The City of Topeka Governing Body met on August 19, 2026, to address a 54-item agenda covering bond sales, zoning changes, economic development incentives, the FY2027 budget, and public testimony on public safety and data centers. The meeting included presentations, public comments, and votes on multiple action items.
Good evening and welcome to the August 18th, 2026 governing body meeting here in Good Old Topeka, Kansas. I will now call this meeting to order this evening. If you'd please turn your attention to Councilmember Hiller, who has the invocation. Please rise if you are able. Thank you, Mayor. I chose to bring something forward this evening rather than a guest, but it's sort of a guest, I guess. I always appreciate the invocation starts to our council meetings, whether they are deeply faith-based or more secular. We've been dealing with a lot of issues lately, and the way we've handled some of them has been unsettling and divisive, and many have argued that they don't need to be that way. In the midst of yet another batch of do this, don't do that, communications, passionate, worried, but truly everyone just wanting to do the right thing for everyone. We all on council got a short string of thoughtful centering emails from an anonymous individual who called himself or herself, educate yourself 785. I really appreciated them and told the person so and have taken the liberty of taking one of those messages and generalizing the example in it. Um to be more overall to the issues we've been facing lately. So what that person shared. Impactful change starts with local leadership, local leadership having the courage to remain open-minded, educate themselves, and recognize that new information may lead to a different fact-based perspective. Leadership means being willing to step outside your comfort zone, examine something unfamiliar, and determine whether it can be done responsibly and successfully. There is no reason Topeka Shawnee County has to blindly accept new ideas or categorically reject them. Local leadership includes the elected leaders and local community members. Add value, get us better results in Topeka Shawnee County. Too often we dismiss unconventional or unpopular ideas before taking the time to understand whether they could produce a meaningful benefit for our community. Similarly, we can be attracted by processes that appear to be a quick fix and find ourselves drawn to those versus actually figuring out what we need in a system and fixing that. Today we are dealing with issues such as data centers, health and safety of rental properties, upzoning ideas, chickens, detention ponds, development subsidies, budgets, and hundreds of daily issues with more emerging every day. If you're only searching and learning about negatives or the quick fixes, that's all you find. Have a vision for what is possible. Do the work, set the bar high, use your power for good. Don't let fear determine your legacy. I hope you appreciate that message as much as I did. Thank you again. Educate yourself, 785. Amen. All right, rule call. Mayor Duncan. Here. Council members Hillard. Here. Valdivia Aquila. Here. Ortice. Here. Banks. Here. Kel. Here. Miller. Here. Bradbury. Here. McGee. Here. Anne Hofer. Here.