Norman City Council Special Meeting - July 21, 2026: Water Tower Bid, Drainage Easements, Executive Session
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Norman City Council Special Meeting - July 21, 2026
The Norman City Council held a special meeting on July 21, 2026, to consider three agenda items: awarding a bid for the Lindsay Tower resurfacing, accepting temporary construction easements for the Summit Hollow drainage improvement project, and convening into executive session for litigation discussion.
Discussion Items
Item 1: Award of Bid and Contract for Lindsay Tower Resurfacing
- Chris, from the Norman Utilities Authority, presented the bid from TMI Coatings LLC for $532,200 for resurfacing the Lindsay water tower with two logos. The bid was originally thought to be lost but was found the next morning, coming in under the engineer's estimate. Staff recommended awarding the bid and adjusting if a third-party logo sponsorship contract materializes. Council discussed paint options: white only ($477,700), City of Norman logos ($512,000), and third-party logos ($532,200). They also discussed paint longevity (10-15 years), structural integrity, and the possibility of cathodic protection. Council expressed support for moving forward with the bid and considering the sponsorship agreement.
Item 2: Temporary Construction Easements for Summit Hollow Drainage Improvement
- Scott Sturtz, Director of Public Works, explained that four temporary construction easements are needed to permanently repair a collapsed concrete drainage channel that had previously been temporarily fixed with a pipe that floated. The project will install a concrete box structure and restore backyards. All four property owners have signed and notarized the easements. Council noted the effort by Councilmember Gibbonsbury in securing the last easement and expressed support.
Item 3: Motion to Adjourn into Executive Session
- A motion was made and seconded to adjourn into executive session to discuss possible litigation regarding the acquisition of right-of-way for the Lindsay Street Special Corridor Project from Pickard Avenue to Elm Avenue, as authorized under Oklahoma Statutes Title 25.
Key Outcomes
- Item 1: Motion to accept bid 2627-04 and approve contract K-2627-10 with TMI Coatings LLC in the amount of $532,200, along with performance, statutory, and maintenance bonds, passed unanimously by voice vote.
- Item 2: Motion to accept temporary construction easements E-2627-1 through E-2627-4 for the Summit Hollow drainage improvement project passed 9-0. Staff indicated the project will go out to bid immediately.
- Item 3: The council agreed to adjourn into executive session; no vote tally was recorded in the transcript.
Meeting Transcript
All right. Welcome to the city council special meeting for Tuesday, July 21st, 2026. We have three items on the agenda. First one is consideration of approval, acceptance, rejection, amendment, and or postponement of awarding bid 2627-04 and contract K-2627. Buy between the Norman Utilities Authority and TMI Coatings LLC in the amount of 532,200. Performance bond, uh, statutory bond and maintenance bond for the Lindsay Tower Resurfacing two logos and budget transfer as outlined in the staff report located in Ward 7. And Chris is here from utilities to leave us on the discussion. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Council. So the last time I left you was Tuesday, and I had received zero bids that day, I thought. And so we were gonna go post the um bids again because you have to start a 21-day state bidding cycle the next day. But that next morning, uh our purchasing person came into my office and said, I am very sorry. Um I got bad news for you, but I found one of the bids in our office that was sitting there in my Mbox on my mailbox, and I didn't I overlooked it, but she said we have it. I was like, Well, that's great news. That's not terrible. So let's open it. And so it was TMI coatings. Um we've they've painted they painted the Robinson Tire back in the early 2000s with me way back. Um, our good notable company out of uh Minnesota. Um, and the bid came in. Um we'll show you the slides, but it came in under the engineer's estimate, and so we're here to say this, you know, a little light here, chance of maybe still pulling this off without having to wait 21 more days. So I wanted to show you kind of the what we see on the bids, some of our you know, calculations if if we do get this um third party to come in and want to um put something on the tank and give us some of that money back. It looks like a good way to put this tank on hold and still keep it in good shape. And so I think we could pull it off. It'll it would be going fast, but Ken and I were out there just about an hour ago looking power lines and figuring out how we're gonna pull it off. Anyway, we'll stop start with the presentation. We kind of prepared just a couple of slides. Oh, you got a vision up, yeah. Just exit out of that and it's on the desktop. Don't have water tower there. All that's all we did is we populated the uh kind of our time value of money and of our options we had in front of us. So let's go to the next slide. So how we bid it was um what what if you painted white and put two Norman logos on there? That's the $512,000 that they proposed. What if you put the fancy logos on there? Uh this other group, the third party, and they said 5322, and then to demo, they don't demo tanks, so we did not get a demo bid. So I don't have that. This is still the engineer's estimate for a demo. Um, but then over here on the left, we went on and calculated what if we don't put the city of Norman logo on there, what would be the cheapest we could get out of this? Just making it white, like we had talked about when we left last time. That's 477,700. But again, if um I I think our proposal or what we recommend as staff is to go on and move forward with awarding the bid and um have them on deck to start painting, and then we can adjust if this other contract comes in. We can see how that fits into this play, or we can not do it, not even put city of Norman logos, and we would be in for 477. The lowest cost. But if they did pay us back some of the money, that would make the net only 10298. Uh that we would be in the hole after time. But we took out the the lighting package because uh I don't know if Jason, we what is we figured we'd bid that at a later date, right? Yeah, I think we we have that out on the street now, so I think we don't need about three weeks to find out what the cost of lighting is take any questions or any comments. I mean it's kind of a wild, it's not usually how we do it.
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