City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the September 8th, 2026 meeting of the Topeka, Kansas governing body. This evening, Council Member Christina Valdivia-Alcala has the invocation. If you would please turn your attention to her and rise if you are able.

Thank you, Mayor. This prayer is from St. Teresa of Avila, and it is a prayer for peace and calm. May today there be peace within. May you trust your highest power that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones and allow your soul the freedom to sing and dance. It is there for each and every one of you. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

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

Mayor Duncan?

Here.

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

Here.

Kell?

Here.

Miller?

Here.

Bradbury? Here. McGee?

Here.

And Hofer? Here. All right. We have nine present, with Council Member Ortiz absent.

All right. We'll move on to appointments. City Clerk?

A is a board appointment recommending the reappointment of Kansas Stiles to the Topeka Metropolitan Transit Board for a term ending September 13, 2013. All right.

Motion is always an order.

No, sorry.

Motion to approve by Councilmember Kell. Second from Councilmember Valdivia. Any comments or questions? If none, we'll take a vote, please. We cannot vote.

Okay, we have eight yes, the motion carries.

All right, I do not believe Candace is here this evening, but I'll double check. So no, but we thank her for her service. With that, we'll move on to presentations. City Clerk.

First presentation is a communications overview.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as part of my annual work plan, this presentation will provide an overview of the city's public communication function to include how we use social media and other channels to communicate with the governing body, the public, and the city organization. This briefing will detail how our communications department coordinates with department directors, staff, and the city manager's office to communicate public safety or other information with all relevant stakeholders and highlight our schedule for upcoming communication efforts on major issues, services, and projects. With that, I will now turn this over to Dan Garrett, Director of Communications, to lead us through this discussion. Yeah.

OK, thank you, city manager. Good evening, governing body. And as he said, I'm Dan Garrett, the director of communications. I've been in this role since 2024. And so tonight, I'm going to go over what our department does and the different ways we communicate with the public. So our mission we came up with as a team last year is to inform, engage, and connect our community by delivering clear, accessible information, sharing stories, and building public trust and partnerships through transparency and collaboration. A lot of words in there. I wanted to cover it all. So our department is a team of five full-time staff. We are small but mighty. So I am the director of communications. I oversee the department, handle crisis communication and initiatives. We have one senior public relations specialist, and they oversee police and fire. They serve as my second in command when I am unavailable. And they prioritize public safety initiatives and all the communication dealing with police and fire. We have one infrastructure communication specialist, and they oversee public works and utilities and help do outreach and communications with road projects and utility projects. And I'd like to point out that these three positions, we are all on call 24-7 to make sure that we are able to respond if there's ever a crisis. We have two video production specialists. And they oversee public live streams of city meetings, capture initiatives, create engaging content for residents, and upkeep the new voting system that we all use with the tablets, as well as create graphics for social media and for department initiatives. We have one part-time employee. That is Susan, who's in the back. And she operates our cameras on a remote. And so she makes sure all of our shots look good. And she's been doing this for about 20 years. So we appreciate her spending the time to do that. So we know with the financial strain that has been going on with the city, so to help do our part, we have reduced and frozen one position each. So the position we have eliminated is the communications and production manager position, and we have currently frozen the language access coordinator, which was a recent departure. So how we respond to critical events. So after receiving notification of a developing situation, we notify the city manager, governing body, and impacted staff. We provide real-time coordination with police, fire, utilities, public works, and any other relevant departments. And then we work to issue timely press releases, media updates, and public notifications. Press releases are approved by the city manager and then provided to the governing body in advance before we send that out to our media partners. We deliver emergency information through website alerts, social media, email updates, and utilizing our local media as well as live stream briefings if the event calls for it. And then after the initial messaging is sent out, we monitor the developments as that situation progresses and make sure we issue any timely updates if it is necessary. So we use our different media channels to inform, engage, and connect. So we use press releases, road closure and construction updates, emergency service information, public meetings and events, and a weekly report that we put out every week on our city website. We also have our social media listed at the bottom. We got a lot and then there are for our Facebook and Instagram. We also have those accounts for police fire in the city. We also have next door, which we use the we also use that for water main leaks and breaks in that. So we use next door to get the message out there. We have the city for cable station on spectrum and those are all of our live streams are on there as well as we use it as a bulletin board to run any promotions. We live stream all the city council and committee meetings and then we replay them on our youtube channel and city for We also create educational and informational videos. And we also have a City of Topeka podcast, which we do episodes twice a month. And we will also be inviting the governing body to come on those episodes and talk about any initiatives that you would like to cover. So we want to provide that opportunity for each of you to come on over the next year. So we also work with our other departments within the city. We serve as a point of contact for all media inquiries, ensuring staff forward questions so responses are accurate and aligned with organizational messaging. We collaborate with the departments to promote events and initiatives through coordinated communication plans. And we help facilitate interviews by preparing talking points and ensuring consistent representation by the organization. We also provide creative support, including developing graphics, visual assets, and other promotional materials as needed. And we also provide cross-departmental initiatives in helping bridge that gap between departments. Another big facet that we have to deal with, not have to deal with, that we work with is fostering our relationship with the media. We have very dedicated media locally and nationally, and we use them and help get the messaging out on initiatives. And they're a big asset to our city, and so we appreciate the relationship we have with them. But we start each day with getting requests from the media and they could range from last night's arrests to gathering how many brick roads there are in Topeka. And there are 30 in case you're asking. Our media partners are a great asset to the city and we work with them to foster transparency with the public. And we work to get answers to them quickly. However, we do prioritize the inquiries based on public interest, public safety, or if it is just a human interest story. Since there are only a select number of us, we do have to prioritize our workload with getting the information to them, but also upkeeping our other duties. So if it is a public health crisis, we make sure that we are on that and getting the information out. So some of our recent achievements is we've supported the launch of the new Topeka.gov website and we also assumed content management on the website. Before that was just IT doing that so we were happy to help. We helped implement the new process for TPD body worn camera and that was the first entity in the state of Kansas to come up with a body worn camera release policy so we were very excited to help build that transparency with the public. We also created in-depth TPD and Topeka Fire annual reports to get more in-depth and more information. Again, we launched the City of Topeka podcast. We are up to five episodes. And we create the Behind the Seal in Topeka history video series. And the Behind the Seal is once a month we highlight a different department that might not always get its recognition so the public can better understand what our staff do. We also provide communication strategy and support for major initiatives, including National Night Out, Trunk or Treat, Citizens Academy, and the Resource Expos. So some of the upcoming projects we have slated for this year is in the coming months, we will be announcing the launch of TextMyGov. We partnered with the Office of Inclusive Communities to earn a $20,000 grant thanks to the Information Network of Kansas. And this will be a new texting initiative that will let us text with residents that choose to opt in about important updates, big initiatives, big changes, and new ordinances. We will also be launching an online community resource page where we have been gathering with local nonprofits and different resources in the city to have them all listed in one place. So it should be a one-stop shop for people to find contacts for different resources in the community. And so we will continue with the two podcast episodes each month, as well as continuing the Behind the Seal video series and the Topeka History video series. We will also coordinate the launch of a new software in the coming weeks with IT. and we will facilitate permitting, planning, land management, and code enforcement operations. I think that is it. And then just some raw numbers of what we've been doing the past year up until June. We've issued 35 press releases, and those do not count police and fire. These are just city initiative press releases. We've handled over 115 individual unique media inquiries, and those are just through email. That does not include in-person and on-the-phone inquiries. We've posted 60 social media posts, and that is excluding live streamed events. We've live streamed 66 events. We've produced 30 videos. As of June, it was two podcast episodes. And we maintain over 12 website pages. And we've coordinated 20 public meetings. And with that, I will stand for any questions. I know that was a lot to speed through.

Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm wondering. if the policy for updating the governing body as soon as possible on emergent issues or issues that they need to know about in a timely fashion before they start hitting over the media, across the media, because that had been an issue even before you were here, Dan, where we would read things in the newspaper and had not received notification across the board with the governing body. And I'm wondering if there is a different protocol for if it is a holiday or a weekend that you're presenting here.

No, we are all on call and we handle it together and we make sure we cover each other if someone is on vacation and we make sure people are taking the time off that they all deserve. So when it comes to crisis that happen, you all should be receiving a text alert. And oftentimes the media is aware right when things happen as well. So we make sure that we are getting the information as soon as we can. But we also want to make sure it's all accurate. And sometimes that does take a little bit to vet through and make sure we're not spreading misinformation.

Right. So thank you for that. And I think overall you guys are doing a really good job. I will say, though, I do believe that there was a lapse. I don't. If the text was sent. about the fire that happened at Coach Light before the press release came out because I actually emailed the chief in the morning. It was probably close to 9 or 10 asking if there was going to be any kind of press release update or anything because I was getting calls about it and I had not gone out there obviously because I wasn't going to get in the middle of any of that. I don't recall getting a text notification. If there was, my apologies, if there wasn't, I would request that my number be rechecked. Because of the nature of that fire and the number of injuries and because of the life lost, I think that there were things that were being reported out right away before we got notification of it. So I think you all overall are doing a really good job. I would just ask to make sure. that all of those things are double checked, especially on holidays or weekends. I understand that people need to get off. I get that. Yeah. But I would request that. So otherwise, a really good presentation. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. And we'll make sure that your number is added.

If I could just add, I mean, we typically don't send out the code red alerts for fires. You'll typically see those, especially on the weekends and in the evenings. Sometimes some of our battalion chiefs will send out the media notices. But, I mean, typically, Councilmember, we don't send the code reds for every fire event that we have. So I understand that the Coach Light event was a little something different. But typically, Councilmember, we don't send out code red alerts for fires.

I wasn't saying that I expected that. I think that Dan was the one that brought up the text. I don't expect that. I'm not asking for that. What I was asking for and what I emailed the chief on later that morning was when there was going to be any kind of update. And I don't expect, you know, continual updates on fires because we have a lot of fires in this town. But I also know that this was not the usual fire.

Yes, ma'am.

And because there was loss of life.

Yes, ma'am.

So I just want to make sure that you understand that. Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I will say we did used to get what I would consider big fire. We used to get those in the system on fires that elevated to whatever this, a level like that. Because I will say I would also, maybe because it was a holiday is why we didn't get one yesterday. But I know there was a time where we did get ones if they were big enough fires that the fire department. So if that's changed, that's fine.

And, Mayor, I can speak to both chiefs as far as, you know, seeing when we elevate something like that. But, again, we typically send out the code reds whenever there's like an active, like the barricaded gentleman last week, whenever there's a homicide or something that we're aware of, the hit and run. And, I mean, those come throughout the night. So those are typically where we reserve the code red notifications.

Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. Dan, you and your team do a really good job. And yes, you said a mouthful in that presentation. Some of yourself there for a quick second. But on this sheet right here, the communication by the numbers, I think the most important number is the zero right there. of the public retractions for inaccurate information. I think people need to truly understand how serious you take your job to make sure that you have all the facts before we put stuff out for the public. I think it's incredibly important for people to understand how the care in which you handle the situations, the staff, how they handle the situations is It's something that when you're dealing with people's lives, making sure that you have the information correct is admirable.

So good job. Thank you. I appreciate it. We do have a really awesome team that most of us have worked in news. So we understand the want to get information out as fast as possible. But we do know when things get rushed, sometimes mistakes are made. And that might happen in the future. But we're proud. Thank you.

Council Member Banks.

Thank you, Mayor. Dan, I too would like to just make a comment on the extent that you and your team has gone to to be transparent with this governing body. And certainly there were parts here that I did not know that our department covered. So the information was really clear for all of us to understand. And I would like to say my appreciation to you and your team, because you know how I joke around. But I know from the information that you've given us today how serious you take your department position. I think that's great. I'd also like to know, when do you plan on having me on your podcast?

We can move you right to the front.

Thank you, Dan. I just wanted to say I'm a big deal.

Be careful what you ask for, Dan.

Thank you, Dan.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member McGee.

Thank you very much. I appreciate all the work that you and your staff do. I also like this last page and the numbers that I see there. Also, I wanted to make a point of clarification for transparency. The grant that was mentioned was from the Information Network of Kansas, and I am the executive director of that. group, I did not this year participate in reviewing any of the applications that we received. I did not participate in their discussions or even the board, the discussions when our board made final action on that. So I, as soon as the application for the city came in, I excused myself. from that process. So I wanted to make that clarification in that statement. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Bradbury.

Yes, thank you. I want to thank you and your staff for everything that you do. I really like, as Councilman Miller said, the communications by the members page. That really puts into perspective the work that you guys do. I do have a question about the TextMyGov. Is there a date when that's going to go live?

We are hoping to do it, start out in October next month, and then for sure have us sign up at the trunk retreat event. We will be having a booth and encouraging people to enroll their phone numbers. And again, this will be an opt-in service, so people will choose to receive texts, and they can opt out whenever they would like. But we hope this would help with community engagement.

Is there going to be something maybe on the city website?

Yes. Yes. We're going to do a whole media campaign to get everyone a part of this.

Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for all that you do. Sort of in line with some of the conversation here at the beginning of this conversation, There's so many things that seem unsettled in our world these days, and so many things that we say, you know, we used to be good at, we got to get back at that again. Something that you all have done well, and I think that the press and the communication in the community is quite something to handle, but along the lines of these crises, There's a fair communication from you, from our chiefs, expectation from the press at this point, and certainly you see on social media as well people going, well, they haven't released the name yet because out of respect for that individual and their family. And people do seem to accept and appreciate that, and it's a team sport to get that kind of communication. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments for Dan? All right. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you.

We have a second presentation this evening. City Clerk.

The second item is the Topeka Housing Study Update.

City Manager.

Thank you. Members of the governing body, this item prepared by our consultant development strategies shares updates to our housing study. As discussed in the presentation, based upon housing activity and population assumptions, we have a housing need of 4,220 units across the spectrum over the next 20 years. The discussion will also include highlights of vacant parcels and future considerations. I will now turn this over to Justin Carney of Development Strategies to lead us through the discussion. Justin's online. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you. I'm getting a little bit of feedback on my end, but the information tonight to make the presentation for the Topeka housing update and. I'm going to go very quickly through this. I know several of you have been participating throughout this process. And I know that we've had some great group conversations and one-on-one conversations. So I'm just going to get through this and just give a quick highlight for you all and for the public that is watching. Happy to answer any questions you all might have. You know, just a real quick update on, you know, what we were trying to accomplish with our housing study update. We did an original, you know, we did the original study back in 2019. A lot has happened, as we all know, since 2019. So we wanted to get an update on the data and get a firm understanding of how the housing context has changed in Topeka. We wanted to evaluate the priorities and the progress that was made from the 2019 report and then very specifically wanted to work very closely with staff on some HUD, you know, HUD specific documentation, the consolidated plan, the analysis of impediments. These are two requirements for the city to maintain and receive their HUD funding. Part of that is also a community survey and we did the same survey in sort of a longitudinal fashion. from 2019 to now. And then we added a vacant parcel analysis to this, which I'll spend a few minutes talking about at the end here. Just some quick highlights. We have made presentations on data. There is a lot of data behind this. There are just a few things I'm going to touch on as we move through this, rather than repeating the full analysis here. One of the biggest things that happened is a population decrease. That's a decrease not only for the city, but seeing a shift and a decrease both for the county, the region, and the state. which is directly impacting the city. While we're seeing actual population declines, we're seeing a shift in household dynamics. And what that means is, one of the biggest ones is that we're seeing a shrinking of household sizes. So while we're seeing population decline, we're actually seeing an increase in the number of households, which is continuing to drive some of the demand that we'll talk about, as well as the job growth and projected job growth. actual experience and projected job growth that we'll see that's the people side on the structure side I know that we know this story all too well we hear about it in the news all the time and the city of Topeka is no exception we are seeing increases in home values we're seeing increases in home prices and we're seeing increases in median rents and all of these are working towards if not increasing the affordability challenge, at least maintaining the affordability challenge that we experience here in the city. On the housing delivery side, it's an interesting picture. From 2010 to 2020, we saw about 110 units on average delivered, and most of those were single family. In the last five years, from 21 to 25, We actually doubled the average or nearly doubled the average to about 210 units a year over the five-year time span, but mostly attributable to two large-scale multifamily deliveries. We did have an uptick in single-family deliveries in 2020, 2021, but then a significant decline even below the previous decade's averages for single-family. So we'll get more to that. This will come up and be important when we're thinking about the demand in just a moment. You know, we did do a new demand projection. And yes, as some of you know, we've had conversations. There is a dramatic difference from what we projected in 2019 to now. But there is still, you know, just over 4,200 units of demand for the next 20 years. That averages to about 210, 220 units. per year over that time frame, which is about what our average was in the last five years. We're seeing this demand across the entire affordability spectrum from the most needy subsidized housing up to the most high-end market rate housing. You can see they're both for sale and renter, more focused on the market side, on the for sale side and on the affordability side. We're looking at more rental units, but again, across the spectrum, we're looking at a demand for 4,200 units. You know, so what has changed? We had 10,000, over 10,000 units in 2019, and really there's A whole methodology, you know, housing demand projections are both an art and a science. I can get into it more in Q&A, but really it's the population decline is one of the biggest factors. And the multifamily delivery is kind of resetting the baseline that we didn't have in 2019. Those are two of the primary culprits, if you will, of why we see less demand today. But that 210 units represents a maintenance of what we had over the last five years, continuous for the next 20 years. And it's very likely not going to be supported by the same large-scale multifamily that we saw in the last five years. So what does that mean? We're going to be seeing and need to see a diversity of housing. We need to still maintain multifamily, but it's probably going to be of a smaller scale. I know missing middle is very important to the city. So there's going to need to be a conversation about how do we sustain that demand to meet this overall demand of 210 units annually for the next 20 years. As I said, I can get more into the questions on that in a bit. One of the things that we added in this go-around was a vacant parcel analysis. Again, I've done a couple of meatier presentations on this, but I just wanna say, from a methodology standpoint, we had about 4,600 units that we thought were parcels, vacant parcels, that had suitable land uses. So we're not thinking about, putting housing on recreational properties or industrial properties. So we took those out. We took out parcels that were in the floodplain and that we don't want to develop. We took out parcels that may have structures on them, and I'll have more on that in just a minute. So we still have 2,700 vacant parcels in the city limits of various sizes that present various opportunities for infill housing. And I'll talk about that in just a minute. I do want to say I understand that there is some real interest in what do we do about the vacant parcels that also have vacant buildings on them? And why didn't we look at that at a deeper level for this study? And really the answer is that the data set just is not robust enough and does not have enough detail to allow for a citywide analysis at the scale that we were looking at the vacant parcels. So it's hard to understand and we don't have the data to understand the overall appropriateness of housing. In some instances, for example, a vacant structure on a vacant property could be a pole barn. It might not be a house. And we don't know what types of structures we're talking about here. We don't know the condition of those buildings or any of the environmental conditions that might need to be remediated with those buildings. So a vacant building analysis really requires a deeper level of analysis that we've talked about individually and in small groups with staff and stakeholders. to think about where can that deeper analysis happen. It can happen at the neighborhood planning level where we can have neighbor input on what they see going on with those structures. We're then dealing with individual specific structures and so getting property condition, ownership, understanding those opportunities in greater detail and how it fits with an overall neighborhood context is really what's needed when we're going to explore the vacant building opportunity. So as I said, we had 2,700 units of vacant parcels that we then explored. And one of the primary ways we did that was understanding the lot size. And what is the opportunity that the lot size presents? Different sizes presenting different opportunities from single family infill, missing middle, small multifamily opportunities to larger scale neighborhood development. really are sort of scattered throughout and more appropriate for different parcel sizes. We also looked at these parcels geographically, understanding how they might fit within the city, using the neighborhood health index to understand what are the opportunities. Those vacant parcels that are in the intensive care and at risk may be great opportunities to align those infill opportunities with neighborhood stabilization. And it might need more city participation in making those really developable opportunities. The vacant parcels get larger in these more outpatient and healthy neighborhoods further out in the city. And so there's larger market rate, larger scale opportunities there, but it represents again kind of the entire spectrum of infill opportunity from incremental redevelopment to medium sized market rate development. And all of these come with different opportunities and different challenges for the city to participate in that. So I know, I just moved through this very quickly. I'm not going to read these considerations to you, but I'm going to leave them up on the screen. There is a continued demand for housing and the need for annual deliveries to more than double what we've delivered in the last decade. That delivery needs to be diversity of housing pipes, diversity of housing densities, both ownership and rental opportunities. And as the city tackles these opportunities, both from infill and larger scale redevelopment opportunities, it can see a real impact on the economic growth of the city, as well as the family and household health and getting people and households into greater quality housing. So with that, I'm going to end. I'm going to stop sharing. I can jump back in and answer the questions as you.

Great. Thank you. All right. Questions from the council? Council Member Kell.

Yes. On the sixth slide you had there, it was the 20-year demand, the different types of rental versus purchasing housing. And on the subsidized to the low end of the workforce, it was two-thirds rental. And to me, that's almost – I almost want to flip that for the simple fact of if you have low-end incomes constantly paying rent and not building any equity, then they're not able to move up that scale. So that's where I think it would be more apt to focus on trying to get people into houses that they purchase rather than renting them where they're not – I understand some aspects is they don't have the money to fix them up or whatever, so a rental is a better option for them, or they don't have the know-how, or they just want to rent. But to me, I see the aspect of looking at purchasing houses as allowing those people to move up over time rather than just paying rent for 20 years and having nothing to show for it.

No, absolutely, Councilman. And I think, you know, what you're seeing here is there is, you're right, there is more rental than home ownership represented in this demand. I think what that's really reflecting, you touched on some of the factors, what it's really reflecting is the ability to, you know, have, it's needed to put down payment, the use of faith, the to go through a mortgage, you know, a mortgage lending opportunity process. This is not meant to say that we want more lower income households to be renters. I think from a lot of the goals you said, certainly from a wealth building and equity building standpoint, you would like to see greater home ownership. This is really a function of the economics of the number of people that are already in, that are lower income and that are renters and moving them into home ownership opportunities is a challenge. So it's saying a lot of this is driven by the dynamics of the market and the population that you have now. It doesn't mean that you can't set additional goals and strive for that, but it's recognizing the actual economic limitations of achieving that on scale and actually also delivering that. So a single family home ownership opportunity may cost more both for a developer and for the subsidy needed to develop that unit versus an affordable housing rental opportunity where you have maybe an apartment complex or a small cottage court sort of example or what have you. There's also an economics of delivery here that's not just about the population itself, but both of those dynamics are working I guess against that, against the notion that you raised.

All right, thank you.

Council Member Valdivia-Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of things. And I understand that there's probably limitations to the study that you've done, but I'm still compelled to ask the question. And it's... where you state that Topeka's housing pressure is driven by structural shifts in households and income trends, not population growth alone. That actually wasn't what I wanted to read. Here it is. Sorry about that. The market is active and adjusting, but affordability pressures persist prices continue to outpace wages when you talk about prices are you talking about it directly in reference to housing prices and if they are cost burden, et cetera, because that cost burden went down too. I guess what I'm saying here is that this state still has no minimum wage, and we are locked from doing anything at a municipal level. And things like the inordinate cost of childcare, how inflation has impacted grocery prices, I mean, I think that with the first, are you guys the same ones that did the study in 2019 that came out in 2020? Okay, so in there, you just covered a lot of stuff, right? So I guess I'm wondering, is there ever a time where you push, you know, punch in these variables that I'm talking about right now to give an even clearer indication about what we're looking like in Topeka?

You know, we have not to probably the extent that you want. I will say this. You are absolutely correct. When you think about groceries, you think about child care, you think about health insurance, and you think about transportation, and then pro-housing in the mix, those are some of the five biggest cost factors that households have to address. And so when I say cost, and when we're talking about costs in the housing study update, we really are focused on the housing component of that. There is a whole economic development side that we're touching on right now in this conversation that gets addressed in in our understanding, but we don't model it as far as our deepening of understanding of the dynamics of household wealth and housing costs in this case. We really do focus on the function of wage increases and stagnant wages, and they're not raising to the housing value cost, the price of ownership, and the price of rent. We have in other studies across the country, we can do a deeper dive. We can do a deep dive here. We just did not do a deeper dive in really understanding all of the other economic facets that go into exactly what you're talking about.

OK, well thank you for that. I would like to see that. I mean that that first study did you know which people pointed to forever. Even you know right after COVID ended in the world kind of fell apart. You know they were still pushing on that, you know, pushing that report all the time. But the other thing that I see where you say the shortage of quality housing impacts future economic growth and then we see If I'm correct, if I remember the slide that you just showed, that there's been an increase in rental housing, right?

Well, yes. Oh, on the delivery side, yes. So we had over from 2021 to 2025, we had two significant multi-family projects come online. And that's where that, yes, there was an increase in rental properties at that time. So yes, and then ask me another question.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is this, is that we have a number of older multifamily dwelling apartment complexes in Topeka. We have a change in our culture of property maintenance, and one of the things that was seriously looked at is a rental registry. And I don't know if you've ever worked with cities or when you've done more in-depth studies is that there are a number of activists that actually live in some very difficult circumstances because the honest point is is that we have some slumlords here and I'm talking multi-family dwellings and I'm talking not all multi-family dwellings but we know we have a problem and we have for some time. So we're trying to craft a rental registry, which took a long time to get off and have more serious discussion, but we're also talking about adding a licensure component. And there's much more serious impact, in my opinion, and studies have shown, like in the National League of Municipalities, about how licensure programs give additional strength to a rental registry. And it can actually help deal with more aggressively some of these really bad landlords because I keep going back to this, you know, what you have. The shortage of quality housing impacts future economic growth.

That's right.

And so, you know, literally we have folks that are afraid to report because they don't have anywhere to go and they're afraid they're going to get kicked out of their apartment. So my bottom line question is, in the numerous cities that you have worked with, Do you have any analysis that you ever go into or have you seen any benefit from a mere rental registry to a rental registry slash licensure? I'm just asking what your experience has been. If you don't have any, okay, that's cool.

No, no, I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. And no, I do, you know what I mean? So there's sort of levels of intensity of that so our a rental registry gets you further than if you didn't have one the licensure and and you know a lot of times we'll talk about a licensure or maybe we are um you know we've recommended to other cities that um are looking at a kind of a landlord certification program which is like a licensure and so you're you're you're saying okay if you've got uh you know in order to be considered a quality landlord and to get a, you know, kind of a gold star from the city, you need to meet these criteria. And if you do, then you make the list and it allows to start weeding out that. You know, the next step then also is proactive inspection or what do you call those? Reoccupancy inspections and those kinds of things. And so we've worked in municipalities that don't do any of that and, you know, want to move the needle in some way. So maybe it's a registry. Sometimes it can't even be a registry, but it's a landlord certification. And so it's really taking the tools and putting them together and taking them as far as you can. If you do proactive inspections, maybe the other two, maybe the painless steps will get you that far. So yes, we've looked at this and we've recommended and Usually we're putting together the pieces and trying to push it as far as we can and then the community, the governing body, the public are telling us how much they want to tolerate, you know, sort of what level. And like you said, meeting that is going to, you've got an issue with slum landlords, as you said, How do you want to address that? And these are different tools that you have. And we have had opportunities to put those in play.

Well, I wish he would have weighed in on that, too.

Well, we've, you know, between the three or four bigger cities in Kansas that we've pried, we get a little stymied by the state, as you know.

No, I didn't know that.

State legislature, you know, how much they can allow and how much a city is willing to go is very much just a push-pull as you're having those community conversations.

Well, we'll have to look into that because licensure, you know, is on the topic of discussion. We know we definitely have pushback by the legislature when it comes to inspections. So that is a very hairy beast. At any rate, I'll have to look into more of what you said. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor.

Council Member Banks.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm looking at the 2019 housing study, and it clearly indicates that we need more housing. But in my district, my constituents are looking at the houses that are being built are not affordable for the people that probably need them most. So I'm thinking or wondering if you have any idea how we get the people matching the growth of the housing. You have to look back. This is a city that hasn't grown 10,000 people in 50 years. So how are we going to fill those houses?

I mean, our demand analysis shows that there is demand across. I'm not sure if I'm understanding your question correctly.

Well, maybe I can make it a little clearer. The houses that are being built right now, there's a number of them. and most of them are exceeding the capability of some constituents in our city to afford them. So how do we get them to the level, I mean, they're not going to be able to, we can build all we want, but if we don't have people that can afford the houses that we have in our city, we're just spinning our wheel, or as Councilman Kale would say, kicking a can down the road.

So Justin, I'm going to interject on that and then you can add to whatever. But I'm going to connect it to something in both your report that you go into a little more in-depth than the actual report and then what was on your slide tonight, which is we are a city with no infill development incentives or programs. And so I think to the council member's point, he's got people in his district who they're acquiring the land and they're building the homes, but if you don't have any sort of infill incentives or development plan, then the cost of those homes are more to build without some sort of assistance on our end, and then therefore it drives up the price. And so I do want to point out to everybody that was very much something that stood out to me as your guys' commentary about, hey, we really need to look at some infill development programs to help with that.

Yeah, that's right. And I think I would also add, there is development of higher-end market-rate homes, and there is a demand for that. I think we've got two different questions going on. I don't think that it is a function of you're building higher-end market-rate homes, and you don't have the population or the demand at all. I believe, according to our demand analysis, that you do. It's a separate conversation, though, and I think you highlighted this. to say that there's also a need for more, you know, work for housing and more affordable housing and how that's a different strategy. And that strategy that, you know, look at 80% of area median income and below in this day and age in 2026 on September 8th, you know, it is very difficult for the private market to deliver housing that is affordable to even folks that are making 80 to 100% area median. So there needs to be some sort of municipal participation, some community philanthropy or community partner participation in the housing that deliver that end of the market in order to find those homes, to build those homes for a more affordable population. So it's not just one or the other. It is both.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Hiller.

Thank you. I've got kind of three overarching questions. One of them, you're saying we need 4,220 new units across the board. Yet the same census data that you drew other numbers from says that in 2024 we had 60,213 housing units and only 57,797 households. So there's a gap of 2,416 which are vacant structures. And those are in my neighborhoods and David's neighborhoods and so on. Yet the sentence in the beginning of your vacant housing assessment said, oh, we weren't asked to talk about that. And you mentioned it today. I appreciate whoever... Probably trickled that for me and maybe some others to you, but it doesn't make sense to me to not have a strategy to deal with that housing. Even if you want to go with a 5% turnover factor, that would knock that in half, but that would still give us 1,200 units that are going to sit or there's going to be one whenever we build something else. My questions are, who are you thinking those 4,220 people are going to be? Are they going to be people from Topeka or people we're attracting in from somewhere else?

It's a combination of both. So the slide, it's slide seven on my deck here, where it says what changed at the top, and it's got a table. There is pent up demand for housing unit from residents here. If you could go down one slide from that, go to the next slide, that would be the one I'm looking at. But there is pent up demand from existing looking for housing of different different affordabilities than what they currently have. And then as you talk about, you know, the demand going forward, it could be a combination of just changing household dynamics and could be residences as housing, as the population ages, as household dynamics change all our household sizes. It could be, you know, there are families that might have four people in them now that might, that same family could have two or three people and somebody spin off into a new household. There's a lot of dynamics for folks living in Topeka that could change this household dynamic. But then it is also future demand and a projection of a .05 annual growth rate, so we did factor a growth rate to our analysis, which is growth, both active growth and migration growth into the city that will be part of that demand calculation.

Thanks for that. And I mean, if you weren't asked to, if you were just asked to look for how many people, how many units we might want to develop, fair enough, I guess. But I guess a challenge to all of us is I just can't imagine us having an overall housing strategy that doesn't include all those structures. Many of them have been sitting for a while, others not very long, but they're part of it.

So yeah, and I do think that there is, I mean, I think we've started to find a bit of a strategy, which is looking at those structures at that neighborhood plan level. And so again, it's a macro city-wide analysis The data is not rich enough to do that at a citywide scale. And so the real opportunity is, as you are going through your neighborhood plans and looking at very specific geographies, it makes those numbers of of the structures that you need to get additional data on and analyze in a deeper way, you get a much smaller pool of that in that neighborhood planning moment that you're able to do a greater level of analysis of forest. I think I would say that that is the strategy, is to begin to look at those units, those vacant buildings, in a way that is very targeted neighborhood by neighborhood as you go through the planning.

Well, I very much agree. I guess when I look at that, if we identify in a certain neighborhood that we actually have 222 existing housing units and we really focus on fixing them up, shouldn't that 222 or whatever it is come off the 4,220 goal if we've brought back into the marketplace one way or another?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I talked over to you. What was your last statement?

Well, just because if we brought those existing units back into the marketplace, and I say that, I represent Central Topeka, and when if somebody is just building brand new subsidized apartments or houses someplace else and people are moving out of my neighborhood, then who's going to be in our neighborhoods? And at least... The third question I had was when you have a number like that, it's much more exciting, at least to some people, to do something new and build something new someplace than to go back and work with what we have. Is there a mechanism that you have built in to this report or otherwise that helps us understand when we have reached our goal of 210 a year or 4,000? When is the subsidy and incentive and extra effort enough and the market should be able to handle itself?

So I'd like to address two things there. I think one thing to recognize, you said, shouldn't we take, let's just say a particular neighborhood or a cluster of neighborhoods has 220 units. Wouldn't we take that off? I would say yes. If those units became productive residential unit, that is meeting some of that demand. Absolutely. But they aren't productive right now. They aren't habitable. And so there's still a demand. And I'm not saying necessarily that you need to build your way out of it. Part of that building is infill development. Part of that building could be a reclamation of some of those vacant structures that you're talking about. So that's all part of that. I wouldn't just take them off the top and part of the production and bringing those up to Stanford. The other thing that I want to say though is that one of the things that we acknowledged on the slide and that we've been thinking about here and permanently and talking to staff is the fact that a vacant building is not as simple as, it would be interesting as you go through your neighborhood plans and you look at the structures, Think a couple of different things. We don't know the condition of them. They may not be simple rehabs. There's analysis that looks at what does it take to construct a new unit? What is the subsidy needed to make that affordable? What's the comparison of building a new unit versus a light rehab or a full remodel? and rehabilitation versus the renovation. So there are different economics in play here. And so the vacant buildings are still going to need a level of I think public investment and incentives in order to get them back into a productive mode, this is not a turn-piece situation where you're looking at a lot of vacant units that just need an utility hookup and maybe a fresh AC or a fresh roof. It may not be that. Some of them could be, and there could be a renovation component to it. but there's likely a larger rehabilitation component. It's those kinds of situations and understated conditions and the economics of bringing them up to a quality level unit that is part of that, I think, deeper neighborhood level analysis. The economics are not as simple as the unit already there because of the need for renovation or rehabilitation of that unit. So I'm not saying that they aren't, and it may be cheaper than actually constructing a new unit. There's definitely grades to that, and believe me, We understand development feasibility very intimately and we do this as part of neighborhood plans everywhere. So we can illustrate it, but it isn't as simple as saying it's a $10,000 roof. There may be more involved in bringing that unit to a quality habitable unit. And that's part of that economic understanding is what I think you will get at your neighborhood level and understanding it unit by unit rather than wholesale. It's easier to have a vacant parcel analysis because the tools involved in new construction, land bank properties and the municipality's participation in getting new units built on an infill sort of situation is sort of a known economics, you understand that. But the economics of renovation and rehabilitation is very unit to unit specific and that's what requires that deeper analysis at that neighborhood level.

Thank you. Just didn't want us left out.

And all of it's an opportunity. All of it's an opportunity, Councilman Hiller.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Councilmember Kell.

I understand a little bit what you're talking about, Councilman Hiller, about the number discrepancy is we're living in a different time. A good example, my wife and I, we have our 20-year-old living at home. And you get those from those high school grads to two or three years post-college living at home. And we'd rather say stack up your money And so we have all this pent-up, as he put it, housing need, and we'd rather, like in my case, my wife and I would rather our child stack up that money to be able to go out and afford that rent rather than have to go work two jobs and struggle. And you see that a lot, and it also is multigenerational, is, you know, mom or dad's at home, and they have their adult child living with them just because it's a lot more cost-effective right now, and it's... You know, it's like that whole thing that they said that, you know, our parents, you know, pretty much almost felt like they walked into a house when they graduated high school or college because of the cost. And now the cost has sort of skyrocketed that it's almost not even a part of the American dream anymore to be able to afford a house. So that's where I think he might be getting a lot of his pent up is that 18 to 25-year-old looking to get their own place but staying with mom and dad for now.

Yeah, Councilman, the economic, maybe even more so than the demographic side of this, is a real challenge across the country. Wage stagnation, wage increases that haven't matched home value and rental increases. And, you know, somebody mentioned earlier, you know, the lack of a state minimum wage. All of that economic side of this very much does impact this, perhaps even more than the demographic shifts. And I think you're absolutely right there.

Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be brief. So I have some subsidized housing in my district. And I don't know if this study talks about it, but we've talked about it. It's over 60 years old. When does your study say we just need to tear everything down and start from the ground up? Because in this location, it really needs to be configured. It worked 60 years ago. Our emergency vehicles have a hard time getting through there. And we've talked about that, but nothing's ever happened. Does your study address that?

Not to the level I think you would want it to. There is, again, at a neighborhood level or a small development level, it's much easier to get into the specific economics of what it means to redevelop a property. HUD is looking at this with their RAD program and being able to reconfigure what public housing looks like now and having federally, you know, federal programs to allow for the reconfiguration of older public housing, older Section 8 housing. That is, you know, a big conversation right now in cities across the country. And so, but you don't again sort of do that on a macro scale. It's very much development by development or neighborhood by neighborhood because you need to understand you know how many units the condition of those units again the idea of what are the economics of tearing them down and building new needing to do slight renovations or needing to do large rehabilitation all of that or you know are different ways to tackle the age and the quality and the maintenance of old housing especially older public housing and you need to be able to do very specific kind of feasibility analysis if you will that just doesn't typically happen in a citywide level so you can get into that very much development by development level looking with the community development funds looking with the Housing Authority and other other entities, you know public philanthropy and others that might be involved with that But when you're looking at public housing specifically in the re Kind of the reconfiguration and redevelopment of that I would look at the RAD program as a starting point Thank you, mr. Mayor any other comments or questions for Justin See none.

Thank you very much, sir. I

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. I appreciate the time.

All right. With that, we will move on to the consent agenda.

There's minutes of the regular meeting of September 1, 2026, and there are no applications.

All right. Motion to approve from Councilmember Miller, second from Councilmember Bradbury. Kirk, take the vote, please.

OK, we have 10 yes. The motion carries.

All right. With that, we move on to action items. 5A, city clerk.

A is an ordinance introduced by City Manager Dr. Robert Perez regarding utility rates for 2027 through 2030, amending Topeka Municipal Code Sections 130520 through 060, and repealing original sections.

City Manager. Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, beginning on June 2nd, we started council agenda discussions on the need for utility rate adjustments to support our operations and increase our investments in capital improvements with entering water utilities. Over the last several months, we've presented utility rate options, but our recommendation this evening, which I fully support, will include removal of the readiness to serve charge and incremental increases in base and consumption charges across all customer classes with a phased-in approach for commercial and industrial customers over the next four years. With that, I will now turn this over to Sylvia Davis, Director of Utilities, and Nicole Mallott, Deputy Director of Utilities, to lead us through this item. Ladies. Thank you.

Okay, good evening. I do not have a formal presentation tonight. We've shared a lot of information, but I would, if you'll bear with me for a few moments, just like to say a few things. First, I'd like to thank everybody who has contributed to these rate discussions over the last several months. We've had a large amount of public feedback, which has been It's not always the most positive, but it's actually very helpful to our conversations with our industrial and commercial partners and the thoughtful questions and feedback that this governing body has given to us. It's opened many windows to the criticality of our infrastructure, but also to the affordability and sustainability challenges that our community faces, so that's not lost on us. I also want to give a special thanks to our utilities team who has helped support this effort, not just in updating spreadsheets and calculating impacts, but also challenging us in how we communicate our needs, how we manage our infrastructure, and how we can improve service across all of our efforts. Our employees are not just staff, they are residents and small business owners. They do their grocery shopping here and they use our infrastructure every day, just like the rest of our community. They are very much invested in Topeka and they are equally impacted by utility rates. As we've worked to balance competing demands and priorities, it's been through collaborative dialogue that we have come to a proposal that does not promise to make everyone happy, but it does demonstrate this administration's commitment to investing in Topeka's future. Earlier this year, the AWWA president, that's American Water Works Association, President reported that the path to a resilient and affordable water future depends on collaboration among water utilities, policymakers, all of us, while keeping front and center the people and families who must be able to afford water without sacrificing other essential needs. I want to emphasize that this is not the end of our dialogue and collaboration. However tonight's vote goes, we're committed to and we look forward to the ongoing discussions as we plan and invest in reliability, sustainability, and affordability for Topeka's utility infrastructure. With that in mind, I stand for any questions you may have as you consider this important vote in front of you tonight.

We do have two individuals signed up for public comment, so we will go to them first. First up, Mr. Henry McClure.

Good evening, Your Honor. Thank you for the opportunity. My name's Henry McClure. I live in Topeka, Kansas. And kind of what got me started on this whole thing was, you know, the planning department took that zoning where you could live in commercial buildings, which I really love, and it took like an act of God to get everybody to realize that the gas company and everything, because of the different rates. I mean, the... Gas Company and Evergy, they had to send people out. But I get my water bill since the classification change and my water bill went up. But I think one of the themes that I've tried to convey down here is equal treatment. And I think maybe over time I pointed out some issues or some times where people have gotten special consideration. Maybe the T&T building, Lawrence Bay, to name a few. But when I look at who, what I'm trying to say is the commercial tenants, And everybody ought to just pay one rate. Take the residential rate. And what I've learned with all this research is you're the final say, not the state, not the KCC, you guys. And all you have to do is be reasonable. And if you took this list of people, if you take the public companies, they have a market cap of $277 billion. And what we're doing, we're the mules carrying the weight for the corporate welfare. And so let's take the data center test, the litmus test. And let's just put the data center over the rates. And for all the reasons you hate data centers, You should just charge these guys more water rates today. Reesers, 53 million gallons a month, they can't fold their tent and go back to Oregon. It's not unreasonable to look at corporate America that we've given them every concession, every time we can. And I'd really like to someday if I, years from now when I retire, but what did those jobs really cost the citizens? And how much are we really carrying the burden? But the people of Topeka shouldn't have to pay or subsidize corporate America. And if you take the data center test to Frito-Lay, well, there's not much health food there. I mean, everybody's trying to point out that the data centers are bad for the environment. But so you can be reasonable, and you can pick up $3 or $4 million today just by charging the top tens. And before I close here, let's talk about the free ride Stormont Vale gets. They have, what, 58 buildings that they don't pay real estate tax on? Why should they get a subsidy of water? If everybody's paying the same water rate, it is what it is. And plus, with the corporations? They're writing that off against their tax return, their income. So think it through. Thanks.

Thank you. Next up, Danielle Twimlow.

Good evening. So we have been told time and time again that our water rates are necessary to fund our infrastructure replacement. We've been shown capital budgets containing millions of dollars in water main replacement projects. We've been told that the city has an aging system and substantial replacement obligations. I'm really not debating most of that. But when we ask the most basic accountability questions, What projects were completed? How many miles were replaced? What year did this happen? How much money did we spend? All of those sorts of things which time and time again have brought up. There are some piecing together. One of the reasons that I don't necessarily just print out and hand every single thing that we discover with documents is because we tend to just give excuses for that specific situation. I did bring forth one specific last week and had a bit of some conflicting information about how within CIP project years and our budget and online sources that our city keeps could have conflicting information. But I want to be very clear. that the response that was received is even more concerning and we cannot move forward on agreeing to any sort of utility rate increase when what was stated was miles completed and money spent has always been a difficult question to answer. with consistency due to various factors such as program funding year, year completed, and year actually closed or capitalized. While memory can serve for a while, time can make that fuzzy and turnover results in a complete loss of knowledge. The only consistently reliable way to track that stat is by using the year closed out capitalized in the accounting system. That method is what we will be using moving forward. an absolute devastating emission that our utility rate increases over year after year cannot be accounted for, that we can't be told this number of miles have been replaced, this utility rate went to this, because we're using institutional knowledge instead of an accounting system, which I'm really glad that's put in place now. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm not stating that anyone is doing anything specifically wrongdoing. But we're in a situation of a frog boiling in water. We've just been doing the same thing for so long that we don't realize what needs to happen. And that is 100% why, in order to move forward, we need a very, very detailed forensic audit of how we do business. Taxes aren't going to fix this. A utility rate isn't going to fix this. We have to see where these inefficiencies are and what is leading us to not being able to answer simple questions about project throughout its timeframe from inception to funding to completion. That is our requirement. We have to have an audit trail of those things. And so what I am stating to you today is that increasing our utility rates yet again without being able to verify exactly where our money is going is negligent. But it's also kicking the can, right? It's also doing that because we're not solving the problem. There's clear issues within this accounting process. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mayor. As I stated before, I would be voting no for this. I think we continue to see increase after increase. I know that there's a lot of information that has come forth. I have had concerns growing over the years that I'm not going to repeat. I too, like many citizens, believe out there listening and watching right now that we need a forensic audit. To do anything before we have that, to start tracking what is really going on in some of our departments, I believe I can't do it. So I would love to be supporting this. And I too push for a forensic audit. Thank you.

Council Member Kell.

Honestly, I think a forensic audit in any department, you know, we rotated that around to, you know, each department every so many years would be a good idea to know where our money is going. I just know that this is a department that is our livelihood. You know, we need water. and we need to be sure that we're taking care of the stuff that we have and if we're going to cut into any type of general fund or water fund to not raise rates we're going to run into a lot of issues here in the next few years and that is that the one thing that we desperately need is good clean water and things have just everything has skyrocketed in price over the years. And I think our staff has gone and tried to figure out the best way to minimize the effect of our citizens. But I don't want to raise rates. None of us up here want to raise rates, but it's just to keep on doing what we're doing and not sit there and defer projects, not sit there and defer the maintenance that we need to be doing every month and every year. We have to come up with that plan. from somewhere. And there's been probably 10, 15 plans that have come across our desks over this. So it's something that we've looked at. And it's not we're just saying, OK, let's raise rates. We've really looked at this and tried to figure out the best way possible. And I support this because we need to be looking at our future and not tearing it down by saying that we don't need to raise rates. Like I said before, I am in favor of a friends audit, but I'm also in favor for that for all departments. Maybe that's something we can look at a five-year rotation for the different departments.

Thank you. Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you. I too want to thank staff for Throwing all this crap at me. Met with them today and I learned something new. How about that? So I don't know if you can do this, Sylvia. If you can give it to Dan over there. That bill. Not my bill. The... You know, I want to thank staff for one thing. They have gone, they have dug deep. They have looked, as we've asked them to, they've looked at a contract. So you know when you get your water bill, you are charged for your refuge and your Recycling. Recycling. And we collect for the county. So when we don't get that, they don't get that. I also learned that we pay for all the mailing going out. Every bill that gets mailed out, that gets charged back to the city. This is a contract way back when... And so they are also looking at that because I think if we're collecting for them, I think that we should get some kind of compensation, especially since postage is going up. I know everybody's like, wow, the city's just hitting everybody. But that's why we're so damn poor. We're doing everything. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, for saying that. So if you look at this, show them, Sylvia, what you showed me today. So I went in and I said, pull up my bill. And this is how much my bill is. And I said, my water bill is high as hell. It's 100, what was it, 26 or 36? 128. They see, they remember. And they said, that's not all water. That's not all water. And then they broke it down. We get so much stuff thrown at us, sometimes we miss that point. So go ahead, Nicole, tell them what you told me when I said that.

About the three? Well, the fact that the city, on your utilities bill, you're actually being billed for five utilities. Right. Three of them are city of Topeka. You're being billed for water, wastewater, stormwater. You also have a refuse and recycling charge on that. Councilman Ortiz was just recognizing that many people get lost on the fact they see the bill, they see one water bill. And it's just important to remember that it's not one utility. It's actually five in most cases.

I couldn't say that like you said that. Thank you. So I want us to remember that. That's not all of us, but we always get blamed for everything at the end of the day. Again, we're paying for postage, which has gone up. And the county, when they don't get their money, we don't get our money when it's out there. And then we also pay for... when we have to go back and take them to court, correct? Correct. Yep. So look at the three things that we don't get paid for. So that's hurting us. What I did ask you, Sylvia, is from my constituents, they don't want that readiness to serve charge, and that's out of you. Correct.

With the proposal that you have in front of you, it's like that last proposal that we sent is not, and the language reads that base charge only applies to properties with active accounts. Okay. So active service, if you do not have active service, you would, it would be pre-2024 days where you would not get charged with this proposal.

Okay. So again, they want to pay for a service that they use. So they won't have that in there, right?

We took that out. If they don't have active water service, they're not going to be getting water base charge or wastewater base charge.

It used to be called readiness to serve, now it's a base charge.

Correct. It would still be assessed fees for stormwater because they still have impervious surface on the lot. If they have minimal water usage, I think that's been a question in the past as well, they will pay that base charge, but their volume is what they can control the most, and so they would be not assessed a minimum volume. If they're only using 900 gallons of water, we're not going to have a minimum charge of 1,000 gallons, if that makes sense.

So you're going to charge me for what I'm using, right? Correct. And I had them bring up my bill, and they showed me in January. I don't know what I did, but I was shooed. I used a lot of water. I didn't water no grass or nothing. That's the other thing. My low to moderate income people, my elderly, they only want to be charged for what they use. And they think, you know, I'm the only one in this household. Why is my bill? Because it used to be you paid from here to here, right? But now we're paying for what we are using. Yes. If we adopt this, correct?

Earlier rates years ago had a minimum. So it didn't matter if you used 300 or 900. You were getting a minimum charge. That's right. And that is no longer the case.

That's no longer the case. Correct. okay now i'm going to skip to my commercial who i've got the biggest commercial water user in the city of topeka who's in this year or maybe he was in this there i don't know but he's out there and if we i i i heard the gentleman say well let's just charge them and make them pay blah blah but if we did that his next bill would be eight thousand

No, significantly. Our largest water user pays a great deal of money for that water. I don't know where I got that. It could have been from him. But this compromise rate that we've been discussing doesn't mean that they don't have increases. It just simply means their increase went from back in June, the rate that we proposed. That was the one that would have. That would have had a 15% higher. That would have had a 15% increase for that largest user in 2027. This compromise rate brings that to under 10%. Okay. It doesn't get them away. They're not getting off scot-free. They are still seeing increases. And those commercial and industrial users over the last three years have consistently seen 12% increases. And so this compromise rate really helps balance that out a little bit. It does increase what we have seen. ask the first year that 2027 rate for residential customers increased slightly from our original proposal. However, it does have a much more balanced impact on those large users. They're still paying significant amounts and over the next four years those rate increases that that largest user will see will still be in the millions and that is increased over what they're paying today but we're working with them we're working with them just like we're working with the with the residents correct okay um i asked the question

Now that we're, when we do projects, they brought up the Huntoon project and we tear all that out and we put our sewer lines and our water lines, is that saving us money? And Nicole said, yes, it is. Because if, when we have to tear out a street, we have to pay to put it back. And so with us working hand in hand on different projects, this saves us an enormous amount of water, right? Or money, right? And so they work hand in hand with the street department. So I could appreciate that. I can appreciate all of the hard work that you guys have done. And I can support this. I can honestly say I can support this. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council Member Kell.

I think I was the only one that was in favor of keeping the base charge or ready to serve, whatever you want to call it. And my point of view on that was if you're hooked to the infrastructure, you pay for the infrastructure. And I did talk to some people afterwards, and I think we did come up with some type of policy that During water volume replacements, if you have been inactive for like five years or whatever, your meter gets taken out. Or if there's a water main break and it's right next to that meter and that person has been inactive for five years or whatever, we yank it. Just because I mentioned, I asked last week, if we go down the whole road and change out all the meters, do we change out the inactives? And it was a yes. So I think we need to come up with some policy so that people want to be inactive. we can at least not have to pay in the future to replace meters or take care of meters that are not being used, and be able to use those meters elsewhere, especially if they're still in good condition, things like that. They'll save us a little bit of money in the long run there, rather than just having, in essence, buried money that's just sitting there deteriorating. So I'd like to see some type of policy or instructions or rules that how we're going to handle inactive meters for, I'd say, five years is a good time frame,

to have those either not replaced or removed at certain for certain circumstances thank you other comments or questions from the governing body council member hillary mike is your motion for the latest um schedule that the staff has brought us yes I will second that motion.

So what specifically is the motion? I got to be honest, it was a little. What specifically is your motion to amend this? I'm not amending it. OK. What do you mean? What's your motion?

Motion to approve the proposal. Oh, yeah. OK. I got you there.

OK. Yeah. I got you. Make sure everyone else gets a chance to talk if they'd like.

I wasn't amending anything.

I know.

OK. That's why I was asking.

Any other comments or questions? I do have a question, Sylvia. I want to clear something up. If I ask your staff right now for a list the past five years of every water line that we've placed, you are absolutely capable of providing that to me, correct?

Correct.

Okay. I do want that to be clear. You do know what lines you've replaced. We do have a chart and a list of actually probably the last decade that can be provided to us.

Absolutely. Some of the frustrations that have been expressed, we've had our own in terms of using different systems, old databases, and then when we try to implement new technology like open checkbook, we don't necessarily know where all of that data is being pulled from. So some of our information may not match up with what is meant to be a tool to be very transparent. So it's just continued dialogue. If we're going to implement some sort of system like we did when we did open checkbook we need to make sure that we're as a whole collectively the city is maintaining those systems so that they are sharing accurate we're going to tell people it's real-time data that it either needs to be real-time data or it needs to come with a caveat that it's six month old data and if you want the most recent yes we would not disagree with that at all i think if you ask anybody today um with this transition into tyler i mean there's there's delays in that information and It can be a burden to try to get you the same answer, but that's what we've worked hard to do and have a very consistent process in terms of when is it officially classified. Because again, we may say we had 12 water main breaks in December, but if one of those or three of those did not finish up in terms of the the restoration of the site, the driveway on top, the yard on top. If that didn't finish until January, it's going to be captured in January's data, if that makes sense. So there's dialogue, and that's where we have to make sure that we're being consistent in reporting so that we, again, get the same, whatever that route is, it's consistent and we're providing that information, no matter who you ask.

I didn't vote for the last water rate increase. I thought that it was not put together well. I thought there were some issues which we saw bleed through these conversations as we talked to things like base charge or readiness to serve or whatever you want to call it. I THINK WHAT I APPRECIATE ABOUT THIS PROCESS IS WE SAW THE INITIAL DRAFTS. WE AS A COUNCIL PUSHED BACK AND SAID THAT'S NOT ACCEPTABLE TO OUR RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS. STAFF WENT BACK AND DID AN ANALYSIS OF WHAT OTHER MARKETS ARE CHARGING FOR INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL AND WE FOUND WE HAD SOME WIGGLE ROOM THERE AND BY MAKING THOSE CHANGES AND WORKING WITH SOME OF THOSE businesses we were able to then make those changes with the smallest reduction we could possibly make to our residential users if you look at the rate over those four years it's being proposed the highest isn't even two dollars on the high end and i'm not saying this is a great choice that we have to make but i do know there's some realities as to what the cost of things are both for us and for our residents and we have to take that into effect into the sum of its whole I do remind everybody that as that conversation has come up tonight that this council last week instructed our staff to put the city auditor position in the 2027 budget. And so we are moving forward on that piece of it and those questions can then be answered and examined as we go through this process. But sometimes we have to make these decisions concurrently. And so as someone who's voted against the last one, I'm going to vote for this one because I appreciate that staff has made it as minimal as possible and listened to us in this process and taken those concerns and considerations of what the cost is to the citizens of Topeka. It's a four-year plan, and I will also remind everybody that in this process over the next two years, we will do a rate study, and that may positively impact some changes we can make in the rates that we have going forward as we also put projects together and look at ways to reduce some costs overall. So as always, I tell people we are city government. We are flexible. So what we lock in today can be changed in the future if need be as we work through this process. And so I will be a yes vote this evening on this issue. Any other comments or questions? We have a motion to approve from Councilmember Kell and a second from Councilmember Hiller. Anybody else? If not, then I would ask the clerk to take the vote, please.

Okay, we have eight yes. The motion carries with Councilmembers Valdivia, Ocala, and Bradbury voting no.

With that, we move on to action item B, city clerk.

B is the public hearing for the purpose of hearing and answering objections of taxpayers to the proposed city of Topeka 2027 operating budget.

Deputy city manager. That's what I have on here. I don't know why. Maybe it's city manager. I don't know.

Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, as mentioned, as part of our FY2027 proposed budget process, the purpose of this item is to hold a public hearing to seek input from the community on the FY2027 proposed budget. Public hearing is a state mandated requisite prior to the city adopting the budget by ordinance, which is scheduled for next week on September 15th. With that, Josh McInerney, Deputy Director of Budget and Finance, and I are here for any questions.

All right. Josh, anything you want to say before we end this hearing?

No, I don't have anything to add. But yeah, this is just a public hearing. It's a statutory requirement. So we can't vote on the budget until we have this hearing. So this is just part of the normal process.

Correct. And just as a reminder, everybody, our plan is to vote next week because it's our last meeting of the month. Our budgets are due to the county by October 1. So unless we need to or feel need to call a special meeting in between next week and October 1, We've got tonight and next week to have these discussions, and today we're hearing from the public. The public's also invited to come and speak next week. It just won't be part of the official public hearing, as we've been hearing from people through this process. So with that, I will now open this public hearing and ask for those who are present. I'm going to start with those who have signed up, and then if there are other individuals here who have not signed up, you are more than welcome to come forward and speak. First up, I have Andrea Palmer. Welcome, Andrea. Can you hear me? Yeah, I should review. If you've ever been here before, it's four minutes. There's a timer right in front of you to watch your time. It's going to beep at you once. That doesn't mean you're done. That means you got one more minute. So thank you.

Again, my name is Andrea Palmer. I am a resident of the city of Topeka. And I am a sixth grade science teacher at Eisenhower Middle School. I want to begin by saying that I feel safer at work because Officer Timothy Bell is there. I am glad to have a trained police officer in my school building. Officer Bell is calm, soft spoken, and builds trusting relationships with students. I spoke with a couple of students who have close relationships with Officer Bell. BW said, when I first started sixth grade, Officer Bell just started talking to me. He knows my sisters and brothers. He's always smiling. He's never mad. And he always has a good spirit. He's somebody I trust. I would trust him with information about a crime if I knew something. TT said, me and Officer Bell have always been close. He does the best he can to help us succeed. He even helped me with my math homework after school one time. I told him I didn't know he was so good at math. He told me he almost became a math teacher. I asked him why he became an officer instead, and he told me that he wanted to help people that need help. Every time I see him outside of school, we always talk. He's the best officer we could have here. I feel like I could tell him about a crime. He knows my dad and he used to help my dad too. Officer Bell started work at Eisenhower in November 2016. During that time, he was running the Our Kids program for the Topeka Police Department, mentoring African American boys ages 12 to 18. That year, he signed up 42 sixth graders. Before Officer Bell began running the program, the students had an average of six major discipline referrals and had an average GPA of 1.6. He worked with these boys until they graduated high school with an average GPA of 3.5 and no discipline referrals. He received the Troy Scroggins Award from the City Council for his efforts working with youth in 2018. From 2016 to 2022, working as the Our Kids Program Coordinator at Eisenhower and Highland Park, he graduated over 200 boys, and over 140 of them joined the military, workforce, or went to college. During the summertime, he would pick up boys to cut grass around the city with a program he created called Worth Our Weight in efforts to keep them out of trouble and learn how to manage money. The boys who participated would generally increase their grade point averages substantially. He took over the SRO position at Eisenhower in 2022. Since then, he's worked hard to cultivate relationships with students and their families, and that helps when he is working outside of the school. Quote, I'm able to prevent issues at public events like the Fiesta when I see two of our students conducting themselves in ways that may lead to trouble. And I'm able to defuse that issue in ways a normal officer may not have been able to. I also received numerous emails throughout the school year about issues in the community from community members of kids doing things their parents likely wouldn't approve of. And I'm able to take care of those issues without patrol officers being contacted. Please vote to keep Topeka police officers in Topeka Public Schools. Thank you for your service to our city.

Thank you. Next up, we have Mr. Paul Byrne.

Thank you. My name is Paul Byrne. I'm a resident of District 7 here in Topeka. I'm an economist by training. I wrote an article a couple weeks ago, sent an email to the city council this morning and then also a couple weeks ago, and I appreciate the responses that I got. My specialty is public economics. I think about economics a lot. I spoke to the city council before years ago and then more recently on things like economic development and things like that. I typically don't get too involved in discussing things on the budget. Because I know you guys are faced with really tough choices, and there's no easy choices. You're faced with two bad decisions, really. You could either raise people's taxes, and a couple weeks, I think a week ago or a couple weeks ago, you had the revenue neutral rate hearing. You had a lot of people complaining that. their taxes were going up too much, even though I was a city resident, my city taxes went up less than the other property tax bills I was getting. Or you have to cut spending and you have to cut services that are really valuable to the residents of Topeka. I'm probably in a minority. I mentioned this at the county commissioner's meeting. I'm probably the one person who, if it was up to me, I'd prefer my city taxes went up a little bit more. because I really don't like, I'm sure you didn't get a lot of people saying that a couple weeks ago, but I really hate to see fewer firefighters hired and fewer police officers on the street. We had a kind of tragic case that someone was talking about in the beginning of the meeting, and that's really the cost to me of lower taxes, and if I have to pay a little bit more every year, I'm probably somewhat okay with that. I've shared with you guys the thing that I wonder about is in all this discussion in the news about budgets and about the data centers, nobody seems to connect these two things together. That's one of the things I'm trying to get out is to expand the debate on the data centers to see how it really could have a big impact on the budget. I shared this in my Capital Journal article that I wrote. I sent an email to the city council today in the hopes of kind of getting more of a discussion, more of an understanding on how the data center could potentially impact the budget and how it impacts real people who you guys really don't want to raise taxes for. I created a website. It is called TopekaDataCenterTaxes.com, and it's meant to just be really simple where people can go in, put in their assessed value that's in their tax bill and click whether they're in the city, click on whether they're in the 437 school district and see how their taxes could go down if you kept the spending exactly the same as was in the revenue neutral rate and just use that extra tax, the growth in the tax base in order to just lower people's taxes. So I ran an example for a home that's appraised at $250,000. If the city were to annex it, I know some of those things are beyond your control, That homeowner would see their city taxes go down by $332. They could see their county taxes go down by $348. And if they're in 437, which a lot of residents in District 7, 8, and 9 do have 437 as their school district, those taxes could go down by $560. $63. So for those city taxes, that $332, that's the benefit to the residents. It could be in the form of lower taxes or it could be in the form of extra services, right, and a smaller reduction in their taxes. But I think you really should consider the other side of the coin when you're making decisions on whether to annex the data center and whether to support the development of that.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, Jordan Seckman. Welcome, sir. Thank you.

I'm Jordan Seckman, and I am a parent of two children in Topeka schools. And I just wanted to speak in support of retaining the school resource officers. I think they're vital in the middle school, make a big difference. and I want to share a couple of stories my daughter has with them and I'll try to be brief. The first one, she was in sixth grade and for whatever reason she was being bullied or had some issue with a group of girls and they planned to jump her or fight her and she just learned that as she was exiting the building and I saw her being followed by the group of kids but the officer there at French officer Campbell was out there where he normally prevents all sorts of fights and rowdiness. I'm sure they turned around right away. I could see him from my car and I'm sure everybody can imagine how poorly that would have went for my daughter for those Children for me for I would have reacted and I imagine other parents would have reacted to me reacting. So I think that's vital. Another one is the officer at Chase Middle School where my daughter doesn't go to school. I believe that's Officer Hamilton. She attended a Gibbs Elite Basketball Academy there and And she fell in love with basketball there. And you can see some of the council members are also active in this. But he was the only person there of all the many volunteers who noticed that my daughter, who has no business in sports at that time, was running with the basketball consistently in all the drills. He was very observant, noticed that, was able to correct her, and now that basketball has become her way of life at French, and she's working hard at it, continuing to work hard on it, but more importantly, her studies. And she's 5'1", probably will not play basketball outside of high school, but she probably will be a teacher in this community, and going from Mostly Bs to all As, I think, is an important benefit for this community. So these SROs not only give us context for our future law enforcement officers to be tied to this community, and be the best officers we can have in this community. They also are supporting other areas where we as a country or a community are lacking, which is teachers, and I just wanted to express my support for them, and really I think they should expand to the high school, and I'm a bit... Shocked that we don't have them here in Topeka, but I'm not from Topeka. And that's really all I have to say. But thank you guys for your time. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next up, we have Dr. Tiffany Anderson.

Mayor, since Ms. Hoffman signed up and we have young people here, may I cede the time to them and come back when they're done? for our middle school students.

So it's an open hearing. So if you have comments, you can make those now or you can come back up and they can come now. But after I go through the list of people who are signed up, we then will open it up to everybody because this is an open hearing to anyone in the audience. That's a little clearer than seating time and making sure that we're not using more than four minutes.

Good evening. Kelly Hoffman, principal at French Middle School. And I am back. I know we spoke once before. Just as you're getting ready to vote on this, I just want to make sure that you understand that the Shawnee County Sheriff's Department provides five officers to the surrounding districts of the public schools. They include Rossville, Silver Lake, Shawnee Heights, Washburn Rural and Seaman. Three of those districts also have a campus police unit that works alongside their county appointed or the sheriff's county officer that is in their school. I would hope that Topeka Public Schools could continue and is deserving of that same level of law enforcement support from the Topeka Police Department. If we remove our SRO unit, Topeka Public Schools will be the only district in the area that does not have a law enforcement partnership. Understanding we probably serve the most vulnerable and diverse population in our community. As I stated before when I was here, this is a relationship that we have sustained for 20 years. Been at French for 20 years, had an SRO in my building for 20 years. I just feel it is so important to continue. As you've heard some of the stories, you're going to hear from some kiddos. The relationship and the connection to the community is just incredible. If you haven't been in our schools to see them in action, I encourage you to come walk our halls and see what they do. They prevent crime, they build those connections with kids, they build connections with families, and they help provide a safer environment for our students where they have an opportunity to learn. And I just really encourage you to continue to support our resource officers and our schools. It's just really hard to put into words the good work that they do and the level of engagement that they connect with kids. So thank you.

So Dr. Are you ready to speak?

Good evening.

I am a second year college prep scholar and an eighth grader at Landon Middle School.

And my name is Brady Weeble. I am a first year college prep scholar and a seventh grader at French Middle School. We were given a task as a project-based learning activity to learn about current events in our world and apply them to our curriculum, which includes formulating professional emails, civic engagement activities, and presentations.

We are here today to stand up for the safety of our students and ask you to please keep student resource officers at USD 501. The Topeka Police Department stated that they are pulling the SRO program due to budgeting issues. However, USD 501 already covers 24% of officer salaries, approximately $250,000 a year, even though officers spend 25% of their time on the streets serving the community. When Mayor Duncan announced the removal of SROs, TPS offered an additional $150,000 to save the program. That offer was rejected. Now the city will have to pay the difference, which completely contradicts the goal of saving money.

Beyond the budget, SROs play a vital role in our daily lives. They don't just respond to emergencies. They prevent issues before they start by de-escalating conflict and serving as trusted mentors. They help students by building relationships with them, building a better relationship with the community, and helping with student self-esteem.

Based on studies done by the National Assessment of School Resource Officer Program, 92% of students with a personal relationship with SROs report feeling safer in schools, along with 76% of students without a personal relationship. I know from my own experiences that having a trusting relationship with your SRO can help report crime. I had a peer tell me that they were carrying a knife on them. In response to this, I immediately told my SRO, who I trusted, and he handled the situation before it potentially got worse. Having SROs in buildings also gives students another adult that they can trust. Whether it's talking to them in their office or playing cards at lunch, they can have someone to talk to. With having real officers available in schools, it also allows them to step into situations even outside of school grounds.

Instead of completely canceling the program, the city and the school districts can work together on a middle ground. You could also apply together for grants. We are asking you to please keep SROs in our schools for our safety, our community, and our future. SROs do far more than just guard a building. We understand money doesn't appear out of thin air, but our city must prioritize student safety. Please keep SROs at USD 501. Thank you.

Dr. Anderson.

Good evening. You've heard from students, staff, parents, and there are many here that, due to your time, have chosen not to speak. But I would ask that anyone that's here be recognized by just standing if you are here in support of SROs but are not trying to belabor the meeting by speaking. As they stand, I just want to share that as has already been said, the jurisdiction that a TPD SRO has with the community and the school is very different than just a school SRO. There are districts that have already been shared that have school employed SROs and city and or county SROs in the same building. It's been said that we have SROs already that are retired from TPD but that is not fully true in that when we look at all of our SROs in schools most of them are not retirees and we would hope that that's not our only reliance to have SROs in schools from TPD. The Topeka Police Department, I think each one of these principals that are here, students and staff and families, can share countless stories of ways in which they've prevented crime in the community, followed up in schools to talk about crime in the community, and often are the only trusted person that an individual may have as it relates to a school official and a police officer that they can go to. Most recently, we've had a student actually drive to the Topeka Police Department to report a crime. And that same student is someone that shared in the middle school, several of the students, when they had TPD right there, they could go directly to them. What we're asking is to please maintain Topeka Police Department SROs. We've offered additional funds. We've offered partnerships. We've offered ways that we can collaborate. We want to and will continue to be a partner with whatever you decide. Be reminded that decades ago, this started with the Topeka Police Department, not just Topeka, but police departments funding SROs. And now this, like many things, have been shifted to become a school expense. But we are ready to invest. the safety and support of our students and staff we just ask that you look at funding and if not funding supporting us and helping you fund school resource officers for our students and staff from the topeka police department thank you for what you do we do appreciate each one of you thank you next up i have miss danielle twemlow

Thank you. I do want to first state that and clarify when we're talking about accountability with funding that when I asked for miles of water mains that were replaced in accountability of what those lines were, When they were replaced how long I received an email from the city with a very extensive document Outlining the years the project numbers the cost and the lines of replacement When that question was asked again during City Council by a City Council member the city supplied another memo with yet another chart of and another different set of miles and lines replaced that do not match what they provided the year prior. So when that question was asked that, yes, we can produce it, it's been asked twice, has been produced twice, and both times it is completely different. So I'm just clarifying that piece because when we're talking about our budget process, we really have to look at these efficiencies. I also want to clarify language that I've heard a lot of times when talking about some of the freezes and cuts that are used kind of interchangeably. The cutting or firing with just freezing positions. And a lot of times revolving around public safety and the police department specifically. And I do just want to point out that for at least the last six plus years, there have been 20 frozen positions or unfilled positions that were budgeted within the police department every single year. Some years it was even more than that. 34 plus positions that were budgeted and never filled for multiple years. This actually got brought up several times because we were budgeting positions years and years and years that we were not filling and when does that actually kind of fall off? So these 20 frozen positions that aren't filled, they just won't be filled is not an anomaly. And we have heard over and over again how we have had very successful reduction in crime within our community. Again, going a lot towards some of the things that community is also doing. So we have to be very creative at also looking at a return on investments. We cannot cut social services and expect there not to be a rise in crime, a rise in people being unsheltered, and not fund those types of things within the community. We don't talk about that return on investment enough. So that includes mental health, that includes unsheltered, crime reduction strategies. All of those things play a role in making sure that we can operate in a way that is productive for our community. A sales tax initiative, whether that goes through or not, is again just another kicking the can down the road. So we have to look at the ways that we can stabilize our community as a whole. We also have to look at those incentives. So we are giving over roughly $3 million a year on these development incentives. And if we break that down, which when I asked the housing study people, they said it will be part of the full cost. of the higher price point value homes and developments that we are providing these 20 years of incentives towards far outpace us using it for those low to moderate income developments that we desperately need or that kind of missing middle. So we really need to be addressing that, how we don't need to be giving 20 years away. So looking at those creative ways to address that in the budget.

Thank you. All right. Those are all the people signed up, but is there anyone else here who would like to speak during this public hearing about the 2027 budget? Yep, just come on to the podium.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Amy Gillette, and I live in Topeka in the south bit outside of city limits. And I would like to speak a bit to what the gentleman said a few speakers earlier as to the manner in which data centers might theoretically be able to help our budget. So this is from realtor.com, data centers and the American housing market. So Compass cited this study in their presentation. The study's from August 11th of this year, so pretty recent. And they said the study proved that there was no appreciable value on real estate values near data centers. But here's what the study also says. Quoting it, two limitations are worth being direct about. First, this analysis only covers the first two years following a data center's opening. That window captures the period when economic benefits from construction jobs and local tax revenue would be most likely to show up in prices. Dot, dot, dot. It also goes on to say that it doesn't include most of the largest data center markets like Texas, and it only includes 43 zip codes across the entire country. So we can take that for what it is. They did not find any upward or downward motion. But I did read further into the study, because it was pretty long. And that's not all it said. It also had a section about how data centers affect property taxes for the communities nearby. And the top line on that said, property tax rates near large data centers ease at opening, then rise above baseline. To quote from that one, any rate differences can reflect individual jurisdictions, individual budget decisions, reassessment cycles, or local politics. And essentially, any sort of tax revenue that does fall back to them isn't guaranteed to fall to homeowners. But here's the end of it. It says, the practical upshot. Anyone expecting their property tax bill to fall because of a data center open nearby should not count on it. The evidence of a direct homeowner tax benefit is weak. And the causal chain between a data center's presence and a neighbor's tax rate has too many missing links to draw firm conclusions from this data alone. I guess Compass did not read all the way through the study that they quoted. But I do thank them for directing me there. Here's another study, also from August of this year, that comes to the same conclusion from University of Utah's business school. That says, for existing Utah property owners, data centers will likely provide some initial property tax relief. This initial property tax relief will likely be accompanied by future tax shifts and volatility. And decision makers will benefit from a careful fiscal analysis of each data center proposal individually. And we've heard this, you know, $4.5 billion at this point is the investment that's getting talked about. So what does that actually mean? And this is where the confusion comes in, right? What part of that's actually taxable? 12 from that study, for traditional commercial property, a business's real property valuation usually far exceeds its personal property valuation. However, data centers generally differ. A data center's personal property value, primarily high-value computer equipment, can amount to three to four times the value of its real property value. So how this plays out in reality. Again, just from the last few weeks, August 18th, in Mississippi, Madison County, their tax assessor in county is currently fighting Amazon over disputes in what they have claimed that the Amazon data center there is worth. At a hearing Monday, their assessor said that it had a true value of $292 million, whereas Amazon argued that that should be $70 million, leaving a gap of over $220 million per building or over $1 billion for all combined structures. They say that information is proprietary. They can't even tell you what their investment is. This is not going to help our budget. Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak on the budget hearing?

Good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Amy Wagner, and I serve as the principal of Landon Middle School. I'm here tonight to ask you to reconsider the recommendation to end the partnership between the City of Topeka, the Topeka Police Department, and Topeka Public Schools for school resource officers. I understand that difficult budget decisions have to be made, but I ask you to consider what we stand to lose beyond a line item on a budget. School violence remains a very real concern. During the 24-25 school year, there were 254 shooting incidents at K-12 schools nationwide. And the U.S. Department of Education cites research showing that in 57% of mass shooting incidents studied, the attack was still underway when the first officer arrived. When seconds matter, having a trained law enforcement officer already inside a school matters. But if we measure the value of our SROs only by how quickly they can respond to an emergency, we miss perhaps their greatest contribution, relationships. Our SROs know our students, they know our families, they know our staff, our buildings, our neighborhoods, and our community. Students talk to them in the hallway, at lunch, athletic events, and sometimes when something simply doesn't feel right. That matters because research on school attacks has found that in more than 80% of cases, someone else knew something about the attacker's plans beforehand, and those individuals were most often peers. A student is much more likely to share that information with adults they can trust. Our SROs don't simply respond to crisis, they help prevent them. Topeka Police Department's own annual report states that SRO units focus on proactive presence, early intervention, collaboration, mentorship, and building trusting relationships. In just the first semester of the 25-26 school year, TPD SROs completed four threat assessments at my school. Campus security is valuable, and we appreciate the people who serve in those positions. But campus security cannot replicate the full role of a sworn school resource officer who is part of the Topeka Police Department and simultaneously embedded in the daily life of a school. These officers are a bridge between our schools, our families, our neighborhoods, and our police department. For approximately 250,000 a year, the city isn't simply placing officers in middle schools. It is investing in relationships with the Topeka's young people at an age when those relationships can shape how they view law enforcement and perhaps the decisions they make for years to come. Please don't wait until we experience a tragedy to recognize the value of these officers. I respectfully ask you continue this partnership. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here this evening who would like to speak on our 2027 budget? I'm going to ask one more time. Is there anyone else here who would like to speak on the City of Topeka's 2027 budget? All right. Last chance. If not, I'm going to officially close this hearing. And I'm now going to recognize governing body members. Councilmember Kell.

When does this contract end with final one? July. Okay. So we have roughly six, seven months. If we want to find a way to extend this, we can work on this, correct?

That's correct, Councilman. Okay.

This is something I think is very valuable for Topeka. I know some people have had some hesitations when it comes to the financial part of it. But This is something, I've said it before, these youth are, they have that wide life. They're going to go down one path or another, or a fork, whatever you want to look at it, they're going to go down a certain path. And those SROs are very influential in their lives. Like I said, my daughters had Officer Kyle. They still know how many years later Officer Kyle. I worked close with Officer Bell and other things, and that man is has a smile on his face every day and an open heart for those youth. And it's one of those things that, you know, I've heard of SROs having situations, you know, this is 10, 15 years ago, where someone needed to turn themselves in. They contacted their old SRO because they knew they had that relationship. And they turned themselves in that way rather than it becoming an issue where a barricade or anything like that, you know, there's relationships are built and you know, not every situation is going to turn out perfect. Like I said, someone had to turn themselves in, but These officers also have off-ground authority, where some of the 501 are kind of limited to the school grounds. So now when the SRO hears about something going to go down a couple blocks away, I remember when I was in high school, we'd go two blocks away if there was going to be a fight. We weren't going to do it on school grounds and get in trouble. So that SRO may find out that information and show up at that spot before anyone else does and knocks it off right then. These men and women put time in before school, after school, during the summer, on their off time. And that relationship that's built is something that we need to continue and keep it moving forward. And I just think tonight's not the end point of it. I think that's where we keep on working to show that this is something that is good for our community as a whole by having those men and women in the schools and essentially spaced out around town so they're there for those communities also when there are situations where students might be doing something off grounds where those SROs are now right there when they hear about it. Those are two that I've worked with closely over the years that I highly respect think they do an amazing job I know our other ones can be people going to attest to them, but I Don't want to see this program go away. I know the budget right now doesn't have it in there, but I Wholeheartedly, hope we continue to work forward to continue this And find some way to make it work, thank you Councilmember Miller

Because I know that these conversations are going to continue for months. I have been a staunch supporter of this program. And when I say this program, the part of the budget in which the SRO program with 501 is currently constructed, I do believe that there's probably going to have to be some adjustment to it. I get that. There's there's there's there's conversations that need to happen. Um and adjustments that need to be made just clearly from a personnel standpoint. I understand what the city manager and chief of police are trying to accomplish long term. Um and when we have the conversation of a possible sales tax in the future. Um, if that is something that is, that gets passed, um, possibly in the future, I would suspect that we would then make sure that the SR program as a part of that and is able to continue. That would be my recommendation. Um, but, um, I'm, I'll have more to say on this later, but, uh, I've all I for one right now and will always be a supporter of that program.

council member valdivia out there thank you mayor um just a couple of things again as i stated before i think a lot of us have been with the meetings with dr anderson and principals and it was definitely appreciated the same thing that i said then i'll say now it sounds like their law enforcement officers or their campus police need more training And my understanding is chief and staff have agreed to do that. This is not going to be some cold, cruel cut after June of 2027. That 501 is just not going to be left in the dark. And again, they have their campus purity. And I was under the impression that some of those are former TPD officers. What many of these principals seem to be explaining is a lot of social work type activities. And one of the conversation pieces that came up when I had my meeting with Dr. Anderson and the principals that were there is that my suggestion would be to hire more social workers. My suggestion, utilize the funds that way. Utilize funds to have more of the restorative justice and I know that there have been moves in that area so I'm not saying in any way shape or form that 501 does not do that at all but we understand that TPD officers just like they have many many roles they have a role that is needed right now within the city that the chief is trying to put forth now did the chief and I agree on everything no Because I believe that there should also be community led initiatives that help get crime down, right? Not only policing, we have to reimagine policing just like we have to reimagine security in our schools. And so I am just saying from the beginning, I have believed that SROs need to be reduced in schools. Again, you have your campus police there that could use more training, more effective training, hire more social workers, and your restorative justice. Start utilizing that, even though I know I don't know all the inner workings of schools, because I support what the chief and city manager are trying to accomplish here, along with other initiatives that are reimagining policing. Thank you.

any other comments or questions from the governing body um nope council member kelly one thing i forgot um i know i think it's 450 if we have to which i don't i don't want to go this route but they do a 50 50 on schools so that might be something to look at but that is something I don't want to do. But if it's a compromise to get us there, to have something there, that's something that, you know, I think we need to look at. But I'd rather still have what we have in place at this moment. But if a 50-50 is the best compromise we can come up with, with either 50-50 or none, I want to go with 50-50. But I'd much rather have our full participation we have now. Thank you. Council Member Hiller.

Mayor, it's a question at this point since this item 5B and item 6A look kind of the same. I mean, are we going to do other discussion on the budget?

Well, this is our budget hearing, so we'll move on from this when we're done and then go on to the next actual budget talk. You know, I'm going to be honest. I struggle up here sometimes. People come up here and sometimes they say things that aren't the full story and I let it go because... It's not worth the conversation, right? It's OK. Other times, I hear things that I feel need to at least have some more context put to them. And to be honest, that's kind of where I am a little bit tonight. A couple of things. And these are in no particular order. First of all, 501 doesn't have campus security. 501 has certified police officers. They go through the state certification program. I've known many of those officers over the years. And it's fine if you don't think they're the same as a police officer. And it's fine if you want them to have more training. But they deserve the respect of the recognition and the work that they've done to become certified police officers who work for 501. And I've known some of them pretty well. We had a meeting with 501. We sat down in a room and we expressed, each of us side expressed their concerns with what this contract meant for the future. It's not just about money for the city. It's about operational issues. It's about direction of resources. There were a list of things that we had. There were a list of things in that same meeting that 501 had, and we heard them. And when we left that meeting, we had a very clear understanding that we were going to circle back, give it a couple weeks, hear what everyone had to say, meet again. And as we did that, we as a city were working on some things that we could take back to 501, things that are still on the table from our perspective. But instead, what we got was an email with a contract that said, here, we'll give you a little bit more money. Sign this. That wasn't what we agreed to. We tried to have a conversation, a real conversation to work this through. That hasn't happened, and I'm sorry that that was how the process has gone. I still don't understand why that was the choice that was made, but I can tell you that I know that we still have things we want to bring forward to 501 that include assisting the officers that are there, providing access to some of our resources that they don't necessarily currently have access to, and there's a whole laundry list of those things. Clearly, we have council members up here who would like us to continue the conversation about some extension of that contract. And if that's what needs to happen to some degree, we'll see where that can go as we work through this. But I think there's also some of us who think that at some point, as we've set up here, decisions have to be made. 501 has professionals who can assist with that that we can help support in many different ways. And we'd like to at least have those conversations. So that door is still open. I want everybody in 501 from the school board to the students to the parents to the teachers to know that door has not been shut by us. And we are still here to have those conversations when 501 is ready. And so we've just been a little disappointed that the process that we thought we were on the path towards just hasn't gone that way. So I'm one of those. As anyone up here knows, anyone who's worked with me, I'm real easy putting the past in the past and moving forward because I think that's the only way you get progress. And it is critical for us as a city to have a good relationship with 501. It's not just critical for us as a city. It's critical for the students, the staff, and everybody who works in those schools. And so we will continue to do that. But I think that context is at least important to everybody who's here tonight, who's here upon this day, who hasn't been a part of those conversations to understand that we were having conversations with 501 up to a point. So that door is open, and I know that as we work through this process over the next couple weeks and the next six months, we'll continue to have those conversations. Any other comments or questions from the governing body? If not, the hearing is closed, and we can move on to non-action items. I think what we'll do is we're going to do this non-action item, and then we'll take a break. Let's do that. So non-action item A, city clerk.

Is discussion relating to the city of Topeka 2027 operating budget?

City manager.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, we presented our FY2027 proposed budget to you on July 14th. And as discussed, we are set to adopt our budget next Tuesday. As part of the proposed budget process, we presented and discussed with you the elimination of 17 vacant positions and the freezing or funding of 32 vacant positions, saving approximately $5.1 million. We have also provided you with a five year financial forecast, which projects a $13.3 million deficit. in FY2028 and a $17.4 million deficit in FY2029, as well as viable options to address those deficits. Last week, I shared with you a list of potential amendments to our FY2027 proposed budget, and this week, I would like to seek any feedback or answer any questions you may have ahead of next week's budget adoption, which we need to complete to submit our balanced budget to the state by the end of the month. With that, we'll open the floor for any discussion.

All right, questions, comments from the governing body at this point? Josh, do you have anything to make sure?

Council Member Hiller. I'll kick it off. I think people have known for a long time that I've been concerned about the budget overall. I feel like we need to, for our staff, for our city, and for whatever our next steps are, to take at least some very affirmative final moves right now as we pass this budget, some things that we can start right now in 2026. to move forward, but also to head off getting deeper in the hole. Um, what I put together utilizing, uh, to a great extent, the list of possibilities that the city manager had would be, um, a package that would reduce our spending in the city budget by $2 million. would correspondingly take some pieces out of the capital improvement budget. And between the two of those would allow establishing the fund that I've talked about before, moving some of the capital projects into cash so that we're not borrowing for them. We did an executive session last time to talk about specifics about cuts. And so I would like to do that in executive session.

I do want to clarify to the public, we did very specific personnel, not general, because we're not allowed to have discussions. I understand that. We didn't violate that.

But they were itemizable positions. I do think that for the capital budget, if we take out, 600,000 a year for the first three years of the 2027 to 2040 plan. That's how Josh has helped me to try and get this on paper. And I don't think we have the numbers quite fully hung, but I can describe it. I have some handouts if people want it. But if you go all the way to 2040 with the extension of the capital budget, Anyway, just take three years of the city sidewalk project, 2027, 2028, 2029. That's 600,000 a year. Then pick it up and continue on out. Take out the fire station. that is in the plan with the idea that the fire stations could go on a request for sales tax just for them. It's not saying it would be out altogether, but take it out of the CIP in the geobond bracket and also remove the heavy duty fleet garage from that geobond bracket. Josh ran numbers on that. And with just those reductions, that would be enough to end the way that the capital budget is playing out would allow $1 million a year to shift from being expected to use for bonding to cash. So with those two sources together, we could start the cash budget for capital projects To me, the most logical items to move over, at least to get it started, would be the DREAMS program. That would make it more flexible and not totally limited to infrastructure. That's $850,000 a year. And then the fleet replacements. fleet replacement program, which is budgeted at $1,030,000 a year. Together, that's just under $2 million. With the addition of the transfer from that very capital fund, because we relieved it with those, again, Josh said we could do another million, and my suggestion would be that that would come out of either the firm program I'm still waiting to see a list of really what all we need in our structures. I'm not convinced that we need $2.3 million indefinitely every year for that. But either way, if we're doing another million, it could either come out of the firm program as budgeted or the fire department fleet replacement, which in just the five years that we see is about $78 million. $7.8 million. Easy things that arguably we shouldn't be bonding anyway. I don't want us to miss this time to go ahead and make some of those tough decisions to cut our budget, get that long-term cash budget going it would it should be renewable every year after that we'll have a progression out for you in terms of how that capital budget progresses through josh runs it out all the way to 2040 so even beyond what we see typically um again I would like to propose that specific amendment tomorrow. I can explain it more this evening if you like. I have some of the rough handouts on how that would look. It's very rough. But I'm open to discussion about that as well. I guess one other point. I've been pretty clear about feeling that we should not even, that we should offer one-tenth of a cent sales tax for the homeless and affordable housing programs. We've had a lot of pushback on the renaming of that, so we probably need some clarification on what the city manager and others have in mind. But that if we're going to do the fire stations, that they go in their own 1 tenth of a cent sales tax. so that if you all decide that you want to put the rest of it forward, and I've not supported that, but I also have felt like the public would not, particularly with a bunch of mixed uses in there, and because the city manager's proposal so far has been for a half cent, and that... with even just one-tenth of a cent sales tax pushes us up to 9.9 cents, 9%, and I don't think people are going to be willing to get near 10%. I think we need to also demonstrate that we have looked inside that budget and we have made some cuts and we've made them now. just to move forward. I think for our staff, they're already weary of waiting for two years, wondering whether we're going to do something, and we owe it to them to be decisive at this point. Questions?

Council Member Banks.

I have always found it interesting. Your numbers are always helpful in a lot of ways to me. Tonight I'm noticing that there are no cuts for PD. And there are. I mean, to cut the fire station programs out puts the fire fighters in a tough position to they're already having difficulty in their living situation as it is. And I think that also it decreases the fire department's ability to increase services to the community. I was mainly interested in the cuts

Thank you for the question on that. For me, I guess I think that the public will vote to support the fire stations if they are done through the sales tax. From when we first started talking about those, basically the way we do construction projects, big ones, whether it's a building or a street, is a three-year project, right? We do design the first year. We do the site preparation or whatever needs to be done. And then we do the construction in the third year. for each of those fire stations was proposed at roughly $11 million. Right now, a tenth of a cent has been about $3.6 million. So boom, boom, boom. You've got the first year, the second year, the third year. We've planned them in advance. We're discussing stretching them out anyway. But that way, they get done with cash. And and I think people would support to do to do that because just a tenth of a cent isn't all that much And it just relieves them from the bonding project, which means instead of costing 11 million. They're going to cost 16 and To me why would we do that? We've got a lot of other things to do with five million bucks so it was more to do it in a way that was appealing and comfortable and separated and a construction project from ongoing maintenance and operating rather than that I didn't want to do it. Does that help?

Yeah, thank you, Councilwoman.

And once again, with the fire stations, this is how I thought about it at first, but it could be any way. I thought if we did them just three in a row, that would just be a nine-year sales tax, and it would one after the other get them done. They could be done one at a time, just single three-year projects.

City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. If you wouldn't mind me asking a question, Council Member. How much does your... I need to unlock my iPhone in order to ask a question. How much are you proposing to reduce out of our capital improvement program to save a million dollars a year and for cash?

The reduction for starters would be just to take only three years out of the sidewalk program. which, by the way, since we're doing the huge Lyman Road project, we'll be spending more than $600,000 a year on sidewalks. So just the 123 on sidewalks and then take the fire station out and then take the fleet garage out, which we talked about before. We're not really sure when that would happen and if it rolls up because we've got something going with the riverfront.

So the sidewalks is about $1.8 million?

I can just tell you the total. A little over $48 million is the total.

So we'll be taking $48 million in your proposed amendment out of the CIP to allow for $1 million of cash? Or $2 million?

It's a way to move the financing around. Every one of those projects is going to get done. The sidewalks, those that don't get done now, assuming we continue a sidewalk program, that program is intended to go indefinitely. The DREAMS program, the idea is to move it into the fund, into the cash fund, not to not do it, and to move the fleet purchases into the cash fund, not to not do them. It's originally seeded with $2 million from the general fund side.

Okay. But taking out $33 million for the fire stations, $8 million for the fleet garage, and $1.8 million from the sidewalks, the sidewalk program alone is $600,000 a year, right? So essentially we'd be allotting $1 million a year to do our sidewalks, but I guess what I'm getting at is... We're essentially taking out over $43 million of CIP costs to allow for a million dollars of cash. And then also, did you mention the two of the... You also mentioned the firm and Dreams.

Again, that is to get those projects done with cash, not to not do them. And the way that starts to pay for itself, and it takes time, and that's where... Josh, I'm pretty sure we don't have it run out right yet. But... When you pull those, when you don't bond them, then your bonding, your total bonding indebtedness starts to drop, so you don't need as much money for debt service, and you can use that money for cash projects.

Okay. But if the sales tax doesn't close, or if the sales tax doesn't pass, then the fire stations are out.

That's true. Okay. That would be, at this point, we do a CIP every year if that didn't pass. And you've got a lot of other stuff. You're kind of wedging on the table, hoping that people will pay for it. I just feel like we've needed to get this done in the capital budget for a long time so that we, instead of paying, let's use a single fire station as an example. It's going to cost $11 million, and we can do it for cash instead of bonding it. And we've got that $5 million to spend on something else.

Right. And I mean, we've talked about that as far as an option, a cash option if it passes. But just alone, the DREAMS is $850,000, I believe, a year. And the sidewalks are $600,000. So it's about $1.4 million, $1.5 million. And we only have about a million in cash or so.

Again, just pushing that sidewalk program down. Otherwise, I don't think there's anything in there that wouldn't ultimately get done. It's a matter of how we pay for it, not whether we want to do it.

Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Council Member Kell. I get where you're coming from on trying to reduce our bonds, which we need to try to figure out where we can. But again, if we start pushing too much stuff down the road, are we actually saving any money? With the way things have risen in cost over the last seven, eight, nine, ten years, there are costs keep on going up and up and up. that are we really saving any money by moving something five years down the road that or we're changing stuff around that or are we going to have to change some more next year and keep on pushing more projects and keep on changing more stuff every budget to try to keep this balance that you're looking for that we're just pushing so much stuff down the road that it's either not fixable anymore to where we were maybe doing a small project, now we're doing a replacement. And certain of those aspects are, you know, I don't really necessarily want to risk the firehouses, especially when we have the state that they're in and then I know at least one, I'm not sure if we have multiple, that females aren't even allowed in it because of the way it's structured. So we have one that's constantly having to be repaired and we're spending $100,000 a year in repairs on it. So it's one of those things of if we keep on pushing something like that, are we really actually saving money by not doing the replacement? And on that kind of stuff. So I get where you're trying to come from.

The adopted CIP only has one of them in there. Yeah. And, and so it's a proposal to do it with a different approach to it, but to do it all. And mostly at the same time, um, within the same timeframe that we've got, it's a matter of biting the bullet to get, to get that cash fund started. But otherwise things like dreams are just moving into that cash pot. And, and the, the single fire station, which is in for 2028, and none of the rest of them even show up on the short-term period of what we have voted on now. And so it's, again... We've all been living through this issue of what people feel like about their property taxes versus about sales tax and the issue of generating only $1.5 million with a whole mill of property tax and being able to generate that much with a half of a tenth of a cent of sales tax. And so trying to look at all the things that we want to get done for everybody and how can we best... broker the money in it so that we get as much as possible done with those tax dollars. That's all I'm wondering.

I just look at the long-term effects. If we constantly have to push back projects, are we spending it?

I'm saying it's not pushing back projects. And we've also looked in there, and there's a couple of other soft spots in there, in that the discussion we had about the CIP was that We had some prospects of being able to get a substantial amount of the I-470 and Huntoon project done with federal or state money. That's $6 million plus within the next few years. So wanting to make sure that we work on that. But again, it's a matter of getting it all, of repositioning some of that money right now for a steady and longer-term excess in dollars available for maintenance and improvements.

Council Member Valdivia-Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. So Karen, when it always gets to, every year when we get to this time in the budget, you come up with an amendment, and honestly speaking, your amendments are so hard to understand sometimes. You don't have any kind of handout that is... I do. ...explaining what you're vocally explaining right now?

I do. Is that a yes? That's a yes. You're remote, so they're print copies, but I can figure out how to get you one. Okay, could we have a copy?

And I understand that based on what you're trying to do, your concern is always how much will came out in bondedness, right? Trying to just get that down, right?

We are also in a position right now where there have been discussions for years about trimming our operating budget. And we've been unwilling to do that. We've had a list of a whole variety of things that we could do. And so taking that list instead of just kicking the can was a way to do both. Yeah.

And tell me what you were saying again about the fire stations and the sales tax. Explain that to me again.

If people want to do them, then the issue is not that we would do them, but if we do that with sales tax, if we did a tenth of a cent sales tax, three-year packages for each of the fire stations, either right in a row, or however, that money to pay for 100% of the design and the construction would have been accumulated from just one-tenth of a cent sales tax over three years. For each station. For each one. Right.

Right now. Okay, so, yeah, I know we need to talk about the... the ballot initiatives later, because I think that there's some real concerns about a general one that I'm very concerned about, the 110th, which I'm concerned about. And I don't know where all you've been hearing, but the 10 are folks out there is that they don't want to vote for anything right now because they're so sore about so many things. My deep concern is that none of this is going to end up passing. So how do we make it to help convince folks Move in that direction, but that's for that's for another. That's for another conversation. But and I think that this will come later as well. In in the fire commission conversation, 1 of the deepest concerns. You know, that we have is not that we don't need new fire stations. That's a new point. Is that there has to be a better plan because we have the money in the new 1 and then. We're out there just kind of swimming around going, what the hell's going on with all the rest of it? So, you know, I don't know if anyone's going to support this tomorrow. I mean, next Tuesday or not. If you could send me a copy, I'd appreciate it. It doesn't sound like anything that I'm going to support, but I really would like to read it and have a visual of it.

Thank you. I guess my thought along your line is just that separating the big ticket investments from the ongoing operating budget and also demonstrating that we're willing to make some cuts in that operating budget right now, not just kick the can and ask people to vote for a big, big sales tax that's got a bunch of stuff, different things mixed in it. We'll make it cleaner. more effective and let people, I mean, if we're responsible for figuring out the operating budget at this point, and we already voted to cap it instead of raise property taxes, then we've got to figure out how to live within that and deliver the operating services for the city and keep these capital budget projects going. My sense has always been that people would not vote for the half-cent sales tax, whether it was just for operating or whether it was a mishmash, but that if it was the specific one on homelessness and affordable housing, at a tenth of a cent and a very specific one on the fire stations at a tenth of a percent that that would clean up the rest of the work and the thought process for us and hopefully for the voters as well. Then if there is a sales tax, it's just on operating stuff. It's not mixed in with a bunch of capital projects. And that's just been my sense of how If people want to vote for a sales tax, they want to know exactly what they're getting for it and be able to monitor that they're getting it. And so trying to put operating budget in that doesn't work. That's my sense of it. Thanks.

Council Member Bradbury.

Thank you, Mayor. Josh, can you talk about the dollar figure amount for cuts to OOE?

Sorry, say that last part.

OOE, other operating expenses, not personnel.

Oh, so just the non-personal cuts. Just in general, I mean, we went through and shaved line items, but I mean, most of our budget is either transferred to other funds or personnel. and then we just for like utility costs for example we have to pay the average street lights those are estimated costs so we've trimmed as much as we can over the years but a lot of those are just your standard purchases because we are a service organization so we can't really cut the non-personnel items that are required for the people to do their job so it's kind of like chicken or the egg in that sense so um there's just been there hasn't been really any mass cuts on the non-personnel operating budget side now we have reduced or CIP, some of my personnel projects, but nothing really material on the non-personnel side.

I'll remind you as far as non-personnel, although it is a personnel cost, the 27 budget includes about a $350,000 reduction to police overtime. So again, not directly related to people, but the overtime budget. But to Josh's point, we've gone through line items before. We can follow up with that list with you.

Yeah, I'd like to, if there had been cuts to the other operating expenses, just knowing an exact dollar amount and where that was at would be.

Are you talking about from when we presented the budget in July to today or just overall in the last 12 months?

What we're proposing.

Okay. Yeah.

Any other comments or questions at this time on the budget? Seeing none, just a reminder, we're going to vote on something next week. So either come prepared with amendments or changes or recommendations. Most of the meeting is just that, conversation. So hopefully there's not too much more added to the agenda. So we'll have some more time to have these conversations before we take any kind of vote. With that, we're going to take a 10-minute break. And then we'll come back for the last couple items on our agenda this evening. We'll see you back here at 9 o'clock. All right, we are back from our recess. We're going to go into non-action item B, city clerk.

B is discussion related to imposing a real estate lien for unpaid utility bills. City manager.

City manager. Thank you, members of the governing body. As part of this item, each year we bring forward for your consideration a list of customers who are delinquent in payment for water services provided by the city. As state law permits the city to institute a lien on the property of these customers in order to recover payment for services rendered, this ordinance is considered by the governing body every September so that the county clerk has sufficient time to add the utility fees to the tax statement that is issued in November. With that, I'll now turn this over to Nicole Mallott, Deputy Director of Utilities to lead us through this item. Nicole?

All right. Good evening again, Mayor, members of the governing body. Many of you have heard this several times. More, I think this is for the general public and to get you some information, but you'll be hearing about the same things here again. The city of Topeka provides water, wastewater, stormwater, and fire line services to a variety of customers located both inside and outside the city limits. When customer utility bills become delinquent, our normal delinquency controls are to turn off the customer's water service until the customer makes payment in full on the delinquent amounts. However, that's not always possible. This evening, I'm going to take just a few minutes to discuss the utility lien ordinance process and this year's numbers. This is our annual process, and it only involves active accounts. Some customers receive wastewater service or stormwater service from the city, but no water service. This greatly reduces our ability to induce payment from customers with delinquent amounts since we cannot shut off their water service. Most of these customers, most of these are customers of the rural water districts and the rural water districts also cannot turn off their water service for failure to pay a bill owed to the city. This year, utilities department sent out letters to 169 property owners regarding delinquent utility accounts at the end of July. The total balance for those accounts was just under $139,000. 128 of those accounts have previously been included in a similar lien ordinance in previous years. Staff has attempted to make personal contact with the other 41 customers who were receiving the past due lien assessment notice letters for the first time this year. As a comparison, last year we sent out 146 letters with an outstanding balance of approximately 112,000. By October of 2025, there were 90 accounts remaining with a balance of just over 84,000 sent to the county for that utility lien ordinance assessment. Of the 169 letters sent this year, 138 accounts remain unpaid as of noon today with a total balance of just over $123,000. We will update these numbers again next week when this item is in front of you for action. If you were able to count all of those very small dots on the initial map, you would see that of the 169 letters mailed, 125 were outside the city limits, all of which were wastewater customers, 44 inside the city limits, 36 of those being stormwater, and eight being fire line customers. The utilities have a couple different collection methods available to them, but lien assessment is by far the most effective. However, a lien can only be used when the utility account holder is also the property owner of record with the county. So we do still use the city's collection agency when the lien assessment is not available to us. The customers identified in this document are delinquent by at least 90 and in many cases up to 365 days in payment for the services provided by the city. State law permits the city to institute a lien on the property of these customers in order to recover payment for services rendered. This ordinance is passed every September so that we can provide the final list to the county clerk prior to their October 1st deadline, giving the county sufficient time to add the delinquent utility fees to the tax statement that's mailed in November. And even though we'll be asking you to pass this ordinance next week, we will take into account all payments made up until noon on Wednesday, September 30th, before sending that final list over to the county for assessment. That's the short of it. Councilmember Kell.

So over the last few years when we've done this, it seems like by the time the letters go out and all that, we start getting a lot more, that number starts dropping off a lot more. So I think that's kind of the one first good step we have going for us is we get that, because when you go off the 169 letters sent and that number, that's $822.27 per letter. So that's owed. So in essence... Out of those 169 accounts, in essence, that's 820. So, I don't know if some of these are with repeat offenders, if they're just waiting until the city comes and says something to pay or what, but it seems like maybe what's going on also there, especially as you said, a lot of them aren't in the city limits. So... I think this has kind of been the best program way to go about this rather than a collection agency or something like that. And we get a lot of feedback or a lot of action done through this. So thank you.

Appreciate it.

We do have someone signed up for public comment on this issue. We'll go to that next. Danielle Twemlow.

I'll just stay consistent.

To speak to these things, I did speak with at least one person on this list who stated they haven't received any notification and, as a matter of fact, have reached out multiple times asking about their utility bill on a regular basis because they don't understand why the bill is the cost that it is. And this is someone who's very engaged and has resources, which kind of brings me also to the efficiency point. I totally understand the need to figure out a way to hold accountable when we need to hold accountable. I'm not arguing that piece of it. It does lead me to wonder how much we're spending on administrative and billing and all this when some of these are $64 that maybe we need to be looking at. a different price point for this, but obviously reaching out much sooner. With that being said, when I heard about not being able to understand the bill and not being able to understand why our bill was this price, it reminded me of a conversation that got brought up quite a while ago about the services that we could do with different meters that are basically like smart meters and when that was brought up within this council meeting it was kind of went on deaf ears as it most of the time does and what I did find was that we in fact did install these meters, and we spent over $12 million to purchase the AMI system, which is an infrastructure system for meters that can read very precisely. I know Councilwoman Ortiz has brought this up many times about paying for what we use. And these smart readers actually can do hourly rates if we wanted to. It allows people to see what they're using and be responsible for that. So we actually could be structuring our entire utility rates differently so that we are paying what we're using and that we can conserve when we need to conserve and that people who are using a whole lot or deciding to irrigate their lawns or fill up pools would pay differently than those who are on a fixed income and living alone. However, this system would be built out where we could go online and look for that and be able to see with our already electronic utility billing what that looks like. I couldn't find it. mine it is stated within our goals from two three years ago that we would do that that we would build out this system that we would utilize it more frequently but that doesn't seem to have been happening we did also state that these new systems that we spent 12 million dollars on was going to allow us to drop our from six full-time employees that were reading meters down to one. However, within every budget booklet, we never reduced any sort of position count any of the years after that. So just looking at ways, again, where we could be efficient, look at ways where we could utilize the resources we have to be serving our community better. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, back to the governing body. Any other comments or questions for staff? Last call. Seeing none. Oh, Council Member Ortiz.

Nicole, if I look at that list, because I'll go over it, do I just have them go to the Water Department and tell them that they're on that list?

Yes, as always, the call center is available to discuss payment arrangements and also other options for those customers, 785-368-3111. Give us a call. We're ready to discuss any time.

So if you put them on a payment arrangement, that takes them off the list, correct?

Yes, if they make acceptable payment arrangements with the city, that can remove them from the list.

So if they make a payment arrangement, they don't have to have it paid in full by September?

Correct. They will need to make payments on an agreed-upon schedule, but yes, that can remove them from the list.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Valdivia-Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. Quick question. So I'm not sure... I remember, I don't know how many years ago, but I remember about the system that was going to stop the traditional meter reading.

I remember that.

I don't know what all was involved and how that was supposed to have anything to do with conservative water. I don't know that. So I'm asking specifically the city manager look into that, how we are utilizing, or if Director Davis is there, how that's being utilized and to verify about the six positions still showing when it's stated there was one and any verification of that. If you don't have that tonight, I totally understand, but I would like that. Does anyone want to answer?

Yeah, Sylvia Davis came up to answer.

Sure. No, it's a very good question. We have been in a beta test environment where we have a number of individuals out in the community who have, for one reason or another, ended up volunteering to test out this online portal that helps tell them what their usage is. We get readings every 15 minutes. For a vast majority of our system, there's a few pockets where they might fall in a dead zone as the radio towers are... trying to read all of these meters. So we have some dead spots we're working on getting cellular routers in place so that we can increase those hotspots, if you will. We want to get consistent usage for everybody. I will say, in a nutshell, we have been delaying rolling that out to everyone because the ideal situation was for us to have a single sign-on where people didn't have to have one login and password. for different portals, one to view their bill, one to get into the AMI system that is called Neptune or My360. However, we're not delaying any longer and we hope, I hope it's sooner than the end of the year, but by the end of the year we will have that open and we'll roll it out. We'll have some education pieces to help people understand how to use that system. But currently, those that are using it can get in and look at their bill, understand their usage, look at their historical data, and they can also set targets to alert them when their usage goes up over a certain volume so that, again, they can control what kind of water they're using, see what patterns they have in their household, why is my water going up in the winter versus the summer, things like that, but also get alerts so that they're not waiting on us to tell them when they have a leak. In the time between when we implemented AMI and when we rolled that out for everybody, we do have part of our team that is looking at that information and alerting us. Because we have such a large number of customers, we started with a seven-day window if somebody has continuous consumption reporting for seven days or more. we will give them a call and let them know that there's some concerns and they want to check for leaks. With the amount of work and efficiencies that our team has put in place, they've reduced that down to five days. Ideally, we'd like to get that to a shorter time period. So even if somebody is not actively in that portal when it does go live, we will still be able to give them alerts when somebody is continuously using water that might detect a leak. I hope that's helpful.

That is helpful. So thank you for that. So how long ago did we purchase that $12 million system?

So the $12 million system's not just the computer software. It's been a multi-year process of replacing all of the meters with the appropriate technology to be able to read from towers. That implementation started in I think it was 2019 is when it started. We are about a little over 98% of our system is fully automated now. We're working through the trouble meters at this point in time that have obstructions or other safety issues that don't allow us to get to them. We're working on that last couple percentage of meters in the system and that program will be wrapped up.

Okay, and how many are you having, how many are in this testing phase that are helping you along?

Volunteering. That's a good question. I'll have to follow up with an answer for you for that.

Okay. And then do you have any idea about any, some kind of verification, the six meter readers down to one? Sure.

I'd love to speak to that one. Just like every area of utilities, meter services is very much doing as much as they can with a stack that they can. There is no shortage of deferred maintenance. So while there's only one FTE on a regular basis reading meters, those other five FTEs have been transitioned to performing that preventative and corrective maintenance to keep the system in good working order for our customers.

Okay. That really didn't end up being what it said it was going to be because they're still being utilized. Sure. I think we're all in this larger program now.

Correct. I think it was said we could go from six readers to one reader. I hope nothing was ever said about the positions going away because we've always known that those needed to go to the maintenance side of the house.

Okay. All right. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I also just want to add, over the last three years, utilities as a whole has reduced its FTE count by eight FTEs total. So that might help as well.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks.

All right. Any other questions or comments on the liens? All right. Thank you very much. When I move on to non-action item C, City Clerk.

Let's see his discussion regarding the Topeka Fire Department 2026 Station Relocation Plan.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, this evening we will discuss the recommended 2026 fire station relocation plan. As will be shared in this briefing, the city speaker has been considering new and relocated fire stations for at least the last 15 years. Also, as a refresher with a focus on increasing our coverage of four minute or less fire response across the city, we presented the governing body with options last year for fire station relocations. After that discussion, the team and I were able to hear stakeholder feedback on the presentation and use that feedback to make revisions to our recommended plan that you will hear this evening. With that, I will now turn this over to Fire Chief Longstaff to lead us through this discussion.

Thank you, Governor, Governing Body, and City Manager and Assistant City Managers. Thank you for having us tonight to present this to you. We did four of them this summer, and so thank you for allowing us. Go ahead, Dan.

Ma'am. A nine-year-old male. CPR is in progress.

Hello? Yes, yes, my son, he turned blue on the couch. He's not breathing. Two years ago this happened and he went into cardiac arrest.

My husband is giving him CPR.

Yes, my husband's right here giving him CPR. Girls, put your shoes on now. He's nine years old. Nine years old? Go, go help them. Yes. Okay. And he's not breathing? He's blue? Yeah, he's not breathing. Esme, don't scream at her. Just tell her she's gone. Okay, just keep giving him CPR. Yeah, he is.

Do you have an agent?

Yeah, he does. Um, no, we don't. He's still giving him CPR. He's got no color in his lips. He's doing it again.

Okay, yeah, he's doing it. No, baby, he's not. If you need help, I can give you the instructions. He's not.

Keep going. Keep going, baby. Keep going. This is what happened last time. Just keep going. The front door unlocked, okay?

We do have the key.

Yeah, unlock the front door. Okay, thanks. Is he still giving him CPR? He's still giving him CPR. Babe, can you hear any heartbeat? Babe? Does he have a heartbeat? Okay, keep going. Don't stop, babe. Don't stop.

Okay, I want you to go to the front door, okay?

Okay, I'm right here. Okay, we'll just keep going. Okay, hello. Babe, they have it. Babe, they have it. Go, stay out of the way. Go, go, right there. Right here. Is that your house?

Okay, are you inside the house? And you can't find somebody?

How old is your grandson? Okay.

Council members, I'll show you the two rooms here that are in the video now. The room on the left is what we would consider a legacy room. This is furniture and furnishings that you would find in your grandparents' home from about 40 years ago. What you have in the room on the right is a modern room. And if you notice the difference in the propagation of the fire, the one on the right is going to be a lot further along a lot quicker. In the olden times, you had about 17 to 19 minutes to get out of your home in a fire. Now with the modern furnishings and the way things are constructed out of plastics, the best description I would say is something if it takes a lot more energy to make, it releases a lot more energy when it burns. So this is what we now face as a fire department. And this is what you would face as a homeowner or a citizen if you had a room on fire in your home. You used to have about 17 to 19 minutes. Now you may only have four. Our entire presentation is predicated on us getting to you within four minutes.

The Topeka Fire Department consistently reviews its fire and medical response times to meet and exceed four minute response coverage in accordance with National Fire Protection Association's 1710. To decrease response times across the city since 2010, TFD has been evaluating how new fire stations and relocating existing fire stations can expand four-minute response coverage. Station operational changes include lack of bay space due to larger apparatus, increased maintenance due to aging stations, and difficulty retrofitting for separate women's facilities.

In the last 16 years, the city has evaluated fire station locations, including the following milestones. 2010, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System Incorporated donated land to Council District 9 to build Fire Station 13. The land was reverted back to the charity in 2015 after inaction by the city. In 16, Interim Chief Tim Wayne recommended building Fire Station 13 and 14 in North Topeka and would consolidate Fire Station 1 and 11. In 19, City Council approved the purchase of land at 6th Street and Governor's Place for Fire Station 13, priced at $290,000. 21, City Fire Commission recommendations including building Fire Station 13 and adding a fire company. And then in 25, Fire Station relocation recommendations presented.

The 2025 recommendation's goal was to increase four-minute response time coverage by building the new fire station number 13 at 6 and Governor's Place, repurpose fire station number 1, and relocate engine company 1 to the new fire station 13. Building a new fire station number 11 at Highway 24 and North Topeka Boulevard and relocating the current engine and truck company to the new location. And repurpose fire station number 6 and relocate it and engine company 6 to the Oakland Billard Park area.

Challenges and questions of the 25 fire station recommendations included the cost to build new stations, concerns of the public safety presence in certain areas, where we repurpose the existing fire stations, questions on four-minute response times, timeline on relocation plan, and how to address the cost of higher-rate insurance premiums for people who live outside the four-minute response times.

The 2026 fire station relocation plan to increase four-minute response times and address identified challenges and questions to the 2025 station recommendation, staff developed the 2026 fire station relocation plan, which includes the following phases. Phase 1 is for Fire Station 13 to build new Station 13 at 6th and Governor's Place and relocate Engine Company 11 to Staff Fire Station 13. This leaves Fire Station 11 operational with Truck Company 11. Phase 2 is for Fire Station 11. We'd build new Fire Station 11 at Lyman and North Topeka Boulevard. and relocate Engine 1 and Truck Company 11 to the new fire station number 11. This would close current fire station number 1 and number 11 to fire and medical responses. And phase number 3 for fire station number 6 would be to build new fire station number 6 at Billard Airport and relocate current Engine 6 to the Billard location.

Once relocation has completed, the current Fire Station 1, 6 and 11 would be repurposed. Fire Station 1 in Noto would house Topeka Police Department. Fire Station 6 would house our TFD Fire Investigation Unit, who are licensed peace officers. And Fire Station 11 on Lower Silver Lake Road would serve as a fire apparatus overflow and storage.

Current fire station locations and four minute coverage is shown in the orange. That's our four minute coverage at 75% of households or roughly 41,000 households under the four minute response.

The 2026 fire station relocation plan recommendations. are the blue and orange hash areas notate four-minute coverage areas, as 82% of the households or 44,632 households would be under four-minute response. That's a 7% increase of four-minute coverage.

Each fire station is estimated to cost between 8 and 12 million dollars. The entire plan to build three stations would cost between 24 and 36 million dollars. Some current examples are Shawnee Heights Fire District is building two stations at a cost of 10 million for both stations. I believe they've already completed those. Example number two is Soldier Township recently started building a new station with administration and meeting space, approximately 15,000 square feet for $12 million. The adopted fiscal year 2027, the fiscal year 2036 capital improvement plan has $100,000 in general obligation bonds programmed in fiscal year 2026 to begin high level estimating for Fire Station 13. And it has $11.3 million in geo bonds programmed for design and construction in fiscal year 2028.

There is a sales tax as an alternate funding source to consider funding this plan. Staff is considering a half sales tax that would generate approximately $20 million annually for general government use to include public safety purposes. If approved, this could be a cash option to potentially fund this plan. Based upon budget availability, staff recommendations would be to proceed with Phase 1, building Fire Station 13, and relocate Engine Company 11 to Staff 13.

Our previous steps were, in May, we briefed the Public Infrastructure Committee. In July, we held four public meetings to seek public feedback. And now, here in September, we're briefing the City Council to seek feedback on the proposed plan, begin negotiations with MTAA on long-term lease at Billard Airport, and evaluate land purchase options at Lyman Road and North Topeka Boulevard.

That concludes this plan. I want to add on the movie that we had prior to this, and he talked about fires, but what is important is strokes, heart attacks, and getting in within a four-minute time. So EMS is a big deal on this four-minute time. Thank you.

All right. Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you, Mayor. Once again, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible, but I've told the governing body this. I've talked to some individual city council colleagues just one-on-one about my concerns. And in 2020, it was stated that there would be another recommissioning of the fire station, understanding that things needed to occur. It just wasn't going to happen right at that time. Again, as I've stated to the governing body, last year there were three representatives, all from different parts of District 2 on the parts where there are the fire stations, which are going to be 11. There was a representative from six. There was the NIA president. And from one, we had someone from NOTO in a meeting with fire staff and the city manager and I think the assistant city manager. At that time, there were serious concerns about questions that were raised. Not that there were not new fire stations that were needed or something needed to be done. There was none of that. There was none of that. And I know that the city manager has leaned a lot on what one of the District 2 people said about a really high cost fire station, which is not the reality of what we're looking at in the price points right now. But there was serious enough concerns logistically and with not having an actual plan, this being more of the beginning of a concept and the importance of reestablishing a fire commission. I'm going to state it again so that the public can hear it. That commission is not going to be forever in a day. There's no sense in that. People have things to do. But what people do need to get an understanding in is to get this fleshed out and that all district representatives would have a seat at the table with someone from their district. The meetings would be televised, and there would be an option at every meeting for public comment. That was what was discussed at that table, and that is what was committed to by the city manager. Since that time, everything has changed. A city manager stated at the Garfield meeting to the audience that was there, yes, I did promise that, but things have changed and nothing is going to change in this plan. This is not so much about a no to fire stations. This is about slowing it down so that people have a chance to become a part of this process and everyone's district should be included if they want a seat at that table but yes this impacts all three of the fire stations in district two so i think that there's a little bit of understanding that should be had because i posed the question to people on you know that i've talked to at the council level and not all council people but i've talked to some is that if it was you in your district what would your feelings be about this if these commitments had been made. And additionally, saying in turn, if this was my district that was going to have a new station built, but there be so much uncertainty for the other three stations in one district, how would I proceed? And this is no reflection on you, Hofer. I'm just telling you where I'm coming from. And I would say stop, because this is not fair. There needs to be more answers, and there needs to be a commitment to what was promised. And I think that if there had not been that conversation that had been had in that meeting, that this would be a whole different conversation. But we need to be able to ask more questions. We need to be more thoughtful in the approach, especially how this is going to run how this is going to unfold logistically. I'm just reiterating what I stated before. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Kell.

Just like Councilmember, I'm going to kind of reiterate what I said before. I think we really need to look at 10. We're looking at an area that 10 is not covering, that it's in that four-minute area that is the fastest growing part of Topeka. And it keeps on getting denser and denser. I'd like to see this map actually show the density of certain areas. Like, you look at something like Big Chunga Park. Put that on the map with maybe some hashtags, because I look at that. Yes, there are people there on occasion that need medical services. But 77 acres. it's being covered where a neighborhood isn't being covered it's kind of it offsets it a little bit to where we need to maybe see where these seem to go uh with the popular density also be looking at that we can use our arc view gis to really show where our most populated areas are in town and The public said it. I know some firefighters said it. I think 10's best spot is to go over to that KDOT land right at 470 and Tabook Boulevard. and it would really work in i think that favor of getting more of that area uh taken care of in that four minute response time because we have some some whole neighborhoods just out of the four minute response time uh when you look at high crest and horseshoe bend and things like that that uh when you look at horseshoe bend it's constantly building right now so If we're not looking forward, we're going to have the same situation where we're going to have a highly densely area that has nothing, that comes out four-minute response time, and we're going to have something like maybe Big Chunga Park that nobody's living there that has almost two-minute response time. So I think we really need to kind of look at where we're going. off of density where we're looking at putting future firehouses or moving them to because if we're just saying, oh, this fills in the map the best, but if it's not covering that density area, then what's the point? Thank you.

Council Member Bradbury. Thank you. I'm sorry. You don't have to say anything. I just realized I didn't give you opportunity.

No, I understand what he's saying and When you move that way, that Station 10 that way, you'll lower the southwest part, that coverage out there. So there is an adjustment that needs to be made out there. We have seen that, but a lot of it is towards that southwest area.

And, Chief, what was it? I mean, we looked at overall response times across the entire network. So the analysis that we did use with our GIS team identified the biggest gap of coverage being in northwest Topeka. I mean, you're talking about seven minutes roughly on average to the areas in northwest Topeka, which is, if you look again, and I love the map that GIS did where they actually show you it's a sliding map where our current coverage is at. And then with the improvements, and there's a still of it on one of the slides that shows the overall coverage going into those areas. And again, the whole intent of what we're trying to do is to increase our four-minute coverage across the entire network. And Chief, we did talk about relocating Fire Station 10 closer to the boulevard. But again, as Chief said, as you move it further to the... East. Yeah. To the east. Yeah, you leave a gap in that west area. So again, we looked at everything as far as the entire network.

And speaking to some of the firefighters, that aspect there is kind of debunked a little bit by actually, if you were to try to, I think, go from that boulevard spot to that area over closer towards like Jardine Middle School and Elementary School, by being able to hop on the highway real quick and go up rather than trying to get off on 37th Street where it's sometimes not the easiest to get in and out of on that fire station there, that you can kind of increase your response time. And this is coming from the firefighters. It's almost like I think maybe some of these areas need to be tested and looked at. what would you do almost run a real life simulation from this spot in that parking lot over by KDOT over by KTA right there and just run a real life simulation of okay we're throwing on our gear and all that and taking off from here to there to see how much it actually really affects because if we're just running a simulation on what some program says that may not be what real life is and I could be completely wrong that it could make it worse but having, I think, the one, I'm sorry, what station is it? Let me pull it back. You have 8 right there, you have 5 right there, kind of, that helps out that area, but then you have that 45th Street that's kind of, it's kind of out there on its own, and so if 10's been taken care of and 9's, you know, you have something like 5 that takes that much longer to get out there, so I think something closer to there takes care of the future a lot better than just thinking, okay, right now we're looking at a densely populated area versus something that, you know, I think that population density map would show a lot better on sometimes where we need to make these changes at because it's, you know, It seems like we're leaving out some very big, densely populated areas, and it's confusing to me, it's confusing to the citizens, and it's confusing to some of the people that are under you guys, that why are we not making certain changes in certain areas? Like, in Oakland, I truly believe they need to have some stuff there, but...

understandable on all this and that's what we're trying to do the same thing with six and governor's place we're trying to close that gap and trying to work with that through the city and i think if dan can bring up that qr code and i don't know if you've studied that on our last page but if you go to that you'll be able to see what those four minute times are where the lack of coverage is so um you'll be able to study that on your own and also i'd be i'd love to go through that with you at at in my office or some places as far as how we got the those numbers population density in those areas it's we're really not learning anything from that map uh rather than

showing us a map that, like you said, Big Chunga has got a pretty good coverage to it, but it's an unpopulated area. So that's where I think we need to look at certain aspects and say, this is not an area that we need to really work on. We need to work on certain other areas because we have an area that's rapidly growing, and it's outside the four-minute bubble. And a little adjustment, a tenth of a mile away, makes a big difference.

Councilman, I would answer your population density discussion with the fact that our greatest population density is in the center of the city. And if you look at the concentration of our stations, we've got threes, fours, fives, sevens. Those are our busiest stations. That's where the heaviest concentration of population density is. I don't disagree with you. We are growing to the south. We're growing to the west. We're growing pretty much every direction but east. We do eventually, we're going to have to put something south. That's just all there is to it. I agree with you. We did look at moving Station 10 over to the Boulevard, specifically kind of where White Lakes is. And it put it too far east. The response times back to the west, even with the response up and jumping on the highway, were just too long. So we were debiting one area by moving it. We did, and... That's true.

I used the KTA slash KDOT area, not White Lakes, because it put you right on the highway, put you going south on Topeka Boulevard, put you going north on Topeka Boulevard, put you in a lot more expedited area than...

Not saying we can't look at that. There's certainly something we can look at.

Thank you.

Council Member Bradbury.

I think maybe one or two of my questions might have been answered about what stations are maybe operating above your capacity, like which ones you're experiencing the longer

response times to sevens is one of them. Um, that is, uh, he's got the numbers right here. Uh, but that's the reason why we were putting that one in at six and governor's place to relieve number sevens, uh, their call volume.

Our station seven is on par to run 3,600 to 4,000 calls this year. One of the problems we have with a station being that busy is that a lot of times they're already on call. when another call comes in. So that means another fire station has to come over and cover their area. One of the things we did with this study was I ran a simulation to see what the new fire station would serve and we've already estimated that they would run 2,400 calls a year. So that's station 13 alone. That would definitely take some of the heat off station seven.

Okay. And then my other question is, um, do you know what the annual cost of operating a new station would be?

So putting a brand new truck in there, new employees, or is that what you're asking?

As you have it planned now, do you know what the difference in operating cost would be compared to what a station that you plan on moving?

We're not adding any personnel or trucks. We're going to continue to have the same number of personnel and the same number of vehicles. The only difference would be if it's a larger station, there might be some more cost involved in heating it, cooling it, things like that.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Hofer.

This is something that my neighborhood and my district has been wanting for decades. And they deserve to be covered. My house in particular... I have a seven-minute response time. There's probably about, I'm guessing, Kevin, is it north of 10th Street where we go over four minutes?

I'm not exactly sure. I would say anywhere north of Huntoon and west of Fairlawn.

So a large section of my district is not covered, including the zoo. Land and middle school is outside of it. The governor's mansion is outside of it. A lot of Wanamaker is outside of four minutes. I'm just, everybody is fatigued in my neighborhood wanting to get this done. Last year we had three fires in a matter of like six months. All of our house insurance has gone up. One quote was 70% more from the year before. So they went shopping and got it lowered. But that relief is not going to come until we can get our response time down. And I think we do need to do some more discussion on the back end of this. Because yes, the south part of town is going to need to be covered. And I already looked from where The station on 37th to get out to Mars, it's over seven minutes. We just have some big gaps, but we've got to start addressing some of these gaps and get them realigned so they make more sense. Parts of Oakland are not well covered. Parts of East Topeka aren't well covered. So... I'm supporting this plan because it needs to be started and going. How we're going to fund it, we've got to work on that. But I am supportive of everything they've been doing and they've been refining. And I think they've done a great job of trying to figure out what to do with the old stations. They're all going to be reused well. But we just can't wait any longer. It's got to be done now. And it's time to commit and get something moving. That's all I have.

Any other comments or questions? Council Member Hiller.

Just a short one. When I read through your comments,

just the agenda piece, it said there was no budget cost. But if your master plan includes keeping the three vacated stations alive, then there should be a budget note for what it would, even if you're not going to have them staffed or active fire stations, but if you're going to have people working in them from PD or whoever or a museum or whatever they're going to be, there will be some cost.

Okay.

That's it.

Other comments or questions? Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you. Thank you for this plan. You know, the city messed up when the Sisters of Charity gave us that property. Should have let the firefighters build a damn shed on it, and we still have it because we didn't fulfill that. I actually asked legal. I said, well, you know, when Mars went in, they were going to give us some money. for a new station out there because they wanted a station out there, and rightly so for their building. I later learned we came back to JADO and said, we don't need this money. So they gave us that money that they were going to set aside for the community to build that or to help build that. And that's what we used that money to pay for the SOTO to get people back and forth to Mars. And I was like, this is crazy. I think that was in 2016. That's when we did that. I don't even remember doing that because I would have said, no, no, we don't need to do that. That's what the then-Mayor Michelle DeLisa and some of our JEDO members, they did. They agreed to go ahead and use that money, and that's what they used for the pseudo-transportation when all along they said, well, Mars was paying for that to get people back and forth to work. Well, I guess they were, but that was the money that was redirected for the fire station. And so, you know, it's been my dream since I got up here. First thing I did is I told Councilman Ocala, first thing we're doing, we're opening up Threes because we had shut down Threes. And I said, that's the first thing on the agenda. Because when we start closing fire stations, once, you know, they left Twos open, but Twos was built because Threes had to go all the way to East Topeka, and a dear friend of mine lost her daughter. So when we start shutting these places down, we do need – more coverage. So I'm going to support this. We've got to start somewhere, somewhere. We've got to. Again, I agree. People, I don't want to see us throwing so many tax things out there that people, they just get turned off about it. And that's what I'm hearing. They want a sales tax for this and this. But I guess if we put the sales tax for the fire stations, that has to go, if we use the language that it has to do nothing but go for that, maybe people will understand that. I've said it from this seat. If I was in your seat, I'd be, every time I open my mouth, I'd be talking about how we don't have a fire station. Because when you don't have a fire station, you're pulling from my side of town to get you guys covered. And so you're making my response time then eight minutes. That's too long. That's too long. And so when I looked at the fact that we got security benefit in life and they had over 192 kids up in the In the daycare, you got 192 kids there with no fire station there in case something was to happen. And so I will support this. I thank you for that. I know I disputed you about I didn't want to see him move, but when you showed me the response time and when you showed me it's more about fire, that it's also about Medical, that was an eye-opener because I know everybody thinks about fire, but they always forget the medical part. I don't know how you guys do it, but you guys are the first ones on the scene. And so that's an eye-opener to me, and you're correct. It's every minute counts with the strokes and all of that. The only other question I have, when I look at the legacy and the tradition or whatever you called it, did they have fire smoke detectors? Did they have those in there?

Yeah.

They did? Yeah.

You're talking about the video? In the video? Yeah.

Because you know what? I was going to get some new furniture, but I think I'll keep what I got. And you know, and on a serious note, next month is October, my favorite month, and we need to talk about those smoke detectors. You guys sit up here and you laugh about it, but we need to push those smoke detectors because they do save lives. And in my district and other districts, the wiring's old, the houses are old. We need to help you guys out. They need to help them out.

I want to add, too, that I had a conversation with Councilwoman Christina earlier today, and Chief Duke started a program. After every fire, we kind of swarmed that area and knocked on doors, and we had a discussion today, and our staff talked about it this morning, that we're going to pick that back up. And we're going to coach light tomorrow and doing the knock and start spreading that of the detectors.

And I can appreciate that, Chief, but we need to do it before. You know, we all can play a part in this and get those applications out there. You know, because every time I read about a fire, that's the first thing I look to see if they had a working smoke detector. And I cringe because nine times out of ten, they didn't. Where are we missing the boat? Where are we missing the boat? And so we need to push those again. We can't push them enough. Thank you.

And I also want to say that this plan. You know, I have to care about the citizens and then what you give me to work with. And yes, I would love to put stations out south, southwest and move on. But we have to do things smart and what we have. And this is one of the best plans that I have seen that we can. get some four-minute times for more people. And I think we also have to look at the cancer factors inside these stations, the women's facilities, and all that environment that they have to live in. And so I have to look at that, too, and moving forward. Thank you.

All right, so two things. First of all, I make a motion to go past 10 o'clock. We've got people signed up for public comments. SECOND FROM I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THAT WAS. COUNCILMEMBER MILLER? ALL RIGHT. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SAY AYE. ALL OPPOSED? THE SECOND THING AS WE WRAP UP THIS CONVERSATION IS I HAVE TALKED WITH CHIEF AND CITY MANAGER And we will put together, call it what you want, a fire commission, a citizen review of this plan. But my plan is to get that moving soon. So I don't 100% know what the structure is, but we'll have that conversation a little bit more over the next couple weeks. But I do know we'll probably include, if you would like, as Council Member Radivacla said, everyone can name a person to that group. So start thinking about who that is, because when we bring you that plan in the first meeting in October, we're going to get your sign-off on it, and then we're going to get it moving so they can at least have a few meetings this year so that they can bring back whatever their recommendations, suggestions, or ideas are sometime earlier in 27 and later. So that's the goal because I want to get it going. So that is going to happen. So just be thinking in your brain who you might want to ask to serve on that review committee or commission or whatever fancy name we're going to give it. But a chance to get some citizen eyes on it with some recommendations.

Oh, and I was making fun of you for not booing yours. Would it be okay if the city staff just said, reach out to your, if you're interested in being on this commission that you're putting together, that you reach out to your district person, your district representative?

I mean, you can make, we can make that announcement. I mean, partly tonight, but I mean, it's going to be your appointment. So, So, over in your district, you would like to appoint to that thing.

Well, I understand what I'm saying. Like, sure, I can have a personal person, but if there's somebody who has more experience or expertise that's like, oh, I would be interested in doing so that I don't know personally, then I would like to know that person.

Yeah, I'll talk to the staff about how we want to message that out to people. I'll talk to Dan.

Thank you.

Just real quick, Mayor.

Yep, Council Member Valdivia.

I just wanted to say thank you for that move. And, again, I want to reiterate, This is not saying that 13 shouldn't be built. This is trying to give you consideration in the district as well, who's does not have a formulated plan yet in all three of the fire stations are being impacted. So maybe consider that a little bit, but there was never anything said that it shouldn't be built. or that this is not the good plan, it's that it needs more body to it. Thank you.

Councilmember Heller.

I guess I got startled there. A little clarification. So even though they've done all this work with the proposals that they had in mind and are here tonight, we're starting over?

No, this is the plan we're working from. Okay. GOAL WILL BE FOR THOSE INDIVIDUALS TO START USING THIS PLAN, AND IF THEY HAVE ANYTHING, MAYBE THERE'S QUESTIONS SIMILAR TO WHAT COUNCILMEMBER KELL ASKED TONIGHT ABOUT, HEY, I WANT TO TAKE A SECOND LOOK AT WHY WE'RE BUILDING A STATION HERE VERSUS HERE, AND THEY CAN WALK TO THE STAFF. OR IF WE'RE REALLY GOING TO GET RID OF A STATION HERE AND YOU HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN FOR IT, MAYBE THERE'S A BETTER ALTERNATIVE PLAN, OR MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T GET RID OF THAT AND WE CAN BUILD. SO IT GIVES THEM A CHANCE TO ASK THOSE QUESTIONS, BUT IT WILL BE BASED OFF OF THIS PLAN THAT'S BEING PRESENTED. NO, WE ARE NOT STARTING FROM SCRATCH AND WALKING BACKWARDS.

I guess I'm thinking that if people are thinking about trying to put the proposal on the sales tax, it needs to be clear before it would get put out to the public.

I think it's very clear that we need to build new fire stations. And so I think it's very easy, especially if this group starts meeting a couple meetings into this year. It can meet first quarter of next year. I mean, there's many times they need to over that five, six months. Two things can be done once. I mean, our issue at this point is not that we need to make some changes within a fire department, build new stations. It's how we want that to look. And so I think we can message that pretty easily. People say, we're doing this. What that final plan is, is you've got a base to work from. There may be some adjustments to it, but we know we've got to build a station 13, and we know we've got to build some different stations at response time. I do think, as I tell people a lot, we can walk and chew gum at the same time around here, even though people don't feel like it all the time.

I guess I'm just, and there's some clarification maybe, but if there's a pretty substantial time lag that you need to do in advance of getting a commitment to put something on a ballot, I would think it has to be final before you do that.

We can talk about it more.

Yeah, just think of a tight timeline if you're going to do it.

Thank you, Mayor. One thing that I do want to communicate is I do want to move forward at least on the feasibility of a fire station as far as the costs. As mentioned, we have $11.3 million programmed for 2028 for construction through bonds, design and construction. I do also want to point out that Shawnee Heights built two fire stations for $10 million. And that Soldier Township is building a 15,000 square foot facility for 12 million. We don't need 15,000 square feet for a fire station. We're probably in about the 5,000 square foot realm. So I do want us to at least start the high level estimating, which we do have about $100,000 this year programmed to do that. And I think that will help aid in the discussion, even if we can't get it done before the end of October. So that is my intent if you see something coming across the council agenda in the next couple of months. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. With that, we will move on to public comment. First up, we have Sharon Gillette.

Good evening. My name is Sharon Gillette. We've covered so much tonight. I'm going to wait and give my speech tomorrow night at the JADO meeting and let everyone go home. Hey, it's 10 o'clock. This is four minutes. You'll see me tomorrow night. I didn't want to just leave. I wanted to thank you for all the decisions you have to make. And you've heard so much. So have I tonight. So I'll save it. Okay.

Thank you very much. I think Colleen left. Is that correct? Okay. And then Amy? Okay. All right. With that, we'll move on to announcements. City Clerk.

On the September 15th agenda, we have one board appointment. We have two presentations. The first is on the 2027 sales tax initiative. Second is on the affordable housing trust fund update. We have one professional services contract with Alfred Benish and Company for KDOT carbon reduction grant program. We have a resolution authorizing initiation of a lawsuit. And then action items include the ordinance for the utility lanes and the appropriation ordinance for the budget.

City Manager.

Nothing tonight, sir. Thank you. Council Member Valdeviacola.

I just hope we get rain. That's it. Thank you.

Council Member Ortiz.

Nothing.

Council Member Banks.

Nothing tonight, Mayor. Thank you.

Council Member Kell.

There's two events coming up that I'm involved in. The Child Care Aware of Eastern Kansas Celebrity Waiter's Foray is October 3rd. There's still tickets available to go to that. And then I know I'm probably going to steal some thunder from two of my colleagues up here, but Brew at the Zoo is this Saturday. It's 80s themed. There's still tickets available for that as well. I'll be working the VIP area and wherever else they put me at. This time of year is always tough for me as the fact that we're coming up on the 25th anniversary of 9-11. I was in New York two days prior on 9-9-2001. Saw some of my friends who are firefighters, some of my friends who are police officers that I never got to see again. And it's one of the things is to honor and remember those rushing into a building. There's a gentleman that I knew that was killed in the Pentagon was from Overland Park. He was one of my mentors in the Navy. And it's one of those things of just going to work can be dangerous sometimes and unexpected. So just take the time to love your family, say what's on your mind and kind of live every day as it's your last. It's one of those things that, uh, it gets me every year, uh, that I, uh, kind of almost get an imposter syndrome. I don't feel like I've done enough. Uh, don't feel like I, you know, uh, I downplay my success. I doubt myself that I could have done more at that timeframe. And I still to this day have that thought process sometimes. And, uh, You know, it's one of those things that hopefully everyone can kind of take a couple days from now, take some time, think about everything that happened, and remember the people that were lost and the people that went rushing into buildings to save others. And the ones on the plane that went to go try to save others had that plane crash. So thank you and have a good night.

Council Member Miller.

Nothing, Mayor. Thank you.

Council Member Bradbury.

Yes, thank you. September is Leukemia Awareness Month, so I just wanted to bring that to people's attention. People with leukemia often need a lot of red blood cells and platelets, so if you can go donate those. That would be really helpful to patients and their families. And I also want to give a shout out to Dr. Singh over at the Cancer Center at Stormont Vale because he took exceptional care of my mother when she had acute myeloid leukemia. Thanks.

Council Member McGee.

I have nothing to add. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Hofer.

Nothing tonight.

Council Member Hiller.

Passed.

All right. I just want to thank all. It was hot this weekend. It's hot now. Supposedly, we're going to get a little break. But there was a lot of stuff that happened over Labor Day weekend outside from a Washburn football game that kind of got played. They just had made the extra point. We would have won that thing. But that's football. But there were a lot of events the next couple of days outside, including some musical events in the evening. But to everyone's credit in Topeka, they drank a lot of water and they went to those events still. So people still got out and participated in that. So I just want to say thank you to all the people at Topeka who didn't abandon all those events for all those people who worked hard to do those things. So good for Topeka to show up and drink their water and brave the heat. With that, as far as I'm aware, we have no need for any executive sessions this evening. So is there anything else for the good of the body? If not, then this meeting is adjourned at 10.06.