The same thing that happened to the uh the Humphreys massive apartment complex noise got some group of material.

Is that what happened today at OAC?

I don't know.

That's what I was doing.

Internal, yeah, they got to it so quick.

I think it takes to like have the buildings.

Like they can go run and windows.

I was hoping it's a question.

All that's not for the 31st.

Oh, yes, yes.

Yep.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, let's go ahead and get started so we can get through these five items.

Um it is five o'clock.

So we'll go ahead and get started with the city council study session for Tuesday, January 20th, 2026.

We have five items on the agenda.

And the first one is a discussion with bond council regarding technical aspects of general obligation bonds and applicable state law provisions as they relate to the city's planned voter propositions regarding the issuance of general obligation bonds to fund the street maintenance bond program and construction of a homeless shelter.

And uh I think our bond council has to be in Chicache for a meeting uh at six.

So if yeah, if you guys want to take it from here.

Most of you, I think know Nate, but Nate Ellis has served as our bond counsel for many years, and he regularly advises us on all things bond related, but specifically uh general obligation bonds before we take something to forward to the voters and to counsel for a vote.

We work very closely with Nate to draft language uh for the proposition, and so uh the language in the ordinance you see is is is bond language that will get those bonds sold on the market after uh approved by the voters.

So we wanted to make Nate available to you all in case you have any questions about that and just to kind of chat about some of the language.

Okay, well, good evening, Nate LS Public Finance Law Group.

I don't have a formal presentation for you, but I mean, just generally speaking, when we'll go into the voters to issue general obligation bonds, there's a couple of parameters that we have to observe.

We um there's there's a couple of different areas of bonds that we issue.

What the city has historically done, I don't think exclusively.

Come over here, so you can see all our spinning around looking out of the back of your head.

Um what we've historically issued is um Article 10, Section 27 bonds, and so the requirements there are that it's a 50% majority vote, uh, which is different from what we see on school bonds, those are Article 10 Constitution Section 26 that requires a 60% vote.

And uh the this uh section 27 provision allows cities to do the 50% vote for roads and bridge type projects, so that transportation, and then it can be done for public utilities.

Now we think utilities, we think water and sewer lines, things like, but really a public utility is just about everything you can imagine that a city might engage in.

So I mean cemeteries or public utilities, homeless shelter, community facilities, things like that.

Those are all things that would qualify as as a public utility, but the requirement is the city has to exclusively own the property, has to exclusively own the building, the assets, whatever the case may be.

And so that that sometimes presents some long-term challenges because there's not really good ways to you can't buy it and then turn or build it and then turn around and lease it to somebody else for them to operate the facility on your behalf.

So uh exclusively owned, and so again, the city's used that numerous times over the years.

Uh the I think the most recent one we did, the municipal um complex improvements that were actually voted in 2008, and we finally were able to issue in 2020.

Uh, that's an example of community facilities uh that we did here as well.

So um so we have to identify what um what we're specifically issuing.

We've got language in there about it be to exclusively own or exclusively owned by the city, and you see we don't have that in streets because why streets aren't really owned by the city, they're in right of way, so it's actually owned by the property owners, so that's why there's that exception.

And then we have to go in and we have to identify with respect to each uh proposition that we have.

We have to identify how we're going to spend at least 70% of the funds.

So if we have $35 million in streets, we need to identify where we're going to spend at least 75% of that or 70% of that number.

Norman historically has taken the approach of let's identify where we're going to spend 100%.

I mean, I think that's a good practice, but that's that's not that's more than what's actually required.

And then the projects that you specifically list, you have to complete those projects, and you need to spend at least 85% of what you said you were going to spend on those projects.

Now, if you get grant funds that come in from other locations that can offset that and maybe change that dynamic a little bit, but generally you've got to you've got to identify what you're gonna build, you're gonna identify generally how much it's gonna cost, and then you gotta spend the money on that.

So you're pretty restricted, um, uh much more so than you would be with sales tax proceeds or utility revenues and and kind of picking what what you want to utilize those for as far as projects.

Um just because people ask, sidewalks don't fall under that and require a 60% vote to do a sidewalk bond program.

Yeah, to do exclusively a sidewalk uh program, yeah, really pro and the problem that we get into is that kind of exclusive.

Yeah, it's that exclusive ownership.

So I mean, when you have a sidewalk that's part of a road improvement, you know, that's transportation, it's getting you know, people that are walking that mode of transportation out of the way of of others.

So there's the ability to integrate some of those projects when they're when they're combined projects, but just exclusively sidewalk.

Yeah, it would it would likely need to be a 60% because the city's not going to own all the all the property along the road.

Now Norman's tried that before maybe in the 90s or before I was even on council and it didn't pass, from what I understand.

But um Councilman Pegar, real quick.

Um, you said the city has to exclusively own it and cannot lease it.

Um that doesn't preclude us from hiring an operator, though, does it?

Yeah, you you have the ability, you could you could have people operate the facilities, you can enter into operation agreements.

I mean, there's there's elements of the state law of exclusive ownership and control of the facility from a state law standpoint.

Then when we issue bonds, we typically do them on a tax exempt basis.

Then you've got issues of you know private use of the facilities, things like that.

So there's kind of two sides of that coin that we end up looking at as as we go through the process.

But yeah, you you do have the ability to have entities come in and utilize it, but it would still be a city asset, and the city would control that asset as opposed to somebody else having a a lease right where they get to do whatever they want with it for five years or something like that.

Appreciate the clarification.

Thank you.

I know we're not doing a sidewalk maintenance bond anytime soon, but are you aware of any other cities in Oklahoma that have managed to get that one over the line?

I think what they've generally done is they've done it in conjunction with other street improvements.

So whether you know, maybe you're doing curve and guttering and sidewalking and all that's kind of combined into one project.

It makes it a transportation project as opposed to just a pure sidewalk project.

Well, I will just say Norman, I think it's low-hanging fruit to ask that in the future.

And we are one of the only communities that does 50-50 split between the owner and the city.

Um, however, that is kind of expensive.

And every year, I feel like most council members, I know we've had turnover, are usually jocking for position to have sidewalks addressed in their community.

So thank you.

And um so one of the examples that came to my mind about um capital projects that were constructed by the city through bond pro voter approved bonds, and then later given away, well, traded.

So the rec centers that we had that are now part of Norm Public Schools originally built with voter approved bonds, and after 50 years, the bonds are paid off a long time ago.

And now they belong to NPS, they're attached to the schools.

So I don't know if you could explain, is there just like a time or once it's paid off, or what is uh the law saying to fold it?

How long is there is that it's not really saying we we spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to navigate this question of how to get there and and where it ultimately came to with the two rec centers and before that with the the gymnasium at Norman High used to be uh city asset as well.

It gets to the point where the ability to upkeep you know the maintenance and repair requirements exceed the value of the property.

I mean, really, there's no way to for a city to dispose of exclusively owned property without going through the normal you know disposition of property, and then you would take the proceeds from the sale and you'd put it in your sinking fund to pay down.

I mean, those bonds are long since gone, but you put it in your sinking fund.

That's the proverbial rebate to the taxpayer, whoever they happen to be at that point in time.

Uh but yeah, kind of how we were able to get there is that you know we had repair needs that were in excess of the the actual value of the facilities, and so you know, kind of from a safety standpoint, the ability to continue to utilize the facilities that you know school could step in and they could take make the repairs, and that was effectively kind of for de facto acquisition of the property is then making those repairs so it could continue on.

Okay, and is it the same um since this program has existed since 2005-6 and been renewed every five years?

Is it the same bond holder?

We've had the same whole time.

Well, I mean, no, that's or have you been worked on most of the program or how many years?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I I mean not 20, but I've been with our firm since 2004.

So I've worked on all of them since then.

Okay.

I mean I've lived in Norman since I got to school in 91.

So we've got a good record of completing all the projects we outlined and said that we would do.

Okay.

Any other questions for bond council uh comments for them?

Anything?

Okay.

Okay, well, thanks for coming.

I appreciate the info on that.

And scheme bonds.

Okay, item number two is a presentation and discussion regarding the street maintenance bond program.

And we've got uh skin certs here from public works.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Just a little bit of uh quick change here, if you don't mind.

Just kind of a quick math that's kind of showing you all the street bond maintenance locations that we're looking at.

Just to give you, I'll give you a little bit of quick backgrounds, and then if you have any questions, be happy to answer those.

Uh this would be a five-year bond.

Uh so it'd go through 2026 to 2031.

Uh, this is a renewal.

We've been doing this.

This will be the fifth time we've renewed this, so it's been a very successful program.

Uh I think that what we're most proud of with it is we brought those scores.

We we score those streets like grades, and we've been able to bring those from the mid-60s up to the upper 70s over over this time frame.

So we've been able to do a lot of good work.

Uh, this usually we'll we'll look a lot more at those neighborhood roads that just don't get the attention that they deserve and that they need.

You know, when you talk about the roadways, they need maintenance, kind of like a car.

There's just certain things you need to do to help keep them up to shape.

Um, so this is just letting us do that, letting us go out and and perform those duties.

Uh, there are the five categories.

There's the urban concrete, urban asphalt, urban reconstruct, uh, preventative maintenance, and then the rule, the rural asphalt roads.

And you can see those there in the different colors.

Uh, we always make sure that we hit every ward.

We want every ward to get some benefit out of this, so we we make that a priority.

And how we choose these roadways is we actually go out and we start with those those those pavement index numbers, the PMI, and we go out there and we use those, and that kind of gives us an area, and then we we actually go out, we review every one of those roads visually to make sure they actually need to be repaired.

We sometimes there's mistakes in those numbers.

We want to make sure that we don't have that case.

But then we'll also look, you can see that it looks like we're attacking neighborhoods.

So we'll see that a neighborhood has a lot of lower numbers.

It's very cost effective for us to go in and work in that concise area and knock out a whole neighborhood.

Plus, we get really dirty phone calls when we fix your street and we don't fix your street.

So it's better to go out and take care of a neighborhood and keep that whole neighborhood happy and have that neighborhood look similar and have the same basic repair and abilities uh within the their roadways.

Um this year, the bond that uh because of the growth in the the tax base from the property tax.

Uh we're looking at about 35 million dollars over these five years.

Uh that's an increase from about 27 million in the previous one.

Uh that's just kind of that's all just due to the increase in the number of properties and the fact that those property values have increased over time.

So we're not asking for any new taxes, it's just an asking for renewal of the existing tax that's already there that's already being utilized.

And we just want to keep this going because we think it's a great service to our community and to our citizens.

And we really think that if we didn't do this, our roads would be in a lot worse shape, and we are really proud of the roads and the work we're able to do.

Um, I'm sure you have questions.

I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

The you mentioned the rating back in 2005 of the citywide, and that was what the in the 50s.

It was in the 60s.

It's in the mid-60s, and we're up into the upper 70s.

The national average is mid-60s.

We're ranking higher than most of the any of the surrounding communities, and we're we're ahead.

We're in a good place.

Councilmember Green.

Yeah.

I actually got an ask about this in the six to 700 block in North Stewart.

And it's an older uh street, and it's a weird little cul-de-sac that I went out there, checked it out.

It is in need of work.

Is that gonna be on the list?

How will we be able to see what streets they're listed in the in the bond uh in the ordinance language?

Every street is listed there.

Um I I would wish I could tell you all the streets, but uh I really I really just don't have that good of a memory.

I'll look it up.

Um, and if it's not uh I guess I can visit with you later about that particular area.

Sure.

And again, sometimes we don't like try to keep away from doing a one off street that's off on its own.

We like to keep them more bundled together uh for cost efficiency and also like I said to keep that neighborhood together and looking similar.

Maybe if it's by one of the ones in the blue, or I think you're doing a project.

Yeah, we'd be happy to take a look at it.

Okay.

Yeah, I just want to say I appreciate you showing the uh proposed turnpike alignment on there.

I uh know that's a sensitive subject, and I've heard a lot of concern about this version of the program that we're setting the table for the turnpike to come through.

And I just think it's pretty clear from looking at the map here that that's not the case.

Um these are roads that are going to be reconstructed, redeveloped, repaved, regardless if a turnpike's coming through or not.

So I just appreciate you showing the kind of the relationship between the two, and it's pretty clear to me that they're not related.

So yes, um, I think it's good to show that too.

That's the current proposed that they that OTA has on their site.

This is the most recent information that we have from the OTA on the proposed location.

And I know we had seen some questions about are these roads, are these being done to connect and all that.

And uh I think the closest one is about a mile.

Yeah, yeah, if you look at and runs parallel to it.

Yeah, if you look at Franklin there parallel, and that that definitely is it's a mile off.

Uh, that's just coincidence, just that road section is in very bad shape, and that's the next section that we think needs to be addressed in the rural section uh or one of you can see all those there in red, but yeah, we did not the the turnpike was not put into consideration in selection of streets for this program.

And then um I had uh the I-35 frontage from Robinson to Tecumseh, um, about two mile stretch, and just questions about uh uh ODOT versus the city of Norman, clarifying that the frontage roads are the city's responsibility on I-35.

Um, there's been discussion about this ODOT doing one converting them to one way at some point, but um I think you mentioned that that's not in their eight-year plan.

So uh and right now it's not in particular particularly good shape from what I understand.

That's correct.

And yes, the the frontage roads are the responsibility of the municipality, so they're ours to maintain, they're not the ODOT.

Um, and in this case, this stretch is in very bad condition.

Uh you're starting to see a lot of the surface coming apart, especially at the edges, some of it down the middle.

Uh, we've been had a lot of questions about this section, and that's why it was added because it was a good opportunity to be able to get in there and take care of it.

And yeah, the the most recent information that we have, there's they're still completing the I-35 corridor study from Robinson Street to Fourth Street and more.

Uh that's basically being finalized, is last I've heard.

We've had some quick uh discussions and and and look at it.

So that's not even final at this point, but there is no work to be done on this section on going one way that's currently in the eight-year plan for ODOT.

Um, I'm kind of starting to hear that the eight-year plan may really be a 10-year plan.

So I I wouldn't say there's going to be any any new work in that area soon, and we definitely need to do some maintenance on it, or it's going to continue to degrade and have damage to vehicles and just cost us more money and patching and repairing.

And then a lot of the well, there's several um preventive preventive maintenance in neighborhoods, kind of on the edges that have been developed in the last 20, maybe 30 years.

And I might just talk about how that's about the lifespan and doing the preventive maintenance, the crack, the sealing the cracks part, how that extends the life of the streets in those neighborhoods.

Absolutely.

So when you start looking at these are talking about asphalt streets here.

And your biggest problem with asphalt streets is water getting into that.

It starts to degrade that, it gets down, it degrades the soils underneath.

And that's when we start seeing, you know, it's what happens in a pothole typically is it's not that it's worn out, it's that it's gotten a crack in it, water's gotten in there, and it's just started to degrade it, or you have free staw.

Freeze thaw is a little less in our part of the country than in others.

And so by if when you go in there and do that crack seal, you're sealing those cracks.

So you're you're not letting the water get in there as much.

And then some of the other, the more recent ones that we're doing with that, we're doing that whole surface overlay.

That's not an overlay, it's really just a thin membrane that's sprayed on top.

That's sealing all those little cracks too.

So you want to crack seal ahead of that and then come in behind and do that.

So you really get it all sealed up.

And with an asphalt road, they typically say within five to seven years, you should be out there doing crack seedling and then repeating that.

And then usually in that 15th year, you're starting to look at some more larger type of preventative maintenance measures, uh, more like the the spray on that we're starting to use, or some or a thin overlay.

And then when you start getting to that 15 to 20s, when you start looking at needing to do what we do at the mill and overlay.

So you're looking at an asphalt road with if you're keeping up with it and really maintain it, it can get a 25, 30 year lifespan longer if you're really uh in good conditions and taking good care of it.

So to be getting out to these neighborhoods, we're really, in our mind, we may be a little late getting some of those.

We probably should have been to those a little bit earlier.

Preventative maintenance got added in in the last five-year cycle uh as a as a larger portion.

So this is a program that we're very happy with.

We're seeing a lot of uh good benefit from it, and we're actually increasing that this year to be able to go out there and do more with some of those roads to keep them from getting their numbers starting to drop.

I think it's a great example of you know every new neighborhood that is developed and every street that is in it within 20 years or so, the city will have to come up with a way to do preventive maintenance or potentially even replace the entire street at some point with this type of bond program or other means.

So that's just always something to think about.

Every new street that's constructed, the developer puts it in and then the city agrees to take over maintenance of it forever.

So councilmember Grant and I looked it up.

So Ponca Avenue from Acres to Frank, Ponca Avenue from Frank to North 700 and of Ponca.

Uh so the place I'm talking about is just a couple streets over.

Would that be close enough to the work that's happening in this?

We'll we'll take a look at it and see, you know, and you always gotta remember we always wind up with you know when if we do our jobs right, we get a little bit of money left at the end, and we always go back and we start looking for projects to add.

Um, so we can definitely uh we've got that number locate that that location, and we'll take a look at it and it's uh cul-de-sac off East Johnson, six to seven hundred.

Uh I don't know if you would call it block, it's a cul-de-sac, but it's just a couple streets over from the work that you're doing on PANCA.

Okay, and you know, sometimes what we find is that when when we get to a situation like that, it may be that the reason that it's not included this one is because it's beyond the point of being able to do that that remove that two inches and put down two fresh inches on top.

It may be a reconstruct, and it may be that it's just it may be that it's in the reconstruct list, but it's not at the top of the reconstruct list because we got other ones that are priority.

Uh but we'll we'll look at it and we'll report back what we find.

Okay, thank you.

Absolutely.

Councilmember Bruce.

It's pretty thorough as far as all the streets quite the categories.

So it's you might want to look at that list, but uh so my concern is probably like everyone else's flexibility.

So was this into the lawyer over the bond lawyer so you listed 100% of your streets?

So I'm thinking Scott helped me out in their stands.

You got 100% of your streets, it's like okay.

There's probably some flexibility in here, probably.

But your your other street projects you have, you're funding that through capital budget.

Yes.

Okay, and so is there enough to cover your needs in the maintenance?

Yeah, with capital budget in this bond to cover the needs.

Does that make sense?

We feel very comfortable with the streets that we have selected and the the amount of roadways that we'll be able to get to and to treat.

Uh you know, you can always spend more, but there is a just a real fact that at a certain point it starts becoming more work than we could complete in a year.

And that's what we're we try to watch very carefully.

Uh, we do the same thing with our sidewalk program.

There's a certain point where you're just running out of of the ability to complete it in a year uh successfully, and we don't you we don't want to have the bond, we got to complete the bond within that five-year time frame.

Uh so right now we're pretty comfortable with uh the amount of streets we have.

Uh, but you know, there's always a little bit of ability in there because we have some contingency funds always figured in.

We always do that.

We also do a small inflationary rate every year to account for increase in costs.

Although I will say in the last five years we did not keep up because it was about a 60% increase of we had two percent per year.

They just two just missed each other pretty badly.

Um so we do we do take precautions and at any time uh if we've expended all those funds in a year, we can come to council and a project can be added.

Uh and then at the end when all the projects are complete, if there's funding left over.

And we've done that this year uh with uh the previous bond where we came in and we asked to be able to do Robinson Street and uh uh frontage road on the on the east side of I-35, and those were added, and we'll be expending funds on those to get those repaired with month with funds that were still remaining in the previous bond.

So you look maybe on the ask around.

You got this lifted out 100%, not 70%, but 100%.

So you're locked into these, and so you don't have that flexibility of 30%.

So your capital program, you're really prioritizing those, you know, every six months or prioritize prioritizing or reallocating based upon higher rate of failure than what you anticipated.

So you're using your capital budget as your tactical and this is your strategic and and we do get uh a portion of the capital every year to go towards street maintenance, and so we do have those funds available for something that would be uh new and that could pop up uh also in that is alleys and so a few other programs, uh you know, ballet gutters and some other programs that we have at our availability to be able to go in.

So we have uh some expenditure money there that we can come in that that council grants us that we're able to go in and take care of those situations like what you're talking about where a street just starts having a really bad failure and we need to go in and do some additional work.

So, Scott, in in this scenario, how many of those uh projects listed on the map will be done by third-party contractors?

Oh okay.

So to council member Bruce's point, the fact that our street superintendent's sitting up against the wall.

Um I I think the last time we chatted about how how much work, how much capacity do we have with our crew?

If we got 10 miles worth of maintenance construction in a in a fiscal year, that's about as far as we can go.

Not necessarily limited by the type of the equipment or the skills or the speed at which our guys can work, but the weather constraints, especially when we're working in uh asphalt.

Um, if I'm not mistaken, they like 50 degrees of rising.

So now is not a great time to go out and do good asphalt work.

It just doesn't, it doesn't take as well as when we're out there paving in August, you're gonna get some really good quality asphalt finished products.

So uh those are the constraints under which we operate.

But Joe's crew is primarily that tactical group that goes in when we got a systems failure right in the middle of the bond program, and then the rest of Mr.

Sturz's engineering team will be administering all of those contracts.

And then of course we have our capital, our full capital program where we go out and you know, it's kind of the you know, the the capital like the transportation bond programs to me, those kind of like that's where you go and you buy the new car.

This is where we do the oil changes and the uh sorry, I didn't have my ringer wrong.

Um, and you know, we're doing the oil changes and put new tires on it and air filters, so okay.

And um the website, the informational and uh stuff about the program and uh the election for it.

Um if it's not already on there, um, can we make sure that there's a link for people to see the programs going back every year until since it started and the list of projects that we have done is we we've added the the previous bond languages, the language that had those streets listed, so that's on there now.

Uh we do we are getting this up online, um online.

We do have an interactive map where you can actually pull it up and look at it and pin to it, it'll tell you the cost, the projected year, the program it's in, so you can really get a lot of good information off the interactive map.

Uh we'll be sending out information on it, and we'll have QR codes to help you get to it.

So we want to help people get the information in their hands.

And in the the 2021 program, it is in the last year of it.

It's in the last year.

And all the projects have been completed except for the last four or five or so.

There's just a few of them.

We're wrapping up the last year's programs on a couple of them, but many of them are already complete and done and and good to go.

So we're uh pleased with the progress.

Uh every prior year has been completed.

We we have been taking a very serious look at making sure we complete every year within the year without rolling over.

So, yes, by the time that that this bond goes into effect, we will have completed all roads that were with within the bond program plus a few more.

Since 2005.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

All right, any other questions or comments for Scott about the bond program street bond.

Okay.

All right.

We'll move on to thank you, sir.

Move on to item number three, which is presentation discussion regarding the city's due diligence and ongoing efforts to address homelessness, including the proposed construction of a shelter.

Mr.

Puritan here.

Yes.

And Shannon Stevenson.

That's good.

Okay.

Well, never mind.

Just told it's the Anthony show.

So ignore that part of it.

Uh so again, I think that uh my understanding is this is kind of a little bit of a uh I would say sort of a primer on um kind of how we got to where we are now.

Uh that being said, I don't want this presentation in any way, shape, or form to, you know, be any sort of uh replacement for I think a more comprehensive educational campaign that we're planning on doing for uh the bond vote.

Um I think the reason I was asked to present today is more of I've you know, as the attorney kind of assigned to the um contractual stuff and everything like that.

I've kind of by necessity been involved in it.

Um from well since I've been here, honestly.

Uh so one of the things I kind of want to start out with here is um I think council member Grant very early on, uh around the seventh time that we were considering 718 North Porter as a uh potential shelter location for the permanent shelter.

You um had the great idea of starting a web page to kind of update the public as um time goes on for you know everything related to the shelter and uh everything like that and the city's ongoing efforts.

So um, if anyone wants, and I think this is going to be a much better uh informational resource than what this presentation will be, let me tell you, because it's much more comprehensive.

Um I mean, I what I do is to get to the web page because it's easier, it's just Google uh City of Merman Homelessness, it's the first thing that comes up, right?

And this is again a fairly comprehensive set of information designed to educate the public on the city's ongoing efforts for homelessness.

So you know, our communications uh you know, team Tiffany has done a really great job of updating this as time goes on.

Um, you know, we have reports, point time information, all the agreements, um, you know, resources, um, timelines, uh, including a more consolidated timeline because it's getting a little long.

Um I know you haven't scrolled there yet, but I want to highlight the contractor updates because that's what I I've been telling people to look for the data, because there's this narrative that the people aren't from Norman, but when you look at the data, it supports what we hear across the state, or from Oklahoma, it's your community, it's mostly your community, and that the fastest population is 55 and over.

Uh for an experienced in that for the first time.

So I I love it and I refer to it all the time.

Yes, it's a great resource, I do think.

One that, you know, again, someone who has been involved in it also may have had to refer to it uh to jog my memory because it's been so long on some of the stuff.

So without further ado, I mean, I'm not going to uh could we be here all night to talk about the history because it's so long?

Yes, but um I uh that is not necessarily I think the best use of our time.

Uh so I want to have there to be time for questions, uh, but again, this is really meant as a high-level overview of kind of how we got to the point we are today, just to bring everyone a little bit up to speed.

Um, I I think it's kind of hard to talk about homelessness in Norman without um going to the point in time count, which uh is data, yes.

Is it perfect data?

It never will be.

Um but this is again for anyone who's not familiar with it.

Uh the point in time, it's I think going to happen this week.

Um Friday.

Uh, every year in January, uh, you know, a group of volunteers everywhere across the country on one day in particular and get together, they go out in their communities and they physically count every person that they can contact who is homeless in order to try to get a snapshot view of how many people are experiencing homelessness in the community at any given time, right?

That is uh uh a tall task um to do in frigid temperatures uh this Friday.

Uh so again, it's not meant to be a perfect number or even an accurate number, it is the number we have, right?

So this is the numbers that we've had since about 2021 around COVID.

Obviously, the numbers are gonna get a little interesting because of COVID, um, and because it's kind of harder to conduct an in-person count.

So uh last year, again, our total persons for people uh persons experiencing homelessness was around 238, which was technically down from the count that we did in 2024, which was 240, right?

Um in the point time information, there's more you know detailed uh statistics, but I think for the purposes of this discussion, since we're talking about the emergency overnight shelter, uh, one of the uh other points of data on there is the amount of beds available, it's a it's like a housing inventory.

Um, and one of them is going to be for emergency shelter beds, right?

Uh for Norman, right?

Technically sort of, that number was 120 last year, meaning that for emergency shelter, there were 120 available beds that um were available to those needing emergency shelter asterisks because 46 of those beds are food and shelters McCown Village, the tiny homes.

Talking to um the collaborative applicant, it it would typically be seen not as an emergency shelter, but as transitional housing because it's more long term, it's not necessarily like night tonight stay, um, but that was how it was categorized in the system.

Um, and so I think that that is a discussion that they're having on like is that appropriate place to put that and to categorize that.

So if we're talking about the shelter beds that we think about when we think about emergency shelter beds, it's more like oh god, 120 minus 46.

I think that's like 74.

Um so that's I think a more accurate number.

Um, and again, 52 of those would be from the city shelter on Gray Street.

So again, I think the other second largest would be um Salvation Army.

I think they have for last year's count, 16 available um individuals, and then I think four families or five families, and then next one down from that would be the women's resource center.

I think they had 14, if I remember correctly.

Um so that's kind of where we're at.

Uh the percentage next to it is basically the amount of beds you have, you know, according to like your total person count.

So we're around 50% if you count McCown Village.

I don't necessarily think I would.

Um, but and then I kind of just for last year to compare Oklahoma City's count and Tulsa's count.

Obviously, they're gonna have much higher counts.

Um they're gonna have like you know, 1800 or almost 1900 for Oklahoma City, and the for Tulsa's 1400, right?

But they also have a much larger um, you know, bed count.

Oklahoma City has a 61% uh availability of beds for every person.

And then again, Tulsa's of right around 50% for the amount of beds that they had available last year.

So another thing to note as well is that emergency shelter beds do count if it is um hotel motel stays, which that funding is variable from year to year, and sometimes it's not always available.

For example, I don't think there's any funding left for this year, but I could be wrong on that.

Um, depending on the year, the weather on the point in time count, that may inflate the numbers if you have money available for you know 15 people to stay in a hotel for a hotel voucher, then that would add 15 beds at that time in that point.

So all that being considered, that's a lot of information, but that's the point time count, and that's kind of where we're at right now.

And again, hopefully after Friday, we'll have some numbers for where we stand this year.

Okay.

Um I'm gonna start uh around the time I started with the city, which was uh in you know, the winter of 2019, which I think is really where you begin the city's initial involvement in operating the shelter and becoming like pretty heavily operated or responsible for the operation of a shelter.

Before that, for several years, um, food and shelter got um money through the social and voluntary services committee to operate uh their dining room as a warming shelter when the temperature is dipped pretty low.

We see a change in that in the winter of 2019.

They do not request, I think they changed their request not to include that.

They had decided at that time to not open their dining room due to the disruption that it was causing.

Um so we do not see food and shelter um offering that service in the winter of 2019, and in response, the city um not wanting to go without a large uh emergency shelter uh for uh those experiencing homelessness decided to for that winter specifically use what is now the development center, which was at that time the old library, as the temporary overnight shelter uh for winter season.

And there, I can't remember necessarily the um amount of people we were able to fit in there.

I want to say about 50.

I could not be, I could be wrong.

But that was where we first started kind of operating the shelter.

And that was through city employees.

And I think maybe at that time, maybe some volunteers and maybe some part-time workers, like seasonal part-time.

And we got a lot of that money either through ESG or through, I think the police department pitched in some of their budget as well to do that.

In August of 2020, because I think again we were faced with the same kind of situation.

I think it did go to a bond vote, and Norman residents vote, you know, down a four pop four-part bond package for a $5 million homelessness.

I think it was just the way it was worded, $5 million for homelessness services, maybe.

And that was a narrow defeat with you know the no to yes votes.

I think only difference of about 300 something.

And then in December of 2020, uh, we opened the Comanche shelter, obviously, because then we moved to the development center against construction.

Yeah, on that August 2020 vote.

I think it's really important to note that the other parts that were also voted down that night.

Um, there was five million dollars in small business relief during COVID, which was desperately needed.

There was an indoor soccer facility at the Griffin Soccer Complex.

There's expanded basketball courts and swim facilities at the WIFAC.

Um, and so I just I hear a lot about normal residents don't prioritize the shelter because they voted it down, but they also voted down several things that I think normal residents do prioritize.

So I think it was the timing, I think it was the politics of that day, and I think there was a lot of issues with that vote.

And I don't think it was reflective of the the city's or the residents' kind of desire to solve this issue.

Yeah.

So also at the height of COVID.

Yes, which could have impacted it.

But again, I think the city continues after that vote to um, you know, at that time it was that was I think for probably a capital construction uh for a permanent shelter.

You know, again, Comanche shelter.

Uh we opened that.

It was a lease, it was not a city owned building, it was up you know on Comanche uh, you know, right on Comanche and Porter basically.

We opened that uh and then a year later, and and I think that for a couple of years it was winter only, and then I think we go to full year round at a certain point.

But around December of 2021, again, we continue to do that due diligence and continue to go back to the community.

Um I think at this time the city's really trying to develop a more robust plan surrounding homelessness and how to address it.

So we contract with an entity called Home Base, who does this kind of service.

It was a consultant.

They did a gaps analysis study that was released in December of 21.

Um, and that you know, involved a lot of community conversation and a lot of um information gathering.

Uh and also that does result in February of 2022, a strategic plan and an action plan, which you guys have heard multiple times at this point as we continue to update it.

Um, and that is where that came from.

And that identified specifically in that gaps analysis a need for a year-round low barrier housing focused shelter.

And so that's kind of, I think, you know, one of the first, if you will, third party uh identified, you know, need for this type of shelter.

Uh and in June of 2022, uh Comanche shelter closes, um, and that was primarily due to the property owner who was a private, you know, uh entity, they were no longer able to insure the property due to it being used as a homeless shelter.

And so that was an issue with insurability.

They were no longer able to insure it.

Due to that, they terminated the lease with the city, and then we were again faced with uh without a location.

Uh around that same time, it is important to note, again, I think in further is because council was supportive of you know uh finding solutions to fill that gap of the year-round shelter.

Uh in June of 2022, we did release an RFP looking for a nonprofit to find a suitable location and operate um a low barrier shelter.

Uh and in June of 2022, I think we opened it up for about a month, and then of course we get two responses food and shelter and salvation army.

Uh, and of those two responses, we decide to go forward with food and shelter.

Um I think food and shelter initially tries to find a location, but as we all know, um, as have we lived at it, it's not easy to find a shelter location.

Um at the time we get to fall uh of 2022, around the same time where we're um, I think awarding it to food and shelter, city council gives the direction to city staff to evaluate the Gray Street building where the shelter currently is now to use as a temporary shelter for the winter season because again, council did not want to go forward another winter season without offering a shelter.

City Council gives the direction to city staff to evaluate the Gray Street building where the shelter currently is now to use as a temporary shelter for the winter season because again, council did not want to go forward another winter season without offering a shelter.

And again, it did not look like food and shelter was going to be able to mobilize in time to operate a shelter, finding a location that was not something that the city provided.

So at council's suggestion, we evaluated Gray Street as a potential location and went forward at council's direction.

So that is kind of how we got to the Gray Street building.

And then you know, again, every time I think council has uh always voted to extend the shelter, it's never been closed for an extended period of time since that time, summer or otherwise.

And in summer of 2024, you know, at the end of the food and shelter audit, uh, food and shelter decides to terminate the contract with the city for operation of the Gray Street shelter.

And again, at council's direction, with the thought in mind that we want to ensure a continuous and uninterrupted operation of the shelter, the city um moves forward with uh trying to find a new operator.

Uh I think that the way that it was discussed at the time, it's either we find a new operator or we have to do what we did previously and we manage it ourselves, which was at this time, again, this is around September of 2024.

So there's not a whole lot of time before winter hits before we need to find an operator here.

Uh so again, the previous, I think intent before, you know, once we found a permanent location and once we, you know, had identified uh property is going out to RFP for an operator so that they could kind of work with us to develop and design, you know, a shelter space that suited the need of the selected operator who is going to operate the long-term shelter, right?

Uh, because you obviously don't want to design something that you know isn't usable by the then operator you select later on.

Um so unfortunately, because of the timing, uh, I think that we were, you know, because it was somewhat imminent that we were going to be able to find a location and we were getting some headway at that time.

It kind of necessitated, I think at that time we were like, okay, well, we need to find a shelter operator for not just the continued operation of the shelter, but because of the timing, it is likely going to be that this is the operator who will be the operator of the new shelter.

Um, and so with that in mind, we proceeded under um, you know, for a legal authority.

Um we're not required by state law to go out to bid for an operator for this.

Um that's really reserved for public construction.

Uh however, our own ordinance do require for you know uh contracts over a certain amount to go out to a competitive um bid.

However, in order to again preserve continuous and uninterrupted operation of a shelter on an emergency basis, which we considered this to be, um, we chose an operator without going through that competitive process.

We were very lucky because again, we were under the full assumption that we were going to be running the shelter with city employees again, because again, who who would be willing in September of 2024 to start uh operating a shelter tomorrow, essentially.

Uh and again, there's only so many operators within Oklahoma who operate at the scale that we were needing a shelter of this size, and um on such short notice, which is kind of important.

And so having the organizational capacity and the willingness were two things that we weren't sure we were gonna be able to find.

Luckily, when we contacted CityCare, um, well, one, thank you guys for not hanging up on us when we called and uh told you why we were calling, um, but they were actually very receptive to that idea.

Now, keep in mind CityCare, uh, I don't know if you guys knew this, I I think you did.

Um, was the model that food and shelter specifically themselves used to emulate their shelter operation.

Like I think that that was specifically the way that they um the operation that they used.

Now, I again uh was it at the same fidelity?

I'm not sure, but that was kind of what was communicated to us is this is kind of the standard that um is important uh and this is the standard that we're gonna try to hold ourselves to.

So we already knew about CityCare, and we already knew that they are a really great model and we consider it to be the golden standard in Oklahoma, at least for operators.

So we were extremely excited that again they took our call, but they were also willing and to come to Norman.

And since then, they I think we hope they have done a really great job of embedding themselves in the community and engaging in you know a community specifically where the resources are so connected.

Um, you know, you can't rely on your Oklahoma City connections to get someone housing in Norman.

So in order to be able to enmesh themselves within the resources that they have been able to do in Norman in this new community in such a short period of time and have such a success as they have is really commendable.

And it also goes to the amount of effort that they have put in and the investment they have put into the Norman community.

So again, I think that's part of why you we weren't expecting anyone who is not a Norman operator or Norman organization to be willing to come to Norman to offer these services.

So again, I think we did luck out to a certain degree with Citycare.

So with that in mind, I think we uh it's also important to note that this is not you know just something that city council has determined is I think best for the community.

I think City Council has at all points tried to again identify through the home base plan, like you know, outside, you know, evidence-based, data-driven um actions and uh recommendations um before making decisions like this.

So for example, the home-based plan, which was a gaps analysis, that is something that council uh specifically wanted and did in fact uh recommend a shelter.

Uh Zini Institute, which is a local nonprofit, I think geared towards creating collaborative community conversations and coming up with um consensus among communities over decisive topics.

They hosted uh last year a community conversations with residents to you know try to tackle the issue of homelessness, and that was one of their recommendations and one of their strongest recommendations was that the city still needs to establish a permanent location for a low barrier shelter.

Um and then also you have heard yourself from council, I think some uh from OU Student Government Association, they have like a I think a home together initiative is what they called themselves uh that also recommended not only you know having a low barrier shelter, but here are some potential ideas for where to locate it.

Uh, I don't know if you remember their top location is SmackDab, right where we were in the midst of talking to the state of Oklahoma to purchase the property.

So I I think that again the location that we've already purchased is um one that's already kind of been identified by council for several years, um, but also independently from the community uh as well.

So uh but that does not mean that we were just satisfied with one location.

I think again, there's always been a sense of urgency to have a permanent location.

Uh and we have not only you know looked at one location.

So again, not only had we have net this was our third temporary location, we've also previously considered many different permanent locations um formally and then also kind of informally, just on a you know uh first past analysis.

But the ones that have, I think for the most part have made it either to hide consideration I've listed here.

Um some of them had purchase and sale agreements even um and were under contract and then later decided not to go forward.

So for example, um 5451 Hunter Drive, which was in North Oklahoma City, um, kind of by I think the York plan.

North Norman.

Yeah, North Norman.

Um council was considering that.

I think we were considering a purchase and sale agreement for vacant land.

Uh and that was in early 2024, and uh council at that time decided not to move forward with that.

I think I don't want to speak for council, but from my understanding, it was um a lot to do with I think the location specifically and the um logistical infraries that that would provide.

Then we've also considered 718 North Porter, um, which is uh kind of an old administrative building across the street from where uh Norman, the Porter campus for Norman Regional used to be.

And um I think that we were developing zoning and platd, and again, that was I think direction from council that that is not a suitable location, and council um did end up selling that back to the county uh because it wasn't suitable uh according to council for that purpose.

And again, that was after you know several conversations with the community and like looking at the building and the renovations that it would require and everything like that.

So Councillor McGrire.

I was gonna mention that part.

It was mostly um the bets wouldn't fit from the Gray Street shelter in that building.

They was two stories.

It would cost a lot to put an elevator in there to make an AD accessible.

The whole building was unable to be AVA accessible for sure.

Yep.

And so it's about we had a close the hospital to close.

Yeah, and I think that at you know, at the end of the day, like again, I think for both, I think all of the affordable housing projects that the city has looked at so far, and and also as we look at you know, either renovation or new build in terms of the amount of you know deliberation that's gone into one or the other, right?

Do we build new?

Do we renovate an existing building?

You know, obviously there are going to be pros and cons with each, but I think as we've gone through this process, it's been pretty clear that renovation in the short term could be, it depends on the property, uh, more cost effective.

But in the long term, I think the most cost-effective approach is going to be to build new.

Um depending on, I think, again, that's highly dependent on the location.

Um speaking of uh is I think a lot of people are like, well, why don't you put it on the Griffin hospital campus north of Main Street, which we've tried that too twice twice.

Um to get that one twice.

Yeah, and that one was the vacant patient activity center.

Um that's when we got a lot of uh insight into the I think state of some of the older buildings on the Griffin campus, and there's a lot of safety concerns there.

Um not only in the buildings themselves, but the areas around the building and accessing the building, um, you know, potential sinkholes uh where you know, like maybe a tunnel used to be.

Um so again, when you have a very old building that has been expanded several times, but then you know has been left vacant.

You have you know issues with you know bringing that up to code, and also you're kind of retrofitting a building that isn't designed or that wasn't designed for the purpose in which you want it to be, right?

And so there are functional issues with that as well, operational issues with that.

Um, and so all of that kind of plays in together, and I think for many, many reasons um that was considered not feasible, and that didn't necessarily even make it to the point where we considered it in terms of like trying to you know work with the state in order to purchase it or lease it or anything like that.

It just was not feasible, and that's why it did not get to the point that it got.

And I think we did several walkthroughs, we did several analysis of you know the cost of construction and everything like that, it just was not up to the standards I think we saw.

Maybe for a temporary um facility, it would have um it would it would have been a little bit of a menu sink, but for permanent location, I I I really uh I think everybody agreed that it was not feasible from a financial standpoint or a safety standpoint.

So this next one is included because it was originally um proposed as uh a location which is this is kind of again close to the area we had it now, which is 601 South Carter Avenue.

Um, and then I think maybe due to the size, eventually the city was actually interested in purchasing this um after consideration, but in a way, that was more going to be I think we shifted towards permanent supportive housing on that specific location rather than a shelter.

We weren't even able to get to the point where we're able to because of the asking price from the property owners was way above appraised value.

Um and at that point, again, feasibility from a cost perspective just isn't there.

Um so that is one of the reasons why we didn't go with that property.

Uh then this is I think we're getting these next two were actually food and shelter um uh vetted at the beginning at right after that RFP in 2022, CBS on Main Street as a potential location.

I think um that would have had some pushback, I'm sure.

Uh there's a vacant grocery store, I think on Lindsay, they were looking into that one, that one fell through.

Um, and I think for my understanding and recollection, that was about the extent of you know food and shelter's um ability and like looking for a location.

And again, because at that time we were falling back on the idea that you know, maybe a lease situation would have been better than a capital improvement.

We were, I think, trying to avoid building a brand new facility.

But as we learned from Comanche at that same time, you know, leasing for purposes of a homeless shelter, when you're trying to build a permanent shelter, is that going to be the most sustainable one?

And is it the most secure facility in terms of as we found out, you know, from an insurability standpoint, do we want to, you know, risk again right before winter, something happening with that lease, and then it falling through and not able to offer that service.

So that's I think part of why we've progressed towards um acquisition and um construction.

Uh and again, even most recently, it's not that you know, we're just opposed to you know, looking at um uh you know, a rehab or you know, something of that nature.

We were also did walk throughs for there was a vacant building on Classhead that I think you know currently now is owned by a church, which next to the OER.

Yes.

And so again, part of the I think this from conversations with the church, and that was actually something that CityCare brought to our attention um very, very early on in that partnership, which we appreciate.

Um we did walkthroughs, we looked at it.

Uh I think everybody agreed we were first under the impression that we would be purchasing the property, but then it was turned into like a lease situation, which again, we've already kind of tried that, and it wasn't in the necessarily the most sustainable or long-term option.

So again, that's how that one kind of got uh vetted.

So, all that to be said, we've looked at a lot of the locations um before we got to this one.

And keep in mind, during all of these, I think it's important to note that council have always stated, wow, it would still be so nice if we could get property next to food and shelter.

Right.

It's always been kind of like, oh man, I really wish we could have that property, or we could get a chunk of that property.

And as time has gone on, we are very lucky that again that it'll become available and that we were able to purchase the property we had.

So with that, I think uh I again, how do you condense you know six years of uh what has been a continuous effort by city staff into a PowerPoint presentation?

Um I'd rather leave it open to questions if possible, uh, and have so we have enough time to discuss that.

Council Murganzbury.

Just one thing I'd like to personally say about the whole situation as a whole.

Um the last city councilman, there was a lot of people talking about how we just thought about this, how we just run into conclusions, just jumping in face forward, and don't have no expertise in the business or anything like that.

And to those people I'd like to say I've been thinking about the homeless with the hospital and what best case scenarios and what could work and what cannot work for the last 15 years of my life.

And when I ran for city council, I talked to several major people, food and shelter being one, the Norman Chamber of Commerce being one, and I laid out my homeless thoughts and what I would like to see, you know, just as a person.

And I got my data from talking to the homeless, talking to those that came in the hospital every day with mental health, going, hey, in a dream situation, what would help you get better?

You know, and stuff like that.

And the property that I showed the Norman Chamber of Commerce before I even was elected was the exact property that you purchased and everything.

It makes the most sense for the people that were serving for their needs.

It's right next to all of the resources that they need, although their medicine they're going to need.

It's within walking distance of several different clinics, being the health department, several other agencies that are all in that generary to be able to help them out as well.

I, for one, the five million dollar one in 2020, looking into it, studying it.

I really don't think the city might have been necessarily ready at that point in time.

I think that would have been a five million dollar ask with no true plan, no true where we want to put it even.

What do we look like a homeless organization looks like?

Now we're coming for an ass with guaranteed property, a guaranteed facility and city care that we've seen a year of their expertise and what they bring to the table.

We got to see what we didn't like in food and shelter and how they ran the organization and have somebody to even compare them to.

So I feel as a city, we've done our due diligence and bringing the best possible outcome to at least a start of the homelessness situation.

If anybody in the world had the correct answer, that person would be rich and we wouldn't have no problems.

But somebody has to stand up and at least start being part of the solution rather than holding everything back just because Councilman.

I'll just like to add to that to say, you know, through our social and voluntary services commission and our continuum of care, all of these different agencies that have been working on this for many, many years, it's definitely not something that we just came up with yesterday.

Um, you know, there's been lots of tries and lots of fails, and I think we've learned from those, but I've said it a hundred times, you know, there are as many reasons that cause somebody to be in housed as there are solutions that need to be in place to lift them back up.

And I really feel like over the last couple of years, we've we've made a lot of progress with kind of fixing these little broken piano keys in the system.

Um, and this is a major step for us to be able to take a big swing.

Um, I think one of the last major steps was our partnering with city care.

I mean, it's really hard to argue with the outcomes that they've already been able to generate in such a short time.

I mean, the data is so much better.

Um, the point in time count was mentioned this Friday.

I hope to see several of you guys there all be participating in it too.

But I feel like every year that I've done that, that data has become more and more useful because of all of the other things that we're putting in place.

So this is definitely not a uh fly by night thing.

Sometimes it does feel like a shot in the dark.

If we're gonna use every cliche in the book, but um I'm really proud of the work that we've been able to accomplish, even down to the architectural partners listening to our requests and and making the shelter have the barriers that we need to have removed, removed.

So good work, everybody.

Um thank you.

I um the main question that I've really seen is about still out there is about operations and operation agreement, and we have City Care running it currently.

I think it's been in our mind with everybody that that would be an agreement to go forward.

Um but questions about this shelter um being a 24-7 or just a night shelter, and um at least to clarify my view on it, I've always thought of it as uh this is a night shelter and is part of a 24-7 campus with food and shelter for friends and the share center, and that they have a partnership and work together the the things that they're both good at because there's been discussion about well, if it's 24-7 shelter, then we've got to come up with three million dollars a year to operate it and um things like that.

Um that's not how I've been thinking about it, and so uh that changes what the operating cost is, the staffing.

If we're thinking it's an overnight shelter that has a hundred plus beds at full build out, um but how much more does it cost to operate it if it's still operating the same hours as far as people sleeping there?

And so that's still some question that's out there.

I know I've talked to Rachel, I've talked to uh Kathy just about in specifically about that, but more so about an expectation of um collaboration in Norman that bringing CityCare into Norman was not competition for a food and shelter for friends, that we needed both of them uh to work together and that we needed Salvation Army and every basically we needed everybody to be working together to really adequately address the issue that I think that we're all trying to do here.

And so that's been the only outlying uh question that I've seen out there is we've got the location, we know what it would look like, we know how much we're asking as far as it would cost, uh, we know what we're spending right now on the operation.

We've talked about uh, you know, if multi-year plan to how does um the city's funding of the operations go?

Are we able to reduce the amount the city contributes to operations?

Um where we own a building and we cover the maintenance, we cover the utilities like we do with other city-owned facilities, and over time we're able to reduce the operating amount that we contribute.

Um, those are the questions just that I've still seen out there about clear on where it's going, clear on what it looks like, clear on who's operating it, but is it 24-7?

Is it in partnership with the current services at food and shelter?

Um, is the city gonna keep paying for the whole thing in perpetuity?

Those are the that's the main lingering one that I want to make sure we can get addressed uh so that voters aren't don't have any questions about this at all.

Anthony, I'd love to take a stab at that.

Yeah, please.

Um I know a lot of you all.

I'm Rachel Freeman with City Care.

Can you come sit at the table with the code?

Sure, sure.

Please.

Um first I just want to say so.

City care, you know, it's about to be our 30th birthday.

We've been in homeless services 30 years, and when we moved into West Lawn Gardens, uh we were trying to find a place uh to move into, and um 31 neighborhoods said that sounds like a really great idea and a central city service, but not here.

And so Westlawn Gardens was the 32nd neighborhood that we went into and tried to move into, and now we've been there for 30 years.

And so when I say that Citicare knows how to be a good neighbor, I would challenge you to talk to anyone who is um in the Westlawn Gardens area.

Um we have 112 units of supportive housing in that neighborhood.

We have a low barrier shelter in that neighborhood that serves 140 folks a night, and then we're building a medical respite shelter that'll have 40 beds.

Um we are good neighbors.

So while no one's mentioned Mimby, I know we all think about it, right?

And you worry that um an operation like a permanent shelter could degrade a neighborhood.

And I want to say that um united in collaboration is one of City Care's values, and we take that really seriously, and and we mean um in collaboration with the whole community.

So to answer your operations questions, does it double the budget?

No, it doesn't.

We are really excited about Kathy being at food and shelter and really excited to partner and definitely had those early conversations about they're already a meal slide, we don't need to duplicate that.

I mean, you know, resources are so finite, we don't need to duplicate any efforts.

What we would be doing during the day is that housing focus.

So what you would see during the day at the shelter would be that if my friend Anthony is staying at the shelter, I might schedule an appointment with him, you know, on his lunch break at noon to come in and have a housing navigation appointment.

So a shelter is not an end goal, it is a container for hard work, it is a flow system.

And so I wanted to mention starting with the point in time counts when you're talking about bed counts, it is so important to start there.

But you really have to look at your daily demand.

And your daily demand includes all your shelter beds that are full, which I can promise you all 52 of ours are full every night.

The people we have to turn away, which is about four a night in in Norman, and then the people that don't even try, right?

And so my friend Lee McCorder and I talk about you know, there's a couple of spots where you've got encampments, and about how many people are those.

So that's your daily demand, and that's where you can start like really narrowing in on a bed count that you need.

So daily demand times how many days do they stay?

And again, a shelter is a flow system, it's not an end result.

So we want them to move through the flow system as quickly as possible.

Norman, because the shelter hasn't been housing focused up until this point, it's still hard to say.

I could tell you what an average stay is, but I think I can get it shorter.

I know that Sean thinks that he can get it shorter.

In Oklahoma City, we're really narrowed in on that.

We know exactly how long it takes us to take someone from we meet you at the front door to we've got you, we're handing you keys to your own place.

So a shelter is an essential city service, and and I'll tell you, city care is not getting rich by being here, okay?

Um, this is not a money maker for us.

The reason we said yes when you all called was because we believe really strongly in the evidence-based practices that we use and that sort of dignity forward people first kind of ethos.

We know it can change communities, and frankly, we felt like Norman could be an easy win.

Norman, you guys, it's so doable for you to get to functional zero in this community.

You have so many educated, passionate people at the table.

I spend more time in Norman with brilliant minds ideating than in the other two communities that we're in.

And and you all are just so deeply engaged.

And so when I look at is this intractable?

No.

Will you always have people experiencing homelessness in your community?

Yes, but it should be very, very short in duration, and it should be housing focused.

So will it double the cost?

No, it'll increase the cost by maybe 15% because what you're paying for is staffing time to do that housing navigation.

The only thing it costs to do housing navigation is a person who is a housing navigator who's working to find you a housing pathway.

Um, will the city have to foot the bill forever?

No, I don't think so.

Um, to be uh really frank with you, we had an application ready to go on the 2025 NOFO for $300,000 for our housing navigation practices that happen inside of the Norman shelter.

That no foe has been paused, there's all sorts of going, you know, stuff going on, and we'll wait that out.

But we do believe that there are pathways and there are other uh revenue streams that we could take advantage of.

Um, the other thing, if you've seen the design, the other thing to notice is that there are medical respite beds included.

This is a whole other conversation, we'll have to have it another time.

But the reality is is that when people who are experiencing homelessness get discharged from hospital, they're discharged to the streets.

That's where they go.

Every hospital does it.

If they tell you they don't, they're lying.

They don't like it, it's not that it's not their values, but there is no tool in the state of Oklahoma, there is no medical respite shelter.

So while in Oklahoma City, we're building a standalone facility in Norman.

We've just tucked some medical respite beds into your design.

And what happens is the hospitals will gladly pay a day rate for those beds because it's a tenth of the cost for them to liberate that hospital bed than it is for them to keep someone in their hospital because the person doesn't have a place to go to recuperate.

So this is another, I think extremely effective.

And you can look in the state of California, there are a lot of medical respite shelters.

If you want to talk more about this and how they pay for themselves, I'd love to talk about that.

But there are lots of examples where that day rate, even at a tenth of the cost for the hospital or the managed care organization, is enough to help you sustain and run your shelter.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

So there are a lot of things that we have in mind.

Um, if we were the operator, if you find another operator, we'll share all these ideas.

We have no ego around that.

We just, you know, we really want to see you all succeed, and we really believe in this community, and that you're on that cusp of success.

And in OKC, you have it set up where the night shelter is here, and then a little bit down the block is the day shelter in that way.

Oh, that's right.

That's right.

They're not just stuck in one building 24-7, which is not what we want.

We transport them, yes.

So we're able to clean the night shelter while they're at the day shelter, and vice versa.

Yeah.

We um it can work either way.

You have to zone, close things down, you know, so on and so forth.

But with with food and shelter right there, we would obviously want to be really good partners because we're serving exactly the same people.

There's no reason to duplicate effort.

Councilmer Grant.

Yes.

Thank you for the stats on funding.

That's much appreciated.

And speaking of being good neighbors and doing our due diligence, um, I hear that CityCare will be meeting with the original town site neighborhood.

Uh is it in the morning?

This morning.

Tomorrow morning, yeah.

Um and then also on the 31st, we have a multi-neighborhood plus the Alameda Church of Christ congregation, which will get a presentation from city staff, you all, continuum of care, and home together Mormon.

So I appreciate your willingness to come into the community and share exactly how you operate.

And I'm sure those folks, if they're not watching tonight and miss out, but they show up at either one of these meetings, we'll get the same messaging.

Yes, and I'll be at uh Norman Rotary on February 3rd.

So you guys are gonna be tired of me, but um, I am very passionate about this.

We do see great results.

Um, and we've seen great results in Norman too, you know.

Um there's there's all sorts of reasons why people why people are homeless, they they need different pathways.

Some of the folks that we've met at your shelter.

I I said this once to Norman Chamber, I think I said when I walked in to the shelter for the first time, it looked like a convalescent home.

And uh that really broke my heart because these were folks who were seniors and priced out of housing, and really at this point they needed skilled nursing, they needed nursing homes and just hadn't had that connectivity.

And so that's that's work that we do, you know, every day getting people where they need to go.

So some of them will need higher levels of care, some of them will need you know, just short-term assistance, just maybe they're working, but they're lower wage and saving money for deposits is really hard.

And so that short-term assistance, and then there's other folks who have more complex needs, you know, that they might need something like permanent supportive housing.

And and again, CityCare's been in that business for 30 years, and so we're able to identify quickly when they come in, what are your needs, and then what kind of what kind of resources and pathway do we need to help you get back to sustainability, self-sufficiency?

So that's what we're looking at.

Councilman Nofire.

Uh, first off, I would just like to say I love having you guys in the city.

Is you are very passionate about it, and that's an amazing thing, and it's a needed service.

Uh, you said in Oklahoma City, you've had a whole lot of data from there, and you have a good beat on everything.

How long from the first night of entry to keys would you say just an average?

Yeah.

So I asked that question to one of our housing navigators, uh, and this was last year, so it's this may be a little bit different.

Um, but I said, you know, if someone does not have housing navigation services and they're just trying to figure this out on their own, what's their average length of homelessness?

And he said 22 months.

And I said, What happens when they engage with the housing navigator?

How quickly do we get someone connected to housing?

And he said 12 weeks or fewer.

So it's so much of this has to do with if you you need an ID to get a birth certificate, you need a birth certificate to get an ID.

So riddle me how that's gonna work, right?

Another thing is transportation.

If you have to go clear across town to the D and V and they're only open on these days, and you get on the bus with all your life's possessions, but your kid gets out of school in two hours and you're in a line.

How's that gonna work?

So it's really just a lot of peeling back those layers and uh helping people expedite those processes where we can.

Thank you.

Yeah, Councilman Bruce.

No, no question, the need is great, and we're trying to fill that need is very difficult.

Yeah, just a couple of questions for you regarding most industries have maturity model.

You say, oh, they're maturity five, they're maturity one related to the execution of that function.

Is there such a thing within shelters?

So like there's a third party comes in and assesses you know a best in class gold standard shelter and say, hey, on your maturity model, you're five, you've maxed out.

Is there such a thing with um not that I know of for shelters?

There interestingly, there is for medical respite.

Um there is a credential, but I will tell you, I think how we would measure that is our success with uh federal dollars and and winning grants.

So that is a competitive process, and city care does very well.

We actually uh just received the day one uh grant from Jeff Bezos, two and a half million dollars, and they found us.

So that's not that's an unsolicited grant.

Um so I would say that's the best thing that we have to point to our success.

Rachel, there I believe there's also, and maybe this isn't uh the same thing that you were thinking of, but it is, I think, somewhat relevant.

I I know that homeless alliance has a or at least they used to, I think it was like a it was a community-driven, I think at the time, shelter, I think I don't know what the checklist, but they like the groups of the shelters or the COC.

Oh, like best practice, do we follow best practice?

Yeah, I mean, they yes, we do.

We operated their shelter for its first eight years of existence.

Uh uh homeless alliances, they're great friends to us, but yes, you're right.

So it's like, is it low barrier?

Uh is it housing focused, like those kinds of things, the checklist, and yes, we would meet all of those.

And so it's a kind of like a community, I think.

Um you guys essentially, and I think with homeless alliance helped develop the standards for Oklahoma City shelters.

Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that.

Yes.

I'd just like to add real quick, I think it may not be an official metrics of measuring, but when you have all of the similar operators that have programs that are similar to city care that are trying to model their programs after city care and saying they're the gold standard in our region that to me carries some weight too.

I know it's not an official metrics matrix assessment system.

Yeah, yeah.

Um the uh so most models throughout the United States, given the size of our pop population about 130k, they they they don't operate a what I call it GoCo, government owned contractor operated.

You have 30 programs out there.

Are are they of those 30 communities?

What's is all 30 have government where they bought the facility and said and then selected city care as the operator of that function?

Is that is that the traditional model city care uses?

No.

Um it has been different.

Um it can work all sorts of ways.

Um let me just but the vast majority of how cities our size operate is that they facilitate execution of this function through nonprofits, religious base, and non-religious base through grant programs, and they select the best in class for those grants.

And we're gonna give these grants because they're certain maturity level.

How do they figure that out?

Yeah.

Um, yes, so any community that has a continuum of care, which Norman has um their own continuum of care, they are doing that work on a competitive basis.

They are passing through federal funds to execute social services, or in our case, homeless services based on a competitive score.

Okay.

The uh I'm glad you're meeting with uh residents, the homeowners in that particular area, old town, town site.

Who is the city person that's part of that team?

Uh that's gonna be Shannon Stevenson and Lieutenant McCorder.

Mean.

Oh, are you coming this that Saturday too?

I've been I yes, I think it works.

It's always evolving, but yes.

Those other facilities where it's a government-owned facility and they they've leased to you or they've you know whatever the related arrangements there because there's multiple.

So one of the things that would have to come up when we discussed earlier today was risk.

Risk on us providing facility to you really to something that happens within the facility.

Right.

How does city care handle that?

Risk is related to human-to-human harm.

Yeah, um so we handle mitigating risks by having really well trained staff, they're trained um on mental health first aid and de-escalation, motivational interviewing.

Um I am really racking my brain, and I cannot remember um an instance of serious violence occurring in uh one of our shelters yet.

Um however I will tell you that we work uh we keep security on site um at our shelters.

We work really closely in Oklahoma City with the hot team in Norman.

We've made great friends um with the police department there.

You've got a really caring group of uh police officers who really want to do right-by people.

Um so we're in constant communication about how to best uh support folks, and then when someone you know um is in our facility, what would happen more frequently is they might have a mental health crisis.

Um, and in Oklahoma City, we utilize um the crisis centers.

If someone um is having trouble regulating and needs higher level support than what we can provide, we're gonna get them to the crisis center.

Um so I'd say there's always inherent risk, you know.

This is something I uh my mama passed away a year ago, but something she used to always worry about, you know, me being in homeless services, and the data does not support that there is a higher rate of uh violence or risk um inside of someone experiencing homelessness versus someone outside or someone who has a home.

Um so to be really honest, and I'd love to show you around um either of our shelters, but they are really peaceful places, people are grateful for a place to rest.

No doubt.

South, yeah.

So of course, and I'm I'm thinking from the city standpoint as far as liability associated with something happening in those shelters, and is that liability passed on the city, or is the city really we don't identify you?

At least I don't I don't think we do.

It's one of the reasons why we undercontract a hat to have security stuff uh maybe talk about that because we do we do own several buildings in the city of Norman where we contract with operators to do programming like the super theater and the firehouse arts center and the depot and others.

Um and I'm sure there's some in case something goes wrong while they're operating it that the city's not allowed to talk about that.

As in general, will you mitigate risk by contract?

So your contract is gonna outline who's responsible for what remember since we're a municipality through full-time tax, so our liability is limited.

Um to a certain dollar amount.

There's also usually whenever we do those contracts that we talk about is the city is responsible for the conduct of these employees.

Um if for example, that we there was a building maintenance issue that we were responsible for, and somebody on our staff negligently did or didn't do something, we're responsible for that.

And then usually um, whoever the contractor is is responsible for other issues that may be there, and usually those contracts do have a provision for insurance, or there's that yeah, you know, just community have insurance up to a certain amount.

Oftentimes you can tailor that language to where that insurance policy also applies to the municipality.

So you're gonna mitigate those risks through some contracting mechanism.

Yeah, I understand that sometimes sometimes you can do that.

So yeah, the other the other aspect, just a couple more things.

So uh government owned contractor operated, understand it's gonna be performance-based specs.

I understand that you have KPIs associated with that, and there's some type of oversight plan associated with that performance.

So that's how I that's how I understand the frame.

I mean, we're gonna build a building.

Yeah, and so like with every contract, there's usually a scope of work that outlines you know the minimum requirements that is gonna be uh required again.

That's still flexible again.

So uh part of it too is when we developed the current contract that we have now that was an also close collaboration with the you know downtown community.

Um we talked to them, we got a list of concerns, and you know, we try to incorporate those as we can into the scope of work and the agreement.

Um, you know, again, I think that where we're at now with the operator we have now, City Care.

I mean, you guys are, I mean, the amount of effort that you guys put into being a good neighbor is one of the things that was stood out to us um to a high degree.

Uh do you have good neighbor agreements as your current um facility in Oklahoma City or like I wasn't around when they when we moved in?

I don't know.

Do we have good neighbor agreements?

I think we had some with um with I'm sorry, with the um car place.

When we built Pershing.

When we built Persian, yeah, but I don't I don't think we had to get agreements like on paper agreements, no, but um but we did have verbal agreements and we did help neighbors with with any situations that code copy of their contract in case you want, yeah.

Um yeah, no now can use great, and we're gonna have the right solution to fill up no doubt about that.

And so uh trying to find that right solution.

We you know, councils given direction direction to head off to or have a government operated or government owned contract or operated.

That's not your all your models, but at some of the 30.

I understand that.

And uh, you know, it's it is uh a very difficult trying to meet that need, I get it.

I fully get it.

So yeah.

And a similar I mean, uh like the um the awe, the adult wellness center, not built through a bond, but I guess built through Norman Ford, but I think we bond that financed it perhaps.

We contract with Healthy Living to operate it for us.

And uh the young family athletics center, we built that with Norman Ford.

We were originally gonna have someone else operate it for us, and it turned out it was gonna be more cost effective for us to operate it, apparently.

So again, not exact not exactly the same because those weren't bonds, um, but city-owned buildings where we contract with somebody else to operate it.

Um I think those are good questions about liability and how do we manage those facilities when we have other people services?

Just one of the follow-up that it's also good, you know, about that performance-based contract and understand what those KPR uh KPIs are on that interface associated with the oversight and sure that the parties are communicating related to that expectation.

Yeah, whatever dollars or whether consideration is given for that.

Yes.

Council Mr.

Dixon.

Um thank you.

Do you all does City Care have a currently have a local board for the that's kind of overseeing?

Okay, I was 99% sure you all did.

Yeah, so obviously if you move into the new facility, that board will still provide oversight.

Um I think um I think it would be really beneficial to have folks specifically from Norman um sit on that board.

That would just be like my you know, gut instinct, but yes, our board is listed on our website.

You're welcome to contact any of them anytime.

And then it's also my understanding that you all have a separate bank account for the Norman shelter that nothing's coming.

Okay, yeah.

And then my last question, um one of the things I keep I've been bringing up and uh people have been asking me about is would City Care be willing to sign like a memorandum of understanding um to to kind of lessen the impact on us that I know you guys are you all are still fundraising and doing all that, and so over time can the kind of the city's contribution to this as um is that something yes, and um that's something Daryl, I feel like you and I talked about this uh a while back, but um, and and to your point, is this the way it always is?

No, you have to go into a community and kind of evaluate what assets and tools do we have at our disposal.

Um in Norman we had a city who was willing to um underwrite this endeavor at this point.

I don't think it's something that the city should underwrite totally.

I've said that from the very beginning um in my conversations with Shannon and Anthony, and again, um we want to put a fundraiser in the Norman community because honestly, homelessness is a community issue and it deserves a community response, and that's just the reality.

Um, but I also can appreciate that you all see this as an essential city service because you know um you you pay for it on the front end or the back end, it does you pay for it, you pay for it in crisis um interventions at a lot higher rate than you do with shelter bed.

Um and and so realizing that um and getting out of in front of it and doing a housing focused shelter is going to be the least cost effective um process and actually address the root cause.

And then the last thing just on the cost I want to point out is that in 2020, you know, your um estimate was five million in 2021.

In 2021, we opened 140 bed shelter for uh four and a half million.

And today you're looking at eight million dollars.

And that's I mean, we're under construction right now, and and those numbers are real.

It's never going to become cheaper to build something, and you will always need this essential city service.

You will never not need it.

Yes, and I would encourage that fundraising to cover the whole county.

Yes, I'm with you.

I'm with you.

More we're coming.

Norman is bigger than all the other communities in the county combined, but we know that many of their uh homelessness may end up in Norman or hospital at the county jail in Norman or at Griffin.

At least while it's still here anyway.

And so it is the Cleveland County continuum care.

Cleveland County continuum care.

It would be great for them to uh help them help out with the fundraiser, not necessarily the cities themselves, even though that would be great, but just people that live in Cleveland County.

But I I think that's helpful too.

And um talked a little bit about some of the reduced operational costs by having a building that doesn't have to have a fire watch and doesn't some of the other issues that we're currently spending money on because of the condition of the current facility, but those costs wouldn't be there in a newer one.

So it doesn't mean it's less, but it there's some there's some trade-offs.

Yes, yeah.

Okay.

Any other final comments or questions for Rachel or staff?

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it.

Yes, thank you very much for your time.

Right now, this is scheduled for the second reading next Tuesday uh for an April ballot.

So um if there's an objection to that, I would encourage everybody to let city staff know by Friday at five.

If you if there's an objection to the second reading, otherwise we'll end up uh postponing it.

You know, that'd be the other option.

But um ideally, yes, Council Member Bruce.

You know, this is such an important comment ballot.

Can we open this subject?

To me, that you want as many, you know, let's put this for a vote.

You want as many pieces of candid vote for this?

What election and what ballot or what what primary or is it the general what what's the best to get as many voters as possible can voters to vote?

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know which one that is.

Yeah, we have we'll have the citywide election in April with the street maintenance bond, and then we potentially could have two city council runoffs as well in ward two and ward five, depending on how those go.

And then June um statewide primaries.

So both of them probably hopefully both of them will have high turnouts.

Um both cases.

So historically, which one is it?

Is it the primary or the which one is it?

I have to look at what the debt is on June primaries and what the turnout is in the middle of the summer.

But school, but that is a good question about compared to a citywide ballot in what's that?

What's that?

School boards in April too.

School board is in April, so school board election for one office.

And then potentially two but there could end up not being any city council elections for you know uh, and then the street maintenance bond will hopefully bring people out from all across the city.

But um that's uh a good question to ask.

And it could depend in Norman, it could be less voters in June, I'm not sure.

Uh any other comments or questions for that?

Okay.

All right, then we'll move on.

Thank you very much.

And item number four is a presentation and discussion regarding the proposed increase to the transient guest tax room tax.

Um we have Kathleen Walker and Mason Olson here to talk about that.

Sure, what's the question?

Glad I didn't hurt you for all that.

I appreciate that.

So the ground is just so this is gonna give you all a quick update on um room tax.

There's been uh I've had a lot of conversations with uh people from Visit Norman board, have a lot of conversation with Norman Art Council and uh we we definitely um trying to get all on the same page, make sure that everybody's supportive of everything.

Um so I'll go over that here in a second.

But uh just going over what uh we kind of hit a little bit on last time that we talked about nothing's changed on this.

I just highlighted what would be the uh main things changing in this, so be adding uh uh a portion for RV so that we can collect uh uh room tax on that and also be asking the voters to increase C tax rate from eight percent to ten percent.

Uh this is exactly what the the ballot question would look like.

We went over that in the last meeting.

Uh so when we start going over possible uh revenue scenarios, this is where we had a little bit of discussion with both of those boards.

I think the biggest update uh is in proposal two split.

Uh we went over the uh current split and proposal one split um several times, and that's where parks would get the uh the entire two percent increase uh after talking to visit Norman and uh even the Norman Art Council, uh proposal two is uh uh what we we talked about uh previous last time, and um uh that has us kind of even numbers where Norman uh visit normal would get 50 percent, Norman Art Council would continue with the 20%, which would be basically maintaining what they uh get right now.

Parks would be at 30%.

Um that includes uh 1.75 increase uh uh rate to the uh trying to get this mind in my correct my mind.

That might be incorrect right there, but the uh the uh visit Norman um portion uh if we do the uh proposed split two still includes 150 or 150,000 for Norm Ford venue enhancements, uh and both uh proposal split one and proposal split uh two will include a parts portion or portion of the parts that would go to fund um public arts annually.

Uh this is uh something that we've all been talking about in in the arts world for a long time.

Uh be very cool to have a a permanent uh uh funding mechanism for public arts.

Uh we've tried very whole lot of different mechanisms from private fundraising uh to having uh things on your your utility bill that automatically goes to to public arts.

Nothing really is materialized.

So this would be uh a portion where it would uh if you looked if you remember from our last discussions that that two and a half percent is approximately about 118,000 on current figures, so that would be a a nice way to start uh having a nice certain budget that go into public arts and uh also added some of the comparables for both uh Oklahoma and uh the SEC.

I know y'all have asked us this.

I forgot to highlight us on the SC SEC portion.

Uh I put the top 10 um uh most populated cities in there, and as you can see, uh currently we're at 8.0 um the highest rates right now in those top 10 is 9.25.

I feel like there might have been like a Bristow or something some smaller city that was uh north of 10 percent.

Uh but uh nobody currently uh in that area that's above uh uh that 9.25.

We do have uh we do believe once we hit that 10.0, we'll we'll see some of these cities probably following suit uh behind us.

Uh so we also have our tax rate included in there, and if you add both of those together, that's uh usually what that's what you would see on your final um charge if you're uh an out of towner, and just remind everybody this is uh truly an other people's money situation.

If you're a Norman resident and uh have emergency at your house or something like that, make sure that when you check into your hotel, tell them you're Norman resident and you get excluded from the local tax fees.

Um Baton Rouge.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So you go through there and uh start looking.

And I didn't total all those up.

I I suspect I was gonna pull a total percentage in there, but you see, you can you can kind of see there's some weird ones in there.

There's alcohol and restaurants.

That's just an additional uh percentage if you're actually staying or buying alcohol at the in that city in that hotel in a hotel.

So it wouldn't necessarily be included in your your sales tax that you would see added on to to your bill if you checked out in one of these cities.

But there are some definitely definitely some high rates going through out there.

Um like you said Baton Rouge uh getting out there with uh 26 uh percent um tax rate after you get a hotel room.

16% lodging tax.

Wow.

And 10.5% sales tax liquor tax.

That one allowed Alabama's money.

We don't have a one percent.

Okay, we'll go back to that one.

Yes, sir.

We don't have the alcohol or restaurant tax.

Or what's that last one?

Uh that's tax C D ID convention bureau improvement district.

I don't know.

I was just curious.

Um is it because their states allow them to have restaurant and alcohol tax in Oklahoma does it on this move?

And Oklahoma doesn't let us know it.

That would probably be a Dan question, or somebody's from that state.

Don't get me lying to you.

I have no clue.

Okay.

Um Mrs.

Walker, but is is there any provision you're aware of that says you don't get to do those things in Oklahoma?

I haven't looked at uh the sales tax code for that purpose, but we can look at that.

Okay, just curious.

Thank you.

I don't know if alcohol consumption is increasing.

I think it's decreasing.

No, I don't, I think it is for alcohol, but I don't know about I do not know about food.

Yeah.

Um it's increasing.

So we've mentioned before that more is currently 8.5%, but they are discussing a 1% increase in their sales tax rate, which would bring theirs to 9.5%.

And um I'll also say in I brought up this is an older email that I had Dan's information in, and uh he sent it to me probably about four or five months ago.

So I was looking up more's information.

So they recently added a lodging or a guest tax.

Um they were at zero percent before like a a year ago.

So they're they're going in there and definitely tagging um catching back up with everybody for sure.

Uh just a quick reminder what's all in the Norman Park system and everything that this would go to.

The uh just a reminder.

I mean, if you go out there, is this a guesstimate?

We we have somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood of uh 100 million dollars worth of assets in your park system.

Um and currently we're somewhere uh around 600,000 on the capital.

So if you um if you do your math that's uh 0.006 percent, that's not a whole lot.

Um trying to um keep your park system upgraded.

And I always uh always repeach this.

Uh when you have somebody moving into your town or you're trying to attract people to move in your town, the the two questions you probably hear the most is what the schools look like, what are the parks look like?

Um so it's a a great way to make sure that we're improving our quality of life and investing back in ourselves and hopefully um even um be able to attract some residents to to move to normal.

And similar to the street maintenance program, every new neighborhood that we approve that has a park in it.

We typically agree to take over maintenance of that park forever as well.

So we're trying to get I've been uh I've told you all a few times on playgrounds that our playgrounds are getting older.

We finally um had my staff go through there and an average age of playgrounds, and this is even um putting our newer playgrounds at uh we're putting them four new playgrounds, uh sudden Sun Place, Eagle Cliff, uh uh over there at Lions Northeast, and we got one more floating out there.

Can't can't think of it right more time.

So we're even with those set at zero, our average age of playground and our um playgrounds or park system is almost 18 years old.

And if you look at a life of a playground, it it's supposed to be your 15 years max.

They stopped making making things uh uh replacement parts for those playgrounds every so often guarantee you're not finding a 15-year-old slide to fit into a uh a playground that's been there for 15 to 17 years.

Uh hit this last time, haven't changed uh anything on this.

Is this telling you what will the funding be used on?

I did put a little star by um public art program.

Like I said, we've been been trying to figure out for years how to uh fund public arts, but uh at least 0.25% of uh of part portion going to every year if this uh passes uh at least 118,000 that can do anything from putting uh uh public art into public places.

We talked about sculpture uh garden over at Ruby Grant, mural programs, um, just whatever is kind of the vision at that time.

Um it's something we possibly could do through that public art program.

Council mural grant.

Um I would say for uh Norman Arts Council and the other entities in that.

If you're if you have money for public art, does that um come back to them in some way if they're doing like a mural program or trying to hire local artists to do sculptures?

So I will say that the Norman Parks is not gonna do the the art.

We're gonna work with the art council.

That is gonna be they're a public art board that works with the community, they're gonna go out and find the projects.

We might have projects that that we ask to ask to do occasionally um, especially if you build a new park or if we um see some places screaming for uh uh a beautiful canvas like the the silos over at Griffin, but for the most part that that program's gonna live inside the uh public art board that is inside the art council.

And then second part, I think 2.5% will be over 118,000 because it was my ask for the point two five percent.

Yeah, that's what I that's the portion I was talking about.

Sorry.

Yeah, so 2.5 a little more.

I don't ask me to do the math either.

Park math is what's going on over here.

I always scare everybody when I start talking about percentages.

It'll be a bit more, it'll be a bit more than 118.

Yeah, yeah.

A little bit north.

That's all I had as of right now.

Council Roos.

So I think it's great you did a little cutout for art.

But you did that because you weren't getting your fair share from the council.

No.

Okay.

No, that um want to make sure that that we've been talking about uh including public arts for before the the last meeting time we talked about this.

Let me rephrase my quick.

I think you're confused.

I see Mr.

Nikol.

So I thought the art council could close the funds, you know, so much for the sale from the uh sales uh hotel tax, you know, they have this, and they've they fund things throughout the town, plus art in the town.

And if I'm the park guy and have all these parking hours to mark my park, I'm going to that council.

Hey, look, I've got a couple of unsolicited proposals for you.

I'd like really to see this in this park, this part, this part.

And I'm thinking, well, you probably get the service you want it from the council.

So you're saying, hey, I'm gonna do a cutout of the two percent, two point four percent, whatever it is.

So you can ensure that you can get that art in your in your parks.

I mean, that's that's how I kind of read me for the cutout.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm totally wrong.

So how uh make sure I'm understanding you perfectly.

So right now they get uh 20% of that 20% uh that is distributed uh amongst a whole plethora of arts groups that's throughout throughout the uh Norman area.

Um and that point that 2.5 percent um of the parks portion uh when we break that out, that will live inside ultra still live inside the the parks capital budget.

Um and we will work with them to come up with public art programs.

And those definitely if we have a a park or a new park opening or a public building that needs art, we're definitely gonna be pushing that at them and um having that um on their priority list.

I guess you did a cutout and say, hey, look at me.

Now I got a cutout, I have a funding, so look at me instead of competing against all the other demands for that art council.

Yeah, got it.

Yeah, that would be independent from that will not be included in their their demands that they they break up, break out with all the other art groups.

Okay, just wonderful.

So I understand the art council also gets explained through the TIFS.

Is that correct?

That there's certain like a TIF, they have uh finance.

Well, not in a TIFF.

So like uh UNP TIFF, there's not a little cutout for a there's there's a cutout for funds associated with art with it in that TIFF.

No, um originally when we were looking at creating legacy park way back in 2006.

Uh there was in public art envisioned for like CS, there wasn't money to fund that when it was constructed.

Uh there has been some discussion, and maybe this is what you're thinking of uh with the development oversight committee about spending some remaining uh town center incentive funds for a public art project within the town center.

And so that may be what you're thinking of.

Yeah, and that's that's really just a one-off, it's not part of the all of our TIFFs or anything like that.

It's just there's some available funding, and that's that was a use that the developer was was willing to partner on.

I'm calling, yeah.

Okay.

Of one percent of every project.

Um okay, and then just for reference to the last increase from five percent to eight percent was distributed amongst Visit Norman and Norman Arts Council parks did not get any of that increase.

Correct.

Parks got zero percent of that that portion or that raise from five to eight percent, seventy-five percent of that raise went to help form the Norman Sports uh commission, and that other 25% went to uh Norman Art Council.

And currently Norman Parks Department is in charge of the firehouse arts center.

Yes, the Center Theater, the train depot, and the historical house, and the historical house are and also the WIFAC and um the Awe and uh all of them we own and we are responsible for maintaining them.

Correct, and utilities and if uh Norm Ford 2 if there's any art cultural type centers that are built for that, or through that, then it would also inherit those buildings.

Okay.

Um other questions or comments for Jason or Catherine.

Okay.

Um so again, same thing.

It's currently scheduled for second reading next Tuesday.

Um, there's been discussion about uh two big things on the ballot in April.

Street maintenance bond, shelter bond.

Do we want to add this on there as well, along with a couple charter amendments?

Um do we want to just focus on the two big things that we're asking voters for?

Yeah, and the other this and the other the charter amendments be in June or however any other ideas that might anybody might have in mind.

Council Mercury.

Yeah, uh I don't know if you're gonna hate me for saying this, but um June, if we voted on it and it was passed, would that still have uh lead time to get in place before the next game?

Um right now, if it's adopted in April, we were thinking it could go into effect July 1st.

Uh so probably September 1st, realistically, before we'd go into effect.

Okay, and that was a conference plug.

Yes, time for the first time.

Yes, uh, and the reason I ask is because we do have some other votes for June, and I was thinking about just the length of the ballot and what else is also being voted on in April, like school board, potentially council, um, that it just for ballot fatigue reasons, it might make sense to split them up.

Councilmember Hinkle.

Yeah, just um I'm hearing just that we're having way too many smaller elections.

I don't think that uh three amendments like this, three items like this would really cause a lot of ballot fatigue.

Maybe the charter amendments would be better for the summertime with those questions.

But these all kind of seem like progressive uh forward thinking questions that I think could be digested easily on one ballot, maybe any other thoughts on that from anybody.

Can mayor can I just chime in real quick for the city clerk's name.

Um we need to know by Thursday at noon.

This is a really large agenda.

Yeah, so if council wouldn't mind if if if you have any input, just get that to our office by Thursday at noon.

That'll give us an opportunity to do what we need.

These are these are all on the non-consent, these are all second reading, so there will be a public hearing, public comment, questions for council.

Yeah, because they've been noticed.

If you decide to delay any of them to another election, our recommendation would be to postpone it uh indefinitely because all of the ordinance titles list a specific election date of April, and when we bring it back in March uh for first and second reading for the June election, whatever whatever's determined to go on the June ballot.

Okay, with with the right changes.

Everybody clear on that.

Okay.

All right, then if there are no further questions about that item, then we'll move on to item number five.

Thank you.

And that is a presentation and discussion regarding proposed amendments to the city charter.

Umil discussion.

This one isn't asking for 20.

Yeah, and I think uh you all have seen this language before in a meeting a couple of weeks ago, and I think it's changed with the language here.

Um it's the extension or the beginning of the term for council members beginning um after the April election, the first Tuesday following the April election date uh for all council members, and then it's the addition of additional qualifications uh for the city auditor position.

Um so those two also are specifically for the April 7th election.

And uh, if you all desire to move those to June, we would just recommend again postpone indefinitely and then we'll bring it back onto your agenda March 10th for first reading, March 24th for second.

Councilmark Grant.

Um I don't want to postpone the auditor one.

Um I the one about when we take our seats could be in June.

But I definitely want to see the auditor question move forward so we can get that position filled as quickly as possible.

In that case, then I would recommend uh if that's the will of council that you amend the ordinance on the floor to strike uh section one of the ordinance uh that amends the charter that for the term of office, and then uh the same section or similar section on uh the ordinance proposing uh that amendment it'd be section five in that ordinance.

And then we'll make a minute, we'll have to make amendments to the proclamation that's attached to each ballot item as well.

I would second council member grant's motion on that uh looks like we have consensus on that.

I mean, uh yeah, I would say I mean I'd if we're gonna put them all on if we're gonna put the other four things on there, I don't I wouldn't have a problem just putting the term putting them all on there.

I mean the term limit or not term limit, but the us being sworn in within 60 days of election instead of five months.

Five questions funding charter amendment, potential runoffs, school board.

I don't know that that's too big, but and I feel each like school board it's it's its own ballot, these five questions should still be on the front page.

I think so.

I think they're short enough.

Yeah, I don't control that, but I think yeah, it's mostly succinct enough that we could do that.

The data from the ones where we had two page ballots of city questions, there was a noticeable drop-off on the second page.

Yeah.

We did the nine, the nine items.

So it if this may be the beginning of being able to kind of put together that barometer uh to give future council just some uh inside information.

If you go to page two, you're gonna lose this many voters that voted on item one that didn't wind up flipping the page.

So uh yeah, if we've got a couple of ballot types and we're able to evaluate how many voted on issue one versus how many voted on the last issue.

I think a pattern will absolutely be identifiable.

Just as uh yeah, a reminder that when we had the nine amendments, charter amendments a couple years ago.

Um question number one had more than a thousand more votes than uh question number nine.

I had a more than a thousand total votes, so number nine lost over a thousand people decided they voted on question one and then didn't make it to the last to say last comment for me.

The it just seems like four of those items are like business items that move the city forward, and I think voters could probably wrap their head around the business nature of you know the the go bonds, auditor, things like that, and then the charter amendments seem more like housekeeping um to where maybe that would be better placed in June with some other I mean and after the elections in February, people may want to decide how long people stay in some place in June anyway.

Yeah, so okay.

Any uh comments or questions about that again scheduled for second reading Tuesday?

Umless anything changes, we'll be moving forward with all of them on the April ballot.

But think about it.

Uh remember what Jamie said.

If you can please, uh if you hear anything different, if you have change of feelings or thoughts, let them know.

Um but otherwise we can also postpone you know if we have to.

But I'll try to draft amendments based on what I've heard tonight, just for just in case.

So we go smoothly no matter which direction.

Right, it's a lot easier to have those prepared in advance.

Uh so I'll I'll work on this.

Okay.

Is that everybody?

Okay.

Seeing no fun no further comments, then this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

And it's Josh's birthday.

I was hoping my