Michelle De La Isla and Brent Trout, both outgoing, say they gave voices to residents across Topeka

Mayor Michelle De La Isla nearly lost her life this year after being hospitalized with COVID-19, she recalled Tuesday.

Yet she continued to take part in Topeka City Council meetings on Zoom, at times from her hospital bed, she said.

"Because I love the city," De La Isla said. "Because I love all of you."

De La Isla, who leaves office next month, and city manager Brent Trout, who leaves effective Dec. 31, appeared together Tuesday in the last of a series of joint news conferences they've held monthly since 2018, the year De La Isla became mayor.

Trout, 55, is expected to become manager next month for a county in North Carolina, the identity of which hasn't been made public.

De La Isla, 45, accepted a job earlier this year as managing director of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation and also plans to take classes beginning in July at Harvard University.

'Of the people, for the people'

De La Isla, who became Topeka's first Hispanic and second female mayor after overcoming homelessness and teen pregnancy, voiced pride Tuesday at having shown that the office of Topeka's mayor is "not just for retired Caucasian men."

The mayor's job is for anyone, regardless of race, income or employment status, De La Isla said.

"This is a position of the people, for the people," she said.

De La Isla said that if someone had told her when she was 10 years old that she would one day be mayor of the capital city of Kansas, "I would have told them that they were smoking something."

But Topekans gave De La Isla a chance, she said.

"You all allowed me to show other girls, like my daughters, that if you care enough and work hard enough, you can make anything happen," she said.

'It wasn't about taking a side'

De La Isla said she doubted that any team of city leaders has dealt with as many stressors as she and Trout have, except for those who were in charge during the city's 1966 tornado and 1951 flood.

De La Isla told of how she'd reached out and listened to the concerns of police and residents who felt disenfranchised in the racially charged atmosphere present after the 2017 fatal shooting by Topeka police of Dominique White, a black man.

"It wasn't about taking a side," she said. "It was about taking the side of the community."

The city has since "come a long way" in terms of empowering the community, including increasing diversity on a citizens' council that advises the police chief and being one of the first cities in Kansas to create a job for a police auditor who reports directly to the city manager, De La Isla said.

She recalled how tensions also rose here in the wake of the May 2020 murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin.

"I think that people don't understand how close we were to having riots in our community," she said.

But city officials prevented that by making sure "that people felt heard," she said.

Building relationships

One of the best things De La Isla did as mayor was to advocate for the hiring of Trout as city manager when she was a counc, she said Tuesday.

"There has been no more gentle, genuine, honest, hard-working human being to be in the position of city manager of this community," she said.

De La Isla said when she was hospitalized with COVID, Trout's wife, Kelly, was at her bedside, holding her hand and praying with her.

Brent Trout said he felt proud that under his direction, the city developed and strengthened relationships with Shawnee County, the city's neighborhood groups and such agencies as the Greater Topeka Partnership, with which the city is now partnering to bring business and industry to this community.

De La Isla said she'd enjoyed teaming up with Trout to reach out to the neighborhoods, adding that one of her biggest regrets was not being able to do more of that. 

"Darned COVID ruined that for us," she said.

The road ahead

De La Isla said incoming Mayor Mike Padilla "is receiving a city that is in really good shape."

She suggested that rises in the cost of living in coming years might make it increasingly difficult for the mayor and council to avoid raising the city's property tax mill levy, as the city has managed to do in recent years.

Trout said other challenges the city faces including figuring out what to do with $45.6 million in ARPA money it's been awarded; making sure it attracts good employees, in particular by ensuring the salaries it pays are comparable to private industry and other communities; and carrying out the upcoming project to replace the Polk-Quincy Viaduct.