mcre Media .......[Henry McClure Publisher]

Federal trail money in Kansas almost never lands directly on a private LLC. It runs through a public sponsor — a city, county, school district, tribe, or nonprofit — and you qualify by bringing the land, the plan, and the local match while that sponsor holds the grant. Most of these are 80/20 reimbursement programs. You (or the city) pay the bills, then get reimbursed up to 80 percent. The local 20 percent cannot come from another federal source. Land and Water Conservation Fund awards also put a permanent public-recreation restriction on the property, so ownership and access have to be structured for that before you apply. ## The programs that actually fund bike and walking trails **Recreational Trails Program (RTP), Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.** This is the pure trail program. Eligible work includes new trail or trailhead construction, reconstruction, upgrades, planning, and land acquisition or easements, motorized and non-motorized. Kansas sets aside 30...

Deputy City Manager Braxton Copley has said he will retire January 4, 2027, after more than twenty years with the City of Topeka. City Manager Robert Perez called his knowledge of the organization and the infrastructure invaluable. That was true at the start. It is the wrong reason to keep the same structure in place on the way out. Copley sat over the work the public actually drives on. He directed Utilities, Public Works, Economic Development, and Planning. As deputy city manager he oversaw infrastructure and development, capital improvement planning, transportation, and stormwater. If a road, a pipe, or a city building project has been stuck for a decade, it sat in that portfolio. The hotel is the case with a number on it. In October 2023 the city’s development corporation bought the Hotel Topeka for $7,668,750. A consultant, REVPAR International, was paid $554,000 and told the city to renovate, brand the property, and sell it to a private operator by the end of 2024. The city sel...

The Metropolitan Topeka Planning Organization does not receive a block grant because it is certified. Certification is the gate. A road or transit project in this planning area cannot take federal highway or transit money unless it sits in a plan the MTPO has constrained and self-certified. What the federal law requires Two statutes impose the same duty. Highway planning is 23 U.S.C. § 134. Transit planning is 49 U.S.C. § 5303. An urbanized area of more than 50,000 people must have a designated metropolitan planning organization. Topeka crossed that line long ago. The designation agreement that named the Metropolitan Topeka Planning Organization was executed March 3, 2004, by the City of Topeka, the Kansas Department of Transportation, and the Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority. The policy board adopted its bylaws on June 3, 2004. The required process is what planners call the 3-C: continuing, cooperative, and comprehensive. The MPO, the state, and the transit operator do it toge...

  Harry “Butch” Felker was the Topeka mayor people liked, and the one whose campaign-money case ended the strong-mayor system. He was born Harry L. Felker III on September 13, 1945, in Wichita, the son of Harry L. Felker II and Virginia Lee Tandy. The family settled in Topeka. He graduated from Topeka West High School in 1963, then from Washburn University in 1967 with a degree in political science. He spent 17 months in the Naval Reserve in 1967–68 with a Navy advisory group in Korea, stayed in the reserves until 1972, and earned a law degree from Washburn that same year. His first civilian job was at the Kansas Revisor of Statutes office, the shop that drafts the bills legislators vote on. He had grown up around that world. His father was a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent in the years before civil service, and Felker later said the family sat in front of the television every other November to see if Dad still had a job. Politics was not a later hobby. It was the house he gr...

  Topeka has not had one form of government. It has had four. The “street commissioner / water commissioner / police commissioner” era you remember is the commission form , used from 1910 to 1985. The city left it for reasons that still show up in today’s fights over the city manager and the mayor. This is a research synopsis you can take into a Citizen Government Review Committee process later. The four eras Period Form Who ran day-to-day Who set policy 1857–1910 Mayor–Council Mayor plus appointed officers (street commissioner, marshal, fire marshal, water superintendent, engineer) Mayor + ward council 1910–1985 Commission Five elected officials who were the department heads Same five people 1985–2005 Strong mayor–council–CAO Elected mayor, with a hired Chief Administrative Officer Mayor + 9 district council members 2005–present Council–manager (Topeka charter hybrid) Appointed city manager 9 district council members + at-large mayor City b...