Mayor Mike Padilla is exiting stage left. That alone tells a story. He is leaving behind rising utility rates that the city locked in for 2024 through 2026, with 2025's increases already baked into the published rate sheets. Voters are not imagining higher water, wastewater, and stormwater bills. They were approved, scheduled, and posted, and residents are paying them right now.  
City Manager Robert Perez talks about stability while senior staff heads keep rolling. In the span of days this month, the city attorney resigned, the city planning director resigned, and Perez issued statements to calm nerves. When your legal counsel and your planning lead walk out in the middle of budget season and housing initiatives, "we're steady" does not pass the laugh test.  
Deputy Mayor Brett Kell was elevated by his colleagues back in January to run meetings and help set the agenda. Fine. Where is the visible win residents can feel on their street or on their bill? As deputy, his job is to move basics faster, not narrate them. The record so far is ceremonies and promises while the city scrambles more pothole crews and still holds hearings on the same aging-infrastructure problems.   
The governing body keeps touting "planning" and "engagement." Translation in Topeka has been more meetings, more hearings, and more rate models. The FY2025 budget was marketed as structurally balanced, which is good, but residents notice what is balanced on their back. Every family that opened a higher utility bill this year understands the difference between a slide deck and a result. 
Here is the kicker. Barely one in ten voters even showed up for the primary. That is not civic pride, that is civic fatigue. If the current cast were inspiring confidence, turnout would not be stuck under ten percent. The city deserves leadership that earns attention without a crisis.
Henry McClure
785.383.9994
sent from mobile 📱
time kills deals
