscene. And I just witnessed six or seven people come up here prior to this on another tax rate proposal who all said, don't raise them. And I watched the city council pass it. So do you guys care about what we say? We're the ones you work for. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak to this matter?

Hello, yes. My name is Forte Cain. I just recently moved here in the past, probably I want to say about a year and a half ago, 2024. And I noticed my taxes raised up from I think it was $1,100 when I first paid into another like $700. And I just, you know, I wouldn't want to see the taxes raised anymore. That's all I got to say. Thank you, sir.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this matter?

I thought he wanted to speak. My name is Joseph Ledbetter. I'm an attorney here in Topeka. I live here in Topeka. I pay taxes to Shawnee County as well. So being a city resident, I get to pay double taxation. I am opposed to raising more property taxes by whatever method. I'm also opposed to raising sales taxes and any other fees. I am opposed to raising our utilities, especially on small businesses that generate the jobs and already pay 25% assessment on their taxes. We, the residents, pay 11%, and that's high enough. And you see what these small businesses are paying, especially the small ones. They're not big corporations. They don't have any room in their budgets to keep paying this. So they're paying 25% assessment on everything that's handed out to them as an appraisal. I sent multiple emails, did lots of research on how to cut the budget. I don't think I got a lot of response, especially from management. I got – we'll look at it. I haven't heard anything publicly on the record about how we're going to cut staff. We have too much. I've already showed you that. The city has shrunk, not since five years, but actually since 2011. It's about 3,000 people. We're not keeping up. We've got staff that – We're over-stabbed. Not in police and fire. We've got too much middle management. We've got three public hearing people. I'm not sure why we have three in a small town like Topeka. You should be able to handle it with one. We are not growing. It's not just about taxes, folks. Your taxes would go down if you had population growth. That's what happens in Johnson County all the time. Their mill levies go down. We are the only city I know of in Kansas that actually extends its sewer services outside the city. So we allow lots of buildings, lots of housing, lots of business outside the city, and we're not collecting property tax on it. And for all those people who move out, they have to have more services, right? So those county budgets get to go up, which we pay. Makes a lot of sense. I think we've got 5,800 units that are actually getting sewer service outside the city of Pekin. And when I did research for Steve Wade when he was here a little while under utilities, I was asked to work on that and housing. I called, I think it was, I've got the note somewhere. It's 13 or 14 different municipalities in Kansas that And I asked them, do you extend sewer services outside the city? I got laughed at on a couple of them. I know Lawrence laughed. They said, what? If you want our services, you better be in the city because we're not giving you services, which would probably include, in Lawrence's sake, buses. So if you don't live in the city, like Montero, you're not going to get services in Lawrence. Of course, they're not going to serve Montero. It's just a slight of tone. But the point I'm making is... As an MPA and getting that really good training from KU, I was taught how to trim budgets. And I'm just not seeing it. And we need to trim budgets. We need some cuts in FTEs. We lost 25 FTEs when the zoo was shifted over to the private organization and then later a sales tax. We didn't get that money back. We had $2 million we were supporting them with in property tax. We never got it back. I was told Steve hired a bunch of new people. Go figure. Math works. Thank you. Thank you.

My name's Henry McClure, Topeka, Kansas. You can also look at it a different way. Instead of worrying about cutting expenses, why don't we try to get some income? Sales tax. Sales tax. Sales tax. There isn't a better thing than sales tax, business. Business begets business. But the higher the expenses are, people will turn down our community because of the expense side. Because when, let's say we're talking about leasing or purchasing, it's just the overall cost of the deal, then it stops making sense. And just for the average Joe that isn't connected to the system, it's even harder and harder to attract people to want to come to our community and do business. Let's focus just real quickly on the Maverick deal. That one befuddles me and most of Topeka. A truck stop that's going to pay sales tax right by the best place to put it in the whole city of Topeka. Sales tax, we need to attract retail to our community. And the best way to attract it is to, well, number one, do the deal. That's the easiest way is just to say yes. But most importantly is to make the overall deal a little easier to swallow with lower expenses. Josh, good luck, buddy. You're doing a good job. Keep up the good work. It's nice to see you all. It's a beautiful day. And if nobody's told you they love you today, you know I love you all. So thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this matter?

Good to see you.

Mr. Mayor, City Council, it's me again. I'm going to try not to embarrass myself, but I'm going to ask you to please do not raise property taxes. I moved here in Topeka three years ago from California. And California has the highest, if not the highest, taxes in the country. They tax us on everything. Just recently, the state passed legislation to tax your tires. It's ridiculous. We moved here to Topeka because we fell in love with it. We fell in love with the people. And I knew it was the population. Excuse me. I knew the population was falling. I knew the city was having struggles with infrastructure, with building. I'm sorry. I'm really nervous right now. What I'm trying to say is I don't want to see Topeka turn into another California. If you want to attract more people, you need to create more revenue through businesses or through sales tax. I know I'm jumping the gun here, but we love it here, and I don't want to move out again. Just ask me to please do not raise our taxes. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My name is Dr. Chris Dexter and I ran for city council this last year and did it the old fashioned way, walked 4,000 doors and what most people are speaking to is a very frustrating thing, but it has to do with population and sales tax. And I can't believe with what I heard two weeks after the election came along, and there's no sour grapes involved because my city councilwoman is a very bright lady, and I really I really respect what she did. We have a design engineer. Basically, what we're left with is, and let me give you an example. We have to lower property tax. We not only have to cap them, we have to lower them or dismiss them entirely some way. And there is a way, and Mr. Ledbetter has studied the issue on how to lower taxes, but one way that I ran on was a hard audit of every paid employee of the city because we do have a bloated middle management. You know that. You know that very well. I do too. And I found out a lot of what's on the inside when I ran for city council. And I really enjoyed it. I worked my tail off four hours a day for months, walking doors. And I stopped and talked to people. I didn't go to doors and put a little something on their door and walk away. Everyone that wasn't home, I left a note saying that I'd be back later. And everyone, to a person, is just simply, they're just burdened by the property tax. And we can do this. And I told them we will. But I didn't have a chance to prove myself. But that's all right in the scope of things, general scope of things. But let's take one thing just as an example. The ongoing mentality of the The people that control a lot of things, and that is the propositions as to what's going to be done at Riverfront and Kansas Avenue. Because we have a possibility of having a nice little magic half mile from Cody Foster's hotel down to the Riverfront. Can I have a few more minutes? You got a minute? Okay. In short, we need to have a sales tax producing attraction at the riverfront or someday we'll have a casino here. That's what people do when they're desperate. They finally just give up, they got a riverfront, a golden opportunity, they end up having a casino. That's trash. That's pure human trash. But the thing to do is, and I had my ideas presented at an old town raised football type venture at the, not a football type venture, but the size of a football field elevated above the dike. and the invitation going to different franchises to have a fish market there, etc. But I didn't have a chance to be on these little committees that decide what's going to be done down at the riverfront. Those two organizations.

Doctor? Yes. Your time is up, sir. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening.

But we do not need little parks down at the river that we have to pay for, maintain, pay the insurance on. We need some ventures that bring some economy to the area.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak to this matter? Excuse me. All right, last call then. Anyone else who'd like to speak to this matter? If not, then I will move over to questions and comments from the governing body. Council Member Kell.

Thank you. I wanted to address some of the topics that were brought up. Some of them I actually wrote down. Well, beforehand. As they, I think it was Mr. Liberator said, if it's getting service, I've been saying for a few years, if they're getting services, we need to annex them. They need to be a part of the city. That would help a lot right there. We have a lot of places that are getting services in our area that aren't part of the city. That kind of goes to the sales tax aspect of it. I don't think we've raised, the six years I've been on Capital Five, I don't think we've raised the middle levy and I think before that it was like 10 years. So it's been 15 years I don't think we've raised the middle levy. But we have other entities that keep on doing it and we kind of feel like sometimes we're taking the brunt when we haven't done anything like the county doing 12%, the schools doing all that. But When I first came on, I was like, we need to raise the mill levy before it becomes an issue. We need to raise the mill levy before it becomes an issue. Then someone had a nice little talk with me, said, sales tax. And once we talked about it, I was like, well, we have all these areas, all these people around the city that aren't paying mill levy. So if we go sales tax, they're going to be paying in that sales tax by coming in and shopping, doing all this. So now our surrounding people will be paying into that. And then I know people like, well, no sales tax. Well, I haven't actually thought about it. Maybe we could actually do a sales tax and lower the middle levy. So then it helps our citizens pay that sales tax. And we're able to lower the middle levy. And so now all these outside people are helping pay for our stuff. Schools were mentioned. That's a 501 or whatever school district that it is. We don't control what they do with their buildings or anything like that. So Grants were brought up. I know we've tried to push grants for a few years. It's really hard to – honestly, it's hard to keep a grant writer. They get paid a lot more in the private sector. But the problem with grants are there are a lot of them that are matching, so we have to match the amount. And that's where people have that issue where, well, why are we paying this money to this project? Just like the investment into was talked about things to attract people into town. Well, one person's attraction that they love is another person's absolutely hates it. So we need to figure that middle ground to try to work with everyone. Just talking about let's make cuts but invest. How are we supposed to make cuts and invest at the same time? Our biggest thing right now is payroll, and that's in the public safety and the roads and the infrastructure areas. Our biggest budget stuff is our payroll. And if, like people are saying, don't cut those areas, well, we've already made, what, $10, $20 million worth of cuts the last couple years off our staff members and through our budget. So that's getting to the point where we start making too many cuts. We're going to be losing people to other areas because they're going to be too overworked. But like I said, the big thing I've said for the last couple of years is we need to look at some type of sales tax initiative and realize that it's not just going to be the citizens, but everyone around, everyone that comes. My in-laws live an hour away from here. They come here probably twice a month, three times a month, and they spend money in Topeka. And then we honestly need to look at if they're getting any services from the city, what's the best way to annex them? And right there will alleviate a lot of our problems. And looking at things like that, I'm not sure if we want to do it like some cities have, where they just a large swath at one time, or if we look what's the best long term also. Just trying to make sure I covered everything. Oh, and the other thing is, unfortunately, some people look at our state, our city, our county on taxes. And they say, well, this place or that place. Some of those places have other revenues. I know California is not a good example. But California has billions of dollars coming in from pro athletes every year. They're taxed there. And California just does a terrible job of maintaining their budget. But we're not like certain places that have that nice income coming in from here or there. We don't have the investment like Wichita does with their parks and recs. A lot of that's paid for by private industries. We need to do a better job of trying to reach out to some of our partners that we have around town and see where they're willing to make investments in our city also. But Again, this is one of those things, like I said, I used to beat the drum on the mill levy, and I'm against that, but it's one of those things that we haven't touched it in about 15 years where all these other entities have, and eventually we're going to have to, and it's not that we want to. It's we're trying to make sure the city can maintain what little we're moving forward with because as we keep on making cuts, it's going to be harder and harder to run the city on a day-to-day basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, as we sit here and we listen to all of the public comments on cuts and investments, well, I can guarantee you there isn't anyone on this council that enjoys these taxes that we're having to endure. And we're having to endure them just as every other constituent in the city. So I'd just like to speak to my constituents and the community. We're doing all of those things that you guys are talking about to get taxes cut. It isn't easy to look at someone and say, hey, we're going to have to cut your position, your job, so that we can exist as a city or continue to function as a city. Being a retired firefighter, I went through this several times. Being on this council, I've gone through it once. And we've not had to cut jobs. We've had to really dig in. and make a really hard decision. So right now, I'd just like to ask our community to just bear with this council, this management system that we have, to see if we can work through this process. It isn't easy. Some of those emails that Mr. Ledbetter talked about, I get them, I read them, and they're really good ideas. We just have to figure out as a governing body if they're going to fit into the plans that we have right now. It isn't easy to match what we're getting as requests or things that community thinks will reduce our budget. but we're looking at those things. And hopefully, we can put enough together to reduce the budget, maybe not having to raise the mill levy or increase sales taxes. I think that one of the things that I advocate for is a relaxation of some of the red tape that developers have to go through to come to our city. We need to relax some of those things so that they are easier to work with. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council Member McGee.

Thank you. I appreciate Councilman Banks' comment. I would add to that, you know, I've talked about reducing some of our incentives, specifically the NRP, cutting that from a 20-year to a 10-year rebate program, go back and take a look at our franchise fees and make sure they're being evenly applied to everyone who fits within that category. And the other thing is continue to work on pilot agreements because we have some very large partners in the city who own a lot of property, a lot of buildings, and don't pay property tax. So the burden is being carried by the residential property owners. And I think we need to have some very serious conversations about pilot agreements with some of our largest partners. And it's a difficult conversation. But I think we have to have it one way or another. Because those are ways that would generate additional revenues and help ease some of that burden that's been placed on our residential property owners. Thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to join my colleagues. I have been on this council for 16 years. Whereas our fellow governments have typically raised their rates a little bit every year, we've raised taxes one time in those 16 years, and we cut them two years ago. And we're suffering for that right now. We're $15 million in the hole, which everybody talks about. We will be working really hard to balance that. We've already started, and with this evening, Councilman McGee has some suggestions. A lot of people do. I think it's important to realize that just like people, cities and units of government are different too and have different stories. As one of my colleagues pointed out, we're a state capital, so we have all sorts of buildings here that we have to provide services for that are not paying taxes at all. After waiting for 20 years under a federal mandate, we all know that the Polk-Quincy Viaduct is being reconstructed through our downtown right now. That is a mega million dollar project. It's a federal mandate that we had to respond to the state required that we put up 10% match. So we have borrowed $22 million recently to pay for that unfunded mandate costs 60, at least 40% more to borrow money than to use cash. When you do the math on that for a 15 year note, There's $2 million a year just in debt service on Polk Quincy, and that's not what we had to do locally to accommodate that as well. Those are real things that this governing body has had to deal with. That $2 million is that two mills right there. We've stayed very faithfully to the mill levy. which then, of course, floats with the economy. So I just hope people will think about that. It is a state law. We talk now about adding taxes. People are working hard. I represent downtown. And people are hustling to get businesses down there. It's exciting to see the energy. And that's people doing it for free because they care about downtown and they want to keep their businesses going. Those are the kinds of things we do that don't get headlines. But all of us are involved in working with people in neighborhoods, and in the downtown, and so on. We talked about annexing so we could have more of those properties. The state has said we can't do that, sharply limited that at the same time as they wanted to limit how much we could assess in taxes. And so it is almost impossible for involuntary annexation. I'm watching you nod back there. The limits are very tight. Someone already mentioned that we don't fund the schools. So when people are coming to comment, what we really need is some help so people understand what we are responsible for and what we're not. And then help us to look in that budget and look for ways that we can do things a little smarter or a little better. All of us up here spend a lot of time working on that. We all walked into whatever point the city was at at that time and are trying to make it better. I think everybody else did a really good job. I personally am kind of the budget hawk on the board, and so I'm one who works really hard at that, yet the reality of how we're going to make this work is a big challenge. So I appreciate people caring enough about it to comment, but we really need that further insight on ways we can accomplish what we all want to do. Thank you.

Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor, and I too appreciate everything that council members are saying tonight. I have spoken about this before, but I think it's important that everybody's perspective is a little different in what they do with their properties, what they decide to buy, and the choices that they make that come with that, or the results of their choices that come with that. I've always thought that I'm willing to pay a little more if the place that I live has better things for people to do, has better facilities for people to use, has better access for people to get to and fro where they need to go. I've always believed that. Maybe it's because of the way I was raised. I don't know. I'm not necessarily for higher taxes, but I understand how sometimes it has to happen. You know, it's just this constant movement of take away from this and this gets higher and take away from that and this gets higher. And for people to come and think that we haven't gone through what budget cuts would look like, that the staff hasn't worked hard to find out exactly what the percentage would be for us to get to a level that is not, to a level to where we don't have to raise taxes and what that would mean to staff, what that would mean to the processes of what we do. People always complain about every single thing that happens in the city. I shouldn't say every single thing because they don't complain about every single thing, but we only have so much money to be able to do it. We only have so many funds that we can pull from or ways to be able to make things work. And if we're constantly cutting off of that, when your valuations for your home are going to go up anyway, let's keep it above. Your private tax is going to go up a little bit. from the county, from other entities, this stuff is going to go up. Things cost more. It's literally a part of what it is. I wish we could go back 50 years ago to where levels were. We can't. And it's time for us to be realistic about that. There was some earlier talk about, you know, we want to have, we want to annex certain parts of the town. And I get that. There's probably some places that if they were a part of the city that, you know, it might level things out a little bit. I'm not going to speak to that because, you know, I got, I have an understanding of why those things were done years ago. I understand why they probably would never happen now. I get it. But any little way that this city has tried to save money, I think we've done so. We're not perfect, but I think the staff has done a good job of trying to come up with ways to get us to a place where we can succeed. And I commend them for that. These votes are hard, just like Council Member Banks was just talking about. These votes are hard, but it comes with the understanding from personally, myself, that I'm willing to give a little more for my city to have what it needs. Thank you.

Any other comments from council members? All right, well, I got a few comments. Look, Property taxes are a top concern because they do place a real burden on everyday Topekans. For every homeowner in this community, including those who are on fixed incomes, who are seniors, who are working families, who are people who have lived in their homes for decades, an increase in the property valuation does not mean an increase in income. A new appraisal looks great on paper, but it does not put a single other dollar into somebody's pocket. I understand that concern. I share it. I live it too, like everybody in this community. And as everyone else here has said, I do not for a second take the decision when we have this one lightly at all. This is never an easy vote. I do not believe property taxes are too low. I'm not indifferent at all to what the homeowners in this community are experiencing. And as I've been on the council and now as mayor, I have never believed or pushed forward the idea that we should simply ask taxpayers for more dollars just because it's become difficult to balance our budget. But we have an obligation to two difficult responsibilities that compete with one another. That's lowering costs while also maintaining the basic services that every one of our residents depends on every single day. Now, I'm always honest about what it means when you exceed the revenue neutral rate. It means the city council likely will collect more property tax revenue than it did the previous year, even if we don't raise the mill levy. We understand that. We take that very seriously. But I think it's also okay to be clear about the city's record, this city's record, on this issue. As you've heard, we have not raised our mill levy in 15 years. During the past five years, we've reduced it several times. Those reductions didn't happen by accident. They happened because members of this governing body, members of this staff made conscious decisions to hold the line and make those mill levy reductions. During my time as a council member, I introduced the resolution that lowered the city's mill levy for the first time in approximately a decade. A year later, we lowered it by another two mills. And we've held the line on those reductions. And I've always said I am never going to vote for a budget and have not. It reinstitutes those. if we don't have to. I've also voted to remain revenue neutral multiple times as a council member. I do think that that history matters because it does demonstrate that this body and any decision we make tonight is not some departure from what we do on a regular basis and we have shown every year that we do care about property taxes. And our decisions do reflect the reality that the cost of providing services has continued to rise, while we have also worked hard to keep our mill levy from increasing. And as you've heard, that has not been the norm, not just in our area, but in other parts of the state. This city receives approximately 25 cents of every property tax dollar that's paid by a homeowner in this community. The other 75 cents goes to your school district, Shawnee County, the library, Washburn University, the transit authority, the airport authority, and state-imposed levies. 25 cents is not insignificant. I'm not going to downplay that. And we are responsible for how every one of those cents is spent in this community. But I would also argue that with approximately one-fourth of the property tax bill, the city is responsible for most of the services that residents rely on. We are responsible for more services than any other of those taxing entities. Right? Police, firefighters, streets, traffic operations, snow removal, code enforcement, and just the basic work of maintaining our neighborhoods. And those services cost significantly more today than they did five years ago. Police vehicles cost more. Fire equipment costs more. Asphalt, concrete, fuel, insurance, technology, construction materials all cost us more. And recruiting and retaining people is getting harder and harder. I do understand, including mine, that families throughout this city are dealing with the same issues and pressures in their own budget in their homes that the city is facing. And we cannot make these decisions in a vacuum without understanding that. You should expect your government to do exactly what you're being asked to do at home. Set priorities, eliminate unnecessary expenses, and make difficult decisions. That's what we will continue to do up here, and that's what we have been doing these last few years. And guess what? Over the next month, you're going to see us, as I have been saying for months, have to make some very tough decisions, decisions that, as we have already discussed, I can tell you right now, many members in this community are sending us messages and talking to us and saying, do not make those service cuts. Do not do it. We will be cutting more than $12 million from this year's budget alone. If we went revenue neutral, that would be an additional $2.4 million on top of that $12 million we would have to cut. As you've heard us say many times, 70% of our budget is public safety. We are at a tipping point that those are the cuts we are going to have to make to public safety if we continue to have to find ways to make more and more additional cuts to the tune of millions of dollars. Doesn't mean we don't need to do it. We need to scrutinize unfilled positions, administrative costs, contracts, purchasing decisions, and programs. If they don't deliver measurable results, we don't need to have them as part of our budget. We've got to find those efficiencies, and we've got to focus on core services. We cannot, as much as we'd like to, spend our way out of this problem, but we also can't pretend that deferring our responsibilities by not investing in growth or allowing our streets to deteriorate are the responsible long-term solution. It will just compound the problem over time. I also want to point out that Topeka has done something that no other tax entity in our community has done. We have an existence and created a local property tax rebate program for qualifying residents who own and live in their homes. I sponsored that program because I believed then and believe now that those individuals who qualify, who are our most vulnerable homeowners, deserve more than sympathy. They deserve real assistance, and we must find ways eventually to extend those reductions and savings to all of our citizens. The state has its own property tax relief program, but among the local entities collecting property taxes in this community, we are the only one that has established such a program. Our commitment is real and it will continue to be real to this community. Now, that doesn't solve the entire problem. We can only rebate our own portion of the homeowner's property tax and resources are limited. But it does demonstrate that we are doing our best to put actions behind your concerns. At the same time, And it's my growing frustration, not just as the mayor of the capital city, but in my other roles in this community, lasting property tax relief has got to be done in partnership with the state of Kansas. The city does not determine what your home is worth for tax purposes. County appraiser does that, operating under a valuation system established by state law. The state also establishes the residential assessment rates and, although they like to say they're out of the property tax business, collects 20 mils on your property taxes. When property valuations rise year after year, homeowners feel those consequences across every tax entity on your tax bill. I wish Topeka could alone fix the problem, but we can't. The state also makes decisions that affect local revenue. Its own research shows the Kansas sales tax exemptions have now reached $8.7 billion per year at the state level in forgiveness that the state has given entities. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars out of local municipalities' budgets of sales taxes that were at one time approved by the voters in those communities. When they do that, it is one example of how they shift the tax burden more and more onto property taxes. Now, some of those exemptions have legitimate purposes, but the issue is the decisions made at the state house have consequences for local governments and local homeowners, and then we must sit in these rooms trying to figure out these bigger problems without the assist that we need at the state level. As the capital city, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to find practical solutions at the state level with the legislature to ease the valuation problem. We should be discussing how to make valuations more transparent and predictable. We should be examining targeted relief for owner-occupied homes. We should be reviewing exemptions and the effect they have on local tax bases. And we should be talking about the state's role in school finance and whether more can be done to reduce the pressure on homeowners from that 20 mils. And we've got to be doing this as partners. Property tax relief will not come from the state blaming local governments or from local governments blaming the state. It will come from everyone acknowledging that their role is important and understanding the consequences of their decisions and working together on solutions. Finally, we also need to grow our tax base responsibly. Every new home, every new employer, every vacant property returned to productive use, and every private investment that pays its fair share helps spread the cost of services across more and more for increased economic activity. If we want to reduce the burden on existing homeowners, we cannot continue asking the same homeowners to carry the same share of the load year after year while the cost of everything around us increases. Tonight, I know I will disappoint some, but my vote to exceed the revenue neutral rate is not a statement that the system is working. It is an acknowledgment that the system is not working well enough and that we are operating within the realities we face today while working to change those realities for tomorrow. My commitment remains the same. Do not increase the mill levy, continue looking for savings, protect our essential services, maintain and strengthen the relief for vulnerable homeowners, grow our tax base, and work with the legislature to address valuations and the broader policies driving property taxes upward in the state of Kansas. This is a difficult decision, and it should be a difficult decision. But my responsibility is not to cast the easiest vote that plays to the politics of the situation. My responsibility is to cast the vote that I believe continues to provide Topekans the services they depend on while providing assurances that the work is not over and we are fighting to bring down costs for Topekans every day. Are there any other comments or questions from the governing body? We have a motion to approve the resolution from Council Member Kell, and I have seconded the motion. Is there any other comments or questions from the governing body? With that, I will ask the clerk to take the vote, please.

Mayor Duncan.

Yes.

Council Members Hiller. Yes. Council Member Ortiz. Yes. Council Member Banks.

Yes.

Council Member Kell? Yes. Council Member Miller?

Yes.

Council Member Bradbury?

Yes.

And Council Member McGee?

Yes.

And Council Member Hofer?

Yes.

All right. We have nine yes. The motion carries.

With that, I will close the public hearing. We will move on to our non-action items. On action item A, city clerk.

A is discussion regarding the city of Topeka five-year financial forecast.

City manager.

Thank you. Members of the governing body, as part of my annual work plan, the team and I have completed a five-year financial forecast identifying viable solutions to address our projected shortfalls for FY2028 and 2029. Although our FY2027 budget is balanced, we have shared recent sales tax collection information that our sales taxes have come in lower than budget in the first five months of this year compared to the first five months of FY2025. As we will share this evening, flattened sales tax collections and franchise fees, coupled with slow growth in property taxes and increased personal cost driven through higher contract wages, have created a structurally imbalanced budget where our costs exceed our revenues. This evening you will hear viable options for cost reductions and tax increases to include options in my recommended timeline for sales tax initiatives that could be on the ballot in March 2027. My plan is to present this information tonight and have a high-level discussion. Given that a number of the identified personnel reductions include fill positions, I would request any detailed discussion of positions be reserved for an executive session next week. With that, I'll now turn this over to Josh McInerney, Deputy Director of Budget and Finance, to lead us through this item. Josh.

Good evening, governing bodies. Like the city manager said, we're just going to be doing a high-level overview of the five-year financial forecast for the general fund. But just as a review, and we talked about this a little bit before tonight, is that 70% of our general fund is related to public safety. And then of the general fund, 75% are related to salaries. So we're a full-service organization to where a majority of our expenses is in our payroll. And then also, too, the main revenue streams for the general fund are franchise fees, property tax, and sales tax. and so if we want to cut the box on the left we're going to have to also we would have to if we want to reduce revenue we have to also reduce expenses because we have to have a balanced budget and then also two one thing to note in 2027 we were balancing the budget through a fund a one-time fund transfer from two funds for a total of 4.5 million dollars so while we are balanced we are still spending down cash on this on a city-wide level So getting just in a little bit of history of the general fund. So a little table of the last six years and then 2026 is just projected. So as you can see, we had a lot of money during COVID to where that took the heat off expenses since we got ARPA money and then CARES money. But over the last three years, we've been spending down our general fund. to where that is only viable for so long because there's only so much fund balance at the end of the day, and then that is beholden to bond ratings and other things of the like. So we want to make sure, and we're introducing this problem the last couple years and tonight, that we eventually need to be more balanced going forward rather than spending now around $4 million a year. Now, part of that... assume the 2026 number that was communicated in the past. Obviously, that's subject to change based off new sales tax collections and expense, but that's a pretty solid number as of today. So just getting into the forecast income statement. So we'll get into assumptions in a sec of how revenues and expenses are derived. But obviously, we learned earlier that personnel is the majority of our expense costs. The future budgets assume whatever we have currently in 2027 and being at full employment. Full employment means every position we have, we assume that it's filled and we're actually paying for it in the future years. Now we know with various turnover, that's always not the case, but that's just a high-level point where we're starting at. And then also, too, the main takeaway is we have a structural problem. It's the last three years in our general fund, we're spending more than we were making. So our current revenues do not cover our current expenses, and that eventually the money is going to run out so that we want to address this problem now, and then over time, 18 to 24 months if we can scale back starting starting today that's more money we have for the future to rather than doing the access approach it's more of a scalpel approach going forward um and then finally even if we extrapolate we assumed our revenue growth and we kept our we capped our expenses at 133 and a half million that revenue growth what we what we have currently planned in sales tax property tax wouldn't wouldn't catch up to expenses until the 2030s considering full employment So in going off those assumptions, city manager just said, and we'll get into this a little bit, through the first five months of this year, our sales tax is less this year than it is last year. Sales tax is about 33% of our revenue. For the sake of this projection, we just used a straight 1.5% for the future years. That's a moderate projection, but it's good enough for now just because even if it was 0, we'd still have a structural deficit. And then franchise fee growth is at 1% and then assess value growth is at 3%. So. Just as a reminder this last year is the assessed value growth from this year to last year is about 42.29%. So we're just using a moderate projection 3. And then on the expense side. Um, we're assuming that whatever we froze or got eliminated for 27, those would be permanent reductions. And then also to, uh, we have to assume concurrent union contracts and just as a straight, um. 3% for anything in the future, just as an extrapolation. Now, other funds we have to consider for the last couple of years, so we did not place any revenue into our retirement reserve fund and workers' comp fund since they have a large built-up fund balance. So we've been spending down that money. Eventually, if we're spending down fund balance, those will eventually require a subsidization, as you see on the previous slide, starting in 28 and then a new one in 29, because there's only so much money in those funds, and that's mainly general fund supported. and also we talked about this last week during the public works presentation our special highway fund is a flat revenue source about 5.7 to 5.8 million dollars a year to where we're eventually going to have to subsidize that through other funds such as the general fund citywide house and sales tax fund etc but that just that money from the state the gas tax alone is not enough to cover the current expenses in that fund

Hey, Josh, can you go back to the last slide, please? I just want to spend a little bit of time on this. So this is the five-year forecast where we've basically forecasted our revenues and expenses through 2031. The surplus deficit, which would probably be the third row down, you'll see that in 2028, again, as we mentioned, 2027 is balanced. 2028, we're looking at, that would be, I guess, the second surplus deficit. We're looking at about $13.3 million deficit. Assuming those liabilities that Josh just mentioned, the things, the funds that we need to transfer to Retirement Workers Comp and Special Highway, you can just see without any major revenue adjustments or any new income coming in based upon those positions that we've frozen and that we've eliminated. I'll get to that in a second. We're basically looking, starting at a deficit of $13.3 million going for 2028, going up to about $22.8, $22.9 million by 2031. That also, that going back, and I just want to state for the record, since it was mentioned earlier, This year, we have effectively frozen or eliminated 49 positions. There's 32 vacant general fund positions that we have frozen in our public well, not just our public safety, but we froze about 32 positions for a savings of about $3.4 million. That includes 19 police officers. 10 firefighters and engineering tech and two assistant chief positions, one both in fire and one in police. And then we've also eliminated 17 positions outright from other departments. So I just want to state for the record that we have reduced 17 positions permanently. and that we have frozen 32 positions for a total of 49, effectively, that we've taken out of our budget for 2027. The forecast here assumes that those positions already stay vacant or stay frozen or have been eliminated. So I just want to make sure to point that out. And we presented that during our proposed budget discussion on the 14th. So I just wanted to state that for the record. Thanks, Josh. Go ahead.

So kind of getting back into the sales tax discussion. So on your screen, there's a two-month sales tax collection lag. So when we get, hopefully this week, the August collection, that's really for June since there's a two-month lag between the state and the city collection reporting. So... As of right now, we're $566,000 below budget if we assume that 1.25% growth over this year compared to last year. Obviously, only two months have came in over, so that's a pretty optimistic projection, but we wanted to bring this to governing bodies. ATTENTION BECAUSE IF 33% OF OUR REVENUE IS FLAT AND WE KNOW WE HAVE VARIOUS CONTRACTS GOING UP, THAT'S GOING THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF A BALANCED BUDGET. SO THAT'S SOMETHING TO BRING TO THE COUNCIL'S ATTENTION. OBVIOUSLY WHEN WE GET HOPEFULLY SALES TAX THIS WEEK, WE'LL UPDATE THE GOVERNING BODY ACCORDINGLY, BUT THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL BECAUSE IF IT'S FLAT NOW, IT'S MOST LIKELY GOING TO BE FLAT INTO THE NEAR FUTURE, SO THAT CREATES A REVERBERATING EFFECT ON WHAT WE PROJECTED FOR AS FAR AS REVENUE COLLECTIONS GO. Um, the next slide. So just as a reminder on the 14th, we talked about middle or the 21st. Sorry. We talked about this a little. Our property tax goes in the three, three bucket, three buckets. The general fund, um, special liability in the debt service fund. That first table is our general or is our fund balances. If each one of those funds So in the debt service fund, that's our bonded project that we pay our principal and interest payments on. We've been spending down that fund, which is OK right now, but it only gets to a certain point where that money There's only so much money in that fund before we have to probably prorate some more money in back to that fund. But the one thing I want you to take away is those four highlighted yellow boxes on the screen. Due to what we have currently planned in the CIP, we have to place more money in our debt service fund to make sure that we're following the various bond governments, the debt service payments, and minimum fund balances to where effectively what we have planned is that makes our general fund revenue flat for the foreseeable future because of how we have to prorate the revenue we receive in total. So we get about $58 million in 2026 of property tax revenue, and we can administratively delegate where that money goes. But in the future, we're going to have to delegate a little bit more to our debt service fund based off what we have planned in our CIP. And again, that's property taxes loan or 35% of our revenue. So, if we know 33% of our revenue in sales, Texas flat and 35% of our. Revenue currently in property taxes flat for how we have to prorate it. That's 70% of our revenue that is flat and a rising expense environment. So one thing that's a tool that we could use to raise revenue is we could talk about increasing the levy. Now, it was stated that we did reduce our mill levy over the last two years. Now, even though we reduced our mill levy, that doesn't mean we collected less in property tax. Part of the reason was that is we had 10% assessed value increases. So even though we reduced it, we still collected more than the previous year in property taxes. So that's one thing to keep in mind. And then the table below is if we did 1 each year, just as a hypothetical hypothetical example. Is that would be the cumulative total by year in that final row. So. If we did 1 in 28, that's 1.6M, then another 129, obviously that doubles and so on and so forth, but. That property tax and sales tax is the 1 way. We can generate more revenue into the general fund besides natural growth or new businesses, paying taxes, et cetera. Um, also, too, in our franchise fee history. So that's that's who pays in averaging Kansas gas Cox. Um, to operate in our right away. So that collection has basically been sort of flat the last couple of years. Obviously, 2022, there's a little bubble because of I think of a. The winter storm event that we had with the cold spell, but that is also a flat revenue source to a degree to where a majority of our revenue in the general fund is flat and we have an increased expense environment. So our revenues do not cover our current expenses. So on personnel history, so I thought this would be a good chart to show because this shows on average when we do payroll every two weeks, we obviously track of how many employees were paying. So on average for a quarterly basis, you can see starting in 21 where we were at versus most recently in 2026. It doesn't account for this last payroll, but it's close enough. So you can see how it started at 1068. It went down and then it kind of went back up to where we're currently where we're at today is about where we were at five years ago. Now, one thing to keep in mind is we are cutting vacant positions, but just because we cut vacant positions doesn't mean we're lowering what we're actually paying out in actuals. That's what matters at the end of the day is what we're actually paying out each period. And so as you can see in the general fund, the personnel history on there is those due to various contractual events, is that went up, and then we've been kind of behind the eight ball ever since versus revenue and expenses because our expenses went up faster than our revenues. So kind of getting into how can we structurally balance the budget? So we talked a little about revenues earlier. That's one side of the equation, but then there's also the expense side of the equation. So just as a hypothetical example, if we cut 25% of the department's budgets by 25%, excluding public safety and any governing body adjacent items, that's $10 million. Now, We wouldn't necessarily consider this a realistic option because those public safety services, they rely on finance to buy their equipment. They rely on HR and legal to handle certain areas of the organization. So we would really like to actually get on the merits of what we're doing as a services. And then if we're reducing expenses, handle it that way. So obviously, if we're going to have to reduce expenses, a lot of that is personnel because that's where the majority of the budget lies. So if we were to do 29 general government positions not related to police and fire, that's about $3.3 million. And then any additional public safety personnel, that's about 6.4. So getting into income statement changes, these are things we can talk about doing into the near medium term future that could tap into reducing that structural deficit by 2029. Obviously, this doesn't all have to be done today. It can be a phased approach because we are only in 26. But anything we do today benefits for us for the future because anything we spend less today is what we can use for the future. Getting into some of this is we have about $1.1 million of grants or social service rebates in our general fund. Obviously, if we're reducing service, it's going to be a little bit of everything. That's about $1.1 million. We have all non-required education and travel. That's about $100,000. We talked about FTEs on the previous slide. Coal elimination currently across all funds, that's about $1 million. Obviously, that's not fun to do, but when your majority of your budget lies in personnel, those are the conversations we're going to have to have to get more revenue elsewhere related to the general fund. We can talk about parking charges on Kansas Avenue. We talked a little bit about earlier where On our CIP, we have a lot of projects in the CIP. We could talk about reducing our CIP to then have more of our property tax revenue instead of going to our debt service fund. It can go into the general fund. We can talk about eliminating any capital purchases within the general fund. We can do a variety of transfers such as from other funds into the general fund. But all that gets to about $7.5 million. Now, again, Doing all that in one go would be a dramatic service reduction all in one night. What we probably need to do over the next 12 to 18 months is talk about ways to eliminate services or evaluate what we truly want to do as a city to eventually be structurally balanced going forward.

I'm just going to real quick chime in here and say I've told city manager and Josh this, and I get different looks. I always say this too, but I'm putting it in the universe. I would like us to see a goal five years from now of having 100 less employees. And if you look at the vacancies we have now, we could do that the next several years without a single person losing a job. And the truth is we could do it over the course of those five years without a single individual losing a job because as departments are aware of what we're trying to accomplish, as people retire or leave a position, it gives departments years heads up to start to say how can we define these roles based on new technologies and new capabilities. new opportunities because again the personnel cost is not going away. So I'll just say I would like this just that's my dream and hope and I know some will agree or disagree but I think that's a realistic goal without having to make mass layoffs or people even lose a job over that five year period. So sorry I just wanted to interject that that's I think that's a reasonable something we can work towards.

ahead josh oh you're good and so i'm not going to read everything on this slide but obviously if you have less people through personnel reductions you're going to have less opportunity to provide service to the public obviously a majority of that lies in public safety but if there is no revenue increase we're going to have to talk about what services do we want to provide as the city that's ultimately up to the city manager and the governing body to decide but less things would have to be done since we have less. Obviously, that's related to public safety and some other things. So getting into those CIP reductions. So one thing to keep in mind is just because we reduce $1,000,000 of bonding does not necessarily mean that's $1,000,000 more that we have. There's a ratio because we have to pay the bonds out over 15 years. So to get $2,000,000 more into our general fund, this is all the stuff that would have to be eliminated because over the last couple of years we've had to bond more with the parking garages, the City Hall. That was a $27,000,000 bond issuance. And then also we had to bond in the 2025 B series, $8 million for the hotel to where our debt service payments are kind of basically staying flat for the next couple of years, which is fine. But if we're reducing the revenue going in there, we're spending down the fund balance and that can only be available for so long to where if we want to get more revenue in the general fund, we're going to have to take a hard look at the bond projects in the CIP. And then city manager alluded to this earlier, but one revenue mechanism is doing a sales tax for the general fund. Now, our current sales tax rate is 9.35%. So in that first bullet, if we did another sales tax, that would take it to 9.85%. But that would also generate $20 million annually for the general fund that we talked about in the first slide, which provides public safety services as well as general government services. Then also, there would be a new 1 tenth of a cent sales tax that would generate about $4 million a year to fund any affordable housing initiatives and establish a market rate housing fund. Now, there's a timeline on the next slide. Also, as part of that combination, a part of that duo and the smaller two bullets, they would also be a renewal of the current citywide half cent sales tax slide, which expires October 1st, 2029. Now, one thing I didn't mention on the previous slide is because we have that citywide half cent sales tax slide, we can still do road projects that there is a $40 million fund balance currently at the end of 25 in that fund to where those projects fixing existing streets, sidewalks, alleys, curbs and gutters. That would still be secured through that funding source because there's an excess of funds there. We're trying to spend it down for the next vote. But it would be mainly anything not related to a road project that would be gone in the CIP. Um, and then finally a sales tax ballot question. So this would be hypothetically a timeline. So September 3rd, it would go to the policy and finance committee for a discussion. Then it would eventually ask to go to the full government body for a discussion. They would approve any language that would go on the ballot. And then that would be all done in October. And if it was approved, it would go to the March 2nd for a special election. And if that was approved by the public, then, um, The first collection would be July 1st, 2027, because you can only collect at the beginning of a quarter, right? And then there's a two-month lag. We wouldn't get the money until two months later. But then you can either do a mail-in ballot or an in-person election, and the various cost estimates are on the screen. But sales tax is just one of the options to generate more money in the general fund, just like property taxes. And at the end of the day, we have a structural problem where our current revenues do not cover our current expenses to where we're either going to have to lower expenses or we're going to have to raise revenue or do a combination of the two. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Questions or comments from the governing body? Council Member Kelly. Oh, actually, we have two signed up for public comment.

Sure.

Let's do that first. Sorry. First up, we have Claudia Elkins.

Thanks for that excellent explanation. You are so smart. Okay, so I looked at this presentation too, and I have a question about slide 15. Talks about the half cent sales tax, roughly 20 million for general purposes, fire, police, code enforcement, municipal court, public works. So is that the same as the half cent sales tax we were talking about for fire? The fire stations?

Yeah, you can respond. Our rules actually allow some back and forth when it's not open general public comment. So yes, you can answer.

Can you guys go to the slide that shows the five-year forecast? So by doing a general government self-tax initiative, Essentially we would roll in roughly $10 million going into 2027 as far as additional revenues. We anticipate that half cent paying for our general services to actually include sustaining the CIP investments for fire stations at $33 million. So basically what this does is this makes us flush if we do a half cent for public safety. Originally, we had talked about a half cent total with four-fifths of that going to public safety and one-fifth of it going to affordable housing and homelessness. Given the financial forecast that we presented this evening, my recommendation would be that we actually do a half cent general government tax. that would fund everything from police, fire, public works, code, everything, to include also supporting the debt service payments for our CIP to include all the projects that we said that we would take out. Now, to Josh's point, I will also say this, and I've told the governing body this, and Josh even mentioned it right now, there's still going to be a combination of reductions and things that we'll look at. So, but the new recommendation, my recommendation, given what we've done here this evening, is to do a half cent public, or I'm sorry, half cent general government sales tax that would fund all those services that I mentioned, and then a tenth of a cent that would be split between affordable housing and market rate housing. I know that there's a desire in the community, and some of the council members here have shared a desire to fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund with a recurring revenue source. So at $4 million for one-tenth of a cent, that would give us $2 million that could go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The other half of it I would recommend to establish for market rate housing fund. An example for something that would be funded out of that, earlier this year we had to provide cash incentives for the hutch, the apartments that are coming into downtown. versus us basically scrambling. I want to say scramble. We had to identify funding to, we had to go to multiple funding sources to include economic development fund in order to fund that incentive. So that funding would be reserved for projects like that. The other thing that I've talked to some of the council members about Sorry if I'm going long. I don't want to keep you here all night. But right now, a lot of the RHID, a lot of the incentives that we give for market rate housing, they essentially force us to forego the incremental increases in our property taxes. So what I would like to do is with that fund, if it was established, is to actually provide cash incentives up front. So that way, as soon as the properties are built, we start realizing those property tax increases into our into our accounts.

Okay, so this is different than what the fire station meetings were all about.

No, so we had talked about a cash option to fund the fire station.

Okay, because I thought that was all supposed to be used for the TAPS and the TELSTACs. It was all supposed to be used for the fire stations.

That was before we did this. But again, there may be an opportunity because if you look at 27 and 28, the projected deficit, again, if we bring in $10 million in 27, And we bring in another 20 in 2028. That's roughly $17 million that's left over or available for programming. So we could still do a cash option for the fire stations if that was the recommended path forward.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Next up, Mr. Joseph Ledbetter.

Thank you, Mayor, everybody, staff. Among the many things I've sent you over the last few months, and I even got berated for it by one of the staff, was I've sent you the copies of court requests I've made. And I've asked a lot of tough questions because the math just wasn't adding up to me. And I like math. I'm not going to deny it. A lot of lawyers don't like math, but I do. And I got a lot of that in my MPA training at KU. We studied billion dollar budgets decades ago. We learned how to put them together, do them for the state, do them for cities. This city isn't near as large as the kind of budgets we worked on. And they're hypothetical, but they actually took real budgets and showed them how to do them. How to cut staff when staff was becoming multiples of multiples, too much middle management, people staying on too long that really hadn't made any improvements in how they were performing long term. We weren't about taking people's jobs. We're about trimming budgets so everybody else could have a job that was left, that was productive. Personnel costs are always at least 80% of any budget. I don't know why we keep talking about it. You should know that. It's not news. So there's also benefits. I didn't see any talk about benefits. We had to cut benefits a little bit at the MTA when I was on that board. I was on that four and a half years. And we had many discussions, people coming to us about we wanted to extend services outside the city. They don't pay. You want to be part of the city? You want city services? Be in the city. I never talked about annexation tonight. There are some industrial areas south that you could probably annex, and they make sense because that's actually something cities are supposed to be doing, at least in Kansas. We're supposed to be growing our cities industrially and commercially. Why are revenues down the first sales tax down the first five months? Could we look in the mirror? Why are so many streets shut down? General revenue comes from the streams of commerce called streets. Four lane streets that are shut down on Fairlawn for the last nearly 12 months. The street that I live very close to, Topeka Boulevard, has been shut down, stopped, shut down, stopped. Eight months we had a shutdown on a very valuable intersection. I wish you all would have been there last night listening to commercial people, everybody from Blind Tiger to the Sonics, Chick-fil-A on Topeka Boulevard, all complaining about this proposed new thing we're going to do to South Topeka, it's going to be shutting them down. Jay told me, who's got the Blind Tiger, fantastic business, he says, I'm looking at the end of my business if this thing goes forward and they won't listen to me. And staff was doing this. We're sorry. We're sympathetic. But we have no ideas. OK. I get that maybe from engineers. We have a certain set of things we've got to follow. I'm going to ask for an extension of two minutes.

Any objections? Go ahead.

I don't want to see the blind tiger out of business. That is a very unique establishment. And people need to be supporting it. It's local. You've got a lot of local restaurants that need help. They need support from the public. And those waitresses and waiters need tips. I usually pay them in cash, so the tips. I just think that's a good way to do business, and they always remember me when I come back. We need to help these people. These small businesses are the backbone of the economy of this country. We need to help them, not hinder them. Why are sales taxes down? Why are these roads shut down through the winter when they could have been kept open if you would have planned correctly? We had a saying in the Marines. Okay, I'm going to go there. The six Ps, and I'm talking about road development and roads not being bid on time, not being bid early enough, and this constant fiasco we've had for the last two years, train wrecks on Topeka Boulevard, Just about cost us Nola Ford, is what I was told, through the grapevine. They were just about ready to move. They generate millions of dollars of sales tax to this community every year, and they got no consideration. What are we going to do about it? In the Marines, we were taught the six Ps. Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. We have some people on this staff that need to learn that. or find another job. It's that simple. You are absolutely hurting these businesses, and now you're hurting the revenue that our people need to be paid because we're not proper prior planning. And that's just roads. I could go down utilities. I've got lots of comments I could make on that. But I've worn out my welcome. I hope not. And I won't say I love you, but I love this city. I really do. That's why I put so much time into volunteer work. Thank you.

All right. Now we'll circle back to Council Member Kell.

First off, Josh, thank you for the amazing work you do. It seems like you know this budget back and forth and can tweak it. Amazingly. Back in slide seven, or just in a couple of these slides, have you figured at all into the upcoming union negotiations and kind of maybe given an average what it's going to cost more into that?

Yeah, so... So mainly the general fund, just as a reminder, it's police, fire, a little bit of AFT, and that's about probably 60%, 70% of the general fund is union employees. So just as a baseline, we plugged in a 3% increase. So those contracts will expire at the end of 27. So next summer is when we'll go through that whole process again where basically half the city is up for negotiation.

Okay. We have a lot coming up, it seems like. Yep. Then on slide nine, it was, I believe, slide nine, the franchise fees. Do we have any, I know we had that one company, was it Solus or something, the fiber internet company that was coming through? IDFX. Idea Tech, is that going to put any bump towards that franchise fee?

If they start paying, yes, but as of right now, I haven't seen a material bill, but I'd have to check on that.

Councilman, let me, on that note, really freak you out. There will be a bill in the legislature to eliminate all franchise fees and subcommutations. As you look at what that number means to us, just heads up. It will be a battle we get to fight this upcoming session.

So on that, are these set contracts or are these something we could start tweaking the numbers on that?

So the way it works now is we collect 5% of their net profits. I think Emporia, they recently went to 6%. So we can talk about adjusting that collection rate. But we've been at 5% for as long as I can remember. And look,

back. I'm going to beat this that I constantly do. I understand we've got to look at pushing projects back. We've got to look at certain things, but in the long run that's going to cost us more. Looking at certain things that we need to sit there and say, well, we're going to save $5 million this year, but in four or five years when we finally get to that project and have to do it, it's going to maybe cost us $4 or $5 million more than we initially thought. So we've got to really look at our long term of if we push too much back, it's going to keep this revolving door of needing money because those projects are going to get more and more expensive. And so We definitely need to look what our priorities are, where we need to make sure, like a fire station, you know, if it's going to cost us $30 million now, let's really look at that because in five years we'll maybe push it down there. It may be $35, $40 million. So we need to really look at those certain projects and say we can't push this because it's going to cost us too much in the long run by pushing that project. So... uh those are those are things when we're looking at this budget we need to really make sure we're looking at and then as mr ledbetter i went into with the military another shame keep it simple stupid kiss and we need to really look at certain things like i've said for the roads we need to kind of just go back to doing the basic on our roads uh some of these you know widening the sidewalks doing all this i think yes And for certain time periods, that is a good idea. But for right now, we just need to do the basics and work the roads. Certain areas, yes, we need to put in some sidewalks because we have some main roads in our town that have no sidewalks on either side. And we need to put some sidewalks in there. But we don't need to be expanding sidewalks and going all this. If we can just get by with doing the basics, keeping it simple, I think it'd save us a lot right there. Because if we do a project where it's, what, a four foot average sidewalk instead of going to this eight foot, how much are we saving by going half the amount of concrete and time and all that on that sidewalk? So we need to look at certain things like that. Other things, and this is another one. Different people have different words for it. The islands, the medians, the pork chops, whatever on the roads, especially on our main roads like Topeka Boulevard. Honestly, I think unless we are needing to buy some statute or something, put those in there. I've seen so many cities get rid of those. and just go to a turn lane in the middle, and it just makes it easier, and then we don't have to, when a business wants to come in, okay, now, like, quick trip at 37th and Topeka, or 45th and whatever. We now have to cut in to get them to have a turn lane. Where if that was just a straight turn lane all the way down, we wouldn't have to do a thing to it. So we need to look at certain things. How much is that costing us in the long run? How much damage does it do when we're taking our snow plows out and hit those? Because I used to do snow removal. When you hit them, you get all this damage. Now we have to go back and fix them. If it's this flat concrete with the turn lane, you look at a lot of cities that's, you know, Wichita, Kansas City, in certain areas, they've gone away from doing those little islands and making the turns and just go straight with the turn lane. Thank you.

Council Member Ortiz.

I won't be long. Thank you, Mayor. Is that you, Josh, over there? Yeah, yeah. I'd say you're looking good, but HR would say something to me, so... I'm going to keep my comments to myself. On page 14, heavy duty fleet garage. I mean, I thought we had a fleet garage. What is this?

So that's talking about the fleet garage on 1st and Crane, or no, it's on Crane Street, 1st and 2nd Street, but it's on Crane Street. So eventually... We're going to have to move that? To move that is a consideration because the building is very old and ending its useful life period. So that's a consideration for the future.

This is going to cost us $8 million to move?

That's just a placeholder number. It'll probably be most likely higher than that by the time we'd actually do it.

So do we have to do it because of the Pope Vita? Or are we just looking to do it?

Council Member, I think we're looking to do it for the fact that, as Josh mentioned, and Jason can give more detail, but the building is coming towards the end of its useful life. Jason.

So that building was constructed in 1980. It's a steel building. Those buildings generally last about 25 years less if they are directly upwind of a salt dome, which this building is. If you've ever been in that building, that is completely dilapidated. The walls are Absorbing salt, rusted, not functional. In addition, the apparatus that we have that goes in those buildings, there is one inch of clearance on either side of the garage door and vehicles are getting bigger, not smaller. So that is a building that is well past its useful life and not functioning properly. We will need to look at replacing that building at some point, whether it's on the existing site or a different location. But that's an estimated budget based on our recent experience on the light duty garage. And this would be the garage that services our heavy duty vehicles like our dump trucks, our back trucks, vehicles of that nature.

Okay. I'm just thinking, does it cost that much to put up a Morton building? Is that what this is? Is this kind of like a Morton building or is it more?

So I don't want to get too into specific designs, but $8 million is a fairly conservative estimate. I mean, obviously we can look at the specific design of the building. I would say we would want to at least have some sort of masonry with steel on top because of the nature of the building. If you have a building that's steel all the way to the ground and you're getting your salt plows in there, you're going to degrade the bottom of your building very, very quickly.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Traffic safety. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

So yeah, traffic safety is anytime we establish an RRFB. So think on 7th and Quincy, or sorry, 6th and Quincy, a flashing pedestrian blinker. Those cost about $50,000. We put those in various spots. Crosswalk control measures, things of that nature.

Okay. So that's what that is. Okay. I will make an appointment with you this week to sit down and go over some more questions that I have.

I think there is one more.

I appreciate it. Keep looking good, Josh.

Thanks. Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor.

We've got a series of observations and questions.

I have a series of observations and questions. I'm not sure where to start, but I thought that when we asked for a revised budget and a five-year projection that what we were going to see was whatever your updates were on the modification of your preferred budget, which includes going after a half-cent sales tax, it always has one way or another, but that we would see an alternative. that did the cuts without that half-cent sales tax and saw that spread out. And right now, this is all numbers all over the place, but not something you could sit down and... Slide 12, ma'am.

Slide 12 has $17 million worth of cuts that we would have to make over the next 28 and 29 to get our $17 million deficit without adding any taxes.

And this is absolutely what you would do this is your budget proposal and we have to go figure out how it goes back in everything?

This is not what I would want to do. This is what I would need to do, yes.

I guess I find it overwhelming to have to go back and do that myself. And could I ask, I should know, what exactly is our sales tax rate right now in Topeka? 9.35. 9.35. And what you're proposing is that we go to 9.95. nine five and I guess I and colleagues on this council all along when that has come up has said that's almost ten percent. You think people are talking about taxes being too high now to even think about going to ten percent sales tax was just beyond imagination at least to me, but also in talking about it for years. So I don't want us to fail to address that that's what you're proposing. Again, I guess I've done a lot of work on trying to figure out how we can looking to the future, not just 2027 or 2028. And again, I thought we asked you for five years projection out so we could see how certain things would work out. The issue of shifting, even right now in 2027, some of those capital projects that shouldn't be bonded anyway into cash so that long-term that debt service wasn't so high. And just things like that You know, you've got some notes here, but seeing a spreadsheet on that new CIP, when I went from slide to slide looking at this in advance, I couldn't put it together exactly how that was going to flow. Even looking at it, and I'll look at it again, but for sure what you were proposing to take out and what you were proposing to leave in. Another thing we asked for, at least on my notes, it says July 17th was not only the itemized budget expenses, which we did get, but also the itemized list of personnel, not by name or anything, but by department and sub department. And so we could see how many FTEs were in that department. And if people wanted to spend some time. We've been asking you, or I have, I should say, but others as well, to look at this from a program and management point of view, not just a percent. And so we don't have enough information to really look at where what you're proposing would land, as well as if we had a suggestion for an alternative.

As mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, I intend to have that discussion with you in executive session because I'm not going to go into specific positions.

And I'm not – I don't want to do that either. I'm the one who asked for the executive session on it. But for us to look at what – rather than just having a percent across the board to be thoughtful about where we thought we – could economize and where we couldn't.

And we didn't do just a percent across the board. We didn't. And so shame on me for not giving a departmental breakdown as far as the dollar amount that would come from each budget. But we didn't do just a straight across the board.

Well, and I'm talking about just that whole list of who we have today first so that those of us who wanted to spend time trying to look at that – My experience here in the city, that's what we've done. The city manager has given us something very specific, and we've had enough information that if people had alternate ideas, they could put something together.

Understood.

Thank you. I feel like we're coming up on a deadline. maybe none of us would be able to prepare the way we'd like to. And so I'd still like to see that master list of personnel. I'd like to see the spreadsheet on what you have in mind for the CIP, how that would play out, if that's a firm proposal on your part, so we could see it. Probably have some more things, but I'll stop. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions on this five-year financial forecast? It doesn't appear.

I mean, I guess it's not necessarily on that. I guess it's a thought of what you said a little bit ago about your want to go down 100 employees in the next five years. And as you know, I support a lot of the things you do, Mayor Duncan, but That one I want to push back on just a little bit. And the reason I want to do that is because I've seen in different industries how when you take some workforce away and start relying more on the technology that you're talking about, let's say what it is, AI, the mistakes that happen when it comes to the services that the community that you and I both live in and all of us live in, that every single detail matters. And I would hate for major mistakes in people's lives to be changed because we had a thinned out staff who was burnt out because one person is doing five people's jobs uh because we wanted to save um a few hundred thousand dollars um and and i'm not saying that that's my way is the right way yours is i just i just want to put that on out there that um i worry about what that would mean in the future thank you councilmember kelp

I agree with Council Member Miller on that, but also when it comes to that is the cuts versus when we farm out the work, how much cost difference is there? Not hiring an engineer versus having to go out to engineer services, and how much more is that costing us in the long run over a year, two, three, four years? So we need to look at the positions and say, yes, this would be saving us money, by not having this position, but certain circumstances, it's going to cost us a lot more money by not having that position. So we need to really look at some of those positions and say which way, because if it's something we need, then we need to make sure that that stays and look at the long term of paying someone $100,000 versus paying a company $250,000 a year, where there are certain positions that that's going to be the case. And we need to definitely look at those positions and not just look at it and say, well, they're going to attrition out, and so we'll maybe lose them. So those are, and like the councilman said, is we need to keep from burning out people also, because that's when mistakes are going to happen and when mistakes happen it can affect a lot of people and then it could have a very adverse effect on on what happens with the city uh so i don't want to point out i have scenarios in my head but i don't want to point out any department and think i'm pointing to them but we really need to look at long term what's best for our employees and best for the city on those aspects

Council Member Hiller. I hope everyone looks carefully at these lists. I look, for instance, at a mistake that the city made before that is now being recommended again. And that's cutting out cost of living raises for the non-union employees. That is why we have seven unions, because every time the city needed to squeeze money, they would just not give raises to the, what you're talking about is your management level people and your non-union people. And we've had compression issues anyway with people who've moved from unions to management. And so that is not a wise cut, just as an example. Again, there's ways that we can work on each of these things. I appreciate Councilman Kell bringing up, again, the issue, for instance, of the engineering. I agree with you that if we really are going to handle somehow this budget reduction and manage to keep the taxes down, that 100 over five years is... probably reasonable to get those numbers done. We can add numbers to it. But it's a false economy to get rid of engineers when we still haven't hired them back. We've talked about that on and off for years that it costs so much more to hire the services outside the city. And I remember a couple years ago, Councilman Miller was new and we talked right across the table about looking at functions and Why are we doing this? Is it working? Is it cost effective? Is it still important enough? And if so, how can we keep doing that? And evaluating pieces that way, not just broad brush on numbers. Thank you.

Just to clarify, it's not about AI. What it is about is us having to recognize that just making incremental changes within the system that we already have isn't going to get us anywhere long term. We can tweak this. We can lay people off. We can adjust this. We can defer things. We can not buy equipment. Great. That buys us a year. It buys us two years. It doesn't buy us long-term institutional change. We've reached a point where some of these departments, not for lack of what they're already doing, they're working their butts off and doing exactly what they're supposed to every single day. But at some point, it's sitting down and saying, what are true, honest, organizational changes that we have to make within our departments that get them to the goals they're trying to accomplish every day, but also recognize the reality of where we are at long term. And so even at its most simple, that means creating an environment where we say, look, forget money, forget resources. If you could redesign this department today, knowing what you know, what would that look like? And let's start from there. And I think if you really open that up to people and you really give your staff the freedom to do that kind of work, I think innovation happens and organizational change is possible and it's something that then everybody has buy into and are a part of making that change. And that's a heavy lift and that's going to take a lot of commitment from staff, from us, from residents understanding what we're trying to accomplish as we work through that and it can't be done in a year. It's got to be a five, six, seven year project through that process. But at some point, we have to at least have some goals that say to get there, we recognize we're going to have to operate this city with whatever it is, 100 less employees, 10 less vehicles, one less department here because we outsource, whatever that looks like. And so for me, that's what it's about. It's about digging deep and saying, all right, are we collectively in this thing together to make some fundamental changes in how we're doing things? Not because what we're doing now is wrong per se, but but because the world changes and the world's changed. And so that's what it is. But yes, we also probably need to look at some AI policies too.

Yeah, what he said. That's what I meant.

All right, with that, no one else is on my board. So we will move on to non-action item B, discussion of the operating budget. My question is, what is this discussion? Are there presentations? No, sir. I'm good either way. I just didn't know if we should take a break

It's really up to you, Mayor. Essentially, what we want to cover in this one is we've completed all the departmental overviews. Basically, this time is set, and we'll be set for the next couple of meetings to discuss any questions you may have of any departmental budget.

Let's take 10 minutes. No, it's cool. No, it's fine. I just wanted to gauge it. All right, we'll take 10 minutes. We'll be back here at 830. All right, we are back from our recess. Action item B, city clerk.

continue discussion on the budget.

City Manager. Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, as mentioned, we've completed our departmental overviews on the proposed budget for 2027. This time, we're essentially going to take time out of this meeting and the next two meetings for work time, work sessions regarding our budget and If you have any budget-related questions, if you have any amendments that you would like to propose and consider, have discussed here for consideration, basically this time over the next two meetings, this meeting and the next two meetings after that, will be for that purpose. What I'm hoping is that you can, if you have amendments that want to be considered, I hope that you have an opportunity to discuss them here as we go. maybe don't want to do it on the night of the 15th. Also, too, if you give us opportunities to review some of your amendments, we can do research and provide guidance on that. With that, there's no set agenda for this time. Again, it's just open discussion for work session, questions, et cetera. Council Member Hiller.

Thank you. Maybe I kind of jumped the gun on the budget overall last time, but it would be tremendously helpful to me if we could have what we talked about back in July, which is I don't know if there's enough time at this point, but to have this budget that includes all the different funding sources and all of the expenses, not just general fund, so that we can look at the whole as well as related to that, no names or anything, but the personnel in the back like the budget is, so we can match up FTEs. I don't think we even have FTE counts. in the budget this year in this document. And so it's just hard for us who aren't in each of those departments all the time to, if it's possible to do that.

Yeah, so we sent that actually out on July 22nd.

So I have it all in the mail. Yeah, you have it all. Then I will get it.

Yeah, and I can re-forward it later tonight.

I can find it if I've got it.

Yeah, and then there is an FT account by fund in the budget book. It's in the first 25 pages. So that's in there.

I don't think it's by the department, the sub-department, by the organization.

Yeah, it's just by the fund. We can get it a little more granular for you, too.

Yeah, just trying to match apples and apples. Okay, thank you.

Questions or comments? Let me reiterate a couple things the city manager said. PLEASE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE NEXT COUPLE WEEKS. I KNOW JOSH WILL ANSWER ANY QUESTION YOU HAVE AND GIVE YOU ANY INFORMATION YOU WANT. SO WILL OUR OTHER DEPARTMENT HEADS IF YOU NEED SOMETHING SPECIFIC, PARTICULARLY IF IT RELATES TO PUBLIC WORKS OR UTILITIES, SINCE THOSE HAVE A LITTLE DIFFERENT FUNDING MECHANISMS. I said this about the CIP, and I'll definitely say it about the budget. It's easy at times to say to staff, hey, I want you to figure this piece out. And that is part of their job. It's why we hire them and pay them and trust them to help us make those decisions. But it's also easy to then, when they come back with those and say, well, that's not what I liked, figure it out again. So if you have fundamental changes you want to see made, that's what we're here for. That is what this governing body is for. Bring those amendments. Bring those to your colleagues up here and let us hash them out. And then we can watch staff either say, that's a good idea, or want to throw something at us. And then we can talk about what those ideas will or won't do. TO OPERATIONS AND HAVE THAT CONVERSATION. BUT WE CAN'T DO THAT IF YOU'RE NOT WILLING TO BRING THOSE THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS AS WE HAVE THOSE MEETINGS THROUGHOUT WHATEVER NEXT MONTH IS, SEPTEMBER ALREADY. WOW, THAT'S CRAZY. SO I DO ENCOURAGE THAT. AND I WILL ALSO TRY TO HOLD MYSELF TO THAT SAME STANDARD. I don't see any other questions or comments at this time. I do think some of the questions probably we would have asked now got asked during the five-year projection. Yep. Oh, sorry. City Manager and then Council Member Ortiz.

No, ma'am. No, sir. I'll defer to Council Member Ortiz first if she'd like.

I just want to thank staff for working really hard on this budget from The city manager, Josh, I know he doesn't sleep. I know he puts in a lot of time in this. And I just want to thank them for all their hard work that they do on this. It might not seem like we're looking at it, but we are. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Next week, I'll bring some proposed amendments that we've already, like some of the things that we talked about tonight, like the travel. I mean, that's easy. We can start that next year. Actually, we could probably start it this year, but we can start it next year. There's some things, and we made some assumptions in our planning and development costs. One of the things that we included in the proposed budget was to migrate all those costs into an enterprise fund. We left some of the planning piece out. So you'll see that cost come in to where we transfer some of that over. So just those are some of the things that we'll be bringing in the coming weeks for discussion. Thank you, Mayor.

All right. Any other comments or questions at this time? Clarification. Council Member Hiller.

When are we expecting to vote on this final?

The budget is adopted on the 15th.

Well, I sure hope that you and all of us bring anything that we've got to talk about next week because we're trickling into the end. We won't be able to be able to see that. Just a suggestion.

So why do we have four meetings then in September? I thought it was, oh, we don't. Did we at some point?

We have three. The first, 8th, and 15th.

Yeah. We added this meeting because we put a fourth meeting on my schedule.

OK. We added this meeting because we deferred, because we had elections earlier. Right. No, I understand that. Yeah. OK. But yeah, next.

It's not a fourth meeting to show up in my calendar. That's why I'm asking. I wondered about that. OK. Okay, perfect. Anything else on this issue? If not, we will, we have, well, we had, Claudia was signed up, but she left. I'm 99.9% sure, unless she's hiding somewhere, so, okay. All right, with that, announcements. Council Member Hiller?

None, thank you.

Council Member Ortiz? None. Council Member Banks? Nothing tonight, Mayor, thank you. Council Member Kell?

Just wanted to say that what you said earlier about the mill levy was well said. Thank you.

Council Member Miller.

No, sir. Thank you, Mayor.

Council Member Bradbury. Council Member McGee. Well, I would be remiss this evening if I did not wish my son, who turned 13, holy crap, we have an official teenager in our house. I said today, folks, I said, there aren't too many life milestones that kind of freak me out a little bit. This happens to be one of them, to know that I have a 13-year-old in the house. But happy birthday to Connor. And I guess the first kid, as Councilmember Ortiz calls him, is now a teenager. So watch out out there. It's still another year before he can drive. So you're all still pretty safe. And so with that, anything from city clerk?

September 1st agenda, we have three professional service contracts on the consent. We have two resolutions coming out of the PI committee. We have an ordinance for city expenditures. Action items include approval of the 2027 social service grants allocations. We have a resolution and development agreement on the transient guest tax funds for Sunflower Sports Association. We have another resolution coming out of the PI committee on the Huntoon Street and Gage Boulevard to Harrison Street project. We have the ordinance setting utility rates. Discussion items include discussion on the city auditor position, the 2027 legislative agenda resolution, and then continued discussion on the budget.

All right. City Manager.

Nothing tonight, sir. Thank you.

All right. With that, then, we are adjourned.