City Council - Special Meeting

All right, good afternoon everybody and welcome to the City Council special meeting for Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026. Our first item on the agenda is consideration of approval, rejection, amendment, and or postponement of contract K-2526-178, a mutual aid agreement between Kansas City, Missouri Board of Police Commissioners and the City of Norman, Oklahoma, providing for mutual aid and assistance related to the 2026 Federation Internationale de Football Association. I don't think I knew that's what FIFA was. I'll entertain a motion to approve or reject the contract. Motion to approve. Second. And I'll recognize city staff for a discussion.

Okay. So sorry to get this on your agenda a little late. Things are moving fast in Kansas City, but not quite fast enough for the last agenda given the Memorial Day holiday. We weren't able to get it on last week for your consideration, but it starts next week, the event starts next week in Kansas City, so we needed to get it before you this week. FIFA is being held across North America at various locations, Kansas City and Dallas being the two closest. Kansas City has reached out to the police department to get extra help with securities. You can imagine an international event with all of these teams coming in and fans. They need all hands on deck and then some. And so they reached out to Norman. They've gotten grant money from FEMA and DHS to fund this effort, including reimbursement of participating police departments who go and help with security. And our staff, I think we've got several of them here, but looked at this as an opportunity to really get some good experience in preparation for the Olympics. Because in a couple of years, you can imagine an international competition as big as the Olympics, probably we're going to get some requests for mutual aid there as well. And so this is a great opportunity to learn more and see an event like this scale in person. Title 11 has a provision that allows for our police officers to perform their police functions if another municipality requested. It has to be approved by the governing body. And so that's why we come before you tonight. You've got two agreements on your agenda. If you don't mind, I'll talk about both. They're tied together. Mutual aid agreement is the agreement with the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners. That is the agreement that provides the aid, so we're going to send officers with a designated leader, Captain Carl Pendleton, I believe, and he will coordinate with their leadership on the ground, and they will assign our officers to either the match events to provide security in the parking lot or within the arena, or to the FIFA special event, the Fan Festival. Kansas City is providing housing to any officer that responds to the call for help. So they will be staying in dorms. Sounds like a lot of fun. And they'll be providing one meal during each shift. Compensation is provided under the mutual aid payment agreement, so I'll talk about that a little bit in a second. Once we are there, our officers follow. They will operate as officers as if they were in Norman. The agreement calls for that, and that's consistent with how we've treated mutual aid in the past. Norman is responsible for any claims, damages, and losses that we sustain by our NPD members, but we don't have to fund any losses that Kansas City sustains or anything like that. We're just responsible for ourselves. Under the Mutual Aid Payment Agreement, we're going to work two days while there, June 11th and 12th, but have lodging from the 10th to the 13th, so they'll arrive on the 10th, they'll get to coordinate and figure out where they're assigned, and then work 12 hour shifts, I think, June 11th and 12th. We think between the seven officers, it'll probably be around 210 hours of service that gets reimbursed at a rate of $150 an hour up to $35,000. And we bumped that number up just a little bit to make sure that if there's any overage in hours, we're still covered. So you'll see also in that payment agreement, because it is dealing with grant funds, that all of those requirements of the grant from DHS and FEMA that are imposed on Kansas City are also being passed on to us. These are provisions that we see in all of our grants. And some of them seem kind of like they just randomly included some of the provisions that are required. But this agreement is being applied to the police departments and other entities as well. So you'll see some weird provisions in there that don't necessarily apply to police officers, but they would apply to other contractors that may be also operating under a contract with Kansas City. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you guys may have.

Liability was my main one. It's just, yeah, if... one of our officers hurt someone or got into some situation or if one of our officers was injured if we were who was liable for that if if our officers had to use their weapon and uh what if they killed someone would it be norman that the family could sue

We'll probably try to sue more than Norman, but we are responsible for our officers and their behavior at the end of the day.

And if they get injured, we're...

Right. And it's that way even under mutual aid agreements within the state. We are responsible for the salaries, benefits, workers' compensation, all of those things. At the end of the day, we will get the reimbursement to compensate us for salaries and things, but we do take that liability of our officers.

And then the seven officers, so are these officers that wouldn't be working this week otherwise? Right. Where are they coming from?

primarily patrol, but they're scheduled off for that time, so they don't impact. We've been planning, well, we just now got to this phase because of the slowness up there. We've been planning for this for a while, so it's not an impact to our community, and our service won't be impacted by it. Okay.

Who had the... Just a question. Are there other cities that are entering into a similar collaboration with Kansas City?

I know other cities are. In Oklahoma, I know others have considered it, and I believe they will be, but I don't know half a list of those cities.

Yeah. Just a couple small ones and everything.

One, will Newman's vehicles be taken up by the officers that are driving up there and everything like that? Yes. And then kind of touched on the overtime. How much overtime would that cost the department local for those seven, eight being out? Right. So it's all in the schedule to be that way?

Yeah, it's similar to a training day where we schedule those. That's not saying that we don't have other things that happen that result in overtime those days, but we try to do our best to minimize that, of course. Gotcha. Thank you.

Council Member Gray?

Yeah, I also had an equipment question. I noticed in the payment agreement, And I think to City Attorney Walker's point, there's federal provisions. So one of them was about drones. Are we taking drones there?

I don't believe we have any drone coverage.

Okay. So it's just vehicles and... Vehicles and things they're wearing.

So like personal equipment that we take. Vehicles will stay in the parking garage and our folks will be shuttled over. Yes, awesome. So we're just using to get there even better. But yeah, we we do have drone assets, of course But they're not being deployed in this that'll be controlled federally.

Okay, just to be clear about what was going to Kansas Prohibition and the contract is dealing with foreign operated grounds. So That's really looking at other issues For an operated or made

some of ours are probably made their own by foreign companies at times, but nothing that we deal with on the drone side is of a national security thing.

Okay, gotcha.

Anytime we deal with anything like that, which occasionally does happen, we don't use our assets, of course.

Okay. Good to know. Thank you.

Councilor Roberts? You said two days?

Mm-hmm.

All right. Any other questions for staff, police department?

We appreciate your... your willingness to get it on the schedule. Sorry for the time lapse, but it's a great opportunity for our folks to get that experience, especially at the Olympics.

Huge recipients of similar outreach every OU home game.

You'll see officers and cars from all over. So it's like an advertisement for the PD. The PD's there kind of deal.

Yeah, absolutely. So an advertisement. We have a dedicated selfie person on the team, all the things. So we will get the publicity out. Get some good publicity.

Does that mean Chad Vincent is going?

Chad is not going.

He has trained that designate. Okay, so if there's no other questions or comments, the motion on the floor is to approve the contract. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? No? Okay. The motion to approve or reject the contract passes with a fail vote of nine. Okay, and then the second item is the same thing, right? Any questions about that part? Yeah. I'll entertain a motion. Second. And all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay.

Motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff.

Good luck, guys. I know you guys are big soccer fans. Really? Prior to your time, but yeah, the kids.

All right. Item three is consideration of adjourning into an executive session as authorized by Oklahoma statutes in order to evaluate the city manager as required by...