The Gallon and the Check
Henry McClure · MCRE Media · Topeka · September 2026
This is not a manifesto against factories.
Reser’s employs about 1,500 people on S.E. 6th. Frito-Lay has been making snacks in Shawnee County since the 1950s. Goodyear has been on U.S. 24 since 1945. Mars built a chocolate plant here and still pays a large tax bill on the slice of the campus that is not exempt. Those facts stay on the page.
This is a ledger. One column is the gallon. The other is the check — sales-tax cash, ten-year tax holidays, federal credits — already written under the same names. A third column is the house that pays $7.75 a thousand gallons and cannot deduct it.
City Council is about to write the next four years of that ledger into the municipal code. Staff first proposed one price for the gallon. Industry objected. Staff came back with two prices and a higher house meter fee, and recommended that. If you only read one sentence before the meeting, read that one.
The June list
City of Topeka utility billing, June 2026, top ten accounts by gallons. Public record.
- Reser’s Fine Foods — 53,105,880 gallons
- Frito-Lay — 19,420,942
- Goodyear — 9,418,580
- Shawnee County — 8,796,611
- Hill’s Pet Nutrition — 6,308,529
- Stormont Vail Health — 6,196,680
- Mars Chocolate — 4,656,727
- Big Heart / Smucker — 3,852,022
- TERC Development LLC — 3,267,277
- Vestis — 2,567,981
Reser’s used more water that month than Frito-Lay, Goodyear, and Hill’s combined. Eight of the ten are private industry. Two are not. Do not dump a courthouse and a hospital into a corporate-welfare column. Leave them on the list so you can see the whole river. Take them off when the subject is a JEDO check.
Two prices for the same river
In 2026, inside the city, a house pays $7.75 per thousand gallons. Industrial II — the class a campus like Reser’s is built for — pays $5.04. The gap is $2.71. Same Kansas River. Same treatment plant. Same pipes.
Kansas does not send the Corporation Commission in to set that number. Municipal water rates are a City Council ordinance. K.S.A. 12-860 says they are supposed to be reasonable and sufficient for the utility. That is the whole legal hook. “Reasonable” is a political word until you put another Kansas city next to it.
Lawrence, effective January 1, 2026, charges industrial customers inside the city $10.33 per thousand gallons. Commercial is $10.44. A Lawrence house starts at $11.18. Lawrence still has industry. The sky did not fall at $10.33.
What the class discount is worth
Volume only. Meter charges ignored. One month of bills. If June is hot for food plants, winter will run lower. Twelve months from Utilities would lock it. The order of magnitude is the point.
Eight private meters used 102,597,938 gallons in June.
Charge them the house rate of $7.75 instead of $5.04 and that month’s discount is about $278,000. If June is typical: about $3.33 million a year. Reser’s alone: about $1.73 million a year.
Charge them $8.00. Gap versus $5.04 is $2.96. Eight private plants: about $304,000 in June, about $3.64 million a year. Reser’s: about $1.89 million. Frito-Lay: about $690,000.
Charge them Lawrence’s $10.33. Gap is $5.29. Eight private plants: about $543,000 extra in June, about $6.51 million a year. Reser’s: about $3.37 million. Frito-Lay: about $1.23 million.
That is water-fund revenue, not a tax. It is the same gallon at a rate another Kansas city already charges.
The companies are not the town
PepsiCo is not a chip line on S.W. 41st. Early September 2026 it was a company of about $192 billion in market value, nearly $97 billion in trailing sales, some 306,000 employees, a dividend north of four percent. Frito-Lay North America is the snack arm. Topeka is a real plant. It is still a rounding error inside that system.
Mars is a private family company and one of the wealthiest families on earth. In 2025 the taxable slice of 100 Mars Boulevard still threw off a property-tax bill in the neighborhood of $2.83 million. That is not a charity case. It is also not a reason to sell them the cheapest gallon.
Reser’s Fine Foods is privately held in Beaverton, Oregon. Topeka is their biggest employment city. Salad lines, a potato plant, tortillas, a distribution center, and a new warehouse do not go on a flatbed because the water class moved two or three dollars. It also means Topeka water is a core cost, not a Pepsi footnote. Ask Beaverton, not a spokesman in a rented ballroom.
The other stack: the check
JEDO is city and county elected officials. GO Topeka, a private nonprofit at 719 S. Kansas Avenue, holds the contract to administer the economic-development slice of the countywide half-cent sales tax. On paper that slice is on the order of $5 million a year. Administration — payroll, occupancy, marketing, travel — is paid from the same stream that is advertised as job money. The exact overhead split belongs in a KORA of the audits. The structure is not in dispute.
What the open file shows on this water list:
Reser’s. JEDO / GO Topeka cash: $659,264 paid on the 2016 salad-plant contract, closed December 2022. Up to about $1.074 million authorized September 2025 on a warehouse addition. A 2019 EDX authorization was reported at $157.7 million of property — an exemption envelope, not a cash check. County appraiser on 3728 S.E. 6th: 2026 appraised about $52.8 million, about $44.9 million in Exempt EDX, $87,290 tax billed in 2025 on the taxable slice. February 2026: another 100 percent exemption on new warehouse improvements, 2027–2036, job test of thirty positions in three years, no rule that those workers live in Shawnee County. Federal New Markets Tax Credits: $13.67 million face on the 2019 bake-plant reuse.
The county traded a ten-year tax holiday on a new warehouse for thirty jobs that do not have to live here. If the workers drive in from the next county, Topeka gets the potholes and the water plant. Their hometown gets the paycheck. That is not a forty-percent return. That is a press release.
Frito-Lay: little JEDO cash in the digitized file; county ten-year exemptions on additions in 2009 and 2018; plant since 1971.
Goodyear: JEDO up to $585,000 in September 2022 on a $125 million capital plan.
Hill’s: GO Topeka / JEDO up to $196,000 (2019) and $341,000 (2020). Headquarters left for Overland Park under a $3 million state deal that also required investment at the Topeka nutrition center.
Mars: 2011 JEDO package reported around $9.1 million plus land in Kanza Fire; later add-on about $125,000 for a TWIX line.
Big Heart / Smucker: grant up to $166,760 (2015); JEDO $383,000 (February 2026) on a $20.5 million expansion. The plant has been here more than fifty-five years.
Stormont Vail is a hospital. Kansas law takes qualifying hospital property off the roll. That is statutory, not a JEDO check. It is still a cost to every mill the schools and the city do not collect. The medical bill does not come down because the campus is exempt. The community already carries the property. The water ordinance should not add a second courtesy on the gallon.
This is not a lifetime audit back to 1945. It is enough to say the sales tax already bought buildings. The exemption already took new square footage off the roll. Industrial II then sells the same gallon cheaper than the house. That is a second subsidy.
Compass — gallons against gallons
Compass Datacenters wants a ten-building campus on S.W. 77th. Power is a separate fight — on the order of 400 megawatts. This article is water.
Compass’s published figures: no city water for cooling; a closed loop; about 125,000 gallons to fill each building once; about 55,000 stays in the loop. County staff put a building at about 240,000 gallons a year. Ten buildings at that figure: about 2.4 million gallons a year. Who sells the last mile does not change the gallon.
Reser’s June is about twenty-two of those campus-years. Vestis used more in one month than that whole proposed campus would use in a year. Compass is a drawing. Reser’s is billed use. If high water use is the test, the test is already running on S.E. 6th. You can still oppose Compass on land and power. You do not get to treat a loop fill like a moral emergency and then defend $5.04 for the salad plant.
The household cannot deduct it
A house cannot take the water bill off a tax return. A plant can. Ordinary and necessary business expense. People who live here pay the high class with after-tax dollars. The campus pays the low class with pre-tax dollars. That is the quiet half of the discount.
Would the tub of potato salad go from a dollar to $1.01 or to $1.05 if the gallon moved? Nobody in this article has Reser’s cost sheet. If water is a penny inside a dollar item, doubling that penny is a penny — unless the company decides to take a nickel and point at the water department. National list prices at PepsiCo and Mars do not reset because Topeka’s class moved. A local plant can still use a city rate fight as cover. That is a choice, not a law of cost accounting. None of the three outcomes — eat the cost, pass a penny, take a nickel — is a reason for Topeka households to keep selling the cheapest gallon to the campus that already got the sales-tax money.
Lead by example
The first letter did not go to Council or to JEDO. It went to Mark Reser, President and CEO, Reser’s Fine Foods, 15570 S.W. Jenkins Road, Beaverton, Oregon 97006.
The ask was small and voluntary: pay the residential volume rate on the Topeka meters, or pay the difference into a city water-assistance fund for households that cannot keep the tap on. Either one is a decision made in Oregon, not a brawl at the rail.
You do not need the $2.71. Some of your neighbors do.
What is actually in front of Council
Seven city PDFs. Two maps.
The August 27 fact sheet, from Utilities Director Sylvia Davis, said the quiet part: eliminate Multifamily and Industrial II as classes. Walk everyone to one standard volume rate over four years. “Rate impact is absorbed by commercial and industrial classifications.” Freeze base charges on meters smaller than two inches. Raise wholesale and irrigation. Kill the old “readiness to serve” fee on empty taps. Pay for $260 million of capital work and a $120 million-plus operating budget.
The August 27 ordinance is that idea in code. Inside-city water volume per thousand gallons:
Single-family $7.75 → $8.08 → $8.12 → $8.16 → $8.20 in 2030
Industrial II $5.04 → $5.68 → $6.55 → $7.33 → $8.20 in 2030
House meter fee frozen at $18.22. A 10-inch plant meter from $924 to $1,353.
Sewer is the same in both drafts: $6.92 → $7.55 → $8.00 → $8.40 → $8.82 inside the city. Stormwater ERU edges up a few cents a year. Those two utilities are not the fight.
September 1, staff put up seven slides. The first half still sold August 27 and still called it “Current Proposal.” Then a slide titled “Alternate Consideration”: two volume rates instead of one, a higher hit on houses in 2027, a lighter hit on plants, and the small-meter base starts moving.
That is not a rounding change. That is the department answering industry in public, on a slide, the same night.
The September 4 memo, written for the September 8 meeting, says so in the first paragraph. Industry objected. Staff wrote a compromise. Staff now recommends the compromise.
A low-volume inside-city house — small base, 1,000 gallons of water, winter-average sewer, one stormwater ERU — in 2027:
Now: $54.66
August 27 draft: $55.77 (+$1.11)
Compromise: $56.63 (+$1.97)
The extra 86 cents is the water base plus four cents on the gallon. Sewer and stormwater do not differ. Page two of that memo swaps the labels. Page one’s table is the arithmetic.
The September 4 ordinance is the legal text staff wants passed. Inside-city water volume:
Single-family $7.75 → $8.12 → $8.18 → $8.24 → $8.30 in 2030
Industrial II $5.04 → $5.53 → $6.08 → $6.66 → $7.26 in 2030
The class does not die. It shrinks from $2.71 to $1.04 — and then the ordinance stops. House meter fee rises about 4.5 percent a year, to $21.74 by 2030. A 10-inch plant meter stops at $1,160 instead of $1,353.
If June is typical, Reser’s annual volume bill at the 2030 compromise rate is about $4.63 million. At the August 27 one-rate of $8.20 it would be about $5.23 million. At the house price of $8.30, about $5.29 million. At Lawrence’s $10.33, about $6.58 million. The compromise, fully built, still leaves on the order of $600,000 a year on that one campus versus the draft staff wrote before industry spoke, and about $2 million a year versus putting the campus on the house price.
The sentence the record will support
The sales tax already bought buildings. The exemption already took new square footage off the roll. Industrial II then sells the same gallon cheaper than the house. On August 27 staff said the plants would absorb a climb to one rate. On September 1 the plants objected. On September 4 staff recommended two rates and a higher house base.
Sewer is not the vote. Empty-tap fees are not the vote. $260 million of pipe is real, and somebody has to pay for it. The vote is whether 2030 is one price for one river or two prices written back into the code after the people who use 53 million gallons in a month asked for a softer landing.
Lawrence already charges $10.33. A house here cannot deduct the bill. A plant can. The plant is not leaving. Compass, on its own paper, is not where the water is. Reser’s June is.
Ask Beaverton first. Then ask the Council. Say the word compromise only if you mean two prices.
Sources: City of Topeka June 2026 top-ten billing list; TMC rate tables in the August 27 and September 4 ordinance drafts; August 27 fact sheet and September 4 memo from Utilities Director Sylvia Davis; September 1 Council slides; Lawrence utility rates effective January 1, 2026; K.S.A. 12-860; JEDO / GO Topeka packets and close-out letters; Shawnee County appraiser; Compass project page and local reporting July–September 2026. Not a publication of the City, JEDO, or any listed company.
