Good afternoon and welcome to the public works committee meeting, 2 30 p.m.

I call this meeting to order number two on the agenda resolution authorizing payment of 223,561.50 for attorney fees and 61,288.95 cents for outstanding interest and litigation costs to Tracy Lewis, plaintiff and David Mitchell Garrett, Law Office, PLLC, and Christopher Camp, attorney at law from the sinking fund.

Hi.

Chad Becker from Treasury.

I'm here as always to give council assurance that there's a sufficient cash balance in the sinking fund to pay this judgment ahead of the levy placement on property tax rolls.

And this judgment has already been approved by the court and by the mayor.

And the council's approval finance will issue payment to the claimant in full and forward the necessary pay paperwork to the county to levy uh repayment uh to the seeking fund over a three-year period.

And uh Michelle McGrew is joining me this afternoon to from City Legal to discuss the case.

Yes, this was a jury verdict from uh April of 2024.

Uh, a former police major who filed the first amendment retaliation action, and the jury awarded her damages, and we just got the award of attorney's fees from the judge last Thursday, and so we have uh made a calculation of the the interest and the attorney's fees, and what the judge awarded uh for the attorney's fees, and then the litigation costs for a total of as Chad said 284,850 and 45 cents.

All righty.

Any questions, comments?

No, Phil?

Oh, what the guess is?

Yeah, I don't know, 74.68 million dollars.

95.2.

Dang.

You were closed, just around the air.

All righty, thank you.

Thank you.

Item number three ordinance amending title 11 C Tulsa revised ordinances, water works and sewerage, amending chapter three, titled water rates, amending sections 302 through 307 and 308 to provide water and sewer rate adjustments, amending chapter 7.

Sanitary Sewer User Charge System amending section 702, 703, and 708 to adjust sewer service charge rates.

Should I read the 302, 303 on all that?

Is that okay to skip the seven?

Eight okay.

All righty.

Who do we have?

Anyone speaking on this today?

I can speak to you.

Yeah, do I have any questions from the council?

It is like the 30th or 40th anniversary.

It is.

It was on the news this morning.

From Euler.

So this is, yeah.

So wait a second.

Two weeks in a row.

Yeah, we're live.

Yes, this is honored.

I'm just gonna wait for the camera.

We have any trivia related to Bueller that we can ask Mr.

Miller before he makes his presentation.

Umler.

When was the film made?

You might have to do the math.

What four years ago?

For Ferris Dealer's Day off.

That's a 83 or 85.

No, it's 86.

The 40th year.

I know it's on 40th anniversary.

She came in.

I think she's saying before she's born, is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, we all know that.

Any character other than Ferris.

Uh great.

What kind of car were they driving?

Yeah.

All right.

You see, so we're done.

You pass that that initial test.

So give us your little spiel.

Sure.

I'm uh I'm here.

Um I know we've got our water and sewer experts that may be arriving here momentarily, but this is just reflective of the uh presentation that they made here uh a month or two ago.

This just kind of codifies that.

The investment in our water and sewer infrastructure that we need, uh this is uh the rates that were flying at those previous discussions.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

That's the seven percent.

Is that correct?

Um, so I'd have to put my pull or back.

Thank you.

Okay.

Who are we waiting on?

Here it is behind you.

Yeah, so uh it was a three and uh yeah, yeah, okay.

Yeah, three and six, and then storm water is in a separate one.

So again, the you you have had lengthy presentations from the experts uh who uh may join us in a little bit if you have further questions, but um this is the the rates that reflect uh the previous discussion in our um we do have uh close to five hundred million dollars in infrastructure in the five-year water sewer plan.

This helps fund that over time.

Is that also including the new um water meters?

Water meters are already are part of the capital plan, yes.

All righty.

Any questions, comments?

Just one more added expense to your paycheck guys, all right.

Moving on to item number four, license agreement between the city of Tulsa and Julian Nickel for property located at 2525, East 30th Street, South Lewis Park addition to install use and maintain a decorative concrete driveway with Bowmanite exposed aggregate finish and a brick paver sidewalk within the street right away.

C D4.

Naturally, it's in distractive, of course.

We do like a decorative driveway.

All right, uh Paul's arch republic works.

Um pretty straightforward.

Uh she just wants a nice Bowmanite exposed ivory up finish concrete.

We just went through the fact that if there's any ever need for any right-of-way occupants to need to go to her area, they will only restore it back to just normal concrete as opposed to this boutique bowmanite concrete.

So that's we've got no objections from any of the utilities, any uh representatives of various boards and commissions, so we would recommend approval of this license agreement.

Oh that's a pretty nice driveway.

Yeah, I'm curious as well.

It's kind of a specialty concrete, it's got sometimes integral colors in it.

It also has a um special retarders and admixtures to it.

It's not just it's not as nice as our plain gray concrete that we have, you know.

But some people like the Bowmanite stuff.

Is it heat resistant or is it just has some problems?

Yeah, it's supposed to be a little, it's more expensive.

It's just we just call it kind of a boutique, it's got more admixtures in it for hardening and and color fast.

That sounds like it can be used to imitate.

It sounds like it can be used.

I looked it up to imitate like even higher end, yeah, like you know, like the spougie cement is what you're saying.

Pinky out, sir.

All right, well, it has a longer lifespan.

And and it's textured, isn't it?

I'm sure.

It can be.

Yeah, it can be.

I mean, it can be made just plain, but generally it allows to if it gets chipped, you still got color in it.

It's color editor and stuff like that.

You know, should I make a quick proposal someday we should get a list of all these decorative driveways and do a lovely decorative driveway tour of the city?

People have doorways, stairways.

I'm never gonna end up knowing what these look like.

I mean, is there a must they have to put a lesson?

You do these, we have all we have all the license agreements.

So I mean, there's no XL shade or anything.

I think the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture is missing around opportunity.

So you can do a search.

Yeah, it could be good.

All right.

Okay, we'll do a scavenger.

All right, thank you.

Always the greatest thoughts at this table.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item number five, ordinance amending title 24, Tulsa revised ordinances.

Nuisances by adopting new chapter five, municipal code lean enforcement procedure, repealing all ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict here with providing for severality and establishing an effective date.

Um brought to you by the mayor, Mayor Nichols, Bellis, Councillor Dr.

Wright, Counselor Lakin, and Counselor Bush.

Alright.

Make it out of the way.

There we go.

Hello, counselors.

Oops, that's not where we're going to do that.

No, James.

Move back.

Giving away the slides that are later on.

All that.

Yeah, spoiler alert.

Kind of like what was it?

Survivor.

Yeah.

Go back, go back.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Can't do that.

Oops.

Alright.

So hello, counselors.

James Wagner.

I'm the director of the planning and neighborhoods department.

And I'm here today to talk about a program that we're proposing.

And a little bit of, I guess, background on this.

There was a state law that was passed last year that essentially enables municipalities to foreclose on properties where there are outstanding abatement liens and where they are not homeowner occupied.

And so one thing I want to make really clear kind of from the outset is that we're talking about vacant properties.

So we've really embedded that into the name of this program to make it really clear that we're talking about vacant properties.

And so we're calling this the vacancy improvement program, but we're talking about you know vacant, dilapidated, abandoned structures mainly.

Counselors Bellis, Dr.

Wright, Bush, and Lakin, who helped to really kind of give some feedback on this so that we can make this presentation as good as it could be, and also Councillor Dutton and Hall Harper, who helped have hosted a couple of town hall meetings to get input from community members.

So we've been working on this for probably six or eight months now.

And I will say like that feedback has helped make this program better.

And there have been some things that we've adapted even before bringing it to you today so that we could uh make it as strong a proposal as we could.

Um so this program is really kind of gonna accomplish two goals simultaneously.

One is that um it will uh be able to help us with those abandoned uh dilapidated houses and get those into productive use, and then also uh kind of stop the cycle of um those you know tall grass and weeds complaints um uh and illegal dumping on on vacant properties.

I'm sorry, do you need uh I do.

I didn't get a handout.

Yeah, I'm gonna make sure you get one.

So it's that we're gonna um so um uh again we're focusing on um uh vacant vacant properties, want to make sure that that's clear.

So uh as far as the per presentation goes today, um, I'll just kind of walk through we'll talk about the goals of the program, um, and then I want to show you um kind of like some what some ideal properties are that we're talking about that would that would fit into this because it's a pretty narrow scope that we're talking about in terms of properties, but I want to show you some examples of those.

Uh and then I want to take you through a little bit of the process, and I want to contrast what um what happens with the annual county tax sale.

Some of you may be familiar with that.

Just happened this week, actually, uh, with what this process would look like in terms of uh, you know, making sure that there is responsible ownership and in the properties that we're talking about.

Um, and then uh we'll finally we'll kind of wrap up with how do we uh make sure that we're not only uh giving responsible ownership but also potentially an affordable housing unit as well.

So we can meet multiple goals, not only having uh properties that are better maintained, but also an affordable housing unit.

Um so uh a few of the goals uh one is to uh increase affordable housing, two, to reduce those uh vacant, abandoned, and dilapidated properties.

Uh three, disrupt that cycle of property owners buying properties and allowing them to become dilapidated, and then really also making sure that we have good use of our our own city resources.

We we spend a lot of resources checking on properties that are not maintained, uh a lot of branch resources and code enforcement, as well as the finance department who has to, we have to send out invoices when we do abatements and then and then file liens whenever the you know those invoices aren't paid, and also of course police and fire.

So the more we're able to more effectively get properties that aren't being well maintained into into productive use.

Uh that is a good thing all the way around.

So I talked a little bit about what are we talking about when we say an ideal property.

So for one, the state law mandates that it has to have more than $1,500 worth of abatement and I'll show you an illustration in a minute about how that might how that might occur.

And we added here in less than three years, and I'll and that'll become clear here in a minute because what we're really talking about is trying to speed up the process of what would normally happen at the tax sales, in addition to the $1,500 minimum.

So in other words, we're not going to be doing this process to any property that just has, you know, one mowing or something like that.

That isn't going to trigger this.

It has to be a lot more than that to kind of get on the radar.

Two, uh, it's eligible for the tax sale, but the owner has paid the oldest year's taxes.

This is a pretty common thing, and I think in the tax sale that just happened this week, I think there were about 1,300 properties initially.

And of course, this is countywide, this is just the city of Tulsa, but 1,300 properties initially, and I think uh about half of those were paid before the tax sale happened, but not paid in full necessarily, but maybe the oldest year.

So that potentially just happened year after year after year, and then we're still going out and doing abatements, you know, over that course of the year.

Or it's sold, but then we continue to have nuisance abatements with a new owner.

So either one of those.

And then uh finally, as like I try overemphasizing it, but an unoccupied and vacant property.

We're not talking about properties where people live, we're not talking about properties where uh people own their homes.

Uh so we're talking about vacant property.

So that's kind of the ideal.

Are you talking about vacant properties?

Yes, yes, vacant property.

Yes, vacant property.

Um, so I'll give you some examples.

So just these are two examples that we just I just pulled from our our code cases to kind of illustrate for you what we're talking about.

So this first property uh had four abatement liens uh for various amounts.

Um the largest of those was for a cleanup, you can see the debris.

Uh it's had the same owners since 2002, it's been boarded since 2023, and it has hadn't hadn't had utilities since 2022.

So, you know, it's it's been um you know kind of a recurring issue for for quite some time, but also hasn't really you know changed ownership, and so uh it's got a lot of liens, um, and so this would be the kind of property we're having.

It's been vacant for a while.

Another example, uh kind of a similar one, not um uh not as much in liens on this one, but uh this one has had the same ownership for even longer.

Uh and it's been boarded for a couple years and no utility since January of last year.

So you can see there, there's two different photos from two different times in 2024 where we were where the grass was growing up high, we were having low this.

This was also an unsecured structure.

You can see that's one of our uh contractors actually just kind of demonstrating that this is an open structure.

So this is what we're talking about, these kind of these kind of properties.

And these are the kind of properties that really uh under different ownership could potentially be rehabbed and you know put into productive use.

So we're gonna talk about how we might get to that point.

So the next slide is actually one of the handouts that I've given you, so you can kind of follow along with that.

And what I want to do here is contrast what happens now with the county tax sale with what we could do with this new uh law and the ordinance that's it's uh in front of you now.

So uh in this illustrative example, you can kind of imagine, like in a typical growing season of summer, we might have two, maybe three, in this case, there's two, uh, mowing.

So there's you know, we're gonna get a complaint, we're gonna respond to it, we're gonna mow the property, we're gonna bill the owner, but then if the owner doesn't pay, then we're placing a lien on that property.

So in year one, that adds up to a thousand dollars, and year two, same thing happens again, another thousand dollars in year three.

Now we have three thousand dollars.

So those liens get kind of converted to essentially a piece of the ad valorum tax at the at the county, and then it would go on to the tax auction, the one that just happened this week.

Um, but as I said before, the owner could just then pay the oldest oldest year, and you know, we would just go on and do it the next year, just repeat over and over and over.

Um, or it could be sold if the owner didn't you know pay anything, so that is an option as well, but still, even if there's a new owner, this this cycle could kind of continue on.

So that's kind of what we have now.

Uh, in this in this process, kind of imagine the same rate of abatement.

So, you know, we're getting uh a couple of mowings uh in the first year and then another one the second year.

Now we're only 18 months in, and we have reached the point where we could start this process.

So there is a provision, though, in the law that says that we have a six-month kind of cooling off period before we can actually file any kind of foreclosure.

And uh this is actually one of the pieces of the uh an improvement that came out of uh having some meetings with community members.

So during this six-month waiting period, we would then start reaching out to the owner and we would say, Look, here's the situation.

We've got you know liens that are piled up here.

Uh, could we potentially connect you with some some people that we would vet, and and I'll show you how we're gonna do that here in a minute, uh, to uh purchase this property and make it a productive affordable housing unit.

Uh if the owner engages with that, great, we don't even have to file a foreclosure, we can just move on.

If they don't, then uh we do have we would have then the ability to notice all the interested parties, uh the owner and any kind of mortgage lien holders or anyone like that, and then move on with a foreclosure, which would ultimately result in a sheriff's sale.

Now we would have to spend some money on our own part to do that.

Uh so we've kind of estimated it might be around 60, 2000 to do that.

Uh, but if we can get a productive you know uh housing unit out of it and have like not the abatements over and over and over, I think in the long run that would be a good investment.

So I'm gonna move now to kind of what that sheriff sale uh process might look like, so you can kind of see what that looks like.

So as you know, uh then I'm gonna kind of connect right now with some of the other housing investments we're making.

As you know, we've got um 47 million dollars in housing funds that are under contract with the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund, and uh we're starting to deploy those funds.

There is a piece of those that is specifically set aside for uh rehabilitation and preservation of affordable housing, and so we've been we've started to talk with the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund about how could we use those funds to incentivize a potential developer to purchase one of these properties, you know, uh fix it up, rehabilitate it, and then keep it affordable for a period of time.

Now the details of that we have not worked out yet as far as how long would that be.

So that's still in the work.

But that would be the first thing is set up the affordability uh criteria so that a potential uh buyer of one of these properties would be able to know here's this here's the parameters that I'd be working within if I decided to go and purchase this property.

Uh so that would be step one.

Step two is uh we would need to create a list of these developers.

So we would probably put out a request for information that would just kind of give us an idea of you know who is out there that would like to participate in a program like this, so that we could develop a list and then be sharing that list with uh property owners who might find themselves in a situation where they couldn't rehab this house themselves, but could potentially uh you know make a private transaction to sell the property to someone who could, um, and then we would contact them, offer to connect them, and we do we are doing this a little bit now, even with our uh our dilapidated structures program where we haven't we have a list of potential uh developers that we're connecting owners with, and then only then at that point if there's no really response or no interest, you know, from the owner, and sometimes it's very difficult to get in touch with owners.

There's lots of complicated situations, right, where uh owners are hard to get in touch with, then we could uh initiate the foreclosure process.

So we've done a lot of work up front to uh do everything we can to get that property off of high center, and then if we if we really can't get there, uh then we would start the foreclosure process that would ultimately result in a sheriff's sale.

So then the question is, well, how do you make sure that at the sheriff's sale somebody didn't just come buy it and you know uh repeat the process over again, right?

So, a couple different options there.

Uh obviously, we would notify our list of potential developers.

Hey, there's gonna be a potential property that's gonna be on the sheriff's sale on this day.

If you go and bid on this property, you could potentially get one of the grants from the Tulsa Housing Impact Fund, and hopefully that someone would do that, but we can't really control the outcome of the sheriff's sale.

That is, you know, that's whoever bids on properties bids on properties.

So even if they even if that doesn't happen, the successful bid better is not on the city's list, we can still reach out to them and uh offer, you know, to uh connect them with the housing impact fund for a grant or loan so that they could uh so they could move forward with that, and then sort of I put it there as an alternative, um, although I would say this is strongly not my preference that the city would purchase this property now.

Um that is a possibility, but it is not the ideal situation.

We are not developers, we're not you know really equipped to do that.

Um, that isn't what the city's really uh has a you know a strong student doing that.

But uh, but if there were no other bidders, if there was no one else interested, that could be potentially uh an option.

Um, and then finally, I want to just point out there's a bunch of other things we're doing to kind of provide resources for people who are wanting to do this kind of thing.

So uh obviously the pre-approved plans program, this would be for like a vacant lot situation, not necessarily a vacant structure, but a vacant lot.

Um we are very close to being able to uh offer those plans to people that want them so they can go and you know get a set of housing plans to be able to uh to build an affordable housing unit.

Uh the neighborhood inf uh info overlay expansion is another uh policy tool we're working on, and as I mentioned, the IoT three really rehab uh grants and loans, and then we're also working on a permit fee reimbursement program, which would um uh potentially like reimburse a portion of the permit fees that uh developers incur if they commit to an affordable housing unit.

So uh again, really kind of the summary is you know, we're trying to solve kind of two two problems at once.

One is uh, you know, vacant, abandoned, dilapidated structures and or lots that are not maintained, but also you know, how can we create an affordable housing unit uh as a result of that?

Just giving it's giving us a new tool essentially to be able to do that.

Uh, we still have all the tools that we've had before, we still have uh the ability if we need to to demolish a property.

Um, you know, we have that we've had that for a long time.

Um, but this is kind of a tool that would give us a different way to uh you know get a get get a property back into productive use and and really you know uh keep a neighborhood more stable as a result of it.

So again, thank you to have the body working group for your um uh input on making this program better um and uh to the mayor for uh kind of uh being able to provide the uh back backup to get this uh through the legislature uh to to be able to offer it to you all as a tool.

So there's an ordinance that goes along with it that basically just says you know, we're gonna implement the state law as it's written, is more or less what it says, but um, but that's what we're here to talk about today.

So that's what I've got, all righty.

Um we have a queue of questions from counselors, no?

Okay, 24 of us worked on it.

So, yeah, it's mostly for those of you who are getting this information for the first time.

No, I appreciate it.

And actually, um I will say that when uh counselor Hall Harper and myself presented it, the biggest pushback was the developers and who are they, and are they gonna be vetted and are they gonna be um speculators, the ones that text everybody all the time about buying their homes, things like that.

So I appreciate the efforts going forward into this to actually sort of that the possible developers we want good actors and not bad actors.

Council Bellis?

Yeah, prioritize.

Yeah, more than a question.

Just wanted to highlight two things.

One, when it comes to addressing you know vacant, dilapidated properties.

We don't have that many tools in our tool belt, so I'm glad that we now have this mechanism, which I know HB 2147 from not this past legislative session, but the prior one is something that Mayor Nichols and Shane spent a lot of time like having fun with the capital thinking happen.

So I appreciate that we were able to get you know another tool to do something, and I think there's still so much else we need to do, but wanted to acknowledge that you know that really paved the way for all this to happen.

Um, and then two, I also see this as a mechanism for historic preservation.

I've watched very historic houses where maybe it was someone older who passes away, doesn't have, you know, whatever, family, and you just watch that house rot to pieces.

Um, and so I really appreciate that this is also something that can help with historic preservation of some pretty historically significant properties that you know now can actually much more quickly be rehabilitated instead of just sitting and falling apart.

So that's exciting.

So thank you so much for all of your diligent work on this, James.

It's exciting.

If I can just build on that, I mean, would be back to the housing study, you know, that led us to the 13,000 units.

You know, one of the things that it pointed out very specifically in there is that you know, preserving affordable housing is just as important as creating you know new affordable housing units.

So in this case, it's kind of like you're kind of doing both at the same time because you're taking a vacant, you know, a vacant structure which isn't being occupied, and you're you know, breathing new life into it with a new owner and a particular grant or alone.

So, yes, I thank you for pointing that out.

Well, thank you, James, for the presentation.

Yeah, thank you for your own.

Just for former occupied homes versus just for scrolling cattle, from what I'm seeing.

Oh, that's what the V is trying to know how our working group meetings went.

Yeah, very productive, I can tell.

Just dad, it works like that.

All righty, moving on to item agenda item number six.

Ordinance amending Title 11, Tulsa Revised Ordinances, Public Works Department, Chapter 9, Street Maintenance, Section 901, special review fund for maintenance and repair of public ways.

Directing that in addition to one percent of public service company of Oklahoma, PSO, gross receipts, nine tenths of one percent, 0.9% of Oklahoma Natural Gas Company, ONG, gross receipts shall be remitted into the fund, amending the purposes of the fund requiring annual approval of a five-year plan for the use of funds.

Providing this ordinance shall be void if the ONG franchise is not approved by voters repealing all ordinances in conflict herewith and providing for severality.

Uh counselor Gilbert Bangle and Lincoln, all righty.

Do we have Miss Sarah at the table?

Sarah Davis, council administrator, and so counselor Julie.

The ONG franchise is up this year and on for a public vote.

And we have actually we've actually talked about this ordinance already at committee, just not in its ordinance form.

And so there are three pieces of legislation that you needed to do for the franchise.

Um, the first two are done.

So that was the franchise agreement and the resolution calling the election, and confirmed that's been delivered to the election board, and that will be in August.

Um, the last piece is um the assurance for the voters on what the funds would be used for, the additional um funds that would go come from the franchise agreement.

Um, and that comes through a Brown ordinance, and it it partially does one to provide that voter assurance, but it's going into the same fund, um, that the PSO additional revenue goes into that you passed a few years ago, and that's the public ways fund.

Um, in order to do that amendment, we needed to do the Brown ordinance process.

Um, so it is on committee, but we've already had the public hearings uh for that process as well as the press conference.

Um, so if you just want to look at the language a little bit, some of the language was already in the ordinance from the PSO franchise, but um the language is added verbatim from the ONG franchise that the funds would be used for maintenance, repair, and improvement of public ways, including median maintenance, enhancements, streetscaping, landscaping, lighting repair, and replacement, sidewalks, and corridor enhancement and unification.

And how this will work, um, is the mayor or his designee, likely the public works department um will come up with a five-year plan to equitably distribute the funds across districts.

So provides a little bit even more transparency than there already was regarding how the funds will be used if the voters decide to approve this.

And that's all that's all I really have.

So this will be on first reading tonight and on second reading next week.

Any questions, comments?

Thank you, Sarah, for all your hard work on this.

Oh, we are still at community conversations.

If anybody has questions, one more community conversation about the franchise OMG has a table there.

When you'll say the next one is the 23rd, I believe.

Oh, okay.

28th, 23rd, a Tuesday.

5 30.

Thank you, Sarah.

All right.

All right, moving on to item number seven.

Addendum discussion regarding a discussion regarding the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget and capital plan public works.

Okay.

Switch sides to the other side.

That's funny.

It's like changing hats.

Yeah, I need to switch my documents.

I received a request to put the budget for general discussion back on the agenda.

I know there were some modifications and additional interest that counselors had that people wanted to talk through.

So I'm not sure if there was a member of the small budget committee who wanted to do that, or if you would like me to do that, however, you would like to proceed.

I mean, I can just kick it off.

So we met this morning because we've heard from community and from you know conversations that we might not be exactly on the touchdown line today.

So some things I think around code enforcement and animal welfare, we just need to amplify what's being done.

Community members are getting their news and little snatches, and we need to do a better job communicating.

Like we've heard you, we know we need to do more, and these are the things that we're doing.

So I think that's a communication issue more than a budgeting issue.

Of course, throughout the year, if something comes up, we can be responsive.

Some of the other elements that have come up, you know, we had a big discussion at the 1030 about how we're funding our homelessness initiatives, really focused in on safe nature also.

I think some of us who are a little bit at the 30,000 mile view, are also like, and what are we doing for uh utility assistance and eviction mitigation and some of the other policy work that at this table we've talked about for many many years.

So I think I would love to hear from people that have ideas around those things, and we can talk with Sarah about how those things may be able to be funded.

Um I think there's some public safety issues that we still have not on exactly where we need to be.

Um, especially given just at the start of the summer, kind of some of the stuff that's going on.

Um, I think it would be wise for us to have a conversation around that as well.

So I'll just kick it off there.

You know, if you guys want to add on that before we go into the big discussion, I think it's a good idea.

No, I think you summarized it pretty well, you know, some of the concerns that we were talking about, you know, some of the contributors to homelessness, the low hanging fruit that we can deal with, where the barriers are much lower, those are programs we should be looking at and funding as part of our homeless initiatives, and we're we're focusing that funding.

CD C D B G dollars could never get those acronym that acronym right half the time, but um how we fund those because my view is um and I think counselor Dr.

Wright said this earlier.

Some of the things that I'm hearing is is that we're funding this at such a high level, but folks, as we're raising rates on their utilities, but their cost of livings are keeping up, and costs of groceries and things uh keep going up as well.

Um they need assistance, and they feel like hey, you know, there are people who've made some potentially poor decisions in their life, and you know, we're taking care of everything for them, but they need that help, and so they potentially are gonna be in that same boat as those folks, but they just need that little bit of help.

So, and then the public safety aspect I'll let you talk about, counselor.

Yeah, uh Counselor Gilbert and I were supposed to have a conversation this morning with some various individuals that's been delayed.

We may have more information uh later today or tomorrow.

I I hope it's not a dramatic change.

We're just trying to figure out how we cause people to abide by the law, especially on trails and sidewalks where e-bikes and e-scooters are traveling at 25 to 45 miles an hour, and they've already created physical harm, but death is not very far away.

We're not careful in regulating those kinds of devices.

We already have laws, but it just takes a little bit more enforcement.

I would say that um what we didn't want to do is come to the table at five o'clock and suggest amendments on the fly.

This time would have given us more time to discuss those things, but we're just not far enough along.

So my hope is that we have further discussion either at 10 30, 1 o'clock or 2:30 next week, get things finalized around this table so that we know what we're walking into at five o'clock, that we don't have any surprises for anybody in the council or the mayor's office.

Okay, I appreciate uh going forward with uh staffing that we're doing for animal welfare, yeah, as well as code enforcement.

I would like to see even greater um of staffing of uh code enforcement simply because that is at the actual citizen level, and uh that's where our communities and our constituents from my perspective have the biggest issues, and I would really like to see a better way for us to go forward to ensure that we do have adequate staffing to make sure we don't have this constant backlog, and I think that's um that's one of those things that as a city I think that will also allow our constituents and our citizens to feel hurt to feel really hurt as it is right now.

They do not feel hurt, and so I'm appreciative of efforts to step up.

That's the number one complaint.

That's what I get all the time.

And the frustration for the problem, yeah, no, that they're under staff.

I think one of the challenges I've always had at this table is well, the departments requested this and that's what they got.

But I think we also know departments get pressured to ask for what they can get, and it's our responsibility to match what they can get with what the citizens need, yeah.

And if we have to push, then we need to push.

And if it means just contracting during the high grass and weed months, something.

I mean, I think code enforcement's doing what's asked of them, they prepare their budget, but every department's asked to like you know, hold the line, and I think it's our job to push in those areas that are still underserved.

There's more needs at always in dollars, but it's our responsibility to prioritize those dollars and maximize them.

And I think I appreciate maybe that we get another week to just finalize some of these things.

I did also want to throw out there that I believe there's some movement around maybe implementing a um drug court at the municipal level that's gonna need funding.

I don't think they're ready to like put dollar ask in front of us, but it's not gonna be inexpensive.

I think the ROI on something of that, especially when we go back to what's causing homelessness, we have a lot of people deep in addiction that then have a cascade of challenges, and if we continue to just keep them on that hamster wheel, it's not going to change.

We have very compassionate judges, we've got a new prosecutor.

I just think being smart with the dollars we have and doing the whole comprehensive approach of keeping people housed, keeping people who are just one or two disasters away from then ending up in a shelter, and then we have to get them through rapid rehousing.

Like I under I hear what you're saying, counselor.

I have constituents too.

Like, well, until I fall through the safety net, there's no help for me.

So I think we need to be thoughtful.

So to that, I think also with that goes along with wanting to increase code enforcement, and that we're showing citizens that are actually contributors in the community that we care about them as well.

That I think with the housing situation right now and the evictions and whatnot, I think it's a huge serious problem.

So they have a dollar amount for that program for eviction for eviction, yeah, not for the code enforcement side, but yeah, if I can um just as two things, and one of these is like a long ongoing just like project that I'll just mention.

I want to make sure everyone's like super abreast of, and then the other is something that I've talked with more recently about um count with counselor Bengal and Counselor Archie a bit.

But um, first related to the evictions.

Um, several of us have worked on eviction prevention for a long time.

Um, myself and um James Wagner both participated in a sprint about you know, um, like kind of legal representation policy.

We came up with a framework.

You know, we've gone a few rounds on this, but the biggest thing is that a program that could serve low-income landlords and tenants with legal like civil legal access and support when they're in an eviction, like legal proceeding situation, those can be a huge difference.

Like, I had a constituent reach out recently who her like property wasn't maintained and tired, all of her material belonging, like by the property owner, there's a repair issue covered in mold, all of her material possessions destroyed.

Um, she's been living there for eight years, paying rent, but she's about to lose her job, and she has no good legal recourse, like, and she has she falls between the cracks of being qualifying for different legal representation.

Um, and part of the thing that makes there not be a resource for her, or conversely, if you had a landlord who's like, she's the one that caused this.

If you had an opposite situation and they were a lower income landlord, is that there were sunset of dollars that used to go to legal aid that gave expansion to very successful programming that keeps people in housing, and we never backfilled that sunset on time, but um, from coordinating with people like Access to Justice Initiative and so many other folks in groups, they're like, hey, with a million dollars, you get these other match dollars, expand these already existing programs, scale it up.

I mean, any amount of course would help scale it up, is like it's a fully vetted concept because it already happens through legally right now, it's just only catching such a narrow, like if you're this percent of poverty level margin, but we could help scale it or help fill in a gap for if it's outside of a certain service area, even and we know that works to keep people in housing, so it's a really good upstream solution that catches those people that are like I've done everything right, and then this thing happened.

Um, and then which also like not to shame anyone who hasn't done everything right, everyone has life stuff happen, um, and they deserve resources too, I think.

But um, and then the other thing that um some, you know, with the sunsetting of uh federal leewa and lie heap, like you know, those utility bill assistance programs.

We saw for that brief time when we captured those water bill dollars, like what a difference those can make for people as counselor Bengal was um mentioning.

Um, so I would definitely be really curious to see if we can, you know, even at least like pilot do IRO just iteration of having you know something that can come in because sometimes one is just like that little margin of water bill payment away from not being able to pay for something else.

The Save Our Homes initiative, I think they need about $500,000, so yeah, I guess if you can identify these stages of dollars, these are really high impact things that kind of fill in what you've been talking about, where you have people who just need that little lift to not fall into a really desperate situation.

And to your point, counselor.

When counselor director Wright was talking about what people might ask for, right, or what they could potentially get at the table.

I did go ask after you know we talked about the four additional coded policeman officers.

I did go ask the folks who do this work to see if that was those four people would legitimately be impactful in this process, and every single one that I've talked to said yes.

Oh, it's better than nothing.

I mean, I get that.

Of course, it's going to be an impact.

If the intentionality of this is to move the needle from potentially 45 days and beyond in getting a case reviewed and inspected, because that's the aggravation that most of the people that I deal with from citizen complaints is not only have they had to wait an extensive period for their case to be picked up and reviewed, more often than not, their case has been closed and they're in this repetitive cycle of having to open a case.

This is why I try to drive people to the app more than anything because they take their pictures, give me the case.

If the case gets closed, at least I can go back and have that case to reference when we're asking Brand and his staff where what happened in this because a lot of times the citizens don't know that if something is only happening between certain hours of the day, and that is not articulated in the report, our code enforcement staff most likely is going to go out there during normal business hours, go out there, not find the violation, and off they go in close case, right?

And so that's where we end up involved in with the aggravated citizens.

So is that does that feel like enough?

Probably not.

But they say it will be impactful, and so I have to support what they're saying is legit.

Sarah, um, I would just if you're kind of finished with ideas put out there, maybe addressing some of the specific budgetary ways that we can address some of these or that or that they already have been addressed, right?

And so just we were on code, so we'll start with code.

Just a reminder in technical changes.

So there was the four positions, an additional position for code enforcement was restored.

Um, and then just on code enforcement philosophy and theory in general, um, voluntary compliance is a major focal point for code enforcement team, and sometimes um if you can get voluntary compliance, that allows you to achieve good results for the community without having to invest so many manpower resources into that.

So I think this pilot of attempting to get this backlog um down really does incorporate the voluntary compliance um aspects of code enforcement.

Um, some people would do the right.

In fact, probably most people would do the right thing if they knew or or maybe needed resources or were connected to resources.

Um, and so that I just wanted to remind you of the technical change that that is proposed to come through.

So there is a little bit actually more um care enforcement resources on animals.

We can definitely um make sure that we're not reminding the community too of not just the investment um you all and this administration, the last administration made in animals, but what you did this year, but what you've done the last five years, there are multiple positions that have been added over the last five years to animal services.

Um, got a brand new facility coming through.

We've been able to achieve donations for operations to sustain so um tons of work in spaying neutering efforts, and I think there's tons of work more to come and plans, and so um we can definitely help put all the pull all that together on the investment that you have made.

Um, you all have already covered some of the um concerns with enforcement regarding the small bikes, and so hopefully we'll get a number there.

Um, on homelessness, and some of the things the programs that you all are talking about can be supportive to homelessness, but they also can be prevention of homelessness.

Um I would probably argue already in the ground ordinance, is in homelessness initiatives that maybe prevention is already included in that, but you could put a little just we want to be sure you could put an indicator in the ground ordinance that says um, you know, related supports and prevention, and that way it opens that bucket up.

Maybe that is the bucket, maybe it's not that something like that could be helpful so that this eviction program could start going and raising the private dollars that are out there because it just feels like we've kept waiting to make a move forward, and we've been like, and maybe there's another part of money that is more appropriate in the future, but um that's to see it, right?

That it's we can we can make that adjustment just to make that clear on that.

Um also on the homelessness funds um small budget to discuss since you had your presentation earlier today, um, about the spend rate of um reduce so there's six million that's essentially for the safe move program.

Um still doing up to six million next year, so not changing the total um, but separating those out into separate budget amendments, and so starting with 1.5 million and quarterly um coming back with those new appropriations, um, to see where we are on outcomes and on spend rate.

Um, and so you definitely can do that same same dollar figure, same amount.

Um sounds very similar to maybe how the private sector donations are are coming in based on the earlier discussion, um, and then finally on utility billing assistance.

Um, there is another bucket of money, and again, this may not be the final bucket of money, but um the 18.5 that is in that brown ordinance.

You know, that is for economic initiative and neighborhood initiatives.

Um, potentially that could fall under there.

You would just um the council later, it's not it's not for this budget and this appropriation will need to um develop a plan for how those funds are utilized and appropriated again.

May not be the final bucket.

I haven't done the research yet on are there grants out there, are there match opportunities?

Um, are there other sources of funds?

They're a working group will start on the utility assistance.

Um, this is gonna stop that for our office, and we've already worked with um Crystal Reyes to set up our first staff working group meeting and and then uh pull in the counselors who were interested on that um to develop that program.

Um I said I think I said finally, but on the on the drug court, I think you covered it already.

Um there is new prosecutor and lots of work to be done on the where CORE is jail, is you know, they're transitioning to the e-ticket system or not the e-ticket system, but the the new system court record system as well.

Um, and so there would be need to be time to program development, some potential opioid um application uh going down the road, but did talk with court personnel about even connecting them with healthy minds is a great resource that we haven't connected yet on that type of program.

So I think I think there's a lot of program development before that would be for this fiscal year.

And that's it, I think.

I appreciate that.

Anybody else?

Uh, Counselor Gilbert, this is something new.

We've talked about it.

Oh, I was like, I think I don't know.

Um so um the office of family, youth and children.

Um, is there we heard from Tulsa Public Schools that uh they wanted to find a way to get elementary kids more active in uh programs, athletic programs if there's something that we can do to partner with or get something going in the parks in our parks department.

Dr.

Dodd said they had a fleshed out proposal, and that's sitting on the show.

I can't remember if it's Dr.

Johnson or Dr.

Dodd, but one of them said, Oh, we built out a whole framework and a proposal, and then it didn't talk, okay.

So I think we should find out.

Yeah, I'll reach out to him.

And they also talked about transportation assistance, right?

Those were the two things I said specifically.

I think the city could help us.

And that was discussed in the cabinet meeting on Friday, was transportation.

So we didn't get anywhere with a solution, but um, it was discussed, so um, but if we could I'll get with Dr.

Dodd to see what I don't have either of those, so I don't know the the volume of money there on the board.

I think we're just in mind when we look for reoccurring dollars, you are in the space of probably reprioritizing a different item if we're looking for reoccurring dollars.

Um, were you finished?

Oh sorry, counselor.

Um going back to the um framing you offered related to the Brown ordinance or I do think it would be helpful or I would like to make that explicit piece about the prevention side, just so we're really clear.

I think that kind of helps us all stay accountable to then working on those next steps related to utility assistance or in these other pieces of the puzzle.

So if like people are amenable to it, I think that just adding that layer of clarification, make sure that we're kind of not you know, yeah, shortchanging ourselves later, be or being too limiting or anything like that.

So I like that language.

All righty, anybody else?

I just have a clarifying question.

So given all that we just threw at you and this staff, are we discussing it today at five and make taking some sort of action to make it happen next week, or what it what's the game plan here?

It it feels it's ultimately up to you all.

It feels like there are enough changes that since you have the extra week, nobody ever likes to make changes the day of correct uh to the budget.

Or just an accuracy willing to try.

Um, and we are waiting on some information to okay, and so um you can you can make all those changes out for you know, you can decide to not go forward if if it is the if there's the general feeling, you know, that that is what is gonna happen.

We can put out some messaging regarding that there's potentially an intention not to the main concern would be citizens coming to speed, yeah.

The other option not getting a chance.

The other option you have is you can leave it on, you can receive the comment, um, and then you would just not take comment the next week.

Um, that's an option as well.

Good and bad to that.

People may not be able to comment on changes.

And not take comment from the same people, right?

No, at that point you would be in council discussion, so you would just be finished with with public comment.

Okay, okay.

And if we can get what is the point, please do Robert's rules.

It says discussion is already proposal.

Please do, sir.

What is your plan for putting this on one of our committee discussions for next week?

Is it earlier the better so that legal can go back and incorporate everything that we came up with, or you have another strategy?

Oh, I would probably probably schedule with one o'clock unless I go look at calendars and there's already other things on one o'clock.

But we can put it on a tender.

I I would likely already do some of these things to propose back on, or as soon as we have them so the brown the brown ordinance, the the reduction potentially, and or this more, not the reduction, this more of a scheduled approach to the safe move um dollars.

Um, and if I get I get a number on the enforcement before then, we can work the earlier the better, whatever we can put on the table at one o'clock that's closest to a final preferred.

Yeah, I'd rather go in at five o'clock and say move to approve, have counselor doctor right say you should like move to approve as discussed in or as provided in the backup material or whatever it is, rather than go through a list of changes, which is tough for people to follow.

Okay, thank you, Sarah, and yes, thank you.

To those of you sitting in the room going, well, hopefully this is cleaner than the way we've had to do it in the past, which is amending on the vote on the fly.

Yeah, very possible.

Not opposed to doing.

I've done it before, but this is this is a lot more than we've done in the past.

Just remember at four, unless you have different direction now, we need to decide if we're gonna take public comment um on the budget tonight, or if that needs to be on the seventeenth.

Seems like the seventeenth is more comprehensive for the public to even go in.

That makes sense.

It's more fair to them to know what they're actually going to do.

Then if it's that's just I'm gonna make a a decision on my own to throw some uh material out there for the card.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

All righty.

Thank you, Sarah.

Any further questions, comments?

All righty, we are adjourned.