Topeka City Council and Shawnee County Commission gather to discuss homelessness
The Shawnee County Commission and Topeka City Council had never held a joint meeting to focus on a specific issue during Kevin Cook's 11 years on the commission.
That changed Wednesday.
Cook was among those on hand as the three commissioners, Mayor Mike Padilla and eight of the nine council members shared ideas for dealing with this community's problems regarding homelessness in a joint meeting at Topeka's Great Overland Station. Councilman Brett Kell was absent.
Wednesday's meeting was the first joint meeting of the two bodies during Cook's commission tenure aside from regular gatherings of the board of directors of the Joint Economic Development Organization, a group of city and county elected officials who oversee $5 million raised annually for economic development by a countywide sales tax.
Mayor: Public needs to know 'that we're talking to each other'
"I think it's important for us to show the public that we're talking to each other," Mayor Mike Padilla said of the city and county governing bodies as Wednesday's meeting began.
As the meeting ended, Padilla said, "Let this not be our last meeting on this topic."
Cook said he came away from the meeting feeling encouraged.
Similar feelings were expressed by others who attended.
But more transparency and communication are needed regarding this community's efforts to deal with homelessness, Cook told The Capital-Journal.
Members of the core group involved had spent more than 1,000 hours focusing on that problem, but Wednesday's meeting marked the first time that county commissioners heard about what that group has been doing, he said.
Homeless residents to be among those sharing ideas
A group put together by Topeka's city government has worked since September with Brianna Sylver, president of Evanston, Illinois-based Sylver Consulting, which the mayor and council voted to hire for $76,080 last February to help the city resolve problems it faces regarding homelessness.
A core team and an auxiliary team created by Topeka's city government have been studying the issues involved during the project's initial phase.
Those serving on those teams include community members and representatives of local government and nonprofit organizations, Sylver said.
The core team is carrying out most of the tasks involved, with the auxiliary team serving as "more of an advisory board," she said.
Work began this month on the project's middle phase, which focuses on generating solutions. That phase involves meetings this week of four ideation groups, Sylver said.
The 11-person core team and 13-person auxiliary team met together on Tuesday, she said. A meeting of the general public was held Tuesday, with 40 to 50 people attending, Sylver said.
That was followed by Wednesday's meeting of the city and county governing bodies, joined by core team and auxiliary team members.
A meeting of homeless residents was planned to be held Thursday at a warming center, Sylver said.
Tiny house villages and one-stop shop among ideas shared
Groups of as many as six people each sat at six tables at Wednesday's gathering, sharing ideas for helping this community deal with homelessness.
Near the meeting's end, participants' 23 favorite ideas were shared with Sylver, who wrote them down as bullet points on giant Post-it notes, which were put up against a wall for all to see.
Some concepts were familiar, including providing tiny house villages for the homeless and offering a one-stop shop where people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless can get all the help they need.
Another suggestion involved building houses to be used by the homeless, then giving them away to people to manage them.
What happens next?
For now, Sylver said, "We're just kind of collecting all the ideas that are there."
In coming weeks, those involved with the effort will further discuss the bullet points, then combine and narrow down them to between seven and 10 concepts that can be most meaningful and impactful, Sylver said.
"There's not one single silver bullet that's going to get us to reduce homelessness in this community," she said. "There are going to be intentional effort towards multiple actions that, when you take them in the aggregate, you are yielding impact. And so our job over the next few weeks is to understand what we have, first of all, but then also balance that portfolio of solutions."
Those involved with the initiative plan in April to put a portfolio of solutions before local elected officials Sylver said.
When carried out in concert with one another, the suggested actions will "really deliver impact toward reducing homelessness in this community," she said.
Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Topeka City Council and Shawnee County Commission talk homelessness
