City Council - Regular Meeting

The City Council Conference of Tuesday, August 25th, 2026. We have one item on the agenda, and it is a continued discussion regarding a residential outdoor lighting ordinance to go along with the existing commercial lighting ordinance that we already have had for a number of years. We have a city attorney here. All right.

And we did talk about this potential residential lighting ordinance. at the oversight committee meeting and it got a favorable sort of consensus, so we wanted to move it forward to a council conference. And what we're really talking about is, to give you a little bit of a history of sort of where we've been with this issue before, we do have a commercial lighting ordinance that is pretty specific with regard to how those facilities have to to have arranged their lighting to make sure that there's no light trespass on other properties and specifically those areas where commercial sort of abuts residential to make sure that we're not causing issues with regard to the residential use. In 2006, there was a proposal to amend Section 10701 and 10709 to create a light emission standard and provide penalties for light trespass. And light trespass is defined as the shining of light produced by a luminary beyond the boundaries of the property on which it is located. Pretty broad. Probably really difficult to enforce based on that definition. But we came back in 2011. Again, we adopted our commercial lighting ordinance that's currently codified at 3650549 of our Norman City Code. Had a lot of success with that. One of the things that goes through my head is I did a mediation very early on after that got approved. And it was about, if you remember, Larry Spencer Chevrolet used to be on Main Street on the southwest corner of Main and 24th Avenue Northwest. And they put in new lighting for their car lot. That car lot backed up to residential just there to the south. There were some residents who were having difficulties. We had a mediation. And that... not commercial occupant was more than willing to do whatever it took to resolve those lighting issues. So we had pretty good success with regard to our adopted commercial lighting ordinance. It came back in 2019, a fairly vigorous sort of lighting ordinance provision for residential stuff. Council considered it, but it did not get adopted at that time. And of course, now we've come forward to 2026 and we're talking about this issue got raised because that is a picture at 4500 Grand Canyon Drive, a residential neighborhood. And as you can see, that lighting is pretty aggressive. And this is taken from the window of one of the residents. And this is what they're looking at in terms of the lighting by one of their neighbors. So that's sort of what spurred this discussion going forward that we really don't have anything in our ordinance currently to address this issue. But as you can imagine, if that's something that you were looking out of your bedroom window, that's probably going to cause, probably going to disturb your peace pretty significantly. So.

Like having, like in that example, policy that would require that, okay, you want those lights? Will they have to face down?

We pulled back out that ordinance proposal from 2019. We looked at it in terms of its purpose and intent, its applicability, the definition. I did like this definition of white trespass, which means artificial light emitted from one property that extends beyond the property line, property boundary in a manner that substantially interferes with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the neighboring property. more reined in than the prior example, because like I said, I usually think about, I'm thinking about a lot of these things. I think about my circumstances and I have a porch light or exterior light on the west side of my house. It does shine over to the neighbor's front yard, but it's like a 60 watt bulb. It doesn't shine into their bedroom. It doesn't cause any of those types of problems. Whereas if you looked at the prior definition, you could say that was a life trespass. And then this has really that sort of provision in there that talks about interfering with the reasonable use and enjoyment of your property. That makes it a little bit narrower and helps in terms of enforcement with regard to that particular definition. We did look at performance standards. One of the difficulties that we had had to do with how that particular provision provides for complaint investigation and it would route it through the code department. And I've got Janita here. I talked with her. She's our code supervisor. We talked about the issue of most of these events would occur at night. We don't have a code person that currently works at night. Currently, in 2019, when this first was proposed, we had four code officers. In 2026, we have four code officers. And since that point in time, we've adopted an Airbnb ordinance that requires that those structures be that we inspect those every year, and that falls on our code complaint officers. So their plate is already pretty full, and if you had to do, we talked about from the perspective, if you had to do a lighting investigation, you had to investigate a light complaint, we're going to have to flex one of our code officers from working during the day to working at night. Usually the way that that would work is the code officer is going to go to the location, going to see whether or not there's a potential violation. If so, they can post the property, send them a letter in the mail, giving them 30 days to fix the violation, and then they've got to go back 30 days later to see whether or not the violation has been remedied. So we would be pulling a code officer, and I suspect we're probably only going to get these like one at a time. So we would effectively be pulling a code officer off of their full-time duties during the day to work at night to investigate one complaint. And just sort of talking that through with our that's just not a very good use of their time. So we started talking about it from the perspective of what are some other potential alternatives that we could look at that might help some of our residents that are having these issues be able to get some relief while also making sure that we're using our resources in an appropriate manner. One of the things that we did talk about, and this goes back to in 2019, This was sort of the complaint or the concern that was actually talked about at that time. And there's a newspaper article from June 9th of 2006, June 7th, 2006. And it was talking about the proposed lighting ordinance. And it was then City Manager Brad Gamble. And it says, from the staff point of view, you're asking for a nighttime enforcement, which would be a problem. who said evening staff is already having trouble keeping up with complaint calls from parking yards and other code violations because the city's budget crunched. So even back in 2006, our city manager's telling us, you're going to have difficulty with enforcement if we put this burden on our code enforcement officers because, again, like I said, in 2006 we had four, we still have four, and their caseload has not gone down. The alternative that we talked about earlier that we came up with was to just, we currently have a disturbing the peace ordinance, and this one section, subsection C, no person should disturb the peace by playing or creating loud or unusual sounds. We have another sound ordinance, ordinance that governs sound, it's very detailed it's very long and it has to do with decibel levels and it prohibits it has different decibel levels for different use categories with residential being somewhere around 65 and then that increasing depending upon if you're an industrial or commercial I've been here 28 years we've literally never filed a case under that ordinance because it requires sound measurement with a specific sound meter and the measurement has to occur based on the ANSI standards for measuring noise. We don't have anybody trained on the ANSI standards for measuring noise. I actually downloaded them at one point in time and they really are more for industrial noise. You can imagine at a plant that noise, those standards are really meant for evaluating noise at those types of facilities to make a determination as to what type of ear protection your employees need. It really isn't well suited with regard to measuring noise when you have issues between neighbors. So the issue becomes, I was talking to somebody earlier, I said, if I was the defense attorney and we could use that, my first question is going to be, show me that the person that made these noise measurements are trained under this particular standard and we just don't have that person. For the longest time, we didn't have sound meters that fit that specific definition as to what you had to have. So since I've been here, Our loud party instances, whenever there's a disturbing the peace issue, usually gets prosecuted or submitted under this provision in our ordinance. And we talked about it from the perspective of light also can disturb your peace. I mean, it's a different kind of wave. I mean, it's not a sound wave. It's a light wave. But if I direct my light source into your bedroom window, so that you can't sleep or you can't enjoy your property that's probably going to be something that we think disturbs the peace so what we proposed was amending that particular ordinance to create a subsection f that says that prohibits creating or maintaining like trespass that substantially disturbs the peace comfort or repose of occupants of neighboring property like trespass means artificial light originating from one property that extends onto another property and substantially interferes with the reasonable use enjoyment of that property Nothing here shall prohibit lighting required by law. Temporary emergency lighting or holiday lighting provided such lighting is not directed toward neighboring dwellings in a manner that substantially interferes with their reasonable use and enjoyment. We did talk about the issue that Councilmember Brant brought up about law enforcement and that would be something that lighting would be required by law. So it really wouldn't be an issue with regard to them but one of the things I like about The code process, which is somebody complains, code will go out and do an investigation. If they believe there's a violation, they send them, post the property, send a notice in the mail, give them 30 days to fix it and go from there. If it were done this way, that citation is immediately going to go to municipal court. Cases like this for disturbing the peace, they go to municipal court. We usually exercise our prosecutorial discretion in favor of sending it to mediation because hopefully if we get the parties together in a room and they can talk about what their problem is, they can come up with a resolution that satisfies both parties and as long as they comply with it, we've gone down the road. Usually if there is an agreement, we will exercise our prosecutorial discretion in favor of not moving forward with the citation. If there's not an agreement, we can always decide whether prosecution is appropriate or not based on the circumstances. But this way, one, I think that's going to be more of an immediate response to somebody's circumstances as opposed to a, you know, hopefully we can get a code officer out there fairly quickly. But even if there is a violation, there's going to be this 30-day time period that they'd have to remedy it. So whatever that particular light trespass is, it may be a fairly significant amount of time before it ever gets addressed. Here, once a citation is submitted, it's going to go to court the next day. We're going to refer it to mediation the next day. And then that process usually requires, I mean, it's going to be maybe a week or so before that person is getting a phone call from court saying, hey, we have this process available. If you agree to it, we can get it scheduled fairly quickly and hopefully get it to the point where you and your neighbor can sit down and resolve whatever your differences are. One of the things that we talked about a little bit while we talked about, sometimes I suspect that These instances don't just arise out of a light issue. It arises out of some other underlying dispute between these neighbors. And one neighbor decides to be punitive and shine this light into your property, says, we can prosecute you, but that's probably not going to resolve the underlying potential conflict. If we can get it in the form of a mediation, a lot of times that underlying conflict can get resolved. And that will resolve whatever the lighting issue is. And then again, you can't be penalized for agreeing to or not agreeing to mediation. parties either don't agree or they agree but there's no there is no resolution you can always go back to prosecution if that seems to be necessary and maybe that changes their behavior going forward but so that was our recommendation with regard to this particular issue so if anybody has any questions

No questions, but I mean it seems fine as as written With the commercial lighting ordinance, I mean Same thing. I mean, it's something that would have to be enforced at night, but it also controls how relatively And so would a lighting ordinance be beneficial in that way about addressing new, I don't even know, I don't know that it's an issue with new residential construction. That example is a resident post-construction putting his own lights out front. So an ordinance like that wouldn't address the construction part.

Yeah, don't have a ton of experience with residential construction because that usually occurs. have talked in the city attorney's office because we're getting some complaints right now about noise really early in the morning because some commercial entities are starting to do work a little bit earlier than usual. It has to do with the heat. And it's like, we understand they don't want to be out there in the middle of the afternoon because of the current heat. So trying to navigate through some of those. But from a residential perspective, not really an issue with regard. We haven't really seen an issue with

That's kind of where that could be an issue. But yeah, I feel like that seems like a good approach to take the recommended way and see how that might work. And that example looks kind of like a personal issue to me, but I don't know. But yeah, ideally getting things like that worked out between neighbors without a government.

people do the right thing so i guess just if the police are the ones enforcing it do they have discretion in terms of like are they just giving like a warning first time is it a ticket like is there the police would have discretion and often when i've gotten that phone call what i've usually said is look if you think it's close enough go ahead and issue the citation because i've got more time when it gets to the prosecutor level i've got more time to look through it to make a determination as to whether or not it really is something that needs to be prosecuted or not, whether you out in the field, I understand you're not going to make everybody happy. But if it's a set of circumstances where arguably it is a violation, bring it to our attention with a citation. Let that citizen sign the citation and let us handle it.

with those citations like you're talking about a lot of times in the mediation situation with the city of Norman that's where a lot of this gets worked down and everything even before it goes to the judge or anything like that also and everything with both parties being able to sit and talk it out kind of deal so it kind of gives that fallback sometimes unfortunately we don't really have very good relationships with our neighbors and it's almost as if instead of going over and talking to them

that way is to call the police and have them come out and do your talking for you. And obviously that can cause conflict between neighbors. Um, but a lot of times, like council member Gainesbury talking about, once you get them in the context of mediation and you can get them sort of talking back and forth, they both kind of see that the other party really isn't evil and you can resolve your conflict with them. And I've always said that Hopefully what that process results in is not just resolving that particular dispute, but it resolves disputes going forward. Because the next time there's a problem, instead of me calling the police, I know I can go over and talk to my neighbor and see if we can get this resolved. So ultimately, I think it saves our law enforcement officers a lot of time when we create a set of circumstances where there's a relationship between those two parties that they can work out their own problems and they don't need to call us.

do about that and you know we we know how to handle those but we would like to try to handle it on the front end if we can in a manner that is a little bit less punitive and more collaborative because if I think that's just a better way to get it resolved if we can and I would say too if we if we did adopt this something we would want to review after some period of time to see how much time the police are spending responding to stuff like And if it gets to a certain point, we would want to weigh how much does it cost for the police to do that versus hire a code enforcement officer that works at nighttime or something. I don't even know if there's like contracting out where you can do that.

A long, long time ago, we did have one officer.

Two nights a week or a month?

We had one officer a long time ago that was dedicated to noise complaints.

Right, yeah.

And we kept him busy. I mean, he was busy a lot. So, I mean, it could get to the point where something like I know he ended up applying to be a police officer for OUPD, but my recollection is, and he was really, it was really helpful. I mean, there were a lot of contentious issues between neighbors that we were having difficulty because we couldn't get resolved that at least he could go out there and there was a response and the person felt like, you know, somebody was paying attention to their problems because sometimes that's what the issue is. They feel like nobody's paying attention to their problems, but he was helpful with regard to that. One in particular, he was really helpful in in saying that guy's just unreasonable.

PROBABLY COST LESS TO HIRE A CODE ENFORCEMENT OFFICER THAN A POLICE OFFICER. VERY MUCH SO.

HE WASN'T A POLICE OFFICER.

RIGHT. IF WE WERE TO HIRE AN ADDITIONAL CODE ENFORCEMENT, THAT PROBABLY WOULD BE CHEAPER THAN IF WE DISCOVERED THAT IT WAS AN ISSUE THAT NORMAN PD WAS HAVING TO SPEND QUITE A BIT OF TIME, LIKE, GOING OUT TO, YOU KNOW, WAY OUT IN WARD FIVE OR SOMETHING, WITH THE HOUSE, LIKE, THAT'S NOT WAY OUT THERE. IT COULD BE WAY OUT THERE. THAT HOUSE IS ON THE WAY TO THE LAKE. AND IF IT WERE FURTHER OUT THERE AND THEY'RE HAVING, YOU and it might be a time where doing that additional code enforcement might be the responsible thing to do.

Why did he stop? Did he retire, or was it a budget thing?

I don't remember.

Okay. I'll just say from a Ward 4 perspective, we would want that back.

It's been long enough ago, but I remember the guy. I know his name was Richard. I know he ended up becoming OUPD office, He is at the game sometimes in the gate that I go in. So I've stopped to talk to him on occasion. But I really, we'd have to go back and try to think about why.

I've seen that they were still wearing brown uniforms back then in the pictures I've seen. But it said Norman police and always neutral on the side of the car.

That's right. black and white pictures I've seen any other questions or comments for just a few won't matter if it's a private road right as long as it's still in city limits even if it's on a private road once somebody calls they can and then will a lot mentioned mediation what if somebody wanted to call anonymous is that going to be an option or will the person call and have to list their name so that it can have the option to go to mediation the difficulty is going to be

A police officer cannot arrest somebody for a misdemeanor offense not committed in their presence. So, because a part of this ordinance has to do with disturbing the peace of somebody else, a long, long time ago, and this is when I first started, and remember this is a long time ago, I was told that there was this rule out there that said a police officer's peace can't be disturbed. and issue the citation. So in this context, the difficulty becomes an officer might go out and look at something. He may think, yeah, that it should, it's something that violates the ordinance, but he has to have that witness to come in and say, this was disturbing my peace. And the officer really can't say that. So it's probably going to have to be a witness from a residence that can say, Under these circumstances, with this light trespass, this was disturbing my peace, and therefore that's not a citation position. So it can be really difficult. I mean, based on an anonymous complaint, an officer may be able to contact that resident and say, hey, we got this complaint. Your lights are bothering your neighbors. I can't tell you which one. Could you do something to resolve it? And they can say, yeah, I will or no, I won't. I'm thinking about it in terms of there's sort of the legal doctrines have to do with An officer can have probable cause based on the observations of a known informant. An officer does not have probable cause based on the observations of an unknown informant. So if I call you and I tell you who I am and how to get a hold of me, and I tell you that I've observed some violation of the law, an officer can rely on that. If I call in anonymous, he can't rely on that.

95% of them that I do and everything are from a police docket. There is rare occasions where they still have it with some two people just calling the city and saying, Hey, we'd like to have some kind of mediation done, you know, sit down and everything like that. That also can occur.

And then I guess my last question, it might be for more manager, uh, When I worked at OU, we used to have a guy that did the night shift, but he kind of just was a floater, so he would drive around and check all the overhead lights to see if any were out, and if you had any that were out, he would call dispatch and let them know the location. I mean, that's pretty much... If somebody had a water main bus, he'd go turn off the water. I mean, it just... Like you said, in case the police did get to, do we have anything like that at Norman who drives around and tells us when any of our street lights or any of our flags are looking ragged? I mean, do we have a nighttime person who just kind of checks on Norman at night?

I mean, we do have people that are available. For example, sewer line people have people that are available at night to handle stuff for water. So we do have those employees. They're usually on call.

They get the secret phone sent home with them. So tell them don't get too involved in any great TV shows tonight. When the phone rings, you've got to come in. They get a minimum two-hour callback every time they answer the phone. Usually got volunteers in each department with expertise necessary to respond solo in those situations. I think the streetlight piece, we do get a lot of Action Center calls, hey, the streetlight's out at this intersection, and we forward those to OG&E or OEC, depending on the neighborhood. So that, I don't know, I think that system's improved over time with the Action Center because, I mean, you don't see it until sometimes 9 p.m. in the summertime.

I support it, just .

Okay. Any other questions, comments?

Well, we'll put this together and hopefully you'll see it on your next agenda .

And again, encourage everybody to try to work out these issues between yourselves and your neighbors if at all possible. involving the police of the city should be a last resort.

If you have any questions about the name, a lot of the residents are actually here in the room. Just if you have questions for them.

Okay. Thanks, everybody.