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49 News sits down with Deputy City Manager Randy Speaker

Story by Kendall Jones

4 p.m. Wednesday, July 23, 2008

49 News: Tell me a little bit about your vision for Topeka.

Deputy City Manager: Topeka is a wonderful place and I think sometimes we have a tendency to not recognize some of our qualities. One of the things that working on is called a south side corridor study. And what a corridor study does is it is much different from a traffic study which figures out the best way to take vehicles from point A to point B. A corridor study looks at the businesses looks at economic development how can changing the traffic, enhancing the intersection, what will that do for the businesses. Topeka has very good interstate access East West, with I-70 and I-470. However, we don't have a very good corridor North South. Wanamaker is one of our prime retail and dining corridors but we'd like to see a really good business and investment corridor established. And at the same time it will provide quicker access for people who live south to get downtown and vice versa. The southern part of Topeka, we have treated kind of as our back door. But in fact it's one of our front doors, so we need to start treating it like that. I think it's time that we start doing something instead of just planning it. So by pulling it all together, by matching up with an area that is eligible for some investments for the future by virtue of being an enterprise zone, makes a lot of sense.

49 News: Now you've said that the south has been treated as a back door to Topeka and we need to treat it as a front door. Have those parts of the city been neglected?

Deputy City Manager: I wouldn't know as if I would say neglected it's a matter of priorities and what I want to see is that become one of our priorities that we look at.

49 News: Now you guys had announced earlier this year that you were moving code enforcement under the police department. Or, I believe it was last year that it was announced. Why move code enforcement into the police department?

Deputy City Manager: Well, Kendall one of the things you've done is you've hit on exactly what we're trying to do and that is you're using the term enforcement. It used to be called code compliance. One of the things that had happened in the past was that people had moved codes because it wasn't performing the way they thought it should be. And they moved it from department to department and basically they were doing the same thing just in a different location. Well, just changing locations doesn't change the mindset, doesn't change activities. What we did was we set out and instead of just moving it, we had a transition period and I think that's the real key to the improvements that we've seen so far and the improvements that we're going to see in the future. We went out and we had everyone cross trained which was one of the suggestions that we got at one of the public meetings. We've accomplished that, we've been able to change some of the mindset on enforcing the codes. So that's part of the change so I'm glad it's working even with the news media now you're understanding it's code enforcement.

49 News: In general, if you're just a Topekan out there looking and saying ok it's code enforcement now, what kind of changes could you point to and say, "Look this has changed, that has changed, this has changed since we've moved it under the police department?"

Deputy City Manager: Well definitely the cross training is one of the big issues Also we're having strategy meetings now. And they're going to part of what are called the comstat meetings that the police have. In other words, when we have a person that is a habitual violator, maybe a landlord who has several properties who just will not cooperate with us, we're really gonna focus our efforts. And we're gonna make sure that to the fullest extent of the law, we follow up on that. It's going to allow us to have also, by having the code action teams we've incorporated the neighborhoods. We're gonna work as a group on these issues and not just one person. A lonely code person trying to do his job. He now has a whole team. It's a team effort, that's the real key because we all live in this community and we need to all address the issues together.

49 News:What more needs to be done in Topeka to get our properties that are run down and that are breaking codes, to get those properties up to code. What more do we need to do?

Deputy City Manager: Well there's always more to be done. One of the things a lot of times people don't understand is what we do is sometimes limited by state statute. So one of the other things that we are planning to do now that we've taken it under the police department, we're gonna start working with the people at the federal and most importantly the state level to make sure that if there are state statutes that are limiting our abilities to get in and get the job done, we want to start approaching and getting some of the other cities in the state to go in with us.

49 News: How does Topeka compare with rundown houses and properties breaking code to other cities around Kansas and around the nation?

Deputy City Manager: I haven't spent a whole lot of time comparing exact statistics as to where we are with other communities. I will tell you one that we are looking at very strongly. And that is -- I mentioned earlier the team approach to it. We don't want our code officers simply to send notices to people and put things into court. Maybe they just didn't know where they could take that paint and dump it. Maybe they just didn't know those things but we can help them with that information. And that's also part of the advanced training that we're now giving our code people is that they -- in fact at one of our staff meetings, one of the biggest compliments we've had is -- one of them said, "The people are looking at us as to having all the answers." And I said, "bingo, that's exactly what we want. You may not know the answer, but they're asking."

49 News: With the tight city budget, how does that affect the codes department?

Deputy City Manager: We have increased to the maximum potential the fines we are putting on people that are not cutting their grass. We have limited capabilities. It's one of those challenges that we and city council need to work together to solve for this next year. Because it is not an optimum situation and it again gets back to that balance a little bit. The government can't be everything to all people. No one has the budget to do that.

49 News: Does that mean that you would encourage citizens to maybe step up if maybe someone next door to them doesn't have their yard mowed, they should go and mow the yard maybe?

Deputy City Manager: Oh no I would never recommend go and mow somebody else's yard, but if they maybe know the owner. Maybe they contact them and get their permission to do it. You know absolutely, there's all kinds of situations across the city where someone has offered to help their neighbor. You know that's what a community is about.

49 News: This one comes from Liz. When is the program coming online to help those unable to fix housing and code problems?

Deputy City Manager: We are within the process and probably within the next 60 days we have identified a not for profit that is available to create a structure to provide some resources to address those kind of issues. We're planning that probably within the next 60 days we'll be in a position to have it ready to go. The idea would be that people through an organization of some kind who don't have the resource would apply and they would be checked to make sure they were income eligible, they did not have their own resources and also that they did not have their own family in Shawnee County. I think sometimes there's able bodied sons and daughters who could go help mom, dad, grandma, grandpa with some of this and we want to encourage that. Again, Government can't be everything to all people, but we can be there to provide some resources especially those that cannot provide them themselves.

49 News: If you weren't in this job as the deputy city manager or the housing and neighborhood development director, what would you be doing?

Deputy City Manager: Well, I would probably be doing about the same type of activity because I really do love helping people to make a change in their lives and to help them better themselves. I'd be doing the same thing in some different form or fashion I'm sure.

49 News: What about when you were younger growing up. Did you always want to be deputy city manager, housing and neighborhood development director? Was that your dream job?

Deputy City Manager: Well no actually I was wanting to do something my father was a surveyor with the survey conservation service and I liked the outdoors of being out and in fact I first started to be in recreation. Probably as a very small child it was a professional baseball player was probably what my biggest dream was. But it brought me to Topeka. You know, helped me play at Washburn. Had a great time there. It was still a big part of my life.