City Council - Regular Meeting

I think I always had a little bit of an allergy, but I think I got it. It's kind of weird.

I think one of my entire life was a stone's eye bee. Then I started, I got a beehive. I started being a beekeeper. And it wasn't my bees that stung me. I got stung three times in a six-month period by other bees. I was like sitting in Kinnick Stadium. There's something that lands on my knuckle. And I even said to my daughter, she's watching, I go, don't worry, it's not going to sting me.

And it stung me. It's going to like be touching.

You guys ready over here? All right, let's get going soon. Okay, we will call to order City Council Regular Business Meeting for Thursday, August 6, 2026. It's 6 p.m. Lindsay, would you call the roll?

Council Member Borjan?

Here.

Brown?

Here.

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

I'm here. We have a full quorum, so we will move on. Item number two is Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance. Item number three is approval of the agenda.

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? Motion. Second. Motion by Brown, seconded by Porter. All in favor say aye. That motion carries. Item number four, proclamations. We have two tonight. First one is National Honeybee Day for August 15th, 2026. And item number two for proclamations is honoring the retirement of Police Sergeant Ron Downing. This was read to Sergeant Downing at his retirement ceremony on Friday. So that has already been presented to him. Item number five is welcome guests and public comment. Thank you for being here tonight and participating in your local government. We'll open up dais if you'd like to address council and myself for any item that is not on the agenda on the agenda. Realize that we can't take action on those tonight because it's since they aren't on the agenda and that would be a violation of open meetings law. Also, you'd like to comment on any item in the consent agenda. Now would be the time. So anybody here to address council?

I get a copy of the agenda somewhere.

I was expecting to come to me and email but I don't know if you would have got it via email, but it would have been posted on the city's website.

Yeah. One of your people here had told me they would send it to me in email.

So we're just here to... Can you come up and... Sure. Yeah. State your name and your address.

Sure. My name is Jill Kissel. I live at 2790 Acorn Street. My mailing address is Norwalk, but we're actually in the city of Des Moines, city limits. And I believe you guys have had before you... Some resolutions about approving street repair on Southwest 28th.

And that's on the agenda. So yes, I will go ahead.

I was only here to, in case there were questions about that.

So, all right. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Item number six is consent agenda. Can I get a motion to approve, to approve the consent agenda? Okay. Okay. Motion by Meineke, seconded by Borjan. Lindsay, would you please call roll?

Council Member Porter? Yes. Borjan? Yes. Brown?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes.

All right, that motion carries. Item number seven is old and new business for consideration, discussion, and possible action. Item A is a resolution approving a 28B agreement between the City of Norwalk, the City of Des Moines, and Warren County for the Southwest 28th Street Public Maintenance Project. We talked about this at our last meeting, but since this is a new meeting, I'm going to go over all the background again. Southwest 28th Street is located in the northeast section of Norwalk. Half of it is owned by Warren County. The other half is owned by the city of Norwalk. Southwest 28th Street connects to Acorn Street, which is in the city of Des Moines, so it's kind of a weird situation here. Recently, there's been a high volume of heavy truck traffic on those streets causing accelerated failure of the street. This 28E has been created to get the street repaired and to share the cost of that repair between Des Moines, Warren County, and Norwalk. Just to get it on the record, Norwalk has no residents on that street with only one maintenance access for Echo Valley Golf Course. Should be noted that Echo uses the roads periodically for different maintenance purposes. There have been conversations between Warren County and Norwalk to put an embargo on the street, which would establish a weight limit for that street. An embargo is a common tool for situations like this. The embargo will restrict heavy truck traffic, which seems appropriate given the established residential land uses served by the street. There is a clause in this resolution that indicates we won't start repairs until the embargo is in place. And we're going to address the embargo in the next item. For this agenda item, we're looking for council to approve a resolution establishing a 2080 agreement to share costs and management of the street repair. At our last meeting, Kelly Cordham addressed council about this, indicating that he's using his lot to dry out soil. We asked Public Works to find out if Mr. Cordham's business meets Des Moines zoning. So, Joe, I'm going to turn it over to you.

You bet. They responded and said that there was a notice of violation issued that it did not meet. It was an industrial use on residential, so they issued a stop work order.

Okay. Any discussion or questions from council? Go ahead and open it up for public input.

Yeah, I'm The guy on this is the bad guy that had the heavy trucks on the road. Very much owned that the road was in bad shape anyway, but we definitely added to it. I can totally acknowledge that. My thing is, is City of Des Moines did serve me a stop work for what I'm doing with the land use. But however, as me still as a land owner, it still is 10 acres of open ground with no house. You know, I can apply for some agricultural stuff, livestock, what have you, development. But I think if we do the chip seal that's kind of proposed, it limits me clear down to if it's going to stay with five tons, Basically me pulling a lawnmower trailer is over that, down there. And that's what I'm saying. It pretty much cuts my use of it for whatever I'm getting, the enjoyment or benefit of the ground. It wasn't really, I don't think very clear that it was zoned already as a residential. Everything I looked at on Warren County, It was it was a agricultural zoning. And that kind of being brought to my attention, you know, put the stops to us. So, you know, either way, I'm probably not just going to be happy to sit there and let it go up to weeds or, you know, whatever. My thing is, and I think you already mentioned it. That. This is supposed to be a joint venture thing. There is no Norwalk residents on that. And there probably is never going to be, unless Echo Valley would sell or something like that. This is five Des Moines residents. If you look, I did kind of blow this up a little bit. Made this zoning map. The yellow is Des Moines. The red is the county and the blue is Norwalk. But if you look real close at the little red line in there, when Des Moines did their thing there and they came in there and annexed that, they skipped the road and they kind of did you guys a dirty. That's all there is to it. Warren County doesn't have any desire. I've talked to them about you know, doing it if you guys, you know, see it the same way. But the road has been in pretty bad shape for a mighty long time. But you're donating your Norwalk tax dollars to Des Moines residents right here. I don't feel like that is the best interest of Norwalk, period.

So, I guess that's all I got. All right. Thanks, Kelly. Everybody else? Yeah.

So as to Can you wait until you're up to the mic and then please state your name and address.

My name is Jill Kissel and I live at 2790 Acorn Street in Norwalk. As to the zoning issue. I do land research. I do real estate research abstract. And it is very clear that that was zoned residential. You look at any of the city maps, it all says, I think it's M3. So, I mean, it is residential. The assessment, the tax assessment is agricultural, but not the zoning. And when the city annexed this, which by the way, we weren't real happy about it. When the city annexed us, they cut off the west 90 feet of our property and made that county. So we are a resident. I mean, we do have interest in that west 90 feet of our property, which is where the street runs. We're not all way in the city of Des Moines, I guess is what I'm saying. And of course, we have interest in the street anyway, because we have to drive that street to get to our house. We have been asking for years, the city of Des Moines, to do something with that road. Um, and it, it, it just came to a head when all the heavy truck traffic started going up and we had other issues with the truck traffic. It wasn't just the road, but we deal with that with the city. So, and I don't know if you guys have any other questions about the status there. I understand that this is an agreement between you and the city.

It really doesn't have anything to do with any of your neighbors up there. Do they farm?

Well, kind of. We have gardens. The property next to the property that they bought is owned by the Gazelles, Jeff Gazelle. And he did keep livestock on that property. I don't think he ever grew any crops, not that I know of. And I think he was maybe grandfathered in for that purpose. But again, we dealt with the city for that. So I don't know if he's currently, I don't know if he's currently keeping his horses on that property or not.

All right, thank you.

Anything else?

Yeah.

Thank you. Any other discussion or questions from council?

Tom, or maybe this is Jim too, or I don't know who it is. What if we said we just want the city of Des Moines to have that road? Can you do that?

How does that work? You really can't. I mean, there's different procedures, like vacating the road.

Kelly, this is a ridiculous situation where the road is... that we are responsible and the county is responsible for leads to residences in a different city. That's like, and that, that's the, that's the only road.

Yeah. And it clearly doesn't serve the residents there either because, you know, who do they go to, to address grievances and things like that. I think that's exactly what, you know, we're witnessing here, whether it's, whether it's Kelly and his group or, or the other speakers here today, they do have those issues, but there really isn't, Unless Des Moines willingly did it, I mean, we could try to sever the west side of the road. Because what you'd normally do in annexations, as we've seen in recent annexations we've done, is you go to the center of the road. So by Des Moines falling short...

Des Moines doesn't even go to the center.

They don't even go to the center of the road. So, I mean, the county shouldn't be a player here if Des Moines had properly done the annexation. Now, Norwalk would have still owned to the center of the road. So even if Des Moines went and did what normally happens, it would be half Des Moines, half Norwalk right now. Des Moines might have a greater stake in keeping it up because then they would be an owner of half the road. uh but as far as the city of norwalk it's it's pretty difficult i mean we could lower the standards just say we're gonna make it gravel uh you know any of that stuff would be that's not helpful for the residents that's not helpful for the residents but as far as somehow getting it out out of norwalk it's it's pretty hard to do i mean i'm not gonna say it's impossible there might be some procedure to be able to go into court and city development board to sever it but it's a

and abandoned because it would adversely impact yeah citizens on the road i'll just let you know also the one is participating in the yeah i saw it so they're they're like a half the cost for sure and we're a quarter yeah so they're participating here though they aren't aligned correct yes that's good uh one other thing just to make sure kelly makes a really good point about the city putting in dollars uh primarily serving areas outside corporate limits

Des Moines, I said at the last meeting, I want to repeat this. Des Moines has been a pretty good player with us on some other projects. If you remember the traffic signals we put at the Highway 5 exit ramp, the city of Des Moines participated in that, primarily because it was a major business inside Des Moines that was asking for the traffic signals, the Coca-Cola. So they came to the table and actually participated in those traffic signals completely within the city of Norwalk. which was a positive. Now, granted, that's taken a real big picture. And we sometimes share snow removal service back and forth when we have corporate limits that go down the center of the road. So maybe that gives you a little more comfort if we are participating financially that they've been good players with us elsewhere.

Yeah, and I want to clarify, my question was not related even to cost of this, which seems to me not a lot. and was not related to a working relationship with Des Moines or us. It was purely related to the residences that that road serves.

That's it.

I think Warren County should have been the city development board meeting to say, hey, no, we want to take the rest of it to the Senate. Yeah.

Okay. I have a question. make sure that I remember it correctly from our discussion two weeks ago. And in my mind, I thought that if somebody had to move a vehicle through there, like a lawnmower, a mowing thing, that there was leeway in there where they could do that.

There is leeway in the ordinance. It has several exceptions, like emergency vehicles, governmental entity vehicles, public utility vehicles. That'll have business on that street. School buses, garbage trucks, recycling, septic services, directly relating to the residential purposes, vehicles making deliveries. or pickups from or providing services to the residential properties located. So that would be all those properties. As if it's zoned residential, it doesn't necessarily have to be a house there. The zoned residential would be residential purposes. So, you know, uses even on, I think Kelly's lot would exceed that if it's for residential purposes. And then there's also a provision of vehicles operating pursuant to written permission issued by public works director or designee upon determination that such operation is reasonably necessary and that no practical alternative route is available. So, you know, there's kind of a little of a safety valve there also. Yeah, but there isn't an exception directly for like ag purposes or anything like that. It's focusing on the residential or business. But it's all done by the same formula, right? I mean it is the only place that it's not is like Echo Valley so I can see Echo Valley having issues if suddenly they decide they want to bring a load of dirt in there or you know pond maintenance and bring in equipment they're going to have to talk to the city and make arrangements if they thought they were going to use that back entrance because there wouldn't be an exception for them.

We just had that I had a call from an Echo Valley representative today I talked to Joe and said, because Echo called and said, well, we get back there periodically like a big brush chipper truck that weighs well over 5,000. And they said, if we need to get back there periodically to do that, to reach out to Joe. And even I think Wayne had said something previously that in those situations, if they're kind of one-off singular trips that aren't often, that you would just work with them to permit it so you know when they're doing it. Absolutely.

I don't know if temperature as a thing. I mean, it's probably different if you're coming in when it's 120 degree surface temperature versus 60 degrees.

Yeah, it probably depends on a lot of loads.

Yeah. But they would need special permission. So if they wanted to not violate the law, I would have to talk to the city and decide whether it's appropriate or not.

And we relayed that back to them.

Yeah.

anybody want to make a motion to approve the resolution as presented second second okay motion by cool seconded by brown any further discussion so one thing i thought we talked about was like the feasibility of other things besides the chip seal did we get any more information on

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Tony and Wayne and I kind of drove around and Tony was able to find a road in Cumming that had the chip seal in 2009, I believe, Tony. It's, you know, no beauty queen, but it's holding up and it has hundreds of residents that use it. And it's had some patching here and there, but... Nothing out of line. And in my mind, I think it's a good repair.

But not cement trucks and others.

Absolutely. I mean, if you drive back there, all of those homes were built with cement truck traffic and, you know, daily or weekly garbage truck and snow plows and all that fun stuff. So what is it?

North 35th. Yes. And it's kind of in between Prairie Shores and the new Great Western Crossing development there. So I was kind of eroded between two developments. There was a gravel road, farm-to-market road. This is the occasional heavy loads. And it's a project I designed for the city back in 2009. And it's a similar project that we're talking about here. It's a base repair, basically scarifying the existing road, shaping it, priming it. support that recognizes that the seal coat that we're talking about is a surface treatment you know so it's dust control it's a lot better road you know a lot of small communities rural communities in Iowa say under 2,000 population 70 percent of the roads are seal coat and they hold up because they've got a good base rural section good drainage and they have seal coat maintenance up that, watch that, and have do some maintenance and build it up over time. It can perform good if it has those two factors, you know, good base developed and good drainage. And we think this road does happen. It's rough, right? But it's got a lot of base rock and it's a rural section, has good drainage. The water, with reshaping that and seal coating it, the water will be able to get off. But how that lasts is the loads that it received. And it can take those occasional straight loads, but a lot of heavy traffic. And again, it's not a permanent pavement or anything close to it. It's something that none of the three jurisdictions really want to put a lot of money into this, but they want an improvement that's going to make a difference for the area. and hopefully last, but the important thing for the council to understand is there's, with that type of improvement, there's going to be maintenance required down the road. Now, maybe this agreement kind of sets some precedence for that, you know, with Norwalk at about a quarter of the cost. But that maintenance cost, if it's watched and kept up, and we plan on a little bit of maintenance work down the road, and see what we're talking about, but it's similar.

into it over the last 15 years thanks tony that helped so then the only other question is kind of what jason brought up so we have if we approve this and we say we're going to do this like it takes the county in dubai to prove it right because they're and at that time can we still have a conversation around who is the rightful owner of the road and push like you said the county should have been at that meeting and said hey you need to do this to point like it feels like that needs to be a follow-on right Like if we're going to be supportive and approve this and do this for the residents that live on the road, then we need to have this conversation, right?

So talking with Tim in Warren County, I believe he's working on that. He's addressing the proper folks and then trying to take a step back from that part and having Des Moines move in where they should be.

Like probably brought up that map, right? Like it's just silliness, right? It is.

What's your status with Des Moines, if you want to tell us, on your building to use your property?

What's your status with the city of Des Moines on that?

yeah well they they stopped me for you know using it for our vac dump and our farming out of our our dirt and stuff you know so right now i'm sitting here dead in the water trying to figure out like what i'm going to do with it or you know whatever but i feel like anything that i bring to that is going to require heavy equipment coming down there to do it and I don't think it's going to, you know, stop some of the, you know, problems on that road with complaints or whatever, you know, and I feel like there's just an overwhelming, I get videoed and photographed every time I'm in there. It's going to continue on. So whatever I'm doing, if I'm developing or digging a basement or, you know, for a future something there, it's going to be putting stress on the road.

So that was a follow-on question I had. So it's zoned residential. If Kelly were to sell it and actually it became a development, there's going to be concrete trucks and X and Y. And so would they have to come to the city then and say, we want a special allotment to build this house?

Like we talked about, there are exceptions in the ordinance. One is service things for, let's see, vehicles making deliveries to pickups from or providing services to residential properties located on or directly accessed from the residential.

the restricted roadway provided such travel is limited to the minimum distance necessary to reach the destination property so a delivery yeah i mean i would okay i feel like there is a lot of exceptions in that ordinance and that road doesn't know whether it's the garbage truck or kelly's truck so it's still putting stress on it and you know there are so many exceptions right there that It's like, oh, you can have a furniture delivery. You can have your gas truck delivery. I get all that. But the road still is getting the heavy trucks and the stress. I mean, I'm all about fixing it. But the embargo just really kind of cuts us bad there. You'd fix the road and say, hey, Kelly, you can still go down there with your whatever I'm doing. I have no problem with that. But yeah, remember, I'm on 10 acres of an open piece of ground right here. It's not like I got a house that's done and I'm driving a $2,000 car down. I mean, you know, a plate dollars, but 3000 pound car. So Everything I'm taking down there, including a lawnmower behind a pickup, is already over the 10,000 pounds. So, you know, keep in mind that it's a five-ton limit, so that's 10,000 pounds, but there's 2,000 pounds in a ton. Just want to make sure everybody knew that. But a garbage truck weighs right around 25 to 35 tons when it's fully loaded. So it's six, seven times, you know, the limits there.

So how often trucks are going down up and down the road? Like how often is what you're doing?

Well, right now I'm stopped.

But when you weren't?

Oh, it would vary. Some days there was no, no trucks, but sometimes you might be six to 10, you know, but sometimes it was nothing. So. could be a heavier use day or something like that but you know that's kind of stopped at the moment with des moines and i'd have to take that up with them but what i feel like is if we're moving forward on this agreement and then we're going to go ahead and ship seal it you know it's pretty much stopping me from having whatever i'm wanting to do with it you know it's just going to be going to weeds or know what have you over there i mean can't really have livestock because the other guy was grandfathered in but technically i'm not unless i rent something to him and he can put something there i guess again but really what what i want to do with it you're not being used what for what i wanted i would think inception like if you need to pull a mower down there and stuff like that that it's a residential lot so you're

You have to maintain that.

If he hired somebody to mow his lawn, they'd have to deliver the service to him.

As far as if you want to somehow incorporate it into your business, clearly you have a lot of heavy machinery, whether it's parking something there or whether it's what Des Moines said you can't do. Imagine very few of your vehicles meet this weight limit.

Most anything that, you know, anything. So my pickup is only a thousand pounds under that one. Not even a dual wheel pickup. So that'd be the one thing I would say is like, I'm all about fixing the road, but don't put the embargo on the road. You know, and then Tony's saying that that road over there on, you know, Prairie Shores is holding up and there's no embargo and there's heavy trucks and cement trucks going down. I'm good with it. But you put the embargo on the road, We're just cut. That road over there I don't think has an embargo on it. I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't think so. Tony, does that road have like garbage disposal, things like that?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Cumming has some part of their subdivision in Prairie Shores, for example, Fernwood Drive. their only access. So yeah, they're going to have most likely, I don't know where the bus routes go. I bet they use part of that between those developments, at least maybe the south part or whatever. But yeah, sure, it gets those occasional loads.

Just a point of clarification I thought of this as Kelly was talking so the motion and second you have on the table is for an agreement to improve the street later in the agenda is the discussion about the embargo just making sure but he's clear that there are 2 separate.

We have to vote on it or gosh.

All right. Lindsay, would you please call roll?

Council Member Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes.

All right. Motion carries. Item 7B is first reading of an ordinance amending Chapter 66 of the Norwalk Code to establish a vehicle weight restriction on Southwest 28th Street. So this ordinance is the embargo that we just talked about. It sets a weight restriction on Southwest 28th Street for the western half. Warren County has already established the embargo for the eastern half. Joe, I'll turn it over to you.

That was really going to be my point. They've already moved forward with it and signed it, and it is in place currently. The only thing we'd be doing is embargling our half of the road to kind of be consistent with their regulation.

Joe, is there an additional, like, related to what we just heard? Is, you know, we just, there's a litany of, like,

exceptions to the embargo um is is the theory behind the embargo that um by doing this we prolong the use of the chip seal i believe so uh it was really kind of pushed by warren county originally when we talked about doing this type of repair he had stated this is tim with warren county that he would like to have an embargo on the road so that we can maximize the life of this HAB-Jacques Juilland, Service when we put it down and it made sense to us. So that's why we're moving forward with it.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, I think one thing is in document itself. HAB-Jacques Juilland, One of your warehouses is the City Council finds that a vehicle weight limitation is necessary to preserve public infrastructure protect public investment and promote the health, safety and welfare of the public. And that's actually included in there because an embargo such as this is authorized under the Iowa Code. And the Iowa Code says that in order to place an embargo upon a road like this, the council has to have that finding. You can just place an embargo throughout the city on everything, for instance, unless you could reasonably find that it's necessary to preserve that road.

Yeah.

question question not i feel like county governments tend to be a little bit more they utilize embargo quite a bit more depending on weather conditions freeze thaw cycles to try and keep vehicles off of certain roads so it wouldn't be unusual for a county government to do that so it kind of makes sense if if this was a first thought also Once it's done, Joe, I'm looking at you. This isn't permanent.

It could be revoked.

If the chip seal goes in and the perception is, hey, this is holding up, the county could choose to remove that. That's something we could come forward and say, hey, this could be removed.

The county's got theirs approved or whatever. They've got their standards for what's going to happen. I believe it has

Well, it definitely would be different because there's two different, that just further shows how crazy the situation is that there's two different jurisdictions. So technically, you know, we talked about Echo Valley needing to get permission if they wanted to put something on the golf course. Well, they're going to have to go to Warren County and get permission also. You got two jurisdictions that are getting permission. Because we only have jurisdiction over the people driving out, not the people driving in.

I can't believe there's not at least an ag exception. Well, at the very least.

Well, you could, but there's no ag use back there. So it doesn't serve any ag use.

But it's still residential.

Right now it's still residential. It's still residential.

Once a property is within city limits, outside corporate limits, there's ag exemption. So zoning doesn't apply to ag. But in corporate limits, that same exemption doesn't exist. But technically, though, I'm not... Well, they can operate that way. If it is zoned appropriately, then you can have an ag.

The city council put, I mean... Yeah, if it was zoned. These exemptions that are in here are just common exemptions. It doesn't mean that they're the absolute right exemptions or there couldn't be more exemptions or less exemptions. So the council could say, I want an exemption to be ag use. The exemption could be a different weight limit than what we have here. I mean, this is definitely all the discretion of the council. They can do what they want. So you could make change. So when you said I didn't spread the ag use in here, well, initially when it was drafted, We didn't put an ag use in there because there's an ag use. There's no ag uses there. Yeah, it's all residential use. This is residential zone.

What I struggle with is that this embargo would still allow residential vehicles beyond the weight limit.

Yes.

Yet it's all zoned residential except Echo with an access point, which then wouldn't fall within that's correct that's why we use echoes because they're not they would be residential so kelly's whole situation aside like that's beyond our control because it's zoned some other entity which is the city of des moines i think that takes care of that and that's kind of out of our control unfortunately um I'm just struggling with why would we even do this if it really doesn't matter because it's all residentially zoned anyways, except for one of our big businesses within our limits.

I think what it is is simply to preserve the road. That was at least the thoughts of putting in place. I think that's why Warren County requested, and that's why it was first suggested was that, hey, we're putting money in to really not benefit any of our citizens. And we really don't want to do it again. And what are ways that we can kind of ensure that you know, we're not doing a full new road, so we're not going to be protected that way from a deteriorator. Most likely chip seal is not going to last as long as a regular cement road that would have cost a lot more money.

I guess I look at it as my way to preserve it. Kelsey, you're right. Like it's already in place for half the road. Why would we not? Andy's opinion, right? Because make it be the same and then force the conversation around why is it two different jurisdictions and we need to have this be one. And then if we find out it's lasting longer, then... It's one jurisdiction that has to make that decision to revoke it versus two.

I guess one thing I would say is we can have that conversation, but I don't hold out a lot of hope to get that changed. I mean, Iowa law is you annex to the center of the road. So it's not uncommon. I mean, all of our annexations share half a road with whoever's on the other side of those limits. That's what is normally seen. We just don't usually run into an embargo type situation. Yeah, and you don't usually run into a situation where it doesn't benefit anybody other than a city that didn't annex to the center of the road.

Getting Warren County out of the picture.

Yeah.

What if Kelly decides to do residential development but in the meantime he's bringing dirt in to build our housing lots.

Then that would be fine.

That's an exception. Yeah.

You know, if that's a residential purpose, yeah.

That's why I said it.

You'd have to get permission from both jurisdictions.

Not on that, right? Not because that's outlined as an exception.

If it's a residential purpose, yeah, then we'd be an exception. I mean, it has to contemplate building a house there. You know, I think... One of the issues, and I can't speak for Kelly, is that when he purchased it, he didn't realize that it was his own residential and really all he was doing was buying a house lot.

Well, he could still be the developer, though, I mean, for moving equipment in there and having the thing craft price.

That's right.

Do we have any estimate for what the coming road with a similar repair in 2009? Like how much does that cost?

I don't, but the initial cost of this one is what, around $80,000 or whatever the city's portion is, about a fourth of that. If two, three, four years down the road, we had to put another single seal application over the entire road. I would guess it'd be in the 35 to $40,000 range, not doing all that base work again and everything. So city might, if the current split, you know, might have a 10, somewhere around $10,000 cost in the maintenance improvement down the road. on that, you know. With the county, with all three jurisdictions in, you know, I mean, I think it, you know, Des Moines ended up, you know, taking up to the center of the road. I think Norwalk's participation in the future would be more. It went more in Kenya out of the picture. It might make sense, but like Andy said, I think in some ways our hands are a little forced with embargo on half the street, but I kind of, I look back to when the whole embargo discussion started, and it was because of some of looking at other areas, you know, maybe it's not necessary, but I don't know how we do that would happen with the county's position already.

We talked about that last time where if we didn't put the embargo, you could get out, but you can't get back in. Yeah.

In that case. Yeah, there's no other way to get in.

Right, which is also silly.

I'll make a move. All right. I got a motion to approve the first reading. Anybody want to make a second? No, seconded. Okay. Okay, so I got a motion by Borjan, seconded by Kuhl. Any further discussion?

Hearing none, Lindsay, would you call the roll?

Council Member Brown?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke?

No.

Porter? No. Borjan?

Yes. All right, motion carries. Okay. Item 7C is a resolution initiating a zoning ordinance amendment referring a proposal to the Norwalk Planning and Zoning Commission and setting a public hearing regarding a proposed amendment to establish a showroom retail use classification within the C2 Community Commercial Zoning District. So as Norwalk grows, we have the opportunity to get new and different kinds of businesses to open up in town that we'd probably like to have in town. However, sometimes our zoning is restrictive enough that it wouldn't allow those types of businesses to come to town, even if we'd like them to. So this is one of those types of zonings that we'd like to talk about changing. This action sends it to Planning and Zoning Commission for discussion, and then we'll come back to Council for discussion and possible passage. Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

Yep, so currently our C2 zoning caps what we call incidental storage at 25% of the commercial floor area of the business. This issue kind of all came to light when we were working through some enforcement actions with the former fairway property at 1711 Sunset Drive. And through talking with that property owner and his revised business plans, we're still struggling to fit it in the box of what our zoning allowed because of that 25%. requirement. So I start reading through the zoning ordinance, find some other uses in there that I feel like also would run into an issue with this 25%, that being furniture stores, appliance and flooring stores, hot tub sales, we allow that. I imagine they would have a decent amount of storage. At one point, we had a Sherwin-Williams store that was looking pretty seriously at building in town. We never got hard enough to look at the the regulations for that, but likely might have ran into some issues with that. So I talked with our staff. We came up with this idea of maybe we amend the code to create this showroom retail use classification where we can identify all of these things as being uses that are allowed to have more than 25% storage as long as they're associated with a retail component. And then that does provide us a potential path forward for a compliant use on that fairway property.

So by retail component, then you mean an actual storefront, people there selling the product.

And the storage, I think for us a big component of it is that whatever is stored there is what's available for sale to anybody that walks it, right? So a flooring store can't hold a bunch of stuff that they only sell online and use it for warehousing while half of it, like everything that they keep in product in the storage area is available for somebody coming in by, so.

I think the, just reading through it, the active retail storefront, what's the definition of that?

Yeah, and those are things we'll kind of work through with the ordinance.

I'll give you my input for what it's worth. I think they have standard operating hours.

Right.

And public walk-in traffic, and you'll have some kind of appointment. Walk-in. Yep. And then some high-transparency

windows where you can see the book inside the store sure and it's made in viking then yeah probably more but that's my book for the night i think in the other area that we're i don't know if you want to call it storage area but it's also going to be designed and have meet retail standards a lot to have aisles and the proper lighting and the proper um fire protection that would go with retail uses versus, you know, a warehouse use. That'd be kind of like how they go back or, you know, even a Home Depot or a thing like that where it's warehousing there in the back.

Any other discussion? Sounds like we might have to refine them a little bit as we go here. Oh yeah, absolutely.

I gave Jim my draft the other day.

It's different than how I see it though, right? Like at Home Depot, I'm walking through the whole store, right? This is, there's a place where I can shop.

then there's like the paint store right to luke's example like i can look at the paint that's in the front but then they got a whole bunch right of five gallon pails and i don't get to go see but that they needed to sell it right well i i think it's probably closer to open depot than than a paint shop thing like that because i mean i think of like lumber liquid baiters though that's up on hickman they have a little show they have a showroom up in front that has samples of what's available But customers can walk through their swinging door there and they have all the storage. They don't even take items from there or pull around back and load the truck.

I think that's a big distinction. Like in the paint store, I don't get to go in the back. And I'm a liquidator, so maybe I can. But I think we're talking about those are two different, and we've got to narrow that down.

I think the intention here is that people are allowed to go in the back. It would have the expectations of the public going back there, whether it's free access or escorted access. Like I say, it has to be designed with the aisles, and it's got to accommodate the public going back there. And the public going back. Are we good with both types, though? I'm not sure what we're good with. It hasn't gone through. But my initial expectations are that it does not get locked and the public is not prevented from being back there 100% of the time. Otherwise, it turns into a storage area.

But then that paint example that we brought up, that if we wanted a paint store, we would say that that wouldn't fit into this.

Right. Maybe that's important. Maybe if that's the way paint stores are. My initial thoughts and I think the discussions that we've had are that is the type of store like a carpet store. That's these garage too also. They might have rolls of carpet back there, samples up front, but people want to go back and see the roll they're buying because it can be differently shaded and cut to size and stuff like that.

Andy, I had the same thought as I've been working through things with the paint store example. And so one thing I've been noodling on with that is access to public or or a space where, like, people are actively working, right? Because back there, it's not only storage, but that's where they mix up your paint. They prepare everything. So it's not – the whole point of it would be it's not just an area for you to store stuff that's not related to what you sell in-plan. So we've got to craft that language, but I had that same thought. That's why I look at maybe Vision West Greenberg. Right, yeah. That's kind of what led me to this is just looking at what other cities zone their showroom places and their furniture stores. And for the most part, they just all fit in their normal commercial zone. And so we're kind of unique with this 25% storage thing.

It seems like some of the stores are almost in a warehouse area.

they do have like it's a big warehouse I was surprised in Clive on University or no on Hickman and Clive where some of that stuff is at it's all just their base commercial zone so it'd be like if we had a zone C1 like that's what it is but I think some of the restrictions we're also looking at is we want to be careful that we you know first of all there's got to be

the good faith presumption by the business owner. But you want to make the regulations that it's actually as a retail center. It's not just something that someone says, okay, I'm going to put this false commercial front and back, never have it opened. That's addressed your problem. And never allow people to back and really go, you know, in accomplishing a warehouse purpose without, actually being commercial. Because the goal is we got to have commercial traffic there or else you're going to start seeing, like Taco John's and everything, those, you know, the other business that depend on that traffic within that complex going away. And so there's a little bit of a trust that they're going to do it as designed, but also you got to have those safeguards to make sure that it is a commercial use. It is a public use such as hours of operations. You know, we had definitely discussed things like that and what the definition of that type of active retail use is.

And now we're just not going to cut it. Yeah.

You're someone saying, okay, it's retail use, but it all ends up being internet sales.

I like what you're trying to do.

Yeah.

So we're going to sell. But we'll see what planning and zoning comes up with, and then we can talk more when it comes back. Yeah. Sounds good. All right. So can I get a motion to approve this resolution? Second. Okay. So motion by Brown, second by Kuhl. Lindsay, would you please call roll?

Council Member Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 7D. Resolution initiating a rezoning, referring the rezoning proposal to the Norfolk Planning Commission. It's heading to public hearing regarding the proposed zoning amendment to establish regulations on 3.5 acres of Hughes Century Crossing PUD land use parcel E. So parcel E is located behind NutraSmoothie, and a developer would like to build some townhomes behind it. And again, this is only to send it to DMP for review. and we'll talk about the merits at a future meeting. Luke, I'll turn it over to you.

So in parcel E, it's the area north of Chatham that has NutraSport in it. It also has a water tower in it, and then all the undeveloped land. It's all owned by the gentleman that runs NutraSport. He's working with another partner to propose some townhomes north of NutraSport. That is an allowed use in parcel E, But the way we set up the PUD, because we weren't quite sure what we needed there to get Chatham built and all that, we have Parcel E has four different kind of land use classifications that can be there with the caveat that before anything gets built, council needs to like take an action to say, all right, now this piece of Parcel E is Nutrisport and this piece is Watertower. So now this amendment will be to set that area north of Nutrisport as townhomes.

We had a bunch of concrete work already done.

They've got a road through there. Water tower's got a lot of work done, obviously. They've got stuff going. But nothing from the townhouse.

And all that we're doing right now is we're referring it so that P&Z can do the job that they're supposed to do. That's it. Correct. Because that feels very important to me in this case.

Yeah. Yeah. And you're not approving other than allowing P&Z to look at it. You're not approving or committing to anything else. Yeah. Right.

All right. Motion by Mikey to approve resolution as presented. Seconded by Porter. Lindsey, would you call the roll?

Council Member Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Cool.

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item 7E. Can I interrupt one? You can still have that. I just have a question of interest because roads and getting around town is important to me. Like, if we start to get more houses, and I think in a working session we talked about maybe apartments and, like, the school over here. What is the plan for north and south roads into, like, where the white box is right now? I know we have 80th that's way over there.

Right.

But, like, Eventually, I don't want this area to turn into like a pain in the ass to get in.

So if you go up a little bit to Beardsley, Luke, in Holland Point, there is a road called Sayre Drive. That road kind of comes in and then it starts doing an angle and it will continue to angle into the middle of that undeveloped parcel and make an intersection with a colonial parkway. That will then continue on south and hit that undeveloped parcel that is outside of the city right now and adjacent to the water tower. We don't have a development plan with that, but The idea would be, I would imagine, that that snakes down and connects to Chatham and then likely continues on south and maybe meets up with, I think it's east 20th in Windflower. So at a bare minimum, it would tee like that, but I would imagine there'll be another connection that goes down to the south.

Yeah, thanks. That's helpful. Item 7E is a resolution initiating a zoning ordinance amendment recurring a proposal to the Norwalk Planning and Zoning Commission and sending a public hearing regarding a proposed amendment to Chapter 175H regarding sign regulations. So this is a total rewrite of our sign regulations. This is mostly due to court decisions and changes in the law. It's only to send it to PNZ for review. And we'll talk about the merits attitude for meeting. Jim, I'm going to turn this over to you.

Okay. Yeah. Well stated there. Our sign ordinance just needs some updating on it right now. Basically, the way the law is for freedom of speech, sign regulation should not... You shouldn't have to look at the sign to regulate it. If you have to read the sign to tell whether it's legal or not legal, it can be found to be a violation of free speech because we shouldn't look at the message... regulating the signs that's just not what government does here uh so it'll still address setbacks sizes of signs allowed signs where they could be uh but it it shouldn't shouldn't be addressing specific types of signs and our ordinance does do that so uh we just want to update that and make sure that we're we're clean according to the series of spring court cases and uh There's a lot of cities in this position, but we got to move forward and just make sure we're good.

Questions from council? I get a motion to approve resolution. Second. All right. Motion by Kuhl, seconded by Meineke. Any further discussion? Lindsay, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Porter? Yes. Forge on?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Kuhl?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes.

All right. Motion carries. Item 7F is resolution accepting infrastructure and approving the final plat of Saddle Ridge Plat 2. So Plat 2 is finished. It's time for council to accept it into the city. Tony and Joe, is everything built out correctly?

It is. We just had our final walkthrough for the public infrastructure yesterday. Everything looked great. Paving, utilities, everything. Just some minor cleanup items. Contractors and developer and they didn't make the council packets that recommends acceptance of public infrastructure and release a final plan upon receipt of the required documents.

All right.

Can I thank Jeff?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Discussion or questions from council? Public input?

These streets are probably still built under our old standards, weren't they? These will be the first, I believe, that are introduced to standards.

That's correct. Yes, so the first and new. Yes.

So they do have some base and some area. All right. So they'll get it.

That's correct. We were meeting today just to make sure we got that organized. The council will see that probably as a consent item coming back. But the key is once it's finally approved and the improvements are accepted, then it becomes eligible for that grant that had been approved before. You'll see that back on a future agenda item.

That one was.

This is the first development ever.

Well, I'd like to move this because it's the first street built to our new standards. All right. Motion.

Okay, so I got a motion by Kuhl, a second by Meineke. Any further discussion?

And the streets look great. You know, it's early. Out there yesterday, I mean, we had a big rain in the morning, and those sub-drains were running. Oh, good.

That's good. All right. Lindsay, would you please call roll?

Council Member Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Wolfe?

Yes.

Meineke? Yes. Porter? Yes.

All right. That motion carries. Item 7G is first reading of an ordinance amending the Norwalk Code to amend Section 55.19 concerning animals, Section 46.01 concerning tobacco and nicotine products, Section 92.11 concerning utility bill adjustments, and Section 135.10 concerning maintenance of parking or terrace. Section 62.09 concerning trail regulations. Section 62.10 concerning electronic communication devices while driving. Section 62.02 and 63.04 concerning speed limits. Section 55.17 concerning chicken licensing. And Section 135.15 concerning privately owned improvements within the public right-of-way. So these are just a lot of correction to our ordinances, Jim, I'll let Paul turn it over.

Yeah, basically you'll see this every once in a while where staff maintains a list of little corrections that need to be made. It could be anywhere from clerical things that were wrong in the past and small changes to accommodate state law changes. And that's what this does. So the dog service exception, basically what that is is, Years ago, one of the drug dogs was kept by an officer that already had the maximum number of dogs. And so we put this in place to make an exception to the number of dogs if we were to, you know, for a public service dog and everything. And that's not really necessary now. And... And so we're getting rid of that. Nicotine provisions is just state law changed a while back to 21 years of age. And one of our officers was reviewing one of the codes that aren't used a lot that says 18 still. So we're moving that to 21. And as we go through its utility billing, we had the individual who reviewed appeals regarding reducing leakages. to a position that's no longer filled here. That title's no longer used, so we're changing that over to public works director now. He's been doing the job for quite a while, but we're just taking care of that in the code also. Public right-of-way maintenance issues, Public Works had an issue that our old code said that property owners are required to go to the curb back as far as maintenance to where it adjoins their private property. Well, we do have some properties that maintenance is occurring and maybe not occurring quite as much where it's not a curb, where it's actually just a road end. So this just clarifies to include that also. Motor vehicle use on multi-use trails. We had a council member mentioned to us a while back that he would enjoy having a, or he thought it was a good idea to have an ordinance that addresses somebody that might decide to take a vehicle onto one of our trails and drive on that illegally. And we wanted to have a law directly addressing that. So that's what that one does. Electronic communication devices is texting while driving. under state code, it's already a violation. In a lot of our traffic codes, we adopt the state code so that we can write a ticket under the city code violation versus the state. It's the same fine and everything like that, but by writing it under the city code violation, the fines go to the city. If it's under the state code violation, we write it, it goes to to the county courts and so this is just a way to be able to write it on the local charge where um frankly i handle the prosecutions of those and the city puts the money in their pocket versus um having fines paid for from our violations going to the state uh default speed limits state changed uh highway speeds from 55 to 60 this year so we're addressing that in areas where we did that 55 In our code, we're changing that to 60 to match what the state has. What's the last part of that?

I was curious, too. What's the obsolete?

What that was was from Highway 28 east to the city limits, our code, it used to be 45. Then at one point in time, it was changed to 35. It was posted as 35. It's currently posted as 35. But when that ordinance was updated to say, okay, we're changing that to 35, The code updaters did not get rid of the 45. So right now our code says that it's 45 and our code says it's 35. So that changes, gets rid of the section in the code where it said 45. Get it back to the 35 where that was posted. All right. licensing requirements regarding chickens. That's just on our code. We have a licensing requirement. And I don't think that was... Is that special breed chicken? Yeah, it could be. I don't know.

I can't believe we're giving up that windfall.

That's right. And I think the licenses... There are so few issued. It doesn't change the rules regarding keeping chickens. It doesn't affect the ability to do it or the restrictions on it, but it just takes away the city's obligation to license it. And then also, the final one is clarifying the privately owned improvements located within public right of way or placed at the owner's risk. And basically just clarifies that that's the issue. And I think that mainly comes out of irrigation systems that are in public property because frequently irrigation systems get installed into the right of way. A lot of owners of the property probably don't even realize that. But then in situations where we have to have road improvements or access the right of way, we run into conflicts with irrigation systems. So this kind of just clarifies that. Anyone that does do that, It's at their own risk that the city's not going to repair or fix or restore their private improvement in the public right of way.

I think that's it. Discussion or questions from council? Motion.

Please let me second, George, because when I read through this whole thing, I was like, I love this one. I had no idea that we would just hold on to things and then just approve it all at once.

Lindsay usually has an ongoing list, so when we say little things, I'll walk into Lindsay's office or Luke Will and say, hey, put this on the list.

All right. I'll probably vote for it, but I'm kind of disappointed because I was looking forward to seeing the chief look into those little license plates on his chest.

Yeah.

uh so i got a motion by borjan is seconded by brown any further discussion lindsay would you please call roll council member brown yes cool yes minor key yes porter yes or john yes all right motion carries item 7h is a second reading of an ordinance amending the norwalk zoning ordinance regarding the reconstruction of non-conforming structures on residential lots So back in April, we had a final reading of the zoning amendment that addressed the replacement of structures. The situation that caused that amendment was residents weren't able to replace, whether in the event of demolition, fire, or other damage. As an example, like an unattached garage, couldn't replace it on its current footprint. The amendment change that was approved only addressed structures in Gordon Heights, Westwood Estates, Platts 1 and 2, and Norwalk Knolls, Platts 1, 2, and 3. We've now had another instance in another part of Norwalk where the same type of thing is happening. So this ordinance amendment allows residents to reconstruct garages in their originally approved locations. It is important to note that this change does not override new fire and building code standards, which may still require a higher standard of construction, depending on the structure's location. The ordinance addresses the expanded zoning allowance. Well, no, never mind that. uh luke i'll turn it over to you sorry i don't think i got anything to add that was a very concise coverage of everything happy to answer questions any discussion questions from council or any public input hearing none can i get a motion to approve the second reading motion second motion by cool seconded by porter any further discussion Mary none Lindsay, would you please call roll.

Councilmember cool. Yes, my Nikki. Yes, border. Yes, more john.

Yes, brown. Yes. All right, that motion carries item seven. I final reading of an ordinance submitting chapter 76 of the Norfolk news code regarding bicycle regulations to update the ordinance to include the regulation of personal transportation devices. So there's been a lot of discussion across the entire metro area about e-bikes, e-scooters, e-motos, and minibikes whose use has exploded over the past year or two. What you see before you is Norwalk's ordinance. I'll acknowledge that this has taken us a while to get this to the council table, but as other communities have brought it forward, there's been significant input from various bicycle and trail organizations. So we've been monitoring that and adjusting so we get it close to correct the first time. Uh, as with any ordinance, we need to realize that we may see some unintended consequences to this ordinance and we may need to quickly adjust, but that's part of getting something decent in place. Uh, if we wait to get a perfect, we may never see anything enacted. So Jim, I'm going to turn it over to you to go over the final changes to the ordinance last week.

Okay. Yeah. Basically it's around about three or four things, but, um, We, there were changes made so that we've changed it to, uh, having an individual supervise younger, uh, writers. As we discussed at the last council meeting, remember it was a parent or guardian. And we worried about, you know, whether it was a nanny or just another adult. And we changed that to, uh, accommodate individuals, 16 years and older to supervise the younger ones. Uh, so there were several changes in there. The definition had to change, uh, And there are several sections in there surrounding that, but now that's been changed to allow for individuals to supervise their 16 years of age or older, those younger riders. There was changes in some of the definitions. I just eliminated references to Emoto throughout because we started looking at it and got some input from the coalition that really Emoto doesn't define anything. It's almost more of a slang term covering a bunch of different ones. So we just took that out of the ordinance because our definitions covered those items thoroughly. And I believe when I started this, the emotos, I think we all thought more like e-motorcycles. And, uh, but that being said, we have that covered elsewhere. And I think emotos were redundant and not really clear on what we were talking about. So, uh, it didn't really add a lot to the order. So we took it out. Um, And then we amended the issue regarding sidewalks in business districts. Remember, we had them that you can't ride any of these vehicles, bicycles or anything, in a business district with the thoughts that, okay, you don't want them riding right where there's entrances and exits to businesses. But there are some businesses. the council recognized there were some businesses that might have sidewalks that aren't necessarily in that area. So what the changes we made to that was to, uh, restrict writing of those on sidewalks that abut a commercial business. So if they are the sidewalk abuts the commercial area, well, then we, you can't ride, but there could be other areas that, uh, that someone could, and then also with the business district, we can post signs prohibiting that if there are other areas that are danger areas that police or the business owners worry about, it could be posted also. And then also, I think probably the biggest change was the helmets. We do have, I did add under 7610.5, we provided for requirements of helmets for individuals under the age of 15. So 14 years of age and younger have to wear helmets. I think with that, that covers the changes that the council discussed and asked for last meeting. And I think it's good to go. It'd be nice to have a third reading and get this behind us. There is a lot of interest in it when you talk about, when the mayor talked about metro-wide and really statewide. I've gotten a lot of emails from other city attorneys, city attorney web rings asking about it. And it's a big topic of conversation every year.

Discussion questions from council. So I was looking at this earlier and I actually threw it into Claude and was asking it some questions.

Like when I asked it, like, what's my minimum age to ride up e-bike then? So, well, there's no direct minimum age, right? Is what we're, what this document would say for us, right? Like there's helmet age requirements, but we never like.

And, and, uh, in age that you have to be supervised.

You have to be supervised. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, so I think that's correct. There's a minimum age. So it's like, but there's a maximum age that you can ride unsupervised. And then, you know, I guess if a three-year-old is being well supervised by his parents and he's learning to ride a bicycle or they decide it's appropriate to have a, what are those little tykes or whatever they, those electric vehicles that would fall underneath this. But, you know, you assume that they're going to be properly supervised.

So I guess I thought at one point we were saying like, if you were 14 or over, Like we were going to allow people to ride e-bikes. Yeah. Unsupervised, right? Yeah. That's not how it would read to me today. Right. Under 15, regardless of supervision, must wear properly fitted helmets.

Age limitation, a personal transportation device shall not be operated on a roadway, sidewalk, trail, or other public property by a person under the age of 12 years. Unless that person is under the direct supervision of a parent, guardian, or supervising individual. That's one of the changes we made.

Age 16 years of age or older. HAB-Jacques Juilland- doesn't really so at 13, then I can write on the road unsupervised as well. HAB-Jacques Juilland- Yes, yeah.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- The Council, because I think he had that conversation. Well, maybe when they cross in the middle school. HAB-Jacques Juilland- You know, maybe that's kind of the HAB-Jacques Juilland- I just want to make sure that's HAB-Jacques Juilland- I was trying to read this that way. HAB-Jacques Juilland- So yeah, but I think 7604 that's where the age limitation. HAB-Jacques Juilland- I feel that that's addressed HAB-Jacques Juilland- Second,

Okay, I got a motion by my seconded by Brown. Do we have any public input? Yeah, go on up.

Thank you, Mayor. My name is Richard Glade. I live at 612 Sawgrass here in Norwalk, Iowa. I've been to several of these meetings where you've discussed this. Some people are saying that somebody 14 year old can drive a three quarter ton pickup truck to school. Also, they can drive a moped at 14 years old. The thing is, is that they have to pass a test by the state of Iowa in order to obtain a permit in order to do that. And there are great restrictions on those. There are no restrictions on riding these things at night of a 12-year-old. whether or not they had to have headlights and taillights on them, signaling devices. And I just feel that 12 years old is way too young. The state of Iowa has to have some reason for a 14-year-old to be able to ride a moped. Yes, they do have to take a written test and a driving test in order to do that. These kids on these motos, these electric motos, are basically riding a moped. They're the same thing. They might go five miles an hour less than a moped. That maximum speed on a moped is 25 miles an hour. Maximum speed on an Emoto, 750 watts or less, is supposed to be no more than 20 miles an hour. Five miles an hour is negligible. And I did some research as far as the ages of different states that have laws. for a class one and two, which is the smaller electric motor, the state of California has no minimum age. New York is 16, Florida is 16, Texas is 15, Pennsylvania is 16, Illinois is 16, Ohio is 16, Georgia is 15, and they go on and on and on. And I think What is their reasoning for this? And I think it is maturity. Maturity level increases a great deal between 12 and 14. And I'm sure that the state of Iowa is going to take it up next session from what I understand. And I'm sure that hopefully they will pass a law that says they have to be 14 years old. in order to do this. But I think you're missing the boat. I really do. By allowing 12-year-olds to ride these things, they don't... I've been watching them and watching them and watching them. And they come up to intersections and everything, just like the cars do, blow right through the stop signs to cross uncontrolled intersections without even looking. And hopefully... Fire rescue is not going to go out and steal one of these kids off the street because they are too young to be threatened. I could go through this entire list of ages, but I don't want to take counsel's time.

I appreciate that.

So can I answer any questions?

There's one thing. Richard, you commented on the headlamps. There is a requirement in here that every personal transportation device between sunset and sunrise is required to have lighting. So that is in there. I just wanted to make sure I went.

I have not seen the entire laws. It's being written. But I do feel that the age is way too young. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Okay. Any other discussion?

I agree with him. That's why 14 was my age, just for the record.

I agree with that, too.

Somewhere between setting the age limit and parenting. A parent would say, are you done? Not yet. That's my take on it.

Right.

And as I said before, this is our starting point. Right.

This is a good start.

Yeah. Even if we said 14, there could be some parents, right, that just aren't parenting, and that'd be the case too, right?

It's going to be a learning curve to all of us.

And hopefully to his point, right, the state does do something, right? So, yeah, this is our first shot. Right. All right.

Lindsay, would you please call roll?

Council Member Meineke?

Yes.

Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Cool.

Yes. All right. Motion carries. Item eight, future agenda items. Purpose for this is for council to give direction to staff by way of motion to have items placed on future agendas, not for the discussion of the merits of the subject matter. It's to get it on the agenda so we can. Any future agenda items anybody have for the night?

Mayor, if I may, just so I can have some closure on one item that we've talked about in the past, council wards at large versus wards. I just want some direction on that. If it's no, then that's okay. I just don't want to drop the ball on anything.

It might be a better way to say it. I'm the one who brought it up, so I feel comfortable not addressing it for a while.

Okay.

Thank you.

When you do... Lindsay's gonna remove it from her list. If anybody wants to talk about it, bring it up again at this section so she can get it back on her list.

I think it's good. I think as we grow, right, or Jason's Villages of Norwalk progress, right, then I think that's a more appropriate time to do it.

Okay. Item nine, council inquiries and staff updates. I'd like to remind everybody that this portion of the meeting is much less formal. You may hear some back and forth, Banner and General joking around. We believe that this can build camaraderie and cohesiveness between staff and council. Luke?

Yeah, I have a few items. First, we had a good city school meeting. There was a little bit of comfort. The school apparently is also learning some of the new legislation as we are as well. But we did start to talk to them about some of the impacts on TIP and how that impacts the schools. We gave them an update of all our different development areas, what's happening. So that was a positive, good meeting with them. Tony, that's got to be one of the best comments I've heard in a long time, you saying that you saw the water flowing through those sub-trains. Yeah. Brian, thank you for doing this on that phase of development. It's a good one to partner with you guys. Park tour. Kelsey was probably going to, maybe she is going to say something about that today. Kelsey and I went with Krissa and Dakota on a park tour yesterday. I think Kelsey's probably going to reinforce this, but for any of the elected officials, if you get a chance to take time and just do a drive around with Dakota and Chris, it is eye-opening. Probably one of the most eye-opening things to me today, even though I feel like I've got a good handle on it, is how many large, vacant, completely empty parks we have in our community. So that's a good thing to go take a look at. Also, Ed, he did a tour with Gene Strable at the library. Really stirred up some good thoughts for Ed. Same type of thing. If you guys ever get a chance, I'm sure Gene would love to show you around what's going on at the library. And then, Lindsay, I'm glad you brought that up, kind of clarifying the districts thing. I had a conversation with Andy after our last work session, we talked about economic development policies and diving into that to see if there's some additional type things we can offer. Andy and I exchanged some text messages and emails, and ultimately we said with all the things we're learning about the legislation, He said it's probably best idea to wait maybe towards the end of January, maybe even into February before we bring that back as a formal work session. I just know we all talked about that at that work session, so I just wanted to give everybody an update.

That's all I have. Okay, thank you. George.

Lindsay?

No, thank you.

All right. Who do we got next? Carissa? In terms of the park tours, I did shut the form off today just so we could put some new further updates on it for you. So once I get some dates set with Dakota for more options, I will send you an email and let you know it's open again if you would like to sign up. And I know some of you are already scheduled, so thank you for that.

That's it.

Thank you. Yep, you are. Okay, wanted to make sure.

Jean Scrabble.

Nothing tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you. Pete.

Just two quick things. Appreciate all the support from mayor and council for our retirements and promotions last month. The promotions are done, obviously, but the placement of all the individuals and the official reorganization happens on Monday, or actually Sunday, but Monday. So we're all excited and looking forward to running the police department in the new manner. And then secondly, every year, the police chiefs fill out a spreadsheet on their fireworks calls. I think it was interesting. We had 22 calls in 2026, which is the same as we had in 2025. We wrote one citation. Last year, we wrote two. The average of the cities that have responded to this was 27 calls, and nobody else wrote a ticket. That's all.

Thanks. Chief.

Oh, I'm sorry. Nothing for me.

Joe. I think Council have directed Wayne to look into Art's area over there on Redwood where we had a lot of water infiltration. We're going to be putting in a subgrade drain along his property down Redwood to remedy that. So Wayne wanted me to mention that and also wanted me to talk about the water main project starting on Ellen Snyder. you'll see that construction happening here. All right.

Great. Thank you. Tony. That's what I was going to talk about.

All right. That's it. Nothing else. Okay. Luke.

Nothing left.

Ed. Yeah. First, I wanted to thank you and the chief for the good retirement ceremony that you guys conducted. It was really well done. It went really smooth and reflects really well on the department. Then the second thing, is what Luke commented about with the library. And I asked Luke, with the mayor's permission, to work with Gene to develop an action plan. So at some point, the council will likely see come before you the actions that will need to happen. I think they really are necessary. Fire Marshal thinks they're necessary, too. So to find not a lot of discussion is more of a question. It's going to be a while until we have a new library building, I think. So this one sure needs to be operational. And even at that, if we decided that we were able to do a new library building, we would use that building for something. So it's still going to have to be serviceable. So anyway, appreciate the help. And Mayor, I appreciate your guidance on it. That's it.

like we said um parks tour this morning was super super eye-opening even for somebody that's been voting and talking about parks stuff for years on the commission before this um i would view it as almost a mandatory thing that you could put the pressure on yourself to do it because again even i who am slightly obsessed with our park system learned a ton today and it was very um good to see it all in person. I know none of us have little kids that are actively using our parks, maybe like a lot of our other residents are so highly recommend that tour. And then also the last WRA meeting in July, we voted to sell off a piece of the property at the WRA facility that's going to be the Joppa village for people, the tiny home village that will be constructed for people experiencing homelessness, which I find a fascinating project. So keep an eye on that.

That's a fascinating possibility.

You don't think?

Okay.

Yep. Well,

Hey, I got community chat on Saturday, 9 a.m., right in this room. And then just to put a plug in for community development, I have tasked community development to... Watch Highway 28 and get rid of all the crappy signs that pop up from developers and people and construction people and all that crap. I think it just looks tacky and bad. They have done a great job doing that. So thank you publicly.

I will let them know. I will inform you I have not directly taken down any signs, so I take no credit.

I have taken down signs.

You're doing better than I have.

So just, yeah, thank you guys for doing that. And so item number 10 is a closed session pursuant to IVACO chapter 21.5.1c to discuss tragedy with counsel in matters that are presently in litigation or where litigation is imminent, where its disclosure would be likely to prejudice or disadvantage the position of the governmental body in that litigation. Jim, is this a valid reason to go on a closed session? Yes, it is. Okay. Can I get a motion to go on a closed session? Motion. And a second. Second. Okay, so motion by Brown, seconded by Borjan. Lindsay, would you please call roll?

Council Member Porter? Yes. Borjan?

Yes.

Brown?

Yes.

Poole?

Yes.

Minus you.

All right, that motion carries. It is 7.31.