City Council - Regular Meeting

Lindsay, can you hear me?

Yeah, we can hear you.

Appreciate it.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, I know that like right away. Thank you guys can go back.

That was pretty good. I do think my favorite screen.

You did it. Click join them. There you go.

You are.

You are. You are. You are. All right, we're going to go ahead and get started.

We'll call to order the City Council regular business meeting for Thursday, June 18th, 2026. It is 6 p.m. Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Council Member Borjan?

Here.

Council Member Brown?

Here.

Council Member Kuhl? Council Member Meineke? Here. Council Member Porter? Here. Mayor Phillips? Here.

I'm here as well. We do have a quorum, so we'll move on. Item two is Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Item three is approval of the agenda. I'd like to move, I'm going to move item 8H to come in front of 8A tonight. Would anybody like to move any of the consent agenda items to the regular agenda? Hearing none, can I get a motion to approve the agenda as amended? Motion. Second. Motion by Brown, seconded by Meineke. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right, both same. That motion carries. Item four, superintendent of schools for the Norwalk Community School District. Sean Holloway is here to talk about bond referendum that's coming up for having me there thanks for coming

I appreciate the council's time this evening to just allow me to go through the school district's bond referendum. I'm not sure if I should face the crowd or face you guys. I'm not sure what is proper protocol there.

You can face us. They can hear.

Perfect. As I go through this, if there's any questions from any of you or the audience, I'd be welcome to take those. So what the school district's looking at is a bond referendum. The election day is November 3rd of 2026. And I'll just go through what's on the ballot. But what we're asking voters to vote on come November is a $65 million general obligation bond issue. And so the projects that are on our list I'm probably going to go a little out of order here, but I like to kind of give our bookend projects first. So what I handed out to you on one side kind of shows a timeline, and then the other side just gives you a little bit more information. And so really what our largest project is the next elementary building, but that's also one of the later projects on the timeline. So for the elementary, we're Budgeting right around $42.5 million. So I'll talk about that a little bit more as we go through. The other bookend project, which would be the first project on really the timeline, is the new transportation building. So you may know, you may not know that... The city of Norwalk has leased transportation building space or your public works space to the school district. And that lease has been in place for quite some time. And it runs out in 2029. And most groups I talk to say, well, the school district's growing. The city's also growing. All of you are aware of that. And so you've been great landlords to us. But at the end of the day, you want your space back. And we appreciate that, right? So the district has purchased land for a transportation building. So if we're at the Public Works building and we're facing north, we purchase the land directly west of the Public Works building. So we'll still be neighbors, I guess, and should work out as long as the referendum passes. But we're budgeting right around $10 million for that. It's about 30 acres that sits there. We plan to use the front half of that you know, for the transportation building. So again, those are kind of the bookends, right? And when you think about $65 million, I've just talked about the vast majority of that, you know, right around 55 million of it. So then some smaller projects in there. We have about $5.5 million for HVAC renovation. That would be at our OVIET Lakewood and our secondary campus to bring that HVAC up, you know, up to, you know, I'll say today's code. So most of those units are well over the 20 year lifespan and will need to be replaced. The next, what I would say smaller project in terms of dollars and cents is safety and security. So we're budgeting right around a million and a half, $2 million for safety and security for our buildings. And really that's kind of a three-fold process for us. So the first part of that is an AI weapons detection software to work with our current camera system that'd be monitored by a third-party vendor 24-7. And so really, as we go through all of these safety security items, what we're trying to do is just create more time than it takes a bad person to get in our building or decrease the amount of time it takes for local law enforcement to be notified of that bad person, right? So the AI weapons detection would decrease the time that our people would be notified of an event like that. Then the second piece of that is some window shields for all of our buildings. And so really, again, that's just trying to delay someone from breaking through a window, through a door, those types of things. Just trying to give us more time to react and get the plan in motion. Then the third part. And my I laugh at myself because I can't remember the official name so even in our presentation we just call them floor anchored barriers or barricades, but I always say you know when you go to target and the big red balls that are sitting in front of the doors right like. You know, they're not just there for looks, they're also there to prevent a car from driving through the front door. And so we would have barricades like that, you know, obviously strategically placed at entrances to all of our buildings. Again, just to try to delay, you know, a negative event. So we have the bookend projects, transportation building. I just talked about what I feel are 100% net necessities in terms of the HVAC and the safety security. Talked a little bit about the elementary, and I'll come back to that in more detail. And then the other projects you'll see on the list really, in my mind, have to, on the timeline, have to follow the elementary building. And I say that because... You know, while every project's important, that elementary building, you know, we have to ensure that we have dollars to do that. So some activity projects and some parking then would be, if you've been to the baseball softball field, you know that that just received a makeover, right? So both fields are artificial turf, new concession stand bathrooms. So project would be then phase two of that, which would be an indoor hitting facility for baseball and softball. Another activities project would be artificial turf practice field, and then accompany parking around those areas. So again, All are important for us and all are important for our students at varying levels of our system. But again, that elementary building has to take priority, in my opinion. So when we talk about the elementary building, last year, School board members, board of directors spent a considerable time debating pros and cons of staying grade alike, meaning all of our third graders go to the same building, all of our fifth graders go to the same building, or going to a neighborhood school concept. And the... Great alike, I would say, is a little unique to Norwalk. I mean, there's a few other places that have that. But that has served us, I think, as a community really well for a long time. There were some equity issues within buildings that I think played a part in it. But ultimately, our board of directors decided to stay great alike. So when you think about what our great configuration would be then, Really for us, our capacity issues, where we're going to see the first problems or concerns with capacity fall in our Oviatt building and then on our secondary campus. And so the new elementary would be a solution for both of those. So starting kind of with our youngest learners, the Oviatt Elementary, which currently houses pre-K, kindergarten, and first grade, would then be pre-K transitional kindergarten and kindergarten. Orchard Hills then would go one, two. The new elementary building would be three, four. Lakewood would be five, six. So we'd be pulling sixth grade off of the secondary campus, again, to alleviate that capacity constraints there. Middle school would then turn into seven, eight.

And then the high school would stay as is.

When we think about the new elementary building, I would say it will be built with the same concept that Orchard Hills was built. And so while it won't look identical to it, I will tell you that as a district, there was a ton about the Orchard Hills building that we like. And so we're going to push those same qualities into the new building. But really what I'm talking about is the new building, like Orchard Hills, will be built to be utilized down the road as a neighborhood school. So some of the classrooms will have bathrooms in it for our youngest learners, and it will be ready to go flexibility-wise if the district ever chooses to ultimately go neighborhood schools. So when we think about like our Lakewood building, that's not the case. We don't have, you know, spaces currently for kindergarten type learners, right? And so that would have, you know, that was part of that decision that would have had to been retrofit there. And then really our Oviatt building, just a number of square feet per classroom. is considerably less than what it is in Orchard Hills or Lakewood. And so, you know, that was some of the concern in terms of that building as well. Talk a little bit about our levy rate. So, you know, the natural question, I think, for, you know, for... you know, anyone is, how do we go about funding this project, right, in this referendum? So since 2013, the district has maximized our debt service levy at $4.05. And, you know, I think that's a pretty common practice for growing school districts, right? And so For Norwalk, we've been in a position where we've had to go to the voters about every seven years and ask for them to vote on a general obligation bond. And so our debt service levy then is ultimately how the taxpayers pay for those projects, right? And so that 405 has been maxed out since 2013. And I always like to start this off, and I'm going to tell you this is not an apples to apples comparison, but The strategy that the district has used over the years, I think, is pretty similar to what a lot of homeowners utilize, right? So the Holloways are in debt. We have a mortgage. I have a truck payment. Angie has a car payment. And there's only so much money each month, right? And, you know, so if we can, we like to pay extra on any one of those three things, right? Well, Angie's vehicle has 0% interest, so it seems silly for us to pay extra on that versus a house or my truck, right? And so we've just tried to prepay down our debt as fast as we can as a couple. Well, that's essentially what we've done as a school district, right? And it's, again, it's not that simple, but as a district, we've really worked hard prior to me being here and then continuing on. uh you know to pay down that debt at a faster rate because we know as a growing district then we're going to have to go out borrow more dollars so we will ultimately utilize that same 405 and so really you can think of that as is just a continuation on that tax that's been around since 2013. went through a lot questions from the council I have one.

Yep. And I'm sorry, I should have prepped you for this, but can you quantify or let us know the effect on property tax levy that the Microsoft data center has that's in Moore County?

Yeah, so I'm not going to probably give you a great answer there because I don't have the exact numbers, but What I've heard a number of times is like when you look at our competition gym or the impact right like that project would not have been able to happen without the tax valuation from that data center coming on. Yeah. You know, so really what you know, we're, we're heavy residential. Uh, again, I'm preaching to the choir when I, when I look at this group, right. Kid rich, kid rich. I tell people we love kids, but we also love buildings that don't have kids in, you know, so really not be homeowners or, uh, or, or, uh, you know, uh, commercial, but, um, Yeah, I mean, what ultimately happens, right, is as our tax valuation goes up, then that would either allow us as a district to go out and bond more dollars, or we'd be able to borrow that $65 million at a lower levy rate. And so, you know, for example, I think a common question is, well, why not a high school levy? You know, I've gotten that four or five times. We as a district don't have the bonding capacity. We can't borrow enough money to build a new high school. You know, so, you know, you talk about like that data center or, you know, any commercial development, right, that adds, you know, to our tax base is ultimately good for us as a school district. but then really also for our taxpayers, right? Because then that brings down the overall levy rate, so.

So a new school is 55 million, a new high school is 100 million?

Yeah, you know, I said 100 million, you know, earlier this week on the podcast with Luke and, you know, my board president, you know, said, well, that might actually be more like 150. But, I mean, ADEL right now is in a project and it's well over, you know, well over $100 million. So, yeah. I mean, just as an example, like Orchard Hills, I think was right around 25 million. I mean, so just between then and now, you know, is kind of that inflation that you're looking at. So overall tax rate, I'll just hit on this real quick. So in 2016-17 for the school district, that was at $20.48. Currently for 26-27, we're at $16.57. So I think the district has consistently tried to bring that down when we could. And again, if I had the visual for you, you would see that the 405 is steady through that entire process. And so for us, really, then it's more just our general fund type levy that keeps coming down. And honestly, that's, I mean, kudos to the city, right? Because, you know, to what I said just a little bit ago, that's that example of as the tax valuation on our tax base has increased, that allows us as a district to, you know, bring that tax rate down as well. So other questions? Question?

I didn't see anything on the timeline about, like, do you have an estimate of potentially when neighborhoods would come up in conversation again?

In terms of neighborhood schools? Yeah, so, I mean, I'm going to talk here, like, well into the future, right? So, this is... I'll be past my time. And so, you know, whoever the next person is or the following person is maybe might have a different idea. But I would say our current plan would be this next elementary building and then a new junior high building and then the next elementary. And that next elementary then, I think the current board would say, would force a hand on neighborhood school districts.

So at that rate, like your 21 years from now, then if you say kind of your typical seven, seven, seven, I think that's, you know, a pretty good plan.

And so again, you know, for, for us at elementary building, you know, probably has kids in it and, you know, that 20, 30, 31 time range, you know, so then I think you can think, you know, 15 to 20 years out from there.

So I know that there's some talk about better graph thinking of, like vehicle traffic with the schools and having multiple kids. I don't personally know, but I have friends who have multiple drop-offs at different schools. I guess for the next 21 years in that example, are we, how closely, I guess, or how much are you guys depending on us to think about the growth and what we're trying to do with our roads and limiting that traffic, I guess? Do you guys, I guess this might be a question for you there too, maybe, or anyone that can answer, but I guess do we work? I'm just thinking like the traffic's already bad. If we keep going, we keep adding one, two, three more schools before then going to the new stuff out. You can probably take that into consideration for the roads and any.

Yeah, and what I would say is the city and school has quarterly meetings. Um, so, uh, you know, between our business manager, myself, uh, Richard sleep, who's our building Browns. Mayor Phillips, you know, Luke. Couple council members typically come right so. That's that's, I think our, our vehicle for having those types of conversations, you know, I mean, I can tell you just. Yesterday or the day before I received an email from Luke and talking about traffic around one of our schools and you know wanting to make sure schools involved in that decision or police those conversations, right, so I Mean I I will a Little bias because I'm part of this but the relationship that's at school and the city has and our police and our fire have I'm not sure it could be be a lot better you know so there's there's good people in all those spots and we work really well together good communication uh not telling you we don't you know there's times we don't agree but we you know there's the communications open and so um yes so let me put on my my old hat my old school board hat um

There are reasons to do grade-alike configuration. The school district needs to do what's best for the kids, not necessarily what's easiest for the parents. By having the grade-alike configuration, the teachers are able to collaborate better. They can address student needs better. They can train better. So that's one of the reasons why.

I think it maximizes our teacher resources, right? I mean, you know, at the end of the day, then we have even class sizes. There's definitely pros and cons.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, we could have a debate and you could tell me all kinds of really, you know, positive reasons to be in neighborhood schools also. You know, I mean, that essentially was what our board of directors went through last year because we for sure know that traffic and parent pickup and drop off is one of the main deterrents.

So putting on my city hat, what we did with Orchard Hills to provide the amount of stacking that's there is fantastic. There's a good deal of stacking there that you can get parents in line and in and out. Right. And While there are some issues that have arisen because at Orchard Hills, I think we have some plans that once they come up on CIP, that will be addressed. I think there are plans coming up. Wayne, correct me if I'm wrong as far as adding a turn lane or two at Lakewood Elementary to help with stacking there as well. So we're trying to get We're trying to make changes on the city side to make it easier for the parents.

Great. Thanks.

I would also add that, you know, one of the, I always tell people it's hard to buy land that's not for sale, which is, you know, ultimately.

Ever. Write a letter. Write a dear seller letter.

But having two access points is awful helpful, you know. Yeah. orchard hills for sure has the most stacking like the mayor said and and is probably our most most congested uh along with lakeland right you know oviatt is the oldest and but but then traffic can flow two or three different ways and i'm always amazed that they don't have more issues there so uh you know having two access points on the new building will be really important as well

Maybe follow up on the buying land that's not for sale. You brought up parking for baseball and softball complex. Is there a thought about high school parking I think is pretty full, especially when there's events and parking. Is there thoughts around parking? I just thought of this as we were talking. I know there's that land across the road from the the stadium. I don't know who owns that.

We call it 528 Center Street.

I don't know if that's available, but has there been thought about additional parking?

We own that. That, I would say, is all in the conversation. If the money would be available, what at least I would like to do is move our tennis courts to a different location and then utilize that parking. I mean, because at some point, when that building becomes a high school, that that's, that's a pretty widespread there. And to me, that's just a location where it's could utilize that school parking, but then, you know, baseball softball. So yes, I mean, parking is always part of what is rolling through the process. run up to these guys? Sure, if you want to.

Any questions from the audience?

I appreciate everyone's time. Thank you for giving me the floor and letting me go through that. Thanks, Sean. Thanks for coming.

See you later. All right. Item five, proclamations. We have a park and rec month proclamation for the month of July. And then I'm going to come down there and read this one. So, uh, that's the fire department here tonight because of this. So, uh, this is proclamation. Proclamation dated June 18, 2026, says recognizing community response and support following the May 8, 2026 apartment fire. So whereas on May 8, 2026, residents of Norwalk experienced a devastating apartment building fire that displaced and impacted multiple families and individuals. And whereas the safety and wellbeing of our residents were immediately protected through the courageous and professional response of the Norwalk Fire Department and the Norwalk Police Department. And whereas community members, volunteers, churches, nonprofit organization, local businesses quickly united to coordinate assistance efforts, including donations, temporary housing, supply collection and distribution, transportation, pet assistance, and other critical support services. And whereas the city of Norwalk, which is recognized the outstanding generosity and leadership demonstrated by fairway stores, the Norwalk Area Ministerial Association and Angie Kroll. We lift Job Search Center and Sue Wilson, great young Chevrolet. and many community members who selflessly gave their time resources and compassion to those to assist those affected and whereas this collective response reflected the strength kindness and unity that defines the norwalk community now therefore i tom phillips mayor of the city of norwalk do hereby express sincere appreciation and gratitude to all first responders organizations businesses volunteers and residents who assisted and the response and recovery efforts following the May 8th, 2026 apartment fire. And witness whereof I have here unto set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Norwalk, Iowa to be affixed this 18th day of June, 2026. I just want, I ask these guys that come here today, you guys, I'd like you guys to realize the professionalism of the staff that you have. They're being able to provide equipment to these guys so that they can do their job. It's just what I heard from them, I'm going to save you guys from talking, is that after they got dispatched and they were on their way, the police department was actually there at the fire and saw flames and smoke. They were able to quickly call Westcom and elevate the fire to an alarm at that point in time, I believe it was the first working first alarm. Okay, working first alarm, which also dispatched Wes DeWine to our location as well, right? Yep. And then as the fire progressed, after they got there, they saw what was going on. They were able to call Westcom again and get Indianola, Carlisle, Mark Warren. Wes DeWine was already dispatched, I think. Okay. to that location.

And Urbandale.

And Urbandale. So the other thing we have to realize is that we have a great chief who is facilitating the training of our firefighters. They were able to get on site. And I think there were some... There were a bunch of people inside the building working the fire, and then they realized, from what I was told, they realized that, okay, we need to get back outside the building and start instant command and get that going. To be able to do that, realize that in the middle, and so that they could more effectively handle the situation at hand was great. And finally, Westcom. Westcom is an added expense for us. Talk to Ed Kuhl. You can find out why we moved to Westcom when we did. But the benefits that we get from Westcom and having those services is huge. And I would encourage city council to talk to the

police department, police officers to see what we benefit and what the benefit you get is from us. Okay?

So thank you guys for being here. We appreciate your work and everything.

Thank you.

Can we get a picture with you guys?

Sure. I'm in shorts.

Well, I'm sorry.

Yeah. All right.

Next on the agenda is welcome of guests and public comment. Thanks for being here tonight, participating in your local government. At this point in time, we'd open up the dais. If anybody wants to address counsel for a non-agenda item, we'll give you a three-minute time limit on that. Realize that we can't take action on those tonight since they aren't on the agenda, and taking action would be a violation of open meetings law. Don't want to do that. Also, if you'd like to comment on any item in the consent agenda, now would be the time. So, have any takers that want to address counsel, either here or online? Seeing none, we will move on. Item seven is the consent agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Motion. Second.

Motion by Brown. Seconded by Porter. Kaylin, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Beinecke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes.

All right. That motion carries. Item eight is old and new business for consideration, discussion, and possible action. We're going to do eight first. It's a first reading of an ordinance amending the Municipal Code of the City of Norwalk, Iowa by amending Chapter 136 regarding sidewalk regulations. So we had a resident address council at our last meeting about the replacement of their sidewalk. The new requirement is to increase the width of the sidewalks from four feet to five feet, and this is due to ADA requirements. However, His perfectly good driveway has the sidewalk area set at four feet, and current requirement is to remove that existing sidewalk and remove the approach and then replace it with a new approach and a five-foot sidewalk. So in some places around town, Mr. Cook's residence being one of them, This could cause the slope of the approach to be pretty steep. This could be a problem in the winter with ice. It could possibly be unusable if they have a car that kind of sits slow, like when Gary buys a Corvette sometimes. So, Luke, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Yeah, so... You mentioned the ADA requirements. The ADA doesn't require a five foot sidewalk everywhere. We adopted in 2014 a standard five foot sidewalk across the city just for consistency standpoint. They normally require a five foot by five foot square every so often. And the reason for that is to allow for people with disabilities, wheelchairs, those types of things to be able to pass one another or pass someone walking. We can't use driveways for those because they don't meet other ADA requirements. So our solution as a city to that was let's just have all sidewalks be five foot. We've consistently applied that since that came into effect in 2014. We do run into scenarios where folks had been replacing a driveway in an old area of town or replacing an approach where they've asked not to go to five foot. We've enforced that in the past of we'd like you to put it at five foot. The idea being that incrementally over time as we go to five foot and things are replaced, eventually everything becomes five foot and we meet those requirements. the request before you today would be to allow a waiver so that a four-foot uh sidewalk could go back uh in the spot of a existing driveway um that wouldn't be a Problem as long as we have five foot in other areas right like if we're still kind of meeting the intent of of that Kind of passing space. I believe this is what they call it so Pretty simply this is just a waiver that would give staff the ability to let those be four foot through the driveway in those instances and then just just for clarification when you say consistently applied and

that is for those people who have come in and requested a permit to be able to use their sidewalk. We've done it without permit. We just don't know.

We've had multiple situations like Mr. Cook's scenario that we've been firm on saying make it five foot. And they have when they've permitted them. There are instances where folks bore a sidewalk back over a weekend and we never even knew they did it and There you go.

All right. What discussion questions does council have?

Well, I think it was a really good solution. I liked it. And just for clarification, you put it right in there, too. You're tearing out your approach, and you're going to feel a fight for it. Thank you.

My understanding of, and maybe I'm, and so this might, I guess, maybe need to be tweaked related to that. My understanding of this scenario was we were just replacing the sidewalk through the driveway. And so if you're just replacing the sidewalk to tell someone to go to five foot, now they've got to cut their approach, or they've got to cut their driveway, and then that messes up the geometry. If one, someone, usually what we see, most permitting we say is, I'm redoing my whole driveway from the street all the way back. In that situation, I'd have the opinion that I understand that you don't like that there's five foot sidewalk there, but there shouldn't be a practical reason why you can't do that because you're replacing everything. The other ones we see are sidewalk and driveway to the house, similar type thing, or sidewalk and approach. So, We took the approach from a staff perspective. If you're doing anything that's moving either one of those other options, we would probably still want that to be five foot. However, if you're just replacing the sidewalk through a space, I don't think it makes sense for the city to say, well, guess what? You also have to either remove part of your driveway or remove your approach to be able to accommodate this five foot sidewalk. So that's the way the waiver is written out. If I misunderstood the scope of the project that was brought to you guys last week, I apologize. I wasn't here. But what was related to me by staff was that we were just doing the sidewalk.

No, I'm fine. That's in your. Right. I'm fine with that. I know it was specific. So I'm good with it. I just want to point that out. that you turn out the whole driveway, you're going to go to 5-4. So I just think it's a good solution in general.

Anybody else? Do we have any public comment? Come on up. State your name and address.

1400 Park Hill Drive, North. My only comment on that also is, is there anything we can do to ensure that commercials and the city itself starts following the same policy? For example, the fire department, city hall, whatever that building is called, that's a four foot sidewalk that was replaced just recently. And it's four foot and right across the street, the dental office is four foot. And then the intersections on Cherry Parkway that I think the city did were under four foot. They're like 44 inches. And so, yeah. If the city's doing work, I would really hope that the city's following the policy. And same with commercial.

Yeah, we've had discussion on that. Yes, we're going to start following that policy.

Thanks, Gary. And then we have something around cul-de-sacs where they're now optional, right? I think I was talking to Luke about that at one point.

Is that true? They were never actually optional. We had... I mean, you guys want to get into history. I told them I wouldn't talk much. It's not my fault. Um... There was a point in time where we didn't have – we didn't kind of force a sidewalk around the cul-de-sac bulb. There were some current concerns about snow stacking and all of that stuff, but our code never said that we could do that. So there was like maybe three or four subdivisions that were approved from like 2010 to 2014, three of those years when I didn't work here, that got approved without sidewalks in the cul-de-sac.

Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think we just have, like, I know of some of those situations, and it looks awkward where we have homes that there's cul-de-sac sidewalks, and then one that doesn't, right? And, like, we need to be consistent to that point, right? Whether it's city sidewalk, residential sidewalk, cul-de-sacs, we need to follow it, right?

I can feel confident in saying that for the last 12 years, we have been consistent in new development.

Okay. Any other public input? I get a motion to approve the first reading as presented. Motion. I'll take them. Kelsey. All right. Motion by Porter. Second. Second by Borjan. Any further discussion? Haley, would you call roll?

Council Member Borjan? Yes. Brown?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes.

All right. Motion carries. Item A. It's a resolution approving a parking waiver for property at 1060 Madison Street. So back on December the 18th, council was asked to approve a parking waiver for the Dunn Industrial Condominiums. At that time, we were told that a basketball operation was going to use that facility for practices only. There were not going to be any basketball tournaments at that location. They never used more than the 27 parking spaces at the site. Prior to receiving a certificate of occupancy, the occupants installed flooring, put a few porta-potties inside the building, held practices, and had events at that location, which exceeded the 27 parking spaces. Due to this, on May 7th, Council revoked their parking waiver and referred the waiver to our Planning and Zoning Commission for review. Planning and Zoning has met and decided the site needs an additional 30 parking spaces. And that can be accommodated by striping the current concrete on the south side of the building PNZ indicated that if that happens they would recommend granting the waiver This waiver is based on the owners and operators Representations and agreements that the building occupancy will not exceed 215 people and parking demand will not exceed 57 spaces This parking waiver is not an entitlement I have the authority as mayor to temporarily revoke the parking waiver for violating the terms of this agreement. If council then determines the number of spaces doesn't meet the needs of the business, whether the business changes, parking is reduced for some reason, or other modifications affecting parking demand occur, council can revoke the waiver at council's discretion. I believe this means the revocation can happen without prior notice to the owner or operators. This is a non-industrial user operating in an industrial area. We don't want to make it hard for this business to operate, but as things build out, there could be a lot of truck traffic on Madison. The industrial users should not have to worry about navigating around a bunch of parked cars on the street, as well as people navigating to those parked cars. Finally, if Council approves the waiver this evening, it does not become effective until the issuance of the Certificate of Occupancy. So Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

That was a very good summary, Mayor. Yep, so where we're at now, we went to P&Z with the item, had a lot of just open discussion about different ways we could solve the parking issue, the kind of obvious easy one i think is uh adding some striping in those loading bay areas um the the plane you see before you is their full build out they have only built out phase one which is the northern drive the northern building uh on the top of the screen and then the kind of loop road that comes around and then all of the paving that would be between those two buildings they've done so they've got a lot of that paving in there so um providing more parking where those loading spaces are to the north up against the building and then still providing uh drive aisle access and emergency vehicle access shouldn't be a problem When we approve the original waiver, we kind of looked at like the space and how much parking was required for the whole space as a full fully built out. and the whole space being used as a rec system. And that gave us a kind of ratio of parking stalls per occupants. And we use that kind of as a basis when we were giving our initial waiver of 27 saying, okay, do that, but we wanna limit your occupancy to, I believe it was 120 persons at that point in time. Updating it to this 57 spots would update the occupant ratio to 215.

Discussion questions from council?

We're there at the time?

No, I don't think we know. Sure. So, that's a good question.

One of the things we did chat about at our P&Z meeting, one of our P&Z members actually had a daughter that was doing some cheerleading things, classes that happened to occur at that facility. So we had a little firsthand knowledge at our P&Z discussion. It sounded like, you know, one of the situations that arose and I'm not going to say I'm going to have a solution for this, but you have, say, cheerleading going on there where you've got kids that show up throughout the week and do their practice and do all that stuff. At some point, those things always end. And then folks like to have a showcase or, you know, bring everybody together to celebrate it being done, right? And I think that's likely what occurred in a situation where you had a lot of people there at once. So we had some discussions at P&Z about is there a way to accommodate people The reality of the way the buildings use 90% of the time, but then also understanding that maybe 10% of the time, there is a need to have more people there because, you know, you want people, you want kids to go celebrate graduating their cheerleading class or what have you, right? Or do a performance for their families, right? But that's the tricky thing when we do any of this stuff, right, is when we do building review and plan review, we tend to have to look at the maximum, which would have told us of the 101 stalls and would say that 400 people can be in that space. Most of the time when they're doing trainings and stuff, you're not going to have 400 people there, but you can fit 400 people in it. And if mom and dad and grandma and grandpa come to see their kid do something, maybe you do it with that many. So... We didn't come to a solution to that at P&Z other than recognizing that it was a potential issue. 60 stalls or 57 felt like a pretty reasonable amount for getting some other stuff there with the site and kind of seeing how that worked out. You know, Madison Street's a public street. I, from a development standpoint, don't have too much concern with folks deciding to park on Madison Street. I mean, that's what it's there for, for overflow parking. That's what all the other public streets are. The tricky thing with these... kind of one-time intense uses on a weekend in one of these areas is we all know and we experienced it with our own facility before it was fully done. People park where they're going to park once they can't find a spot. And maybe that's not too big of a deal right now, how it looks out there. But as the mayor mentioned, more industrial users show up. you start to get some friction between the people parking on the street even and people wanting to park in other people's parking lots and all of that. It's something we definitely want to keep an eye on, I think. But I don't unfortunately have a good solution for you all for that specific scenario.

Mayor, I have a question. So this makes sense, right? I think the question I have is they get an occupancy for a minute and it doesn't have to even be this place, but all of a sudden we have 400 cars here. We have a thousand cars at the baseball facility, right? Can't hold that many. Like what happens, right? Like nothing, right? For the baseball, for... Greg Young Sports Campus, yeah, nothing happens there. Right. So, like, us just taking it away, right? Like, it's... I don't know. I don't know if we overreacted. I don't think so, right? Because there were a lot of cars there, but, like... I've been to an event. I know Jason has as well. All of a sudden, both parents have to drive. All of a sudden, there's a ton of cars there. We didn't plan for it. It is what it is, right? And so I think to Luke's point, like we're doing the best we can here. And I think that's what we have to. And we know we're going to have incidents where there's going to be way too many cars in some situations, right? We've all been in situations, right?

I guess one thing I would note comparing it to our facility versus this scenario is we Understand that there's some community thought that we don't have enough parking out there. Our facility has the number of parking required by our code for what we would have. Now, that could still be not enough parking in a scenario where mom and dad both have to go because one's got to run somewhere, right? But when we do these kind of unscientific calculations of how much parking something needs, you know, the grade young sports campus, we can confidently say, well, it met the number that we had. Whereas we, so we didn't give ourselves a waiver for that.

I think if they had, if they would provide the number of parking spaces that required fire code and not ask for the waiver, I wouldn't have any problems, you know, because yeah, they have, but a little bit of it, it's out of their control too.

Right. Like, because they didn't know Jason and I and our wives were all going to take, like, we're going to take four cars there to that tournament or whatever happened. Right. And so I'm a little bit like, yes, I want, I want these businesses to succeed and have that.

Yes.

But also I need to do it the right way too. Right. So it's a little chicken and egg here too. Right. So.

Well, if, It was represented that they were only going to have practices there. Agreed. Right. And they had more than a practice there. So that's, yeah.

Before an occupancy.

Before an occupancy.

I think, yeah, most of this was generated by personal, by the entry into the building with the kids before occupancy was granted.

Well, and having porta potties inside. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

So that's what we've got in our house. Yep. I'm about ready to apply for a parking.

Luke? All right. Any other discussion or questions from council?

If I can speak as the building owner here on Zoom.

Yeah, I'll open it up for public comment.

Jared Housman, I'm attending via Zoom here, 1060 Madison Street, owner-developer of this. What I want to kind of talk to, I think, is what Jason, not sorry, Jason said, I'm sorry I'm on Zoom here, so I'm forgetting everybody's name. Andy, thank you, is like, This was built as industrial, yes. But if you guys decide to hold us to 110 parking spaces, this whole business and this whole lease becomes invalid. And we lose a whole business and a whole use. And I'm back as developer trying to refill the space, which could be six months, a year, year and a half. It might even go into foreclosure, quite honestly, guys. I'm just being very honest with you. We have $20,000 a month of bills we as owners have to face every month that sits vacant. And so if we don't get a parking waiver, we are potentially back to square one. I want to also reiterate that Mayor Phillips, I think your comments were a little inaccurate because when I'm planning zoning and Luke, you can speak us as well. They didn't require me to add 30 more spaces to the back. I offered it because I wanted to utilize the parking we have there. I offered to build 30 more spaces, add two more doors because I want to have parking available for this site as well. And they agree that was a great option. That was an option we had available to us. even the start of this whole project as well. I still will reiterate that I think that this parking waiver is different than the building occupancy permit. I understand there's building occupancy issues. I'm not denying that, but I want to reiterate that that is a separate issue separate department and i'm working on the parking making this available as well and i i do think that it was a little bit knee-jerk reaction to take it away and now we've even made it better we've added 30 more spaces as well if you require 110 then this building's going vacant and honestly we don't know how long it'll take to fill up and we've just alienated a whole lot of business in norwalk so that's all i have have you take any questions

I just confirm with Jared. I mean, we did have a very open collaborative discussion at P&Z, so that's correct. You know, we were talking about what could you do. He offered that up. P&Z's recommendation ultimately was do that. So, yeah.

But I'll go back and say that it was represented to counsel that it was going to be practices only. no events, no tournaments, and then they turned around and they had an event, a tournament that required more parking than the waiver said. I will just reiterate. That's why the waiver was revoked.

And I will reiterate, Mayor. Go ahead, Mr. Manicke, if you want to speak. I'll wait.

I agree with the Mayor. That's my recollection, exactly what the Mayor said.

I just want to reiterate that as far as we know, that is still an alleged overuse of parking. There was still it's a verbal complaint by a citizen. There was no documentation of it. There's no pictures. They didn't even know what day it was or what time it was. So is that a possibility? I'm not denying that. Yes. But I still want to reiterate that it was a verbal complaint. It could have just been people there for practice parking on the street.

Well, I also had confirmation from a PNZ member that they had an event there. So.

I'd also just add that our building officials talked with the Norwalk Athletic Club folks, and they've noted that maybe not a large event, but they did tell our building official that they'd been utilizing the space since February. So without that occupancy permit, we're still reviewing the permit, actually, as we spent today.

Any other public input? Hearing none, can I get a motion to approve the resolution?

Motion.

Second. Okay, so motion by Brown, seconded by Borjan. Any further discussion? Caitlin, would you call the roll?

Councilmember Brown?

Yes.

Beinecke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes. All right, motion carries. Item 8B is a resolution approving amendments to the Central Iowa Water Works 28E-28F agreement. So the proposed amendments revise provisions related to board-weighted voting procedures and meeting notices. It formally recognizes the treasurer officer position, establishes two-year terms for committee chairs, revises the composition of the finance and audit committee, Announce provisions governing the allocation of Central Iowa Water Works tax-exempt bond issuances among member agencies for federal bank-qualified designation purposes. Luke Nelson, I'll turn it over to you.

I really don't have anything to add, Mayor. You did a great summary.

Thank you. Any discussion, questions from Council? Any public input? Can I get a motion to approve the resolution as presented? Second. Okay. Motion by Meineke, seconded by Borjan. Any further discussion? Kayla, would you call the roll?

Council Member Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 8C is resolution approving architectural amendment in Hackney Hills, Platte 1. So Platte 1 is where there is a problem with the retaining wall above Stormwater Detention Pond. The developer is suggesting a change to the slope above the detention pond, and this will cause a change to the look of the units that will be built above that detention pond. Council, when originally approved, wanted a uniform look along Beardsley with the front of the units facing Beardsley. I'll say the units to the east of this area look fantastic. The proposed units will look differently. but I think they look okay. Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

Yeah, that's the gist of it. Going to give you a brief idea of what's going on. We do have the developer and their engineer here. They will be able to talk much more intelligently about the retaining wall than I can. But the main thing you need to know is we had a retaining wall for the detention basin out there. You may have been by. It kind of sunk down. They did a repair. It did the same thing again in the same spot. They spent... the basically last six months, six, eight months, studying it, trying to figure out solutions. Can they make that retaining wall work? And what they've come to is that it's likely just not worth the effort and time and money and all of that to make it work. The solution is remove the retaining wall, create a slope back to the housing units that they had planned. The challenge with that is the retaining wall existed so that they could get grade up to that kind of first floor level of a house unit. So with this new grade slope, the detention still functions how it needs to, still does what we need to. We maintain a proper slope on that detention hill, but we end up with... a walkout unit, if you will, where it's a kind of lower level front door look. So I wouldn't call it necessarily a walkout like you'd expect in a house, but kind of front door area that goes into a lower level. The garage would be on the second level coming off the back. You can kind of see there in those profile views kind of how that looks. So the three-story view is what you would see from Beardsley. Got some architectural elements there to help it match with the ones that are already built and kind of keep that front door look that we were wanting to go for as it faced Beardsley. So from a staff perspective, what we really need to do is approve those new architectural renderings for those units. They do meet our code requirement, and we think they're meeting the intent of providing that front door look as well.

Okay. Tony, I got a question for you. So based on what you've heard and seen out the site, if the soils there are shifting or aren't solid enough to hold up a retention wall, can you tell me how those same soils are going to hold up the weight of like a five plex unit that the developer's proposing?

Well, I think that's a fair question. So, and again, For me, there's two parts to that question. I guess in general, they're certainly going to be dealing with the same soil types. So, number one, to construct these units relatively close to that failure area, I think, number one, the builders and their, who's ever involved with the builder and evaluate the foundation needs. beneath these structures and incorporate any knowledge they have from the soils geotechnical engineer for the issues that we have in that area. So certainly they're gonna deal with the same type of soils. I think this is a little bit different. Now we have soil issues all over Norwalk. Even in this area, for example, in Saddle Ridge, there's homes going up to stabilize the foundations of this area. So in general, we would expect that type of diligence for these structures, even more so for the size of these structures, of these structures in that area. And I think, and so that's a possibility, you know, I'm enough removed from this that, you know, I can't answer that, you know, And that's that the soils below that retaining wall that are supported in that retaining wall are at a steep angle down to this detention base. And so when I first went out and looked at this retaining wall, I expected to see the thing bowed out and retaining wall blocks falling over because of the lateral soil pressures against the walls after a large rain event. That didn't happen. In a lot of ways, the retaining walls really did. What failed is the underlying supporting soils for some reason that I really don't know. You know, I'd be speculating, you know, why that occurred. Maybe an underlying condition related to groundwater movement, something like that. But those soils have a steep angle. All soils have what we call an angle of proposed. And that's the steepest angle of those soils. time friction of the soils, the cohesionness of the soils, the weight of the soils saturated with water, lots of factors like that. So once you start reaching that close to that maximum angle that those soils will support, you can have sloughing or And when those soils, you know, this aren't kind of representing that steep slope and this being the retaining wall, as that soil starts sliding, it pulled the wall down vertically. Now, I don't know for sure with any degree of certainty why that happened, but that's different than a confined soil bearing that the structure's gonna see.

So I would be concerned, a little bit concerned with these being within its own influence.

What I mean by that is the way that the structure and how those lobes are are distributed into the into the soils below and so those those are typically distributed on an angle down you know so they need to be far enough away so they're not so that if there's not they're not within the zone then for us by by this failure and i could extend further back to the south you know we don't know so the short answer is we we would expect billions the fares that we see close to that.

Okay you want to answer a question too?

Yeah well while Paul jumps up there just for go ahead well we do as part of permitting like we we just require a geotechnical report of every building site in town like so that's just part of what we require to make sure that they're because of our soils evaluating what they need to do every structure will have that done. So this will have that done as well. We don't do an engineering review of that, but we rely on them to hire an engineer to make sure those structures they're building can be accommodated under the soil conditions.

Paul Clawson, Civil Engineering Consultants, 2400 86th Street, Urbandale, Iowa. Tony is exactly right. So for months now, we've had several geotechnical engineers looking at the slope stability here. And the best we can tell is that to get these units where they were, and they were placed where they were, and there was no basements for two reasons. Sanitary sewer depth, we couldn't service a basement, and the developer didn't have any basement units that they had to put here. So with that being said, we built up the elevations 20 feet. So we put 20 feet of fill over the existing soils. And there was shale underlying that area pretty common in this area, so when the groundwater runs across the shale that creates a slip face, so it could not support that 20 foot of fill. What these basement units are going to do, it's going to remove 12 foot of that fill. And we've had the geotechnical engineers give us a factor of safety that they find adequate for these units on that site. But yeah, there's been a lot of looking into investigating this area.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Discussion, question?

I'll get to you in a sec. Sorry, yeah. Go ahead.

Any other questions right now? Yeah. So it's been stated the front facing the street, so it looks nice. I'm confused by that one picture we had on before. It looks like there's two sets there, that one. Is that?

Oh, that's just the different elevations.

Okay, gotcha.

I'm good. Thank you very much.

Jennifer Ellison, Jerry's Homes, 3900 Westtown Parkway, West Des Moines. Mayor Phillips and Council, thank you for your attention on this matter this evening. As has been mentioned, we did work on getting a second opinion. We want to do the right thing. We want this to be a successful development. It's taken way longer than we ever thought, but we did a lot of investigation. We've got a geotech team that's been working with us and This is our best option moving forward. They're certain of it or they wouldn't allow us to do it. They will be a part of our team as we move forward with the grading and construction. There's some additional tiling that will be required just to make sure there's proper drainage around the basements. And we also will be over-excavating down to the stable soils where it slid. So there's going to be some additional work done to that area as well.

All right. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. Any other questions from council or discussion or public input? Anybody want to make a motion to approve the resolution as presented?

Motion.

Second. A motion by Borjan, seconded by Meineke. Any further discussion? Caitlin, would you please call roll?

Council Member Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Yep. Item 8D is resolution approving the site plan for 729 Main Street. So Fairway Franks would like to add a sunshade over their outside seating area, which requires a change to the site plan. Just as an aside, I didn't know Fairway Franks had outside seating, so I will be using that in the future. But Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

Yeah, okay. Not a lot of details. That picture up there is not fairway Franks. It is just an example of the type of sunshade. A little silly, we think, from a staff perspective that it ends up being a site plan amendment, but we ran it through all of our tests, and it did. Essentially, structurally, all you're doing is putting up a couple poles and then stringing this canvas across. We don't have an issue with it. It doesn't really violate anything zoning-wise, so it would be a nice, good shade structure for people hanging out on that patio.

Which I will be utilizing, simply. I do have one. I've actually gone in the back door as we went over there afterwards. If they're doing work on that in the deck or stairs, are they at code? That would be my only question. If they're doing this, do they need to make sure that's all good?

I will check with our building official. I don't think so because they're not making a change to the deck.

And I don't- But it feels like they're doing this work to use that structure. I want that structure to be safe and good, right? So that makes sense.

Yeah, I totally understand. I don't know our ability to require that upgrade as it being an existing structure that was, I'm assuming, used by Pirate Pizza as well. So typically, when something exists, it's allowed to continue to be used. But I will certainly kind of – this hasn't gotten to our building official yet, so –

you're kind of upgrading them. I don't know if these poles are attached to the deck and other things that are on there. Right. But if you're doing that work, I feel like we want that work to be safe. Like I'm, I'm a frequent over there. It's a great place. But let's make sure it's safe as they're doing this work.

If I may, I just sent a message to the fire marshal to make sure they know, because I know that they did take special interest in the sunshades at Cooper's to make sure that they're rated properly and all of that stuff. So I would assume that there is going to be some level of oversight here from buildings and fire for this edition.

Thank you. Motion.

Well, one second. Motion by Meineke, seconded by Brown. Any public input? Or further discussion from council? Kaylin, would you please call roll?

Council Member Brown?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borja?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 8E. There's a resolution approving the site plan of Main Street School. So at our last meeting, council approved the final reading of an ordinance regarding some exceptions to yard requirements. This project is the reason we realized the ordinance needed amending. The school is going to add some footpaths and egress structures on the south side of the building. Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

Yep. So that's really why we did that zoning amendment recently. So this is just the next step of that, of making sure that that building has the proper life safety features to be able to utilize for a school. And that is the addition of this fire escape structure. So with the new zoning change, it is compliant.

Questions from council or public input? I get a motion to accrue the resolution as presented. Second. Okay, motion by Porter, seconded by Brown. Any proposals? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you call roll?

Councilmember Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes.

Motion carries. Item 8F is a resolution of repealing the Norwalk Community School District building permit waiver policy. So, In November of 2018, City Council discussed creating a policy around waiving building permit fees for the school district. At this point, staff is requesting a repeal of that policy. So Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

Yeah, just, you know, as we've done our reviews of the things the city provides to different organizations and things, we wanted to bring this permit waiver policy back. We adopted that in 2019 to give some waivers to some school projects to kind of help them out, the idea being that, you know, good schools are good for Norwalk, and that's still true today. But with our building permits, every permit we issue, the cost is supposed to cover our ability to do the work. So by not charging permits for a school, which we do spend a significant amount of time in a large project like that, we're really just kind of spreading that cost across other permits. um which we really shouldn't be doing um so what we're requesting here is to uh pull that waiver policy back um and just charge the school typical permit fees as we would anybody else on their upcoming projects um we have waived around 150 000 in permit fees uh in the last uh well, six years since we enacted the policy and spent about that much staff effort and time inspecting those. So I'm happy to take any questions. We did, Luke Nelson, city manager, did have meetings with Sean Galway, who was here earlier, talked through it. They understood the city's perspective on it or staff perspective anyway, and they were fine with proceeding with that policy. I'll let Luke add anything else that he might want to.

I think that was a good explanation. Thanks, Luke.

I just thought of this question, so sorry. I'm surprising you with it. What do other communities do?

Most... Last time, I didn't look at that as part of this thing, so I don't have a clear answer for you today in 2026. In the past, there was about a 50-50, but it seemed like most were trending to charging their school district. And a lot of it depended on... kind of what the school district encompasses. I mean, the other way to think about it is the school district's taxpayers aren't just Norwalk taxpayers, right? They're county taxpayers, they're coming taxpayers and West Des Moines taxpayers. But when we waive a Norwalk service for that, we're kind of putting that burden back just on our taxpayers. So in a way, this kind of helps redistribute that back out to all of the folks that benefit from those new schools being built and those improvements being made.

And, you know, with recent legislation, with property tax policy, it's... We're just having to think about that stuff.

Yep.

Yep.

And as we heard this evening, lots of exciting school work to be done, and we're certainly good partners with the school. Yep.

Luke, what do we do for ourselves? No, I'm kidding.

Cover our costs. That's all we can do. What do we do for ourselves?

We've charged permit fees before in the past and then just transferred dollars from a department. We've done that on our big projects. I don't know that we've done that on smaller work. When we've had electrical work that's need be done, we still permit them so that we can have record of the stuff that we've done to our buildings and everything. But as far as...

I know it's kind of a shell game, right? But it feels like we're saying now school, you got to pay them. Like we should make ourselves pay them, whether it's sports complex, library, et cetera. Right. Right. And it's just everybody pays them if we have to move the shells around. Right. Right. We're doing it. Right.

Yeah. Correct.

Right. Other discussion questions from Cal State for public input? Again, a motion to approve resolution is presented. Motion. Second. Motion by Borjan, seconded by Brown. Any further discussion? Kaylin, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 8G. It's a resolution approving the preliminary plat of Rosewood Estates. So Rosewood Estates is a development area south on R63. just to the south of the North River. So the original plat was approved the year Brian Baker graduated from high school. 1979. Luke, I'll turn that over to you. I was going to say me, but since you're here, I thought I'd target you.

Okay, so... Rosewood Estates, we had a comp plan amendment to contemplate was this something we were going to let go through. We did end up changing that to single family from a medium density and a kind of commercial flex space. So the developers proceeded with developing a plat. They've got their, I think, 43 lots here. We did have some discussions at P&Z, primarily related to kind of two different options. As part of a development that's outside of the city, when we do this thing, we can require the development to follow city standards. And one of our things for city standards says when you don't have access to sewer, we want you to install a dry sewer, with the idea being that we're eventually going to be there, and we'll have sewer there, and then we want to be able to connect up your dry sewer. So in talking with the developer, and I believe they mentioned to you all during the comp plan process that they were willing to put that in and to follow our standards and everything, they did ask that they be allowed to flex that expense, and they felt like it would be better utilized for their development to install a curb and gutter street, a typical urban street section, and just provide easements and assessment agreements for a future sewer. Our code provides us the ability to give a waiver for that. It actually comes down to our city engineer and myself. It's kind of how we feel about that. So really what we hinged on was what's the serviceability of this? Like, can we actually get sewer here? There is the North River sewer interceptor, the one that we're extending as part of our industrial work, runs north of this area. There's a good stretch amount of sewer that would be needed to bring it down to this area, and it would have to cross underneath the river. There's... fancy siphon technology that Tony can tell you more about if you really want to know. But what you have to understand essentially is you put a crossing underneath the river and that crossing would have to have flow in the pipe from this development to be able to function, right? It's like flushing a toilet. It won't flush unless you put enough water in it. And so the engineer, we asked them to go back and do an analysis of that, tell us, can you do it? Will it work? And their review of that was based on those 43 homes. Wouldn't it create enough volume to make that work? The ability to serve it via gravity is a huge question mark. There's always the ability to put in a lift station, though. We've explored that idea in the past in other areas. We know that they're continual maintenance things, maybe not a long-term solution that we want to do. I know Public Works tends to not be a fan of them either. So there's a question as to whether or not we would ever serve this area if we annexed it with it being developed this way. So we just kind of put these options out there to the Planning and Zoning Commission, talked about the pros and cons of them. I'll run through those real quick. Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend not requiring the dry sewer and proceeding with a curb and gutter. They felt like that would create a better development, and they felt like that dry sewer might be something that just sat in perpetuity, and there was really never a benefit to it. Pros of doing the dry sewer in a rural cross-section, again, all these would be private streets, so we would expect the city not to take ownership of them at some point in the future. But requiring that dry sewer, that follows the intent of our code as it regards to the scenario. So it's the black and white thing to do. That's what we require. That's the black and white of it. It would be in the ground if the owner did decide to do it. annexation of this area and it coming into the city is likely not going to be in the timeframe of any of us being on council and development directors and public works directors and everything. So those people might have different opinions about the viability and the purpose of bringing that into the city. So having a dry sewer there would let it be served. And it makes that decision to annex it a little bit easier, right? Because you know that you don't have an expense. Even with easements and assessment agreements, you still have to go and install a sewer through somebody's yard, right? So, again, the cons of that, though, is it doesn't look like you can be served very easily. And probably the best way to serve it would be a lift station, which we don't tend to like to have right now. Not putting it in, lets them make an urban cross section road, which is a little bit nicer look, a little bit more formal of a neighborhood, probably increases the value of the homes. We do have that option again to waive it. And again, there would be assessment agreements put in place at the final planning stage where each person that owned one of those properties would agree to saying, I'll be assessed for a sewer if the city ever puts it in. So while we would know that that would be a thing we could do, the practical realities of that, right, would be 40 years from now, we go to those folks and say, guess what? Here's your bill for the sewer. Why didn't you make them install it in 2026? Right. Why didn't the city do that? Why didn't it, you know, and so there'll always be that nickel and diming of all of that. Um, People will use those yards as they see fit. There's no city there to review what they're putting in their easements or not. So there'll be trees planted in them. There will be sheds put in them and playgrounds and swimming pools and things that could be problematic, which again, we would have the right to install that sewer there, but the practical realities of it get tricky. At the end of the day, we discussed all that stuff, had a good discussion at P&Z. They ultimately recommended proceeding without the dry sewer, having that assessment agreement in the abstracts, and going to an urban cross-section road. I think Under either situation at the same thing in 2026, would there being a role subdivision happening here? The likelihood of the city deciding annex that I would say my opinion would be we don't touch that until we surround it. There's several developments in. and around Norwalk that are that way right now. And so this would be another one of those. It's frankly probably the farthest one away, but those are areas that we want to try and stay away from. Regardless of what we do there, there'll be 43 homes out there that'll get mad at the city for whatever we decide to do near them.

so that'll be a fun thing wayne or tony does dry sewer besides future sewer pipe provide any benefit like i know we we talked a lot about sprinkler systems and road problems but it doesn't help with any of those because it truly just for when that happens it's there for it right yeah that's right and i think luke gave a good good summary and so

I really struggle with just the black and white requiring a dry sewer in an area outside the city within our planning area. It's something that I like to look at in detail. These homeowners today are going to have to put in an on-site treatment system that's going to at that expense, adding a dry sewer through the yard is gonna probably double that we may or may never use, may or may not be connected. So I think it's important for us to look at an area like this and not just, you know, the information that Luke provided, but in general, you know, what's the chance of us wanting to extend the sewer across that challenging area across the river? And what else can it serve besides these 42, 43 homes? You know, so when across there, first of all, it's not very big. And second of all, most of that area, the service area, is already developed in real estate lots in that area. And so we'd have the same challenges in serving all of those areas. So it's really tough for me, I would say. I mean, I don't have a clear answer or recommendation one way or the other. I support P&Z's recommendation, I would say. But I think in general, overall, I think this would be the first time we've had inquiries maybe, but it would be the first time we've ever required dry sewers. We've had some county developments within our planning area that we don't have dry sewers.

I need to jump in and clarify something. Tony, we've explained to you before that's not true. There are other situations where there were proposed developments and because the city was going to require dry sewers, those developments did not proceed.

Right. And that's what I said, Luke. I said we had inquiries about that for potential developments. Apparently. I mean, I've never been involved in any of those discussions. So I have to agree with what Luke said. And that, for whatever reason, But we have not installed dry sewers in Norwalk or within our planning. I should say, so in areas we can't serve. But that doesn't mean that we, that in itself doesn't mean that we should. As I said, I'd struggle with this, but I think it's important for us to look at all those different situations and the potential of us wanting to serve that, wanting to annex that green city, what else it could serve, you know, because there's a cost of extending that program. And it challenges with certain areas beyond that that's developing itself.

Good question, Luke. Are some of these developments that we're trying to stay away from, are they in our comprehensive plan?

Yeah. So like this is. Right. You know, something that's existing would be shown like Twin Lakes. Great. It's shown as a rural estates project in our comprehensive plan. We're not showing that we're changing it for our comprehensive plan. But just the reality of should the city take Twin Lakes into the city, you know, certainly we want to take ownership of the roads, you know. Do they want to be in the city? You usually wouldn't go about that until you just fully encompass them. And that's a little bit of a change from how cities have annexed in the past. But I just think more and more we're not seeing the The return that we would want over bringing on 18 homes in Twin Lakes to become in part of Norwalk. And the same thing, I think, when we got out here, you know, unless we surrounded it with development, I don't see a whole lot of compelling reason why we would want to annex them in.

What I was getting at, are we better off just to say, we'll change our comprehensive plan, but just leave it out of that?

Oh, in the future?

We'll just pull it back.

Right. So with comprehensive planning and you're doing those land use plannings, it's not bad to include that stuff because you want to understand what's going to happen in areas. So even if you don't think you're necessarily going to grow in some areas, you want to be able to understand what's going to happen because that might influence a transportation corridor you're doing. When we go, our focus southeast is a great example, or southwest. We plan for some areas that are probably going to end up incoming, but to understand what that could be can influence the rest of the comprehensive plan for what Norwalk could be.

Then we talk about the urban cross-section streets. Same street as being... put in at Saddle Ridge. Yes. Same thing? Yep.

Curb, gutter, storm sewer, no ditch. So rural cross-section would be, you know, ditches to handle your stormwater and all that, and just a shoulder instead of a curb.

The new Saddle Ridge will have sub-drain and sub-base.

Yeah. Oh, the newer section of it?

Correct.

Okay. HAB-Jacques Juilland- The same thing. HAB-Jacques Juilland- But I'm sorry. HAB-Jacques Juilland- No, we've.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- That was one of the more concerning points was, and I think their intent is to lay with them private streets. HAB-Jacques Juilland- I think I'd wanted something that mentioned to Paris to include some language at reconstruction. These roads will not be city of Norwalk responsibility. HAB-Jacques Juilland- To private streets are not built our standards. So I think even curb and gutter is our current standard. And then with sub-base and sub-drain. I'm just being consistent. I think those are very important items. I've told you that several times.

Right. And so you'll see this, again, as a final plat. So a lot of things we've talked about, like if we go with an assessment agreement, those will be conditions that we'll see with the final planning documents.

So that would be recorded and put in the abstracts for each property to say that if the easements will be in there as well as indicating that if they ever want sanitary sewer it will be an assessment project on their shoulders correct not for the rest of the city of normal that's the idea i'm ready and they're private streets

that weren't built to our standard at the time, and therefore were not going to replace the streets.

So what I saw, one thing that I saw, and this is not related to dry sewer, is that there's no real stormwater detention or stormwater management in this preliminary plan. Is that right?

Correct. I'll let Brad speak a little bit more to that. As we were working through things, we had a couple of different options and they were working through putting together some stormwater calculations and everything for us. And so we don't have those fully available tonight. So we would certainly want to see those before we turned loose with construction on anything.

You want to see those before you allow them to start construction.

Right.

So if the engineering shows that there's going to be a tension pond needed where you currently have a street plan.

So you could do a couple things. One, if you approve a prelim plat and that happens, then we're doing a prelim plat amendment and we're back here looking at this thing. Oh, we have a detention base in there. you you could just say we want to see it back with the the detention basin in it um and approve this tonight with the curb and gutter and dry sewer with the condition that they bring back the finalized version for the council stamp you could do that too you could approve it with a condition that they give that information to staff And we put the city stamp on it when when it's time. So there's a couple different options for how to proceed with that. But thank you for catching that because I was so focused on the dry sewer.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, please do.

Brian Cooper, Cooper Crawford Associates. Yeah, we did as much... We tried as hard as we could to get as much done since P&Z decided to go with this route with the curbing gutter and the storm sewer versus the dry sewer. We do intend on having some ponds, not necessarily detention ponds, but sediment ponds. This is also going to the county at the same time we're doing this. And they have kind of some heartburn in messing with their... the floodplain zoning area. So our intention is there's a couple areas that are out of the floodplain, yet it's in their zoning area, but it's ideal spots to put sediment basins and detention ponds if we end up having a detention pond. But we're required to have a settlement pond by our DNR grading permits. So we will incorporate that in there. It looks like a not very big subdivision, but that's a very large subdivision when you consider all 42 lots or at least two acre lots. We do feel like this will be a really nice amenity to have the curb and gutter and the storm sewer. It's really not saving Dan any money. We thought there might be some savings. maybe $100,000 to $125,000. At P&Z, he actually had offered to donate that type of money to the North Parks Department to apply towards parks, especially since one of the parks he donated during Timberview is still sitting undeveloped. He'd like to see something done with that. But P&Z didn't recommend that he have to contribute that, but I believe that's something he intends to do.

Normally, we do charge for that only, and we don't charge for it in this case because it's not in the city. Is that what you mean?

We work for parks.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the council seems like it's always been, the last 10 or 15 years, really big on getting land instead of getting money to spend on the parks. Our Blooming Heights 5, they actually took money in lieu of park space.

It's much less than $125,000.

Yeah, yeah. I like that. But yeah, he's intent on giving a nice donation to parks.

So just a couple of things on that. Right. Because it's outside of like we want to accept a park donation as part of parkland dedication for a subdivision outside of city limits. So there's that side of it. The discussion wasn't had at PNZ. We recommended that PNZ just make a recommendation on the prelim plat. One of the things that we have to be careful with is what the city is requiring in parkland things, and we can't tell a developer, you have to give us money. right so if they want to do that like that that's something we can we can do and and explore um i talked with jim a little bit about this as well um we just as part of approving the prelim plat it should probably just be focused on the prelim plat and then if there's other agreements or other things related to this park donation that can be handled separately

I also want to touch base on the streets. Basically, what we're proposing is to build the streets just like the streets in Timberview, like I live on. I know your development out there, it was designed and built at a time when the standards were less, especially when it comes to private roads. Our streets we're proposing are going to be the same exact design as what we'd put in Timberview or all of Blooming Heights. So they are up to... not today's standard for the city, but also the city contributes money to be applied to this rock sub base that's going in currently. So like Blooming Heights, the city's paying for that rock. If that was to happen in this plot, paying for rock under pavement that's not in the city. So... to be a little unusual i guess but i i'm confident the streets are going to be fine built just like the ones we've done in timberview and everywhere else in norwalk prior prior to the new ordinance.

I guess I thought when we talked about that last time, the streets were going to be built to our today's standards. So what William said surprises me. Is it better use of your funds to not donate them to parkland and to make them be, and then would they not be classified as private roads? And it's probably way more than $125,000, right, to do that, I'm sure.

It will be private roads no matter what. The county will not take the roads.

I get the county wouldn't take them, but if we were ever to annex them and they were built to our specs, I thought the conversations that we were having around roads was then if they were built to our specs, if we were to annex them, then we would take over them. Is that not what we said?

I don't know that until we would take over them, but if we did take over them, we would know that they met our were built to our standard right so you feel more comfortable taking over that road and taking on its maintenance whereas um i think a lot of the lakewood projects that we've been doing or we took on those roads that were built as lakewood and then we feel a responsibility to upgrade them to get them in better condition so we have this improvement program that we've been working through the roads in lakewood to to help revitalize them

Since there's no throughway there, even if we annex them, they could stay private.

But I thought, maybe not lessons in general, but I thought we'd talk about if we have these rural developments and eventually we grow and want to take them over, don't we want them to meet our standards? I guess that's all I'm trying to say.

Okay.

Other questions from council? Any other public input? Anybody want to make a motion to approve that resolution?

Second.

Okay. Motion by Porter, seconded by Borjan. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Kaylin, would you call the roll?

Council Member Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Meineke?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Item nine, future agenda item. So the purpose for this is for council to give direction to staff by way of motion to have items placed on a future agenda. It's not for discussion of the merits of the subject matter. It's to get it on to an agenda so we can discuss the merits. Any future agenda items for tonight? I think we were, remind me if I'm wrong, I think we were originally going to talk about golf carts tonight, but since... We expected there was only going to be three here.

We decided, nah, we're not going to put it on the agenda.

Same thing with e-bikes and e-bike coordinates. We think we won.

We had a big discussion at MPO tonight.

About e-bikes? Uh-huh. Well, you can tell it to us here in just a moment. All right. Any other questions? Okay, hearing none. Item 10, council inquiry staff updates. I'd like to remind everybody that this is a less informal portion of the meeting. You may hear some back and forth banter and general joking around. We believe this can build camaraderie and cohesiveness between staff. Hey, Jim, are you there?

I am here. Okay. No, hello from Whitefish, Montana is where I'm at right now. But no, I have nothing for the meeting.

Do you have to go up to a top of a hill to get to cell service?

I am. I'm on the top of the ski slope mountain right now.

Interesting. All right. Well, have fun.

Okay, thanks.

Oh, wait, no, I don't know.

No, it's his firm. That's fine.

I just DC with the partnership was incredible. It was an amazing experience. I'm very appreciative to have gone, learned a ton, experienced a ton, had so much fun, possibly most fun ever. learned a lot about some of our staff members which is fun kind of living with them these couple days you always learn more about people Luke might be one of the unluckiest people I've ever met I don't know why you would think that we swapped some more stories and Pollock can last longer in heels and farther in heels than anyone I've ever seen in my life it was a great it was a great trip we got a lot of top weapons so thank you

Yeah, it's an opportunity to also talk to some of the other cities away from the normal hustle and bustle of here, which is good.

It's cool. There's a couple business leaders there as well that are actually residents of Roloff, but, you know, where they're representing companies in other areas. So that was cool.

Yeah.

It's nice to face with them, even though they're there for a different purpose. Good. All right.

So a lot of communities are taking action related to all that kind of stuff. It seemed like some MPO member communities were hoping for MPO to take some leadership in putting together model legislation, but Plexa has really taken leadership to put together model legislation. I think the majority of the communities represented at MPO were just thinking, why do we need MPO to create model legislation and another organization has put it out there and communities are already acting.

But it was the liveliest discussion I've been a part of.

So that was kind of fun. But yeah, we've got some communities that have gone before us in this that I think we can learn from. I assume we are learning from this. We put this together.

And for anybody who wanted to know, Plexa is the police chiefs around the metro.

Yeah. So if there wasn't any leadership around this issue, MPO might step in. There is leadership. Yeah.

I know Mac was also talking about doing some model events as well, but Plexa came up with, at Mac, Metro Advisory Council. Yeah. Letting Plexa do it. So, yeah. Anything else?

Nope. Nothing, just that I won't be at the next council meeting, and I hope that Jim hopping on from Montana does not set expectations for me to wake up at 3 a.m. Italy time.

I hope so, too. Wayne?

Thank you, Mayor. Update on the water conservation status. Holly's been really busy with our water department. They've issued 140 notification letters. We've had 100% compliance. Once letters are received, we have not had to do shutoffs, which is great. We've had a great response. And that's trends with the rest of the communities served by the fluid treatment plant. They sent out an update. Compared to this time last year when we were also in water conservation, we're using less water. So the fluid treatment plant is operating within an adequate range right now. People have been being great about not irrigating. So thank your neighbors.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Yes, when is there any brand to is that's going to drop itself back and allow usage or have we heard it.

HAB-Terry Palmos- On my chain levels are still pretty high source waters.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, I think the last round of storms with nor which is going to flush a bunch down our way so HAB-Jacques Juilland, Thank you.

HAB-Masyn Moyer, Chief I have nothing tonight. I just want to thank you again, Mayor for the proclamation that really meant a lot to our department. So thank you.

over halfway up so uh so progress is going well cool thanks uh so last night um there was a fireworks and fireworks stand had the fireworks in a trailer in des moines that was broken into and then also last night um the trailer parked at the old fairway that contained fireworks for the fireworks tent that will be going up there was in the process of being broken into, and the suspects were scared off. The midnight officers, officers Newman and Sergeant Lewiston, were able to track down and identify the suspects and solved our attempted break-in of the trailer and Des Moines theft of fireworks. So one more time, Norwalk officers solve the Metro's crime problems. Happens more often than you think. Yes. Well, investigation is still continuing. But there were fireworks in the truck that we found that belonged to the suspects for the Norwalk. And there were no fireworks stolen from Norwalk because we didn't get in the trailer. So More to come on that. It'll just be placed later. As you know, if you call the police, the police will come. And sometimes they'll write a report. Not every police call generates a police report. When a police report is issued, that's an indication that the call was of a more serious nature. year-to-date, we've had a 21% increase in police reports from 2025. And comparing the month of May 2025 to the month of May 2026, there was a 34% in police calls for service. As the trend is continuing, our calls and our police reports are on the increase. And I don't see it slowing down. And then lastly, you may have seen on our social media, folks think that the assistant chief, Kirk Westfold, has announced retirement in his last day with the city on July 1. It's a Wednesday. He has a retirement reception at the Public Safety Building from 2 to 4 that day. Everybody's welcome. He told me he was considering retiring back a little while ago and thought July 2nd would be his last day. And I said, come on, July 3rd is Friday. You don't want to work on Friday. And then I gave him one more opportunity to work the July 4th parade who declined. I have to think out of spite. He said, I'm leaving on July 1st. Exactly.

Chief, when you look at those numbers up in reports, do you have classifications? Is it domestics? Is it break-ins?

We are eyeing assaults with no rhyme or reason as to why. And then everything else is just generally increased. That's all.

Thank you. Jean Strable.

No report. Thank you.

Carissa.

um just as we head into national parks and recreation month our department's in full swing and great things happening everywhere but the aquatic center is up and running which is always a big undertaking so we are glad to see that happening and thank you for your support of our department uh andy nothing george uh really nothing but i want to i'm impressed with the uh sitting the chair playing volleyball Oh, yes. Come join us.

I heard that was a lot of fun.

Yes. We've had good numbers for three weeks now. We've been going. So come join us on Tuesday mornings. All right.

Luke.

I do have one thing, Mayor. The Rosewood development. I've been pretty quiet in conversations about that, but I want to make sure that mayor, you and council understand that at some point in time in the future, I think it'll be good for us to revisit the general topic of subdivisions being developed outside of corporate limits. I think that Rosewood is a completely unique situation because it was previously platted. which is a big reason why I've been so quiet about it. But I feel very strongly that the city has to be very attentive to watching what happens outside corporate limits. It's one thing that can really impact our future growth pattern. So just kind of an FYI that I'll probably be asking some of you folks to consider a work session in the future to take a little bit deeper dive and make sure we're all on the same page.

Cool. All right. So I actually have a question there. I was actually looking at the map the other day and I was kind of interested in this. I'm going to So like we talked about that Rosewood and then next to that, there's already a lot of like multi-acre estate houses. So we can't really grow much there. Do we have like, I'm looking at Luke, do we have a sense for where we could have these close subdivide like hotspots of that we would want to be able to look at and think about, or is that something we want to put together that we would understand where those could happen? Um,

So the short work session that Luke Nelson says we should do, which we probably should do a bigger thing, is there's not a real concern about something like Rosewood happening because that – I've already looked. There's not another subdivision that was done 40-some years ago that would lend it to that thing. Luke mentioned earlier that we have told people to do dry sewer. Dry sewer and urban cross-section roads. when we tell people that come to us and say, hey, we want to put 10 lots out here, that usually makes it not financially viable for them to do that. So that's a big tool in our arsenal to not end up having those things happen outside of town. So there's a lot of things that you guys don't see because it never gets to council level that we as staff are saying, these are things you've got to do. And then it just, okay, well, we're not going to look at doing that.

But like, I guess my example is that was 44 lots at roughly two acres, so about 100 acres, right? Like, do we know where we have, and maybe 40 is not the right number, but 60 contiguous acres where like somebody could be wanting to do a real estate that's within our Oh, sure.

I mean, yeah, anywhere that there's not already that, there will be some pressure from folks to want to do that.

I think it would just be good for council to see kind of a picture of what that looks like.

Yeah, we can map that out. When we have that work session, we'll put that together. It's really not that different from the work that we did when we were looking at annexing out to the interstate. We were looking at large chunks of undeveloped ground that didn't have homes on them because we can say, let's preserve those for the growth that we think Norwalk should have. And ideally, that provides better value for those folks because if you've got the choice between selling your land for industrial versus for rural estate homes, there's a pretty significant difference in the value per acre of those.

can't tell you that timber ridge i think is 80 acres d is an 80 acre area they only developed the north 40 of that because that is sewerable by gravity and we were going to require them to either put in dry sewer or put in their own lift station pump it and they didn't want to do that right so

We had a 140-acre or 140-home subdivision proposed off of 50th outside of town and did the same thing. And that got squashed.

Anything else, Lou?

Nothing else, Mayor. Thank you.

Hope you feel better.

Thank you.

Just as an FYI to council, don't get alarmed here. I hate when I hear that the city doesn't plan very much. You know, the city doesn't do any planning, blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to let people know as we do planning. As far as we're in stage three of our water use plan right now, we have started just so that we know and we are prepared if it ever happens. And I don't think it's going to, but if we go to stage four, we're starting to talk about what's that actually going to look like. So I just want... It will know that we are planning this out. It's not going to be off the cuff. That's all I got. I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Second. Motion by Mayan, seconded by Borjan. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All opposed, same. We're adjourned, 7.59.