City Council - workshop

Norman Utilities.

Well, when we do jobs like this, we tear that down and I won't haul it to like Big Owls and OKC. I will fill up a trailer and I will haul that to the coast down in San Antonio or down in Galveston and I'll pull top dollar. So if you tell me that that needs to come figured or people understand that that has to be figured in the bid and you have an open bid, then a lot of people are going to call down and they're going to figure out the weight of that metal at the scales and they're going to figure out if they have any move to reduce that price. Like you can say drop that price to $350,000, $425,000. And I know that's not a lot, but in our tight budget, $75,000 is a lot. And you look at the metric ton that that metal is going to be inside of that water tower, not to mention the different types. I'm sure it's not just galvanized or stainless. I'm sure there's copper in there. Every metal has a different price range. So when I'm making up a barrel that I've collected from all my different job sites, I'm cutting off the soldered joints. I'm cutting off the wiring. I'm making sure that I separate the metal into the compartments that it needs to that I get the maximal draw. Now, if you put that in, I'm going to change my price. If you don't put that in, I'm going to run just like I'm not recycling it because my job is to clean up the job site. And then I'm going to make that money plus the extra $125 because I'm running it down to the coast. And I mean, that's my hard work. But you can actually bring your price down by requiring them to figure in the cost of all that metal that they're going to haul off. Because like he mentioned, sometimes people come and do that for free just to have the scrap or the... you know, they'll build a bridge across their property on their farm and cross the creek. I mean, people look at that. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I know. I just say, I mean, I disagree with you on that. I think the contractors have priced that into their bid.

They got it in without any requirements. Just to clear up, so legal, is there something out there that I don't know about related to contracting in Oklahoma that

I don't think there's anything that says you have to include that in the bid specs or that you can't. We can be explicit.

I'm going to give you a case in point, multiplication point. There's multiple times when a contract came on installation, they assumed they owned salvage rights, and they didn't. We didn't put it in RFP. We didn't put it in their request for a bid. We didn't put it in RFIs. We did not. But they assumed it. Turn around, we had a legal case. Hey, look, you don't have the right to this copper. You don't have the right to this metal. You don't have the right to these.

Yeah, but we're just telling them, haul it off. Yeah, get rid of it. Right. You do have rights.

Yeah, just haul it off. If there's an inherent value in it, isn't these guys due diligence to recapture that inherent value where they can? So how you do that is you address that in your RFI or your request for bid or your RFP, whatever you're doing. If you don't, then you could have a future argument associated with, hey, look, you took this valuable product that's residual from this demolition and we were going to reuse that for something or we were going to do something with it.

But we're not saying that.

No, but why not?

They won't win the bid. Because we want it hauled off.

Yeah, we want it hauled off at a reasonable price, fair and reasonable price, including the salvage value. Does that make sense?

Yeah. We did the same thing at Hall Park. We tore down the Hall Park tower. And the woman, McLaughlin, she was a family of Albert Hall, I believe it was. And so her son wanted that tank. And so it did. He had scrapped by her. I think either brother was the one that won the bid. And he was going to do it for X. And then she said, well, I want that taken to my son's yard. Well, then you'll need to pay me because I was going to go scrap it. That was part of my bid. So whoever gets the lowest number, they got that figured in. Or they're not going to win. So she ended up, her son paid the extra money for him to take it over to their yard instead of him getting scrapped.

Yeah, so I mean, I think if it's $500,000 and the city of Norman says, we want to know how much you're going to get. Actually, we want the scrap value. And if the scrap value is $50,000, well, those bids are not $500,000 anymore. They're $550,000. Like, I mean, that's the federal government contracting way to go. Like, we don't get to do that. Like, we don't get to buy $400 hammers. Like, we... If we're going to require the scrap value to come to us, whatever the scrap value is gets added on. As a guy with a Bachelor of Science in construction science, I'm fairly confident on how this works.

I'm very confident on how it works, too, at the construction and federal level. If you don't address it, there's an issue. Does that make sense? There is an issue.

Well, that's something we can... Yes, sir.

I'm going back to the possibility of not having to worry about that and saving it You said that the funding can't come from the water fund. I Know it's preliminary with this Bit and you know this person that might step forward that wants to use and everything How much of that cost do we really think we might get out of the person wanting to do the painting of it and stuff? I

We'll show you here in another slide. Perfect. We've got more.

Okay, I'll just make sure this works.

Okay, so here's us talking about what we're looking at doing, the three options that we're bidding. Future, after this was done, this is Jason's stuff, how he makes it look fancy, and I'll let you talk about it if you want to.

So when we're able to talk about who's going to be on there, in the advertising that we're going to be on there, it's going to be very advantageous. We do think it's a possibility that it does become a tourist attraction. It's going to work in concert with the football games because of its proximity to the football stadium. So it might be good for us to also light up the tower to... Go along with that to make sure that if we're having night games that the advertisement that's on there is visible. Also, to go into more of a lighting thing, we also can theme it up and possibly change colors depending on what time of year it is. And if we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day or Breast Cancer Awareness Month or Christmas or an OU game or graduation or anything like that, we can light those up, possibly light the tower up according to whatever those colors are. So it might be advantageous that we do add in some lighting to that.

And we looked it up. This one's a really nice looking one in Texas. And we looked up their website and they actually have below this water tower schedule, what color they show the tower at at different times of the year. They have it all mapped out. It's like, wow. We're not cool looking. It's a fun stuff.

And ideally, it even goes as far as the lighting can be connected to a cellular connection and we can control it from our cell phone or computer or things like that. So it'd be very easy to keep up with that.

And then that cost is able to come from the hotel-motel tax?

It's one of the possibilities. If you want to ask where I want it funded from, it would be a different fund. But, yes, that's the possibility of it.

You could argue that it's an art piece, a tourist attraction, and a park. I don't know.

So that would be separate if things continue to move forward. Okay. And then now talking to your question, Council Member Gansberry, about the funds. So I think Catherine is still working through this, but here's kind of the high-level stuff that I understood, and I'll just – do you want me to run through them or – Yeah. So looking at it being a 10-year agreement, the initial payment for accounting for some of the payment required for the logo would be the $75,000 and then $50,000 in nine additional payments. So $525,000 in totals what we're looking at. And then there's space under the tower that parks would look at, like how the, you guys use the term activate it. And then the vendor would also look at having space available to better advertise what's on the tower with the space below it. So they would look to improve some of that area there. And then the thought would be is Water Fund is paying for the funding for the coding and the logo to help facilitate that. If bids come in at a lower number, and we'll look at the NPV analysis here in a little bit, but if the bids come in lower and water fund is paid back sooner, then wherever council feels that that should go, if it goes to the general fund, it seems like it'd be appropriate. And then after 10 years, we can rebid it out? Then when you get into the question, I think we would look for maybe seeing if we could re-up with the current one because then you're not repainting. Yeah, exactly. You have to go to somebody new and then you're talking about repainting and changing and dealing with that. Think that's all?

Yes.

Okay. Cool. That's a way to make money. Some of our towers are wrapped. Did you know that? Yeah. Yes.

We checked with that too.

Yeah. The understanding we have from our vendor is just the wraps are probably only going to get you a five-year lifespan.

And the person, the company that we're dealing with would much rather have it painted because it has a longer lifespan than a wrap does.

Why not a longer contract?

So this is just what we negotiated into the life of a marketing campaign. I don't know how long that necessarily lasts.

Depends on your institution you're dealing with, a business, right? If they're a long-term business, why wouldn't you?

Well, because it's attached to a marketing campaign and contract. Everything they're doing. They are asking for this possibility plus automatic rights to up that if they have the choice at the end of the tenure.

I think you've got to keep that option open if you think it's a long-term institution, business, whatever, long-term tenure. I don't know why you wouldn't have options on there, et cetera.

Council Member Dixon.

It's my understanding that this third party asked for a contract in perpetuity. Is that... So they were wanting, and so the city was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's back it down.

Kind of, sort of, the initial conversations were that they They wanted to pay just for the cost of having the water tower repainted and then pay us back in a five- or six-year schedule. And that made us kind of where we became a bank. We're loaning them money to basically do this transaction. Now we turn it into a marketing agreement where... In theory, we're making more money from the painting of the water tower than it's costing us to paint a tower, so it's advantageous for us to do it this way. And I'll put a shelf life on this. Once again, every marketing campaign does have a shelf life, and they want to make sure that their shelf life of this marketing campaign doesn't expire or could expire with however that will last. Thank you, sir. Yeah.

Could we add, you know, if the company, whoever they are, is thinking that they want it, you know, very long term or whatever, can we go ahead and add in, like, release agreement, like, you know, this many years is this much, you know, a flat fee or whatever after 10 years?

We can definitely talk about that with them. I mean, if they're interested, we know. Yeah, we haven't gone that far in those type of details.

At least they would know up front what the expectation was.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to just renew the agreement without more money, to be honest. That's what I'm saying.

You can put a price tag on that.

So, yeah, we would have to work through what that would look like. But those are details we'll get into.

Take it out of the marketing budget.

Council Member Kirk.

Will council get to hear who the – people are before any work is actually done, or are we just supposed to kind of approve it and then surprise when we see it on there?

We'll bring a contract to you with the third party. They may proceed if you guys want to go ahead and proceed with painting the water tower either way. They can proceed with that, and then we can come back with this agreement for council approval. We're hoping to have it July 14th. The party will be named in the agreement. I don't know if we'll get there that quickly, but we're working on it.

Yes, you'll definitely have it before you approve it. And you'll see what the tower looks like before you approve it.

Why did we tear down the Hall Park one?

Same thing. It was way short.

Really short. We left the standpipe. You want it, we'll give it to you.

It's kind of the same thing. They're hard to get rid of. Expensive to tear down and get rid of.

Was that when we took over? Yeah, Hall Park, yeah.

We took in Hall Park. They had two waters, a standpipe and a tower.

They had some wells that were full of arsenic. It wasn't compatible with our system.

So, I mean, technically, we'll never be able to use this tower again other than a pretty— Maybe.

The reuse is still to irrigate Reeves Park. That really looked good because just down the railroad tracks, you'd have to get easement across OU to get a pipe down there. I mean, it could happen. It was just expensive.

Yeah, the golf course, too, was another discussion.

And by putting it in a tower, you can do a lot of irrigating when you need it, but then you'd use a little bitty pump to fill it up slowly overnight until you need it again.

I'm just struggling with the whole thing because of how tight we are, and I still fight the whole. No offense, but $500,000 to firemen and police, in my opinion, would be more.

These are utility funds, so they can be used for fire.

Yes, it's just paid by water doesn't affect it. Well, once again, also, we don't get no recycling bin. There's a lot of money.

That's how much would have to be almost to tear it down. So it's going to be spent. Exactly. Council Member Dixon.

I was just going to point out that these are utility funds, not general funds. So I'm good.

I just wanted to clarify to make sure I heard this right. So, Chris, you're willing to push forward without a to-do list?

painting repair maintenance in your painting on this tower without a contractual agreement is that what i heard is that what i heard you're willing to do that maybe we want to see what it is yeah i i wouldn't do that if the demo comes in really cheap i still got to be fiscally responsible first and foremost i was just referencing if that's council's direction they could move forward and paint the tower

not with a logo or anything, just white, gray, or whatever they might want to paint it.

To preserve it.

To go ahead and preserve it, and that agreement could come later.

We'd like the third-party agreement in hand.

Yeah, so would I. That's something we're just going to stand for another year, two years, and whatever.

But we are getting complaints on it a lot. People say, why don't you paint that tank? We're in a holding pattern.

And if it were a blank, Council and others maybe get more interest. Well, now it's not just a rusting water tower. It's a blank, clean canvas. We can imagine more things on it better now. I don't know.

I've given a picture of the water tower. You know, that's part of the problem with city government as far as contract clearance and business clearance and all that stuff. You know, it's one of those things we really don't do exceedingly well, but we try very hard. But, you know, I think it's a good idea, you know, myself, but, you know, it's also a business decision.

So just talking about what we understand is going to be the layout. So there's kind of that south side there of Lindsay just west of the tracks to see where the tower's at. And Jason working with the vendor about who gets what space and what they can use. And then I believe there was some discussion about maybe having some space over there to the west of the drive If it becomes kind of like a landmark where people want to go take a picture in front of it or picture underneath it Then they might be able to create some space and adjust that fence line there Okay, so my heart is with you council members like on the number side um so kind of just thinking we had the three options that we presented when we talked about the bids but getting those those numbers in and then just looking at it on a cost basis like what's the net present value which one gives us the lowest cost numbers um that makes sense to me but there's also stuff that's not really accounted for if we just took straight numbers so um And these are just me plugging in numbers here just so you guys can kind of see the logic we were thinking of. But this doesn't account for what's the value of a tank. If you have a tank there that's coded and then now you're getting people that want to come see it, then maybe even

option of number two or number one gets even even better yes what is the the value that that creates by having that there like the hazmat the hazmat being there so it's a water check the three water towers that were painted and lit in other communities they have become elements in brochures that the city circulates. If you go to the International Convention of Shopping Centers in Dallas, and they have these cities set up in booth space to meet with different development groups to bring housing or retail or industrial to their communities, those are the pictures they're showing at their booth to say, this is who we are and where we are. They become that iconic. And I didn't realize that there were three of them all kind of, they look a lot like our water tower and the old design and It's one thing to kind of envision. It's another thing to actually see pictures of what some of our neighboring communities have done with similar assets.

They call this a witch's hat is the typical sign of what they call the style of tank. And all of these I was looking at in Texas are all 1930s vintage. So it makes me think ours is probably 30s vintage somewhere in there.

Well, I've seen pictures. aerial shots of the stadium during the game in the 30s, and that water tower is there. Okay. And in the pictures, it's like solid black, so it's hard to tell what. But, yeah. And I've seen ones that look like a teapot, like they have a handle on the side and put on there, and then a spout on the other.

The city of Tulare has one that's painted like a giant water glass and has a big straw sticking out of the top of it. Yeah, I've seen one that looks like a rocket ship.

Councilman Blodgett.

Yeah, I just want to say we're spending the money either way. So because of that, if there is even a slim chance that we could reuse this in some way, then I am all for painting it, keeping it. And because I would hate to, I mean, like I said, we're spending the money either way to get rid of it or whatever. But like you said, we possibly could use it again. So for that reason, then I would support that.

If we're able to get a third party.

If we're able to get the third party in on it, then we're not spending. We're loaning money, basically, but not spending.

And the council in 20 years can decide if they want to keep it or not.

So, yeah, this kind of goes to the next slide. What is the logic that we want to apply? If we go through the process of doing a resolution, that way we can try to move forward if we were able to get that. Then, what is the pathway that we go through when we evaluate this? What is the. We give the city manager authorization to do that. Like, as long as can we check this box? We check this box. We check this box. This is how we're going to move forward or we didn't check this box. So we're going to go down a different pathway. So. that's the questions I think council if you guys can help us answer like what do you see the value of a painted tank is like if we plug that into that formula that will help us with those numbers and then doing that do we select just what's the lowest best alternative most cost anything else we want to factor in I'd say possible that before the 14th either before that meeting

all the council plus the two new members. And then we can give some direction before we are in a council meeting in the chamber, figuring it out.

Would you want us to do something on the 14th to help give direction?

Yeah, if we can, before the council meeting, pre-council conference.

Pre-council conference where we can actually have the bid numbers, and then we can have kind of a poll on where we go.

And then the full council can give a...

Okay. And if we do the resolution also on that same docket, then we can get Daryl the pathway to move forward if we're ready to do that.

And discuss that with the full council before. So it's not the whole council trying to make a decision about whether to give the city manager authority in that meeting. But discuss it here and if council wants to or not. And then go do whatever. Definitely try to get everything figured out.

I like that better.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. And we'll talk about that on the 14th then, too. Thank you all for your work on it, though.

Any other questions? Possibility.

If council were to approve it on the 14th, the timeline for it actually happening, like as far as the tower getting painted.

So we would give them 60 days and we would look to do like a hard 60 days from when we give them the go and we'll give them a go quick. So we would think two months after that.

And so when you're saying not something you anticipate disrupting Lindsay Street traffic?

Oh, we'll definitely take a lane. We will use a lane when we do that work.

So there's a month long period where there's not a home football game.

Yes, we're trying to work through the logistics. I think the third party vendor was hoping we would be ready by the first home game, but we're trying to see if maybe we can do first SEC game. Yeah. Yeah. That will give us a little bit more flexibility because that is October.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Council Member Kerr?

So if we do get the contract, say you do the painting and all that, and we do get the contract, was I seeing that right, that it's going to be almost $836,000 to get it prepped up before the $525,000 could possibly come back, meaning the city of Norman is still going to be out $311,000, give or take? Even with the advertisement? Yeah, the 836 on the bottom.

That's the lighting package and all that stuff? Yes.

That's with everything? So, yeah. And then when you had the other page a few back, it was like, what, $525,000 was going to be coming from? Yeah, so this is...

So the first line is like the year zero where we're showing the capital cost. And then in the second option there in the middle in the green... The 350 was for the lighting package. So, yes, you would be spending more money, but you would be getting that money back. And so if you look at the very bottom line, you see what the delta is there. That would still be the lowest cost option for us, even better than taking the tank out of service by tearing it down because we'd spend almost $400,000 for that. And this is just us plugging these numbers in, just saying here's kind of the structure. We'd see how this would be evaluated.

At the end of the day, at the 10-year point, we're still going to be... out money, correct?

Oh, either way, absolutely.

Any way we go, we're going to spend money to do something with the tank, yes.

Versus if we tore it down for, say, $400,000, then in 10 years we wouldn't be out no more money? No, because if they pay it back in 10 years, if they pay that amount back that we talked on in the third-party agreement, we would be out less money with that option going with them and painting it and doing a logo than we would if we did the demo, based on our numbers. Now, the bids will tell us exactly where it will be. Especially when they start possibly renewing it.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're saying who knows what it costs to tear it down 10 years, 20 years from now. Yeah, yeah. But hopefully the paint job would last for at least 20 years. This one, it hasn't lasted 30 years, but it was last painted in 1991, last time we talked about it. And it, yeah. Hopefully the paint's getting better too. But it's been out of condition since 2010.

The brand that kind of is the leader is called Tanemic. It's cement backwards. They're known as some of the best paint out there for water tanks.

If you look on Google Street View and go back a few years, even like mid-2010s, and you can see that it's still, it's not showing really any rust. And then within the last nine years, each year you can see like, oh, there's a spot. It starts getting bigger and bigger. So that paint job from 1991 lasted about 25 years or so. based on what I can see.

And their paint is better than the 91 version? They got better in the 2000s. You've got a three coat system now. Then they start doing the 20 year. Used to, you'd plan them on every 10 years. Now they're saying 20 year.

And this is another example. An idea that didn't really have a funding source. We were looking for opportunities for cost avoidance. Had a decision been made to demo the water tower a year ago, we wouldn't have the opportunity we have before us. So we've talked a lot. If there's a thing that we'd hope to accomplish and the only part of the equation is we haven't figured out the money yet, that's okay. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep working on it and shouldn't keep that game piece in play because things have a way of... presenting themselves solutions materialize over time even if we only saved you know 12,000 bucks going down this road to save 12,000 bucks you may have created a super neat place in Norman Oklahoma could be memorable for a lot of people any other questions for staff

Thank you, guys, for working on this, and I look forward to continued discussion in a few weeks with the rest of the council and the new council members. Let's see what we want to do. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Next item on the agenda is an update and discussion regarding the Gray Street Shelter. And Jason Parkstab is here.

Yeah.

Oh, give us a second.

How's everybody doing?

You know, we do have the 4th of July coming up. There's a gunpowder and some flares, and we've got this tower.

Watch that baby on the floor.

Problem solved. Got that rocket roof on it.

I'm telling you, this idea could work.

I'm just Lance's fan. I'm going to just change the slides.

You know, we've had the problem with the shelter. Last week, we got the Episcopalian Architects walked aside with us. And in the existing shelter that we have now, We have just numerous problems. We've done everything we can to keep it open until our timeline sit with the state car Marshall, but kind of briefly go over what the problems we have and what we're looking at what we're wanting to do. We're in 3 buildings right now. We have no set firewalls. We have. Three buildings that offices were built onto numerous times for just offices over the years. You have false roofs. You have different building materials. Just an array of problems. And trying to figure out how to sprinkle three buildings, build firewalls, and make this safe in a timely manner and in a cost-efficient manner is just almost impossible. So what we did was we walked next door to, which is the Couch Building, which is the farthest west building. That wall has an intact firewall. We have one opening that we can put our fire door or close off pretty easily. So we had the architect look at that. and say, can we make this into the shelter at a reasonable price? This would still allow us to have about 55 beds in the couch building. We saw plumbing in there. We have HVC. We have another HVC unit that we took off a building that is workable that we can put back in our staff can to make this area work. So we're at the point now as the architect to draw this up. I think we have an agreement came in a little over $38,000. for them to design something. We have until July 15th to hit that date to get a permit started and satisfy the fire marshal that we're continuing to move forward. After that, we'd have another 30 days to 8-15 to provide a layout for a sprinkling alarm system for this couch building. We can still use the other part of the shelter for storage for city care could keep an office or 2 in there. Just don't get sleep over there. It just be for stories and some office use. But we really think we can move into the couch building with architects help and hit these. Milestones at the fire marshals hit us.

To add, I think the beautiful part about this plan is that while we're going through architectural design, construction, demo, and everything, we do not affect their current situation. So the homeless shelter will seamlessly eventually move over to the couch area. And what we would like to see is basically a consensus with us. If y'all want to move on with this. For a permission for us to basically have 214,000 dollars and do not exceed them out and give us if. You are good with that. I think that Daryl and finance can work their magic and we can make that arrangement and we can. make that a budget adjustment and bring that to you here in a few weeks and get this all taken care of and I would say probably in three to four months time have this fully ready to go and we are still 18 to 24 months out from the permanent shelter being built and And the delay of that lawsuit that's been attached with that has probably added a few months to that. So just want everybody to be aware that we have not fully started that architectural process just yet. So we still have a lot of time to be in this building.

And to be just crystal clear, the state fire marshals gave us the date of 7-15 to have construction drawings for these improvements done. If not, we would fully anticipate the state fire marshal putting a lock on the door and you got 54 people out. So these are hard deadlines. They're not our deadlines. They were given to us from the state. And this is kind of the plan to meet those timelines if it is council's desire that the shelter stay operational until the new Reed Street facility is open.

What does the couch get, in theory, for the $213,000 price tag?

That includes our architect fees in there. It's getting the sprinkler system, the riser put in. That's about $75,000 worth right there. We're going to have to do a little bit of remodel work in the north end, opening the wall up and building a second wall. Towards the north end, that will be the men's dorm area. You can see there's two bathrooms there. It's changing the doorway around so that the women can access the bathroom from their side, men from our side. Some new lighting in there and a few walls being moved around. Trying to do it as minimal as we can so we can do it quickly. And then adding... an RTU unit, but it'll actually be in the bay areas where we're going to set the air conditioning unit, pipe in the heat and air to this north end because the south end already works. So it's minor remodeling, putting new light sinks, the lights in there are all bad, and then probably putting our ceiling back in after the sprinkler ships is put in.

Does the couch side have any showers or would we have to add those?

There are no showers. Are there any plans for that at all or not? No. Another thing we kind of run into when we started looking at these buildings, the sewer system is old and it's cast. And as we dug into that, you know, can we, you know, how, Can we get into these and get out to the sewer? Well, our water line is also, this whole area is fed with a half-inch water line that is old. So it just keeps building. So my suggestion on my side looking at it is we've got a way with, I know it's not pristine, but we haven't had chires and there's just no feasible way to add chires in now. We'll do that in two years and give them something decent. We just can't get there and try to stay in a budget that's reasonable.

Perfect.

You said it would do 52 beds? 55. 55? Yes. How many are going to be men's beds and how many are going to be women's?

About the same as we have now. I didn't write down that number, but it was basically the same amount that they have now. We're duplicating the current services over in there now.

54 beds.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean... 20 and 30, low 20s, high 30s.

I'm sorry, I don't know that number. They told me. The fact that there's always a domestic violence house also takes a couple more women in that thing, too.

Sometimes, yeah. Or more women have families.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

And I want to point out, too, that a lot of this stuff can be done just like how we went there and did a lot of repairs after the state fire marshal went through. A lot of this stuff, the replacement of lights and putting in the HVAC unit, that is all going to be done in-house. So our building maintenance boys will take care of that, and they do a heck of a job keeping up with all that.

Yeah, I just want to say... I'm all for it. I appreciate y'all's hard work y'all are putting into this. And I'm for it, obviously, because this keeps them off the streets. And I like the hard deadline of 7-15 because that gets it done quick. And they're not just out there getting putted to different locations all the time and getting kicked off parks that they don't belong on and all this thing. So, yeah, I'm all for this. Thank you.

It doesn't make sense. I SHOULDN'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT I'M GOING TO. PERSONALLY, I REALLY DON'T LIKE THIS, DON'T LIKE ANYTHING ABOUT IT, BUT I REPRESENT WARD 8. WARD 8 VOTED IN FAVOR OF THE PERMIT HOMELESS SHELTER, SO I THINK WARD 8 WANTS ME TO SUPPORT THIS, SO I'M GOING TO.

slides or anything no we made this a one slider we just wanted until we get back to the architect okay yeah time is of the essence for me personally I know that 213 number is going to stick out to a bunch of people but with that including the sprinkler system and being in a whole new area that actually has some firewalls in it that definitely makes it a lot safer for just the workers if nothing else also But, I mean, the biggest thing is this isn't housing, you know, just to make it clear, this isn't housing any more people. It's just housing the same amount that we've been housing the whole time and everything. So there's still going to be all those people that was at Cates Park and all that stuff that still are going to be out there and everything like that, you know, and stuff. But with the biggest heat of the summer still to come and everything like that, I mean.

But it's not putting more people out there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But with the biggest heat, some are still coming, I think.

Another thing that we want to point out, that we put a number on there that we are very comfortable with on not exceeding. So we plan on coming in much lower than the $175,000. That's just to make sure that we don't have to come back to you again and ask for money. We're very comfortable with that $175,000.

Do you know if the councilman can answer this?

One more real quick, sorry. Sorry, Bruce. Is CityCare willing to assist with any of this cost at all? You know, they were talking about maybe assisting with the fire sprinkler system and things like that before. Is that a conversation that we could have at least just to see if they're willing to pitch in anything? Happy to engage...

You never know until we ask. And we know their mission was to develop their fundraising capabilities here in Norman.

They can pitch it to their fundraising people as being the extra firewalls and everything else and being a whole lot safer for everybody. So maybe. And that can lower the cost maybe.

Absolutely worth the ask. Council Member Bruce.

The city is really in the business, a large percentage of it, probably one-third of it, maybe a little bit more than that, acquisition business. So your management reserve. I mean, I shouldn't have said it, but my estimate is so high that I have a management reserve, basically what you said. So what's your management reserve?

We think we're being somewhere around about $160,000, correct?

Yeah.

So we just added a little bit in there just in case, because there are things, any construction project you get into, there are always unknowns and things you don't expect. But once again, we're going to do a lot of this with our own people and try to save as much money as possible.

We'll put our main interest. We'll go back around to this backside. You know, we made the main entrance on the, now we're on the east side. This will put us around on the backside. And that seems to be a concern of some of the main street area. So we'll have a place lined up back there. It's also in the shade because of where the sun building is. And we think we can manage it back there and still give them their area, outside area, like we have on the east side. Awesome. I like the fact that we're being backed further.

All right. Well, I'm not ideal. I agree. But I'm also in favor of doing what we have to do right now to make it through until the new one is done. And it'd be ideal if CityCare is able. Anything helps, of course. And then if We need to discuss it next Tuesday after swearing in with new council members and a full council.

So our first step tomorrow morning, we will engage the architect at that architect's quoted price for all the construction drawings necessary with a green light for tomorrow. The architect said he can meet that 7-15 deadline for plans submittal to keep the state fire marshal happy. So that'll be the first step. And then we'll keep you posted as we make incremental progress to fully completing the long list of improvements required of us to keep the shelter in operation until we move to REIT.

Our longest lead item is going to be these sprinklers. That's going to take a while to get on schedule, especially now that we're into summer. It's like the worst time to try to get fire suppression scheduled. That is the perfect time for every school to go through there and update their system. So we're going to have to get in line somewhere. So we would think that this probably would happen, I'm guessing, September-ish, October-ish, in that range.

Could you possibly send out an update email to council if we find out city cares willing to play ball or not everything just so we know happy to and the fire suppression part That doesn't have to be done for it to continue being occupied or it does but doesn't have to be completed I think as long as we're hitting our deadlines it will satisfy the state fire marshal and

And our own city fire marshal.

What fund is going to pay for all this right here?

So we did have a fund set aside that was set up for engineering initially of the current or the homeless shelter it was voted on. And now that that vote passed, we did stop taking money out of that fund. And I believe there is a couple hundred thousand dollars left into that. So that would be the fund that we would access. It was the original fund that was set aside for engineering of the Reed property. So, yeah, it was a capital project.

We just labeled it, you know, Future Homeless Shelter. And it had an original appropriation where we started. When you saw the schematics leading up to the ballot question, that's where we were paying FSB.

It was SMC. So, we don't have to go out and grab new money for this. We just have to basically get your permission to change the title of it. Do yourself a favor.

But it's money kind of already attached to the homeless situation in a way.

Yeah. We're going to have to go look backwards. I don't know where it came from.

If that came originally from the sale of 718 North Porter. To the county.

Yeah, I don't know the answer to that.

You're going to have to blow some cobwebs off to get that one answered. Do you know when the fire marshal came in and shut us down for the particular reasons, how much did we spend to get it back to where we're at that now we're going to spend more on another section to move? Like how much are we at right now before making this investment?

I think that cost was minimal or probably less than $10,000 on that one. Over less than $10,000.

White Electric did a lot of work for us. They billed us minimal or going to bill us minimal. They actually donated a lot of their time. We did a lot of stuff in-house. Our cost mainly came from door hardware. Getting our door hardware set was about the biggest.

And that will come from existing building maintenance.

And then in two years, we're just going to tear this or sell this building and we're going to do away with it. None of these upgrades will be recoverable, correct? Correct. I mean, we're probably voted against it, so it's hard. No matter which way I go on it, I'm going to have people angry at me. I just struggle. I feel like there's other, I feel like we have other routes possibly that could house twice as many people, have showers, have trash, have laundry, and come in. for cheaper per month that we're not looking into. So I'm struggling with this because we do have other options if we would sit down and bring them to the table and discuss them. One of them comes from the White Buffalo Alliance. I'm pretty sure I've sent it to you. I've posted it online a few times, but it would house a little over 100 people. It would move them through with the program to get them back into the street. It would come with a whole lot of assistance from vets and other federal funding. It would be a... collaboration more than likely with state, county, Norman, the tribes. I mean, it seems like we're trying to tackle a beast right before new laws go into place that we should be looking at if the county is going to give money to multiple organizations but not help with us because we're not following certain guidelines that they would like to see. I mean... We have other options that could help twice as many people and come with more amenities. So once again, y'all is going to do what's best for the city. But on this one, I'm going to struggle because I say we could do better with the money we're about to spend. And that's just my personal opinion. But I do want to see the unhoused with roofs over their head. So at the end of the day, I want to see what's best for them. But at the end of the day, also, we are here to manage our money the best. And I feel like we could do a lot better and serve about double what we're trying to serve, in my opinion.

from White Buffalo.

And White Buffalo could do it for 18 months for under 213?

You're not doing this for 18 months under 213. You're getting them housed for 213. We're still going to be spending the $96,000 a month or whatever we currently spend. So, yes, White Buffalo with what we could do would get them in it for about $108,000 and you could do about 100 people for about $51,000 a month versus $96,000 a month. And we could probably get outside funding to help us from county, state, tribes. I mean, it would bring in additional funding besides just our general budget. So like I said, I know we're on a time. But I would like to also just bring in that we should also be looking at options that can help more people, especially when the numbers double for almost half the price.

Yeah, I agree. We need to explore any options out there because we also have the Supreme Court case and there's no telling how things may turn out there. So we'll have to figure out, you know, have other plans too. And that's an all and above approach, I think. So, Council Member Bruce.

I ASSUME IT WAS AN UNSOLICITED PROPOSAL OF THE CITY BASED ON AN RFI YOU GUYS SET OUT OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT? WAS THERE AN RFI SET OUT AS FAR AS CAPABILITIES? YOU KNOW, WE HAD THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM.

YEAH, THIS WAS NOT THAT. OH, NO, I DON'T THINK IT WAS A RESPONSE TO THAT.

I NEVER HEARD WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RFI, IF IT WAS EVEN SET OUT. You know, when the problem originally came out, you might say, hey, did you go out and test the market related to RFI capabilities, what people were on the stand up to, et cetera. I don't think we went out with any type of RFI. Craig, if I'm wrong.

I think we had to beg Food and Shelter to staff it. Nobody was lined up to.

No, I mean. Recently. Recently, when we had a problem with the. No, once again, it falls on deaf ears.

No, it's. No, yeah, it's on a plate. It's not on the street.

So this was an unsolicited proposal from White Buffalo, whoever that is, some institution. No, this is just when we said give ideas, this was just an idea that everybody did their own research. Like I brought in the bunkhouses and all the pricing of what I've got for 18 months cost on a bunkhouse, delivered, picked up, and cleaned what it would cost to have them for 18 months. And I submitted that as well as, you know, like a, and our tent. And then they came in with all their own and it came to a whole, and yes, an RFI has been submitted to, I believe, Darrell, I sent over all the information. Unsolicited proposal. Unsolicited, yeah, so. from White Buffalo, but not you. No, not me. And it's not, like I said, something we're trying to take over city care. It's just if city care wanted to run it, they could run it. It's just a proposal of how we could help more people in a cost-efficient manner and run it through more like a triage and less like to where we got the mentally ill people their mental health or we get the veterans their health. I mean, it's not just trying to do a parallel treatment for 100 different illnesses.

I think we sent those binders to council when those came in.

Yep. It's just alternative options. That's all.

Any other questions or comments?

So I look at it, when you did numbers, about $4 digital night per body for next 18 months, two years to provide the required fire safety and the other things. I don't know anything about someone else coming in and giving us a proposal and your analysis of it, you know, the staff's analysis and all that stuff. There should be that on the table, the recommendation, if it's even viable. But, you know, setting that aside, since I don't have an analysis from staff, you know, I don't really want to invest the money, the $4. I understand. I'm okay with it. use for this when I'm really thinking about the future at Reed.

But at Reed, this will be in place if something goes. No matter what, we still have this if you go with the money.

Yes. I mean, that's what we would be left with if the bond were to be overturned. Then we could, I guess, figure out some other way to send something to voters again. BUT THAT'S WHY WE DO NEED TO CONTINUE EXPLORING OTHER ALTERNATIVES, BECAUSE WHO KNOWS WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. I GUESS IF IT'S SUPREME COURT, THERE IS NO APPEAL.

I'M COMFORTABLE WITH MR. KNIGHTON'S POSITION IN THAT PARTICULAR CHALLENGE. SO IT'S TIME CONSUMING. IT MAY COST US A LITTLE MORE IN INTEREST WHEN THAT PARTICULAR BOND QUESTION GOES BACK OUT TO THE MARKET AS A STAND-ALONE QUESTION. RICK, IT'S ON THE EXPEDITED Tracked.

Yeah. So we could still take a year, though, even expedited. It don't mean it's going to happen next week.

Yep. Then we'll put it on a calendar for us.

Yeah. And then my goal would continue to be, regardless of what happens, how can we get this shelter to not be in this location anymore? place that helps the people that need it better and is closer to the services and things they need and helps the property owners and business owners downtown too. So any other questions or comments?

Yes. So Lieutenant McWhorter and I have done a little research on just some alternative options. They're very expensive. Like we've looked into kind of like, I don't wanna call it like makeshift tent, but like some kind of like soft building essentially. And we are looking at, well over 500,000. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but 500,000 is probably like the minimum cost. I think we're looking at over a million for something like that that can house maybe closer to 150 people. That way we are servicing more people, but we also need a place to put those things, possibly a slab to put something like that on. that some of that pricing does not include bathrooms at all so that would be a whole separate price of like a removable trailer essentially that has bathrooms and showers same thing with like dog kennels too um so i just want to throw that out there that some research has been done on some of that would you and or anyone else but you and lieutenant mcward uh be able to meet with counselor kirby about the white buffalo and any other

If we've got copies of what that proposal included, so we'll plug in.

That'd be great. Okay. Anything else? Okay. All right.