Money

I'll check the City of Topeka planning sources, permit portals, Planning Commission materials, and local coverage for anything new since the usual public updates.The portal launch and the September Planning Commission data-center amendments are the main official items so far. Next I’ll pull the latest weekly report, October agenda, and public permit search.October’s Planning Commission packet is not posted yet. I’m checking the live permit portal, the permits map, and the Sept. 30 portal update next.No new commercial, multifamily, industrial, mixed-use, plat, CUP, rezoning, or annexation cases are posted since the September Planning Commission meeting. Public permit search is effectively dark during the Tyler EP&L switch.

### What is new (process, not projects)

The City’s Tyler Enterprise Permitting & Licensing portal is live for many licenses, permits, inspections, and planning applications: [cityoftopekaks-energovweb.tylerhost.net](https://cityoftopekaks-energovweb.tylerhost.net/apps/selfservice#/home). Public search of recent applications is not available without login. The search path redirects to authentication. Contractor licenses and some inspections are still incomplete; those still go to Trade Permits (785-368-3905 / inspections@topeka.org) or Building Permits (785-368-3704 / dspermits@topeka.org).

On September 30 the City said the new system erroneously emailed about 3,500 prior applicants. Recipients were told to disregard those messages. SeeClickFix requests from the September 3–21 blackout are being cleared. Contacts for questions are Planning (785-368-3728) and Development Services (785-368-3704). [Weekly Report 9-28-2026](https://topeka.gov/news_detail_T11_R423.php); [EP&L update](https://topeka.gov/news_detail_T11_R425.php).

The building permits map at maps.topeka.org/BuildingPermits/ did not resolve. No September or October Development & Growth Management monthly PDF is posted. The latest statistical report is still the year-to-date run of September 1, 2026: 389 permits, about $271.5 million valuation, 311 residential units. Commercial additions/alterations dominate that total (93 permits, about $172.2 million). New five-or-more-family is only 2 permits / 10 structures / 224 units / about $46.3 million.

### Planning Commission

September 21 was discussion only. No action items, no new case numbers, no valuations.

- ACZR26/05: draft definitions and standards for data centers and energy storage. Not an application. The City’s 12-month moratorium (Ordinance 20670, July 14, 2026; clarified by 20677 on August 11) still blocks acceptance, processing, and approval of data-center applications, including city utility connections inside and outside the city.

- ACZR26/04: broader use-table and definition amendments.

- CPA26/02: Land Use & Growth Management Plan 2040 update (text and maps since the 2015 adoption).

Next hearing is Monday, October 19, 2026, 6:00 p.m., City Council Chambers, 214 SE 8th. No October packet or new cases are on Topeka Speaks yet.

### Flagged items

- Data centers: nothing new inside the city. The county item in the September 9 staff memo is Compass Datacenters’ CUP on about 600 acres west of US-75 and south of SW 77th (site cited locally as 3303 SW 77th, Wakarusa). Filed July 24; staff memo said Shawnee County deemed it complete as of September 9, with no public hearing scheduled then. City procurement RFP 105, Independent Data Center Subject Matter Expert and Technical Advisory Services, closes October 9, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

- 37th & Gage / Eveningside: no new filings. The last related case remains A26/02 (August 17), annexation of about 19.35 acres at the southwest corner of SW Gage and SW 37th by St. Peters and Paul Orthodox Christian Church and 37th and Gage LLC (parcels 1452201002001000 and 1452201002001010). No Eveningside item.

- California Crossing: no new action. The 1.5% CID (Ordinance 20633, February 3) covers the center southeast of SE California and SE 29th. Estimated project cost about $6.08 million; phase-one reimbursements were capped at about $1 million for Super Mercado Nuestra Familia tenant work. Sales tax collection was scheduled to start July 1, 2026.

### Other broker notes

Residential Development Forum is Friday, November 6, 10 a.m.–noon, Topeka Area Builders Association, 1112 SW 6th (registration required). Land Bank lots remain available on the city map portal for affordable-housing transfers. No new TIF, RHID, or CID cases showed up in city news, the September 28 weekly report, or local coverage.

Henry McClure

785.383.9994 

Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device
Get Outlook for Android

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 

Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device
Get Outlook for Android

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.