New Topeka city manager Stephen Wade wants government to be more transparent and customer-friendly

Making Topeka's city government more transparent is key to new city manager Stephen Wade.

So are improving customer service, making the city more developer-friendly and facilitating community conversations, he said.

Ensuring that "voices that normally don't get heard have a chance to speak" is what Wade sees his role as city manager as being during such talks, he said.

Career in journalism taught new city manager how to listen

Wade shared his vision for the city Wednesday morning with The Capital-Journal.

Topeka's mayor and city council had voted 10-0 the previous evening to hire him effective Wednesday as Topeka's fourth permanent city manager since it adopted the city council-manager form of government in 2005.

Mayor Mike Padilla said the reasons Wade was selected included his experience in leadership roles in the public and private sectors, as well as his vision for equity in government.

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Wade did particularly well in an interview with the mayor and council, said Councilman Brett Kell. Wade is working on a three-year contract that calls for him to start at an annual base salary of $200,000.

While the previous three managers came from other states, the 55-year-old Wade is a native of this community who graduated in 1985 from Shawnee Heights High School. He has twice left Topeka for professional development reasons, and returned both times.

Wade has been employed since 2020 by Topeka's city government, for which he most recently served as administrative and financial services director.

He previously spent 30 years in the media industry, including being publisher from 2018 to 2020 of The Topeka Capital-Journal.

The old adage, Wade said Wednesday, is that "if you're talking, you're not listening."

As a journalist, he said, he sought to ask good questions — but most importantly, he learned to listen.

Relationships matter in business and government

Good business and good government are both largely about relationships, which is one reason Wade considers himself a good fit for Topeka's city manager's job.

A lot of people here know Wade, and he knows a lot of them, he said.

Wade told of how he'd recently been contacted by a Topekan who'd been worrying for two months that the city was going to take her yard due to stormwater issues.

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City staff members hadn't responded promptly to the woman's calls, and her councilperson had been out of town.

She called Wade, whom she knew from having gone to the same church 20 years ago.

Wade said he went to the woman's home, looked at the situation and told her the truth — that the city might have to do some work and it may well affect her yard.

"She sent me a text the next day and she said: 'I cannot thank you enough for coming over. For the first time in two months, I was actually able to sleep all night,'" Wade said. "That's relationships, and that's why I'm excited to be in the role I'm in."

Topeka City Council had discussed hiring a 'homegrown' city manager

Council members had raised the possibility of hiring a native Topekan as early as last January when they noted that Topeka's last two permanent city managers, Brent Trout and Jim Colson, both left because there was someplace else they'd rather be.

Colson resigned in 2016, saying he had been away too long from his wife in Arizona and needed to return home to “full-time husband status.”

"I think there's people here who are homegrown who may have more of an investment in this position," Councilwoman Sylvia Ortiz said at a council meeting in January.

Trout resigned in late 2021, saying he and his wife were moving east to be closer to family, including grandchildren.

Topeka needs to be more approachable

Wade said one thing he's learned about government from being on the outside — as well as from watching things on the inside — is that it can be scary to people.

He noted that speakers at Tuesday evening's city council meeting included a woman who feared she was going to lose the house where she had lived for many years because of the potential establishment of a tax-increment financing district.

The woman learned that the area encompassed by the proposed district no longer included her home. Her situation illustrates how the city needs to be more approachable and transparent, Wade said.

New city manager wants to try to cut red tape

The city also needs to revise its processes to address concerns that it puts too much "red tape" in the way of people who wish to create developments here, Wade said.

He said he hopes to sit down and "bounce some ideas off" of local developers and other community stakeholders.

"I think we need to understand where that red tape is," Wade said, adding he also wants to make sure the city doesn't act recklessly.

"We have to make sure that people are being safe and that the structures that are being built are safe," he said.

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'Wages come with skills'

Wade said the Topeka community needs to take steps to ensure it offers a skilled workforce by partnering with such entities as local universities, Washburn Tech and the Topeka Center for Advanced Learning and Careers.

"I think that's the way you build a better community, through partnerships and collaborations," he said. "It's not something anybody can do by itself."

Wade said "wages come with skills."

"So as you have a workforce that gets better skills and is developed, I hope wages come along with that," he said.

Topeka's city government during Wade's time as finance director has taken steps aimed at enabling it to pay more competitive wages for specific professional positions — such as engineering jobs — for which it has had trouble attracting applicants.

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Mental illness, affordable housing important issues to tackle in Topeka

Wade's other priorities include addressing concerns regarding mental illness and affordable housing.

Wade said he doesn't know whether Topeka has recovered from the closing in 1997 of Topeka State Hospital.

"And COVID's made things worse, or at least more pronounced," he said. "I don't know if there's more people suffering from mental illness or not, but it's more visible, and I think it's more acceptable these days to say you're having mental health challenges. It didn't used to be that way."

Wade added that the mayor and city council, the city staff and the community all appear to be in agreement that Topeka needs more affordable housing.

He recalled how five different topics were highlighted at budget hearings the city held last February and March.

"But regardless of what the topic was, affordable housing invariably came up as something the community believes we need more of," he said.

Topeka has a 'blue-collar mentality'

Wade gave a two-word response Aug. 30 when a group of community stakeholders asked him the best thing about Topeka.

"The people," he said, before expanding on that.

Topeka is often described as being "a great place to raise a family," Wade said during Wednesday's interview.

While it's not strictly a "blue-collar town," Topeka is a community of hard-working people who share a "blue-collar mentality," Wade said.

"And that hard work and perseverance, I think, is what makes Topeka special," he said.

Tim Hrenchir can be reached at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: New Topeka city manager Stephen Wade shares his vision for the city