Good evening, and welcome to the City Council, Norman Utilities Authority, Norman Municipal Authority, and Norman Tax Increment Finance Authority meeting of February 24th, 2026.

Madam Clerk, will you call the roll?

Councilmember Gandisbury.

Here.

Councilmember Peacock?

Yeah.

Councilmember Bruce?

Here.

Councilmember Grant.

Present.

Councilmember Nofire.

Here.

Councilmember Hinkle.

Councilmember Blodgett is absent.

Councilmember Dixon?

Here.

Mayor Holman.

Here.

Please join me for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

To the Republic for which it stands one nation under God in the law.

Liberty and justice for our oath of office.

Administering the oath of office to and seating of council member elect Robert Bruce for Ward 3.

And I'll recognize Judge Nichols to administer the oath of office.

Perfect.

Bruce, if you raise your right hand, repeat after me.

I state your name.

I Robert Bruce.

Do solemnly swear.

You solemnly swear that I will support, obey, and defend.

That I will support obey and defend.

The Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States.

And the Constitution of the State of Oklahoma.

And the Constitution of the State of Oklahoma.

And then I will not knowingly receive.

I will not knowly receive directly or indirectly.

Directly or indirectly.

Any money or other valuable thing.

Any money or other valuable thing for the performance or non-performance.

For the performance or non-performance.

Any act or duty pertaining to my office?

Other than the compensation allowed by law.

Other than the compensation allowed by law.

I further swear, I further swear.

That I will faithfully discharge my duties.

Oh, faithfully discharge my duties.

As council member to the best of my ability, so help me guide.

As council member as council member to the best of my ability.

So help me.

So help me guide.

Yes, sir.

I declare you duly sworn as council member for the city of Norman.

Thank you.

Sir.

All right.

Item number two, a resolution of the Council of the City of Norman honoring and recognizing Jennifer Baker for her exceptional contributions to arts education and her receipt of the Arts and Education Award at the 46th Governor's Arts Awards.

The motion on the floor on the floor is to adopt the resolution.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt a resolution pass this unanimously.

All right.

What are we doing?

Norman, Oklahoma, honoring and recognizing Jennifer Baker for her exceptional contributions to arts education and her receipt of the Arts and Education Award at the 46 Governors Arts Awards.

Whereas Jennifer Baker was honored with the Arts and Education Award at the 46th Governor's Arts Award presented at the Oklahoma State Capitol on January 20th, 2026, a prestigious recognition presented by the Oklahoma Arts Council to individuals who demonstrate outstanding leadership in advancing arts education for youth statewide.

And whereas the Governor's Arts Awards recognize individuals whose work has made a lasting impact on Oklahoma's cultural landscape with the Arts and Education Award honoring efforts to expand meaningful access to the arts for the next generation.

And whereas Jennifer Baker has devoted more than two decades to advancing the mission and impact of the Sooner Theater in Norman, transfer transforming it from a primarily rental-based venue into a vibrant center for professional programming, comprehensive arts education, and broad community access.

And whereas under her visionary leadership as an executive director, Baker developed the studio of the Sooner Theater, now offering more than 70 year-round classes and camps serving more over 1,300 students annually, while ensuring accessibility through significant scholarship support and providing students with exceptional educational opportunities recognized at the state and national level.

Now for, now therefore, be it resolved by the Council of the City of Norman, Oklahoma, that Jennifer Baker is hereby honored and celebrated for her extraordinary leadership, her unwavering commitment to arts accessibility, and for her profound and lasting impact on generations of young performers and the cultural vitality of our community.

Passed and adopted this twenty fourth day of February, 2026.

I just, well, I didn't know exactly what I was what we were doing tonight.

Thank you so much.

This is such an honor.

Recognize my family and Nancy from the Sooner Theater and Chuck Thompson who who nominated me for this, but really it's the heavy lifting of the staff over there at the Sooner Theater.

And a lot of you in this room know many of them, but it's all due to them and all the hard work they do.

But thank you.

This is, I mean, I'm usually not speechless.

I'm speechless, so thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, item number three is a presentation of awards from the Oklahoma Municipal League to employees who have completed twenty-five years of continuous service to the City of Norman.

Due to other commitments, some recipients are not able to be present tonight, but I want to read their names for the record.

I would like to start off by saying that we would like to extend our deepest condolences to the friends and family of Carl Leganis, water treatment plant operator, who recently passed away.

Carl dedicated 25 years of service to the City of Norman.

His commitment and contributions to our community did not go unnoticed, and we are grateful for the many years he devoted to serving our residents.

On behalf of the city council and the entire city organization, we honor his service and extend our heartfelt sympathy to those who knew and loved him.

Those that are in attendance, please come forward when your name is called.

From the finance department, Celeste Gully, Treasury Associate.

The certificates weren't ready, but we have these OML pins for everybody, and then we'll get the certificates to everybody later.

And then Bryce will get a picture of us.

From the municipal court, Maggie Griffith, Deputy Court Clerk.

From the Parks and Recreation Department, we have James Briggs, Park Development Manager, Carlos Sitton, Administrative Technician Four, and Brian Sullivan, Golf Maintenance Supervisor.

Which one's which?

From the planning department, Larry Durham, building inspector.

Thank you.

One, two, go.

From the police department, Russell Anderson, Communications Systems Manager.

And John Hensley, parking officer.

They're both working right now, checking on parking.

All right.

From the public works department, Brian Churchwell, Fleet Equipment Support Supervisor.

Mark Jordan, engineering technician.

Brian McNabb, traffic signal supervisor.

Robin Gonerman, pavement maintenance coordinator.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, guys.

From our from the utilities department, Christopher Mattingley, Director of Utilities.

Jennifer Matthews, administrative technician three.

Robert Daniels, administrative technician three.

Congratulations.

And again, just want to extend my my thank you to as mayor to all of our city employees and all of your families and the sacrifices you make that allow our city to continue to function every day so that all of us can go about our lives running our businesses and going to school and doing things like that.

So thank you all so much for your dedication to Norman.

Council announcements, and we'll start in Ward One.

Hello, Ward One.

Maggie Griffith, Chris Madley, and Brian Churchill, who have a personal relationship with each one of those people.

So thank you very much for your 25 years of service.

Also want to thank the chamber for the annual wards events that they held the other night.

Carla Atkinson, our small business of the year, was a local the standard.

And then our big business of the year recipient was Riverwind and Justin and his team out there with Riverwind.

So when you go in those established, make sure to thank them and thank them from everything they do.

Other than that, that's it.

Thank you.

Ward two.

Thank you.

Yes, big congrats to everybody that was honored tonight.

I was hoping to catch Miss Jennifer Baker before she left the room, but uh the Sooner Theater is an institution and a treasure for the City of Norman.

And if you've never gone there to support any programming, please change that because it needs all the support you can get, and we want to keep that at Treasure and Institution.

Norman, thank you.

Thank you.

Ward three.

Yes, uh, Ward Three members.

I appreciate the confidence and thank you for all the discussions, and let's keep those going on and the calls and uh showing up the house.

I appreciate that.

But uh I am really grateful for it and looking forward to serve.

Thank you.

Ward four.

Yes, good evening, Ward Four, City of Norman.

I also want to extend a congratulations to Jennifer Baker and to our employees who have served for 25 years.

That's no small feat.

And then also a shout out to our Ward 4 resident, Bronte Bagwell, for serving on the Social and Voluntary Services Committee.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ward 5.

Good evening, Ward 5 and the City of Norman.

I would also like to say thank you to everybody that has hit the 25-year mark.

I don't know how you did it.

This city, it functions amazingly well despite what you see up here on the dice, and it's all thanks to those people.

They're amazing at what they do.

I would also like to uh thank two specific people tonight, Mark Emerson and Pamela Post for accepting their appointments.

Because without those volunteers, same same difference.

This place wouldn't run like it does.

So thank you.

That's it.

Thank you.

Ward six.

Good evening, everyone.

I also want to say thank you to Jennifer Baker and all of the staff at Sooner Theater, Nancy, and everything that they do for the kids in our community, and just providing such a special historic place for all of us to enjoy.

So your work doesn't go unnoticed, and you're one of the best shows in town, so please keep that going.

Tonight on the consent agenda, we're going to approve a voter-approved park for Sutton Place.

I know that neighborhood in Ward 6 has been waiting a long time for that park.

We've kind of got some upgrades along the way there, but uh there's a brand new park coming, and I know that neighborhood's looking forward to it.

So hopefully they're watching and they can celebrate that with us.

Um I also want to say congratulations to all of the 25-year employees.

Um as a city council person, you get a bird's eye view to what they do every day.

And I think overall, there's just some amazing people that work for the city that have big hearts, and um they're all working towards the same goal to give our residents the best support and best services that they can do.

Um, and then I also want to just remind everybody that the there's a big bond election coming up on April 2nd, so a little ways away, but get your get knowledgeable about those items because they'll be here before you know it.

And then lastly, I just want to say uh send condolences to the family and friends of Dennis Brigham.

Uh he passed away over the weekend.

He was a longtime member of the Norman Arts Council, uh, the tourism board, he was on the parks board, he was a district governor for rotary and a longtime Retarian.

He was a friend and a mentor of mine, and I'll miss him a lot.

And I think Norman will too.

So I just wanted to send a little shout out uh to the Brigham Brigham family and let them know that we're all thinking about them.

So thank you guys.

Thank you.

Ward eight.

Uh thank you.

Uh just want to give a big thanks to Nick Heflin, um, Ward 8 resident who's going to who has volunteered to serve on the public safety oversight committee.

Um, we need we need people that care.

Um, and he's that person.

Um also um I hope you hope you all were able to invest in spandex here recently because Councilmember Gandisbury and myself, we got a little Olympic fever, and we are gonna start working out, and we're gonna do the two-man luge um in four years.

So if you see us working out, mind your business, we're working on something.

Uh and that's it for me.

Thank you.

Um just a couple things.

Um, also wanted to congratulate um the standard and river wind um for being recognized as outstanding businesses in Norman.

The standard as best small business.

Um if you haven't checked them out yet, they've quickly become what I would describe as an anchor tenant in downtown Norman, and especially on Gray Street, a great place for gathering and holding events and um just a real great example of taking or revitalizing what was a old auto repair shop for many years and turning it into a vibrant community space and restaurant and thing like that.

And then also um, and I just really appreciate the efforts of the owners investing into downtown Norman as they have, and then with Riverwind, a a business that is not technically located in our city limits, but is in our school district, public school district, and um provides a lot of jobs for people that live in Norman and in this area, and they've uh been generous to uh many organizations in our city funding-wise and hosting events and things like that.

So I really appreciate uh the folks out at Riverwind and their partnerships in the City of Norman.

And then also wanted to mention um Thursday community planning and transportation committee meeting here at 4 p.m.

at City Hall.

Also live streamed on YouTube on the City of Norman YouTube.

We'll get our regular monthly update about the public transit system, ridership report, the budget, um upcoming transit budget for the overall city budget in June.

And um, and if you're interested in that discussion, I would encourage you to tune in.

Um, send us any questions or comments you might have about public transit.

We'll make sure that is discussed.

We'll also be discussing uh parking in downtown Norman uh as a general topic of discussion.

We've had different conversations with different businesses, and there's some inconsistency of some blocks there's a hour and a half time limit, some blocks there's one hour, I think there's somewhere it might be two, and then around the courthouse uh there's no time limit, you just have to pay.

So it's uh we'll have a discussion about all of that, a continued discussion about downtown parking if that's of interest to you.

And then we'll also be getting an update and uh discussion about um OTA and ODOT related projects in the city of Norman.

So any of those that are interest to you, I encourage you to turn into that, tune in to that committee or attend in person if you like.

And um also want to encourage everybody to update your voter registration or get registered to vote if you aren't for the upcoming election on April 7th.

Um not only are there multiple uh uh ballot items on there, but the ward five runoff.

So if you're ward five resident, definitely encourage you to uh research the candidates and make sure your voter registration is up to date and everything, and make sure you cast your vote in those that election on April 7th.

And then also um since Councilmember Belogit is not here.

I wanted to mention one of the items on consent docket is the funding for uh upgrades to Eagle Cliff Park, which is in Ward 7 and has been something that we've been working on for a number of years, and as the uh former ward seven representative, I uh you know uh regularly received comments, um, questions from residents in Eagle Cliff about that park and um how heavily it is used and um how it was and has been in need of upgrades for a while, and so I'm really excited that uh through the Norman Ford Initiative uh funding to get uh updates to Eagle Cliff Park are on the way and will be approved as part of the consent docket.

So I know council member bloggett is real excited about that as well.

So that's all I have for this week, and we'll move on to the consent docket.

This item is placed on the agenda so that the city council by unanimous consent can designate those routine agenda items that they wish to be approved or acknowledged by one motion.

If any item proposed does not meet with approval of all council members, that item will be heard in regular order.

Staff recommends that item four through item 26 be placed on the consent docket.

I'll entertain a motion to place items four through twenty-six on the consent docket.

Motion at this time I would like to recognize council member Peacock for an absentation on the item on item number five.

Thank you.

Uh yeah, regarding item number five.

I have a professional uh conflict on that item, so I will be abstaining from item five, but we'll be voting on the remainder of the consent docket.

I will entertain a motion to allow councilmember peacock to abstain from item number five on the consent docket.

Motion second.

The motion on the floor is to allow councilmember Peacock to abstain from item number five.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to allow council member peacock to abstain from item number five on the consent docket passes unanimously with council member peacock abstaining from item number five.

The motion on the floor is to place items four through twenty-six on the consent docket.

Council members, you may cast your votes have been cast in the motion to place items four through twenty-six on the consent docket passes unanimously.

The council member peacock abstaining from item number five.

Sorry.

I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent docket.

Motion.

Second.

Are there any comments from council regarding any item on the consent docket?

Seeing none.

The motion on the floor is to approve items on the consent docket.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

And the motion to approve the consent docket passes unanimously again with council member peacock abstaining from item number five.

All right, non-consent items number 27.

An ordinance upon second and final reading, amending section 36-201 of the code as to remove a tract of land generally located at the northeast corner of the intersection of 24th Avenue Northeast and East Alameda Street from the C2 General Commercial District and R1 single family dwelling district and place the same in the RM6 medium density apartment district.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading section by section.

Motion.

Second.

Is there a representative of the applicant to make a presentation?

It looks like Mr.

Reger is here.

There is, thank you.

Applicant in this item tonight.

And let me get us going here.

We are in East Norman tonight at 24th and Alameda in Ward 6.

Here we go.

So the item we have for tonight is really an infill parcel.

You'll see it here on the screen.

A lot of development around this parcel, Alameda Street and 24th Avenue Northeast is the corner.

And you see your first bank on one corner, 7 Eleven on another, Sonic, and some restaurant uses on the southwest corner.

And then Norman Public Schools has Irving Complex and the large recreational complex just off to the southwest of this as well.

Summit Lakes is the neighborhood off to the southeast of this.

So about 11.6 acres is the total site.

We are not developing the total site.

You'll see that in just a moment that we're leaving the eastern side of this site basically untouched.

This is GIS, and I always like to show this because you can see all of those green lines and purple lines and uh blue lines are all water and sewer and stormwater lines all around this site.

So this is already heavily infrastructured site all around it.

Alameda is heavily improved at this location, as is 24th Avenue.

So this really is an infill site where we have utilities and infrastructure completely serving the site already.

You see the two green lines coming down the right side of the screen.

That is the WQPZ zone.

We are not developing in that zone.

This is not an engineered solution to change the WQBZ.

It will remain unchanged and uh unimproved as we move forward with this project.

This again just shows you the infill.

So we've put the aerial in combination with the utilities shown on the screen right there, and you can just see it is intense development all around this site, really in every direction.

I would note some multifamily, you can't really read it on the slide there, but just to the left on the just off the screen is some multifamily, and there is some multifamily kind of dotted as we move back into Norman along Alameda Avenue as as Alameda Street as we approach more of the interior part of Norman.

The site is currently zone C2, and that's important to know.

C2 with a slight little very thin band of R1 across the top, but mostly this is a C2 site.

C2 is the most intense commercial zoning we have in the city of Norman.

This is car dealerships, gas stations, everything.

Anything you can want to do in Norman, Oklahoma from a commercial standpoint, you can do in C2.

It is the most intense.

In fact, when appraisers are appraising property for condemnation values, that's the highest value condemnation land you can have if you're being condemned and looking at pricing of the value of land.

So it is a very intense zoning district that is currently pushed right up against uh basically this neighborhood of Royal Oaks to the top and to the east.

And this will be a point of discussion that you'll see as as we talk through this item with the protest and what is planned.

So right now it's a field of trees, but it is zone C2.

So this could be uh created as a C2 development right now.

The proposal is to change it to a much smaller area of C2 on the hard corner and RM6, which is basically multifamily development on the remainder of the site.

This is the proposed zoning, so if you consider previously it was pretty much almost all C2, now it will be a small corner of C2, and I'm gonna show you how that relates to the other corners and RM6 for the remainder of it.

About a point 1.4 acre corner of C2.

AM Norman, we're starting to talk a lot more about AIM Norman.

We're starting to understand it a lot better, I hope.

Uh, as it was adopted this past summer.

AIM Norman, of course, is your new land use plan.

Um we've been using it quite a bit.

The planning commissioners are very adept at it now and asking us questions about it and how we how we complied with it.

And you have extensive staff reports now that tell you item by item of how we've complied with it.

This one, the character area on the left, character area on AIM is not something we can change.

It's sort of the very high altitude look of what the land should be used as.

The character area in this location is corridor, which is you can probably imagine is more intense commercial zoning, typically on the corridor of a section line uh arterial, and then behind it on either side is suburban, is the character area, which is basically the residential areas sitting behind the corridor.

On the right is the future land use, so this would be sort of like Norman 2025 was.

Now we're doing with AIM land use.

And then land use, there's a lot to look at on this slide.

Basically, we are showing is mixed use.

I'm gonna show you on the next slide what mixed use means.

But mixed use is is fairly intense.

It is what you think of it is as mixed use, different uses that comprise the site.

And then behind it to the top is urban medium, and you it's a little bit hard to see, but it's kind of a mustard color of yellow, and then on the lower right is low, basically urban low.

Those are two different designations of residential, different densities.

And so you could see basically AIM Norman plan for everything surrounding us.

It's already developed, so don't let me confuse you there.

This isn't blank sites, but basically they anticipate everything to be fairly dense in this location.

And I'll show you those densities in just a moment.

Again, we are not changing AIM Norman as to the land use.

But I thought this might be helpful in the sense of understanding what is anticipated for all of Alameda Avenue, Alameda Street.

And you're going to see some other projects come forward on Alamedia later on to the east.

But you see our little corner kind of circled in the middle is mixed use.

Around us to the top and to the left, the west is the muster color of urban medium, UM.

And UM is gross densities between at basically greater than eight units per acre.

I'll give you sort of jumping ahead here.

Our proposal staff has determined is 13.8 units per acre.

So behind us, AIM plans for it to be about eight units per acre.

And then to the east, you see UH, which is a brown color.

AIM Norman says that should be 12 units per acre.

Again, we're planned at 13.8 units per acre.

And so we're sort of in keeping with the densities that are planned along Alameda Street as we progress up and down that corridor.

This is mixed use aim for the land use and mixed use basically is and staff determined, this is their words.

Overall, the proposed development largely aligns with the AIM Norman land use and character area objective.

So it was found that we do largely align with what is planned on this location.

I just did want to remind sometimes it gets confusing, and mixed use is just thought of as just mixed use vertically.

That's not the case.

In AIM Norman, you can see on the bottom left, maybe a little hard to read, but page 167 of the glossary states mixed use, the use of one area for multiple uses, such as commercial, office, andor residential.

Mixed use can be horizontal or vertical.

So it can be either.

And it's it's really remarkable.

A lot of people find this almost unbelievable, but I believe that those who sat through this process of AIM can understand where the calculations came from and how they came about.

And it's it's pretty daunting when you think about what we need to do for housing.

This is from AIM.

You can see the population growth is planned at a 1.5% per year.

That is basically what we've grown out for the last four decades.

In fact, that's the low end of typically what we've grown at.

And that means by 2045, we'll have 185,000 people, which is what is projected.

That means about 57,000 more people by 2020 by 2045, and that equates to a demand of 23,226 new homes.

It says that could be dwelling units of any kind, that can be multifamily units, micro units, any kind of unit.

But that's a lot of units.

Tonight I'm proposing you 60.

So we have a long way to go.

But incrementally, we can get there if we keep working at it and improving projects as we can.

I would just remind AIM also said goal number four in AIME, as you adopted said enhance and promotes in-fill opportunities in existing neighborhoods.

We are not inside of a neighborhood, but we're right next to it, and this clearly is an in-fill development because it is completely developed all around this site.

And so AIME instructs us to take advantage of that and enhance those opportunities where we can and develop them as we can.

Here's the site plan.

The site plan, and on the lower right is the AIM character areas, and what I want you to see, if you will, is the lower right, the quarter is the pink, which is intended to be basically commercial, and that basically is the lower half or third of the site.

And this site plan basically contemplated that by moving the commercial down to the corner to keep it on the arteries at the traffic light intersection.

And so basically you have C2 commercial at 1.4 acres instead of the entire site, basically.

And then the rest is a duplex development under RM6.

Under RM6, we can have one lot and put duplexes throughout that lot.

If we were to do RM2 or R2, we would have to have a separate lot for every single structure, every single duplex, and that gets a lot more complex in terms of traffic access and utilities.

So we are able to do it more efficiently if we can have RM6 as one lot with all of these units within that.

We have a little commercial building on the corner.

Basically, this would be what we would refer to as neighborhood commercial, small space commercial, probably about a thousand square feet to 1,200 square feet uses within that building.

The preliminary plat that you're being asked for approved tonight is two lots, one lot for all of the residential and one lot for the corner commercial.

And basically that would be served by access points on each side of 24th and Alameda.

In the protest letter, it talked about, and you've certainly seen that letter, I'm sure there were many of them in your agenda book.

I would point out that it was basically one letter that was walked around the neighborhood, and I'll talk about that in just a moment.

But a couple of the bullets that it set in there were about infrastructure and about traffic, and it questioned whether we have capacities and abilities to handle this project versus the infrastructure.

And in your report, every time you do a zoning or a plat item, not every time you do a zoning, but every time you do a plat item, you get an extensive report from your staff that determines whether it can handle the infrastructure of that project.

Here, your report noted that utilities could handle it, there were no inconsistencies.

And as to traffic, you always get this detailed memo that we appreciate very much.

And I just want to highlight some of the concerns because there was a lot of comments from neighbors about traffic.

And it basically said that the access management code was complied with.

After development, this is projected to have maybe about 12,000 a day.

So we are way below the traffic capacities of these arterials as they are planned right now or as they exist right now.

This is the protest that you saw many pages of in your book, but I want you to see how this is actually manifested out on the site.

There's actually not that many within the radius.

There's only two abutting to the site to the north, and there's only one abutting the site to the east.

And as you saw the site plan, that will be hundreds of feet away from the actual developed area of this site when you look at it to the east.

Most of the protests were walked around to the neighborhood.

You could see all over as much as a quarter mile away or a long ways away from this site and sign this form letter.

But I think it's interesting when you look at the letter that it basically, in all due respect, contradicts itself.

The first bullet says that they are basically happy with the existing zoning, that it served them well.

Well, the existing zoning is C2 commercial development.

It's not developed yet, but by right it could be.

So I'm not sure there's a probably a misunderstanding as to what the current zoning is.

It is not agricultural, it is not farmland or nature.

The existing zoning is C2.

The next few bullets talk about what would be really contradictory to C2.

They say loss of open space, wildlife, environmental ecology, and that is certainly not what C2 provides for you.

So I think it's just kind of a misunderstanding of what the zoning is of this property as to what has been objected to.

And then the final two bullets are the infrastructure, which we just talked about in terms of traffic and utilities.

Parks looked at this as they do every time we have a residential development.

They looked at it closely, and actually it was a pretty long discussion at parks because we have a private area of parkland and a public area.

And what was discussed is that the parks board would rather not have a public park.

What we have to do as developers is we have to either give you a public park, dedicate an actual piece of land to you that you then you go develop and improve, put a play structure on or whatever you choose to do, or basically we do fee in lieu of or provide park amenity amenities ourselves.

Staff decided that they did not want a public park.

The park in this project would be 0.27 acres.

That's about 108 feet by 108 feet.

To put that in perspective in Royal Zoe Royal Oaks Park up on the upper right, there's a play structure there.

And I put a box on top of that.

I should have shown you a slide of it, but basically that takes up about a hundred feet by a hundred feet just for one play structure.

So basically, you can't really accommodate a park in that size of space.

And what your city staff struggles with is going out and maintaining and mowing and taking care of parks when they're tiny little parks, they would rather not do that.

So this will have a fee in lieu of, and those funds will go towards Royal Oaks Park when they are paid.

Plan Commission.

This was a long meeting at Plan Commission, obviously, with all of those protesters.

We went through extensive discussion at Planning Commission.

It was pretty remarkable at night in that I don't recall in my memory where every single planning commissioner spoke.

But they did that night.

And probably because Commissioner Byrd, Chairman Byrd took it one by one down the dais for all of them to make commentary on this project.

There were many people speaking against.

You saw all the letters in the project, and one by one, every single planning commissioner said yes to this project and explained why.

And I wanted you to see that.

Commissioner McCown evaluated it with consistency to AIM and found that it met AIM, that it was in compliance.

And so she voted for that.

Commissioner Parker found that it was comparable to nearby developments and would improve the area.

And so he voted for it.

Commissioner Maria Kindle voted voted yes and said that it was compatible with surrounding property value.

She considered it in terms of valuation and uh not something we had presented, but she had kind of come to that conclusion on her own.

And then Commissioner, I'll jump to the bottom.

Commissioner McDaniel said that uh it reduced the C2 zoning and created a buffer.

And he he contemplated that it was really unknown what C2 zoning would be.

You have no idea what C2 is going to become, and it's already approved as C2, so you're taking a pretty big gamble on what that will be if you just let it stay as C2.

I want to jump back to Commissioner Griffith because Mr.

Griffith is a longtime City of Norman volunteer.

He was Ward 6 council member for many years back quite a number of years ago.

Then he uh left the service of the council and then came back as a commissioner, still in ward six.

So he's very familiar with planning and zoning and projects in ward six.

He too came to vote for this project and said this is less than tense than C2, and he found the density and the spacing compatible with nearby neighborhoods.

So he too voted for this.

The entire commission voted in unanimous unanimous fashion for this project and recommends approval to you tonight.

So what is C2 zoning?

I just wanted to kind of show you.

The neighbors said C2 served them well, but I think they're not really understanding, frankly, what C2 is.

C2, we can just look at one mile west and you'll see what C2 is.

It is the corner of 12th and Alameda, and you see it on the left there.

C2 zoning is completely covering a site with buildings and pavement entirely.

C2 zoning has no impervious limitations.

RM6 has 65% impervious maximum.

C2 has no limitation.

You can flat cover the site entirely with buildings and concrete.

C2 also has very intense, basically, traffic uses.

You can have any kind of use on it, basically, odors, sounds, uh, smells, lights, activity late, early, trucks unloading, loading docks, all of that happens on C2 sites, just like it does at 12th and Alameda.

So if you were to leave this as a C2 corner, all of that is a possibility, just as Commissioner McDaniel was concerned about.

So that's the site plan.

You can see it in context now.

And what I want you to see there is basically the WQPZ is left entirely untapped.

It will stay as it is.

The detention basins are just off the edge of it, not in the WQBZ, but that's where it drains to, and then historically it releases at the historical rate.

The development is basically two access points that more or less line up with access points across the street on 24th and Alameda.

And you see the residential basically encompasses around the commercial corner.

One of the things I want you to notice is just from a density standpoint.

If you look across the street to the south, across Alameda, you see the Summit Lakes Villas.

Different product, those are villas, but you can see the density, those are very tightly compacted units just south of Alameda.

And if you compare them to what we're proposing just north, we're really not much different than what is there to the south.

So you can see density-wise, we are somewhat compatible with what is already around this corner.

And then what I want you to notice, I put the red box around the commercial corner, but if you see that red box, the commercial site that we've proposed is basically roughly the same site size as the commercial corners on the other three corners.

And so we've more or less lined up the commercial with the other three corners.

So you have a pretty tight C2 commercial corner now.

Whereas previously we had a massive C2 corner on our corner and three smaller ones on the other corners.

Now we are very compatible with the size of those C2 corners.

So, in summary, unanimous plan commission, unanimous parks board.

Staff found in their reports that we overall largely aligned with AIM Norman land use and character area objectives, and that this will provide a different housing option and additional commercial activity to this area.

With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have, and I thank you very much for your consideration.

All right.

Questions from council members or councilmember Grant?

Yes.

Yeah, it is difficult to see the contour lines are all in there.

But basically, there are sidewalks in front of every one of those uh duplex units.

And so then basically you would come down the sidewalk and then there's a sidewalk around the commercial building as well.

So you would cross just as you do in any shopping center.

Get in their car and drive around, they can walk from the neighborhood and then this is like straight rezoning, so you know, no spud narrative, all that.

Correct.

I'm just a little curious about like um besides the landscaping for the buffering uh between commercial and residential, and also I guess to the north.

Um what are what is the plan for trees and landscaping as a whole?

So by code, by your code, whenever we do a parking lot, we have to basically put trees around that parking lot.

So we will have to show trees uh in and I forget the number, but I think it's one every 20 or 40 feet, I believe, that we have to put around every parking lot.

So we will have to plant trees uh per year city code.

Okay, okay.

Okay, that was it for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You, Councilmember Peacock.

Thank you.

Um it looks like you're providing stormwater detention in addition to the WQPZ.

Am I reading that correctly?

That's correct, Councilmember.

Are those going to discharge into the stream corridor there?

That's correct, Councilmember.

They will have basically their detention ponds, so not retention, they're detained, so detaining water, and then it would have what we call wears that release the water into the WQBC.

We cannot release it any faster than the rate of flow that it does historically.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

The um along that the flow is to the north.

I believe this corridor flows to the north, yes.

Yes, and then away from Summit Lakes.

Correct, yeah.

And Summer Lakes is is being rebuilt right now, the dam.

Uh, and so it flows into this and then flows north.

So this won't have any impact on Summit Lakes Dam.

No mayor.

The um driveways, do they line up?

You're kind of alluding to it there with the shape of the commercial, but to the west aligning up with Alameda Plaza, and then to the south, lining up with the driveway into First Bank and Trust.

Uh, roughly, you can kind of see there, and sometimes we we probably don't have this exactly shown because we overlay the site plan onto an aerial.

But if you see on the left, you can kind of see where the 711 says 711, there's a street behind 7-11.

Alameda Plaza.

Yeah, so that comes straight over and basically rough roughly lines up with that access point, and then on the south, the bank exit point roughly lines up with the entry point to the north.

Okay.

And then um you talked about the green space and the part what was the total green space that you mentioned for the total property, which includes the WQPZ area.

I don't have a percent, but uh RM6 requires us to have 65% minimum and in within the lot, and the lot is just the basically that uh that area.

So then the WQBZ is left entirely untouched, which is roughly four acres.

So the parkland part um is there a certain distance where the park has to be this park was compared to the park that's in the neighborhood across the street, or if it's more than a mile or more than a half mile walk.

Does it still call that type of thing?

I don't recall that the code has a minimum distance.

I don't think it does, Jason.

Um, but it is talked about.

I could tell you at parks board meetings when we go to those meetings that is that comes up quite often.

This one just was discussed as the people will come off of this site and go down Alameda, a significant sidewalk on Alameda, and then pretty quickly get up into the neighborhood and walk up to the Royal Oaks Park.

And so if you think about the neighbors that are in Royal Oaks on Alameda, it will be basically a similar walk to where what they endure.

I uh just asked because in a straight line it's like 0.38 miles.

Yeah.

So going down Alameda and then going through the neighborhood put puts you up almost a mile.

So is that reasonable?

I had the same question with the Eagle Cliff development additions was Eagle Cliff Park was the closest one, but it was pretty good walk from that new addition to Eagle Cliff.

So just wondering about you know how far is it for, and I guess we don't have a any minimum, but there the memo talks about it.

Um should be in your packet.

We get a memo staff does a report.

James Briggs, 25 years tonight, usually writes that reports.

And uh uh James works with us as we do these projects.

I believe the memo on this one said it was roughly a half a mile away from this site.

Um in a straight line.

I'm not sure if that meant straight line.

I I don't know uh if he measured that straight line or not, but um but I would encourage you to consider that basically this development if you look at the housing right off Alameda on Royal Oaks, it basically is a similar distance as compared to those houses down there on Alameda as they come down on Alameda go down the sidewalk and go up those streets.

Yeah, and if there was a connection there that connected to the pond area that I know that's private parkland, it looks like but anyway, it's just something for us to think about in future developments about yeah if we're not gonna provide a park dedicated park for a development, how far is the nearest park reasonable, I suppose.

Yeah, and Jason and I have had a lot of talks recently about this uh about parks and how we deal with that.

It is a competing uh uh discussion, basically.

Uh everybody would love to have a park right next to the house.

Who wouldn't?

Unfortunately, Jason's department has to go maintain all of those and send a crew out to them and empty the trash receptacles and make sure they're safe and mow them.

And so it's uh it's a challenging friction point.

How do you do that?

If you put a park at every every everywhere.

Right.

That's a lot of money.

Uh that's a challenge for labor and management and maintenance of all those different parks.

So it's an ongoing discussion.

I don't know where it will evolve to you, but uh um, but that's sort of the challenge with that.

And you had went over the density part there.

Seeing that there was a question from one of the commissioners about the AIM plan and it not being enough actually your stating that actually does fit with this portion.

Yeah, and what I would have you consider is uh again, north of this AIM says about eight units per acre, east of this is about twelve units per acre.

Staff said we calculated at 13.8 units per acre.

Yes, mixed use says 18 units per acre is what it desires for.

Uh I I would shudder to tell the neighborhood that we're gonna do a whole lot more density because they were quite unhappy with this amount of density.

So uh so we feel it's a healthy compromise to be at 13.8 units per acre when the area is generally eight, twelve units per acre.

Acknowledging yes, we are below what AIM said that mixed use would like to be at 18 units per acre.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Um, Councilmember Bruce.

Questions been answered.

Okay.

And this is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments or uh ask questions regarding this item.

Madam Clerk, are there any public comments?

Uh yes, Mayor, Cindy Rogers.

Um good evening, Cindy Rogers, ward four.

Um so yay, In Phill, the infrastructure's already there.

Um I would like just to make a um continuing comment that um the aim plan updated our zoning and had this goal of a hundred and eighty-five thousand people target.

But um that's really just a straight line projection.

We never actually did the analysis of how many people Norman can accommodate and fisk fiscally and environmentally.

So let's just keep that in mind.

Um the other part that we haven't done to go along, two parts we haven't done to go along with AIM, which is relevant to this, is that um we have requirements about not increasing rate of flow, which is why we put in detention ponds.

But we haven't actually updated and thought carefully about volume of flow and how many release days you have, because if your upstream neighbor is releasing water to you more often, then you will get flooded.

You'll recall this was uh an issue with the pots farm.

So we need to update that to go with aim.

And the other part that we need to update to go with aim that's relevant for every new development is we need to think about the costs to accommodate new growth with new infrastructure, not so much a problem with the infrastructure to serve infill, but we still have to think about water capacity.

So I think those are things that we need to keep thinking about.

And um while a zoning change that's not a spUD, that's a surprise.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Cherylandzood evening.

Uh Cheryline Denzel and I've got properties in words four and six.

And um I want to reiterate that, yay, it's not a spUD.

Um I am uh glad to see that um it is changing from uh totally commercial area because I think that would get people riled up completely.

Um I am glad to see uh as much green space left behind um as there is uh and I I often thought that Norman didn't have enough duplexes in this city as an alternative to the apartment complexes and and single family units.

So um I don't have a problem with this particular development, and I just wanted to state that thank you.

Thank you.

That's all Mayor.

Is there anybody else in the audience who has not spoken on this item that would like to speak?

Seeing none.

Okay, any final comments or questions from council?

Councilmember Hinkle Yes, on this item.

I I certainly don't want to take away from the efforts of AIM developments like this, the density that uh we're looking for in Norman, the housing needs that we have.

Um I don't even want to take away from the merits of this project specifically.

Um just as the Ward 6 councilman, I have received more contact uh in protest of this project than any project that I've been a part of just from the protest area.

So um I thank everyone for their investment in Norman and uh hope that we continue to invest in that way.

I like to see these types of density projects typically in other parts of town.

Um but because of the amount of contact I received um in protest, I'll be voting no on this tonight with the ward six residents.

Thank you.

Grant Councilmember Grant.

I have a question for the applicant.

Um I was just curious, since it is rezoning for the residential part.

If somebody were to buy right um, let's say add density, what is the max they can do?

So on RM6, RM6, it is uh it's it's not a units per acre determination or an R of six in your code, it's what we call floor area ratio.

So I'm gonna struggle to answer your question in terms of units per acre because floor area ratio is a different way to calculate it.

Roughly typically RM6, I think can go as high as an 18 to 20 units per acre is kind of what I've heard in the past.

That's probably pretty high.

I don't know.

Uh but uh but it it's a floor area ratio.

There's actually four calculations you make in RM6 to determine how much you can do.

So uh but realize too uh that comes up a question comes up a lot when you're open district zoning versus spUD or PUD.

Um open district zoning, we are plating this, and preliminary plat, we have to submit a site plan with.

So while we can change the site plan on zoning, preliminary plat, not so much.

We would probably have to come back.

I'm just guessing Mr.

Sturz and his staff would probably say if we change the site plan really dramatically, they would probably make us come back through on a preliminary plat site plan amendment if we did that.

I'm probably going far from your question, but well, no, I was thinking into the future if somebody were to come back around and imagine more density if they could do it or not.

So it sounds like they would still have to come before council.

With a preliminary plat site plan change, I I think they probably would.

Zoning they would not.

Zoning uh as open district zoning, they can do whatever they can fit within RM6.

You do have parking limitations, obviously, you don't have a parking requirement, but market does.

Uh they got to park it or they won't rent it or won't sell it.

So there are some practical limitations in terms of that.

This one also, by the way, is a pretty heavily sloping site.

You can see those sort of contour lines going through there.

Uh that will that will really keep this project from getting too intense in terms of how much they they get into large buildings.

So there's a number of sort of practical limitations that would keep it from changing that much.

Okay.

Um I did have an open question in the mix, but it's like floated out of my head.

So thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember.

All right.

Any further final comments or questions from council?

Councilmember Peacock.

Uh yeah, I just um one of your comments, Mayor Holman, regarded to uh how close the park is and if it's walkable.

I just have some experience with this topic, so I figured I'd share it.

Um in urban design, we talk a lot about a 15-minute walk shed that you know a walk is comfortable 15 minutes or less, and that's about three quarters of a mile.

So just thought I'd put that out there.

Thank you.

Okay, any final comment question from anybody else on council?

Okay.

All right.

The motion on the floor and second reading section by section.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section passes by a vote of seven to one with councilmember Hinkle voting against.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance as a whole.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole passes by a vote of seven to one, with councilmember Hinkle voting against.

Item 28 is preliminary plat 2526-1-3 for Norman A24 edition, located at the northeast corner of Alameda Street and 24th Avenue Northeast.

I'll entertain a motion to approve or reject the preliminary plat.

Motion.

Second.

This is a companion item from the previous item.

Are there any further questions from council regarding this item?

Seeing none.

Are there any further public comments?

Yes, Mayor.

Cindy Rogers.

That's all, Mayor.

Anyone else from the audience that would like to speak on this item that has not seeing none?

Okay.

Any final comments from council regarding this?

Okay.

Um I would just say I appreciate the comments from Council uh Councilmember Hinkle.

Um I did read the uh protest letters, which seem to mostly be about wanting a desire to preserve the space the way it is, which I can appreciate.

Um as well, I've passed by that corner many times in my life.

And it seems like this is um I don't see a scenario where it stays undeveloped unless somebody buys it that will keep it undeveloped.

Um and this seems to preserve more of it than the existing zoning would.

So that would be the reason why I voted in favor of it this evening.

But um I do appreciate everybody that took the time to uh reach out to us with those letters and councilmember Hinkle with your comments.

And with that, uh the motion on the floor is to approve approve the preliminary plat.

Council members, you may cast your votes and cast in the motion to approve the preliminary passes by a vote of seven to one with councilmember Hinkle voting against item 29, an ordinance upon second and final reading detaching property address 2800 and 2801 Hensley Road within the corporate limits of the city and designating the areas or tracks included in such detachments, repealing all other ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict here with I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading section by section.

Motion second and I would right like to recognize Beth Muckala from the city attorney's office to make a presentation.

Thank you, Mayor.

Hi, Council.

Uh my apologies.

Let me see if I can.

Oh good.

I was afraid I was going in the wrong direction.

Um okay, so I am here to uh speak about a petition for detachment, which is before you on a vote over ordinance zero twenty-five twenty-six-37.

So a detachment is a de-annexation.

We don't have many of these.

And the last one we saw was over five years ago.

So I did want to go over just the the basics.

I I think uh council member Holman then will be familiar with that last one, which was on the northeast side of town.

This is on the southern boundary.

And so we don't have a resolution or a specific code adopted process for detachments.

So by and large, we're following state law.

Although our code does specify that these have to be reviewed by the planning commission prior to coming to a final vote before council.

So we follow state law and we fit Planning Commission into that process.

What we're doing is on the front end, making sure that that state law has been complied with, because of course we don't want it coming to a vote unless we are positive it is ripe under state law, and obviously it does the applicants, the petitioners, no good unless they've they've checked those boxes.

In this case, uh 75% is required.

Here on this petition, we actually have 100% of the owners represented, and they in turn are represented by legal counsel whom I've been working with during this process.

So we've worked together very well.

We verified ownership.

This city clerk is the office that verifies the signatures and has done so early in the process.

And before we even get that far, they have already drafted the petition and published notice of it twice in the paper, which is another thing we verify before we even move forward.

So when it goes to Planning Commission and of course to you for consideration, the statute isn't incredibly verbose on what you're considering, but it makes sure that we're looking for what uh has to happen.

First, it cannot be platted property, it can't have infrastructure installed, it can't be laid out in lots or blocks.

Um it must be located on a municipal boundary, and we've already discussed this one's on the far southern boundary, and this does not happen to be a platted property.

The petition must be in the correct format, and as I said, uh we verify that very early on in the process.

And uh then we have the departments review it.

We have public works and utilities that looks at it specific to the infrastructure that either does exist and in most cases preferably does not exist.

Um but in this case, we also had um planning and the fire department taking a look at it.

You might recognize this party, uh, this property as part of what was originally annexed and back in the 60s in order to protect uh the Little River Reservoir and the uh Thunderbird watershed.

This does not implicate the floodplain or WQPZ.

Um it's unplatted.

However, there is some title evidence of a certificate of survey filed long ago, titled H and L number nine.

We've verified this is not a city approved survey, um, it does not lay it out in lots and blocks either, but you'll see in some of the legal descriptions there are stray references to that, so I wanted to be clear about that up front.

Uh, these are two separate parcels for with uh a combined total of 20.1 acres more or less.

They are both currently zoned A2.

Each parcel uh appears from online records to have been owned by these petitioners uh for more than 10 years, and importantly, they are accessed by a road that is not maintained by the city of Norman.

In fact, you can see here that these two properties are at the northernmost terminus of Hensley Road.

They uh are the continuation of what's a little neighborhood of houses there, and they are the only ones within that little group that are within the city of Norman.

Here you can see them not as well, but you can see the A2 zoning, you can see the floodplain and WQPZ off to the corner.

So that's not a concern in this case.

And so, as you know, if they are detached, uh what effectively happens is they become unincorporated uh Cleveland County.

They are no longer subject to codes and ordinances.

Um this is the timeline that this particular application has been through.

We uh went to planning commission on January 8th, where it was unanimously recommended for approval.

Uh February 14th is when city notice was provided.

I should have mentioned that, in addition to the two notices that are provided before we even move it, the city is also required one publication in the paper within 10 days of its final hearing, which is today.

So we worked with the city clerk's office to ensure that was done correctly.

And so if it is approved tonight, what we would do is um once effective, we would forward it to the county and to the tax commission for reporting.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay.

Questions from council seeing none or cancel member.

No fire.

So I can get it out there.

Do these applicants receive any sort of CVD services such as uh trash pickup or anything?

They were previously receiving trash pickup.

Um, but that's not really because it's not installed infrastructure, that's not really affected by the detachment process.

Whether or not the city offers services to those out of its territories is pretty much case by case determined by feasibility.

I'm unaware of a determination in this case, but as I said, that wouldn't really be part of this process.

Copy that.

I was just curious.

And uh my next question would be would they still get trash service at all after this if they did before and if feasible, um I think what our utilities department uh does is offer it at a higher rate uh than to within municipal limits.

Okay.

No further questions.

Councilman Peacock.

Thank you.

Um you might have mentioned this and I missed it.

I apologize.

So uh could you or the applicate speak to the motivations behind why this is being sought?

You know, I would be hesitant to speak to the petitioners' motivations.

In most cases, it has to do with the regulatory burdens that come along with existing in a city, uh, any tax consequences, subject to bond proposals, those types of things.

But there was but they do have a representative here tonight, Mr.

Brindley Hudson, and I know that he will be able to give you better specifics.

Please, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Um got a question from Council Dixon, and then we can him up and hit them all at once.

Okay, Councilmember Dixon.

I was just gonna say this sounds like a great way for those in Ward 5 to stop any kind of development out there.

Um so we legally can't run water sewer to this property if it is detached.

Is that right?

Right, it would no longer be subject to our regs.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Yeah, if you would like to push the podium and council Peacock.

Thank you.

I was just curious if there's any, you know, big project or big reason why this is being sought, or just if it as Ms.

Magalov referred to, is just a kind of get out from underneath the regulatory burden.

Yeah, thank you so much uh for the question.

Um, the main reason behind all of this is actually related to services.

Uh my clients have been refused services several times.

Uh although you know you can look on the map and see pretty clearly that uh the properties do fall within the city limits uh because it's connected to that Hensley Road, it it looks as if it's not in city limits.

And we've had several times where uh police would not come out, they would they would uh identify that the county uh needs to be called um trash is actually um paid for by my clients um that they are paying the uh increased rate for that uh to my understanding.

Um so they they are taking on those um detriments uh by not receiving those burden, uh those benefits rather.

Uh whenever it comes to the detriments though, they're having to pay for those as well with the taxes, um building their their house or any attachments to to city code.

Um but again they're not receiving any of the services.

So rather than requiring the city to go out there and install all of that infrastructure, we're just saying, hey, let's just do this detachment.

Uh it seems to me, uh, and and I am assuming here, but it seems to me that previously when this annexation occurred, they were uh annexing a large swath of property surrounding Lake Thunderbird.

And in doing so, you know, they've they've cut off a large area of land and thus have landlocked several, possibly um citizens.

So that's the problem here, and we're just wanting to do a little clean slate breakaway.

Well, I appreciate your candor.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um any other questions for them?

Okay.

This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item.

Madam Clerk, are there any public comments?

Yes, Mayor.

Uh Cindy Rogers.

Cheryl Denzo.

Um well, my thought is um you go.

Uh and uh yeah, there's a lot of reasons why people don't want to be part of uh a greater uh city.

Um but also there are reasons why you would want to uh have the services of the fire department and the police and and such.

Uh I know there is problems out in the rural part of uh Norman that um when push comes to shove, particularly around Lake Thunderbird.

Um who's who's in charge?

Who's gonna respond to an incident at Lake Thunderbird?

Um is it the sheriff's department?

Is it Norman?

Is it if it's on the lake, is it Lake Patrol?

Um those issues have always been around this city.

Uh who's supposed to respond to those rural incidences, and um and it has been a problem, and you know, uh different different uh agencies have kind of pointed the finger at each other.

So I understand uh the issue, and um and if somebody wants to um take on all of the responsibility of their property, every single thing, um and they have the wherewithal to do that and the resources to do that.

I don't have a problem with that.

So um I hope you guys just vote yes and let them do their thing, you know.

Um it's uh uh we are a uh a all inclusive community.

So let the people that don't want to be included do their thing.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anyone else from the public that would like to speak on this item?

Please come to the podium.

Billy Jewell ward five.

If y'all pass and approve this, does this set a standard for anybody that wants to do this?

Because I would love to online.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Where it's located.

Are they gonna leave it at like the 40-acre?

I'm guessing it's about 40 acres, give or take, or they're gonna leave it one whole plot, because if you do this, it makes it to where there is no regulations unless you get to state out there, meaning you can build anything and as many as you want.

I mean, you could put in a hundred trailer houses, drill a hundred whales.

So I'm kind of wondering what they're gonna want to do with it.

Also, that particular property I'm pretty sure runs straight down into Prairie Creek as one as does one of mine, which follows down to the little river, which feeds into you know other people's water supply.

So once again, what are you gonna do with it?

And if it's a property I'm thinking of back when they built it, they built a nice big uh home on it, and there was an incident with the storm cellar, and the door wouldn't have opened back up.

Had a city inspector not showed up and inspected that they would have never known, and they could have locked themselves in it during a tornado.

So it was the move of a city inspector coming out and catching that that may have been a future lifesaver.

But my biggest concern is when you drive out on 84th and go north of Indian Hills just south of 149th, over on the west side of the road, you'll see a property that has a hundred semi-trucks just parked on it, leaching off into a water supply.

Uh all the oil transmission fluid and everything like that can get off in that water supply.

So what I want to know is are they just gonna leave this agriculture or are they intending on doing something because it is a HUD opportunity zone where you can build housing and get a whole lot of uh relief?

So I'm just kind of curious of what they're gonna do with it once they unzone it.

I mean, outside of that, more power to them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Councilmember Nofire.

And actually uh Beth, would you mind uh could you put the slide back up that shows uh the area of the property and the I think there was one that shows the city limit boundary and all that stuff?

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Councilman Nofire.

So I've been following this one pretty intently since I first heard of it, uh, just because it's a deannexation and those are not to be taken lightly.

And from what I've gathered and watch going back, watching the meetings and reading everything on this list in front of me, is that the applicants get zero benefits from being in the city limits, and yet they still deal with all the city encumbrances such as zoning and permitting.

And the biggest thing to me in this entire specific case is the fact that it is on the edge.

It's not going to leave a hole in the city limits, it's so at all.

I would never vote, nor would I I would absolutely do my best to stop a hole being within the city limits on the map.

But since they can't even leave their property within the city limits, they have to drive outside of the city limits just to get off their property.

I'm going to be voting yes in supporting this.

Is um see if we approve this action, this property will just become part of the unincorporated Cleveland County.

Yes.

Okay.

And we don't have do we know if they stated any plans that they have?

And if they do, they wouldn't be under our regulations anymore, of course.

As you mentioned, that would just be a county, whatever their process is.

Right.

If de-annexed, they would be under whatever county regulations would apply.

And no, they haven't outlined any future plans.

I will say in response to some of the other inquiries, these are 20.1 acres together, but two separate parcels, both of which have residences on them.

Okay.

Um thank you.

Um I think yeah, it's a unique situation where this um these two properties are at the end of a street that's three quarters or three-fourths of a mile from the from Cedar Lane, the main road, and then a probably another half mile uh west to the other city limit line.

So just kind of a weird anomaly, it seems like and it would make sense in this circumstance since they're not there's no other connection to Norman.

And that the previous de-annexation that I remember had dealt with a property that bordered Moore, and the only entrance to the property was on a street in the Moore City limits that the city of Moore maintained and not the city of Norman.

So their property actually had no access point within the city of Norman.

And so that's the last one I remember being somewhat similar to this one.

So yeah, I agree with comments made.

It seems to be a weird situation, and based on the stipulations that uh city attorney went over about connections and plating and all those different things.

Um I don't know how many of these types of properties might exist out there, but um this one appears to me to be appropriate to take this action for.

So uh councilmember Grant.

Yes, sir.

Yes, I just had a question about environmental and how that's real regulated by the county, or if it were to become an issue in the future that impacts the city in some way, how that might be addressed if they're an unincorporated territory.

I am aware of what county regulations exist, if at all regarding environmental regulation.

Um, if there were effects on the city, I imagine that we would go about it in the same manner as as any other detrimental effect um on our property.

Okay.

Um that was pretty much it for my questions on that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Any final comments, questions from council?

Seeing none.

Okay.

The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

Cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section passes unanimously.

I'll attend a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Is there a second?

I didn't have a motion.

Or a motion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

I'll vote to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole passes unanimously.

All right, item 30 ordinance upon second and final reading, amending section 32-426 to include consumption of marijuana inhaling secondhand marijuana smoke and can open container that contains marijuana in passenger area of motor vehicle.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading, section by section.

Motion.

Second.

Is there a staff member that would like to make a presentation?

Yes.

Mayor and council members.

I'm Jeannie Snyder, one of the assistant city attorneys, and I have uh prepared the staff report and ordinance amendments on this.

I am going to call up Major Barber here in just a moment and have him answer some more specific specific questions that may have to do with the Norman Police Department.

But we uh presented this at the study session sometime in December and have just now getting it moving forward uh along with the next uh item on the cell phones and construction zones and school zones.

And this was uh a new state law took effect on November 1st, and we are just bringing this forward so we would have uh the same compatibility that the state statute has.

And it's about public consumption of marijuana uh and secondhand smoke in marijuana while driving.

Um as we all know, alcohol, drugs, or under the influence of any substance can be a detriment to driving, and that's our main concern is public safety.

Um I believe Major Barber may have some statistics about uh traffic accidents and other things like that.

But this would be, and I'm gonna just kind of read this so I don't get it wrong.

It would be unlawful for a person operating a motor vehicle on a public highway, street, or alley to consume marijuana, including medical marijuana.

It also prohibits inhaling secondhand marijuana smoke from another person's consumption while riding while operating a vehicle, and that means both the active and passive use of marijuana smoke are prohibited for drivers.

It further prohibits possession of an open container of marijuana in the passenger area.

Uh an open container is defined as any container whose seal is broken, has been opened or otherwise not fully sealed in the original packaging.

Uh passenger areas are all portions of the vehicle accessible to occupants, excluding the trunk and other enclosed compartments.

This is very, very similar to what it would be when you would be transporting uh alcohol.

You can transport alcohol, but it can't be an open container if it's accessible to the driver, other passengers.

This is the same thing.

Uh it also mentions the secondhand smoke of marijuana use is is uh is different than if your passenger is drinking alcohol.

This law would prohibit uh any use of secondhand smoke or marijuana use while operating a vehicle.

So I'm gonna have Major Barber come up here and he has more of uh the point of view from the police officers, the police department, and how that would be enforced.

Thank you, Ginny.

Good evening, everybody.

I appreciate it.

I know you all have a handful of questions.

There's a few that have come up specifically that I figured we'd go ahead and address uh up front.

Um obviously this really boils down to a public safety thing.

It's very similar to alcohol consumption in vehicles.

We've worked over the last 20, 30, 40 years as a society to get um better at that to make our roads safer.

Um in Norman in particular, uh just in the last five years, uh, we've had 55 fatal collisions within our city limits.

Um those have attributed to um 60 fatalities and 26 um injuries, most of them critical.

Um these are not the collisions that are critical injuries, lifelong changing uh impacts to families and individuals.

These are just the the ones that resulted in a loss of life.

Of those um NRC is not terribly abnormal of those uh 24 of them involved in pair drivers outside of putting your seatbelt on and paying attention when you drive down the road, driving sober is the number one thing or the in that group of three that'll keep you safe and keep other people safe driving down the road.

And so this is just a step in order to um help with that.

Um as Ms.

Snyder mentioned, um, this is already a state law.

We have that ability um today to cite in district court um through state charges in order to do that.

And what this allows us to do is very similar to many ordinances such as speeding, running red lights, um, transporting an open container of alcohol.

Um, this allows us to write that as a city charge and city court.

And really, what that does for us is two pieces.

Um it allows for that person or that individual, um, the goal being an educational component that we're using this as a deterrent, of course, um, to make for a safer driving behaviors.

But what it allows us to do is write that citation and allow them to go on their way.

Um, when we deal with district court citations, we either have to take them into physical custody, which is not really reasonable under most of these circumstances unless they're impaired, of course, and that's a different scenario, um, or we have to go and do a warrant request through the state.

And so when we deal with um that we have two different pathways, it's still a misdemeanor.

It's exactly the same.

If it goes over there, it's still a fine.

Odds are nothing changes over there, it's still expungible after adjudication.

Nothing really changes, with the exception of um how we're allocating our resources.

So for us to write a citation outside of checking for impairment and those facets, we're talking probably a minute, two minutes, maybe, depending on the technology and the officers' ability to write it and what they're dealing with on the side of the road.

When we're dealing with a warrant request for state charges, we're talking an hour and a half to two hours.

When we're dealing with a limited number of resources, obviously we want our officers out and about and patrolling our neighborhoods and responding to calls and backing each other and taking care of everybody and making sure they're safe.

That process is significantly longer.

So it's a poor allocation of our resources as well.

If it's a habitual event, if there's somebody impaired, obviously different road.

So we do this all the time with alcohol.

It wouldn't be any different than that.

The second thing that comes up regularly that I've heard a lot of questions on is how are we going to find it and what's it going to look like, right?

Um so what I have learned in this process is people kind of have two different purviews based on where they're at and where they're operating every day.

Um and this has been educational to me.

There's some people that um live and operate and and visit certain parts of the city that see this all day long.

Um in my neighborhood in particular, I can promise you it's a very regular thing.

Cars are pulling up the stop side in front of my house personally, and it is um for lack of better reference, it looks like Chichin Chong pouring out of the car, um horrific odor.

Um very, very obvious um that that is occurring within that vehicle.

Those are an easy example, right?

The vast majority of these, the other side of the folks are people who don't experience that.

And they're like, wait, this happens.

People are driving around doing this.

The vast majority of these I anticipate we will find um through other traffic stops.

We're going to make a traffic stop for somebody that is um has a driving behavior that is potentially impairment or they're speeding or they're doing something else, and upon walking up there, it's gonna be obvious.

So this isn't the driving down the road, you see smoke rolling out of a car, and you assume automatically that that's marijuana.

That's not a thing, that's not probable cause that wouldn't be a valid stop.

Um, so so there are things in place.

Um so we would impair um obviously um provide some education, make sure they're safe to drive down the road, and then uh um release them with that citation in those scenarios.

When it comes to the open container, it's a little bit more tricky.

Um, so alcohol is exactly the same now.

Nobody in the car can drink a um a beer or liquor or shots or whatever they're doing driving down the road.

Um obviously that's um a pretty well um established safety concern.

Um this is very similar.

Um so nobody else will be in there on the old container, it's very different.

Really, what we're probably looking for is are they rolling a joint while they're driving down the road kind of thing?

Um are they passing it around kind of thing right before they light it?

Um so it's kind of like we have APC for impaired driving.

We don't have to wait for somebody that stumble out of the bar, pick themselves up, crawl into the car, try 18 keys, get in the car, and clearly impaired, wait.

We don't have to wait for them to drive before we stop them.

Um we can stop them immediately.

And so these kind of give us those abilities to hopefully get ahead of those things before they're unsafe.

Um, I don't expect to see a lot of these.

Um, obviously um with the medicine um medical marijuana stuff, there's a lot of the uh it moving around.

We simply want to see people drive home and and do that so safely.

I'm happy to answer any questions if you all have any.

Okay.

See, this is not well see uh council comments, questions about this one?

Council Bruce.

Yeah, major, I so when I look at Norman, I I see the growth in population.

I see a growth in you know housing number of buildings, housing, I see a growth in visitors.

When I look at the police department, I I see uh your lines relatively flat as it relates to manning for sustained time flat.

So I I understand you guys have overcome based upon your uh changing your process procedures, like this would be a change to your process procedure.

You've overcome through technology.

I I can understand pulling an officer off for a couple hours and there's only five or six on shift and the risk that that would impose.

Can you talk to me a little bit about that risk?

Sure.

Um obviously uh making sure we have the resources available to respond to the emergencies and needs across our 190 square miles in the city is uh a daily challenge, as it is for most of our city departments, of course.

We run a really lean, you all hear this, especially coming to budget season.

We run a really lean group and in almost everybody's um um division.

We're no different than that.

And so um having our folks available and able to respond, um, not only to respond to calls for service, especially emergent calls for service and in a timely fashion is a high priority for us, of course.

Um, when it comes to those life safety things, um we have to get there.

There's not an option.

Um if I have people tied up on other things in the office and doing paperwork, booking and property, things like that.

Of course, that deters that to some degree.

Um, the additional part of that is I want them out there being able to back each other.

Um, I want that proactive approach, um, patrolling the neighborhoods, checking the businesses, doing the things that we are addressing when they're brought to us, but we also want to ensure that they're there to take care of each other.

But we also want to ensure that they're there to take care of each other.

There are uh increasing number of situations where we have to have more than one officer there to make sure that we can address the situation safely, have the tools available and resources available.

Um so the more people we have available to get to those things when we need them are um obviously on our benefit um as a community and and for the outcome of the individuals we're working with at that time.

I think that answered your question.

Yes, sir.

Council Murganzbury.

Yes, Major, do you get in and everything like they uh sorry about that.

First and foremost, you know, want to thank the city and Norman police for bringing this to the attention of council and bringing up that state law to council to be able to look at so that we're compliant with all laws within city Norman.

I also like the fact that I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that by being able to ride them as a city now rather than just district, that offender that might get caught for that first time or something like that, their court process is going to be a lot easier.

It's not gonna be on file or anything like that, on record and stuff like that, correct?

If it's filed with the city rather than with district court.

So obviously it goes on their city record, but the city court is not a quarter record, so it's not gonna be under state records.

On district court it would.

Yes.

Um barring some sort of um expungement, which then um so like one scenario about ride share Uber driver, I know responsible for people in your car or your vehicle, but you have a passenger and they have a vape, and they take a puff while you're stopped, and there's a police officer next door.

So they pull up next to you, they pull over the Uber driver, Uber driver, the one that get is potentially at risk in that scenario.

So it would be the person who's who's smoking or who's possessing the beer just like a TOC for alcohol.

Um, but I will tell you the discretion is the thing we rely on the most, and those are a perfect example of times when hey, we might educate them and really probably educate their passengers.

Um odds are most of our ride share drivers or taxi drivers don't want them smoking in their vehicle anyway.

Sure.

But obviously, especially they don't always control everybody, um, right?

They don't they don't have the ability to do that.

So that's an education piece.

We will work with them and work through that piece.

Okay, so double check that one, make sure that absolutely wasn't gonna get a DUI because somebody in the backseat did that.

Absolutely.

And then um kind of went over about how to tell if somebody could be vaping CBD, which is a part of marijuana, it can smell like it and look like it, but doesn't have the THC content.

Nicotine vape, etc.

Um, like you mentioned, just seeing a big cloud of smoke come out of the car doesn't necessarily mean it is that that doesn't necessarily constitute a stop.

So you um how to differentiate between the different things that people might be consuming, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we see that regularly driving around now, right?

We're seeing cars you pull up next to um that that you know their windows are rolled down and it's blowing straight into you.

You have the odor, you have the clear signs that they're smoking, uh that we could make a stop on it, but we could always um transition that, right?

So we make stops occasionally, um, seat belts are a good example.

Um, we stop people occasionally for seat belts, and you get up there and realize they're actually wearing it.

Uh they're probably wearing it improperly, um, it's probably under their arm, so you couldn't see it.

And so things pivot and change throughout those stops.

Um, so kind of like the the ride share person.

Um but those are case-by-case example.

The majority of these are going to be um, I really believe are going to be um uh um other based on other stops that we contact them and or um game days.

Game days are a great example.

We have some checkpoints we run, and there's a tremendous amount of people pull up to those um checkpoints, and they are going to town, whether they are drinking, they're smoking, they're doing whatever, they're having a good old time.

Um, and some of those aren't safe.

And a lot of them end up with those checkpoints because they're lost and or they're impaired, and of course, that becomes a significant as um allocation of resources in a time we really don't have them to spare.

Um so I think it's those type things that we'll see it.

The majority of what you'll see from us is a public um information campaign along with the DA's office.

I think Moore and Edmund, I believe, are doing or have already done similar ordinances to Mirror State Law.

I'm sure Oklahoma City is right behind us if they aren't already.

Um and so a lot of that educational component, very similar to DUIs becoming felony in many scenarios um this fall.

Um handled through the DA's office, but we've had a lot of work with them and discussions of them of hey, we're really hoping these be deterrents.

We want them to, these are incidents to never occur so that we're not having to deal with the end results.

Okay.

And then um you mentioned 55 fatal collisions in the last five years, roughly.

Yes, sir.

Um 24 impaired drivers.

Yes.

Do we have any idea how many of those were marijuana was the only thing in their system?

I do, and I apologize.

I knew I knew I was gonna be asked that and I forgot to get to it.

Um so we have about 10 of them that have marijuana involved um of those, and three of them were marijuana alone.

Okay.

Um and I'm so a lot of times we see crossover between um impairments a lot.

Um especially with medications and other illicit drugs, um, cocaine meth, and meth is a fairly frequent one that we see.

Um, but we do have standalone ones.

In fact, uh I uh I'm one of our collision reconstructionists, some of you know that.

I have spent about 16 years responding to most of our fatal and uh um critical injury collisions.

My very first chargeable crash was a young man who was um high on marijuana alone, um, who killed two people on graduation day trying to go to um go to graduation for their family member.

Um so he's 18 years old, he's now in prison again because he didn't learn his lesson the first time, unfortunately.

So it is a thing we do see, and that that's exactly what we're trying to do is prevent those those conversations and those incidents from happening is that every one of those numbers represents a family, they represent a person in a loss of life that we want to prevent, of course.

I appreciate that.

And you mentioned too, this is a change in state law.

This is bringing up local ordinance.

Correct.

That state law went in effect in November, so we're just catching up to that.

Perfect.

Thank you, Major.

Thank you.

Any other comments, question, Councilmember Bruce?

I just major, I appreciated the um So understand it's a misdemeanor, whether it's district or uh municipal.

Um I understand there's a large percentage, whether it's district or municipal or expunged.

Uh yeah, we see quite a few.

I don't know the specific number, but there that expungement law changed four or five years ago, maybe longer than that now, and it's really fast.

Once they adjudicate them, they can expunge them quickly, and we see a lot of them come out.

So again, that record thing kind of doesn't go away.

I'm a little foggy on this now.

Is it is it still the officer's discretion he could maybe want me to file this at district versus municipal?

Absolutely.

Um, if we find any, so we are not allowed to by policy and by reasonableness, right?

We can't cross charges, right?

So I couldn't do a DUI through city or through district court and a ticket through municipal court on the same stop.

Um, but there are scenarios if we have um other things going on, it's an habitual offense, we have other impairments or other things going on, then we have that discretion still if necessary to go through district court.

And then uh one more just checking my sanity here.

So let's say you get a repeat offender multiple times in open container.

What then so we actually have the ability, fortunately, with some of the technology things to see some of those records, and that doesn't obviously make a decision on whether we cite somebody or not, but if we know we have a habitual person that's causing any um infraction, and it may be better to go to a different option um, then we have that tool and that discretion.

Um the most common one we see probably on that are probably trespassing, but really public intoxication.

And so what we're really doing is we escalate those who work with the DA's office and through the city attorney's office to identify folks who were dealing with these regularly, they're not fit to come to city court.

Um and so the intent of that is to get them to district court for different options they may have available, right?

Their their ability to sentence certain programs or or um programs or things are higher.

So we we we do have those tools that we use.

Thank you, Major.

Thank you.

All right, council member Nofire.

So I know a lot of products can these days contain THC, not just gummies and actual vapes and things of that nature.

Um talking more things like uh ointments, lip balms, and motions.

Do those count as well for the open container?

They would, I believe for the open container portion, they would.

Um the challenge, of course, is being able to identify it reasonably and legally, right?

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item.

Madam Clerk, are there any public comments?

Yes, Mayor Paul Wilson.

Paul Wilson on Ward 1.

Thank you, Mayor, for bringing up the ride chair, because you know very well that I am a ride chair driver.

My question is, because when I get a passenger in my car, there's a lot of times I'll stop at a dispensary.

I've already taken some steps, and I can smell it.

I literally roll down the windows.

Um because I don't want that smell in my car.

I've had some very bad instances with that word actually got I got reported for driving under the influence, which I've never touched it.

And that almost cost me my job.

Um my question is if I rolled down my windows, I guess Major Barber can answer this, and an officer pulls up next to me.

Obviously, they might be able to smell it out of my car.

Am I gonna get pulled over because they can smell it?

And if so, that kind of leads me to what should I do then?

Because the passenger, I believe, can still report me for being pulled over by law enforcement.

And that could really hinder me.

Because I get it a lot.

Where the uh either they'll come out of their house or they'll go to dispenser, come out.

And to put it bluntly, he's right.

It's it's like cheech and chong.

I mean, you can definitely smell it.

So I'm kind of worried about if I get pulled over and they report me for for being pulled over.

Enough of those, once again, I lose my job.

And to no fault of my own.

I mean, the only thing I could probably do is just cancel the ride, but they're just gonna get another Uber driver.

So I don't know if you can if you can answer that question, because I was worried about it, but mayor brought up some of the questions.

But this was the question I actually had.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Steve Ellis Steve Ellis ward for uh apologies for uh showing up late.

I had an engagement on campus, so I missed most of the discussion already.

But I did want to raise the issue of uh what types of THC-bearing substance were gonna be made illegal under this uh uh you know, balms and tinctures and that sort of thing are things that my disabled daughter uh uses uh to great effect, actually.

And uh, you know, I'd hate to think that that was the sort of thing that if it was uh, you know, not in the trunk, which is where we usually keep her wheelchair, uh, like in the bags that she takes into the law school at OU, uh, that we could potentially get in trouble for that.

She can't drive anymore.

We drive her around a lot.

She's often packing some uh THC laden balm or tincture because it does help her medicinally, and uh so I just hope that uh there are exceptions in the law for things that are not sort of immediately intoxicating if they're within the reach of the driver.

Thank you.

Thank you, Benjamin Benjamin Plummer.

Ben Plummer Ward for you guys need to stop rubber stamping laws.

This is a very very stupid ordinance.

Um Texas, for example, let's say that I'm driving to Texas.

I have a mother-in-law there, she has severe back pain.

Um there's THC ointments that only they only work when they have THC.

The CBD stuff isn't strong enough, but it doesn't get you high.

What you'd have to do is you'd have to get a sealed container each and every time you wanted to transport that.

So you'd have to like what, like put a laminate on the top or something every time you wanted to move it.

It's just it's just a bad idea.

You should be going in the opposite direction.

You need to vote against this, and you need to go in the opposite direction.

You need to decriminalize this stuff.

Trey Kirby.

Um, I just had some questions on the legality of it.

I know this was a Daryl Weaver bill out of Moore, Oklahoma.

Um, targeting the cannabis industry after what 400,000 sent people in Oklahoma voted on it for 788.

Part of 788 said you could smoke it anywhere a cigarette was allowed, which would be in the passenger seat of a car.

Not saying you should be able to, because I agree, if it's smoke rolling out the window, it's hard to determine who in the vehicle was doing it.

Um working at a grow, you can change your shoes, you can change your clothes, and you can get in that car, and I guarantee it, they pull you over, they're gonna smell cannabis and they're gonna yank you out, and they're gonna, you know, uh disrespect your constitutional rights because they're gonna treat you like you're guilty of something that you're not guilty of.

What you're guilty of is working in a legal agriculture industry that is the sixth largest crop in the state of Oklahoma, and was put that way by the vote of the people in a majority.

It was done that in 39 other states and two districts.

Forty-two people or 42 parts of this United States out of 50 have spoken of where we stand with medical cannabis.

As they're talking about with the bombs, uh bison rows and them make good creams that hands down, beat any arthritis cream you can get from Walgreens.

Umtainer by the vote of the people on 788.

We have a right to grow our own plants.

So if it's not in its original factory seal, how do you determine that when it comes from somebody's personal farm?

People say all the time, well, you shouldn't have it in the vehicle with you.

Well, like they just said, you know, what if I went to say Elk City for a family reunion for three days, and say a person has cancer or just had an extreme back surgery and they need to take their medicine with them.

Say they home grow it.

What are they supposed to ship it in?

I mean, are they supposed to buy a safe?

And then they say, Well, put it in the trunk.

But what about all the people who drive trucks with no trunk?

We supposed to throw it in the bed, drop the old spare tire and put it up on top of it like the cartels.

I mean, what exactly are they supposed to do to transport their medication?

Because to me, this seems like you're not targeting uh alcohol, you're trying to label medication as alcohol, and this is a natural herb.

It is grown, it is dried, it is medicine.

This ain't made with hops, it ain't brewed, it don't take days.

We didn't run it back in the days of uh back in the day, you know, in trunks of cars.

This is something that's been around for 2,000 years, and as he just said, three wrecks were solely because of cannabis, they assume.

So I'd just like to say, consider this bill because I'm pretty sure Darrell Weaver, there's a lot of lawsuits already in action at the Capitol over this bill.

And if the city of Norman is watching our funds, we probably don't want to poke that bear and get sued here, too.

Thank you.

Cindy Rogers.

My question was asked.

Okay, Sherilyn Denzo.

Okay, folks, you've probably heard it all, but I'm gonna give my two cents here, regardless.

Um basically, this is just a housekeeping thing.

We're just trying to get in line with the rest of the state, okay.

Um, there's consequences for not being in line with the rest of the state.

All right, there's lots of different areas where we're not in line with the rest of the state, and Norman citizens are gonna pay for it.

So I am going to urge you to vote for the ordinance, and down the line, if the rest of the state changes, then we just change to be in line with the rest of the state.

So basically, it's just a housekeeping thing we're looking at.

It's a passionate issue, and I get that.

But legally, we need to be in line with the rest of the state.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all.

Anyone else from the audience that has not spoken that would like to speak?

Please come forward.

Cullen Beaver Ward 3.

I really just have two questions.

One, take a moment and think about do you personally have any medications that are a controlled substance?

Do you ever travel with them?

Do you know what the requirements are?

If I have my control medication, I have to have it in a pill bottle with my name on it.

As long as it's in the glove compartment with my name on it, could be on the floor of the car, could be back seat, doesn't matter, could be in my pocket.

Has my name on it, it's my medication.

I'm allowed to take it, says my doctor.

Along those same lines, if I go to a bar and I have six beers, I get in my car.

There's a very easy, discernible way to determine that I've had six beers.

Could be done through a breathalyzer, can be done through blood test.

How do we determine how high a person is when they're driving?

How do we determine what the legal limit is?

What is the mechanism we're using to determine that?

To my knowledge, there is not a field sobriety test.

There is not a scientifically analyzed test that will allow us to discern that information.

Thank you.

Please come forward.

Billy Jewell Ward 5.

Uh as somebody that's worked real close with the police department before, and I've been out on those fatality recks.

There is something you need to do with the driver.

I don't know about the open container, the rest of the people.

I've been out on them wrecked, I prompt you have people in this room with puke.

You don't want to see it.

If you can save one life, do something to save one life.

We'll start with one.

Then we go to more.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Are there any final comments from council or questions regarding this item?

Councilman Bruce.

I have one more question for you.

So officer pulls them over there and they see uh the container's been open, and I I produce my medical card.

I've got here's my medical card.

You say that should be in your chunk, or you should be locked up.

Is that is that the protocol?

Education.

There we go.

Yes, educate them, move down the road.

Um and I think I I think I probably misunderstood your question earlier on the the oils and things.

I understood that it's impairment based, those things if they're causing impairment, will be our concern.

This specifically we're talking about oak containers is marijuana.

It's not talking about the oils and the gummies and the other pieces.

If they're not impaired, then that's not a concern.

Councilmember Grant.

Um in line with that, what is uh compartment that you've like put it away in?

Could it be a glove compartment or uh a console or something in the back that is also a compartment, you know, depending on the vehicle.

Sure, anything reasonable.

Um I mean, this whole entire thing, much like any ordinance that we have comes down to reasonableness.

Um I said that the the vast majority of the scenarios that we're gonna see this in is they're actively um working on consuming it at the time.

Um combination with impaired driving, because that was the other thing I picked up on when you said it was at the discretion and what you're looking for, and you know, rolling up on somebody who's just blowing a cloud of smoke is not enough.

You're gonna need to see some bad driving with that, correct?

Um you're gonna have to have something to have probable cause, right?

So when we're talking about impairment, of course, yeah, and just having the the odor of marijuana upon you, which is a real thing.

Um, I agree with the comments that were made by the um by several people.

That's a real thing, so is the odor of alcohol and many other things.

You have to have other components related to that.

And that's not uncommon.

We see that a lot today.

Um, we when it comes to the impairment side, which is different than this, um, we have specific steps and things we can do, and we're looking for is behaviors that are inconsistent with safe driving.

So we're looking for kind of behaviors that are inconsistent with motor coordination, decision making, um, divided attention, and we have a battery of tests and things we can do to evaluate that when it comes to this in particular, the odor alone, um, even um as Mr.

Wilson talked about um coming from the vehicle isn't a violation.

Um the ordinance doesn't say it's illegal to have an odor of marijuana in your vehicle, it says it um it's a violation to um produce it or to smoke it while you're driving down the road um or your passengers, and so we would have to have more than just that thing.

And then um to the part where state law changed and we we need to be in compliance, like we won't be the only city uh updating our ordinances.

There are uh I know for sure Edmund and Moore have talked to them and they're working on it.

I would imagine several others will as well.

Um and I don't have a list for you, I apologize.

Would we be in conflict if we didn't do anything?

Um probably a better question for the city attorney, but but I don't believe so.

Um, unless I'm wrong, that the challenge would be the public education side and the deterrent for if we're not actively enforcing it, um, or at least announcing that we could or would, um, which if I'm having to spend an hour and a half-ish to do that through a state charge, then I'm probably not, to be honest with you.

Um, then that deterrent goes away.

And obviously, our goal is to deter those before they ever even get to an enforcement capacity.

Okay, and then I guess the second part should be directed to Rick Knight.

Um, if we didn't do this and somebody got into like a massive wreck, and they're like the city had the opportunity to do this, and look what happened, you know, somebody habitual could have been advocated along the way.

Uh what does that mean for us?

It doesn't mean anything for you legally, because there is a if you're talking about it from the perspective of a tort claim, there's a specific zip in the tort claims act for failure to um enact an ordinance, but it might have something to do politically with regard to the opportunity to do that and not doing it and then having some tragedy like that.

It's probably gonna be more political than it's gonna be legal.

Okay, thank you.

Um do we get to comment on it before we vote?

Uh I'll just say that I plan to vote for this just because it seems reasonable, and um this is really about education and also dealing with people who might be problematic when they pop up on our radar.

Um, so I understand what it's trying to be done here, and I do hear the people who are concerned that you know it's our legal legal medication.

Um they're worried about being stopped and frisked, so to say, but I don't think that might be as um I you don't we have like four cops to one stop.

It kind of seems silly if this is we're just stopping people writing the citation and moving on.

So, anyways, those are my thoughts on it.

All right, thank you.

Councilmember Bruce.

Four cops to one stop.

I don't get that, but what I do get is that you're taking a uniform officer off the streets for a couple hours.

That's what I do get.

I get the increased risk associated with that team that's out on the field patrolling.

I get that.

So for me, it's a manning situation where Manning's been held constant for years related to the growth of population, housing, and visitors.

So the roof valve is change of process, or come through technology, which you can't.

So all right.

Um, I share similar concerns.

I've uh my questions were asked about what happens if we were to say no and not um adopt this state law.

Um I personally do not agree with the motivation of it.

Um, and I think our legislature often passes laws with no regard for how they will be enforced or how local police departments and various factors go into these things.

Um that it did pass the legislature, it was signed by the governor, and as it stands, it is the law of the state, and I uh would not want to create a conflict for our city staff and police department in this.

But I would encourage everybody to contact your state reps and you know, encourage them to think hard about these things before they vote to pass them on to us to enforce.

Um, because I do think there's but to you know, there's a lot about discretion, and you know, our officers may be well trained and have the discretion needed, um, but other departments around the state may not be.

And uh so that'll be a concern.

Um, and I guess we'll see how this plays out as far as people transporting plants or bombs or a bag of gummies, and if that turns into a situation where an officer determines that's an open container, and then the person that person is up going through a whole legal ordeal involving a DUI and so on and on, or if there's an issue with a ride share driver at some point that that comes up dealing with a passenger.

So all things to consider.

Um, but again, this is a state law that has been passed, and I I think it is appropriate that we be in line with that as it stands.

Um so with that, uh the motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

It's second or yeah, we're a second reading number six.

I was doing my notes down here.

Sorry, yeah, it's okay.

Okay, the motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section.

And uh council members you may cast your votes and that's motion to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section passes unanimously.

I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

Mayor, you gonna vote?

Of course.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole passes unanimously.

All right, item number 31 ordinance upon second and final reading amendance amending section 32-509 to include prohibiting the use of handheld electronic devices while operating a motor vehicle in designated school zones and active construction work.

I'll entertain a motion to reject, adopt, reject, adopt or reject the ordinance on second reading section by section.

Motion second.

Is there a member of staff to make a presentation?

From a house bill that was effective November 1st with the state.

The violation is a total fine and court cost of no more than 100.

There are some exceptions to this.

If you can do it if uh with you can have voice activated if you're trying to do emergency communications with law enforcement, fire medical personnel, or when uh emergency vehicles are operating in the performance of their duty.

Only with consent can they take the phone from the driver.

They can't stop the driver and then take the phone and attempt to do something with it.

It also is uh for distraction to reduce crashes.

Uh we want to keep our road workers safe and our school children and crossing guards safe.

I will say I'm I'm one of the primary prosecutors in municipal court, and with all the constructions, like especially through Highway 9 and other areas, we have a lot of speeding citations and other citations in construction zones also, and this will just be another deterrent or another way to help make the safety of the roads in the construction zone areas and in school zones.

Um but you can still use your voice activated, you just can't hold your phone and be talking into it while you're in those two particular zones.

If you have any questions, Major Barber may be able to answer a few of those also, but it's a safety issue.

Okay.

This is an opportunity.

Well, let's see.

Keep showing me the public one first.

Questions or comments from council regarding this item.

Okay.

Um Jeannie.

I thought it was already against the law to text and drive anywhere.

It is holding your phone already, I thought was against the law.

It it is, uh, but I think they wanted to point out that specifically they wanted to make a point for the school zones and the active construction zones.

They also went a made it just a little more clear than the original statute and original ordinance about what is a handheld device and the state, and then we did follow that also on use the word texting.

Um, where a lot of what I have seen when we've had these types of uh citations come before court, it's not it's not just the texting, it's maps, you know, GPS, people reading text.

It's more than just texting, and so it did make it a little more clear for the school zones and the construction zones that you cannot have a device in your hand when you're in those zones.

Can you have a device in your hand when you're not in those zones?

This again, yes, you can, and that is where I've seen a little bit of a issue is it's more than just texting.

Officers are seeing uh drivers using their cell phones uh to use specifically for maps and where they're going, and that's distraction also.

It's just a language in the original ordinance and state law use the word texting.

I can't remember when we passed that.

It's been a number of years, and I think this is just a little more clear that you cannot hold any device in your hand when you're in those two zones.

Um it is in the same ordinance that we have as the texting.

Uh we do see some of the citations come through as texting when the author is certain that, and I've we've all seen it.

You've sent somebody going down the road and they're actually texting, but the officers are still able to use the failure to devote full time and attention to driving if they see uh drivers using the phone and and they're not sure if it's just texting, but they know that they're reading it in front of their face, and so they have some have used that other ordinance that we have failure to devote full time and attention when they've noticed that behavior also.

Okay.

Um that's interesting.

Um there any comments from council, council member Bruce.

Just really just clarification.

So trying to understand.

So if I'm driving down the highway or in municipality, I I can't have my phone in my ear.

Oh, that's a good question.

Um specifically for the ordinance today, in a school zone or construction zone, no, they would not want you to have that up to your ear.

In the previous one, where is the the one that we already have about texting?

It is a in my opinion, just a little bit less unclear because we use the word texting.

Um it's never was intended for people to use their phone up to their ear and and talking to the microphone.

It's this behavior that we want to discourage, which is the distracting driving, whether you're really good at driving and texting at the same time and reading, or you're looking at your map, which is I believe is probably the biggest problem we have with distracted drivers and phones is not necessarily somebody trying to text while they're driving, it's somebody looking at their phone just for maps.

Uh so in a construction zone or school zone, you couldn't even technically probably have it up to your ear.

Um but I would imagine that this this change came along that we'll see it it's in some future a little more tightening up of it as cars are more and more cars have the uh value ability to be hands-free, or all the other devices that folks can buy where you can put it in your cup holder or put it up on your dash where you don't have to be you can be hands-free no matter what distracted driving all the way around is is what they're trying to curb, and especially in our school zones and construction zones and highway nine, that would be my biggest one right now.

Um I guess along that, if your phone is in a holder, can you text if you're not holding it?

It sounds like a law school exam question or something, Mayor.

I know I know uh just so while we're here.

If we should it be more, could we be more specific?

Yes, we could, but uh that would be that would not be hands-free in a construction or school zone if you were texting, even if it was in a holder.

If you're touching it, because you would be touching the screen.

Um, I mean, I've seen drivers using iPads in their car, and you can tell, and officers can see that too when they're they can glance over, and especially at night when you can see the lights coming from the device.

Some cars, the panel is like an iPad, I guess.

Some I some have such large screens anymore that you can almost watch a movie while you're driving.

I guess now we're all hands-free, and we can get cars that we don't even have to touch the steering wheel.

So that's another issue.

Which makes me wonder.

Okay.

Um yes, one time I was on Sunset Boulevard in LA in traffic, and I was trying to look at the map to see where I was going, and I had the window rolled down, and an LA County Sheriff pulled up next to me and yelled at me through the window, put your phone down, it's illegal to text.

And I was like, I'm just looking at the map.

And he said, I don't care.

It's mainly the map, is what people look at.

I don't think as many people text as if they're looking at the at their map, or maybe they're reading a text.

Okay, well, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Any other questions from council before we move to public comment?

Okay.

This is an opportunity for members of the public to make comments regarding this item.

Madam Clerk, are there any public comments?

Yes, Mayor.

Um, Paul Wilson.

Okay, Paul Wilson Ward 1.

Believe it or not, this doesn't have to do with me being a registered driver because now I've got Android Auto.

It goes through my nav system anyways.

Um my question is the original one that the texting and everything, it was not a pullover offense, according to some of the police officers I've talked to.

Is this actually if they see it, can they pull them over?

And if it is, why don't we just do it all all the way around?

I mean, I'm sure every one of us has been behind a driver, whether it be on the interstate in the city town, where you pull up next to them and they're just yapping away on their phone.

That's a distraction.

You're supposed to have two hands on your steering wheel.

I mean, granted, most of us don't.

I'm guilty of that too.

But I don't have my phone in my hand.

I have it to where I can if I in a situation put that hand back on that steering wheel like that.

So I mean, and a hundred dollar fine.

We always do these ones that are about safety, and we put the bare minimal thing.

I don't know about you, but most people hundred bucks.

Okay.

And in a school zone, I agree with it, but there's a lot of other parts of the city that they need to do this too.

And I mean, I drive through school zones all the time.

I don't regularly see law enforcement hanging around our school zones.

I have been known to see them around Highway 9 during around that construction area, but not around our school zones.

And I'm sure we have a lot more school zones right now in Norman than we do active construction.

Maybe not, but what about uh when the school bus is letting off a kid or loading a kid?

I mean, how many people have seen it on Facebook, even on normal community pages where people are blowing past these school buses?

That's a problem.

I mean, we should just not allow cell phone usage at all while you're driving.

I switched insurance companies.

Guess what?

You know those safe rides?

I can't even touch my phone without getting dinged.

So I mean, just put it down.

It's not that hard.

And we we need the lobby for state law to get even tougher.

Make it pull overable where they can pull somebody over if they see them yapping on their phone.

How many of us have had conversations that turned how should we say spirited?

I don't know about you, but when you're angry like that, are you really paying attention to the road?

I already see one council member shaking his head, nope.

I mean, I get distracted driving.

But we need to blanket it for everything.

Distracted.

I mean, you'll see people that'll post on YouTube.

They have their phone literally on their thing, and there is a video playing there.

They're not touching it.

So technically, this law would not apply.

But they're watching a video.

So just no, like this on the lot of the back of the school buses, just put it down.

We need to just stop doing the case by case and just blanket it.

So that way we avoid those crashes.

I'm sure there's been dozens of people killed because of distracted driving.

How many is it gonna take?

A hundred, a thousand?

One is too many.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Steve Ellis.

Steve Ellis Ward 4.

Uh, for what it's worth, I appreciate the sentiment behind this bill.

I mean, I'm ordinance, I'm not a opposed to it at all.

But it I was just confused by something, and it may have been covered in the stuff from the previous uh discussion that I missed.

But I'm not quite clear on why it's crucial that we need to change our ordinances to be exactly the same as the state ordinances.

And it seems like there were getting lots of redundancy here, and I'm not exactly sure why it's important for us to have exactly the same language.

Does it have something to do with what we can prosecute in municipal court or would have to go to someplace else if uh if if a Norman police officer stop someone for violating the state law as opposed to a municipal ordinance?

So maybe this is just asking for civic education here, but does anybody have an explanation for why it's important for our municipal ordinances to be exactly in tune with the state law?

Thanks.

Thank you.

Ben Plummer.

Ben Plumber Ward 4.

I don't know if this ordinance is a good idea.

I do know that I used to be a cop in the Air Force, and cops don't read the law.

They don't, it's not like somebody comes in and gives you a lecture and tells you this is the exact wording of the new ordinance, and you have to do it this exact way.

They don't really do that, to my knowledge.

It's more like your sergeant comes in and says, hey guys, we now get to pull people over in school zones for being on their phones, and then you go do it.

Then you go pull people over.

Um cops are not lawyers, and every ordinance you pass is going to be a very low resolution.

Um you're gonna pass it at this high resolution, right?

Where the words say this very specific thing, and then it's gonna get implemented in a much more a much more crass, sorry, I did not spill a much more crass and um simplistic form.

And I'm not sure that you need this particular ordinance.

If you've already got a state ordinance or state law that says that you're not allowed to be on your phone or something, I'm not sure about the uh the benefits of redundancy.

Um I know that legislative bodies like to constantly make new laws and never repeal any laws, and that that's always a worry to me because century after century you're making laws, you're not repealing them, they're just building up and building up and building up, and the range of acceptable action shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, and every law that you pass, every bill that you create is uh kind of an escalator of violence.

So if somebody violates the law at the lowest level, they commit an infraction, then you're going to issue them a ticket, which they're gonna have to pay a fine.

If they don't pay the fine, they're gonna have to go to a court date.

If they don't make the court date, uh warrant for their arrest will be issued.

If they get if they resist the cops or fail to comply when they're arrested, then they're going to use um something like paying compliance according to the use of force model, they're going to increase the severity of violence in order to gain compliance from the individual.

So if you have a simple rule like, you know, somebody who runs a hot dog stand or a swarma stand or whatever has to have a license.

And they don't speak English.

You've just created this escalator for the guy, the immigrant who owns a Schwarma stand to get killed by the police.

Every single it sounds crazy, but every single mayor, can we zoom to the agenda item and every single bill?

I've only got 45 seconds.

Every single bill, every single ordinance can result in that happening.

It can it can result in something like that.

And I just don't think that you need this much legislation.

Thank you.

Do you want to vote on it since we have a point of order?

Okay.

Okay.

Anybody else?

Yeah, Trey Kirby.

Trey Kirby.

Sherylands.

Sheryland and so wards four and six.

Um, and I'll be very brief.

Um again, uh there's nothing wrong with complying with um what the state deems as a problem in uh in our safety.

And um's driven cross-country over a dozen times last year.

Um I've seen it all on the road.

And I've driven in small communities, and I've driven in large communities and super big cities.

And um the level of phone use in a vehicle is kind of on the ridiculous side.

So this is just trying to keep uh our construction workers, which many are killed uh every week across the nation for people that um are not paying attention in you know, in construction zones, and the construction zones are extremely extremely intense driving in some areas across the country.

Um you have to have both hands on the wheel and drive between those concrete barricades and maneuver around large vehicles and small vehicles and motorcycles and all sorts of stuff, and as well as the the traffic.

So I implore you to adopt this ordinance for those construction workers and their families.

And school zones, again, you know, if anything, maybe it'll teach the teenagers that are learning to drive around those school zones to uh put the phone away.

It's not that important to jump on the phone as soon as they walk out the door of the school and to pay close attention to what's going on around them.

And so, you know, these are just two small areas where I've seen driving around the work, you know, around the country a bunch.

Uh people literally watching YouTube videos and the like and FaceTiming as they're zipping down at 80 miles an hour.

So you know, this is a pretty simple thing to do and hopefully make us a little bit safer.

It won't take everything away, that hopefully will make things just a little bit safer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all I have, Mayor.

Anyone else in the audience who has not spoken that would like to speak?

Come on up.

Billy Jewel Ward 5.

You worried about fining people for talking on their phone.

CDL license.

You get caught touching that right there.

$1,500 fine to me and $1,500 fine to my company.

I see a ton of them, probably 50% of the driver.

You're look down there, and now I've got that phone between their legs, and they're going like this.

I've dodged a ton of them.

I think nailing.

Thank you.

Hello, Miami Windler Ward 2.

So this is about distracted driving.

Um I drive manual transmission cars.

Automatic transmission cars make me nervous.

Um is that gonna be considered a distraction at some point?

What if you're fiddling with your radio?

What if you're fiddling with you know your air conditioner heat, whatever?

Where does this stop?

That's all.

Thanks.

Are there any final comments from council regarding this item?

Seeing none.

Reading section by section, council members, you may cast your votes.

All votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section, passes unanimously.

All right, I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading as a whole.

Council members, you may cast your votes.

All right, miscellaneous comment.

This is an opportunity for citizens to address city council due to open meeting act regulations.

Council is not able to participate in discussion during miscellaneous comments.

Remarks should be directed to the council as a whole and limited to four minutes or less.

Yes, Mayor.

Paul Wilson.

Paul Wilson.

Sorry.

What do we have to have a doctor nudge me?

Anything council uh Paul Wilson Ward Warren.

Um I normally don't come up here and just start reading about the TIFF, unlike some people in the audience.

Um, but I want to give a little excerpt from a Facebook post by somebody I think we all actually actually like, and that's Anthony Francisco, our former finance director.

It was directed towards the mayor, but I think the council needs to actually see or hear this.

Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman.

Now that the state state Supreme Court has ruled, it become has ruled, it becomes the job of the city that you govern to implement the ordinance that was passed by the city of by the city council despite your vote against the ordinance as Ward 7 council member and your disappointment at the determination of the courts.

You are the mayor now.

Your job is to work to the best of your ability to make the city policy work.

I think you would agree that most people in Norman, and certainly most Sooner fans, which I know you to be, are supportive of the project to build a new arena and the surrounding development.

The development itself passed the council unanimously, including your affirmative vote.

The design of the arena reflects many features that you suggested, make it work.

I think you should now turn your attention to implementing the TIFF and supporting the development.

You should use all of your influence with the state, ACOG, ODOT to complete to completing the improvements to flood and to come that have been needed and to get I-35 on ramps and off ramps built at Rock Creek.

Access to the area is a valid concern.

You should hold the developers accountable to build the quality development that they promised.

Now that the public is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in their development, make it work.

Okay, last Tuesday we had an eye over from the city attorney.

Because he brought he mentioned repealing the two ordinances.

And I'm not sure if the numbers he used were the minimal or the maximum.

If they were the maximum, they're pretty bad.

If they're the minimum, oh my god.

230 million as a minimum or a maximum passed on to the city taxpayers in the way of property taxes.

That amount of money with those numbers shown last Tuesday would hurt every single person in the city of Norman that rents, owns, runs a business, or owns a commercial property.

You want to talk about you guys were worried about 31.25 million over 25 years coming out of the city general fund.

Now you need to look at it and worry, am I going to be the one that causes 230 million dollars to come out of the taxpayers' money?

Like somebody said earlier, I'm sure this has happened before where city council repeals something either here or in other cities, and they've been sued.

Why poke that bear?

Why take the risk?

That is a huge risk.

There's two people behind me that probably don't care if you do it or not.

If you do it and it comes to fruition, they'll just move on.

They'll go to another city, another university, and go there.

When I saw this, it scared the bejesus out of me.

Because I am a renter.

My property is worth 100,000 or less.

If it does go through in the just at the 230 million, my rent's gonna go up by 200 to 250 dollars.

Just one for one.

Thank you, Paul.

Stephen Ellis.

Steve Ellis Ward 4.

Uh wow, that was almost the perfect setup for what I was gonna discuss tonight.

So uh, first of all, uh, I don't know where the Anthony Francisco quote came from, but I thought he was better informed.

As of right now, there are no actual plans.

No architect has built a plan for any sort of arena.

They're shopping that out as we speak.

They there's they're not gonna break ground on this very soon.

And the county hasn't located funding that we're ultimately supposed to pay back, right?

There's no plan right now that you could get in trouble for busting.

So if we're going to decide that this TIFF was a mistake, which I think we should, now is precisely the time that we should be doing it, because it will minimize costs to everyone.

We can all just move along, and it will diminish the damages we might have to pay, since you guys got stuck with a contract that was passed under a really mostly a previous council.

Uh, if you think the TIFF is a bad idea, this is the perfect time to get rid of it.

Secondly, um Paul's concerns and being freaked out about the possibility of some huge payment through property taxes, uh, I think shows that you guys haven't been getting particularly good legal advice.

It is possible to sue somebody for almost anything, including specific performance.

But I think if you push the attorneys who are advising you to talk about how liability actually gets assigned, even if you lose a court case on breaking a contract, you'll see that they don't get to just say, hey, this was gonna work perfectly, so you owe us all the money we were hoping to get from that contract.

That's not how it works.

As a matter of fact, that's probably so speculative that it won't be the basis of the contract resolution at all.

Even if you lose, you're on the hook for the amount of money that the counterparties relied on you for.

So to the extent that they thought a contract was going through, if they you know paid somebody some money, so like you know, Hyden is gonna get paid no matter what from the county.

Uh the question is whether or not they'll assign that cost to you.

And notice that's a lot, lot less than you stand to lose in terms of either a failed arena or even a successful arena, the way it undermines the city budget.

So uh, you know, it was I I was you know going back and forth with a council member on Facebook, and that council member wasn't even aware of the doctrine of efficient breach.

Uh, even if you thought we're up, you know, we're stuck with this contract right now, which I do not take as obvious, but even if it was, if there was ever a time for efficient breach to cut your losses, this is absolutely that time.

So uh I think you should.

I sent a note to you all with this regard.

I hope you ask your legal advisors, both personal and uh through the city for explanations and not just go ask the city attorney for permission to do things, because it's easier for him if you follow through.

And uh that's not a good reason to adopt that as Ben Plummer.

I've been opposed to the TIFF from the beginning.

I think it illustrates how you know the rubber stamping tenancies.

Um the developers came in, they were very sleazy, and they had this, they just gave off this aura of being scam artists, and you don't have to accept flaws in language in the legislation and the in the ordinances.

When you pass something, you can always just be like, let's postpone this.

Let's think about this more, let's work out the details more, let's get more public input.

Anything of consequence can take, you know, can take a long time.

It's fine.

Um, if if you must wind up building out or you know, giving these people money, you might consider taking the money back using like an arena surcharge, like a ticket surcharge or something like that.

Thank you.

Trey Kirby Terry Kirby Ward 5.

On the note that they're speaking about on this TIFF, um, I just really had one question.

If it does go to a lawsuit and say we did lose, even if it wasn't the 230 million, say it was 150 million, and that goes towards the property owners and the renters, and they all get an increase on their taxes and their rent.

Does it really stop there?

Or can them property owners turn around and come and file a tort claim or something against the city for appealing that and costing them money due to overturning it.

I'm just it's a serious question.

I want to know if it ends at just that or if it goes further, and what's what's the regulations on that?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Rob Norman.

Rob Norman Ward 3.

Through the past few elections through the referendum petition, 11,000 voters have charged you with two deliverables, both in the referendum petition and an election after election after an election.

The mayoral election was about 11,000 to deliverable.

Put a halt to the arena TIFF until and unless it is put to a vote of the people.

Deliverable number two, oppose the termpikes at all turns without fail.

There are more deliverables that may be relevant, but those deliverables you're not going to be able to deliver on if you don't deliver on one and two.

Now, a little bit about what the law says.

We're going to ask you to repeal this ordinance and send it to a vote of the people.

And let's go back and look at the advice you got.

You were told it's possible that you could be held personally liable, and it's possible that the city could have a 230 million dollar judgment entered against it.

Well, we're going to provide more formalized presentations to you folks that show you that is out of the realm of reality.

We've already told you that the city attorney did not advise you of the Local Development Act provision that specifically allows you to repeal the ordinance.

Now, also the city attorney on the issue of personal liability did not advise you of Section 8.06 of the local development agreement, which says you cannot be held personally liable under this TIFF.

You were also not advised of the issues of your errors and omissions insurance coverage under OMAG, which I assume I don't know if the city has a different product.

You were not advised of that.

You were not advised of Carter versus Greenhall, which says that under a contracts clause lawsuit, a party suing for violation of the contracts clause is not entitled to a money damages remedy.

That has been that is from the United States Supreme Court that has been followed all the way up to the present day.

We'll provide you with a formalized presentation that cites those cases.

You were not advised that of the the cases the city attorney cites, none of them support the notion that you can be held personally liable or that the city can be held liable for money damages.

They said the exact opposite, and they also said that in this situation it would not be a contracts clause violation.

Now, what about, oh, but there's still a breach of contract there under state law.

Well, what you have to understand is that a party entering into contracts with the city is charged with knowledge of the limits on a city of authority and a city's power.

What are the limits on the city's authority?

Well, one, Section 9.01 of the economic development agreement says the city's obligation is to provide the TIFF increment revenue.

No other fund or revenue source of the city can be charged with the city's failure to do that obligation.

And there's a case involving a county under the Local Development Act that we'll provide you with that's right on point to that.

Now, we will also provide you.

There also is anyone entering into a contract with the city is charged with knowledge of this explicit repeal statute.

Now I think we've talked about and we reached a consensus that at some point it gets to the point where it doesn't make sense for the city to repeal.

But right now it does, and there is plenty of law under Oklahoma's Constitution.

We'll continue on.

Thank you.

John Scammy Horn.

Good evening.

I'm my name is John Dr.

John Scammy Horn, a retired chemical engineer.

I've lived in Norman for 45 years the whole time in Ward 1.

I admit I was uninvolved in local politics until about five years ago during the police defunding controversy.

This coincided with the homeless problem in Norman exploding.

Currently, I'm very concerned about city finances.

We are running deficits every month, as you well know, with no sign of turning things around.

It seems like building a new homeless shelter and putting permanent supportive housing in healthy neighborhoods is the priority for our council.

You need to set priorities and ensuring basic services to working and retired citizens is a must.

Currently, the approximately 300 homeless individuals seem to be the driving force for city plans, not the 130,000 plus productive citizens.

While it doesn't solve the problem on its own, homeless relocation programs in the U.S.

While it doesn't solve the problem on its own, homeless relocation programs in the US have been a tool students have used to reduce the financial burden of homelessness, offering homeless people one-way tickets to move elsewhere.

This strategy is also referred to as Greyhound Therapy or bus ticket therapy.

Proponents argue that there are legitimate reasons for seeking to reunite homeless people with their friends and family in other locations.

I will list just a few examples of successful homeless relocation programs.

In January of 2024, Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office claimed to have relocated over 100,000 migrants to sanctuary cities.

An itemized list of tens of thousands of people of undisclosed immigration status were allegedly sent to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles.

Between 2005 and 2017, the City of San Francisco sent 10,500 homeless people out of town by bus.

In Seattle, bus tickets were offered by nonprofits such as the United Way of King County, which reported funding about 116 journeys out of the region in 2018.

In Portland, in the fiscal year ending 2019, the city sent away 383 individuals to places such as Las Vegas, Seattle, and Phoenix.

San Diego police officers and supervisors testified that they routinely cleared downtown streets of transients by running them up before dawn and moving them to other jurisdictions such as National City or other other unincorporated areas in the county.

The Southern the Southernmost Homeless Assistant League, a nonprofit operating at Homeless Shelter in Key West, has sponsored more than 350 bus fares to leave Key West.

In return, clients had to promise never to return to Monroe County.

Between July 2008 and April 2013 in Las Vegas, the state-run Ross M-Neal Psychiatric Hospital discharged 1,500 mental patients, sending them via taxi to a Greyhound bus station and on to cities across the U.S.

We are constantly told about mental health patients being discharged from Griffin Hospital onto the streets of Norman.

Las Vegas teaches us there are alternatives.

In summary, greyhound therapy is a tool Norman can use to help alleviate homelessness.

Thank you.

Thank you.

May you mean.

Two of them were from the monthly report.

One of them was from the IT section.

There's project to upgrade Microsoft operating systems.

I'm assuming it's like from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

And it said that that was scheduled to be done at uh you know December 2025.

It is February now, so what's going on with that?

Why isn't that done yet?

Um the next thing is about the sales tax revenue, the general fund revenue, and the expenses, all of those are below budget.

So that's great for the expenses, but for the revenue parts, not great because that's like uh we're down like 1.5-ish million dollars for the for the month.

So what is going to need to be cut from the budget to make up for that?

And then another question about that is why did we decide that we needed to increase our budget, knowing you know the state of sales taxes and how that's been flat for a while.

Um the last thing is did you know that Tulsa is getting an IKEA?

This is amazing.

Um Texas, I want to go to IKEA because it's IKEA and it's fun just wandering around.

Um anyway, so it's there's an announcement on the City of Tulsa's website, and then there's a link to their economic uh development department.

And then I was looking at their TIFFs because TIFS are a big thing.

Uh so they've got, I think, four active TIFFs right now, and in each one of those plans, uh, they carve out 10% of the ad valorum taxes to go to schools.

Why aren't we doing that here?

So nobody gets 100% of ad valorum, and they are specifically carving out that money for the schools.

That's it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Cindy Rogers.

Cindy Rogers, still Ward 4.

So I moved here in 1997 to work at OU in the economics department.

And honestly, we didn't think we'd be here that long.

We thought we'd be sort of a drive-by stick around.

But but we're here, we raised our kids' kids here.

And I didn't really do much engagement in city business because I was busy trying to get promoted in tenure.

And then in 2006, former mayor of Rosenthal gave me a call and said, as I'm sure you're aware, which I wasn't, and it had to do with the TIFF.

So since then, I've really been paying attention to all this TIFF business because I do public finance.

And so let me ask a question.

Why did it make sense to use tax increment financing for the Rock Creek Entertainment District project?

Or even for the original UMP TIFF.

Why didn't we use bonds like we do to build roads?

Or a special purpose sales tax like we did for Norman Forward quality of life.

Why TIFF?

Why is TIFF the right tool?

Besides getting around a public vote, why TIFF?

Well, if you've been paying attention when these things are talked about, oh a TIFF protects the city because it doesn't put the full faith and credit of the city at risk, because you're only obligated to make payments from the increment collections in the district that you create as you collect them, not in advance, not a certain amount, you could cap it, but you don't really know how much you're going to collect.

So I'm here tonight talking for the Oklahomans for Responsible Economic Development, which is the organization that put forth the referendum petition, which 11,000 people signed.

People were driving to us in cars at little tents.

And if people love it, and they want us, they want to commit this much of city funds for a new arena, then fine, they'll vote yes.

And if they don't, then we could put together another plan.

But that's ultimately our goal.

So if people say other things, you just don't want this.

No, we want to vote to see if people want to support it.

So I think you'll find and we'll be bringing forth more information, but the other thing about a TIFF that's really good, and actually the arena TIFF, the Rock Creek Entertainment TIFF contract, the economic development agreement has some good parts to it, believe it or not, I'm gonna tell you there's some good parts because the contract language is pretty specific.

So Section 8.06 is a part that says you can't be individually held liable.

And section 9.01 clarifies that only the increment is what's obligated, only as you collect it.

So this idea that you could make a you would be responsible for a payment of an increment that's not collected, just seems far-fetched and in direct conflict with the contract that you have that's existing.

So I hope we can be really careful about understanding the protections that TIFF give us, and I hope you will have the courage.

Chelsea Gravel.

So I've been doing a little bit of research.

So I guess we have a budget due before council June 1st.

June 1st.

Yeah, then we'll have a public hearing on that, June 15th.

Another seven days before the start of the fiscal year.

You must adopt the budget by resolution on June 24th.

And if that budget is in the red.

Moves the city from local autonomy, autonomy to potential state mandated fiscal rehabilitation, focusing on immediate drastic cost cutting.

So the details and what that would look like, it looks like would be state intervention and financial oversight, as well as uh drastic service reductions, personal liability for officials, mandatory cutbacks and revenue failures, loss of credibility and credit rating downgrade, municipal bankruptcy, chapter nine, taxpayer protest and litigation.

I'm not gonna go into all the details here.

I'm gonna write it on my Facebook because I don't have much time.

But also found something else that when our city is alive and well again, we need some indemnity bonds for the citizens, so the council can't ever do this to us again.

Okay.

I just found out about that, so I'm gonna um that's really important.

Um I guess this is a message to our sister cities and sister municipalities.

If you're stroke not struggling and you're growing and you could be at risk of your council putting you in the red.

Now I say our council because along with the other um research that I did to find out exactly what those spikes went, Mr.

Pyle, those spikes, what those actually look like as opposed to actual growth.

That language is way beyond me.

I am I don't even think I'm pronouncing most of those words properly.

Um but I do want to say that now with our thriving sister cities, uh our state and our county needs to think about putting some indemnity bonds in place so that the citizens are protected financially, should council do this to their city.

Um I want to say that one of the things that Mr.

Pearrant uh Mr.

Francesco said to our citizens academy that I want to add to this issue that caused it is he said we were getting a lot of COVID money, and the council was choosing to create projects that were going to have to be sustained by our general fund.

And he warned and warned and warned the council not to do that, but they did it anyway.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Billy Jewel.

Trey Kirby.

Uh boils down to a couple of things.

Transparency is is really the paramount.

We just finished an election.

We have a runoff.

Two of the candidates haven't released their financials.

That's against the law.

Plain and simple.

There's there's no way around it.

It would be really interesting to know how those campaigns were funded.

Second thing, want to echo what some of the other individuals have said.

You can't be held personally accountable.

There is a cap on how much the city is on the hook for if we repeal the TIFF.

But really, back to accountability.

What'd you tell your voters?

When you ran.

Did you tell them that you'd support a recall or a vote of the people on this issue?

They're gonna remember.

Thank you.

Have a great evening.

Thank you.

Hi, Ella Crenshaw, Ward 6.

Um, my first item is uh I know there are plans to deal with the intersection at James Garner and Acres and to make that safer, but is there any way in the time being that we could just make it a four-way stop?

Just put a couple more stop signs out there because I drive through it every day and it's pretty dangerous.

Um my second item is also about the TIFF.

Uh a lot of people can get up here and say a lot of things about what could happen or what might happen if various different paths are taken and whether or not people agree or disagree with this at all.

And there's really only one way to find out whether or not the majority of Norman agrees with this plan or not, and that's to have a public vote.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yep.

Sherlain Denzo words four and six.

Uh so how did we get here?

Right, folks.

Um obviously a lot of this uh these issues have been in play for a very long time.

So you gotta look at each other and say, who's been around here for a very long time?

Okay.

Um I hold those people directly responsible for getting us to this point.

Sorry, uh Ms.

Denzo.

We have you down as already spoken in miscellaneous comment.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, I was asking if there was anybody that hasn't spoken.

Oh anyway, um the citizens are paying attention.

Yeah.

Yes.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Okay.

No, you're correct.

I I accidentally skipped over you.

I apologize.

I had you on the list.

Sorry do over.

Yeah.

I went straight from it's okay.

It's okay.

It's it's late.

It's late.

And we're tired.

But we're not too tired to pay attention to what's going on.

Sorry.

In our city with our citizens on our streets, with our workers.

You know, we're not that tired to not pay attention.

And um, I want you I just want to remind you that this is a citizenry that is smart.

We're not lemmings that's gonna jump off a cliff.

We're going to watch and have thoughts and comments all along the way.

And yes, we're gonna vote.

And hopefully, more people are gonna get out and vote.

We all care about Norman.

One way or another, we care.

Good, bad, or ugly.

We care.

Um, and in that regard, we all hope and pray that Norman can move forward, can be prosperous for all of its citizenry, can be housed one way or another, can eat, can thrive, not only survive.

So I implore you to dig deep and do the work that you promised to do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's really all.

Okay.

All right.

Um, all I would say is uh would encourage everybody if you have the time to check out the finance committee meeting from last Thursday.

It is available on the City of Norman YouTube channel and uh has a lot of wonderful information and data in it about the current budget situation.

So if there are any final comment from council, Councilmore Gansbury.

Yeah, I'd like to comment about the uh who cares about the homeless or not and everything, and that's definitely me.

I do care about the homeless.

I cared about them for the last 20 years.

I'll care about them for the next 30 years, whatever it takes.

Um I would like to inform everybody in Ward 1 and the City of Norman, though, that I have taken upon myself that three times in the last two weeks now I've went over to the food and shelter and to our property, especially that we bought, and I've been doing meeting cleans.

So I've been going over there and meeting with the homeless that are in that area, along with teaching them how to clean up and how to take care of things and how to take responsibility.

We've also had great communications about what a homeless shelter might be, what it could be, and what the expectations are around that.

Not a single one of them had heard from anybody about that possibly going there, which was kind of alarming to me.

If this is the client that we're trying to serve, I think we'd educate them on what it is and what it could be for them.

Just a couple quick things that stuck out to me though when we talking to each other.

I asked the group what's your main things that you would want inside that homeless shelter if I could get them for you.

And we all probably as society know the crazy things that we'd expect them to say.

But this was the main things that they wanted inside a shelter for the people that supposedly don't care about nobody and only care about themselves.

First guy asked for a library.

He said, Seems how we don't have the East Central Library.

Could I have a library with some books because I like to read before I go to bed at night?

The next guy asked, can you guarantee that I can have some people come teach us classes on substance abuse?

Thought that was already happening, but I guess maybe not.

So that would be something that they're actually wanting to see.

The other guy asked, Are you going to put security cameras up around the place so we feel safe?

I was like, Well, we're putting them up because other people don't feel safe, you know.

And then the last guy he actually came up to me and goes, Dave, I'm sorry.

He goes, I do admit that I have a lot of fines with the city.

And he goes, I think about them every day.

But he goes, I don't have the money to pay them.

So can you ask the city, maybe, if they can work a program where we can volunteer somewhere around here, keeping it cleaner or whatever it takes to work some of that off.

So I'm gonna get with Rhonda from municipal court, try to see what kind of program we could work out with her and Anthony and everything to maybe help them out.

But I just want people to know that they're not scary people.

You just go over there and talk to them, you know.

I've talked to several of the people that live on Reed Street that everybody's been telling me are these great homeowners and you know they don't care nothing about homeless.

So far out of the six houses, four of them actually are residing by ex-homeless people that know where they live.

They like the fact that they're kind of trying to make a way for themselves and everything like that.

So let's just go over there, talk to them, remember, vote on April 7th, right?

And everything, let's get this built.

Thank you.

All right, seeing no further comments.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.