The Public Health and Safety Committee of the Topeka City Council reviewed a 2025 action plan and preliminary performance data for the Changing Our Culture property-maintenance initiative on Wednesday, as staff outlined outreach programs, a software migration, vacant-property tracking and several performance measures intended to guide enforcement and community engagement.

Nicole Stovall, staff lead for the initiative, presented the 2025 action plan and described key components: a unified public web presence for property-maintenance materials; translation of materials into Spanish; a Yard of the Month public-recognition program; community cleanup events; and a major software transition that will move case data from the previous myGov/City Works setup into a single Tyler platform intended to let multiple departments share case information.

Stovall said the Tyler migration aims to reduce duplicate inspections and improve cross-department notifications between code enforcement, planning and development, fire and permits. "We're taking both of those and merging those into Tyler ... we're all going to be on one system finally," Stovall said. She also described a GIS-driven vacant-property registry the city is building to identify structures that may present repeated problems.

Dan Garrett, director of communications, and Monique Laudet, director of the Office of Inclusive Communities, described outreach and community-engagement work. Garrett said the city launched a Yard of the Month program and communications materials that appeared with water bills. Laudet said the program received 28 submissions and a judging panel of three (two from nonprofits and one from a local government agency) will review entries in mid-July; she also said the Office of Inclusive Communities had received 31 calls since January about the property-maintenance program, including five calls seeking lawn-mowing recommendations and one requesting information about tree-limb removal resources.

Stovall reviewed a set of performance measures pulled from the city's data. Among staff findings: the number of initial inspections rose while reinspections fell (staff said some variance reflects how inspection actions were logged in the old system); vacant-property registration was 201 in the most recent year but staff estimated a larger inventory of potential vacant structures after additional mapping (staff cited a working estimate in the low thousands); and the housing-repair grant program (Federal Home Loan Bank funds plus a $200,000 local contribution) had allocated funds and helped dozens of households.

Committee members stressed that the 2024 data will likely serve as a baseline year going forward and asked staff for clearer public-facing metrics. Councilman Brett Kelt suggested tracking extension lengths given to property owners (for example, 14-day sanitation deadlines or supervisor-approved extensions) because extensions affect staff workload and timelines. PMU supervisor John Shardine described current field guidance that limits extensions without supervisor approval and noted audit steps for a portion of cases.

Committee members and staff discussed next steps and scheduling. Stovall said the committee could expect a fuller review of proposed International Property Maintenance Code (IPMC) standard changes and a separate session to discuss fines, fees and enforcement procedure; she proposed the IPMC review move through committee on an August timeline. The committee asked staff to provide data and suggested focusing future meetings on standards and enforcement procedures prior to any council vote.