What “housing, housing, housing” is doing politically

Yes — there are official reports. And no, the “housing shortage” talk is not only about free housing for the homeless. Officials are folding several different problems into one slogan.

The reports they actually cite

The city’s main document is the Citywide Housing Market Study and Strategy (July 2020). It still underpins later RHID write-ups, the 2024 implementation-plan metrics, Consolidated Plan language, and a lot of council/chamber talking points.

HUD’s latest independent snapshot is the Topeka Housing Market Profile as of April 1, 2025. It does not describe a collapsing market. It calls the sales market balanced and the rental market slightly tight.

Other numbers in circulation:

• AEI Housing Center (March 2026): Kansas as a whole is short about 4,200 homes — roughly 0.3% of statewide stock. That is a modest gap, not a 10,000-unit local emergency.
• City Manager Robert Perez (Feb 2026): about 900 units short downtown.
• Topeka Housing Authority CEO Trey George (March 2026): Topeka needs roughly 10,000 additional units across all price ranges. That figure is much larger than HUD or AEI and looks like several 20-year “need” buckets stacked together.
• A 2022 RHID needs memo updated the 2020 study to about 2,367 units of net demand for a “balanced” market.

So the reports exist. The size of the shortage depends on who is talking and what they are counting.

What the market actually looks like

Topeka is not San Francisco or Austin. Prices are still low by national standards, and there is not a raw “no roofs left” crisis.

Sales

• HUD: sales vacancy about 1.2%; market balanced. Average sale price about $236,000 in the year ending Feb 2025, up 7%.
• Recent local/realtor figures: median sale often in the $184,000–$227,500 range; homes sell fast (roughly 8–19 days) at or near list. Demand for existing houses is real.

Rentals

• HUD: overall rental vacancy 7.4% (down from 9.9% in 2020); apartments about 7.2%; average apartment rent about $941. “Slightly tight,” not a 1% vacancy squeeze.
• Listing sites put typical Topeka rents around $850–$1,000. Cheap compared with the country; still a stretch for low-wage households.

Population

• HUD: Topeka MSA population about 233,000, basically unchanged from 2020. This is not a boomtown absorbing tens of thousands of new households.

The 2020 city study itself said something officials rarely repeat: Topeka already had enough units to house everyone and then some, with about 6,000 vacant units (11%), and vacancy as high as 17–21% in parts of east and central Topeka. More than 40% of the stock was built before 1960. The problem they defined was quality, price, type, and location — not a missing 10,000 empty lots.

That mismatch still explains a lot: empty or worn houses in older neighborhoods, and a tight market for decent starter homes, townhomes, and clean rentals.

Production is the real constraint they can point to

Where the “shortage” claim is strongest is how little has been built since 2008.

• Shawnee County private housing permits: 540 (2021), then 199 / 206 / 218 in 2022–2024. The Chamber’s line is that average annual permits are down about two-thirds from the five years before the 2008 crash.
• City of Topeka 2024: 112 new housing units permitted inside the city. That is a trickle.
• 2025 city YTD through early November jumped because of multifamily: 350 residential units, including 250 in 5+ unit buildings. That is downtown/incentive-driven product, not a wave of $200k starter houses.
• HUD (year ending March 2025): about 330 for-sale units permitted metro-wide and only 40 rental units.

The 2020 study wanted hundreds of units a year. The city has mostly delivered far fewer, except when a big apartment deal lands.

Homelessness is a separate, smaller number

Latest official Point-in-Time count (June 24, 2026):

• 460 people / 379 households
• 202 unsheltered
• Down from a peak of 546 in July 2024 and 502 in January 2026.

That is a serious local problem. It is not a 5,000- or 10,000-unit housing gap. PIT counts also miss people doubled up, and they do not measure addiction, mental illness, or whether someone will stay housed. Treating street homelessness as if it were just “we didn’t build enough apartments” is the part of the rhetoric that does not hold up.

Subsidized housing waitlists are a better measure of income-restricted demand:

• Public housing: 744 THA units; waitlist recently cited around 300.
• Section 8: list was closed for years with 2,000+ names; THA briefly reopened it in spring 2026 after working through that backlog. About 938 Housing Choice Vouchers in use.

That is real need at the bottom of the income scale. It is still not the same thing as “Topeka has no housing.”

What “housing, housing, housing” is doing politically

Officials are bundling four products under one word:

1. Low-income / LIHTC / public housing / vouchers — waitlists, trust fund, possible extra sales tax slice.
2. Workforce / “missing middle” — duplex/triplex/quad changes, starter product that private builders have not delivered at volume.
3. Downtown and market-rate apartments — The Hutch (~192 units), Union at Tower District, tax incentives. Perez has said those two projects are “a little over 400 units” at both ends of attainability.
4. Homeless services and shelters — Compassion Impact Center, CoC funding, PIT counts.

City Manager Perez has also floated a tenth-of-a-cent sales tax: about $4 million a year, split between the affordable housing trust fund and a market-rate housing fund. That tells you the slogan is being used to justify both social housing and developer incentives.

The 2024 implementation metrics showed the city lagging its own targets, especially workforce rentals (only a handful counted toward a 400-unit goal). Affordable-rental counts looked better mostly because of emergency vouchers and LIHTC, not a private building boom.

What’s really going on

• There is an official study trail. The 2020 city study is the mother document.
• There is underbuilding of new, livable product — especially starter homes and good mid-price rentals — after 2008.
• There is cost burden at the bottom: the 2020 study said about 30% of households paid more than 30% of income for housing, and it estimated a need on the order of 5,000 units at or below 60% of AMI.
• There is not a citywide unit shortage on the scale of the loudest quotes. HUD still calls sales balanced. Vacancy in older neighborhoods has been high. Population is flat.
• Homelessness is real (~460 people) and is not the same problem as “we need 10,000 more units.”
• “Housing shortage” is now a policy umbrella: it supports zoning changes, land-bank lots, LIHTC, Housing Trust Fund money, and tax breaks for downtown apartments.

The cleanest way to hear the slogan is: officials are short of the kind of housing they want to take credit for building — subsidized, workforce, and new downtown product — while the existing cheap-but-tired stock and a small unsheltered population get rolled into the same speech.

Dark Money Killed the Right to Vote Amendment

From: Rep. Pat Proctor <pat@patproctor4ks.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2026 3:02 PM
To: mcre13@gmail.com <mcre13@gmail.com>
Subject: Dark Money Killed the Right to Vote Amendment

Henry, The Axis of Ballot Harvesting and its allies spent 19 million dollars in dark money to defeat the Right to Vote amendment and keep you from electing y

View this email in your browser Support Our Campaign With your help, we put up record-setting fundraising numbers in 2025. But the Axis of Ballot Harvesting has struck back in 2026, showering my Democrat opponent with over $180,000 in cash from the George Soros, foreign billionaires, and left-wing radicals on the East and West Coast. I need your help! Every contribution, no matter the size, brings us closer to victory. Click the button below to join me in this critical mission. Contribute DARK MONEY KILLED THE RIGHT TO VOTE AMENDMENT The Axis of Ballot Harvesting and its allies spent $19 million in dark money to defeat the Right to Vote amendment and keep you from electing your own Supreme Court justices. This massive influx of out-of-state cash, spent on deceptive and outright false ads and mailers, makes it clear why we must get foreign and dark money out of Kansas politics. In this edition of the Proctor Election Report, I will discuss the troubling sources for the money spent to defeat the Right to Vote amendment, detail my ongoing fight to get foreign money and dark money out of our elections, and explain why we need a Secretary of State who will actually defend our election laws. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with ALEC TV to talk about the work I have done as the Chair of the House Elections Committee to restore confidence in our elections here in Kansas by combating dark money and foreign influence in our politics. Kansas elections should be decided by Kansas voters, not by China or foreign billionaires. This August, Kansas voters had a chance to abolish the unaccountable, lawyer-controlled nominating commission that picks our state Supreme Court justices. The Right to Vote amendment would have restored transparency by allowing citizens to directly elect our highest court. It was a simple fix to return power to the people. In a recent decision, the Kansas Supreme Court came within just a single vote of stripping the state legislature of its constitutional authority to write our state's election laws. If just one more justice had flipped, activist judges would have had the power to strike down every common-sense safeguard we've passed—from signature verification to bans on ballot harvesting. That's why I fought so hard for Kansans to take back the court! But we were simply overwhelmed by millions in dark money, some of it apparently from foreign sources. The radical Left relies on activist judges to legislate from the bench and rewrite laws they cannot stop in the legislature. So they spent millions in dark money--buying thousands of hours of false and misleading ads--to keep you from having a voice and to protect their control over the courts. Planned Parenthood and Axis of Ballot Harvesting charter member, the ACLU, funneled over $19 million into Kansas to defeat the amendment. Much of this money came from out-of-state billionaires and George Soros-linked nonprofits, many of which are linked to foreign billionaires. “On Aug. 4 Kansas voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have changed how state supreme court justices are selected. The measure failed 61% to 39%... “Those opposing the amendment raised about $13.7 million while those supporting it raised only about $3.4 million. Over $4 was raised to oppose the amendment for every $1 raised by those supporting it... “The dominant opposition player was a progressive group (KUIC) with two very similar names, but registered in Kansas as two business entities: Kansans United for Impartial Courts (KnsUIC) Kansas United for Impartial Courts (KsUIC) “KnsUIC and KsUIC share the same board of directors: Evan Gates (Kansas Values Institute employee) Micah Kubic (ACLU-Kansas, Executive Director) Emily Wales (Planned Parenthood Great Plains, President and CEO)” Earl F Glynn Watchdog Lab August 28, 2026 Learn More I have spent the last four years as Chairman of the Elections Committee fighting this exact kind of dark money and foreign influence. We cannot allow shadowy nonprofits to dictate how Kansas runs its elections. After a Swiss billionaire poured $1.2 million into defeating the Value Them Both amendment in 2022, I carried and passed the law banning foreign money from Kansas constitutional amendment campaigns. This common-sense safeguard closed a massive loophole that allowed foreign nationals to put their thumb on the scale of our elections and rewrite our constitution. Not surprisingly, the ACLU immediately sued to stop it. They are desperate to keep their foreign funding pipelines open so they can continue subverting our elections. And the massive influx of money into this election appears to show they have found ways to circumvent the law. Last year, I passed a ban on foreign money in Kansas Elections.  Not surprisingly, the ACLU and its allies, awash in foreign money, sued to try to stop me. Moreover, the radical Left does not just use dark money in ballot campaigns. It appears they are also exploiting loopholes in our campaign finance laws to funnel unknown money directly to Democrat candidates. Last year, I called for and led a special committee hearing to investigate the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue. We heard shocking testimony from retired data scientist Earl Glynn about a fraudulent practice called "smurfing." Bad actors use the stolen identities of everyday Americans to make thousands of tiny donations, evading detection and disclosure requirements. Even Democrat Governor Laura Kelly and Johnson County Democrat Congresswoman Sharice Davids are implicated in these accusations. Earl F. Glynn spoke to the Wichita Pachyderm Club on the topic of dark money in politics at the club’s April 17, 2026, luncheon. Glynn is a retired data scientist who retired in 2022 after a career research and development for large medical companies. He also worked for the CIA.  In 2024 Glynn was appointed to the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission by Attorney General Kris Kobach. Glynn has degrees in engineering and computer science from Kansas State University. This vulnerability allows unknown, and potentially foreign, money to flow right into Kansas Democrat's campaigns. We must require transparency and close these loopholes to ensure our election system is not subverted by foreign interference. Now, this same network of dark money is trying to buy the Secretary of State office. My opponent, California Democrat Jennifer Day, was recently endorsed by March On PAC. This out-of-state political action committee is funded by the exact same radical Left dark money network that pours millions into Kansas to fight every single law I pass to restore confidence in our elections. My opponent, California Democrat Jennifer Day, is endorsed by a massive left-wing PAC that has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars of dark money support into her campaign. What do they think they are buying? This definitely isn't a reflection of the quality of the candidate. She abandoned her post as a State Representative after serving only one year of the two-year term she had committed to her neighbors to serve.  It's because they will have her in their pockets. She's a quitter who defends illegal non-citizen voting and is bought and paid for with dark money. How hard do you think she will fight to defend the laws I have passed to ban foreign funding when her friends at the ACLU and March On PAC the Secretary of State use that same funding to tear them down? She will simply step aside and let them dismantle our election system from within. “A women-led political action committee (PAC) that has spent the last several election cycles targeting key races across the country is pointing to a string of recent endorsements and victories as evidence of its growing influence in Democratic politics. “March On PAC, founded in the wake of the 2016 election, has built its strategy around backing candidates it describes as “bold Democratic leaders,” with a focus on reproductive rights, voting access, economic issues, and racial justice...   “In its latest statements, the PAC made clear it sees its work as part of a longer political fight, tying individual race outcomes to national stakes.   “We don’t just talk about change,' the organization said. 'We invest in it.'” Stacy M. Brown The Washington Informer April 13, 2026 Learn More I have relentlessly defended our election system against the Axis of Ballot Harvesting and their foreign-funded lawsuits as the Chairman of the House Elections Committee. With your help, I will continue that fight as your next Secretary of State. I produce this weekly newsletter, the Proctor Election Report, because it's important to me, as the Chairman of the House Committee on Elections and a candidate to serve you as Kansas Secretary of State, to keep you informed on the latest developments in Kansas elections. But I also want to focus on the subjects that are of interest to you. Is there a topic you would like me to discuss in a future edition? Do you have feedback or questions on the topics in this edition? Please REPLY to this email. I respond personally to every reply I receive to this newsletter. I look forward to hearing from you! Copyright © 2026 Pat Proctor for Kansas, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in by providing us with your email address. Our mailing address is: Pat Proctor for Kansas PO Box 3421 Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Any solicitation contained herein is not intended for lobbyists, political committees, or persons other than individuals. Paid for by Proctor for Kansas, Amy Cawvey, Treasurer

They are not banned from talking to staff. They are banned from running staff.

Under Topeka’s council-manager charter, the governing body is legislative and policy-making. It has no administrative powers. The city manager is the administrative head. That line is in the charter itself.

The current Governing Body Rules (effective August 11, 2026) spell out what that means in practice:

What councilmembers may not do

• Interfere directly with the conduct of any municipal department.
• Give instructions or directions to department heads or other city employees (except the assistant to the Council).
• Give individual orders to the city manager. Direction to the manager has to come from the governing body after a majority (six) approves it. The manager is supposed to ignore one-off instructions and send them back to the body as a whole.

What they may do

• Ask the city manager, department heads, or their designees for routine information.
• Ask the city manager for lengthy or detailed reports (those requests go through the manager, not around him).
• Talk directly with a staff member when the manager has assigned that person to a specific task — including staffing a council committee.
• Provide input to the manager on the assistant to the Council / assistant to the Mayor.

So a councilmember calling Public Works for a status on a pothole, drainage question, or a constituent complaint is generally allowed as a request for information. A councilmember calling Public Works and telling them which project to do first, who to hire, or how to run the shop is the part the rules treat as improper.

The practical rule of thumb in a council-manager city: ask questions and gather facts; do not supervise. Meetings with staff for briefings, committee work, or constituent follow-up are normal. Meetings that turn into management are what the charter and Rule 2.6 are written to stop.

Frito-Lay PepsiCo / Frito-Lay — public, global, and priced every day

Frito-Lay has been in Topeka 70 years, not since the big plant on I-470. The current factory is the second Topeka home, built after a tornado. The tax breaks that show up in the public record are almost all on later expansions, not a documented 1971 “welcome package” with a dollar figure attached.

When they came

1956 — first plant.
Frito-Lay opened at S.E. 6th and Kansas Avenue. That is the same east-side industrial corridor where Reser’s later sat. Employment when a longtime worker started in 1970 was only about 43 people.

June 8, 1966 — tornado.
The 1966 Topeka tornado destroyed that building. The company ran a temporary plant in Pauline (south of the city, near what is now the Forbes / Topeka Regional Airport area) while it rebuilt.

August 30, 1971 — current plant opens.
The south Topeka factory at 4236 S.W. Kirklawn (just south of I-470, west of Topeka Boulevard; same campus often listed as 1303 S.W. 41st) opened that day. PepsiCo’s own 1971 annual report lists “a new Topeka, Kansas, plant” for Cheetos, Doritos, Funyuns, and Munchos. It started around 100 workers. The site was chosen for turnpike / I-470 truck access and a Kansas workforce, not because Topeka was a potato district — potatoes and corn still roll in from Nebraska.

So: in Topeka since 1956; at the plant everyone drives past since August 30, 1971. That is the date the company itself used for the 40-year party in 2011.

What they were given (what is actually in the record)

Kansas does not publish one tidy “Frito-Lay incentive file” from 1956. What is public is ordinance-level and newspaper-level, plus later county exemption hearings. Here is what holds up.

1956 and 1971 — original location and rebuild

I did not find a digitized City of Topeka or Shawnee County packet that lists IRBs, a cash grant, or a named property-tax abatement for the 1956 shop or the 1971 Kirklawn plant. Kansas already had industrial revenue bond authority (K.S.A. 12-1740 et seq., 1961), so a 1971 bond deal is possible. It is not in the online archives the way 2009 and 2018 are.

What the company and state later said about why Topeka: interstate access, labor, and a “business-friendly” state. After the tornado they already had people and a market; they rebuilt here instead of leaving. That is a location decision, not a published subsidy spreadsheet.

Treat 1971 incentives as not documented in the sources below, not as “they got nothing.”

2007–2011 — the era that is documented

From 2007 on the plant was in almost continuous expansion: about 75,000 sq. ft. in 2007, 125,000 in 2009, a $53 million high-rise automated warehouse around 2010, biomass boiler, SunChips / Tostitos lines. Roof area was described in that period as heading toward 800,000 sq. ft. on roughly 188 acres.

June 2009 — 10-year county property-tax break on the addition.
Shawnee County agreed to a 10-year exemption from property tax on the new work: biomass boiler, Tostitos Scoops line, and a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. Go Topeka’s Steve Jenkins announced it. Important detail from the Capital-Journal: Go Topeka did not put countywide economic-development sales-tax cash into the deal. The incentive was the county tax exemption on the new property, framed as job retention for 800-plus workers, not a big new hiring pledge.

Frito-Lay’s own plant engineer, Allen Moore, later told Site Selection the state helped with “standard tax abatements and other incentives” and that “GO Topeka, the city and county were all very good to work with.” That is the company describing the 2007–2011 wave, not a 1971 ordinance.

Federal piece on the boiler: DOE put about $1.66 million into a ~$13 million biomass energy project at the Topeka plant (wood waste, including city yard waste from I-70 and MacVicar). That is a federal cost-share, not a city check.

Stacked exemptions. In January 2018 the county commission’s agenda included renewing year 8 and year 9 of separate Frito-Lay projects. That means at least two 10-year economic-development exemptions were running at once, consistent with a 2009 deal and a follow-on ~2010 warehouse deal.

August 13, 2018 — warehouse EDX

County commission approved an economic development property-tax exemption for an 86,000-square-foot hi-tech warehouse on land west of the plant (bought from the Graeme W. Henderson Trust; city rezoned/platted it as Frito-Lay Subdivision No. 3 / PUD so they could go taller than the old 70-foot I-1 cap, up to 125 feet).

What the hearing actually said:

• Exemption is on new value, not the existing factory. County counselor Jim Crowl: existing plant stays on the tax roll.
• Jobs pledged: 7 new, 6 retained on that project — small next to an 800–1,000 person plant.
• Staff cost-benefit: about $1.03 million to the city and $166,000 to the county over 10 years, “net benefit” ~$1.2 million. That is their model, not an audited check.
• Context numbers in the packet: land/buildings around the site appraised about $9.3 million; 2018 tax on that existing property about $380,471. That was the old tax, not the abated amount.
• Public objection: resident Marge Ahrens said Auburn-Washburn USD 437 had already lost on the order of $2.5 million county / $2 million city from exemption subsidies in 2017. Commissioner Kevin Cook called the Frito deal “an investment now, to have a much larger investment in the future.”

The 2018 file also allowed a payment in lieu of taxes if the county wanted one. The published stories do not print the PILOT schedule.

What they generally did not get (in the clips)

• No JEDO cash grant on the scale of Reser’s later $1 million (2025) or Reser’s huge EDX face amount. Frito-Lay’s public deals are property-tax exemptions on increments, plus state “standard” abatements, plus a DOE boiler grant.
• No evidence in these sources of a free water rate or a special industrial water contract. They sit on the city’s published Industrial / Industrial II class like everyone else in that class.
• Go Topeka cash from the countywide ED sales tax: specifically declined in 2009.

Predictable class discount is just a plain-English label for how Topeka prices water. It is two ideas stuck together: class, and predictable.

1. What a “class” is

Topeka does not charge every gallon the same price. The city puts each account into a customer class and publishes a different volume rate for each class.

2026 inside-city water, per 1,000 gallons:

• Single-family: $7.75
• Multifamily: $6.28
• Commercial: $5.99
• Industrial: $5.35
• Industrial II: $5.04
• Irrigation: $9.31

Once Frito-Lay, Mars, or Reser’s is coded Industrial or Industrial II, every thousand gallons that month is billed at that one rate. Ten thousand gallons or ten million gallons — same cents per thousand.

That cheaper industrial number, compared with the house rate, is the class discount. A house pays $7.75. Industrial II pays $5.04. The plant is getting $2.71 off per thousand gallons versus a single-family account. That is not a secret rebate. It is printed in the ordinance.

Topeka staff have said this out loud: historically the city has used a declining rate structure — the more you use (or the class you sit in), the less you pay per gallon.

2. Why “discount”

Three things are being discounted at once.

Versus residential. The plant’s gallon is cheaper than the household gallon on purpose. The political story is usually “large users help pay for the treatment plant and the 900 miles of pipe, so they get a bulk price.” The other story is “we want factories.” Both can be true. The tariff does the same thing either way.

Versus commercial. Industrial and Industrial II sit below commercial. A storefront and a chip plant are not priced the same.

Versus what a “cost of one gallon” story would look like. In a pure cost-of-service world you might still give big meters a break on the fixed charge (a 6-inch meter costs more to read and to size the main for), but you would not automatically make the commodity cheaper just because the customer is labeled industrial. Topeka does both: bigger base charge on a big meter, and a lower volume rate if you qualify for the industrial class.

Industrial II is the extra notch — the city’s cheapest published retail gallon. That is the class a truly large process user wants to be in.

3. Why “predictable”

Predictable means the plant controller can forecast the water line item without a weather model or a winter-average formula.

On the first of the month they know:

• meter size → base charge (fixed)
• class → dollars per thousand gallons (fixed)
• estimated production → gallons

Bill ≈ base + (gallons ÷ 1,000 × class rate)

If they fry 10 percent more potatoes, water cost goes up about 10 percent. If they cut a shift, it goes down about 10 percent. No surprise block. No “you used more than last February, so this thousand gallons just tripled.”

That is what a CFO means by predictable input cost. Electricity has time-of-use and demand charges. Natural gas has index plus transport. Topeka industrial water, as written today, is closer to a catalog price.

4. What it is not

It is not a declining block inside the month.

Some cities say: first 2 million gallons at $X, next 5 million at $Y, over 7 million at $Z. Emporia works that way. Your last gallon is cheaper than your first gallon in that billing period.

Topeka’s discount is by who you are, not by how far you are into this month’s meter. Industrial II at 500,000 gallons pays $5.04. Industrial II at 10,000,000 gallons still pays $5.04. The house next door pays $7.75 on its little meter whether it used 3,000 or 8,000 gallons.

So “the more you use, the cheaper each gallon” is true in Topeka only in this sense: if you can get into a bigger class, your rate is lower. It is not true that a factory’s 10-millionth gallon is cheaper than its first gallon that month.

5. Contrast: the unpredictable structures

This is why the phrase matters when you put Topeka next to Wichita, Hays, Lawrence, or Olathe.

Winter-average / inclining block (Wichita, Hays, parts of Olathe and Lawrence residential).
The city measures what you used in December–February (or a similar window) and calls that your Average Winter Consumption (AWC) or winter quarter average.

• Use up to ~110% of that winter number: cheap block.
• Use 111–310% of winter: middle block (Wichita commercial jumps from $3.83 to $13.36 per thousand).
• Blow past that: third block ($19.55 in Wichita).

For a lawn, that is a conservation tool. Winter use is indoor-only; summer irrigation is the spike; you pay extra for the spike.

For a food plant, winter is not a quiet season. Potatoes, corn, sanitation, and cooling run in January. If the plant runs hard all year, AWC is high, and most months stay in Block 1 — Wichita can look cheaper than Topeka. If they add a line in April, or picnic-season salad volume doubles in June, or a second shift starts, a big slice of the bill can jump from $3.83 to $13.36 overnight. That is not a class discount. That is a usage penalty tied to last winter.

That is the opposite of predictable. The rate on a given gallon depends on a ratio to a past season, not on a published class price.

Inclining residential blocks in Lawrence use the same idea for houses. Their industrial rate is a high flat class rate ($10.33) — predictable, but not a discount versus houses in the same way Topeka’s is. Lawrence industrial is expensive and flat. Topeka industrial is cheap and flat.

6. Worked example (same 10 million gallons)

Assume inside city, volume only, one month.

Topeka Industrial II
10,000 × $5.04 = $50,400
Every month that they use 10 million gallons, same math. Year = 12 × $50,400 = $604,800 water volume, plus base, plus sewer.

Wichita commercial, all inside Block 1
10,000 × $3.83 = $38,300
Looks like a $12,000 win that month.

Wichita, same 10 million, but winter average was only 4 million (plant was down for a rebuild in January–February, then roared back).

• Block 1: 4.4 million gal × $3.83 ≈ $16,850
• Block 2: next 8 million (4.4M to 12.4M of the 110–310% band) — they only have 5.6 million left in the month, all in Block 2: 5,600 × $13.36 ≈ $74,800
• Total ≈ $91,650
  Same gallons. Bill more than doubles because last winter was low.

That swing — $38,000 vs $92,000 for identical gallons — is what “not predictable” means. Topeka would have billed $50,400 either way.

7. Who the discount is for, and who pays for it

A class discount is a cross-subsidy argument whether anyone admits it.

If it costs the utility roughly the same to pump, treat, and push the 1,000th gallon to a house or to a plant (the extra cost of a big user is mostly in pipes, pumps, and peak capacity, which show up in the meter base charge), then selling industrial gallons at $5.04 and house gallons at $7.75 means houses are contributing more per gallon toward shared treatment and debt.

That is why Topeka staff, in 2026 rate talks, walked the council through flattening classes — kill Industrial II, then multifamily, then step commercial and industrial up toward the residential commodity rate over several years. They said the current design is the old declining structure: bigger users, bigger discount per gallon.

So “predictable class discount” is also a political object. Industry likes it because the budget line does not jump. Residential advocates dislike it because the plant’s gallon is cheaper than grandma’s. Cost-of-service purists want the discount justified by actual extra cost to serve, not by the label on the account.

8. What the plant actually buys with it

For Frito-Lay, Mars, and Reser’s, the class discount buys three things that matter more than the $2.71 vs. a house:

1. A known unit price they can put in a cost model next to oil, corrugated, and labor.
2. No conservation-block ambush if Halloween candy or picnic-salad season blows past last winter.
3. A published industrial policy. The ordinance says large process users are supposed to pay less per gallon. That is a signal, not just a number.

It does not buy a rate so low that water is free, and it does not make Topeka the cheapest city in Kansas. Emporia’s volume floor and Hutchinson’s large-user block can undercut $5.04. Wichita Block 1 can undercut $5.04. What Topeka sells is cheap enough, and stable.

9. One sentence you can use in the article

Topeka’s industrial rate is a predictable class discount: once the city files you as Industrial or Industrial II, every gallon that month is the same published price, cheaper than a house, with no winter-average trap — unlike Wichita or Hays, where the price of this month’s gallon depends on how much you used last winter.

That is the whole phrase.