Topeka council increases its oversight of high-dollar street projects

Topeka’s mayor and city council late Tuesday gave themselves increased oversight of high-dollar street projects financed by a city-wide, half-cent sales tax.

Before voting 10-0 to approve the city’s 2021-2023 capital improvement budget and 2021-30 capital improvement plan, the mayor and council voted 10-0 to adopt an amendment proposed by Councilman Neil Dobler to the resolution involved.

That amendment takes steps that include requiring council approval twice for all project budgets of $250,000 or more for street work financed totally or in part by revenue from the citywide, half-cent sales tax.

Dobler, who has been on the council since November, said he sought to provide a “happy medium” between the rules the city has followed in recent years and those it had in place when he was interim Topeka city manager from 2005 to 2006.

Topeka’s mayor and council each year adopt a CIB listing capital improvements the city may carry out in the next three years and a CIP listing priorities for improvements to be carried out in each of the next 10 years.

When Dobler was interim city manager, he said, project budgets needed to first be approved well in advance as part of the CIB, then approved individually, with the latter usually happening not long before they were carried out.

That process was a drain on the council and city staff, Dobler said.

“It made sense to do something different,” he said.

Dobler was not a part of Topeka’s city government when the city in 2014 switched to authorizing its staff to carry out any project listed on a CIB approved by the council.

But that change brought the city from one extreme of micromanagement to the other extreme of receiving “really very little oversight” from the council, which has a responsibility to “watch what’s going on,” Dobler said Tuesday.

He proposed Tuesday that the council increase its oversight by amending its procedures to require council approval for all street projects that have a total budget of more than $500,000 and are financed totally or in part by revenue from the citywide, half-cent sales tax.

Councilman Mike Lesser proposed a friendly amendment to Dobler’s amendment that involved lowering the amount to $250,000. Dobler accepted it.

The mayor and council then unanimously approved the amended amendment, and soon afterward unanimously adopted a CIB and CIP that included earmarking funding for specific city projects in the amounts of nearly $90.5 million for 2021, more than $80 million for 2022 and more than $96.5 million for 2023.

Dobler stressed that the mayor and council may opt in the future to continue to revise the procedural arrangement approved Tuesday.

The CIB and CIP the mayor and council approved Tuesday include plans for the city to borrow $20 million between 2021 and 2023 to help cover costs related to the planned replacement and realignment by the state of Kansas of downtown Topeka’s Polk-Quincy Viaduct.

Tuesday’s council meeting was closed to the public in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, though citizens could submit comments by email in advance. The meeting was aired live on the city of Topeka’s Facebook page, the city’s website and on City4, the city’s cable TV channel.

Council members Dobler, Karen Hiller, Tony Emerson and Spencer Duncan were physically present in the council chambers, as were city manager Brent Trout, five other city employees and three journalists.

Mayor Michelle De La Isla and council members Lesser, Christina Valdivia-Alcala, Sylvia Ortiz, Mike Padilla and Hannah Naeger all took part using the Zoom teleconferencing application, as did some city department heads.