City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Norfolk City Council meeting, August 3rd, 2026. I'd like to call this meeting to order and inform the public of the location of the Opens Meeting Act posted in the council chambers and accessible to members of the public. At this time, we'll have a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call, please.

Granquist.

Here.

Barnes.

Here.

Webb.

Here.

McCarthy.

Here.

Beckman. Here. Jensen.

Here.

Lenge. Here. Ildebrand. Here. Mayer.

Here. All right, with that, we'll start off with special items, and this will be for our city engineer to talk about the recent chip sale project.

Mayor and council, I'll be specifically addressing you with my comments, but I know these comments are also being directed to some of the attendees here from parts of the community. First off, first and foremost, are we gonna fix this? Yes, yes, we're gonna fix this. From there, I wanna go into a little bit of background. And maybe before I go down that path, are we going to fix this? Yes. Is it all going to be fixed this year? Most likely not. We'll be addressing, we'll be starting to look at First Street, Victory Road specifically this fall. We have had some conversation with our current mill and overlay contractor, They're open to the conversation of a change order to their contract, but they cannot guarantee that that would be done this year. They've got a fairly substantial workload. We've already done one change order to them. So their focus right now is getting in, getting the work done that they've already committed to, and getting to their other clients that they've committed to yet this year. But they have indicated that if they were to go into a to add that level of work would probably be next spring for any kind of melon overlay work. So first I want to talk to you a little bit about our contractor, Midwest Coatings. Midwest Coatings is located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Norfolk, Nebraska, and Modale, Iowa. They work in a four-state area, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Their primary work, well, their primary work is HMA chip seal armor coat type projects, so extremely experienced. The owner of the company has 36 years in HMA, 28 years with Midwest Coatings. We've looked at kind of following our, the work here in Norfolk. My staff's been out and looked at work in Iowa. including myself, going over to Iowa. We've also looked at work in Scotts Bluff. Scotts Bluff has a very proactive pavement management program here a few years back. They bonded, they did a $2 million bond to Chippsville, all of the streets in the community, all the asphalt streets in the community, and then they continue to do that. So we have gone out and looked at other communities try and gauge where we ended up with the work that we received. My comments this afternoon or this evening will be followed by a couple comments from Maneli Wagner as well. Norfolk's history on preventative street maintenance. So what did we, in my book, what was probably the number one thing that we didn't do a very good job of, or maybe some might argue we didn't do at all, And that set the expectation for what this project was and what this project wasn't. What was going to occur on these street segments during the project and warning the public and the traffic how to respond to those issues. Our history, as I've gone back and looked at the history of pavement maintenance, specifically chip seals, armor coats, we've never done them. So this was... Somewhat first, yes. We did a project here in 2003 where we chip-sealed Gulfview. But that was the first one in our history that I could find. We were going to go out with an armor coat in 2016, but we pulled back and didn't do that. So historically, we've built the streets. We've operated them to the point that they were at the point of failure. They needed to have a mill and overlay, and then we went and performed a mill and overlay. Just for perspective, the cost of a mill and overlay compared to the cost of a chip seal is a factor of 10. So if it costs you $10,000 to mill and overlay a street, or I'm sorry, if it costs you, say, El Camino. El Camino was about $15,000. It costs you about $140,000 to mill and overlay that, about $1.7 million to reconstruct that. Okay. Why do we need to implement a proactive pavement management program? Well, we need to keep the good good. Once we put the investment into a multi-million dollar project, long-term pavement management program is going to keep that good for as long as you can. We know we have a period of time from 1984 to about 2008 where we had this issue relative to the cement industry and alkali silica reactivity. Gulfview, six, seven years ago, was in pretty bad shape. It had several failure areas going on. So we went in there and we did a concrete repair job, but we couldn't repair and replace all of the concrete in there. And so we wanted to put a seal on that to keep the rest of it that was in good shape in the best shape we could keep it until we could afford to put a mill and overlay on it. So keep the good good. It's the least cost to your program over the long term. I talked about the mill and overlays being 10 times the cost of a chip seal, and reconstruction is 12 times the cost of a mill and overlay. To date, we've reviewed the project with the contractor and Manelli Wagner. Manelli Wagner does chip seals all over the state, and they had prepared the plans for this project as well. I know this is going to be controversial, but the streets, the residential streets turned out well. I'm not going to tell you they turned out perfect. We had light bleeding, overspray. There were some traffic control that allowed some equipment to get on there that did some damage in front of a couple residences. We sealed two coasts to the curb. Preferably we would stay about 18 inches off the face of the curb They sealed right up to the face of the curb. They had overspray that got on the curb. The other thing that we did that was counterproductive to the end result of the project was we overreacted to comments that were coming in from the public and social media. So comments like, why do I have all this gravel down? When is this gravel going to be swept up? Looking out at Scott's Bluff, they leave it down for four weeks before they touch it. That was not the plan. Our plan was to drop the aggregate and have the aggregate picked up within three or four days. And so as comments were coming in, we felt we were okay going ahead and picking that aggregate up within about that 72 hour period. But in the end, Did it was counterproductive in terms of the bleeding and stuff that was occurring more on the residential streets? I'd say less so on on our on our collector streets. That was a different different issue Benjamin Avenue in Georgia those turned out well I really don't see any issues at all on, Georgia. I see very few issues if any really on East Benjamin Avenue so We're looking at all of these street segments and digesting everything that went into them temperatures humidities traffic It rained Saturday night. We're looking at all of these different components of the project. Was the oil okay? Was the oil the correct viscosity? What was the gradation or the mix of the aggregate that was dropped on those? And then was that within the specifications? So far, there is no silver bullet that is saying this is exactly why First Street bled so much or why Victory Road bled so much. I don't think it's necessarily one thing. I think it's a combination of two or three of those in some quantity. First Street and Victory Road, from a seal perspective, overall the seal's pretty good. From a surface aggregate perspective, the pullout issues that occurred where we've got small areas that pulled out, got stuck into tires and pulled out, or larger areas that pulled out, certainly those things were not anticipated, not expected, and they're definitely non-desirable in the finished product. I mentioned kind of the things that we've looked at and we're still evaluating. Residential streets, I talked about staying 18 inches off the curb face. Certainly desirable. In Nebraska, minimum design standards in Nebraska, a 31-foot street is three 10-foot lanes. It goes right to the face of the curb. And I've argued with the state's minimum design standards that Where's our curb and gutter? We really don't define the gutter section of our curb. And it would be nice to define that as that 18 inches off the face of the curb. But that's probably why I would say the contractor milled to the face of the curb. But certainly going forward, that would be something that we would address and define that curb. Better traffic control, less access directly following the laydown operation. We did review the laydown operation as well in terms of the sweeping of the streets, the shooting of the binder or the bitumen, binder, bitumen, asphalt, tack. It's all the same, sort of all the same stuff. But Yep, the streets were swept. Yes, they were adequately tacked. We've looked at the quantity of bituminous material that was laid down ahead of the chips. Everything was within appropriate ranges. I think, you know, just a couple more comments here, and I'll comment on something that I received from one of the landowners up on El Dorado, but Some of you have heard me mention that we have a 90 million dollar backlog in street maintenance in this community for whatever reason But that's what exists and that's what we've got to figure out How do we keep the good that is there good as long as we can? So that we can focus the dollars that need to go into Reconstruct as much as we can but then once it's reconstructed Having that proactive pavement management program so that we can keep that in good shape is very important and Our collectors, arterials. I think I'm just going to skip down here to the comments by one of the owners that went to Sioux Falls. So one of the owners on Eldorado went to Sioux Falls and took some pictures of some chip seals up there. Yes, they do look good. I agree. I agree. They've had a proactive pavement management system that dates back into the 80s. There was a lot of work done on that through the 90s. But they've dialed it in, and they do a very good job. It didn't just happen. There was trial and error in their process. I was there for seven years during the early 90s and was part of that process. So I'm very familiar with it. With regard to sealing concrete, a lot of conversation that's floated around there. Concrete is a pavement just like asphalt. We currently seal the cracks in concrete with asphalt material. It's a hot poured material. And whenever we overlay, in fact I just went over to Sioux City over the weekend and they're shooting an asphalt tack on top of concrete highways getting ready to do an overlay. They're not milling it. They're going to do an overlay right over the existing surface. But they're shooting asphalt on it as a tack material, and that asphalt functions as a seal as well. So I don't know if the thought out there is that the seal isn't going to stick to the concrete or you shouldn't seal it, but It's just a progression of sealing asphalt. We seal asphalt because of the oxidation of the asphalt materials and the breakdown of the asphalt around the aggregate. But primarily, we seal asphalt to keep the moisture out and keep the chemicals out. The number one failure mechanism of any pavement is moisture. And so that's, you know, as we look at our concrete streets, we look at that ASR activity that's going on in there The number one thing to do to keep that ASR at bay is to keep the moisture out. Secondary would be to keep the chemicals out. Those are my comments. Again, I'm going to go back to the very first comment. Are we going to figure this out? Are we going to fix it? Yes. Can I tell you definitively when and how? No, but we will. Dick, you want to come up and just make some comments on your observations? Yes.

Do I have to sign in? Please do. I'm Dick Johnson with Manelli Wagner and Associates. I've been with them probably about seven years. I don't remember for sure. We did the specifications and bid documents for the chip seal project. And then the city chose to do the construction engineering themselves, which is fine. And then they had some problems, so they called us to, I guess evaluated is probably the best word I can use there. We went out and I called the contractor and got his oil tickets and his rock tickets, which we compared. Now, it would have been ideal if they'd kept them separate for each job, but they didn't. but we were able to quantify them. We had the dates that they were placed and kind of get an idea of what was used on which project. Overall, the quantities were within the range that you would expect from the planned quantities. The first one we try to look at is, well, there was too much oil or not enough chips. or both and again they hit pretty well with the planned quantities. So we looked elsewhere. I sent our chief inspector out with Steve one day last week and he's seen an awful lot of armor coat projects over the years and he went and checked it and mainly was looking for if there were chips embedded in the asphalt which is what you want. He drove all the projects and looked at them and took a screwdriver out and checked them like that and came back and reported that there was chips embedded in the asphalt. I guess from the standpoint of if the project was a success or not, it did what it was supposed to as far as sealing the streets. In most cases, now you had some You've got issues, like Steve said, on Victory Road and First Street. I think a lot of the problems came from too much traffic too early. And especially at Paz Walk, there's some raveling in rough areas. And that, to me, is from people stopping for the stoplight or whatever and then accelerating. That doesn't do real good on new pavement of any type. These are the kind of things which the contractor said he will fix. As far as mill and fill, I would recommend against that, at least in the near future. You know, you've got a good seal on there. It's going to be pretty disruptive to the neighborhoods, not only from the standpoint of the construction traffic and all that sort of thing, But you also have to stay off the new asphalt for three or four hours while it cools, which is going to cause more problems. There's a pretty fair chance that some asphalt will get trapped in the driveways. Keep in mind the first thing they do is go and spray a tack coat down, which is just basically the same thing they did with your chip seal and sprayed asphalt down. come back and, well, the first thing they do is mill it, of course, but then the tack coat goes down, and that's just wet oil which is put on there, and you've got to stay off of that. It's going to be real tight working in El Dorado or Gulfview Drive. It can be done, but it's going to be quite disruptive for the neighborhoods for a while, and I think you ought to take that into consideration when you're deciding what to do with the mill and fill. That's all that we've really found out so far. I'm still looking for a few things to go over. But like I said, you know, and it's fairly common for on these types of jobs for the contractors to have to go back and make small repairs. So that doesn't bother me a whole lot. And most contractors will do it at their expense. Any questions?

Well, what are those few things that you're still waiting on out of curiosity? What are those few things you're still waiting on out of curiosity?

Well, mainly me trying to figure out how the traffic affected it and if we put the traffic on it too soon, which I suspect we did. And again, you know, you've got a lot of traffic in Norfolk, especially on First Street, and a victory road that you've got to accommodate. Okay.

Thank you, Dick. I'd be happy to answer any questions, but I think just from a process perspective, I'd encourage you to hear from the public. I know there's a contingency here and they want to be heard. I'd encourage you to take their comments and we can circle back and I can answer as much questions as you guys would like in another session or however you'd want to manage that, Mayor.

I just have one comment, I guess, and I just beg to differ with you, Steve. When you said most of the residential streets were done well, I'll beg to differ on that one. I honestly don't believe any of the citizens would agree with that statement as well.

Steve, I Dick asked a question, and they went out and checked the roads. But one of my questions that I don't think got answered was, is there a certain thickness that needs to be down of this? And do we feel that that appropriate thickness has been done?

Yeah, the chip seal from a thickness perspective, and Dick may have more of an answer around that, but generally, so we drop three-eighths inch, what's called a three-eighths inch minus, so it's three-eighths inch aggregate, and then there's a component of the mixture that's a little, that's less than that. You want to have, in theory, about a half of that, half to two-thirds of that aggregate embedded, so that kind of gives you an idea in terms of thickness of that layer over

Two-thirds ish of three-eighths whatever that math would crank into So I got two two questions on that thickness one is when I drove the roads and looked at them Golf view and Ilderado especially was just people turning into there Just people turning into their own driveways or driving down the streets or going around the cul-de-sac whatever it might be it looks like it's still tearing up and And then I also have been able to find areas where I still see concrete and not even chip seals. So obviously there's not the appropriate thickness.

Correct. And there's a lot of stuff that happens on the street. Is it uncommon that you would see some areas that are missed? I wouldn't say that you should see a lot. You know, somebody spilled battery acid or... Something else out there. There's there are things that can interact that and so as I mean again as I as I look at the streets are there are there One or two small, you know areas maybe the size of a manhole That yes, but they're fairly rare out there, but I'm not going to say they don't exist Is it as necessarily as uniform as Both from an aggregate cover, per se, an oil cover, as maybe the picture I saw in Sioux Falls, no. But did it seal the surface? Aside from those small areas, yes. Aside from some of the pull-outs. Obviously, on Victory Road, there's a lot of pull-out. First Street, there's a lot of pull-out. That's more isolated at intersections on First Street, but... There are some areas, longitudinal areas, that aren't right in an intersection. Victory Road from the south end to the north end has a lot of pullout, which tells me the percent truck traffic had a lot to do with that.

I wouldn't even call this in that area. I mean, I see open concrete where they literally didn't put anything down near the cul-de-sac on El Dorado Road. Literally nothing down. And not far from that, literally on somebody's driveway. And then down the street, literally. Those are the things that I think some of these people are here to complain about, that it was not done correctly and smoothly that needs to be taken care of.

Steve, I do have a question for you. So we do have a mill and overlay coming in to do work in Norfolk. Is it possible at the next meeting we'd be able to have a potential change order to... change maybe a street that we had already had designated for this to change gears? Do you think that company could?

I would say yes. Yeah, absolutely. If there's a, you know, yeah, you know, if they're, If they're willing to come back, they've kind of indicated that if they couldn't get to this, they'd be able to come back in the spring and finish this. But yes, if there's a desire to shift one of those pieces out and put this in front of that, absolutely that can be a conversation. Anything else?

I got one question about this chip sealing over concrete. Should have it been milled and prepped prior to putting an oily surface on a rigid road and then chip sealed into concrete?

I would say no. Like I say, right now they're squirting oil or shooting oil, tack oil on unmilled concrete over on Sioux City. I don't know what highway that is, Highway 20, maybe something else. And they're going to put a mill and overlay on it. So it's a bonding agent to connect the new asphalt to the existing concrete.

I understand that if they're putting asphalt on top.

But the oil is asphalt. The oil is asphalt.

So you put a tack oil on the concrete to go ahead and put the asphalt on top. I understand that.

Yeah. And this is no different than that tack. It's got a little bit different mixture to it, but it tacks down on that concrete just fine.

In fact, the milling... Is it an industry standard to put tack oil and chip seal over concrete? Is that a pretty common practice?

I would say no, it's not common. But certainly it's an acceptable practice in terms of sealing and sealing the asphalt. Asphalt, I mean concrete. Concrete's porous. An oxidated asphalt is porous, which is why it takes to an oxidated asphalt surface fairly well. Concrete in nature is a porous surface. Water gets down in there and it turns that concrete from a light white gray to a dark wet gray after a rain event. That's the porosity of that concrete. Shooting that medium cure oil in there, we wanted that oil to absorb into that concrete. I think it did very well. We've had Jebro here. As I talked to the city of Kearney, they're very interested in coming out. If we don't Mail those things up too fast. They'd like to come out and take a look at that because they got the same issues we do and Anything else not I'll turn it turn it over.

I'll just one probably quick thing here Obviously we've taken a lot of calls on this. I think a couple of you guys have met with people within the neighborhood I've drove in this driven the streets some look okay some look absolutely horrible Absolutely horrible the one I wouldn't an Eldorado today, and you can see where everybody But he stops and turns when they back out of their driveway. I don't care how we slice it. You can't tell me that looks good. It doesn't. So we've got an issue we've got to fix. So I think tonight's about we've got to come up with a solution, provide people answers. You've got a whole bunch of angry customers out here. And so let's figure that out and how we're going to do that. It just doesn't look right. I mean, the other stuff is starting to look pretty good. I was on South First Street the other day. It doesn't look too bad. But I can't say the same for some of the roads. So... I think we need to start there and recognize the fact that I applaud you for trying to come up with a preventative maintenance plan for our roads. We need that. And I understand this is a cost deal where it's for every $1 you invest with a chip seal, it's $1 to $10 for an overlay and then $1 to $100-some for a full concrete replacement. So we have to look at all types of maintenance for our roads. But when you've got one that goes south on you, you've got to fix it. Yep. That's kind of where we're at. So we need to probably start talking about solutions and not really about, well, this and this. Because all we're doing is giving out excuses, and people hate excuses. I don't like excuses.

My department, we need to understand what happened so that we can... We need to understand what happened.

There's something happened. Because it doesn't look like a typical trip. Corey was in Omaha, took a picture of a chip, so it looked beautiful. sent it to me, and I'm like, this does not look like what we've got here. Had a meeting with a construction company. You know, he's doing big projects out in Scotts Bluff and Omaha and all over the place, and got a good reputation for what he does. But I don't think he even thought those looked that great. I think he was a little bit upset at the fact that they overspread the curves. So, I mean, they're just, we just got an issue. Let's talk about solutions tonight and not be pointing at each other. Let's get it figured out.

I think the contractor would want me to express that Yeah, just what you said. He's not happy, right? He's just invested $3.5 million into creating business in Norfolk, putting a permanent asphalt in Norfolk. We are one of three communities that they are officed in across four states. This is the last thing the contractor wanted to happen, and that's what he wanted me to message, was this is... He's just as interested in the why and getting it fixed, and he's committed to that, and he expressed that to us. But he knows it's a black eye. I know it's a black eye, and we want to get it fixed.

All right. Thanks, Steve. Unless there's any more questions for Steve from this audience here, from the council, we are going to go to our public comment period where everybody will have a chance to talk here. And that is scheduled for this night. That's why I'm assuming... Everybody's here. So Steve or Scott's going to read something here real quick. And then I might say another thing after that.

Yep. Just got a prerecorded message here. Just kind of rules of the game as we move forward. We're moving into the public comment period. Each speaker will have up to five minutes to address the mayor and city council in accordance with the Nebraska open meetings act. The council and city staff will listen carefully to your comments. However, we'll not respond to questions or engage in discussion during this portion of the meeting. We ask that all comments be directed to the mayor and city council and be presented in a respectful manner. Appreciate the input, and your comments will be taken into serious consideration by the city council as part of the decision-making process.

Thanks, Scott. So basically what he's saying is we can't comment on your comments because it's not on the agenda, which is really going to make you frustrated, just so you know, because you're going to come up here and say something, and we're all going to stare back at you with blank looks on our faces because we can't say anything because it's not on the agenda tonight. Now, we are going to move forward, I'm guessing, after tonight, and put something on our agenda, have those discussions. So just tell me when I step over the line here. She keeps me in check. But so that would be obviously solutions we'll be talking about at the next council meeting. So Phil, you're both gonna come up and speak. I just don't want you to get frustrated because we're not responding back to you. But we are taking it all in, okay? So that being said, the floor is open for public comment.

Okay. Sasha bone. Um, I've signed in already, so I'm going to do this a two part. Actually I emailed last week or the week before about this. And so I'm just going to start. I have two parts. Um, first I want to address the importance of decorum during public comment, and then I want to recognize strong community engagement. We saw through Norfolk during the month of July, as I've shared since may sharing what is working, the great opportunities and vision that make Norfolk an amazing community. When I attend city council meetings, I do so with the expectation that this space operates with structure, fairness, and respect for community members, speakers, council members alike. Public comment is an important part of our civic process because it provides residents with a direct and transparent way to engage with the elected officials. During the July 6th, 2026 meeting, I observed moments during public comment that moved away from the purpose. Some remarks were directly specific to individual council members rather than the council as a collective body. At timestamp 1608, a council member was personally attacked with a derogatory statement for getting to take your nap. Additional comments at timestamps 2238, 2413, 2426, 2428 individually called out council members. Norfolk City Code 2191, 2192 established comments need to be directed to the council as a whole. And section 220 provides a presiding officer authority to maintain decorum when those standards are not followed. Purpose is raising this and ensuring that public comment remains a constructive space where all perspectives can be shared while maintaining fairness, consistency, and respect. Clear expectations and consistent enforcement strengthen the process. I respectfully ask that these standards continue to be upheld moving forward. With that said, I want to shift recognizing what's working. For those that don't know, I have started NOVA, which is Norfolk Opportunity for Visions and Actions. organizations, community members, focusing on those positive things. So for in July, this is what I have come up with. Farmers Market, July 11th and 25th, brought in 300 attendees each. River Point District Concert, July 17th, 650. Music in the Park, 1,100 people on July 9th, 2,500 people on July 23rd. Sizzling Santa Days for Farmer's Market, 1,200 people. Oddfellow Parade and Downtown Activities, July 4th, 4,500 people in the River Point District between 8 and 1 p.m. Freedom Fest, we don't have those numbers yet, so I will get those because I'm super excited about those. Parks and Rec, 280 shelter rentals, 9,000 plus ice skaters. 2,400 games and practices on our fields up from 1,200 10 years ago. Camping revenue, 50,000 up from 24,000 10 years ago. Rec revenues, 90,000 up from $3,000 10 years ago. Concessions, 202,000 up from 123. Swimming lessons alone this year brought in 35,000 for two months. What if we had an indoor? How much would that bring? Johnson Park at 100,000 cell phone hits up from 1,800. 1,000 pre-construction and 41,000 attendees at AquaVenture this year alone. Again, these are estimates. They are not direct numbers. Beyond events, we also saw continued progress through community development. The foundry apartment was a 166. Housing unit, the Northeast Nebraska Regional Land Bank accepted two offers supporting affordable housing opportunities by helping transform vacant or abandoned properties into habitable homes. Lyle has more information if you want that. The Norfolk Freedom Point Memorial was established. Amazing if you haven't seen that. Our library, arts work, River Point, all of these things are happening because of what the city is doing. With time, I also want to point this out. As far as the streets go, I wasn't going to say anything, but I am. I come from a background that has worked construction my entire life. Every person up here, most of them, you guys have a business. If a business, if an employee or a consumer had an issue with you guys, you would handle it appropriately. I also feel that this was done way too fast. We need to have the expertise of the Engineering department Millie Wagner. Sorry if I said that wrong. Those are the experts I think the questions need to be asked to them instead of doing a response to the quickness of instant gratification of frustration I understand frustration is there I also live up in the neighborhood. I do have to say for those that are not in the words I'm unsure where some of the comments are coming from and I do feel that it's important that people are following through with what the protocols are, having those conversations in a respectful manner. I'm here for any, I know you guys can't answer, but I'm more than happy if we ever need to sit down and talk more. I also drove the streets. I agree, like, the intersections suck. I'm not gonna lie. Like, I don't like the intersections. I also understand what the process is, though, too. It's not something that's easy. And I also think you guys, as a city council, I'm gonna hold you guys accountable The streets have been bad for decades. And so when you guys hold the engineering department and the streets department liable of like get your budget down, that's what they did with the money you guys allowed in the budget. So I also think that needs to be a part that is said to the constituents here that may have issues is it's not about excuses. It's about everybody taking accountability for their part in it. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Anyone else?

Hello, I'm Steve Schramm. I live up on El Dorado Road, and we've all worked as a neighborhood to try and figure out what's going on with the chip seal process and how it got to this point. A lot of us attended the meeting July 23rd with Mr. Ramos, and they were talking about the one in the six-year plan. most of the people there were Wanted to talk about the chip seal process and what what happened what went wrong? How do we fix it and so forth? to start with on They started work on our street June 15th And what we got and at our door was a little sign said don't park on the street today. We're going to be doing road work and then all of a sudden they're out there putting chip sealed out of it. None of us knew it was coming. We went to the city website and looked to see what the projects were and on the city website for the one year plan it had Several streets to be redone and they have they were color-coded as to what type of work was going to be done The ones in red were chip seal Eldorado was not in red. It was something else so we had no idea that this was coming We had no input into the process nothing I also want to say that I My son, Scott Schramm, lives in Gretna. He's a district manager for the Iowa Department of Roads. He came home after they had put the chip seal down. He said, what did they do? And I said, well, here it is. And he says, well, I'm going to do some research on this because this is not right. And when we met on July 23rd with Mr. Ramos, after all the discussion, he said he would, at tonight's meeting, make a change order request on the project to do a diamond chisel to remove all the chip seal and then come back in and do asphalt on top of the concrete street. He said he would make that recommendation tonight. It's not on the agenda. That's upsetting to us because that's what he said he was going to do. But in visiting with my son, he came up, he did a lot of work. He did some investigation. The main issue here is you cannot put chip seal on top of concrete, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. My son contacted several of his colleagues from six or seven states around here, and they say they would never put chip seal down on concrete. And here's the reason why. In an email that Steve Ramos sent out, he said, well, it's all about the ASR science. You can visibly see the ASR, which is the alkali silica reactivity. You can see that in the concrete. And he said in his comments at the July 23rd meeting, His comments were, you can see it on every street we went to. My son looked at images of the street, our street before they did that, and he said absolutely no sign of ASR. He said what you're seeing is some deterioration with salt going down on streets and so forth, and you're seeing that in the lines of the concrete. But he said nobody would put that down. And you can, one of the reasons why is if you've driven up our street, if you're backing out on the street and you're cramping your wheels, you're pushing that chip seal. And normally you would push into, if it's on top of like an asphalt street, you would push it in the asphalt. This is a concrete street. So when you do that sharp turn, you're pushing that that chip seal, there's only one direction it can go because it can't go into the concrete. It just slides away. And so this is terrible for the city to do chip seal on concrete streets, period. And he would gladly come up here and testify in front of all of you if he wanted to. This is why you don't do it. And it's obvious if you drive down our street why you don't do it. Because we're going to have a mess all year. And what I'd finally like to say is... Yes, you've got a one and six year plan. The problem is you need to fix what happened now. Those things need to wait. You need to fix the mess that was made now with the money you've got.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Al Rajee. I reside at 1706 El Dorado Road. And first and foremost, I just want to start this conversation by saying that I think a lot of things that has happened here in our street, in our community, has been lack of communication. Like Steve mentioned, the communication was never done with the neighbors as far as what was going to happen to our street. But more importantly, when I reached out initially and talked with Steve, Ramos, and Will with the city department, they both told me that this product that they applied to the road would dry within 72 hours. Then they would come up and sweep up the rock that they spread on top, and then the street would be fine. We are over a month and a half into that project. And we have insurance claim for vehicle damage. We have insurance claim with the company for damage to the shoes, to the clothing. And our homes are full of this chemical. We drag it into our garages. We drag it into our driveways. And those things we can't correct, but we can correct the street. And we should, because A dead-end street that only has traffic for 32 homes should never be chip sealed because there's not enough traffic to drive that material, even if you could drive it into the concrete. There's not enough traffic on that road to be able to do that. Now, if you look at 37th Street, it's an asphalt street. They chip sealed that, and if you drive that, That's totally different than what the product that we got with the streets that were concrete. But all I can ask is that the city of Norfolk and the contractor, I think the contractor here has to have some liability. They did a lot of damage to the curbs. They did a lot of damage to the driveways. One of my neighbors, her driveway, her first two panels of her driveway is the tar and the chip seal. We can't do that to people's homes and not expect them to be upset and come forward and ask for something to be changed. I know the council, I know Steve made that comment that he was gonna come to the meeting tonight and recommend that the street be overlaid. That's not happening. I'm hoping that the council and Steve can get together and come up with a resolution to make this right. So in my business, When we do something wrong, the best thing we can do is make it right. And I think this is exactly what the city of Norfolk needs to do. So thank you for your time.

Jim McKenzie. I googled, is it good practice to chip seal over concrete? And the answer was no. Chip sealing directly over concrete is generally not good practice. Concrete has a smooth, rigid surface and expands and contracts differently than asphalt emulsion, leading to a weak bond. This causes stone chips to quickly break loose, pop out, and peel under vehicle tires. Why it fails. Poor adhesion. Liquid asphalt binder does not grip smooth concrete as well as it grips existing asphalt or a crushed stone base. Delamination. Turning vehicle tires easily twist and shear the aggregate free from slick concrete substrate. It's one thing to make a mistake. We're all human. Mistakes happen. We correct them and we move on. But it's a whole different animal to make a major mistake and then claim that the mistake doesn't exist, or to diminish the seriousness of the situation. The streets are still tearing up, they're still rutting, and they still have loose tar and aggregate on them. How is there not already a plan in place to fix this? It's shocking to me that that hasn't already been done. A month and a half in, streets are horrible, people are trying to drive on it, it's a mess. You know, it's just, you've got to admit it. It's time to fix it. It's not rocket science. Let's remove the streets that you added the overlay to recently and reallocate that cost and that time for the contractor to Eldorado and Gulfview, and let's get it done this fall. Thank you.

David Jansma, I too was at the street meeting, and a couple things stick in my mind, but the one that sticks in my mind was Steve standing in front of all of us saying, I'll present it to the council and I'm sure they'll approve it. That's what he said. Instead of saying we'll work on a fix, he said basically he could sell it to you guys to fix it. This whole thing is a mess. and it needs to be corrected for the whole community.

All right. My name is Dan Pupp. I live up on 1405 El Dorado. And I just want to echo what's been said already, plus add to the urgency of it. the problem will not go away on its own. And so I think if any of you, I imagine all of you, have driven up on El Dorado Road, you know it's a mess. My grandkids call out the elephant tracks in the street. The blotches are continuing to pop up. The gravel is continuing to get in the driveways, in the grass, on the tires, everywhere there is. To me, my main focus is just to say there is a sense of urgency to this. Please don't let it go on. We've heard a lot of engineers speak and a lot of different things being said here about what could have happened, what's right, what's wrong, maybe it's sealed, who knows. It's really a mess that's getting worse. It's not going away on its own. The stuff is continuing to fly up. And so I would just like to be sure to voice that to all of you to please understand there is some urgency. It's getting worse by the week, by the day. And I'd like to find a solution to it as quick as possible. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Sarah Granquist and I live at 1701 El Dorado Road. My concern is if this is a project that's not taken care of right away, what are they gonna do this winter when they have to clean the streets? Are all those rocks gonna be up in our yards and then our yards have to be redone? I mean, I've seen the street cleaner up there. All it does is just swirl it around. It hasn't done anything to the project. I think this project needs to be taken care of before winter comes. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Hi, I'm Ilana Haybrock. I live at 1503 El Dorado. And yes, everything they've said is absolutely true. It is a mess. But I just want to say thank you to everybody who came up and looked at that mess. And I appreciate your comments.

Anyone else?

I'm Scott McHenry. I live on Gulfview Drive. We've lived there for almost two years. In October it will be two years. And I've had some customers on that road for quite some time. And so three years ago when the chip seal project was done on Gulfview, I was kind of surprised that it was done on concrete because I actually did grow up in Scotts Bluff and I've lived all across the state. I've seen chip seal throughout the state. It actually happened in my street when I was roughly 10 years old. And I saw the whole process happen. And it was successful. And I've seen it successful other places. But it was never done on concrete. It was never on concrete. And so when I saw this done on concrete three years ago, I was kind of shocked. And so when we bought the house, we could see, you know, already the track out and the concrete exposed from the project three years ago. And I just kind of chalked it up to a failed project that the city wouldn't look at again. And when I got the notice about this year's chip seal, I was kind of caught off guard because literally a week before, I had to clean up my garage from what had been done three years ago. So not something I think that the city should pursue anymore, especially on top of concrete. I do agree, on top of 37 seems to be holding up a little bit better. But just echoing everything on Gulfview, they have good organization there. Neighbors come in and I'm not going to repeat a lot of what they say, but I just hope something gets done, and the urgency is key. It's just something that needs to get fixed, and like I said, let's not do it on top of concrete anymore. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Go once. I don't see anybody standing up. So, all right. We will end the public comment period. Thank you for your comments. They're duly noted. And we'll be looking forward to, I shouldn't say looking forward to, nobody once looks forward to this, but working on a solution. So I don't know how that would keep you informed of all that, I'm sure. Next city council meeting, they'll probably be, we'll have something to talk about there a little than we do tonight. So that being said, thanks for your patience and thanks for your comments. Yeah, if you want to go, now's the time. I'll wait for you to head out. Yeah. Which one is he? Okay, on to our recommended action. I need approval of the consent agenda.

Your Honor, I'll be abstaining from this vote. All right. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Your Honor, I'll be abstaining from this vote as well.

All right, thank you.

I'll do a second.

The motion is second. Please vote.

But in the affirmative, Grantlist, Arns, Jensen, Lange, Webb, Beckman, Abstaining, McCarthy, and Hildebrand. Motion carries.

All right. On to the approval of the full agenda, please.

I make a motion.

Second. Motion to second. Please vote.

All council members voting in the affirmative. Motion carries.

All right. That brings us to item number 23. Consideration of ordinance number 5970 and annexing a tract of land generally located one half one quarter mile west the intersection of East business Avenue and Highway 35 on the south side of Benjamin Avenue This item passed on first reading at the July 6 2026 City Council meeting and on the second reading at the July 20th 26 City Council meeting being that it's a Third reading there'll be no discussion

I move consideration of ordinance 5970 on third reading. Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Short title, please.

An ordinance of the City of Norfolk, Nebraska to annex to said city the part of the northeast quarter of section 24, Township 24 North, range 1 west of the 6 p.m. Madison County, Nebraska.

Council members voting the affirmative ordinance number 59 70 carries on third reading Right on on item number 24 consideration of resolution 2026 that's 31 approving a citizens housing task force advisory committee to serve in an advisory capacity to the mayor and City Council on matters related to the residential development and neighborhood revitalization I Would move consideration of ordinance number 20 26-31 second Right motion second and discussion says mayor so I guess that's me So if you have any questions about this task force you can ask me now So essentially what the plan would be with this task force is going to help us Look and advise on current codes and regulations that we have in the housing industry and what we can do to help make basically remodels, I would say, remodels and things like that, more affordable on the code side of things. So we'll be addressing with that using the help of our staff at the same time with this board to move forward with that. So if you have any input or anything like that, let me know. Let's see.

Anticipate a number of makeup that way. Go ahead.

Yep. So as of now, there's 12 voting members and seven ex officio. Those seven ex officio will be city council representatives. The initial appointee will be Frank Arns, as well as the director of planning and development and essentially all of her staff members, including the fire marshal. The 12 voting members, taking a look at it, they really wanted to hone in on those specialties. So it'll be like two residential electrical contractors, two residential plumbing contractors, two residential mechanical contractors, two residential building contractors, a loan officer from a financial institution, a licensed realtor, and two members of the Norfolk Area Home Builders Association.

Thank you. You're welcome.

It's going to be a fun meeting. Anyway, Frank, you had a lot to do with putting this together. Do you have anything to say?

We got a nice variety of people that volunteered to be on this, and quite honestly, there was a lot of interest. There were a lot of people, everything from electrician to plumbing to just general contractor. There's been... Let's just say sometimes some hardship when it comes to remodeling. And we all get to sit down and talk about what we can possibly do to make it better and possibly easier. And we'll never know until we sit down and talk. So it's kind of a good group we got put together and looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

All right. Shane, I'd say I like the idea of it. I mean, time is of the essence in this, too. The sooner you can gather some things, look through some things, and have different eyes on how people interpret code is definitely a good thing to review. Obviously, we still have to go by state codes, but is ours too restrictive, or are we interpreting it in a manner that's not the way it was intended, right? Hopefully something comes up fairly quickly, not save everything for one meeting, but as we move through that process, have something to come forward if there is anything there.

And some of the goal, too, would be to come up with different ideas regarding code, maybe how those codes look for remodel and historical housing, and then presenting those at the state level and trying to get those passed. So we're trying to be a little bit of a trendsetter here, I guess you'd say, for other communities going through the same thing we are. Anyway, anybody else have anything to add? Public comment or public input? All right, that's all I have on it. I think we've got a motion and a second already, so if there's no more discussion, please vote.

All council members voting in the affirmative, resolution 2026-31 is adopted.

All right, that takes us to item number 25, consideration of ordinance number 5991, authorizing insurance of various purpose bonds for permanent financing for Pavey District 520 and 521, Water Districts 128 and 129, and Sewer District 255 in the principal amount not to exceed $3,900,000.

Thank you, Mayor. This one.

One second. Just need a motion and a second to open.

Offer for consideration ordinance number 5991. Second.

Thank you. Okay.

There you go. Okay now John now you're up. You're like a lab on its first trip. It's like I'm new here.

Tugging at the leash. So I appreciate the grace there. This evening we've got Scott Keene here with Piper Sandler who's been representing for us in getting these issues prepared. We are doing, and he's here in the audience, available for any support and answering any questions you've got. We are anticipating doing a rating analyst call. I believe Thursday afternoon To get this get get an analyst rating on our on our bonds and our in our position as the city We anticipate that going well, and then these would these would be going out to market. I believe Scott later this month in August, right? so if there's any questions regarding the process or the sale and how it's going to proceed I I'm happy to try to answer those questions. And, of course, I've got Scott here as well.

Any questions for John or Scott? Any public input? All right, John. Without having any other questions, I think we're probably good here. Okay. So short title, please.

An ordinance authorizing the issuance of general obligation various purpose bonds series 2026 of the city of Norfolk, Nebraska and the principal amount of not to exceed $3,900,000 for the purpose of financing or refinancing the costs of constructing street improvements and paving district numbers 520 and 521. sewer improvements in sewer extension district number 255, and water improvements in water extension districts number 128 and 129, prescribing the form of said bonds, providing for the levy and collection of taxes to pay the same, authorizing officers of the city to award the sale of the bonds to the bidder providing the most favorable bid to the city at a public sale, authorizing officers of the city to make arrangements for the sale of the bonds and to designate the final terms, rates, and maturity schedule for said bonds within stated parameters, and providing for the publication of this ordinance in pamphlet form.

Let's get all that. All right, please vote.

All council members voting in the affirmative, ordinance number 5991 carries on first reading.

I move that we suspend the rules and pass ordinance 5991 on second and third reading.

Second.

No motion, second in discussion? All right, seeing none, please vote.

All council members voting in the affirmative, ordinance number 5991 carries on second and third.

Right, that brings us to item number 26, consideration of approval of continuation of an affluent purchase agreement between Total Energy's Hydrogen Holding, USA LLC, and the City of Norfolk for non-binding transaction terms water supply agreement.

I'll make a motion for consideration of approval.

Second. All right, motion second, Steve.

Yeah, Mayor and Council, thank you. Back in, I think it was the first meeting in February, we approved a similar agreement with TESS. It had different terms in it. This is a continuation or an additional terms agreement that we've been working on with them. Again, this is a non-binding agreement. Once this is in place, this is part of what they call their feedstock, which is a bunch of engineering agreements that they need to get in place with everybody that's supplying them some sort of product that they're going to use. Once this, assuming that this gets passed tonight, the next stage was it sounds like they'd like to move forward with a design contract to move the design to 30% over the next six months or so. And then somewhere around February, or actually late this year, start working with us on the binding terms agreement. And probably somewhere around January, February of 27, present City Council with the binding version of these documents, but Big picture there they are still Very actively moving this project forward in our conversations with them It sounds like things are really lining up quite well the final investment decision would be made in late 2027 and probably ahead of that a little bit would be sort of another green light towards moving towards final investment decision. So, again, somewhere early 27, binding terms agreement mid-27, sort of a green light on the project, and late 27, final investment decision. Any questions for me?

Any public input?

All right.

Seeing none, please vote.

All council members voting in the affirmative. Motion carries.

And with that, we adjourn at 639.