Community Planning & Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

He's checking.

Don't mind me. I'm just doing We're okay. You asked if the slide. Okay. Don't mind me. Just All right. We'll go ahead. It is 4 o'clock, so we'll go ahead and get started with the community planning and transportation committee meeting for Thursday, September 25th, 2025. We have four items on the agenda this afternoon. and we'll start with the first item, our usual presentation and discussion about public transit ridership in women.

Thank you, mayor and council members. Yes, as always, we have a memo with some writership reports in your packet. Uh starting with the memo, uh few a few updates. So, on our central Oklahoma and long-range transit plan, we had that conversation on Tuesday and um as the city manager mentioned, we can send out an alert to uh the public. So, I worked with Tiffany, the chief communications officer, and we got that put on the website today and we'll be sending that out um over time just to try to get residents more more opportunities to feedback or notice so that way as we wind down that long range plan, we get as much public comment as possible. And then, um we should be coming to council in October, uh looking for approval on purchases for three large buses. We're we're looking at that internally right now trying to get it lined up. That's using grant money that we had available through that SVG program at ACOG plus some other 5339 um FTA monies that we could utilize. So uh it's a pretty good deal 85% but it's a big uh chunk of money to put put aside for a few 18 20 months. So we're looking at that internally try to make sure it works with the current budget. But that would be our last three large buses that we need to purchase since the transition. So, we're very excited about that.

The uh ACOP were we approved the amendment from Norman for the TIP funds. Yep. So, yeah, all that's lining up. The money wasn't going to go away. We just had to get all the paperwork in order, but we're Yep. Commissioner Cleveland made the motion to And no questions. That's always good. So, yeah, there we're done.

Um, let's see here. Uh on the paratransit software transition as council knows back in February uh we had a a transition with embark over to a new software. So we're now under one umbrella uh software rather than the two because we kept the legacy one from OU when we transitioned. So with that we had some bumps uh some learning curves and things that we needed to iron out. and we've been meeting monthly at the uh adult wellness and education center with some passengers to talk through those things. Um I think to date we've had three um four I think we've had four meetings. So we've had one since May and tomorrow will be our next one. So we're just keep following up trying to see if we can iron out any wrinkles that are possible. So we'll be continuing to work with them as we can that makes the most sense. Uh I will say according to our ridership report the pair transit service has gone up in ridership per service hour from 1.2 1.3 to about 1.8 1.9. So while that metric isn't the end all beall we are trying to be more efficient with the service and so far we're seeing that through the data. Um but as always we want to be as customer service friendly as possible. So that's the ironing out the wrinkles and trying to find that best solution to the issues. And then on the transit center parking lot improvement project, we uh got the east side completed and now they're working on the the west side. So, we've switched and um I think they have it all demoed. We're just now getting everything prepped and ready to go and be poured. It's moving along pretty quickly. So, we're excited to get that finally uh completed so we don't have to worry about any large potholes in the asphalt or from that that I assume it was a 50-year-old asphalt that was there when the bank or close to it when the bank was completed

for big buses to come and stop over and over again. Well, it may have not been the original either because we did find some brick pavers underneath the asphalt in some some sections. So, it was kind of interesting. I know a long time ago that corner was a car dealership from the historic pictures I've seen before that drive-thru was.

Again, I can't I can't say it enough. Great reuse of facility. We had hardly had to do anything um major major tear down building or anything. So, it worked out really well for our uses for the current time. We know it'll be um short term because if we expand like we want to, we need more space, but it's it's working out really well. And then on to the the writership. So, I feel like I've been saying this for two years now, but in a uh in August, it it might be showing the signs of slowing down on on the ridership for paratransit and fixed route. We had 43,718 rides and last August we had 42,950. So, that's less than a thousand increase from last August. It's still an increase, which we like to see. We don't want to see a decrease. And sometimes it can play into it if you have more days of the week versus last August and things like that, more Saturdays, more game days, things like that. But, uh, it's not the typical 20 to 25% that I'm used to coming to you all since we made those route changes. So, um, we'll keep monitoring it and month to month we'll keep coming back to you guys as always to look into, but maybe start to slow down.

Almost a thousand fewer car trips is how I look at that. we're still providing a high level of service u even if the increase isn't as high. I that's how I kind of look at it because on the writership for service hour for uh fixed route on weekdays it was at um 20.12. So that's that's 20 people per service hour that we're providing um uh which is very high. It it's actually a decrease from last month. So again, that days days of the month kind of play into it of 22, but anything I mean, we used to be down in the lower teens when we first started. So we're we're really increasing that ridership per service hour. And that's not 20 people from 10 to 11. That's we have if we have four buses on the route on out in service, that's 20 people per bus, if that makes sense, per service hour that we have on the street. So, and then um if you have any questions about specific numbers, I'm happy to go into the report more, but I'll go back to the Norman on demand. And for that service in August, we had 2640 rides. And actually last August, we had 4694 rides. And we mentioned last month that that service is really um constrained capacity wise. We have seven minivans. We typically have five or six of them on the street with one or two as a backup um if one breaks down or an incident occurs. So they're doing a lot of work on the street with these minivans and then it comes down to hours. So when we approve our contract with via the operator, they have a bucket of hours that they work with over the course of the year. So they're going to ramp up service on game days, Fridays before games, other special events, and then they might level it out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays when it's a little bit less, right? So less less vehicle hours. Last August, um we we made the conscious decision to really increase the service at the start of the school

year and that's why you're seeing a large decrease in the amount of rides for August. So, it's just that it we now are building off some historical data on where to put the service hours and they're trying to be more conscientious of spreading the wealth over the year, making sure that we don't come over any issues by the end of the current contract amendment. I did want to note too on just the fixed route stuff that um slow growth on the fixed route Monday through Friday, but on Saturday 50% increase on the main street route, 50% increase on West Lindsay route, and an overall 16.3% increase on Saturday service from August of last year this year. So that was a service that we restored when we took it over because you had eliminated it. So, Saturday service,

right? And so, anyway, know that people are needing to ride the bus on Saturday. That's for sure. Thank you for that comment. And Main Street might be a little bit lower because of uh it's still only 60-minute frequency where the others are 30 minutes. So, and then um East Lindsay and West Lindsay 112 and 111. They're they're great what I call mixeduse routes. They're going to apartment complexes and commercial districts. Uh they're serving a lot of different areas plus being 30 minutes frequency and a 70% increase of people bringing their bikes on the bus I noticed too. Yep. And that that's a

that's one to monitor over time because with weather it can really fluctuate. But yeah, we're we're happy to provide those bike racks on the front of the buses so people can get that first last mile or first last half mile whatever they're most comfortable with. Uh you know expanding that transit reach. Any other qu any questions about transit, public transit, ridership, anything like that? Would you like to see us go out? Yeah. Be back next month. And if you guys have any questions between then, let us know.

Absolutely. And then just Yeah, if any of your constituents have any comments or questions or suggestions about bus routes, bus stops, anything like that, this is a appropriate place to bring it up or talk about it or whatever. So, um, and just when people bring up public transit, especially about, you know, the turnpike or highways and expanding roads, we have evidence that shows that if we provide the service, we provide it efficiently, people will ride it and use it. And not everybody, but like I said, that's 43,000 rides in August. 43,000 people that weren't driving around in a single car. So, anyway, that's

awesome. Yeah, I was looking at on demand numbers and new accounts. It looks like OU's accounts for on demand have gone up. Yeah, that's um at least what I'm figuring out. That seems to be typical with the start of the semester. So four to 5,000 students graduate, four to 5,000 students come on campus. So there's just new users every year. And is the basically the total number of writers is going up or not? So this year over service43.76

that's what I uh was speaking to earlier. We we put out a bunch of hours of service last August. Um and I think that was just it was our second year. We wanted to you know get people on board and and um show showcase the service. And I think we may we felt like we had a little bit more um hours in the bucket to be able to do that. And this August they kind of tampered it down to provide more hours over the year. So, okay, that's why that ridership really decreased on on that. But we're still able we were still able to provide a a really high level of service um even though the hours were down a little bit more. Okay. Okay. Anything else? Transit.

Okay. All right. Then we'll move on Taylor to our second item on the agenda which is an update on the 2021 street maintenance bond program and discussion regarding 2026 proposed bond program renewal of that uh program. We have city staff here to talk to us about that.

Good afternoon. Scott Cerse, director of public works. With me Joe Hill, our streets program manager. He's the one that actually manages this program and keeps it running and keeps all of our streets in shape. So, you know, he's the one that fixes all of our potholes, all the curbs. He's very busy guy. They operate out of the Lindsay yard. I think everybody's well aware of that, but they do a great job. And it's that time. It's time for us to come back, start talking about the street maintenance bond. This has been a very successful program. We'll be discussing that as we go forward here. So, we're just going to kind of take a few minutes, talk about the history, where we at, what's our pavement condition looking like, are we actually making a difference? And then start to begin the introduction into the next street maintenance bond proposal that we'd like to be bringing to you guys. So, kind of look at our street maintenance bond history. Uh, this has been going on since 2005. It's been highly successful. It's a five-year bond program. uh and it's really there for maintenance of existing structure infrastructure. So existing roads, we've really put a lot of emphasis in the past on residential roads because they were being well they weren't being wellmaintained or not as well as we'd like to. And this is a way for us to really get in there and affect the roads that we all use every day. U we're doing a good job. We think maybe time to maybe start making a little bit of a shift, maybe just a little bit of a change in direction because we're starting to catch up really well. You can see uh citywide that PCI is pavement condition index. Think of that like a grade in school. 77 is really good. Oklahoma City was bragging that they have a 70 overall. I don't believe it. I don't think they're that good. Either that or their PCI is different than ours. Um no, they they do a good job, too. But you can see that nationally you see a normal PCI of 60 to 65. The reason that we have such a high PCI is this program right here as well as our regular

transportation bond program which we really go out and look at our arterials more. So just if you look there you can see that over time that bond amount it's the bonding capacity. It's just the millage that we get the the value that we get for the property tax that goes up as more houses and more structures and more property taxes are collected as well as the fact that the property values are just increasing. So you can see we've been able to go from about $11 million up to $27 million for those 5-year programs. So that also is kind of keeping track a little bit with inflation. So to say that we're really done a lot more work may not be as accurate, but we are getting more work done keeping up with inflation. The other thing we're really proud of is the voter approval rate started around 50%. They went, you know, they did a pretty good job. we got to about 65% and now we look like we're kind of stabilizing at 67 which we all know in Norman is a very good pass rate. So we're really happy with the program. We believe that the citizens are happy with the program and we would like to continue this service to our community. So when you kind of say what is the street maintenance spawn program? It's kind of a combination of multiple programs that we kind of lump together in one way to be able to go out and take care of the roads. Uh but we always make sure that every year we are touching every single ward. So every ward gets some streets touched. So no one gets to hear why are they getting all the work we're not getting any. Now we do get neighborhoods. Why'd you do that street but not my street? But there's that's a whole different problem that we have to try to address. Um it's really a balanced program. Um you know we have about 800 miles of streets in Norman which is a lot for a community our size. Um, but we break this down into these five categories you see here. Urban asphalt, rural asphalt, urban concrete, urban reconstruct, and preventative maintenance. So, you can see there on the urban asphalt, usually with that program, we're going to go in, we're going to take out about two inches the top layer of that asphalt, fix any major

underlying problems, and then put two two inches back down. So, it comes out really nice. it it it's a way to really prolong the length of that roadway without a super high expense. Uh rural asphalt, we're usually going out and doing the same thing that may be a little more uh intensive, but we do that both urban and rural. And then urban concrete, when you drive around in our concrete streets, you'll notice one panel is cracked out and busted and the ones around it look good. Well, we don't do the whole street. We fix those broken panels. So, it's a way for us to effectively go in and increase the ride of our streets and the looks of our streets and the way that they can be serviced and also to get rid of the problem areas. So, we'll talk about that a little bit more later, but that's why sometimes we may say we're doing five miles of a roadway that may really only be we're doing 30% of that roadway, not the whole thing. Um, and then we get into the urban reconstruct. That's where some of those roads when we get there and they are just beyond the our ability to do a maintenance project. So we actually go in, we remove all of the road that's all the road surface that's there. We go all the way down, we redo the base, we put new curve and gutter in and we rebuild that whole section of road. There's a lot of areas in around this area that we've done that a lot. Uh so that's a a great program for us to be able to go and pick some of these more minor streets. And then preventative maintenance. This is something that we're realizing is much more that we can get a lot of impact for for very low cost. That's crack sealing. So if you drive around, you see the little black lines all over the road. That's crack sealing. Keeps the water from getting into the asphalt which causes it to degrade much quicker or it's going out and maybe just doing some you've also seen me start doing some really thin overlay work or almost like a spray on and it seals that roadway. So it stops some of that degradation that we see over time. And this prolongs the length of that. And there's recommendations for when you touch a street and how often you touch a street. We're a little behind that, but we're catching up. But it's a program that we've really seen a

lot of benefit in. And we continue to look for new technologies to bring in in that area. When we do the bonds, we actually give a list of the streets. There's a map. So, we're not out there picking and choosing as we go. We know exactly where we're going. And that I think that's another selling point. People know what we're doing. We're really targeted. We know what we want and again we have results. We can show the success rate and we can show what we've been able to do over time. And with that, I'm going to let Joe brag about his own program here for a minute and then he's going to take it for a few minutes and we'll get back.

Thank you, Scott. Um, so current status of the program, years one through four are complete. All the construction is done and we are actively underway on all of the year five projects. So Scott touched on a couple of the different uh practices that we follow. U the two photos on your left are of before and after of Bro Drive which is in the northwest part of Norman. Uh that is the preventative maintenance program that we've we've been employing with this. The preventative maintenance was actually plugged in to the 2021 bond for the first time. um added as a new category. And so that you can kind of see how much of an improvement aesthetically it is, but it also seals all those little micro cracks. And then as we go through the presentation, we just put photos in of active construction as it was going through of these different categories. So again, year through one, year one through four complete. Um the street maintenance bond program through the last couple of cycles has had savings. Um we've been able to add locations at the end of the program to attack more mileage with it. Um and we're we're doing pretty good in this one. Uh we did see I I think everyone knows construction costs for the last few years have been pretty hard to keep track of. Um, so we're forecasting roughly four million um in sales with the program as as we kind of get to the end of this year um if everything goes well. Um and and we've done several different things uh with that in the past. Uh the last time we did uh Alama Street,

we helped supplement the 2012 transportation bond um Alama Street project to to get that one completed. And uh we have some potential uses in mind for this. Uh, one of those being possibly trying to supplement 36th Avenue Northwest or a phase of um I don't know that there's quite enough to supplement all of it, but um

since that that project is the only remaining project, the 2012 bond, uh the reason it's still remaining is we were going after federal funding for that. Uh the scoring for that federal funding changed. This would have been a lock project and when we did that program and those projects now aren't ranking where they should. Uh we have made multiple uh federal applications in other federal programs not just through our ACOG funding but we've been unsuccessful. We still are that is our that that is our number one priority if I had to pick one in our programs.

Do you guys have an updated cost estimate for that? Feel like last time it was about $12 million. Last time I remembered it started at $12 million. I knew the number was in my head for a reason. It has more than doubled. Okay. Okay. That's what I was trying to figure. 4 million is not going to I mean it's it's it's it's a very large project now. Um we've tried breaking it into originally it was one phase. The amount of money we could get through ACOG reduced so we made it two phases and we're now we can only get $7.5 million uh per project. So that now we're breaking it down into three. Um actually four. Well, four. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're we're we're digging as deep as we can. We've we have a current outstanding application in the safe safe streets for all program that we did jointly with more thinking that maybe bringing in their section of telephone road to get all the way up to 34th street more and calling it a safety corridor. We have letters from state agencies. We have letters from Tom Cole's office. We have done everything we can to try to get this one going.

Yeah, we've uh myself, multiple of Matt's other W 8 council members, we uh have gone to Washington DC every year for the last I haven't gone every year, but somebody has gone every year for the last 10 years and has been advocating directly in Washington as that

for that project. Um because it is a voter approved project, so we have an obligation to get it done, but it also is the closest route section line to I35. So if there's a problem on I35, the detour in this part of the metro would be getting off on Telephone Road 36th Avenue in Norman and going around it. Um but the criteria is does not support big widening projects any more as much. And so that's partly why as a city we've had to try to focus on we can't continue to grow the same way that we have where we spread everything out and then we have to try to widen every section line road to four lanes because it's $10 million a mile to widen a two-lane road to four lanes with curb and gutter and sidewalks and all that stuff. And then generally low density development and singlestory strip malls is never going to generate enough property value or sales tax revenue to ever cover the cost that it takes to widen and maintain those big wide streets like that. So uh other projects like Porter Streetscape, Grey Street, uh two-way almost entirely federally funded

because they are focus on pedestrian uh improvements and slowing traffic down which makes streets safer generally. But Jenkins has got approve got funding East 24th that two-mile section was funded. This one's we've been very successful historically. Yeah, it's just with this but they're

with the new administration in Washington. We're waiting to see what the shift is. We think it's probably going to shift back towards our favor a little bit. Um but yeah and and our safe streets for all application was really concentrated on that that is an emergency uh detour route for I35 or for emergency vehicles needing to access it. Other people don't realize there's actually hospitals at both ends of that corridor and we we tried selling everything we could. We we it's David and his team do a great job putting those together and getting those in. But I just want to give a little bit of background on that project.

Thank you. So, some other projects that we've we've kind of been eyeing as well. Um, again, as as Scott mentioned, we are seeing a shift in in some of the needs and and we'll get to that here in a little bit as we talk about the conditions. But, um, Robinson Street, uh, from just west of 36th Avenue West all the way over to Barry Road, um, the asphalt, if you drive through there, we're starting to see some accelerated delamination and and some holes pop up and, um, we're seeing that we we have to go out there a lot more often for for pot roll hole repair. We don't want to let that road get away from us. Um, that road sees well over 20,000 vehicles per day. So, um, another one, east and west Interstate Drive, starting at Robinson Street on the east side. Um, going up to Rock Creek Road. I'm sure many of you have driven through there. All the transverse cracking that we're seeing. Um, it's a, uh, it's an uphill battle right now. Uh, but we think that would be a really good candidate. as well. West Interstate Drive, we have some just some old asphalt uh from Robinson all the way up to Tecumpsa that um we're regularly trying to tend to, but um it's it's another one we don't want to let get away from us. But, uh, and a combination of these options depending on the again, I'm forecasting savings while I've still got a full construction season ahead of me, but um, we're we're getting pretty good at this. So, we think that's where we might land. That might be able to knock two of these off depending on on the route we decide to take. And then to discuss our overall condition. So, as Scott said, our average PCI for the city is 77.

Um, that that is good. Um, our our program is working. I have peers from all over the metro um as far away as uh lot asking about our program and and how we have structured it. Now, I inherited this program. It was created. Um, we've been collecting payment data since 1999. Norman was way way way ahead of the curve. There are a lot of cities in the metro that are just now

going out and saying, "Hey, we need to have an inventory and a condition assessment on our roads in 2025." Um, so another item that is really important here in this bar graph is the backlog number. So that accounts for the poor and very poor rating. Um, that is 2.2%. So if you think about our 800 almost 800 miles of roadway that's centerline miles of roadway roughly 2.2% falls into the poor very poor category and you can see that um all the time you drive to any one of our border roads and you know when you leave Norman instant um north, south, west, you can't or east you can't go west. Um, and so we're doing really well. The average backlog, um, talking with our our consultant that does the pavement management, and they are nationwide, have a lot of clients nationwide. The average backlog is anywhere from 8 to 12%. So, we're we're doing really good in that category. Um the the other list here, the average condition rating by road classification. That is where I'd like to kind of talk about how the program has changed um over the years. So you'll notice our rural roads have an average PCI of 80 plus. Um we're we're doing really well. Now, going through the history, talking to some of my guys that have been here for a really long time, you know, both east and west in the rural parts of Norman was gravel 20 25 years ago.

And we have a barely a quarter mile of gravel road um left in the city of Norman.

So, a lot of that pavement generally speaking is newer. we we've caught up and we are regularly maintaining um those sections as well. So the residential areas when all of this started by the way the the citywide average from what I've been able to track down over the last 25 years u the citywide average pavement was in that 60 to 65 range. it was it was getting very low and so huge strides in in our overall condition. But you'll see that some of your higher volume roadways, your arterials, your um major arterials and primary arterials are starting to get down to that mid to lower 70s. We want to try and start attacking some of those sections. Um think of a main street, right? where one area that we've dealt with a lot of popups. So the old concrete every August likes to buckle in the middle of the night and yeah um so as an example think of that section you know between Barry and and Mercedes. Um think of Robinson Street north of the golf course there. Roads like that. Uh we do feel that

brick in the middle

with this with this program um we need to start shifting and incorporating some of these sections so that we can maintain those existing high volume roadways as well uh while still running a balanced program that keeps tabs on the residential neighborhoods. So, the upcoming bond, again, we're in our final year of construction and in the first or second quarter of 2026, we are going to need to renew this program. Um, what we have currently is around $35 million in estimated maintenance activities. Um, we will hit whatever number is necessary to consider this again as a no new tax program and just continue to renew our category distribution as as we have it set up right now. Again, these numbers can fluctuate, but roughly 25% to the urban asphalt, 25% to urban concrete, 15 to rural roads, 20 to reconstruction, and 15% to the preventative maintenance. This program is focused on our pavement conditions, our our rideability, and the structure of the road. But with that comes improvements to some of the incidental items like bicycle safety features, fixing the hoods and grates on our inlets that have been damaged, um ADA improvements. When we're going through and we're doing concrete panel replacement on on a neighborhood street or even a primary street, we're going to make sure that those crossings meet ADA

and and that the ramps and everything that they tie into. Um, we also do some minor storm system repair, valley gutters, and and surface drainage repair, as well as every time we do a road out in rural Norman, you know, we we will lay lay back the shoulders a little bit, try and regrade the shoulders, clean out the ditches, and and kind of get them back into good working order as well. This table here is just an an overview of all the bond programs as they've as they've progressed through the years showing the different categories that have been added and the lane miles associated. Again, uh the green columns there are the proposed program as it sits today. The lane miles and the cost for each category are estimated. Uh we have I would say we're 95% on our on our list. We're just trying to fine-tune things and make sure that we have it all ready for you guys. When it comes to building the list, um I think one thing that has made this program what it is, it's a legacy program. you know, we're we're going on 20 years of consistency and voting cycles with the public. So, every 100% of the work promised has been completed. But the other side of that is it's data driven. So, we talk about balancing the work, spreading it out around the city. Um, it's not every ward gets x amount of dollars. it's spread out based on need and and

um really data driven. Now with that we we do um there's some subject subjective items in there. Um we have to do visual inspections. This data is collected over the course of five years. So every five years we have kind of our updated inventory. Um, and then that data that we receive from the consultant assigns a proposed maintenance strategy. So whether it be preventative maintenance, mill and overlay, concrete panel replacement, we will go out to these sites and we drive every single mile um as we're building this bond program to determine whether or not we agree with that. that algorithm um is sometimes just a little bit off and and so we we do make changes as necessary there. Depends on the pavement type. And then I want to touch on budget optimization when we talk about spreading this out. It's not a worse first strategy. So if we put all of our ducks into that 2.2% 2% backlog that we have and just focused on those, you would see all those other roads that are in good shape start to deteriorate and get to a point where we would have to spend more money. So, it's preventative maintenance, trying to extend the life of roads, general industry standard practices like overlays and uh concrete panel replacements to keep the integrity of the road intact and again prolong that life and then a portion allocated to those reconstructions that that need to be done. We also coordinate with other departments making sure that our program doesn't conflict. I, you know, we don't want to build a new road or mill an

overlay road and then two months later have a waterline trench come down or a storm water project come in. So, we try and coordinate these projects accordingly, whether it be cutting the project from the list until we have a better plan or trying to stage that project well past the time frame for any of that utility work or other improvement projects. Then I'll give it back to Scott here to let you guys discuss.

As as Joe said, this this pro this program is inspiring. We want to make sure we don't want to lose that millillage that we have. We don't want to lose that. We don't want have to come back and ask for a new tax. Uh so we've got to get a vote out in the very near future to be able to keep this maintained. Um we have always thought that with that an April time frame for the election looked very good, but Mayor Hullman requested that we take a look at could this go in a February election. So we've looked at that. What we're showing you here in this table is both alternatives and we will we'll make whatever work we got to do and we'll we'll we'll make it go. So when we look at what it takes for us to get something to a vote, we can't just say we're going to do it next week. It takes a a good time frame ahead of time. So, the first thing we that we want to do is we want to come back to council with the full program, be able to show you the map, show you where we're working on, what our proposal is and get council's full approval uh or at least acceptance and acknowledgement that we've got a good program and you're willing for us to move forward. Uh because we definitely feel that we want to make sure that we have you representing your wards and making sure that everybody's comfortable with what we're doing before we try to move forward in any case. Um, so if we were to do that with the February, we'd be coming back next month to do that. So it probably have to be the second study session for us to be able to get that that put together in that time frame because we're still wrapping up. It could be done. If we did it in April, we'd come back in November with that same presentation uh to be able to work with you and make sure that we've got a program that we all are comfortable with.

Yes, ma'am. Since it was April, would it be bundled with anything else or would I think that that's a part of the discussion that's ongoing. uh with the mayor and the clerk's office and the city manager's office uh with some other items. And I think that there's a couple of things that have some movability that could make both dates have possibilities and could could work together in a way to make it acceptable.

So, uh you know, we I think we've all heard last year we didn't have this year. Last year we didn't have as many, but couple years ago we had a bunch of elections. A couple of them were were actually City of Norman ones, but there was a bunch of other elections that year. And people always ask, why isn't this on a ballot with the city council or something else? Or in November. Um, and so, uh, especially because this February there, we will have six city council elections, could be a good opportunity to increase voter turnout, give candidates an item to run on or against, I guess. But I think a no tax increase maintenance program that's been very successful is a pretty good thing to

um and then coupled with the discussion about whether we do any charter amendments about swearing in times or pay or whatever. Um if we were a couple that could be part of that. Um I anticipate with six city council elections there could be a good chance that there'll be a runoff election at least one ward in April. who knows. So, um just something for all of us to think about and um uh and if you hear feedback or uh seek feedback about that from constituents about what they might prefer and if staff's able to get that the map together and the projects together. um don't want to rush you and miss it, but

I I think that we could commit to having that coming back in late October and that way we can meet either one of these dates regardless of how council chooses to move forward. But I think that for us and for you, uh it would be better to plan for that October time frame and it it's going to we'll we'll have to compact a little bit. we can we can make that happen and then that way that will leave your options fully open uh to whatever council's decision is on that and then and then moving forward from there um obviously February the first readings we have to have two readings because it's a it's a vote uh November and December for the second reading for April would be January and then the second meeting in January and then uh we have to have the s the city clerk's office has to notify of a election 60 days prior to so it put us in December or February. Um I will just state that for us either one is doable. Uh we do have some concern about with the February election or we have enough time to get out to all the Rotary clubs and the PTAs and the if if you all want a ward meeting for us to come discuss this at. It can compact that time frame. But

yeah, we can we can make things happen. we're we're going to we're going to follow the direction that you give us on that. And then I would hope that yeah, anybody anybody on council that decides to run for reelection that that might be part of your campaign, it it there is definitely pros and cons to kind of a short runway on a campaign like that. Um we don't mind being super busy and hitting the ground running full speed doing all of the clubs and church groups and and everything. It's that's really we're we're pretty good at that. Um and I'll be out there doing that.

It it does provide fewer opportunities for people to show up and throw rocks at you in the process. The longer it runs, the more somebody can show up and say, "Well, I think this is a bad idea because of X, Y, and Z." So, I'd rather be really, really busy for eight or 10 weeks than a little less busy for 14 or 16 weeks and have more time for people to work against us.

So, think about that with charter amendments. I don't know if we can get all of that finalized by November and get it on a February ballot, but we can have that discussion, too. But I would say unless anybody disagrees that yes, let's shoot for full council study session on the program in October and then the council we can make a decision about whether we want to go forward with a February or April. We're happy to do that. We'll work with our the city clerk's office to get that on the schedule and we'll be back next month to give you guys a full picture.

And and Mr. Mayor on that thought and and we have two attorneys sitting here behind us. Um the charter questions, we went through the big exercise with a charter review committee a few years ago and it I mean it was big and laborious. Um there seem to be a handful of questions that council may be contemplating now. I don't know if it's required and I'm looking at our attorneys to have a charter review committee. So council might be able to move more expeditiously because I think you're really talking about a lot fewer questions and number and maybe very more specific issues.

Typically I think call them call convene a charter review committee at least every 10 years and then they go through the entire thing and try to find things that are outdated or or that we think need need to be changed. But in this case, I do think I mean I'm not opposed to convening that and doing a whole thing, but there's some targeted ones like swearing in times and pay potentially. And so we'll do the leg work. We'll go as fast as you all decide you're willing to go. So if you were going to talk about creating like a Norman water utility board or whatever that would be on a charter amendment

if if we were to create a Norman utilities authority that is not us. Yes. and separate it from being the city council and it be its own utilities authority that has its own board that would could either be appointed by the council or elected even I guess in some cities but um but I think it would require a charter I don't know if it would require a charter amendment to make to take our NUA hat off and place it on an independent or a different board like the hospital authority board. Yeah, I think that would but for utilities

in the essentially the originating document for the NUA for sure. I'm not sure if it would be in our charter or not, but um we can look Yeah, we can look into that. Well, we can answer that question quickly. I guess too since charter amendments are on the agenda technically. Um we can talk about that next month too maybe or even next Thursday, whatever meeting is coming up next. Yeah. just to stay stay in front of it. We can agendaize it for a block of conversation. Just a discussion about charter amendments. Great. Okay. Okay.

With that, if there's any other questions regarding the current or future, we'd be happy to answer them. If you think of something, just reach out to me. I'll be happy to give you the information we've got and see you in a month. But just in the highlighting points, not a tax increase and is not road expansion is just maintenance of existing infrastructure we've already built and need to maintain. So, okay. Any final comments, questions about this one?

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation. Um, item number three on the agenda is vehicular detection options at signalized intersections discussion. um was approached by um a guy named Matthew Le who's run for city council a few times more too and now works for a company that um does intersection radar systems and he just asked about um how does Norman had why did we use the system we use and other cities are using this other type of system and just wanted to hear from staff kind have a little talk about why we're doing what we do and what's out there.

Certainly. And there's all obviously lots of options and options change a lot and and I've got to say that we do our best to keep up with modern technology and and try to rate it and see how it fits in with our program. We have David Rezeland here who's our transportation engineer and Brian Heiny who's our what what I traffic management center engineer. Traffic management center. I knew it wasn't capital projects engineer. That's what I wanted to say. Uh so Brian. Yeah, Brian hasn't moved with us for long. He will be running our new traffic management center that will be opening up in the very near future project happening. Yes.

Uh very exciting. It's going to really change traffic in Norman and that's going to be something that's going to be kind of key to what you're going to hear today. Uh but these are the guys that actually know about this stuff. If you ask me, I'm going to go, "Yeah, it detects cars." And I'm going to shut up. So, I'm going to turn over to them and let them actually uh share the information they have with you on this. Well, that makes for a lot shorter presentation. They just want to say that.

Uh before I get started, uh Joe in his presentation talked about coordinating with other departments and everything to make sure that he doesn't do something to a road and come in and have the a line maintenance replace a water line or something. It works the same with divisions within public works. We're not going to go out and stripe a road if we know that Joe's going to come back in six months and rip it up the road because that's just not a good not a good picture. Um, this is something that we deal with almost daily. Uh, there are so many vendors out there, you wouldn't believe how many times we get calls from somebody, hey, we've got this. We'd like to do you have time next week we can come and demo this system for you. Yeah. No. change all 170 traffic signals.

170 intersections or something like that. Yeah, it's like 158, but it it it's growing all the time it seems like.

So, a little bit about what we'll talk about today. Uh we'll give you a little bit of history on on how we selected video detection as our main detection platform. We'll give you some facts about video detection. uh some of the things we have to do to work with video detection, some of the responsibilities that we have to our citizens and what would be the impact of changing our existing system. So in terms of history uh this is you go back to uh easily to my predecessor but uh this has been probably 20 25 years ago this decision was made. Uh but for years the the only option that we had available for us for detecting traffic in an intersection was to cut a loop in the pavement and run wires that cars would drive over and send a signal to the traffic signal controller that hey I'm here. Send me a green light. That's changed over time. Um, when we decided to go with video detection, that was like the first thing that was an an alternative to loop detection because when you put loops in the pavement and they fail, you have to send someone out to get in the street and repair something in the road. Absolute worst thing you want to do to your maintenance personnel. Um, I I wasn't here very long when I said we got to get guys out of the road. I mean, that's just crazy.

And you got to close the whole lane down. And if you work on if if just imagine if this one of the two spooies Yeah. would have loops in it because right now to work on a camera we have to close like four lanes just to work on one camera. But if it was but repairing a loop in the pavement it'd be awful. I mean I would safe to say that I'd be advertising for maintenance workers all the time and that's not any fun.

Currently we maintain about 156 traffic signals. Um we are almost fully video. Uh it's taken years to get there. We have one more phase. Uh I think it's got 20 22 intersections maybe in it and that will be it will have every single thing will be on video now and not not being relying on those uh loop detectors anymore. Why did we choose video detection? Well, again, when when we did, it was really the only other option to loop. We knew we wanted to get guys out of the road, but um since that time, other technologies have come online like radar detection, like the mayor was approached about recently. And and honestly, you all of you could be approached by a a vendor somewhere. Uh and it's important for you to understand why we're where we're at and what happens if we wanted to change where we're at. so you can speak intelligently to these vendors should you be approached. Um, construction is a huge reason why we went to video because if if you're going to have a project that's going to shift traffic to from one lane to another, you can't move that loop in the pavement, but you can change the way that camera is pointed to detect traffic in the new lane. So, that was huge. Um, just the ability once we got because we were putting in fiber since 2009, we had the ability to bring that the video feeds back from those cameras so we could actually see the intersection. And that was huge whenever someone would call and say, "Hey, I've been stuck at this light for six minutes." Well, you might want to check your watch. But, um, you know, we can pull up the camera and say, "Oh, yeah. You're the third car in line, aren't you?" And they're just shocked that we can say something like that.

Are you in the white car? But they don't record in real time. So you can't get We can make them record and and we have done that to do things like traffic counts and things like that. So that it's beneficial for that use as well. I don't know if I've said that yet, but that's I think our director would have a coroner if you said prepare for storage to store all that video because it would cost us a bajillion. People do ask, I'm getting crashes or stuff and they often will ask isn't there a video on the camera at the Yeah, my son or daughter was in a collision. Can you send me the video from three three months ago and cannot do that?

But yeah, that fiber is huge. Uh being able to see the signals really can can we have a a staff of five traffic signal technicians now because we can see all the intersections that we have video detection cameras at. really makes it seem as if we have seven or eight is is kind of what I would equate that to. Um I'll give you an example. When I first came to the city of Norman, um all intersections are set up with phase numbers. Uh they're numbered 1 through eight. The through movements are even numbers and the left turn movements are odd numbers. And each contractor, if you gave them a choice, would put them all. they would install them all differently. So, we would get a call that at this intersection the westbound left turn was not getting agree. Well, the technician would have to think, what phase is that at that intersection? So, we made a conscious decision 15 years ago to make westbound always phase two and and we ch we rewired a lot of intersections. So, that was standard. So, the technicians didn't have to think. they they would know automatically if if they knew the direction and the the approach and the direction they would know what they had to do and what and maybe what equipment they had to take. So that standardization is huge. Um some of the facts about video detection um you know all the options out there have their advantages and disadvantages. There's there's no best system. Uh people that represent uh radar will tell you that video detection has problems uh because it doesn't work well in fog. Uh it has issues with sunrise and sunset depending on which way the camera is pointed. And

yes, that's true. But you learn to work with those things and you do things to account for that. Uh so it becomes less of an issue. Um, but being able to see the image and record the image if we want for collecting traffic data is just huge and that's not as easy to do with radar. Um, again the the flexibility that video detection offers us um multi-lane and turn lane monitoring uh advanced detection and analytics like turning movement counts and vehicle classification. It just scales with our growing network needs. um addressing some of the limitations. Yeah, there are things we can do uh things that we do do regularly. Uh we had something come into the action center recently where uh lady was complaining that if you were on Tecumpsa at 36 and you were trying to turn left, you weren't being you don't get a green arrow anymore, which tells us she wasn't being detected. Well, one of the issues with cameras, a similar issue with video is that during storms, they can rotate. So, we pulled up, it's our standard operating procedure. After storms, somebody goes in and looks at all the camera images. And sure enough, this particular one, we actually saw it before the action center notify us, but the detection area is over in the field and the lane's over here, and nobody's getting picked up.

It's just something you deal with. Um but you would have the same issues with uh radar as well. F the future integration with the traffic management center. Uh speaking of the traffic management center, um our substantial completion date is June 6th and we think we are about four months ahead of schedule. So we might be operational in February. It's over there. And we'll have a a unit at the ECO as That's what I wanted to make sure too since we built a whole section of Yeah, we'll have three units over here and one over there. And is it a future plan to migrate everything to there at some point?

No, because that room is that room is roughly onethird the size of the space we have over here in old building C. But definitely during emergency we're redundant to Okay. Yeah, we will we will take a technician and there there's a glass wall between the police and the and so they can see what we're seeing at the same time. Great.

Yeah, very well thought out. Um planning for the future. Uh you know, we have a significant investment in video detection. Uh, I haven't put a dollar amount to this, but it's got to be $400 to $500,000 I think that we've invested in video detection over the years. Um, staying with this platform protects that investment and it helps make sure that we have uh everything that's compatible for our existing infrastructure. It it keeps our technicians knowing one platform so they don't have to think if we were to switch uh oh is that video or is that radar and and what equipment do I need to take to respond to that call? Um well there I had it. It was nearly 2 million. Uh I was wrong at 400,000. So if if we did switch uh what we have in place now because it's everything that's in the field. It's all the inventory that we need to maintain to respond to, you know, if a storm comes through and and wipes out cameras, uh, uh, hail storms that we had several years ago, uh, drove ice pellets through the signal heads and the cameras. And you got to have a lot of stuff on hand to to be able to respond to something like that because if if you're relying on vendors or contractors to send you things,

that's just a recipe for disaster. It's very not cool. You're right. Um, so that $2 million investment is the cost of the cameras. It's the maintenance costs. Um, and again, it's the appropriate platforms to be able to full fully utilize those systems. So, you know, every platform has its own software to view whether it's video or whether it's uh radar. uh you know I I take very seriously my responsibility to be fiscally responsible. Um there are yes there are definite benefits to radar but I think the costs and and the the strain it would put on my technicians are far outweighed. So, some of the impacts of change. What would happen if we did change from video detection? Well, of course, we'd have to replace everything. We'd have to replace all of our inventory. Again, this would be over time, most likely. Um, but we want to be as as efficient as we can with our maintenance. Um, we don't want to take steps back to where we're now. It's harder for our guys to to repair things. um just isn't a a good idea. Um one last thought I would like to leave you with. Uh because we have video detection cameras in place that allow us to see the intersection, that's equivalent to having one or more additional traffic signal technicians. The systems continuous visibility free staff from unnecessary field visits, providing the benefit of additional technician capacity without the added personnel costs.

All right. I just was curious when you were talking about the cameras like in a storm getting uh off center or facing the wrong direction. That means somebody has to manually go out and fix it or are they okay? So there's not like an option where it's motorized and you just turn it back. It's it's both. Um there are things that we can do within our software where we can physically move the detection area, but somebody Yes. needs to eventually go move that camera physically and make sure it's tight. Yes. Okay. Um, can you reset the whole system all at once? back to factory settings if you

No, I just It's like if there's a certain timing or camera detection, like does it have a a timing loop if it gets off or an emergency signal goes through? Does it change the timing or is there anything like that that because it just seems like there's some intersections in Norman that you really do sit at for ages and I'm curious nobody coming crazy. I'm just curious if that's an effect of emergency vehicles throwing timing off or what could cause that and then if there's a time where you know maybe it gets reset and all the lights are the same again and we start over with I'm going to say all of the above. Okay.

Uh yes, emergency vehicles, pedestrians play heck with our ability to move traffic, vehicular traffic through intersections. Uh they're obviously both necessary components and we'll have to deal with it. But it does make it seem because of of what it does to the coordination of multiple traffic signals. It throws the the system out of whack, so to speak, and it takes a few steps, a few signal cycles to get back in step. So, it can make it seem really odd. So, you get to those places like Robinson and 24th where you've got a fire station on one side and you've got an ambulance center on the other side, they're both going through. Yeah. Okay.

It can make it look really, really bad. Did the cameras pick up the signals like the siren lights? We have separate equipment that takes care of that. Okay. How does that work? There is a uh one unit now that's mounted. It's It's usually on the cabinet corner of the intersection. It kind of just points down over the middle of the intersection and it it's got a more of like a fisheye lens and it it will see things coming from two or three blocks away. It's all based on GPS now. Um, God, one more question. I'll email you if I think it is.

But yes, you you were talking about when there's doesn't appear to be any traffic. A lot of that is is an effect of what we call coordination where we try to make traffic progress through intersections multiple times. So, if you happen to be on the side street and it's a low traffic time for the main street, it can make it seem like you're sitting there and there's nobody coming forever. I guess not necessarily forever, but I get the point. With the radar system, would it change how emergency vehicles come through? No, because it's again a very separate system. Okay. I just So, that would be able to be independent from the radar. Yes.

Yes. And then um is it possible for us as council people just to get a little remote that we can go ahead and do that? They get one. I want one. I was going to say if I can't have one, it's hard for me to justify giving them out to others. All green all the time. Can't can't say yes if you don't. That's right. That's right.

I I would like to say that we I'd say probably one of the things that we get, you know, the traffic and traffic signals are are probably some of the most common things that we get through the action center. It's very common. They they do a great job with it. Uh Brian has been looking at timing in different corridors at different intersections and trying to tweak them to the best visibility with the with what we have going. Uh but the addition of the TMC is going to make that a whole it's going to be a gamecher because the amount of coordination and information that they will have to be able to use quickly uh is going to hopefully we're really going to see a change. it'll be more uh fluid and I I think that we're all really excited about it and we just really expect that we're going to see some improvement. I don't think it's going to be what everybody wants because everybody wants green lights every direction and we can't do that one.

But but uh you know Brian's done some really good work on the Highway 9 corridor. We realized that when they did the timing they didn't take into account that that road arcs. They did it as straight lines. So the timing wasn't quite right. So we're at that level of actually looking street to street and and that will continue and the TMC is really going to be an improvement on that system. Uh flood and uh gray going towards Norman High always. It's the number one my whole life. Porter. Uh, I hear from my residents all the time, Porter coming southbound on Robinson because

I guess just right there by the hospital, it gets changed all the time. But that southbound, what do you think going southbound on Porter coming out of W six into W 4 is it seems like that light is always stalled. No. All right. Any other question? Council No. Uh my question is is anybody actually monitoring these 247 like say something happens and I was curious if anybody was available to fix those our system gives us alerts but

PD has has ways to contact our signal our signal technician as well as our sign technician if things happen in the middle of the night and yes we do respond. We have 24-hour response, but no one is actively right at a station looking and watching and dealing with it. But yes, we have 24 hours, seven days a week response to emergencies.

To council uh member Noir's point, when the remodel's done, all the equipment's installed and and it's game day and Alabama's coming to Norman, we will be able to actively manage it. even if it's on a Saturday where somebody would be sitting in front of monitors, you know, and we could look at, okay, we're really interested in about four big streets around the university and be able to make the light stay green a little longer and and and and we've talked with PD about that because, you know, right now they have officers stationed at most of these intersections when the TMC comes online. Yeah. They might be able to get move those officers to better locations to think about uses

or pay out police officers to stand on the corner clicking buttons. Uh any other comments or questions for staff about this? Okay. Thank you guys. Well, I appreciate you guys uh putting that together. It's very informative. I encourage all of our residents to watch this presentation if they want to know more about traffic in Norman and how we're trying to manage it better. Uh but yeah, thank you very much for that information. It's very helpful, I think. So, okay. Anything else? Okay, last item on the agenda is a discussion on possible uses for the Aspen Asping lot. Wish we had an Aspen Street.

So, um thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Um, I put this on the agenda. Uh, Council Member Grant and I had a conversation not long ago about a student housing project under construction uh, northeast of our parking lot. And there's a lot of student housing going in and parking is a challenge for that particular uh, builder who had reached out to see if if they could lease this parking lot for their tenants. And um this is this is heavily utilized periodically. Not too unlike a church parking lot. Well, on Sundays is real busy, but a whole lot of the rest of the time it's it's underutilized. Um, we do lease that parking lot to the campus corner merchants and Taylor can give you the details about how long that lease is and why it's important for them to make sure they've got adequate parking available during

game days,

those home game weekends for sure. Um, while we're noodling, um, what a and and and we we have lease documents. We lease out 51 53 spaces over at our Gray and Peter Street parking lot. Uh mostly to the Vista building tenants. So we we we we do leases. This is not an uncommon conversation. Um, the mayor brought us a conversation regarding a gentleman who rents a parking space from parking lot on the bottom center of that picture and operates a mobile food truck in in a parking it's in a in a non-parking space right in the corner. It's striped. You can't park here because if you were there and everybody parked on both sides, you could never leave.

Which works great for the food truck. Yeah.

He's not leaving anyway. his goal is to be there. His lease will expire from that lot in December and the landlord said, "I'm not renewing it because I have something big coming." Um he looked at um Herz Donuts right at the bottom of the parking lot and and was looking, well, maybe I'll just rent the building and move my business indoors. That building won't be available either because something big's coming. Our parking lot is in our parking study and it says uh that someday will be a parking structure. Now, when I look at the lot and and boy, a picture is worth a thousand words. This aerial view, you could squeeze a parking structure on that lot and you give up a lot of spaces just on the ramps going up and down. If you look at two long skinny parcels running east and west adjacent to our lot to the south

and the building just below that is that it's a Chinese restaurant that's never opened been open. It's been closed for a decade and and the table claws and the silverware still on the table, but nobody's there. Machine is still plugged in operationally. If if look like it's still if those three parcels were assembled.

Ah, you're talking about a really, really valuable parking structure. Sarah Kaplan, our retail uh sales coordinator, was contacted by a large development group and and she did a whole bunch of digging and a group that's got uh a resume of largecale development. They reached out. We're going to meet with them next Friday. They said, "We'd be interested in that parking lot." And I'm thinking, whatever gets built anywhere around here, somebody's going to have to park it. um if in their vision of something big to come, the conversation about we we we really need to have vertical parking there sooner than later, um I see value if if a an apartment builder across the street wants to rent a whole floor right off the bat, that makes financing parking, structure, construction that much easier. If Campus Corner said, "We'll take a floor and whatever is going to be built says we'll take two floors and we add another floor just for general public parking," that could be the coolest and most in demand piece of real estate in Norman in the very near future.

To that point of getting a developer to purch or to res lease it, could you just reserve one floor or two floors? basically that is open to any developer that comes and builds in the area. You're able to access it. So, we don't need necessarily a specific developer with a specific project coming online. We can say these so many spaces are reserved um for just housing in the area and be able to borrow against those and that's how density absolutely occurs that everybody is interested in seeing. And the other the other one was a question. Um Stephen, you probably you probably have the uh history on this. There's something related to campus corner and the tiff and center city as it relates to a parking garage.

I don't remember exactly what it is.

Parking solution which I argued to legal staff that that our parking lot maybe could have qualified. So campus corner was left out of the center city tiff because um all of campus corner is pretty much C3 zoning. No height limit, no parking requirement. and center city committee at the time wanted to impose a height limit which I don't I personally don't support. I feel like the market drives the demand and I think Valar being five stories looks fine on campus corner. nice to have a variety and uh but anyway that was the desire then but to put a height limit in place we would be taking the existing rights away from property owners to build the size they want and so the compromise was sent uh campus corner becomes part of the center city tiff when a parking structure okay uh is cons is built to address parking on campus corner in exchange for that parking structure They get a height limit.

No height limit. They they or their height their unlimited height gets eliminated and then they would have height restrictions based on where in campus corner they are. Interesting. So uh I don't know that the height limit thing is necessary honestly. Um, and I have tried to argue that our parking lot qualifies for a parking struct solution and we need to get good idea. We need to get campus corner integrated into the center city area and the tiff for center city. So,

absolutely that's a whole lot of whole lot of increment that we're not able to access right now. And so I mean I'd support a parking structure for that fact alone, let alone what it would do to open up development housing just that means Campus Corner is just it's redevelopable under the old zoning, the old suburban 1950s zoning. And so anyway, counc yeah.

Yeah. Um I support like doing away with the height limit on campus corner and I do know that one of the owners seemed interested in potentially signing on to being a part of the center city. Um could we go back and change that just for center or campus corner?

So you have two options. One would be to amend the current center city tiff. Um the exercise to amend the existing tiff is virtually the same exercise to establish new. Uh if you establish new, you get more time. So potentially you could collect more increment. Um and when you look at gosh I just I love the the tools available to us from an aerial photo. You can see several properties around that lot that are I mean they're singlestory single use low density and on what I mean that's beachfront property for the city of Norman to be that close to the university as its population continues to grow and uh all that movement into the SEC. So, um I think it would be worth a study session conversation about the existing center city uh tiff area and what either an amendment or uh center city 2 tiff would look like. uh because we've got the maps and now we're start we'll we'll know next Friday what that level of interest is and if they're going to come in and do something big and you see a lot of underutilized

parcels the opportunity to capture that increment is is before us and that that's the kind of increment that would really make uh vertical parking easily achievable. Yes, the devel the now hotel is in the center city tiff and it its construction greatly contributed to the center city tiff bottom line because it wasn't even anticipated. No, that wasn't that was not about when we did that. Yeah. So, west of university is in it. East of University to I think is to Jenkins or no to Deans Row. I think it's Deans Row actually it's kind of cut out. Yeah, it's not a straight line. We can we'll create that map for you and bring that back

ASAP wherever that conversation takes place. And our parking lot and those three strips to the south of it there, that was the origin of why the center city policy was created was there was a proposal for a six-story highdensity apartment building with parking garage and underground called the Risser project. Mark Risser, I think was his name. The developer came in

and wanted to build it from Buchanan to ASP with parking coming in off Buchanan across from Athll's six stories. Nothing like that had been built in Norman yet. And there was a pretty big backlash to a single large kind of monolith project going in on campus corner. And so that's part of what started the because that was rejected. Then we started to see these little ones pop up, these little two-story duplexes. They started tearing down the old houses and building these twostory brick duplexes based on the old 1950 zoning that required 25 foot setback. And well, was that prevali? Yes. So the sixtory doesn't sound like much with the five story.

Valari was developed uh under the existing C3 zoning. And so people always ask who approved that. I said this was built under the he could have made it 50 stories if he wanted to. So, uh, but he he built it as tall as he tall as his, but instead of one big project, we started getting these little ones and they didn't fit in really with the area and they weren't increasing density and they were wiping out the old houses. So, we were losing the character of the old houses and we weren't gaining anything. So, that's why we created the center city policy to say if you tear down the old houses, you have to build in urban form row houses and tall higher density apartments. Anyway, where did you council Hel? Go for it.

So, we wanted to make sure council was aware of big and you all get approached by different constituents with different ideas and now there seemed to be a couple of ideas all circulating around that piece of property. We wanted to bring to you what we knew um at the earliest possible convenience and um after our meeting next Friday and we get some idea about what is anticipated. One of the three big property owners in the area saying I don't want to renew anybody's lease because it's happening.

So the catering truck that approached the mayor he his space is good through December. I think by December we'll have a really good idea about what all the interest is and if we can come up with a solution to satisfy everybody's interest everybody in Norman's going to win and it's going to be really really wonderful for the experience campus corner on game days I mean Tennessee Alabama Michigan uh from Boyd uh you're shouldertosh shoulder walking up to the hotel it is packed full of bodies and an amazing sight to see and we just hope they're spending all the money they've got uh before we send them home into defeat. um that campus corner if if you move over a block onto ASP, it's shoulder-to-shoulder.

And um we know parking is they're parking everywhere and walking in. Um if we can capture the ability to park more, at least park for the uh Monday through Friday regular volume of of higher density residential and commercial shopping. Game day is always going to be chaotic. That's part of the ambiance of uh game day on campus corner. But uh it's starting to

look to us that our our parking plan that says that's going to be a structure the the time may be before us to uh start moving in that direction. And we do if if we've got opportunities for current construction to say I I I'll lease long-term X spaces, we can start working on that. Now, our current lease with Campus Corner merchants, Taylor, if you can describe what that what that looks like. So,

this is the second football season we've done that um with Campus Corner. They reached out to us, asked if they could utilize that lot. Previously, we had been increasing the rate of the lot to $20 per day and then $25 for for game days. So, uh when they approached us, they wanted space for their vendors and for uh vehicles to park. It's not customer parking as far as I know. So that's what they lease it from us and they do it at $25 per space per game day. And of course by February all that activity will be gone for the year.

So that's the that's the lease. It's just for the seven game days. Uh I think that amount totals to about $1,200 that they paid to us over the course of the football season. And obviously for an apartment builder, they're going to want seven day a week parking because I'm sure their residents don't want to have to move the car and park somewhere else on a

and so that's a part of we've been talking with the ask lot uh of possibly providing lease spaces like we do the Grey Street lot. And that's a part of the rub is if we keep the agreement with campus corner ongoing, how do we interact with leases with the game day parking? Um I would we've been working in the background up trying to update our parking management plans. So, uh, I I feel like we haven't talked with this group about that in a long time, but we actually have two. We have a downtown one and a campus corner one, and we've been looking at a draft to combine them because a lot of the intro is the same and things are the same. So, we would love to come back to a CP&t and talk about that update that does a lot of little changes here and there,

um, as well as some of these other things we're talking about because we've discussed the asblot leases. who discussed uh decreasing the asp um hourly rate maybe from a dollar an hour to 50 cents an hour to adise people to park in it. Um and then like the Grey Street lots 25 putting one of those big signs that's shaped like an arrow and lights up it's like parking but there's just a lot of things that we need to clean up. I think the last update to the management plans was in 2019. So there's just a lot of things to update that that we need to do but also to continue this conversation. Well, just like with the lease spaces on Grey Street, like during normal music festival, they can't park there that day. Right. Right.

Um, so I don't know, maybe there's a caveat to lease them, but these seven Saturdays in the fall, you're not going to be able to use the first come, first serve that day. We only charge the Grey Street lot Monday through Friday hourly. So on the weekends, it's open to whoever. Um, so we have a little bit less uh conflict, but you only Okay, gotcha. But to your point, normally Musicfest starts uh Thursday afternoon. So there's a Yeah, there's a little bit of but conflict on that lot. Uh a lot of the Vista building employers, they just recognized MusicFest is chaotic. So they tell their employee, "You're working from home today because nobody's going to be able to get to park when they if they showed up to work." So they've they've they've adjusted because

and to everybody that's listening or council, our two parking studies that we currently have on the books. They do have a lot of parking structures uh thought out in downtown and campus corner. They did the Lego exercise, right? Put it here, put there, and this was one of them. There's a I think one more that they envisioned in campus. Well, the first Presbyterian parking lot um was the number one, I guess. So, but yeah, lots of ideas. And I mean, maybe we lease out that top row, the parking lot and chest it out or something. That's so that's why I'd like to come back to CPT if we can. Maybe maybe next month that the mayor agrees. Yes.

And um because the Grey Street lot leases are on a calendar year if we get that uh update in front of you guys, talk about it and get it um approved. We could possibly start providing asphalt less as early and we lease at least a short term. Yeah, we lease 50 some odd out of 151. And right now, uh, we've had requests to lease all 151, which would be great for the businesses, but not great for customers. Yeah.

Um, and maybe for us to understand, well, the customers are coming in 5:00 or after for evening dining and bar and restaurant activity, those work pretty well together. Um, but it it that the the value of being able to park at Gray and Peters is growing and there are building owners that have zero parking on the property that they own and would be thrilled to death to be able to sign long-term parking leases. Their buildings all of a sudden go up in value, which is also tiff beneficial to

and to the t the food truck Taco Villa, he's interested in if we'll lease some of those spaces in our lot to him. so he isn't forced to go out of business on campus corn. So anyway, council Hinkle and then Gainsbury. Um, so the Chinese food place that used to be there was called Awong's Kitchen and every time you called they would hit a gong into the phone and say thank calling Awang's Kitchen, which was kind of neat.

But do we know why that has been why that hasn't been? Um, when we had CAR's Act money, when the pandemic first started, the federal government gave us a bundle of money and said, "Send this out to the business community who who they're struggling because of uh business closures." That company applied. They met all the criteria and they cater. They were still you could call and they they'd cook. And so, I don't know if that was the commercial kitchen from which they were catering. Um, and I don't know if it's still available for catering today. We haven't they were hanging on to it and it may take some finesse to get it

looking like a uh my understanding is it looking like it's still a functioning business and a real restaurant. The thought from the owner is that it makes it more valuable and when this big mega project comes someday, they're going to buy it all out and they're going to pay him more because that looks like looks like a working business still. Um, this again is something that I want to bring through the finance committee, but creating the parking trust where we can issue revenue bonds for these projects and use the leases and things that we get to prop up the next one and the next one, the next one.

And and your honor, I think timing wise, uh, for us to agendaize that, um, detailed discussion to bring in bond council and and the city attorney's office, uh, I think the sooner the better to establish those trust documents. Um, so we will initiate that conversation on the next finance committee agenda because I think the time is before us. Yes.

And then my last thing is, you know, if we do end up doing something like that or leasing, um, maybe creating a partnership with either the downtown merchants association or just something that the businesses that want to participate in, but they can validate parking. So it brings people in their doors even if it's for something small and then they validate the person that leaves and the parking spots open again. So in in our flowird is do we have the technology

internally we've been talking about uh and just a little background we we transitioned the parking operations from in within public works but from traffic to us and we've kind of been learning along the way and and looking at things. we've had this validation code module uh or option in the system and as far as I know we we haven't really used it. So, what you can do, it's very flexible and Jason can correct me back there if I get it wrong, but uh we a business can say I want to put in 50 bucks and then just give out a code. Put in one two three four. It charges on the 50 bucks to that business. Um that's that's kind of the idea, right? I want to pay for 50 hours worth of parking and I'm going to give out the code. Now, somebody gets it. Anybody can use it, right? Um, and I think you can do it by certain times, certain windows of of certain days. It's very, like I said, very flexible. We can do it in the software ourselves and then we could issue an invoice to that business and collect the 50 bucks or whatever. So, it would be additional staff time things we have to monitor if it really takes off. But that is something we can do with our pay stations that

brings you into the 21st century all of a sudden. So when you when you go up to a flow when you go up to a pay station, you can push one or two, right? There's validation or hourly parking. It's always it's been there. We just haven't really utilized it. This conversation added on a a question and everything cuz like in break time when you go there for a ball game and stuff like that and you go down and park by the Sonic and everything over there, you basically have to run into the Sonic, order something, take your ticket out and run back to the validation, you know, person that's sitting there and they staple your receipt from Sonic to the thing, put in the drawer and give your money back and everything like that, you know, right there. sales tax happens.

Well, basically whatever business, you know, then at the end of the day, I guess whatever business they have on the thing, they pay for that validation ticket and everything expert business and everything. That way the business that if Sonic gets 99% of the business, they're paying 99% of the fee that night and everything instead of roundabout. And then how much do we That's not really a fair system for here though because if you're going to the game and you pop into Ollos's and Ollos validates your parking for the entire time you were at the OU football game then that's not really a cool way to do that. How much on average do we charge for at least for one spot if we leased over a month period? I think

that's something we've been talking internally at the Grey Street lot. It's $450 a year right now per spot. Per space. Yes. Um I think the original logic uh was it was like a 25% discount. And if we did the same thing, you can start playing with the numbers, but uh you got to do the costbenefit analysis. Is somebody going to pay $1,000 for an annual lease on the space? Maybe. Are they going to pay 1,500 if you start doing the math just to put it in context and everything over there right behind the Tar Mars where the hospital leased that parking lot there. Yep. They was paying $400 for every spot a month there and everything also for the

And if you think about it in a structure now you're not just paying for now you pertain for covered parking and boy in the heat of the summer or in the threat of hail value goes up. And in the Grey Street versus ask lot right now the Grey Street lost 25 cents an hour. That's also something we want to talk about with the parking management plan update and ask lots of a dollar an hour. So when you throw in those different 25 cents an hour versus a dollar an hour, your annual permit, you know, proposal changes dramatically. So that's where we got to find, okay, what do we really think people were willing to pay? And the street parking on campus corner is a dollar an hour. And people, I think, view that as, oh, that's premium parking. Park in front of the building I'm going to

pay a dollar for that, but I don't want to pay a dollar to walk half a block. But whatever. Right. I'd rather park there, pay a dollar circle the block five times. Is that casing? Yeah, that was cas.

Um, yeah, I was interested in the validation code option. Um, especially because we had talked about putting Flowird downtown and there was resistance among the business community, but I get hit up for like, can we increase the hours or amount of hours of parking at particular businesses? because then they're like if you're a restaurant and somebody's having a party during the day, you know, they're there for over an hour and then they get a ticket or if they happen to be there when uh parking enforcement is coming through. But I could see them embrace embracing maybe a Flowbird system where if somebody's coming to the dentist versus Beantock or whatever, pay for what you use,

right? Uh or a hair salon, you know, that's one that you could be there two, three, depending on what you're doing, four or five hours. Um well then council member Grant that that from your flowird and I never thought about it that way. Uh while I'm sitting in Jimmy John's on campus corner my flowird apple will say do you need to add more time and you I mean you could be in the dentist chair and say yep add another 30 minutes. I got more work to do and not risk the ticket and you're still paying for what you use. I if boy if the downtown merchants would gravitate towards that solution we could solve even more parking challenges for sure. I was going to say the whole point of putting Flowird in downtown was to help pay for a parking structure and the Grey Street bought, right?

Yep. It could. I mean, that's the We've heard from a couple of the property owners that said if you build the structure first, we'll fully support paying for parking on Main Street. And I thought I if it's a trust issue, I get it. Uh you'll see vertical construction. Maybe it doesn't even have to be done yet, but if the parking structure is going in, I think you would be in a much more comfortable position to say everybody's going to pay to park downtown just like they pay to park in Bricktown, just like they pay to park in downtown OKC or Campus Corner Camp right now. And I don't have any problem keeping campus corner full of cars.

I'll say to the So we the really the the the benefit of paid parking is turnover. You know, it's not necessarily to make money off of the parking. is to try to get the businesses more business by, you know, I I could spend two hours in here, but I'm going to spend an hour because I don't want to pay more, right, to get people moving. So, if if it is a longer term, I think the why like council member or mayor Holman said the premier parking on street uh that's a policy decision of it you can only pay up to two hours or one hour at a time. But the parking lots like ASP or Grey Street currently uh Grey Street you can pay for all day 25 cents an hour really cheap. So, if you were going to get your hair done or you had a party, uh we might want to mark it better to go park all day and park many hours in the Grey Street lot and then it might be a little bit further walking, but uh you wouldn't have to worry about parking enforcement at that point.

Probably closer than walking to the front door Walmart because there's a there's a little bit of push and pull if you increase the amount of hours people can pay for on the on street that you're not getting that turnover that the restaurant wants. Uh, and there might be a big party every once in a while, but they really want as many people they can get in and out at a time, right? So, yeah, I was thinking about a very popular coffee ground. I'll just say it. Uh, where they, you know, have students or community groups come set up and they're there for many hours. Um, and that ownership said that they wouldn't mind a flowird system because it would make their life honestly easier. And that's how we got it in campus corner. Um and again David can uh he was around when we did that but they wanted it to be metered. Right. So that's why we went

and their number one complaint was that their employees are parking in front of this space and they have nowhere for their customers to park. But Grey is also a great example. They're literally across the street from a 25 cent an hour parking lot. So if people wanted to be there for half the day, it's

I was going to say when all that construction was happening, I got them in touch with the standard because I know the owner is not opposed to shared parking and so for during, you know, the work that was happening there, some of their employees got to park in that lot, which if you're open mostly mostly during the day and that other business isn't really kicking off until the evening, it has a natural flow to it. And that can be something the businesses that have parking, they can talk amongst themselves about how to um share parking if they want to do that. Yeah.

And something else we need to probably do better marketing about with our Flowber system is as a business, you can go in and create a business account. So just like your personal account on your app and you can actually add users that you want to pay for, employees or whoever. So it's separate from the validation option, right? Where people are just putting in a number. You can you can actually go in and make a business account and add or take away people as as you see fit and pay for that parking. You got to remember they're on there because I think we had a we actually had a business that had a a employee that they fired or they they left the business and went to do something else but they were still charging that and we couldn't we couldn't we couldn't refund them because it wasn't our fault. But anyway, just something else to consider. Council,

uh just a general plug again. It's kind of what I was saying a minute ago about if we're talking about parking structures on Grey Street or this lot. Um I think for me it's less about providing businesses or their employees more parking but facilitating an atmosphere that creates more housing in the area. So if a developer is able to put another 30 units of housing on his lot instead of 10 parking spaces because we've got a solution that we can put those 10 parking spaces in the building. I didn't even think more people, more housing, just more patrons living in the area more valuable than it's a means to an end. I mean, whether or not it's for employees or not, I think it's just

we really need to be looking at all these opportunities to increase housing and density in the areas because that's who spends money. Absolutely. Okay. So definitely come back uh whenever you guys are

finance committee will be our next visit with the development of the trust and I don't know if it's called a trust indenture document or whatever you all call it back in the uh attorney world and um we'll start bringing you back that strategy and in the visual it makes perfect sense that we would in that effort ultimately attempt to assemble uh those little skinny parcels next to it for an ultimate parking solution. So, we'll start evaluating ownership and interest in their participation in the development of a parking structure. Those are just park people use those as parking. It's all busted up and there's giant holes just park there. Yeah.

Um Okay. Any final comments, questions? Anybody? Okay. Thank you, staff. Thank