That was my high school gold.

Oh, yeah.

We ready?

Yes.

Okay.

No, we do.

All right.

I guess we're live, so we're gonna go ahead and get started.

Welcome everybody to the Tuesday, October 2nd of the City of Norman's uh business and community affairs committee.

Uh today we have two items on the agenda.

The first being a discussion regarding minimum lot sizes for development.

I believe Miss Jane Hudson has a brief presentation for us, so I'll go turn it over to you.

Brief.

Brief.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yes, Jane has Sun Planning Director.

Uh so I want to the first slide is actually a carryover from the last time when we were here in April, and I kept it in here just because I wanted to remind everybody that the uh two subdivision scenarios, what we were talking about last time was how to possibly subdivide an existing property with an ADU on the back or something like that.

But uh we're expanding the discussion today, but I wanted to keep this slide in there just to uh remind everyone you know, we have the greenfield development, and then we also have uh the infill, and then we have the existing zoning, the requirements for uh lot area, so the 4500 uh square feet, six thousand, and then uh five thousand.

So uh part of the discussion today is about minimum lot sizes.

Our current regulations again, same thing that was on the other screen, but uh R1A, 4500 square feet, R1, you have to have 6,000, R2 is 5,000 if you're developing a single family home, and you have to have 7,000 if you're doing a single family home or uh sorry, single family home and a garage apartment or a duplex.

So you have to have that 7,000 in the RM2 R3, you can have uh 5,000.

If you're doing multifamily development, that does require an additional square footage within those zoning districts, so about 3,000 square feet of additional area for every unit over three, I believe it is.

But I wanted that in there so we could have that to talk about as we move forward with this discussion.

So the proposed uh regulation options would be no minimum lot size, period, and that would be in these districts that I've outlined already.

So the R1A, R1, R2, RM2, R3.

And I want to add this 1400 square feet.

Uh we looked at a couple places real quick, and Houston, I believe, has a minimum of 1400 square feet.

I believe Austin had 1,800 square feet or 1,500 square feet, but that's just some information for you in case we want to talk about that, as opposed to just doing zero for development, and again, I'm talking about new development, so I'm talking about greenfield development.

We're coming in with a preliminary plat.

We would have to review everything that will be coming in on that plat.

So we have to have our street frontage, uh appropriate location for solid waste collection, emergency vehicle access, adequate drive access, and then of course utility access.

So the easements for water and sewer would have to be accounted for our current setbacks are 25 feet for the front yard, five feet on either side, 20 feet for rear setback, and we do have a 65% maximum coverage.

And we went back a couple years ago and updated that.

So it's 65 uh total coverage.

We did have it broken into 40 percent for structures and then the additional 25 for uh paving, but we we just did 65 percent across the board for that.

If we are going to make this change to go to no lot size requirements, I wanted to throw this out there because I think this is something that we need to talk about.

And like I said, the the front yard setback right now is 25.

I think that we need to pull the front yard to 20.

That keeps the setback for the garage for a car to park in the driveway and not overhang onto the sidewalk.

But if we're reducing the lot size and keeping a 25 foot front yard setback, that's some additional area that somebody could utilize for housing.

Something to think about.

And again, still required to plat if unplatted.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about, uh so for the current subdivision regulations, we have uh a minimum distance of street frontage of 50 feet for a lot.

If you're on a cul-de-sac, you can have 35 feet.

Depth of the lot is 100 feet.

If we make these changes, we were thinking that we could do uh 35 feet for a butting the street, and the depth of the lot.

I wanted to talk about that.

We've had two, so I want to go through these.

So we've had two items uh in a cut the last couple years.

We had the villages, those are about 30, 35 feet wide, but they were all still a hundred feet in depth.

Then we also had uh St.

James Park that you just saw.

That one is 30, 35 in width, but again, they still have the 100 foot depth on those lots.

So that's another one.

Um so for discussion, I would like to get input on what your thoughts are for the lot depth, and if you were good with taking that 50 foot requirement out and only having the 35 foot requirement, which is what you're seeing when you when you're seeing pads come forward to you, that's one of the reasons they're coming forward.

Is like they're bringing the 25 foot front yard to 20, and sometimes 15 if they set the garage back to 19.

Um, and then they're bringing forward uh the coverages, I think is the other thing that they were bringing forward.

But those are the the main things that you guys will see in the PUS that you vote on.

Speaking of coverages, what does it look like if you uh have a smaller lot to work with?

Do you still have to do the 65% or less?

That's a great conversation point.

Um that number council did some adjustments to that number because we had one number for impervious service and another number for total lot coverage, which kind of felt like the same thing, and council cleaned that up, and now there is a number.

65.

65%.

Now, what does it mean if council says we're comfortable?

If I mean the lots get smaller, your houses either have to get taller and skinnier, or we're gonna have to deviate from the 65% coverage.

If the 65% coverage is allowed to, maybe it's 75% under this uh concept.

What storm water infrastructure must be accounted for in the street?

Now, if it's a plat, all that math problem can be accomplished.

The engineer might say the pipe needs to be uh a 30 inch instead of a 24-inch pipe if there's that much more coverage in the infill, which that's a different conversation.

Very different.

And and coverage is another thing that they come forward with 75%.

Some of them well, in the center city, actually, with engineered solutions, they can actually go up to 85%.

So and again, this is greenfield, so that would be taken care of as it moves forward.

Right.

Well, I think all those factors are the reason why I was okay with no minimum lot size because if you have to accommodate the setbacks, you have to accommodate the coverage.

I mean, you're kind of the problem will solve itself almost at a certain point.

And so putting a minimum, I can I can see the logic, but I feel like we'd just be picking arbitrary number and not really knowing if it works.

Um for the for just frontage or for the instead of actually giving it a minimum lot size instead of making it zero.

You had said something like 1500 or something like that.

Oh, that was one of the ones I just wanted to throw that so you'd seen because we didn't, I don't think that we actually found anybody that just didn't have anything.

Right, yeah.

So I'd seen that Billings Montana, they had sort of eliminated all minimum lot sizes, but they have a minimum width that they have maintained.

I couldn't, I didn't see what that width is, but um, so but I think that's along the lines what you're talking about with 35 feet versus 50.

And um, yeah, my preference would be zero, maybe with a um maybe with a recommended, like we have a parking minimum being like zero, but this is some sort of maybe it's a thousand or fifteen or something.

That's so if somebody has no idea what they're doing, they have some point of reference, maybe, but saying I like the idea of not having a minimum, and I I would like the idea too of the house or apartment being having less of a setback, and uh if there's a parking, if there's a garage, it having to have a setback, maybe.

I was thinking exactly.

You move the building the house forwards, then the garage just has to be set back or enough at least for a car to fit with the block in the sideway.

I'd say yeah, 15 foot setback for the building, 20 feet for the garage, if you can parse it out that way.

Something like that.

Because I think yeah, I mean, let them design it.

Well, that's that's the whole idea with this is to you know put that pull down a lot of the red tape and let the market tell us what they want to build, what they can build, and what will is buildable, and so you know, very much.

I'm glad you brought up the parking very much in that same vein.

Let's let's give them a set of recommendations, not a set of requirements.

And so I think if the recommendation is 1500, we have no minimum, but the recommendation is 1500 square foot for the lot or whatever number we come up with.

I think that's a fair compromise to give some guidance.

But I prefer functionally, I'd like to see zero on the lot size.

I mean, we can do that.

That's why, and like you said, the market will determine that, but it's also the engineers as they're designing that and bringing in, it's gonna depend on the property that they have to tobos and what they've got to work with.

Uh less, whatever, less than 50, so 35 or whatever that is, but as less as well, on our historic you know, downtown lots, those are all 25 foot wide by 140 deep.

And so that was a pretty solid module.

I know you almost have to combine lots to get things done at a certain point, but you know, there I think there's lots of 20-foot wide buildings on Main Street that goes to your lot line to lot line.

I know it's different than what we're talking about here, but 25 can work.

Um in those in those original plates, 20 or 25, and it was just assumed that whatever you needed, you just bought two lots, or you just bought three lots, and that was you assembled what you needed for yours, and the guy next door will assemble what they need to do for theirs, and it seemed to work, but we actually creates a stronger knit community if you ask me, where you have to share bricks with your neighbor and figure out how to firewall like all that stuff works.

Customer makle.

If we were to set a minimum but set it low, like you could.

I'm just thinking, so if you did 30 foot wide and a hundred foot deep, you could get what 14 units on an acre.

If you did 30 foot wide and 60 foot deep, you could get 10 more units on the acre.

Or if you did 20 foot wide, 30 foot deep, you know, something that it's really small and it allows for um development per acre, because that's how it's going to be looked at from the financial side.

Uh but still have some kind of grip on it a little bit and not that way you don't have 300 foot lots that are getting developed with stuff in neighborhoods, like that may not be the with that that may be tough to do with the easements, but you might have some very jagged things that way in some of the parts down.

Well, you know, part of this is partly for the core where we want to partial potentially pars partition off backs of lots to sell off ADUs, but I think you tip the nail on the head, it's more for greenfield as well.

And so if we get new developments coming forward and we're saying well, you can squeeze in that many more homes or make that much more efficient use of your land.

Um maybe we just put something in there about urban core and greenfield, like differentiate that and maybe have again.

I'm all about let's get dense, but well, and I I think that's a so something to keep in mind is we will be doing a full overhaul of the zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations.

So I think there is opportunity to massage all the numbers, all the things in the ordinance.

For me, this was just a much like parking.

Let's take the smallest next step, no minimums, and then we'll kind of tease out some of the variables after that during the ordinance overhaul.

I mean that's just that's the way I'm looking at it.

I'm not trying to rule with an iron fist or anything, but and this conversation will help guide the consultants who will ultimately be helping us draft that new zoning ordinance.

So yeah, as much input information as they get as to what your thoughts are, we'll wind up with a better product for you to consider at the end of that process.

So I want to I want to point out one thing in the villages.

The example I showed you on the villages there.

So like I said, it's a 30, 35, some of them might be 40.

So that was done as a PU.

With a PUD, they have to give us a typical design of how the lots will work.

At 30 feet wide, when you start putting the driveways in some of these smaller developments, you do start to encroach upon the radius starts to encroach upon the adjacent lots that are there.

So I think this can be done, but I also think that as these applications come forward, we're going to have to have some additional requirements, some expectations of the engineers as they submit those applications to us to show us how each of these will work if they are going to be 30 feet wide, if they're gonna be 35 feet wide.

How are you going to do this?

Because these are 30 and they're single drive lots, single car garages.

Yeah.

Um I would like to be able to put some of those expectations with this update of what they do have to get to us.

I think that's the absolutely reasonable compromise.

We get rid of the minimums, but we say now you have to prove that it works.

You have to show us your math, essentially.

And it's not, I mean, yes, it's a little bit of extra work on the front end for them, but we're also pulling down the requirements.

Again, it's a it's a happy medium, if you like.

And in that particular neighborhood, I think my niece and nephew bought they live on lot 20, I think, based on now that it's all built.

Um it is an affordability enhancement.

Yes.

Um it's three-bedroom, two and a half bath, and when you're inside, it does not feel like a little house at all.

Super duper livable, a one-car garage.

They left a house off of Boyd out by uh Rotary Park that was built in the 60s with a one-car garage.

So it was nothing new to them.

That's just the way it works, and you you learn to whoever gets home first, you know, parks inside.

I mean, and they they just do the do the dance, but that's what they were doing at the house they lived in before.

So we used to build them like that all the time.

Were you you're saying that with this development, they didn't realize that until after they started building it out?

Like they did.

I would assume they would have had every piece of property is plot is planned out.

They know how many units they can fit.

I was just told after they started building them, they were like, oh, wait, there's a couple we can't think that the lots that are in question are actually like the lot number nine there at the corner there at the corner.

You can see that with the corner cut, they can't get the can't get the drive to the front and the side garage doesn't leave enough room to park a car.

So I think that's what we're looking at more is that it's these these edges that cause the problem.

I think the main lots may be more okay.

So in the subregs, right?

I'm sorry.

In the subregs right now, we actually have that requirement.

Remember, this is a PUD, so they were able to do how they wanted to design it, but in the subregs, we do have the requirement.

If it's a corner lot, you have to have that additional depth.

So I think something like that should have to stay in there, which would help with this problem.

I think that's fair.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, just so everybody knows, my goal with this was to kind of check this, check this box in the process and be able to take it to a full study session with the rest of council.

So as long as there's no cries of outrage or any you know consternation with that, I think that's what I'm gonna recommend if that's okay.

Can I just ask you one more question?

So like what's the city that you've seen this in that you think it's oppressive, like gosh.

Of course, I don't have it off the top of my head.

I know I have seen it in a lot of places.

Um, obviously, this idea did not come to me out of the blue.

I've I'm definitely stealing it from somewhere else.

Um I will track that down.

I I've got a list of it somewhere I don't have the top of my head.

I would say it may not be their regulation currently, but you know, we went to Providence.

Yep.

And uh I would say most of their city was probably developed no minimum lot size.

Yeah, clearly they have one now for the but they're also only 18 square miles.

So they say the top three things you can do for housing affordability is to abolish parking minimums, legalize ADUs, and abolish uh minimum lot sizes.

So if we take this step, we'll have done the top three things to increase affordability for housing in our communities.

And in that scenario, when it becomes an entitled opportunity, developers they spend less money on attorneys and putting together PUDs and spuds, which is a cost that just gets tacked onto every single one of those lapses.

Well, and you think about just from a maintenance standpoint.

I, as a homeowner, have less yard demo, less yard to water, you have less leaves to pick up and just you less is more sometimes, more is less, sometimes.

Um I think it's just it's an attempt to not have large single family houses, multi-family, and nothing in between.

This is kind of the step to get what we always call the missing middle.

So all right, you got direction?

Excellent.

Well, thank you very much.

All right, item number two is a discussion regarding a possible charter election and other spring elections.

I don't know if staff is presenting anything on this item, but if not, I'm happy to wing it.

Okay.

Uh so this came up.

Uh, if you guys remember in our study session, I think it was two weeks ago, we talked about the um street maintenance bond and where where we would like to put that in terms of the election calendar.

Um, there was the option of February with the city council elections, or we could put it in April if we had something else to maybe pair it with.

And so we talked about the charter amendments coming back.

Um I was hoping that we were gonna have a slide that talked about the previous charter amendments.

You I pulled some of that out.

I mean, based on your conversation at um retreat, what you were looking at was um the swearing in time, council pay, and possibly the threshold thing again.

I think term limits was also on there, right?

I'm not sorry, um, term length.

Well, that's what failed last time.

It was all coupled together.

The term length um with the swearing in and the pays kind of all in one section, and all that, and it went down.

So I don't know what they had the most heartburn about, but if we were to bring it back, would you have to put them all in one section again, or could you parse them out?

I believe they could be parsed out.

I can talk to Catherine about it.

Um, it would just be a separate question.

I think the goal is to not have to reconvene the charter committee and the ones that council feels are a priority to revisit.

Let's put those back on a ballot and see where it stands.

I know that the first time those passed, it was a it's a very hot time politically, and so I'm not certain that the votes on that were really indicative of how people felt on those issues, and so I'd I'd like to take another minute the apple on that.

Berylman.

Yeah, six six of the nine passed.

Um, but yeah, the one to allow us to increase utility rates terms and then pay for the three that failed.

Um my goal or my plan right now is not to reconvene a charter review committee and go through the whole thing.

Um years, I think what we have to do every time.

Every 10 years mandatory.

Um, and so I don't know that we need to go through it over and do a whole thing again, but some targeted ones, specifically the swearing in one, um, which I would tentatively propose being within 30 days of certification of the election board, so not tied to any date specific that way if state law changes again and affects when we can have city council elections, then don't have to go try to amend the charter again to deal with that.

Um, and then you know, just having being elected February 11th, not being sworn in until September or July 1st is a long time.

Um people asked about it a lot.

Um requiring not in there already, and then you have issues uh like in Ward 1 that you've you know so that's one main one, and then um I mean there seems to be a lot of support whenever people find out how much we get paid or how little.

Um so that's one to think about.

Uh but primarily the term or the swearing in time is what I'm most interested in getting changed, but um certainly open to considering any others as well.

And I think we've all heard from residents about elections and uh why we don't take up more opportunity perhaps to put things on similar elections, and sometimes we just can't.

Sometimes things aren't ready to go forward.

Um sometimes they're not something we're requesting, and it's another entity.

Um and then you know, there's not statewide elections every November.

So and we've also seen um, I mean, just in the charter amendment election that we had a few years ago in the nine questions, uh ballot fatigue is a real thing.

If there's too many things on the ballot, people start to skip the questions as they go down the line.

And you can see it if you look at the nine charter amendments from a couple years ago.

The first question had over a thousand more vote total votes cast for it than the ninth question.

And you can see it when you go down the list, the total gets less and less and less until you get to number nine, and yeah, it was over a thousand.

So over a thousand voters decided it voted for the first one, didn't make it to the end.

Yeah, um got to be careful about putting a whole bunch of stuff on one ballot, especially if there is a federal and state and their state questions and judicial retention and 50 things that are on there.

So, but also people you know have been critical about well, we just had an election of February, a special one in March and this one thing.

Yeah, and so I I think with six city council elections in February, probably maybe a good chance that one of them will have a runoff.

So I think we could be okay scheduling something in April, but something I I thought we really needed to think about.

Um I think the street maintenance bond is to me, it's a very popular uh program.

Uh it's 20 years old, it's been reapproved four times, and um has been very effective.

And I think it's something that candidates for city council can run on supporting, hopefully, and um that could help get the voter turnout for it in a positive way.

Um but yeah, we can think about April as well if we want to do street maintenance bond and charter amendments as well, or if we want to do it all in February, all in one big slate.

So yeah, that's what I want us to think about.

If I remember the discussion, um staff said they could be ready for February or April, but almost preferred April because they gave more time to do public outreach marketing meetings, and like actually really run the machine instead of trying to force it through.

So um, I agree.

I mean, if February ends up being in, I think it's that's fine.

Yeah, because everybody's out on the trail talking about it as part of the campaign, and I would be out there too trying to promote it.

But um so maybe we don't need as much time to do marketing and all that stuff if we've got much people running for council that are a little bit in perspective.

A February election, we would have to have it on first reading, the second reading in November, and then second reading in December.

So we would have quick.

I think staff is gonna be able to come back at the end of this month.

We have it currently scheduled for October 28 to come back to full council with the the street maintenance spot.

And then we can decide in the in that meeting, I think if we want to go for send it forward for February or hold off.

So um, but yeah, and then other charter amendments, like I said, if there's any other ones that anybody thinks about specifically, um I'm open to considering them, but specifically swearing in times is one I'm mainly focused on.

I go to the one about utility uh rates.

Was that something?

Do we need to have a charter amendment to create a different board that actually is trust utility?

We'll have that uh for the water raise if you wanted non-council members to serve in that capacity.

I do believe that would require maybe the trusted drive.

I don't remember off don't oh yeah, yeah.

So we have a public utilities authority, right?

But if council said we want to appoint private community members to serve as trust trustees, yeah, there's no different than the hospital trust.

Does that require a vote of the people?

Go look specifically at what the language says about that particular utility.

Um what that trusted interest says, and we'd look at that and take a determination as to whether or not we're a vote or not.

Oklahoma City does it.

Because what not they have different people as trustees at their recommendations to come to uh I still have a question about that too.

So does that board have to have that?

Let's say it's water rates, and there's uh trust that's over it that's not us.

Um and they say that the rate needs to be raised according to a study by so much.

Do they get to automatically do that, or do they have to go to the key collapse?

Yeah, not without taking it out of the charter or amending the charter language.

You'd have to amend that language for them to do that without a vote.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think, yeah, they would they would uh work on that with utility staff, and then I would guess I would envision it as them making a recommendation to us that this is what uh when the next rate needs to happen.

This is what staff and the authority has discussed of what that needs to be.

Here's our recommendation to city council, and then we decide whether to go forward with it or change it or whatever.

But that's what I would view, and then other I think I don't know about mundane being the right thing, but other things that the authority does where we change our hat and stuff that um TFA.

Right.

Yeah, those those um trustees depending on the skill sets you see, then you're getting community members to say, yeah, we recommend this, this really needs to happen and provide you another level of salesmanship.

Should the question go before the voters, it's gonna handle layer of trust.

If I have a list of the politics, so they're all about it as better than I do, but if I remember right, the history was this got put in there because the water rate raising them and lowering them was being abused, you know.

So the people, the powers that be uh were taking advantage of the situation.

So exactly like you're describing, if it was now citizen led and they were recommending as a citizen body, and we as a council thumbs up thumbs down on the recommendation.

I think it's a lot different than the man behind the curtain, you know, pulling the strings whenever they want to raise or lower rates.

Increasing utility rates and using it for non-utility.

Yes.

I think the story is that at some point in time, and this is before I was here, there was a request to raise police salaries that got proposed and it was rejected.

And that city manager says, Well, I'll just increase the utility rates and what is used to have to pay uh raised before for public safety, and that's what resulted in that charter change that now requires for that.

So I think you're right about the issue of it seemed like it was a little bit abusive, and then that resulted in what we have now.

And of course, the difficulty is from the utilities department perspective, it's difficult to recommend those incremental increases that you probably need.

You have to wait until something's really, really bad, and then of course the electric go to how come they can come and tell us it's not because you weren't gonna approve it if we just told you this was just regular.

How often are you going to vote to increase your rate?

Right.

And it's probably really rare that that's gonna happen.

I mean, I I'm not really motivated to raise the amount of money I pay for services very often.

I mean, it's gonna like you say there's got to be uh something uh carrot at the end of the line that's saying, well, if you don't do it, either you're gonna lose your access to water or whatever the situation may be.

So even the the rules of governmental accounting standards changed since then abuse took place back in the day.

If in today's environment under governmental accounting standards, um if our external third-party auditor came in and saw us buying cop cars out of the water fund, uh your audit opinion would be skewed mildly to say this is absolutely not uh reporting through the current financial position of the city.

Uh make it really tough to issue there would be bad outcomes from it.

It was a little looser back in the 70s when I understand this may have taken place.

So that makes sense.

Safeguards, but it's hard to convince the public that well, it's a different place now.

Uh exactly.

I think I mean I would I'd very much be in favor of bringing that one back uh with the caveat that we do quite the campaign to educate this you're not handing over the power to the city council.

We would there will be an extra layer of protections in there.

Um, we as a city, like all cities in Oklahoma, we're hamstrong once because of the sales tax system, doubly hamstrung because of this utility um setup.

I would just hate to uh box ourselves to a corner.

That's right.

The other thing to keep in mind is there's a possibility that you may have a referred to vote on one of those two dates.

If the Supreme Court reverse a judge burden ruling, we have to set it, we have to send it for a vote.

It's gotta be on the next general municipal election or the next county election.

As a general rule, the next municipal general election is an election when all the citizens of your jurisdiction vote the difficulty.

Yeah, the next mayor.

Um if you had a charter election on one of those two, the February or the April, there's an argument that that would be an appropriate date for that.

If not, the next county election is November 2026.

So it could be either April, February or possibly November.

And it's gonna I I know Mr.

Norman has been I've heard that he's been telling people that it's gonna be in February.

I don't know if that's necessarily true.

If there's no charter provisions that are considered that's just uh anyway, just words and I could imagine that that would draw a challenge judicially if if there were no tr if there were no charter provisions being voted on, and there wouldn't be a reasonable argument that everybody in the city's voting that probably would get challenged in the next the date that I the date that I concluded was the most appropriate absent of potential charter election would be November.

So that's good.

Would be the next citywide it's definitely something to consider your home.

Yeah, I I had an experience with uh what municipal election means.

A few years ago I had an opponent in Ward 7 who had not been a registered voter for six months.

They weren't from Norman, they were a student that lived in the dorms, and I challenged their eligibility to serve to the election board ruled in their favor saying that there they haven't been a registered voter for six months yet, but they will have been by the next municipal uh citywide municipal election.

Which will be three years two years from now, the next at that time, the next mayoral election.

I'm gonna be a millionaire by that time.

That's that was my I was like, oh wow, that's interesting.

So um, but yeah, that that is an interesting thing.

It would seem I don't know, if there was a decision by the Supreme Court tomorrow, would it be on notice February would be well there was a but we don't have a citywide election currently unless you put a charter.

Unless you've got a city charter member.

Well that could be interesting.

Yeah, the tax.

Well, the street just put a one is gonna be a citywide vote though.

So that's gonna have to be in April or February because we have to redo it before expires before so there's gonna be a citywide vote in either February or April.

So hopefully we get a ruling before then.

Yeah, the only pick up is there are cases that do say you can't put it on a special election meeting, so that's the difficulty.

It's gotta be on one of those ones that's considered a general municipal election, and you can't do a special election, and all the elections but for the ones in February and April would be special.

Special.

Yeah.

Yeah, it would have to be February or April.

And I mean in April you got the possibility that only maybe only Ward 5 has a runoff.

Yeah, or whatever.

Yeah.

Uh six wards now.

Well, we just, you know, we talked about balloting vote of teaching, you know, six ward races, all the charter stuff, street maintenance bond, potentially the arena referendum.

It's a lot, I feel like on one ballot.

Well, that's why the swearing in date might be the only charter amendment.

Since we don't need one for a utilities problem, apparently, maybe um, I mean, I would like to increase pay, but I don't know if it's urgent that we put that on there.

But the swearing in time, I would I think it's fresh in people's minds, and I think that one feel like everybody would support changing that.

So um, but that along with um the street maintenance bond and possibly an election over the TIFF thing.

Yeah, that could be a lot.

I think it'd be smart to sp, I don't know what you spread out, but putting in February and April, divide and conquer a little bit.

Um then so if you got February, April and then a November, and that's all we're looking for did putting the dates with a court ruling if it happens and everything like that.

I think that swearing you I think that blends well together par vote.

If I don't think it hurts it, that particular question.

It's gonna be front center in the elections.

I mean, absolutely, whichever February or April.

Yeah, so it it as long as council is comfortable, we hear the message that yeah, we can't just overload April and then February comes in really, really light.

If we could balance the ballot weight uh and make sure um the uh state supreme court ruling, if that has to go to a vote, we we maybe lighten that one up.

Hopefully, we'll know in time it and if obviously we don't know in time to hit February, then I have no choice.

Yeah, April it's gonna be, but the other ones we've got a little more flexibility because those are just internal decisions, and staff will remain uh diligent and uh we'll keep all this into consideration and bring you what we think is the best balance in council's the ultimate decision, council grant.

Um I'm just curious, so in order to even have that to vote in February, it would have to have a first reading in November.

Um I was just curious so in order to even have that to vote in February it would have to have a first reading in November I don't suppose you know what the odds are we might hear something before November.

You would hope that it would have taken that long.

We thought it would be before August so I guess that is a good question.

Do we have to go through the whole process of calling for an election for a second reading and all that even though it's ordered by the court and it just you you would just start the process where you left it off right which was you had a petition you had the signatures you thought they were valid it got interrupted because of the legitimate just started up or okay okay um clear as mud all right well I think that we've talked about that one enough there's no other conversations or comments on that.

Do you guys