Public commenter urges city and county to prioritize mitigation, basic needs amid budget shortfalls

A public commenter told the joint Topeka and Shawnee County meeting that elected officials should prioritize mitigation, emergency preparedness and basic services in light of current budget pressures, and she urged more evidence‑based budgeting and joint planning.

Danielle Twimlow, who signed up for public comment, said emergency planning exercises she attended with the National Guard showed the value of mitigation planning and that local officials should apply the same risk‑assessment approach to current budget choices. Twimlow told the governing bodies that, in the last two months, the community lost roughly 200 childcare slots and that fewer than four in 10 children in the county have access to needed childcare. She also said about 25,000 people in Shawnee County are food insecure and that the county faces an estimated $17,000,000 budget shortfall to meet certain needs.

Twimlow asked officials to convene more joint meetings to prioritize the community’s pressing needs, to maintain “a living” mitigation plan with diverse stakeholders, and to make budgeting decisions grounded in evidence and risk assessment. “The threat of a recession is real, but the bigger threat is a failure to plan for it,” she said. Twimlow asked governing bodies to consider the immediate human‑service consequences of funding choices and to weigh mitigation strategies alongside other requests before committing public dollars.

The comment followed a presentation by the Riverfront Authority task force that asked for $400,000 from city and county budgets; officials said they were weighing that request while noting existing fiscal constraints.