City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it is a little bit after five, so we'll go ahead and get started and wait for other council members to, when they come in, they can jump in on the discussion. Welcome to the City Council Conference for Tuesday, August 11th, 2026. We have one item on the agenda, and that is a discussion regarding potential interchange locations within Norman for the South Extension Turnpike planned for construction by the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. And we do have representatives from the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority here to answer any questions. I think they've got a few slides and then answer any questions. that council has about this particular proposal. So please proceed with it.

All right. Thank you, Mayor Holman. I'm Trenton January. I'm the chief engineer for the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. And I wasn't able to be at the last Transportation Committee meeting. I was talking with the Windstone neighborhood, just south of Indian Hills, west of I-35, giving them an update on where we are with construction, progress-wise, what they can expect during construction. So I wasn't able to be here to provide that normal update that I've been giving over the past few months, so... I'm going to go through some of these slides. Councilwoman Grant has suggested, since there are a couple new council members, to kind of talk about OTA and our process, just so they're kind of caught up to speed of where everything is. And so I'll run through that, and then I'll let Director E. Kelly kind of touch base on the interchanges after that. So I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. Really just wanted to talk about OTA's bond process, where we go issue bonds, we do design and construction, and then we collect the tolls, and then we pay off those bonds with those tolls that we collect. And so that's just kind of how our business model, how we operate, just so everybody understood that process. And again, we all know the Access Oklahoma program, it's an $8.2 billion investment into our system, into the state's Turnpike system. The different projects are not just the new alignments. It's also widening the Turner Turnpike, adding in interchanges where there aren't interchanges there today. I'm going to use the example would be the community of Depew. When the Turner was originally built, they didn't get a interchange. Well now, that we have gone cashless, we have that opportunity and they're asking for an interchange at their community so people can, if they need to get off or visit their community and get there. We also have some widening on the Will Rogers Turnpike and we're adding interchanges on that. We're completing interchanges that are only partial interchanges to provide additional access And really that additional access is, you know, there's a safety component behind that. If you're traveling down the turnpike and maybe there's a 17 mile distance in between two interchanges, now you may have more of an opportunity, maybe a shorter distance to be able to turn around. or for emergency management services to be able to access something that may happen on the turnpike. So those are some of the things when we're talking about adding interchanges is not only access but allowing more, the ability for people to get to locations that they need to get to. John Kilpatrick, we're widening the rest of the John Kilpatrick on the west side of Oklahoma City, also adding additional interchange there at County Line. And then as you can see on the Again, talking about adding those interchanges in locations where there hasn't been any access. Again, an example is on the Indian Nation at State Highway 63 in Blanco. It connects with the State Highway, providing additional access for people to be able to get onto the turnpike or get to McAllister or get down to Antlers or Hugo or Paris, wherever they may be trying to get to. And then again, the new alignments where there's about 4.4 billion on the new amount of alignments. This is just an overall map of, you can see on our Access Oklahoma website, where you can go in there, you can click on these, and you can get a lot more information. Again, orange is active construction, green are the completed projects, yellow are the ones that are currently in design, and the blue are our future routes that we're working on, but we're not heavily working on those right now. Here's kind of a snapshot of where we are today, to date, what we have spent in engineering right away in construction. And then also what we have under contract, whether it was an awarded construction contract or whether it is a board-approved contract with engineering or right-of-way acquisition or any of those contracts, engineering, design contracts, we still have these amounts left on those contracts, which totals up to about $1.63 billion that we've spent or have under contract. This is just a, this up here, when we say 208 pre-construction submittals, these are the plan designs that the firms have turned in across the entire Access Oklahoma program. They've submitted 200 sets of those submittals, whether that be a 30%, 60%, 90%, a total, or the PS&E, the final package. then down here at the bottom sorry then at the bottom is a kind of a right away update this is for the full access program so anything on the Turner Will Rogers Indian nation any any right away that we have been working with landowners to purchase we're currently actively working with 408 different parcels we've closed on 219 across the entire program and then specifically on We're actively working with 124 parcels, and we closed on 118. And those are as of Friday, last Friday, we gave this presentation yesterday, so we wanted to state the same numbers, but these numbers here change daily depending on If we worked out an agreement with the landowner on a purchase price or maybe we swapped some land as part of that agreement Whatever it may be where we closed on some parcels Give you a little update on some of the projects that we that are going on like we like we normally talk about This is the bridge construction continues at the Canadian River at the beginning near the beginning of July we we hung all of the beams across the Canadian River And these are a little over 200 foot spans. And we did that intentionally. We did that intentionally to stay out of the ordinary high water mark. And that allowed us to be able to stay out of the ordinary high water mark. We didn't have to go Worked with the core on that plan trying to make sure we were we were doing everything that we could to stay out of that impact area and they were you know They worked with us on this and then we know we worked with them on our Lost Creek permit on the east end of this project to be able to get permitted to be able to do work in that area, but it but this was This was a really, really cool experience. This crane here was brought in on about 60 truckloads. And it was the largest crane at the time. It's probably the largest crane that I've seen, largest crane you've seen in our 20 plus years in Oklahoma. I think it costs about $250,000 to get it delivered. It costs about $50,000 a day, just a day to be there, and then $250,000 to be taken down and removed off site. But that was a big accomplishment for the contractor to get that done. They continue to work on the columns and the drilled sash, as you can see here. throughout the entire length of this project. This completion date is 2028. That's for both bridges. And so what we're working towards is getting the westbound bridge completed and open to traffic by the end of 2027. And then you can see down here we're about 30%. I think the next slide... The westbound bridge will carry both directions. And it will carry both lanes of traffic at first. And then... You know, we say early 2028, you know, hopefully we can get that done sooner rather than later. And then as you continue east, we get to what is known as the Ten Mile Flats Creek area. We're continuing to build the substructure. They've hung a lot of beams. I was out there yesterday looking around to see how progress was going. They're moving really well on this project. They've got most of the substructure, the drill shafts, the pier caps are all built. They're really hanging beams and then they'll start hanging their deck pans and then they'll get to where they're pouring The deck at that again, we're looking at getting this completed by the spring of 2027 and it's there at 40% of the construction cost to date So this is just can you click on it maybe and that'll do the video There we go. So this is just a flyover. We probably should have had this after after this and on a lot of the westbound direction currently, not just hung over the river, but also on the west on this side. But as you can tell, we're still working on the pier caps, really concentrating on that westbound direction. On the west side of the Toby Keith Expressway, we are getting ready to start the first phase of the I-44 Toby Keith East-West Express, or East-West Connector interchange. This was a project in coordination with the City of Newcastle, with ODOT on this project here, where we're looking to construct from the west to the east the new Toby Keith Expressway, which is This here in purple. So everything in purple will be the first phase of this interchange project. Everything in white are later phases to come later on. These are really the first connections that we need to be able to facilitate traffic from 44 to the Toby Keith and vice versa from the Toby Keith to I-44 and the State Highway 37 and 62. We'll be constructing a diverging diamond interchange, as I said, I-44, 37, and TKE, which is right there. That'll be one of the first things that'll get started. We're constructing new frontage roads between 24th and 36th. And then we're adding new on and off ramps at 24th Street with a new four-lane bridge over I-44, which is down here. Again, that was in coordination with the City of Newcastle, working with them on what they are anticipating their growth to look like in the future. We plan to start this project early this fall. It's about a $75 million investment just in phase one, and these later phases will come in later on in the program. Phase one of the interchange of I-35 and the Toby Keith Expressway, this is what phase one we'll be working on and looking to let later in the spring of 2027. It's about a $122 million project. We will be building bridges over I-35 here to make that initial connection to meet that end of 2027 year deadline. to be able to make that connection from I-44 to I-35. This is the phase that we need to complete. This is also in conjunction with ODOT's project to one-way the frontage roads to the north and to add in some additional ramps that they're wanting to add to help with some of the functionality and how people get in and off the interstate and really to try to improve some of that ingress and egress along I-35. project is kind of talking about these new on and off ramps here uh yeah there'll be turnaround bridges built on both sides that's what i was talking about here to help facilitate that traffic movement initially so you can get on on and off i-35 again we're looking to start this project next spring and it's about 122 million dollar project again this is phase one of several phases to Build the interchange and like the big flyovers or the direct direct connect ramps Those are something those are things that will be coming later at the end tour later on in the program All right, and then to wrap it up, kind of on my update on the projects that are coming up that we still have to award for the rest of this year, the interchange at Western Avenue is going to award in September. We're going to start, that's an investment of about $50 million for that interchange there. We worked with the city of Oklahoma City on things that they would like to see out of that interchange is what their expectations were when we were coming through with the Toby Keith Expressway. The next project is the gray drain surface from Santa Fe Avenue to South Telephone Road and also includes the City of Norman widening of Northwest 36 project. We're looking to award that project in 2026. Again, that was a partnership project, working with staff, working with y'all on how we can bring y'all's project with ours, kind of an economy of scale. we were needing to upsize a box to accommodate some of the drainage that we were needing. Lo and behold, the city of Norman was also wanting to upgrade that same box. And so there was that opportunity there to work with the city to get that economies of scale because we were both trying to accomplish the same thing. And so again, we're looking to award that in October of 2026. Another project is the bridge over Santa Fe Avenue in 2026. And then on the very, we kind of, sometimes we'll dive off into the very east and north end of the Toby Keith Expressway. And at the end of the year, we're looking to start to let some of those bridges where we have worked with landowners, negotiated, purchased those properties, and we have the ability to go in there and start to build some of these bridges ahead of time before building that mainline construction. And so you'll see a bridge over 104th, a bridge over 36th, and then a bridge and surface for southeast 89th Street over the TKE. And that's just south of the I-40 and Kickapoo interchange currently. And so for the rest of the year, these are the projects that you will see that go out to bid for the rest of the year. There's about $151 million in total investment that we will be, for the rest of this year, along the Toby Keith Expressway. And I'm gonna pause right there I know I flew through a bunch of information and I'll be more than happy to go back and And talk about any of those or answer any questions before Joe comes up here to kind of move on to the South extension This particular progress report, yeah, this is just because I won't be able to make it to your next Transportation Committee this month Next part

Perfect, Trent. So overall picture of the construction that's ongoing and the alignment of the east-west connector, Tobykeep Expressway, and the south extension. I'm going to lead up to talking about the interchanges. We won't answer any of the questions that the council might have about it. When we first started talking about building the turnpike in we've been you know late 2021 coming into 2022 we met with city staff for all the cities all over the turnpike network everywhere we were proposing a new interchange uh going to be building a new uh redoing the alignment redoing the surface of the turnpike or doing one of the widenings we met with just about everybody and during those conversations is where we started to talk about the need for or the want for one-way frontage roads and interchanges along The east-west connector is what we call it at the time. Also, same conversation about the south extension. At that time, the alignment was much closer to Lake Thunderbird. At the same time, we were announcing that alignment and starting to talk about it. Came down to Norman and presented to the Norman City Council, addressed a lot of questions at the time. Part of the process was that we needed to apply for the ability to work on Lake Thunderbird property that's operated by the Bureau of Reclamation. Thank you. And through that process, they have strict use of the property that they own in fee and own in title, which restricted our ability to cross that land. We were proposing to build bridges across all the waterways, all of the things. We weren't going to. affect the lake in any of those ways, but that restriction has to look further to the west. When we did that, the conversation came back up about interchanges and frontage roads and where those may be requested or may be necessary or may be needed or may be wanted. Turnpike Authority and the goal of our east-west connector and Toby Keith Expressway and the South Extension has always been about moving major freight traffic, major corridor, and a major improvement, future improvement to I-35. We've been quoted lots of times as saying that nothing that we're going to do is going to improve or fix the problems that I-35 has, and that's true. By the time this is built in 15 years, I-35 will grow more traffic than it currently has today. The city of Norman's growing. Goldsby's growing. Purcell, lots of people are building houses, and more people are moving into the area. So we're just trying to provide an alternative for the people who are not destined to Oklahoma City or are trying to get northeast or trying to get from the northeast or east to the south. So we're trying to provide a cutoff, basically. that provides a more direct route. Through that process, we were going to build interchanges with the state highway system. So those were shown on here at 77 down by Slaughterville and I-35 closer to Purcell, Highway 9 on the east side of Norman, and then, of course, an interchange that would tie it into the Toby Keith Expressway. So those things have always been something that we were a goal to do. Look back through history, the Turnpike Authority did not always build interchanges with the state highway system. There's a reason for that, because everywhere we had to have a toll booth required a lot of infrastructure and a lot of maintenance and upkeep. So when we went cashless and started taking a picture of a license plate and building in that way, made it a lot easier to put an interchange anywhere that we can have power, fiber to connect to transfer data. Made that a whole lot easier and a whole lot simpler to do. So when we talked with City of Norman, with other communities about where interchanges needed to be, it had to do, especially on a new alignment. We're here. We're buying right away. If there's a need or a want from the community to do these types of things, then we're here to talk about it. And that's where we generated and we had the frontage roads in. You remember the frontage roads came out. and the county picked it up and the frontage roads went back in. That was a lot of back and forth with some of our engineering groups, and they had to do some redesign and caused a little bit of delay. Today I want to talk about, you know, we had a meeting, Darrell, it's been five or six or seven weeks ago probably now, a month and a half, two months ago, and it's time to talk about the south extension. I got a question on this the other day, so I'll answer it up front. Why now? Why is there a deadline? You want to have a ribbon cutting. We talked about what day we're going to open some of these alignments. You assume that there's going to be about two years of construction for any piece of this. Then you assume that you need to move utilities on any parcel of property on any piece of land. You assume you need to acquire that right away. All of these things take time, and so when you back up that schedule, the deadline to decide Are we buying right away? Are we doing this design or not? Realistically, in an ideal world, would have happened probably earlier this year, probably this spring, in an ideal world. At that meeting that we had back in, I think, June or July, June, we said, look, we'll wait and take feedback from the cities as late as August. It's going to put the engineers and the designers in a little bit of a time crunch to get the design complete, which generated why we ended up here today. At that meeting was Noble, Norman, Cleveland County, and OU attended that meeting. Go ahead and go to the next slide. So a little bit of an update. This shows I-35 going east. It's got the frontage roads being shown. The interchanges are the little connectors. back and forth to the frontage road. Over on the far right side, we've got the connection with the Toby Keith Expressway. And Trent mentioned this earlier on our access website. As those plans are beginning to be turned in and submitted and approved, we're updating the website with additional line work that you can, as you zoom in, it starts to show up a little bit better. You can't show all of that line work at a high level map. So I would encourage anybody with, that wants to zoom in here and get a little bit more understanding especially west of I-35, a lot of that data is there. Go ahead and go to the next. I wanted to show a quick right of entry for parcels. I know this has been a question that Trent's been asked when he's been here before, you know, how far along are we in the right-of-way process? We need to procure the right of entry. We do that lots of different ways. There's lots of different ways to arrive at that, but namely the most you know it's whenever we come to an agreement with a landowner uh city of norman i'm sure doesn't do anything different than that but it allows us to start moving some utilities and begin construction so some of this has been uh turn back authority's been closed on and owned it for some amount of time but Most of the interchange over here at I-44, most of what we call the Toby Keith Expressway or the East-West Express, the very first phase from I-44 to I-35, we have right of entry for. Go ahead and go to the next one. This is I-35 just off the left side of this map. Orange are ones that we're actively have been working on acquiring. So we're doing appraisals, making contact with property owners, and making offers. Green ones are some that we've acquired. I pointed this one out the other day. This one was acquired actually in 2022. I think we closed on it in September or October 2022 when the program was announced. We got on realtor.com and looked at what properties are for sale along the route. This one was for sale. It's in a low-lying area. We negotiated with the property owner. It was already for sale, and so it was one of the early ones acquired. There were several that were like that. We had to go to the next one to try it. So the south extension connection is here, and we're headed northeast toward I-40. And you can see that there's some orange that's on here that are still in the active process, but green denotes the ones that we've either come to an agreement or at least signed a right of entry with the property owner. Go ahead and go to the next one. And then this I-40 is there at the top, and the Kickapoo Interchange shows quite a bit of green there right off the south end of bottom left. As some of the decisions were being made about where the interchanges were going, like the one here at Peably and the one on the previous slide at Choctaw Road, those were locations where those were done by the City of Oklahoma City. Because the south extension is north-south, you've got to twist your head just a little bit. North is to the left now, as opposed to being up and down like it's been on the rest of these. But I-35 down here at the bottom, Purcell would be just off the edge of the screen on the right side. Got a pretty expansive bridge that's going to cross the railroad and the river again. interchange that's being built at US 77 you'll see that there are right away acquisition that's ongoing in the area and also we just started this couple months ago Trent and so we're beginning to get right of entry to some of these parcels this shows the energies talent nobles here shows the interchange locations where we're working with noble for either two interchanges or a connected interchange that serves both both Etowah and McGuire Road. We go to the maximum trend. Again, some orange is where we have total acquisitions. These are the early acquisition parcels that we know we're going to impact. So we went ahead and started on some of those and we show some green over there. on the far right side of the screen, which would be the south side of this image. The interchange at Highway 9, the interchange we're going to talk about today are circled in blue at Alameda, and then the one on the far left here is at Tecumseh. Go ahead and go to the next one. No, it's not. Didn't have the next slide, but there's another image that shows north of here, and it's still, it's all orange. I didn't think there was any green shown on that. So let's talk about these interchanges, the ones at Alameda and at Tecumseh. So on the left side of the screen is this crossing, the Turnpike, the South Extension crossing Alameda. We've reoriented the screen. North is up again. And what we're showing that's here in orange are the early acquisition parcels where it's a total take, or at least we anticipate that it's going to be. So we've reached out and started working with those property owners. Underneath this and it's maybe hard to see from the very back mayor But there are some houses that are underneath here underneath the orange section and those are assumed at this stage to be a total take and And there'll be a property line a right-of-way line. That's going to be on the left-hand side of this left-hand image here for where that turnpike fence would need to be When you jump over to the proposed interchange to the number of houses is no different. It is an additional impact to the volume of land, so the Turnpike Authority does require, will need to require, will need to acquire more property, no different than on the east-west connector to build the frontage road, we needed to acquire more property. For this particular one, we're showing a diamond. This diamond image that's shown here was just a conceptual. As the engineering process moves through, they're going to do what we call a tight diamond, which will be much narrower. Go ahead and go to the next image, and we can come back to these to answer questions. But the next one's at Tecumseh, similar situation, no additional houses that will be impacted by the interchange. I know that's been a Question that the council's had that city staff has passed on to us and so to build the interchanges It does require more property doesn't impact more houses at either of these locations Go ahead and go to the next slide. So when I say a tight diamond as opposed to a Regular diamond. This is what I'm talking about. So this is at 23rd Street on the kick through turnpike and You'll notice that the ramps are very close. The ramp lanes are very close to the main line. It'll look different than this. This was built to support cash collection. We've made that commitment when we started the driving forward program. These locations were only in service for a couple of years before we went cashless, so it'll be narrower even than this because we don't need the additional cash lanes you can see in the far right. of the far right image that those lanes have been barricaded off. So that's 12 feet narrower already in footprint. This project was done in conjunction with ODOT, but we did make, we did do a mill and overlay on the existing State Highway at 23rd Street at locations like south of here where we tied into County Road and City, Oklahoma City and County, Oklahoma City, City Streets and County Roads. It was a similar situation. We, you know, Did our nice pavement and made the tie-ins both directions. So we do that regardless at connecting points. Back up. Several. So I want to talk about spacing here for a second. So we go all the way back to the further back, to the very beginning when I first stood up here, Trent.

Okay.

Probably something I should have said, but keep going. Right here. So one of the conversations that we had when the alignment moved further west and got closer to Norman was how many interchanges fit, how often would the Turnbuck Authority allow them, those kind of things. While a high-speed roadway doesn't lend itself to have an interchange every mile, because when you get on, you're trying to merge and weave with traffic that's trying to get off at the next exit. So we usually have, we prefer at least a mile, at least probably a mile and a half between interchanges. So when we first looked at this, we talked, I think one of the early maps showed interchanges at lots of locations had more of those little circles on it. And when the engineers took a look at that, when you talk about Lindsay Street, it's only a mile from Highway 9. That's just too close. So we talked about moving. Well, what's the next one that would be desirable? We talked about Alameda. We talked about Rock Creek, Tecumseh, and Franklin. Well, Franklin's too close to the Toby Keith Expressway interchange. So that one's out and Lindsay Street's out. Leaves you three in between. You can't have all three because then you're back to within a mile, you know, you're back to too close together again. So it broke it back into which two locations maybe make the most sense. And that's where we got to on the engineering side, the two locations make the most sense, also provide the most probably connectivity to city and city facilities at Tecumseh and Alameda. So the thing that we're here today or to answer the question is, is this something that the city's interested in or not? We're not pushing for it. Our desire is to connect the northeast to the southwest, interstate to interstate. We're going to connect to the state highway system. That just helps with flow for ODOT. I know there have been concerns. OU issued a statement. in support of having additional interchanges to serve the university. I totally understand that. I know there's been some talk about the safety aspect and some letters that have been written in support of that. It is convenient to have more interchanges when there's an issue on the turnpike. I think it's also very convenient if you're on the east side of Norman and you need to get to the hospital or to the interstate to get to a hospital to have an interchange that's close by. That's personal. I mean, I think that's important. Turnpike Authority contracts with the Highway Patrol. We'll have Highway Patrol that'll work. All of the new alignments we support. We budget for 125 troopers. That's inclusive of staff and... And inclusive of all of the capital expenses, which includes cars and all the things that they use, we will add to that contract to support the new alignment down here as well. And with that, and anybody could have interrupted me at any time. I appreciate that nobody did, but happy to answer any questions.

I would like to go back to NOVA real quick because I believe some of one of the NOVA interchanges is Etowah. Is it Norman city limits?

Yep. Yep. I went too far, sorry.

There's nine. There it is.

There you go. That's the one.

Yeah, so as I understand it, and I'm going to look to the Norman city manager here for a little help, but the Etowah Road, there's a line, an imaginary line in the middle of the road where part of that's Norman, part of that's Noble.

Yeah, we think two... Corners are Norman, and two corners are Noble.

So my question is, are there houses there, and is this also a tight diamond, and are they getting two, or are they merging it into one? What's impacted on the Norman side, and are they getting two?

So on the Norman side, so on the north side of Edward Road, I don't know the answer to that. I can tell from looking at the image up here that it looks like north of Etowah Road there's a pretty significant total take that we've already begun working on. And so I'm looking at Colin here, Trent. And they're saying that it's the same situation, no additional houses.

So what you see there in orange are parcels that we've identified as total takes and based on just the main lines themselves, not the interchange. And so we would build, again, a tight diamond, something we would try to keep that footprint narrow. And what the town of Noble has asked for is a split interchange. So you have ramps on this side, front of drugs that carry to here, and then ramps on this side of McGuire, on the south side of McGuire. But keeping that footprint narrow and within what we've already identified without taking any additional homes.

So everything should fit in the orange that's already been acquired?

Yes, ma'am. At the interchanges. At the interchanges, yes, ma'am.

And if Norman doesn't agree to it, does that kill Noble's interchange?

So this is a different situation down here on the south end. I mean, the conversations that we've had have been, you know, this is 99% Noble conversation. I think that if they're putting the request in, which I think they have, then we're going to move forward with the design and we'll work out project-related details with area improvements and address that in a future project agreement.

Do we as a council have to put the Etowah interchange into a resolution to say that that interchange can go there?

Yeah, it would be good if you could.

Does it empty onto a Norman city street? Or is this all noble streets?

How's your guys met a lot the north half is us and the south half is them so It is partially on city street. Yeah, so we share the maintenance of that roadway. Thank you.

All right, so it would be a resolution then I Think it would be better to have that included And then to the other two interchanges We discussed you said no more houses would be taken and

That is correct. Let me get to that slide. Again, what you can see here, these yellow ones are the ones that we identified as total takes. parcels that we've identified that they're gonna be partial takes because they are larger parcels. So we haven't started those negotiations. We're getting the 60% design at the end of this year, which will allow us to then figure out what partial acquisitions or partial purchases we'll need of those properties, and then we'll know. But again, when we're looking at the interchange, it's gonna be a tight diamond. We're not gonna go outside of that footprint That of that yellow one so we would stay where there would be no additional homes that would need to be purchased Right now this alignment where you've got it.

You're not shifting No, ma'am at all.

It's where it's where it's at. It's where it's at.

Yes I want to answer on a wall on the north side you are taking a home and a shop on that one that's rather new. And then I also want to point out if you look at all this. Which one? I'm sorry. Etowah. You want to go to Etowah? On the north side of Etowah.

Yep.

There's a rather new home and all that right there, right where you're going to take, and a barn on the north side, right about in the center where that yellow line is.

That's the total take that we've identified.

They're not cooperating, right, because it would be green because of a right of entry or they would have already sold, which means if they send the yellow, y'all are still trying to take. At the end of the day, you're sending them letters saying you're going to use eminent domain.

No, we're currently in the active right-of-way process, which could mean we're trying to get out there and do survey, or we're trying to communicate with them to have some discussion.

So you haven't went to court in a no-way-and-shape form. Do these people understand you're about to take their property?

Yeah, no, sir. We have not gone. We're nowhere close to going towards that.

And then I'd also like to point out, y'all keep saying you're not taking no more homes. When you take land, you're taking homes, whether it be a squirrel, a raccoon, a possum, a kangaroo. I mean, you're taking something's home. Whether it's a person or not, it's still a home of a creature. And I do want to point out how I don't know when y'all don't understand what no means, but at some point in time, you have a lawsuit going between Catoosa and Claremore where part of the highway was supposed to become free, and it never did, but we're supposed to just assume that you're going to honor the contracts and the resolutions, even though I can state multiple times y'all have not How wide is this going to be? I mean, how big a footprint are you running? Because in 1961, when the city of Norman came and took a 62-foot perimeter around Norman and annexed Ward 5, they annexed 112,000 acres. That went to the Supreme Court in about five different cases. And in every one of them Supreme Court rulings, it said that that 112,000 acres, which was from 12th Street all the way out past the lake, was supposed to stay protected for a watershed. This is not how you protect a watershed. I'm a little emotional because my family was the town of Dairy Farm right here. And when we built Lake Thunderbird, the 6,600 acres after that annexation put that dairy farm out of business. So my family sacrificed and continues to sacrifice for what y'all are just saying is a road. But this road is running through a very protected area. And yeah, y'all did have it closer to the river and they made you move it, but you didn't move it out of the protection area. You kept it right there in it. So I guess the next one is the resolution. Y'all mentioned a resolution. Wasn't there a resolution passed back three councils ago that said we needed impact studies for the environmental impact studies, and we requested any time y'all were going to move forward through Norman, we wanted an environmental impact study. I'm still waiting to see them studies. How many years has it been? I think you've had time, because now you're wanting to come through my ward, through my home, through other people's homes, and you might miss my home, but if you go through my neighbors, you're going through my home. Because I'm standing in front of my neighbor. That's who they elected to protect them.

When the studies are complete, they're posted on that website.

Have you done a whole study of the whole and not chopped it up into little bitty?

They are submitted as part of the application process. So skirting around it. I got you. They're just done as segments.

How are you going to pay to fix all the busted toll roads throughout Oklahoma when you continue to build more? How do we know ours are going to stay usable and not be all busted up like out there near Daisy, Oklahoma? or out near Henrietta, or the one going through Route 66 that you're just now finishing up. I mean, people don't want to be in construction for the rest of their lives. They don't want to breathe dust. So y'all are coming through here by force. And... For years and years and years and years, people have told you they didn't want it. And from my understanding, when you go in to take something from condemnation, you go to the person and you ask them, hey, I'd like to acquire this property. They say no. You go to the courthouse. You start the process. You don't enter their property until a judge gives you permission, is the way I understand it. And there's been several occasions I've been called by residents of Ward 5. And I showed up, and you've had the highway patrol there, hands on guns, forcing people to let them on their property. That's not how we do business. That's not being neighborly. That's not being neighborly at all. In my opinion, that's being tyrants because you're using the force of the law enforcement to get you on somebody's property. Why not just stop when they say no and go to the court system and use the court system in the proper way? Why is it so important to get on it that day that you're scaring elderly women and elderly men and contaminating people's pastures. I heard you talking about having a pasture, you know, Blackfoot. TNT, tetanus, there's a dozen things that can be spread by boot into a closed herd of people who've had this property for six generations. And they're asking for a little bit of respect. And they're not catching none. And I don't know who the guy is that stands out there on the side of the road with his arrogant smile, but he's a prick. And I'm going to say it right now, I probably shouldn't, but he is. And when he's taking people's land, he needs to talk to them and be nicer to them. I've got report after report of people in my ward and the way y'all came through, they're like bullies and like tyrants. And I'm just, I'm trying to figure out, y'all want people to work with y'all, but all you've come to do is talk through us. You don't talk to us. You don't negotiate with us. You don't listen to us. You just talk right over us or right through us. Can you go back to where Alameda's in there? Right there, I need the other one where you're taking the land acquisition.

Oh, the bigger one? Yeah.

So right there where the diamonds are on the north side of Alameda, can you tell me what sits there on the left-hand side inside that diamond? Can you tell me what that house is? Yeah. Can you tell me about that? Because I can tell you, I know exactly who owns that. He's a veteran. He's a retired fireman. He's a business owner. He's a father. He employs a buttload of people here in Norman and takes care of all our surrounding communities. And you're going to shut down his shop and take him out right now with that picture the way it is. Something he's worked so hard, something he fought for his country to come back and have some land and build a dream. And y'all's just going to rip it out from under him. So I just, you know... You act like it's no big deal, but a lot of them properties has a lot of blood, sweat, tears, family. You know, if you moved over a little bit, you would be taken where my grandpa died, where my great grandpa died, where my mom died, where we carried them out of. And a hundred more people can tell that story. So when you say it's just a piece of land, no, it's a piece of heritage. It's a piece of history. It's a piece of someone's soul that you're coming through there and taking. And I think y'all can show a lot more damn respect when you do it.

So I have some questions as it pertains to public safety, specifically with the fire department on turnpikes and these interchanges. Would you be able to answer these questions? Try. Try, okay. Well, if that's the case, sorry. Can you pass that down to them just so they have a little bit of a reference point? That's essentially our ward map. I represent Ward 6, which you can see there. The sharpie is the turnpike. The marks you see there are fire stations in Norman. that are close to the turnpike and the two that you see circled there are fire stations that don't exist yet but are planned sometime in the future near the turnpike. So I guess in a general sense, when an accident happens on the turnpike that requires fire department to respond, is that typically the responsibility of the local municipality or do you have a contract similar to like you do with the troopers?

No, so our contracts with DPS are statutory. They're the They're the, statutorily, they're the only law enforcement entity that we're allowed to contract with to provide law enforcement services on terminities.

Okay. So, but for, so for fire, these sections, excuse me, would be entirely serviced by Norman Fire Department?

So... Questions asked a little bit funny, so let me just answer that just a little bit different. So the closest emergency responder is always who's going to try to respond to whoever can get there the quickest. Fair enough. Doesn't matter if it's somebody that's driving through from Ardmore headed to Shawnee and they're on this turnpike and they pull up and there's a crash. They're going to. They're going to stop to work it. I mean, that's what we, the public, all expect, right? Sure. So if a call comes out for a fire, crash, paramedic, whatever, the closest entity is whoever usually responds.

Okay.

Tribal. I mean, it's all inclusive. Sheriff. whether local or outside their jurisdiction, that's who you want there, whoever can be there first.

And then as far as the cost for these local services, so does the OTA work with other cities, or in this case, Norman, to help with equipment to handle these incidents. If we're going to be getting essentially truckers coming through and they spill toxic load and we need to help clean that up, does the OTA help with any reimbursement for that or just getting the equipment set up for that that these fire stations are not going to have to handle?

Well, there's a lot of examples, so let me work a few of them one at a time. A truck leaks fuel. You know, their insurance is going to cover the cleanup. We hire hazmat groups to come out and remediate the soil and replace it. I mean, that's very typical. ODOT does the exact same thing. We have the same contracts for that. The only thing that does happen that local fire departments encounter from time to time is a grass fire that comes from a lit cigarette that somebody throws out or somebody dragging a chain. When those things occur, we do get billed for fire call-outs, and we do pay those. And that's statewide. ODOT gets the same type of invoices as well.

So what the OTA deals with is it's more – let's just call it reimbursement when these kind of services are provided as opposed to helping with, you know, the upfront costs of getting this equipment and things like that.

Yes. I didn't address that, but, uh, you know, if there's some, we've had these talks, I don't know, in, in my history at OTA, I was 15 years ago, came to Turnpike 10 years ago. Um, my history here at OTA we haven't purchased any additional equipment but that I can think of and I'm trying to really think about that but but it has been done before okay so if there's a You know, we don't need a ladder truck for a turnpike issue, but, you know, if they don't have a pumper in a certain area and they needed some assistance with working on that, we'd be happy to talk about it. I don't know what the particular piece of equipment might be. I was recently in Denver, and there's a Northwest Parkway is a six-mile stretch. toll road up there. They partnered with a local fire department to build a fire station on surplus property right next to one of their maintenance facilities. It was convenient because it could have a driveway directly out onto the turnpike. They also, that toll entity also Just down the road from them, they have an all-electric Amazon distribution center with lots of EVs. And so because of the unique nature of vehicle fires around electric vehicles, the Northwest Parkway purchased fire blankets, which They're kind of like the ones you would throw over your stove if it caught on fire, but much bigger and thicker. And so they bought those for the fire department to carry their expenses. And they did that to be able to mitigate for any electrical fire. So similar to that, the Turnpike Authority would be interested in visiting about unique circumstances like that.

And then, Chief King, I'm sorry, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but for these fire stations near the turnpike, do you know if you would need additional equipment that you don't have currently in order to service potential accidents on this turnpike?

Certainly, yeah. You know, with more workload coming through, we could look at more equipment, right? So maybe some rescue equipment, heavy lift bags. Talked about the fire blankets, that sort of thing. Getting those in strategic areas that we don't have them at now could be something that we could look to partner on.

So, Council Member Steele, to your point, there is a specialized vehicle, heavy rescue vehicle, and it's stationed at Station 7, so it can get to I-35, and it's at the airport, and it has that type of equipment that can pick up a truck if a truck tips over. It's got some highly specialized equipment in it, but it's all the way over at I-35. It's quite a ways over to get to...

Fair enough. So I'm sorry, I don't think I marked seven on my reference there. But thank you. Yes, I put the two proposed ones as well on there. And then, I guess for Chief Foster and Chief King, obviously not now. But do you all have some sort of program or data or study that would say what the response times would be to various points on the turnpike with or without intersections? Or is there a way that you could get that data?

I could probably give you an estimation of what it would take to respond here, particularly if you're going to Highway 9. Let's say if we were responding to an accident that's on the southbound lanes and you had to go to Highway 9 to get on, then you had to go all the way north to the interchange up north and come back south on the southbound line. That's considerable time that you're taking there. to get to where you need to be.

And then we recently had a study that we have talked about that we asked a third party consultant to look at access to a turnpike for public safety and it recommended interchanges at Highway 9 at Alameda and Tecumseh So the fire department could get on in a timely manner. So those response times were considered, you know, and as you all might remember, we talked about a station 10 at 36th and Highway 9. We do have currently a station in the 3000 block of East Alameda, station 9. We currently have a fire station in the 7400 block of East Alameda, that's station 6. We've looked at a proposed station in the area of 24th and Tecumseh. which could access, and then a possible future station 12 at 108th and Franklin could work its way back and access the turnpike at Tecumseh as well. We talked about the heavy rescue. Certainly being in proximity to the airport and to I-35 is important. That unit could also get out and get Tecumseh all the way out to that possible interchange, and you're looking at way reduced response times than having to go up way to the north or try to navigate through town to get down on the south part or to access Highway 9. We know that it would have a positive impact on response times.

And that study you're mentioning, it's completed?

I'm sorry?

The study you're mentioning, it's like completed?

That's what I presented, yes, to council last Tuesday night.

Can someone on staff just give me like a physical copy or email it to me just so I can take a look at it? Oh, is that in the fire station?

Oh, it's in that packet. We asked them to analyze that, and that's what I talked about last week as far as what they recommended where interchanges should be, and it matches up.

with what you guys are saying or potentially putting to add to this which is helpful or not helpful we have locations where we don't have interchanges on our network where there is a local fire department so the map that you gave me shows two on alameda nine and six and so if an interchange wasn't built there there's enough right away there for us to put a gravel road up to a combination log gate both sides so that you can get on there with the combination we have we call those emergency access gates we have we have those throughout our network we also in the median have locations where you can turn around we don't like those from the safety aspect and You probably don't like your engine drivers to use those to cross. It's better to have a controlled access interchange where people can get off safely and get back on safely. It's not just for the fire department or the police department or the highway patrol. It's also. You know, if somebody misses an exit, which is what Trent talked about earlier, and you see a gravel cut through in the middle of the turnpike, you're tempted to make a U-turn. And when the roadway on day one won't carry a whole lot of traffic, but by a few years in, it will carry significant traffic as maps get updated. And on day one, that may not be too dangerous to make. We don't even like our maintenance people or the emergency personnel or the highway patrol using the ones on the Turner Turnpike. It carries a lot of traffic. It's just not safe. So we're trying to have more interchanges, trying to get them within five miles or so. If you look at ODOT's system on I-35, you'll notice that about every three miles or so, they put a cut and a break in the cable barrier so that everybody can turn around. And that's not for the public to use, but for emergency services to be able to get turned around on. So... Similarly, whether interchanges are built, we would have something like that. That will all be vetted out through the design process. That's all I had. Thank you.

I just would like to build on what Council Member Steele said. You've been looking at Station 11A, which should be on that map. It's Tecumseh and 24th? Yes. So what could, other than equipment, could the OTA help with if we put a fire station there?

I would need help with ideas. I don't know exactly what to think of. You know, the one thing I don't know if you have any history about fire stations in Norman, but one thing that as we were purchasing right away, just like it's shown on the Tecumseh map, If an interchange is built here, we're securing that right-of-way that's there to the north. There's probably room within right-of-way that we're acquiring to build a fire station if you don't already have a location selected.

We don't, so that might be helpful. And then I was thinking about other communities where you put interchanges in. Have you done landscaping and sound barriers to lessen...