City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, we'll go ahead and get started with the study session, City Council study session for Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. We have four items on the agenda. The first one is an update on the One Transit commuter rail program, and we have one of our representatives for Norman, Marian Hutchinson, here to lead us in that discussion.

Thank you very much, and this will be a high level view. I was given a dance in 15 minutes directive so I'll cover it and if you have questions we can talk again or I'm happy to meet with anybody separately so the first thing I want to say is we've been working on regional transit for 20 years since 2005 and I've been involved since 2010 and Norman has led the way on this so many former mayors all our former mayors so many council members have worked on this and So it's something that isn't new, it's just been in the works and kind of finally gotten to the point where we're almost ready to get it done. So we'll just kind of go through this pretty quickly. One transit which was formerly the Regional Transportation Authority of Central Oklahoma was created by the member cities back in 2019. So that's Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Norman. So we're now an independent governmental agency. We represent you. I and Chuck Thompson are your representatives on our board. And our mission is to develop a regional transit system for the Oklahoma City metro. And we've got great partnerships with the federal and state governments and all of the local leaders as well as our current transit operators. So this is really all about growth. And Oklahoma City, we all know, it's been very successful. And when I say Oklahoma City, I mean the metro, Norman, It continues to grow. We've had a lot of success on economic development and our population's booming. The metro is supposed to reach, by 2040, about 2 million in population. We're at 1.5 now. So that's a tremendous change. And Norman's population is projected to be at 175, believe it or not. So, you know, we're not going to stop growing. One of the fastest growing regions in the country. And you'll notice, like, I'm going to talk about Salt Lake in a little bit. We're right behind Salt Lake. So the big problem with growth, and all the benefits are good, but inevitably you hit the point of congestion. And when congestion gets to the point, it affects mobility. then you're affecting the quality of life, but you're also affecting economic development. And we need to be able to connect the region and move our citizens. Over on the left is Oklahoma City's, that was last year's total transit ridership, and that includes the Embark system in Norman, CityLink, that's it. And the reason we're not with our peer cities is we do not have a regional transit system. It's as simple as that. But we're at that point where all other cities kind of get to hit 1.5 million in the metro. You've got to start looking at transportation options. So this isn't about trying to make people not drive their cars. It's just an addition to your transportation system in almost all large metros. You've been to Salt Lake, Dallas. This is your next transportation alternative is transit. And why now? So we've just got accelerating growth in the whole metro and everybody's, I'm sure, driven up and down I-35. I just drove back this afternoon from Edmond at 3.30 and it was packed. And so you've got delay per commuter in annual hours that's accelerating. So it's just something for our workforce, for mobility of our residents that we've got to address. And one critical thing is ODOT's a big supporter of ours now because they've adamantly told us they're out of right-of-way on I-35. So it's not going to get widened. And if you think about it now, think about it in 10 more years. So transit improves mobility, which is critical for those that need transit. But a big part of the regional transit system, if it's done right, is creating choice riders. And those are the people that have a car but decide they'll use transit because it saves them time and gets them where they need to go. And it saves them the cost of fuel and all of that. Enhances quality of life. So one of the big is time spent in traffic. You know, you've got more time to either Work on the train while you're riding. They've got work tables, Wi-Fi, or get home early and not sit in traffic for an hour if you're commuting. One of the big things, though, it's not just about moving people. It's economic development. This is really a key part of this that I want to talk about. Up on the top left is an area in Plano, an old area of town. and that was back in like the late 80s or so, before and after a DART station. So that's a DART light rail station on the right, same thing. That's called transit-oriented development, and these systems, A lot of younger people, especially, want to live near transit stations. And so you put in mixed-use developments, and it creates more of a density development. And that's another thing. As the city grows, you kind of run out of space for sprawl. This isn't saying you can't still have subdivisions, but it's a new way to have density areas of mixed use. And I mean, a lot of people want to live around transit because they don't have to drive. They can... access their transportation and then they've got amenities all around it it raises property values and increases local taxes it's just a tremendous economic benefit so this is a quick just an example of they call it TOD that's in the planning world that's what you refer to it as and it's just a really great mixed-use environment that provides the amenities for people that want to live near that and get some good transportation options this is real important for every dollar invested in public transportation systems you end up with about a five to one return economically and that's you know you're talking about billions of dollars invested in construction development the jobs that go into that and on and on and that's not including the private economic development for these TODs. That's just from the transit agencies building their systems. So a big part of this is economic growth. I like some of these quotes. The better you move people, the more business you generate. And the big one is most companies want to locate in cities that have these because they know their young knowledge workers want to live near that. And if you're in a city and you put your company there that has a transit system, your reach to more employment is greater because of the extent of where those lines go. This is just kind of talking about regional advantage. Cities are trying to develop these because they want to attract those businesses. And so if you've got it, you're attracting companies and new residents. And a lot of younger people, when they want to move, they're like, well, do you have a rail transit? And I've even met some at my presentations that have moved here from Denver or Seattle. And they're like, well, this is great because when I first moved here, I was like, where's the train? How do I get from the airports? So this is really important for regional competition. So we are modeling Salt Lake. Salt Lake is one of the last of the big metros to have developed it. We're kind of behind them. Back when they first put this in right before the 2000 Olympics, they just got some federal grant money because the Olympics were coming and putting the first light rail line. They were very car-centric, kind of conservative Western culture. And once they put the first line in, it just took off. And so now their annual ridership is over 40 million on their commuter rail line. And their commuter rail line runs from Provo to Salt Lake to Ogden. And so kind of think... like Norman, Oklahoma City, Edmond, because Provo is BYU, and Ogden has Weber State College, just like UCO, and so it's really successful, and in comparison, like Dallas's ridership was 55 million the same year, but they're so much bigger, and it's because their systems built they just did it so well and one of the best things about being one of the last metros of our size to do this is we can look at what cities have done right and what they've done wrong and try to emulate the things that really work um this is just some comments from some of their mayors about once they put it in how what a huge difference it was and the way that people move and people are using it now every day on weekends so it's very successful So this is really something. Since 1999, there's been $10 billion of private investments in transit-oriented construction in Salt Lake City. Around every station, there's a commuter rail station that's north of Farmington. with departments and everything going around it so this is what kind of comes with it and then that generates sales tax revenues it just generates all kinds of additional economic benefits not just for the developers but for the municipalities so I want you to focus on this a lot because We think Grapevine, Texas is very similar to the benefits you're gonna see here in either Norman or Edmond. So back in 2019, Fort Worth finally put in a commuter rail line that runs from Fort Worth out to DFW with a number of stations, about the same length of line that we're going to put in. One of those stops is Grapevine. And their ridership every year is setting new records. And they had all this big transit-oriented development right downtown Grapevine. And that's the Venn Hotel, and it's called Harvest Hall. And that was a local private-public partnership with one of the developers there. and it's just really generated a lot of great revenue. So they bring all these people in now that come to their festivals, and you can think like, Norman Music Festival or anything that we have here, you've got people that are going to ride down from either Edmond or Oklahoma City. Just notice that first paragraph. There's been an explosion in business with the arrival of the train. Sales tax is up citywide 23% since 2018. Businesses within a five-minute walk of the station have 38% gains, and property values within walking distance have increased by 95%. So this is the kind of economic benefits that come with it besides moving your residents. So we want to focus on mobility and connectivity, safety and accessibility, economic workforce and development, sustainability and viability. So let's go to our system plan. This map has the north-south line in red is the first project we want to develop, which is the commuter rail line from Edmond to Norman. This is a modern commuter rail train. This is the latest version that San Diego is running. These are Siemens locomotives with twin cab cars. And like I said, they have Wi-Fi, great comfortable seating. light rail out to the airport at some time in the future, superimposed underneath or superimposed on top of what is Oklahoma City, Norman Edmonds bus system. And so the point of all this is if you do it right, all of this becomes connected and we're going to connect up the entire metro in one big system so most people can get just about anywhere they want to go with the transfer. We're not going to do all that once. It'll take time to do this fiscally, you know, in a conservative way, but those are the proposed stations right now that we're planning. Norman would have three, one out near Tecumseh, downtown, and South Norman down by Highway 9, and we're going to be running that train in the BNSF corridor. They'll be partnering with us, and they have agreed to let us run special event trains, and we will have a station at OU at the Duck Pond in Lindsay, and we'll run game day trains on all home OU games. And then, of course, they'll let us run into Thunder games during certain festivals. So it's really a great layout in the way our existing railroad right-of-way allows us to connect up and anchor this system with Norman on one end and Edmond on the other for great ridership. Part of this then also expands the bus system, which you've got to do in order to connect up to all the new stations so people have connectivity and can ride. So it would be providing expanded and improved bus service, more stops, new routes, all the good stuff to come with that for those that really need transit bus service. I'm going to get through these pretty quickly. This is just kind of fun. So this is kind of to show you what all this would connect you to up and down the commuter rail line. So we're talking major employers, UCO, the Capitol, Health Sciences, downtown Oklahoma City, Tinker, FAA, OU, higher education. Up and down the line, OU Medical Center, OU UCO, OCU, Dining and Entertainment, you know, University of North Park, downtown Mormon. I mean, you're going to be moving people back and forth. You know, I always say my wife once asked me to go to Edmond or Oklahoma City on the weekends to go eat dinner, and I drive it all the time, so I never go. But people are going to travel, if it's easy, to get from one place to the other to enjoy those kind of things. All your sports venues, Devon Park, Thunder, OU Center games, local festivals. This is like Grapevine. This will bring a lot of people and a lot of visitation into Norman. Area attractions. So this, I'm almost done here. This is kind of thrown together, not to say this is what it should look like. This is just to give you an image of what it could look like with a station and what's happened in Grapevine. So those are just some superimposed things from Grapevine, down from Plano, from other TODs on how this will really transform and improve and re-energize downtown with everything that's going on. already down there. Edmond's in the same position. They're very excited about that. So you're talking about bringing lots of visitors, but also we've got a large commuting population. And so one of the things that's referred to as park and rides, those other stations, you know, have large parking areas. So if you live in any area, you know, north or south, you can drive to that, park your car, go to the city, go where you need to go, then ride back. And that's pretty common. My last slide. I just want you to kind of see how long we've been working on this and how much has been done to get to the point we're at. Like I said, multiple mayors, many, many council members from Norman leading the way on this and with the other cities starting in 2005. all of this planning all of the acquisitions the oklahoma city streetcar which was put in to serve this system is what it was built for so when you get downtown on a commuter train you can step off and have something to get you around forming the rta back when mayor rosenthal was here all the way up to where we are today and so We're situated that we're ready to go to a referendum. That's all we're left to do is fund this. And we're hoping to do that within the next nine to 12 months. And so it'll be Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Norman. And we do not call the election as the way this is set up through statute. The city councils will. That's your decision to do that, and they'll all coordinate together. And, you know, this has never really been done like anything like this in this state. It's kind of a first of its kind. And Daryl and everybody knows this is kind of complicated, but we're almost there. So I hope that was fast and furious. So I'll answer questions if you want to.

Just a real general quick question. What's the anticipated cost for the total package?

Well, so as far as just the sales tax piece?

Well, just, you know, I'm... Really, it's a leading question, and I'm wondering to compare it against the proposed turnpike expansion, you know, dollar for dollar.

Right. So what are we looking at? So the main cost in implementing the commuter rail corridor is that BNSF is going to let us operate on their tracks. We have to agree to keep them whole. They can't lose freight service, which means we're going to have to spend quite a bit of money on infrastructure improvements so that we can run – what we need to run, and they're going to guarantee our service and actually be our contract operator. And you're looking at, you know, $500 or $600 million to put all those improvements in on the BNSF corridor. Half of that's going to be FTA, federal grant, new start money. So, and then that's just kind of a ballpark at this point. And then, you know, stations and other things. That's a great answer. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

And it had been mentioned before that, like, with the stations, there would be, like, a base package, basically, that could be constructed. But if, as cities, we wanted to do enhanced stations or do more details, then we would have to come up with that.

Right. Early on, it was discussed that the cities would acquire the station property, and we would put in the stations. But we're going to acquire the properties, put in the stations. They'll all be nice stations. But if you did want to... Brand one or make one an OU-branded station, then you could pay for that extra.

The plan was for downtown historic depot would stay. Right. Stay as it is. I mean, there might be some improvements, but the historic part of it, everything would be we're not building a new station. Correct. For that. Could you go back to the site real quick that showed the ridership per metro area? Oh, at the beginning. That one right there. Yeah. So, um, Salt Lake city, the city of Salt Lake city has a population of 200,000. So not, not even really that much larger than Norman. the Salt Lake City metro area is the 46th largest with 1.3 million. And OKC metro area is the 42nd largest at 1.5 million. So our metro area has 200,000 more people than Salt Lake City metro. And Oklahoma City has over 500,000 more people than the city of Salt Lake City has. And look how many more I mean, 38 million more riders on their public transit compared to ours, and we're a considerably larger metro area and larger city.

The real thing that we're fortunate is we started planning 20 years ago because Austin made the comment a number of years ago on a trip down there, do not make the mistake we made. We waited until it was too late. So transportation projects, infrastructure projects, take years of planning and just – the political part of getting it passed, getting all this done. And so if you waited until 2040 and then decided, wow, we've got to do something, it's almost too late. I mean, it really gets you in a bad place. So we're really fortunate we did all this, and we're right now at the point where we can actually put in something that's effective. And 20 years from now, it's going to be our kids and our grandkids that are really going to go, golly, that was, thank you.

Thunder, I think, were one of only two or three NBA teams in cities that did not have any rail-based transit system. So not counting just a streetcar thing, but there were only three teams in the NBA that were in cities that had no rail-based transit at all in OKC and San Antonio.

Well, you know, if one of the other ones, I can't remember the other one. Cities grow. And if you're not growing, you're going to decline. You know what happens to cities that quit growing. And so, I mean, that's a good thing. And this is just one of those next pieces to be the next. You want to be a big league city. This is kind of the next thing you've got to have.

Well, we know how spread out the OKC Metro area is. We know how. certain times, and we know that widening them can only do so much, and this is what I believe is one of the most effective ways that we can address traffic.

I know some of you are going to Salt Lake. I've been out and looked under the system. You'll really come back with a new perspective, having actually been there and ridden these these modes. If you can't go there, we'll be taking some people down on a day trip just down and back in the day to Fort Worth and riding the Texrail up to Grapevine. We can do that too for those that don't. And that's, it's really, that's a good trip to kind of see that what's going to happen, what could happen in Norman.

Yeah. I've ridden that, ridden the Heartland Flyer, of course. I've ridden the light rail dart in Dallas to the OU Texas game many times. It's really great And then the Heartland Flyer is in peril, so I encourage everybody to contact your Oklahoma representatives It's not done till it's done, but Texas as most people know has not Last year decided not to fund their share of the Heartland Flyer and their legislature only meets every two years So they have not funded it last year or this year And now I guess the Oklahoma legislature is not going to fund it either, apparently. So I would encourage everybody to contact any state reps, governor, anybody you know. I think it's a small cost for the benefit of connecting OKC Metro to the Dallas, the fourth largest metro area in the United States. And it all connects together. This is a big part of it, in my opinion. And my big selling point for years has been, imagine if people could get to Norman for OU football games on a train. Get dropped off in downtown Norman on Main Street, get dropped off on Brooks or Lindsay. They could maybe spend more time in Norman. They could maybe spend more money in Norman. maybe have a better time and they don't have to worry about parking they don't have to leave the game early which is one of the biggest complaints is people leaving the game early because they gotta go beat the traffic and it's like why'd you even come here then you know so people can stay till the game ends and you don't have to worry about beating the traffic you don't have to pay 50 bucks for parking so that's one of my big pitches anyway so councilman kirby do y'all plan on adding a

separate set of tracks because like he just pointed out if we are larger than they are and they 40 million people are using it it would seem like we'd sit on the side of the train track a lot for 30 or 45 minutes why bnsf passes because i mean that's going to grow as well just like a good question so it's we've actually been in negotiations and planning and engineering with them for four years and like i said they will guarantee our service

over theirs during our operational hours so they will operate them run them within a certain number of minutes they can't be late to one into the other but we're going to end up spending almost that money like i said will be to essentially have the entire line double tracked and extra sightings you know those big long trains that sometimes stop and block things that will be thing in the past, too, because they'll have more room to get those out of the way. And it actually benefits them. I mean, we're upgrading their infrastructure, but we're going to run, they're going to run it. But at night, when we're not running, you know, freight runs around the clock, right? They don't care. So they've got more capacity to move their freight. So it's a win-win. Everybody hears that term, but it kind of is.

So do you know how many times a day it would travel, like,

We're setting it up for initially it's 12 round trips a day with higher frequency during morning and evening rush hour and then maybe going to like midday it'll be lower with the option in the contract to go to 24 round trips a day where you could have 30 minute frequencies throughout morning and evening. Now we're going to make sure we don't want to do anything. If you don't set it up to have enough service and frequency you're setting yourself up for failure. And that's why people don't use transit in some places because it's too slow, it doesn't come enough, or you don't have it when you get someplace, you're not connected to anything else.

On that map, if you were to get on that train at the North Norman to come set a commuter rail stop, There would only be, if I was remembering that, there's only one stop between there and downtown OKC, and that's that 29th Street. Right, because. Since Moore is not a part of this. Right, we don't have to stop there. It's a direct route to the south side. Keep on going. To the very, yeah, almost to downtown is no stop.

Yeah, it is.

Any other questions or comments from council for?

Thank you so much. Anybody who wants to meet privately or in a group, more questions, I'm happy to do that.

We can get an update in CPTC any month or any time if you have questions, Marion sure is happy to talk. All right.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you so much. My wife's going through the mention of graduation, so I'm going to get over to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary. All right. Item number two is a discussion regarding the Sooner Mall sales tax rebate agreement.

Got copies of that agreement in its current form. The agreement you see Catherine Walker put together in coordination with the attorneys representing the Super Mall properties, it is 100% in accordance with the term sheet Council had previously approved. Yes, sir. Derek Caldwell, our mall manager, is... en route. And he said, if they have any questions, hold them to the end and I'll be there to answer them. So he's making his way this way. But nothing too interesting or too exciting came up through the process. That term sheet Council had approved made moving to the draft agreement you see before you pretty painless. Council Member Green? Nothing new. They had shared their initial questions about the map. Those questions actually resulted in the development of the very last page of the agreement to describe what properties are included in the agreement. And then EDAB did discuss a higher cap and a different percentage. And council had discussed that and said, nope, council is happier with 100% and the lower cap at $300,000 a year.

So between the two maps, I know Derek's not here, but I was pretty sure that Dillard's

they do own the building in that portion of the parking lot but in their operational agreement all of the improvements are still managed by the Sooner Mall properties so they would still participate in through exhibit B that's just for uniformity so when they're doing parking lots you don't have a really new section of parking I will touch base with Mrs. Walker and Sarah in the City Attorney's Office and email those to counsel for your consideration.

Yeah, just to reiterate, this is a rebate, sales tax rebate. We're not giving anything up front.

This is only money that's created by the mall and returned to the mall, correct? Correct. And if they invest and do not see a return, then they are eligible for zero. Excellent. Thank you. They will definitely have to be strategic in how they invest. Better as a cat. Correct. Up to $300,000 annually. And in assembling the numbers for that three-year average, the monthly average sales, it has declined three years in a row. And I think that was kind of the alarming point that there's attention getting for all of us. When we look at the property as a whole, and of course, in the news, the stories of what malls are doing in some of our neighboring agencies, there are some mall success stories, and there are, unfortunately, more mall failure stories. Ours just happens to be on Main Street and I-35 in Norbit, so definitely in our best interest to ensure the longevity and success of that particular property.

So they would have to, to get the rebate, though, they'd have to reverse the downward trend and would have to get positive just to get anything. To see nickel one.

Yeah, Council Member.

So we're voting on this next?

It could be on the agenda next Tuesday night with Council's concurrence.

I still have some questions about it. I know he's not here, but... You know, just because we see the chatter online about it. So, like, the first year is at, like, 60K is what they could get back. And then up to five years is what we were talking about. Yes. With two, three-year agreements.

And those renewals are absolutely at council's discretion. You could choose to continue the strategy or call it quits at your preference.

And, I mean, like, let's just say the five years with the two, three years. So, that's where you get the 300K number from.

IN ORDER TO GET BACK TO WHERE THE MALL WAS PRE-PANDEMIC, I THINK IT'S ABOUT A $14 MILLION INCREASE IN GROWTH SALES AT THE MALL PROPERTY, AND THAT WOULD GET THEM AT ABOUT $300,000 IN A REBATE.

DURING THAT TERM. IT'S NOT LIKE THE FIRST FIVE YEARS YOU'RE GOING TO GET $300,000.

NO. THEY COULD POTENTIALLY HIT IT IN MULTIPLE YEARS. if the return produced that kind of growth in sales, which that's pretty impressive.

Well, I just wanted to get that out there because there's some other information.

all at once but we're really talking about up in years and it is also the the 2.3% of discretionary sales tax so your norm and forward public safety sales tax public transit and capital still come to you for your budget your appropriation your utilization as you see fit so

I know it's been a little while since we first talked about this item. I mean, once again, probably a question for the guy that's not here, but have we heard any rumblings about any possible tendons for Sears? Have we heard any progression in those contracts or talks?

I have not, but then again, I haven't. grilled Derek on the subject. So, by all means, as you spend a little time plowing through that, please jot down all your questions. If you'll email them to Rick and me and Catherine, we'll jump on the answers and have them back to the group. This still isn't dependent on... Correct.

That's what I heard the most of us say. Can I read done, Counselor? Yes, sir.

I actually met with Derek maybe two weeks ago and asked a similar question, and I was hearing November, December for a potential lease signing.

Cool. And... After five years, the council, if the council did not believe it was worthwhile, could say that's it. Absolutely. And not renew it for another three. But potentially, if they were hitting that top mark and hitting that $300,000 threshold each of those years, that would probably be a sign of success, hopefully, for them. Council Member Bruce? Yes.

1800 square feet to 2000 square feet for city use. I have no idea what the square foot is per year to rent it. You bundled those up in several years. So in my mind, if you execute that option, you're tied in for those two years or three years. Why was the decision to go that route instead of yearly options?

I couldn't tell you that there was necessarily a strategy either way. The initial request was for five years and two three-year options, and so that was the idea that was brought forward, and we didn't receive any opposition to that strategy. So it could have just as easily been a 1-1-1-1-1 after the initial period.

So that would free up future councils to make the decision what they want to do?

Mm-hmm. And still the same case that, according to the police department, that's probably not something we need. We don't need a police substation.

In terms of, yeah, to provide an opportunity, should it be advantageous to the police department to have a substation in the mall, that space would be made available when working with the police department. It doesn't really operate that way in the current environment. They tend to operate out of a car. They've all got their computers with them, and that seems to be the most efficient way to spread their availability around.

On that section, could we maybe do police department substation or other City of Norman use subject to approval by normal management?

absolutely worth that conversation.

It might be cool to have, I don't know, something that came up.

I asked about that.

And then I'll get Council Member.

I was asking when we were going to vote on it because we could vote in that section. If this doesn't work out, can we do something else? And for the police station... I was hearing that they didn't want to do that. I'll have to think about that. And they were open to it. That was the other thing. But they have to get permission. They went through a whole process to just get the substation added. So if you put that little

addendum at the end it's like this isn't working approval of the mall management and it's yeah the the mall uh tenant group they do meet and discuss and have some input as to future tenants to make sure the tenant makes just stays balanced so uh mr call will put out there would you guys support a police substation and they said yep so that's what's in the agreement he said it would cause lengthy delays if they got to start that process again with the input, but he said they're happy to have that conversation and could be amended at any time. Council Member Hinkley?

I just wanted to continue expressing my support for this. I think that capping it at $300,000 and not front-loading it makes it, I mean, like Matt said, it's a heavy lift. for them to correct and get back to a number where they once were, plus any future development. I know the property company that they are owned by also manages hotel properties as well, and so they do put those types of properties on existing properties. So there may be some benefit there, but I would like to lock in the three-year term for them all, because as they go to issue debt and it's back-loaded by a rebate like this, they'll use that for financing. And if it's subject to change every year, that could make that more difficult for them to capture the benefits of a financing mechanism that they wouldn't otherwise have. So that's .

Council Member Wright.

To the hotel point, I also spoke to Derek about that, and I don't know what we have to do to make that happen, but it seems like a very advantageous thing, and there's a lot of, I would call, underperforming parking lot out there.

Great address, great location, easy on, easy off, great visibility.

And your number is $25 a square foot, triple net.

$25 a square foot triple net. And I think something worth just considering about it is some have mentioned that the mall ownership, being a large corporation that's out of state, could afford to do improvements into the mall, I'm sure. My kind of perspective on that is that if there's an opportunity to make a local contribution to help that property, Or do we want to rely on a large out-of-state corporation? This is probably not the biggest thing on their portfolio of properties. And so will they make a necessary investment into it or not? I don't know. And do we want to rely on them to do that in order to keep our mall from becoming like Heritage Park Mall? IN MIDWEST CITY.

TO THE MAYOR'S POINT, WHEN YOU HAVE AN OWNERSHIP GROUP THAT HAS MULTIPLE PROPERTIES, EACH PROPERTY LITERALLY COMPETES FOR THE INVESTMENT OF THAT FINITE CAPITAL DOLLAR. A LOT LIKE OUR DEPARTMENTS DO WITH OUR BUDGET PROCESS. SO EACH MALL OPERATOR WORKS MINDLY TO ENSURE THOSE INVESTMENT DOLLARS CONTINUE TO FLOW TO THAT PROPERTY IN OUR CASE. going back to corporate headquarters and saying city norman loves their mall and this is why you guys should continue to invest in this property and not shift attention to other shiny things this this is the shiny thing so that's exactly how those those conversations go with that big corporate ownership group councilman dixon i think i remember derek saying this is either the smallest in their portfolio or the second smallest

like second smallest but I'll just be super short I support this as it is we don't want to have to have a break dancing contest to say Tiffany is popular again because of stranger things strong I mean have you did a research on them because we have the hotel at Robinson that has been

distressed for how many years and they have how many hotels and yet here in Norman it looks great from wherever they live because they're not looking at it every day and they're not in danger and their firemen with it sitting there and you know we had perfect swing the owner I think was in California so it looked great from where he lived but yet it was an eyesore for us so I'm just curious like have y'all did a background check to make sure they don't have any

uh holes in their portfolio to make sure that this ain't going to end up another robin center highway 9 perfect swing this is either the largest or second largest mall ownership group in the country they are they're the flagship of this space so um they've got a enormous portfolio of properties all over the country That's what they do. When we talk to our current operators about different models and different amenities like, hey, could you put a hotel in here that maybe the lobby opens in the mall? They can go to the portfolio and show, yep, this is where we do that exact thing. And how do we develop more into the parking lot? Because Norman doesn't have any parking minimums, it does free up space for future investment that may be built out in other portfolios. But we still have room to grow that mall or grow the property that returns and supports that wall.

And then my other question was y'all were speaking about the security booth or the police booth. I know Right after the Arlington Mall was completed, it was overran. I mean, you'd walk in and people spit off you, balconies down onto you. They'd show you the guns in there. I mean, it wasn't the most inviting environment for such a brand-new mall. So I was just – we are going to have security there, right, to make sure that this brand-new investment is protected from –

They do have a security presence at the mall. And, of course, the PD is in the neighborhood relatively frequently with...

So it is Would be on next Tuesday's agenda unless I mean if counsel if any of you think there needs to be more discussion Constituents we have more questions for Derek And as soon as he walks in we'll jump down we'll see if we can catch him before we're done tonight just let

Yeah, I need to know today, tonight.

Because I'm leaving. Yeah, because we've got a holiday on Monday to post it.

It's on the agenda, and there's objection. We can always postpone it, of course.

Absolutely.

Is the consensus to move forward at this point anyway? Okay. Then, as of right now, it'll be this agreement. This agreement right here will be on the agenda Tuesday. So, have the conversations that we're going to have. Okay, any further comments or questions for staff about that part?

All right.

We'll move on to item number three, and then when Derek gets here, if anybody does want to ask any questions, we can come back. All right. Item three is a discussion regarding the proposed FYE 2027 City of Norman budget enterprise funds.

Yay! Kim and Clint here. Kim, Clint, and we've got Nathan and Chris here on the sidelines to fill in the blanks.

Thank you, Mayor. Kim Kaufman, not the budget manager, but I'm doing this presentation. And then Clint, of course, finance director. And tonight we're just going to kind of give you an overview of the proposed budget for the enterprise funds for the upcoming fiscal year from July 1 through June 30, 2027. And this is a picture of the book that everybody should have received mid-April. to our website. This is the budget calendar that's in your budget document. It was approved by Finance Committee back in September. And you can see there's a lot of work that goes into developing the budget. We're down at the bottom in May, almost at the end of the process. Again, you received your preliminary proposed budget books in April. We had a study session. The first study session over the budget was April 28. And that was general funds, special revenue funds. And that was also the first public hearing at the council meeting. And then you had, on May 5, a study session for capital funds. And tonight is a study session for enterprise funds. And we'll have our final public hearing on next Tuesday on the 26th. And then council will consider the budget for adoption on June 9. And then, of course, the beginning of the fiscal year is July 1.

New Year's Day.

And just to kind of touch on what are the enterprise funds, they're operated in a manner similar to private enterprises, where the intent is that the costs of providing the goods or services are recovered primarily through user charges. The sanitation fund, the water fund, water reclamation fund, pretty self-explanatory. sewer maintenance fund a new development excise tax funds are kind of sub funds of the sewer of the water reclamation fund and The sewer maintenance fund of course just is a five dollar Sewer maintenance rate it was adopted in 2001. It's a funds pago capital projects on our sewer lines and then the new development excise tax fund revenue comes from new construction building permits and and based on wastewater generated. So we're gonna start with the Sanitation Fund tonight. Between residential commercial collections, they bring in over 100,000 tons each year. Yard waste compost brings in over 60,000 tons each year. And then, of course, curbside recycling started in 2008, transitioned from public to in-house in fiscal year 25, just last fiscal year, and we bring in over wool materials. The charts on the left, you can see here kind of the trends of what we receive in the landfill each year at the transfer station, and then the transfer station revenues. And they both kind of peaked around fiscal year 23, and then utilities kind of made an effort to increase the transfer station rates to try to curb the amount of trash we were receiving at the transfer station and now Chris would say that we're kind of at the sweet spot when we compare tons received and revenues received.

That's a simple math problem when you have folks willing to drive from 25 or 30 miles out of town because our fee was so much cheaper, we thought, yeah, although we're efficient as all get out, we need to stay in the market to incentivize neighboring communities to take care of their own recycling and solid waste drop off.

That's because of that.

They stayed home.

That's correct. The rate increases did kind of curb that.

We recognized there were people driving with trailers full of debris past a landfill because the landfill was going to charge them more than the transportation in Norman. And we thought, okay, that behavior needs to stop.

So these are the four... That previous slide, so other than that little bump right there, is that... show that we've roughly, even though the population of Norman's grown since 2015, our waste production is somewhat level, except for that little bump right there. Is that an accurate reflection?

I mean, it's slightly growing. I graph it, just our residents, just what we go pick up. It's slightly growing at 1%, 1.5%. But really that extra was just all extra people bringing outside stuff to us.

So our waste is about equal to population growth. Yeah. And then did you have on there that cost of the tipping fee, how much we spend every year just to? It's in an upcoming slide.

It's just over $3 million. Yes. So moving on to the recycling drop-offs, we have four of them. They're the red stars on this chart here. They bring in over 1,800 tons each year. And then the hub at the bottom, you can bring, it's at the transfer station, you can bring in scrap iron, wood, and glass. And then we recycled over 200 tons of glass each year. So this is one of my favorite parts of this presentation where we look at rate comparison. This compares Norman's trash rate with 16 other kind of benchmark cities. And recall that Norman's trash rate is $17.20. $3 of that is for recycling. And that includes two bulk trash pickups, one in spring, one in fall, one time a week collection, as well as one time a week yard waste collection, free brush drop-off. The four recycling centers we just touched on, free compost as available, and then, of course, the residential curbside recycling. With these other 16 cities, the green bars depict cities that also offer curbside recycling. Blue does not offer curbside recycling. And then the two orange offer curbside recycling through a company called Recyclops. And you can see that there's one, two, three, four cities that have lower sanitation rates than Norman, Newcastle, Enid, Edmond, and Moore. This has been our rate for the last 15 years.

Let's point that out. Yeah. Since 2013?

Yeah, 11. But most of these 16 cities have higher rates than we do. So just kind of an interesting metric.

Not only have we not had a sanitation rate increase in 15 years, basically, 15 years, most cities probably raised them pretty annually. And more, as it shows in Newcastle, don't offer the curbside recycling. Correct. Ours are nearly as much as ours. Right. And then that other part, the services included, I don't know. for each one, but I'm pretty sure most of the cities don't offer all of that list of stuff either. And so all of that's included in our cost, and there's a bunch of cities that their cost is higher than ours, and they don't offer any of that or only a few of those things. So getting more for less is what I've seen as far as sanitation goes. Council Member Kirby?

Do you know if the people in Ward 5 are paying that... curbside recycling fee, even though we're not allowed to have the curbside recycling? They're not. You just pay $14. Okay.

I did not know that.

Is there a way we could get the curbside recycling? You're not dense enough. It's hard. For $3, it's hard to go get it twice a month.

Could we put a separate pickup station out there?

We have one at that fire station on East Alameda. Oh, that's right. That's kind of our location. We can print it. I'm bragging because we've gone so long, but we're there. Ref Tillis just looked at our rates, and we're reviewing the report now, and it looks like we need, what did he say, two bucks? Two bucks a month for customers, kind of what they're recommending. Once we finalize the report, we're going to bring it to council, and we'll all discuss it. Just let you know where we're at.

And it's not just sanitation. Is it also sewer?

Wastewater needs one also. It's a separate fund. They reviewed it also. Not dire, but what it does is just with more income, you're allowed to replace more trucks per year. You know, just keep up with your stuff.

With the sanitation and the wastewater, are both of those coming at the same time for discussion? Yes.

We could. The reptile study, yeah, we've got the data on both. So we could do that in one study session. Schedule in the summer or something?

You want to do that?

Yeah, and then also maybe get a survey out there about if people support this, if they understand it.

Yeah, put that graph right there.

When you say Ward 5 is not dense enough for anything, if they had a separate charge or... just to make up for how sparse it is? Do you think they would pay for it?

We could calculate what it would be. It would be a chunk to have that big old truck drive out there two days a week and pick up 30 or 40 pounds.

Two times as much? No, I guess it might be more because of, I don't know. What would it cost?

We're barely hanging in there on the $3 for everybody between the 48s. We're generating like $1.3 million with that money, $3, and we're spending about a million, but that extra $300,000 I've got to save. I've got to buy a new $600,000 truck every so often, and I have three or four of those running.

I was going to ask Councilmember Kirby how desired is recycling out there?

Recycling is heavily desired and it's also It's kind of a sensitive subject considering the neighborhoods that have neighborhood associations out in Ward 5 already have the recycling, so they drive right past a lot of our neighborhoods to get to them neighborhoods, as well as the apartments over here by Walmart. All of them people requested recycling. A lot of people are elderly and are living there for the convenience, and there's no recycling options because of too many doors. So I don't know, since it is an apartment complex, could we get one in the parking lot to where they could walk down? I mean... There's a lot of Ward 5 that just don't have recycling. And I know myself, I do it. My dad, who's 70, drives into the fire station every week and recycles. We want to be good stewards, but we are not offered the same opportunity. So we'd have to talk to find out. But I mean, I know a lot of people want it.

And we can ask Reptile.

And I know he's working hard, so not trying to.

No, no. It's a consultant. They'll totally run the numbers for us.

We can discuss the rate stuff. And then also, a few years ago, a multifamily pilot program for recycling was done in wasn't very successful I guess so but that was a few years ago and we can get an update about the results of that and then discuss and explore it again so that's definitely something we can do and we are doing the recycling in-house now just last year we were doing the math and it was going to be more expensive to continue to have a contractor provide that service so Chris and Nathan decided

the demand for the service isn't going away. And if there's a more cost-effective delivery, and lo and behold, they've figured out a way to deliver more cost-effectively. So it's a whole new workload. It's, you know, having to negotiate the deal with the wholesale buyer of our recycled materials and dealing in that commodities market. But it is working. And since times have changed and the commodity markets have changed, it's absolutely worth reexamining what a multifamily solution might look like. And then how could we group communities in Ward 5 to see if we could schedule in such a way that makes it more cost effective. But absolutely worth the effort.

So major revenue assumptions for the sanitation fund. Again, the rate was set in 2011, $17.20 per month for one poly cart. That includes the $3 for curbside recycling and $0.20 for the Oklahoma solid waste management charge. If you want a second poly cart, it's $7 a month. And then user fee revenue has been estimated at an average annual growth rate of 1.5% per year for 27 in the out years. Major expenditures in the Sanitation Fund, over $3 million was included in the 27 proposed budget for capital outlay, which included vehicle replacements, poly cart and dumpster replacements, and computer replacements. And there's the landfill tipping fee. It's the same as 26 at 3.125 million and the ending fund balance for fiscal year 27 in the sanitation fund is 5.57 million.

And that tipping fee is the one I really try to get residents to understand is we're spending as a city, even though it's a ratepayer enterprise fund, not tax dollars, but $3.1 million a year, that's what we're spending just to throw our stuff, trash wood. That's what it costs to put it in the landfill. That's it. putting $3 million a year into the landfill to dispose of our trash. That's a lot of money just to bury trash forever, every year. Just imagine all the things we could do with $3 million if there was some other way. But anyway, I always like to point that out because it's not going up this year, but it has gone up over the years. That's good.

O.K.C. gets the best deal because they're the biggest customer, and we get a good deal because we're a big customer, too.

I was just curious, because I don't know, is there any way at all to incentivize recycling? I only ask that because I know not everybody in my neighborhood has a recycling cart, so I'm just trying to think of ways that we could convince people to recycle.

We try with education and try to encourage, but some people...

You can do a count every once in a while how many cans are out.

It's around 80%, I think, last time they checked.

That's good, that's good. It's pretty good. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to like all go in and if we're doing ward meetings, remind people. That's good, that's good. And you can always ask utilities to come through and they'll give goodies as well.

Refuse this first, though. Try not to even buy it again.

I'm trying to understand any fund balance of $5.5 million. That's a positive fund balance in any year. So, Chris, what risk do you have out there to say, hey, man, I've got to have money in the bank to cover it?

Just buying trucks. Probably my biggest concern is the batteries. Sometimes they get thrown into the recycle stream or the trash. And if they get squished or crunched, they will start a fire. We've had a few truck fires. Our trucks are rigged so they can put a hose on it and pump water in it quickly. And they know they have a protocol to dump it on the street and get rid of the hot load so it doesn't burn the truck up. But we've had two of them where it burned outside of the truck, didn't hurt the motor or the cab. But that's probably our biggest concern. And those are $600,000 for a truck if we were to lose one.

Yeah, just a follow-up question on the truck. So in my mind, it's $250,000 plus a year on a truck as far as miles.

How many miles they put on them per year?

I don't know that, actually. They do go through a set of breaks about every 90 days. I can get that. Yeah, but we can absolutely. We'll email that back to you, what the data looks like. Fleet will know that. Yeah, fleet keeps it by vehicle. And Chris, correct me, the lion's share of our solid waste fleet, we have a lot of CNG vehicles in that fleet. So it really extends the service life. The service interval in a CNG vehicle could be about 12,000 miles just because the CNG runs so clean. And what we did find when we have extreme cold is The last of our diesel rigs, the diesel kind of gets all gelatin-like, and it takes a few hours to warm one up so we can get it back on the road. But the CNG seems to do really, really well in that colder environment. So fleet's definitely on top of it, but we'll get you those fleet statistics and how many miles we typically get out of a solid waste vehicle before we decide it's time to surplus that one out.

And also to touch on your fund balance question, it's just north of the 8% recommended, or I guess required, fund balance reserve levels that we have. So that would be like $3.5 million in the sanitation fund. So this is just a little bit higher than that. It has to do also with the timing of the capital projects. They didn't have any new capital projects in fiscal year 27, probably trying to build up some fund balance for that. All that goes into consideration for fund balance levels.

And Kim, household hazardous waste is still operated out of the solid waste fund.

Is it?

Yeah.

Some of that contributed. Solid waste water and waste water all pitch into the doers team. Okay. I was thinking fund 32, but okay.

Major capital projects in the sanitation fund from the current fiscal year to be completed next fiscal year is the compost facility scale house at $1.2 million. And again, no new capital projects requested for fiscal year 27, but potential budget impacts for next budget process. Again, Raftel is currently performing cost of service study to be completed in the current fiscal year, so before next fiscal year begins.

I have a question. Staff request has been for a sifter. I heard that it's like a $300,000 machine.

To get our mulch.

But it could possibly help us generate.

Yeah. You know, I'm a tightwad. So right now we give away all of our compost as is. People love it. We run out really quick.

Yeah.

screen, it won't give us anything else. It'll just put our compost fund more in the hole.

So it already loses about $400,000 a year.

That whole operation loses $400,000 a year. I mean, if it just set it up by itself. So that's why it's not cost effective, but we're going to look into a small one and make sure we're not getting something to a big O&M problem where it breaks every year and I got to buy another $200,000 one or something. But we're going to try it. And we talked about maybe putting a little price to it. So if people wanted the sifted stuff, maybe you'll pay $20 for a truckload of that.

What's it sifting exactly? Like you get plastic and things like that?

Yeah, plastic. Our compost isn't super just dirt. You see it sticks. Some people complain about that part of it. But it's still pretty good. I mean, it grows stuff really nice. High quality.

And then moving on to the water fund And the water utility produces over five billion gallons annually runs 24 hours 365 days of course the chart at the top on the left here shows in billions of gallons our annual water production in 2025 the darkest part of the bar there is what is processed at the water treatment plant and primarily from Lake Thunderbird. And then the middle bluer bar, I guess, is what comes from groundwater or our wells. And then the light blue at the top comes from our Oklahoma City resource. And then the picture on the bottom is our water treatment plant.

So last year we relied on

We get 3 billion gallons. So three across the board. That's really all we're allocated. But we have a contract with Dell City to buy 300 million from them. So 3.3 we can get every year with our contracts. If the lake gets over full, it goes into free mode where we can then use and it doesn't count against our permit. So whenever it gets above the full mark, we really use a lot of lake water because it's good chlorinated water. It's a very affordable way to make water. At 25, we had a lot of flood pool water, so we used it really nice. And rest of the wells, that's an opportunity to rest your groundwater.

Yeah. Okay.

Is this facility set up for if the AI center is going all over OKC right now, drive our water costs up? Can this handle taking on more?

What are you talking about?

Well, because you have to do yearly contracts for that 600 million gallons of water we purchased from OKC, correct? Yeah.

We get a million gallons a day right now, 365 million gallons. We just buy that and we just base off of it. And the advantage it gives us is it's like 30 million gallons a month. We could take 10 in one day, two days, and then not take it the rest of the month. So a couple of days when we're needing some.

But what I'm asking is, so you buy from Dale City, you buy from Midwest City, you buy from OKC. Yeah. each one of them are putting in their own data centers right now, which are going to take about a million gallons a day as well, which is what we use. So when next year's contract comes, it's going to come down to the nitty-gritty of who's going to pay what for that water that we're going to now start competing with, private industries, not just do we have first grab at the water over private industries, or do we have like a locked-in contract for water rates for the next five years, or if water goes up, can this facility take on more water pressure to make more water for our residents.

Yeah, what's the extent? We're getting ready to re-sign a new Oklahoma City contract. They like us to permanently sign on, so like a year.

They operate similar to us where you have AWWA has a methodology for how you do cost of service, figure out how much the water costs, and then they calculate justifiable rates because otherwise you can get sued for that. I think their last rate increase was like for the next four years. that's typically about as far as people can go out just with capital so we are locked in on like a four-year purchase they have a set published rate it's not something we negotiate with them specifically it's like ours it's in their ordinance and so everybody that's a wholesale customer with them is paying that same rate have you all taken into consideration though that we might not have that water from them facilities in the future um our discussions with them and we were doing the aim plan was that there would be water available i mean they're building a 72-inch pipeline all the way down to Atoka. They've got to go get more water from Sardis. Those are all things that are in their long-term capital plan that they're doing. So there will be water available.

We are fortunate. Nathan spent a good amount of time working at the city of Oklahoma City in utilities. And the methodology that was adopted by Oklahoma City 40-plus years ago was to develop a water system that would sustain a metro population of 2 million. And we're not there yet. So their system is designed to provide more water than is currently being drawn. So they've still got room to grow in what they can deliver to us, to all of their 700,000 customers and customers into the future. So still a good sized chunk of capacity in their system.

Water line maintenance is one of the divisions in the water fund. If you guessed it, they work on our water lines. Maintain 657 miles of water pipe with diameters of 2 to 48 inches, over 7,000 fire hydrants, and over almost 15,000 valves. Repair an average of 147 water line breaks annually, 878 water leaks annually, over 6,400 service calls. Replace about 3,000 feet of old deteriorated undersized water mains annually. but lately staff have focused on water line leaks. Repairs maintains almost 1,100 fire hydrants annually and over 43,000 water meters. So this is kind of a history of our water rates. In 1999, we started the inverted block rate to encourage conservation, progressive rate structure. It's a progressive rate structure that charges higher rates to the highest water users. Higher tiers are only 25% our residential customers. Seven years after that, in March of 2006, we did approve another water rate increase. So that was seven years without an increase. And then four years after that, a water rate increase was needed, but the vote failed. In 2015, which is nine years after the last water rate, a water rate increase was approved to fund water treatment plant improvements and obtain 2 million gallons a day of additional groundwater supply. Seven years later, in April of 22, another water rate increase was needed but failed. And then a year after that, which is eight years after the last water rate increase, water rate increase was approved to fund groundwater disinfection, water line replacements, lead services, and operational cost increases. So that was eight years between water rate increases, and that was three years ago.

So 25 years, there have been three water rate increases.

And two failed votes.

So five total votes, three of them approved in a span of 25 years. Or since the year 2000, I guess, so 26 years.

This is our current residential rate structure for water. 1090 is the base fee. And then it's $3.46 per 1,000 gallons from zero to 5,000 usage. 5,000 to 15,000 gallons is $4.50 per 1,000. 15,000 to 20,000 is 6.75 per 1,000. And then over is $9.51. There is a summer surcharge from July to August of $0.35 per 1,000 gallons for usage over 20,000 gallons per month. And then we're always on a mandatory odd even day watering rotation system. And that's based on your house number, if anybody's curious. So this is a comparison of rates of our water rates. This is for 10,000 gallons of usage monthly. And you can see Norman, the only city that charges less than Norman for 10,000 gallons is Ardmore. And I have been doing this rate comparison, I guess, for the last seven or eight years. And most cities do increase every year, definitely every two years, if not every year. It's difficult. Tulsa is just right above Morgan, but Ardmore's the only one that charges less.

Edmond's almost double us, and they're, I just read that they're raising theirs, I think, this month.

Still watered them out. Exactly.

Still watered right into them waters.

$120 for 10,000 gallons of usage. Maybe they're trying to discourage high water usage. Sure. Major revenue assumptions in the water fund, user fee revenues, just like sanitation rate, estimated growing rate of 1.5% per year for projected customer growth. And then water connection charges were increased for all meter sizes in April of 22 and 23, depicted in the chart below. And after recent completion of the AIM plan, Reptiles is working on updating connection charges based on the new infrastructure that will be required. Expenditure assumptions in the water fund. And here we're talking about the Oklahoma City contract. In fiscal year 27, the proposed budget includes $2.33 million for our Oklahoma City water purchase contract. And that's 1.5 million gallons a day take or pay $3.28 per 1,000 gallons. The COMCD, and I wrote that down because I can never remember what that's. And I don't know if anybody. Thank you. That's another water resource that we have. And we have $854,000 budgeted. for that allocation next fiscal year. And then on the capital outlay side, 1.2 million in fiscal year 27 proposed for fleet, computer, and well equipment replacements. The ending fund balance in the water fund is projected to be 10.3 million in fiscal year 27. Capital projects in the Water Fund, major projects completed in the current fiscal year, Parsons Water Line Replacement at $3.2 million, South Lake Water Line Replacement at $2.7 million, Danfield Water Line Replacement at $2 million, and then the Water Utility Master Plan at $450,000. Major projects from 26, the current fiscal year, to be completed next fiscal year include Meter Infrastructure Program at $16 million, the Jenkins Water Line Replacement with Public Works at $2.5 million. James Garner Water Line Replacement at $2 million. Tecumseh Road Water Line Replacement at $4.3 million. Groundwater Facility at $7 million, start of construction. Water Treatment Plan Improvements Phase 2B, $3 million, start of construction. And then the Robinson Water Line from 24th Northeast to 12th Northeast at a cost of $4.5 million, start of construction. And then finally, neighborhood water line replacements at $11 million. Major new water projects for 27, Venture and Astor water line replacement design phase, Alameda Plaza water line replacement design phase. South Water Loop Segment D, $2 million additional funding. Flood water line replacements to OTA limits, $1.5 million. And then the water treatment plant lagoon improvements slash filter media at $400,000. Any questions? And then finally, we're moving on to the water reclamation fund. This is a picture of a tour they're doing at the water reclamation facility. And I think there's about three staff people in this picture that are retired now. So this chart has a lot of information. The green bars are the average flow at the water reclamation facility from July of 22 through April of 26. The solid black line shows a 12-month rolling average of the flow. The broken line at the top shows the water reclamation plant facility capacity. So you can see that we're pretty far beneath capacity with the exception of a few months in the spring and summer of 2025. At the top there, you can see kind of some trends for ammonia removal, BOD, and I wrote that down. That's carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand. And in case you're curious, it consumes the oxygen dissolved in the water. Am I right? Interesting stuff. And then the blue line is that removal, and the yellow is solids removal. Sewer line maintenance, a division in the Water Reclamation Fund. I'm trying to respect your time and go quickly because you've had a long night. Maintains over 515 miles of sewer lines, over 12,600 manholes, cleans over 1.2 million feet of sewer lines annually, inspects and records over 350,000 feet of sewer lines, and maintains 14 sewer lift stations. The rate comparison for water reclamation, we're the lowest. The 16 cities, all of them are higher than us. Lawton is just slightly higher. Tulsa is ridiculously higher than us. But it's just kind of an interesting metric to see how we measure up. And yeah, we... 2013, is that right?

Last? Yes. Last reading, please.

Are there some cities that include their stormwater fee into the water reclamation fee? It's not separate.

None of B16 have it in their super fee.

That's just their water reclamation?

we are needing a increase on this one we'll bring it to you and discuss it but actually your guys good work going to DC and getting the congressman coal money at five million dollars that put the fire out Brad would have been screaming earlier that bought us a year or two so we're good so 2011 for sanitation 2013

water reclamation Current rates are five dollar base plus two dollars and seventy cents per thousand gallons of treated wastewater and for Residential that's of course based on your winter quarter average User fee revenues have been estimated again like the other funds at an average annual growth rate of one and a half percent Expenditures assumptions in the water reclamation fund On the capital outlay side, $1.1 million proposed for fleet equipment replacements, computer replacements, and pumps. And then the ending fund balance in this fund at the end of fiscal year 27 is projected to be just over $4 million. Capital projects in this fund, major capital projects from the current year to be completed next year include the watering centrifuges at $3.3 million. aeration basin blower placements at $2.8 million, main admin building upgrades and storage building at $3.5 million. And then no new projects requested for fiscal year 27.

And Chris, the top two, the centrifuge and the aeration base blower, that was our $5 million federally.

we didn't schedule any projects because we're kind of low on money in that fund so we've been holding line but so moving on to the one of the sub funds of uh the water reclamation fund is the sewer maintenance fund and again that's uh the five dollar per month uh sewer maintenance rate that was approved in 2001 all projects are pay as you go and since the this rate was established in 2001 we have rehabilitated over 500,000 feet of sewer line.

And that's never been increased.

No.

It could only be increased by voters, I assume.

Right, right. This is a map of sewer maintenance projects funded by that $5 a month rate from 2003 to 2030. Major projects completed in the current fiscal year include sewer maintenance project 2019, That's down in the lower southwest corner in the kind of lime green, 5.5 million. Flat aerial crossing replacement, 870,000. And then major projects in the current fiscal year carried forward, sewer maintenance project 2018 at 5.3 million. Construction phase 2022 at 3.4 million. Design. I'm starting to choke on something. I don't know. Thank you. 2024, $4.1 million design phase, and then 2026 at $3 million. Lift station radio upgrade at $250,000. And the new projects for 2027, sewer maintenance project 2027 at $3.3 million, and lift station decondition assessment at $75,000. So while there were no new capital projects requested in the Water Reclamation Fund, there are projects in the Sewer Maintenance Fund.

So it looks like pretty much all of Ward 4 has been replaced since 2003, except for Campus Corner. It's that white box in between the pink. It's connected to the rest of Campus Corner. That is Campus Corner. So I would have thought those might have been replaced as part of the Campus

they were revitalizing Campus Corner, we went and helped them get the infrastructure all new back in 2001.

And so it looks like most of the older or most pre-1980, 1990 neighborhoods have been done in Norman.

That's kind of what we did. We started with the oldest first and then we listened to our line maintenance crews that say, oh, I'm really having troubles over here. Can you add that and get that jumped up on the schedule? So we kind of a little bit of age and wherever they're having trouble spots. And we appreciate Joe Carter, former council member, writing a nice article on this because he saw the pipe at Imhoff and Highway 9. Yeah. So I appreciate him writing that. That was a good article in our area.

And this sewer maintenance fee was born out of a pretty significant problem with sewer overflows in the 90s and even a moratorium on development in Norfolk. The sewer system was so bad?

Yes. But the community came together and found three funding mechanisms, and this one was a good one. They said five bucks a month from everybody. It was Mayor Henderson at the time. He said that's a cheeseburger a month.

Cheeseburger a month.

So he said if everybody does that, and it's generating $3 million a year, so we just replaced $3 million a year of residential lines.

And lastly, we have the new development excise tax fund where revenues from new construction building permits, again, based on wastewater generated. And you can see this is a graph that shows the revenues brought in from the beginning in 2003 and then through 27 projected. And revenues have kind of stagnated in the last few years, so we reduced the REVENUE PROJECTIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 27. IT'S 900,000 FOR RESIDENTIAL, WHICH IS THE BLUE BAR, AND 160,000 FOR COMMERCIAL, WHICH IS THE RED SECTION. AND IT HAS BEEN FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS 1.1 MILLION for residential and $300,000 for commercial. Projected revenues, well, this is what I just said, $900,000 from residential and $160,000 from commercial projects in 27. And projects completed in the current fiscal year is the AIM wastewater utility master plan at $900,000. And then in this fund, there are no new capital project requests for fiscal year 27. And this is the final slide. This is a comparison of total utility rates. And I apologize, I didn't put in my red bar so you could see how Norman compares, but it's pretty obvious. So we have the lowest utility rates out of all 16 cities by far. Our bill is... This is for 10,000 gallons of water and sewer usage, and then it includes any other rates that the cities might have, like storm water. Some have a light fee. So Norman, for 10,000 gallons, water, sewer, trash is $102. The average across these 17 cities is $167 a month. Tulsa was the highest at $211.28, and then Edmond's at $204, Broken Arrow's at $203. So I thought that was pretty interesting. But there's also, in these 17 cities, only two other cities don't have an additional fee for stormwater or anything else.

besides Norman and that's Ardmore and Newcastle yes and see this so Norm is the third largest city in the state and after us is Broken Arrow and They have a $13.22 per month stormwater fee. And then after Broken Arrow is Edmond, and they have a $9 per month stormwater fee. Tulsa has a $13.70 fee. Where's Oklahoma City? $6.71. And then Moore has just $1 there, so even something. This was the case 10 years ago, and it's still the case now. Norman's the only large city in the whole state that does not have any dedicated stormwater fee, none at all. And a whole bunch of small towns have it, too. But we're the only large city in the entire state that doesn't keep that in mind and how much cheaper our total utilities are compared to every city we haven't had a sanitation rate in 15 years and we haven't had a water reclamation wastewater rate increase in 13 years and we haven't it's been three years now since the water rate increase so When people think about how things have increased in price across the board in our daily lives and everything, and especially private utilities that seem to raise rates yearly and are posting record profits, you haven't had a price increase in your sanitation rates in normal years? in 15 years like kids in high school right now weren't alive yet the last time we had a sanitation rate and then I mean so I mean it'd be hard to find pretty much anything I could think of that is the same price today as it was 15 years ago so especially when it comes to utilities and services and different things like that so council member I do appreciate

are low rates, but I do see room and reason for them to go up a little, especially stormwater. I'll just say if we want to densify the core, we'll have to address it, and I think even like a $5 a month for stormwater is in the long term a good investment, thinking about what we can also get besides just those stormwater projects. If you do stormwater, you get other things. So I just want to throw that out there.

The caveat, of course, is none of those cities had to get their voters to approve the creation of a utility. Those were all created by their city councils at various different times. Tulsa had one of the most notable flooding events in, I think, U.S. history back in the 80s that, I mean, people died. Councilman Hickman, former Councilman Hickman from Ward 4, grew up in Tulsa and was, I guess, a teenager in his 20s or so in college when that happened, and he talked about how It changed everything in Tulsa. They got real aggressive about stormwater management in Tulsa after that because people were killed and there was a lot of property damaged and significant parts of the city were flooded. So, yeah. But, yeah, they didn't have to... None of them had to get voter approval to create theirs. We do. So that's a little bit of a thing, but it's something that continues to be an issue for us.

That really highlights the... skillful management of those three funds by Mr. Mattingly and Mr. Manuel. The cost to provide the service is not that dramatically different. Tipping fees at the landfill, we're all paying the tipping fees. The cost of water is the cost of water, but our ability to deliver it as cost-effectively as we do is reflected in these We're able to survive. We're not, I wouldn't say thriving. We are surviving. It's a daily challenge, and we just happen to have the best crew in the business to deliver that service. And we still win awards for having the best tasting water anywhere in Oklahoma.

Can I give a fun fact about that? Please. Brett Scoble ran our solid waste for many years.

And actually, when I took over as director, I saw the overtime of...

And I said, Brett, man, is that a lot of overtime you need to hire anybody? Nope. Overtime is how you run a private business. And he was trying to explain to me, you want fewer trucks and you want to run them as much as you can. And so after we started talking in here within the last year about overtime and how my overtime budgets are big, I was looking at it again like, okay, who's dealing with overtime across the state? So I asked Broken Arrow's guy at the last Solid Waste Conference, hey, how do you guys deal with overtime? Do you have it? Nope, don't have any overtime.

You don't have overtime? How do you do that?

And then I found out his rate. He just buys trucks and hires people like you. He's got a big crew, a lot of trucks. He doesn't do commercial. He only does residential. And he's got a nice, comfortable feed that he can do in no overtime. So I give it up to Brett. I'm trying to figure out exactly the method to the madness, but there is a madness to that. Running the trucks hard, fewer trucks. Fleet is what kills you in solid waste. Big $600,000 trucks. And they wear out every eight years. We'll find out the mileage on them.

Well, and the seasonal, the bulk trash pickup hits overtime hard, too, because that's all a weekend operation, and it's a month long, and we bring in staff from different departments to help out with that, and it's all overtime.

It really does reduce illegal dumping, so we're not cleaning up messes on the roadside in rural New Orleans, so definitely worth the effort.

Any other, Council Member Bruce?

Chris, if we could get some words on a model. the system and how you're bending that curve down.

Yeah. Actually, Nathan, because we just are finishing the new meters. Really, we're seeing a lot of improvement there. Let's talk about that.

Well, I mean, doing the new meters was good because we got to audit our system, make sure that we have locations where unfortunately the meter had stopped and it wasn't caught. So we put in, we have new meters in at every location and those will now give us more granular data before we were getting once a month. Now we're going to be able to see that usage 24 times a day, because we're getting hourly reads. So we'll be able to better understand, are those uses appropriate? Or do they know that that's occurring? Or is it a leak that they didn't know about, and that's what caused their water usage? Our first main goal was just making sure, kind of meter to cash, make sure the reads were coming in. We looked at it the other day. Our estimated reads two years ago was 20,000. Last year was 8,000. This year so far, we've only got two months left, it's 300. So we're giving people more accurate bills. So a lot less rebills that we've got to do to fix an error that we may have made.

Just to follow up questions. of breaks and water loss. I know you have some efforts that you're trying to bend that curve down. Is that me? Are you following me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're trying to reduce our water loss.

We were up getting 18 percentage. I mean, what did you say we were at? 15 to 20. 15 to 20. That's, yeah. So think of that. We make 14 million gallons a day on average. And your 18% is you don't know where it went. You didn't get paid for it.

Sorry, I kind of went in the weeds. When you do that AWWA conservation audit, it looks at what can you do to better your score, like to make sure you have a better audit. And the biggest thing was having more accurate meters, because you have people manually reading it, doing estimates. So by getting those automatic meters, you know that you're getting good reads. That's like step one. They always say, do that first, and then now you can know better where your water's going.

So the thought of we know exactly how many gallons of water a day we make, And then we know how many gallons aggregate we sell per month through the meters. And then we know how much water shows up at the wastewater treatment plant. So what you made versus what you processed, some went to leakage and some went to irrigation. And as we are able to zero in on how much was a leak, it really kind of shores up. We'll be able to know exactly how much We're consuming inside the home versus outside for irrigation purposes. We're going to have a whole lot better picture about our water consumption, production, and treatment just by having really good meter data.

Back in the EPA loan days, probably the 70s, 80s, they used to watch cities. Before they would loan them more money to build a bigger water plant, they would say, you need to have your water loss. Some cities would be over 20%. And they'd say, we need you to get to that 20% first fix your leaky lines before we give you money to build another water plant or go get additional water. And so we were at 17%, 18%. We were starting to hit up to that 20% number, which that kind of raises my ears up, like, oh, we need to get that down. But if you never get to zero on lost water, probably 10, 19? 10 would be ideal. That's a good number in the industry, which still sounds like a lot.

Any other questions or comments?

It'd be good to see that trend line.

Again, these are ratepayer-funded enterprises. They're not in our government, not subsidized by the general fund by tax dollars. These are services provided by ratepayers that pay a monthly bill to the City of Norman for receiving these services.

Public hearing next Tuesday night on the subject, so the public will have the opportunity to review and weigh in.

All right.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Colwell, our mall manager, has made his way in. And if we can take just an opportunity to have Derek come up and grab a chair, he can answer any questions you may have his way. And then we'll jump into our final subject. He was coming in hot, but he was definitely on his way.

Sorry for being late.

Join you.

Derek Colwell, manager of the mall. Anything you'd like to say, and we can take some questions if you like or whatever.

Excited to get this partnership going.

Any questions anybody have for Derek about this agreement, about the mall, anything?

One question that I'd ask. We talked about the thought of Sears being occupied by somebody in the future and everything. I'd ask just in general at the table, be towards the end of the year, whether we really kind of know for sure or not. But just from you, that's all about that.

My last update, out of the group of five that this company is purchasing through our company, we're number two on the list. So they're hopefully looking at end of third quarter, beginning of fourth quarter. We're still in the pre-sale agreement, still negotiating terms. Okay.

Council Member Grant.

We're kind of addressing things that have been said online. Could you explain how you guys operate and how rebate helps you? It's not like you have bajillions at your disposal.

Yeah, so each one of our properties within our corporation, it operates its own entity. We are an LLC. So when I'm fully staffed, I have four staff members. We run them all. There's three office members and one maintenance guy. We operate off the funds that we produce off of income. The corporate level funds are capital investments is what our corporate level funds, but our day-to-day operations expenses, our property taxes, everything's paid for out of our income base that we pull. Average in Norman right now is 17 to 19 square foot, and we're averaging 13 to 16. But retail rent is different. It's not just a square footage rent. Retail rent's based off an occupancy cost. So when you go in, your rent, if you're producing $4 million in sales, your rent is going to be different than somebody producing $100,000 in sales. Because there's a level of occupancy cost for any type of retail that you want to get, and that's where retail rent hits. Thank you, sir.

Council Member Kirby?

How do you determine what you're wanting to bring in? Like, do you poll Norman or anything to see if what you're wanting to bring in does good? I'm asking because you have somebody shopping, but nobody knows what it is. Don't you think the people of Norman...

would encourage that come in or not whether by the excitement yeah so um i i have two different leasing groups so i have i have a leasing rep that takes care of leases that are 12 months and below or my common area tenants so the carts and the kiosks that are in the middle and then i have another leasing rep he takes care of everything that's 13 months and up up to 10 years and those are all in line areas when you have a tenant coming in that's gonna purchase something the size of our Sears box because of competition in Norman and that's not known until papers are signed because it's like any other business if somebody finds that somebody's coming in there's be another developer another real estate agent that goes in to try to undercut budgets to try to pull them to their property

I would encourage anybody to reach out directly to Derek. If you don't have his number up, Derek will provide that. I'm sure Derek will be willing to meet with anybody to discuss. All right. Well, thank you very much for coming down. If there are any other questions, like I said, reach out to Derek or staff. And if there are any concerns about this feedback agenda next Tuesday, then let staff know. All right, item four is a continued discussion of interim solutions for homelessness.

So Mr. Lance Harper is our building super-super. All things construction related and the task was to come up with a more polished cost estimate for the provision of

additional shelter bed space so Take us through it So y'all kind of catch up where some of these ideas came from a Couple years back. We were looking at 113 Shelters now taking that East building cleaning it out and put the shelter in there and Cost prohibited to remodel because it has asbestos in the tape and mud. Tent coats are hanging on it. It's not going to hurt anybody unless you start tearing it down and drill holes in it. So the cost got us there. Just to sprinkle that building, it was going to be $75,000. We have code and permitting issues that we'll get into later. I mean, we have old warehouses and buildings that we're using for other things. We have a lot of hurdles to overcome. So we're going to look at this next engineering sprinkler system that will actually hit all three buildings, which has a lot of hurdles. And also we have our fire barrier and fire walls, which should probably be put in that we have hurdles on. So this is where we came up with, hey, we sprinkled once where we have some numbers of 75,000. So all those things change, as we know, as we get more hurdles. So currently we're in those three buildings, 109, 111, and 113 on the south end. And these were old service buildings, so those were where the offices were. So that's where we're housing these people now the best that we can. So each building is a separate building. So we're creating more problems for ourselves. The south end or the north end of these buildings are storage. They have the city's Christmas ornaments in them. They have some of our old furniture items in the back. They're just storage areas that the city utilizes the best we can. What we have in these buildings is there's no fire barriers or firewalls. These hurdles I'm talking about that we're going to try to overcome. There's a new sirloin running up to these buildings, but all these buildings have old cast iron that hasn't been upgraded yet. We're kind of at a max with our bathrooms. We're doing the best we can. More hurdles, we try to increase it. So I kind of wanted to get that out there for our jump in. You guys go, why aren't we doing this? Well, we've looked at all this in the past, and we're still trying to do what we can to get us by to our new shelter camps two years away. So this is our current building that we're in now. An estimated cost to put a sprinkler system in these buildings is 125,000, and that's coming off about an 825-square-foot average. It sounds a little high, but I went ahead and put the utility work to bring our main line into the building. then your engineering takes off from there and our sprinkler so I just added it all together breakout but it's about 125 to do it monitoring after that would be about $50 per month that's about our average we're paying for the rest of our city bill cost to establish fire barriers and firewalls we're anymore from 5,000 25,000 estimate we really don't know what we need we really don't have a code it's not an apartment it's not um it's not a hotel it's not an adult daycare we don't know what to call it so how do we get to these codes and you know and i've reached out the fire marshal we've kind of got our hands up in there we don't know what to do you know to make it safe we're safe as we can be right now a fire watch To do the sprinkler system, I think we're going to run into 200,000 probably pretty easy. It's not the numbers I thought I would hit. It wasn't the numbers that I even talked with Daryl about. But as I started reaching out to these engineers, the P&L fire and a few others, they really started putting some things, you know, we're going building to building. You know, there's things we have to overcome. We have permitting restraints. I mean, there's some ways we can get around that. possibly the council could do an emergency resolution to bypass that. But then we worry about, we're housing people. How do we keep them safe? We've got a fire watch now, but we want to keep everybody in there safe. How do we do that? If we take us out of the permitting, do we need a third party to look at these fire plans to tell us what to do? That's good. You bring someone like that in, it brings our money back. How do we find the money to do this? So it's a lot of things that have hit us that scares us. So that's kind of where I'm at. I've got some other ideas, but again, there's issues. But this is kind of where we're at on the sprinkler.

How much of that $125,000 would be the riser, the underground work, bringing the line to the building and all that? Basically work that could stay in place after this is no longer a shelter. Probably about $30,000, $45,000.

And that's, you know, the water lane is just out in the parking lot, right from where the water line is. So it's a really short company, and they're putting a riser up. Like I said, I just added that into my square footage cost instead of breaking it out, but it's still pretty healthy.

You used the words after it's no longer a shelter. I thought after that shelter moved, that building was going to be sold to be demolished or something. I didn't think we were going to do anything further with it because we've been promising business owners we were going to evacuate that. Correct.

I think the long-term goal is that building doesn't exist, and a new building exists in its place. So then none of it will be usable anymore. This stuff in the ground still would be. That's why he was asking that question.

That stuff in the ground could maybe keep 30,000 back. The sprinkler system itself would be scrapped.

That riser might be able to stay.

I can see that. You could ask for 30,000.

I want to keep the sun. Yes. Cover the ground stuff.

That they could tap into.

Okay, so that's kind of our sprinkler. I think it was a little more higher than what we all thought. The other thing that we ran into is when I started calling these... It's on the fire screening company. It's like, it's summertime. We're going into schools. They are backed up. So they're saying, yeah, we can engineer it, help you work through it, maybe 90 days. But we're six to seven months out before we could get this out of production and get it in your building. If we were doing this in September, it would be a lot shorter because they're finishing up all their school work. But they just get slammed this time of year. Other stuff that was bad news. I'm springing some of this on poor Darrell because I didn't think it was going to be this bad. Thanks, Lance. Sorry. So there is another option I looked at. We still have hurdles, a lot of hurdles. This is in what we call the men's dorm now, which would be next to the couch building. We utilize that far south end right now for their areas. We have a bathroom in there now. The back side of that first area was a warehouse area bed. It is insulated as far as has a drop ceiling. It has a bathroom we can make functional. It will operate. It's going to take some demo work and some bringing in some redoing some walls. Those are garage doors that I have in the black, some doors to other buildings. We have to seal those off, add our exit doors, emergency exit to two areas. In that second area, which would be the far north area, We took an HVA system off of the Andrews building. It wasn't that old. I thought somewhere down the road I might be able to use it again or even in an emergency. We can set that inside of the building. I say inside in that back area. Saves me money from cutting and put a rip curb on. We can plumb it in. We would take one of the garage doors. We'd put a steel frame in there and some expansion metal so it can breathe, keep it safe. The other side, we can leave the garage door, put a seal it off, but then run an emergency door back out to the area. This gives us about 1,800 square usable space. That 30 to 35 people can be added in this area. A lot of this work, I use money if we did it as much in-house using my tradesmen. There's hurdles there. We have calls every day. We get busy. We do things like this to help us save the city money. At the same time, when we do that, our operating buildings take priority. So if there's something, we've got to run them over there. So that's kind of where I put that money. It could go up another $15,000 to $20,000 if we used outside contractors. We can do the emergency lighting in-house. Things like that. It's all in that $35,000 to $45,000.

Per fire code or fire chief coming in for the inspection afterwards and everything, does the sprinkler system have to be installed even with this idea?

We use FireWatch now and I'll let the fire marshal answer that. We're in a really gray area. It's not a great place to be.

Yeah, it's a very, you know, we want everybody to be safe in there. That's the main thing, yes. And so the way we look at it in the fire department is we want this permitted, just like we make everybody else in the city for business get it permitted. Go through that. But we do run in, like Lance was talking about, we met this morning, and it is a weird way to say what kind of occupancy it is. So we'd almost want to have a third party to say, hey, here's what we feel it is, and that would help define us what we need to meet on the code. Because we can sit here and say it's an R1, And it'll require all the stuff and then kind of look at it and say, no, maybe it's this, and then it won't require as much stuff. So we'd like to have that defined by a third party and then permitted to get that approved and make sure it's per code for the safety of everybody in there.

That's kind of my two options that I have. Trying to move as quickly as we could. And that option there is a how long? I would say 90 days max, if everything goes well.

So that would fit into the stipulation the state sort of made about temporarily being able to use some of their property for 90 days if we were going to pursue an expansion of our existing facility.

I'm going to ask Anthony. Oh, yeah.

That was the conversation with Chad about if we needed an interim.

Which I don't think is probably going to be on the table. After some recent news from, I think, the department, I think that higher up from the Department of Mental Health even, based on feedback that we got from them, I think that that is likely no longer going to be an interim option. And in fact, we might see some additional and heightened state enforcement in the very near future.

Just thoughts on it. That's all there ever is, just thoughts. Nothing seems like anything. My thought process is that with our time of 18 months best case scenario for a shelter, which equals probably 24 months or even longer in reality and everything, that's two winters to get through for sure. Whenever winter does come, we're going to have to have some kind of cold weather options out there. Do we want to address cold weather options in September, October, November when we're running on a deadline for any time winter's coming? Would we rather maybe forward think that and look at what those options are now? I'm not saying that the city necessarily funds the cost of a sprinkler system in this place, but I'm saying if it could be private donations that at least supply those funds and maybe the city's Part in it would be something like this expansion also included and the cost of maybe the firewalls included. But the actual main beef of the $150,000, $160,000 could be privately funded. That way when the building comes down, it's not technically city loss revenue. It's that people felt like they wanted to spend $160,000 to better protect a certain client that we have. And then we would have a sprinkler system in place not only for future people but for the 52 that's in there currently. It could be permitted and if they've done the right way and allowed to. If we look at our focus being for winter, not necessarily rushing it 90 days quickly or something like that. And it could be maybe a longer 18-month solution than just a short-time solution maybe done properly. Council Member O'Brien.

Yes, I agree with what Councilmember Gainsbury said. Back in the day, it was still for an expansion. It's still for it now. I'm pretty tired of the encampments being broken up and everybody scrambling, and it is on my summer priority list to talk about a winter plan or inclement weather plan as well. I'll just say for the people that have to deal with our tornado season, Some of them don't stay in their tents, and they're looking for places, and that could be people's sheds and other things. So not addressing people's real needs, I don't think, makes their problems or our problems go away. So I think that's great. You can get 35 people. I was hearing something like, we'll be lucky if we get 10 extra beds. So this is much better. And I would just like to remind everybody, these are people. sprinkling a building, you know, that ensures their safety. I think as the city, you know, that... I don't know about our liability because we have to, like, we're self-insured. But I would just say in the public's... Public liability, it looks bad. If something happens in there, we have opportunities to address safety concerns, and we just kept kicking the can down the road. So that's my thoughts on it.

And that $35,000, $45,000, that's the cost of this option without fire suppression?

Correct. I've just been asking CityCare to do their fire watch.

And that doesn't include furnishings, I would assume, getting the beds and all that stuff?

And we believe potentially the furniture is, transferable to the new facility, so those wouldn't be disposable dollars.

Is CityCare still on board with potentially raising money first for course? Yes. Okay, perfect.

Council Member Gansberry?

Another thing that I would like is our job is to protect everybody at the table, not just unhoused or this or that, just to try to look at the overall picture of what's best for everybody in general. I have been fielding a lot of phone calls, not only from going out and talking unhoused, but from business leaders in our town as well. And if we entered into something of this mindset going forward, I don't know, I haven't been here long enough to know the exact way to do it. But if this includes some kind of recontract with CityCare about what Firewatch is or what Sprinkler means, that in that contract that's written, if there's any way to put the wording in there, that once everybody is moved officially into Shelter B, that Shelter A, by this contract, will be demolished. And to give those business owners on Main Street and the investment people on Main Street a clear-cut directive that, hey, we're not, they're saying they're just going to be here for a second option as a shelter forever, that we are serious when we said we get this, we close this, you know, and make that somehow permanent in somebody's eyes. And I think that maybe then businesses can maybe get behind this plan if they knew they had a clean-cut end date.

I don't think that's a bad idea because I do know some of them read the contract. And so having a clause, and it's basically saying when the shelter opens, this one closes. And I would also throw it out there, you're going to have people who are hard no regardless, and they want us to close it now. But I would just point out that having places for people to go means those people aren't trying to sleep in their stoops or alcoves. I think even with the new shelter building, that there'll still be issues downtown, but they would be a lot greater if we weren't trying to address any of this right now.

To that point, and I'll nudge the realtor at the table, the ability, Anthony, you can Slap me down. The ability for the city to advance its objective to sell this parcel and the parcel across the street. You could sell it now and lease it back for a dollar a month for the duration of the construction at the new site. And that could all be put together in the contract to give those neighboring property owners. They know we don't even own it anymore. The guy who bought it's the guy who's going to knock it down quick.

so just a thought also keep in mind by the time you do that it's already time to move because that's a very very it's already going to be a complicated transaction to begin with right so i mean you're not going to move forward on this for another six to months to probably a year then before you work that out. And also, you probably, since it's a year-to-year contract with the operator, one, it would be very odd to put, we're going to demolish this building two years down the road, even though we're only contracting for one year. Keep that in mind, but I mean if you're going to do like a position statement or something like that Keeping in mind that you may not be able to bind a future council That's something probably more akin to a resolution or some official statement of council, right? But I mean what I since I have been here and since there has been a shelter in downtown Norman I have not heard a single person on any ever say that this is going to be a permanent solution. In fact, I've heard the opposite from every single council. I don't know what else this council could do to assure business owners. And also, I can't necessarily think of something that would be legally binding that is beneficial to the city. That I, as an attorney, would say, I recommend you do this because it makes good business and legal sense, because you are going to be paying more, probably, to make that deal with that future developer. And you're going to be putting yourself at risk, because if you put a hard date on that, and then, I don't know, you get a lot of rain. you're two months behind what happens then when we have to find it too much you know so in terms of there's a lot of things this council could probably do to reassure but i don't know what else is i mean again like you already have gone above and beyond i think what is necessary but at that point i mean to create something that's binding you'd really have to stretch really have to stretch. And keep in mind, it's two years from now. How would you bind a future council, right? He's not going nowhere.

To Mr. Burrington's point, I think our resolution makes more sense.

And I don't want to

put anything in the way that would slow us down on this since we are working you have to be mindful of the time frame so it says upon completion of exactly not a date not date certainly yeah counselor uh blodgett and then kirby yeah um what um council member grant just said i mean i would be in full support of of doing of expanding um this plan um but also just because of uh what Attorney Puritan said, that we do need to keep that and be mindful of that. And so I would be, I feel like business owners should already know that that is temporary because we passed a bond to build a new homeless shelter. So that right there just deemed it temporary. So I think that they already understand that. They don't like that it's there, and I get that, but it is temporary. So I think that we, I mean... We got to make some kind of move showing that we're doing something, and we can't just keep letting them get evicted, evicted, evicted from wherever it is that they move to next, and it look like we're doing nothing. So I would be in support of expanding and nothing happening with the current shelter until the new shelter is built.

Council Member Kerr. This is kind of multi-point. Are you saying you would not be in favor of making a contract to guarantee that the downtown business owners who had this told was temporary how many ever years ago to ensure that they know it's going to be temporary? Is that what you're saying, that the contract, this is just question number one, that the contract would be a bad deal? Secondly, temporary to me in the electrical world is 90 days. When I pull a permit, I got 90 days most of the time in a temporary situation. And like I said, we went on years. Third, just because we built it don't mean they're going to come. This ain't the field of dreams. There's people out there who don't want to be in a shelter. So even if we add this on, we might not attract a single person until winter. But we're asking our fire department, who's already stressed, and already this is one of their number one calls, to put more pressure on them and add more people in a building that already don't pass fire code, and we want to ask them to stick their neck out for another 18 months? I mean, this is just my question. Is this shelter going to be our absolute only option that we look at? Family been in oil wells for a long time. They make bunkhouses. You can get 10 bunkhouses, a bathroom, stall house, and a laundromat to sit over there right next to food and friends for 18 months for $100,000. That's just one company I've checked with that gets these people indoors and air conditioning. It takes the stress off the firemen, and it makes our downtown businesses, who have been tolerating this for many years, probably a lot less edgy. So I'm just wondering, if this is our only option, I'm just going to say it right now, I'm a no, because it does not protect our firemen, it does not protect our homeless, and it does not solve a situation that we've been in for a long time. And I'm darn sure not going to put any more stress on our firemen, who this is one of the number one calls.

So in terms of, I'm just saying, I'm not necessarily opposed to like, you know, how can council further reassure the business community? Like, there is some, again, I'm thinking of it more of square peg, square hole, right? There were a lot of kind of, ways to go about creating a contractual obligation for account so again keep in mind you know constitutionally also we are constrained to i think for the most part enter into contracts that follow the fiscal year right so you know there are some logistical and constitutional potential issues of going out that far considering we're two years out right from construction But again, it was more of redirecting the intent to something that is within the Disabilities Council to accomplish to further reassure, not necessarily, I'm saying that a contract might just not be the best vehicle. Not that it is not worth pursuing. It is just a contract, especially with a current operator, which is only for a year term, right? When we're talking about a two-year obligation, potentially, that's just not, again, circle, peg, square hole kind of thing. And so, again, more than happy to, you know, think about legal ways to reassure and legal vehicles to reassure. If possible, that's why I suggested the resolution just off the top of my head.

But a resolution is only as good as the council that, like, it's not a contract.

The next people could overturn that resolution, correct? Any contract. is only as good as the council that makes it, right?

I mean, I'd argue that.

Well, just to help, we can own a contract for a year. So if we enter into a two-year contract, the second year of that contract is not enforceable.

So then what about what Daryl said about selling the building immediately with a dollar endless until it's moved, and then we know somebody else already owns the building and it's going to go forth to be something else?

That contract would have to be renewed every year. The next council could say, next year we're not entering into that contract. So when we're talking about the issue of reassuring property owners as to what's going to happen in the future, this particular body can only tell you what's going to happen for the next year. We can't go beyond that because there's a constitutional provision that prohibits municipalities from entering into contracts that are more than a year long. So that's what the issue is.

Then why can't we overturn the TIF contract?

Because the TIF contract is entered into by a public trust. Okay. Public trusts are not bound by that Constitution provision limiting municipalities to contracts for it.

Councilor Gansford?

I'd also just like to reiterate what I mentioned, you know, the thing about letting business owners know that an end is an end and everything like that. And I just want to move forward. unified council type of just statement at the bare minimum, showing them that we hear you also, because the two months that I spend every night thinking about how to solve this endless world of homelessness and how to help this and that, everything that I write down, everything I try to think of and everything, it takes just more than us at this table to be a part of the solution of that. And so some end game, I'm going to know we're going to need to reach out to business partners in town. We're going to have to reach out to other people in town to maybe come to the table and be part of this. And if they see that we're respecting them and their thoughts in this process, I feel that they would be a more accepting of that invite to the table where if we just left them in limbo and said, well, you know, we only care about this over here today, you know, and everything. It's not necessarily right by that client base that raises a lot of our sales tax that allow us to survive in this town. You know that thing, too. I just want to make sure they're recognized.

Have we checked with CityCare to see what the additional operational cost would be for 30 to 35 people?

Mrs. Freeman's working on that subject. She recognizes our conversation. It may boil down to ultimately how many additional square feet and how many more sets of eyeballs will it take to make sure everyone inside the shelter remains safe. So if we come up with a strategy and council says we want this option, do that work, but don't do the other work, we'll give that information to CityCare. They'll come back with what they think that cost increase might be.

Thank you. And the second thing, and I just forgot, but that's going to add on and everything. I 100% care about our fire department also going into any damn building. And by putting a fire sprinkler system in this, that takes away, in my world that I live in, it's security about what's the worst that can happen. The worst that can happen in this shelter to me is that my fire watch guy had a long day of work at his other job and fell asleep for two hours, and the whole damn thing catches on fire, you know? because that's human error. That does happen in the world that we live in. But a fire sprinkler system will let us know right away if we have a fire or not in that place and make it more safe for the guys that are trying to come in and actually fight the fire too and everything like that also.

Yes. I would also say this temporary shelter has been here for lack of options and we've definitely explored all kinds of options from 718 of memory serves north porter which made people mad um we looked at a building on oh yeah hootner drive that was also unpopular we looked at a building on griffin um i heard recently through the grapevine that the county had given a private homeless operator six hundred thousand If we had had their help for $500,000, we could have remodeled that and put people there. But they didn't reach out, and they didn't seem to want to cooperate with us. So here we are. I would definitely say it's not for lack of trying to get out of downtown sooner. And I would also just like to remind everybody that it's roughly 238 people camping outside right now. This is maybe 30, 35 extra beds. That is not going to address everybody, but that will definitely be full. In fact, I met more than a few people who told me that they would come in if there was room. I was going to say, for the possible expansion area, is this all going to be for men, given where it's located?

I was hoping CityCare might be able to do some maneuvering around on the women's side. I think they have a little extra space over there. The other buildings... when we start looking at these. There's no insulation in these warehouses. It's just, and they're cut up. This one really scares me. We can't do anything because of the asbestos. Anyway, I jumped the second one. There's an upstairs area that's pretty dilapidated. No insulation after you get away from these walls. So all this is the deck. It's just I don't have any way to go in there.

If the city here can move it around, I would love to see a few extra beds for women.

Oh, me too.

They're the ones who are definitely telling me that for safety reasons, and especially when you have people who have disabilities, like in wheelchairs, it's much easier for them to shelter in a building.

We still don't have much. There's no options in there. I've been looking at everything.

Maybe pulling the men out. I don't know.

I don't know. And you said the couch comm building is not. Hey, Chris is our guy.

She used to turn it on.

She did the water. Our units over there, we couldn't get them to fire up. And we kind of did a water test in that first bathroom. And we didn't run a snake down or didn't run the camera down it. But we just weren't having much luck over there, but the units alone. I mean we could replace the units and look at that again I Just I just didn't go that way because My should be see guys and plumbers kind of stirred me back away It's like we got if you want to do it quick.

We can't get in there Councillor Bruce There's like what I'm feeling so I Oklahoma Department of Mental Health, what's their end date as far as move?

End of the calendar year, they should be 100% in Oklahoma City.

Were they successful in keeping some pipes open, discussing different things with the department?

Yes, the headlines in the news over the weekend probably negatively impacted their willingness, but they're still answering the phones.

I think we should still push on that rope as it relates to space. There was also a discussion last week about RFI. What's the status of that RFI going out to nonprofits, those that are part of the COC and those that are not part of the COC as far as, hey, what could you do given RFI?

Just initiated. So staff will be working on that. Hopefully next couple of weeks we'll have something available for the street.

And Mr. Hinkle, are you going to talk about your suggestion on the ordinance?

No, staff has been given that directive, and they'll bring it up when it's ready to present.

I know. Downtown's not my area, but I get calls all the time from business owners regarding safety and security in homes. I don't know if other council members do. We all do, I promise you. We all do.

I'll just say it's never not going to be a problem because it's downtown. And you cannot force people to go to shelter. There are people who get released from jail who don't get a ride back to their community who come downtown because it's a public place you can be. And without systemic change, that's not going to stop. I do have a question for city managers. Councilor Burris, will you finish?

No, I... I think security and safety is a concern from downtown business owners. I believe it really needs to be thought through if we're going to increase the capacity. Because I know my calls and my texts and my emails from people that are not my constituents, but they're part of Norman, they don't live in Ward 3, but I will get those texts. AND I'VE SIT DOWN WITH SOME OF THESE BUSINESS OWNERS, AND I PULL OUT THEIR HAIR.

COUNCILMEMBER O'BRIEN.

I WAS GOING TO ASK, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN SAY ABOUT THE DEATH THAT HAPPENED?

We have requested that OSBI prepare a statement on the subject. They are doing the investigation. There were social media stories about a stabbing. We have no indication that a stabbing took place or a homicide took place. So we have requested OSBI to give an official statement on the subject, but we do not believe it was a homicide or A stabbing.

Will we have to wait months for that?

That I don't know.

No, you won't.

All right. It would be nice if the state gets past, maybe they figure out what happened and it's not as nefarious as it looked on the surface. And maybe they're willing to talk about maybe some longer term solutions. Maybe if anybody's got pull with the county. But whatever. Here we are.

Since I was brought up as a question, I would like to add in some response also. And this isn't necessarily, I don't think it's for anybody necessarily in this room right now. But for some of those that might be listening at home or listen to this later on YouTube or wherever they want to watch it from and everything. You run into conclusions and you create your own story in your head to go try to put out some clickbait on Facebook does not do the city of Norman, the unhoused, our businesses in Norman, or anybody else in Norman any good whatsoever. A national news ran a report about a stabbing in Norman on maybe or maybe not state property. That probably isn't going to affect how state people think about us when their property is mentioned with Norman on the national news. It does no good whatsoever. People need to relax in a time like that, care about the people that it affected personally and everything like that, and wait for the truth. The truth will come out. We'll be able to handle whatever it is, good or bad. If it comes out of stabbing, it is then. But we can handle it that way as a community and not have everybody not more thinking that we have maybe somebody out there doing things and hurting a certain type of people. Now they might think to go do the same thing and be copycats. So you do the city no favor by doing that. So I would please ask next time think twice.

Council Member Kirby?

Since he mentioned newspapers and whatnot, in all my years in Norman, I had a family member who worked at Gingerbread for 30-something years and retired. I've been a part of that crawdad fishing. A lot of families have. A lot of dads have. And the fact that that got canceled for the first time ever, that's kind of one of the points is we have to respect the fact that there's 128,000 other residents as well as children that are occupying these areas that we currently have issues in. Everybody keeps saying we keep kicking the bucket and we keep leaving no solutions. But even when solutions are offered, it does not clean up the problem. I keep hearing the number 238 people. But I believe the police department, I don't know if they can speak on it, have arrested more than this number by double that have said they were homeless here in Norman. So I don't know why we keep listing 238 when the police department's number of arrests of homeless people is well over 500. Seems kind of manipulative. Maybe it's just because they came and gone. I don't know why it's a hard 238. But just moving them from one park to another park without changing anything obviously has not worked. It has not worked for Norman. It has not worked for OKC. It has not worked across the world. New York has made stances opposite of California. I'm just saying we can't just... open up and extend a shelter as well. We're going to have to make rules that give the teeth to the police to be able to enforce. That way we're not waiting 14 days for action to happen when people decide they want to set up somewhere they're not supposed to. Otherwise, we are just going to keep gaining because right now we're attractive. If we have rules in place, rules that people don't want to follow, if they come here and they want help, let's help them. I don't care if they're from California or New York. If they're here and they need help, let's help them. But we need to put firewalls into place that make it to where we're not just openly ended, like Arizona or Utah who did this, and within 60 days they had 1,000 people. Because I guarantee you, if we can't handle 238 people, we darn sure can't handle an influx of 1,000.

Yes, and we have some of our COC and service providers here.

The numbers have always been a little funky. I WILL SAY SINCE CITY CARE HAS BEEN HERE AND HAS BEEN TRACKING NUMBERS IN SHELTER BETTER, THE 238 NUMBER COMES FROM NOT THE NIGHT OF THE POINT IN TIME COUNT BUT THE NIGHT AFTER THAT WE HAD THE BIG SNOWPOCALYPSE. SO WE HAD 238 PEOPLE THAT WERE AT CITY CARE, AT FOOD AND SHELTER, NOT OVERNIGHT, JUST ANY 23-HOUR SPACE. But we believe there were 238 people that sought emergency shelter on that night. And we believe it was probably the majority of people that are in the area. I will say that CityCare's number from last year was well over 400. So that would have been from January 16th when they took over the shelter to December 31st, they saw 400 unique individuals, which is much closer to the 500 to 600 number that we've seen from the Norman Police Department. Some of it is transient, but my best guess, and I see the numbers, and we were in coordinated entry this morning, is the number probably bounces between 225 and 275. just depending on the trends.

So you all have been able to reduce it with Thunderbird Clubhouse and CityCare and all that?

The thing is, 238 is a snapshot number. It's tonight there will be 200. 500 is 12 months. I made 500 arrests of people experiencing homelessness. So every day someone becomes homeless.

Every day someone gets back into housing. So

OF THE PIPE FARM. SO WHEN YOU HAVE LARGE ENCAMPMENTS HAPPENING, YOU MIGHT HAVE MORE PEOPLE THAT ARE TRANSIENT FROM THAT MIGHT NORMALLY BE IN OKLAHOMA CITY, THAT MIGHT BE IN NORMAN. THERE'S MOVEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO AREAS. THAT'S WHY WE DO OUR PIT COUNT ON THE SAME NIGHT. BUT I WOULD BE COMFORTABLE, AS SOMEBODY WHO GETS ASKED ABOUT THAT NUMBER A LOT, I WOULD BE COMFORTABLE AROUND 250 SAYING THAT'S PROBABLY WHAT OUR UNSHELTERED POPULATION

looks like and you're in this world seven days a week 365 days a year she's an adult yeah that's what i thought you're very okay she's a hero yeah she is and oh to that point would an expansion make y'all's lives easier i think anytime you get somebody inside shelter that's a good thing um

I ALWAYS LEAD WITH, THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY NUANCED ISSUE. IT HAS SO MANY MOVING PARTS, AND IT HAS, YOU KNOW, AS I SAID LAST WEEK, THIS IS A SYSTEMIC ISSUE. IT'S GOING TO TAKE SOLUTIONS AT A FEDERAL AND A STATE LEVEL. NO MUNICIPALITY IS EVER GOING TO SOLVE THIS ISSUE. YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT SERVICES, WHO HAVE BEEN THROUGH SERVICES 14 TIMES AND NO LONGER BELIEVE SERVICES WILL WORK FOR THEM. AND QUITE HONESTLY, THE SERVICES MAY NOT WORK FOR THEM. They are unable to participate in the systems that the way that they exist that will be successful for them. But anytime you're bringing somebody inside, it's a better outcome because they are more likely to engage in case management. They are more likely to get entitlement services. They are more likely to get possibly healthcare services. They might become medicated. Anytime you can do that, you're bringing them into wraparound services, you're going to have better outcomes.

Thank you. Can I just point to about having more shelter beds and getting services, thinking about Council Member Kirby's one solution of the bunk houses and stuff. Anytime we can get folks inside, yes. But at the same time, too, we have to think a lot of these people have lived in encampments for potentially years. They may have lost the ability to maintain housing on their own. So while I love the bunk house idea, Who's going to go in and teach them some of these things? Because you can't just throw people into housing and expect them to figure it out. Oftentimes I've seen folks get thrown into housing and they have a bed, but they're still sleeping on the floor. Or they pitch a tent inside of their house because that's what they're used to until they feel safe and comfortable enough. And a lot of that takes a lot of case management and peer support to be out there. And like I said last week, there's not enough of that in this community. We do not have enough service providers to allow that to happen successfully right now. And it is going to take a very big coordinated effort amongst all the agencies, churches, businesses, all of those things to really make this successful.

I'd also like to just add on something about people going to shelter and not going to shelter. There was a meeting that I attended that a bunch of us in this room were at and everything like that where I even threw out the number of those that I thought that were out there that we can go to shelter no matter what you do, five to ten percent. I believe now after Sunday, I spent five hours out and about on Sunday and everything and try to debrief with a lot of people, especially about the bad situation from Saturday and everything like that. And I just ask the question flat out to everybody that I came into contact with as an option. And I really think now that our number is about 20% to 40% that we have currently in tents that would not take whatever shelter might be offered. And when I ask, what's your biggest barrier of not wanting shelter? That way, if that's something that we need to address also is a lot of them didn't like the certain rules that city care themselves operate under necessarily and thought that some of their freedoms was restriction of coming and going on their free will things like that and everything. So. When we finally come up with some idea, that's something that might need to be discussed at a later date, is how do you come to some kind of compromise or something, you know, to get more people, you know. And we know why it's there.

I would think if you could get 30% to go into shelter, that would be a high percentage. It's probably more like 60% to 70% if they've been outside long-term in encampments. unless they're doing something where they're being housed with their peers and some very specific things. People who have lived outside for seven years, it's very difficult to change your world and come inside.

I was going to ask, we also have thrown out the idea of limited kennels, speaking of barriers. Is that an option still if we got them from somebody?

We have access to kennels. They are available to us in kind of an emergency response scenario.

So if we had a tornado and a bunch of people lost contact with their pets, we can deliver kennels.

I think they're handled through emergency services, not through animal welfare.

Okay. I had an ex-council member that happens to be in here, Norman, and they reached out. And that person also heard about that idea of a possibility and said that they would offer any resources or help to go along with that. But when that was brought up also, we talked about how it has to be in cohesiveness with our animal control already about what the rules and regulations are because we don't want to – just go throw up some kennels and have them taken down, you know, and everything like that. We want to do it the right way if it's going to be done at all, you know, and everything, too. So there is a process way that could lead there, just a matter of doing it the right way the first time.

Council Member Kirby?

I'm going to jump off course a little bit. Can you tell me about the asbestos as an abatement worker for five years for OU? That kind of caught my attention on the addressment you wanted to take. We're just slapping some makeup on a pig. What type of asbestos was it again? Do you know which one of the three types? And is it on the pipes, on the floor, under the tile, in the walls, on the paint, in the ceiling?

In the walls. It was mainly in the mud and drywall.

Popcorn ceiling? Some areas, yes. So then that would be hot too? Yes. And would you be trying to remove that or just put some stuff up on it and hold it for containment? Yes. If we go through with the sprinkler system, it would be having somebody there to catch the dust. So then you're going to have to get a hazmat crew in there like mid-South abatement. They're going to have to put glove bags in, do Oklahoma Department inspections, get a whole crew in, throw up a negative two containment because of the type of asbestos it is, keep it super wet.

Probably so, yeah. Because we looked at demoing all that building out under state contracting, getting it all out of there, and our prices were too high. And that's one of the hurdles we have. That's why I kind of left that $5,000 to $25,000 added cost, because I don't know what it's going to cost. If some of these areas in that, in 113, can become overhead and dropper down, you know, when there are drop ceilings, and not interfere with those. But all those buildings... are all these rooms here to get a sprinkler in there. You're going to have to go through the walls. Firewalls. Or they're just little rooms, but I can't get into the sprinkler system without going through there. So we'd have some kind of abatement to go on in there. And in this central area here, we try to sprinkle in, same thing.

So every single wall you punch through, they're going to have to come in, prep it off, scrape the wall down, make it to where you can drill it without causing an airborne pathogen? Yes, sir. Okay. Do you have an in-house hazmat team, or is this something you're going to have to call one of the four or five people we have in Oklahoma to try to do?

It would be someone on a state contract.

So then we are going to be waiting on them? Because I know one has, Environmental Action has the OU contract. Mid-South, I think out of Noble, has the same contract. Anthro Mercy Hospitals contracts and Tinker. So you might not even be able to get a crew in here within six or seven months.

It's not busy as they are with other contracts, yes.

And we haven't got any pricing on that. So this pricing is minus what it would take to puncture them walls with the HAZMAT crew in 2026. Okay. So we had hurdles.

We got hurdles.

Well, there's a lot of good points made, I think. Several of the folks I've talked to at the encampment that was at Cape Park, I mean, I just flat out asked several of the individuals, I mean, one, how did you end up in this situation? And then two, if there were space in a shelter, would you take it? And every single one that I've asked that to directly told me, yes, I would take shelter space if there was. These individuals, anyway, said they would much prefer to be indoors than out. They didn't want to be camping in a city park on state property. and one of the guys, he spoke at the council meeting last week, and I asked him, like, how did you, how did this happen? How did you end up here? He said, well, I'm from Norman. I grew up here. I graduated from Norman North in 2009, and I got into trouble legally when I was a teenager. I have a girlfriend, fiance that gets into trouble. We've both gotten into a lot of trouble, and Every time I've tried to turn things around, something happens. And he's like, I've had several jobs. I've worked at like every restaurant in Norman. And oftentimes when they find out that I'm homeless, I end up getting fired. So maybe there's other things that go on. And then the other one was Nancy. She spoke at the meeting last week about how nobody grows up wanting to be homeless. She didn't want to bother anybody or be a burden on anybody and understood that the the criticisms that we face and that they face. And she did say that she would take shelter if she could, and that she had an income, that she had a check from OU, but it wasn't enough to afford anything. She had some health issues. And I feel like if there were a space to do bunks or any other option, we wouldn't have WOULDN'T HAVE EVER OPENED THE SHELTER WHERE IT'S AT IN THE FIRST PLACE IF WE COULD HAVE USED ANY OF THE STATE LAND AROUND FOOD AND SHELTER, IF WE COULD HAVE GOTTEN THAT REC CENTER, WHICH, AGAIN, I THINK WOULD BE THE BEST OPTION. WOULD HAVE BEEN THREE YEARS AGO, AND I THINK IT STILL IS, IF THE BUILDING, YOU KNOW, IF WE COULD MAKE SOME IMPROVEMENTS TO THAT BUILDING, BUT I THINK LOCATION-WISE IT'S THE BEST OPTION. BUT WE'VE BEEN UNABLE TO FIND ANY OTHER privately owned property that we could purchase for a reasonable price. When we did, it was next to the interstate in an industrial area, not near any public transit, not near any services. Not only people that were against the shelter didn't want us to approve that, but people that are for the shelter didn't want us to approve that because it was so far away. And then various, the North Porter property across the street from Norman Regional Hospital, we've really explored a bunch of different options and we came to the Gray Street location out of last resort and really getting to the point where it was like, what city-owned property do we have that we're not using? And we were using that building, but mainly just for storage and boxes. And there were a few offices and some line maintenance folks in there, I think. But if we would have had any other option at all, the council three, four years ago would have never voted to open the shelter on Gray Street to begin with. We've just not been able to find any other option. And the state property to me has been the most ideal. And it was really a miracle that we were finally able to purchase the little piece that we did get from them. And so I've even been asked if we would be interested in, in, any other pieces of their property and I said we're interested in discussing anything anything you got let us know we'll talk about it for sure for businesses like I said we've got we got voters to approve a bond to build a new shelter we're moving forward with that we went through a little bit of litigation we're like a week or two left of the appeal deal of the time period You know, I agree, I don't know that we can bind a future council and say they won't extend it there. But, I mean, my goal from day one has been as soon as I can find any alternative option, I will vote to move the shelter out of downtown Norman. And so, to me, as soon as the new shelter is open, that is that trigger. And I've had a pretty ambitious goal myself about what I think that property could become where the shelter is. combined with the police department property too about that whole frontage and how that could be mixed-use multi-story development it could include affordable housing because the city owns the property we can use the fact that we own it to incentivize a type of development we'd like to see by offering a discount on the price maybe so I see a lot of really positive potential for that property and how it could possibly positively impact downtown Norman and in a big way and so I'm fully committed to moving the shelter out of that location as soon as we possibly can and so I'm I'm for either one of these options Whichever one get more people off the street and out of the parks and out of the doorways I think is good and The sprinkler thing is more long-term, but if you're saying that that puts some infrastructure in the ground for future development that might help incentivize something, then I think it's maybe worth it in that case. But that's where I'm standing on it. I want to get more people off. street. I want to get them out of the parks. And I, I mean, I really feel for kids not being able to have the crawdad thing, but I, I also feel that how unfortunate it is in our community that there's people that feel so desperate that they're willing to put a tent up in a city park. Like I would have to be, I can't even imagine how desperate I would have to feel to do that. And if I were doing, I feel like I would want to go set up somewhere where nobody could see me and I wouldn't know, you know, to do it in a park to me is like the ultimate desperation move in my opinion. So, um, I feel bad for the people that are in that position in their life, that that's, they feel that that's the level of desperation that they've made to. But I also agree that the parks are supposed to be for recreation for everybody. And it's not acceptable that we have, uh, groups of kids and school kids that are planning to have activities and feel like they can't because of that. So in both cases, we need to be doing a better job as a community in those ways. So I'm for pursuing either one of these options, whichever one we can get to that might help get people off the street while we're building the new shelter. So that's where I'm at on it currently. And I agree that new shelter is not going to solve homelessness Some of the individuals that we see that businesses deal with that are experiencing extreme mental health and mental health issues and addiction problems the new shelters in my view isn't going to really address a lot of those folks because those folks aren't staying in the shelter right now and until the state really does some comprehensive reform and when it comes to mental health care and I don't know what we're going to do with those individuals. The police cannot arrest them for making everybody feel uncomfortable downtown. And if they do something worth being arrested for, as we've talked about before, it's a very short period of time where they're going to be kept in the county jail and they're going to be right back down there and that business is going to be calling again. So we can just keep rehashing all that over and over again. That's kind of where I'm currently sitting.

Not to add on to the thing, but just because I wanted on public record more than anything else and everything, not just looking at this solution here. I mean, one reason why I was out there busting butt on the property behind food and shelter and everything like that is It's an option that I have called in to Daryl as, you know, maybe an encampment possibility and everything that now that it's cleaned and a little more sterile and everything there a little bit. If the state was to fix their sewage pipe on that property, that's the reason why we had to move in the first place. About that possibly being a temporary encampment type of possibility if the state would allow it. But it was why I mentioned it earlier and everything. Here today from the state side of things, I don't think that's going to be an option anymore and everything like that as well and everything. But I was working on that, was trying to get us there, but I don't think that's going to be an option.

It kind of comes down to a whole lot of we want people to trust us, just like we want people to show up to vote. But then when people showed up to vote all them years ago, when y'all had to make that tough decision because people were dying on the street to go ahead and approve a temporary shelter, even after the people voted no, that kind of notched out some respect. And it notched out some trust. And then every year since then, we haven't been able to address it. And this happens every year. And every year we come to this table and we... We have this conversation as a city, and our residents are watching. Our business owners are watching. People whose employees are being threatened are watching. And so, you know, where it's horrible what's going on with the homeless, we cannot keep ignoring the people. We run on sales tax in this town. Our sales taxes fell flat. How many years? I mean, when we have encampments set up right by a huge soccer field that we spend a lot of money on, people that would come in and spend sales tax money don't stay as long. They leave. And we lose that money. If they're being harassed at businesses over there around these brand new parks, we lose that money. And I mean, this is what we survive on, is these businesses that are asking us for help. And it's not just that. You go over near where they were set up at Cape Park, them houses right next to that are people who have changed their lives and are trying to get off of drugs. And then we're allowing people to be in a park right next to them using drugs. And I've never been through a rehab or nothing, so I don't know, but I imagine when you're hooked on something and you have to get off of it, it probably takes an extreme amount of work. So we can't ignore the fact that they're over there working their butt off to get clean And we're not keeping the area around them clean. So once again, I'm not against the homeless. I mean, I wish we could do a shelter overnight right there like we voted on. But that's not going to happen. And everything I see is coming out six and seven months, three to nine months. It's not getting fixed overnight. Getting a big army tent and putting it out there next to Food and Friends right now, I mean, at least that would give them something to be covered in. But we're not even discussing like a temporary temporary. We're focused on this. We're not even considering about tomorrow or next week or the next storm when it just rained like hell last night. We're so busy focused on how we can expand this that I haven't heard one option in here of an alternative immediate solution like an Army tent or, you know, a 40 by 60 or 90 by 100, 200 tent. circuits tent that can have air conditioning and size. I mean, we're not coming with any type of solution. We've sat in here for two hours and not one solution besides this shelter has been optioned. I mean, we got to have an immediate thing we can do right now because how many days before they get kicked out of that next part? I'll just ask you, where does that tent go?

I mean... What properties?

Okay, she mentioned $600,000. Have we contacted the agency who got $600,000 and asked if we could put them in the area behind them?

I would not be opposed to that if the state would tell us that we could use the property.

Have we contacted the place at 48th and Rock Creek that is technically a sober living or recovering that's going through permits and asked them if that 100 acres could be occupied? It's literally going to be to help... that they have the staff who know how to handle this. I mean, have we reached out to anybody? I'm just trying to figure it out because when we leave here tonight, they're still going to be in a park with no option.

That's the thing, too, is, okay, so if there was a person at Cape Park who's doing drugs next to people that live over there, so we kicked them out of that park, and now that person's just doing drugs next to someone else's house in Norman or next to someone else's business. So by kicking them out of the park, we may have... SOLVED A PROBLEM FOR A NEIGHBOR ON CARTER OVER THERE, AVENUE, BUT THAT PERSON THAT WE KICKED OUT IS JUST NOW A NEW PROBLEM FOR SOMEONE ELSE IN NORMAN, ANOTHER PART. SO WE DIDN'T SOLVE ANYTHING BY KICKING THEM OFF THERE. AND MAYBE THAT YOU COULD ARGUE THAT THE POPULATION AT MCKENZIE GARDENS IS MORE VULNERABLE. SO MAYBE THEM NOT BEING THERE IS AN OVERALL GOOD THING. BUT LIKE WITH THE SHELTER, THE SHELTER WAS OPEN BEFORE THE VOTE And the same thing as it was this time. That was not a vote on whether we're going to keep it open or not. It was a vote to create, to build a permanent one. And if voters of Norman in 2020 had said yes, then we wouldn't be in this position now. We would have already had a shelter that would have been built and not have been in downtown Norman years ago. And the downtown businesses wouldn't have been dealing with the shelter for the last five years. But Norman voters said no back then by 350 votes out of 25,000 votes cast. And I told people the voters, I've told people the same thing then. If you vote no, I'm not voting to close the existing shelter. So get that out of your mind. It's not happening. So you vote no, the existing shelter stays where it's at. Operating how it's operating. You vote yes, and we move it. But there's no option where we don't do it unless you elect different council people. And every council, pretty much, everybody for the last six years who has run for mayor and city council who has said, I'm supportive of the shelter, of funding it, and I'm supportive of moving it, has won their elections, and overwhelmingly the people who have not have lost their elections and lost re-election on council. So... I get it about the respect part, but again, we had a shelter before the vote in 2020, and it failed, so we just kept operating a temporary one. We had to move it three times during that period of time because we couldn't find anywhere to put it. But I would love to be able to do something like that. I think, I mean, what you're talking about is an immediate solution if we were able to do some kind of tent. I think there's questions about how... Who would manage that? How would that be organized? But I mean, that's the type of solution I've been trying to think of for the encampment issue is this takes months to do. The new shelter's months off. It's still not going to address everybody who's out camping, people that might not want to go in. So something like what you're talking about, I feel, is a path if we could get some property. We can't do it in a city park, and the only other property we own is the property we're going to build a shelter on. So we're... We need the states. So can we ask a church? Yes. And I think some people put that call out last week. Council Member Grant, I think, was talking about that too.

Yeah. And also Council Member Bruce kind of asked for that RFI. So I think we're headed in that direction if we're putting out the RFI to ask those questions And I would say, how about yes and? Yes, do this, and do attend. And wouldn't you agree that helping up to 75 people get case management to deal with their mental health and substance abuse issues makes us all safer? If you don't want them camping out in random spots doing drugs, give it maybe. And I have met those kids. I say kids. The last one was a kid. I have that downtown pantry that has food that a lot of different people come to. There was a younger, I would say 1923, hard telling when you're out in the streets, kid that approached me that said, do I know where an Oxford house is? And he was basically trying not to use. So I think having more options, yes, an Oxford house, it's like yes, yes. If the Oxford House is not an option, having more space at this place makes it possible for somebody like that to get that treatment, and especially early on in their lives where it doesn't become a habit, like decades on the streets. I think there was a study, and Heidi or somebody else can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you want to intervene with younger people like three to six months into homelessness. Mm-hmm. because then it becomes very normalized. Is that a correct stat?

Can I share a story that I have from this week? A 19-year-old, been home was actually a while, started living in one of the encampments, has been offered a housing, has declined. Why? Because he met someone in the encampment who he doesn't want to leave behind who is taking care of him. Not only that, that person has a brother, same age, same situation, different partner, that they wouldn't have met if they hadn't been living in an encampment to begin with. I'm serious. When I say the amount of resources and community members that mobilized, and I'm talking a moment's notice to get that done, had no effect. Why? Because it was too late. And that 19-year-old, the longer that 19-year-old stays in that situation, the harder and harder and harder it is for that person to become housed.

I appreciate the story. So anyways, I was just going to say, how about a yes and? We're doing our best. If CityCare is paying for a sprinkler, and maybe we might have to do the part with the riser. I'm not sure how that would work out. I see that being a benefit in the future as redevelopment comes. Obviously, I'm a yes to this. But does staff have our consensus?

We are working on the ordinance. We are working on the RFI. We would gladly take a phone call from any church group or private property owner who takes the call. In this particular scenario, we've got some cost estimates, the ability to take one more step in either Sprinkler or the 109 solution or both. We'll definitely need consensus on that because we're going to start spending some money in that scenario. So we do not have consensus yet to advance the fire sprinklers and or just the effort in the 109 building, which was the smaller, less costly solution. Still with hurdles, but.

One of the people I met at the encampment at Cape Park last week said that he worked, he was a caseworker at our shelter when it was on Comanche Street. and he's now homeless. So when we closed that shelter, we closed it for six months and then reopened the shelter where it's at now on Gray Street, and when we closed that one, he was laid off, I guess, and he didn't go into all the details, but he's become homeless since then. He did say that, and if there were shelter space, I would take it.

Anyway, any... Can you say...

I know we can't vote, but can we just... I don't think now's the time for any of it. I don't think you want it right now, what you're about to ask for. I really don't. Okay. So do I. I think it needs time.

So staff does need some direction, though, so I would encourage everybody to... Is there any other questions or comments? Council Member Ruse?

I would still continue to be knocking at the door and ask.

And state representatives, too. Any other comments, questions for staff or anybody from council?

The unhoused people, they throw away a lot of stuff. They throw it away for them. And all that stuff is repurchased, and every time it's purchased. Before six months, you'll be graded not. It takes up to two years to get out, right?

So just like you said, we operate on sales tax. Anybody that buys anything in Norman is a taxpayer. So anybody that has a check from anything that goes out and spends it buying anything is a taxpayer in Norman. So just keep that in mind. Okay, any final questions, comments from anybody or staff? Okay, please let staff know if you have any further thoughts about this proposal, this plan, and so they can have direction on how to proceed. It seems like both of these options are going to take time, so. All right. Okay. And this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

We got eight million dollars. Now we're dying. Another thing that's keeping us closed down at the moment is our senior senior.

Kids in crisis. Now they're going all the way to the city.