The Topeka City Council on Tuesday approved a plan budgeting $136.4 million in street work and $256 million in utility work.
The Capital Improvement Plan has two phases projects scheduled for work between 2022-2026, and projects being considered for 2027-2031.
“The CIP budget that we have presented for approval today provides targeted financing for some of our biggest needs within our city,” city manager Brent Trout said.
How will the projects be funded?
There are a variety of ways to fund the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects. Revenue bonds will fund around $219.5 million of budget expenses from 2022-2026. Revenue bonds will bear the brunt of the budget, accounting for 43.6% of spending. No other revenue source will fund more than 15% of the expenses from 2022-2026.
Potawatomi tribal members were forced at gunpoint in 1838 to leave their homes in Indiana and walk a 660-mile route known as the Trail of Death, Jon Boursaw said Thursday.
They then lived in what is now Linn County in east-central Kansas, where 600 members died of cholera and were buried in unmarked graves before the Potawatomi were relocated in the late 1840s to the Topeka area, Boursaw said.
A native Topekan and a Potawatomi tribal legislator, Boursaw was among those who spoke at a ceremony in southwest Topeka to dedicate an exhibit focusing on Potawatomi tribal history.
He stressed that the Potawatomi have been here since before Topeka became a city in 1854 and Kansas became a state in 1861.
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Shanta Trice could have lived anywhere in Topeka, but she chose the Hi-Crest neighborhood.
“There is just a sense of belonging, being aware of who you are and being accepted,” said Trice, who is also a spokeswoman for Mothers of Murdered Sons.
The diversity of Hi-Crest, coupled with its sense of community, gives the area potential, Trice said, but she believes it is being squandered. She said some central, northern and eastern neighborhoods “definitely get slighted in city infrastructure investment.
Trice said everything from roads to business development is lacking, and that has a negative impact on schools.
“I can t tell you really where it’s broken, other than it is broke,” Trice said. “It’s a cesspool of all kinds of problems.”