Community Planning & Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

Commission Committee meeting for Thursday, August 27th, 2026. We have four items on the agenda. The first one is a discussion of dividing an offering for public sale, former railroad right-of-way located between East Duffy Street and South Jenkins. slash James Garner Avenue, right where it merges there, and between Front Street and current BNSF Railroad right-of-way. So we have Director of Public Works here, and we have Beth from Legal here to discuss that with us.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to start it off because I was the one who received the initial contact on this. I was contacted by a property owner who is redeveloping some property off Duffy with interest in the adjacent parcel just across Front Street, interested in, I guess, incorporating that into what they're planning on doing on the current parcel. So I found the history of this, and as you can see, it was purchased. Actually, it was a negotiated purchase from the Topeka Railway, Topeka and Santa Fe, back in 1993. And we paid 51 cents a square foot for it back then. So this is property that has an inherent value. At the time of the purchase, the plan was generally to keep it looking nice, beautified, just landscape. But there was also the plan to utilize a portion of it for the front street that we've already identified there. There was actually two parcels, west side and east side of the railroad right of way. That was purchased. That's all of it. This is the portion that we're coming here to talk to you about today because it's in the immediate area of the requested inquiry. And it goes through, again, as the mayor said, the Jenkins, James Garner kind of area there. And so... The last time that we had surplus right-of-way and we considered whether or not right-of-way or property we had was surplus for the potential sale, it came to CPTC for a discussion to determine whether or not it should be declared surplus. The applicable provision in our code is 12-301. essentially if it's over a thousand dollars we declare it surplus now that section doesn't say real estate but in a previous project with Robinson crossing under past property we followed that same procedure so that's what we'd recommend to do again just follow the same procedure and so if we were to determine that we would like to you to utilize this for sale as surplus property for then we would want to identify parcels the parcel that we're looking at and this is the portion that we've brought to you today but we have some more information about that that mr. Sturtz is going to go over and and in the Robinson Street case it was eminent domain property so there were additional notices there were contractual notices there were a lot of steps in that case here it's pretty simple we would want to give a general notice in the paper if we decided to sell it and And then we would want to have it, again, identified probably by legal description. We would need to hire an auctioneer who would auction real property. Same situation. We don't keep one of those around because this is not a common practice. So that would be a part of it as well. And since it has been a long time since we valued this property, part of the process would be putting a value to these parcels that we would like to talk about so that we can set minimum prices, deposits, hold money, that type of thing for the auction process. So that's really all there is to it for the parceling process. Before I hand it over to Mr. Sturtz to go over the parcels themselves, are there any questions?

Yeah, just out of curiosity, why go through an auction process as opposed to saying like, hey, this is for sale, we're taking bids on it?

Well, I mean, it would be bids. Oh, do you mean an RFP process?

Yeah, where it's not like an, yeah.

So when we did the sale on Robinson, it wasn't an open live auctioneer auction. It was exactly, they submitted their bids, and then the high bid was the successful.

And we still need an outside auctioneer to do all that? Okay, fair enough.

We do.

Council Member Gray?

Are there utilities under this, and what is it zoned, if it has any zoning?

I actually have the map pulled up here. There are some utilities in the way. We would have to reserve easements for those right-of-ways, just like we do any time we vacate or any time we get rid of property. So it would be very similar to what we do when we close. So that all would be done. Yes, that would be just like typical zoning. And it's pulling up everything that is Center City form-based code.

If it's Center City, do you know what color it is? Is it the orange?

It's orange, but there's nothing there currently. We don't have any intention of extending the road through here.

Orange being general purpose, meaning mixed use or housing.

Yeah. Yes, just like the rest of James Garner is in that section of Jenkins.

And there was an inquiry from someone who wanted to purchase this? Yes. And did they say what their project might be?

Not with me in particular. I understand they are in touch with the planning department, but as you can see, it's a residential house right now.

So I would imagine... What we understand is they want to redevelop that and potentially do another student housing type of development like what's being typically done in this area, and they wanted this to be parking for that location. That's kind of... I don't know that proposent. That's what I've been told was their consideration at this time.

But they have to work around the utilities.

They would have to work around. And that's part of the reason, like, there's a water line through there and some other utilities that are publicly owned. So we'd have to be careful with those. But those can be under paving.

Yeah. The parking lot's not going to be the same as the building.

No, that's not going to really impact it.

OK. Thank you for the extra info.

One little final note that I didn't get to. Front Street, as I said, is that 20-foot alley that's shown on these, and that was actually carved out of this property. To the extent of the tract number three there, we think that 20-foot alley might actually go back into that parcel ultimately through whatever sale happens there if it's closed because there is access directly off of Duffy. That was just something we were talking about before, so I wanted to.

feel like this is jogging up a very ancient memory, probably a couple years ago, honestly. But I think there was somebody who wanted us to vacate an alley over there so they could develop a parcel more.

That was further to the south. It was on the other side of Duffy. It was basically down there off the end of McCullough. Yeah, it was McCullough or one of those. And when we started looking at it, there wasn't consistent alleyway through there already, and there were some parcels that there was alleyway there and other places that there weren't. And we wound up closing that, and they actually did develop part of it. And when we did that, it was the same thing. The ownership went to each half.

Okay. I can drive still if you want to go ahead and go over these.

I'm just going to turn it where I can see it.

Real quick, does the railroad have to be involved in any way with this land sale?

No, because they deeded it to us.

Okay, and then you mentioned you're confident that utilities can be paved over, but if down the line, let's say something happens to the utilities underneath, would the city be responsible for paying that and fixing that, or would you fix it and then the property owner would have to reimburse?

Typically, if we had to go in and fix it, we'd come in and we'd So those are all, you know, agreements that could be made and determined at the time of, you know, easements being dedicated. So really what you're looking at here, and I'm looking at the drawing there to the left-hand side, what you're seeing is there's three separate parcels when we look at carving this one piece up. That parcel to the south, the yellow kind of hatching there is the kind of the cross hatch. That is the parcel that we wanted to look at selling to that property owner that he was interested in. When we looked at this, there is that alleyway that goes east and west. It's not currently used as an alleyway, but they are accessing the back of the properties from the alleyway. So we felt like the best thing to do would be to cut that off to where that alleyway would still be preserved if there was a need or if the people owning it wanted to open that back up. So that's why we chose that to be the end of that parcel. The parcel that's there in the middle, that is kind of the X hatch across it, that is a parcel that we feel that we need to retain. You can see that big loop that's kind of within that. That's where the trash trucks currently turn around because there's no alley access further to the south. So we feel that to continue the access to these properties that are currently served from that, we need to make sure to maintain away from the turnaround. So that's why we have retained that section and we would recommend to retain that as city right away for the alley purposes. And then that area to the north is kind of the dashed hatch, kind of hard to see there. It doesn't show quite as well on the screen as it does on paper. That is kind of the remainder of the area because this area was all contiguous. If we were to do something, it makes sense to go ahead and split it all up. Currently, the students or the people, they may not be students that live at the Wedge, park on that. They have stacked parking, but they don't like it, so they single stack and then they park across the street on gravel on our property. So an easy nexus there would be to say, why don't you just take this property? And then they'd have it and they could extend it, extend their parking. Or it could be any other purpose that anybody would want. You know, this would be getting some property that is currently not usable. It would be getting it on a tax roll to at least have some property taxes going towards it. It would also help by, you know, putting it in so it would help with the TIF. And then, as Beth was saying, in that area, the far lot to the south that we'd be creating would, they could vacate that at that owner purchases, he could choose to vacate that alleyway. And then he would get half of that alleyway to each one of the properties. And When I look at the aerial photos, it's pretty clear, even when I look at aerial stretch and what I can expect to be realistic, they're already in the alleyway down there with their housing structure that's currently there. But that'd be coming down if they were to do anything else. So that would allow that bottom area to be more contiguous and be more like usable lots. So like Beth said, this is something that came to us. So that's really where we're at right now. Kind of just a quick summary of that tract one to the south. This is the one that they were requesting about. It has access to Duffy. We could restrict it to parking only if that was a choice that council wanted to do there. Otherwise, we have to relocate. You actually can see the water line runs through there. A couple of water lines. There's one that comes in from the east and then the one that goes kind of north and south. You rotate it. uh so that they'd have trouble putting any structures on there without relocating all that and that's a pretty good cost uh track number two again that would come off of the alleyway and we'd retain that and then the last one that would be the james garner they could use that at the wedge or it just became retained by the city we could do that too that restricted deeds parking only question mark is this because the

easement or I'm sorry, utilities under it.

That or just, you know, that's just what we thought that needed to be there. Obviously there'd be a large expense to try to do a structure or, and if you look at the buildable area working around those water lines, it's a really small area. It'd be difficult to get a lot on there.

And the location. And I just, I wanted it to be a point of discussion because if we were, we have an unrestricted deed. If we were to convey one, that's going to go into the appraisal and however we go forward.

And then I guess with this too, like Center City's idea was the parking is in the back of the structures and the street-facing part is all nice and walkable. So I'm cool with it being parking only because I think this is in the back of everything and that keeps in line with form-based code.

Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with staff recommendations on this basically.

Let's see. So the right-of-way where Front Street would go through and connect to Duffy or Monette, if it had ever, I'd be interested in not maintaining that entire width as a street or an alleyway, but maybe just reserve it as a 10-foot path in between. in between that property and the property to the west right on the boundary line there where the right-of-way exists so where the alleyway shrinks the right-of-way a little bit gives them some more space but maintains a access from Duffy the Duffy crossing into that back area for pedestrians and whatnot so I'd like to see that if possible and then the lot the parcel three um you might have answered it just now but like i was wondering what would be maybe the benefit if we built a paid lot right there that was just for center city parking in general like anybody that lives in center city can park there um but it's paid or it's maybe it's paid 24 or seven i don't know but i don't know if there'd be any benefit if it'd be big enough to make it worthwhile to do that but

You know, that is an interesting and something that did kind of cross my mind. I didn't put a lot into it. But we could look at, you know, maybe that it would be one row of, you know, parking and then a second row that may have to be parallel. We just have to play with how many spaces. But that would definitely increase parking in this area and something that could be done and it could be a pay law.

So that would be one. I'm not opposed to potentially... finding a way to sell it to that property there or whatever. But if it would make it worthwhile if they were to do a paid parking lot there, I don't know.

It would help. There's a lot of student housing in this area, including the wedge and the parcels across the street that they are looking for parking solutions and That could be one. We've recently sold parking spots at the Aspen Street lot that could be utilized for that. And this would be a place where they would have an opportunity where they could purchase a block. And if it was all free sold, maybe that's not the worst case either.

Yeah. And I think, in general, this could all be an opportunity to make that little area look a little bit nicer, too, from the tracks, from the people riding the trains and whatnot. And then on the tract one, was it clear... Not giving it away, but selling it. So one of the things we've talked about before with city-owned property that we have surplus, like where the current shelter is potentially, or if we build a new police department somewhere else in that space. We've talked about leveraging city-owned property to... Offering a discount on the property in exchange for X number of units have affordable or market rate. I don't know, something like that. We've talked about that. I don't know if that would be something we could look into. If they would be, we'd give them a discount or if we gave it away, could we say, but you have to include 30%, 50%, I don't know. affordable units, whatever that definition might be. And if they'd even be interested in that, it'd be worth it to them to get a discounted piece of property or even a free property if we're able to do that. But just a couple ideas there. If we already own it, we can leverage in some affordable housing for students. I assume that's who most likely would live in a spot like that, but... But a conversation, I think, worth having since we own it. And those were the three things I had. A path, and then paid parking, and then potential affordable housing in exchange for a discounted sale price. If the person interested. If they're not, that's not a deal breaker for me. Council Member Grant.

On that point of thought, how would that look in a bidding process situation? Would those be like you get points toward, yeah, I'm just curious.

It almost sounds to me like we'd wind up looking at something more like an RFP process like we did on the properties over here where we would actually say, here's our requirements. Tell us what you would do and what is your cost. So it would be more like an RFP like we've done on other properties instead of a pure sale through highest bidder. So it's all doable and we just have to see what the responses would look like.

And the process, obviously, would be different than the notice and bidding I was talking about for the rest.

I'm interested in seeing what exactly they want to build.

I mean, we could write an RFP that would say what would be your considerations to include. You'd want to give them the play to see what they would come up with. You wouldn't want to quite define it for them. You could definitely say that there would be opportunities, and that would be another way that we could go about this.

Yeah, I'm interested, because, you know, thinking of highest and best use and just being thoughtful about our limited infill opportunities, so.

Yeah. And, yeah, in general, I'm not. opposed to parting ways with that tract one for a general housing or whatever they want to do. But I think it's worth exploring if there's anything there that could work. So anything else? Questions from council on this?

We'll begin the process of how these properties would be given legal descriptions and set them up. And then we can begin the process from there. And obviously, I guess at some point it'd be platted. Would it have to be if we sold it?

We were talking about the option of, yeah, doing surveyed sales.

Okay. So.

But that was also tied up in, would these be used for parking only? Are they thinking about putting structures on it? That might be different, especially for the tract one, if we're talking about housing.

Tract three, I was thinking, I mean, I was If we were to sell it to the wedge there, or whoever, I wouldn't be opposed to it being developed into housing instead of a parking lot. So I wouldn't necessarily want to restrict it to be just a parking lot.

Utilities under it, too.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah, you've got a water line that runs right through the middle of that track.

Well, I guess you could build a building on a water line.

No, you'd have to move the water line. We wouldn't allow building on a water line.

Okay, any other questions from council about this? Okay, so you'll come back at a later date?

Yeah, we'll bring it. We'll work on it. We'll bring it back.

Okay, sounds good.

All right, item two is a discussion regarding a proposed ordinance establishing rules for bicyclists proceeding through stop signs and red traffic signals when conditions allow for safe passage. I'm Gina Snyder, one of the assistant city attorneys.

And I don't know, six, seven months ago, David asked me to come to the bicycle advisory committee. And I was like, okay.

Which a couple of our members are here today.

And I want to say that some of the members are here. I'm on other committees. I love all my committees, but I've enjoyed this one. They're a joyful group. I do like them. They're very agreeable, and they meet for an hour. But they asked me on this one. There's some other things we've been discussing, but they did ask about this Idaho rule. I had no idea what that was. It's a thing. And so what is the Idaho rule? Well, that was originated, obviously, in Idaho in 1982. And a number of states have adopted different variations of this rule. Oklahoma actually adopted it back in 2021. And what it does, it allows cyclists to safely proceed through a stop sign or red signal to maintain momentum, reduce exposure at time and intersections, which are obviously common areas for bicycles. of vehicle accidents. Cyclists naturally slow and yield rather than come to an absolute full stop because in our ordinances, bicyclists are supposed to, I always call it rules of the road. They're supposed to follow the rules of the road. And they naturally do slow down and yield rather than come to a full stop, and it helps them clear the intersection more quickly and reduces, again, it's really more about safety. Policies like this make cycling more convenient, it's more efficient, encourages obviously a greater use of bicycles and reducing traffic congestion and environmental benefits. And I found through the Bicycle Advisory Committee, I tell them they're the professionals, they're the folks that ride the bikes and are very aware of safety, of the rules. Not everybody rides bikes like that, but this group does. And I wanted to just mention before I see what you all thought was the Bicycle Advisory Committee, they do review transportation development plans on an ongoing basis. They make and assist implementation of recommendations and encourage support in biking and recreational for transportation. They consult with and forward recommendations to the Transportation Committee. There's nine members of this committee. And on August 10th of this year, they did vote unanimously to recommend the adoption of this ordinance commonly referred to as the Idaho rule. So that was in July. I got it on this committee. Jamie kind of snuck it in there real quick for me. Instead, I wasn't available next month, and it would have been October, and the committee members were anxious to get this in front of council. So does anybody have any questions? It's mainly safety and efficiency for the bike riders, and David can help answer the questions, too, because he's been on the bicycle advisory committee a long time. Council Member.

Assuming this clears this committee, what agenda would we expect to see it on?

A council agenda? I just would have to talk to city clerks and see when I could get it on the next one or so.

Maybe next month or so.

Probably, yeah. I wanted to get this on as quickly as I can because they've wanted this. We've talked about it for a few months that I've been going to the committee, and I wanted to get it in August so I could get it moved along in early fall, I guess. So I would guess, Jamie, to get it on in probably not the first meeting in September, but maybe the last or the first one in October. The last one is September 1st and October.

Okay. And then let's say we get to the point, it's on the agenda, we're voting for it. How does the messaging work with the new adoption of this?

What we would need is talk to Tiffany and get some information out through our communications office. You know, how do we normally do that? I don't know. But it may be a good way for, too, for maybe to have some other information on what the Bicycle Advisory Committee does. Maybe see if we can get some social media on it or some interviews through the Bike Committee. Because they are a very active committee, and they've been working on maps, which they've just gotten one done.

Work with, like, the utility or transcripts. The only reason I ask is because after watching some of our changes that were made for safety, like two-way gray and how people were receiving the new way of doing things, I'm just very cognizant of the fact that if we do this, we're going to probably see some people complain and be like, why are we doing this? So I would just love to have, like if we get to the point, because I'm supportive of it, it makes sense to me, but just to have some really great messaging and a strategy for that.

We can do it very much like we did the reverse angle parking pilot down there on James Garner. You know, we had a lot of videos performed and we had extensive interviews and things like that, so.

And I would talk to the police department to let police officers know. Now, is this something that people are ticketed for often? No, it's not. But it is important to the bike community to have this in place. I mean, it's in place with state statute. It's in place across the country. And the committee members and other active bike riders want to know they're doing something that's legal. I mean, they're all going to stop at the stop signs or the red lights because they're going to follow the rules. But I think it would also be helpful for them, and I'm pretty sure that everybody on the bike committee is involved in other bike groups, that they could push out the information to them also.

And it kind of levels the playing field for all areas. It's not different here than it is in Oklahoma City or vice versa.

Yeah, I think having information about the state adopting us in 2021 would be super helpful in that education campaign.

And although I don't know what else to call it but the Idaho rule, because I guess that's the commonly used phrase because they were the first one, but that was 40 years ago. So it's not a new way for bicyclists. I know the committee wants to do the right thing.

And it won't be the first city in the United

Now, I don't know about other cities in Norman. It's your fault. I knew that State passed it in 21, so there could be some others. I could do a little research on that to see if others, but my committee probably knows. They know a lot.

Yeah, we weren't the first city to do reverse angle parking. We were the first city in Oklahoma to do it.

We're behind Idaho by a couple of decades. A few decades. But it's important to the committee, and after I've been attending that for a few months, it is important to them, and I think they'll help get the word out.

Council Member Steele? Does it affect the city's liability in any way if we're saying, oh, you don't have to follow this? Okay.

I mean, if a bicyclist gets hit in the intersection by a vehicle, they shouldn't have cleared that intersection because they're required to look around. And if there's no other cars coming, they can proceed. But if there's other active traffic, the bicyclist has to stop. I don't see a lot of accidents like that. I see more accidents with bicyclists. come off the sidewalk into a crosswalk, and then a car makes a turn, and the bicyclist is supposed to walk the bike across a crosswalk instead of, you can't just shoot off a sidewalk. I have seen accidents with that, and it's usually the bicyclist's error.

And then... Maybe a different conversation that relates to this, but is there like a maximum speed of bicycle? I'm basically referring to e-bikes because I've been seeing a lot more of those lately that might be following this.

We just decided to move this one through first because it was kind of easy. Yes, we have discussed e-bikes. We've looked at the state statute. I'd already done that. We've looked at it with the bike committee. It pops up with lots of other issues about other motorized vehicles on the road, and every day we get a new kind. And so that is something that I need to wrap up. But for this one, we wanted to go ahead and get it moved through before it gets bogged down and all that other.

That's my concern, is if there's a legal definition where a bicycle can't go over X miles an hour.

Bicycles, and it uses the definition in the ordinance, they're self-propelled. Okay.

This is the first of many times that you're going to see us with different ordinances. We're starting to work on that.

I have no problems with this. I know e-bikes have been a, I've gotten a few requests about that.

But this is one we knew could get through. So it's just the beginning of one. And they wanted this one.

If it's already on your radar, perfect.

It's on our radar.

It's even on our agenda.

It's a lot. There's so many different types of motorized vehicles. Two-wheeled vehicles.

I guess just as an aside, if it's a self-powered scooter, like two wheels and scooters on a bicycle, does that apply to this as well?

In the ordinance, we did state that a bicycle is two or more wheels propelled solely by human power. So this is just bicycles. The actual regular bicycle. All right. Then I'll get it, move forward. I'll talk with city clerk's office and try to get it on the agenda.

I've been wanting to do this for quite a long time, actually.

And then it'll push me to get some other things done. All right. Okay.

All right. No further questions on that one. All right.

Item three. Thank you, staff. Item three is a presentation of the June and July public transit report

Thank you, sir. Yes, thank you, Council. Your usual memo and the accompanying performance reports are in your packet, like you were alluding to. We do have two months' worth of data in here because we didn't meet in July, so we have June and July numbers. I'm happy to go over those. First, I'll go through a few things in the memo to update you guys on. First one being the paratransit bus. It's unit 52471. That was totaled in that head-on collision back behind on cue by Tecumseh. We did get that replacement in last month, and it's in service now. So that will go off of your reports here, and now we're not down a paratransit unit. We are still at one unit that needs to be replaced, and we're looking at grant funding for that. But that's the only one in the city's fleet currently that's passed its useful life. But we're on a good cadence with our vehicle replacements. We still have three big buses that are grant funded. We have POs for that are expected to be built in May. So we are ahead and on schedule for keeping up with our transit fleet. Skipping down to grants, I added a section here. It's grant season. The federal government's put out a lot of NOFOs, or Notice of Funding Opportunities. So I'm just going to go through those four bullets there, sub-bullets there, really quickly. But the FTA Innovative Coordinated Access and Mobility Program, or ICAM, Embark and City of Edmond and our staff have been talking, and we're going to, with Council's blessing on Tuesday. Yeah. We are going to submit a grant application for regional paratransit study or plan. It sounds simpler than it is, but geographic boundaries mean a lot for transit funding, so we can't necessarily take somebody on a paratransit vehicle from Norman to Oklahoma City and back, counting miles, keeping track of where the dollars are spent. So this is an attempt to, okay, how do we bridge that gap and try to make more sense of it with the technology we have now? It's easier to track those things. So What you saw on your agenda on Tuesday was the city's local share would be $10,000, Edmonds would be $10,000, and Oklahoma City's would be $20,000, and the rest would be grant funded after that. About $200,000 is going to be our request as a joint application. So I appreciate the resolution of support for that. We'll be proceeding for that. There's three other grants that we're looking at, and that council – We'll see in the next few meetings the second and third bullet, the FTA bus and bus facilities program. That's due September 21st, so we're looking at the September 8th council meeting for those. CAD AVL upgrade, that's our system that keeps track of the buses, that counts the passengers on and off. We are looking at upgrading that. We did that when we transitioned the fleet in 2020, 2021, and those systems are five to seven years, and they start to get run down. They're used 15 hours a day. The technology just kind of gets wore out, and we're putting together some cost estimates and going to present that to council on September 8th. Keeping up with that cadence of replacing units, we identified that three of our paratransit units, minivans, are going to be due for replacement end of next year, and we haven't actually programmed funding for those, so we were going to seek grant funding for that, try to get 85% of those vehicles paid for through that grant process, like we have with the majority of our fleet. And then the last bullet there, the ACOG STBG UZA funding, we're looking out at fiscal year, federal fiscal year 30. So it's quite a bit ways out. We'll be submitting other projects, programming resolutions in addition to this for council to consider, but replacement of two fixed route units. So we have two that'll come up for replacement that far out. And again, we're just trying to look ahead, get some grant funding. The sticker shock might be there when you look at it. When I requested an estimate, we're paying $780,000 for the three buses we'll get next year. Expected to shoot up to a little over $1.1 million by 2030.

We're still cheaper than a fire truck, so we appreciate that.

Yeah, but it's just that in a little bit as the unknown the last four or five six years that taught us We just need to be careful and that's just what the manufacturer has said They're looking at for cost wise if and we're looking at the same contracts. We've used in the past Washington State contract So they're using the right amount of percentage.

They can increase per the contract and all that same thing with fire trucks where there used to be a bunch of manufacturers Equity has bought up most of them, and now there's a handful of, less than a handful of manufacturers of fire trucks, and now it takes three years to get one, and they are twice what they were in expense 10 years ago. Same thing with buses, I assume.

I'm not going to say that it's because there's less manufacturers. I don't know that. I've done the research on that, but there is two major manufacturers in the U.S. that build transit buses. Gilligan, New Flyer. New Flyer, yeah. So those are really your options. There are some other players, but those are the major ones. So yeah, and then the supply chains, all of that is kind of built up underneath them. So at this point, it is what it is. We're obviously proceeding forward with that knowledge and trying to stay on top of our replacements. I would much rather be able to come to you all with us only having to spend 20% of that amount than 100% of it when it comes due. And then I'll move on to the ridership numbers. So again, we have June and July. So the first one in your packet will be the Embark Norman performance report for June. And we did have a good month. It was 46,000 compared to 41,000 in June. For fiscal year to date, since that was our last month of our fiscal year, we were just at, for fiscal year 26, 499,474. So there's no magic number with half a million, but we were less than 600 shy. I wish we could have scrounged together 600 more people to ride the last day, but I wasn't watching it that close. For fiscal year 25, just to put it in perspective, we had 476,000 riders, and that's about a 23,000 increase or 4.8%.

I'll embark and ask them to find me 604. Right. But we...

We had a good year. Again, it's not the 20, 25% we were seeing coming out of COVID and with our route changes, but still 5% increase is good, and that's on our fixed route system. And then for paratransit or Embark Plus for fiscal year 26, we had 26,000 riders, just over that, 26,067. And for 25, we had 23,915. So that was actually a 9% increase on paratransit or Embark Plus for the fiscal year.

The total ridership increase percentage over last year.

4.8% for fixed route, and then paratransit was 9%.

4.8% increase in total ridership for the entire year compared to the year before.

Correct. So that's June. There's obviously a lot more numbers in there if there's anything that catches your eye. But for July embark, Norman? Still going up compared to the previous July. So now we're looking at July 26 and July 25. We had 45,642 just last month and then 42,895 in July of the previous year. So still increasing. The average daily, if that throws you off, did decrease by 2.5%, but that's just because weekdays versus Saturdays and just weather can play into that, but overall, we had a higher increase because of that, but the average daily did decrease, which is, it doesn't happen very often, but it is kind of strange. Our paratransit continued to increase. It was about about 80, 90 increase over July of last year. So overall, we'll obviously keep an eye on it and keep reporting back to the committee, but increase is still good for transit ridership, and we never want to stall out if we can. Our on-time performance on Fixed Route, I'll just mention that the last few months has been better. That's a little bit to do with the summer. I think we all feel that whenever we take the pause and most of the traffic is, or some of the traffic's gone. So I think all of our on-time performance getting everywhere is probably down. We're definitely seeing it with the start of school. But our goals, we're still shooting for that half a million mark on fixed route and then just the same amount for paratransit, that 26,000. We'll keep an eye on it as we go through the fiscal year. For Norman on Demand, for June, we ended the fiscal year with just over 26,000 riders on that service. And then for July, we had 1,542. So we're looking at that service like we've talked in the past, formulating an RFP on June. on doing that service or continuing that. And we'll be hopefully putting that out in the fall for what that looks like in the future and bringing it back for council to consider. So happy to take any more questions you guys might have.

And I'm trying to remember if it was Council Member Grant or the mayor. Somebody had contact by a lady in a motorized wheelchair. And she had some issues with some gaps in ADA accessible sidewalks. And I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, it is incredibly hot outside. She's got to qualify for paratransit service or something. How do we get this lady out? She just said, hey, can you fix the sidewalk? And I think we need to help you in transportation. It's a pretty long route going back to church and she had a busy schedule and she laid out how she makes her way and Taylor's team contacted her and She had some access and some knowledge of our system. And Taylor's folks helped her download the app and just really did some great hand-holding for a customer who needs that level of support. And that's exactly the level of support Taylor and his team provided. So we appreciate you. There wasn't anybody else going to be able to show up and help that lady in her particular predicament, but hopefully Taylor helped her mobility, especially in really hot weather, or it's going to be really cold four months from now.

Where are her sidewalks?

We have that gap. We sent it over to Mr. Sturtz and said we need to work on those closures.

It's interesting because she talks about going up Howell Road to Main Street and then over to the Walmart. We have spent... million dollars on that exact route. So that route confuses me. And I would like to, I know we still have her contact. We're still going to contact her about the sidewalks further. And if there's a specific area, we basically went through all of Helmold Row and made that ADA accessible. But as you go east of there, and I just lost the name of the street in my head, there are no sidewalks on that street. Then you turn south and go along west on Garrison. You know, the sidewalks are a little beat up because she's also getting down to Bethel Church. All right. Yeah. Um, Morrison was all I could get. And then as she, and then she gets over to McGee and then down McGee and across, she also identified a problem with pedestrian pedestal. Uh, David, who was here earlier, his crews have already gone out and gotten the parts and repaired that to assist. So we'd like to know more about water, exact problem, exact locations are where she has issues. But we spend a lot of money on Main Street and also on Helmold Road to make sure that that access is available. But if there's something that's become in disrepair, we definitely want to get out there and know about that. But as far as putting that sidewalk stretch in, that's going to be another large project. We will rank it. We'll put it on the list with all the others. But you do get extra point in our ranking system if there's an ADA-specific complaint, which in this case.

It's got a couple gaps.

We repaired a lot of it when we did the Lindsay Street project, and we went pretty far to the north, but then there is a location where we stopped. And as I look at that on the aerial photos, I do a lot of my recon on aerial photos. I can see that there's a driver on the south side. We've got a nice ADA ramp on the north side. It doesn't look like, in fact, I can't verify that it may not be a curb there. So if there are areas like that, we definitely want to help her. But as far as a large project of completing gaps or rebuilding sidewalks, those are the larger projects will take us more time, but we definitely want to help her. Something else that Taylor shared with me is that she is fairly recently become disabled. And so she's having to learn a new way of life and, And Taylor's ability, she, Taylor can tell the story better than I can, but I guess that she had the application from Bark Plus and had some questions. Taylor was able to help her. And then he helped her download the on-demand app. And so, good way for us to be able to reach out and assist a citizen in need.

And I just want to give kudos to Tim Miles in engineering with Steve Guizzo. He's the engineering assistant that does all the sidewalk work. So definitely a team effort. He was going to chat with her along with me, but she ended up calling me back when he wasn't available. But he's going out and assessing those sidewalks. That's not me, so I want to make sure that that's mentioned. He does a great job with that program.

Okay. Steve and Taylor came in together and said, do you think we could just call her together? And I'm like... Great plan. I love that plan. Let's not make multiple phone calls. Don't have to. So quick staff response on that to try to address that ADA concern.

Definitely appreciate the update. I know people complain, but I know we're trying with our limited resources. And when we talk about fixing gaps, you're going to have a set of people who are mad because it's like, oh, you're doing a sidewalk and now I'm 50% responsible for it.

Or I'm losing eight feet of parking on my driveway. There's always a plus and a minus, but that is public right of way. I get it. I understand both sides. I do understand.

But the only way we, again, please, if anybody's listening, tell us what the issues are so we know where to go look and fix it.

I was going to say that we don't go out and do inspections of sidewalks. We don't have the staff and the time to do that. So the only way we know is if somebody lets us know or if there's a problem with the bus transits or paratransit, we need to know so we can do what we can to help with it.

You're with the government, and you're here to help. In this case. That's why you've got to love local government. Sometimes that's good. Councillor Dixon.

Thanks, sir. I love that you're looking into kind of making the paratransit regional. I think that should open up really good things for us. Right. And then I'm going to beat my dead horse on the microtransit. It looks like we're still only meeting 20% or one of the KPIs for the five. I don't know how we make that better.

And we did, I was just looking at that. So specifically on, if you look at the average rider wait time, it is obviously still above the 15-minute target, but it did decrease from 26 minutes to 20 minutes. We've been able to allocate more hours into the service because the demand has gone down. We've talked about that, the ridership being down. But we're not totally putting the hours back in. We've just been able to make a higher quality service. But it's just trade-offs, right? You put more dollars into it, it becomes a higher quality service. You don't have the funding, then if the demand gets out of hand, or out of hand, if there's too much demand, then... you know, the KPIs kind of suffer. So we're obviously monitoring that, and then that's, we did get direction from council to move forward with our RFP. Perhaps there's a better efficient way to do that, and we can allocate more dollars of the program into service and make it more efficient.

And I do agree that it is, I do agree it's necessary for the whole part of the ecosystem of, you know, public transit. Like, I get it. Just, you know, a lot of times we talk about The government's there to step in when the private marketplace doesn't. This exists in the private marketplace. It's the only hang-up I have. Nobody's doing private bus routes. Uber, Lyft, and whatever. That's just my only hang-up. But that's my dead horse. I'll stop beating it. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, it's a valid thing we're going to have to keep taking into consideration every year, even though we're past it being a pilot program. But, you know, I think valid points from staff about if we reduce it with the demand and all that, but it's also just, you know, accessibility and if that is a thing that people aren't using it for as much then I mean it also has that benefit of the in between the fixed route stuff but yeah that's something we really do because it is an expensive service and as staff has talked about we could you know do we could add fixed routes we could maybe do Sunday service some other way but um you know And the partnership with OU is good, and a lot of students are using it. But that ADA accessibility, like Councilmember Dixon said, For students and people leaving Campus Corner, there is Uber and Lyft that they could be using to do that. They don't have to have this. And that intent being the ADA accessibility and filling that last mile gap or whatnot. But the cost is something we're going to continue to take into consideration versus the benefit of it. And if it's not meeting those kind of standards we put in place year after year, then we'll have to definitely think about that. Council Member Dixon?

I was going to say, I forgot to say, like, I don't hate the program, and I think we're doing the best we can with what we have. And I think if the elected officials could give you, you know, triple your budget, then I think we'd be maxing out all of these. But I just want to clarify, like, I don't hate it. Like, I'm not hating on you. I think you all do a wonderful job with it. It's just, we're just constrained.

We had the same discussions. Yeah. Is this our best bang for the buck right now? And that's a discussion that we have, especially when it comes to budget time. That's why it'll be interesting to do an RFP and see what service comes from that. And then we bring that back to council and the further discussions we had about What's the best way forward?

And I do kind of right now, I do think it is our best thing for the boat. You know, as much of a hard time as I give you. Yeah.

And we talked about this when we were starting the program. Microtransit does a great job for times that doesn't warrant a fixed route. Yeah. So late night or areas that are not as dense.

I would just add in this discussion I was reminded talking to some OU professors that the international student community really does use the on-demand service and it's always a trade-off with costs but I do think if one transit passes

That might help us a little bit because I know that micro transit is a part of a bigger plan Yeah, and even outside of one transit Embark has in their plans for for micro transit zone or I think it's actually in the last maps program It's just later on in the maps program. So Yeah, we we shortly won't be the only ones doing it Tulsa as a micro transit program. It's just

And I was going to ask, I know we're doing this RFP, has the private market caught up on ADA accessible vehicles being offered through Uber or Lyft or another ride share?

I don't believe so. And usually if transit agencies partner with the Uber or Lyft, they have a way to kick those riders over to like a paratransit vehicle or a paratransit-like vehicle. So you bought one, total local funds, so that way they get that.

Is it running in the off hours too?

That's kind of the part about our service because it's not really running at the exact same time all the time with the current service. With current embark service, we'd have to have a driver on call potentially or call them in, you know, and just be, we'd have to figure that out. But that's traditionally how they overcome that because there really isn't a lot of private Uber or Lyft drivers that have those vehicles. And even if they do, they're not using them. They're probably using them for themselves to get around and not wanting to use it for other purposes.

Thank you. Thank you, Taylor. Appreciate that. Thank you, sir. All right. Item number four on the agenda is a discussion regarding the potential transfer of Blue Jay Lane slash road, a county road to the city of Norman, including associated costs, maintenance responsibilities, and other related considerations. And we have public works here to... Lead us through that discussion.

Scott Sturtz, director here again. I have Tim Miles, city engineer with me. We've both been working on this for a few years. I've got to say, this has been one of the most unusual cases that I've worked on in my public works experience here. So kind of a lot to share. I've got to say, a lot of information, a lot of help we've gotten is from Mr. Randy Carter. He's in the back tonight, today. And I know that he passed out the little history that he has. We've reviewed that. We got it earlier. We agree with about everything that he's written on there. So we appreciate the help. In fact, without him, we probably wouldn't have made it this far. So kind of as a quick discussion, just kind of show you where this is at. This is out between 72nd and 84th off of Lindsay, where Lindsay stops. Kind of an interesting history there. And then it goes north and then back over and ties into 84th. So there's these two roads that are the roads that are in consideration here. Lindsay Street was open back in the 80s. You can see in aerial photos in 84, 85, it opened. There may have been a cattle trail there, not much of one. And then it goes away and you see it just go away more or directly in the following years from there. And, you know, this neighborhood was platted in 1973, if I pull my numbers together right. So, you know, it's been there for a while. And so that's kind of how this came about. Back at that time, basically, it was decided to close this roadway. I can't really give the whole story. Definition to why this area you can see it's floodplain was frequently flooded I've seen some drawing there's some aerial photos that showed it may have kind of gone around that little You got the river right there in the corner. It may have gone around that it may have gone over it It's hard to tell exactly how it occurred. But at some point of the site the best option here was to close it so To kind of bring you up to current then we'll go back again from our point of view We kind of got a little bit of a background here When this first came up, when Mr. Carter came to us and asked about helping, I said, well, it's a private road and we don't work on private roads. He produced the easements that he, I think, actually went and researched out of the basement of the county courthouse. So he provided those. We went, oh, wow. So the county owns it. And so that's where we wound up. Hold on.

I would just dispute our attorneys do not say that that is the county's easements. So that is not and that was looked at by Sean Rieger. So all I'm trying to do Mr. Chairman is get a working agreement between the city and the county to make sure we get the neighbors taken care of. And I apologize for interrupting, but. I thought it was important that the board and the council members know. We do not have a conclusive piece on the county owning that land. So we're willing to come in and accept the easements and move them over to the county easements after we complete the project. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

All right. That's new news to me. I never heard that before.

I know our attorneys may disagree.

Yeah. I mean, so anyways, so at that point, It was stated that it would be graveled, and then sometime in the 90s, it came back, and through our interlocal agreement with the city and the county, it was paid. And that was probably about the last real maintenance that was done out there, major maintenance. I'm sure there's been some potholes and some other fixing that was done since then. Um, so over time, the maintenance, it's starting to deteriorate as a road does, especially an asphalt road. Um, so, you know, we've met with, we've met with. The county we've met with their consultants who we've met with, with, uh, Mr Carter and, you know, basically to us, whether it's a county road or a public road. It's still somebody else's responsibility, and so we don't normally expend funds on those facilities.

Can you touch back a minute ago? You said, was it the 80s or the 90s you did a city-county?

In the mid-90s.

What was that? Can you explain that?

So we have an interlocal agreement. We've had it for years with the county where we will work together on county roads or on city roads. Typically, how that turns out, usually it's a lot of them have been unpaved roads or roads that need a lot of work. And what we'll do is we'll basically offer each other equipment and labor and whoever owns the vehicle. the roadway pays for materials. A lot of times what we've done on our roads, because we finished paving all of our roads out just a few years ago, is that they would come in, they would kind of do the earthwork, get it compacted for us, then we've got the pavers, we come out and we do the paving. So that's kind of what it's been, and we still have that agreement in place. And that's what my suggestion has been all along, is we'd be happy to come in and help out on interlocal agreement with this roadway. Mr. Chairman.

Council Member Curzio.

Would that end with the city taking it over, or would that end with the county still having to take possession of it?

Yeah, we've never taken over a road after that cooperative agreement. We've never done that.

Some of those will get answered here in a minute, though, I think, with additional information.

I just wanted to understand the full county-city, so I'm good now. It's been a great relationship.

We've used it a lot, and I think we use it to the most mutual benefit to both parties.

Mr. Kerr? If you introduce yourself.

I'm Randy Carter. I've obviously been introduced by Mr. Sturtz earlier. I've been a resident since 1979 on Block 1 of Thunderbird Estates, which is right at the corner of Lindsay and 80th. And I've lived through all this process. The reason Lindsay was closed is because I got stuck many times trying to drive through there after a rain. It was way below the floodplain, as you've mentioned. But Lindsay also, which was a city street at the time, was not paved as well. And so if we back up just a little bit, we signed the easements over to the county back in 1984, and they were accepted in the minutes of the county commissioners. At that time, the county and I believe the city together came in and brought, Lindsay was in horrible shape as well, from 80th all the way back to 72nd, except for about a tenth of a mile that was paved up to, anyway, this is about a tenth of a mile. But the rest of it was in horrible shape. Many times we could not pass out Lindsay either after a heavy rain. So after we signed the easements over, county and the city together brought 80th and Blue Jay up to a level that was that would make it passable basically to replace Lindsay Street that was no longer a viable option at the time. Then in 1994 the city and the county together I believe it's 95 excuse me November of 95 the city and the county came in together and and asphalted Lindsey, 80th, and Blue Jay all at the same time. And with the interlocal agreement, I'm assuming that that was how that was probably done. And there's been mix and no maintenance. I believe the county came in recently and did do a couple of potholes that made it a little smoother. But Lindsey, 80th, and Blue Jay are all getting in bad shape. So my question then is, if the county needs to bring it up to a certain specification, is the city going to do that same specification on Lindsay that was all done at the same time in a cooperative agreement? So I mean, it was all the same project, and it was done in coordination with each other. And I understand. The current county commissioners really got hornswoggled by their predecessors. The county did not even know. Mr. Atkins here went to the county, what, two, three years ago, and they said, no, that's a private road. They didn't even know that they owned it. Also, I've spoken with Paul Meyer, who was former second in command for many, many years. Paul told me that at the time, that after it was paved, that those easements were at that time signed over to the city. We cannot find any record of that anywhere, either through the city or the county, which it is my belief that that was the intention with that, and I believe that the county commissioners at the time just dropped the ball.

Yeah, we've looked. We can find no records.

No, I agree. There's been no record that that's anywhere. So I sympathize with the commissioner in that the county is not in the business of owning roads within the city. And frankly, I mean, the city uses the road. We get trash service, which we greatly appreciate. But the school buses use the road. And this road was taken over with the intention to replace the city road that was no longer functional. So I'm, well, I think that, I mean, like you said, this is a very unique situation. And we're caught in the middle here. And I don't know. I think, to me, the solution seems to be that if we get, I mean, the commissioner's told me he's willing to come in and repave the road, bring it up to the standard that was done at the time, which Lindsay was done to that same standard, which I'm under the impression, and there's been a lot of city roads that have been repaved in an ongoing project, which as a bike rider out there, I greatly appreciate. But is the city going to hold itself to the same standard that it's asking the county to hold to? to fix these roads. And I understand that when the city takes over a road in a neighborhood or something is planted, it has to be to a certain standard. But that standard was not held by the city or the county at that time. And those things have changed. So I mean, it's a confusing to me situation why this can't be brought back to a reasonable standard that I mean, it lasted for 40 years, and it's been in great shape with no maintenance on it at all.

Mr. Chairman, I would also say usually in my time in county government, an interlocal is a legal partnership between the county and the city, mostly for a city street. And it's a great partnership. You guys can appreciate we all have limited funds, both in the county and the city. Normally, if we do a project with Norman or more, the county comes in and does the manpower and lays the road, and the city reimburses us for the materials for that. This is a lot different scenario now. We are in a spot where what I'm offering is nothing that anybody on this board or this staff was responsible for. This was way before some of us were even born. But what I'm offering is now that And our attorneys, and this has been several eyes that look at it, dispute the fact. And I'm not arguing. My goal is that both the county and city take care of the neighborhood. That's my goal out of this. But what I would argue is if we're taking easements on, which we'll have to legally do before we can actually work on that road. then we move it to county specs, and that's by consort engineering specs. A lot of times the counties, even from Oklahoma to Tulsa to Cleveland County, will use different engineering levels. We don't spec to Oklahoma County because Oklahoma County's got 10 times the budget we have. So it's impossible for us to go do that. What I'm offering in this scenario is we take on the easements. The county uses county dollars to build it up back to a good standard for the neighbors. And then in that same interlocal, after the work's completed, since it's inside city limits, that we deed it over to the city after the fact. That road that was built between us and them many years ago has lasted a long time. And I respect Scott and staff. Guys, I get it. I've got my own staff that does the same thing. I'm not disrespecting what you guys are saying. I'm simply saying that we're making a neighborhood in Councilman Kirby's neighborhood and the mayor's that we can get these people happy and get it to a good engineering level standard. We're talking about buy-in right away. We may have utility relocations. That's not going to be feasible for this neighborhood. what we've got engineers is a full road reconstruct brand new asphalt stabilized road like all of us will probably be in some different place by the time this road repairs again and i'm willing to take that to pay for it out of district two's funds so i'll pay for the road all i'm asking in return is a partnership where we can say

So we'll skip this one, but it does say that they accepted the maintenance in the minutes of that meeting. It's a 20-foot wide road today, and we've measured multiple locations. That doesn't meet even our most minimum of standards in Norman. You can see from the pictures, Extensive damage when we see what we call this alligator cracking in all these pictures where it looks like alligator scales That's significant. It says that there is some great value. That's just there's no debating that so Now what the discussion is, and by the way, I'm getting all kinds of information today. That's an offer I've never heard. So I'm learning new things, and this would have been a very different presentation had I had this prior to walking in. So the question becomes, what standard is the city willing to accept? Typically, if we're accepting new roadways, it has to be built to our standard or we won't accept it. And that's in our subdivision regulations. Now, I give that this is not a subdivision because that's for final plat. But the question is, What level of payment are we willing to accept? Our typical, this is what we would call a rural collector road, which is our smallest road that we would do unless you get to a rural estate, which would be much smaller and much less use than this, is 12-foot lanes with six-foot shoulders and then drainage. Currently, when you look out there, there's a lot of the driveways that do have tin horns under them. A lot of them are packed in and you can't see them anymore. So that's another question is if we take this over, what about drainage concerns and drainage issues that could occur? I'm totally interested in discussing further. I just don't know what the standard is that's being proposed that we would recommend or not recommend. We would love to work. We're even willing to do it under an interlocal agreement and help and be a part of it. We want to get this fixed for the neighbors also. And that's what we have offered from day one on this. And we're totally willing to do that. But if it's not to a city standard, then we think that it should stay as the county's property and let them continue to maintain it. Again, if it's lasted 40 years, Let it last another four years. The alternate is that it needs to be built to our standard, and then the city would accept it. But the way that the right now is only 50 foot right away, and that's not enough to really even build it to the standard of the city of Norman. So that's where we've been. Again, further discussion may have had a totally different outcome. option and outcome today, but this is what we recommend to staff, and part of that is because we have other roadways out there where people want us to take them over, and they're substandard, and we feel strongly that we shouldn't be taking over a substandard road that is going to increase our maintenance likelihood and liability.

Mr. McGrath?

I could see kicking us back to have those discussions that need to be had, especially maybe legal disputes. I don't know if we need to talk to Rieger and staff, city attorneys, whichever one that would be, to figure out the easement portion. Because I am curious, what does that mean, a county standard versus what our standard is? I'm not opposed to, because it is a unique situation, meeting in the middle somewhere. But it would be helpful to know what the county standard is.

I agree. And I mean, if it was a little bit wider road, it would be safer for passing. Okay, maybe we say, okay, great, no shoulders. Maybe we can look past some of the drainage issues. But those are all discussions that we need to have to get to a point. But this is what, if this was being built new, this is what we would say we'd have to see in place. Mr. Chairman?

Hold just a minute. Let me get these two council members. Council Member Kirby.

So, I'm kind of like, Commissioner, I'm not trying to offend y'all in any way, shape, or form. I think the way y'all build roads is fantastic. My issue is, is Everything out there is county line road style. I mean, it's not six-foot shoulders. It's what's been there. This road in particular, it hooks back. People aren't going to be out there passing. When you go to a new standard such as what you're trying to do, It's going to involve taking people's easement. It's property. I mean, by force, we're going to take people's property in an area that I know y'all is going to say we have the right to as a city, but it don't make it right. In an area, this has been perfect since... It's been paved. And I get we're trying to upgrade streets, but once again, I'm still fighting that same battle of Ward 5 when the city of Norman annexed it in 1965 was to protect it as a watershed. So where curbs and concrete and all the fanciness in the city is okay, in the county, you might create more problems by trying to go in and get a little too fancy, especially in an area that's already... I mean, I don't know how else to say it. You go out there after a good rain, it might get 100 foot off each side of that river bank out there. So sometimes it's a little bit better just to do the KISS method and just keep it simple because we are talking about the county, and we don't want to take up a lot of the city's money. if you can use that money elsewhere for a project that needs it, like the sidewalks for this lady in between McGee or whatever, I mean, a simple road for simple lifestyle is, I think, kind of sometimes what people are asking for. I mean, I know 60th... putting in shoulders right now. I mean, we're going in in areas and just putting in shoulders, and the time you connect the next mile to it, that area's already wore out when we could have just done two or three miles and kept it simple. And that's kind of where I'm at. I mean, even if we got to pull back the AIM plan, we're going to have to look at Ward 5 independently and not as a uniform method with the rest of the city. And every resident in Ward 5, to the majority, will agree with that same stance that we don't need to go fancy. We need to do what's best for the watershed. And widening roads ain't always what's best. I mean, that's just in my opinion. I think what you're doing, like I said, when you build a road, they're amazing and they hold up to the truck. So I'm not trying to argue with you, but certain areas of Ward 5 don't need to be Four-lane down.

This isn't four-lane, sir. We never recommend that in Ward 5. We never recommended a four-lane road in Ward 5. I never would recommend a four-lane road in Ward 5.

We'll disagree on the 60th bridge in between. That is not four-lane, sir. Because that lane is so wide.

That's not what we did necessarily. What we did is we put in the standard that meets this that's accepted by council under engineering. Does that count?

Councilor Dixon had a question. I think first and foremost. for Dick's reading.

Yes. Sorry, I just kind of forgot what was that. I agree with Council Member Grant. I think I'm not going to say you need to do mediation with Council Member Gansberry, but I think just a meeting with Director Sturtz and maybe County Commissioner McHugh's just to get this a little more solidified so that there's an actual plan that at least they agree on, that then we can cuss and discuss would probably be beneficial. And if we could do that quickly for the neighbors, for the residents. I mean, I... Do not want to slow this down, but I think there's just some more conversation needs to be had outside of this room.

If that makes sense. Mayor, Mr. Chairman, thank you. So, and you guys know this, my responsibility with our district funds is for unincorporated areas. People that don't have government, the county government, I have to answer to them on where our road funding goes. I'm offering in this of our district funds, I think it's around $180,000. Scott, you've got a hard job on that. I want to work with you guys however I can. All I'm saying is why am I making, number one, I would do it to city specs if you guys want to pay the difference. I don't have the money. What I was understanding is it went from around $180,000 to over $300,000. I don't have that in my district funds. So if you guys want to partner and the city wants to split that, I'm all in on that. I would offer that if you guys are making an argument as if it's city easement, right now city trucks are going down it, but you're telling me it's county easements. What I would argue is that we'll take it into county easements and bring it up to county specs and we'll assign that inventory over to you guys. After you guys are done past that point, you can take it to city specs. It's city easements. All I'm saying is that once it becomes county property, we make it county engineering levels. And it's not subpar. This is done by a very talented engineer. It's just not done where we're taking right away from people. I don't think that...

I'm more worried about the thickness and the quality than I am the width. But a 20-foot road is not acceptable, and I would never recommend accepting a 20-foot roadway. That's fine.

Even if the city wants to split the difference on that, I don't have the funds to get it to where you're asking.

We've offered to split funding with you. We've made that offer. That's been on the table. That's the first I've heard of it. I've made that statement multiple times. To me? I know I've talked to it with your consultant. And I can't remember when you and I talked last, but I made that.

If it's a split funding issue, I'm in.

We've said that we'd be willing to work together on this. That's what it sounds like the best...

option is, and if over the next, or before our next CPTC meeting at the end of September, if that conversation could happen, and whatever that cost is, we could discuss it next month. And if council or committee wants to, I mean, I think that's probably the best idea.

Well, and can I say something real quick?

Please, Council Member Kirby.

If it's going to do that, I mean, are you, as the neighbors, willing to go talk to your other neighbors and about the easement and the widening in the road? I mean, does anybody who's in the neighborhood gonna have a problem with giving up, what do you say, six foot on each side of the road or more?

I'm gonna ask for easement. We can, of course, opening up the road by two foot each side.

Without having to take anything. In existing roadway? All in the existing right-of-way, Scott?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's 50 foot out there. Currently, there's only 20 foot. So there's 15 foot on either side right now. Well, then I'm not fighting you at all.

As long as we're not taking nobody's land by argument, I mean... To build this, we would have to.

And that's what I'm saying. We're willing to give on that.

We don't have to build that.

We don't have to build this standard. I mean, I'm trying to find middle ground.

So...

You don't need to put shoulders in or whatever, but I was just thinking about the drainage part and how things flow. That can still be done even with the hybrid version of whatever the county standard is and whatever we're talking about doing to match because flooding has been an issue out here, which is why we're talking about this too.

I don't have any reports from the property owners that they themselves are flooding or this road is flooding. It's really that area to the south where Lindsay was. So that's really, I mean, if you go back, the area in blue there is the floodplain. So there is an area there that the floodplain does go across the roadway. I don't know, does it flood there?

Yes, it does. One time in all the years I've lived out there, it flooded down in that lower corner. That was when they were having to boat people out across the lake.

And I have a question for them. So if we are talking about making this road better and how it handles runoff and all that, and maybe we need easement to improve drainage, is that something that they need to do?

Because we're in a valley, so I get all the runoff on Blue Jay. That, on a heavy rain, my property will go underwater because it can't get through that tin horn fast enough.

Can I ask you to kind of, like, point to me up there? I'm sorry.

He's talking this thing right here. Yeah. Okay. Is this your property, sir, or is it this one?

That's mine there. Yeah, I'm on the other side of the road. Okay. Yeah, up here. Okay. All right. Sorry. Thank you. In a heavy season, my bottom there where it's blue, I can't drive across it. I get stuck, which is fine. I understand it's a flood zone. A lot of water comes through. I've actually seen trees coming down through there at times, but not very often.

But just because of the way the land is laid out there, we're in a valley.

Okay. Well, it sounds like staff and commissioners need to get together and hash this out if possible. And at the next month's CPTC, we can maybe have some solution that we can all agree on. Hopefully. Does that sound amenable to everybody?

Council Member Kirby? I'm with everybody else. Just as long as everybody's happy at the end of it, I'm a happy fella.

Okay. Yeah, well, hopefully 40 years from now, the mayor and county commissioner can worry about this.

My only question, if I can say something here, is that at the end of the day, will the homeowners have someone to call and say, we need something done with the road? Because our problem has been out there is that we get told it's not our road. We jump more than anything. The biggest thing is somewhat of county action.

I'd say regardless, it would either be the county or the city, depending on what the final end result is. But yes, at the end of the day, someone will be responsible. And if it's built to a standard that we can recommend to our council to accept, and we accept the easements, then it would be the city.

And as long as the road is put in nice, then you guys

something happens, it'd be nice to be able to know who we need to call. I'm going to tell you, I think the asphalt they put them back in 95 is better than the asphalt. I see 30, 40-year-old roads that look better than stuff that's five years old, even though we have all the testing we do.

This is also my last CPTC meeting as chair after seven or six years. I'm handing it over to Councilman Gansbury to chair the rest of this year. I'll still participate, but I figure it's good to delegate out to council members. All right. Thank you.