Cool

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 percent for motorized use; non-motorized walking and bike projects compete for the rest. ADA and environmental benefit score well. The 2025 round closed November 14, 2025, and KDWP is not taking applications right now. Contact Cherie Riffey, RTP grants, 512 SE 25th Ave, Pratt, KS 67124, 620-672-5911, and ask to be on the list for the next cycle. Details are at [ksoutdoors.gov grantmaking](https://www.ksoutdoors.gov/programs-services/grantmaking).

**Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), same agency.** Open now. Applications are due 5:00 p.m. July 31, 2026. Eligible applicants are state and local units of government only. Trails, trailheads, parks, and public access facilities qualify. Contact Riston Landwehr, riston.landwehr@ks.gov, 620-672-5911.

**Transportation Alternatives (TA), KDOT.** This is the big federal bike and pedestrian pot — sidewalks, shared-use paths, rail-to-trail conversions, Safe Routes to School. The 2026 call is closed. KDOT awarded about $37 million to 33 projects in August 2026, and the next call is planned for early 2028. Eligible sponsors are cities, counties, tribes, schools, state agencies, nonprofits, and small MPOs. Urbanized Wichita and Kansas City metro areas are handled by their own MPOs, not this KDOT call. Topeka-area projects go through KDOT. Match is 20 percent; some safety projects have drawn extra Highway Safety Improvement Program help on the match. Contact Jenny Kramer, Active Transportation Manager, 785-296-5186, KATE@ks.gov. Program page: [ksdot.gov Transportation Alternatives](https://www.ksdot.gov/programs/multimodal-programs/transportation-alternatives).

**KDOT Cost Share.** Opens spring and fall. Bike and pedestrian projects are eligible. Recent rounds have capped awards around $1 million. Useful when TA is closed. [ksdot.gov Cost Share](https://www.ksdot.gov/programs/economic-developmentprograms/cost-shareprogram).

**Competitive USDOT grants (RAISE / BUILD and similar).** These are for larger corridor projects, not a neighborhood path. Kansas awards in the last cycle included sidewalk and shared-use path pieces inside bigger street jobs. Letters of support from the senators matter here.

**Kansas Infrastructure Hub.** Weekly dashboard of open federal infrastructure grants Kansas entities can chase: [kshub.gov](https://www.kshub.gov/iija/open-grant-opportunities).

Smaller side doors: Sunflower Foundation trail work, AARP Community Challenge (quick-build, livability), and PeopleForBikes. Those are not the federal money, but they fund design, a pilot segment, or the local match narrative.

## How the senators fit

Jerry Moran sits on Senate Appropriations, including the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development subcommittee. That is the useful seat. Two things his office actually does:

- Letters of support on competitive grants (TA is state-run, so the letter helps more on USDOT discretionary programs and on agency scoring that looks at congressional interest).

- Congressionally Directed Spending requests when the appropriations window opens, usually early in the calendar year. Past Kansas CDS has gone to counties, cities, and some local development groups — a public sponsor still has to be the named recipient. His office posts the process at [moran.senate.gov](https://www.moran.senate.gov) under Congressionally Directed Spending. Call the Topeka or Washington office and ask for the appropriations staffer who handles THUD requests; do not wait for a press release.

Roger Marshall’s office has written support letters for Kansas BUILD and infrastructure applications and announces awards. Useful as the second signature, less central on the appropriations request itself.

For Shawnee County, copy the KS-02 House office on the same packet. A short project sheet — location, public benefit, cost, match source, sponsor, and what you want (letter vs. CDS) — is what those offices can act on.

## Practical sequence

1. Lock a public sponsor. City of Topeka, Shawnee County, or a trails nonprofit has to be the applicant. Private land can work if you grant a long-term easement or the city takes title. LWCF is the strictest on perpetual public use.

2. Call Jenny Kramer at KDOT and Cherie Riffey or Riston Landwehr at KDWP before you spend money on engineering. Ask which program fits and whether Cost Share can bridge until the 2028 TA round.

3. Budget the 20 percent cash match and treat the award as reimbursement, not an upfront check.

4. Once the sponsor and a one-page scope exist, send it to Moran’s appropriations staff and Marshall’s grants staff and ask for a letter, and for Moran’s office, the next CDS deadline.

If you have a specific corridor or parcel in mind — rail bed, drainage way, subdivision path, something tied to a development — the sponsor and the program choice get much clearer.

Henry McClure

785.383.9994 

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Let the deputy go. Then let the city manager do the job.

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 self-managed it instead. Occupancy came in at about half the projection. The operating loss ran about $1.75 million a year. In December 2025 the hotel sold for $1 million. The sunk cost was on the order of $18 million. The net loss was about $17 million. Copley was the project manager. In August 2024, while that loss was still open, he was promoted to assistant, then deputy, city manager. In March 2026 he recommended a new 2 percent community improvement district sales tax and a higher transient guest tax so the city could collect the money back over twenty to thirty-five years. The council approved it.

In a private company, the person who signed off on that course would have been replaced. Here he was promoted, and now he is retiring on his own calendar.

Perez should treat the departure as the opening, not as a hole to fill with the same advice. Copley knew the building. That knowledge was useful when Perez arrived. It is also how a bad project survives. A city manager who wants the manager form of government to work has to be able to say the hotel was a mistake, the road program needs a new set of eyes, and the deputy’s chair will not be a continuation of the last twenty years.

The public should also get off the city manager’s salary. The council set the pay. He accepted it. Anyone who has taken a job at the wage that was offered knows what it feels like to be called a bum for cashing the check. If the wage is wrong, say so to the council members who voted for it. Do not spend the year heckling the man for taking what they put on the table.

The other half of this is the council. A manager form of government does not work if nine people run the departments from the dais. Hire the manager. Set the policy. Judge the results. Stop micromanaging the day-to-day. Letting Copley leave, and not rebuilding the office around him, is the cleanest chance Perez is going to get. The council should let him take it.

Henry McClure MCRE, LLC 3625 SW 29th Street #100, Topeka, Kansas 66614

bye bye braxton

785-383-9994

Federal transportation funds in the Topeka–Shawnee County area, and what MTPO compliance actually buys

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 together. The products are a metropolitan transportation plan of at least twenty years, and a transportation improvement program, the TIP, covering at least four years. A project seeking federal highway money under Title 23, or federal transit money under Chapter 53 of Title 49, has to be in the approved TIP. The regulation that turns those statutes into a checklist is 23 C.F.R. Part 450, Subpart C.

The compliance paper is the self-certification in 23 C.F.R. § 450.336. At least every four years, when the TIP goes up with the statewide program, the state and the MPO certify that the process meets the planning statutes, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the transit nondiscrimination rule, the disadvantaged-business rule, equal-employment rules on federal-aid highway contracts, and the Americans with Disabilities Act together with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration then find that the TIP matches the long-range plan. That finding rests on the self-certification.

The harder federal review, the one that can hold back up to 20 percent of an area’s highway and transit funds, applies to a Transportation Management Area, an urbanized area over 200,000. Topeka is under that line. It self-certifies. It does not get the four-year federal certification review that Kansas City and Wichita get.

What the certified program shows

The current compliance document is the MTPO Transportation Improvement Program for federal fiscal years 2026 through 2029. On page 90 the board self-certifies that the process meets 23 C.F.R. Part 450, including fiscal constraint. These figures are programmed amounts in the Topeka planning area. They are not cash already received.

2026: roads and bridges $22.8 million, transit $11.2 million 2027: roads and bridges $8.6 million 2028: roads and bridges $304.7 million 2029: roads and bridges $19.2 million Four-year total: roads and bridges $355.2 million, transit $11.2 million

Source: MTPO Transportation Improvement Program, FFY 2026–2029, funding summary. Figures rounded.

The 2028 figure is one project year, not a new annual allotment. Take it out and the other three years of federal road and bridge work run from about $9 million to $23 million. Transit is lumped in 2026 in the programmed table. The same TIP lists Topeka Metro’s ordinary FTA formula grants at $3.2 million a year, $12.8 million over the four years. Those are Section 5307 urban formula funds, matched by the city mill levy and fares.

Two other numbers in the same document keep the federal share from being read as the whole transportation budget. After operations and maintenance are taken off the top, the TIP shows about $498 million available for road and bridge projects over four years and about $12.6 million left for transit projects. Most of the road money is local sales tax and state highway funds, not a federal check to the city. The city’s own capital table inside the TIP shows a much smaller direct federal line, on the order of $0.6 million to $2.4 million a year, plus a $30 million competitive-grant assumption in 2026.

What compliance does, and does not, do

A normal year is a few million dollars in transit formula money and somewhere around $10 million to $20 million in federal road money programmed through the TIP. A year with a large KDOT project inside the planning area can show a few hundred million, because that project cannot be authorized unless it sits in this certified program. The self-certification is what lets FHWA and FTA act on those projects. It is not a separate appropriation, and it is not a finding that the money was well spent.

The local papers that show the duty are the March 3, 2004 designation agreement, the June 3, 2004 bylaws, each TIP, and the self-certification statement filed with that TIP. The bylaws already say the chair signs the self-certification after the policy board approves it.

Henry McClure MCRE, LLC 3625 SW 29th Street #100, Topeka, Kansas 66614 785-383-9994

He admitted ethics violations.

 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 grew up in.

Topeka in those years did not have a city manager. It had a commission. Five elected officials ran the city and the departments. Felker never particularly wanted the mayor’s chair under that system. In 1975 he ran for parks and recreation commissioner, won, and kept the job until 1985. He said the work fit him: athletics, gardening, and a law degree. In 1985 voters threw out the commission and installed a strong mayor, a district council, and a hired administrator under the mayor. Felker did not like the first administration under the new charter. He went to work for the Chamber of Commerce and the Topeka Sizzlers, the old minor-league basketball team. About a year before the 1989 election, he and three others decided they could win it. They did. He served as mayor from 1989 to 1997, then stepped aside rather than seek a third term, citing his health. In the gap he ran the Topeka Youth Project.

In 2001 he came back, beat Joan Wagnon, and took the strong-mayor job again. By then the office was the real executive of the city. The mayor hired and fired department heads. The council passed the laws. A mayor who wanted to move could move without asking nine people first.

That power is what the scandal sat on.

In 2002 the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission opened a case on his 2001 campaign and charged him with six counts under the state campaign-finance law. The allegation was not a briefcase of cash from a contractor. It was a paper trail. Employees of the Topeka Convention and Visitors Bureau filed false travel-expense reports. The money then showed up as donations to Felker’s re-election campaign, and the sources were not properly documented. Prosecutors also said the reports hid cash gifts over the $100 limit, the cap that exists so a contribution can be traced to a name. In July 2003 he pleaded guilty to three ethics violations and was fined $7,500. Two other counts were dropped. No criminal case was filed.

Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht then asked a court to remove him. The petition had three parts. One was the campaign report. One was an agreement paying former city administrative officer John Arnold about $113,000 over eight months after Arnold resigned in February 2002, never taken to the council. One was an August 2001 power of attorney letting Betty Simecka, of a group called Cultural Exhibitors and Events, contract with the Kremlin museum in Moscow for a Russian-artifacts show, plus a $5,000 city credit-card charge to that museum in January 2002, also without the council.

On October 17, 2003, District Judge Eric Rosen suspended Felker while the case was pending. Rosen kept the campaign-finance cloud. He wrote that the question was whether the city could be governed by a person under “a cloud of credible suspicion of criminal violations involving moral turpitude.” He threw out the Arnold payments and the museum deal. His reason is the part that still matters: Felker was acting inside the power the strong-mayor charter gave him, and he had not enriched himself. The trial was set for November 17. Felker resigned on November 6. He said he could not afford the defense. Deputy Mayor Duane Pomeroy became acting mayor. The council later picked James McClinton to finish the term.

People who had known him for years did not pretend he was a stranger. Wagnon, who had lost to him and sat in on some of the hearings, said later that everybody liked Butch, he broke the law, and he paid a big price, and that the town felt bad about it. He was also the third local official in a short stretch to leave under an ouster cloud, after Sheriff Dave Meneley in 2000 and county treasurer Rita Cline in 2003.

The city did not stop at replacing the man. Council members Betty Dunn and Lisa Stubbs used the resignation as the opening to put the form of government on the ballot. On July 20, 2004, the council voted 6–3 for Charter Ordinance 94. McClinton was in the room and was told he could not vote. On November 2, 2004, the same day as the presidential election, Topeka voters approved a council-manager charter by about 66 percent to 34 percent. They had rejected a city manager in 1929, 1952, 1962, 1964, and 1969. The Felker year is what flipped them. Starting in April 2005, an appointed manager hired the department heads. The mayor kept the title, the gavel, and a thinner set of powers. McClinton did not run for a full term. He said future mayors would basically cut ribbons and shake hands.

Felker left City Hall and went to work for the Heartland Park Foundation until illness stopped him in 2004. He died of cancer on January 3, 2008, at Midland Hospice House. He was 62. He had married Paula Felker and adopted three foster children, Tammy, Joshua, and Joe. That marriage ended. On September 30, 2000, he married Bette W. Martin, who survived him. A memorial service was held at Grace Episcopal Cathedral.

The fair reading is not that he stole the city treasury. He admitted ethics violations. The money path was false expense reports into a campaign, with the donors not properly named. A judge said the other deals Hecht complained about were legal under the charter Felker was elected to use. Voters then decided the charter was the problem. Twenty years later Topeka still lives with that decision: a manager who answers to the council, and a mayor the public still treats as the person in charge.

Topeka did not drift from commissioners to a city manager. It voted out the commission form in 1984 because five elected department heads could not run a modern city as one enterprise.

 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.

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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 budget books and old city pages all use this same four-era sequence. Voters rejected a city-manager plan five times before they finally adopted one: 1929, 1952, 1962, 1964, and 1969.

Topeka is also unusual in Kansas: the charter requires a Citizen Government Review Committee about every decade. Staff have said Topeka is the only Kansas city that does this on purpose. The 2025 committee already reported; the governing body is still picking through those recommendations in 2026.

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What the old “commissioner” government actually was

Two different things get mixed together in memory.

Before 1910, under mayor–council, Topeka already had a street commissioner, city marshal, fire marshal, engineer, and water-works superintendent. Those were appointed officers, not independently elected department bosses. Early directories list them by name.

In 1910, Topeka switched to the Progressive Era commission plan (Galveston after the 1900 storm, then the Des Moines model). Kansas authorized it for first-class cities in 1907 and tightened the law in 1909. Topeka adopted it at a special election on November 2, 1909. First commissioners took office in 1910. First commission mayor was Julius B. Billard.

The structure was simple and concentrated:

• One mayor and four commissioners, all elected at-large, usually on a nonpartisan ticket.
• After the election, the five of them assigned the departments among themselves.
• Typical Topeka split, reported in 1911:
  • Mayor: police and fire
  • Commissioner: water works and street lighting
  • Commissioner: streets and engineering / public improvements
  • Commissioner: parks, public buildings, sanitation
  • Commissioner: finance and revenue

They were both the city legislature and the department heads. They passed ordinances, levied taxes, hired and fired, and ran streets, water, police, and fire themselves. Civil service was part of the Kansas first-class-city commission law. Salaries in the early years were modest (about $2,500 mayor / $1,800 commissioners in one contemporary report).

That is the government people mean when they say “we used to have a street commissioner and a water commissioner.” Those titles were not side jobs. They were five elected executives sitting as a board.

Nationally this form was sold as businesslike reform: kill ward machines, collapse a large council, put named people in charge of named departments, add initiative/referendum/recall. Kansas cities piled onto it between 1908 and 1911. Topeka was part of that wave.

Why cities later abandoned it

The same features that made it attractive in 1910 became the case against it by the 1970s–80s:

1. No single executive. Five bosses, five fiefdoms. Streets could fight water; finance could starve parks; nobody owned the whole city.
2. Legislators running departments. A person elected to “fix the streets” also voted on the police budget. Politics and operations were the same job.
3. Amateur administration as the city grew. A miller, barber, ironworker, merchant, and house-mover could run a 1910 city of ~44,000. A late-20th-century city with utilities, federal grants, labor contracts, and a professional police/fire force needed different skills.
4. Weak checks. The same five people made the law and executed it.
5. The form itself was dying nationally. Birmingham, Tulsa, and Topeka are all cited as cities that left commission government for mayor–council. Very few mid-size U.S. cities still use classic commission government. Portland is the famous holdout, and even Portland has spent decades arguing about it.

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Why Topeka left the commission form in 1984–85

This was not a sudden impulse. It came out of the first Citizen Government Review Committee (1983–84).

• 16 members, appointed by the four commissioners and the mayor.
• Six public hearings, weekly meetings from August 1983 through March 1984.
• Recommendation: replace commission government with a strong mayor–council–chief administrative officer plan.
• That went to the November 1984 ballot and passed. The new form started in 1985. Doug Wright, already mayor under the old system, was re-elected into the new one.

What they were buying:

• A citywide elected chief executive (the mayor) who hired the people around him, more like a governor than a fifth commissioner.
• A nine-member district council so neighborhoods had a seat, instead of five at-large department heads.
• A hired CAO under the mayor for professional administration, without giving the CAO independent executive power.

The 1983 committee also talked city–county consolidation. That part went nowhere; later state law made consolidation much harder.

The next review committee (1989–91) did not change the form again. Its fight was the one that never goes away in Topeka: what is the mayor’s job versus the council’s job? The governing body adopted some of those recommendations and ignored others. That pattern is still the rule. The committee writes; the council and mayor decide.

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Why Topeka left the strong-mayor form in 2004

This is the change that produced the current system, and the one most tied to personalities.

Trigger: Mayor Harry “Butch” Felker’s second tour (2001–2003) ended in ethics/fraud allegations and removal. The council named James McClinton interim/successor mayor. Council members used the scandal as the opening to put form-of-government on the ballot.

Mechanics:

• July 20, 2004: council passed Charter Ordinance 94 (6–3). Then-Mayor McClinton was told he could not vote on it. Bill Bunten later argued that was illegal because the “governing body” was 10 people and a charter ordinance needed two-thirds of 10, not 9. That fight is now time-barred.
• November 2, 2004: voters approved council–manager about 66% to 34% (city sources also say “2 to 1”). Effective April 2005.

What changed on paper:

• The mayor stopped being chief executive.
• The CAO, who had reported to the mayor, was replaced by a city manager hired and fired by a majority of the governing body.
• The manager hires/fires department heads, prepares the budget, and runs operations.
• The mayor kept the four-year at-large election, ceremonial role, meeting gavel, some legislative recommendation power, intergovernmental face, and a veto on certain home-rule ordinances.

McClinton declined to run for a full term and said future mayors would “basically cut ribbons and shake hands.”

The academic write-up in More Than Mayor or Manager is blunt: Topeka did not switch because council-manager is theoretically perfect. It switched because strong-mayor politics had produced scandal and a credibility problem, and voters reached for the Progressive remedy they had rejected five times before—professional management, weaker elected executive.

Buyer’s remorse showed up quickly

By 2017, former Mayor Bill Bunten—who had supported the 2004 change—had flipped:

“I now believe the No. 1 person in government, at any level, should be an elected official. … If there’s an agenda by a majority of the council, the manager’s decisions may not be the best ones, and the mayor has little input. A strong mayor answers to the voters.”

Mayor Larry Wolgast kept the manager form but described the real-world gap: residents still treat the mayor as the executive (“Can you take care of this?”), while the charter says the mayor has no administrative powers. He called the mayor’s role “still being worked out by the people of Topeka.” A 2015 charter change expanded the mayor’s vote. Power struggles over the manager’s authority (including a 2016 fight over lending executives) have been recurring.

That is the system you are looking at now.

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What Topeka actually has today (not textbook council-manager)

Textbook council-manager: council is the legislature; manager is the CEO; mayor is often chosen from the council and is mostly a chair.

Topeka’s charter version is a hybrid:

• 9 district council members + 1 at-large mayor = 10-member governing body.
• Mayor is citywide elected, not picked from the council.
• Mayor votes with the body on most items, but home-rule ordinances are a special case (veto / when the mayor votes is a running legal puzzle even for city attorneys).
• Deputy mayor, chosen by the council, assigns committees—real power.
• City manager is the one employee the governing body hires and fires. Staff have described it as the manager having “10 bosses all the time.” That is exactly the micromanagement problem you named.
• Manager appoints police chief, fire chief, public works director, and the rest.
• Charter still requires periodic citizen review of the form itself.

So the 2004 vote did two opposite things at once: it professionalized administration and left a citywide mayor who looks like an executive to the public but is not one on paper. Every mayor since has tried to enlarge that space. Every council majority has tried to keep the manager as their employee, not the mayor’s.

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Side-by-side: what each form is good and bad at

Commission (1910–1985)
Strengths: Clear names on departments. Fast decisions in a small board. Voters could punish the street guy or the water guy directly. Simple org chart.
Weaknesses: No one ran the whole city. Department silos. Elected people as operating managers. Politics inside every utility and public-safety shop. Form aged poorly as the city got more complex.

Strong mayor–CAO (1985–2005)
Strengths: One elected official answers to the whole city. Can set direction, hire a team, be the public face of economic development. Matches how residents already think government works.
Weaknesses: Quality depends entirely on who wins. Felker is the exhibit. A mayor who wants to “control the world” can do it. Council can become a spectator or a war camp. Professional staff turn over with each mayor.

Council–manager (2005–now)
Strengths: Professional CEO, continuity when mayors change, council theoretically stays in policy not potholes, ICMA-style administration that most Kansas large cities use.
Weaknesses in the Topeka version: Manager serves 10 elected bosses with district incentives. Council can micromanage hiring, contracts, and project-level decisions. Mayor has a citywide mandate but limited tools, so the office either becomes ceremonial or becomes a rival power center. Accountability is blurry: if streets fail, is it the manager, the district council member, or the mayor who cannot fire the public works director?

Your diagnosis matches the structural complaint, not a fringe one. Bunten, Wolgast, and the 2010 academic case study all described the same tension: professional management versus an elected person the public can hold responsible.

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Why the city kept changing—compressed

1. 1910: Progressive reform. Ward council and patronage looked corrupt and slow. Commission = “run the city like a board of directors.”
2. 1985: Commission looked amateur and fragmented for a modern capital city. First citizen review committee recommended a strong elected executive plus a hired administrator.
3. 2005: Strong mayor looked personally dangerous after Felker. Voters bought professional insulation from politics—the same manager plan they had rejected five times.

Each change solved the last crisis and created the next one.

• Commission solved machine politics and created fiefdoms.
• Strong mayor solved fiefdoms and created personality risk.
• Manager solved personality risk and created a 10-boss professional who can be boxed in, plus a mayor with a mandate and a short leash.

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How you actually change it later

Form-of-government change in Topeka is not a council motion. The path is:

1. Citizen Government Review Committee studies the charter and sends recommendations. It cannot enact anything.
2. Governing body accepts, rejects, or rewrites.
3. A charter ordinance (two-thirds of the governing body) is required to alter the form.
4. A citywide vote is required to actually change the form, as in 1984 and 2004.

The 2025 CGRC already finished a cycle (report around mid-2025). From 2026 Policy & Finance packets, they recommended no change to the number of council members, election method, or terms. They did recommend a city auditor, cleaner follow-up on board recommendations, redistricting-commission changes, and better city–county cooperation language. Some of that is still moving through committee. A member of that 2025 committee also said on the record that they had not heard a case for dropping the manager in a city this size.

So the next full “should we change the form?” window is the next charter review cycle—unless the governing body puts a charter question on a ballot sooner.

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Questions worth taking into a future citizen commission

If the goal is evaluation rather than nostalgia, these are the useful tests:

1. Who can fire the police chief and public works director, and in front of whom? Under commission: the board. Under strong mayor: the mayor. Under manager: the manager, unless the council leans on him.
2. Who does a citizen call when a department fails? If the honest answer is “it depends,” the form is already leaking accountability.
3. Is the mayor supposed to lead, or chair? Topeka has never settled this. 1989–91, 2014, 2015, and 2017 were all the same argument.
4. Can a manager serve 10 bosses and still manage? If the council is in the weeds on staff and contracts, you do not have council-manager. You have a nine-member commission with a hired clerk called a manager.
5. Would returning to elected department heads recreate 1970s silos? Streets vs. water vs. police as political brands is exactly why the 1983 committee killed the old form.
6. Is the real problem the form, or the incentive structure? District council + weak at-large mayor + at-will manager is a design that rewards district casework and majority stacking, not citywide operations.
7. What problem are you solving this time? 1910 = patronage. 1985 = no CEO. 2004 = corrupt/strong mayor. A new change needs a similarly clear diagnosis, or it will just be the next pendulum swing.

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Bottom line for the file

Topeka did not drift from commissioners to a city manager. It voted out the commission form in 1984 because five elected department heads could not run a modern city as one enterprise. It voted out the strong mayor in 2004 because the elected enterprise leader had just blown up. The current charter tries to keep professional administration and a citywide mayor at the same time. That compromise is why the manager can look micromanaged and the mayor can look like he wants to run the world: the charter gave each of them half a job, and both keep reaching for the other half.