Toplikar Out!!!

Rendering my previous post irrelevant except to let the remaining commissioners know that I'm keeping my proverbial eye on them the Election Board certified the race and Hayden won by 42 votes. How much fun is this??? This is why I blog! I don't dislike John Toplikar. He is too dumb to dislike. It isn't his fault he was given an IQ closer to the average number of points the Chiefs score on an average Sunday.

John Toplikar died politically as he lived, unavailable. He wasn't even man enough to give the paper a comment. You could say both intellectually and physically he did little to serve us in his two terms as a commissioner of the 6th ward. He was legendary for his inability to make tough decisions and demonstrated he often didn't know how his own commission conducted business. I often thought he must have been quite an embarrassment to the other commissioners. I often imagined him like the guy on the TV show The Office, no not the manager.....Dwight Schute. I could just see Annabeth giving him some line of bull and Toplikar taking the task with great honor. A man not smart enough to send someone else out to do his dirty work shouldn't be a county commissioner.


Nope, for Toplikar this was just what he figured was a life long easy payday. He had until the end incredible local support and really what amounted to a brand name in local politics. His supporters liked him because he was very conservative and for them ideology came above skill and intelligence. These are the same people who supported Phill Kline. He served on the Olathe Council and in the Kansas House until he figured out that was too much work for too little pay. Nope, the City Council was too cold and the Kansas House too hot but the County Commission tasted just right for our little Goldilocks.


It surprises me a little bit that nobody else seems to mind that our Johnson County Commission is better paid than our Kansas State Representatives and Senators and more than any City Council members in the county for a job that is basically one day a week. Maybe I'm missing something. They get $50,000 a year in salary. I believe they get regular benefits like health insurance and they get a $400 a month car allowance and a $100 allowance for technology (which means their cell phone) and the last two aren't taxed. Not including our cost of their additional benefits they get $56,000 a year for part time work. Calvin Hayden hit on this a little bit when he promised NOT to take the car allowance and the cell phone allowance. That's a good start but I'd like to see him take the additional stand and work to reduce salary and benefits as well to save taxpayers these dollars. Local office holders are first and foremost usually in it to truly be public servants. When the pay is low you get people who really want to serve unlike Toplikar who needed it to supplement his income. Losing this election probably has left Toplikar and his family in a serious financial crisis.


So now to Calvin Hayden. I hope you work to earn your spot and bring some creativity and hard work to the commission. We need it. Good luck. Hopefully this is the last we hear from John Toplikar unless you are building a house and you need a trim carpenter......




This is John Toplikar hiding out at his home not talking to the press.......or anyone else. This has been fun. What a great way to end this election season.