City Council - Regular Meeting

Yeah, good. Thank you.

Oh, I like that. I wish to Well, that's not a big deal. Yeah. It wouldn't. I was like, I'm horrible. I figured out, you know, it will be, or it will be. His son's, at some point, he was telling me, he was telling me, he was telling me, he was telling me, Yeah. And there's way too many. That's awesome. It's something else.

All right. You guys ready?

All right.

It's six o'clock. We're going to go ahead and get started. This is City Council regular business meeting for Thursday, May 21st.

2026, it is 6 p.m. Kaylin, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Borjan?

Here.

Council Member Brown? Here. Council Member Kuhl?

Here.

Council Member Meineke? Here. Council Member Porter? Here. Mayor Phillips?

I'm here as well. We do have a quorum, so we'll move on. Next item is Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge of Allegiance.

Okay, would anybody want, well, I'm going to move items. I'm going to switch items four and five on the agenda so the partnership can do their thing and then get out of here if they want to. Anybody like to move any of the consent agenda items to the regular agenda? Hearing none, can I get a motion to approve the agenda as amended?

Motion.

Okay, so motion by Kuhl, seconded by Borjan. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say aye. That motion carries. So item number five is presentation by the Greater Des Moines Partnership. Tiffany's here.

Thank you. Good evening. I'm joined by my colleague, Ryan Carroll. Clickers, thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Council, and city staff. Really appreciate you taking time to hear from us and give a quick economic development update. I'm Tiffany Tauscheck. I'm the president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. And essentially, our message for you tonight is one of gratitude. We were here with you not too long ago. Really appreciate you and your continued leadership and all that you're doing, certainly for the city of Norwalk, but also for the region overall. We also want to share with you some updates on what's happening related to overall development in the region and ways that we've been working with the city of Norwalk. So as a quick reminder, we are the regional economic development organization. We focus on economic development and talent development with public policy as a supporting strategy. You are one of our investors. We very much appreciate that. Thank you. We have over 400 investors. We are considered a nonprofit and we represent over 7,200 regional chamber businesses and members throughout the region. And that's through our very unique affiliate model that we have. We represent a CSA or combined statistical area of about 940,000 people. That is a very important number because once we hit 1 million, we will instantly be eligible for additional economic development projects, which given we are very interested in pro-growth, that is something that we're really excited about. So I want to continue to see that population grow. As noted, we work with a number of affiliate chambers throughout the region, including with the Norwalk Area Chamber of Commerce, have a great relationship there. And collectively, because of our unique model, we are the second largest regional chamber of commerce in the entire country. And that is really important as we're looking to get things done at a federal level. We have a louder and stronger voice when we have one voice. And that's what we do, representing one region and one mission. Every five years, we go out and ask you and our investors, what's of most interest to you? What would you like us to focus on? So these are the five-year strategies that we heard about for our 23 through 27 investor work. And this year specifically, so we also come back out and every year ask you, what are your priorities related to that ladder up to our five-year strategies? These are the priorities for this year. So no surprise, economic development, number one, talent development, quality of life, AI and innovation is new this year, as well as continuing to position our region as the place for the future and continued growth. And then storytelling is really important to us. This is a data point that we believe is very important. It's actually one that's been picked up by national media. And that is the fact that our region collectively has $5.7 billion in capital investment and economic development activity underway right now. Another $2 billion in the queue. And that is really, really impressive for a region our size. So we wanted to just call that out and thank you for being part of that momentum. Also want to call out the fact that we recently announced a big win for the region and you all were part of that. The fact that you understood and signed on and got behind this HQ project coming to the region, landing in another city, but you are all, we are all going to benefit from this headquarters says a lot. So thank you for that. So Corteva's spinoff company, Bylor, did announce last week that they selected the city of Johnston and the greater Des Moines region as their new HQ. So again, just want to call out, you were one of the 14 cities that provided that formal support with a city resolution and door letter of support. We thank you for that. It really does matter. The site selector even said after our pitch, he said, we do not see this in any other community. This is really unique. And when he called to let us know that they selected our region, he pointed that out as a key differentiator. So we're gonna keep doing that. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Ryan Carroll, who is here to give an update on economic development.

Well, thank you, Tiffany. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Ryan Carroll, so I think originally Stacey Le Bon was supposed to be here, so you're stuck with me tonight. but economic development we basically break this down into two key goals that we work on regionally first of all we try to work with our existing businesses who are here in the region to assist them help with their growth strategies when they are physically growing their presence here in the area and then the second part of it is we are identifying prospects leads that are outside of the greater Des Moines area either as relocations or expansions and trying to secure those investments heat. This slide just kind of shows that the organization was founded in 1999. So this is the total impact that has happened over the course of time. So a lot of capital investments, square feet and jobs have happened during that timeframe and appreciate working with your team to help make that happen. And then this is just a summary of the projects that our team worked on in the past year. And I wanna say each and every one of these is truly a collaborative effort. So this is not something that we go out and do on our own. These are all instances where we are partnering with cities, counties, our utility partners, and of course our state economic development organization as well. And I'm gonna go back to a business retention and expansion, which was that first goal that I mentioned Roughly 80% of the growth that we see over time happens from the businesses that are already here. And so this is really a key priority for us to work with our local partners to make sure that we are getting in front of those businesses on a consistent basis. And so we're closely here with Holly and Chris in your community and executing that program. The goal is really to understand what's going well for them, if they're growing, There's programs that we can help them with if they're experiencing challenges or anything of that nature. We also want to address that as well. This is a regional effort that we're doing throughout the 13 counties. And so each year we're all using the same technology. survey instrument essentially to go out and do this and we compile that data each year and then generate a report from that which shows us kind of what's going on regionally trend wise and it helps us identify areas if we need to improve on something and then also it helps inform our marketing efforts of things that are going well out there. The second piece is the business recruitment piece where we are trying to attract new investment into the area. And this is really truly where economic development is a team sport. And so, as you can see, the Iowa Economic Development Authority markets the entire state, both nationally and globally. The partnership does that regionally where we market the region nationally and globally. And then our communities, counties, and utility partners really help us with those responses. So when we have leads, which some of you have probably seen that have come from our office, we work very closely with local partners, so Holly and Chris in this case, to get that response back to the client. And this is one of Stacey's slides that just always blows me away. But this shows that there are more than 10,000 economic development groups that are competing each year for roughly one to 200 major projects. And so working together is absolutely critical for us. We all have to be on the same page to have the best response we can possibly have. It's called site selection, but when we work with site selection consultants and businesses, it's really truly site elimination in terms of how they view it. And so it's critical that we put our best foot forward. And again, it's great working with your team here on those opportunities. And obviously we've been pretty successful in that. So who do we market to? We have six key target industries. As you can see, advanced manufacturing is the first one there. Obviously, Michael Foods, Windsor Windows here in the community are two key players in that. Also, insurance, financial services, ag innovation, logistics, data centers, and technology are really the crux of who we are marketing to. The marketing efforts that we do regionally, as you can see, I'm not going to go through and list all of those off, but we attend a lot of trade shows and conferences that are industry specific. So those six areas that I just mentioned are key to that. And then we also attend all the site selector events really throughout the country to keep the region in front of those folks. And then we do six recruitment trips each year to larger markets where we are looking for new investment opportunities. And then we are also meeting with site selectors in those major markets and then doing some headquarter visits as well. And so when you look at lead generation and kind of how that happens, as you can see on the left there, last year, we had a significant amount of that that came from our office. I think last year we probably had more leads total than we've had certainly in my time at the partnership. So it was a great year. in terms of lead generation that our team really worked hard to accomplish. And then you can kind of see over the 10-year period there, it's generally a mix of state and local partners in addition to the work that we're doing. So again, it's really truly a team effort in terms of securing those opportunities. And then where those leads came from last year. So we had 20 different states where we had opportunities and 11 different countries that we had leads, qualified leads from. I'm gonna close with this last slide, just again, showing regionalism. Tiffany mentioned a couple of minutes ago, the Corteva by-law project and how critical that is, not just for Johnston, but for the entire region. This slide kind of shows from Norwalk's perspective, how you play in the region as well. And so we used some of our subscription tools that kind of show in the box there. Those are some of the major employers where your residents are currently working throughout the region. And then you've got a little over 2,000 workers that are coming from the region into your community to work each day as well. And so roughly about 25% of the people that live in Norwalk also work for Norwalk. which is kind of interesting. So with that, I will turn that back over to Tiffany.

Nice job, Brian. Thanks for jumping in. Stacey had a family situation arise. So her apologies. I know she would have I've been happy to be here. Thanks. Thanks for stepping in. So I'm going to just fly through talent programming really quick here. Feel free to jump in with any questions. But as mentioned, economic development, talent development are key areas of focus at the Greater Des Moines Partnership. On the screen are just a few of those programs and initiatives that our team runs and manages. So that's everything from K-12 to internships to current workforce and attracting workforce and retaining workforce as well. We have a number of tools that we utilize, including this, the DSM USA Welcome Guide that our team put together, and I'm happy to report that Norwalk is featured in this guide. We utilize this as we are marketing the region to prospective talent, and then those new talent who have moved here, we share this with them and get them connected in the region. So City of Norwalk is highlighted, and specifically also Warrior Park is referenced. So I wanted you to be aware of that. We also have a program called the DSM MVPs. These are super ambassadors, if you will. These individuals have raised their hand and volunteered to help us attract talent. So they'll meet with talent virtually that are considering moving here. And then they also meet with talent either virtually or in person if they're comfortable. with talent that have just moved here. So you have two Norwalk residents that have raised their hands and volunteered to serve on this. So wanted you to be aware of that, that you are well represented in the pool of volunteers and they're doing great jobs though in your city. We also continue to focus on that needed connection of rural, urban, suburban, knowing that we all need to be working together and grow together. I wanna call out and again, thank the mayor for participating in many ways, but especially in the regional summit on our mayor's panel, last year. Really appreciate that. That is the favorite for the event. We've heard that over and over again. That is the favorite piece of the event. And we just continue to appreciate the ongoing connections that we have with you all and your team. They do a great job. Small business support, obviously, also very important. To Ryan's point, our greatest opportunity is helping our existing businesses grow. So we want to continue to invest in those small businesses and wanted to call out and share with you that there are a number of businesses, local businesses located here in Norwalk that are involved in the partnership in different ways. So one example is very recently, one of your small businesses, Zima and Zeke's participated in our Spark DSM incubator program. This program is free to any of your small businesses, any of your businesses that are looking to learn how to scale up and refine their business. And that we also have a scale program for an accelerator. program as well. So let us know if we can connect with any of your local businesses any further. Also state policy agenda. As you know, we build our public policy agenda. It's consensus based. It's built with support and help from our government policy council. And again, we'll just call out and say thank you to the mayor, to Luke and Holly for all of your help and guidance. We had a lot of conversations with many of our cities and business leaders throughout the session. Our state policy agenda, obviously session is done, but those were our priorities. And we advocated for pro-growth strategies and policies. And it was a bit of a mixed bag, as you know, but really pleased that we were able to make some progress in some areas and also help stop some things from happening. But know that that will be a continuing conversation as we move forward in the future. Federal policy will be flying into D.C. with about 170 leaders from around the region in just a couple of weeks. So appreciate your continued involvement. And hopefully you can you can join us again this this time around. We're headed out on June 3rd. And just want to call out again the continued momentum that we have throughout the region. We really do have a great story to tell. You are a big piece of that. I want to call out specifically that ranking up at the top, the number two top metro for number of economic development projects. This is a ranking that we just recently received as a region. It's something we're really proud of that we hope you're proud of as well, just to help tell the story outside of the market even about all of the great things that are happening here in the region. Population growth and employment growth. We continue to outpace our Midwest peers, which is great news. We know that this is the growth center of the state. And you offer tremendous quality of life amenities, which help us attract that talent and really, really appreciate your work on that as well. We also produce several events and activations. And so again, wanted to make sure that you're aware that you do have businesses participating in the downtown farmers market, as well as we've had hide and seek ornaments you keep here featured in Norwalk. That's where we hire a local artist and they hide ornaments around the city. And we promote it on social media to get people to move around and hopefully spend local or buy local spend money while they are searching for the ornaments. And then the World Food and Music Festival, we also have a local business involved and a vendor at that. In addition, we have had a number of other businesses in 2025. We had five additional Norwalk businesses involved and vending at some of our events. And this year we have nine Norwalk businesses that are signed up to be vendors at our events. We believe in the power of telling the story, so we continue to focus on communications and marketing and would be happy to help you with getting additional word out on the great things that are happening here. I know we've been able to do some of that already. We have a new storytelling hub that we recently launched, so please let us know how we can continue to help you get the word out about the great things happening here. I want you to see that this is just a snapshot of some of the benefits that you receive as a municipality investing in the Greater Des Moines Partnership. and some calls to action. So no surprise, we want to continue to work with you related to our state and federal policy and agenda, and also want you to continue to be a partner as we move forward in shaping and sharing the story and attracting talent and economic development leads into the region. With that, I will say thank you again and answer any questions.

your AI and innovation strategy? Like, is there anything to say there or what's the focus there for you guys?

Yes, thank you. So we are building out an AI fluency tool. So this is something that will be informed by investors who are interested. We know that we have five generations in the workforce currently and everyone is leveraging AI in different ways. We have some really large businesses involved that are leveraging AI and then we have really small businesses and everyone in between. So we want to create a tool to help any size of business, any size of organization to leverage AI to the best of their abilities and what they're comfortable with, knowing that every business has their own needs. So we'll be, we're working on that currently. We'll be working on that throughout the year and hopefully have something by year end.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Item number four is a dedicated work session. So this dedicated work session is for mayor, council, and staff. If or when this item ever comes up to a regular agenda, we'll ask for public input at that time at a regular meeting. And so the regular city council meeting is going to begin immediately following this work session. So Kelsey is going to guide us through a discussion about golf cart standing. You're on.

I can barely see over there. Whatever you want to do.

Are you guys golfers? So speaking of AI,

and innovation. I, over months, do I need to introduce myself first? Okay, yeah. Kelsey Porter, 2715 Blooming Heights Drive here in Milwaukee, city council. So speaking of AI and innovation, after months of research on what other communities are doing, what's working, what's not, And basically combining all of this, instead of hearing me rant and ramble, following some slides, which we regularly do. So I thought I would bring something new to the topic tonight. So without further ado, I have a video that AI helped me make, thanks to Notebook LM, which um and it sounds like luke's obsessed with notebook lm now so welcome he's new to that um i can actually think my husband he's a nerd um but yeah so i guess we'll start with that and then i'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any and kind of go over what my um recommendation is personally at this time so you just have to give me a minute to make sure all of this works There's some quirky details because AI is not perfect, but neither am I, so I couldn't judge it.

Today, we're diving into a really hot municipal topic, the feasibility of legalizing and strictly regulating golf carts on Norwalk's public roads. Specifically, we're looking at allowing them in zones with speed limits of 25 miles per hour or less. We've got some fascinating data to cover regarding safety, infrastructure, and exactly how our neighboring cities are handling this. So let's just get right into it. Okay, let's dive into this agenda real quick. First, we'll ask the big question, why regulate carts at all? Then we'll compare policies across the metro area, look at the state law baseline, break down the proposed local safety requirements, and wrap up by weighing the pros and cons. Simple, straightforward, and it's going to give us a complete 360-degree view of this proposal. Section one, why regulate golf carts? Well, we have to start by acknowledging the elephant in the room, the unregulated usage that's already happening right now in our community. Look, here's the reality of our current infrastructure challenge. Residents are already driving golf carts around town. But because we don't have a legal framework for them on the streets, folks are driving them on residential sidewalks or illegally on the roads, basically completely unchecked. So by passing an ordinance, we aren't creating some brand new behavior out of thin air. Instead, we're actually giving the city the teeth to enforce strict safety rules on something that's literally already happening. And that brings us to a really fundamental point about urban planning. To quote a widely accepted standard, streets are engineered for vehicle loads. Sidewalks are not. Think about it. Sidewalks are for kids playing, walking the dog, going for a jog. They just aren't built for motorized carts. If we want to make our sidewalks safer, we actually need to move these carts off them and onto the streets, where the infrastructure is actually designed to handle motorized vehicles safely. All right, section two, metro area policy comparisons. Let's zoom out a bit and see how this all fits into the broader regional picture. The good news is we really don't have to guess how a policy like this might play out. We can just look right next door at the rest of the Des Moines metro. Analyzing our neighbors gives us a super clear data-informed precedent. It basically shows us what works, what doesn't, and how towns just like ours handle this whole thing safely and effectively. Now, this brilliantly illustrates the split and how cities handle this. Notice the demographic divide here. You've got your massive commuter hubs, places like Waukee, Ankeny, and West Des Moines, pulling in populations of 34,000 to 75,000. They absolutely do not allow golf carts. But look at the communities closer to our size, places like Pleasant Hill, Indianola, and Carlisle, ranging from around 4,000 up to 16,000 residents. They actively permit them as long as they follow some strict regulations. Let's zoom in on a few of those smaller towns, starting with Carlisle, which has about 4,300 residents. They allow golf carts, but you have to get a $25 city permit and show proof of liability insurance. They also have strict road rules. For instance, you absolutely cannot drive along a primary road extension like Highway 5, but you are legally allowed to cross it. Now shifting over to Pleasant Hill, a town of about 10,000 folks, they recently revamped their framework. They charge a bit more, a $100 registration tag that's good for two years. But crucially, they mandate some serious safety outfits. We're talking rearview mirrors, headlights, brake lights, and turn signals. They want to make absolutely sure these things are highly visible. And then there's Indianola, the largest of the three, at roughly 16,000 residents. Interestingly, they don't require a registration or permit process at all. They just allow them on streets up to 35 miles per hour. But don't let that fool you. They still heavily enforce safety via traffic stops. You've got to have a valid driver's license, an SMV or slow-moving vehicle sign, and a tall safety flag for visibility. Moving on to section three, state law and road restrictions. Because at the end of the day, all these local rules have to be built on top of a non-negotiable legal baseline set by the state of Iowa. Under Iowa Code 321.247, the state already lays down some pretty strict ground rules for golf carts on city streets. The state mandates that anyone driving one has to have a valid driver's license. It also requires basic safety gear, that slow-moving vehicle sign, a bicycle safety flag, and adequate brakes. Plus, state law says you can only drive them during daylight hours, sunrise to sunset. So to quickly summarize those state parameters, besides the daylight rule and the SMV sign, the road restrictions are absolutely critical here. State law strictly prohibits driving a golf cart along a primary road extension going through a city. You can cross one directly, but you can't cruise down it. And here is the real kicker. The state explicitly gives cities the green light to add our own stricter local safety requirements right on top of this baseline. which perfectly tees up Section 4, proposed local safety requirements. This is exactly how Norwalk plans to use that state-granted authority to enforce some incredibly strict standards of our own. What's really fascinating about this proposal is how it completely transforms a basic stock golf cart into a legitimate, safe neighborhood vehicle. Norwalk would require some major mandates beyond state law. For example, there has to be a dedicated seat for every single passenger, so no hanging off the back or overcrowding. and street usage would be strictly capped to zones of 25 miles per hour or less, keeping them safely in our slower residential neighborhoods. Let's break down the exact upfits required here, because it's pretty extensive. To legally drive on Norwalk streets, your cart must have turn signals, brake lights, headlights, and rearview mirrors. On top of that, you need proof of liability insurance, and we're proposing that drivers must be 18 or older with a valid driver's license. So we're making it crystal clear, only heavily modified, truly road-ready carts are going to be legally permitted. Now, you might be wondering, how are we gonna track all this? Well, for the sake of administrative efficiency, we're actually not proposing a registration or permit process right now. Why? Because managing a permit system creates a massive amount of paperwork and labor for city staff. By skipping a local permit fee, we avoid bogging down city hall while our police force can still actively enforce all these safety up fits and rules just through standard traffic stops. It's really about working smarter. Finally, section five, weighing the pros and cons. To make a truly informed decision, we have to take a step back and look objectively at the total impact of this policy. Let's weigh these side by side. On the pro side, we get safer sidewalks for our pedestrians. It really fosters that welcoming small town vibe. And passing a law actually forces the standardization of safety equipment. On the flip side, the cons are real. Carts naturally travel slower than cars. A stock model lacks basic safety features like doors or seat belts. And they're wider than e-bikes, making them a bit tougher for cars to pass. Our goal today is to objectively show how smart regulation is the exact tool we use to mitigate those cons. Expanding on those pros for a second, allowing golf carts really leans into that community feel that so many residents absolutely love. And think about this, their speed is pretty much the same as the electric bikes we already allow on our streets, but golf carts are much larger, which makes them way easier for other drivers to spot. Plus, we already allow UTVs. By creating a solid regulatory framework, we're giving residents a real incentive to install proper safety equipment on the carts they're already driving anyway. That means a safer environment for everyone. But we can't ignore the cons. There are totally legitimate concerns about the safety of driving a bare-bones stock cart and the worry that kids under 18 might treat the streets like a rule-free playground. But here is the thing. Regulation actually solves this. By legally requiring drivers to be at least 18 with a valid license and by mandating strict equipment upgrades like mirrors and lights, we completely eliminate the danger of some unregulated stock cart being joyridden by a minor. So I want to leave you with a final, somewhat provocative question to chew on. By actively regulating instead of just ignoring the issue, can we transform an infrastructure hazard into a safe, locally governed small town asset? Legalization doesn't mean it's a free-for-all. As we've seen throughout this explainer, regulation is actually the necessary mechanism to enforce public safety and restore order to both our streets and our sidewalks. Thank you all so much for taking the time to engage with this explainer today. I really hope this structured look at the data, the regional comparisons, and our proposed safety mandates has been informative and brought some clarity to the issue. We'd love to hear your thoughts, so we now invite any questions you might have regarding these feasibility guidelines. Thanks again.

Okay, so I wanted to go over the cons real quick that the video talks about. It kind of debunked in the video the con of like kids under 18. playing around and messing around with golf carts by making it the age 18 and up with a valid driver's license. I think that that solves that risk and potential issue that I think maybe we've had in town before. All the reference to sidewalks. So I do not live over there, but obviously this is a hot topic over in Echo Valley. I know the original plat was designed with wider windows golf cart paths in lieu of sidewalks or however that was originally drawn out, but it's definitely become something much more than that. And I think that that's a problem. There's a lot of walkers and runners on those pads and a motorized vehicle of the size of a golf cart, in my opinion, should not be on there. Um, And then, yeah. So basically what I'm proposing at this time is that we work on an ordinance similarly to Pleasant Hill, Indianola, Carlisle, making golf cart street legal on roads 25 mile per hour or less with a few more in your packet and in the video. Stricter safety regulations.

yeah do we have any questions and just to be clear right like we could choose to say valid driver's license right versus 18. for sure we could choose to say tail lights or headlights versus turn signals those are choices that we can make to go above and beyond right right i think originally we didn't say rearview mirror in the in the video it said rearview mirror like that could be a choice right i think We want to make it feel like what's safe for our community, right?

For sure. And rearview mirrors, something I became passionate about hearing there might have been an incident actually over in Echo Valley recently with somebody backing out of a driveway and a pedestrian on a sidewalk. I've been in a lot of golf carts that do have rearview mirrors. So I don't think that that's asking for too much. And if you're on the road, then you, in my opinion, need a rear view mirror. So these are just my recommendations as someone who doesn't own a golf cart and doesn't really golf myself. And I don't live in Echo Valley, but I am very passionate about this because people are riding them. There's at least a dozen houses in my neighborhood that they are riding them in the street. And so I do think that this isn't something we can just kind of go old school and you know, wait for something bad to happen. Let's nip it in the butt and get some regulations around it. So any other questions or comments?

I was thinking about enforcement. They're already breaking the law. I mean, I get them coming from the Westmoreland side, coming to my neighborhood, and there's little kids hanging off the back of them. They're on the other side of the street, but they come over here, race around, go back. They get away with it. So what's put the regulation in place. There's no one important. The law is being broken.

Mostly what I believe regulations are going to do on the safety side of things is make these golf carts safer and also bring the adults that own the carts themselves to a standard of some kind. Whereas right now there is no standard. And what do we know about society? If there's no rules, there's mayhem. So that's what I believe. And It just brings more rules to something that's already going on. So I agree with you. They are already riding them around.

I'll be upfront. Personally, I don't care. I mean, just for the most part. If they want to ride around on some golf cart, that's fine with me. But just for the city to manage it, that's where my concern is. I don't buy into the sidewalk thing. I'd be wrong about the weight load and all that kind of stuff, but As I've probably talked to people informally about this before, I've been at the state fair many, many years. If you're going to get run over by a golf cart, it's going to be at the state fair. I've never heard anybody get hit by a golf cart. Maybe I have, but I've come close. I know I've come close to being hit, but never been hit.

George, I think you should come to our neighborhood. an echo where they're required to be on sidewalk. And we have lots of walkers. Golf carts are not meant to be on sidewalks that are this wide. Right. And so I would say you have as good or better of a chance getting hit by a golf cart in the neighborhood that you do. So stay fair. And because per capita.

But is it set up? We get the skinny sidewalk and we get the wide sidewalk.

There are skinny sidewalks and there are wide sidewalks and the golf carts get driven on all the sidewalks. And so now you have walkers or runners or dogs or whatever, and a sidewalk. Who's supposed to give up the right of way? Where do the people go? Are the walkers going into someone's yard? Are the people? What if you don't see them? Then another topic that we have around scooters and other things. I do think saying where do we want them is something we need to put a stance on the ground on.

And in other parts of town, they are being driven on the road and we have no... Like, it's not legal right now. So they are writing, you know, maybe souped up, no roof. And there's one in my neighborhood that's got no roof. It's just like the Wild West. And I think that there's something here where we can get more rules in place and regulations so that there's some expectation for our residents who do own and are driving these and the kids maybe that are between 16 and 18 while also still remaining this small town community, close-knit vibe that I know a lot of us want to keep. And that's what brought us to Norwalk in general.

We got my neighborhood. We walked down with coolers. with the chair. We don't need to give him a golf cart to go. We walk down to the neighborhood, whoever's putting on the parties or whatever. Again, I'm just saying that I don't know. I don't think you're making your case. It has to be. It's a want. We want to do this. It's not a necessary item, which, again, I'll go back. I don't know if I personally I don't really personally care that much I think if you want to do that that's fine just matter how the city's going to manage it because it sounds like right now they're you know it's running amok everywhere I see it in my neighborhood uh but there's no enforcement I mean, but I don't expect the police to be out there waiting for a golf cart to come down the street.

For sure.

So I have a slight different opinion, right? Like your neighborhood is different than my neighborhood. It's an... need is strong, but we have community members in our neighborhood that are going to play golf and they have to use the sidewalks today. We have had people pulled over by using the streets and gotten tickets and or warnings because they're not allowed on city streets. Is that what we want to do or do we want them to be in streets and have pedestrians be safer on sidewalks? So I think each neighborhood is different. I think there's people in Lakewood that would like to go to the marina, the sand volleyball places, and that's a farther walk for them, but they're in the neighborhood. Maybe they should be wanted to take golf carts.

That's where I think these other communities that are very similar to us in a lot of ways have kind of paved that trail. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. I'm not asking Jim to pull out some legal jargon that's never been written before for any type of ordinance of any kind. I'm literally asking for, this has worked for a couple other communities that are similar in size to us. How can we take what's worked for them and what does work for them and make it even better and what will work for Norwalk?

My question would be, we compare it to Ankeny and Waukee and we're not there, but compared to the communities you were talking about, I would say we're going to be closer to the other larger ones, somewhere between, compared to the ones you're ending all of and at some point. And maybe we'll grow with it. I'm just trying to be the devil's advocate here. For sure. This is a work session, so we're trying to throw everything at you. Possibly can.

I think it's a good question, George, of, you know, those, like, Indianola, 35 mile an hour. Like, do I want to be driving down a road that's 35 mile an hour? I'm like, oh, probably not. Like, I think this is a good compromise of 25 mile an hour. That lessens the risk, in my opinion. Yeah.

Well, my understanding, most traffic accidents, cars, are really close to home. Been close to home and having that happen to me recently. I believe it. So with that said, I hate to get hit by a car at 25 miles an hour with a golf. They've been in a golf cart. And I find it ironic how we spot another vehicle as well. How much money we spend on safety for cars, airbags, seatbelts. Thank God I had a seatbelt on. Otherwise, you know, you're forced to basically, which is fine. It's great. And now you have unseatbelted people in golf carts running around. You get hit by a car at 25 miles an hour. Uh, Why do we need all the safety equipment and vehicles?

We already have motorcycles.

From a society standpoint, you're going to have people maimed and injured and killed. Where in the car, they have a better chance of survival.

Yeah, we also have UTVs on the road that don't have the same well protections either.

On faster roads as well.

Yep.

I guess I just have the same argument there.

Okay. First, I want to congratulate you on the presentation. That was pretty smooth.

I like that. That

A couple things. One, I know we've made an allusion a couple of times to the ridge in Echo Valley and everything. But the realization is that some of your sidewalks up there aren't really sidewalks. They're designated cart paths owned by golfers. So it's kind of presumptuous for us to say no golf carts on your cart path. People want to walk there.

But

kind of a whole different thing there. The other thing I noticed with the regulations and stuff that you're proposing there, and they all look, I mean, not pretty good regulation, but they reminded me of the Obama car. I don't know if you remember that. Maybe you're not, you're probably pretty young. But the Obama car was basically a golf cart that had all these things on it. And the state said, If you get a license on those Obama cars, you can drive them. Just got to keep them off the highway. And remember, sir, we got a couple of Obama cars in town here already. Now, maybe Jim or Chief, maybe you could tell me, maybe you can't off the top of your head, but the regulations that we're looking at here, are those very similar to the Obama cars and the regulations they have? I'd be curious. Yeah.

My memory of the Obama car is not that I've reviewed it. It's more a state if it's willing to give a title on it. So it's a title vehicle as opposed to a title vehicle like this. It probably has more protections in it, definitely more safety things. Some of what they're talking about here, but I think it even goes beyond that.

I guess I'd be interested in seeing how the Obama car compares with the proposal that she's making. You know, see what's what's different. Right. And the state is already authorized to remember net right you guys help me out.

Yeah, they classifies what you're talking about as a low speed vehicle. And they meet NHTSA standards that were required by the state. And if you present a low-speed vehicle title at the DOT, they'll give you a registration plate. And it becomes a similar, it becomes a car, essentially.

And proof of insurance, the state requires proof of insurance. So if it's on the street, it's still a motor vehicle operating on the street. So proof of liability insurance would be required.

So it's not citywide. Pleasant Hill Chief never answered. Please don't allow them.

So at what point do we take it away?

So that's a good question. I've thought a lot about this. What I see with growth in a business, with growth, there's always growing pains. It's growth in a city. if you can, habits are really important. And if you can accommodate your life, let alone a whole community's life to the habit of bringing their golf carts to a safe or state than what they are now and regular and get people used to it. I don't see it being a huge problem when we're only allowing them on streets that are 25 miles per hour or less. There's always probably, or at least in most of our lifetimes, there's always going to be parts of Norwalk that are not necessarily connected by 25 mile per hour streets. It's like right now, for example, I live right smack in the middle of timber view and blooming Heights. If I owned a golf cart and we made the street legal based on my recommendations today, I could go through timber view. I could cross the G 14 and go into timber Ridge. I can go into blooming Heights. I can't go anywhere else because the roads don't lead me there. And other neighborhoods are the same way. And I think that that'll be the case for a very long time. But again, I think that if we were going the more route of Indianola where what the state currently allows would involve carts is you have to be 16 or older with a valid driver's license. And you have to have, uh, it's in the packet that you.

But they're not authorizing them on the city streets. They're authorizing them outside of cities. And then it's up to the city whether or not they allow it.

It's within the discretion. Those are the mandatory minimum requirements that a city has to follow also. A city can't go against what the requirements are in the code.

But unless the city authorizes it, the state hasn't authorized it. That is correct.

So it's slow.

Operable brakes.

Adequate brakes. And you must carry insurance. So if you do get pulled over, it's like a car. You have to provide proof of insurance and a valid driver's license. So that's what the state says. And that's how like Indianola and Pleasant Hill and Carlisle, that's how they can kind of have what they have now.

Right. That's a minimum standard.

Correct. Yep. So I'm recommending that. And then beyond that, things like the rear view mirror, the headlights, the turn signals.

The seats.

Yeah, explicitly indicating that you can't have a bunch of people piled in, falling out of the back, that it needs to be one passenger per seat. Yeah, so there is already state information there, and we're just building off of that.

We wouldn't have to reach very much further to be at the Obama car seatbelt, right?

I think it'd be seatbelts. I mean, if you're saying, okay, let's get to that level. What you wouldn't have is you wouldn't have the vehicle requirements as far as a VIN number and the ability to ever title it. I mean, the suggestion is we might as well just go with Obama Carbons. They are already authorized, so if people want to do that, they might as well get one of those. I think you can compare it and say, okay, this is what our proposal doesn't have, and you can certainly require those things in ours, but... I don't think that there's a scenario where you can take an ordinary golf cart and turn it into an Obama car. They get to buy the Obama car. Okay.

That's where it becomes a whole new vehicle, whereas the golf carts that are out on the street already illegally driving around in Norwalk can upfit to become what this says in my recommendation. Not too difficultly. Yeah. then i'm also recommending just reiterate it again not no permitting or tag system of any kind um i think some of my research indicated that maybe some cities do that because they think it's going to be a little bit of a money generator of some kind but it's not worth the juice ain't worth the squeeze on my findings yeah i think the police department should always use more things to do They're already doing it because it's not legal and they're on the streets.

And proof of insurance, the state requires proof of insurance. So if it's on the street, it's still a motor vehicle operating on the street, so proof of liability insurance would be required.

Luke and I have also been in contact with Representative Fett and the rest of the health department's ordinance and its stance today of

have headlights tail lights and you know could increase or the operation hour so you say that there's a topless golf cart that's operating currently yes we put all this in our level of enforcement does not change or as far as cops on the street what stops that guy from being not being on the street anymore

Just like any law. I guess it's up to him, but he gets pulled over once and now we actually have rules in place. So now it becomes not a place now, which is no golf carts on city streets. Right. So now instead of saying, get rid of that vehicle altogether, we're saying, Hey, we're meeting you halfway. How can we make it safe for pedestrians for you? And I think that that's fair.

By the way, I'm with George on this. I don't care.

I also know you guys are sick of talking about it, and so I apologize, which is why I made the video, because I knew I would just rant for as long as you'd let me stand up here and rant, but yeah, so I know that this has been a conversation.

I'll tell it publicly, because I think it's funny. There'll be a laugh, but I'll set everybody up to laugh, hopefully. Take care of your TV. suppose you get a trailer hooked onto it, put your golf cart on it, drive it to the golf course or wherever you want to go, and then unload it so you don't have to be on the streets. And the point being, if you can't afford the UTV, you shouldn't be owning the golf cart either, and you shouldn't be golfing if you can't own the UTV. Thank you. Not funny. Was that to learn, right?

Yeah.

Which is why I don't think it's asking too much to upfit these carts that aren't currently to the standard with some rear view mirrors and headlights, taillights, turn signals. I don't think that that's too much because I agree. I mean... I don't know. In my house, if you can't afford it, then you don't buy it. So I couldn't agree more if you can't afford to upfit something to now meet the regulations. No, I know. It was funny. I just didn't laugh. I'm hard to make laugh because I'm the funniest person I know. But yeah, I think.

My brother has a golf cart. He has a panorama. And he drives it. And it's a beast. It flies. Most golf carts, you can reach down, grab a ball, and you have to get out to grab a ball. It's up. They drive it on the roads. He lifted his golf cart.

I think it's also good to remember that this is on 25-mile-per-hour streets or less.

The last comment I'd like to make is that there's probably a reason why they put those requirements on your golf cart. I think it's because it saves And I'm sorry, it's an ex-police chief. When I look at things, I think about what could possibly go wrong. And I hate to say it, but the way this is set up, I can see a few things that might go wrong. And when the Obama car came out, I thought that was terrible. I really did. And we don't have a lot of them around. Maybe some people agreed with me, I don't know. But I just have a lot of trepidation, safety-wise. That's not about any people or not about any particular group. It's just traffic safety. And there's a reason that they demanded those standards on the Obamacare.

I agree with you, and I think safety is a concern. of our U.S. Chief to reach out to various communities that have implemented this. And I think you've talked to peers, right, in other places that probably have some anecdotal comments. Like, it's most of them fairly positive comments.

The Carlisle Chief reports that they haven't had any issues. The Indianola Chief reports that if there are issues, it's guards driving after dark. The Johnston chief says their cards are legal for one specific purpose in one specific spot for somebody to drive from one place to another. So it's not citywide. Pleasant Hill chief never answered. That was what I found out.

Thank you for doing that, by the way. I guess, should we ask about UTVs too, since that's been a recent thing? Has that become, I mean, they're on roads that are not just 25 and under, but

As my knowledge, we have not charged a UTV with a city violation since they were legal. That's not saying we didn't. That's saying to my knowledge.

So at one point in time, I did not think the Echo Valley Country Club would allow carts on the course that had slow moving vehicle signs and flags. Is that still true?

Well, there's no rules. know we definitely have some that have flags both orange and or handicap flags so that could be a takeaway that i can follow up with that fast that'd be good so the big you said the big cities don't allow them so at what point do we take it away so that's a good question i've thought a lot about this um

What I see with growth in a business, with growth, there's always growing pains. With growth in a city, if you can, habits are really important. And if you can accommodate your life, let alone a whole community's life, to the habit of bringing their golf carts to a safe place, or state than what they are now and regular and get people used to it. I don't see it being a huge problem when we're only allowing them on streets that are 25 miles per hour or less. There's always probably, or at least in most of our lifetimes, there's always going to be parts of Norwalk that are not necessarily connected by 25 mile per hour streets. It's like right now, for example, I live right smack in the middle of timber view and blooming Heights. If I owned a golf cart and we made the street legal based on my recommendations today, I could go through timber view. I could cross the G 14 and go into timber Ridge. I can go into blooming Heights. I can't go anywhere else because the roads don't lead me there. And other neighborhoods are the same way. And I think that that'll be the case for a very long time. But again, I think that if we were going the more route of Indianola where we're kind of aligning with that state regulation of 35 mile per hour or less, now I think we're in trouble. And that was a big part of why my recommendation is 25. I think it helps grow. I think that that'll help us ease into any rapid growth from here on out.

Okay. Chief? In the e-bike ordinance do we have references in there that indicate that pedestrians have the right away or that the e-bikes have to slow down for pedestrians.

I think there is a there is mention of pedestrians pedestrian e-bike conflict and I believe pedestrians win that in our ordinance but

I agree with you. I haven't read it in two weeks, so. I agree with him. And I think in SACO, pedestrians always have rights. Pedestrians always have rights.

But we need to make that. If we do create a golf cart ordinance, and that comes before council, that needs to be written into that ordinance as well.

But the other thing, too, here, is that when we allowed those all-terrain vehicles on the street, we had a list of equipment that requires them to ask. So why wouldn't you require the same stuff if it's going to be on the street? I guess that's my question.

Well, I had a comment.

I agree. Yeah, I guess. So you think that the UTV requirements should be, the golf carts should have the same requirements as the TVs do?

We're going to do it because the reason we asked for that or demanded that was to be safer on the street. Right?

But then would we allow them at any speed of the street? Like, then we're just making them the same as UTVs, though. Like, I'm playing Deadpool's ad kid a little bit here, right? Like, we're saying only at 25 or less, right? So is lower speed a mitigating factor?

And in fact, the UTVs are regulated about the same way. Because they're not allowed to be on those streets that we have that are at a higher rate of speed. They're regulated to the residential areas and the off streets, right? And most of those streets are at 25 miles per hour.

No, I turn in behind one going to East of Fairway off of Highway 28. Yeah. Driving down Highway 28, right? I think I couldn't drive my golf cart down that street. I don't think they can drive them down.

Not legally. There you go, Chief.

I had three people talking to me at once.

You're saying UTVs are only allowed on 25 mile an hour roads.

UTVs are allowed on any road

There's no speed limit requirement for UTV. However, the UTV is not allowed to go faster than 35 miles an hour. And UTV is not allowed to operate on Highway 28 from city limits on the north side to basically Elm Avenue on the south side. But they're allowed on any other street regardless of the speed limit. They just can't go faster than 45.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Well, one thing about UTVs, quite frankly, unless I'm just missing the rush hour or something, but I don't see that many UTVs really drive around. You see a few.

There's a couple of them that I see, and they've Usually on that street behind the Chevy dealer most of the time.

And our mullets in the morning. That's where I see them most of the time.

Oh, really?

Yeah, that's right. A couple of good old boys up in mullets. They're there during the day. I looked across the street today and there was two in the parking lot of the auto parts store. They're around. More than you think. I just don't think you notice them. I don't notice them as much.

Any final thoughts?

Mayor, before this topic, you had a question or you made a comment about something, and it's escaping me. Do you remember what it was?

No public input right now. Any public input will come when it comes. Right.

No, it was something that Indianola does, and it seems to work for them. But I don't remember.

Does everyone agree about it? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I think I agree with Kelsey and we could we talked about this too, like the idea of licensing and registering it have city staff have to spend time doing that feels like a waste of money to me or waste of resources.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I agree completely.

Yes. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, On record.

That was my recommendation. Yeah. Oh, here it is. I know what it is. Okay.

Okay.

So we talked about something to have to do with traffic and like they have to follow the rules of the road and pedestrians first. So Indianola requires operators to be subject to local traffic, Indianola traffic code.

Okay.

So they explicitly say that even though you're on the road that's already implied by the state, but they reiterate that.

Yeah, they do.

So that's something like that could work.

Things like assurance of stopping at a stop sign. Yes.

So glad that would have kept me up for weeks.

I'm curious, as far as the public goes, who's here to listen to this discussion? Well, look at that. Thank you all for coming. Any other? Okay. So I think we'll leave it up to the, do we want to put it on a paper?

Can I do that? I thought we had a vote on it.

Yeah. At the end of the meeting.

Okay. Thank you.

You can move it again.

Okay.

Okay. Sure. Uh, at the, at the end of the meeting, we'll have, we got an item that's called future agenda items. Okay. It's an opportunity for council members to put an item on the agenda to be talked about at a future meeting. So it's by way of motion. So somebody can make a motion, there'll be a second, and then there'll be a vote. See whether they want to put it on a future agenda to talk about this more.

I have one more comment.

Sure.

I'm all about asking for forgiveness rather than permission, which is why I've been pulled over in a golf cart by one of Chief's lovely officers. I do not own one, but I was thinking about owning one. Now I don't know if I ever would anyways, but.

Just get a UTV.

Well, I might as well have to. Or maybe I get this Obama cart. I don't know. But I think rules can be hard. And I know I heard throughout the video in my speaking some sighs or moans or groans and whatever those meant and were directed at. I think that change is very hard. There's a book called Who Moved My Cheese. I recommend everybody read it. Yeah. Change is hard. So if you're already illegally riding a golf cart on the street, you're probably not going to like my recommendations. If you are riding one on the sidewalk in Echo Valley and you're perfectly happy with that, you might not like this recommendation. But I think that this is a really good way to put safety first and make that a priority and in a very reasonable way for Norwalk. So that's it. I'll stop.

Okay. I got another question then. Okay. Meaner, meaner. Oh, okay. So you would, you would, would you put in the ordinance that golf carts cannot be ridden on sidewalks or trails? Cannot be ridden, cannot be driven on sidewalks and trails.

That, yes, but that also might already be in the state. I didn't focus my research on that.

Some said this is wild. operating hours because right we know people are going to go to the draft house or to on other trails and or be playing golf then it gets to sunset and then how are they supposed to get home say they can't be on roads after sunset and now if you like what are they supposed to do right and so walk home leave their carts yeah maybe

It's the same thing as if you decided to go out to dinner and you had too many drinks and you shouldn't drive.

Outside and see the sunset and then just go home on time.

I eat dinner at 5 p.m., so this is a non-issue for my household.

Just saying.

I would point out when we're talking about sidewalks, really, we're talking about the ridge. Because every place else, you can't legally drive them on sidewalks. I don't want to give that impression to somebody watching this. Or trails. Okay. HAB-Jacques Juilland, yeah the only place that we're talking when we're referring to trails or sidewalks the designed trails in the rigid echo valley plants.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Because that's what they're meant for.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, that's what they were.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, They were built. HAB-Masyn Moyer, The original are you. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Know the whole thing. It's built to have parks.

Because there's a townhome community inside of Echo Village.

Yeah, there's a townhome community that does not have that.

And they'll have that if they're going to drive those in the street. I don't think that's private street.

It's not private. No. They just don't have them in there. But wherever those trails were designated, I don't think necessarily all of them were in the area. Dave Kuntz, Within the rich even this exact sidewalks were designated on the plats but that'd be Council discretion Council to say okay we're allowed on those we're not gonna allow it, you know the trails aren't safe in the besides trails aren't safe they're probably not safe in the dark either.

Dave Kuntz, You know counts could take that could change that they wanted to or not, but I think we'd want to take a look and just see if some of those sidewalks up there.

Dave Kuntz, are cart path and they were built by the golf course the service. I don't think the ones that we're talking about. I think all the ones we're talking about are public sidewalks.

I don't believe any of the paths you couldn't get to where you need to go on the road. I don't think there's anywhere you'd be landlocked beyond where the path is and where the roads would be if we made them legal to drive on the road. I think that's what Councilman Kuhl was getting at. Correct me if I'm wrong.

There are houses that don't have access to access. There is acceptance. So what Coppola did with us there as well. All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

I like that. That was good.

Moving on. Item number six, welcome guests and public comment. Thanks for being here tonight, participating with the meeting, listening in on the work session. That was awesome. At this point in time, we give you an opportunity to come and address council for non-agenda items. We'll give you three minutes time limit on those. Realize that we can't take action on those types of items tonight since they're not on the agenda, and that would be a violation of open meetings law. Also, we'd like to comment on any item that's in the consent agenda. Now would be the time. Do we have any takers? Some people could comment on golf carts. If you want to comment on golf carts, come on up. Please state your name and your address.

Eric Larson, 9417 Bellflower Lane. That's the newest street out of Echo Valley. As you guys are discussing the golf carts, please, I don't care what you do in the rest of the city. It's not going to affect me, but personally, I think there's some assumed responsibility or The assumption that if you go to Echo Valley, it's a golf course, that you're going to see golf carts. So having them on the streets in Echo Valley, to me, as a resident out there, doesn't seem like a big deal driving from a neighbor's house. Or more importantly, getting from my house to the clubhouse, I have to cross one street. It doesn't make sense to me to get on the sidewalk. make the lady walking her dog or the kids with their scooters. We have to move aside or we have to make a decision on who's going and whatnot. So I think specifically for the bridge where all of us live at, driving on the streets makes sense because over half the people out there have golf carts and we look for golf carts. That's just something to consider when you guys are Moving forward with this. So potentially the Echo Valley Ridge could be an exception to the rule. And that's the only place you can drive them on the street because it makes the most sense in the neighborhood to drive them on the street. So that's been on there.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yeah, come on up.

So I'm Marty Thompson. I'm 29 and 34 Prairie Roads Drive. Thank you for your work. We're about to see that this issue is coming about. I think if you, it always seems to be, well, it's about the bridge. And I don't think it's about the bridge. I think it's about the people of Norwalk. I hope it is. Number one concern for almost everyone that lives up there is safety. And the way the golf cart ordinance is written today, We have to go down a wider sidewalk. And if you, back to your question, Coppola didn't build anything up there on sidewalks. When I built my house, I had to pay for my wide sidewalk in the front of it. Nobody came from Echo Valley and say, I'm going to add on to the car path. Very concerned, a couple instances, in the morning and the evening when people are walking. They're walking their dogs. They got kids in strollers. They got their earbuds in. They're going down the wide sidewalks. And you come up behind them in your golf cart. They have a choice. You can pull up in the grass and go around them. Or you can honk your horn and scare the crap out of them. Have their dog run loose or pull somebody down and get hurt. So I think safety is the real key. they won't use the other side of the street there's virtually no one who walks on the narrow sidewalks side of the street for a simple reason there's more room free to walk with your kids and walk with your dog on the safety side so i think their safety big concern as the owner of a golf cart i'm concerned about personal safety for me and the other owners of the golf carts i think you can regulate this thing how deep you want it to go. As soon as a smart car is an Obama car, right? A little different. It's a little bit different. But anyway, people are very concerned up there about their own safety and the safety of others. We don't want anybody to get hurt. We don't want anybody to get hurt in the street. We don't want anybody to get hurt on the car path. When you have regulations that you're talking about or conditions to have that privilege to drive, by rights you should have some. What happens if you don't? So my recommendation would be if you had an ordinance that's clearly stated, violation of this ordinance has a fine. And you implement the fine, no different than a, enforcement. As far as additional enforcement people, Joe, people are driving on the streets now. Very few use the sidewalk. So I don't think there's any increased burden about having to set up cars to watch who's driving their golf cart in the street or horn honk or whatever. But anyway, I appreciate all the work. I just want to make sure you know that from my perspective, It's all about make sure people are safe, make sure we're safe, and we just got to move on. Thank you.

One quick comment I will say about people driving through. We have wider paths and people will turn and it will trample people's yards. And we've had able to put a fence post at the very corner where car posts are supposed to be because they don't want to be a yard rack. And so that's probably perfectly legal for that person to put a fence post there. And so I think to this point, there is a bunch of safety challenges with what's happening today. I think ADA, when they designed that thing, the ADA came by.

So now if you go down the cart path to the intersection, you immediately reduce down to a red ADA onto the sidewalk all this way. And one going the other way. And right between them is the street side. So it's kind of a hazard that way. Also, I think that's what you're doing. The initial concept that we're going to have cart paths might be great, but I don't think it ended up that way.

Thank you.

Shane Miller, 9403 Foxtail Drive. We just moved to this community and the only reason or one of the major compelling reasons to move out to the bridge was to own a golf cart and to have access to the club and to be able to come and go as we please. Now we found by having that access specifically for that event, that's why we joined Echo Valley as well because we knew we had that option or we're going to have that option in the future. Now there's many other communities that we could have chosen, but we landed in Norwalk because of the flexibility and because of the unique community that it does create. So we've traveled over to a couple other people's houses and it's just much easier to go you know, from place to place to do that. So there's ease, there's access, but I also think that there's an attraction here. It is something special. It is something unique to have. So if we're talking about economic growth and building talent, this is something that is a hook for a lot of people to come and have this type of community. There's a reason why people migrate down to Florida, right? They want to go down there. They want to get on their golf carts. They want to go 25 miles an hour so they don't have to worry about the hustle and bustle of the world, right? They want to go golfing. They want to go over to their friends' houses. So I think there's a lure here. I think you guys have an opportunity to enhance the city of Norwalk with these ordinances. And whatever they may be, because I don't care either. But I just, I love the fact that it is an option where we're at. And so I just wanted to put that on the record that it is unique. It is something fascinating. And it's, again, it's something that's an allure that you guys have today. And we could probably enhance that in the future. Thank you.

Thanks. Anybody else?

I don't know any of these names.

Oh sure.

I don't.

Jared Huseman, 1060 Madison Street, Norwalk, Iowa. I have nothing to say about golf carts. So what I'd like to address actually is the revocation of my parking waiver that happened at the last city council meeting to my knowledge. I want to acknowledge right away that buildings not have certificate of occupancy. Did not know that, or I knew that. We're working through that as well to get the building up to its full compliance with the city. Going there right now, waiting on comments from Luke and team to go through that. I was not aware the building was being used how it was. I take responsibility for that. I'm the building owner, but I was not aware it was being used however it was. Anyway, what I want to address for the... people of the city council here and staff is the parking waiver being revoked. And I think the concerning precedent that was set with it being done the way it was. I have three concerns specifically. The first is the parking waiver is a formal zoning instrument. When it was revoked and being considered, This affects property owner and a property owner like myself deserves more time and written notification with ample time to review and process, not just simply post on an agenda. The average property owner, myself included, does not check city council agenda daily on the off chance that their property and their rights are being discussed. Without a phone call from a city staff member, I would have no knowledge this was even being discussed at last city council event. I think this is a concerning standard for the city council to set as a precedent to discuss property owner's rights without having a city staff member know them. No notification, no email, no mail, nothing. I happen to be on a flight at Las Vegas City Council or I could have actually been able to attend. I was given less than 24 hours notice. Continuing this theme, I want to also make one important distinction. The certificate of occupancy is a building permit matter. That's a separate department. Then planning and zoning. These are two distinct issues. Planning and zoning, certificate of occupancy. Building permit, planning and zoning city council. Two different things. I am concerned that one was used to justify and intensify the other one. And I want the council to be aware of my concerns as a property owner and developer in this city. My second concern is the complaint itself that triggered this revocation. To my knowledge, it was a single verbal account with no photographs, no documentation, and no formal investigation following it. I'm not questioning the validity or the credibility of the person who raised it. However, credibility alone is not a source in evidence. It's just credibility, but that's not evidence. A verbal account should trigger an investigation, not an immediate revocation, something that was issued by Planning and Zoning City Council months prior or even years prior. The bar for revoking a formal granted waiver should be higher than it was in my opinion. My third concern is proportional response. I believe a revocation was not the only option available. A written warning, a notice of concern, a deadline to remediate, any of these would have given us time to address any problems. We received none of that. I don't believe this was a proportional response, again, in my opinion, especially without supporting documentation and evidence. I am filing a formal complaint and appeal of this, and I am going back to planning and zoning as requested by the city to go through this process. I fully intend to work to the city and planning zoning and every staff member here to get the certificate of occupancy as a certificate of occupancy done and to go through this process again as provided by the city planning agenda. But I am concerned that this was a precedent set. My property rights were taken away at short notice with no notification. That's all I have. If you have any questions for me, you can have them. If you just want to make a statement for the record, I'll be going back through planning zoning back in front of all you here probably soon. my parking waiver variance or that may be that's all i have too many questions american i make a comment or

I think your comments are a little bit, well, no, I don't mind a comment, but I don't want discussion as the council can't deliberate this issue is it's not on the city. So if you make a single comment, you're not deliberating, but if three or four of you suddenly start wanting to make comments and competing, then that'd be deliberation. We probably cut it off.

Okay.

I guess I got an observation.

You know, parking regulations are there for safety. Absolutely. Right. I don't think you disagree with this. No. And When we issued that to you, I remember being here when it was issued. I wasn't here for this particular action. September, I believe it was. But you agreed to certain stipulations. Those stipulations were there because of safety. So this was an unsafe situation. There's no reason to put it off for 30 days. You stop an unsafe situation from where I'm coming from. You stop it as quick as you can. Then you go ahead and deliberate on it because you know that nothing bad is going to happen in the interim, right? And just watching that, I wasn't involved in it, but it looks like the city was trying to do that. Thought something that was unsafe, and then go ahead and forward it to the people that work in that area, planning and zoning, to review this and try to find some kind of an answer, right?

Can I ask a question? Sure. Where's the evidence and proof? This was an unsafe, whatever. I don't even know fully what the complaint was. I have not been initiated. I've not been seen any complaint. I have not been told. All I know was that we had a complaint. And that our parking renovation was our parking waiver was revoked. Sure. But I don't even know what the complaint was.

It'll be in the nature of the complaint. But what I'm talking to you about in general terms, I mean, you can discuss with the staff, the particulars of the complaints. But I'm talking to you about in general terms, parking regulations are there as a matter of safety.

I understand. I'm just saying I have not seen the complaint itself. Right. I agree safety. I appreciate where you're coming from. Anyway, that's all I have. Thanks.

All right. Item seven is consent agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Second.

Motion by Meineke, seconded by Porter. Haley, would you call the roll?

Councilmember Borjan?

Yes.

Cool?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes.

All right. That motion carries. Item 8 is old and new business for consideration, discussion, and possible action. Excuse me. Item A is resolution approving a service agreement between the City of Norwalk and the Norwalk Area Ministerial Association. Excuse me again. The Norwalk Area Ministerial Association, or NAMA, is going to have a pickleball tournament as a fundraiser. NAMA would like to host a tournament at the Fieldhouse, and they've asked to waive rental fees. As staff began to discuss this, it became apparent that this could cause other nonprofit organizations to make the same type of request. At the April 16th council meeting, council directed staff to do some further research around using LMI funds for the request. The finance director has found that this is valid use of LMI funds. City attorney has drafted a formal service agreement around the funds the city will be giving to NAMA. Joe, I'm going to turn it over to you for the explanation of the service agreement.

Okay. Well, basically the service agreement comes as a result of, there are some pretty strict rules that the state auditor has put out regarding cities, you know, giving money to nonprofits or worthy causes and basically since it's taxpayer money, you can't just... The city's not allowed just to give it away because it's a good cost. There's a lot of really good causes out there that a lot of people would personally give to, but the city can't just do that because it's a good cost. So really what the city's got to find is that there's some community service or community product that benefits the city with the expenditure of that money. So really what has... what the state requires and what we have been attempting to do on all those type of contracts that we get on is actually create a contract that lays out, gives and takes to this. And what this says is that the city is giving $5,000 because NAMA is definitely providing services that is worthy of city services. And that would cost the city money if we did it ourselves. And it's a lot easier to have somebody do it themselves. So it lays out requirements within that contract on what, I've got to follow through with regarding the obligations created by the city giving this money, this $5,000 money that's laid out in the contract. So you're going to see that probably anytime there's a request, really the city council's got to find a good public reason for that, other than, hey, this is a great group, we should give them money, because that's not the excuse. The reason why would have to be there is a benefit of give and take, fair market value that is getting out of the money going out. It kind of creates a criteria in public-private partnership for particular services. That's right. And if you notice in the contract, we are actually... We have those requirements in that contract that lays out obligations of them.

So the contract really kind of assumes a criteria or almost a policy that we can think of it.

Well, no, I think it's more just it's a contract. It's like as though we're hiring a third party to do something.

An application or consideration for other groups.

Yeah, but they would have to be providing a public benefit and the city would have to the council has to decide that we are getting a benefit for it. It's not just, hey, this is a good cause, we should give it to them. It's like, okay, what are we getting out of this deal? But it's got to be a two-way street. So, you know, we've got performance standards in the contract, basically, that they've got to keep track of the individuals, families served, that the funds provided by the city should be used for the benefit of the citizens of Norwalk. So it's not just a general statewide type thing. It's definitely for that. There's certain record keeping that they've got to keep. And so... It just talks about how they direct financials. They provide direct financial assistance on behalf of economically disadvantaged residents, including the island to energy assistance, food and or personal property, sir, pantry services, housing support, and other localized services. And all those things are, you know, city counts could find that that's a benefit to the city and that some of the city, um, would have to do otherwise. So now we've got a group doing it for us, Jim, on the, uh,

I'm sure this is well below this threshold of low bid situation. What is that threshold?

Well, what, what that is, that's more just on public construction projects. Okay. Like we're building roads or anything that we have a construction project. That's really the only area where the city is required to take bids on. Okay. You know, when you're buying cars or, you know, buying furniture or anything else, you don't have to take public bids on it. Certainly the city can have a policy saying, boy, we want to see a couple bids if, you know, the department's going to go out and buy a new pickup truck or something. Council can say, no, I want you to get three estimates on three different companies, but the only legal requirements are construction projects.

So if somebody came along and said we could do it better than my shot at it, our discretion would be to go, no, we already got our

The only thing you really have to find is that it's providing a benefit in that we're getting basically fair market value. We're getting a good deal out of it.

I thought the contract actually read pretty good. Jim wrote it, but it really read nice. It looks like a pretty good contract to me. The question I had, though, as I was reading that, is I'm thinking, do we want to build something like that as a budgeted item, or are we better off not to do it? Yeah, I mean, putting a limit on the overall number of dollars that we might consider out of those LMI funds. Or we just want to do it, see how many, see who comes, see what, you know, right?

Keep in mind that, so this was one of the, HAB-Jacques Juilland, Additional things Council brought up when this first came up was that you wanted us to take some time for future requests. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Right to establish more policies and guidelines around it for this particular case it's really isolated to what name is requesting just that $5,000 anything else we would do in the future would be completely separate. We wanted to make sure this was understood. This is not a precedence. There won't be ongoing funding. It's just this one instance.

I think we talked about, like, is this really something we want to even do, right? Do we want to, like, give money or something to the Chamber and have them manage it? Like, we don't want to manage it. We have to choose, right, what organizations we're giving this to.

I think we're kind of in a position to do that. You know, I had a discussion with Luke earlier this week. The Council was talking about trying to find somebody else to administer the money for this. I don't think we can do that. I would recommend against that because... You know, it's, we got to find that there's a good public purpose for it and can't really delegate that authority to somebody else. Probably the contract is pretty straightforward anyway, as far as the way to handle it. And you're going to find that, you know, I am going to be pretty limited on this because the requests understandably are increasing. The money that the city has available is decreasing. The auditor's restrictions on it are increasing. And if you go to the school, they just give a flat note. We operate under the same rules as the school does. but they've just always taken a flat no, whereas the city has, you know, there's legal ways to do it, but it's entering into contracts and really finding a public benefit. So it is, the normal answer should be no under, except under special circumstances. And I, you know, you could certainly budget say, well, we'd like to spend, you know, 10,000 a year or 15,000 a year or 5,000 a year for public benefit. John Gerstle, Matters and throw it into the agenda. Oh, my. But then, you know, make it available for services. John Gerstle, You really have to look at it that we're compensating Nana for the services they're providing we're not giving them money because they're they need money.

John Gerstle, To answer your question.

Not really, but John Gerstle, I think maybe, maybe it's a two step process. Maybe we look at this now. And then as we come around to build budgets next time, we'd say, okay, this has been our experience. Do we want to go down this road? If we do, how far do we want to go?

Yes, I think you explained it accurately. Thanks.

You answered your own question better.

Hey, all right.

Do you have anything else you want to discuss? No. Okay. Questions, discussion from council? Or any public input? I'll move this. Second. Okay. So I got a minute by Kuhl, a second by Meineke. Any further discussion? Very none. Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Council Member Borcia?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yeah.

Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes.

All right, that motion carries.

And in case Angie leaves, I'm going to be giving her a thank you later agenda. All right.

Item 8B is a continuation of the public hearing regarding a zoning amendment to the Farms of Holland planning and development to add car wash as an allowed use and land use of parcel 3. We're going to continue the public hearing at 7.36 p.m. So there's been a request to change the zoning within the Holland Park area, right behind the get and go, to add car wash as allowed use. So note that planning and zoning voted against the request. Luke Parrish, you got anything?

Yeah, thank you. Let me get to my staff report here. So I just want to give you guys a little bit of a background on this land use parcel, the Farms Island PUD. Going through this process, realized, man, it's been a while since we did the Elizabeth Island Park, which is great. So just I guess to run all the way back to that corner, we're talking about the southeast corner of Beardsley and Highway 28. Um, the get and go, uh, looks like it was constructed in 2004. Um, so that's going on a little over 20 years of existence there. Um, the parcel behind it and really all of Elizabethtown farms used to just be a kind of drainage way. Uh, obviously folks that have been in Norwalk for a while, uh, Remember it is that in that 2014-15 timeframe, the city started working on a regional stormwater detention project that would eventually become Elizabeth Holland Park. That was also coupled with like some... So Sydney taking the lead on some economic development in that area where we did a lot of analysis of the dirt from the ponds to try to find good dirt that could be used to build pad sites and create areas where we could have more commercial development around the pond. And so all the area that we've got stuff building around the park area, uh, were areas where we put that dirt as we created the ponds. Um, And then that kind of necessitated the creation of this farm style on PUD. You know, we were building this real nice park pond scenario with our trails, and we really wanted to hone in on what the land uses were. So we put in a lot of thought into those PUD land use parcels in 2015. Within that, we restricted certain things. We zoned them in C2, land use parcel three and five. And then we restricted out a bunch of things that we felt like were normally allowed in the C2, but we might not want to see near our park. So if you look at the PUD, there's a list of things like liquor stores and tobacco stores and stuff like that. And so we've gotten some good development through there. A few years back, we did have a request from uh on parcel 5 i believe it was in 2019 um an amendment or i'm sorry it was in 2022 an amendment to allow a car wash in parcel 5 parcel 5 is the area that is around turnberry um it's where sydney state bank currently is and where the retail center with Domino's and such is. And Parcel 5, the car wash, was looking at where Demos is currently building. um so that was the thing we made that change and a lot of time at that discussion uh remember the parcel five and parcel three uh language in the pud was the same um so we did have a decent amount of discussion of like where did we want to allow car wash there and we specifically limited it to parcel five due to proximity concerns and just that adjacency to the park that parcel three has um so that's one of the little bit differences between the the the spaces is uh parcel five you know has that turnberry separation and it's a little sits up a little bit higher and away from the park whereas parcel three kind of sits right behind um uh get and go so with all that said that's kind of what the the thought process was with our land use decisions that we'd made in that pud zoning um We have this request before us today from the current property owner wanting to include a car wash on the site, allow for a tunnel car wash for a national chain to come in and build that. I don't know if Ryan or the car wash folks are on. They did communicate at PNZ, you know, they've been working hard to try to get development in the area and feel like this is the best thing that they can get there at this time um so if they're on they can uh when it's uh public comment time they can fill in on that um but i do want to acknowledge that uh that they've been trying to get some development in there and that's uh this is what they've landed on um from a staff perspective uh We've just got some of those same concerns we had back in 2022 with the idea that a car wash could go there. Obviously, people are going to take care of their property and take care of things, but inevitably, it's a windy day and something blows out of somebody's car or somebody doesn't do the right thing and litters. There's just some concerns about that pollution that could happen into the park area, some concerns about... You know, runoff and things and when it rains and, you know, again, these things try to be controlled. Most all uses will try to control some of those things. We just kind of feel like the car wash maybe introduces a little bit more of an opportunity for a negative situation to happen from some of those things, those unintended consequences. Yeah. Ultimately, at the end of the day, our staff recommendation was to leave the PUD as was. We did hold a public hearing at The Planning and Zoning Commission, there were five members at that meeting. Motion was made to approve the agenda and that motion or the item. That motion failed on two yeses and three noes vote. So that does, as the mayor mentioned, trigger a supermajority requirement at the council level. Happy to answer any questions.

Taylor have received any oral or written comments on this.

Yes. You see written comment from Ryan Jensen at 3000 Sunset Drive in Norwalk. Do you think he's also on Zoom?

He is. He had initially asked that I read it for him, but he is on Zoom and I believe he'd like to read his statement himself.

Yeah. Ryan, you want to go ahead and get on? Sure. Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. Right. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I was in Wisconsin today and then it was coaching baseball. So I thank goodness you guys talked about golf carts for so long. um no i did prepare a letter uh so if it's okay i'll go ahead and and read that um i'll start by stating i feel like i've been a great steward of norwalk uh for the growth in norwalk for the city put the first hotel in the market um with with the help of the city and some incentives uh that frankly would be uh completely drowning if we didn't have so uh thankful for those but um i'm I also prepared a speech in front of hundreds of pitchforks to push for support of the data center infrastructure project. One of the few people that were pushing for that. I know how important the great growth is for the city, and I feel the goals that we have with this site are aligned with the city of Norwalk. And I believe that voting in our favor today would be the best interest of the city, the residents, and the site itself. So as Luke mentioned, we were denied by Planning and Zoning Commission April 27th for the request to add the car wash to this PUD. And during that meeting, a few things stood out as general concerns from the staff. Luke touched on some of those. I'm just going to kind of run through my commentary on those as well. One, the city planners had an extremely specific vision for the site for the last 10 and a half years. A sit-down restaurant with a patio. That vision has not changed, although Norwalk has changed dramatically. In 2015, when this lot was planted, the population of Norwalk was about 7,880 people. The population of Norwalk today is around 16,500 people. So it's 110, 111% growth since this lot was planted. A lot's changed. The same vision remains. Highway 28 and Beardsley traffic counts were roughly 15,700 in 2015, currently estimated north of 30,000 per day. And to give you a little comparison, the traffic counts at Mill Civic and Jordan Creek Parkway are 33,000 a day. I don't see any restaurants with a patio out there. Highway 20 in Beardsley is a high volume intersection. It's only getting busier with increasingly more truck and construction traffic. It's not a quiet intersection. Still the same vision remains. While I understand a restaurant with a patio is not the only allowed use in this PUD, it was opined by staff, strongly by staff that this was their vision. Given the deed restrictions, the island nature of the lot, the deed restrictions and poor neighboring user get and go, opportunities are extremely limited to go on this site. Comment number one. Number two, this lot is on an island. It's known in commercial real estate that hotels, quick serve restaurants, grocers, general retail users want to be next to other users to capture traffic those other users generate. The current retail focus in Norwalk is Norwalk Central, where all the foot traffic will be for the next decade to come. Um, 3000 sunset is not an ideal site for a strip center, sit down restaurant, the patio daycare, a number of other uses that are allowed, um, on the site. If it were, it would have been developed in the last 10 and a half years. Um, as a number of other retail centers have popped up in Norwalk, uh, in that timeframe. Um, and regardless of what happens, you know, with, with this, whether you approve or deny getting goes, not going away. Um, They did offer or made a verbal, just to remind you, they had given me a number of 1.6 million and maybe they would consider selling. That's $72 a square foot before you do any environmental cleanup, any demolition, pad work, any of that. So you don't have to be a developer to know that that doesn't work to develop that site, get rid of that, get and go. So they're not going anywhere. Number three, views disruption to the park with the use. You know, start every on this item, every house east of the park and every trail walker, park visitor looking north, stare straight into nine mechanic bays at the Christian Brothers Automotive in the backside of get and go. And there's no screening, none. They're just staring at those nine bays and get and go. This user is willing to create a park-like setting, create a very intense barrier to the park to eliminate disruption for the users. It will block get and go. It will block the proposed use. And also for a quarter mile along that trail will block the view of the nine bays at Christian Brothers. So our goal, we agree the park's a valuable community amenity, and we want to enhance and protect the city's investment and the residents' ability to enjoy it. The topography and the distance to the trail from the lot provide a natural setup to create the environment that shelters park users from the site and even Highway 28 road noise. For reference here, a couple stats. I think we talked about these before. There's a 36-foot drop from the subject lot down to the trail. Pretty substantial topography change. The trail on the south corner of this lot is approximately 95 feet from the edge of the site. It would be 110, 120 feet from any road or parking lot or drive on the lot. And the trail to the north is roughly 178 feet from the lot. So topography allows us to create a barrier and actually enhance and protect the integrity of the park. Number four, council previously approved this exact same request in the exact same PUD. There was a lot of talk at PNZ and staff about how important the integrity of the PUD is. Somehow that only matters on our subject lot at 3000 Sunset. um if the use drastically violated the original tent of the pud you know why did staff and council approve allowing a car washing the pud once already the pud is the governing body of not just this lot of every single lot in the pud but there was an exception made and i understand maybe it's a different site you know maybe the topography is a little bit different it's a little bit farther from the park but the governing body of the pud that is the governing body. And they, they allowed, you guys allowed this once. Um, so, you know, as a politics, different buyers, different sellers, you know, hung up on an idea from a decade ago, you know, whatever the reason is, um, you know, I'm not really sure, but the PUD is put in place on all the lots, not just our lot with the intention, um, allowed the very use that we're asking for in the PUD once already. So I asked you today to consider what the site is today versus what it once was in an idea, you know, ten and a half years ago. I asked you to consider the residents and visitors that come to this market, the number of traffic counts you have versus 10 1⁄2 years ago. And I ask that you honorably consider that you've already approved this use in the PUD, the governing body of all the lots within, not just the lot in question. We're going to take an ugly corner at the entrance of Norwalk. add an amenity the entire community wants, and enhance the peace, serenity, and beauty of Elizabeth Holland Park for all those who walk it, ride it, rest in it, and overlook it. I ask that you unanimously vote to approve this use and let us move forward. So thank you. Happy to take any questions.

Thanks, Ryan. Kaylin, any other moral or written comments? No. Okay. Any public comment? No.

This is Rance. I don't know if you guys can hear me. Rance Wildman, the developer working with Quick Quack.

Yeah, we can hear you.

Okay. Let's see if I can pull myself on. And I can share my screen. I submitted a couple of documents, a couple of which were the aerials, but I don't know if those are available, if I just need to share my screen to try to allow you guys to see it.

France, can you see our screen that I'm sharing?

Let's see. Let me look. I'm going to go standard view. Oh, yes. I can see that, but I submitted an aerial. It's a new one. I submitted it this morning.

Is it different than this?

Yes, sir. Let me see here.

All right, I've got them.

Thank you.

And, oh, great, perfect. Yeah, we were going through all this car wash stuff, or the golf cart stuff. I was thinking, man, maybe we should be washing golf carts. But then I guess we'd be pulling all that traffic up the park, and that'd be a problem. Yeah. Yeah, we have a problem. Okay, so Ryan did a great job, and I don't want to be redundant, so I'm going to try to run through it pretty quickly. I'm visual, so what I wanted to do was show what Norwalk looked on the aerial view 10 years ago, because I think it's relevant. I mean, you guys had a vision for Norwalk, and 10 years ago, you look at Beardsley, and you look at Sunset, and you run it south all the way to Highway 14, and it's mostly ag and residential. And then as you transition 10 years later, your vision is starting to come to fruition. You've got this commercial up and down Sunset, and you've got Norwalk Central. I've been in the retail business for 25 years, and I'll just highlight what Ryan spoke about, which is co-tenancy. You guys have done, and the developers and all involved in the city have done a great job with Norwalk Central. That is the place. That's where the retailers and the restaurants have come, and that's where the better restaurants are going to continue to come. And so, you know, two of the main objections that we got at Planning and Zoning were, number one, this is what was planned for 10 years ago. And then the other was what we'd really like to see is a restaurant type use. And so I guess my point is great job with the vision and you guys have attracted some of the best brands in the United States and the other brands that you guys want to attract are gonna come here and by and large, they're gonna want to congregate in and around Norwalk Central. We were attracted to this intersection because of the high traffic counts. and um because of the nature we're not we're not opposed to it but we don't we don't love the fact that we can't have co-tenancy but as ryan mentioned there's just really no other opportunity to have uh co-tenancy here so i i think because of that your only co-tenant for now or the future is going to be get and go. And so any tenant that is gonna come in here is gonna either have to have some type of use that is similar to get and go or wanna be near get and go. And for us, get and go is just not an issue. Then, let's see, I think we could probably go to, oh, one last thing. So I apologize. I've been at the retail conference in Las Vegas. So I'm just getting back and a lot of my resources were being used trying to get visuals ready for that. But one of the things I was going to do, and I'll do it in our next meeting, was I was going through and looking at the other C3 zoning programs. So if the city of Norwalk is going to consider a car wash anywhere, it's going to be C3 zoning. And when I was looking at the map, and again, I'm going to have to come in and highlight it. The only opportunities that I saw today that has vacant land is the land owned by Hy-Vee. Everything else has a use on there. So as it stands today, there isn't a place for a full surface car wash to come into Norwalk. And so I think on the last slide, if we can, okay, great. You've got the, so this is just some views of Quick Quack. We are, you guys may not be familiar with the brand, but we are 400 units in the United States. So we're the second largest operator in the US. Our goal with the greater Des Moines area is that they come in and be number one or number two. Currently, Mr. Car Wash is number one with 13. We're looking to come in to Des Moines starting in 27 and 28. And we believe that we'll have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 washes. So your community members can have their car washed here or they live or in other parts of the Des Moines area. They'll have that service available to them through the membership program. and then as ryan mentioned i just wanted to highlight one of the things that we're trying to do and being a good community member is come up with a landscape plan that not only screens but so they're ran to the south so we're the screening, the get and go, which today doesn't have any screening. And I think the last thing that I wanted to highlight, I don't know if you guys are aware, but the deed restriction that's on here is for financial services. So in addition to Ryan's efforts to try to get a restaurant group here, They probably would have been here in the last 10 years. As I said before, I think the place for these restaurants to go full service in particular is going to be towards Norwalk Central. But there are some other deed restrictions in play here that make it a difficult corner to lease and develop. It may be relevant. As far as our investment, this will be our entry point into Iowa, Des Moines. So we haven't built here, but I would suspect my budget right now is in and around 5 million. So you're talking about a substantial investment into the community. And that is all. If there's anything else you have for me or need for me or questions, I'm happy to answer them.

All right. Thank you. Any other public comments?

Mayor, can I get some, I just wanted to get some clarification on a couple of the things mentioned in those statements, or would you like me to wait until staff discussion? No, go ahead. Okay. On some of the zoning, just so everyone's aware, other places that car washes can go, Rance is correct. It's very limited. It's limited to the C3 in the most part. We do have, obviously, the C2 area of parcel five within this PUD. The Hy-Vee ground is mentioned. The legacy PUD across the way where Greg Young has done all the grading and everything. It has PUD language in it that allows for a car wash. And then there is some C3 ground up by Highway 5. and Echo Valley that could have a car wash as well. So I just wanted to clarify where currently we can have that. And obviously, anywhere that we have commercial in our land use plan, that's kind of open to be potentially rezoned to really any commercial. But of course, those aren't on the Highway 28 corridor. On the staff vision, you know, we did at PNZ and there was a lot of talk about restaurant and patio as kind of like an initial thought. But really, when we did the PUD and everything. It wasn't a specific specific user. It was just really something that's compatible with the park. and something that will play well with the park. Um, in fact, we, uh, the previous owner of this, uh, was NutriSport Smoothie. They were looking at doing their, and we were really trying to work with them on how their smoothie shop could, uh, support the park. Maybe we could share parking and how that would be a use that could play into the park. And for a variety of reasons, they moved on to it and built on a different site. Um, so, uh, that is, um, That was really kind of the vision there. Ownership and development timeline. Just, you know, this was created in 2015 as a lot. It sat owned as really just property holders until 2021, I believe, when it sold to the NutraSport Smoothie Group and then finally transacted on to Mr. Jensen and his group, I believe, in 2020. So that's kind of the timeline we're working with on the, the, the statements and the ideas that the farms of Holland PUD allows car wash. So we should be allowed everywhere. Just, You know land use regulations are targeted towards properties and we set those for a variety of reasons, based on their compatibility to the things around them so. I would say, as the development director it's not out of line at all for the city to have one regulation on one piece of property and a different regulation on a different piece of property. purely for the reason that they're different pieces of property and they have different things near them. That's why every piece of property is zoned differently in the town. That's kind of how it works. So that's really the main notes that I wanted to hit on. Again, happy to answer any questions.

Angie Kroll, 225 West High Road in Norwalk. The first thing that pops into my mind when I see this car wash, first of all, I want another car wash in Norwalk. So that would be great. But I remember when I was on the Parks and Rec Commission, we looked at this property with trails and that there's a sidewalk that goes right across that driveway to go to the Holland Park. the pond and i would be concerned that a car wash has a lot of traffic coming in and out and if we are crossing that rail to get to the park that that is going to be an increased uh increased liability there well probably not liability but just increased hazard for the walkers and stuff there so just something to point out yep appreciate that i think you might see that with a restaurant as well though But like the car wash is like 10 minutes in and out of the restaurant. At least you're going in, you're there an hour.

Yeah. Just to give some reference. Thank you for that. We have approximately 400 a day, which is a very small number compared to a restaurant, full service restaurant, which is getting, you know, three to four times that.

Thank you. Any other public comment?

I just want to ask a question. Where did NutraSport Smoothie go? Norwalk Central? Yeah, it's just hammering home the point that Norwalk Central is where any type of use like that, that's where they want to be. So just wanted to hammer that home.

you i guess to further clarify a little bit of that i i do believe some of that issue was as well with uh some of our city requirements for connections off of highway 28 and to get and go okay any other public comment all right i'm going to close public hearing at 805 pm item 8c is first reading of an ordinance

Amending the official zoning map of the City of Norwalk, Iowa by adding car wash as an additional allowed use in land use parcel three of the Farms of Holland planned unit development. So we just had a public hearing about this zoning change. Before council considers action, I'd like to provide some procedural clarity. Planning and Zoning Commission submitted a recommendation of denial for this. This action by PNZ Kicks in a heightened requirement of a supermajority vote by council to override the recommendation of the denial. A simple majority of council is three yes votes. In this case, a supermajority requires four yes votes before the project can proceed. And just to note, we are missing one council member tonight. There must be three readings of the ordinance with supermajority approval at each reading. A single failed vote ends the process. A similar request cannot be brought back for one year. So Luke or Jim, anything else to add? Nope, I think it's well stated. All right. Any discussion from council?

I have a question for Holly and her team, right? Like you brought up as well, like you guys do a bunch of research on like what the community wants, like what we need. You've always tried to find that out high on our priority list for the car wash. That's been one of the top priorities for the last eight, nine years, I would say.

a ton of wash yeah yeah i couldn't agree more i think that we really could utilize a business like this i worry that some of the i so i watched the pnz meeting where this was not recommended. And there were a couple small quick conversations about potential runoff with the park network of water and waste. I think other than that, and other than litter, and maybe other than quick moving vehicles in and out safety with pedestrians, I think this is great. And it is super, super needed. I cannot believe that we've gone this long with all the other car losses all around the metro. I drive for work all the time. I'm shocked that another company didn't beat them to this. Just wanted to say that. And I have noticed that their prices might be a tiny bit more, but only by a couple dollars per month. And I thought that was something that they didn't really talk about at P&G, but it's something I noticed. So I don't know if they're going to have the same pricing that they do in other areas here, or if they'll match what we see here with companies like Mr. that we've talked about.

But I did notice that.

And I think

speaking for myself and a lot of our Norwalk neighbors.

Like, I don't know. We care about that stuff. We do our numbers. We're all smart. So, great. Any other concerns?

I have a question for the council. I went on to walk the trail. I can't remember who said it, but it was Rance or Ryan. Like, that elevation change from the trail, like, where you're actually physically walking to the grade of where this property is significant, I don't think your eyes are drawn to it. Like it being an eyesore? I don't think it was really a question. I think the question I have, like, I like the picture of the trees as a buffer. If we were to allow this, how do we enforce that they truly do some sort of buffer I think is good. I think it's needed. I think we're on the my opinion, I'm here to help push what what our city wants. We want this, it seems like an ideal location for traffic.

maybe a question for Luke.

It basically sounds like we could have a tunnel car pro but car wash like this right across the street on 28. So why not in this spot where it seems like it's an ideal location to I guess one thing on that answering your question.

I think the restrictions regarding offers could actually be in this PUD amendment. I mean, if if it happened to be passed on first reading here, Council could also instruct that further wording come into the next next round further reflecting what's in the drawing there to make you feel more secure that that would actually occur.

Jim, that's a good point on the buffer that I missed when I was describing the PUD. because we wanted to try to, you know, really maximize value on these properties, um, since the city invested so much in, in making them developable, right. Um, we, uh, we actually reduced the buffer requirements and the open space requirements on these. So if we wanted to make sure that there was a beefy buffer there, we would certainly want to include those changes into a future revision of this for a second reading. And I guess to the question of If it can be across the street, why can't it be here? I mean, you guys get to decide that, right? Like that's what the zoning amendment is for. I think in general, the idea with the west side of the highway and its allowance is the proximity to the dealership, the typical things that go with dealerships. And then on the flip side, again, just wanting to have use on that property that really enhanced the park.

Yeah, good point. Good point, Luke. I guess I'm far more apt to wash my car after I get gas than when I go buy a vehicle, right?

Correct. And there's a come and go on the other side of the street.

When I look at it, I think back to all the work and all the planning we did to put this thing together. I mean, you talk about the park and the development of the whole area. And I mean, I like the design of the car wash. It's like quite an operation. But I do not think that's the right place to put it. And the idea that no development can come there, I don't really buy that. Because if you just look up the streets, you look at all those businesses that came in there. I mean, heaven sakes, the garage that's over there has an agreement with us that they won't leave their cars out every night because of the appearance. Remember that? Because of the appearance, right? what we were trying to do is we were trying to make an area up there that looked good, that enhanced the community, that was worth the investment. And we went to the work of moving all that dirt around, trying to get it compacted. I think the engineer probably remembers some of this, don't you? Get it compacted and get it set up so we could build stuff there, right? Because it was kind of a public-private partnership when we did it. And, you know, I find this frustrating because You could put a car wash on the other side of the highway. That's fine. And it would meet the requirement. And it's right there off the highway. But why would we sacrifice everything we've done and tried to have there, right, for something that we didn't think we wanted there in the first place? We didn't. And when we, when we did the thing site-specific for a car wash behind the bank, it's because that place was back out of the way in a corner where you couldn't see it from the rest of the park. That's why we said, okay, we'll think about putting that there. Right.

But has that changed since then though, Ed, right? Like, has that become a hotter zone of stuff than what this spot is? Like, I just feel like that's where we're going to continue to grow.

Yeah. I'm not saying it's a, it's a nice corner. Because it's a problematic in and out, right? It may have just worked out that way. But that doesn't mean that we should sacrifice our expectations to make an easier sale. Take you over across the street. There's something else. I'm sure if we worked with the state, we could get better access in and out of there. And you'd be able to have something else in there. Something that would contribute to that area. I guess I don't like the idea.

I'm kind of with Ed on that one as well. I think you look at the long-term view of this one. I would like to see, I'm not going to say a restaurant, but just a general purpose building that will stand the test of time, converted into whatever needed to be converted into. and I suppose like a car wash over time could be demolished and rebuilt because it's primarily equipment that's in the car wash that is the investment. I mean, the land. I mean, it's very expensive, but those items don't disagree with that. But I just don't think it fits with that area and with the original intention for that area. It was saying what we wanted to see.

Do you think it's interesting that we've had a few restaurants that have that patio fun vibe of what I've been hearing multiple times described, and I heard it in the P&D meeting as well, that we envisioned for this spot have not gone there. And I keep struggling with that. What is going to go there? That's my big struggle.

All we can control is the type of thing that goes there.

Right. It's a very drivable. It's not the destination area that we're talking about and referring to with central though. It's a stop and go, get your gas, drive home, drive to central and then parking, go and do things. And so what I'm struggling with is the only thing I can really envision there is like a fast food restaurant. And now we have all the kind of same issues in a way, except maybe more traffic from the sounds of it, whether that's, you know, true or valid or not, whatever. But I struggle with that because part of PNZ's arguments against this too is also noise from the vacuums. And I actually own property in Des Moines that is next door. Well, it's actually farther away than the park would be from this, but it was an old Wendy's that's now shut down, thank God. But you could hear drive-thrus. half a block down. So I know that that's a noise concern as well. So when I envision what could go here if this doesn't, that's where I'm really struggling with. When multiple restaurants have clearly passed up on this opportunity to go there recently.

We have a lot of restaurants in town right at the moment. Quite frankly, not that that can't change as we grow and we'll have more restaurants, I'm sure. But

know what's left in c2 i mean there's i'm sure there's going to be a lot of different options that could go in c2 that's more than just a restaurant let's go back to what holly said like this was like one of the number one ones that we've had for like five eight years we face right and our citizens want it like right next to a gas station doesn't feel very appealing. And so it feels like we're kind of joined. Yeah, right. It feels like a good use. And I get your point. We did a lot of work to get this thing there. But like, what do we really intend to go there?

Well, if you get the get and go and you throw this on top of it, as far as I'm concerned, you just kind of sealed your fate for the next 40 years. Yeah.

Can I provide a little bit of background from development perspective? So, you know, my team, we work directly with the private businesses, private investors, working with their land that they own, spending their money to do something good for the community. They listen to the community. They know the market. We know the market because we work with them directly. And it's already difficult to do development today. And I think Kelsey understands that. Other people understand that they spend money in the community on business. So our job is to go out and try to find high-quality projects, high-quality businesses, things, goods and services our community wants and needs. And it's not easy. So it's a little frustrating for me to hear an argument of, well, someday we might get something better that we want. But it's not our land. I know that we put money into it. I know that we spent time designing it and we had a vision and that was valid and it was good and it made sense at the time. And we have changed so much in the last 10 years. And we all know that. But what I see with a project like this is it is a perfect fit with that gas station there that is not going away anytime soon. We all know that. It is a super busy, super loud corner. I walk that trail all the time. I could care less what's on that corner. I don't see it from that coming around that curve. The parts of that trail that I'm there for are the long stretches, the north-south stretches, because that's where it's quiet and you don't have things right up against you. But you know that the two short east-west stretches are noisy. beardsley and you've got you know all sorts of stuff going on so for that aspect that that isn't a concern but then just working in the development world and working with these people trying to invest in our community and we've spent this money to to build this pond out there that we need to generate revenues back to help pay for that and here we have a five million dollar you know beautiful project that's providing a service to the community that they want and And we don't want it because we think there might be something a little bit better someday, but we don't know. So I understand where everybody's coming from. There's good perspectives on all ends. But I also see this as, oh, here's a perfect solution for a very difficult location that does have all of these other difficulties tied to it because of the restrictions and then the access points. I work with Grant a lot. He was the guy that owned it before, that owns the Nutri Smoothie that moved to Norwalk Central. And they thought about that concept too. And they tried to make it work. And it's a weird lot. And the access is strange. And there's noise in the gas station and all this stuff. So there's just a lot to it. And I understand everybody's hopes and perspectives and the work that went into it in the past. But we have changed so much. And the market does change. And I do want to be respectful to the people trying to come into our community to spend money and do good things and have good projects. And we need the tax base. We need the tax base and the growth. So from that perspective, as development director, that's where I'm coming from on it.

I'll throw my two cents in. Can I throw my two cents in first? No, go ahead.

I just, as a bit of a counterpoint to that, from community development perspective, you know, we've got a property owner that's owned it for three years. Um, it's been actively being developed for maybe five years. Um, you know, we've, we've got our plans we put in place and they are long-term visions. And, um, yes, we can always get something done today. We can always move forward with the project. Um, we're a desirable community, but because of that, um, you know, I feel like we're, we're able to be a little more picky and choosy now. Um, so I really do feel pretty strongly that, you know, we need to be careful about the things that we, we decide to let develop certain areas and, uh, make sure that they're the right fit for things. Um, you know, we've got, uh, From a card wash perspective, you know, for the last nine, 10 years, if that's been the major thing that we wanted to have, you know, we've entertained countless pre-app meetings for car washes in various spots. We did a rezoning for one recently, as recently as four or five years ago, that didn't develop out the Greg Young property across the way. They've indicated various times throughout the last six, seven years that they're going to build a tunnel car wash at some point, but nobody has. So, you know, it's a desire, it's a want, and there's places for it in the community, and I believe they'll happen when it's ready to, but, you know, we need to make sure it's the right place, and my opinion would be we've got other better places.

Okay, so my two cents. I think there could be something that could be better and more suited to go on that form. However, I've resigned myself that get and go is never going to go away. And this could very well be the next best thing to go in there rather than what's ideal because get and go is not going to go away. So that's my two cents. Kind of a get and go compromise.

Yeah.

Yeah. Other discussion, questions, comments? Anybody want to make a motion to approve the first reading?

I'll make a motion. Got a second? And I do want buffer added, that kind of thing too.

OK. So you got a second with the buffer amendment? Yeah, we're not taking public comment now. We had a public comment. So were you the second? Yes.

Reluctantly with my passion for parks, but let's protect the parks. Second.

Okay. So I got motion for Borjan, second from Porter. Do we have any further discussion? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Council Member Kuhl?

No.

Mining Pete?

No.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes. All right. That motion fails then. So we will move on. Let's see. Item 8D. Would anybody like to take a break?

Yep.

Yep. Okay. Because I, you know.

For all of us.

Okay. So we're going to take a 10-minute recess. We'll be back at 835. Okay.

Yeah.

So limited.

All right. You guys ready to go back? Breaking it in, you know. All right.

So we're going to call, go back into session, say 35.

Yeah.

Next is item 8D, public hearing on the fiscal year 2026 budget amendment. So we'll open up public hearing at 8.35 PM. So over the course of a year, we may receive some additional revenue and incur more expenses than originally budgeted. So this is an amendment to formally document those changes. Please note that all of the added expenditures within this budget amendment have already been vetted by the council at previous meetings. However, this step of holding this public meeting is an added level of transparency. I'm also happy to note that none of these amendments will result in an increase in property taxes. So, Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

I think you summarized it well, and I think that Gene did an excellent job of summarizing the revenues and the expense changes. As you know, when we do a budget amendment, it's not just about additional expenses. It's about the additional revenue to offset some of those as well. So it's just, if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer that.

Okay. Kaylin, have we received any oral or written comments on this?

No.

Any public comments? Hearing none, I'll close the public hearing at 8.37 p.m. Item 8E There's a resolution approving the fiscal year 2026 budget amendment. So we just had a public hearing about this, the budget amendment. Anything else to add or discussion from you, Luke? Any discussion, questions from council?

No.

Second. Okay. Motion by Borjan, seconded by Meineke. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Councilmember Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Poole?

Yes. All right, motion carries. Item 8F is a public hearing regarding the 2026 Founders Water Main Replacement Project. We'll open up a public hearing at 8.37 p.m. So we've been working to upgrade the water mains in the Founders District. That's just areas south of here. This project is for Elm Avenue. It will run from Main Street heading west to Snyder. And then on Snyder, you go north to Lane. This project is a continuation of the city's efforts to right-size water system infrastructure based on our 2018 hydraulic study. It's great to see that we're following through on the recommendations from that in-depth study. Tony or Luke, you got anything to add? I don't have a sheet.

When appropriate, I'll talk about the bids received for the project.

Okay. Valen, have you received any oral or written comments on this?

No.

Do we have any public comments? Hearing none, we'll close public hearing at 8.38 p.m. Item 8G is resolution approving plan, specification, form of contract, and estimate of cost for the 2026 Founders Water Main Replacement Project. So we just had a public hearing for this project, and this is the first of three resolutions needed to get the project launched. On April 16th, Council passed a resolution that approved the preliminary plan specs, form of contract, and estimate for this new project. This resolution is the final approval of all those. Anything from Luke or Tony on this part? Any discussion from council? I think this will help to make our town a little bit safer too. Yes, it will. These are needed to be able to hook up fire trucks to it. Can I get a motion to approve the resolution? Motion. Second. Okay. Motion by Kuhl, seconded by Meineke. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you call the roll?

I'll number a quarter. Yes. Warthog?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 8H is resolution awarding the contract for the 2026 Founders Water Main Replacement Project. So this is the second of three resolutions needed to start the project. This resolution awards the contract to steel construction for $1,250,000. Tony, anything to add? I do have something to add.

First of all, man, infrastructure in that area. It's about 2,600 feet of 8-inch water main along Clinton Avenue and Snyder, as Mayor indicated. We received bids on the project last Thursday. City received a total of three bids. Steel Excavating Incorporated was the low bidder on the project. about 9% below the engineer's estimate. They didn't make a mistake on their bid. And based on our procedures for adjusting the bid, actually their bid was $12,000 higher than what the apparent bid was when we opened the bids. their low bid was one million one hundred thirty seven thousand dollars one million one hundred thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars uh still below bid about nine percent below our estimate so just was based on our our criteria for uh um for adjusting the error in their bids so um Steel excavating hasn't done work in the city before that I'm aware of. We did ask them for references and previous project experience. They've done a lot of this type of work in other areas. Our firms actually worked with them in Grinnell. And we talked to some of the references and had nothing but good information about this contractor. So they are a responsible, responsive bidder. the project and our recommendation is to award a contract for the project to steel excavating corporate based on their bid based on their adjusted bid of one million one hundred thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars and i'll answer any questions anybody has three bits is that

What were you expecting?

You know, we expected to see more. We had a lot of potential bidders on the plant holders list. We talked to a couple of them, a couple others. And yeah, for a project like this, the timing and everything, we would have expected, in recent history, similar projects, we would have expected four, five, six bids. For some reason, a couple of contractors we thought were going to bid didn't bid the project. uh but the low bid was under our estimate all the bids were relatively close together so i feel like we got good even though we only had three three bids uh we did have uh two other bidders that have done uh significant work in the city as well they were just slightly higher than our low bidder so even though we didn't get a lot of interest in the project that we expected we still got we still feel like we got favorable bids i believe our budget for the project was uh about $1.5 million.

Other questions? I get a motion to approve the resolution as presented.

Motion.

Second. Motion by Porter, second by Kuhl. Any further discussions? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Huerta?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yeah.

Minerkey?

Yes.

Porter? Yes.

All right. That motion carries. Item 8I, resolution approving contract and bond for the 2026 Founders Water Main Replacement Project. So this is the third and final resolution needed to get this project rolling. This resolution approves the contract and indicates how the city is going to pay steel excavating for their work. Tony, anything to add? Yes. All right. Discussion, questions? Council? I got a motion from Board, John. Anybody want a second?

Second.

All right. Seconds for Meineke. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Hannah, would you call roll?

Council Member Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjana?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 8J is a resolution approving a minimum assessment agreement for a property located at 620 North Avenue in connection with a five-year partial commercial tax update. So this is a building across the street, currently under construction. The area isn't under a TIF agreement, and they are eligible to apply for the abatement. Luke, I'll let you take it.

I don't have anything to add.

All right. Any discussion from the council or any public comment?

No, they've never had TIF involved in their building or the construction. Correct.

And what's unique about this is the law changed, I don't know, a couple of years ago now, that when commercial tax abatements granted, which is available through our code, we have to enter into minimum assessment agreement. So that's what this agreement is. It's just setting the minimum assessment from the Iowa code. We have to do that.

And we didn't use TIF because it was not in the TIF zone?

Or am I missing that point there? Or we just didn't have TIF? The typical incentive in a situation like this has been the commercial pavement.

Since there's no infrastructure that was needed because it's all already there.

Already there. Okay. Gotcha. Holly, did we cover everything okay? You probably could have even answered some of those better.

Yep. It's just a standard program that we have available if they qualify. Make the motion.

Motion by mine. It can be seconded by Kuhl. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Councilmember Poole?

Yes.

Monique? Yes. Porter? Yes. Borgen?

Yes. All right, motion carries. Item 8K is a second reading of an ordinance amending the official zoning map of the City of Norwalk, Iowa by rezoning parcel number, and that's the number there, from R160 single-family residential to AR Agricultural Reserve. So this is a property that was under an annexation agreement. They sold some of the land, which actually ended the annexation agreement. But the land in question, and that land was rezoned. That's what ended the annexation agreement. The land in question has not changed hands. The owner would like to now build a horse barn on the property. So they've requested the zoning revert back to AR so they can build a horse barn. Anything to add? Okay. Any questions, comments, questions, or discussion from council or public input?

I think this is great.

I'll make a side comment though, right? Like we intended it to be something else. So we resolved it and now we're going to want to go back. Right. And so.

Well, to the car wash, right?

Like, like we, we had a vision for this, all I'm saying, and then we're letting it go back. That's my comment. Fair enough.

My comment was that if we, in a world where we see the opposite of this every day with land, This is cool. I drive by this every day. So maybe I just think it's cooler because it doesn't harden out on the location. But I think it's in a world where things are turning into a McDonald's on every corner. We're seeing a horse barn.

It's the same family ownership, though. That's what I view it. It's not really like it's being sold off.

I got to answer her observations here. I think that's pretty neat. It's pretty unique. And it would be nice to have an opportunity

But makes no effort. I like it.

Great. Can I get a motion to approve a second reading?

Motion.

Second. Okay. Motion by Porter, seconded by Kuhl. Any further discussion? Kaylin, would you call roll?

That's a number of mine to keep.

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes. right that motion carries item 8l is second reading of an ordinance amending the official zoning ordinance of the city of norwalk iowa by amending chapter 170 175a.21 regarding exceptions to yard requirements so this item has to do with property in residential zoning that isn't that really isn't residential this particular instant involves instance involves the main street school and the need for them to put in a fire escape and that would Putting the fire escape in would extend into a setback. Anything to add? No. What comments, discussion, questions does council have? Or any public input?

I think the Main Street School is a real asset to the community.

Yeah. Can I get a motion to approve a second reading?

Motion.

Second. OK. Motion by Kuhl, seconded by Meininger. Thank you. Any further discussion? Kaylin, would you please call the roll?

I'm the member for her. Yes. For John?

Yes.

Cool.

Yes.

Yes.

All right. Motion carries. Item 8M is the second reading of an ordinance submitting Chapter 177 rates and fees of the Norwalk Code providing for amended building permit valuation fee. So we're changing some of the fees for building permits to provide up-to-date rates for certs. Anything, Dan? No. Discussion, questions, comments, or public comment? I get a motion to approve that second reading.

Motion.

Second. Motion by Kuhl, seconded by Meineke. Any further discussion? Halen, would you please call roll?

Council Member Borja?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes.

All right, motion carries. Item 8N is a second reading of an ordinance amending and replacing in its entirety chapter 92.12 of the Norwalk code providing for a water use plan. So Central Iowa Water Works is renaming the water shortage plan to the water use plan. They've also made some adjustments to that plan. CIWW is asking all of the member cities to standardize their response if we have to implement water usage restrictions. we had an ordinance that addresses the key components of the new plan. In fact, the Norwalk ordinance was the model for the regional approach. This new ordinance aligns Norwalk with Central Iowa Water Works region so that all cities are similar in our strategy for water emergencies. Any discussion, questions from council or public input? Good idea. Thank you. Second. All right. Motion by Kuhl, seconded by Borjan. Any further discussion? Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Councilmember Borjan?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Remke? Yes. Porter? Yes.

All right. Motion carries. Item 8-0. Final reading of an ordinance amending Chapter 177 rates and fees of the Norwalk Code providing for amended fees for park and recreation volleyball programs.

Mm-hmm.

So Park and Rec is asking to amend the fees for the adult rec program to better reflect cost. Chris, anything to add? No changes. Any questions, discussion from council or public input? Can I get them? Oh, thank you. Second. Okay. Motion by Kuhl, seconded by Meineke. Any further discussion? Taylor, would you call a roll?

Council Member Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Orton?

Yes. Curt Brown, Right that motion carries item nine future agenda items, so the purpose of this is for Council to give direction to staff, by way of motion to have items placed on a future agenda it's not for the discussion of the merits of the subject matter it's to get it on the agenda, so that we can. Curt Brown, You got a future agenda item you'll see.

I would like to add.

of a potential ordinance to be brought in front of council to go on golf carts.

Sorry.

You guys know what I'm talking about.

Is that a motion?

That's a motion.

Anybody want to second it? Second. All right. So I got a motion by Porter, a second by Meineke. I'll see what you call roll. Not Kelton. Kayla, would you call? Oh, my gosh. All right. Just get going now. It's almost 9 o'clock.

Number of boards on?

Yes.

Cool.

Yes, I'll bring it to a vote. Yes.

Porter? Yes.

All right. Motion carries.

Anything else?

The last time or two times ago, I created the person I thought the idea of and unset past or something? Yes. And I chatted with you on the way out, but like, I'd be interested in how much work this is for staff. Like, maybe could we just have some more information?

I can't remember exactly how the meeting dates fell, but I think we had that meeting the same day. And that was also at the time of the fire. So we had followed up once since then. I sent out a meeting summary to all relevant city departments. And we are kind of now just waiting to hear back. There were some inquiries that police and fire, I think, would need to give them more information on. But I have not heard from anyone from Sobrent Productions since then. And I think we're just kind of in a waiting game to see if they have a request to move forward. We did point out the areas where there would likely be city fee or in-kind requests for them so that they could make a request to you if they have a request for that.

What made me think about earlier when talking about giving money to certain organizations? Well, we give a lot of time of staff to certain organizations, and that's much too. That's kind of right.

So thank you for recognizing that.

Excellent point.

Anything else? All right. Moving on. Item ten, council inquiries and staff updates. So I'd like to remind everybody that this portion of the meeting is much less formal. You may hear some back and forth banter and general joking around. We believe that this can build camaraderie and cohesiveness between staff and council. Let's go with Jim. I don't have anything else.

No.

Yeah. I got no update. No. That's the side of the room.

Tony. Foundation for the water tower went great. And the walls are supposed to start next week.

So excited. Cool.

That's it.

Yeah. PB Harmon Zuckerman, Since it was already pointed out that this side of the room for staff was here. PB Harmon Zuckerman, This group of staff is here and I have nothing else.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, It's still a little sparse.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, I was just gonna point out through both golf cart and car wash discussion that a lot of people seem to like trails and nice parks and things like this. Just keep that in mind. Okay. Lindsay?

I do, and I'm sorry, I'm going to be fast. But we have a lot of work session items on our spreadsheet that we keep track of for upcoming meetings. So the mayor brought this up, actually. Given the number that we have, we wanted to see if there'd be interest in scheduling an additional work session in June or July. Just be a work session, but it probably would last two to three hours. We could meet at five, though. So that would be nice. But this would help us move projects along. So we're not just playing things. Current topics, if you care. C4 crisis leadership team wants to do a quick work session. That one won't take very long. Assessment policy, along with irrigation, SUDOS legislation, geotech reports, and subdivision-related items would be want. Development agreements, TIF, and related legislation, and data center rates, noise, and warnings.

When is this?

Well, we just gave you your interest right now for an additional work session. Oh, yes.

I'm here.

I'll be gone about half of June. I'll be gone about half of June. Half of June.

I was just going to suggest that because of one of the topics on there related to the TIF and as we're learning more about the property tax reform, July might be a better time anyway.

Okay. Sounds good here. July okay for extra meetings? So can you send out like a two-fold or whatever you want to send out? Got it. Give it some dates.

Will do.

Awesome. Anything else?

That's it.

Andy.

George? 100 Men in Norwalk voted on $10,000 or more to the NAMA for the fire departments. Yeah. And then, oh, anyway, just wanted to point that out. And then, yeah. There's a lot of work finance audit committee to this morning and it's just fascinating. Beyond quite frankly, and what they're moving target is And the amount of money and the amount of water pretty amazing. And it seems like they get it under Under control. So it makes me feel good to go to the meetings with them to them, but it's very, very, very complex. say the least. So anyway.

Yeah, I think.

I think we have great people running. Yeah. All the different people in the communities as well.

So yeah. I thought Ted was doing a really great job. And when he retired and they hired Tammy, I think that was a home run. She was phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.

And Jody Smith.

Yeah, sure. Yeah.

That's all. Cool. Thanks. Well, Mayor, I have two things. The first thing I'm going to bring up, it's too bad Angie wasn't here, and I'm just going to piggyback on what George brought up. NAMA and WeLift, so Angie Kroll specifically, granted NAMA's the Norwalk Area Ministerial Association, the stuff that those two organizations did to help organize gifts, benefits, helping out helping with medical supply. Those two organizations did an outstanding job of helping some of the victims of the fire. It was neat to see that that's what 100 men selected to donate the funds. So I wanted to say thank you to her and for her being a trooper to be here during the meeting, hang out, even though she didn't actually have to get up and say anything. So Angie's done a great job. Okay, the other one is I have just a few quick slides and I wanted to give you a little heads up on what property tax reform looks like. So very quickly, there's some wins and losses here. The win is meaningful tax relief for our residents. The challenge is it will be a significant temporary headwind for city budget. So what it looks like currently from a resident's view that lives in their home, currently they get about $190 per year benefit. That's about $16 per month. That's your homestead tax credit. Homestead tax exemption, as it's been changed, is about $780 a year on total tax bill based on current rollback, current numbers, all the current things, which all we know is it won't be current in the future, but based on just the numbers of right now, that's what it would look like is about $780 per year. That's the maximum benefit. That's if your home is around $430,000 and that max benefit is a $20,000 exemption. What was neat about this is when we did the calculation, we being Jean and I, For Norwalk, we ran the numbers, and if you've heard the governor say anything about the $4 billion in taxpayer savings over the next six years, I will say I think that is a very accurate number. Just simply taking these same numbers based on what would happen across the entire state. So it was neat to see our numbers line up. So what is a meaningful benefit? Not so... rate is the impact on city finances. This would equate to about a $1.04 million negative impact in one tax year. And that's about an 8% reduction in our total revenue. However, there's some upside. The financial offsets, so what shows up on the graph here is that negative $1 million. House File 17 does expire. That was about a $300,000 negative impact. We won't have that. We can perceive that as a positive. The homestead tax credit removal, so the existing homestead tax credit was about $250,000. Well, that is replaced by this new one. Also, we project that we'll see growth of about 3%. So that's about 360,000 to the good. And the multi-residential rollback will go up by 3%. That'll happen twice. So in the future, multifamily, their rollback will automatically, over two years, will be 6% higher than all the rest of the residential. So in one year, that adds about $50,000. So the net result is significantly mitigated, although there's still, we need to be present be aware that it's still a negative number. Now, for any of our department heads, we're pretty slim this evening, so I'll look at Chief Staples and Carissa that are looking at this saying, well, but that doesn't show any new dollars. That's our big challenge. Typically, just to cover typical inflationary raises, we're looking at about $200,000. That doesn't show up on here. So the one fiscal year, and I say one fiscal year because it's year it's implemented, we'll see kind of a reset. After that one year, we should see things start to rebound.

Can I ask you one question? Please. And that multifamily rollback, that's, so if you own a multifamily property, you're going to pay more taxes. Correct. Okay.

Yes. Slightly more than residential. Okay.

Yep. And there's a- It seems like that wouldn't have came out of that legislative. That seems like it would go the opposite way with the current arrangement.

Yes, although I will say some of the other proposals that were put forth was an idea of actually taking multi-residential back to commercial rates again, which would have been a 50% increase in their role, changing the role. So what they ended up adopting was very minimal.

Yeah.

So this is focused more for residents, why residents might not feel the cut or why they may not feel that tax cut is something that's benefiting them. So you take that $780. First of all, we're a year in arrears on property. So from the day your property is assessed to when you actually are seeing the city set the budget and then they're paying their property taxes on it is sometimes 18 months to even two years. Then you consider escrow delays. If you have a mortgage and you pay escrow property taxes, it's not until that year is complete that your bank, your lending institution comes back to you and says, Hey, we have to make some corrections in your escrow. Then after all of that, homeowners insurance premiums have skyrocketed about 96% since 2020. So there's a significant amount of time between now and when somebody will actually see the impact on their property tax bill. And by that time, they may see their insurance rates overtake any of these savings. So while it's a great thing, it's good for residents, it's important for people just to notice that.

Well, a lot of people just look at their escrow payment. They don't think about what the breakdown is. Right. Just assume it's back.

Yep.

So... This really reiterates what I just said, so I'm going to go over that again. What I want to leave you with is this is a very preliminary estimate. I just presented some of this information to the department heads this week, And Chris and Chief Staples might be saying, Luke, I thought your numbers were about half.

Yeah, it changed.

It changed. And part of it was because we realized that the calculation was post rollback versus taking the calculation before rollback. It was a 50% difference. That's why these numbers look twice as bad. Nevertheless, these are early. This is just back of the napkin type calculations. So don't hang your hat on these things at this point. We still have more to learn. That's it.

Hey, Mayor, can I get an alibi for just a minute? There's something I was going to mention. I forgot about it. The apartment fire. I wasn't here for that.

I had no personal knowledge of it.

But I had an opportunity to visit with the police chief just now. I haven't had an opportunity to visit with the fire chief. But I guess I'm visiting with you. And so What I would ask is that we review the actions of the people there. Some of those people, it sounds like, may be worthy of recognition. So we could possibly do something here in the council chambers in the way of recognition with you, right? The other thing I'd like to see considered is there's a thing that the state has at their level called the Sullivan Award. It's presented by the governor. The state patrol does an investigation of the incident to verify that the person is deserving of it. But the supervisor of the individual can nominate them to the governor for that. So I guess I would appreciate it if you could consider that. I'm sure you're going to be talking with the two chiefs anyway as they take and look at and review what's happened. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, it was down in the corner. No, I don't think there has to be transparent. Yeah, right.

Well, the opportunities were down for that. Yeah, great. Right.

So yeah, absolutely.

Well, and he showed us the video yesterday. He must be the one who told them about Zilkbook. Yeah. That is a great tool. Yeah. Zilkbook LM. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. I don't have anything, so I would entertain a motion to adjourn. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Okay. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Most of my board. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Second, I might be almost a favor. Say aye. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Aye. HAB-Jacques Juilland, We are adjourned. I know if you're curious.