All right.

Good afternoon and welcome to the city council special meeting for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026.

We have a couple items on the agenda today, two items.

The first one is a discussion regarding the FYE 2027 Capital Improvements Program Budget and the FYE 2027 through 2030 capital improvements plan.

And we have city staff here to discuss that with us.

So thank you for having me.

Good evening, Mary and Council.

My name is Jake Huckabee.

I'm a budget analyst in the finance department.

And as he said, we're going to be going over the fiscal year ending 2025-26 midpoint midpoint evaluations, as well as the fiscal year ending 2027 to 2031 capital improvements plan.

I think there was a little bit of a typo on the agenda item online, but it is going to be the 27 to 2031 CIP plan.

We're at a point in the process where we have the midpoint projections now.

So we're able to tie those into uh the requests that were just turned in for the FIE27 budget to get a better idea of where we're at and what we're looking at heading to the last half of this budget cycle before adoption.

Um so first, just kind of an overview of where we're at in the process.

Um we have today March 3rd.

Um the only other meeting that we have related to the CIP in this budget cycle is gonna be on May 5th.

It's where we're gonna review the final proposed uh city manager's preliminary budget for FYE 2027.

Um we'll have the preliminary books to you before the end to review, and we'll go over everything that's in those as well as any uh possible amendments or changes that you all uh would like to discuss before that goes up for adoption in June.

Um so first just wanted to throw this in uh to kind of give an idea.

We're gonna talk about some of these projects and this is where some of the numbers come for from these projects.

Um we talked about our capital sales tax is seven tenths of one percent.

This is just our starting point for uh how much do we want to put in each of these categories uh each year?

Doesn't always line up perfectly.

Um sometimes we go more or less in these categories, but overall this is kind of our starting point for where we start to look at uh how much we want to spend on each of these.

And on this chart, how much would you say of the other projects in debt service?

How much of that piece is the debt service?

I mean, not much.

I don't think it would be much on the no, I I think a big portion of that is debt service, actually, because most of the projects fall into the other categories.

So I I would I would so other projects and debt services 36%.

So that's and how much of that 36 is debt service is the question.

And then yeah, what is the other my other question too?

Is what are the ones other projects made?

Projects that don't fit into that category, so that would be um buildings and grounds, is our probably the biggest category within other projects.

Um but debt service looks like it accounts for um and that's on all the bonds, obviously, but it's four, five, six, seven, eight, so about ten million in debt service each year in that uh 36% category, and then it's the building and grounds category as well.

Okay.

Would it be possible uh future graph to show debt service as its own slice?

Absolutely.

Okay.

So look at these preparing project requests.

Um the projects that um we call them recurring, they're just kind of the the bread and butter of what we put into capital fund.

Um so starting off with street maintenance, that's gonna be that 20% of that uh pie chart.

That's gonna be at 3,450,000.

Um within that little category, we're gonna have alley repair, asphalt maintenance, concrete maintenance, and crack seal.

Those are the four project categories within that street maintenance line item.

We're gonna have a hundred thousand for street striping, um, 2.4 million for stormwater, which is gonna include uh three different drainage projects.

That's 1.5 million uh for a project that's gonna target the Finley Avenue uh pipe replacement there.

We have the forest account drainage project, it's a hundred thousand dollars, um, as well as a drainage rehabilitation project for 400,000, and then the uh Lake Thunderbird TMDL total maximum daily load project for 400,000.

And the that's not including street maintenance bond program.

Yes, this is the sales tax portion that is separate from the street maintenance bond.

Is this what our street maintenance program would look like if we didn't have the street maintenance bond yet program?

That would be it.

It would be all pay-go.

Okay, so this is on top of the yes maintenance in addition to the program.

And we have our park amenities project for 60,000.

This is a project that targets um replacing things like concrete pads and benches at various parks throughout the city.

We had the tree program for 45,000, uh, planting trees.

Up uh, I think there was an update to the uh urban forest management plan within that project as well.

Um we have the IT hardware and software projects.

That is the the little pie slice for the IT projects.

Um these are pretty big ticket items.

I think uh the one of the largest ones upgrading our Microsoft software and getting the hardware to support that upgrade as well to keep us in compliance with what they support.

Um we have capital outlay, that's that 27%.

That's a $4,775,668.

Uh the majority of this is gonna be taken up with things like fleet replacements and computer replacements, and the remainder of that is where uh management team goes and they discuss all their individual requests, or the city manager will eventually bring uh those and we submit those within the remaining funds in that capital outlay line.

And and council, when it comes to that IT hardware or the in the capital outlay for fleet replacement and IT workstation replacement, um, all of our desktops, monitors, all the components, there's a date when it was put into service and the department where it was put into service on it.

And behind these lists are on the IT side, uh, Mr.

Tim Powers team, they track the lifespan of all of that hardware and and have an indication as to when they think it's it's gonna need to be replaced.

And we try to stay proactive in that so we're not dealing with either hardware failure or hardware that doesn't have enough horsepower to run the next evolution of software that we operate.

On the fleet side, uh Mr.

Mike White, our fleet superintendent, he's got an inventory of 900 pieces of equipment, their anticipated useful life, all of their service records for each piece to really give us an idea.

Some of the pieces they last a lot longer than we thought, which is great.

Some of them start becoming a real maintenance consumer earlier than necessary.

So they do analysis to determine that piece is better off being replaced because it's eaten us alive on the maintenance side, and other pieces we can go ahead and keep uh in the fleet system for another year or two.

When other capital demands uh start to drill into available dollars, that's when we look real hard about what pieces can we drive one more year to address a uh a council identified need for those same capital dollars.

I have to expand on that just a bit.

We spend anywhere from about $300,000 a year to $400,000 to replace uh the computers, desktops, and laptops, and um I think that's about 70 computers, and they're about five.

We replace computers about every five years.

And the last few years we've spent about 2.5 million to replace uh different uh fleet equipment um used by the general fund.

Um and it used to get us a lot further because uh remember we have about 4.7 million to spend on um all capital outlay uh within the general fund.

And uh I I would say over the last six years or so, uh the cost of fleet equipment has almost doubled.

Uh police vehicles, I think about seven, eight years ago used to be about 50,000, now they're over 80,000.

So um 2.5 million, which is usually about the amount we replace, uh, will get us about 16,000, 17 vehicles replaced on the fleet list, which is probably 50 vehicles long, if not.

One fire truck.

Fire trucks uh five years ago were a little over 500,000, and now they are right at a million, and ladder trucks were about a million, and now they're a two million.

And uh it's it's this is not unique to Norman Oklahoma.

This is nationwide, these are the issues that all of our neighboring agencies are facing.

How do we stack up against other municipalities that it relates to average when it comes to vehicles?

Are we far exceeding other municipalities?

I mean, is that benchmark meeting done?

So when we look at uh communities near our size, uh the broken arrows and the Edmonds, uh, I would say we are competitive in terms of keeping a fleet on the road that's safe and responsive and not too labor intensive to keep on the road.

We know that when uh we've recognized it's time to surplus our equipment.

There's a lot of smaller agencies in the state of Oklahoma that they really love our equipment because we have service records, it's been maintained as as good as it could be, uh, and it's still better than a lot of equipment that a lot of small agencies really deal with.

So it's hard to compete with you know the Oklahoma cities and the Tulsas when it comes to uh dollars available for that fleet replacement, but for cities our size, the Edmonds and the Broken Arrows, we I would say we're um we're doing as well as they are doing.

So you have an average you compare, for example, the overall police fee fleet has an average, and you compare that average against some municipalities or size.

Um, our ability to look at a couple of things.

We could look at miles on the odometer, how long are we having to keep these pieces of equipment in service?

Um to get an idea if other fleets are fresher than our fleets.

We really, and I'll look to our fire chief and our police chief.

We don't really have a history of incidents where responding to an emergency, we've had equipment failure that left folks on the roadside.

Other things we have to deal with.

Um years ago we had a hail storm and it did a million dollars worth of damage to our fleet, and and we had a long conversation about if the if the piece of equipment's older than three years old, we're driving it with dents in it.

If it's newer than three years old, we probably need to get that uh corrected, but we went last.

We let the community get all their dents taken out first before uh city vehicles went in and got uh maintenance.

We always fix the windshields and those scenarios to make sure they're safe and operating, but you'll see we still have police cars in our fleet that are crowned victorious, and Ford hadn't made a Crown Victoria Police Interceptor in 15 years, been a long time.

So do we have any left-in service chief?

I think we got rid of the last one last year.

Last budget cycle.

So somebody killed it on 35.

I would say also that I think we have an advantage.

A lot of municipalities take it from the general funding or something similar.

Right, right.

So, you know, most of the vehicles I've jumped to, I sold my my personal choice.

Man, those are a lot of miles on your vehicle.

And so the obvious question is what's your average for your fleet?

And how is that average compared to other municipalities?

I mean, that's just the basic, right?

Yep.

So Mr.

Yeah, Mr.

White should be able to deliver that to us.

Maybe the police guy is.

I mean, you can spec better to me than I can remember fleet health.

Probably.

Maybe maybe it's a transportation guy.

I would say that we're pretty uh similar to other municipalities because I think a lot of them use the same software to gauge um, you know, the condition of our vehicles.

So I think in that regard, we're pretty similar.

And then there's industry standards and things like that.

So there are programs and and the concept of uh the old accounting adage, you should buy what appreciates and rent what depreciates the ability to lease an entire fleet from you know enterprise rent a car.

It's a thing uh today, and you're guaranteed a much newer fleet because they're gonna swap it out when it reaches its peak resale value, and we tend to drive it a lot longer than you know, uh a lot of those kinds of rented fleets would drive because they have a different end goal than we do.

But I'll ask Mr.

White to uh provide us with some of that analysis.

He's he's got software and he lives in that environment, but yeah, we'll be happy to send that out to council for your review.

Um, also on these, we have the personnel costs that are captured in the capital fund.

Um, I think there's a few like park planners, engineers, part of their salaries are paid on their capital fund, which totals out to 1,393,002.

Um we have the maintenance of existing facilities and recent years.

What we've done with these, all the project requests that come in, uh, we take those and we give them to facility maintenance where they rank them similar to IT and fleet, and we just uh take that little uh seven percent and we just work our way down and do as many as possible.

That's been pretty uh successful, and we've been able to get quite a bit done with that one.

Uh the recurring sidewalk projects, it's 500,000.

The next slide we'll get uh into some more detail on where those locations are for FYE27.

Uh with the driveway repair program for 10,000.

Um the next two are related to ADA compliance.

Um, the first one is the 300,000 dollars.

Um, that is the 300,000 that is set aside.

Um, and the 2018 transition plan, I think it was something just under $7 million of um needs that were needed to catch up to make things more accessible.

Um so what that does is there's a I think it was $300,000 or so a year to keep up with that and get that um within compliance.

And then the next project is 105,000 to update that 2018 AVA transition plan just to make sure it's up to date and meeting the accessibility needs.

Uh we have the Oklahoma Department of Transportation audit adjustment project for 100,000.

Um, this just helps us whenever we partner with Oda and they go through and it takes a few years to audit these projects.

Sometimes they adjust the city share.

And so this helps us close out those projects a little bit quicker, and we're able to account for those changes in this project if they come up every few years.

We have the uh pay as you go sales tax funded bridge maintenance project for a million dollars.

This is separate from the bridge maintenance bond, similar to the street maintenance on this.

And this is one million dollars.

We have a traffic calming project for $50,000.

We have our contribution to the regional regional transportation authority for $129,000.

And um the GIS mapping update, I think this is every other year.

Uh this is $225,000 to help keep the base maps and all the data that we use for our GIA systems up to date on those.

And so um in total, we have $16,358,000 and $536.

So quick question on our regional transit authority contribution.

That's um formula driven, and I think it's population based for the city of Norman, Oklahoma City, and Edmond to fund the effort.

And the council has appointed board members to represent Norman on the RTA board.

Um recent as we move into and you're beginning to see headlines about one transit, which is the brand of what will be uh before the voters in early 2027 to fund that commuter rail system.

That 129, they it I think they sent us an increased request because it's gonna have a um a serious push on the part of the consultants as they devise the sales tax question and then the public education campaign that will go with it so that everybody in the Metro understands what that ballot question means.

So that 129,848, it it I think it needs it'll need to go up.

I think we just got a communication from the uh regional transit authority saying here's what the 2026 27 contribution looks like, but good news.

Um we'll know in February of next year if it's a thing we'll have to continue to fund going forward or not.

So Bruce I'll just uh look at current work programs and people would come in and give me briefings on what's going on related to different needs and wants that we put in priority order.

So I assume this is in priority order.

Not um actually, so there's there's several departments that that manage that list you see before you.

Um, and some of them are more weather sensitive, some of them are materials, what's the lead time to get the the materials delivered to us?

And some of them are are just kind of prioritized by how much capacity do we have to do um beginning July 1.

So uh those is a discretionary function before the council, and you can put more money in one bucket and less money in another bucket, and there isn't a wrong answer.

This is the just the accumulation of activity over the last couple dozen years.

This is for FYI 27, right?

Correct.

And this is so as a city manager, I'd be coming and say, okay, this is in prior order not.

And then how'd you get here?

Really set priority, and then you then I'd be saying, okay, what about have you risk rated these things?

And then what's the health of these things currently?

So these uh they go by the funding guidelines for these projects, and then within these categories, they are in prioritized order.

So street maintenance, 3.4 million has a number of projects within that category funded by PAGO within that guideline there on the pie chart that he had earlier, and those projects, individual projects are all in priority order.

So I'm I'm I'm assuming you've already called those down to as low as you can get.

Uh yeah, public works maintains our our street um payment management system, which gives us letter grades on the condition of all of our streets, and they try to tackle the worst first uh to keep them from degrading further.

So in those line items, each of the departments that manages them, they'll have their priorities, and it's based on a criteria that uh they stay on top of.

So let me give you stormwater of the 2.9 million.

You've already called that list with the chief with the division chief, or said, okay, we're we cut that as much as we can into 0.9 million.

Um we tend to look at it as how how much of our how much of our um what we anticipate to be available resources for next fiscal year um should be allocated to capital.

Uh the voters did approve a seven tenths percent sales tax um that's capital only.

And um is that our capital outlay number?

What's our that seven tenths?

What's the total we anticipate to receive?

Like 17 million.

So it that is the bucket from which we pay.

Um so we try to just come up with those lists not to exceed that 17 million dollar number.

Um, some of those projects we may not spend all the money for that particular task in that fiscal year, but the money stays in that fund, and lo and behold, other demands pop up throughout the course of the fiscal year that we didn't account for, and that's usually how we're able to respond and you know, fix the roof or replace a big air conditioning unit or buy a car after it's been wrecked in a high speed pursuit or something like that.

It's up to a certain dollar amount and then you come back to council.

Always above a certain dollar amount.

Okay.

Well, and the council will approve this also when you uh look at the budget to approve in June.

And your honor, anything right now, if it's under $50,000, the city manager, if it if the money's been appropriated, and council in this request would appropriate $16,358.

If a single piece in there pops up, uh we didn't account for, and we're not gonna spend more than the 16.3, then the city manager has authorization under 50,000.

And if it's over 50,000, council has to approve the the expenditure.

And I think it also uh makes it clear on this slide since we have about 17 million in new revenue, uh, or we'll we'll receive about 17 million in new revenue, and we're spending 16.3 of that on these recurring projects, projects that get about this amount of funding every year.

That's why we don't have a lot of funds for new projects.

But these these are there aren't legal requirements for any one of those categories.

We would argue ADA compliance is kind of an important deal.

We want to make sure we stay on top of that.

Um your long-term participation in the regional transit authority.

We're nearing the finish line.

Uh, we would say you really need to stay on board until uh we get that across the line.

Other pieces, they're absolutely discretionary.

You can say we want way more money in sidewalks and way less money in you know, picking up in stormwater, and that would be totally acceptable.

Understand.

And if we had a stormwater utility, we could take this out of the list.

Exactly.

That could be an addition to or uh or relief from capital fundentially.

Okay, yeah, and um and anything location specific on these projects will be in the preliminary book as well when they submit those requests, they give a list, and sometimes they go a few years out in the future too, so you can have a look at that.

Um, and that's all put together.

So you'll have that detail when you look at the budget to adopt it.

Those funds, those are not those can't be used for filling staffing positions somewhere else.

Correct.

They have to be for capital.

We do have some positions funded um in the capital fund, like some of our engineers and so forth, and then we have some other positions that are split funded with the general fund and the capital fund, but their jobs uh rely heavily on the capital project aspect.

So um, so in that sales tax portion with the recurring sidewalk projects, this is a breakdown of what each of those individual projects are and where they're gonna be for FY27.

Um so we have the sidewalk program for schools and arterials at 100,000.

This is gonna be the south side of the road along Alameda Street from Class and Boulevard to Morningside Drive.

We have the sidewalk accessibility project for 45,000.

This is gonna be adding ramps to Brookhollow Road at Parkside Road in Brittany Court, the citywide sidewalk project for 125,000.

This is going to be the 50-50 replacement where the city partners with um property owners to get those uh specific sidewalk locations repaired.

We have the downtown area sidewalk project for 50,000.

This is gonna be the north side of the road along Garver Street from North Barrie to the east 400 feet.

We have sidewalks and trails for 140,000.

This is gonna be the east side of the road along 12th Avenue Northeast from North Moran Drive to East Robinson Street, and then our horizontal saw cut program for 40,000.

This is gonna be both sides of Northbury from Main Street to Kansas Street, and that's uh in total to 500,000 that we just had on the last slide.

The uh 5050 program is something that the city of Norman provides that most cities don't, from what I understand, unless they've started to.

Uh, but legally, as the property owner, it's your responsibility to maintain the sidewalk if there is one.

Um, and it's entirely your cost to do so.

But in Norman, we offer this 50-50 cost share program to help folks maintain their sidewalks.

Um just a service that I like to tap that we offer that's really helpful.

Uh, we've discovered and I found that most people don't know that that's that it's their responsibility, and they wonder why isn't the city gonna replace this sidewalk?

That's well, the city doesn't have to, it's yours.

Uh, but I like that we've had this program as long as I've been on council, and I don't know when it started before I was on council, I think.

And then the horizontal saw cut program has also been a really valuable uh program we've been doing for about a decade, maybe, and um extending the lifespan of existing sidewalks that have become uneven and things like that, and so it's a really low cost way to extend the sidewalks without having to replace the entire panel.

And so that's just another successful one that I hope we can eventually increase the funding for that at some point.

Councilmember Grant.

I was gonna ask is the 500,000 our what we've been working with for a few years, or have we raised it within the last five years?

There's a few target locations added in like fiscal year or two ago.

But this 500,000 has been pretty consistent for all these projects.

And then just for clarity's sake, the missing sidewalk or sidewalk replacements that are happening in the CDBG neighborhoods that's totally separate from this.

That's like in addition to all of this work.

And whenever we have a street project that's got a sidewalk component or intersection component, we do the street project to bring everything up to ADA compliance, so it may not show up as a separate ADA project, but know when they're in the intersection, it will be ADA compliant when we're done.

Yeah, I know a couple of years ago we had a good surplus, so we were able to add some projects that council members had.

I got a couple done in Ward 7, I think three sidewalk projects in Ward 7 done that year.

So that was nice.

Alright, so moving out of the sales tax portion and into the bond programs.

Um, this is just a review of the 2021 to 26 street maintenance bond program.

Um, this is the final year that we're in.

This was a five-year, 27 million dollar uh voter approved general obligation bond program.

And as you can see, the five categories for each of the five years we're completing every single one.

Uh just the remaining one is the urban concrete pavement, which is under construction.

Um, so we should be finishing that before the end of the fiscal year and getting ready into the next fiscal year as we go to the vote for the renewal of this program, which is gonna be the FYE 26 2031 street maintenance bond program.

Do we know uh how many projects actually are left in that last urban concrete from the uh 2021?

We had that full list uh to actually go through and do the location, I'm sure.

I mean it's probably less than seven.

It's a very low number.

I saw one that started this morning.

Yeah, they're rapid enough.

Uh we actually have we broke that out into two separate contracts because it was a large number.

That way we try to get two contractors uh to get it moving quicker.

Uh we kind of waited until the end of the year, we try to space them out so we're gonna have stuff torn up everywhere.

So I can't do the asphalt earlier in the year, the concrete later in the year, and that's why the concrete are still under construction.

But yeah, it's down to a minimal number.

Uh they just you know wrapped up share, they're gonna do a little expansion on that.

So you see them just knocking them off one at a time.

But uh in this last five years, uh, we've had all the projects completed within the fiscal year.

So, and we've got a track record over the course of the the four cycles that all the projects were completed and all the all the years.

So by the time I know 99% done.

Yeah.

Yes, it's very near completion.

Thank you.

Um, so just wanted to highlight that since we're asking voters to extend that program that all the projects were just about have been done, completed as promised that voters approved five years ago.

Yeah, and so on April 7th, um, there will be a quite a proposition to extend this with a no new tax for five years, 35 million dollars.

Um the program is set up in the same way with the five different categories.

Um you can see the breakdown of the 35 million for each of those categories, and then the estimated lane miles for this program would be 180 lane miles.

I think the the last one was on 150, and so this one would be a little bit more than the last one.

Um, but this will be on April 7th.

I think it will be in the uh preliminary budget as is, and if something changes before adoption, that will be changed.

But you'll you'll be seeing all the locations for this in the preliminary budget.

And then just touching on the final project in the 2012 transportation bond program.

This is one that for the past few years we've been working hard to uh secure the federal funding for this project to help get it underway.

Um before since the last meeting, we were awarded the $25 million Safe Streets for All grant to uh help get phases one and two of this project built.

Uh the current estimate for the project construction is $32,062,740.

Um and I know there's also been some uh some discussions about the phase two portion and partnering with the OTA to get that to help reduce the city's portion even more going forward.

So those conversations will continue as we get ready to get this project project started.

Uh moving on to the 2019 transportation bond program.

Uh this was 19 projects where voters authorized 1772 million dollars of general obligation bonds.

Uh to date, 46 million of those have been issued.

Um so looking at the the timeline of what's been funded for the the federal funds as well as what's been complete.

Two of these projects have been complete related to Porter Avenue, the streetscape and the intersection acres.

We have three of these currently underway with the Grey Street two-way conversion.

That's a seven and a half million dollar project where I think 4.9 million has been secured in federal funds.

We had the traffic management center being put in right now on the uh municipal complex.

I think there was 360,000 within this program uh yearmarked for this project, and I think we've got a three million dollar grant to help get that one funded.

And then the Jenkins Avenue project, which is the theme of the overall book, the Tour of Jenkins.

That is a uh $15.5 million project.

We secured $10.2 million in federal funds with the city share remaining being $5.2 million.

And so anything that doesn't have the federal funds locked, I know staff is working hard to get those grants put in every year and trying to improve our chances to get those to match our city matches.

Then savings from any of those projects go back into those same list of projects.

Okay.

Next we have the bridge maintenance bond program.

This was approved in 2023.

It was a 10-year program where voters authorized $50 million of general obligation bonds.

Today we've issued 16 million of those bonds.

Um this is another one where we're working hard uh to go and get any sort of grant funding or federal funding to help support these projects to help move uh the projects down the list with the funding.

Um we received a $13.8 million dollar grant from the uh Abstitute Shawnee tribe on the uh Porter Avenue rehabilitation project.

Um, and anything else we're working with the the tribe to continue to get funding for the remaining projects.

As you can see on the list there, four of these have been complete with uh three more in design, and the most recently the 24th Avenue Southwest Rehabilitation Project has been designed.

Um FYE 27, I think there's two requests.

We have uh one for 72nd Avenue Northeast Bridge replacement, the design of that one, and the 48th Avenue or Franklin Road Bridge Bridge rehab uh as well for $500,000.

Those are for both the design of those bridges.

So the next two, by the time we get to this next presentation, we should see two more in design in next fiscal year.

Uh next, um, similar to the street maintenance bond, the proposition for the permanent homeless shelter and resource facility coming up on April 7th as well.

Uh, this is something that if it passes will be um included and factored into the uh probably the final budget when adoption comes through.

This would be for an $8 million general obligation bond paid over 20 years.

Um, the city would contract the operations and pay for those operations as well.

Those would not be included in the capital budget, those those would be coming out of the general fund.

Um so the $8 million would go for the construction of this facility built on uh property that the city has purchased on Reed Avenue, and this would be a home of shelter and resource facility that at night would uh shelter up to 120 people if the voters approve it.

Um so with all that taken into account um taking those midpoint projections and factoring in some of these recurring projects.

This is where we look at how much we have available for new projects.

Um again, just want to point out that this does assume that we're spending all of the previously appropriated funds in this fiscal year, which is something that won't happen, but we include it in these projections just to get an idea of how much we have appropriated versus how much we're um adding in the next fiscal year.

So we're negative eight million sixty-five thousand six hundred and ninety-seven dollars for FYE 2027 and the projected available for new projects.

And then out of the capital fund into the public safety sales tax fund.

Um just quickly touching on what we talked about last time.

Um we still have one of the critical capital needs left within the PSST fund that voters uh approved, which is the reconstruction and relocation of station five.

Um with the revenue bonds in the PSS T fund being paid off in 2027.

Um just wanted to go ahead and get started on the uh the design and figuring out where that location is going to be and paying for that land.

Um, and so I know that in the next few weeks we'll come up with some sort of a I think there's an agenda item in the next few weeks to come up with the the funding for the design of that um it's on Tuesday's agenda for uh funding for the implementation on the fire side of the matrix um assessment.

So we'll be seeing that in the next few weeks, and the current estimates for the new fire station are um around six and a half million dollars, probably a little bit more by now.

This is a few years old, I think, when the request first started coming in.

But that'll that'll be around six and a half million dollars at least to get this uh new fire station built.

And then finally, we have the Norman Forward Sales Tax Fund, and this was discussed uh last Tuesday.

Some of the remaining projects we have in this after all the major projects have been built.

We saw the Saxon Park and Canadian River Park.

Um we have some new project uh new park projects and existing neighborhood park project renovations, and then some trail and traffic improvements as well left in that.

And then factoring in those remaining project budgets.

Um it was discussed last week that we had an FY31, a projected surplus uh fund balance of 11 million dollars.

And so there's um you're presented with some project list to go through and see what what all you would like to uh prioritize those with.

Um when it comes to the FYE 27 requests in the Norman Forward Fund, uh the first two there, the Kids Base Playground replacement and the park sign replacements, those are just two of those projects that were in that list uh just to get the conversation started.

I'm not sure if those will be in the preliminary budget when you're presented with it, but uh, those were submitted as requests just to get that conversation started on those, as well as the neighborhood park improvements for $650,000.

That's going to be the existing neighborhood renovations and uh $21,000 for public art projects, which I don't think those have been um earmarked for anything specific, but just appropriating those funds so they're there when those art projects arise.

And council, for your consideration, that that fund balance that we anticipate sitting in the Norman Forward account.

Um don't feel like you're on a treadmill trying to keep up and you have to have a decision made before the budget's adopted.

You'll amend your budget throughout the course of the fiscal year when new resources become available, or when such a list becomes finalized and you say, Yep, those are the things we want to spend this this uh Norman forward balance on.

So if we make it through a process and you're comfortable by the time we adopt the budget, great.

If not, if that's July or September or November, that's okay too.

That 21,000 art project goes along with uh Saxon Park.

And uh we were trying to anticipate uh or or guess what y'all might want or prefer, and that's reasonably threw down um kits back is kits-based playground now.

And uh we'll add that we do have a request out to T set for a $600,000 grant with that, and there is a matching portion of that.

So even if that does get approved, we would probably need to come back to y'all and find uh whatever that magical math number that goes along with that six hundred thousand dollar matching portion of that grant.

And truly, we won't see the full surplus until 2031, which is the final year of this plan.

So that's why we're starting the conversation, but there's no rush on that.

Okay.

That's all we have this evening.

Um, if you have any questions or comments, we should have the preliminary budgets in April or the exact day in April.

Um, but we'll have those to you for review before our next meeting in May, on May 5th.

You'll uh you should get the preliminary budgets uh before the April 17th meeting, which I'm told uh a lot of council members won't be here for.

But so how did you council member?

How did you get these numbers if you don't have the inputs already from the division chiefs?

Uh how did you get it's just an allocation for previous years uh back on I guess it's the second or third slide.

The recurring yeah, recurring project requests for the four.

Those are requests that have been submitted the recurring requests.

Yeah, yeah.

We start in December on the internal processes to get to something that looks like uh a budget proposal based on all a council's input that that you would anticipate and be able to support.

Just and just for comfort, um we we heard some comments in the last couple of council meetings about uh some serious concern on the part of uh community members about uh our our current budget reality, which is great.

It's wonderful when the community is paying attention to.

But what we want you to recognize uh if you take a tour uh in the finance department, what you'll see on one wall is a long list of award-winning budget preparation recognition from the government finance officers association.

Uh that's a nationwide group, and they recognize excellence in both your financial reporting of your audited financial statements and your budget preparation.

Um we talk about deadlines by which we need council to adopt this budget because we send it to the state of Oklahoma, and they verify and make sure what you've adopted is legally compliant.

So even if we brought you a budget that was not legally compliant, it wouldn't get very far.

It'd get kicked back, and we'd have to amend that and get it fixed before we could do accounts payable or payroll in the new fiscal year.

So staff has uh high degree of expertise in being compliant with all the rules uh under which we operate for both budgets and audits.

So you're in you're in good capable hands.

Being being compliant is one thing, and then the other thing is okay, what do you divest from?

What do you continue to do?

Two separate things.

Correct.

And so that's council's job.

Think about do we divest from anything?

Do we add to anything?

Do we take away from any that's our that's our job?

So you can decline.

Absolutely.

All these words.

Yeah, I've been through that environment myself, and really the other side of the house.

Okay, what's the other part of the top?

What is it we need to divest from and or not?

And and we had a wonderful conversation just a few uh short budget years ago.

Um, we brought a recommendation, and I think in total, 11 positions were being recommended to be added citywide.

And the council member said, well, if if we're recommending we're gonna add 11, how many were requested?

104.

Uh so to go through uh our processes and practices to get down to this is everybody would love more, but here's what we think we can afford ongoing to make sure we don't bring on a body this year that we have to lay off next year because our current revenue projection was unsustainable.

So those are things we do keep in mind.

Uh uh, and we'll be happy to bring you those recommendations uh when the time comes.

We pride ourselves it was a council priority a handful of budget years ago, that we we don't want to be laying folks off.

That's that's a sign that we missed something in the budget process.

We should have caught it early enough, or we could have corrected course by uh holding some positions vacant until the situation steadied itself.

So agree completely with your assessment and throughout the rest of this process.

Um, if council sees anything that that provides you with a level of discomfort, please raise your hand early so we can address it before we bring you the final book to adopt yeah, or your decision should be based on risk analysis, what fund, what not the fund, and insight into that would be great.

You bet.

Um we'll actually put that on paper.

Um, we've had I think this is where the the art and the science come in, uh, is related to that revenue estimate and what trajectory do we see ourselves on for our major revenue categories.

Um, it's a little easier in the world of our utility revenues on our enterprise funds.

The number of customers just tends to grow at a relatively stable clip when it comes to what's going to happen in the world of sales tax and use tax collections, a little crystal ball activity happening along with input from every department, not related to revenue estimates, but what are you seeing at your windshield?

Every one of our directors has a different set of news feeds that gives some insight as to what uh what direction we're heading.

Are we heading into a more positive set of circumstances or maybe uh a more negative set of circumstances?

And um, and I gotta tell you, as as good as we have been as successful as we have been about putting a pin in a revenue estimate and getting really, really close.

We've had instances the when we were in budget development, this time in 2020, and COVID had just become a thing.

The president had just announced his national emergency, and we started looking at revenue projections with not really an understanding about what COVID meant.

And a group of people, not a doctor among us, felt like it's the flu, and when it gets warm outside, it'll all go away and everything will go back to normal, which is right around the beginning of the new fiscal year.

We assumed OU will be back at full tilt, full football stadiums, and none of it happened.

And lo and behold, we finished the fiscal year, and we're right on budget in our revenue projections, and we recognized what materialized was that was the luck part, the the art part, the science failed us.

Uh, people stayed at home, they staycationed, they didn't go spend money out of town, they bought a Peloton and had it delivered to the house, and when everybody stayed at home and and shopped from home, it kept us in a pretty comfortable revenue position at the end of the year.

So our analysis was completely off, and sometimes better to be lucky than good.

We got lucky in that one.

And then we had two or three straight years of record.

Record growth record increase, and then plateaued sets.

And we we boy, we couldn't explain it.

Um on the public safety sales tax part.

Um so we've talked about there's a list of projects that was approved by voters when the PSST was made permanent in 2014, 15.

Um, and um the projects had to be done in order, is the way I understood it.

And fire station five was the last one on the list, and couldn't be done until the emergency communications system was paid off, which was the most expensive piece of the whole thing, from what I fire recall.

About 15 million chief on the communications piece, yeah.

Yeah, that and you got the uh the radio system that was also a big ticket item, probably just under that.

Those two combined the radio system.

Abra's replacement program, which is another size, and then I know fleet mechanics, uh, dispatchers, and then several trucks, and then uh so fire station five is the last one.

And is there so is it not classified as a rural fire district because it's in our city limits and we're a bigger city as a whole?

Because I know there's this discussion at the state about rural fire districts and funding, and so this station will does currently and will serve an entirely rural area, and in apparatus uh obviously the chief will recommend equipping uh a new fire station five differently than fire station one.

Um, but chief, in terms of fire districts and what you're hearing, what you're seeing out of your windshield, um we know there was talk at one time legislatively about the establishment of public safety districts, primarily fire focused, uh, and there was deemed to be a constitutional problem with the legislation that was approved, so it did not go forward.

Um we recognize um Norman in its ISO rating as having a dual rating, one for the urban response and one for the rural response.

So there are different expectations about uh 911 call when uh station five, station six are the closest stations, you'll you'll you'll experience a different response time than you would if you lived in Ward Fort.

So and the station serves all the south half of the lake, all the state park plans.

And the boat, Chief, is the boat parked here or is it parked at six?

It's at station six.

So we'll have to get one here though, where we're proposing to put it.

But obviously, this study that we're hoping to get approved next Tuesday, we'll go into that.

Um, but no, they they will respond to the lake, but the boat we have is a station six on the other side of the lake, 72nd Alameda.

This district is south part of the lake and the east side of the lake.

Oh, let me kind of uh kind of a reverse L following the lake.

Probably the most busy part of the lake, perhaps that whole south side of the Calypso Cove, the yeah, the recreational side.

Thunderbird Casino and all of the little X area.

Um, so just wondering if there's any opportunity at all for outside funding for rural fire stations or um capital projects.

We're watching both uh stateside and um to see what the the feds may be interested in in terms of we would consider a fire station to be infrastructure, not unlike uh wastewater treatment plant or uh water infrastructure, it's it's infrastructure from which services are provided.

So and then the way it's set up right now based on what voters approved a year from now when the bonds are paid off PSST becomes part of the general fund.

Correct.

It'll be it'll be in in terms of the strings attached, uh all of the bodies that are currently funded out of PSST, uh they'll that the revenue stream will be able to, and I think we'll be able to track it coming in, or do you guys just allocate it to PSST when it comes in?

It's a journal entry to allocate it.

But I I want to clarify though, um, it was the the projects were not in any specific order, they didn't have to be fulfilled in any specific order, they were prioritized um in the order that they were fulfilled.

So the the radios and the um the fire the apparatus replacement program were and then the positions were filled kind of simultaneously.

Um and the reason that we haven't started on fire station five, which is a cash issue.

The bonds were um issued, and the thought was that they wouldn't cover most of these critical capital needs.

So um we haven't it wasn't that we couldn't start fire station five until uh we paid off the bonds because they don't pay off until uh next March.

So it was just a cash flow issue.

Um, and now that we've uh fulfilled all the other critical capital needs, we have uh cash-free a little bit to start on fire station five, and that's when you'll see that agenda item next Tuesday um where we're gonna start shifting some money from the leftover ECOC.

But um, does that answer your question?

Yeah, yeah, just that all the voter approved projects will be done.

And previous conversations I remember is that after that happens that potentially PSST wouldn't be accounted for separately anymore, it would just be blended in.

But council one of the things we'll probably will need to discuss is do we prefer that it still be in its own category so we can track it at least, even if it doesn't have to go towards any specific things anymore.

Um, and then there's been the discussion about the PSS T3 for additional capital projects that are identified in the matrix study and the staffing part of that as well.

So that's a separate discussion, but wrapping up the current PSST program.

Um, and then I've kind of always favored there's a there's a voter approved sales tax fund, and I think it's a good idea to have a tracking of it, you know, to continue having that even though it's not required anymore.

But so uh as a discussion for council, I guess next year when we absolutely uh when when the time feels right, um, in and to recognize that the bodies on board we've fulfilled the staffing side of that request, and the cost of those same bodies exceeds the amount that we were collecting in public safety sales tax.

So uh in oftentimes we overspend the PSST fund and the general fund backfills it because their police officers and firefighters they're general fund expense if they're not PSST.

So that most of those dollars get spent every year.

Um and fire station five is a very unique scenario to relocate an existing station.

We're talking about a capital project to build a new fire station, which is primarily a one-time expense, and at least we already own all the equipment and we already uh have all the bodies that will move to the new location.

Council will get to make a decision on what to do with the asset from a vacated fire station five.

Oh, right, that'll be fun.

Council member Bruce, Jeff.

Yeah, uh, we didn't follow all the conversation, but just want to make sure we're sure I understand PSS uh the PSS two it never goes away.

Correct.

Correct, it's probably okay.

It was just going to fold into the general fund um after folding the general fund.

Well, it should be earmarked, right?

If that's what the voters voted on, it should be earmarked for particular purposes.

All of those, once those are fulfilled, the purposes that voters approved next year will well, fire station five when it's paid for, that'll be the end of the because those expenses aren't going away.

So, if you're not going to be able to, and so I'm thinking about the voters voted on for a permanently, and so I'm thinking, well, that's an account.

That accounts never go away because it's funded for a particular part of the sales tax, and that's for safety and security.

And we would uh refer to that that accounting as our maintenance of effort to demonstrate to the public we didn't go spend a bunch of other general fund money doing other fund things and supplement to the general fund that that it loses traceability when you say that.

Yeah, I agree.

That's why I think that it's a good idea that even though we wouldn't be required to anymore, that we should continue to account for it separately.

Councilmember Dixon.

Councilmember Gansbury?

Oh no, okay.

All right.

Um, so okay.

I look forward then to the continued discussion about PSST and the future of that.

And um uh I think there'll be some further discussion on Tuesday about the request for funding for the implementation part on the fire side, and then police department in short.

A few minutes after so we'll have their own requests um for the that part too.

So um, but as of right now, there will be an item on the agenda Tuesday for funding for fire station five, one, two, and new stations.

1011 sites, designs, budgets, all of that stuff for capital program.

Okay, any other questions about the uh capital budget stuff?

Okay, thank you very much, staff.

I appreciate it and looking forward to the continued budget discussion so they march on towards June.

All right, um, the second item on the agenda is a consideration of adjourning into an executive session as authorized by Oklahoma statutes uh to discuss pending litigation associated with bad day towing and recovery company Inc.

versus City of Norman uh Oklahoma Supreme Court case uh SD 12329.

So that is second.

I understand a motion to adjourn into executive session and uh this is all the police keeps falling away.

So what a name for our towing company, right?

Bad day, yeah.

People bad day.