All right.

So Gary Bell.

Okay, we'll go ahead and get started with the study session, City Council study session for Tuesday, May 19th, 2026.

We have four items on the agenda.

The first one is an update on the one transit commuter rail program.

And we have one of our representatives for Norman, Marion Hutchinson here to uh lead us in that discussion.

Thank you very much.

And um, this will be a high level view.

I was given a dance in 15 minutes uh directive.

So I'll cover it.

And if you have questions, we can talk again, or I'm happy to meet with anybody separately.

So the first thing I want to say is we've been working on regional transit for 20 years since 2005, and I've been involved since 2010.

And Norman has led the way on this.

So many former mayors, all our former mayors, so many council members have worked on this.

Uh, so it's something that isn't new, it's just been in the works and kind of finally gotten to the point where we're almost ready to get it done.

So we'll just kind of go through this pretty quickly.

Uh, one transit, which was formerly the regional transportation authority of central Oklahoma, was created by the member cities back in 2019.

So that's Oklahoma City Edmund and Norman.

So we're now an independent governmental agency.

We represent you.

I and Chuck Thompson are your representatives on our board.

And you know, our mission is to uh develop a regional transit system for the Oklahoma City Metro, and we've got great partnerships with the federal and state governments and all of the local uh leaders as well as our current transit operators.

So this is really all about growth.

And Oklahoma City, we all know it's just it's it's been very successful.

And when I say Oklahoma City, I mean the metro, Norman.

Uh it continues to grow.

We've had a lot of success on uh economic development and our populations booming.

The metro is supposed to reach uh by 2040 about two million in population, and we're at 1.5 now, so that's a tremendous change.

Uh and Norman's population is projected to be at 175, believe it or not.

So, you know, we're not gonna stop growing.

And the one of the fastest growing regions in the country, uh and you'll notice like I'm gonna talk about Salt Lake in a little bit, we're right behind Salt Lake.

So the big problem with growth, and all the benefits are good, but all you inevitably you hit the point of congestion.

And when congestion gets to the point it affects mobility, then you're affecting the quality of life, but you're also affecting economic development, and we need to be able to connect the region and move our citizens.

Over on the left is Oklahoma Cities, that was last year's total transit ridership, and that includes uh the embark system in Norman, uh City Link, that's it.

And the reason we're not with our peer cities is we do not have a regional transit system.

It's as simple as that.

Uh but we're at that point where all other cities kind of get to hit 1.5 million in the metro, you've got to start looking at transportation options.

So this isn't about trying to make people not drive their cars, it's just an addition to your transportation system in almost all large metros.

You've been to Salt Lake, Dallas.

This is the this is your uh next transportation alternative is transit.

And why now?

So we've you know we've just got accelerating growth in the whole metro, and everybody's I'm sure driven up and down I-35.

I just drove back this afternoon from Edmund at 3:30 and it was packed.

And so you've got delay in uh per commuter in annual hours that's accelerating.

So it's just something for our workforce for mobility of our residents that we've got to address.

Uh and one critical thing is ODOT's a big supporter of ours now because I mean they've adamantly told us they're out of ride away on I-35.

So it is not, it's not going to get widened.

And if you think about it now, think about it, you know, in 10 more years.

So transit improves mobility, which is is critical for those that need transit, but a big part of the regional transit system, if it's done right, is creating choice riders, and those are the people that have a car but decide they'll use transit because it saves them time, it gets them where they need to go, and it saves them the cost of fuel and all of that.

Uh enhances quality of life.

So uh one of the big times is time spent in traffic, you know, you've got more time to either work on the train while you're riding.

They've got uh work tables, Wi-Fi, or you know, get home early and not sit in traffic for an hour if you're commuting.

Um, one of the big things though, it's not just about moving people, it's economic development.

This is really a key part of this that I want to talk about.

Up on the top left is an area in Plano, an old area of town, and that was back in like the late 80s or or so, before and after a Dart station.

So that's a Dart light rail station on the right, same thing.

That's called transit oriented development, and these systems, a lot of younger people, especially want to live near transit stations, and so you put in mixed use developments and it creates more of a density development.

And that's another thing is the city grows, you kind of run out of space for sprawl.

This isn't saying you can't still have you know subdivisions, but it's a new way to have density areas of mixed use.

And I mean, a lot of people want to live around transit because they they don't have to drive, they can uh access their transportation, and then they've got amenities all around it.

It raises property values, it increases local taxes, it's it's just a tremendous economic benefit.

So, this is a quick just an example of they call it TOD.

That's in the planning world, that's what you refer to it as.

And it's just a really great mixed use environment uh that provides the amenities for people that want to live near that, and uh gives them good transportation options.

Uh, this is real important for every dollar invested in public transportation systems.

You end up with about a five to one return economically, and that's you know, you're talking about billions of dollars invested in construction development, the jobs that go into that, and on and on.

And that's not including the private economic development for these TODs.

That's just from the transit agencies uh building their systems.

So a big part of this is economic growth.

I like some of these quotes.

Uh, the better you move people, the more business you generate.

And the big one is most companies want to locate in cities that have these because they know their young knowledge workers want to live near that.

And if you if you're in a city and you put your company there that has a transit system, your reach to more employment is greater because you're of the extent of where those lines go.

Uh this is just kind of talking about regional advantage.

Uh, cities are trying to develop these because they want to attract those businesses, and so if you've got it, you're attracting companies and new residents, and a lot of younger people are when they want to move, they're like, Well, do you have a you know, rail transit?

And I've even met some at my presentations that have moved here from Denver or Seattle, and we're like, Well, this is great.

Because when I first moved here, I was like, where's the train?

Where you know, how do I get from the airport?

So this is really important for regional uh competition.

So we are modeling Salt Lake.

Salt Lake is one of the last of the big metros to have developed it.

Like we're kind of behind them back when they first put this in, uh, right before the 2000 Olympics, they just got some federal grant money because the Olympics were coming and putting their first light rail line.

They're very they were very car-centric, you know, kind of conservative Western culture.

And once they put the first line in, it just took off.

And so now their annual ridership is over 40 million on their commuter rail line, and their commuter rail line runs from Provo to Salt Lake to Ogden, and so kind of think like Norman, Oklahoma City Edmund, because Provo is BYU, and Ogden has uh Weber State College, just like uh UCO, and so it's really successful.

And in comparison, like Dallas's ridership was 55 million the same year, but they're so much bigger, and it's because their systems built they've just did it so well.

And the one of the best things about being one of the last metros of our size to do this is we can look at what cities have done right and what they've done wrong, and try to emulate the things that really work.

Um, this is just some comments from some of their mayors about once they put it in, how what a huge difference it was and the way the people move and people are using it now every day on weekends, so it's very successful.

So, this is really something since 1999, there's been 10 billion dollars of private investments and transit-oriented construction in that in Salt Lake City around every station.

You know, here's a commuter rail station that's north of my Farmington with apartments and everything going around it.

So, this is what kind of comes with it, and then that generates sales tax revenues, it just generates all kinds of additional economic benefits, not just for the developers, but for the municipalities.

It just generates all kinds of additional economic benefits, not just for the developers, but for the municipalities.

So I want you to focus on this a lot because we think Grapevine, Texas, is very similar to the benefits you're going to see here in either Norman or Edmund.

So back in 19 in 2019, uh Fort Worth finally put in a commuter rail line that runs from Fort Worth out to DFW with number of stations, about the same length of line that we're going to put in.

One of those stops is Grapevine.

And their ridership every year is setting new records, and they've had all this big transit-oriented development right downtown Grapevine, and that's the Vin Hotel, and it's called Harvest Hall.

And that was a local uh private public partnership with uh one of the developers there, and it's just really generated a lot of great revenue.

So they bring all these people in now that come to their festivals, and you can think like Norman Music Festival or anything that we have here.

You've got people that are going to ride down from either Edmund or Oklahoma City.

Um, just notice that first paragraph.

There's been an explosion in business with the arrival of the train.

Sales tax is up citywide 23% since 2018.

Businesses within a five-minute walk of the station have 38% gains, and property values within walking distance are increased by 95%.

So this is the kind of economic benefits that come with it besides moving your moving your residents.

So we want to, you know, focus on mobility and connectivity, safety and accessibility, economic workforce and development, sustainability, and viability.

So let's go to our system plan.

Uh this map has the north-south line in red, is the first uh project we want to uh develop, which is the commuter commuter rail line from uh Edmond to Norman.

This is a modern commuter rail train.

This is the latest version that uh San Diego's running.

These are Siemens locomotives with uh twin cab cars, and then like I said, they have Wi-Fi, great comfortable seating, uh light rail out to the airport at some time in the future, superimposed underneath or superimposed on top of what is Oklahoma City, Norman Edmonds bus system.

And so the point of all this is if you do it right, all this becomes connected, and we're gonna connect up the entire metro in one big system.

So most people can get just about anywhere they want to go with with the transfer.

Uh, we're not going to do all that at once, it'll take time to do this fiscally, you know, uh in a conservative way.

But um, those are the proposed stations right now that we're planning.

Norman would have three, one out near Tecumseh, downtown and South Norman down by Highway 9.

And we're gonna be running that train in the BNSF corridor.

They'll be partnering with us, and they have agreed to let us run special event trains, and we will have a station at OU at the Duck Pond in Lindsay, and we'll run uh game day trains on all home OU games, and then of course they'll let us run them to Thunder Games or during certain festivals.

So it's really a great layout in the way our existing railroad ride-away allows us to connect up and anchor this system with Norman on one end and uh Edmund on the other for great ridership.

Uh, part of this then also expands the bus system, which you've got to do in order to connect up to all the new stations, so people have connectivity and can ride.

So it would provide expanded and improved bus service, uh, more stops, new routes, you know, uh all the good stuff to come with that for those that you know really need uh transit bus service.

I'm gonna get through these pretty quickly.

This is just kind of fun.

So this is kind of to show you what all this would connect you to up and down the commuter rail line.

So we're talking major employers, UCO, the Capitol, Health Sciences, the downtown Oklahoma City, Tinker, FAA, OU, Higher Education, up and down the line, OU Medical Center, OUUCO, OCU, dining and entertainment, you know, University North Park, downtown Norman.

I mean, we're you're gonna be moving people back and forth.

That, you know, I always say my wife once asked me to go to Edmund or Oklahoma City on the weekends to go eat dinner, and I drive it all the time, so I never go.

But people are gonna travel if it's easy uh to get from one to one place to the other to enjoy those kind of things.

All your sports venues, Devon Park, Thunder, OU Sooner Games, local festivals.

Uh this is like Grapevine, you know, this will bring a lot of people and a lot of visitation into Norman area attractions.

So this, I'm almost done here.

This is kind of uh thrown together, not to say this is what it should look like.

This is just to give you an image of what it could look like with a station and what's happened in Gradevine.

So, you know, those are just some superimposed things from Grapevine down from Plano from other TODs on how this will really transform and improve and re-energize downtown with everything that's going on already down there.

Uh Edmonds in the same position, they're very excited about that.

So you're talking about bringing in lots of visitors, but also we've got a large commuting population.

And so one of the things that it's referred to as park and rides, those other stations, you know, have large parking areas.

So if you live in any area, you know, north or south, you can drive to that, park your car, go to the city, go where you're needing to go, and ride back.

And that's that's pretty pretty common.

Uh my last last slide.

I just want you to kind of see how long we've been working on this and how much has been done to get to the point we're at.

Like I said, multiple mayors, many, many council members from Norman leading the way on this and with the other cities starting in 2005.

All of this planning, all of the acquisitions, the Oklahoma City streetcar, which was put in to serve this system is what it was built for, so that when you get downtown on a commuter train, you can step off and have something to get you around.

Uh forming the RTA back when Mayor Rosenthal was here, uh, all the way up to where we are today.

And so we're situated that we're ready to go to a referendum.

That's all we're left to do is fund this.

And we're hoping to do that within the next nine to 12 months.

And so it'll be Oklahoma City, Edmund, and Norman.

And we do not call the election as the way this is set up through statute.

Uh the city councils will that's your decision to do that, and they'll all coordinate together.

And you know, this has never really been done like anything like this in this state.

It's kind of a first of its kind, and Daryl and everybody knows this is it's kind of complicated, but uh we're we're almost there.

So uh hope um that was fast and furious.

So I answer questions if you want to.

Council More Peace.

Just a real general quick question.

What's the uh anticipated cost for the total package?

Well, so as far as just sales tax piece.

Well, just you know, I'm really the it's a leading question, and I'm wondering to compare it against the proposed turnpike expansion, you know, dollar for dollar.

Right.

So what do we look, you know?

So the main cost in implementing the commuter rail corridor is that we BNSF's gonna let us operate on their tracks.

We have to agree to keep them whole.

They can't lose freight service, which means we're gonna have to spend quite a bit of money on infrastructure improvements so that we can run what we need to run, and they're gonna guarantee our service and actually be our contract operator.

And you're looking at you know, five or six hundred million dollars to put all those improvements in on the BNSF corridor.

Uh half of that's gonna be FTA, federal grant, new start money.

So, and then that's it's just kind of a ballpark at this point, right?

Uh, and then you know, stations and other things, but uh that's the great answer.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

And then it mentioned before that, like with the stations that there would be like uh a base package, basically that could be constructed.

But if as cities we wanted to do enhanced stations or do more details, then we would have to come up with that.

Right.

Early on, it was discussed stuff.

The cities would acquire the station property, and we would put in the stations, but we're gonna acquire the properties, put in the stations, they'll all be good, nice stations.

But if you did want to like brand one or you know, make one uh, you know, an OU branded station, then this you could pay for that extra.

And the plan was for downtown historic depot with with stay.

Right.

Stay as it is.

I mean, there might be some improvements, but the historic part of it, everything would be we're not building a new station.

Correct.

Uh for that.

Um, could you go to the back to the side real quick that showed the um ridership per metro area?

Oh, at the beginning.

That one right there.

Yeah.

So um Salt Lake City, the city of Salt Lake City has a population of 200,000, so not even really that much larger than Norman.

Um the Salt Lake City metro area is the 46th largest with 1.3 million.

Right.

And OKC Metro area is the 42nd largest at 1.5 million.

So our metro area has 200,000 more people than Salt Lake City Metro, and Oklahoma City has over 500,000 more people than the city of Salt Lake City has.

And look how many more I mean, 38 million more riders on their public transit and the trip here to ours, and we're in considerably larger metro area and larger city.

The real thing that we're fortunate is we started planning 20 years ago because Austin made the comment a number of years ago on a trip down there.

Do not make the mistake we made.

We waited till it was too late.

So if you transportation projects, infrastructure projects take years of planning, you know, and just the political part of getting it passed, getting all this done.

And so if you waited until 2040 and then decided, wow, we've got to do something, you're it's almost too late.

I mean, it really gets you in a bad place.

So we're really fortunate we did all this, and we're right now at the point where we can actually put in something that's effective.

And 20 years from now, it's gonna be our kids and our grandkids that are really gonna go, golly, that was like a couple of years ago.

It was the Thunder, I think were one of only two or three MBA teams in cities that did not have any rail-based transit systems.

So not counting just a streetcar thing, but there were only three teams of the NBA that were in cities that had no rail based transit at all.

And OKC and San Antonio.

Well, you know, if one of the other ones, I can't remember the other ones.

Cities grow, and if you're not growing, you're gonna decline.

Right.

You know, what happens to cities that quit growing.

And so we I mean, that's a good thing, and this is just one of those next pieces to be the next you want to be a big league city.

This, you know, this is kind of the next thing you've got it, you've got to have.

Well, we know how spread out the OKC metro area is.

We know how traffic can be on all the highways at certain times, and um, we know that widening them can only do so much.

Um this is the what I believe is one of the most effective ways that we can address traffic.

I know some of you are going to Salt Lake, you'll really I've been out and looked and ridden the system, you'll really come back with a new perspective, having actually been there and ridden these these modes.

If you can't go there, we'll be taking some people down on a day trip, just down and back in the day to Fort Worth and riding the Texrail up to Great Vine.

We can do that too for those that don't, and that's it's really that's a good trip to kind of see that what's gonna happen what could happen to Norman.

Yeah, I've ridden that, ridden the Heartland Flyer, of course.

I've ridden the light rail dart in Dallas to the OU Texas game many times, uh, and avoided all the traffic and parking and and everything, and it's really great.

Um, and then Heartland Flyer is in peril, so I encourage everybody to contact your Oklahoma representatives, um, even though you know it's not done until it's done.

But Texas, as most people know, has not last year decided not to fund their share of the Heartland Flyer, and their legislature only meets every two years, so they have not funded it last year or this year, and now I guess the Oklahoma legislature is not gonna fund it either, apparently.

So I would encourage everybody to contact any state reps, governor, anybody know?

I think it's a small cost for the benefit of connecting OKC Metro to the Dallas Fort, the fourth largest metro area in the United States.

So and it all connects together.

Uh, this is a big part of it, in my opinion.

And my big selling point for years has been imagine if people could get to Norman for OU football games on a train and get dropped off in downtown Norman on Main Street, get dropped off on Brooks or Lindsay.

They could maybe spend more time in Norman, they could maybe spend more money in Norman, uh, maybe have a better time, and they don't have to worry about parking, they don't have to leave the game early, which is one of the biggest complaints is people leaving the game early because they gotta go beat the traffic.

And it's like, why'd you even come here then?

You know, so people can stay till the game ends, and you don't have to worry about beating the traffic, you don't have to pay 50 bucks for parking.

So that's one of my big pitches, anyway.

So, Councilman Kerb.

Do you all plan on adding a separate set of tracks?

Because like he just pointed out, if we are larger than they are, and they 40 million people are using it.

Um, it would seem like we'd sit on the side of the train track a lot for 30 or 45 minutes wide.

So it's we've actually been in negotiations and planning and engineering with them for four years, and like I said, they will guarantee our service over theirs during our operational hours, so they will operate them, run them within a certain number of minutes.

They can't be late to one into the other, but we're gonna end up spending most of that money, like I said, will be to essentially have the entire line double tracked and extra sidings.

You know, those big long trains that sometimes stop and block things, that will be uh a thing in the past too, because they'll have more room to get those out of the way.

And it and it it actually benefits them.

I mean, we're upgrading their infrastructure, but we're gonna run, they're gonna run it.

But at night when we're not running, you know, freight runs around the clock, right?

That they don't care, they'll so they've got more capacity to move move their freight.

So it's a bit it's you know, win-win.

Everybody hears that term, but it kind of is.

So do you know how many times a day it would travel?

Like we're start, we're setting it up for uh initially it's 12 round trips a day with higher frequency during morning and evening rush hour, and then maybe going to like midday, it'll be lower with the option in the contract to go to uh 24 round trips a day where you could have 30 minute frequencies throughout morning and evening.

Now we're gonna make sure you know we don't want to do anything that's it'll if you don't set it up to have enough service and frequency, you're setting yourself up for failure, and that's why people don't use transit in some places because it's too slow that doesn't come enough, or you don't have it when you get someplace you're not connected to anything else.

On that map, if you were to get on the that train at the North Norman Tecumseh commuter rail stop, there would only be if I was remembering that there's only one stop between there and downtown OKC, and that's that 29th Street.

So you right because since more is not a part of this right, we don't have to stop there.

It's a direct running outside keep on going.

So to the Verity almost to downtown Zoom stops.

Yeah, it is any other questions or comments from counsel for RTA.

Thank you so much.

And I anybody wants to meet privately or in a group uh that more questions, I'm happy to do that.

We can get an update in CPTC any month or if any time if you have questions, Marion sure is happy to talk to you.

All right, I'm gonna let you get us to standard.

Okay, well, thank you.

Thank you so much.

My wife's going through the mention graduation.

I'm gonna get over that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Marion.

All right, item number two is a discussion regarding the Sooner Mall sales tax rebate agreement.

Got copies of that agreement in its current form.

The agreement you see Catherine Walker put together in coordination with uh the attorneys representing the Sooner Mall properties, it is 100% in accordance with the term sheet council had previously approved.

Um Derek Caldwell, our mall manager is in route, and he said if they have any questions, hold them to the end and I'll be there to answer them.

So he's he's making his way this way, but uh nothing uh too interesting or too exciting came uh up through the process.

Uh that term sheet council had approved made uh moving to the draft agreement you see before you pretty painless.

So council McGrey.

Or um nothing new.

Uh they had shared their initial questions about the map.

The those questions actually resulted in the development of the very last page uh of the agreement to describe uh what properties are in included in the agreement.

Uh and then edab did uh discuss um uh higher cap um and a different percentage.

And council had discussed that and said nope, council is happier with 100% and the lower capit that 300,000 a year.

So between the two maps, I know Derek's not here, but I was pretty sure that fillers with exhibit A, they actually own their own, they're not a part of it.

They do own the building in that portion of the parking lot, but in their uh operational agreement, uh all of the improvements are still managed by the Center Mall properties.

So they would still participate in uh through exhibit B.

Okay, all right, and that's just for uniformity.

That's just for uniformity.

So when they're doing parking lots, you don't have a really new section of parking lot, not a really mad section parking lot.

Um there are meeting minutes for ebox discussion about all this.

I will touch base with uh Mrs.

Walker and Sarah in the city attorney's office and email those to council for your consideration.

Appreciate it.

I think there's a salary on the website.

Okay, just looking up.

Councilman.

Uh yeah, just to reiterate, this is a remake, sales tech remake.

You're not giving anything up front.

This is only money with created by the mall and returned, correct?

Correct.

And if they invest and do not see a return, then they are eligible for zero explain.

Thank you.

So they will definitely have to be strategic in how they how they invest.

Correct.

Uh up to 300,000 uh annually.

And in assembling the numbers for that three-year average, um the monthly average sales, it has declined three years in a row.

And I think that was the kind of the alarming point that uh was uh attention getting for all of us when we when we look at the property as a whole, and of course, in the news, the stories of what malls are uh doing in some of our neighboring agencies.

There are some mall success stories, and there are unfortunately more mall failure stories, and ours just happens to be on main street and I 35 in Norman.

So definitely uh in our best interest to ensure the uh longevity and the success of that particular property.

Um so they would have to get the rebate, but they'd have to reverse the downward trend.

We'd have to get positive just to get anything to see nickel one, yeah.

Council Mercury.

So we're voting on this next uh it could be on uh the agenda next Tuesday night with council's concurrence.

Um I still have some questions about it, and I know he's not here a bit.

Um, just because we see the chatter online about it.

So, like the first year is that like 60k is what they could get back, and then up to five years is what we were talking about, yes, with two, three year agreements, and those renewals are absolutely at council's discretion because to continue the strategy or call quits at your preference.

And uh, I mean, like let's just say the five years within two, three years, so that's where you get the 300k number from it in order to get back to where the mall was pre pandemic.

Um I think it's a about a 14 million dollar increase in gross sales at the mall property, and that would get them at about 300,000 in a rebate at that during that term, it's not like the first five years you're gonna get 300.

No, they they could potentially hit it um in multiple years if the return uh produced that kind of growth in sales, which that's impressive.

Okay, well, I just wanted to get that out there because there's some other information floating around that it would be like all that all at once, but we're really talking about 11 years, and it is also the um the 2.3 percent of uh discretionary sales tax.

So your Norman Forward, public safety sales tax, public transit and capital still come to you for uh your budget, your appropriation, your utilization as you see fit.

So okay, thanks.

I know it's been a little while since we first talked about this item and everything.

Do I mean once again probably question for the guy that's not here, but um have we heard any rumblings about any the possible tenants for Sears?

Have we heard any progression in those contracts or talks or I have not uh but then again I haven't grilled uh Derek on the subject.

So uh by all means, um as you spend a little time plowing through that, please jot down all your questions.

Uh if you'll email them to uh Rick and me and Catherine will jump on the answers and have them back to the group.

This still isn't dependent on correct.

That's no what I heard the most of us say that we didn't want to make it correct.

Can you read done counselor?

Yes, sir.

Council Grant.

I actually uh met with Derek maybe two weeks ago and asked a similar question, and I was hearing November, December for a potential lease signing.

Um and after like five years, the council, if council did not believe it was worthwhile, could say that's it.

Absolutely, and not renew it for another three.

Um but I would but potentially if they were hitting that top mark and hitting that 300,000 threshold each of those years, that would probably be a sign of potentially be a success sign of success, hopefully um for them.

Councilmember Bruce.

A couple of questions.

The uh 1,800 square feet 2,000 square feet for city use.

I have no idea what the square foot is per year to rent in a in a place it's had what's a rough figure on that.

That's a great question.

The other thing, the other question I had was on the options for extension.

Uh you bundled those up in in several years.

So my mind that option you're tied in for those two years or three years.

Why was the decision to go that route instead of have yearly options?

Um I couldn't tell you that there was necessarily a strategy either way.

The initial request was for five years and two uh three-year options, and so that was the idea that was brought forward, and we didn't receive any opposition to that strategy.

So it could have just as easily been a one-one one-one-one after the uh initial period.

It's gonna be free of future councils that they make the decision what they want to do.

And uh still the same case that according to the police department, that's probably not something we need.

We don't need a in terms of yeah, uh to to provide an opportunity.

Should um should it be advantageous to the police department to have a substation in the mall, that space would be uh made available and uh working with the police department.

Um that they just it doesn't really operate that way in the current environment.

They tend to operate out of a car, they've all got their computers with them, and and that seems to be the most efficient way to spread their uh availability around on this on that section could we maybe do police department substation or other city of Norman use subject to approval by Norman management um absolutely working with some other things that might be cool to have.

I don't know something we might something that came up with Councilman Grant's station.

Um then I'll get councilman.

That's what I was asking when we were gonna vote on it because we could throw in in that section.

Um just if this doesn't work out, can we do something else?

Um and for the police station.

Um I was hearing that they didn't want to do that.

Well, that's the other thing about that.

Um they were open to it.

That was the other thing.

But they have to get permission.

They went through a whole process to just get the substation added.

So if you put that little addendum at the end, it's like this is to approval of the mall management.

Yeah, it's yeah, the the mall uh tenant group, they do meet and discuss and have some input as to future tenants to make sure the tenant mix just stays balanced.

So uh Mr.

Call will put out there, would you guys support uh police substation?

And they said yep.

So that's what's in the agreement.

He said it would cause lengthy delays if they got to start that process again with the input, but he said they're happy to have that conversation and could be amended at any time.

Councilman Hank proposed it.

Um I just wanted to continue expressing my support for this.

I think that capping it at 300,000 and not front loading it makes it, I mean, like Matt said, it is a it's a heavy lift uh for them to correct and get back to a number where they once were, plus any future development.

I know the property company that they are owned by also manages uh hotel properties as well, and so they do put those types of properties on existing properties, so uh there may be some benefit there, but um, I would like to lock in the three-year term uh for the mall because as they go to issue debt and it's backloaded by a rebate like this, they'll use that for financing.

And if it's subject to change every year, that could make that more difficult for them to capture the benefits of a financing mechanism that they wouldn't otherwise have.

Uh so that's from the bigger councilmore.

Uh to the hotel point, I also spoke to Derek about that, and I don't know what we have to do to make that happen, but it seems like a very advantageous thing, and there's a lot of I would call underperforming parking lot out there.

So great address, great location, easy on, easy off, great visibility.

Oh, I bet you don't and your number is $25 a square foot, triple net.

It's $25 a square foot, triple net.

And I think what something worth just considering about it is some have mentioned that the mall ownership being a large corporation that's out of state that could afford to do improvements into the mall, I'm sure.

Uh my kind of perspective perspective on that is that you know if there's an opportunity to make to make a local contribution to health that property, or do we want to rely on a large out of state corporation?

This is probably not the biggest thing on their portfolio of properties, and so will they make a necessary investment into it or not?

I don't know.

And do we want to rely on the then them to do that in order to keep our mall from becoming like Heritage Park Mall in Midwest City?

To the mayor's point, um, when you have an ownership group that has multiple properties, each property literally competes for the investment of that finite capital dollar.

Gee, a lot like our departments do with our uh budget process.

So um each mall operator works mightily to ensure those investment dollars continue to flow to that property in our case.

Um Mr.

Calwell um going back to corporate headquarters and saying City Norman loves their mall, and uh this is why you guys should continue to invest in this property and not shift attention to other uh shiny things.

This this is the shiny thing.

So uh that's exactly how those those conversations go with that big corporate ownership group.

Councilman Dixon.

Um I think I remember Derek saying this is either the smallest in their portfolio or the second smallest, probably like second smallest.

Um but I'll always be super short.

Uh uh I support this as it is.

Okay, we don't want to have to have a breakdancing contest to save them all like that.

Well, Tiffany is popular again because of stranger things, so maybe she'll do the mall tour.

We can get our councilmer Kirby.

Is their portfolio strong?

I mean, have you did a research on them?

Because we have the hotel at Robinson that has been in distress for how many years and they have how many hotels, and yet here in Norman, it looks great from wherever they live because they're not looking at it every day, and they're not endangering their firemen with it sitting there.

And you know, we had perfect swing.

The owner I think was in California, so it looked great from where he lived, but yet it was an eyesore for us.

So I'm just curious, like have y'all did a background check to make sure they don't have any uh holes in their portfolio to make sure that this ain't gonna end up another Robinson or Highway 9 perfect swing.

This is either the largest or second largest mall ownership group in the country.

They are they're the flagship of this space.

So um they've got an enormous portfolio of properties all over the country, and that's that's what they do.

When we talk to um our current operators about different models and different amenities, like hey, could you put a hotel in here that maybe the lobby opens into the mall?

They can go to the portfolio and show, yeah, yep, this is where we do that exact thing.

And how do we develop more into the parking lot because Norman doesn't have any parking minimums?

It does free up space for future investment that it may be built out in other uh other portfolios, but we still have room uh to grow that mall or uh grow the property uh that returns and supports that mall.

And then my other question was y'all were speaking about the security booth or the police booth.

I know right after the Arlington mall was completed, it was overran.

I mean, you walk in it, people spit off you uh balconies down onto you, they'd show you the guns in there.

Uh underpayment, I mean it wasn't the most inviting environment for such a brand new mall.

So I was just we are gonna have security there, right, to make sure that this brand new investment is protected from they do have a security presence at the mall, and um, and of course the PDs in the neighborhood relatively frequently with uh their investment in whole size current safety tone.

Yep, and as soon as he walks in, I'll we'll yeah, jot them down.

We'll see if we can catch them before we're done tonight.

Just let's council, yeah.

I need to know today tonight.

I'm leaving.

Yeah, because yeah, we gotta holiday on Monday to post it.

It's on the agenda and there's objection, we can always postpone it, of course.

Absolutely.

Yeah, is the consensus to move forward at this point?

Are you anything?

Okay, then as of right now, it'll be this agreement.

This agreement right here will be on the agenda Tuesday.

So have the conversations that we're in transit.

Okay, any further comments or questions for staff about that part?

All right.

We'll move on to item number three, and then if uh when Derek gets here, if anybody does want to ask any questions, we can come back.

All right, item three is a discussion regarding the proposed FYE 2027 City of Norman budget enterprise funds.

Yay.

Kim Clint here.

Cam Clint, and we've got uh Nathan and Chris here uh on the sidelines to fill in the blanks.

So thank you, Mayor.

Um Kim Kaufman, not the budget manager, but I'm doing this presentation.

Um, and then Clint, of course, uh finance director.

And tonight we're just gonna kind of give you an overview of the uh proposed budget for the enterprise funds for the upcoming fiscal year from July 1 through uh June 30, 2027.

Um, and this is a picture of the book that um everybody should have received mid-April.

It's on our website.

Um, this is the budget calendar that's in your budget document.

Um it was uh approved by finance committee back in September.

Um, and you can see uh there's a lot of work that goes into developing the budget.

We're down at the bottom at mid in May, almost at the end of the process.

Um again, you received your uh preliminary or proposed budget books in April.

We had um a study session.

The first study session over the budget was April 28th, and that was general funds, special revenue funds, and that was also the first public hearing at the council meeting.

Um, and then you had on May 5th the study session for capital funds.

Um, and tonight is study session for enterprise funds, and we'll have our final uh public hearing on next Tuesday on the 26th, and then the council will um consider the budget for adoption on June 9th, and then of course the beginning of the fiscal year is July 1.

New Year's Day.

And just to kind of touch on uh what are the enterprise funds, they're operated in a manner similar to private enterprises, uh, where the intent is that the cost of providing the goods or services are recovered primarily through user charges.

Um the sanitation fund, the water fund, water reclamation fund, pretty self-explanatory, um, sewer maintenance fund and new development excess tax funds are kind of um subfunds of the sewer of the water reclamation fund and the sewer maintenance fund, of course, just is a five dollar uh sewer maintenance rate.

It was adopted in 2001.

It's uh it funds PAGO capital projects on our uh sewer lines, and then the new development excise tax fund revenue um comes from new construction building permits, and based on uh wastewater uh generated.

So we're gonna start with the sanitation fund tonight.

Um between residential commercial collections, they bring in over 100,000 tons each year.

Yard waste compost brings in over 60,000 tons each year, and then of course, curbside recycling started in 2008, uh transitioned from republic uh to in-house in fiscal year 25, just last fiscal year, and then we bring in over 4,000 tons each year recyclable materials.

Um the charts on the left, you can see here kind of the trends of uh what we receive in the landfill each year at the transfer station, and then uh the transfer station revenues, and they both kind of peaked around uh fiscal year 23, and then uh utilities kind of made an effort to increase uh the transfer station rates to try to curb the amount of um trash we were receiving at the transfer station, and now Chris would say that we're kind of at the sweet spot uh when we compare um tons received and uh revenues received.

That's a simple math problem when you have uh folks willing to drive from 25 or 30 miles out of town because our our uh fee was so much cheaper.

We thought, yeah, we're although we're efficient as all get out, we need to stay in the market to incentivize uh neighboring communities to take care of their own um recycling and in the solid waste drop off 20,000 tons or less because of that.

That's the that's because of that.

They stayed home.

That's correct.

Is the the rate increases did kind of curve that a little bit?

We recognized there were people driving with trailers full of debris past a landfill because the landfill was going to charge them more than the transfer station in Norman, and we thought, okay, that that behavior needs to stop.

Okay.

Uh so these are the four that previous slide.

The um so other than that little bump right there, is that show that we've roughly even though the population of Norman's grown since 2015, our waste production is somewhat level, except for that old bump right there.

Is that an accurate reflection?

I mean, it's slightly growing.

Um I graph it, just our residents, just what we go pick up.

It's it's slightly growing out of one percent, one and a half percent, but really that extra was just all extra people bringing outside stuff to us.

So our waste is about equal to population growth.

Yeah, and then did you have on there that cost of the tipping fee?

How much we spend every year just uh it's in an upcoming slide, it's just over three million dollars.

Um, so moving on to the recycling drop-offs.

We have four of them.

Uh, they're the red stars on this uh chart here.

Um they bring in over 1800 tons each year, and then the hub at the bottom.

Uh, you can bring it's at the transfer station, you can bring in scrap iron, wooden glass, and then we recycled over 200 tons of glass each year.

Uh so this is one of the my favorite parts of this presentation where we uh look at rate comparison.

Um, compare this compares Norman's uh trash rate with 16 other kind of benchmark cities.

Um, and recall that Norman's trash rate is 17.20 cents.

Uh three dollars of that is for recycling.

Um, and that includes uh two bulk trash pickups, one in spring, one in fall, one one time a week collection, uh, as well as one time a week yard waste collection, free brush drop off, the four recycling centers we just touched on, free compost as available, and then of course the residential curbside recycling.

Um with these other 16 cities, um, the green bars depict uh cities that also offer curbside recycling.

Uh blue does not offer curbside recycling, and then the two orange offer curbside recycling through um a company called Recyclops.

Um you can see that there's one, two, three, four cities that have lower sanitation rates the Norman, Newcastle, Enit, Edmund, and more.

Um, this has been our rate for the last 15 years.

Um, but most of these 16 cities have higher rates than we do, so just kind of an interesting metric.

Not only have we not had a sanitation rate increase in 15 years, basically, yeah, 15 years.

Most cities probably raise them pretty annually, and um more as it shows in Newcastle don't offer the curbside recycling.

Correct.

There's nearly as much as ours.

Right.

And then that other part, these services included.

Um I don't know for each one, but I'm pretty sure most of the cities don't offer all of that list of stuff either.

And so all of that's included in our cost, and there's a bunch of cities that their cost is higher than ours, and they don't offer any of that, or only a few of those things.

So getting more for less is what I've seen it as far as sanitation goes, Councilmer Kirby.

Do you know if the people in ward five are paying that uh curbside recycling fee, even though we're not allowed to have the curbside recycling?

They're not used to pay 14.

Okay.

I did not know that.

Is there a way we could get the curbside recycling?

You're not dense enough.

It doesn't it's hard for three bucks, it's hard to go get it twice a month.

Could we put a separate pickup station out there?

We have one at the uh fire station on East Alameda.

Oh, that's right.

That's kind of our between it.

Customer grants.

Um we're not only have to go to the sanitation.

That's what I was gonna.

I'm I'm bragging because we've gone so long, but we're there.

Uh ref tells just looked at our uh rates, and we're reviewing the report now, and it looks like we need what you say two bucks, two bucks a month for customers, kind of what they're recommending.

Uh, once we finalize the report, we're gonna bring it to council and we'll all discuss it.

Just let you know where we're at.

And it's not just sanitation, it's also still wastewater needs one also, but it's a separate fund.

They reviewed it also.

Um not dire, but what it does is just with more income, you're allowed to replace more trucks per year, you know, just keep up with your stuff.

Um with the sanitation and the wastewater, are both of those coming at the same time for discussion?

Uh we could.

I don't know.

The Reptela study will, yeah, we've got the data on both, so we could do that in one uh study session in the summer or something.

You want to do that?

Yeah, and then um also maybe get a survey out there about if people support this if we understand it.

And then that graph right there.

Um you say ward five's not dense enough for anything.

Uh if they had a separate charge just to make up for how sparse it is, do you do recycling for it?

Or we could calculate it would be, it would be a chunk uh to have that big old truck drive out there two days a week and pick up you know 30 or 40 pounds.

Two times the month, or no, I guess it might be more because it I don't know.

How much what would it be?

We're barely hanging in there on the three bucks for the the everybody between the 48s.

We're at uh we're generating like 1.3 million with that money, three dollars, and we're spending about a million, but that extra 300,000 I gotta save, I gotta buy a new 600,000 truck ever so often, and I have three or four of those running.

So I was gonna ask Councilmember Kirby how how desired is recycling out there.

Recycling is heavily desired, and it's also um it's kind of a sensitive subject considering the neighborhoods that have neighborhood associations out in Ward 5 already have the recycling, so they drive right past a lot of our uh neighborhoods to get to them neighborhoods, as well as the apartments over here by Walmart.

All them people requested recycling.

A lot of people are elderly and are living there for the convenience, and there's no recycling options because of too many doors.

So I don't know since it is an apartment complex, couldn't we get one in the parking lot to where they could walk down?

I mean, there's a lot of ward five that just don't have recycling, and I know myself I do it.

My dad who's 70 drives into the fire station uh every week and recycles.

I mean, we want to be good stewards, but we are not offered the same opportunity.

So uh maybe a separate we'd have to talk to find out.

But I mean I know a lot of people want it.

And we can ask rep teles to break that out.

And I know he's working hard, so not trying to no no, it's uh it's a consultant, they'll totally run the numbers for us.

We can uh we can discuss the rate stuff, um, and then also uh a few years ago a multifamily pilot program for recycling was done and uh wasn't very successful, I guess.

So uh but that was a few years ago.

Um, and uh we can get an update about the results of that and then discuss if we want to explore it again.

So that's definitely something we can do.

And we are doing the recycling in-house now just last year.

Uh we were doing the math, and it was gonna be more expensive to continue to have a contractor provide that service.

So Chris and Nathan decided um the demand for the service isn't going away, and if there's a more cost-effective delivery, um, and lo and behold, they've figured out a way to deliver more cost effectively.

So it's it's a it's a whole new workload.

It's you know, uh having to negotiate the deal with the uh wholesale buyer of our recycled materials and dealing in that commodities market, but uh it is working, and since you know times have changed and the commodity markets have changed, it's absolutely worth re-examining um what a uh multifamily solution might look like, and then how could we group uh communities in ward five to see if if if we could schedule it in such a way that makes it more cost effective, but absolutely worth the effort.

Um major uh revenue assumptions for the sanitation fund again.

The rate was set in 2011, $17.20 per month for one polycart.

That includes the three dollars for curbside recycling and 20 cents for the Oklahoma solid waste management charge.

Uh, if you want a second polycard at $7 a month, and then uh user fee of revenue has growth has been estimated at an average annual growth rate of 1.5% per year for 27 and the out years.

Major expenditures in the sanitation fund over three million was included in the 27 proposed budget for capital outlay, uh, which included vehicle replacements, polycart, dumpster replacements, and computer replacements.

And there's the landfill tipping uh fee.

Uh it's it's the same as 26 at 3.125 million, and the ending fund balance for fiscal year 27 in the sanitation fund is 5.57 million.

And that's the that tipping fee is the one I really try to get residents to understand is we're spending as a city, even though it's a ratepayer enterprise fund, not tax dollars, but 3.1 million dollars a year just that's what we're spending just to throw our stuff, trash wood.

That's what it costs to put it in the landfill.

That's it.

Putting three million dollars a year period into the landfill.

That's to dispose of our trash.

So reduce reuse.

That's a lot of money.

Uh just to bury trash uh forever every year.

Um just imagine all the things we could do with three million dollars.

Um if there was some other way, but anyway, I always like to point that out because it's not going up this year, but it has gone up um over the years.

Um controls that fee on the city.

Okay, we take it to shop one.

Okay, so there's two big ones in OKC.

Yeah, OKC gets the best deal because they're the biggest customer.

And we get a good deal because we're a big customer too.

That's for a budget.

Uh I was just curious.

I uh because I don't know.

Is there any way at all to incentivize recycling?

I only ask that because I know some not everybody in my neighborhood has a recycling cart.

So I'm just trying to think of like ways that we could convince people to recycle.

Yeah, we try with education and try to encourage, but some people don't want to.

I mean we do have a real high participation.

Yeah, yeah, we can do a lot of cities, a lot of cities we bragged how many we do have to participate, but mine all over time.

Oh, this is literally another.

We do a count every once in a while, how many cans are out?

It's it's up around 80%, I think.

Last time they checked.

That's good.

That's pretty good.

I mean, would it hurt to like all go in and if we're doing ward meetings remind people?

That's good.

We can always ask uh utilities to come through and give goodies as well.

Recycle, yeah.

Yeah, we can use this first though.

Yeah, try not to even buy it if you want to number trying to understand any fund balance of 5.5 million.

It's a positive fund balance in a year.

So, Chris, what risk do you have out there?

They say, hey man, I gotta have money in the bank cover.

Just buying trucks.

The probably my biggest concern is the um the batteries.

Um sometimes they get thrown into the recycle stream or the trash.

And if they get squished or crunched, they will start a fire.

So we've had a few truck fires.

Our trucks are rigged so they can put a hose on it and pump water in it quickly, and they know they have a protocol to dump it on the street and get rid of the hot load so it doesn't burn the truck up.

But we've had two of them where it burned the outside you know, outside of the truck, didn't hurt the motor or the cab.

But that's probably our biggest concern.

And those are six hundred thousand dollars for a truck if we were to lose one.

Yeah, just a follow-up question on the truck.

So in my mind is 250,000 plus a year on a truck.

As far as miles, how many miles they put on them a year?

Um, I don't know that actually.

They do go through a set of breaks about every 90 days, so I can get that.

Yeah, but we can absolutely we'll email that back to you what the data looks like.

Yeah, fleet keeps it by vehicle, and Chris correct me.

Um, the lion's share of our solid waste fleet.

We have a lot of CNG vehicles in that fleet, uh, so it really extends the service life, the service interval in a C and G vehicle could be about 12,000 miles just because the CNG runs so clean.

Uh and what we did find when we have extreme cold, uh, the last of our diesel rigs, the diesel kind of gets all gelatin-like, and it takes a few hours to warm one up so we can get it back on the road, but the C and G seems to do really, really well in that uh colder environment.

So fleet's definitely on top of it, but we'll get you those fleet statistics and um how many miles we typically get out of a solid waste vehicle before we decide it's time to surplus that one out.

And also to touch on your fund balance question, it's just north of the 8% recommended or I guess required fund balance reserve levels that we have.

So that would be like three and a half million in the sanitation fund.

So this is just a little bit higher than that.

Has to do also with the timing of the capital projects.

They didn't have any new capital projects in uh fiscal year 27, probably trying to build up some fund balance for that.

So all that goes into consideration for fund balance levels.

And Kim Household hazardous waste is still operated out of the solid waste fund.

That's is it yeah?

Some of that contributed the solid waste water and wastewater all pitch into the doers team.

Okay, I was thinking 32, but okay.

Um major capital projects um in the sanitation fund from uh the current fiscal year to be completed next fiscal year is the compost facility scale house at 1.2 million dollars, and again, no new capital projects requested for fiscal year 27.

Um, but potential budget impacts for next budget process.

Uh again, Raf Tell us currently performing cost of service study to be completed in the current fiscal year, so before next fiscal year begins.

Uh-huh.

Staff request has been for a sifter.

To get our mulch, but it could possibly help us generate more.

You know, I'm a typewide.

So right now we give away all of our compost as is.

People love it.

We run out really quick.

Yeah.

So for me to buy a two to four hundred thousand dollar sifter screen, it won't give us anything else.

It'll just put our compost fund more in the hole.

So it already flees us about 400,000 a year.

That whole operation loses 400,000 a year.

I mean, if it just set it up by itself.

So that's why it's not cost effective, but um, we're gonna look into a small one and make sure we're not getting something to a big OM problem where it breaks every year, and I gotta buy another 200,000 dollar one or something.

So we're gonna try it.

And we we talked about maybe putting a little price to it.

So if people wanted the sifted stuff, maybe you'll pay 20 bucks.

Council remember what's it sifting exactly?

Like you give through the bigger.

Our mulch our compost isn't you know super just dirt.

You you see a stick.

Some people complain about that part of it, but it's still pretty good.

I mean, it grows grows stuff really nice.

High quality.

Okay.

Um then moving on to the water fund.

Um, and the water utility produces over five billion gallons annually, runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, of course.

Uh, the chart at the top on the left here shows um in billions of gallons or annual water production.

Um, in 2025, the darkest uh part of the bar there is what is processed at the water treatment plant, uh primarily from Lake Thunderbird, and then the middle bluer bar, I guess, um, is what uh comes from groundwater or our wells, and then the light blue at the top um comes from our Oklahoma City resource.

And then the picture on the bottom is our uh water treatment plant.

So last year we relied more on water treatment plant and lake that we did on what we we get three billion gallons, so three across the board, that's really all we're allocated.

But we have a contract with Dell City to buy 300 million from them, so 3.3 we can get every year with our contracts.

If the if the lake gets over full, it goes into free free mode where we can then use and it doesn't count against our permit.

So whenever it gets above the full mark, we really use a lot of lake water because it's good chlorinated water, it's a very affordable way to make water.

So that's 25.

We had a lot of flood pool water, so we used it really nice.

And rest of the wells, that's a that's an opportunity to rest or groundwater.

Yeah.

Okay.

Council of Cook.

Is this facility set up for if the AI centers going all over OKC right now?

Drive our water cost up.

Can this handle taking on more what are you talking about?

The uh well, because you have to do yearly contracts for that 600 million gallons of water we purchased from OKC, correct?

We get a million gallons a day right now.

Uh three six 365 million gallons.

That's just we just buy that and we just base off of it.

Um, and the advantage it gives us we it's like so 30 million gallons a month.

We could take 10 in one day, two days, and then not take it the rest of the month.

So a couple of days when we're needing some better.

But what I'm asking is so you buy from Dale City, you buy from Midwest City, you buy from OKC.

Yeah, each one of them are putting in their own data centers right now, which are gonna take about a million gallons a day as well, which is what we use.

So when next year's contract comes, it's gonna come down to the nitty-gritty of who's gonna pay what for that water that we're gonna now start competing with private industries, not just do we have first grab at the water over private industries, or do we have like a locked-in contract for water rates for the next five years?

Or if water goes up, can this facility take on more pressure to make more water for our residents?

Yeah, what's what's the extent?

We're getting ready to re-sign a new Oklahoma City contract.

We usually they like us to permanently sign on so like a year.

They they operate similar to us where you have AWWA has a methodology for how you do cost of service for how much the water costs, and then they calculate justifiable rates because otherwise you can get sued for that.

I think the last rate increase was like for the last or the next four years.

That's typically about as far as people can go out just with so we are locked in on a like a four-year purchase.

They have a set published rate, it's not something we negotiate with them specifically, it's like ours, it's in their ordinance.

And so everybody that's a wholesale customer with them is paying that same rate.

Have y'all taken into consideration though that we might not have that water from them facilities in the future?

Um, our discussions with them when we were doing the aim plan was that there would be water available.

I mean, they're building a 72-inch pipeline all the way down to Otoka.

They've got to go get more water from Sardis.

Those are all things that are in their long-term capital plan that they're doing.

Um so there will be water available.

We we are fortunate Nathan spent a good amount of time working at the city of Oklahoma City in uh in utilities, and um the methodology that was adopted by Oklahoma City 40 plus years ago was to develop a water system that would sustain a metro population of two million, and we're not there yet.

So uh their system is designed to uh provide more water than is currently being drawn.

Uh so they've still got room to grow and and what they can uh deliver to us to all of their 700,000 customers and and uh customers into the future.

So there's still a good size chunk of capacity in their system.

Uh waterline maintenance is one of the divisions in the water fund, and um if you guessed it, they work on our water lines.

Maintain 657 miles of water pipe with diameters of two to 48 inches, over 7,000 fire hydrants, and over or almost 15,000 valves.

Uh repair an average of 147 water line breaks annually, 878 water leaks annually, over 6,400 service calls, replace about 3,000 feet of old deteriorated or undersized water mains annually.

Uh the lately staff have focused on water line leaks of repairs maintains almost 1,100 fire hydrants annually and over 43,000 water meters.

Uh so this is kind of a history of our water rates.

Um in 1999, we started the inverted block rate uh to encourage conservation progressive rate structure.

It's a progressive rate structure that charges higher rates to the highest water users.

Higher T tiers are only 25% of our residential customers.

Um seven years after that, in March of 2006, we did approve another water rate increase.

Uh so that was seven years without an increase, and then four years after that, uh water rate increase was needed, but the vote failed.

Um in 2015, which is uh nine years after the last water rate, uh, a water rate increase was approved to fund water treatment plant improvements and obtained two million gallons a day of additional ground water supply.

Seven years later in April of 22, um, another water rate increase was needed but failed.

And then a year after that, um, which is uh eight years after the last water rate increase, uh water rate increase was approved to fund groundwater disinfection, water line replacements, lead services, and operational cost increases.

So um that was eight years between um uh water rate increases, and that was three years ago.

20 25 years, so then three water rate increases.

And two failed votes.

So five total votes, three of them approved in a span of 25 years.

Or since the year 2000, I guess.

So 26 years.

Uh this is our current residential rate structure for uh water.

Um, 1090 is the base fee, and then it's three dollars and forty-six cents per thousand gallons from zero to five thousand usage.

Five thousand to fifteen thousand gallons is four dollars and fifty cents per thousand, fifteen thousand to twenty thousand is six seventy-five per thousand, and then over is nine dollars and fifty-one cents.

There's a summer surcharge uh from July to August of 35 cents per thousand gallons for usage over a 20,000 gallons per month, and then we're always on a mandatory odd even uh day water and rotation system, and that's based on your house number if anybody's curious.

Um this is a comparison of rates of our water rates.

This is for 10,000 gallons of usage monthly.

Um and you can see Norman, um the only city that is that charges less than Norman for 10,000 gallons is Ardmore.

Um, and I have been doing this rate comparison, I guess for the last seven or eight years, and most cities do increase every year, definitely every two years, if not every year.

So difficult.

Uh Tulsa is uh just right above Morgan, but um Ardmore is the only one that charges less.

Edmund's almost double us in their uh I just read that they're raising their six months.

Still water wow.

Still water water.

120 dollars for 10,000 gallons of usage.

Maybe they're trying to discourage um high water usage.

Uh major revenue assumptions in the water fund, um, user fee revenues just like uh sanitation rate, um, estimated grow at a rate of one and a half percent per year for projected customer growth, and then water connection charges were increased for all meter sizes in April of 22 and 23, uh depicted in the chart below.

Um, and after recent completion of the AIM plan, Reftelus is working on updating connection charges based on the new infrastructure that will be required.

Um expenditure assumptions in the water fund.

Um, and here we're talking about the uh Oklahoma City contract in the fiscal year 27.

The proposed budget includes uh 2.33 million uh for our Oklahoma City water purchase contract, and that's uh one one and a half million gallons a day.

Take or pay at $3.28 per thousand gallons.

Um the COMCD, and I wrote that down because I can never remember what that's and I don't know if anybody services district.

Thank you.

Um that's another water resource that we have, and we have 854,000 budgeted um for that allocation next fiscal year, and then um on the capital outlay side 1.2 million in fiscal year 27 proposed for fleet computer and well equipment replacements.

The ending fund balance in the water fund is projected to be 10.3 million in fiscal year 27.

Uh capital projects in the water fund, major projects completed in the current fiscal year, Parsons water line replacement at 3.2 million, South Lake waterline replacement at 2.7 million, Danfield water line replacement at 2 million, and then the water utility master plan at 450,000.

Uh major projects from 26, the current fiscal year to be completed next fiscal year include meter infrastructure program at 16 million, the Jenkins water line replacement with public works at 2.5 million, James Garner waterline place replacement at 2 million, Tecumseh Road, uh water line replacement at 4.3 million, groundwater facility at 7 million, uh start of construction, water treatment plan improvements phase 2b, 3 million start of construction, and then the Robinson water line from 24th northeast to 12 northeast at a cost of 4.5 million start of construction, and then finally neighborhood water line replacements at 11 million.

Alamito Plaza water line replacement design phase, South Water Loop segment D, $2 million additional funding, flood water line replacements to OCA limits, one and a half million, and then the water treatment plant lagoon improvements slash filter media at 400,000.

Any questions?

And then finally we're moving on to the water reclamation fund.

Um this is a picture of a tour they're doing at the water reclamation facility, and I think there's about three staff people in this picture that are retired now.

Um so this chart um a lot of information.

The green bars are uh the average flow at the water reclamation facility from July of 22 through April of 26.

This all the black line shows a 12-month rolling average um of the flow.

The broken line at the top shows the water treat water reclamation plant uh facility capacity.

So you can see that we're pretty low capacity or pretty uh far beneath we're far beneath capacity, with the exception of a few months in uh the summer of or spring and summer of uh 2025.

Um at the top there, you can see um kind of some trends for ammonia removal, uh C B D O D and I wrote that down.

That's carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand.

And in case you're curious, it consumes the oxygen dissolved in the water.

Am I right?

Um interesting stuff, and then uh the blue line is is that removal and the yellow is solids removal.

Uh sewer line maintenance, um, another division in the water reclamation fund.

I'm trying to respect your time and go quickly because you've had a long night.

Uh maintains over 515 miles of sewer lines, over 12,600 manholes, uh cleans over 1.2 million feet of sewer lines annually, inspects and records over 350,000 feet of sewer lines, and maintains 14 sewer lift stations.

The rate comparison uh for water reclamation um were the lowest.

Uh there, the 16 cities, all of them are higher than us.

Lawton is just slightly higher.

Tulsa is um ridiculously higher than us.

But um, it's just kind of an interesting metric to see how we measure up.

And yeah, we uh 2013 is that we're last yes, last rating group.

Are there some cities that include their stormwater fee into the water reclamation fee?

It's not none of these 16 have it in their super fee.

That's just their water reclamation fee.

Okay, that's interesting.

They're nice cities right now.

That's also large.

We are needing the uh increase on this one.

We'll bring it to you and discuss it.

But uh actually, your guys' good work going to DC and getting the Congressman coal money, that five million dollars that put the fire out, or I'd would have been screaming earlier.

That bought us in year or two.

So we're good.

So 2011 for sanitation, 2013 for uh water reclamation.

That's correct.

Yeah, current rates are five dollar base uh plus two dollars and seventy cents per thousand gallons of treated wastewater, and for uh residential, that's of course based on your winter quarter average.

Um, user fee revenues have been estimated again, like the other funds at an average annual growth rate of one and a half percent.

Uh expenditure assumptions in the water reclamation fund um on the capital outlay side 1.1 million uh proposed for fleet equipment replacements, computer replacements, and pumps, and then the ending fund balance in this fund um at the end of fiscal year 27 is projected to be just over $4 million.

Uh capital projects in this fund, uh major capital projects from the current year to be completed next year, include the dewatering centrifuges at 3.3 million, aeration basin blower replacements at 2.8 million, main admin building upgrades and storage building at 3.5 million, and then uh no new projects requested for uh fiscal year 27.

And uh Chris, the top two, the centrifuge and the aeration base floor, that was our five million dollar federal it helped on those right there.

And we didn't schedule any projects because we're kind of low on money in that fund, so we've been holding the line, but so moving on to the one of the subfunds of uh the water reclamation fund is the sewer maintenance fund, and again, that's uh the five dollar per month uh sewer maintenance rate that was approved in 2001.

All projects are pay as you go, and since the this rate was established in 2001, uh we have rehabilitated over 500,000 feet of sewer line.

And that's never been increased.

No, it could only be increased by voters, I assume.

Right, right.

Uh this is a map of sewer maintenance projects funded by uh that $5 a month rate from 2003 to 2030.

Uh major projects completed in the current fiscal year include um sewer maintenance project 2019.

That's down in the lower uh southwest corner in the kind of lime and green, 5.5 million, flat aerial crossing replacement at 870,000, and then major projects in the current fiscal year carried forward.

Uh sewer maintenance project 2018 at 5.3 million construction phase uh 2022 at 3.4 million design.

I'm starting to choke on something, I don't know, but it's almost the end of the presentation.

I love it, thank you.

2024 4.1 million design phase, and then 2026 at 3 million.

Lift station radio upgrade at 250,000.

And then new projects for 2027 sewer maintenance project 2027 at 3.3 million and lift station decondition assessment at 75,000.

So while there were no new uh capital projects requested in the water reclamation fund, there are projects in the sewer maintenance fund.

So it looks like pretty much all of Ward 4 has been replaced since 2003, except for campus corner.

Is that white box in between the pink?

That's connected to the rest of Campus Corner.

That is Campus Corner.

So I would have thought those might have been replaced as part of the campus corner Tiff, but we did them separate.

Okay, we did a view Canon project when they were revitalizing campus corner.

We went and helped them get the infrastructure all new back.

So that was one.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so it looks like most of the older or most pre 1980, 1990 neighborhoods have been done in Norman.

That's kind of what we did.

We started with the oldest first and just went out.

And then we listened to our line maintenance crews that say, Oh, I'm really having troubles over here.

Can you add that and get that jumped up on the schedule?

So we kind of a little bit of age and wherever they're having trouble spots.

And we appreciate Joe Carter, former council member writing a nice article on this because he saw the pipe at Mhoff and Highway 9.

Yeah, so I appreciate the him writing that.

That was a good article in our little area.

And this sewer maintenance fee was born out of a pretty significant problem with sewer overflows in the 90s, and even a moratorium on development in Norman.

Right.

For a period of time because the sewer system was so bad.

Yes.

But the community came together and found three funding mechanisms, and this one was a good one.

They said five bucks a month from everybody.

It was Mayor Henderson at the time.

He said that's a cheeseburger.

Cheeseburger a month.

So he said if everybody does that, and it's generating three million dollars a year.

So we just replaced three million dollars a year of residential lines.

It worked out great.

Again, based on wastewater generated.

And you can see this is a graph that shows the revenues brought in from the beginning in 2003, and then through uh 27 projected.

And revenues have kind of stagnated in the last few years, so we uh reduced the uh revenue projections for fiscal year 27 to um I can't even think about those.

I think it's um it's nine hundred thousand for residential, which is the blue bar, and a hundred and sixty thousand for commercial, which is the red section.

Um, and it has been for the last few years um 1.1 uh million for residential and 300,000 for commercial.

So projected revenues.

Well, this is what I just said 900,000 from residential and 160 from commercials or from commercial projects in 27, um projects completed in the current fiscal years, the aim wastewater utility master plan at 900,000, and then in this fund, there are no new capital project requests for fiscal year 27.

And this is the final slide.

Um, this is the uh a comparison of total utility rates, and I apologize I didn't put in my red bar so you could see how Norman compares, but it's pretty obvious.

So we're the lowest, we have the lowest utility rates out of all uh 16 cities by far.

Um, our bill is uh this is for 10,000 gallons of water and sewer usage, and then it includes any other uh rates that the cities might have, like uh storm water, some have like a light fee.

Um, so Norman uh for 10,000 gallons, water sewer trash is uh 102 dollars.

The average uh across these 17 cities is 167 dollars a month.

Um, Tulsa was the highest at 211 dollars and 28 cents, and then Edmonds at 204 dollars, broken arrows at 203 dollars.

So I thought that was pretty interesting, but um there's also in these 17 cities, only two other cities don't have an additional fee for stormwater or anything else, um, besides Norman, and that's Ardmore and Newcastle.

And then after Broken Arrow is Edmond, and they have a $9 per month stormwater fee.

Um, where is C Tulsa has a $13.70 fee, and where's Oklahoma City?

$6.71.

Uh and then more has just one dollar there, so even something.

Um, but so this was the case 10 years ago, and it's still the case now.

Norman's the only large city in the whole state that does not have any dedicated stormwater fee.

None at all.

And a whole bunch of small towns have it too.

But we're the only large city in the entire state that doesn't have it.

So just keep that in mind.

And how much cheaper our total utilities are compared to every city.

Um we haven't had a sanitation rate in 15 years, and we haven't had a water reclamation wastewater rate increase in 13 years, and we haven't it's been three years now since the water rate increase.

So when people think about how things have increased in price across the board and our daily lives and everything, and especially private utilities that seem to raise rates yearly, and and are posting record profits.

Um we are you have you haven't had a price increase in your sanitation rates in Norman in 15 years, like kids in high school right now, weren't alive yet.

Some of them the last time we had a sanitation rate, and then I mean, so I mean it'd be hard to find pretty much anything I could think of that is the same price today as it was 15 years ago.

So especially when it comes to utilities and services and different things like that.

So councilmer grant.

Um I do appreciate our low rates.

Um, but I do see room and reason for them to go up a little, especially stormwater.

Um, I'll just say if we want to densify the core, I'll have to address it.

And I think even like a five dollar a month for stormwater is in the long term a good investment, thinking about what we can also get besides just those stormwater projects.

You do stormwater, you get other things.

So just want to throw that out there.

The caveat, of course, is none of those cities had to get their voters to approve the creation of a utility.

Those were all created by their city councils at various different times.

Tulsa had one of the most notable flooding events in I think U.S.

history back in the 80s.

That I mean people died.

Uh, Councilmore Hickman, former councilmer Hickman from Ward 4, grew up in Tulsa and was, I guess, a teenager in his 20s or so in college when that happened, and he talked about how it changed everything in Tulsa, and they they got real aggressive about stormwater management in Tulsa after that because people were killed and there was a lot of property damaged, and significant parts of the city were flooded.

So yeah, but yeah, they didn't have to none of them had to get voter approval to create theirs.

We do, so that's a little bit of a thing, but it's something that continues to be an issue for us.

That really highlights the skillful management of those uh three funds by Mr.

Mattingley and Mr.

Maddenwall.

The cost to provide the service is not that dramatically different.

Tipping fees at the landfill, we're all paying the tipping fees.

The cost of water is the cost of water, but our ability to deliver it as cost effectively as we do is reflective in these uh rates.

We're able to survive.

We're not, I wouldn't say thriving, we are surviving.

Um it's it's a daily challenge, and we just happen to have the best crew in the business.

It's able to deliver that service.

And we still win awards for having the best tasting water anywhere in Oklahoma.

So can I give a fun fact?

Brent Scobel who ran our uh solid waste for many years, and actually he when I took over as director, I saw the overtime before, and I said, Brent, man, is that a lot of overtime you need to hire by?

Nope.

Overtime is how you run a private business.

And he was trying to explain to me you want fewer trucks, and you want to run them as much as you can.

And so after you know, we started talking in here within the last year about overtime and how my overtime budgets are big.

I was looking at it again, like, okay, but who's who's dealing with overtime across the state?

So I asked Broken Arrows guy at the last solid waste conference.

Hey, how do you guys deal with overtime?

Do you have it?

Nope, don't have any overtime.

Like, you don't have overtime?

How do you do that?

And then I found out it's rate.

Found out he has he just buys trucks and hires people like a big crew, a lot of trucks.

He doesn't do commercial, he only does residential.

And that he's got a nice comfortable fee that he can do it in overtime.

So I give it up to Brett.

I'm trying to figure out exactly the method to the madness, but there is a madness to that.

Running the trucks hard, fewer trucks.

Big $600,000 our trucks.

And they and they wear out every eight years.

We'll find out the mileage on them.

But yeah.

Well, and the the seasonal the bulk trash pickup hits overtime hard too because that's all a weekend operation and it's a month long.

And you know, we bring in staff from different departments to help out with that, and it's all overtime.

So it really does reduce illegal dumping.

Uh so we're not cleaning up messes on the roadside in rural norm.

So we can definitely worth the effort.

Okay.

Any other council Bruce?

Yeah, Chris, if we got some words on uh water loss uh in the system and how you're bending that curve down.

Yeah, um, actually, but Nathan, because we just are finishing the new moot meters, really we're seeing a lot of um improvement there.

Well, I mean, doing the new meters is good because we got the auditor system, make sure like that we have locations where unfortunately meter had stopped and it wasn't caught, so we put in we have new meters in at every location, and those will now give us more granular data before we're you know getting once a month.

Now we're gonna be able to see that usage 24 times a day because we're getting out of the reads, so we'll be able to better understand are those uses like appropriate or like do they know that that's occurring to where or is it a leak that they didn't know about, and that's what caused their water usage.

So we're gonna be able to get better at that.

Right now, our first main goal was just make sure you know, kind of meter to cash, make sure the reads were coming in.

We looked at it the other day.

Our estimated reads two years ago was 20,000.

Last year it was 8,000.

This year so far, we've only got two months left, is 300.

So we're giving people more accurate bills.

Okay, so a lot less uh rebuilds that we got to do to fix up an error that we may have made.

So just to follow questions.

This is uh a four-meter uh breaks and water loss.

I I know you have some efforts that you're trying to bend that curve down.

Is that is that making calling?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're trying to reduce our water loss.

See, we used what do you we're up getting 18 percentage?

I mean, what do you say we were at?

15 to 20.

15 to 20.

That's that's yeah.

So think of that.

We make four 14 million gallons a day on average, and your 18% is you don't know where it went, you didn't get paid for it.

Sorry, I kind of went in the weeds.

When you do the AWWA conservation audit, it looks at what can you do to better your score, like to make sure you have a better audit.

And the biggest thing was having more accurate meters because you have people manually reading it, doing estimates.

So by getting those automatic meters, you know that you're getting good reads.

That's like step one, they always say do that first, and then now you can know better where your water's going to.

So uh the thought of we know exactly how many gallons of water a day we make, uh, and then we know how many gallons uh aggregate we sell per month through the meters, um, and then we know how much water shows up at the wastewater treatment plant.

Um so what you made versus what you processed, some went to leakage and some went to irrigation, and as we are able to zero in on how much was a leak, it really kind of shores up.

We'll we'll be able to know exactly how much we're consuming inside the home versus outside for irrigation purposes.

It we're gonna have a whole lot better picture about our water consumption uh production and treatment just by having really good meter data.

Back in the EPA loan days, probably the 70s, 80s, they used to watch cities before they would loan them more money to build a bigger water plant.

They would say you need to have your water loss.

Some cities would be over 20 percent, and they'd say we need to get to that 20 percent first fix your leaky lines before we give you money to build another water plant or go get additional water, and so we were at eight 17-18 percent.

We were starting to hit up to that 20% number, which that kind of raises my ears up, like oh, we need to get that down.

So, but it you never get to zero on lost water, probably 10, 9 would be ideal.

That's that's a good number in the industry, which still sounds like a lot.

Any other questions or comments about see that trend line from here?

That's how you're gonna have to go.

Yeah, anything else about utility enterprises?

Just again, these are ratepayer funded enterprises that are not in our government, not subsidized by the general fund by tax dollars.

These are services provided by rate payers that pay a monthly bill to the city of Norman to receive these services.

Public hearing next Tuesday night on the subject, so the public will have the opportunity to review and win.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Mayor.

Mr.

Derek Coldwell, our mall manager has made his way in.

And if we can take just the opportunity, have Derek come up grab a cherry can answer any questions you may have his way, and then we'll jump into our final subject.

He was coming in hot, but he was definitely on his way.

Sorry for being late.

Join you.

Yeah.

Derek Colwell, manager of the mall of Senior Mall.

Anything you'd like to say, and then we can take some questions if you'd like or whatever.

Just excited to get this partnership going.

Any questions anybody have for Derek about this agreement about the mall?

Anything?

Councilman Gansmore.

We talked about the thought of Sears being occupied by somebody, you know, in the future, and everything.

I'd asked just in general at the table.

You know, have we hardly any updates on how that's going?

Helen mentioned that you know might be towards the end of the year when we really kind of know for sure or not, but just from you.

So that's it all about that.

My last update out of the group of five that this company is purchasing through our company.

Um we're number two on the list.

So they're hopefully looking at end of third quarter, beginning of fourth quarter.

We're still in the pre-sale agreement, still negotiating terms.

Okay.

Councilmember Grant.

Um we're kind of addressing things that have been set online.

Uh could you explain how you guys operate and how rebate helps you like um it's not like you have bajillions at your disposal.

Yeah, so um each one of our properties within our corporation, it operates as its own entity.

We we are an LLC.

So we have, you know, when I'm fully staffed, I have four staff members, we run them all.

Um there's three office members and one maintenance guy.

We operate off the funds that we produce off of income.

Um the corporate leveled funds are uh capital investments is what our corporate level funds, but our day-to-day operations, expenses, our property taxes, everything's paid for out of our income base that we we pull out of rent.

All right, uh uh council Bruce.

Yeah, I really don't know a square foot for commercial, you know.

Rent and for you with it, is it north of 12 north?

Um average in Norman right now, 17 to 19 a square foot, and we're we're averaging 13 to 16.

But retail rent is different, it's not just uh a square footage rent.

Retail rents based off an occupancy cost.

So when you go in, um, your rent if you're producing four million dollars in sales, your rent is going to be different than somebody producing a hundred thousand dollars in sales because you you there's a uh a level of occupancy cost for any type of retail that you you want to get, and that's that's where retail rent hits.

Thank you, sir.

Councilmember Kirby.

How do you determine what you're wanting to bring in?

Like, do you poll Norman or anything to see if what you're wanting to bring in does good?

Um asking because you have somebody shopping, but nobody knows what it is.

Don't you think the people of Norman would encourage that come in or not?

Whether by the by the excitement, yeah.

So um I I have two different leasing groups.

So I have I have a um a leasing rep that takes care of uh leases that are 12 months and below, or my common area tenants, so the carts and the kiosks that are in the middle, and then I have another leasing rep, he takes care of everything that's 13 months and up, up to 10 years.

Um, and those are all the inline areas.

When you have a tenant coming in that's gonna purchase something the size of our Sears box because of competition in Norman, um, that's not known until papers are signed.

Um, because it's like any other business.

If somebody finds that somebody's coming in, there's be another developer, another real estate agent that goes in to try to undercut budgets to try to pull them to their property.

Any other questions for mall management about this deal?

Okay, if you if any come up, I would encourage anybody to reach out directly to Derek if you don't have his number up, Darryl can provide that.

I'm sure Derek will be willing to meet with anybody more than happy to discuss.

So all right.

Well, thank you very much for coming down.

Um if there are any other questions, like I said, reach out to Derek or staff, and um if there are any concerns about this for you on the agenda next Tuesday, then let staff know she says too late.

Yep.

But we don't have the press.

Okay, thank you very much, Derek.

Thank you.

Thanks, sir.

All right, item four is a continued discussion of interim solutions for homelessness.

And see here we got.

So, Mr.

Lance Harper is our building super super.

Um all things construction related, and the task was to come up with a more polished cost estimate uh for the provision of uh additional shelter bed space.

So take us through it.

We've kind of jumped back to where we were a while back so you all kind of catch up where where some of these ideas came from a couple years back.

We were looking at 113.

Um the shelter is now, it's taking that east building, cleaning it out, and putting the shelter in there and putting sprinkler system in.

So that's we had sprinkler system in our head.

Um we found it was cost prohibited to remodel because it has asbestos in the tape and mud.

10 coats are painting on it, it's not gonna hurt anybody unless you start tearing it out or drill holes in it.

So uh the cost got us there.

Um sprinkler just to sprinkle that building was gonna be 75,000.

Um, we have code and permitting issues that we'll get into later.

I mean, it's kind of we have old warehouses and buildings that you know we're using for other things, so we have a lot of hurdles to overcome.

So um, so we're gonna look at this next engineering sprinkle system that will actually hit all three buildings, which has a lot of hurdles.

Uh, and also we have uh our fire barrier and fire walls, which should probably put in we have hurdles on.

So this is where we came up with hey, we sprinkled once where we have some numbers of 75,000.

Um so all those all those things change as we know.

Uh yeah, more hurdles.

So currently we're we're in those three buildings, 109, 111, 113 on the south end, and the these were old service buildings, so those were the offices were.

Uh so that's where we were housing our uh these people now, uh, the best that we can.

So uh each building is a separate building.

Uh so we're creating more problems for ourselves.

Um the south ends or the north end of these buildings are stores.

They have uh the city's Christmas ornaments in them, they have some of our old furniture items in the back, but they're just storage areas that the city utilizes the best we can.

Uh, what we have in these buildings is there's no fire barriers no firewalls.

These hurdles I'm talking about that we're gonna have to try to overcome.

Um, there's a new serve line running up to these buildings, but all these buildings have old cast iron that haven't been upgraded.

We're kind of out of max with our with our bathrooms.

We're doing the best we can.

More hurdles, we'll try to increase it.

So I kind of wanted to get that out there for our jump in and you guys go why aren't we doing this?

Well, we've looked at all this in the past, and and we're still trying to do what we can to get us by to our new new shelter camps two years away.

Um so this is our our current building that we're in now.

Um, an estimated cost to put a sprinkler system in these buildings is 125,000, and that's coming off about an 825 square foot um average.

It sounds a little high, but I went ahead and put the utility work to bring our main line into the building, and then your engineering takes off from there and your fire sprinkler.

So I just added it all together sort of break out, but it's about 125 to do it.

Uh monitoring after that would be about $50 per month.

That's about our average we're paying for the rest of our city buildings.

Um cost to establish fire bears and firewalls, we're anywhere from 5,000, 25,000 estimate.

We really don't know what we need because we really don't have a code.

It's not an apartment, it's not um, it's not a hotel, it's not an adult daycare.

We don't know what to call it.

So, how do we get to these codes?

And you know, and I've reached out to fire marshal.

We've kind of got our hands up in there, and we don't know what to do, you know, to make it safe.

We're safe as we can be right now a fire watch.

Um, to do the sprinkler system.

I think we're gonna run it into 200,000, probably pretty easy.

Um, it's not the numbers I thought I would hit, when the numbers that I even talked with Daryl about, but as I started reaching out to these um engineers, the PL fire and a few others, they really started putting some things you know, we're going in building the building, you know.

There's things we have to um we have permitting restraints.

I mean, there's some ways we can get around that.

Um possibly the council could do uh you know, mergy resolution to bypass that.

Um, but then we worry about we're housing people.

How do we keep them safe?

We got a fire watch now, but we want to keep everybody in there safe.

How do we do that?

If we take us out of the permitting, do we need a third party to look at these fire plans to tell us what to do?

That's good.

You bring somebody like that in, it brings our money back.

You know, how do we find the money to do this?

So it's a lot of things that have hit us that that scares us.

Um that's kind of where I'm at.

I've got some other ideas, but again, we have there's issues, but this is kind of where we're at on the sprinkler.

There's things just to be in.

Uh, how much of that 125,000 would be the riser or the underground work, bringing the line to the building and all that basically work that could stay in place after this is no longer a shelter.

Oh probably about 30,000, 45,000.

And that's you know, we the water lane is just out in that parking lot, right?

From where the water line is.

Okay, so it's a really short coming in, then putting our riser up.

Um, like I said, I just added that into my my square footage cost instead of breaking it out, but it's still pretty pretty healthy.

Council member Kirby.

You use the words after it's no longer a shelter.

I thought after that shelter moved, that building was going to be sold to be demolished or something.

Like I didn't think we were going to do anything further with it because we've been promising business owners we were going to evacuate that.

Correct.

I think the long-term goal is that building doesn't exist, and a new building exists in its place.

So then none of it'll be usable.

No, I think stuff in the ground still wouldn't still be.

That's why he was asking that question.

That the stuff in the ground we could could maybe coop 30,000 back in the sprinkler system itself would be scrapped with a bit.

But that riser might be able to stay around.

Yeah, you can see that you could ask for 30,000 more.

I want to keep the sun.

That they could tap into.

Okay, so that's kind of our sprinkler.

I think it was a little more higher than what we all thought.

The other thing that we ran into was when I started calling these some fire screen companies, like it's summertime, we're going into schools, they are backed up.

So they're saying, Yeah, we can engineer it, help you work through it, maybe 90 days, but we're six to seven months out before we could get this out of production and get it in a new building.

Uh wow.

If it was we were doing this in September, it'd be a lot shorter because they're finishing up all their school work, but they just get slammed this time of year doing three windows.

Yeah, so other stuff that was bad news.

I'm springing some of this on poor Daryl because I didn't think it was gonna be this bad.

Thanks, Lance.

Sorry, sorry, boss.

So there is there is another option I looked at.

We still have hurdles, a lot of hurdles.

This is in the uh what we call the men's dorm now, which would be uh next to the couch building.

We utilize that far south in right now for their areas.

We have uh a bathroom in there now.

The back side of that first area was a warehouse area, but it is insulated as far as has a drop ceiling.

It has a bathroom we can make uh functional, it will operate.

Um it's gonna take um some demo work and some uh you know, bringing in some uh redoing some walls, those are garage doors that I have in the black, some doors to other buildings.

We have to seal those off.

Uh at our exit doors, emergency exit, uh, to two areas in that second area, which would be the far north area.

We took an HBA system off of the Andrews building.

It wasn't that old.

I thought somewhere down the road I might be able to use it again, or even an emergency.

We can set that inside of the building.

I say inside in that back area, saves me money from cutting and put a rough curb on.

We can plumb it in.

We would take one of the garage doors, we'd put a seal frame in there and some expansion metal so we can breathe, keep it safe.

Um, the other side um we can leave the garage door, put a uh seal it off, but then run an emergency door back out to that north area.

Um, this gives us about 1,800 square usable uh space.

Um that 30 to 35 people uh could be added in this area.

Um a lot of this work I use money if we did it as much in-house using my tradesmen.

There's hurdles there, we have calls every day, we get busy.

We do we do things like this to help us save this the city money, but at the same time, when I we do that, our operating buildings take priority.

So if there's something we got to run them over there, um so that's kind of where I put that money.

It could go up another 15 to 20,000 if we used outside contract.

Um, we can do the emergency lighting in-house, uh, things like that.

It's all that 35 to 45,000.

Per like fire coder fire chief coming in there for the inspection afterwards and everything.

There's no doesn't sprinkler system have to be installed even with this idea.

We use fire watch now and all at the fire marshal lengths of that.

We're in a really gray area, it's it's it's not a great place to be.

Um, it's a very uh, you know, we want everybody to be safe in there.

That's the main thing, yes.

And so for the way we look at it in the fire department is we want this permitted.

Just like we make everybody else in a city for business, get a permit.

Go through that.

Um, but we do run it like Lance was talking about.

We met this morning, and it is a weird way to say what kind of occupancy it is.

So we'd almost want to have a third party to say, hey, here's what we feel it is, and that would help define us what we need to meet on the code.

Because we can sit here and say it's an R1 and it'll require all the stuff and then kind of look at it and say, No, maybe it's this, and then it won't require as much stuff.

So we'd like to have that defined by a third party and then permitted um to get that approved and make sure it's per code for the safety of everybody in there.

So that's that's kind of my my two options that I have.

Um trying to move as quickly as we could.

And that option there is a how long I would say 90 days max if everything goes well.

So that would fit into the stipulation the state sort of made about temporarily being able to use some of their property for 90 days if we were gonna pursue an expansion of our existing facility.

Asking oh that was uh the conversation with Chad about if we needed an interim.

Which I don't think is probably gonna be on the table after some recent uh news from I think the department.

Uh I I think that higher up from the Department of Mental Health, even based on feedback that we got from them.

I think that that is likely no longer going to be an interim option.

And in fact, we might see some additional and heightened state enforcement uh in the very near future.

It goes well.

Councilmer Gansberg.

Just thoughts on it.

That's all they're over or is just thoughts, and that's it seems like anything.

My thought process is is that with our time level of 18 months, best case scenario for a shelter, which equals probably 24 months or even longer in reality and everything.

That's two winners to get through for sure.

Whenever winter does come, we're gonna have to have some kind of cold weather options out there.

Do we want to address cold weather options in September, October, November when we're running on a deadline for any time winter's coming?

We'd rather maybe forward think that and look at what those options are now.

I'm not saying that the city necessarily funds the cost of a sprinkler system in this place, but I'm saying if it could be private donations that at least supplied those funds, and maybe the city's part in it would be something like this expansion, also included, and the cost of maybe the firewalls included, but for the actual main beef of the 150, 160,000 could be privately funded that way when the building comes down, it's not technically city loss revenue, it's that people felt like they wanted to spend 160,000 to better protect a certain client that we have and everything like that.

And then we would have a sprinkler system in place not only for future people, but for the 52 that's in there currently it could be permitted and everything, then if done the right way and allowed to if we look at our focus being for winter, not necessarily rushing it 90 days quickly, you know, or something like that.

And it could be maybe a longer 18-month solution than just a short time solution, maybe done properly.

Councilmember Grant.

Uh yes, I agree with what council member Gainsbury said.

Um back in the day, but still for an expansion, still for it now.

Um I'm pretty tired of the encampments being broken up and everybody scrambling and it is on my summer priority list to talk about a w a winter plan.

Um, inclement weather plan as well.

I'll just say for the people that have to deal with our tornado season.

Um of them don't stay in their tents and they're looking for places, and that can be people's sheds and other things.

So not addressing uh people's real needs, I don't think makes their problems or our problems go away.

So um, I think that's great.

You can get 35 people.

I was hearing something like we'll be lucky if we got 10 extra beds, so this is much better.

Um I would just like to remind everybody these are people, so um sprinkling a building, you know, that ensures their safety.

I think as the city, um, you know, that I don't know about our liability because we have to like we're self-insured, but I would just say in the public's um public liability, it looks bad if something happens in there and we have opportunities to address safety concerns, and we just kept kicking the can down the road.

So that's my thoughts on it.

3545,000, that's the cost of this option without fire suppression part, correct.

Okay, and we've just been asking city care to do their fire watch, and then that isn't doesn't include furnishings, I would assume getting the beds and all that stuff.

Okay, and we believe uh potentially the furniture is transferable to the new facility, so those wouldn't be disposable dollars.

Council just wanted to is city care still on board with potentially raising money for sprinklers?

Yes, okay, perfect.

Councilor Cansbury.

Another thing that I would like is our jobs to protect everybody at the table, not just unhoused or this or that, you know, is to try to look at the overall picture of what's best for everybody in general, okay.

I have been fielded a lot of phone calls, not only from going out talking unhouse, but from business leaders in our town as well.

And if we entered in something this mindset going forward, I don't know, no, I haven't been here long enough to know the exact way to do it.

But if it if this includes some kind of recontract with city care about what firewatch is or what sprinkler means, that in that contract that's written, if there's any way to put the wording in there, that once everybody is moved officially into shelter B, then shelter A by this contract will be demolished, and to give those business owners on Main Street and the investment people on Main Street, a clear-cut directive that hey, we're not the same they're just gonna be here for a second option as a shelter forever, that we are serious when we said we get this, we close this, you know, and make that somehow permanent somebody's eyes.

And I think that maybe then businesses can maybe get behind this plan if they knew they had a clean cut end date.

Uh I don't think that's a bad idea because I do know some of them read the contract.

Um, and so having a clause in there that's basically saying when this shelter opens, this one closes.

And I would also throw it out there, you're gonna have people who are hard no regardless, and they're gonna they want us to close it now, but I would just point out that having places for people to go means those people aren't trying to sleep in their stoops or alcoves.

Um I think even with the new shelter we're building that there'll still be issues downtown, but they would be a lot greater if we weren't trying to address any of this right now.

So um to that point, and I'll nudge the realtor uh at the table.

The ability, Anthony, you can flat me down.

Uh the ability for the city to advance its objective to sell this parcel and the parcel across the street, you could sell it now, and lease it back for a dollar a month for the duration of the construction at the new site, and that could all be put together in the contract to give those neighboring property owners they know we don't even own it anymore.

The guy who bought it's the guy who's gonna knock it down quick.

So just a thought.

So also keep in mind by the time you do that, it's already time to move.

Because that's a very very it's already gonna be a complicated transaction to begin with, right?

So I mean, you're not gonna move forward on this for another six to months to probably a year then before you work that out.

And also, you probably, since it's a year-to-year contract with the operator, one, it would be very odd to put we're gonna demolish this building two years down the road, even though we're only contracting for one year, right?

Keep that in mind.

But I mean, if you're going to do like a position statement or something like that, keeping in mind that you may not be able to bind a future council, that's something probably more akin to a resolution or some official statement of counsel, right?

But I mean, I since I have been here and since there has been a shelter in downtown Norman.

I have not heard a single person on any council ever say that this is going to be a permanent solution.

In fact, I've heard the opposite from every single council.

I don't know what else this council could do to assure um business owners, uh, and also I can't necessarily think of something that would be legally binding that is beneficial to the city.

That I, as an attorney, would say, I recommend you do this because it makes good business and legal sense, right?

Because you are going to be paying more, probably to make that deal with that future developer, right?

And you're going to be putting yourself at risk because if you put a hard date on that, and then you know, I don't know, uh, you know, you get a lot of rain, and you're two months behind.

What happens then when we have to find it too much, you know.

So, in terms of there's a lot of things this council could probably do um to reassure um, but I don't know what else is.

I mean, again, like you already have gone above and beyond, I think, what is necessary.

Um, but at that point, I mean, to create something that's binding, you'd really have to stretch.

Really have to stretch.

And keep in mind, you're it's two years from now.

How would you bind a future council?

Right?

Um bigger.

Yeah.

He's not going nowhere.

Council Grant.

Yeah, it's true.

Mr.

Pierrington's point, I think a resolution makes more sense.

And I don't want to uh put anything in the way that would slow us down on this since we are working.

You have to be mindful of the time frame.

Someone says upon completion of not a date, not date certainly.

Yeah.

Council uh blodgett, and then could yeah, uh what um councilmember grant just said, I mean, I would be in full support of doing of expanding um this plan, um, but also just because of uh what attorney Perriton said that um we do need to keep that and be mindful of that.

And so I would be for I feel like business owners should already know that that is temporary because we passed a bond to build a new homeless shelter.

So that right there just deemed it's temporary.

So I think that they already understand that.

They don't like that it's there, and I get that, but it's it is temporary.

So I think that we I mean, we gotta do, we gotta make some kind of move showing that we're doing something, and we can't just keep letting them get evicted, evicted, evicted from wherever it is that they moved to next, and and it look like we're doing nothing.

So I would be in support of expanding and nothing happening with the current shelter until the new shelter is built.

Council Mercury?

This is kind of multi-point.

Are you saying you would not be in favor of making a contract to guarantee that the downtown business owners who had this toll was temporary?

How many every years ago to ensure that they know it's gonna be temporary?

Is that what you're saying?

That the contract, this is just question number one that a contract would be a bad deal.

Um secondly, temporary to me in the electrical world is 90 days when I pull a permit, I got 90 days uh most of the time in a temporary situation, and like I said, we went on years.

Third, just because we build it, don't mean they're gonna come.

This ain't the field of dreams.

There's people out there who don't want to be in a shelter.

So even if we add this on, we might not attract a single person until winter.

But we're asking our fire department who's already stressed and already this is one of their number one calls to put more pressure on them and add more people in a building that already don't pass fire code, and we want to ask them to stick their neck out for another 18 months.

I mean, this is just my question.

Um is this shelter gonna be our absolute only option that we look at?

Uh family been in oil wells for a long time.

They make bunk houses.

You can buy you can get 10 bunk houses, a bathroom stall house, and a laundromat to set over there right next to food and friends for 18 months for a hundred thousand dollars.

That's just one company I've checked with that gets these people indoors and air conditioning.

It takes the stress off the firemen and it makes our downtown businesses who have been tolerating this for many years probably a lot less edgy.

So I'm just wondering if this is our only option, I'm just gonna say it right now.

I'm a no because it is not protect our firemen, it does not protect our homeless, and it does not solve a situation that we've been in for a long time.

And I'm darn sure not going to put any more stress on our firemen who this is one of the number one calls.

Can I address that first point?

So, in terms of I'm just saying, I'm thinking like I'm not necessarily opposed to like, you know, how can council further reassure the business community?

Like it there is some again, you want to.

I'm trying to think, I'm thinking of it more of square peg, square hole, right?

Um, there were a lot of kind of uh ways to go about creating a contractual obligation for a count.

So again, keep in mind, you know, constitutionally also we are constrained to, I think, for the most part, enter into contracts that follow the fiscal year, right?

So, you know, there are some logistical and constitutional potential issues of going out that far, considering we're two years out, right?

From construction, but again, it was more of redirecting the intent to something that is within the disabilities council to accomplish to further reassure, not necessarily I'm saying that a contract might just not be the best vehicle.

Not that it is not worth pursuing, it's just a contract, especially with a current operator, which is only for a year term, right?

When we're talking about a two-year obligation, potentially, that's just not again, circle uh peg, square hole kind of thing.

And so, again, more than happy to you know, think about legal ways to reassure and legal um vehicles to reassure if possible.

That's what I suggested the resolution just off the top of my head.

But a resolution is only as good as the council that like it and contract the next people could overturn that resolution, correct?

Any contract is only as good as the council that makes it right.

And I mean, I'd argue that well, just to help.

We can only contract for a year.

So if we entered into a two-year contract, the second year that contract's not enforceable.

So then what about what Darrell re said about selling the building immediately with a dollar endless until it's moved, and then we know somebody else already owns the building and it's gonna go for it to be something else.

That contract would have to be renewed every year.

So what Anthony is saying is if this council entered into our contract for a year and it's gonna take two years to get out of this building, the next council could say next year we're not entering to that contract.

So when we're talking about the issue of reassuring property owners as to what's going to happen in the future, this particular body can only tell you what's going to happen for the next year.

We can't go beyond that because there's a constitutional provision that prohibits municipalities from entering into contracts, they're more than a year long.

So that's what the issue is.

Then why can't we ever turn the TIF contract?

Because the TIFF contract is entered into a public trust.

Okay.

Because the two months that I spend every night thinking about how to solve this endless world of homelessness and how to help this and that, everything that I write down everything I try to think of and everything, it takes just more than us at this table to be a part of the solution of that.

And so in some end game, I'm gonna know we're going to need to reach out to business partners in town.

We're gonna have to reach out to other people in town to maybe come to the table and be part of this.

And if they see that we're respecting them and their thoughts in this process, I feel that they would be a more accepting of that invite to the table, where if we just left them in limbo and said, Well, you know, we only care about this over here today, you know, and everything, it's not necessarily right by that client base that raises a lot of our sales tax that allow us to survive in this town, you know, and everything too.

And I just want to make sure they're recognized.

Um, have we checked with um city care to see what the additional operational cost would be for uh 30 to 35 people?

Um, Mrs.

Freeman's working on that subject.

Uh she recognizes our conversation.

Uh it may boil down to ultimately uh how many additional square feet and how many more sets of eyeballs uh will it take to make sure everyone inside the shelter remains safe.

So uh if we come up with a strategy and council says we want uh we want this option, do that work, but don't do the other work.

We'll give that information to city care, they'll come back with what they think that cost increase might be.

Thank you.

And second thing that I for just forgot about that's going to add on in their thing.

I 100% care about our fire department also going to end any damn building, and by putting a fire sprinkler system in this, that takes away in my world that I live in is security about what's the worst that can happen.

Because that's human error.

That does happen in the world that we live in.

But a fire sprinkler system will let us know right away if we have a fire knot in that place and make it more safe for the guys that are trying to come in and actually fight the fire too and everything like that.

Also, it's a work right.

Yes.

Um, I would also say this temporary shelter has been here for lack of um options, and we have definitely explored all kinds of options from seven eighteen of memory serves, North Porter, which made people mad.

Um we looked at a building on oh, yeah, Hootner Drive.

Uh that was also unpopular.

We looked at a building on Griffin.

Um I heard recently through the grapefind that the county had given a private homeless operator 600,000.

If we had had their help for 500,000, we could have remodeled that and put people there.

Um, but they didn't reach out and they didn't seem to want to cooperate with us.

So here we are.

It's I would definitely say it's not for lack of trying to get out of downtown sooner.

Um, and I would also just like to remind everybody that it's roughly 238 people camping outside right now.

This is maybe 30, 35 extra beds.

That is not gonna address everybody, but that will definitely be full.

Um, in fact, I met more than a few people who have told me that they would come in if there was room.

Um I I was gonna say for the possible expansion area.

Is this all gonna be for men?

Uh given where it's location.

I was hoping city care might be able to do some maneuvering around on the women's side.

I think they have a little extra space over there.

The other buildings um back when we when we start looking at these.

There's no insulation in these warehouses.

It's just and they're cut up.

This one really scares me.

And we can't do anything because the specs anyway.

I jumped the second one.

There's an upstairs area that's it's pretty dilapidated.

Um insulation after you get away from these walls.

So all this is the deck.

It's just I don't have any way to go in there.

It's city here can move it around.

I would love to see a few extra bets for women.

No, me too.

They're the ones who are definitely telling me that for safety reasons.

Um, and especially when you have people who have disabilities, like in wheelchairs, it's much easier for them to shelter in a building.

So we just don't have much it's there's no options in there.

I've I've been looking at everything.

Pulling the men out.

I don't know.

I don't know.

And you said the CouchCom building is not Chris's or got in good shape.

If you turn it into the water, our units over units over there, we couldn't get them to fire up.

You're at the end.

We kind of did a water test in that first bathroom.

And it we didn't run a snake down or didn't run the the um uh camera down it, um, but we just weren't having much luck over there.

But the units alone, I mean, we could replace the units and look at that again.

Um I just I just didn't go to that way because uh my H VC guys and plumbers kind of stirred me back away.

It's like we got if you want to do it quick, we can't get in there.

Okay.

Uh councilmember Bruce.

Well, I don't think we're so uh Oklahoma Department Mental Health.

What's their end date as far as moving?

Is it end of the calendar year?

They should be 100% in Oklahoma City.

We're very successful in keeping some pipes open, discussing different things with the department.

Uh, yes, the headlines in the news over the weekend probably negatively impacted uh their willingness.

Uh but they're still answering the phone.

I think we should still push on that rope as it relates to space.

Yeah.

There's also a discussion last week about RFI.

What's the status of that RFI going out to nonprofits?

Those that are part of the COC and those that are not part of the COC, as far as hey, what could you do given type of RFI?

Just initiated.

So staff will be working on that.

Hopefully, next couple weeks we'll have something available for the street.

And Mr.

Hinkle, are you gonna talk about your suggestion on the ordinance?

No, staff has been given that directive, and they'll bring it up when it's ready to present.

I know I downtown's not my ear, but I get calls all the time from business owners regarding safety and security and homeless.

I don't know if other council members do all do, I promise you.

We all do.

I'll just say it's never not gonna be a problem because it's downtown, and you cannot force people to go to shelter.

There are people who get released from jail who don't get a right back to their community who come downtown because it's a public place you can be, and uh without systemic change, that's not gonna stop.

Um, I do have a question for city managers.

Councilor Bursery finished.

No, yeah, I I um I think security and safety is a concern from downtown business owners.

Uh I believe uh it really needs to be thought through if we're gonna increase the capacity.

Um, because I know my calls and my you know, and my text and my emails from people that are not my constituents, but they're part of Norman that did all of them forward three, but I will get those texts and I've sit down with some of these business owners, and I'm pulling out their hair.

Councilmember Green.

Um, I was gonna ask, is there anything you can say about the death that happened?

Um we we have requested that OSBI prepare a statement uh on the subject.

They are doing the investigation.

Uh there were social media stories about a stabbing.

We have no indication that a stabbing took place or a homicide took place.

Uh so we have requested OSBI to give an official statement uh on the subject, but we do not believe uh it was a homicide or a stabbing.

Will we have to wait months for that?

That I don't know.

No, you won't.

Um right.

I it would be nice if the state gets past their maybe they figure out what happened and it's not as nefarious as it looked on the surface, and maybe they're willing to talk about maybe some longer term solutions.

Maybe if anybody's got pull with the county, um, but whatever.

Here we are.

Councilman Gansbury.

Uh since I was brought up as a question, I would like to add in some response also.

And this isn't necessarily a no, I don't think it's for anybody necessarily in this room right now, but for some of those that might be listening at home or listen to this later on YouTube or wherever they want to watch it from and everything.

You run into conclusions and you create your own story in your head to go try to put out some clickbait on Facebook, does not do the city of Norman, the unhoused, our businesses of Norman, or anybody else in Norman any good whatsoever.

A national news ran a report about a stabbing in Norman on maybe or maybe not state property.

That probably isn't gonna affect how state people think about us when their property is mentioned with Norman on the national news.

Okay, it does no good whatsoever.

People need to relax in the time like that, care about the people that it affected personally and everything like that, and wait for the truth.

The truth will come out, we'll be able to handle whatever it is, good or bad.

If it comes out of stabbing, it is then, but we can handle it that way as a community and not have everybody not more thinking that we have maybe somebody out there doing things and hurting a certain type of people now.

They might think to go do the same thing and be copycats.

So you do the city no favor by doing that.

So I would please ask next time think twice.

Councilman Kirby.

I since he mentioned newspapers and whatnot.

Uh in all my years in Norman, I had a family member who worked at gingerbread for 30 something years and retired.

I've been a part of that crowd ad fishing.

A lot of families have, a lot of dads have.

And the fact that that got canceled for the first time ever.

That's kind of one of the points is we have to respect the fact that there's 128,000 other residents, as well as children that are occupying these areas that we currently have issues in.

Um everybody keeps saying we keep kicking the bucket and we keep leaving no solutions, but even when solutions are offered, it does not clean up the problem.

I keep hearing the number 238 people, but I believe the police department, I don't know if they can speak on it, have arrested more than this number by double that have said they were homeless here in Norman.

So I don't know why we keep listing 238 when the police department's number of arrests of homeless people is well over 500.

Um seems kind of manipulative.

Maybe it's just because they came and gone.

I don't know why it's a hard 238, but just move them from one park to another park without changing anything.

Obviously, it has not worked.

It has not worked for Norman, it has not worked for OKC, it has not worked across the world.

Um York has made stances opposite of California.

I'm just saying we can't just open up and extend a shelter as well.

We're gonna have to make rules that give the teeth to the police to be able to enforce that way.

We're not waiting 14 days for action to happen when people decide they want to set up somewhere they're not supposed to.

Uh otherwise we are just gonna keep gaining because right now we're attracted.

If we have rules in place, rules that people don't want to follow.

If they come here and they want help, let's help them.

Let's I don't care if they're from California or New York, if they're here and they need help, let's help them.

But we need to put firewalls into place that make it to where we're not just openly ended, like Arizona or Utah who did this, and within 60 days they had a thousand people.

Because I guarantee it, if we can't handle 238 people, we darn sure can't handle an influx of a thousand.

Yes, uh, and we have some of our CLC and service providers here.

The numbers have always been a little funky.

I will say, since Citicare has been here and has been tracking numbers in shelter better.

I the 238 number comes from not the night of the point in time count, but the night after that we had the big snowpocalypse.

So we had 238 people that were at city care at food and shelter, not overnight, just any 23 hour space.

Um, but we believe there were 238 people that sought emergency shelter on that night, and we believe it was probably the majority of people that are in the area.

Um, I will say that CityCare's number from last year was well over 400.

So that would have been from January 16th when they took over to the shelter to December 31st.

They saw 400 unique individuals, which is much closer to the 500 to 600 number that we've seen from the Norman Police Department.

Um, some of it is transient, but my best guess, and I see the numbers, and we were in coordinated entry this morning is the number is probably bounces between 225 and 275, just depending on that.

We can reduce it with Thunderbird Clubhouse and City Care and all that.

It the thing is 238 is a snapshot number.

Tonight there will be 500 is 12 months.

I made 500 arrests of people experiencing homelessness.

So every day someone becomes homeless, every day someone gets back into housing.

So there's a there's a pipeline, right?

And so that snapshot number is just the slice of the pipeline.

So when you have large encampments happening, you might have more people that are transient from that might normally be in Oklahoma City, that might be in Norman.

There's there's movement between the two areas.

That's why we do our catalm on the same night.

Um but I I would be comfortable as somebody who gets asked about that number a lot.

I would be comfortable around 250 saying that's probably what our unsheltered population looks like.

And you're in this world seven days a week, 365 days a year.

She's in adults.

Yes, yeah, that's what I thought.

You're very she's a hero.

Yeah, she is.

And oh to that point, would an expansion make y'all's lives easier?

I think anytime you get somebody inside shelter, that's a good thing.

Um I always leave with this is an incredibly nuanced issue.

It has so many moving parts, and it has, you know, as I said last week, this is a systemic issue.

It's gonna take solutions at a federal and a state level.

No municipality is ever going to solve this issue.

You will always have people who don't want services who have been through services 14 times and no longer believe services will look will work for them.

And quite honestly, the services may not work for them.

They they are unable to participate in the systems that the way that they exist that will be successful for them.

But any time you're bringing somebody inside, it's a better outcome because they are more likely to engage in in case management, they are more likely to get entitlement services, they are more likely to get possibly health care services, they might become medicated.

They are more likely to get entitlement services.

They are more likely to get possibly healthcare services.

They might become medicated.

Anytime you can do that, you're bringing them into wraparound services, you're going to have better outcomes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Heidi's point too about having more shelter events and getting into services, thinking about council member Kirby's one solution of like the bunk houses and stuff.

Like any time we can get folks inside, yes.

Um, but at the same time, too, we have to think a lot of these people have lived in encampments for potentially years.

Um they may have lost the ability to maintain housing on their own.

So, like, while I love the bunkhouse idea, who's gonna go in and teach them some of these things?

Because you can't just throw people in housing and expect them to figure it out.

Oftentimes I've seen folks get thrown into housing and they have a bed, but they're still sleeping on the floor, or they pitch a tent inside of their house because that's what they're used to until they feel safe and comfortable enough.

And a lot of that takes a lot of case management and peer support to be out there, and like I said last week, there's not enough of that in this community.

We do not have enough service providers to allow that to happen successfully right now.

Um, and it is gonna take a very big coordinated effort amongst all the agencies, churches, businesses, all of those things to really make this successful.

Customer Gansbury?

I'd also like to just add on some of that, you know, people going to shelter, not going to shelter.

Um, there wasn't me that attended that a bunch of us in this room were at and everything like that, where I even threw out the number of those that I thought that were out there that wouldn't go to shelter no matter what you do, five to ten percent.

I I believe now after Sunday, I spent five hours out and about on Sunday and everything, and try to debrief with a lot of people, especially about the bad situation from Saturday and everything like that.

And I just asked the question flat out to everybody that I came into contact with as an option, you know.

And I really think now that our numbers about 20 to 40 percent that we have currently in tents that would not take whatever shelter might be offered.

And when I ask what's your biggest barrier of not wanting that, that way that's something that we need to address also is a lot of them didn't like the certain rules that city care themselves operate under necessarily, and thought that some of their freedoms was restriction of coming and going on their free will, things like that and everything.

So when we finally come up with some idea, that's something that might need to be discussed at a latter days.

How do you come to some kind of compromise or something, you know, to get more people, you know?

The number that I've always and we know why it's there.

I mean, but I I would think if you could get 30% to go into shelter, that would be a high percentage.

It's probably more like 60 to 70 percent if they've been outside long term in encampments, unless they're doing something where they're being housed with their peers and in some very specific things.

Yeah, people who've lived outside for seven years, it's it's very difficult to change your world and come inside.

Councilman.

I was gonna ask.

We also have thrown out the idea of limited kennels, speaking of barriers.

Um, is that an option still to if we got them from somebody?

Um, we have access to kennels.

Um they are available to us in kind of an emergency response scenario.

So if we had a part of a tornado and a bunch of people uh lost contact with their pets, we can deliver kennels and not sure.

Uh I think they're handled through emergency services, not through animal welfare.

Okay.

I I had an ex-council member that happens to be been there and hear Norman and everything reach out when that person also heard about that idea of a possibility and said that they would offer any resources or help to go along with that.

But when that was brought up, also we talked about how it has to be in cohesiveness with our animal control already about what the rules and regulations are because we don't want to just go throw up some kennels and have them taken down, you know, and everything like that.

We want to do it the right way if it's going to be done at all, you know, nothing too.

So there is a process where it could lead there, just a matter of doing it the right way the first time.

Council Mr.

Kirby.

I'm gonna jump off, of course, a little bit.

Can you tell me about the asbestos as an abangement worker for five years for OU?

That kind of caught my attention on the addressment you wanted to take.

We're just slapping some makeup on a pig.

Uh what type of asbestos was it again?

Do you know which one of the three types?

And is it on the pipes on the floor under the tile and the walls on the paint in the ceiling?

In the walls.

It was mainly in the uh the mud and drywall um popcorn ceiling.

Uh, some areas, yes.

So then that would be hot too.

And would you be trying to remove that or just put some stuff up on it and hold it for containment?

Um if we go through with um the sprinkler system, it would be having somebody there to catch the dust, and then so then you're gonna have to get a hazmat crew in there, like miss out the basement, they're gonna have to put glove bags in, do uh Oklahoma Department inspections, get a whole crew in, throw up a negative two in containment because of the type of aspects that it is, keep it super wet.

Probably so, yeah.

We looked at you know, them little them and the them demoing all about building that understate contracting it and all out of there, and our prices were too high.

Um, and that's one of the hurdles we have.

That's why I kind of left that five to twenty-five thousand added cost because I don't know what it's gonna cost.

If some of these areas in that and in one thirteen, can we come overhead and drop our down or drop ceilings and not interfere with those?

But um, all those buildings um or all these rooms here to get a sprinkler in there, you're gonna have to go through the walls.

Firewalls, fire, or they're just little rooms, but I can't get into the sprinkler system without going through there.

So we'd have some kind of abandonment to go on in there, and then this central area here, we try to sprinkle in, same thing.

So every single wall you punch there, they're gonna have to come in, prep it off, scrape the wall down, make it to where you can drill it without causing an airborne pathogen.

Yes, sir.

Okay, have you do you have an in-house hazmat team, or is this something you're gonna have to call one of the four or five people we have in Oklahoma to try to do?

It would be somewhere on the contract.

So then we are gonna be waiting on them because I know one has environmental action has the OU contract, uh, mid-south.

I think out of Noble has the St.

Anther Mercy Hospitals contract and Tinker.

Um so you might not even be able to get crew in here within six or seven months.

Yes.

And we haven't got any pricing on that.

So this pricing is minus what it would take to puncture them walls with the hazmat crew in 2026.

Okay.

So we had hurdles, we got her.

Um well, uh points made.

I think the several of the folks I've talked to, folks that I talked to out at the encampment that was at Cape Park, I mean, I just flat uh asked several of the individuals.

I mean, one how did you end up in this situation?

And then two, if there were space in a shelter, would you take it?

And every every single one that I asked that to directly told me yes, I would take shelter space if there was that these individuals anyway said they would much prefer to be indoors than out.

They didn't want to be camping in a city park on state property, you know.

Um and one of the guys he spoke at the council meeting last week, um, and I asked him, like, how did you how did this happen?

How did you end up here?

He said, Well, I'm from Norman, I grew up here.

I graduated from Norman North in 2009, and um I got into trouble legally when I was a teenager.

I have a girl feet girlfriend, fiance that's gets into trouble.

We've both gotten into a lot of trouble, and uh every time I've tried to turn things around, it something happens.

And he's like, I've I've had several jobs, I've worked at like every restaurant in Norman, and and oftentimes when they find out that I'm homeless, I end up getting fired.

So maybe there's other certain things that go on.

But um, and then the other one was Nancy, she spoke at the meeting last week about how nobody grows up wanting to be homeless or doesn't want to she didn't want to bother anybody or be a burden on anybody and understood that the criticisms that we face and that they face.

Um and she did say that she would take shelter if she could and that she had an income that she had a check from OU, but it wasn't enough to afford anything.

She had some health issues.

Um I feel like uh if there were a space to do bunks or any other option, we wouldn't have wouldn't have ever opened the shelter where it's at in the first place.

Um if we could have used any of the state land around food and shelter, if we could have gotten that rec center, which again I think is would be the best option, would have been three years ago, uh and I think it still is.

Uh if the building, you know, if we could uh make some improvements to that building, but I think location-wise, it's the best option.

Uh but we've been unable to find any other privately owned property that we could purchase for a reasonable price.

Um when we did it was next to the interstate in an industrial area, not near any public transit, not near any services.

So not only people that were against the shelter didn't want us to prove that, but people that are for the shelter didn't want us to prove that because it was so far away.

And then um, and then various the North Porter property across the street from Norwich Regional Hospital.

We've really explored a bunch of different options, and we came to the Gray Street location out of a last resort, and really getting to the point where it was like, what city-owned property do we have that we're not using?

And we were using that building, but mainly just for storage and boxes, and there were a few offices and some line maintenance folks in there, I think.

But if we would have had any other option at all, the council three, four years ago, would have never voted to open the shelter on Gray Street to begin with.

We've just not been able to find any other option, and the state property to me has been the most ideal, and it was really a miracle that we were finally able to purchase the little piece that we did get from them.

Um I've even been asked if we would be interested in any in any other pieces of their property, and I said we're interested in discussing anything.

Uh anything you got, let us know.

We'll talk about it for sure.

Um for the businesses, like I said, uh we've got we got voters to approve a bond to build a new shelter.

We're moving forward with that.

We went through a little bit of litigation.

We're like a week or two left of the appeal deal of the time period.

Um, I agree, I don't know that we can bind a future council and say they won't extend it there, but I mean, my goal from the day one has been as soon as I can find any alternative option, I will vote to move the shelter out of downtown Norman.

And so to me, as soon as the new shelters open, that is that that trigger.

Um I've had a pretty ambitious goal myself about what I think that property could become where the shelter is combined with the police department property too, about that whole frontage and how that could be uh mixed-use multi-story development.

It could include affordable housing because the city owns the property, and we can use the fact that we own it to incentivize a type of development we'd like to see by offering a discount on the price, maybe.

So I see a lot of really positive potential for that property and how it could possibly positively impact downtown Norman uh in a big way.

And so I'm fully committed to moving the shelter out of that location as soon as we possibly can.

And so I'm uh I'm for either one of these options.

Uh whichever one could get more people off the street and out of the parks and out of the doorways, um, I think is good.

Um the sprinkler thing is long more long term, but if you're saying that that puts some infrastructure in the ground for future development that might help incentivize something, then I think it's maybe worth it in that case.

Um, but that's where I'm standing on it.

I want to get more people off the street, I want to get them out of the parks.

And I I mean, I really feel for kids not being able to have the craw dad thing, but I I also feel that how unfortunate it is in our community that there's people that feel so desperate that they're willing to put a tent up in a city park.

Like I would have to be, I can't even imagine how desperate I would have to feel to do that.

And if I were doing it, I feel like I would want to go set up somewhere where nobody could see me, and I wouldn't nobody you know, to do it in a park to me is like the ultimate desperation move, in my opinion.

So um I feel bad for the people that are in that position in their life that that's they feel that that's the level of desperation that they've made to.

But I also agree that the parks are supposed to be for recreation for everybody, and it's not acceptable that we have uh groups of kids and school kids that are playing to have activities and feel like they can't because of that.

So, in both cases, we need to be doing a better job as a community in those ways.

So I'm I'm for pursuing either one of these options, whichever one we can get to that might help get people off the street while we're building the new shelter.

So that's where I'm at on it currently.

Um, and I agree that new shelter is not going to solve homelessness.

Um, some of the individuals that we see that businesses deal with that are experiencing extreme mental health and mental health issues and addiction problems.

The new shelters, in my view, isn't going to really address a lot of those folks because those folks aren't staying in the shelter right now.

And until the state really does some comprehensive reform, and when it comes to mental health care, I don't know what though what we're gonna do with those individuals.

The police cannot arrest them for making everybody feel uncomfortable downtown.

And if they do something worth being arrested for, as we've talked about before, it's a very short period of time where they're going to be kept in the county jail and they're going to be right back down there, and that business is going to be calling again.

So we can just keep rehashing all that over and over again.

But that's kind of what's is where I'm currently sitting there.

Not to add to them, but just because I wanted on the city.

Council Gasberry and then Kirby.

Just because I want it on public record more than anything else and everything that not just looking at this solution here.

I mean, one reason why I was out there busting butt on the property behind food and shelter and everything like that is it's an option that I have called in to Daryl as you know, maybe an encampment possibility and everything that now that it's cleaned and a little more sterile and everything there a little bit.

If the state was to fix their sewage pipe on that property, that's the reason why we had a move in the first place about that possibly being a temporary encampment type of possibility if the state would allow it.

But reasonable haven't mentioned it earlier and everything is due to some things that I've been hearing today from the state side of things.

I don't think that's going to be an option anymore and everything like that as well and everything.

So but I was working on that, was trying to get us there, but I don't think that's gonna be an option.

Counselor Kirby.

But then when people showed up to vote all them years ago and y'all had to make that just tough decision because people were dying on the street to go ahead and approve a temporary shelter even after the people voted no, that kind of notched out some respect.

And it notched out some trust.

And then every year since then, we haven't we haven't been able to address it, you know.

And uh this happens every year, and every year we come to this table and we we have this conversation as a city, um, and our our residents are watching, our business owners are watching, uh, people whose employees are being threatened are watching, and so you know where it's horrible what's going on with the homeless, we cannot keep ignoring the people we run on sales tax in this town.

Our sales taxes fell flat.

How many years?

I mean, when we have encampments set up right by a huge soccer bill that we spend a lot of money on, people that would come in and spend sales tax money don't stay as long, they leave, and we lose that money if they're being harassed at businesses over there around these brand new parks, we lose that money.

And I mean, this is the what we survive on is these businesses that are asking us for help.

Um, and it's not just that, you go over near where they were set up at Cape Park, them houses right next to that are people who have changed their lives and are trying to get off of drugs, and then we're allowing people to be in a park right next to them using drugs.

And I've never been through a rehab or nothing, so I don't know, but I imagine when you're hooked on something and you have to get off of it, it probably takes an extreme amount of work.

So we can't ignore the fact that they're over there working their butt off to get clean, and we're not keeping the area around them clean.

So I'm once again, I'm not against the homeless.

I mean, I wish we could do a shelter overnight right there, like we voted on, but that's not gonna happen.

And everything I see is coming out six and seven months, three to nine months, you know.

We're not it's not getting fixed overnight.

Um getting a big army tent and putting it out there next to food and friends right now.

I mean, at least that would give them something to be covered in, but we're not even discussing like a temporary temporary.

We're focused on this.

We're not even considering about tomorrow or next week or the next storm when it just rained like hell last night.

We're so busy focused on how we can expand this that I haven't heard one option in here of an alternative immediate solution, like an army tent or a you know, a 40 by 60 or 90 by 100, 200 circus tent that can have air conditioning and size.

I mean, we're not coming with any type of solution.

We sat in here for two hours, and not one solution besides this shelter has been option.

I mean, we gotta have an immediate thing we can do right now because how many days before they get kicked out of that next part.

I'll just ask you where does that tank go?

And who stacks it?

Where does the tank go?

I mean, what properties?

Okay, she mentioned $600,000.

Have we contacted the agency who got $600,000 and asked if we could put them in the area behind them?

I would not be opposed to that if the state would tell us that we could use their property.

Have we contacted the place that 48th in Rock Creek that is technically a sober living or recovering that's going through permits and ask them if that hundred acres could be occupied?

So it's it's literally gonna be to help individuals that they have the staff who know how to handle this.

I mean, have we reached out to anybody?

Yeah.

I'm just I mean, I'm just trying, I'm I'm just I'm trying to figure it out because when we leave here tonight, they're still gonna be in a park with no option.

And that's the thing too, is okay.

So if there was a person at Cape Park who's doing drugs next to people that live over there, so we kicked them out of that park, and now that person's just doing drugs next to someone else's house in Norman or next to someone else's business.

So by kicking them out of the park, we may have solved a problem for a neighbor on car on Carter uh over there avenue, but that person that we kicked out is just now a new problem for someone else in Norman, another part.

So we didn't solve anything by kicking them off there.

Uh and maybe that you could argue that the population at the McKenzie Gardens is more vulnerable.

So maybe them not being there is is an overall good thing.

Um, but like with the shelter, the shelter was open before the vote in 2020.

And the same thing as it was this time.

That was not a vote on whether we're gonna keep it open or not.

It was a vote to create to build a permanent one.

And if voters of Norman in 2020 had said yes, then we wouldn't be in this position now.

We would have already had a shelter that would have been built and not have been in downtown Norman years ago.

And the downtown businesses wouldn't have been dealing with a shelter for the last five years.

But Norman voters said no back then by 350 votes out of 25,000 votes cast.

And I told people the voters, I've told people the same thing then.

If you vote no, I'm not voting to close the existing shelter.

So get that out of your mind.

It's not happening.

So you vote no, the existing cell shelter stays where it's at, operating how it's operating.

You vote yes, and we move it.

But there's no option where we don't do it unless you elect different council people.

And every council, pretty much, everybody for the last six years who has run for mayor in city council who has said I'm supportive of the shelter of funding it, and I'm supportive of moving it, has won their elections, and overwhelmingly the people who have not have lost their elections and lost re-election on council.

Uh so I get it about the respect part, but again, we had a shelter before the vote in 2020, and it failed, so we just kept operating a temporary one.

We had to move it three times during that period of time because we couldn't find anywhere to put it.

Um but I I would love uh to be able to do something like that.

I think I mean what you're talking about is an immediate is an immediate solution if we were able to do some kind of tent.

I think there's questions about how who would manage that, how would that be organized?

But I mean, that's the type of solution I've been trying to think of for the encampment issue is this takes months to do the new shelters months off, it's still not gonna address everybody who's out camping, people that might not want to go in.

So something like what you're talking about, I I feel is a is a path if we could get some property to we can't do it in a city park, and the only other property we own is the property we're gonna build a shelter on.

So we're we we need the states.

So can we ask a church?

I'm for I'm yes, I'm and I think some people put that call out last week.

Councilmember Grant, I think was talking about that too.

Yeah, um and also council member Bruce had asked for that RFI.

So I think we're headed in that direction if we're putting out the RFI to ask those questions, and I would say, how about yes and yes, do this and do a tent.

And wouldn't you agree that helping up to 75 people get case management to deal with their mental health and substance abuse issues makes us all safer?

Um, if you don't want them camping out in random spots doing drugs, give it maybe, and I have met those kids.

Uh I say kids, the last one was a kid, but I have that downtown pantry that has food that a lot of different people come to.

There was a younger, I would say 1923, hard telling when you're out in the streets.

Uh kid that approached me that said, Do I know where an Oxford house is?

Um, and he was basically trying not to use.

So I think having more options.

Um, yes, an Oxford house.

It's like, yes, yeah.

If the Oxford House is not an option, having more space at this place makes it possible for somebody like that to get that treatment, and especially early on in their lives where it doesn't become like a habit, like you know, decades on the streets.

Um, I think there was a study in Heidi, or somebody else can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you want to intervene with um younger people, like three to six months into homelessness because then it becomes very normalized.

So um is that a correct stat?

Yeah, and I share a story that I have from this week.

Yeah.

Uh 19-year-old been home is actually a while, right?

Uh started living in one of the encampments, has been offered housing, has declined.

Why?

Because he met someone in the encampment who he doesn't want to leave behind who is taking care of him.

Not only that, that person has a brother.

Same age, same situation, different partner that they wouldn't have met if they hadn't been living in an encampment to begin with.

Um I'm I'm serious.

When I say the amount of resources in community members that mobilized, and I'm talking a moment's notice to get that done.

Had no effect.

Why?

Because it was too late.

And that 19-year-old, the longer that 19-year-old stays in that situation, the harder and harder and harder it is for that person to become housed.

I appreciate the story.

Um so, anyways, I'm just gonna say, how about a yes and like we're doing our best if CityCare is paying for uh sprinkler, and maybe we might have to do the part with the riser.

I'm not sure how that would work out.

I see that being you know, a benefit in the future as redevelopment comes.

Um obviously I'm a yes to this, but does uh staff have our consensus?

Uh we are working on the ordinance, we are working on the RFI.

Um we would gladly take a phone call from any uh church group or private property owner who takes the call.

Um in this particular scenario, we've got some cost estimates, the ability to take one more step in either sprinklered or the 109 solution, or both.

Uh, we'll definitely need consensus on that because it it's gonna we're gonna start spending some money in that scenario.

So we do not have consensus yet to advance the fire sprinklers uh and or just the uh effort in uh the 109 building, which was the smaller less costly solution, still with hurdles, but um one of the people I met at the encampment at Cape Park last week said that he worked, he was a case worker at our shelter when it was on Comanche Street, and he's now homeless.

So when we closed that shelter, we uh closed it for six months and then reopened the shelter where it's at now on Gray Street, and when we closed that one, he was laid off, I guess, and he didn't go into all the details, but he's he's become homeless since then.

He did say that, and if there were shelter space, I would take it.

So that's just anyway.

Uh any can you say I know we can't vote, but can we just I don't think now's the time for any of it?

I don't think you want it right now, what you're about to ask for.

I really don't.

Okay.

So do I think it needs time?

So staff does need some direction though, so I would encourage everybody to if you have any, is there any other questions or comments?

Councilman Roosevelt.

I would still continue to be uh knock at the door and ask Oklahoma Department of Mental Health.

Different questions, different have different requests.

Yes, and state representatives too.

Um other comments, questions for staff or anybody from council?

I just want to throw out over, but uh the young house people that throw away a lot of stuff in the LSS don't throw away or them and all that stuff is repurchased, and every time it's purchased, almost always sales tax to stay at all.

Um and then six months before six months, uh you'll be grade if not.

It takes up to two two years to get out, right?

Isn't that the that so just like you said we operate on sales tax?

Anyone that buys anything in Norman is a taxpayer.

Yeah, so anybody that has a check from anything goes out and spends it buying anything is a taxpayer.

So just keep the okay.

Any final questions, comments from anybody for staff?

Okay, please uh let staff know if you have any other further thoughts about this proposal, this plan, and uh so they can have direction on how to proceed.

It seems like both of these options are gonna take time, so all right.

Okay, and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

I don't know the exact one.

Now they're gonna have to go all the way to the city and further from the machine level.

Um yeah, and then you can probably