City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the City Council, Norman Utilities Authority, Norman Municipal Authority and Norman Tax Increment Finance Authority, Norman Parking and Transit Authority meeting of June 23rd, 2026. Madam Clerk, will you call the roll?

Councilmember Ghandis-Berry?

Here.

Councilmember Peacock?

Here.

Councilmember Bruce?

Here.

Councilmember Grant? Present. Councilmember Kirby?

Here.

Councilmember Hinkle?

Here.

Councilmember Blodgett? Absent. Councilmember Dixon?

Here.

Mayor Holman?

Here. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Get started with awards and presentations. Items one and two will be acknowledged with one vote. Item one is a proclamation of the Mayor of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, proclaiming the month of July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Norman. item two a proclamation of the mayor of the city of norman oklahoma proclaiming the year 2026 as a year of recognition of the 250th anniversary of the united states of america in the city of norman i'll entertain a motion to acknowledge receipt of the proclamations for items one and two motion second the motion on the floor is to acknowledge receipt of the proclamations for items one and two council members you may cast your votes

All votes have been cast in the motion to acknowledge receipt of the proclamations for items one and two passes unanimously.

Okay, and we will do the next three items as well, and then I'll go down to the podium and we'll do them all together, the presentation stuff all together. All right, and items three through five will be adopted with one vote as well. Item three is a resolution of the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, expressing appreciation and recognition to Lieutenants Corey and Mandy Doggett for their dedicated service to the Salvation Army of Norman. Item four, a resolution of the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, extending appreciation to Matthew Peacock for his dedicated service as a member of the Norman City Council. Item five, a resolution of the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, extending appreciation to Joshua Hinkle for his dedicated service as a member of the Norman City Council. I entertain a motion to adopt items three through five.

Motion.

Second.

The motion on the floor is to adopt items three through five. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast, and the motion to adopt items three through five passes unanimously.

All right.

oh already turned over okay all right if jason olsen director of parks and rec would like to join me at the podium here and everyone else involved with parks yeah awesome yeah i invited a few friends awesome wonderful okay a proclamation of the mayor of the city of norman oklahoma proclaiming the month of july 2026 as parks and recreation month in the city of norman Whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including here in the City of Norman, and whereas our parks and recreation facilities are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in our communities, ensuring the health of all citizens, and contributing to the economic and environmental well-being of the community and region. and whereas parks and recreation programs build healthy, active communities that aid in the prevention of chronic disease, provide therapeutic recreation services for those who are mentally or physically disabled, and improve the mental and emotional health of all citizens. And whereas parks and recreation programs increase a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses, and crime reduction. And whereas parks and recreation areas are fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community, and whereas parks and natural recreation areas improve water quality, protect groundwater, prevent flooding, improve the quality of the air we breathe, provide vegetative buffers to development and produce habitat for wildlife and whereas the u.s house of representatives has designated july as parks and recreation month now therefore i mayor of the city of norman oklahoma do hereby proclaim the month of july 2026 is parks and recreation month in the city of norman passed and approved this 23rd day of june 2026. congratulations One, two, three.

Real quick, July is Parks and Recreation Month in the city of Norman, and we're very thankful for not only our council members who are always super supportive of everything that we do in parks, and we're thankful for our elected leadership, but our residents, which make our department one of the best to work for in all of Oklahoma. We do everything that you can imagine. We're kind of the jack of all trades in the city of Norman. We do everything from running programs to mowing parks to working on every and maintaining every single building inside of the city of Norman. We have so many great employees, and we brought some of our employees here with us tonight, and I just wanted to recognize them. Marina Wells, Siakris Aguilo, I'm sorry, Siakris, I probably killed your last name, Carla Sitton, Kellan McCoy, Paul Kraut, Phillip Brooks, but they're all just representatives of all of our divisions that we have. And just to give you a simple idea that we all not only do cool things like run Westwood and provide swimming or the wife back or or have cultural centers. But a few few weeks ago, the homeless shelter was shut down by our state fire marshal. And then our facility maintenance guys were out there for three straight days working to get that building open and much credit they worked so hard to get that done just today after the storm we had our park maintenance guys are out there sawing trees and getting streets back open and make sure that our neighbors had access to get back home we do a lot and we have so many employees that are so good and so unselfish and our job is to make the quality of life in norman better and we want to thank everybody for allowing us to do that thank you very much

All right. Up next, I would ask Emily Clifton and Kathy McCullough of Daughters of the American Revolution Black Beaver Chapter to join me. And anybody else with the group that would like to come on up? Yeah, please.

I'll go from the other way.

You can be right on the sides here. And I'll read it. Oh, you have to read it. I'll read it.

And then if you all want to make a few comments about it, that'd be great.

All right, a proclamation of the mayor of the city of Norman, Oklahoma, proclaiming the year 2026 as the year of recognition of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America in the city of Norman. Whereas the year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, a nation born from the belief that all people are created equal and endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And whereas this historic milestone provides an opportunity to celebrate our nation's achievements while reflecting on both the progress we have made and the challenges we have faced throughout our history. Whereas for 250 years, the United States has stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity, continually striving to form a more perfect union while learning from the successes and shortcomings of its past. And whereas the strength of our nation has always come from its individuals of diverse backgrounds, beliefs, cultures, and faiths whose contributions have shaped the country we share. And whereas the City of Norman reflects this same spirit through resilience, service, inclusion, civic engagement, and a commitment to respect, understanding, and common purpose. And whereas this anniversary calls upon all Americans to reflect on our shared history and renew our dedication to the principles that unite us and guide our future. Now, therefore, I, Mayor of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, do hereby proclaim 2026 as a year of recognition and reflection in honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America and encourage all residents to commemorate this milestone by celebrating our history, engaging in thoughtful reflection, and working together to build a stronger and more united future. Pass and approve this 23rd day of June 2026. Thank you.

And we'll get a picture right here.

If you guys want to come right over here, we'll get a picture together. Whichever way you would prefer. Thank you so much.

Mayor Holman and esteemed members of the Norman City Council, it is with gratitude and great honor that we accept this proclamation in observance of this historic 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States of America on July 4, 1776. In the spirit of our revolutionary forebears, the Black Beaver Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution is profoundly honored to join the city of Norman, our community, and our nation in commemorating this significant occasion. Tonight, with this proclamation, we reflect on the shared history, our common heritage, and the enduring courage and devotion of the men and women whose sacrifices secured and sustained the blessings of American independence. Thank you.

All right. If Kurt Lee would like to join me at the podium from representing Salvation Army. A resolution of the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, recognizing and honoring Lieutenants Corey and Mandy Doggett for their dedicated service to the Salvation Army of Norman. Whereas the Salvation Army has served the City of Norman and surrounding areas for over 100 years, providing meals, shelter, and a place to seek refuge for countless of our neighbors in need. And whereas lieutenants Corey and Mandy Doggett have served with honor, love, and faith for over three years as leaders of the Norman Corps, bringing hope and care to the citizens of our community. And whereas their hard work and perseverance, the lieutenants leave behind a legacy of dedication and growth, as the Salvation Army broke ground last week on a facility and service expansion in the heart of Norman, allowing their organization to reach even more people in need. And whereas the City of Norman recognizes their family's wonderful contributions to our community, leading their organization with faithfulness and dedication to the citizens of our city. Now, therefore, I, Mayor of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, do hereby recognize and honor Lieutenants Corey and Mandy Doggett for their outstanding service and contributions to the City of Norman and extend best wishes for their future endeavors. Passed and approved this 23rd day of June, 2026.

Just very quickly, Lieutenants Corey and Mandy Doggett could not be here tonight. They got shipped off to Mountain Home, Arkansas, a little sooner than anticipated. They got an extra year here in Norman. Typically, Salvation Army officers are around for about two years or so. And so on behalf of Lieutenants Corey and Mandy Doggett, I just want to say thank you to this council for embracing them, this community for embracing them for three years here as Salvation Army lieutenants. There's been so much progress at the Salvation Army, as you can see if you've driven by Hayes and Porter, that they're breaking ground on an expanded kitchen, hopefully an expanded shelter and facility. And as we welcome new lieutenants in in the next couple of weeks, Miranda and Victor Estudante from Washington, D.C., I just want to let you know, and as the advisory council chairman here in Norman County, The Salvation Army of Cleveland and McLean County, we're incredibly looking forward to being a partner and a valued resource here for those in need in Norman and McLean and Cleveland County. So thank you.

First up is a recognition of Councilmember Matthew Peacock. A resolution of the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma extending appreciation to Matthew Peacock for his dedicated service as a member of the Norman City Council. Whereas the strength and vitality of local government depends upon citizens who are willing to dedicate their time, talents, and leadership to public service. And whereas municipal government serves as the level of government closest to the people. and elected officials play a vital role in representing the interests of their constituents while addressing the challenges and opportunities facing the community. And whereas Council Member Peacock answered the call to public service and faithfully served the citizens of Norman as Ward 8 Council Member from July 7, 2020 to July 2, 2024, and as Ward 2 Council Member from July 2, 2024 to July 7, 2026. And whereas throughout his tenure on the Norman City Council, Council Member Peacock demonstrated a steadfast commitment to public service, thoughtful leadership in the advancement of policies and initiatives that benefited the residents of Norman. And whereas Council Member Peacock further distinguished himself through his service as mayor pro tem from July 5th, 2022 to July 7th, 2026, providing leadership and guidance to the council while representing the city with professionalism and dedication. And whereas Council Member Peacock contributed his time and expertise through service on the Community Planning and Transportation Committee and the Business and Community Affairs Committee, including servant serving as chairman of the Business and Community Affairs Committee from July 5th, 2022 to July 7th, 2026, helping guide important discussions and decisions affecting the future of the city of Norman. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the city council of the city of Norman, Oklahoma, that the city council, on behalf of the citizens of Norman, hereby express its sincere gratitude and appreciation to Matthew Peacock for his years of dedicated service to the community and recognizes his contributions to the city of Norman through his leadership, commitment and public service, and extends its best wishes for continued success in all his future endeavors passed and adopted this 23rd day of June 2023.

This is the first time I've ever gotten to speak from this side, so this will be interesting. Bear with me, you've got six years of memories here to live through, so it might take a second. So, looking back tonight, I can honestly say that serving the people of Norman has been one of the great privileges of my life. I first ran for City Council in 2020 with the desire to make Norman the kind of place that my kids didn't want to leave when they grew up. I also wanted to be an example to them of what it means to give yourself to public service for your community. Those reasons have never changed, and they are as true today as they were six years ago. So over these past six years, we've spent 312 Tuesday nights together. 312. That's 312 nights that I missed bedtime with those kids I just mentioned. 312 nights that my work was put on hold. And I know that I'm not alone. Everyone who has sat on this dais has made sacrifices. People often see the votes, but they don't see the hours of preparation and the difficult conversations. Keep in mind those 312 Tuesdays don't include any of the committee meetings, material prep, phone calls, emails, texts, public events, or campaigns that council members are tasked with. All of this for very little pay and a lot of negative attention on social media. Yet despite those sacrifices, we do this job because we love our city and we want to use our talents to make it better. And so tonight, so I leave tonight with tremendous gratitude and tremendous optimism because this city has accomplished a lot in the past six years. Here are just some of my personal favorites. Together, we navigated a global pandemic, which just happened to be my very first council meeting ever. We adopted AIM Norman 2045, which was the largest planning effort ever taken on by a city in the nation. And by doing so, we established a long-term vision for our community. We adopted master plans for Andrews Park, Westwood, and the Griffin Memorial property. We partnered with the Trey Young family to construct the WIFAC. We secured ownership of Griffin Soccer Complex from the state of Oklahoma, preserving one of our community's most valuable recreational assets. We funded and constructed the Adult Wellness and Education Center, a project that previously had no identified funding source or way to be built. We partnered to establish a small business incubator focused on women and minority-owned businesses in Norman. We pursued zoning reforms and created opportunities for accessory dwelling units and incremental housing to fight the affordability crisis. We removed parking minimums citywide and are pursuing the removal of minimum lot sizes to create better land use policy. We created the city's first ever parking trust, which Councilmember Hinkle gets all the credit for. We became one of the first Strong Towns Community Action Lab cities in America. We stood united against the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority the entire time that I was up here. We strengthened our partnership with the University of Oklahoma and continued to build on Norman's reputation as one of America's great college towns. We supported pattern zoning, public art, mural incentives, and other placemaking efforts. We passed guest tax increases, utility rate increases, and two street maintenance bonds. And we passed a bond to build a homeless shelter. which was the issue that I heard the most about in my time on council. I heard from more people begging for the city to do something, anything, about that issue than nearly any other topic combined. I hope that I've left the city a little better than I found it, but none of these accomplishments belong to any one person. In the six years that I have been up here, I have served with 29 different council members, three different mayors, and have represented two very different wards. And while the headlines often focus on conflict and ways to divide us, the truth is that far more unites us. Which that is something that you realize more and more the longer that you're up here. And if my colleagues take anything from my time on council, I sincerely hope it is that. Cities are the ultimate team sport. And as the old saying goes, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. So in that spirit, there are some people that I want to thank. And I appreciate you indulging me as I go down memory lane. I want to thank my fellow council members, past and present. Even if we disagree on policy, I have never doubted your love for the city and am grateful for your service to Norman. I want to thank Mayor Holman for his leadership, friendship, and for four great years of being my only seatmate when we sat down at the end of the dais representing Ward 7 and 8. Thank you for trusting me as your mayor pro tem. I want to thank Daryl, Rick, Scott, Jane, Laura, Jason, Jamie, Lisa, Katherine, Anthony, Taylor, Michelle, Sarah, Shannon, and Mama Brenda Hall, and every one of our incredible staff. The public sees council votes, but you are the people who really make things happen and are the real MVPs. Thank you to Lee Hall, Lauren Schuller, Helen Grant and Elizabeth Foreman. The five of us are trauma bonded for life and it was a joy to share this experience with you. Thank you to Richard McCowan. You supported me from day one and I'll never forget how you poured into me and into this community. Thank you to Josh Hinkle and Scott Dixon for your authentic friendship and for making meetings fun again. I'll consider you both of you very good friends for a very long time. Thank you to David Gansbury and Robert Bruce for being wonderful seat mates over the past year. It has been a joy watching you both grow into your roles, and my only regret is we didn't get a chance to serve together longer. And to Trey Kirby and Kimberly Blodgett, it has been an honor to serve with you both, and I look forward to seeing you continue to advocate for Norman. Don't ever lose the fire and passion that you bring to this team. You can never go wrong doing things for the right reasons. And lastly, I want to thank the people of Norman. As an architect and urban designer, I've always believed that cities aren't really about buildings. They're about people from different backgrounds who can still come together around a shared love for community, even if we disagree on the past of how to get there. Norman is full of those people, and we're better because of it. And lastly, most importantly, thank you to my family, Megan, Charlie, Graham, and Whitley for sharing me with this community over the past six years. I hope that I made you proud. And now, after six wonderful long years, I'm looking forward to being at home on Tuesday nights with these kids. Thank you.

All right, Councilmember Joshua Hinkle. a resolution of the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, extending appreciation to Joshua Hinkle for his dedicated service as a member of the Norman City Council. Whereas the strength and vitality of local government depend upon citizens who are willing to dedicate their time, talents, and leadership to public service, And whereas municipal government serves as the level of government closest to the people and elected officials play a vital role in representing the interest of their constituents while addressing the challenges and opportunities facing the community. And whereas council member Hinkle answered the call to public service and faithfully serve the citizens of Ward six as council member from July 2nd, 2024 to July 7th, 2026. And whereas throughout his tenure on the City Council, Councilmember Hinkle demonstrated a strong commitment to public service, worked diligently to represent the interest of Ward 6 residents, and contributed to the discussions and decisions that advance the goals and priorities of the City of Norman. and whereas Councilmember Hinkle contributed his time and expertise through service on the Business and Community Affairs Committee and the Finance Committee, including serving as Chairman of the Finance Committee from July 2025 to July 7, 2026, helping guide important fiscal discussions and policy decisions affecting the City. and whereas Councilmember Hinkle further represented the city through service on the Norman Convention and Visitors Bureau and Norman Employees Retirement System boards, providing leadership and oversight on matters important to the economic vitality and long-term sustainability of the community. now therefore be it resolved by the council of the city of norman oklahoma that the city council on behalf of the citizens of norman hereby express its sincere gratitude and appreciation to joshua hinkle for his dedicated service to the community and recognizes his contributions to the city of norman through his leadership commitment and public service and extends its best wishes for continued success in all future endeavors passed and adopted this 23rd day of june 2026.

All right.

Good evening, everyone. Before I begin, I want to say thank you. Thank you to the residents of Ward 6 for trusting me to represent you. Thank you to my colleagues on council, both past and present. Thank you to our city staff, department directors, city manager, attorneys, clerks, and everyone who works every day to keep the city moving forward. Public service is an unusual thing. Most people who run for local office do so for the right reasons. They care deeply about their community. They want to solve problems, and they want to make things better. What I've learned is that caring is necessary, but it isn't always enough. Most people in local government arrive with passion and purpose. Very few arrive with the training to read a capital budget. Local government is not just speeches and votes. It's infrastructure, pensions, water systems, public safety, economic development, planning, debt, and all of the budgets. It is complicated work carried out by people who strive to attain the best information and best resources. Serving on this council has given me a deeper appreciation for the responsibility carried by public servants at every level. It has also given me tremendous respect for the staff members who quietly do the work long after the meetings end and the cameras are turned off. During my time on council, we didn't agree on everything. In fact, sometimes we didn't agree on much at all. But I remain convinced that most people who serve this city genuinely care about its future. They may have different ideas about how to get there, but they care. I've had the privilege of working alongside some remarkable people. I've made friendships that I expect to last long after tonight. I've learned from residents, business owners, city employees, advocates, and neighbors from every corner of Norman. To the residents who supported me, challenged me, criticized me, emailed me, stopped me at grocery stores and at dinner, or spoke at meetings, thank you. Democracy works best when people show up and participate. I am proud of the work we've accomplished. I'm proud of the conversations we've had, even the difficult ones. And I'm proud to leave knowing that I gave this responsibility my best effort. But tonight is also the end of a chapter. Public service is important, it matters. Cities need people willing to step forward and serve. But public service should never become your entire identity. Outside this room are families, friendships, hobbies, quiet mornings, dinners around the table, children growing up, grandparents getting older, and all the moments that make a life. For me, it's time to spend more time there. To my family, thank you for sharing me with this city. You sacrifice more than anyone will ever know. And to everyone here tonight, thank you for allowing me the honor of serving the city of Norman. Public service is important, but it should never replace the life waiting for you outside this room. And I'm looking forward to spending more time there. Thank you.

all right council announcements and we'll start in ward one uh well of course first foremost thank both councilmen tonight for their time served but also more importantly for their friendship also their knowledge that they shared and how they're not afraid to take somebody under their wing and kind of help guide them and direct them in the right direction For that, I will personally be forever grateful. I want to say a shout out to thanks to the Meadows over in Ward 1. Invited me and the mayor out for a little pool party and a little discussion and chance to connect with them over there in Ward 1. So thanks to Meadows for that. Thanks to all of our volunteers. All of our staff, all of our everybody that made Jazz in June and Juneteenth a great celebration. Norman once again showed how we are truly a town that likes to put on a show and be able to have some activities to do in our local parks and make life a little bit better for all of us. And then, last but not least, thank you to the OU baseball team. Breeding pride to Norman, Oklahoma, especially with you being a super underdog. It just shows that we never give up. We conquer the goals.

Thank you. Ward 2.

Boomer.

Ward 3.

Yes, council members Hinkle and Peacock, I appreciate everything that... you know the conversations we had in the lessons learned I've taken from I did to your service, but thank you for 3 Norman residents had appreciate the text again calls the e-mails the face-to-face discussions, please keep it up. I appreciate it gives me additional perspectives. So thank you.

Thank you word for.

Yes, good evening Ward 4 and City of Norman. I'd also like to recognize Councilmember Peacock and Hinkle for their service. For Councilmember Peacock, I know once you're off the dais that I'm sure I will see you around the urban design implementation plan because the work isn't done there. And whatever you're doing through inked of that connect cross connects with Norman, I'm sure across our paths will cross. And then downtown Norman initiatives. I know you're working on some, so I feel like I'll be seeing you around and and to Councilmember Henkel. I'm sure our paths will cross. Usually, I would have a card made by now, but I'm between studios. But I would like to say that when I can make a cyanotype for each of you, that I would love to meet up at Juliet and catch up. Also, thanks to Parks for both Juneteenth and Jazz in June, and for reminding us about the work that went into restore the functioning of the homeless shelter i know that was not easy it took a community effort and i think some of the conversations we've had around churches stepping up have been helpful i know it is a bigger problem than churches and the city can handle on their own and i hope that those advocates that want us to do more as we talk about the future things we may do with potentially exploring a managed encampment, that your advocacy efforts also need to extend to your county and your state government and your federal government. Also, speaking of anniversaries, Speeding Bullet, which is located at 614 North Porter, in celebration of 28 years in business, has another special event tomorrow, Wednesday, June 24th, from 2 to 6 p.m., featuring Matt and John Yuan, who are comic creators, writers, artists, and actors who work in not only comics, but television as well. Fans may recognize them from appearances in shows and films like Observe and Report, Arrested Development, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where they played the Chang brothers in the Marvel series. You can go check them out, visit with them, get things signed, and support local business. Thank you.

Thank you. Ward five.

Just want to say thank you for Council Members Peacock and Hinkle. All the little things like the coffee pots and the ice machine locations. Little tricks that we would have spent years not knowing. Appreciate that. And then I'd also like to thank Jane and the developers from last week when I postponed the item to meet with me and get everything worked out with it in the residence. That way everybody's satisfied and I think everybody's really happy on that deal now. And then would also like to thank Matt only Chris for making such great deals on the products that keep our water plant going Outside of that. That's all I have Thank You

I'm guessing that Matt showed you where the coffee pot was, because he's the one that's finding it all the time. I didn't get to go to Juneteenth this year. We were picking up my kiddo from camp, but I heard it was fantastic, so thank you to all the volunteers and city staff that helped put that event on. If you've never been to that festival, I know it's kind of new. It is so much fun, and I can't wait to go next year, so hopefully we'll get to attend. Same with Jazz in June. We actually did attend that, and it was wonderful as well. The weather was absolutely perfect, so thanks to Jason Olsen for making that weather happen. And again, I want to say thank you guys for your friendships and for the lessons learned up here. I really look forward to continuing our friendships and the conversations that we have, maybe in a less official capacity. And now five of us can talk at the same time, so that'll be really fun. And then last, I do want to say congratulations to OU men's baseball for winning the national championship last night. I know that they were big underdogs, but the University of Oklahoma is a big feature in the city of Norman, and having a world-class organization like that that brings the spotlight to our community is always a benefit and will continue to be a big part of our city moving forward. So congratulations to the coach and especially those two amazing pitchers.

Thank you. Ward 8.

Thank you. One of the things my friend Josh didn't mention, he's now going to have a lot more time to work on his business of selling necklaces to college baseball players. We think after watching the College World Series, that's a lucrative business to be in. Congrats, sir. I want to highlight the the city's water meter infrastructure program. It's part of our smart meters that we got a grant for and put in. So we don't have meter readers anymore. It's all kind of electronic wireless. it goes we have a portal it goes live tomorrow so you'll be able to log in through the portal come to the city's website you can essentially monitor your water usage real time so you'll you should be able to spot leaky toilets leaky anything it's going to be phenomenal it's going to be great for everybody just want to highlight that it's the city of norman meter infrastructure program or mip Just want to extend thanks to council members Peacock and Hinkle. Just absolute great friends. I would say all nine of us are truly friends, do anything for any of us. But those two especially have been super helpful for me. If there's anything I've done that you liked, I learned it from Josh. If there's anything I've done you didn't like, I picked that up on my own. Matt has been extremely helpful. Just love these guys. Matt and I probably didn't have the best of starts. I like to say we ran for the same seat. We didn't run against each other, but I ran against him. He walloped me. And in just true Norman is a small world fashion, I'm going to embarrass her so bad. I'm going to try not to, but... Matt has a very handsome seventh grader. And my seventh grader thinks he's really handsome, so. Uh-oh. So, you know, there's that. And then I'll just end it. And then I'll end it on, Council Member Gansbury mentioned going to a pool party. He and I are working on something later this summer, and we're going to have a cannonball contest. So it's going to be who can beat one or eight. Good luck. Bring your cannonball skills.

And that's it for today. Thank you.

Yes.

um i too wanted to just mention appreciation for events highlight some of the events that we had this past week we had ribbon cuttings at eagle cliff park and at northeast lions park for new playgrounds that were paid for by the voter approved norman ford initiative Eagle Cliff Park has been around since the late 1970s, and the playground equipment dated back probably to the 90s or so. During my time as Ward 7 Councilmember, a frequent request I would get from residents, especially in Eagle Cliff, obviously, was when updates would be coming to that park. It was always part of the Norman Forward program. And about a year and a half ago, we started hearing from staff that we were getting close to actually being able to do the project for that park. And there was lots of great input and feedback from residents in that area. And then Council Member Blodgett was able to help see that project through. as the current Ward 7 Council member. So it was exciting to see the residents there. One resident who uses a walker came up to me at the ribbon cutting and told me how much more accessible the park is now for her to use. The old gravel pathway was a little bit difficult for her in the walker. That was really great to hear. And then Northeast Lions Park was a great example of city staff partnering with Norman Public Schools and doing a little land swap. And we were able to take two parks and consolidate them into one and rebuild a new playground. and the park space is even bigger but it was two separate named parks now they have the same name and it was really great to have that and the concrete pads when we had the ribbon cutting were not cured yet so the benches and tables were moved after the ribbon cutting and should be back out today or tomorrow sometime this week according to staff so I had heard some questions about that, but I appreciate staff and all their work on that. And then we've got another ribbon cutting for Sutton Place Park over in Councilmember Hinkle's area this week as another Norman Forward project. So thanks to the investment that voters of Norman made in 2015 through the Norman Forward Initiative, every single park in Norman, over 70 of them, will be updated. There are several new parks that don't exist, but all existing parks are being updated through this program. I'm very excited about that and encourage everybody to attend the Sutton Place Playground Ribbon Cutting this week if you're available. And also wanted to mention that I was invited to read a proclamation this weekend at SoonerCon, which was at the Embassy Suites. They were celebrating their 40th year as an event, and they've been hosting it in Norman for a number of years now, and hundreds of guests from all across the state or across the country coming to, it was very fascinating, I'll just say that, and I definitely would look forward to attending again, but having the opportunity to go up on stage and be a part of their opening ceremonies on Friday, welcome everybody to Norman and thank them for for being there and so that was really wonderful to celebrate and then running from SoonerCon straight to Reeves Park so I could do a proclamation for Juneteenth and recognize that festival and that event just keeps growing every year based on my observation so I'm really excited that awareness of what Juneteenth is continues to spread because like I've mentioned many times that is not something I recall ever hearing about in any level of school growing up and And really, until a few years ago, it was not something I was very well aware of. So I'm glad that that is spreading in the Norman community, awareness of what that is and what it means, and that anybody that wishes to celebrate it is free to do so at the Juneteenth Festival. And then on Saturday was able to finally make it over to Jazz in June at Andrews Park, which was also packed full of people. And it's just great to see so many wonderful events going on all at once in the city of Norman. So much to do. So many people having a wonderful time with their families and so on and on. And then just on top of that, OU winning the national championship in baseball last night. So it was really exciting to watch the whole run through the whole College World Series and being down eight to two, I think it was, against Georgia Tech in Atlanta and then coming back and winning and winning 10 out of the last 11 games. It's really remarkable. And someone mentioned that OU is not accustomed to being a Cinderella story because they've typically been very successful throughout all the decades. And so that feeling of being the underdog and nobody expecting you to win and being 11th out of 16 in the SEC throughout the regular season, losing in the first round of the tournament, and then going on a run and winning the College World Series, it's really awesome to be a part of that. The score to be the same score as the 2000 National Championship game against Florida State, 13 to two. And so I remember how I felt as a 16-year-old freshman at Norman High when that happened, being a lifelong OU sports fan. So I know what that means to a lot of kids in our community and lifelong fans as well. So excited for them and the coaches and the fans and everybody that was involved. And OU announced that they were having a celebration at Kimmery Family Stadium tomorrow evening. And so that's open to everybody as far as I know. So I would encourage everybody to attend that if you're able. And also wanted to thank the Meadows neighborhood HOA in Ward 1 for inviting us out to the pool party and getting to talk about some city issues and some issues that they've been dealing with in their neighborhood. and then also appreciate the Norman Fire Department for showing up and attempting to give a demonstration to the kids about pool safety. They were much more interested. When they asked who wants to go see the fire truck, literally none of the kids said yes. They all were, or stay in the pool. They all wanted to stay in the pool. But I appreciate them coming out and talking about pool safety, fire safety with the kids, and they even had to leave on a call real quick, and then they came back after they were done. So that was really nice of them, the guys out at Station 9. And of course, any neighborhoods out there that wanna host any meetings with a council member, I would definitely encourage you to reach out to your council member, and if I'm available, I'm happy to be there as well, so we can hear directly from you about what's going on in your neighborhoods. And then I also want to extend a thank you to city staff and the First Presbyterian Church for stepping up to help with the shelter issue. I know there were other organizations in Norman that reached out and expressed that they were willing to help out with that as well. But First Presbyterian was able to host shelter guests for a few days while those issues were addressed very quickly by our staff. So I appreciate that community effort to step up when there's need. And that's really what Norman means to me growing up here. That type of mentality is when there's a need, somebody or something in Norman will step up to try to address it. And so I appreciate everybody that worked on that and continues to do so. And then lastly, I also wanted to extend my appreciation and thank you to Matt and Josh, with Matt serving for six years out of my 13, almost 14 now. Only one other council member in my entire time on this council has served more than two terms. And that was council member Castleberry from Ward three served three terms, six years. And the average term served on the Norman City Council during my tenure is less than two. Actually, it's about one and a half. And that's partly because we had a council member who passed away a month after he was sworn in. We had a council member who resigned a month after he was sworn in because he took a job out of state and moved away. And so for the most part, we've had council members serve one, maybe two terms. And for the most part, council members have done so and found out this was not something they wanted to continue doing, did not want to continue subjecting themselves and their families to over and over again. and for $100 a month, as most mentioned. It's a mostly voluntary job, voluntarily voluntary job, and there's an expectation that we are to solve homelessness in the city of Norman for $100 a month. Not the state representatives, not the federal representatives who really make a ton of money to do their jobs, and have it really cushy. They're not held to that same expectation, but every city government is. And I talk to mayors from all across the country and it's the same thing. Every city council member, every mayor is held to a much higher standard than the President of the United States for our personal conduct, for things we say. for how we conduct ourselves on social media, we are all held to a higher standard than even the president. We're held to a higher standard than state representatives and people running for those offices on a consistent basis. And it's easy to see why would people want to continue to subject themselves to that and miss their kids' lives. Six years of Matt's three children growing up, young children, and missing events and having to be here on the receiving end of mostly people that are upset about something. Very rarely is this council chamber full of people that are very excited or happy about what's going on. It is usually to tell us that they're upset, that they're opposed to something. things like that and so I'm always I just have a great admiration for anybody that's willing to step up and do this I've not always agreed with everybody I've served with and I've now served with about 43 different council members and four different mayors and I've had a lot of disagreements over the years with council members but until you've sat up here in this position you really don't know what it's like and and I appreciate anybody that's willing to step up and do that on a pretty much voluntary basis and try to tackle and address these very difficult challenges that a city like ours is facing so Having someone like Matt Peacock on the council, someone who's a city nerd like myself, who I grew up being fascinated with architecture and city planning. That's why I started watching council meetings was because you would see presentations for projects or street projects. And having someone else that is so as deep into it as I am, if not more, and who does it professionally as an architect, I think was very valuable to have on council. And that big accomplishment of removing the parking minimums for commercial so that we don't have these massive giant seas of parking that are never used covering up all this space that could be buildings or green space, and we'd be better used being either one. So I really appreciate your service and the COVID and coming in right at the height of all that. So it's just been really great having someone like you, Matt, to be on the council throughout this entire time. in a time of upheaval and a lot of change over on the council, it's been good to have someone that's been able to and willing to stick around for so long. So thank you very much, Matt and Josh. Having someone on council who grew up on the east side like I did that went to Kennedy and Irving, the kid the schools that a lot of folks uh maybe look down on in the community um you know for being lower income and being much more diverse perhaps in a lot of other places and a lot of kids i think look on that in that area of the city being able to look at the council and look at myself and look at you and say Well, if those two guys could get on the city council in Norman, I could grow up and be a city council member in Norman. I could be interested in city planning stuff and be on the city council someday if I just get involved. Having someone that I can share that perspective with, what it's like to grow up in that part of town, to go to those same schools, and to be up here and try to tackle the issues that we both grew up knowing about and seeing and experiencing in our lives growing up here was really meaningful. And I really appreciate having your perspective and experience up here. And again, same thing, having young daughters who would much rather have you at home, and I know you'd rather be at home with them, but being willing to dedicate your time to deal with these types of issues and take away time from your family is really something that I appreciate and I hope the whole Norman community appreciates too. So thank you both so much for all your work and I'm looking forward to continuing our friendship beyond this. With that, we will move on to the regular agenda, the first being the consent docket. And I was also going to real quick mention the portal, but Council Member Dixon did a really thorough job of that. But the utility portal coming up having a 24, I just want to admit, 24-7 access. Customers can view advanced meter consumption data, pay bills and review payment history, download and analyze water usage, set usage thresholds and receive leak alerts, receive text notification about bills, manage account details and service requests. So that's some of the main features of the new utility portal that will be going live tomorrow that will hopefully help all Norman residents, utility customers, more efficiently manage your usage and understand your bills and all those types of things at your fingertips. With that, we'll go ahead and move on to the consent docket. This item is placed on the agenda so that the city council, by unanimous consent, can designate those routine agenda items that they wish to be approved or acknowledged by one motion. If any item proposed does not meet with approval of all council members, that item will be heard in regular order. Staff recommends items 6 through 39 be placed on the consent docket. I'll entertain a motion to place items 6 through 39 on the consent docket.

So moved.

Second. And are there any questions from council? And I would like to recognize council member Bruce for a question on item 36.

Some questions on care contract. I think Anthony and Amanda should be able to answer these questions, I believe. Writing a contract related to the services of operating a shelter is difficult. It absolutely is difficult putting together a statement of work, performance work statement, KPIs, the deliverables, the oversight plan, et cetera. As I was reading through your draft contract or the signed contract by the contractor, I was looking at the pricing arrangement, and I'm thinking, okay, what type of a contract really is this? Is it a cost-plus contract or a fixed-price contract? From what I could tell, well, it's really a reimbursable contract, cost plus percentage of cost. The cost plus percentage of cost up to a certain point, 800,000, cost plus percentage of cost. Anything above that 800,000 back to the city for another cap. Sorry to say that one more time so you it's kept right now 800,000 800 some on 1000 it's capped cost plus percentage of cost correct, they're coming back to the city when they approach that number and saying hey about rated bust the budget. If you want to continue to form the service or additional services in scope outscope services. I need additional funding.

Well, I think, you know, technically they're agreeing to perform the service for the cost that I think they're quoted at. So like technically I think it would be it would come back as a contract amendment. But I don't necessarily see like, you know, if they break the budget necessarily that the shelter would shut down or anything like that. I think that's kind of just the do not exceed amount. So it's like I think reimbursable up to that amount.

So you have a cost plus percentage of cost, cost plus percentage of cost, a reimbursable plus percentage for the administration of 12.5. So we have a cost plus percentage of cost. So when I'm spending, I'm earning that administrative percentage. So it's a cost plus percentage of cost. So whatever I spend, whatever my expenses are, I get those expenses plus I get an administrative burden on it.

Yes, I would put one caveat, though, the admin fee, which is a percentage of the total budget, not necessarily what the reimbursements are. So it is always a fixed admin fee of, I think, twelve and a half percent. And the reason we did that, it was actually an increase from previous years, not last year's, but the year before. I think it was 10% could have been seven. We did increase that amount to encourage, I think, which they did, you know, additional fundraising and grant writing. And we didn't necessarily want to create a reverse incentive in terms of we didn't want them to, you know, if they were able to minimize their contract reimbursement that would also you know diminish their admin fee part of that would be going to that grant writing and other stuff so when you do that you know yeah they were successful in uh reducing the amount of burden that the city had for the reimbursable expenses we didn't necessarily want that to come back to bite them in terms of the admin fee so we fixed the admin fee at that amount

the didn't see a lot of KPIs in here or called out KPIs for oversight but you may have that other some other place related key performance indicators and your oversight of that you may have it in another document understand that I think my next questions are really for Amanda Man, I notice in exhibit a program and service requirements were using a term that a little concerned with that term is housing first model. Now my concern really isn't with the model of the structure, but Given that we're providing a shelter, there is so much case management with that shelter that CityCare provides. It's minimal case management. Now, the way the federal framework is working now with the state framework for grant assistance in the future, they're gonna ask, okay, what model do you follow? And show us how you're following that model. I'm afraid this housing first model will not give you the best opportunity for future grants related to the federal level or the state level. What is your team done to think about migrating from that housing first model to more preferred model.

So I think what you're talking about, um, with the housing first model, um, is related to the nofo that HUD has put out. And that is more so for what has been permanent supportive housing, which is not emergency shelter, um, permanent supportive housing. HUD is trying to transition that into transitional living, which has a time limit. Um, and it has a treatment focus to it, which again, that's not emergency shelter. which is what our city care contract is.

So what you're telling me is that because we have a no barrier, low barrier, no expectation shelter, that should not affect any federal or state flow of funds related to grants for case management or treatment?

For the emergency shelter, I don't believe it should. Now, if we were under a contract for permanent supportive housing with city care, that is where it could run into trouble, but city care would apply for their eventually transitional living, because that's what permanent supportive housing is going to. They would do that on their own. We don't funnel that money through to them.

In the future, I want to be as confident as you are, but I'm not. I think the federal and state models have shifted on you and you need to be aware of the risks of the loss of potential funding as it relates to case management and treatment for people who are seeking shelter assistance, even emergency shelter level. Now I'd argue with this that a shelter that we have emergency shelter or no expectation low barrier shelter Is it your state emergency? I mean, no, the expectation is hey, treatment early. I don't know what that early means, but I think we're cutting ourselves short if we don't look at the risk of the shifting framework as it relates to federal and state funds for treatment and assistance with shelters. That's all I have.

Thank you. Any other questions regarding the consent docket? OK. The motion on the floor is to place items 6 through 39 on the consent docket. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast, and the motion to place items 6 through 39 on the consent docket passes unanimously.

All right. I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent docket. Motion. The motion on the floor is to approve the consent docket. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to approve the consent docket passes unanimously.

All right, on to the non-consent docket. Item 40, an ordinance amending section 36-201 of chapter 36 of the Code of the City of Norman as to remove lots 19 and 20 in block three, D.L. Larch's first addition, generally located at 126 West Apache to the City of Norman, Cleveland County, Oklahoma, according to the recorded plat thereof from center city form-based code district urban residential frontage and place same in a center city planned unit development i'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading section by section is there a representative and there is mr joyce thank you mayor good evening council um

I've got a presentation that will discuss items 40 and 41 together. They're essentially the same project proposed. Happy to take specific questions in any order that you would like to do it. As you are aware, we were here two weeks ago with a postponement request. We were working on a revision to the site plan based on feedback that we'd received at various stages in the process. And thank you to Mayor Holman and Council Member Grant for the feedback and working with us on this latest rendition. This is 126 West Apache that's shown on screen. Specifically, it's the house that is in between, basically kind of a Frankenstein lot, as the developer has coined in conversations with me, because he's in between two different buildings that were built to two different versions of Center City form-based code. As many of you are aware, It's gone through multiple iterations as time has passed. And so we are working on proposing a project that would merge with these two units. And that is what we are presenting in front of you tonight. The same proposal is at 214 West Apache, not really right in between two lots that have developed out under the city-city form-based code, but in between, again, kind of competing uses The left side of the screen or the east side of the property is a Center City form-based code project that was built under one of the first renditions. And on the right side of the screen, the west side of the property is a single family home that will remain not part of this application. And so this is what was originally submitted for 126 West Apache. It was exactly what the property to the east looks like. It was the same project, same proposal, but it did have variances from the current center city form-based code. That is six bedrooms per unit, two unit minimums, five yard setbacks, side yard setbacks, and a building extra setback of four inches, two feet, four inches for consistency is what is built out to the east. You can see those all highlighted in purple. because those are in existence up and down this street in multiple properties that you'll see later in the presentation. It also had a request for two less parking spots than bedrooms and so it was kind of feeding off the idea that over time this area is turning into more of a park once walk nature uh and we have been hearing the conversations from council that we want to again limit and reduce parking kind of encourage some of these students to not bring a car and be able to walk and ride share and use multimodal transportation lastly there was a maximum uh increase of the 65 impervious cap to 70 impervious because of that kind of angled parking layout This is what was originally filed. We immediately heard some feedback from planning commissioners as well as community members in the area, pre-development. And so for Planning Commission, we presented a revised plan that took out those two that you see scratched out at the bottom, those two variances. It now had 12 spaces, 10 in the back through the tandem parking that is kind of common in this area, and two in the cutout off of Apache in front of the building to meet the parking requirement. And it also went back down below the 65% impervious cap, so there's no more requests for the impervious increase. The remaining variances were simply to match the structure that existed to the east. All four of those exist with the various structures up and down the street. That was approved unanimously by Planning Commission. But continuing to work with Council, we received that feedback and wanted to see the building go all the way property line to property line. That's one of the main changes in this latest round of the Center City form-based code. And the developer was willing to do that. And so you can see now for the first 17 feet of the property, this building will be property line to property line. That gets rid of the five-yard setback. five yard side yard setback as you can see on screen there and now just asked for three additional variances that are consistent with development up and down the street. It does most notably still stay below the 65% impervious cap, which is a reason for the side yards for the remainder of the building. That will need a friendly floor amendment tonight to include the latest rendition that we've worked on in the last two weeks since this last postponement. It is the June 18th CCP that has the correct and updated edits that is already in your packet and on the agenda tonight. 214 is essentially the same request, but I want to talk about it differently because of a fire lane apparatus issue that was not present at 126. And the reason for that is parking is not allowed on either side of the street in front of 126. 214 does allow for parking on the opposite side of Apache. And essentially, we greatly appreciate Aaron Easter and Norman Fire for helping us kind of work through this development process. aspect, but we are increasing the actual width of Apache by going even farther into our property so that we can ensure compliance with the fire apparatus code. Because of that, this specific site will have a temporary request of 10 spots instead of 12 because until parking is either not allowed on Apache in this section, which is within council's authority, to do so or the property across the street develops out in the city for his code that that those 2 cut out spaces in front of this building need to be treated as a designated fire. So we have the same design is one 26 but you don't get to count those 2 spaces for parking spaces temporary temporarily until redevelopment across the street or Council decides no more parking is allowed. But otherwise, it's the exact same proposal. This one, 214, was a 7-1 approval of Planning Commission. Commissioner Jablonski voted against because notably he wanted to see the west side built all the way up to the property line. And hearing that feedback and additionally working with Mayor Holman and Council Member Grant, This new latest rendition does go all the way to the property line, so I'm confident that would satisfy Jablonski's objection. It is, again, consistent. Here are the three remaining variances, six bedrooms per unit, two unit minimum, and two feet four inch setback from the RBL. Up and down this street, it's been developed out in that nature. A lot of conversation at Planning Commission was that these variances were changed for a reason in the latest Center City form-based code. And while that is certainly true in context, when you look at this street, this is consistent development. Across all of Center City form-based code, of course, these same variances likely do not make sense. if you were to look at the context and the uses but here up and down this street all three of these are present and this is consistent development that meets the spirit and intent of the form-based code so as i've mentioned requested variances exist on the street consistent with the area unanimous planning commission approval 126 west apache 214 had that one no boat wanting to see property line to property line which is now presented tonight and there was no filed protest on either of these properties. So with that, happy to take any questions.

All right. Is there any questions regarding this item, Council Member Grant?

Yes. We always ask this question. So could you talk about the considerations for stormwater management at both of these?

Absolutely. So originally, as submitted, there was an ask to go above the 65% allowance, and that was going to essentially take some sort of special considerations. That's what the code allows, is if you exceed 65%, you come in with LIDs or BMPs, engineered solutions. The initial ask had requested a variance from the LID BMPs, was wanting to just have an increased cap. that was quickly taken out through conversations with the community and talking with the developer that sort of, you know, a non-starter, especially in this area. And so now kind of the stormwater approach is being substantially under that 65%. So typically when we're in front of you talking about the LIDs, BMPs, is to justify the increase above we are lower than 65 so that would essentially be the storm water um kind of get give of the developer is giving up some of that allowance to go even greater than what is proposed and it could go essentially five more percent uh with with coverage and there would be some landscaping or green spaces in the parking area There is absolutely customer and this is a good context to look at you can see some of those highlighted the green ones are the identical uses that were originally submitted that match the original list of variances. You can see all the parking in the back of these is essentially entirely covered was proposed here is a lot of usable green space in the backyard that is not typically seen in center city area.

Okay, and then I know there'll be questions about this, but could you explain the rationale for six bedrooms versus three?

Essentially, it's market driven. It's what the developer is seeing in this, especially this area. And frankly, it's driven by a lot of students that are looking to move off campus and look at their options. There are multiple housing types. Right now, student housing certainly has a large appetite for Norman. There are applications that are in process. There are approved ones that are being built. And this is a local developer that's basically looking to seize on that same momentum.

Okay, and then also to that point about highlighting walkability and incentivizing walkability, tandem parking on both, which would make the students have to coordinate to get in and out, so I appreciate that.

Absolutely.

No further questions, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, and... Okay. All right. This is seeing no further comments from council questions at the moment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item. Remarks should be directed to council only. Once public comments have concluded, council may choose to answer your questions. Madam Clerk, are there any speakers registered for this item?

Yes, Mayor. Stephen Ellis.

Steve Ellis Ward for again, this is basically just my reminder whenever these sorts of things come up that we kind of need to get our zoning stuff together because we spend a lot of time here talking about pods that don't do anything particularly special. And, you know, it ends up being a very Council member involved and very City Council involved looking at lots of different kinds of details And it would be much better if we just had a procedure that allowed us to say yeah, this meets the code Let's do it and you know again, I don't have super strong attitudes about the relative importance of consistency on Apache Street versus the rationale that we had for changing the code out from underneath those things. But I do think that it would behoove the council to pick a lane and not have all of the special planning stuff largely because it's a way in which council members become very involved with developers and they become cheerleaders for particular kinds of plans and I think that's the unhealthy thing. So let's pick some zoning codes and just let people operate under those. We should pick the general principles rather than trying to worry too much about all of the details. Thanks.

Thank you.

Marguerite Larson.

Marguerite Larson, Ward 6. My only concern is Not all of Apache is that type of housing and that there are still people who have homes there. So I don't really know how this is going to affect the homeowners in that area. I'm sure that people have spoken to them, but when it comes right down to property and should they want to sell, how is this going to affect them? So that's my major concern is how is this project GOING TO AFFECT THE CURRENT HOMEOWNERS. THAT IS STILL HOMEOWNERS ON THAT AREA.

Hello, Miami Wendler Ward 2. So with this, I'm kind of wondering, it's kind of like a boarding house idea that there are individual rooms. How does that work out? You rent a room, but then you share common space. And I understand this is for students. Could we have something similar for just normal people, not students, maybe more lower income kind of people where you know six people with all separate bathrooms and bedrooms and i'm assuming the doors lock they share their common area and it might be a nice place for just normal adults to live and actually maybe have some community with their roommates that's it thanks thank you luigi

Hello, Luigi Polvani, Ward 4. Again, I think I spoke on this before. What breaks my heart is that we progressively lose the little houses, the character of Norman, the core of Norman. What makes this town cute and lovely? And we replace all these different houses, character, history, with big cubes. that maximize space, create some housing, but at the cost of the soul of this town that I really like. And I think, as Stephen Ellis said, we are trying to do density with ideas and criteria and rules, most importantly, from a century ago. We need to change the way that we build. Single family is long gone. and sustainable, especially in core town. We need to reevaluate the way we create housing. Thank you.

Thank you.

Lloyd Carroll.

I was told I could speak about my life experiences, but because you've involved most of my life here, this stuff becomes difficult because you can double your money in that building trade. Oklahoma made the parking meter. They tell you, write in the paper, it's not the coins you put in that machine, it's the ticket they write you. I don't know if this guy wants to admit to that, but that's the reality. And I was here 20 years ago before Luigi got here.

Thank you.

That's all, Mayor.

Anyone else that hasn't spoken on this item that would like to, please.

Good evening, Council. I'm Lee Hall, Ward 4. I felt like it was just important to offer a gentle reminder about how we got to where we are, and this project is really a good example. Along with Mayor Holman, I've participated in the development of the Center City Form-Based Code. I attended the Charettes. as an interested resident. I served on the 2019 ad hoc committee. I also served on the 2022 ad hoc committee and chaired it as the council member from ward four. And I want to first say that I do recognize the hours of work and negotiation that have been invested into both of these CCPUD Apache projects that are being considered tonight. I also recognize that the applicants have every right to request changes using a CCPUD because their projects cannot be built under the current land use zoning and new character area requirements in AIM Norman. But I also want to highlight some of the comments in the staff report. that the planning department identified as inconsistent with the AIM Norman plan that was approved less than a year ago after two years of monthly steering committee meetings and multiple forms of public engagement. And one of the analysis that was made was that the applicant proposes a housing type already frequently utilized and is not contributing to creative alternatives. And the point of that is I understand the mitigating circumstances with these projects and the lots that are being considered tonight, but I also just really wanted to remind council as we move forward and work with our new AIM Norman plan that we remember that the recommendations from the ad hoc committees were to limit the number of bedrooms per unit. And that's because there was a proliferation of six bedroom units, seven, or not six, six, eight, 10, 12 bedrooms per units that were being built in Center City. And in two different ad hoc committee iterations, we recognized that what we really needed was less bedrooms and more units. So that's a particular piece of this project that I just want you to remember going forward, that the staff report says the CCPUD proposal for a duplex with six bedrooms in each unit seeks to return to a housing type prevalent in center city pre 2019 and as a different housing type from the recently built multifamily developments constructed under the revised 23 center city form based code. So it's just a reminder that we are all interested and want to support moving forward with how our land use plan and our zoning is going to work and our new character areas that also apply to this application. And that in this case, maybe this is appropriate for the applicant to come and ask for more bedrooms per unit, but I wanna caution you in the future to carefully consider what we need is more units and less bedrooms. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yes.

cindy rogers ward four um i guess i'd like to uh follow up on on what lee hall said i too participated in the charrettes and was on the center city steering committee and was on the aim housing subcommittee and um You know, this was a move towards intelligent or intentional upzoning densification to add more housing units. And my concern, I can't say anything more articulately than she did, but my concern is the the old arbitrary and capricious argument. Once you do it once, the next person that comes through the next developer that comes through and wants to do the same thing Well, I know how many times, well, those of you who have been on council a while have heard, oh, you already did it and we did it here and you got around the aim plan there, so it would be arbitrary and capricious and we'll sue you if you don't say yes. So please keep in mind that any time you make exceptions that aren't consistent with the aim plan, You're basically opening a can of worms for that to keep happening going forward, and then what's the point of the aim plan if we're not going to try to follow it? Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Council.

Paul Wilson, Ward 1. Me and Luigi don't agree on a lot, but when he got up here to talk about character, I actually agree with him. You can build these type of units and not make them look like a giant rectangular monstrosity. The best example is that you follow in South University. They took an older building, made it into a multifamily or student housing, apartment style, but it has character. The best example of seeing what happened is if you look on Boyd, right there across from Sarkis, or a little bit down from Sarkis where you have the two big rectangular and the nice little character building right in between them. I call it the uphouse because it reminds me of the film. I remember when Boyd had at least four to five or six of those same style houses and they got torn down to build those big rectangular monstrosities. You mentioned, people mentioned about the neighborhood around it, this project, and that they're single-family homes. I can tell you exactly what's gonna happen. These people are gonna sell, some out-of-state investor's gonna come in, buy up the property, and build 20 more that look just like this. And Norman will slowly lose its character. We need to do better when we're doing architecture. I know Councilmember Peacock can appreciate that. I like character in buildings. It actually says something about the city. A lot of these homes are very old. They're probably some of the originals, considering where they're at. Are we going to sell out and lose all of our character just to appease student housing? At what point do we say stop? Do we open Pandora's box? and just let this keep happening over and over and over again. I know we need housing, we need affordable housing, but not like this. We need something with character. Architecture is a staple in the United States. It's been around for 250 years this year. If you look at some of the older areas of the country where buildings like this exist, they still exist and they still have character. But they also Don't let it get lost. So I'm just tired of these rectangular monstrosities. It's going to destroy the look of Norman. So the architects need to do better. And it could start with council wanting them to have architecture. There's a lot of historic areas in the city, in Oklahoma City, that would not allow this. They are very strict, especially when it comes to their older historic areas. And I would call any area around the university pretty historic. They've been there probably since right around the foundation of the university. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else from the audience that has not spoken on this item who would like to? Okay, seeing none.

Council Member Grant.

Council Member Grant.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry. I did hear the

feedback on 6 bedrooms. I don't know if anybody is familiar with this area of center city, but it is technically in the periwinkle section, which means try plexus and we're not getting a triplex here. It's more of a duplex situation. I do remember when center city was working its way through some of the public feedback had been concerned that as center city redevelops that there would not the consistency and setbacks and how things look. And it's definitely threading the needle on this. I would also say on the boarding rooms and affordable housing, there is policy in the Center City document And we have an urban design implementation plan process that needs to be finished so that we could incentivize affordable housing. It is something on a hopefully not too distant horizon. To the point about CCP and spuds in general, we are working through the pro housing grant process, not only a housing and parking study, but sorry. revising or zoning and sub regulations so that they match AIM Norman and we don't have to go through this process as often. Although I always expect that somebody can exercise their right to ask for variances and changes. with that i still plan to support this project but i would like to see us get further on try not to use acronyms but udip urban design implementation plan so that we can recognize some of the housing types that were desired in the original centers or the revised center city plans thank you thank you any final other final comments from council and we did have a recommended four amendment are you doing your are you doing an amendment yeah um i recognize councilman grant yes i would like to make a friendly four amendment for item 40 i thought it is ccpud narrative and site plan

Sorry, these mics are messing up tonight. Okay, so the motion on the floor is to amend the site plan in the CCPUD as presented. Council members, you may cast your vote. All votes have been cast, and the motion to amend the site plan and the CCPUD as presented passes unanimously.

OK. And are there any final comments from council on the amended plan? OK. I would just say I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made, especially as someone as former council member Hall that's been involved in the center city process since the very beginning. just a couple things I would note is that this specific area is the only place where this is really allowed and when this policy was developed there were proposals that were brought forward and approved by the City Council that extended the Chautauqua Historic District and the Miller Historic District and We also expanded actually, kind of counter to what a lot of cities have been doing, we down zoned multiple blocks on the west side of this area to single family, which again, most cities are going the opposite of that. We down zoned the area around it, we extended the historic districts around it, and we really walled this area in, this specific area between Campus Corner and Main Street. So an area that makes a lot of sense to increase the density. And this policy was a response to free market development that started happening around 2010-11. So it happened first on the corner of Jenkins and Duffy. The second house to the south on the west side of the street, a good friend of mine, Marne Botkin, owned that house. It was green and it was covered with trees and she had a bunch of junk on the front porch and all sorts of stuff. But I used to live on Dean's Row right behind her. And when she passed away, her family sold her house, and it was scraped clear. And what was built was built under the old 1950s zoning, by right, without council approval, was a two-story brick duplex that had 10 bedrooms in it, and has a suburban front setback, so there's still a driveway where cars park and block the sidewalk, and it has setbacks on both sides, and a setback in the back. And then another one of those popped up across the next door to it. And then two more popped up across the street from it, all in that same intersection, they started popping up one after another. And back then mayor Rosenthal and myself and others thought, wow, more and more of these old houses are starting to get torn down. People are selling these houses. People are buying them and they're tearing them down and they're redeveloping under the old 1950 zoning. and they're developing it in a way that is a suburban low density form. So we're losing the old houses and we're not even gaining any additional housing in place of it. It was looked at and that neighborhood had less than 10% owner occupancy. It was almost entirely rental, which is not a bad thing, but that's why people were selling the houses and why people were buying them for cheap. And so we thought, if these houses are going to get torn down by the people who own them and we can't stop them, what can we do to make sure that what they rebuild in their place maximizes the density, increases the living space between Campus Corner and Main Street? And then the market came in and said, I mean, think of it. If you're an OU student, where would you want to live if not on campus? Wouldn't you want to live between Campus Corner and Main Street? I used to and it was awesome and I would still love to now. To be able to walk to Campus Corner, to be able to walk to Main Street and still be close enough to campus to walk, it's a pretty good deal. And so it's pretty easy to see why a market demand would be for students in this area, why multiple bedrooms may be a demand. And with the goal of trying to make better use of the space. So how can we better connect them? And so the old zoning limited the height to two stories and required you to have suburban setbacks on all four sides. So it did not maximize the space at all. So all that we require with the center city policy is if you tear down one of these old houses in this very specific area, What you can rebuild has to be at least two stories tall, has to make maximum use of the space. You have to bring the building closer to the street. All the parking has to be in the back off the alleyway so you eliminate the driveway in the front. Because one of the most common complaints in Central Norman we always hear is the sidewalks are always blocked by trucks and cars and we have to go out in the street to get around them. Well, in the center city, it eliminates the park, the driveways in the front completely. Over time, there will be no more driveways on any of the streets in the center city, and there will be no more cars blocking the sidewalks. And so maximizing the space, increasing the density, the more density that we're able to fit into this area, the more we're able to theoretically make more. We're able to protect the rural spaces in Ward five and six and eight and so on. And so make better use of our existing space, better connect campus and corner and downtown together. They're only six blocks apart, but there's multiple parking lots, empty lots, houses that are not occupied and are not well maintained by some folks. that are I would call substandard living and potentially not safe. And one of the other things that we're seeing over the last three years is record student enrollment at the University of Oklahoma. And OU is not adding any new student housing, zero. They're tearing down the existing dorms and just rebuilding the same number of dorms back in their place. So they're not adding any. And this is something I've been talking to the SEC mayors about. It's an issue happening in most of our cities where the universities are experiencing significant growth in student enrollment and the universities are not adding any on student housing. and so that is causing a lot of issues. We've always had issues with students going in the neighborhoods and residents having friction with party houses and things like that, but with limited on-campus housing options, and we've approved some large-scale student housing complexes that have not been constructed yet, and so that's what some of the cities are seeing they're either seeing smaller scale higher density projects like this or they're seeing really big mega projects like eight nine ten stories and and we've seen a couple of those come through we just haven't seen any of them actually go under construction so this is what we're seeing and so if you love these old houses in this neighborhood which i do you can buy one and you can not tear it down and you can restore it and keep it and live there or rent it out or do whatever you want with it but other people are choosing to sell them to people who are choosing to tear them down, and we cannot stop them from doing that. We can only try to control what they do afterwards. And architectural review is something we've talked a lot about, and I just would mention the University of North Park area has an architectural review design committee That whole development, that whole, all the strip mall and everything has a whole committee that reviews the architecture and design and approves it. And it's one of the biggest things I hear complaints about that area. So I agree that there's things in the Center City that I personally, if I were the architect, would not do. And Council Member Peacock and I talked a lot about stuff like that. It seems like money can't buy taste sometimes. And there's a few that I think really do look good and do follow the intent. And the really simple fact is, all it's trying to do is think of the row houses in any eastern city, all of which, all that architecture that was mentioned that's so lovely and great in all these cities, was all done without any architectural review boards. There wasn't even any zoning regulations. People just cared more and wanted to build buildings that people would care about and that they would care about. And so that just isn't so much the case anymore in my experience. So I would love to be able to make every building look like the buildings on Main Street and the detailed brick and all those different things. That's what I would do if I were building a building. So but that's been the back and forth we've had about this for 10 years. and that's the situation that we're in with that we're only allowing this type of thing in this really specific area as it is right now anyway and we've down zoned and extended the historic districts all around here in an attempt to try to protect those neighbors neighborhoods and just saying that in this specific area increasing the density connecting campus corner and main street really makes a lot of sense now to do more bedrooms they do have to come to us to get used to they could build by right ten bedrooms as many bedrooms as they pretty much wanted as they could fit now they have to come back to council if they want to do more than three and have to go through these different things so this is going to continue to be a policy that we work on I think it'll continue to be a living policy as things evolve with development with market demands with students where they want to live whatever may happen so but that's just a little bit of the history of how it got here and that's what my advice to you is if one of those houses comes up for sale and you want to save it buy it and save it and restore it and live there if you want or volunteer to get on the center city committee or work with your council member and help us come up with some better policy that can address Not just this area, but our goal of trying to make better use of land in the entire city of Norman. How can we make better use of the space that we've already developed? We've talked about the 36th Avenue project being about $13 million a mile to widen that street. So we can't keep just developing our city further and further out and hope that we can come up with tens of millions of dollars to widen every section line road like 24th and 36th and 48th. We're not going to be able to do it. We're going to have to accommodate population growth in Norman. However, it happens with the existing space that we've already developed. I'm pretty adamant about that. It's delicate because we have to do it while trying to protect the existing areas and the existing affordable housing we have and we're trying to protect the rural area and so Just all in so anyway, that's done going on about it. But all right, the motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance section on second reading section by section As amended council members you may cast your votes. I

All those have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance upon second reading section by section as amended passes unanimously.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole. The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole. As amended. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading as a whole as amended passes unanimously.

Item 41 ordinance 2526 dash 5, 9 amending section 36 dash 2, 1 of chapter 36 of the code of the city of Norman as to remove lots 25 and 26 in block 6 D. L. Larson's first edition generally located at 214 West Apache to the city of Norman Cleveland County, Oklahoma, according to the recorded plat thereof from center city form based code district urban residential frontage and place the same in center city planned unit development. i'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading section by section and mr joyce is still here if there are any further questions from council regarding this companion piece seeing none okay and uh you want to do public comment and then it says recognize counselor yeah just public comment okay this is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item remarks should be directed to council only once public comments have concluded council may choose to answer your questions madam clerk are there any speakers registered for this item yes mayor stephen ellis marguerite larson floyd carroll

I'd still like to talk about my personal experiences since I was born and raised in Oklahoma. But this was pretty interesting to me because I spent my life in it. And one of the things you're having problems with is the infrastructure. And I've seen a lot of developers go broke just trying to put the roads and utilities in to think about somebody coming in and building something on it. You know how popular that is, but the plan is the best plan. And this guy here, he's kind of funny because I'm watching him, he builds a school somewhere, but watching him try to build a nut house with a bunch of nuts is pretty entertaining.

Thank you.

That's all I have, Mayor.

Anyone else from the audience who would like to speak on this item?

Councilman.

I just wanted to use this opportunity to also bring up a third leg of a new three-legged stool that you all are using to consider projects of these types and that's called the character area. This was new to all of us during the AIM Norman steering committee process and it's outlined in the staff report and it just seemed important to mention it to all of you and to the public because this is a new concept. So in the past you've considered land use and you've considered zoning and now you have character areas that have also been added for your consideration on each project. And one of the policies of the character area is to accommodate a variety of housing styles, sizes, densities, and price points to suit diverse housing needs. And as we mentioned in my last comments, in this particular section, this was a place that the planning department felt was inconsistent in meeting this brand new tool that we have to consider. And I think we're all gonna be learning about it and learning about how to use it in the future. But again, my focus really is about the recommendations that have been made as we've gotten to live with the Center City form-based code and moving from the past, which was multi-bedroom units to what we see as our future in addressing our housing needs to have units that can be used for diversity types of living units and people who live there and you know the character area is just one more of that three-legged stool for you all to consider so appreciate your thoughtful discussion and just wanted to mention that this is something that we're all learning about and getting used to but it's going to be an important tool as you all consider projects in the future thank you thank you

Okay, all right. Any final comments from Council, Council Member Grant?

My final comment before I make this amendment is I hear former Council Member Hall on the character area and I do believe through the pro-housing grant work that we're doing that those areas will be studied more in depth and I think through the process We will hopefully get to where we need to be to recognize those different types of housing. And like I said with the urban design implementation plan, I look forward to us finishing that so that we can free up some TIF funds to incentivize affordable housing in Center City. And with that, we'd like to go ahead and make a friendly amendment to update item 41 to reflect changes in the CCPUD narrative and site plan. Okay. Okay. Okay.

The motion on the floor is to amend the CCP the narrative and site plan. Council members, you may cast your vote. All votes have been cast and the amendment passes unanimously.

All right, the motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section as amended. Council members, you may cast your votes.

Hang on just a second. There we go. Sorry, I'll have to reset it. So there you go. All votes have been passed and the motion to adopt the ordinance upon second reading section by section as amended passes unanimously.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Motion to adopt.

As amended. The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole as amended. Council members, you may cast your votes.

Hang on just a second. All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading as amended passes unanimously.

Item 42 is an ordinance adjusting the salary of presiding and associate judges of the Municipal Criminal Court as provided by Article 7, Section 1 of the Charter of the City of Norman and amending Section 22-208C of Chapter 22 of the Code of the City of Norman, adjusting the salary of the acting judge of the Municipal Criminal Court and Section 22-102B, adjusting the fee for the court-appointed counsel. I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading, section by section. And I would like to recognize our court administrator, Ms. Rhonda Guerrero, to talk about this.

Good evening. This item is about the judges' compensation and the court-appointed fees. Neither have been addressed since 2012. We surveyed our surrounding cities. Our proposed recommendation will bring the judges' salaries back in line with market in other benchmark cities.

Okay. Thank you. Are there any council questions regarding this item? Seeing none, okay. And thank you. Thank you. This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item. Remarks should be directed to council only once public comments have concluded. Council may choose to answer your questions. Madam Clerk, are there any speakers for this item?

Yes, Mayor. Mayumi Wendler. And then Luigi.

Hello again, Miami Windler, Ward 2. So I asked about this one last time, I think. OK, so in the budget book, municipal court is funded by the general fund. But in the municipal court section, the judges are in a dotted line box and are not actually listed as employees. Something about them being part-time employees, but we are paying for them. So why are they not listed as city employees? And then in the monthly report, those in the consent, so there's listed 12 employees for municipal court. But that doesn't include the judges. And then I remember there was the amendment to the whole budget thing. to add money so that they could get these increases. But where is the line item for that? That's all, thanks.

Thank you.

Luigi.

I mean, everything gets more expensive every day. So it's just fair to adjust salaries of the people that keeps this city running as we haven't as a state done with minimum wage. But beside that, I like to see these kind of very practical, very monetary kind of appreciation for the people that keeps the city running. I would like to see something for the city council members too. I would like, maybe not in a monetary way, maybe just recognizing city council members as city employees with all the benefits they have. I THINK IT WOULD BE SOMETHING THAT SHOWS HOW THE CITY APPRECIATE WHO SPEND THEIR TIME. AS WE SAID TONIGHT, 400 BUCKS A MONTH SKIPS A LOT OF EVENTS WITH THEIR KIDS, BEDTIME, ET CETERA. I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO SEE MORE OF THESE HAPPEN. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

BOYD CAROL.

OKAY. WE GOT TO SOMETHING I CAN TALK ABOUT. And I'm absolutely against it. I think the rent is too high in this place. I think our electric is too high. And I don't agree with an income that people get at McDonald's that they think that they can buy a house with. So I got a ticket right here from the city. He operates like the homeless. He drives up and down the street and then threatens you with a letter and looks for something to steal. And this man took responsibility for some of it. The last time I got a sign on my fence, which upset half the women in the neighborhood. And I thought maybe I have to talk to that guy's dad, but he probably doesn't have one. He's probably raised by his mother. So when can we get a handle on that?

Mr. Floyd, this is about the, Mr. Carroll, this is about the- Giving the judges a raise or something.

Yes. And I don't think we should. Okay. The police tell me the judges got their hands tied, so they took me before the judge and tried to tie my hands. And if I can't protect myself and my property, who's going to do it? We need to shut it down until we stop the theft. Rape, drugs. And if you guys are going to be responsible, then just put a stop to it. All right.

Thank you very much.

That's all I have, Mayor.

Anyone else from the audience that has not spoken that would like to speak about this item?

I would just like to echo one of my please state your name and word for the certainly Rodney Johnson Ward 2 I would just like to echo something that I heard one of our fellow citizens talk about and that is transparency in the budget and why isn't this a line item where I would assume it should be thank you thank you no other

Comments? Would staff, either attorney or not sure which one, would be able to answer the question about the classification of the judges?

So most municipal court judges are full-time attorneys, either in other jurisdictions. Could be a city attorney in one jurisdiction and a municipal court judge in another. So it is a part-time job. And it's been listed that way in the budget for at least the eight years I've been here, so we haven't changed anything.

It's in the charter.

One way or the other.

It's in the charter.

The charter, in order to alter their employment status, we'd have to put it on a ballot and get a vote of the people. It really doesn't result in full-time, we don't have enough volume to keep judges employed as full-time employees.

Thank you.

Probably a great thing.

Okay. Any other? Okay. All right.

Any final comments from council regarding this item? Seeing none.

The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section passes unanimously.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole. Let me take a screenshot. The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading as a whole passes unanimously.

item 43 is an ordinance 2526-70 declaring a temporary moratorium on the issuance of rezoning or administrative requests approvals and permits including building permits that would allow construction on expansion of or use of property for a data center located in the city of Norman providing for an appeal process, providing for effective and expiration dates, providing for the severability and declaring an emergency. I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading, section by section. I would like to recognize, I don't know if Rhonda Guerrero, Court Administrator, wants to talk about this.

I know. Sorry, that was duplication. And this would be for Mr. Knighton.

OK, I'll recognize the city attorney to start the discussion on this.

All right, this is just if you recall a couple weeks ago we had a study session and Council consensus was to bring forward a measure that placed a moratorium on construction of data centers to give staff the opportunity do some research with regard to what the impact would be on our water supply our electricity things along those lines and this is simply taking forward or implementing that request from a majority of council with regard to that particular moratorium I have some specifics in there about the specific type of data center. We did talk a little bit with our I.T. department to make sure that we were careful. I did talk specifically about we have a room in the other building. It has all of our servers in there. And I asked him, would that be considered a data center? And his answer was, yeah, probably would. So we wanted to be careful to not make sure that for entities that I mean, for centers that are not that big ours is actually cool by an air conditioner that has free on in it for lack of a better sort of more descriptive term. We want to make sure that for built for businesses that may be coming in that have some of those centers for their sort of internal use that we want prohibiting those because those really aren't the ones we're talking about we're talking about the ones that are larger, got some input from council member Kirby about those. So it's specifically limited to the larger data centers. And again, per council's directive gives us the ability to go forward and collect a little bit of information with regard to those. So we can bring back something to you if council wants to ultimately impose some sort of ordinance that limits those to certain zoning districts and have some other specific requirements with regard to those centers.

All right. And any council questions and we'll start Councilman Kirby. Yes. Yes. Councilman Kirby.

So when we originally proposed this, it's about the high scale data centers that use megawatts. extreme amount of water. I know a lot of people reference the closed loop data centers, but they still use a lot of water and they also still use stuff like glycol in the cooling system to make sure the units stay to stay cool. Definitely want to move forward with this on making sure that we keep proper regulations in to protect the water in all of Norman. we have over 5 000 data centers in the united states already with 48 in oklahoma by itself with many apartments turned in to build more the closest nation to us is china with about 500 so when you hear the if we don't build them now we'll fall behind that's just a false statement we have a data center in prior oklahoma that used 1.6 billion gallons of water last year and only returned 235 million back to our river People say, well, we need to do a lot of research. I'm pretty sure across the US the research has been done. We need to study it a little bit more. But I can count thousands of data centers that nobody is happy that came to their community. And I can only find about three where the community actually supports what came to their community. With the technology we have, we could run it without water, but it also takes an extreme amount of natural gas, and to get the utilities to people's buildings will take eminent domain to go across other people's property. So to respect private property rights, we do need to limit the size of data centers we allow in the area, if we even allow any at all. Thank you.

Council Member Gansbury, questions for staff or anybody?

Yes for this also for the simple fact that muscle looking 40 any study session and anything the city can bring us any rock to turn over where we can maybe find some way to do ordinance or anything else to limit the possibility of this ever been an issue for the city of Norman.

Council member grant. Yes, apologies, memory fails on when we talked about this. But I just wanted to highlight that in doing the study, we would hopefully avoid preemption and or a taking lawsuit. And if City Attorney Knighton could explain the taking part, I think that would go a long ways towards civic IQ.

Well, that's specifically why the moratorium is limited time wise, because for moratorium purposes, you are prohibiting someone from using their property, maybe in a way that they want to use it. But as long as you're doing it for some reasonable time period and you have a specific sort of directive in mind, I mean, it's not open ended. We're not just saying you can never have data centers and we're really not doing anything moving forward to establishing some sort of regulations. So that's one of the reason why it's limited in terms of the time. It was a year from the date that the ordinance is enacted. And also the specific directive was for staff to go forth with some investigation, providing council with some information, ultimately hopefully moving towards some sort of ordinance provision that outlines the requirements if one of those entities were to locate here, they'd have some specific requirements, again, like zoning, where they could be located, I've seen, it's been really popular in the media recently for some other municipalities, but things like, I saw something on one of our local news stations, and I think it was somebody from OG&E talking about a data center having to provide the cost of all the infrastructure that was put in in order to facilitate their facility. We would probably want to think about some things along those lines. As Council Member Kirby talked about the water issue, mean when we talked about this in a study session we were really talking about a data center of not a fairly significant size really requiring the amount of water that the entire city of Norman uses in a year from our lake and that's just not that's just not feasible we would need to talk about some of those issues and council member Kirby talked a little bit about the closed loop system I kind of know a little bit about that but it sort of trying to address some of those issues that we may not necessarily understand the way that he understands it which is just because your system is closed loop doesn't mean it doesn't use a lot of water it still uses a significant amount of water and we wouldn't want answers to those questions I think before moving forward with enacting some type of an ordinance because that's what keeps you out of the takings issue And again, under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, if a municipality takes a person's property for public use, then they can be obligated to compensate that entity for the taking of their property. But a reasonable regulation generally is not considered to be a taking. So we're looking towards hopefully proposing something that regulates these entities that's reasonable such that you would not have the issue of taking it.

And then to the item around preemption, would it be fair to say that creating specific policy may help in not being preempted by state legislatures?

Hopefully having a reasonable sort of policy or reasonable sort of regulation would keep from being preempted in that manner and if like I said some of the things I've been seeing in the news media seem to indicate that a lot of municipalities are struggling with this and we're just trying to get ahead of the curve so should one of those entities come knocking at our door we'll have something specific that we can give them that indicates whether they can or can't locate here and if they can't they can go look for someplace else.

OK appreciate it. Thank you.

Councilmember Bruce.

Data centers are like gold golden bricks at the ways and means are done appropriately related to consumption of water and electricity it and I think about Edmond, I think the Oklahoma City, I think about surrounding municipalities and in competition. I understand they're doing like activities because moratoriums you have the attention of the attorney general's office now on on data centers and what what they are and what's appropriate for consumption of electricity in and water. I would just hate to get behind the power curve when we're talking different approaches to ways and means for not consuming so much water. And not consume so much electricity was itself generated. And using things like effluent water and wastewater. I know there's a corporation out there thinking about this. And I can understand the moratorium. Don't get me wrong, I can understand it. But I'd have my eye on Norman, because I know it comes out of the wastewater treatment plant. And I know if I can produce my own power, I'd be looking at a place very close to the water treatment plant. But if someone else has that and you know the surrounding is pounds and be also looking at their area. As long as we're cognizant of that. I think the moratorium is is fair.

Thank you. Any other questions for council? Not seeing any right now, okay. Before we go on to the public comment, I did notice there was a break requested.

It's been pushed the whole time.

Was there something you do? We need to break. We're good.

OK. OK, cool.

All right. This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item. Remarks should be directed to the council only. Once public comments have concluded, council may choose to answer your questions. Madam Clerk, are there any speakers register for this item?

Yes, Mayor Joseph Love.

Joseph Love, Ward 1. I'm happy to hear the discussion that's going on tonight. We do need to protect our natural resources, our land, our energy. But I'm in the IT industry, and I know these things are also crucial for what's going on right now. And as technology improves and things grow, it's kind of a scary thing. I would just want to encourage everyone to not operate out of fear of the unknown, but to more define what the knowns are, what we need, what our lines in the sand kind of are, what our natural resources we're not willing to give that much of. And I would also, as a very much of a free market supporting guy, I would like for these rules to be put in place for all types of businesses, not just data centers, for anything that might happen to come up. I would also warn that the word data center, as the city attorney kind of alluded to, is a term that is likely to change. I worked at the postal training center as the IT manager for 16 years, and we had what might be called a data center today. I have no idea. ANYWAY, PRIMARILY JUST WANT TO SAY IF YOU WOULD PLEASE FOCUS ON OUR NATURAL RESOURCES AND NOT THE NAME OF THE BUSINESS THAT IS TRYING TO COME IN. AND ALSO CONSIDER THE FEW OF US AROUND HERE THAT WOULD LOVE TO HAVE SOME BETTER IT INFRASTRUCTURE HERE IN TOWN AND THOSE OF US THAT SUPPORT INDUSTRY IN GENERAL. uh we don't want to do it in an irresponsible way and i wouldn't be involved in any of that directly but i think if we lay out clear guidelines then if it makes business sense people will come and if it doesn't they won't thank you thank you steve ellis and then marguerite

Steve Ellis, Ward four. I want to congratulate you for thinking about this moratorium. Seems like a wise idea. We have to be a good steward of our resources and industries that could potentially, you know, Use up a lot of what Norman doesn't have very much to spare of could easily be a mistake I hope to recommend to something For you as you go on and study this I think it's more than mere natural resource distribution There's also an effect that there's pretty strong evidence that data centers have distributional effects that they tend, the existence of a data center tends to privilege people who are sort of upper income more than people who are lower income. At least one of the mechanisms involved there is just that data centers because they're such large users of resources tend to have significant amounts of market power at least compared with a relatively small-ish city like Norman, having one customer for a bunch of your resources gives that customer a lot of negotiating power. We know that a little bit with regard to OU and a data center would be another you know, 800 pound gorilla in town if we allowed it. And we need to be very, very careful about getting ourselves into a situation where a data center, because they're such a large part of the community, can make demands of the city. In particular, if they drive up the costs of various kinds of things, they'll probably try to negotiate special deals, that sort of thing, and leave other people hanging with the price tag so you've got to be really careful about large entities that are large relative to the other economic actors in your town lest you create distributional problems you might want to look into that when you're looking at the natural resource issues as well there's some some economic and sociological issues involved as well thanks thank you marguerite

And then Mayumi?

Marguerite Larson, Ward 6. Personally, I would like to see a total moratorium, not a temporary moratorium, a total moratorium. I think that everybody on city council needs to pay attention to what's happening, not only in our state, how many people have been coming out to their councils demanding No data center. And it's not just because of the resources that it's taking away. It's all of the stuff that it's doing to the air. It's all of the things that are giving people headaches, that are making people sick, that are limiting all of our natural resources. It's taking everything up. And if you look nationwide, pay attention as to how many people have gone out, faced their city council, and shut down a data center for those reasons. It doesn't produce anything except harmful THINGS TO THE RESIDENTS, ALL OF THE RESIDENTS. AND I THINK COUNCILMEMBER CURRIE CAN ATTEST TO THAT, TO THE OEC THING THAT IS HAPPENING IN WARD FIVE. SO THERE IS A PRIME EXAMPLE AND IT'S NOT EVEN THE SIZE OF A DATA CENTER. I WOULD REALLY LIKE ALL OF YOU TO TAKE CAREFUL CONSIDERATION WITH HEALTH HAZARDS, NATURAL RESOURCES, taking up our water, using up our electricity, and I don't even see any benefits for this at all. I just find this whole thing crazy. So yes, vote on the moratorium. I would just like to see a full moratorium, never to happen. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayumi? And then Luigi?

Miami-Winler Ward 2. Okay, so the large scale data centers are not a great idea because where would you even put one in Norman unless it's going to go into Ward 5? And we don't want that kind of thing. So I like this idea of a moratorium. I wonder though, So it says it's going to expire June 9th of 2027. Great. What are we going to do in the meantime? How are we going to prepare to actually come up with policies and procedures for addressing this in the future? So basically, we have less than a year. Is there going to be some sort of committee formed to work on this? because that's probably a good idea. I know there's the whole idea of cutting down the number of committees, but this is kind of important. Another thing, so OU has a supercomputer. And they do supercomputer tours every once in a while. So I've been with OU long enough that I went on the supercomputer tour when it was at the Merrick Building on North Base. And then a few years ago, I went to the new one on South Base. Things have changed a lot. Technology is amazing and wonderful. Thanks. Thank you.

Hello, Luigi Polvani, Word4. I also work in IT. I have a lot of opinions about that. If we want a better IT infrastructure, we need to, at the state level, to get a better service from our power companies at a national level to break up the duopoly, basically, for connectivity. This is what keeps us back. It's not data centers. Yes, we should not regulate the data center. Let's just regulate the businesses or anything that uses as much power and water as a city. Because data centers are size and power measured in gigawatts. There are orders of magnitudes larger than the OU supercomputer. Data centers bring incredible numbers, $9 billion investment up north of OKC, of which very, very little goes into the territory. Data centers' big bulk of expense is in hardware. Their money goes straight to Taiwan. They create very few jobs because mostly they run on themselves. But someone mentioned sticking with the known. What we know about that center, they are big. They are 800 pound gorillas. They bring a lot of weight around because they move a lot of money. They can impose themselves on cities. They're very unpleasant. And yes, they generate their own power. As you can see in the Grok data center in Nashville, the one that's used to create mostly racist content and child pornography, it had an illegal power plant that generated a ton of pollution and had been sued because it was an illegal power plant in the middle of the city. THAT CREATED NUZZ AND POLLUTION. DATA CENTERS ARE NOT GOOD NEIGHBORS AND ARE NOT GOOD BUSINESS PARTNER FOR A CITY. I'M ALL ABOUT THE MARITORIUM.

THANK YOU. LLOYD?

MAN, AM I GLAD TO SPEAK ON THIS. FATHER'S DAY, WHAT I GOT WAS I GOT TO GO WATCH DISCLOSURE. ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH THERE, It popped in my brain, and I'm so glad to see that movie because it is all BS. But I happen to know some of those guys right there that are much smarter than I am, and I can tell you they don't even use the same physics that I took in college. So I don't know how you're going to manage them, and they're trying to get me to figure it out. So my main problem is I can't ask that robot the right question. If I could, I'd be just like them. I mean, we're 50th on the list for dumbass. And that social engineering, I think that's what that robot's going to do is re-educate Oklahoma.

Thank you.

That's all, Mayor.

Anyone else from the audience that has not spoken that would like to on this item? Please. Just state your name and what ward you live in.

Your name and ward.

just thinking for a moment not necessarily about my name, about all the other incredibly thoughtful comments that I've heard. My name is Jackson Foote, still learning to be a good neighbor. And it impresses me very, very much how people would come and talk when they are not paid lobbyists. That should be enough to say, but it's not always. What I have heard is that there needs to be a consideration of corporate tax in the city of Norman to talk about these issues. And I've heard people talk about it as paying the fair share. This is something that applies to monopolies as well as to other corporations. They have considerations and power that I do not, and I can only speak for myself, but I imagine there are thousands of other people who have felt that way about a corporation in their lifetime.

I DON'T MEAN TO INTERRUPT YOU, BUT ON REGARD TO THE SUPPORT OF OR OPPOSITION TO THE MORATORIUM ON DATA CENTERS.

I WOULD SUPPORT THE MORATORIUM. I THINK THAT YOU WOULD HAVE TO HAVE A CORPORATE TAX FOR IT EVEN TO PROVIDE THE BENEFITS THAT ANYONE IS TALKING ABOUT, A. B, IN TERMS OF THE HISTORY OF THE COMMUNITY, THE LITTLE I CAN SAY IS THAT I CAME TO OKLAHOMA ONE TIME WHEN I WAS ABOUT 8 OR 9. AND I DROVE DOWN WHAT MUST HAVE BEEN 35 AT THE TIME. AND THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT OF CHANGES SINCE THEN. I'M OBVIOUSLY OLDER THAN 8 OR 9 RIGHT NOW. So what you must be considering is how and when and in what ways Norman is becoming a satellite of Oklahoma City. What you're considering at that point is obviously the development, whether they pay a fair share or not. WHAT YOU'RE ALSO CONSIDERING IN TERMS OF THAT IS THE COMMUNITY THAT IS BEING BUILT HERE AND IF THEY'RE PRICING OTHER PEOPLE OUT, POTENTIALLY PRICING OTHER BUSINESSES OUT, I DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THAT, BUT IF THEY'RE PRICING OTHER PEOPLE OUT AND THE RENT IS TOO GOSH DARN HIGH AND PEOPLE, IF THEY NEED BAD WORDS TO SAY IT, THEY'RE BETTER THAN I AM.

THANK YOU.

CINDY ROGERS, STILL WARD 4 TO THE CORE. SO I'M REALLY HAPPY WE'RE THINKING ABOUT A MORATORIUM. I THINK WE CAN LOOK AT EXPERIENCES IN OTHER COMMUNITIES. I THINK WE VERY MUCH NEED TO BE SMART. At the end of the day, we should think of data centers as an extractive industry. And I spent a lot of time in Appalachia and West Virginia before I moved here. And so what happens with extractive industries? They get the water. They get the electricity. They don't contribute. Well, in Appalachia, they at least contributed jobs. Data centers aren't job creators. They're not community builders. So I think we need to be very careful and just going to plug an idea if they're truly going to use a lot of water. We could think strategically about using impact fees for very, very high volume water users. to change the calculus of them wanting to come to Norman. And I think that would be, it's something we should do anyway because we don't have enough water available even if we're gonna, I don't know how many times we can use our wastewater if we're gonna recharge the lake with it. um so i think that might be a way to think about how we could proceed noise ordinances disturbances of neighbors i think those would be ways to go as well setbacks maybe this needs to be added into the aim plan thank you thank you

Anyone else that has not spoken on this item? We've already, since we've already spoken, Mr. Robinson.

I just wanted to ask you specifically about what Flareon Associates was going to do, what the directive was.

Thank you. Okay. Any, let's see. Final comments from council.

I have Council Member Grant.

Council Member Kirby.

I have Grant.

Okay.

Council Member Grant and then Kirby.

I just want to address some of the comments. So July 17th is when we have our council retreat. And so I imagine multiple council members will probably put this on the priority list and we'll work it out through our committees that happen every third. Well, first through fourth Thursdays. And I could see it going on business and community affairs oversight, maybe finance, if applicable, or community planning and Transportation Committee. So I think there are multiple avenues for us to do this work. Thank you to everybody who came out to speak on this tonight. We will definitely consider the environmental impacts. especially noise, water, and power. We aren't like other communities like Edmond or Stillwater that create our own power. So to that note, on infrastructure and power companies, I just wanna say that I have been reached out to by Campus Corner Business about the stability of the grid over there. So it's kind of funny to me to think that Norman would be attractive to a power company, but unless they're creating their own power on site with generators, which create noise and air pollution. So definitely we will consider the impacts on health. Anyways, I look forward to voting yes on this item so that we have the time to study it and create policy that is specific to Norman and hopefully doesn't get preempted or we get sued for an illegal taking.

Thank you, Council Member Kirby.

I was going to address the same as some of the questions and the way we address it is just staying on top of it. City of that staff here can only go the direction we give them so if we quit given the direction and it's going to be hard for them stay on it so I would say the best way to stay on top of this just to make sure we do our jobs that we were elected for and keep reminding staff the direction we want to go.

Thank you. Any other comments from anybody? Okay. I would just briefly say the first time I ever heard about a data center was in an episode of Black Mirror called San Junipero, actually award-winning episode. And the end of that episode is actually quite interesting if you want to. and see what that's about. But that was the first time I ever heard of a data center in the way that we are seeing them now. It was mentioned there are two supercomputers in Norman, actually, and I did tour one of them recently, one of the ones that are on campus, and that was pretty fascinating to hear about how that works. And I think part of this, a lot of it is really, as was mentioned by some commenters, is what is a data center? I think that term, data center, just encompasses and there might be quite a bit of misunderstanding about what is a data center? What are we even talking about? Are we talking about the IT center that we have here at City Hall with all that stuff? Are we talking about a massive building that's the size of a manufacturing facility. I think that's what many of us think about and that's what we've been seeing around the country is these massive facilities that use a lot of electricity and take a lot of water and create noise and disturbances where there weren't any before. And so those are questions I hope to learn more about and get clarified about what exactly are we, are we talking about, what are we trying to regulate here? going forward because in our city, we need entities that either and or create jobs or generate sales tax revenue. For the city of Norman, that's the priority for us is does it generate jobs? Does it generate sales tax revenue? Something like Johnson Controls, now Bosch, is a massive manufacturing facility in the city of Norman. That's about the size of what I have seen some of these big data centers be like. Bosch employs 1,500 people. They manufacture a product that is sold and generates tax revenue off of it. And some of these large data centers that I've been seeing take up about that much space, use more resources than that Bosch plant does, and maybe they employ 50 people, not 1,500. And they don't really sell a product that From my understanding is sales taxable. So I'm looking forward to learning more about that as well But those are concerns I have is because what what good would a large facility be? to Norman like that if it didn't employ anybody and didn't generate any sales tax revenue and You could maybe argue it increases property taxes and that goes to those entities, but not for the city of Norman. So a lot of questions, just a lot of things out there that we don't know. And even just recently, Council Member Grant and I and Council Member Bruce and City Manager Powell were in Salt Lake City touring regional transit stuff. And when we were leaving, Council Member Grant and I drove up to the state capitol in Utah, which is in downtown Salt Lake City, It was a Sunday morning and there just happened to be a massive protest going on at the Utah State Capitol. It was about data centers. They had all the big signs up. I know Utah has been the center of that lately. But it's going all around the country. Elected officials are facing recalls for voting for data centers. their people are getting arrested at council meetings speaking about it and going over the time and doing it whatever so I'm hopeful that we can avoid that type of stuff in Norman and that we can come up with actual policy that addresses what this really is and and I agree with one of the commenters about this is definitely going to be evolving too so making sure that whatever policy we come up with is able to adapt and address that fact as well so And right now, as far as I know, we're not aware of any proposals in Norman for a big data center like we know, I think what everybody's thinking of. We don't know of any one. I'm not aware of any one of them currently. So this isn't a effort to block any specific business or proposal that's coming that I'm aware of. This is really just like other cities in the metro, trying to get ahead of this situation.

So with that, if there's no further comment, okay.

All right, the motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading, section by section. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast, and the motion to adopt the ordinance on second reading, section by section passes unanimously.

All right, I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the emergency clause that allows the ordinance to take effect immediately. Are there any council questions regarding the emergency clause? And the motion on the floor is to adopt the emergency clause. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast and the motion to adopt the emergency clause passes unanimously.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole. The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole. Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading as a whole passes unanimously.

All right. Item 44, an economic development agreement between Sooner Fashion Mall LLC and the city of Norman, Oklahoma, providing for the rebate of certain sales tax revenues as reimbursement for certain property costs expended by Sooner Fashion Mall over a five year period. I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the agreement.

What was the. Got it. Got it.

Okay. And I would like to recognize our assistant city attorney, Ms. Catherine Walker, to make a presentation.

thank you i don't have a formal presentation tonight but i i wanted to just note that uh we've had i think three two or three presentations by me uh over the last few months and then you all had a discussion again last week and i understand the forum yesterday that i was unable to attend so i'm here happy to answer any questions you have about the agreement i know derek colwell the manager for the mall is here as well so happy to answer any questions you guys may have, but otherwise, leaving it to you guys.

All right, are there any council questions regarding this item? If you have any questions of Ms. Walker or any staff or anybody, or of Mr. Colwell, Councilor Gansberry?

Yeah, if I could have Daryl come up, please, that'd be great.

Councilor Peacock, will you?

As far as the mall tenants are concerned, how many of the mall tenants have you spoken to or visited with about the idea that you have with collecting the revenue and improving the mall?

Probably at least half of them. That's going to be the majority of our national tenants and some of our local tenants. And I may not have spoken to the managers, but I've spoken to the district managers or a higher level turnover in retail is high. So I could go talk to someone tomorrow and next week could be somebody different.

Okay. And all of them seem to be on board.

Oh yeah. It's improving common space for their customers. Okay.

Yesterday I went and talked to a bunch of them yesterday and everything and out of the 25 that I talked to the owners or the head person that was in charge and everything like that only three of them said they knew anything about this tonight and so I found that a little disheartening that a lot of the businesses didn't know anything about the process or how it was going to

it's the the type of managers like i said if i didn't speak to the managers there i would speak to the owners hallmark's an example um the owner's a local owner so i spoke to him uh well that that's one of the ones i spoke to the owner of and they said no so jack was his name jack justice yeah but that's besides the point that i just once again i just feel like that

I feel like not everybody's in the loop on what it is or how it's going to come about. I also feel that, you know, I know we're not worried about the entity that may or may not be, but I believe that these talks only started when that entity that may or may not be came into the equation.

No, this started a year and a half ago.

okay so that entity didn't call norman and asked norman personally about a deal to go over there by the target and everything and then the mall jumped in on it not my not to my knowledge not at all no okay if you've heard that that's something completely i i haven't heard that who we're trying to bring in has looked anywhere else okay i've never stated they have okay um also just a couple other things that you know we're talking about the mall survival you know i found it interesting that you know we have 13 closed stores in there right now in the mall one of our bigger brands is going to be leaving the mall soon to go over to the target area which was that and the one that everybody in the mall seems to know about and everything so I don't want to Adam if they don't want to be added to you or anything but several other than them several other tenants knew about it as well that they were going to be leaving the mall and everything so so it just this worries me that I don't you know feel like the renovations will take place and the money will be spent where it's supposed to be spent so

What would make you think it's not gonna be spent if we have to spend the money first and bring receipts to you and you approve the project at that point? So I'm confused to where you're coming at with this and where some of the accusations are tonight because This is a reimbursement. It's not if we gain the money, we get the $300,000. I'm going to upgrade this. I'm going to physically show you it's upgraded. How would that not be?

Well, I look at it as, like I said before, the citizens in Ward 1 come out to the mall and shop. They shop at these independent people that I talk to, and they run these stores in the mall and everything. And then that money gets sent to Oklahoma City for the state tax to get out. Norman gets their cut, and then we're supposed to give you a cut after that. If the stores that send in their check up to Oklahoma City doesn't know what's happening to their money or even know that there's an investment being made in their mall by anybody, that's a concern of mine that everybody in that loop is not aware that our tenants in that same mall they operate.

Well, they do. And I make my personal rounds and talk to managers. Like I said, there's high turnover. I can count multiple stores. There's a reason we do management contact forms four times a year. A lot of times those four contacts are completely different. I can count one of my tenants that had three different managers in a single month. So there is changeover. I hold managers meetings. If I hold a meeting and only nine of them show up to find out what's happening, that's... I can try everything I can do.

And at the last meeting, you asked for somebody to go out there and talk to him. So that's what I did and that thing. And I just got a whole different answers from the people that talk to.

Yeah. Since the last meeting. Also, I've had a couple of chances to meet with other council members, you know, and I've had a lot of time to think over the last two weeks about some of the things that have been brought up and brought said One thing I'd ask council to look at is take this away from the economic development agreement. Staff legal has said you could. I didn't bring this in as an economic development agreement. I brought this in as its own contract, as its own proposal. I would ask that you look at it on those terms, not on what the economic development agreement rules are because that's not what I proposed. I had no clue anything about that. Secondly, this is a community center. If people can't see that, I don't know how much I can change the views on that. If you look at where people go vote, it's the mall. If you look at where early voting in Norman, we're one of two locations in all of Cleveland County. If you look at where people got their COVID shots, if you look where people brought donations to tornado victims, That's a community center. It's what we offer to the community. Another one of the concerns that was brought up with the downtown associations group was the fact that it was gonna be public tax dollars on private money. I found out there are two businesses on the Porter area that was able to use public tax dollars to build their patios that improved their business. because of Porter getting redone. Instead of parking spaces going back in there, these businesses gained patios which gained customer space. So they got an improvement on tax money, but it's the same ones saying this shouldn't happen that happened to them. If it's something that you don't see the community involvement and see what the mall does back to the community, that's great. I wish you would have contacted me personally and let me know you would come over.

I figured that I got the invite from you at the last meeting.

No, I'm saying let me know. I could have met with you also. I've done that with multiple other council members. I actually reached out to you two days ago and never heard back from you. You can find me in your email asking if you had any other concerns or questions and never heard a word back. So I've tried. So that's kind of where I'm at. I feel like I've done all I can do. Like she said, we've presented this multiple times. We've given the postponements as everybody wanted. I don't know what else to say to show that a 50-year-old business that is a community center has been here. When the power went out today and we lost power, you should have seen how many people stayed in the mall because it was- I was at the mall at 3.30 today while everything was- When the power was there?

Yes. So you saw how many people were there? Or maybe Norman Furniture was there.

Yeah. So you saw how many people were gathering in there because it was out of the storm. It was a community center. We still didn't even have power. So that's where I'm at. I mean, I would prefer just to move forward with the vote tonight. just to see where we go. But I would like you also to consider taking this on its own weight and not with an economic development agreement that I didn't apply for. That's been a large pushback is there hasn't been an application. There wasn't any of these studies done. I didn't apply for any of that. I brought together a term sheet and I showed on Monday examples of our other properties that did this and it's worked out great in those communities those communities understand what what a regional shopping center does and what it provides for the community they were incredibly supportive their council was supportive council spoke well about it um it just shows honest to god it if you look at the dollar amounts in here and the dollar amounts that you guys deal with this isn't anything to replace any kind of investment from our company this isn't anything to cover any kind of large expenses this is truly a partnership and that's what those have been done And that's, I would hope you'd look at it that way.

Okay. Councillor Bruce.

Couple questions for you. So when I look at the mall, you're in the business of leasing space. And you have spaces that are vacant, a lot of spaces are vacant. I'm thinking, okay, I don't want a slow decline of the mall. I want people to rent from you spaces, and I want retail sales to go up. And I can see that in this performance agreement, pay for performance. But I do have a niche. I have a scratch. I want them all to continue to invest at a higher rate on capital improvements than they have in their past.

I can explain how that higher rate can go up. So our capital budgets are based off of our NOI, our net operating income. So more or less your profit side of it. So after expenses are paid, what you have left of your income. So we have a certain percentage that is set aside from our capital markets, and that's what's invested. So as your NOI increases, your capital increases. The value of our NOI in 2014 when we were 96% occupied, which historically that's what Sooner Mall's been pre-COVID, 96% occupancy from the time it was built in 76 all the way up to COVID. COVID hit, we started hitting, all the bankruptcies hit, and that's where we started going down. We triggered somewhere in the mid-70s at one point in occupancy. We're back up into the upper 80s, low 90s. The problem with our mall is it is small. It's not the 1.7 million square foot. It's not the 1.4 million square foot. So I have less vacancies than Penn Square Mall does, but ours looks greater because I can have four stores close and they're gonna be clustered together where you have 1.7 million square feet, which is three times the size of our property. You can have 25 vacancies and they'd be spread out and the optics aren't as bad. So we are trending better in our occupancy, but the patterns of rent collections from 2014, 2015, even up to 2019 pre-COVID to compare to now are percentage of what was being collected then.

I appreciate as a foundation increasing retail sales. I see that as part of the equation as OK that would build a pool of available matching funds above a certain baseline associated with capital improvements. We didn't make that step. We didn't go that additional step. I understand the agreement's been in work for probably the last six months, if not longer. Year and a half. And I get it. I get the amount of sweat equity put in it. I remember the discussions initially to the council and the comments that were made. And I've seen this thing all the way through. And I'm thinking, hmm. Strange where we're at now. I would have liked to seen multiple performance criteria, at least two, but we have one. I get it, I understand it. I would like to see more, but it's not a no for me. I would like to see more. I know you're at a time constraint. I think you've mentioned this in the past about, hey, I'm under a time constraint. I don't want to go back to my approval system.

It's a process. And to me, this term sheet was passed unanimously by this council that's sitting right here, that the term sheet that you guys passed unanimously is the same terms that are in the contract. There's not anything that changed. We broke that term sheet down during a study session. At that point, that would have been the point that I could have gone back and been like, this is what council has requested. Staff requested this, we've got to this point. But that term sheet, we literally built this contract directly off the term sheet that you guys present, you passed unanimously. That's where I've gotten, honest to God, it's been a confusion that we're here for, I think, your second or third meeting now after the terms that was passed unanimously got written into a contract in the exact same way.

I understand the difficulties and nine minds come into one. I get it in the influences that are out there in the public for what they would like to see and what they don't want to see. I get it. I'm going to hold right now my other comments.

Any other questions from council? Council Member Grant?

This question is more for Catherine. This really centers on the timeline for the five-year program and the likelihood of when if it were to pass realistically we could see reimbursement being paid out. I was just going to say too, I believe the loan manager said that the first year is out, they didn't hit it, but just thinking about what's potentially coming and what timeline that would mean.

Yeah, so the next time we would be looking at what incentive was available for rebate funds, would be based on the sales tax collection period of the current calendar year. It would be available to reimburse property costs that the mall incurred between January 1st, 2027 and June 30th, 2028. And so we would come back next year and we would figure out what that rebate amount could be and we would want to make an appropriation when property costs have been incurred and we're ready to make a payment.

Okay so they in the next not this year but in the next year would have to hit those targets make the improvements to get that back and then let's say this one particular development comes there's like a build time for that to get built and then open up and do those sales is that like an 18 month to two year process potentially?

Yes, that's what I understand. I think Mr. Colwell said at the last meeting, correct me if I'm wrong, that if that retailer is coming to Norman, we expect an announcement by the end of the year, and then I believe it's probably an 18-month construction process, and then it would be able to generate sales tax. That would put us into mid-2028, which would result in potential reimbursement in fiscal year 2030.

OK. And then the next question is for Mr. Colwell. i maintain i'm taking a non-adversarial position um my question for you is if we end up in a tie situation and it fails to pass and we are able to create a rebate policy that you could apply for uh knowing what we know about the payment schedule potentially would you be open to trying oh yeah and that's why i've been here for a year and a half i'm open and like like i've stated before if this is something that

you know, hopefully passes tonight that we can use. I would love to sit on a committee of some sort or just give advice of what I've gone through that that would help the next group that wouldn't have to go a year and a half. I don't honestly, I think this could be a quick six month process.

I hear you. And I also appreciate the work and money that you guys have spent to get it to this point. And I don't want to waste your time because I'm sure we're going to get public comment here in a second. Thank you.

any other questions for councilman kirby you tell me how many employees you have total including yourself and what give or take i mean i don't need to know their exact salary but are they over the 1875 yeah all mine are um currently it's me and uh two other employees um as of next monday i'll be fully staffed there's four of us that that run them all it's myself i i do both management positions. We have an admin office manager and we have a property management associate and one maintenance facility tech. Every one of us above.

A couple more questions. The first one I think about this. In your portrait, you keep your GDP. So I don't know their property list, you know, with 100 or more. About 124. You know, you're on that list someplace where they think about you, you know, and I don't want to see our mall at the end of the list, and I'm just going to let it, I'm going to let it slowly die.

We're considered a core property. Most retail centers you have value add, you have core, then you have super core, and then you have destination. Things like the Grand Canal shops, Fashion Show in Las Vegas are destinations, Ala Moana in Hawaii is a destination. Those are destination style. Then you've got the super cores, which are like lock and sorry, lock and tear is actually destination in San Antonio. And then you've got the Dallas market, which you've got the super cores, which you've got parks of Arlington. And then you've got a stone briar. And then like the two other core properties in the Dallas area would be town East and Hewlin. So Houston's the same way. They've got two super core and three core properties there. So we're in that core property category.

And once again, I'm going to repeat my question from, you know, how can I be reassured that the mall will increase the amount of capital investment as we move into the future? How can I be assured of that?

The majority of my capital spend is not on common area. The majority of my capital spend currently is on infrastructure. It is on what we've spent.

I can tell you for the next five years what our plan is.

OK, so for the next five years, we've got $185,000 planned in plumbing. close to three quarter of a million in paving, ITs another 150, 170,000, 200, 250,000 in HVAC. And we do have about 70,000 interior lighting because we had to plan for a little bit of this not, if this didn't pass. So I had to do some in my common area that is definitely needed. So that's in the next five years.

Yeah, I'm thinking more like based on my previous years. I'm going to spend. On average or what whatever. You know where there's a lowest amount of capture spend last 5 years and use as your baseline. To me there's got to be having to do more. I'm not going to less.

Oh, and I see that, and that's where I was saying the NOI. Every one of our properties, our capital budgets are all strictly based on NOI. So you're going to have a bigger capital budget at a Stonebriar whose NOI is bigger. They're a 1.7 million square foot mall, and they're 95% occupied. So as our occupancy grows up, our sales go higher, our tenants see higher foot traffic, all of that increases our NOI. So an increase in NOI increases the capital spend.

So that NOI goes down, they're investing less capital.

I mean, that's how the formula works. Formula? Yeah. That's why you do things like this to bring in more tenants to fill occupancy. Because you can ask any retailer that comes in and when they look at Norman, they look for location, they look for quality of building, they look for traffic patterns. They're not going to want to go into a building that hasn't been upgraded. They're not going to want to go when You drive through University of North Park and you've got brand new landscaping. You drive through downtown and we've got new sidewalks, new streets, art everywhere. It's a visual thing for retailers also.

Yeah, I guess I'm simplistic. I'm thinking, well, okay, I've spent so much on capital improvements this year, last year, you know, last five years, and I know that mall is a certain condition in my mind. If I'm an owner of it, I'm walking through and saying, you know, I need to invest maybe a little bit more related to visual appearance, related to replacing tile, related to, you know, Jammed on doors and stuff of that nature. Yeah, I'm I'm going to say I got it.

I've got an earmark more than what I did I can I can ask that that's where the water line came in is a Million dollars wasn't in my budget or nine hundred and thirty five thousand dollars wasn't in my budget so as long as we can make the case and and show it's Desperately needed like my HVAC amounts gonna go up. I This is budget off of five-year, and if I budgeted five years ago for HVAC, I mean, you quoted jobs, you know, a 30-ton air handling unit, I could have replaced five years ago for 55,000 to 105 today. So when I get to that project, I mean, for example, my budget I had, we're fixing to paint outside of JCPenney's. That budget was two and a half times, or the bids that I got were two and a half times what my budget was. We're still doing it.

Any other questions from council? Okay. All right. And we'll move on to the next part. Thank you. This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item. Remarks should be directed to council only. Once public comments have concluded, council may choose to answer your questions. Madam Clerk, are there any speakers registered for this item?

Yes, Mayor. Stephen Ellis. Then Alex.

Steve Ellis, Ward 4. The Sooner Mall is not a charity to which Norman needs to donate. They have an owner that, if the mall manager is to be believed, is sort of starving them. But in a certain sense, that's going to be a problem no matter what goes forward with the mall. Neither is the mall a community center. It's not a public space. If you go try to exercise your freedom of speech there, they will run you off. Don't try to petition, for example. This rebate instead is not supposed to be about supporting the mall. It's supposed to be about an investment that pays off for Norman, right? If there's no rate of return, you have no reason to do this. Unfortunately, the Norman City staff seems unwilling or unable to do the analysis that indicates whether or not this is a good investment, which is weird because it's the sort of tools that you need to do that analysis is something you pick up in a sophomore economics class. When, for example, the city manager asserts that the rebate is a no-lose proposition, it shows he doesn't know how to do that calculation. And yet some people seem to be really influenced by that. Thankfully, not everyone on the council. But as a favor, I did the basic analysis for you and sent it. It's very easy for Norman to lose money on this proposition. In order for this rebate to make sense, in order for it to come out ahead, be a positive return on investment, the taxable sales at the mall have to be 2.26 times what they would be with the but-for condition. And again, the but-for condition is different from the baseline. We've talked about this before. No one's even dreaming of that level of influence from, 300 grand per year, which they're not going to make because we know that they're not growing that fast, right? So that really should be the end of this proposal. Even the mall manager won't say that he anticipates 2.26 times an increase over what they would get in the but-for condition. Now, there's been a lot of talk about attracting the Dick's House of Sports, but But the mall is already working on that. And if the DIX comes to Norman apart from any rebate, that's part of the but-for condition. It doesn't help make the case for this subsidy. But if it isn't going to come, you can do the calculations on that too. In order to have any positive influence on Norman's budget, the increase in the probability of the dicks coming has to be something like 30%, 29.1, I think is what it turned out to be. That's a huge impact. And again, no one's even claiming that we're going to get close to this. So let's just be very clear. If we vote for this today, this is just a handout to them all. This is not an investment. This is not return. This is not economic development. This is just we're giving them all money because we like them all. And that's really worrisome if we're doing this as an economic development agreement because it really does put you on the hook for getting the claim that you've got to do it for everyone. So I think the problem is too many people here are suffering from the delusion that this rebate has no possible downside. But actually, it's a lot of money that you're putting up relative to what you could possibly get out of the program, right? You're giving up 55% of the taxable sales. So to make that up with the lower rate that you would be charging, it would really

alex alex lanfear ward 2. i oppose this i don't really understand why the city needs to give the mall tax rebates the city doesn't own the facility so that investment doesn't make sense to me when the mall is a private business owned by a multinational corporation if these rebates were going to fund publicly owned spaces like parks or common areas i might understand this uh malls have been failing nationwide for years now and for all uh for all any of us know the sooner mall could be in the same situation as crossroads mall and those rebates could all be a waste I would also like to know where the line is drawn on rebates like this. Why are we entertaining this for the mall and not other businesses in Norman? Why are they special and other businesses aren't? I said this a few weeks ago. This feels like corporate welfare. Vote no and thanks.

Thank you.

Marguerite Larson. And then Mayumi.

Marguerite Larsen, Ward 6. I oppose this 150%. I agree that this is a handout. I don't think that we should be subsidizing in a mall. However, I did attend the town hall, and so I want to address a few issues. The first issue was we were intended to suppose that money had been given to various malls in Oklahoma City. So Penn Square Mall Private owners and developers invested $78 million in renovations in 2013. The city of Oklahoma City did not invest a dime. What they did was modernizing entrances, major exterior, expand the food court, upgrade restrooms and flooring. Quail Springs Mall. Oklahoma City invested $2 million in economic development in 2013, sales tax rebate, however, The specific benchmarks where owners had to invest $15 million to develop the Sears space with a 10-year cap based on Von Meier, which is who they brought in. In this case, this mall is wanting to bring in Dick's Sporting Goods, so it was based on That particular company generating $27.6 million of sales first volume for the first year and $30 million annually for nine years. They missed the goal the first year. Oklahoma City did not invest. There is a town hall that was mentioned, I'm sorry, a town east mall that was mentioned in Mesquite, Texas. The city provided a one-cent sales tax rebate, but the developer must secure a 10-year lease with a main event. We already have a main event. And invest $25 million by July 2026 with new restaurants, landscaping, and green space, and the mall is using the Sears space to bring in the main event. There was another mall mentioned. Colony Mall in Sugar Land, Texas did not receive the request until March of 2025 in the amount of $72,000. And that was for outdoor play, picnic tables, and pedestrian walkway. Following the completion is when they would receive the money. The developers contributed 80% of this project, while the owners of the mall paid $360,000. I don't see a partnership here. I see the city of Norman donating. And quite frankly, we have empty buildings. We have businesses that could really use our help. And I believe 100% in supporting small businesses. Therefore, I really don't shop at the mall. So that's my spiel. Thank you.

Mayumi. And then Luigi. Luigi.

Miami Windler Ward 2. Okay, so it really bothers me that you guys approved the term sheet as it was rather than really trying to do more negotiations and, you know, trying to set up different options. Basically, you ignored what the EDAB recommended. So that's not cool. Um, so let's see my family moved to oklahoma in 1977 i was seven years old and we um at that time we were living in oklahoma city but i do remember sooner fashion mall and it was super cool but you want to know what was even better crossroads crossroads was amazing um I remember the last time I went to shop at Crossroads, it was like in 1998, something like that, and it was starting to get a little sketchy there, and now it's just completely weird. I do see that, okay, now it's not Sooner Fashion Mall, I guess it's still that legally, but Sooner Mall, whatever rebranding, There's a certain amount of sketchiness to them all now. And I don't know if there's really a way to attract better shops. The idea of chasing after retail tax dollars, is that really the best use of this money? And then are you prepared for every single other business in Norman to come knocking on your door saying, hey, we want a rebate too. Think about that because if this passes, That's what is going to happen. I mean, there are a lot of small businesses that I frequent, and sure, they could use a rebate too. Thanks. Thank you.

Luigi? And then Keith Brewster?

Okay. A lot of said, and probably more eloquently than I could. But yes, I was at that shameful meeting yesterday where FAD, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt was just handed out freely. What if we lose them all? What if we lose them all? Something else will open there. Something else will be developed. People that go shopping at the mall will go shopping somewhere else. The mall is not this regional attraction that's bringing money from out of town. So I don't think we should just cry at the even idea of losing it. It's funny because the people that most I see supporting free market and bringing it up, they end up, when we talk with the big players, they end up supporting corporate socialism. They want all these nice hands-outs for businesses. But I'm also not surprised that there are some people that are in the pockets of developers that not my opinion, look at the finance statements from the campaign, that are siding with large real estate owners. More men here yesterday just mentioned that He spoke with every single council member today was being sassy with Gansberry because he didn't respond promptly. I don't know what it is. Mr. Private Investigator over there yesterday was aggressively in favor of the mall, but we're not stranger to paid attendance in this room. So this conversation started over a year ago. Why do we want to rush a vote with a lame city council? Give it a couple of weeks, let's get it fresh with the people that were just freshly elected. Yesterday in that meeting there was also a lot of Mixing up public and private. Talking about how much we invested in Main Street versus how much we should invest in the mall. Main Street, the Main Street sidewalk, the road, that's public space. That's for everyone. And as was pointed out early, the mall space is not a community center. That's a private space. And Mr. Mall decides who can stay and who cannot, what you can do and what you cannot. And all the beautiful things they did is not for grace, is not for food traffic. I will challenge them to find one selfless thing, one thing they did for the community and not to get more people through the door. And finally, yes, one of the big tenants of the mall is moving to a more attractive area. And how that happens? We spent money. We took money. tax money from families. We gave them to develop this very attractive business area up in the target area. And now businesses are moving there. So now we need to take more money from the families and give it to them all because we created a more attractive area. So we need to compensate with this other attractive area. This will never end. What we should do is not mess with business, not choose winners, and let the free market do its thing. Thank you.

Thank you.

Keith Brewster.

Keith Brewster, Ward 8. I sent all of you an email, so you have all my points here. And so hopefully bear with me to get through all of them, at least in a bullet-wise fashion here. First of all, the mall owners are expected to maintain and periodically upgrade their facility. And the manager just mentioned a number of- Mr. Brewster, excuse me just a minute.

Gentlemen, if you guys would like to have a conversation, please, you're welcome to if you would want to do it in the lobby. Please.

Thank you, Mayor. The manager, Mr. Koval, I believe, I'm not sure I have his name right. He just explained some things about his capital budget. But to me, all of those items are maintenance. And it's a sad thing if he's kept to that small amount and it hasn't been mentioned here tonight yet but it was mentioned at the meeting yesterday that there was no overall remodeling of the building since 2020 i mean i'm sorry since 2000. so now here we are in 2026 26 years later i mean there are people graduating from ou who have never you know seen anything different in the mall So now the mall, as also mentioned by others, is a subsidiary. The GDP is subsidiary of Brookfield Properties. They're a subsidiary further of Brookfield Asset Management. This is a multinational company. It has $1.2 trillion, that's T, trillion dollars worth of assets under management. And I have all their investor presentation, some of their key points here that are related to their real estate business. And they talk about how they want 20% gross return and they get actual 19. They want 16% net return and they get actual 15. Now, obviously, this is for their entire real estate portfolio. It's not for Sooner Mall. But given all of that, they're a very profitable company, and they're able to go out into the market. They say they have $3.0 billion of corporate liquidity. They can send notes. They just did a note offering a $1 billion in April, rated A, investment grade, 4.8%. for five years and 5.3 for 10. There's not a single retailer in the city that can get those kind of numbers if they go to a bank or they go to their source of funding. So I say this company of any place in this whole city, you have plenty of resources and you just need to tell them it's time for a major remodel. like they did and thank you margaret for talking about uh what was done at quell springs which is one of their sister company or their sister malls and um so that's part of their 300 273 billion dollar real estate program um so anyway they claim further um that they're that there's going to be no impact on the city budget because it comes out of the increment Well, we're not thinking about all the losses. So nobody wants to talk about this, but apparently in the back rooms, in the smoky back rooms, you've all been being told about Dick's Sporting Goods or I think it's called Dick's House of Sport. Okay, well, are these not going to be taking away from academy sports sales? How about main place? We just got them to come here. Now we also have Hay Day, which is owned by a local person. They put 100% of their money into building that with no subsidies like UNP or what we plan to give to the mall. Is that fair to them? And so now all other company or retailers are going to come to you

Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.

And then Paul.

I was at another meeting where moving Norman forward, I went to all four or five of those, and they was talking about putting 50,000 people here in five years. I looked around to see if he was in the room, but he's left. So just through supply and demand, you can call that tech guy back up here if you want, but in their world they're saying they're going to put 50 percent of the population out of work so 50 000 people here 50 of the population is going to be out of work we're going to have to build a bigger homeless shelter i don't know what we're going to do about that but for some reason that map doesn't add up and I wouldn't know what to do about the mall over there. My grandkids like to shop there. But I think we have bigger problems than we can think about. High density development is going to eat this place up, mostly because we don't know what we're doing. I've seen it all over the United States and mostly I work for those guys. They are much smarter than I am and more powerful. So I don't know how you need to look at that pretty close because if it's going to happen here in the next five years, you better get that bull by the horn.

Thank you.

Paul Wilson.

then chelsea paul wilson award one i'm kind of torn on this one because to be honest i like sooner mall i don't want to see it end up like crossroads um but my biggest thing is sears has been gone pre-pandemic seven years later now they're trying to fill it i've been to dick's house of sports up in the city Recently and I'll be straight on us. I was impressed. I've been doing normal dicks. I went to the house of sports. It's impressive. I would love to see it come to Norman. I think it is a little bit different than Academy. Because they do have the outdoor activities where you can play basketball, you can practice your swing, they have indoor golf simulators. So I mean, it's a lot different than Academy. But here's my question to the mall management. It's been seven years. I have seen that mall decrease tenants in the 18 years I've been here. I actually used to work there at a store in the mall. And I remember when it was busy. The one feature I loved about the mall, kind of like the carousel at Crossroads Mall, was the fountain. And then they got rid of it. I also noticed a lot of the restaurants started leaving. I was just there yesterday. Your options to eat at the mall, inside the mall, is El Chico or Chick-fil-A. And I guess maybe if you want a pretzel. The cookie place has closed. When I worked there, you had Subway, you had a Chinese restaurant, you had a Sbarro-like pizzeria, you had Chick-fil-A, you had El Chico. You had a lot of options. People go to malls. They want food options. You want to keep people in the mall? Have restaurants. Because they'll eat and they're going to want to walk that off before they get in the car. Also, there's a lot of empty spaces. And I actually had a passenger about a week ago. They run retail spots. You know what they're doing? They're cutting their rent in half to fill their spots. And they believe in the old ad, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. You want to fill them all? Find ways. If you have to make improvements to get Dick's there, I don't know about you, but I'd be making those improvements because that's a big retailer. How much are you going to make on their rent? How much are you going to make on rent from tenants that come in because Dick's shows up? That's where your capital improvements can come in. I mean, look at Ed Noble Parkway. When we redid the Lindsay Bridge, it basically killed Ed Noble Parkway because nobody can get to it. New owner came in. They did their own capital investments. Now I think I can count two, maybe three stores, storefronts that are empty. One of them is empty only because the national retailer went out of business. So you can't really count that as a fail. Maybe. But, I mean, people aren't going to malls. That's not true. I've been to Penn Square. I've been to Quail Springs. They're bustling. Those malls are not failing. And as mentioned before, they didn't get a handout from the city, or if they did, the owners of the malls didn't meet the criteria, so they just didn't get anything. You want to bring back Sooner Malls? As a retail owner, invest in your property.

Chelsea Hinkle, Ward 6. And the only reason my kiddos agreed to stay this long with me is because I want to advocate for this, for the mall. We love the mall. I do believe it's a community center. I grew up in Norman, so did my husband. One of my first jobs was at Garfield's in the mall, if you remember that restaurant. And it's changed a lot over the years. I also really love the fountain and miss it, but I don't mind some of the things that took place. The boba tea place is amazing. When I was a new mom with these two little ones, it's where my kids learned to walk. The play space in the mall was like a park to us. So in the sense of it being a community space, we would go there if the weather was bad and we just needed to get out. and find a place to eat and run off some energy. As they grew up, we'd have parties there. If you're a parent and you've tried to have a party in Norman, it's great to do something like Hay Day or Get Air, but it's a $500 party and they get really expensive. But you can go to the mall with 20 kids and give them know 10 15 bucks each let them go shop around you can go eat and so you can run off that energy and there's elderly people that go there to walk you see them every morning if we go to the library that's another great community space but you got to be quiet you can be loud in the mall and it's just as a staple of our community and not even just indoors the outdoor space we've gone to so many community events just in the parking lot i don't remember what that was the safety event with like helicopters and you could take you know they would take off and you could see what they were looking like and um the officers would be out there giving you your thumbprint your id tags and then they have the circus in the parking lot and we did safety town saw Baker Mayfield do his community service day there and so it's just tons of experiences throughout our whole life have been at the mall and I think $300,000 as a rebate when that has to be they have to improve the space and increase their taxes that they give back to us you know i don't think we're going to lose money on that and three hundred thousand dollars isn't going to renovate the whole mall so i think five years is a good run of time to do some of the work that we'd like to see in the mall that's all i can think about to say i know my daughter wrote something about it she didn't feel like coming out to talk about it but there are malls in the city but it's all the way in the city penn square mall doesn't have the same kind of play area and we really want to keep our tax dollars in norman so if i need to go buy clothes we go to hot topic we go into you know tour it's gone now they just mentioned the cookie company is gone so we miss businesses when they leave and we're excited about new ones when they come i just heard about the dicks potential but that's a place to hang out inside of too it's not just a place you go to buy things but a place you go to spend time and so i really hope that you vote yes to give them all a rebate and if it builds a pathway for other businesses to do this in the future i think that's also a great idea if you can create that framework and other businesses come in and say we want to do this too we want to do this too i think that's awesome if we can incentivize businesses to invest in the spaces that make this community great then let's do it thank you that's all i have mayor

Anyone else from the audience who has not spoken on this item please come forward.

This is why i'll never run for city council it's way too late for me, but I and I see, and I had a great story, and i'm not gonna tell it because you're all tired what i'm gonna say is that We know that we have an opportunity here. You all have an opportunity to correct a misstep. Nobody's arguing that businesses don't deserve some opportunity. It's just that the way this was executed, and we all know this by now, Is left a sour taste a lot of people's mouths and I think if you were to move forward with Tabling this create your retail program and open it up again. I think you will win a lot of hearts and minds I mean all of this is about doing the people's business not the corporation's business You can do that in creating this retail program, whether this came as part of that or a separate part of it, it doesn't really matter. The gate is open, the conversation has been had. And thank God, I mean, you realize how passionate people are about this community and about our businesses and about opportunity. Let's make good on that promise. Do the right thing tonight. and go forward and create that retail program and do it in a way that everybody has an opportunity to benefit. That's what we're about. That's what this community is about. And by the way, I didn't get to say congratulations. I look forward to seeing your new projects going forward. You are an amazing architect. I know that wasn't part of the deal, but thank you very much. Thank you.

cindy rogers ward 4 and i'm not the economist on edab but i am an economist in town um i i think it's important to note that even though there's been we've been talking about this for a year and a half the first time edab saw this was in november of 2025. And they saw a different set of terms than they were, than you all saw in March, I forget the date, March 17th of this year. And then the new terms were sent back to EDAP the very next day. And EDAP, which is supposed to be the Economic Development Advisory Board, the board that advises the city on economic development, actually had concerns about this, about what happened in the change of terms. So while there was... discussions going on about the terms, these certainly weren't done in a public forum or any place where you could have public comment, maybe by some people who know a thing or two about economics and retail markets. So I think it's a little disingenuous to say, we've been talking about this a long time. The public certainly hasn't. The terms that you approved to go negotiate were on a consent docket. So again, the public didn't get a chance to say, hey, maybe we should think about that. OK, so that's my complaint about the process. um chasing retail if we're really going to do that we need to be very careful why do we need to be very careful first of all edev didn't suggest chasing retail is a thing we should do the policy you're using for this project or this deal is certainly not consistent with the economic development incentive policy even the dreaded well to me nedc was very clear that chasing retail is not a good economic development policy. So why are we thinking that we're chasing retail? And if we're going to do that, how do you do that in a smart way? And there are ways to do it in a smart way. It's very tricky. Why is it very tricky? I'm going to mention the word, the big C. cannibalization because you can bring in new sales at the mall and the mall benefits from that and their noi goes up and they can spend more and the mall's hopping but the problem is those new sales at the mall largely come from their closest competitor which mr caldwell told us is a ump so they come from within town they come from target they come from main event they come from So those aren't really new sales to the city. They're not new sales to the general fund. They're not new sales to the dedicated funds. So the math that's been presented here, oh, it's very straightforward, is not straightforward. I guess it's straightforward if you just ignore cannibalization and how significant that is for retail. It's huge. The Arena Tiff study suggested that the cannibalization there would have been 83%. And when you put that into it, the math doesn't add up. The point of an investment is spending money to make sure there's going to be more investment. I appreciate Councilmember Bruce's questions. How do we know we're going to get more investment rather than, oh, now I know how much I can spend. I'm going to spend it on this. Your contract gives you no control and no assurances that the public is getting more investment in the mall because you give a reimbursement. It's not a sales tax rebate. Those are when you pay a tax when you buy stuff and you get that tax back. This is a reimbursement. So there are a lot of problems with the specifics of this contract.

A couple more, please. Yeah, just line up and come on up as you.

Joe Love, Ward 1. I would really hate to be in you guys' position right now, honestly, because I'm of two minds of all of this. As I say, I'm a free market guy, so I'm really not into handouts to anybody. However, I feel like that this is kind of the chicken coming on the roost a little bit. uh we've done a lot of things in this town that have cannibalized other businesses and concentrated businesses in certain areas and to the detriment of businesses that have been here for 50 years you know and uh so i really don't know what what the right answer is on all of that but i would caution again uh you know against these really large projects that uproot a lot of businesses in norman and move them somewhere else you know when we when we had uh the mall and uh at noble parkway was all new and all of that uh you know that was the happening spot and then just overnight i mean it's obviously not i mean it's not like those businesses are all gone but it's not the happening spot anymore and if you had invested your money over there it was definitely hurt by that uh so i just look at this and i say is it fair to give other businesses that we did that to kind of, uh, a shot, a hand up on, on some of this stuff, or is it better to go with the free market live and let live survival of the fittest? But, uh, I will caution and say that I think a, a vacant mall would be a terrible thing for Norman, for crime, for whatever. And I don't know if it, if that, that, I don't know, I can't see the future, but, uh, I really hope that the mall can stay and improve and that we can, whatever we do going forward on this or any other issue, that we look at what we might be causing from a cannibalism standpoint. Thank you. Thank you.

Rodney Johnson, Ward 2. Yeah, I'm a private investigator. You know what I did before I was a private investigator? I spent most of my life working for the ambulance service. I've seen people die every way there is to die. I was at the Oklahoma City bombing. My life has been about people. And when I look at things, I obviously since I was 17 and started working for the ambulance service, rely on data. And little did I know what was gonna happen when I, two weeks ago, when I misunderstood what the difference between a place zoned for a park and a real park, and then stumbled into this issue. But I've done a lot of research over the last two weeks. And I can tell you a couple of things. First of all, I walked downtown and talked to the businesses that actually have retail businesses. And why do we rely on retail? Because that's how the city makes money and helps citizens. And most of those businesses didn't even know that this was going on. And when I explained it to either the manager or the owner of that business, they agreed with what was going on. Another thing I learned, a lot of those downtown businesses aren't owned by people here in Norman. They're owned by people that live outside the city, which is fine. You know, that's the way things go sometimes. And You, I'm sorry, you get in a situation sometimes when you have to look at economic development in a lot of different ways. It's not gonna be a cookie cutter situation. And look at all of the money that we have spent through the hotel motel tax downtown with every festival we put on. When I first went to the Art Walk, I don't know, many years ago, it was a small little thing. Not very many people went. We just went between the different, You know, galleries. Now you go down there, all the millions the city has spent. It's a great thing. It's a miracle of the transformation. But the city spent millions. And to say that that is not economic development, you don't know what you're talking about. And another thing, when we listen to economists, and this is why I said what I started out to say, when we listen to economists that do nothing but look at spreadsheets, you know what they're missing? They're missing people that I've spent my life to help people. Mayor, you have an opportunity right now to either be someone that's a jobs mayor that helps move the city in a direction that provides people opportunity, or we can be like a lot of naysayers and not provide anything for people and continue to grow smaller and just, I don't know. This is a no brainer. And it's not as complicated as some people like to say. This will bring in 200 jobs, possibly, if it's the business we're talking about. I ask you to be fair to all the wards in the entire city. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. are very important to the people that live in that area. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Foote, did you want to speak?

Yeah.

No, Jackson Foote. How many minutes?

What ward?

Oh, four. Thank you. Though it shouldn't matter. If I had no ward, It would be a question that I don't think you could answer. not because you're you, but for many other reasons. No, I don't want to talk on this, but this discussion is long because it is necessary. I have realized in the last 45 minutes, listening to people talk, including the number of people on the dais, this discussion is public because it is necessary. That is the nature of giving money away to corporations which are not public despite the fact that we socialize people from a very young age to that terminology by calling them public, whether they are capitalized in trillion dollars or capitalized in billion dollars. Those corporations make people compete for jobs. They are the monopoly, what has been called by people who came before me, the monopoly class of buyers of labor. They make people then compete at their will and discretion. That's how it works. If you've been to a job interview, you know, because you're just about willing to say anything to that monopoly class of labor buyer. Those people then extract profits. Anybody who has made a profit in their life knows that that's how it works. They extract the surplus as profit. Anybody, Norman may be an exception. My political memory in Norman only goes back to the senior center issue, which people were calling a public space. Norman may be an exception and the mall may be an exception to this, but I have only been reading about monumental historic unheard of in your time or mine corporate profits. That's what I've been hearing. I don't pay attention to the news, but that's what I've been hearing. That is the nature of what we've been talking about to think that in a city like Norman, that swings a big bat, that hotels would not come here, that businesses would not come to Norman to extract as much as they could, either from the natural resources or from the customers or from the labor. without the help of so-called partnerships, which I have been reminded this may not be a partnership if the contract doesn't seem like it is. So I would ask you all to consider that with time. Some people who know more about it than I do have suggested that maybe a I believe it's called a rebate, would be preferable to a reimbursement. I'm not that interested in that small ball, but that would seem like something to wait and consider going forward in the next however amount of time you have a retreat coming up. You discuss it openly, you discuss it honestly. Anybody who discusses it, they're a friend of mine and you can ask me anything you want anytime. I'm pretty recognizable.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that has not spoken on this item that would like to speak about it? Seeing none, okay. Are there any final comments from council regarding this item? Council Member Gansberry?

Hearing the applicant say earlier that they now wish not to have this part of the economic development agreement, would that then make it where we might need a motion to table this item since how it is literally for an economic development agreement?

I don't

Believe the title of the document Needs to be that deciding factor Counselor Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I think what he was referring to was the economic development incentives policy that we've talked about and This request was not considered under that policy because it doesn't address retail. It's more keyed towards job creation and employers, businesses, targeted industries, things like that. And so it wasn't processed under that. So I think there might make some confusion there.

Okay.

I don't know if the buttons are working for everybody. Councillor Grant.

I just want to say that, yes, we do have her cheat again, July 17th. I think from multiple conversations in the community that it's very important to say that. You know, the goal is to create unique districts throughout Norman and have active transportation that connects people and gets them around to places. I just want to say that where the mall is located, there is not the ability to do a TIF. I do think if we came up with a retail rebate process that ensured transparency and fairness that we could consider this in the future. And to address our economic development policy moving forward, I just need to remind people that we did not enter the Cleveland County Economic Development Coalition primarily because we were not guaranteed transparency about how public dollars would be spent. So in the absence of outsourcing our future economic policy to an entity like that, What we have been talking about since late November of 2025 is the Norman Economic Development Authority, aka NIDA, which is the other hat that council wears and has been largely underutilized for quite a while. And I think as NIDA, we can have productive conversations with the Economic Development Advisory Board, EDAB, that was mentioned multiple times tonight. And I do think during the retreat process, we will probably discuss expanding that board to be more representative. Currently, there's like seven positions and there are eight boards, but it doesn't hurt to have an out large member and also somebody who can split or weigh in and not have a tie. And then we talked about for the money we weren't spending on the Cleveland County Economic Development Coalition, hiring an economic development director along with interns who can use the data that Sarah Kaplan collects to help us develop opportunities that make sense for Norman. um especially utilizing our aim norman plans what we're doing with our tiff district master plan and other things where it makes sense to pursue specific businesses that can actually fit in our footprint and um add to that bottom line that we're constantly chasing until the Oklahoma legislature allows us to collect more than sales tax. Also part of developing an economic development plan in the future, we've got things out there like a film-friendly city slash permit that we have not really picked up. And so if we're going to talk about retail rebates, TIF master plans, and whatnot, I hope that we're able to, through our committee work, create the policies that allow us to pursue economic opportunities that make sense for us, which is why I would not be opposed to this request in another form, although I will be a no tonight and Mr. Colwell knows this, so I have been very transparent with him. about where I'm at. I do think that our council, especially the incoming council, needs to have education on economic development tools available to Oklahoma cities to include TIFs and sales tax rebates and smart ways to structure that so that we understand their impacts and we're attracting quality jobs. And I think our community should have a conversation about what that term actually means. All to say I did hear a comment about the Porter streetscape earlier and I just want to say that yes there were businesses that benefited from collaborating with the city during the streetscape construction and there were businesses who did not collaborate with the city and did not get the same kinds of improvement. There are common areas at the mall that with maybe finalized details that aren't controversial, that we could have bike racks, we could have public art, we could have more collaboration. And just because I'm a no on this tonight doesn't mean that I won't be pursuing opportunities for those entities that have reached out to me and asked could they work with them all to, for example, host the Master of Fine Arts graduate student thesis work. So anyways, I just want to put that out there. Definitely not trying to divide this community and thinking in a holistic way about what economic development means for us. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Bruce.

I just want to address a couple issues there as far as the Norman Economic Development Coalition used to advise EDAB. We don't we don't have that anymore. There's a long history associated with that organization that is very successful Why we did a turn, okay, we didn't turn But to develop that capability inside city staff is very difficult on Expenditure of funds in different areas. We often expend funds driving traffic in appearance throughout the city. When you look at particular segments of the city, say, wow, they really benefit over those investments in that area. Just look at downtown. I don't know why people are a little bit gun shy as far as those investments. in my ward. I don't know. But I wish someone would help drive traffic in that area and drive traffic in the mall and increase mall retail sales. Minimal cannibalization, hopefully, but cannibalization.

Cannibalization.

Some of that has been very expensive as far as projects within certain areas of the city. And it drove people to those areas. Something to consider. That's all I have.

Council Member Hinkle?

Yes, I just, I want to say that I do believe that the mall is a community space. We do lots of things for different areas of Norman to make community spaces, whether that's parks and neighborhoods or senior wellness centers or libraries or anything like that, whether the city owns it or not, whether the community uses it is what determines it as a community space. And the mall has been that to Norman for over 50 years. to my family, to many other families. There's 17 local businesses in there, so if you don't shop at the mall because you don't support local business, then that's at your own detriment. I think it's unique how we bring up the topic of cannibalization so much for different areas in Norman when we are truly trying to create exceptional areas for Norman residents to go. And the mall brings two million unique visitors a year. So you can't say that it's not a destination because it is. And when you talk about cannibalization, to talk about Norman cannibalizing itself is unfair because we lose so much of our sales tax revenue to Moore and to Oklahoma City. And if you want to do things like comparisons, then I challenge you to go to Sooner Mall walk around and see what's happening there, and then go to Penn Square Mall and see how many people from Norman that you know that you will run into there because they are leaving Norman. And it's not just our sales tax dollars that are leaving Norman. It's our talent from the university that doesn't want to live in Norman. It's businesses that go to Oklahoma City or go to Moore or go to other areas because we don't provide the places for them. And we have provided tons of money for other areas in Norman to be successful. Norman Arts Council is almost exclusively funded by the taxes that we generate from things that we've done in Norman. And the revitalization of Main Street would not have been possible without something like Art Walk. And I love going to Art Walk just as much as my kids love going to the mall. So I really do, I almost sounded like a threat of what if other businesses come in behind the mall and do this exact same thing? I really hope they do. I hope this is a blueprint for bid districts and for other places to come in and say, hey, we can bring something more to Norman. Here's the blueprint that you've created for us. Let us do it too. And let's keep some of our special things that we have in Norman here instead of letting them go to other communities. And I hope your sales tax dollars stay here too. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Dixon.

Thank you. Just want to clear up a few things I heard from the audience tonight. Miss Wendler is on EDAP. She was part of a unanimous vote that would have given a half of a million dollars a year. We back that down to 300,000. She voted yes for 500. We backed it down to 300. So to have her come up and lecture us is a little bit disingenuous. Luigi mentioned that the mall is not a private place. I think Mr. Ellis brought it up too. It's not a public place. Try doing a petition there. Try getting people to vote for a Republican in the patio at Yellow Dog that the city paid for. Try getting the exact same thing at one of Becca Bean's establishments where the city provided a patio for them. So we have to tell the truth because it's just, Everybody's entitled to their own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own set of facts. It's just too much. So there's those. Also, if you listen to Mr. Ellis and his wife, one of them tells you that this thing has to be 2.26x so that it works. Then the other one gets up here and says, aha, 83% cannibalization. It doesn't jive. It's, I'm talking, I have the floor, sir. You already had your 16 minutes tonight.

I'm not. All right, guys.

No, sir.

We're not gonna do this. Talking over everybody, council member.

So this is a 53 to 47% sales tax split. If you ignore that 47% that comes back to the city as part of this deal, A 10-year ROI is 88.68%, with an internal rate of return of 13.54% over a 10-year period. That's if you do really bad math and ignore the 40% of the sales tax that comes back to the city of Norman. If you correctly include that, sir, I've never interrupted you tonight. If you correctly include that 47% that comes back to the city of Norman, the ROI is 1,566.67%. This thing pays itself back. This thing pays the city of Norman back in 7.9 months. 7.9 months. Would you do that with your personal money? I would do that every day and twice on Sunday. 7.9 month recoupment. That's what we're talking about. And the community is not divided about this. It's six people who hate everything we do. It's the same six people who hate everything we try to do. The community is not divided. It's six people with a 7.9 month recoupment based on facts, not feelings. Facts, 7.9 months. When someone says this is a no-brainer, 7.9 months recoupment. So if this just goes to five years, I'm talking 7.9 months after this thing is over in five years. If we don't redo it, 7.9 months from that five years from a year ago, we have all of our money back, 100% of it. And then what happens on day two? We're making more than we did a year ago. This is a business deal. It's not a think tank. It's not a, I'm gonna sit in my ivory tower and just come up with some really weird stuff and make this difficult. This is basic business. It's a simple investment that returns every bit of our principal in 7.9 months when it's over. So that's why I'm voting yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Kirby.

I just wanted to address the 6 people comment because I don't know about your email that mine had a couple 100. Emails about people who had concerns about this issue so I do actually believe is a lot more than just the 6 people sitting in this room.

OK so couple notes about it too that I want to mention that some of more mention, but he dad did recommend a 5050 split with a $500,000 cap Council unanimously agreed that that was not what we wanted to do and recommended the lower cap at a 100%. One of the things that seems to get lost in the conversation about cannibalization, for example, is population growth. It seems to come from a perspective that we have no new people living in Norman, whereas since 2010 census, there are 25,000 more people living in Norman just in the last 16 years. That's just Norman alone. That's not the greater metro area. So there's a lot more people living in the city of Norman. There are a whole lot more students attending the University of Oklahoma today than there were just three years ago. There are new people in this city who are spending money. And we have to account for that too in these calculations about cannibalization because they seem to focus on we're not having any new people, it's just the same money getting circulated in Norman forever, for decades. It's not. We've doubled in population since I was born in Norman. So we need to keep that perspective about population growth and what that means. With the mall property, there is opportunity to add things like housing to the mall because it is a massive property with a lot of parking that isn't necessary. It wasn't necessary even in probably the highest heights of mall activity. But the best thing about it is there's a lot of space and potential for addition of housing to it, to a hotel, to other businesses that can be built on it, and there's been a couple already. So that's one of the big things. One of the things we looked at that Council Member Grant mentioned was the potential for a TIF that would include the mall property, Ed Noble Parkway, and all of West Lindsey Street all the way to Berry Road. It turns out none of that area in Norman is in an enterprise zone. It's not in a grandfathered enterprise zone like the University of North Park, and thus none of that is eligible for a TIF. So the only other option for someone like the mall or Ed Noble Parkway or businesses on West Lindsay Street would be to come forward and ask for something like this. And so just want to be clear about that and some of the other options that we've explored. We do now have an economist on the EDAB. There was a real imbalance on that committee, in my opinion, as in there is no representation on that committee from anybody that lives in Ward 6, Ward 1, Ward 5, or Ward 7. So the entire east side of Norman has nobody on that committee. And there are six members from Ward 3 on that committee. But one of my goals as mayor is that as vacancies come open on committees, even when it's not required, my goal is to try to get committees appointed and have equal representation to the extent possible from all eight council wards. And so since I've been mayor over the last year, we've made a lot of progress on doing that. But I also have to wait until vacancies come up to make those changes. But that's something we plan to do. And I think we're because we're not in the county economic development coalition, we're going to have to lean more on our EDAB committee and our in-house staff and things like that when it comes to economic development. On the process and the consent dockets last month Council was asked in a committee meeting. Is there any objection to putting this on the next council agenda? There was no objection and City staff put it on the consent docket I would say mistakenly as soon as any but as soon as council members got the agenda Several reached out to the staff and said we need this to not be on consent We're gonna have to have a conversation about it So that was not meant to happen. It was just that count nobody on council objected to it being on the agenda and It was put on the consent and immediately taken off and then the applicant asked to postpone for two weeks Which we did and then council decided to postpone it for another two weeks. So just to clear up that part of the process and You know, things like the mall is not in peril yet. It isn't, as stated by the mall manager. It's not in peril. It's not at risk of closing. But we have seen what has happened to malls all across the country, that there are very large properties that are sitting vacant in cities all across the country. A big one in OKC that we all know about. There's also one in Midwest City that the city of Midwest City recently had to purchase. I don't know if they had to, but it had been abandoned for a decade. They were having tons of police calls, fire department was having to show up constantly to people breaking in and setting things on fire, and nobody was stepping forward to redevelop that property into affordable housing or anything else. It was a massive blighted property in the middle of Midwest City, and they had to step in and buy it. So they could do something with after legal wrangling for years with the property owner, something that we're in the middle of right now with the Norman Hotel on West Robinson. So that's an issue as well. Not in peril, but what if something could done to prevent it from getting to that point where it is in decline? Don't want to end up with an abandoned mall like these other cities. And again, with the issues we've had with abandoned buildings like Perfect Swing, for more than a decade, 16 years of it being abandoned, just recently purchased. And the Norman Hotel, which is a decade now that it's been empty. A year ago, maybe this meeting, council voted to abate that property and force it to be demolished. and it's still standing because the owner is fighting it even though it's a it's a hazard and we don't want to send our fire department in there at all if there's any issues but people break into it there are fires being set and i'll tell you it's not mostly homeless people it's teenagers from around the metro area who know about this eight-story abandoned hotel in Norman. It's on the side of the highway. It's easy to get to and easy to get out of Norman if you break in there. So it's a risk to our public safety personnel that we're dealing with, and that's a massive abandoned building in a very prominent, high-profile, highly valuable location, and yet nobody, nothing's happening. So that's a concern that I have about abandoned buildings and allowing things to get to that point and then just hoping that something will come along later and remedy it, because what we're seeing is that's not happening. And I would assume that Crossroads, which is on the corner of the intersection of two major interstates, would be a target for that type of development. I do see this as an investment. Some people have asked, an investment, is that increased sales tax revenue from this property benefits the city of Norman. If the revenue in sales tax at the mall property increases, then the city gets more sales tax revenue. That's an investment. If the mall were to decline and the existing sales tax that we collect from it were to decline, then we lose revenue. And right now, over 60% of the mall activity is from non-Norman residents, from people outside of Norman coming to Norman to shop at the mall. And there's no guarantee if the mall were to close that those 60% of people would then, okay, I'll just find another store in Norman to keep shopping at. They would likely go to the nearest mall. in Shawnee or in Oklahoma City. So 60%, more than half of the activity at the mall is not Norman residents. It's outside of Norman. There is no mall south of here until you get to Denton, Texas. So all the small towns all around here come to Norman to go to our mall. One of the things that was asked, no other businesses have asked for this. None have come forward with a proposal like the mall managers brought forward. None have asked. None have come forward. The economic development agreement has existed since 2013. It has never been used. Nobody has ever come forward requesting it. It was only considered once in 2019 to try to get Costco to come, but it's never been requested. No business has ever asked to use it. And I do, I agree with the comments. I would love to see a policy that allowed businesses in Norman to request something like this, especially small locally owned businesses that don't have a corporate entity. that they could go to that may have a hard time getting loans from a bank and so that is a really important piece that I would like to see us have that would apply to any business in Norman that would want to ask for it and it was already mentioned there are The perception that the mall is entirely corporate is maybe a former reality of what malls used to be, where it was entirely corporate national chains. But one third of the businesses in the mall right now are locally owned small businesses. And so I would encourage anybody that is avoiding the mall because you only support local businesses, there are several in there that would love to have your support. And the council did not want to attach this deal to any specific business. When conversations about the retailer coming to the mall, it's been in the social media and whatnot. I know I specifically did not want any deal to be attached to any specific business or luring any specific business here, especially a business that could compete with an existing business that we have. So I was pretty adamant about any any rebate deal has to be for public facing improvements that would benefit the mall property as a whole and would help existing businesses in the mall get more traffic and improve their sales which would generate more sales tax for the city but specifically but specifically cannot uh did not want it to be attached to trying to lure any specific business and that's what the council as a whole had expressed feedback as well and so those are some of the points I wanted to make about it but one of the and I do support trying to find some way to help the mall property because I think the value of it 50 years as an entity in Norman whether it's legally a public space or not it functions as a public space and has for 50 years Like other people have mentioned, it's a place where people go to be together, to see people, to go indoors when the weather's bad, to walk, do all kinds of things. And it's something that's worth, if we have a local ability to do something to give it a hand up, instead of relying on some out of state multi-billion dollar corporation to come in, if we have the ability to do something local, it's something that's worth considering. And some folks have been upset that we've even considered this, but the mall or any other property has the right to come forward and make this request. And they have the right to have our full consideration of it. And you can say that you don't like the deal or you don't think we should approve it, that's fine. But to be upset that we even consider it is wrong. It's wrong and it's backwards, in my opinion. Everyone has the right to be heard. And if you have a business in Norman and this is something you're interested in, I would love for you, one, to give us some feedback on how we can make a policy that would work for businesses, people who have experience running businesses, Tell us what would work best for you and that you would have the opportunity with a fair shake and equal opportunity as any other business to access this type of thing. But given the current circumstances and my own criticism of past economic development agreements and council's inability to come together and support things as a whole. As it stands right now, the council seems to be very split on this particular issue and for me there is no way in good faith that I can Approve something by a one vote majority like this I need the council to get behind a policy and I need more I need this council to do more than just five to four votes things especially that might be controversial and I thought we were going to get there with this it seemed like that and then circumstances change other information comes up council members have a right to change their minds or have different opinions the more you think about it and so that's reasonable but the way it is right now I won't be able to support this until I know that council as a whole is more willing to go forward with these types of endeavors so With that, and I have spoken directly to Mr. Colwell as well, I'm not gonna be able to support this tonight, but I do wanna continue to pursue concrete policy that can help address all businesses in Norman with economic development and can give us an actual policy going forward with this type of thing. So with that, that's all I have on this issue. And the motion on the floor is to approve the agreement. Council members, you may cast your vote.

Sorry, I'm just writing this down. Okay. The motion on the floor fails by a vote of four to four, voting against Council Member Gandisberry, Council Member Grant, Council Member Kirby, and Mayor Holman.

All right. Miscellaneous comments. This is an opportunity for citizens to address city council due to Open Meeting Act regulations. Council is not able to participate in discussion during miscellaneous comments. Remarks should be directed to the council as a whole and limited to four minutes or less. Do we have anybody signed up?

Yes, Mayor Joseph Love. OK. Stephen Ellis. And then Marguerite.

Steve Ellis, Ward 4.

Three issues for miscellaneous here.

First of all, let's start with the mall issue. That was a mess. I don't think that Norman does a good job of doing its due diligence on these kinds of issues, as was evidenced by Councilmember Dixon's inability to understand opportunity costs and therefore inability to do a simple ROI. I think we really dodged a bullet there. I think we need to sit down with some of these basics and get the city finance director involved so we can see when things are likely to make money for us and when they're not. Two, I want to consider the city's responsibility for the unhoused for just a minute. I agree with what was said on the dais that we need policy changes at all levels, federal, state, county, city. I think we need to do advocacy at all of those levels to handle the problems of the unhoused. But I do think it's important for the council to understand that the city has a very special role here because that's the level at which the police operate. And really the most pressing issue for people who are unhoused right now is the police chasing them from place to place in a kind of whack-a-mole policy. That's the problem for tonight, and that's going to be the problem every night until the shelter is completed. So a lot of the advocacy that's coming at the city is because that's where the problem is at right now. And the Hippocratic Oath remind us first do no harm, right? What we need to make sure that we do is not have the city creating more problems through its enforcement policy. There are lots of things to be said in that regard. And I know it's complicated, but the city has a special role that the county and the state can't solve that way. Finally, issue number three. Let's talk about the lawsuit that ORED filed today against the city regarding the arena tiff. um there's a lot to be said i know you guys probably haven't had a chance to read it yet because it was uh submitted this afternoon at about four o'clock um so it probably isn't up yet i know city legal is going to have to look at it and give you guys advice but i just want to remind you it wasn't more than what two months ago when we were talking about a situation where the city and ORED would sit down and try to work out these kinds of issues. That didn't happen. There was some suggestion from the dais that ORED was going to have to sue the city. They did, but at least in spirit, there's some of that activity that remains the possibility of working together. And in particular, the city can just cop to some of the violations if it wants to. As the city council, you should be directing your legal department Once you get a chance to look at everything, if you think any of those arguments have any kind of merit, you can just fess up to that kind of stuff. And that lets you side with your citizens on these kinds of issues. It's not really any different from getting a declaratory judgment. That's going to be part of it as well. So remember, when you look at that sort of stuff, if you think there's any merit in those kinds of arguments, you should take that back to your city employees who work in the legal department and possibly, you know, come to some sort of compromise on what you think you need to fight and what you don't. So thanks a lot. I'm glad we ended up where we did on the mall, although... Marguerite Larson.

And then Mayumi.

I'm very happy at the vote this evening because I feel like the position that was being presented to them all was presented as a partnership. And I feel like the way that the doctrine was written was not really in a partnership. So I think that when you guys take a look at this and review it, make sure that there is a partnership going, that there's an investment from both sides. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayumi?

Mayumi Windler, Ward 2. So comments about the monthly report. Sales tax revenue is a little bit below budget. General fund revenue is quite a bit below budget. Expenses are quite a bit below budget. What was cut? It's like $8 million that didn't get spent, so. you know, what happened there. Next thing for the IT department, the whole thing about moving the secondary IT data center to a new location. So it's been in the same status for several months where additional cleanup is ongoing at the old location. So that's February, March, April, May, four months of cleaning up. When is that going to be done? Next thing, Westwood Golf, range tokens. So nothing, zero. But I guess last year, 4115, is that something that was discontinued? I don't know what a range token is, but whatever. It was just something that I noticed. Then the last thing. Okay, so animal welfare section. We get the intakes, live releases, live outcome rate, animals, fosters, volunteer hours. Can we get the same thing for the people at CityCare? just so we know these are the people that we are taking care of. This is how many people have come in. This is how many people have gotten housed and Yeah, what happens with that? And then the last thing is that at EDAB we looked at two different proposals, and our final recommendation was it was basically like a contingent sort of approval that further negotiations would happen, and that didn't happen. Thanks. Thank you.

Billy Harless.

Billy Harless, Ward 5. I live at 5401 Alameda Street. And if you don't know where that's at, that's where the February 26, 2023 tornado came through. Lost my house there. And then later the Turnpike announced that they're going to put a turnpike right in my front yard after I started building my house facing towards the west, and now I'm gonna have a turnpike right there. I live on 20 acres there, and so I appreciate y'all at least paying attention after a long night of this, because y'all do not get enough thanks for what y'all sit through and have to debate. But my issue is the 10 and 30-acre minimum. When I came in to apply to split my 20 acres into two 10-acre tracts, the application was accepted. I hired an engineer to do the split. I moved forward with the project. Staff reviewed it. It went through committees. It went through the sidewalk committee. It went through the development review team. It went through the trails committee. It went through planning commission, recommended approval, and then right before it was coming for the council, it was pulled and denied and not heard because of the aim plan. Okay. Well, I've been really busy. I didn't know that there was a proposal to go from 10 acres to the 30 acre minimum development. And the response was, well, it was in the newspaper. You should have known. Well, staff didn't know about it. They accepted my application. Staff didn't know about it. Went through committees. It went through the planning commission with the recommendation approval, and I'm supposed to know about it. It was in a transcript that you have to subscribe to get those notifications. Or I'm supposed to go visit every time to see if my property is losing value, taking half of the value of my property by not letting me split it and sell it to my sister. So I know that's coming back up and I appreciate the consideration your time for listening and Maybe you'll take that in consideration for the next council meeting. Thank you very much.

Thank you That will be on our next council agenda I Was going to talk to you about

demographics that Hinkle brung up, so the circus that's going on is we're bringing more homeless people in here that don't have a home, and then all the good people's going to Oklahoma City and Edmond. I mean, the system does what the system's supposed to be doing, and it's not gonna change until somebody changes it. But in theory, I'd like to talk to you about Dan Jacobs. He's the guy that was a code enforcer in Midwest City that stole my house from me or condemned it and then bulldozed it in 10 days. And I seem to have a problem with code enforcement here in this city. I've been here 20 years and 20 years ago we didn't have this problem. We didn't have the homeless, we didn't have the flies, we didn't have mosquitoes. We didn't we didn't have the mice and the city didn't have a rat running around trying to look for something to steal and the thing is is they this this guy thinks that I don't own this property and The city manager can tell you that I've had a few cops work that one over with me, too And I think if I own the property I own the property and I didn't ask for that guy's information so I am familiar with the police department, and one of the problems that I got is this kid named Jeremiah. He's been over there for 10 years. He's been stealing from me for 10 years. I've called the police on him many times, and the police are going to talk to him. Well, we don't want to talk to him. He's been stealing. He's still a thief, and we want the police to do something about it. And it seems to continue. And then whenever this code enforcer you got running around tries to do his job, if you don't do something about the theft problem, these women don't even want to look at the city. And right now, we've got a couple of them that's afraid of the cops. If the cops are the same thing as the thieves, how are you going to know the difference? So you have my phone number, he has my phone number, and Trey Kirby over here has my phone number, but I would like to talk to you two some more about this stuff. He knows that the police is involved in it, and I will make it known to you. Police thinks I don't need to talk to nobody about it, but there's more people that know about it than the police know. That's why I come down here to this city council, because you're not going to get anything done until you clean up your business there. And if these guys ain't doing what you're supposed to be doing, like listening to you, it's an insurrection. And during that problem right there, we should be seeing crime go down, not crime go up. Does that... Does the nutty professors have to tell you those statistics, or is that pretty easy to figure out? We're paying these guys to stop crime. Crime should be going down. That's including theft.

Thank you, Floyd.

Am I going to be able to get with you two guys? I think so. Text me. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else that has not spoken yet that would like to speak?

well thank you paul wilson award one um i like how you said something about the norman hotel i've got a real easy thing if there are people coming from the city kids letting it set on fire there was a hotel right in front of crossroads mall had the same problem you know what the fire department finally said let it burn What's there right now? Absolutely nothing. They solved the problem themselves. They just let it burn itself out. No pun intended. The other thing is Wonderful Gray Street. I was not for it, but I mean, I've seen some benefits to it. But one of the things that the mayor brought up countless times was it'll improve safety. But when you have 10 to 12 cars parking the wrong way and have to back out completely across the entire street to go in the right direction, I don't know about you, but that's not very safe. And it's been a month and there's still people doing it. You had a month, they had at least two weeks, if not three weeks with the digital signs. You know what I want to see? I want to see some people start getting towed. That'll change it. I have no problem backing in. I do see the benefits to it. But when are we going to start enforcing it? Because I do actually see the benefits to it now once it's been done. The other thing about this mall issue that I've noticed is I kind of see where the line was drawn to the council. The same, well, four people that voted no tonight also voted no against the TIF. Although the mayor flat out said he's all for this, but he wants the council to get behind it. There's really no difference between this and the TIF. Other than one's called a rebate, one's called a TIF. You're doing something to generate sales tax to the city. And I can hear the grumbling from the, as he put it, nutty professors in the back. So I mean, I get why we want to do this with the mall. Like I said, I don't want to see the mall die. I do not want to see it go the way of Crossroads Mall. So I mean, that's why I'm torn on it. I want to see this happen and hopefully save the mall, because I used to love going to the mall. The other thing is, Mary was correct. There are people going to more Oklahoma City that could be staying here. I tried to tell you that when I came up here and was beating a dead horse with the TIF. Because most of you know what I do for a living. And I told you, I take passengers every weekend. And they're not just Norman residents. They're students. They'll go to the Jones Assembly. They'll go to Paseo. They'll go up there. That's why I was always for the TIF. and the entertainment district i wish there was a better way for us to pay for it i know i talked to i believe daryl and i also talked to anthony francisco when he was our finance director and everyone looked for a different way you guys obviously looked for a different way with the mall and you found you couldn't put a tiff in there so i mean i really hope we can get this small thing situated because i don't i i used to love going there but we got to figure a way that makes everything happy and i mean i get it the same six seven people come up every every

Yeah, I've had a busy day. I wanted to let you know that what we have done today is an act of love and commitment to this community. And I hope you all see it that way. We may end up being adversaries in court. We're not adversaries in this community. This is not any small thing. It's taken a lot of resources from a lot of people, more than six, to make this happen. And I know it was risky for you guys to do it. So somebody said, hey, your name's on this. Do something about it. So we did. So in honor of that, I'm leaving this. I'm going to leave this for you guys.

This is nine copies of the actual physical press release.

Thank you very much. And again, I hope you understand that we're on the same side of the fence in this community. Thank you. Thank you.

He was next.

Bill Jewel, Ward 5. Just got a question. When someone comes up and brings a site plan for rezoning, and you all approve a rezoning according to that site plan, Later on in time when this site plan is not being followed What do we do? When a completely different site plan was presented to stormwater for the permit What do we do I Forwarded some pictures to trades this afternoon of today's water one and a quarter inches water running across 72nd Good traffic hazard somewhere runs down through there and hits that hydroplanes ain't good But somebody needs to When somebody presents something to council for rezoning or whatever in the future make sure That's what they put that's what they built. That's what they did Not just we're gonna throw this out here today and we walk out that door. We're gonna do what we want That's what this project's doing I talked to a bunch of you about it. Thank you.

Thank you.

My new and maybe not for very long friend, Jackson Foote. My new and maybe not for very long friend reminds me that I am too dismissive of the small ball. Those things are things that you all have paid attention to and I am new enough to this conversation that I don't know what level of reality I should be operating at. It occurs to me the city of Norman might make the same mistake. chasing what appears to be an ever-moving cannibalization, seems like it would be a large problem for everybody, every neighbor in Norman. And it seems like something that even someone like me, born so far from third base that I was almost home, would recognize because i have no idea what it's like to be unhoused i have no idea what that pain is and i have no idea what those needs are all i can tell you is my experience which i'll get to in a second The thing that I have thought about most in this discussion is that it still appears to me that Sooner Mall to be a bad deal. If you keep making bad deals and there's never an opportunity to make a good deal, then people are going to keep coming to you to make bad deals, not just because of precedent. It seems like a bad deal. That's because you're the government. You're supposed to think not just democratically of people, but you're supposed to think of public resources, not private entities. That I believe is what the recent proposition on what some people call, and I agree with them, our unhoused neighbors has been about. It's the government. The government thinks of people. not corporations. Corporations are legally bound to think about their profits. Before getting into partnership with them, it is incumbent and I would assume part of the law to think about that. Someone else can talk much more at length than I can. Personally, don't want to dump more work at your desks, but I can tell many, many a story about thinking about the police. I've thought about the police and recently about whether the need for identification in encounters with the police is something that has to be considered. Since I don't think there will be a council meeting before the holiday in which everybody is celebrating the freedoms that they believe underwrite the society in which we live. It would seem that now is the time to talk about things like whether this is a stop and identify community. What that does to unhoused neighbors, what that does to teenagers, what that does to socializing all of, I don't have children myself, all of the people who have children's children. The person who was walking and talking slower than me said it all in that

again rodney johnson war two well there we have it mayor i don't believe that you showed any leadership today you gave us a five-minute dictatorial about why that the mall think should happen and then you vote no that's not leadership from the mayor i wanted to call mayor And from other council members that represent Main Street, I can tell you, you didn't walk Main Street and talk to your constituents like I did. And 200 emails, I guarantee I went to Junefest or Juneteenth. I went to the Jazz in June. I talked to people everywhere. I guarantee I talked to more than 200 people and not a single person was against this opportunity. The people that really run businesses in this city, They know the opportunity that this was. The people that benefit from the millions and millions and millions upon millions of dollars that we have poured into downtown through the Norman Arts Council, they know what economic development is and those people to a person told me that they were for this opportunity. So we may want to think that we want nicety among everybody. We want friendly amendments. Well, you know what you just did? You divided this community. Now, it was a tough vote, but you know what I think I'm going to do? I'm going to start an organization, and I'm going to try to get more than the nine nattering nabobs of negativity that come up here every council meeting. Every council meeting. The reason I want to start coming to council meetings is because I watch them on YouTube. And it's every time, every couple of Tuesdays, every month, it's the people that think they run you. Look at social media, especially the new council coming on. These people openly talk about running the city council. And they definitely don't believe in civility. So my new organization that will be more than nine people is going to be economic fairness for the city and citizens of Norman. And you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna go after the hotel motel tax because that is the most money for economic development. And I know we're going to have probably four votes on the council for it, or we should, and I hope we have you, Mr. Kirby, because your area definitely lacks economic development, and I don't know how we could help those people in Ward 5, but we need to start doing it. And we need to quit pouring all the millions into downtown, and we need to spread that across the city. So what do you think, Ms. Grant? Your constituents are going to say when they lose millions. Mr. Johnson. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. What do you think the people that represent downtown are going to think when they lose their millions and millions and millions of dollars they get poured into each year? Thank you.

Cindy Rogers, still ward four. Thanks for still being here. I'm always very disappointed when folks just start bringing out the name calling instead of just engaging on substance. I probably am a nut. I mean, I'm still here. I'm not paid to be here. I have other things to do in my life. But I really like this city. This city has given me a lot. Raised my kids here, had my career here. And, you know, I think we actually need to think about boring economics sometimes. So, and then the whole, it's always just if you don't have a good argument, you know, you shoot the messenger kind of thing. So I hope we could get around that. I just wanted to follow up with the lawsuit announcement, you know, ORED, and I'm a board member. Did not really want to file a lawsuit against the city. We did the referendum 11,000 people signed it Fought it all the way to the Supreme Court that took a lot of energy and effort You know was it was dinged on some technical issues of things that weren't even in the ordinance So we tried to work with the city to collaborate to get an answer of a path to get this to a public vote and that just went nowhere and so the last option for us was to file a lawsuit and so that's what we did but it's not because we don't love norman and it's not because we don't want the best for norman I just recall that was a 5-4 vote. In fact, every vote on the University North Park was a 5-4 vote. The original vote, the amended project plan was a 5-4 vote. And when you have 5-4 votes, you end up getting into sticky situations like lawsuits or referendums. So I get I appreciate The not passing another thing with a 5-4 vote Using a policy that doesn't really exist. I don't know all the presentations. I went to said This is a policy. It doesn't really apply to this but it kind of said we were using that policy so I think I don't quite understand that point and And chasing retail is a really hard thing to do. You need to be surgical precision and you need, if you're making investments, you need to make sure private parties are matching or doing more than they would otherwise. And with the Sooner Mall deal, there was just nothing there. There wasn't you spend so much and we'll match it with 20%. It wasn't a match. It was a here's a spending account thing. That's not the way to do it. And we could do it better. That would be a win-win. So I hope we can get there. I hope we can build some more civic IQ, maybe some more civility instead of calling people names because they care. And I really wish I controlled council because we would have some different economic development policy. Thank you and good night.

Thank you. Okay, any final comments from council at all? Council member Grant. Okay. Council member Grant.

yes to the point about advocacy at different levels of government i think it needs to be said that for the whole systemic issues we have between affordable housing permit supportive housing and even having money to do like a managed encampment that is not something i think a city of our size has the extra money had American Rescue Plan funds like we did in other years, we might have the opportunity to finance that, but we don't. Next, I saw a comment about economic development online when I was perusing real quick looking for something that said that I didn't understand how TIFs work. Well, I would challenge you to figure out an economic development policy where you're gonna incentivize affordable housing from developers who are definitely not offering it without some kind of incentive. Developers, out of the goodness of their hearts, are not creating below market rate housing. So when I was talking about the TIF for Center City and how it is a part of our policy to create affordable housing, we do need a mechanism that releases the funds to those developers who are willing to create that affordable housing. Also, that TIF is an ad valorem TIF, which is progressive in structure. When we are talking about our opportunities as a city to use economic development tools like TIFs or rebates, I would shy away from a sales tax rebate because it's regressive. I don't have another opportunity in some of the areas that we talked about to use an ad valorem TIF like a property tax TIF to get affordable housing or maybe incentivize a hotel that could bring additional tourism, then that would help our arts and visit Norman and parks. So anyways, I would just say instead of attacking those of us on the dais that you don't think understand how municipal finance works or don't think that we have the expertise, work with us and give us ideas. I can tell you in the short time that I've been looking it up that there are things we can incentivize. We don't have to give away a sales tax rebate if it perhaps does not have the quality jobs at the income levels that we want the state preempted us on setting our own wage minimums for a city but that doesn't mean we can't use our other policies to incentivize the wages we want to see so anyways that's just what i wanted to say and for those again listening you should try working with your council members and maybe lessen the personal attacks on their ability to understand things thank you

Thank you. Councillor Dixon.

Thank you. I was just going to make just a real quick statement here. The Cleveland County Economic Development Coalition, along with the governor and the city of Moore, announced today a $179 million investment by McKesson. It's a global kind of health care company. So they'll be getting 200 really good jobs and more. Norman wasn't even looked at because we're not a part of the CCEDC anymore.

Thank you. Thank you.

I'm going to address that in just a little bit off topic. I really appreciate everyone who comes here and speaks whether we agree with you or not your opinion matters. We were elected by the people to represent the people. One of the things I had a problem with before elected and now being after is i think as a city we have forgot about the rules of the first amendment of our constitution um it might not be a bad idea to look up jason fallowell harvey freebird or otto the watchbird watchdog on facebook Because I don't know if you know, but they're going around towns in Texas and they're eating people like us alive for throwing people out of a meeting for making a comment. They're also getting people like us because they call a person out by name. And under the First Amendment, freedom of speech has no limits except for when we're the government. So as the government, we have to respect the freedom of speech of the people whether we agree with it or not. Moore just currently got served because they didn't respect the First Amendment. And the First Amendment auditors are spreading across our nation like wildflowers. So we might want to reconsider our legal status on what people can say because they are taking them and winning across the board. We need to respect the First Amendment.

Any other final comment sing none. OK, thank you all for being here. Thank you, everybody, for watching at home. This meeting is adjourned.