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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
