City Council Special Session & Meeting, 2/27/24

good evening and welcome to City Council special meeting of Tuesday February 27th 2024 there are three items on the agenda the first of these is an update and discussion of the micro microtransit pilot program Mr Taylor Johnson thank you mayor and Council uh I'll try to be quick in my PowerPoint I know it was distributed previously and I know you have three other or two other items so uh if I feel if you feel like I'm rushing it's because I am I want to get to I want to get to the discussion and and try to get some Direction as we move forward with this program so um let skip the agenda so I'm going to go back to the beginning you know and talk about what microtransit is get into how we got here talk about where we are and then about where we could go uh depending on your direction so microtransit uh over the last six seven eight years uh has emerged as a a way in the urban environment to provide a little bit nimbler Transit service that kind of in between a bus and a taxi right smaller vehicle uh more on demand um and again it's not necessarily on a fix route bus system might go somewhere where it's uh less dense or and where big buses don't make sense so uh we did talk about microtransit as we developed the goorman transit plan back in 2020 and 2021 um with our our consultant Nelson niggard we talked about maybe Northwest or Southeast Norman and then we as we got got into the recommendations uh it was decided to uh kind of put that on pause because for one it would result in a largest increase in the transit budget which we've kind of seen that cost right depending on what we want it does cost money to do this just like with anything else and then uh we also identified uh meaning the C consultant staff citizens uh you all when Council approved the plan identified there was greater needs particularly with frequency for the existing bus service or when we implemented the route changes with that that bus service so it's not that we didn't talk about it it's just that there were greater needs that were identified so it wasn't in the plan um however through a discussion with Council over a couple of years uh we got into what is microtransit it was suggested by a by a council member to look at it and uh we spent about a year talking about it um a few months study sessions going into it and in FY 23 we got a budget of about 750,000 to um Implement a microtransit pilot program uh quickly realized that we needed to narrow down what that means because again what it can accomplish a lot of goals depending on what your community needs or what you want to test out so we we hired hntb to help us out on looking into that we had a series of workshops and study sessions uh to go and with with you all and council at the time to see where we might go we looked at some data and then overall we ended up basic basically with what we have right now late night service and then uh Sunday during the day when we don't have fixed drought Ser uh bus service and through RFP 22 2359 we uh asked for some uh for some vendors to come back with their proposals and in that RFP um I'm not going to go through all of these but we just detailed what we came up with during those study sh sessions right um we had a we needed a budget we need to serve downtown OU um complement our fixed route service um we needed them to uh kind of figure out help us figure out uh what kind of service we need based on based on the hours of service we wanted and that's in the middle there and we had some goals we didn't want people to walk very far we didn't want them to wait very long and then Vehicles we we did a little bit of preference on vehicles they need at least SE six passengers need to be we you're accessible at least some of them and then people needed to have ability to pay right so we had some specifications in that but generally the RFP went out for what we talked about as a council at the time we received three proposals um the one that we uh was ranked the highest by the selection committee and was forwarded to city council was by River North Transit which is a subsidiary of via Transportation who does microtransit projects all across the country and that contract was approved on June 27th and uh the contract amount there is about 640,000 um and then we started we wanted to start service uh preferably before school started but that was actually the first day of school for OU so we got pretty close that was our goal and this was our initial uh service profile so you can see the Zone there we didn't have enough uh funds to cover the entire city because that would require a lot more vehicles and drivers but we served uh we we try to serve as much of the dense part of Norman as possible with the uh you know the the desired destinations uh that we could and you you all have seen this before at least at cpnt about what we what our targets were and everything and then uh after about the time we were finalizing our um partnership with via or our contract uh it was identified that OU was going out for their safe ride program about the same time so my colleague here George amadis uh he's on our bicycle advisory committee he's not a um he's he's a a good friend and somebody that's not a a has been on City committees before so he's he's been in this room and he works in student affairs and who that's who manages safe ride so it seemed like a good fit right we want to provide late night service that's what Safe Ride does on Thursday Friday Saturday how can we work together to provide an efficient Service uh knowing that our portion was a pilot program so uh we we got together and we were able to uh thanks to other city of Norman and OU staff we were able to combine our resources and I I think that was uh really good to see how how it would go for at least for the first year and what that meant for our initial contract was we extended the service time to end on Thursdays through Saturdays from 1:00 a.m.

To 3:00 a.m. to match their historic Safe Ride hours we got the map a little bit bigger um we increased the numbers of vehicles from four to 5 it did increase the cost uh obviously 121,000 but OU agreed to pay for that increase and uh through that just like the hisor safe ride if you um were no you student then the rides would be provided for free during those Safe Ride hours only so um don't can't do a side by side but the zone map did get a little bit bigger then obviously what I just walked through with the timing um is is is what increased and our our targets still stay the same however the percentage of rde requests completed with 20 minutes um we wanted it greater than 80% but during that safe ride hours oh was okay with uh students possibly getting a time to wait longer uh because the the app initially said it said it where you'd get only proposals if we can meet it within 30 minutes so we increase that time so some students some late night Riders actually took that up on that if they had to wait an hour they waited for the on demand service so that's kind of inflated now but uh other than that the other kpis uh we'll go through them in a minute but uh we're hovering around where we wanted to be even with adding OU we were able to uh keep the August 21 start date we had a great unveiling event and some good press and now kind of getting into the numbers since we started we've had 13,000 completed rides um generally people are happy with the service with five star ratings of about 95% and then uh kind of drilling down we've had 1.6 th000 who have individuals who have taken at least one ride so there's some people that have obviously taken um uh multiple rides and uh that kind of gets into the uh uh bottom right uh uh table if you can see that there um uh OU Safe Ride eligible accounts so those with ou.edu email addresses is about 1100 um those that have engaged with the app at least once and requested a ride doesn't mean they have actually taken one but has been 2,300 or about 2400 accounts those that have completed at least one ride again and it's 1.6 th000 those have been done two is about 1.2 and then Rider accounts with at least one paid ride is uh 23 so obviously as we drill down there's a subset of accounts that are really uh using the service uh as we set the parameters with the times and we have some more numbers here in a minute about that so kind of comparing it to our uh other existing Transit service the ridership per service hour at cpnt I try to bring that up uh on our monthly updates because it is a good metric to keep in mind uh how many rides are we serving on average uh per service hour we have on the street right so our fixed route uh service you can see there in blue um initially was about 14 Riders per service hour and that really has uh after after covid uh really taken off and we're currently at about 18.7 for fiscal year 24 to date pair transit's always been about 1 to one and a half depending um you know it's on on demand so we try to maximize the service as much as possible but if people are going extreme distances within our city then we have to service them within a relative time frame as they would be on a bus so we can't put them on a bus or on a pair Transit ride for 2 hours for example they so we have to maximize that so it could be a little different depending on uh the rides that are requested and then uh Norman on demand has average since we launched about four and a half rides per per driver hour per service hour so if it's a little bit better uh more efficient than par Transit but obviously fix route is uh really driving um is really driving the ridership and has a high Riders out so just putting that in perspective on how it compares to our other Transit service um I know this was requested by a couple council members uh in cpnt uh ridership um by day so you can see that the weekends are a lot higher than the rest of the week and then Sunday's a little inflated because we serve more service hours especially during the day right so we're capturing that 1: to 3:00 a.m.

Or midnight to 3:00 a.m. in that in that bar plus the 10 to 6 uh during the day but uh about 40% of rides occur um between Monday and Thursday and then about uh 40% of rides occur between uh midnight Friday through 3:00 a.m Sunday and then during the day times you can see there it's about 18% uh people are really are riding it uh during the day on Sunday which is good we wanted to test that out before we possibly implemented it on a fix route service so just giving you a perspective on how the the ridership uses it throughout the week and kind of getting in our kpis or key performance indicators uh our average walking distance is less than what we want it to be so that's good um the maximum walking distance so somebody had to wait about or had to walk uh 7 miles more than what we wanted them to be but again the average is much lower than that so I think we're doing really well average weight time that's higher than we wanted to be about 5 minutes more 6 minutes more than we wanted to be and uh Maximum Rider weight time again that's kind of changing those parameters where we offer a a longer lead out time so somebody wanted to wait that 63 minutes and the way you fix these metrics is really adding more drivers and vehicles on the road right so that's really what it's telling us is we're hovering around where we wanted to be at least on the averages but to drive those down if we wanted to would be to add more drivers and vehicles and increase the cost of the service so uh the safe ride OU Safe Ride impact on our ridership data um drilling down into that about 10% of all completed trips uh utilize the safe ride discount again that's the Frid Friday through Saturday uh into Sunday morning um 10: a 10 p.m.

To 3:00 a.m. ou.edu uh students can ride for for free um about 1100 or about 29% of riter accounts are eligible for that discount and um 35% of all the completed rides that occur during cart hours are those eligible accounts so you can see that the general public is also writing it right um during those extended evening hours and uh what we see though through the rest of the week too is that the OU students are taking advantage of the service throughout the rest throughout the rest of the the week so 49% of uh all ridership is made up of OU ridership so uh I think that's good one of the goals that uh we had was hopefully the the students would recognize this as a a good thing for them not only during the late nights but during the during the rest of of the week um if they needed it not just on Thursday Friday and Saturday so expanding their options uh going back again to our kpis this is just another uh way of looking at it again the average walking distance that's the green line is our average blue line is what we wanted it to be so uh it's it's below the maximum walking distance throughout the months has been high and low so that's kind of where we pegged it in yellow it's it's hovering there average Rider weight time is is red as we discussed and then Maximum Rider weight time is also red but again that the way to drive those down would be to expand the service in terms of drivers and hours so uh back to the fair uh discussion um again we we kept the fairs uh relatively low uh thinking you know we wanted to have some sort of fair for this program because it was on demand but also wanted to make it accessible to people at $2 per trip plus if you had a rider with you you'd add them for a dollar so about $3 uh if you had a somebody riding with you and then again with adding the U folks uh if you had an OU student email address you would be eligible for a free ride during the 10 a.m 10: p.m.

To 3: a.m. Thursday Friday Saturday and let's see we also implemented a uh try to get people to sign up the first six rides for were free with this program about 77% of all completed trips have been um the six free rides so um I feel like we're seeing a lot of people uh take the six free rides and not continue um but that could change in the future as we if we continue the service obviously so um that last bullet I think there as of January 31st Approximately 80% of all completed trips you can see there the numberers qualified for one or both of the promotions so uh 80 about 80% of the trip trips were free uh free rides so in about September we started uh collecting a fair well in August I guess we started collecting fair but we it really started ramping up in September and October and you can see those Fair numbers uh I think December was a little down um as you get into Colder Weather Transit rides really decrease people don't want to get out as much so we've collected about 2200 uh Fair boox Revenue so far and uh this is just a little bit more about fairs again the inverse of the 80% free rides 20% have have paid with fair and that's you can see that the number of completed trips have been paid with Fair 1,500 the unique Rider ID so unique accounts have been 213 that I've actually paid for a fair and then we have this U super user so after you use your six free rides those that have used it 11 more times and paid have been 41 accounts so those are the people that are really up there and we'll say the upper 20% riding right so that works out to about an average of seven paid trips completed by a unique Rider ID with the PID Fair after their six free rides and about 5.6% of Rider accounts with at least one paid Fair um wanted to throw a heat map or two in here to just show you some high uh destinations and Origins uh for the service uh we're not trying to choose winners or losers here just trying to give you an orientation of the map so you can see the Clusters uh the East Lindsay area where our our main bus ridership is you can see all those apartment complexes are highlighted really well around tradition Square Apartments and then obviously M campus corner and OU are our Big Driver of the service as well as downtown and up by uh the West Side Walmart and the UNP area so and then we have a little bit up at the HealthPlex where we thought we might get some late night riders that need to either go to or from uh a service that they need up in that area so Taylor yes sir I'm sorry was curious uh the Little Dot north of Campus corner and slightly west of Walmart uh go up roughly that Noe further up okay uh is that kind of where more Norman is no more Norman would be way up here here are there any rides going out there and they have evening classes right yeah our zone right now doesn't extend up Tom morning oh Goa Goa gota this is about Rock Creek or this is Rock Creek so if that gives some perspective um uh I'm going to go quickly through this satisfaction survey that via conducted uh we had about 45 respondents in December um again it was in your packet so I want I want to make sure we respect your time but uh a lot of young riters um their frequent uses grocery shopping work education Recreation the things that we typically see that we are all doing right when we we get around anywhere um a lot of benefits uh people say saving money and they could click multiple options that why that's why the percentages kind of don't add up here but they saving money they feel like it's safe which I'm glad they do uh reducing their commuter travel time they feel like they were getting out more because of the [Music] service and uh again uh this was a a limited survey we Tred to get as many responses as possible but just giving you uh the the number here about 82% said they would be very disappointed if the service went away um and obviously if they're using it I would be too so uh that makes sense we have some quotes here uh I won't read them all but uh a lot of people again if they're if they're responding they're invest in the service they would like to see it increased in coverage which we'll talk about that uh we have a proposal they want to see decrease weight times again they're a little higher than we want and they want expanded operation hours so um moving forward uh we have some um direction we need and some things we need to discuss uh the initial pilot program was supposed to end after 12 months so August 21st of 2024 um we did explore a uh expansion which I'll get into in a second but their options are really in the short term we either expand the service as we're about to talk about um and then after that long term do we end it after the pilot program in August is up or do we extend the contract through F fiscal year 25 so the proposed expansion is just to go to 36th on the west and make that kind of more clear um and use Lindsay as the as the southern boundary as it turns into 36 and really fill out that West Side capturing the Sooner Mall the Ed Noble Park Parkway um and all the way up to Norman Regional um we also are proposing to expand the service hours for Safe Ride Thursday through uh or Friday through um technically Sunday morning from May through August in the initial proposal it was decided to cut that in the summer so there's not as many riders but uh we felt like doing that if we were going to expand it would be good because there was a lot of uh General community members plus Safe Ride Riders um that we think we would benefit from that so we wanted to keep the service consistent if we were considering an expansion uh the numbers I I I think I reported about a $70,000 cost to cpnt a couple months ago when we first started talking about this and obviously the cost is going down as we get closer to the end of the pilot program so right now if we started at uh I think March 1st which we would have to get on a council agenda so that's probably not realistic it would be about about a $51,000 increase through the rest of the pilot program through August if we did that expansion and if we really wanted to drive down those weight times then then via provided a more Premier uh quality of service at about 102,000 so that's just adding another vehicle to try to drive down those weight times so um those are just a couple of options for that expanded service to consider if we wanted to do that in the short term realizing that if we keep it uh if we keep the service after fiscal year 25 or during fcal year 25 we obviously want to keep this going so it just increased the costs so it has long-term impacts as well so with that I I hope I left enough time for discussion but I really want to go back to this and it's it's fairly simple but we need to have a discussion about the proposed expansion through the rest of the pilot program and then beyond if we want to uh in the service on August 21st after the initial contract would be up or extend it and one reason I just want to throw out there before uh we start discussion is we want to make sure we give our partners at OU enough time to make changes if they need to for safe ride if we decide not to continue right one way or another they need to know uh in the next month or two probably to make a good decision on how to move forward so that's how my repeat you kind of started to get into my question um has OU expressed interest in continuing the partnership into the next fiscal year yeah I think I'll let George speak for himself yeah absolutely we've um the RFP went bus because it was over budget um Taylor really was cist that he called and said hey I have this idea um we've been getting a lot of requests for expanding the service and we just do not have the budget to to meet that we've lost a lot of money and we've been dealing with flat budgets since that time this really you know satisfies a lot of the requests that we get for an expansion of the service especially from our international student community so we would definitely like to see it continue excent appreciate that Council Grant I'm in favor if the expansion I was aware of uh not only Shoppers that wanted to get over to Ed Noble but also workers uh that worked in the evening hours right um also cool with extending the contract for fiscal year 25 but in the back of my mind I am concerned about um how to continue to pay for it and while I have ideas I also think maybe approaching more Norman Tech which would expand the area but as I understand it they actually have quite a bit of money to spend and this might be something they are interested in investing in okay the expansion itself won't go up to them we'd have to come up 12 um I mean we can still approach them and ask they're interest it would be a good if if a child didn't have the money to be able to get up there with his own car and you could provide him with some kind of Transportation him or her transportation to get in up there and Advance themselves that's money well spent in my opinion I agree with you so could t let me know Taylor if this might be a progression of of service that so um in conversation with Brian rman and U his board members to think about what the what is step one in trying to improve student access to more Norman Technology programming that a system like this where more Norman Tech might be able to participate financially like OU for that student transport get your more Norman Technology student ID card you show that you get in we keep the stats they help cover the cost that student transportation need if the demand makes itself visible in the microtransit solution that I'm sure it would provide tailor data to say oh based on this writers ship you know maybe it does warrant a permanent bus stop stop at you know our our place on North 12 and it should run you know x times a day up to that uh location if if the numbers supported it so that that might be a great step one to see if the demand is there for step two that's kind of what we used it for Sunday service uh too is to see if the demand's there for fixed rout Service uh we do have a a a fix bus plan to go up to more Norman Tech it's uh about the third or fourth priority uh in our go Transit plan um so we could that would serve all day and into to 10 p.m.

As well so um we could look at that too if that's really a desire of council is for forwarding that prior to Priority up uh we could look at that cost I'll invite Taylor to join me with uh Brian Rutman Norman Tech might they might also figure out and help us with cost to go from the our campus to the pen campus cuz our kids go up there to this why right not as big I know it's outside of Norman but it's kids still got to get yeah yes sir I'm sorry oh yeah uh how much would it costs to do the a new route a bus fixed route to more nor um I'm going to without buying another vehicle obviously just operational and maintenance um uh based on the cost we have to add a frequency on Route 112 I'll probably say between 400 and 500,000 to add a route and that's at 6 minute frequency or no that'd be a 30 minute cuz adding a bus on Route 112 is about 210,000 so um well uh if we didn't have to expand the fleet right the cost is definitely the main concern I have just the cost of this system verse for that same price we could extend hours of fixed route buses we could maybe do Sunday service we could maybe add new routes um and uh we've talked about the idea of the Paratransit service Imark plus and this and On Demand potentially being combined in some way right and I know if I recall Imark is working on making the plus a On Demand right now it's 24 hours so you have to sign up in advance and that's yeah part of the I think if there was one thing that Council Berlin and council member Studley agreed on was this program this was kind of their idea but it was about trying to fill gaps where the fixed route doesn't go um The Last Mile type stuff and then the lack of ADA Transit options for on demand so Uber and Lyft not providing Ada accessible vehicles and and there being a demand for that so that's kind of where this came from we could provide an OnDemand service that isn't currently being provided by the private sector um the only complaint I've kind of heard about that is that because it only runs in the evening in late night uh they can't use it during the day and so they're still using the Embark plus and so part of the question for me is is the viability of Embark plus evolving into being a more on demand system and being able to address that right issue right and Dr Dylan came and uh spoke about that a little bit uh in cpnt a couple months ago and she has a she has a grant through FTA to develop software to be able to do that uh because it's it's not so much as just adding on demand capabilities uh she talked a little bit about the different programs we get money for so the software needs to be able to change you know Bill easier through the different Grant programs so she has a grant to implement the software to be able to do that so it's pretty much assure that that will happen and as we've talked about before uh by law we're only required to provide the Embark plus service within is it one two miles 3/4 of a mile 3/4 of a mile of a fixed drought bus system right but we offer it for all 200 square miles of Norman sure even though we don't have to but we do and that probably costs quite a bit um we could run that number uh but it I mean obviously again going back to the the ride or weight time if somebody wants to go out to like Thunderbird uh we're going to have to dedicate a vehicle to take somebody out there right so it is taking a whole vehicle to drive somebody out farther east and back so part of my question would be is is it would it be cheaper for this service to cover all of Norman like that for Ada maybe maybe only I don't know or is it more cost effective to continue providing Embark plus service to the whole city limits something something along those yeah so that's kind of where I had the how do we manage the cost of it it's popular it seems like and hopefully it'll continue growing in popularity and uh maybe that results in expanding it to other areas too um but weighing that with Improvement that could be made to the fixed route system which does have a lot of ridership and keeps growing month by month um but yeah I don't I don't think I'm in a position to want to end this program yet and I don't know if the information we would need about Imark plus and other stuff would be ready by the time we would need to make a decision so I don't know maybe we keep it going as a pilot for another year yeah work on those other aspects and and going to your point about uh expan the operational hours that was a conscious decision because it felt like we were double dipping if we're providing fixed drought buses plus the on demand in the same area we're kind of using we'd rather expand the options of Transit into the evening hours where fixed route doesn't provide right so it does overlap a little bit but um so I've tried to explain to folks the balance of we didn't have late night service and we didn't have Sunday service at all right and now we do with this program but but yes it doesn't run there are some people that would find uh that have a need to use it at the same time that the bus is right I think is yeah I I understand that it would be uh some people may prefer the on demand over the bus during the daytime hours but we didn't want to again overlap very much because we were providing service during the day fairly robustly so I don't know if we can maybe look at starting a little bit earlier in the day or I don't 3: in the afternoon or yeah some where there's a little bit of overlap between daytime stuff I don't know what the cost of that might be but yeah every every uh option proposal is obviously going to widen the gap of the the the contract right of what we need to provide so I just could there be other sources of funding we might be able to access because we're providing this service now and weren't before maybe we can get more allocation from the federal government per year I don't know yeah our our allocation uh CU we're a small Urban is just based on population and population density it's not based on ridership or vehicle miles travel like the larger system so uh and we use all of our grant funds to pay we go above and beyond right now with the sales tax uh obviously so I don't think we're in a position to have any of our grant funding pay for it so okay and I would say if we're already at 760,000 now for the service uh it's probably going to go up next year just due to cost increase and everything so plus the expansion and then if you add we're it's almost uh 3 four five six it's not doubling the hours but uh if we go to 3 a 300 p.m.

For example that's a pretty big swath if you do it from Monday through Saturday so just something to keep in mind if we come if we were to explore that and come back it's probably exceeding the $1 million Mark yeah okay got M shooter um so the slide that has the cost of expansion uh yes so that 51,000 would be for the remainder of this contract right through August so is that for that's also for the expanded boundary and extending safe ride through August like yes it includes both of them it includes both of them and that's for 6 months so if again if we go another year just think about the doubling of that sure um so what is the cost of what I'm trying to get at is like what would OU's proportion of that expansion be for those several months that like were not initially in the contract yeah and does oh you have expanded capacity to pay a little bit more percentage wise for what you're using so just starting off the cost of the the added Safe Ride hours uh it wasn't much in the grand scheme of this cost so we haven't discussed we just wanted to gauge the willingness of doing that first and see how it went uh but I'll let George answer if there's any yeah sure yeah it was that you I think we've capped out one type of our funding there might be other opportunities um but I think this was I first approached Taylor about this and saying hey can we just get this going through the summer since safe ride is always operated during the summer and I showed him our writers numbers and they're pretty low I think okay our main goal has been that we run every weekend and this was kind of a significant change to our to our service um and I think at that time Taylor went back to Via and there was a broader um you know okay yeah just trying to understand cuz I know the summers are going to be probably less volume than what is typical um so just trying to understand too like if we expand service then what is OU's proportion to that and just making sure that like you're willing to um I guess come up with a little bit more money if if needed for um expansion and some different things um I I've heard from some people about um expanding and I think they are in this little boundary here um which is that little section that from 24th between the highway and 24th that um wasn't covered before so that's part of w i um and so like I think that that would be a benefit um and I like picking up up um Ed Noble and kind of the shopping along there as well as all of the different um restaurants and things that people could be working late um at and I agree with councilman roolan I I'm not ready to say let's stop this like I think that it's been a really great service and I think that it is generating momentum um with the community and I think that you know some of the numbers show um that increased kind of expansion and I think too like you know George was talking about um International students and you know community members that are here that you know don't have a car and those are the types of things that we want to facilitate we want to be um a walkable you know easy mass transit kind of community and those are things that we we value and so if we're um wanting to keep students here potentially long term like this is something that I think is a benefit um to the community as a whole and I'm glad that OU is part of the program because I think you know U students it's a great opportunity for them to have a service like this okay coun peock did you still have a question got answered thank you yes sir um I just slide that there's a program for unbanked individuals to get demand how does that work because I the reason I bring this up I had an individual come to me that said that they could not get their credit card to work on the on demand and they even showed me try to put it in it was like and it was the same card they used for the rub and so I told them to call up there and see what they could do but I also this was a very low income individual and so for the individual that do not have Banks and don't have credit cards how do they go about this you just explain yeah so you should be able to use a credit or debit card and um the I think the initial if you don't have a bank I think the idea is to get one of those prepaid debit cards that you can get at you do have to have a card yes there yeah it's just like with us with cash handling it just it would would cost probably more than it's worth than to have people pay no cash but you should be able to get any prepaid debit card at the store and be able to use it so if they have to trouble call via email us we actually had somebody in the last couple weeks that was having trouble and my counterparts at Via uh called and emailed to them directly you know so if people have problems then they should definitely reach out so yeah thanks sir all right any other questions for the so we're going to continue this like I I'll swivel in my chair and look at Mr Francisco uh we currently don't have a budget in FY 25 for this it wasn't an ongoing uh allocation so that'll just be something that we'll have to get with his department and look into so I that needs to be a part of the discussion now but I just want to put that out there that we in the current Transit budget we don't have that allocation so that's that's that's good yeah better late than um so I I think what I'm hearing is uh possibly moveing forward with the expansion of service now to the west side of town um for what however many days we'll try to get on the next Council agenda to to be able to do that um and then explore options with more Norman Tech uh for next year and it sounds like everybody's in agreement to continue the service for another year council member uh any thought or discussion about the rate and it and it's a flat fee right now right any discussion about it being fluctuating based on the distance or or like Ian I still I'd like it to be affordable but at the same time we're we're having a publicly subsidized entity that's competing with private business outside of the Ada aspect of it right so um I don't know if there's ways to generate more revenue from it or advertising from It Whatever creative ways we can find to pay for it because I I think it is a good thing to have and I think it can complement our bus system our fixed route system um too but that cost the yearly reoccurring cost is concern I think we all probably have so yeah I think it's probably similar to the bus and that you'll you'll probably never pay for the service through fairs right right um with with on demand you can get creative and you can say hey the first three miles or whatever one mile is $2 the next mile is another dollar next mile is another dollar you could do those types of things uh so if council's interested in that we can ask via uh to explore that option that' probably be something that we need to do a lot of marketing to let writers know if we are changing it that way but that would something we could at least know about right yeah what it would look like if that if we did do that cuz it shouldn't emulate a taxi service what what you're talking about is a taxi service with the me old used to have meters but it's just if you went to a Zone if you're coming in town say five miles for the $2 going out to Thunderbird for some more money yeah uh but most of the time there should be an exemption for kids uh going to school and those kinds of things those you know it a lot of this isn't isn't going to make any difference to kids shouldn't be well I shouldn't say that it shouldn't be a a great writers ship of kids coming back from bars who want to go straight to school this but there's there's got to be some way we can help pay this because I think there are wonderful wonderful things to do and help the people be able to do stuff I can speak to parrans they a friend of mine takes uh has a standing appointment it seems like she probably calls in but she gets picked up at church and brought home and and I mean they're on time clean courteous great Bunch so and that's my editorial yeah yes sir I think the plus system is great and the fact that we serve the whole city the only thing about it is is being the day 24-hour advance notice it seems to be the one go shopping right now or they got a thing they want to get to right now and going back to our study sessions uh about microtransit and the difference and everything it's just it's hard to manage a system based on on demand uh you don't how many drivers do you uh have sitting around potentially waiting on rides uh so I think that's why the 24-hour um requirements there because uh to make it more cost efficient you can just know how many rides you're going to have the next day right so you know how many drivers you need how many vehicles you can pull vehicles in for serious maintenance and not have to worry about you know putting another vehicle out there to service the the system so I think that's uh why it's been historically that way just to be able to manage the the cost well you know we've had some examples where we've had some residents ride Embark plus to City Hall for a meeting right and the meeting ends an hour and a half before they thought and so they have to wait MH their appointment wasn't scheduled till when they thought it was going to end so they're waiting until it gets here so addressing that is trying to where kind of where I'm trying to get to yeah and similar to somebody if if a bus wasn't coming by for another hour right it's unfortunate but wait yeah got to wait thanks all right thank you sir I appreciate your time item number two I guess is a Branda discussion on regarding time change for City Council meetings Okay um currently um your regular meeting time is at 6:30 as you know and that is codified by ordinance so um there was some discussion from some members of council after last meeting when we started the conference at 4: and the and the regular meeting at 5:30 that they may have some interest in doing that permanently so if that's the case um it would just be an ordinance amendment to change the time of the regular meeting the other meetings the conferences and study sessions and things of that nature just have to get a new meeting um annual meeting summary reissued I mean reposted so that's not a big deal it's just a matter of amending that SC okay um yeah I'm going to say no because I work a full-time job um that technically is supposed to go until 5: I'm already getting out you know have lenience to get out a little early it's the time it is right now is what I signed up for um when I ran for office was like what the expectation was um I also think like I understand on the staff side like that would be wonderful for City staff um but I'm also thinking about the residents to and accessibility to meetings and them being able to get off work get their kids from school maybe have dinner and then be able to come and listen and speak at meetings um so I think that it's more accessible for our residents um at the current time so I'm personally not interested in moving it I just want to Echo what uh council member Scher just said we have full-time jobs when we signed up to to run is with this understanding of when the meetings are and what time we're able to commit to that kind of a time frame if if we are ever change the times of the meetings ideally would I guess it can never happen for the entire change over at once but uh Happ you know like before filing so that the people that are filing to run understand that the meetings begin at this time instead of like if were to make some extreme change for example at 8:00 in the morning that could immediately uh cut out half the council mhm because we have jobs that we have to be at that we can't always just peel away from Drew yes ma'am so I two concur with Schuler and Nash um the number one concern I have about it is public engagement and then to you know whenever I decided to run you know I was under the impression at the time to be you know 6:30 and five and so on so and you know if if there's ever discussion on changing in the future you know anybody in the future you know potentially going to run with plenty of advanced notice if that's going to happen so yes sir I think is there a way to put this out to the public to see what they think because it's not about us I mean yes we were elected to cast our vote but if it's about public engagement it's what time is more convenient for people to come and the majority of people come to speak of miscellaneous comments and if they're here sometimes our miscellaneous comments don't start till 9 or 10 o'clock at night with families they don't want to be up here at night or 10 o' at night and I think that detracts from the public engagement so I mean I understand what everybody here saying trust me I I have a kid I got to pick up at five and you know run here but if it helps our citizens come and be able to express themselves I don't mind doing it ear so for um at the meeting that we did up the time was at the 13th I guess um we did did have some frequent flyer commenters come and they felt like it was being sneaky and intentionally doing it earlier because they have jobs and they can't be here so I think that public engagement would be worse and lessened because people can't take pay time off and they do have to sign up to speak at the meetings and if our meeting starts at 8 and like uh council member ball said you know sometimes comments don't start till 9: I mean they they would be here all day miss a whole day of work potentially just to get in a comment so I think we should keep it at the time that it is I understand it trust me I like it in theory yeah I like getting out early in theory but yes sir uh last time we talked about this a couple years ago uh some wanted it in the morning some wanted to keep it the way it was some wanted 5:30 I kind of suggest well we could do it at 6 I mean 30 minutes could be a big difference perhaps U start this meeting at 5: start the council meeting at 6 um but I haven't seen any real agreement from people on when is a good time to change it so makes it hard to decide to change it um I think con Ball's point I mean one of the ways we could potentially address that is move the miscellaneous comment up we talked about that before moved our Council comments from the end to the front of the meeting so that could be one way because yeah I don't I hey part of me is like well I like that they have to sit through the whole council meeting because they get to see the whole thing uh but part of me is like yeah I hate that people have to sit through the whole council meeting just to say this one thing that they have and so um but maybe moving that up next to the council comments or after before whichever could be one way to address that um but yeah I just don't see a good real good time to do it that everybody's going to have an objection to any time that we come up with so I'm kind of just like keep it the way it's always been so but I agree too that you know for staff it could be better and some members of the public it could be better some maybe not so yeah just kind of a don't have a real will to change it based off all that okay that's what we're going I'll just say as one of the council members with a lot of flexibility um I'm okay with the times that we have I know when we change it it's not often and it's rare and we got to let everybody know that uh you know we might have a 2 p.m budget meeting but um I think for folks that have to get out especially uh watching people try and get out for other meetings like Planning Commission especially if they have small children uh you know the time that they can make comments being a little later might not be the worst because their kids might be in bed one parent can sneak off or they can get somebody to come watch while the kids are in bed and come make public comment so I'm happy with what we're doing now well in the lead up to this is I looked a lot at what other cities did when they do and they're much earlier most of the time during the day the my the other thing is the the Rarity that we go way past 10 o00 we' we've done I think only two that I can think of lately it's rare but it would bring up that miscellaneous comments by an hour and so perhaps we can revisit this in 6 months to get it look that again if we want to do the change obviously everybody' have to change again and before the next election starts up so nobody because I'm I'm like you I I can adjust my schedule as I need to adjust it yeah but that's not everybody and so um it's just finding a better time it's difficult I think on on on staff when you're waiting around and per for if your item is the last one you're waiting through a lot of mud to get there and so there's nothing wrong with that it's just they've got families too and and uh and and doing stuff but yes ma'am um uh I think also maybe a good time to talk about it would be our next Council Retreat when everybody's sworn sworn in by then right yeah uh so that we could get other new council member feedback yeah um and we can do it then and it' still be a year or whatever the cycle comes out at that time still be a year to do that anybody disagree with that Council just confirming that our typical budget adoption process starts at 2 p.m.

Just for the last two years AG yeah so with consensus we'll continue to agendize it just like that that one work thank you my only comment about that is that we moved it up and then we got done in like 30 minutes and so it made we were like oh the city council just moved the most important meeting of the year to the middle of the day because they thought it would go long because it did a couple times and then they got done in like 30 minutes cuz nobody came and spoke so why you darn if you do I know I tell you that's what I always say it's uh people complain about the roads if they're in bad condition and they complain about the construction when they're getting fixed so how you no matter what you yeah all right anybody else want to stay on that moving on the next item is uh considerate item number three consideration of a journey into executive session is authorized by Oklahoma statutes title 25 307 B4 to discuss pending class action litigation against three M company and EI Dupont deore and Company and other defendants involving P contamination or and aquous film forming foam products liability litigation I'll entertain a motion to adjourn out of special session into executive session second thank you uh show all right good evening and welcome to the city council Norman Utilities Authority Norman Municipal Authority and Norman tax increment Finance Authority meeting of February 27th 2024 madam Clark will you please call a roll council member V present council member Schuler here council member Montoya here council member Grant here council member Nash here council member Foreman here council member Holman here council member peacock here mayor hiola I am here would you all please join me in Pledge of Allegiance I pled aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you next item is approval of minutes approval of the city council oversight committee meeting minutes of February 2nd 2022 city council special meeting minutes of October 31 2023 November 21st 2023 and December 19th 2023 and the city council finance committee meetings of February 15 2024 I'll entertain a motion to approve or reject the minutes so move second thank you the motion on the floor is to approve the minutes council members you may cast your votes all votes have been cast and the motion to approve the minutes passes unanimously item number two presentation of a civilian service medal and certificate to Christy stubs for her outstanding performance and teamwork with the Norman Police Department chief Foster will you please present that thank you your honor and thank you council members uh chrisy here and by chance do I have Amy here she is not here okay she was going to try to make it but okay let's uh certify that the chief of police has authorized the award of the civilian service medal to Christy stub October 12th 2023 Norman Police Department was dispatched to a location in reference to a cardiac arrest Bond officers arrival Christy stubs and Benjamin Kirkland who could not be here today were performing CPR on unresponsive female which was Amy we called and asked her if we could tell you who she was she was good and she was going to try to be here um stubs were performing chest compressions and Kirkland was giving breaths officers confirmed the female patient did not have a pulse medical personnel arrived on scene took over the duties of CPR and had to shock the patient at least once with the ad prior to medic's leaving the scene the patient was breathing on her own and making purposeful movements if not for the quick thinking stubs and Kirkland beginning CPR prior to Medics arriving on scene the female Amy most likely would not have survived for outstanding performance and teamwork with Norm Police Department Christy stubs is hereby awarded the civilian service matter your certificate and the M congratulations thank [Applause] you all right item number three a proclamation proclaiming Monday April 22nd 2024 is Earth Day in March 22nd through May uh 19th 2024 is Green Norman Echo month in the city of Norman I'll entertain a motion to acknowledge receed of the Proclamation so move second I have a motion and second the on the floors is to acknowledge re seat of the Proclamation council members you may cast your vote all votes have been receipt passes unanimously thank you ma'am I'll read the proclamation a proclamation of the mayor of the city of Norman Oklahoma proclaiming Monday April 22nd 2024 is Earth Day and March 22nd through Mar May May 19th 2024 is Eco month in the city of Norman whereas Senator Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day to increase environmental aw awareness and to highlight devast the devastating effects of pollution to her air water and soil to the nation and whereas 22 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22nd 7 1970 whereas the city of Norman Parks and Recreation utilities and public works department have planned a series of events to celebrate this important Milestone and provide Norman residents with an opportunity to get involved and whereas Saturday April 22nd 2024 marks the 54th anniversary of Earth Day and whereas Saturday March 22nd through Sunday May 19th is recognized as Green Norman Eco month with free activities to be held at various locations through throughout the city whereas Sunday April 2 21 2024 from noon to 5:00 p.m.

Is the city of Norman's 20th annual Earth Day Festival to be held at Reeves Park and whereas we encourage the community to come to be a part of these free public events and learn these new things about the world around us now therefore I mayor of the city of Norman Oklahoma do hereby Proclaim April 22nd 2024 as bir day in March 22nd through May 19th 2024 is Green Norman Eco month in the city of Norman and encourage our citizens to make a difference in our community uh to think reduce reuse recycle replenish restore refresh replant rebuild repurpose and respect our city is uh D danne Hines and Sarah Bondi here would you please come forward okay let me have it that's awesome what's sad is I was sitting in Biology class on that first uh Earth Day and then I had to see that okay distinguished members of the Norman city council and mayor honored guests and fellow citizens I stand before you today deeply honored to accept this Proclamation declaring April 22nd 2024 as as Earth Day and March 22nd through May 19th 2024 as Green Norman Eco month Senator Gaylord Nelson's vision of Earth Day born from a deep concern for our environment has blossomed into a global movement reminding us of our shared responsibility to protect this precious Planet as we celebrate the 54th anniversary of Earth Day Norman proudly joins the world in this call to action I offer my sincerest gratitude to the Norman City Council for recognizing the importance of environmental stewardship this Proclamation serves as a powerful Testament to our City's commitment to a sustainable future our dedicated staff volunteers and support organizations deserve immense praise for planning a series of events throughout Green Norman Eco month including the upcoming solar bulk purchasing initiative in partnership with 820 and the Star Wars Day May the 4th Electronics waste collection event at Reeves Park these events offer valuable opportunities for our community to learn engage and take action I particularly encourage everyone to attend the 20th annual Earth Day Festival at Reeves Park on April 21st it promises to be a vibrant celebration filled with activities information and a chance to connect with fellow citizens celebrating our environmental well-being let us not underestimate the power of individual actions by embracing the spirit of re think refuse reduce reuse recycle replenish restore refresh replant rebuild repurpose and respect each of us can contribute to a healthier and more sustainable Norman together let us embrace our responsibility as stewards of this beautiful Earth let Green Norman EC month be a catalyst for lasting change inspiring generations to come to cherish and protect our shared environment thank you thank [Applause] you now down to council announcements I'll start with W8 uh so thank you uh this year Norman will be one of 16 cities in the strongest Town March Madness bracket uh every year the the N National nonprofit strong towns honors one Community with the distinction of strongest town and this year Norman will have the chance to earn that title voting starts March 4th so I hope to see everyone watching get out and vote for Norman and to advance to round two and Beyond uh and I can't just say highlight how big this is for our city and how much positive PR and press we are going to get out of this so please get out there vote support our city and thank you very much c m thank you uh just a couple things wanted to note that tomorrow evening at 6:00 at the firehouse Art Center we've got a mural dedication so another piece of public public art going in for Norman um and then also wanted to note um a few things about Reeves Park which is inward 7 uh the kids space playground I've got some emails about that and seen some comments online uh it is 25 years old this year and it continues to be the most popular playground in all of Norman as far as its use um but there are some issues that it's having due to its age and the fact that it's made out of wood and it's having some issues with the base some of the things that are in the ground uh parts are breaking off of it um so park staff has been working for over a year on um with the company that originally helped us build it back in 1999 um on options for how we can replace it but also preserve it as well um that same theme of playground um May potentially making it larger but also uh using materials that will be much more durable and long lasting and require less maintenance than the current one so improvements are in the planning for that playground uh we hope to continue using it for another 25 plus years um and make it even better so I would just encourage parents to be patient with that as City staff Works through that and we identify funding for how we'll go about doing that uh weather through there's at least three more phases of Reeves Park improvements uh we've completed phase one basically with the new uh baseball fields and the parking and the drive that goes through the middle uh but there's a lot more improvements to the park that are uh on down the road I also wanted to mention because I've received a lot of emails about softball adult softball and um so the soft adult softball league in Norman is is separately run from the city and is through the Optimus Club who runs the fields out there and so the city government is not really particularly involved in the adult softball program uh what I can say is that uh from my perspective as a lifelong Norman resident and someone that lives near Reeves Park um I've always loved the adult softball league um and have been glad that we have it in Norman and would definitely like to see it continue uh but the detail of that are an agreement that's between the adult softball league of Norman and the Optimus Club so hopefully they are able to work out uh the issues that they have and are able to continue the league going um for more years to come also uh with Reeves Park we do have Earth Day festivals coming up uh which I'm always excited about hosting at Reeves Park and Medieval Fair is coming up as well in April so it's becoming the busy season for Reeves Park and I'm really excited for um everybody to get an opportunity to go out and see some of the improvements we have made if you haven't uh to see the new robot uh piece of public art if you haven't seen that one yet and um again we will continue making improvements to Reeves Park over the coming years to make it even better um also wanted to mention the ribbon cutting of the wfac last week the young family athletic center a voter approved project um but we did have uh a partnership with Norman Regional hospital and um the young family Trey young family and uh we had the ribbon cutting last week it officially opens March 11th and the pools will be done and everything then but it's already been use in use for over a month um it's extremely popular if any of you have been out there uh so far um it might be hard to find a place to park but there I just want to remind everybody there is a lot of parking in that general area specifically to the east of the embassy sweet hotel is a very large parking lot that's underused I'll just say and then across 24th is another very large parking lot that is vastly underused so uh just keep that in mind when you're going out there and if you're a family and you can take one car inste of to like council member peacock's family I would recommend that but it seems to be extremely popular um and well used which is what we wanted um and Trey Young's father Ry last week said they've been all over the country to facilities like that and they said there is nothing like it in the rest of the United States um so be sure to go and check that out if you get a chance again it is a voter approved project it's the largest dollar amount for any public quality of life Improvement project I think the city has ever done so um and then there's also a large public art piece that's in the front that was also part of the voter approved 1% for public art that former council member Kyle Allison had um added to the Norman forward proposal back then so check that out and then also we have another ribbon cutting on May March 88th for the new municipal court and so this is a project I've been really passionate about for a number of years partly because the current Municipal Court shares a small corner of the police department um and it's kind of always been jammed in there with file cabinets in the hallways and stuff like that and there was just one single small Court room for the whole city for adults and juveniles um and if you ever had to go deal with a municipal court issue there you would know that the lobby is extremely small definitely not big enough for a city of this size and so our new Municipal Court which is across the way over here in the building a um which used to be the home of Public Works and planning and code enforcement a whole bunch of different city departments were under that one roof now that entire building is our new Municipal Court it not only has a regular Court courtroom for I guess adult issues but it has a dedicated uh juvenile courtroom as well so I'm very excited to see that that is another voter approved project uh for the municipal complex going back to 2008 so uh March 8th at 3M if you can attend that I would definitely encourage you to come see that and then the last thing I wanted to talk about was the uh Community planning and Transportation uh we had our committee meeting last Thursday it's the 4th Thursday of every month at 4M here at City Hall it is live streamed on YouTube and you can go back and watch any of the meetings um after they've happened as well but in that committee we get an update from City staff every month about public transit system about the budget for it about projects expansions of it uh we try to answer any questions or comments that the public may send us or that we may hear or see online throughout the month so if you are a writer of the public transit system or if you just have an interest in knowing more about it I would I would definitely encourage you to check out that meeting we have been seeing uh significant growth in the ridership month-to-month uh since we took over the system in 2019 and especially since um I say after covid it's kind of still going on but since the height of covid has gone down we've seen more and more people using public transit to get to work and to go shopping and go to appointments and things like that uh we also talked about this past week about the Citywide sidewalk program about funding for sidewalks in Norman that's one of the most common questions I think we all get is about sidewalk gaps or the condition of sidewalks or Ada accessibility and I just want to make sure you all know we do have a sidewalk plan for the city we do have an ADA plan that aims to uh address all the Ada deficiencies we have in the city of Norman when it comes to pedestrian mobility and um if that's a topic you're interested I would definitely encourage you to check out the meeting that we have this past Thursday um and then we also discuss uh major road construction projects as well so if you're wondering about the Robinson and James Garner underpass in the bridge uh we get updates from City staff about ongoing City projects uh road construction that may impact your travel daily or it may just be something you're interested in knowing more about so if those things are are things you would like to know more about or if you have comments or suggestions or ideas for us um in regard to Transportation stuff please let any of us know on Council we'll be sure that we discuss those in that committee meeting Community planning and transportation thank you as for I don't know if there's anything left to say that's a tough act to follow take more sips okay um so according to my nine-year-old our meetings can be sort of boring to her and but there is one item I do want to draw your attention to tonight it's item number 25 it's something specific toward six it's actually a public hearing and I asked our City attorney and this is actually something unprecedented that Council has never had to do before um there's a public nuisance property and Circumstance you you will hear the presentation on that but this will be something that we will be considering for the first time and so a lot of people will say how does local government really affect our life well we actually can impact quality of life um and intervene on certain things like that so pay a particular interest to this item that's all thank you that's no announcements this week thank you good evening word for in city of Norman this is the last week of Black History Month here in our multi-racial city uh where ostensibly all of us are working towards building an inclusive community as I think about our Collective history Mysteries and struggles and how they last all year I'm reminded of land acknowledgements and the reasons for doing them the one I use for our city goes like this Norman is located on C Witchita Apache abente sha Kawa kikapu and Osage lands 39 tribal Nations dwell in the state of Oklahoma as a result of settler colonial policies designed to assimilate all native peoples Norman Oklahoma was also a Sundown town until 1967 the land we occupy has complicated histories and I wish to acknowledge that speaking of having our own spin I went to the rescheduled 2024 Interfaith breakfast on Saturday February 17th I left that event hopeful that we'll see at least one action item mentioned come to fruition as it is 100% something all nine of us on city council can affect and that is supported ing the work that comes from our Human Rights Commission how do we do that well we appoint Commissioners listen to the recommendations that come from that commission and then work towards implementing them we heard from Interfaith breakfast organizers and speakers that we need volunteers to stop up and serve on our Human Rights Commission they also mentioned OKC restarted its defunct HRC these times Demand Action if you're interested please go to normanok.gov navigate to your government then navigate to boards and commissions once there you should find a link to the online application it's not listed but as I understand it there are three vacancies on the Human Rights Commission you cannot be related to anyone on city council you cannot be a city employee and you must live within Norman city limits to be eligible to serve you can also come to City Hall and apply in person through the city clerk's office office we keep applications on file for 2 years if you live in W 4 or a member of a marginalized Community Living full-time in Norman I invite you to connect with me by email Norman or sorry W4 normanok.gov or text 45876 9237 about what it takes to serve on a border commission especially as a minority I've served on several over the years and while it is a time commitment your voice has the potential to go a lot further than you think it is here that I'd like to acknowledge the Norman Community Candlelight visual for next Benedict that took place Saturday February 24th at Andrews Park I want to thank the city of Norman Parks and Recreation for the role they played in that event being successful and to say that this event went a long ways towards building an inclusive community there were a minimum of 60 to 70 people in attendance potentially more as I saw saw the crowd grow by Nightfall I met people from all over Norman and others from smaller surrounding communities who also supported what we were doing to both honor and mourn this young non-binary kid from aasa Oklahoma next Benedict should still be with us today and not just alive but thriving survival is not enough learn their name next Benedict and know that they were a trans teen working their way to using Heim pronouns that they were chocka and learning more about their family history and that he died before he could grow into the person he was meant to be scapegoating queer kids to grift off the fear and hate that other people have will never make America great I T I started tonight's announcement reflecting on Black History Month originally before all this started during between last meeting in this one um I wanted to reflect on African-American artists that inspired me however real life Interrupted but as Tony Morrison said this this is precisely the time when artists go to work there is no time for despair no place for self-pity no need for silence no room for fear we speak we write we do language that that is how civilizations heal well yes we as a community of artists organizations families friends elected officials and others did our best with that at the candlelight vigil for next Benedict I plan to join the OU indigenous student Le walkout at 12: pm tomorrow Wednesday February 28th the March for Life March for Rights march for next Benedict starts at the seed sewer statue on the south oval still W for marches past the Cleveland County Courthouse and ends at Andrews Park when I think about the impermanence of all things certainly an existential thought had by many for eons I'm reminded of of what little we do get to hold on to and how that experience and connection shapes our brief time on this planet so in the vein of connection Blackness queerness and family I want to Circle back briefly to highlight the life of an artist I found impactful Jackie Shane who was born in Nashville Tennessee May 14th 1940 I found her music because I was crate digging at a Numero Group records Oklahoma City popup in 2017 I learned early in her life her mother was very supportive lending clothes and makeup when Jackie came out of his trans at 13 however watching a racially motivated hate crime occur in her home state Tennessee she re relocated to Toronto Canada in Canada Jackie would come to Define her sound rhythm and blues times rock and roll she was a regular at the sapphire tavn and although she enjoyed success in 1996 she moved to LA to take care of her mother retired from music when her mother pass pass Jackie moved back to Nashville there was a new renewed interest in her body of work before Jackie passed away in 2019 at the age of 78 on her life and career Jackie Shane told the Canadian Broadcasting Company I really feel that I have made a place for myself with wonderful people what I have said what I have done they say it makes their lives better when I think about connection that's in the heart of it isn't it you know the Heat death of the sun might render this all into Cosmic dust and there's no record no building left of what we've done but we'll always have had our connection to one another and the meaning we collectively create from the chaos as someone who's just come off a reelection won by a landslide which required a lot of door knocking and porch chats let's be real making policy choices that results in family suffering is neither pro- family nor Pro Community I have heard stories from multiple families in Ward four of friends and family but especially adult trans family and friends leaving Oklahoma in case my election this month wasn't loud enough Ward four as a majority doesn't care about respectability politics the people in this W care about the future from environmental sustainability effective and efficient city services all the way to what's going to happen to the quality of Our Lives as more of our children siblings and other family and friends choose to move away they care about what that means as time and distance strain their connections connections that should have been protected and nurtured and the majority in W for care about the people who can't leave too I don't think this sentiment is unique to W for but let me tell you as I connect with W for families in the core and in the newly Rea reapportioned areas they aren't looking for groups to be scapegoated they're looking for policy in a plan of action that makes sense and gets to the root of systemic issues their patience is thin for grifters who want to siphon off money resources and power all while having nothing substantive to offer our community speaking of actual Community our second Friday artwork takes place on March 8th contrary to the rancid Echo Chambers you'll find online I expect to see weather permitting well-attended and happening art events amid a plethora of shopping and dining options in the Walker Arts District AKA downtown Norman shopping and dining locally supports your community and your city as mentioned by council member Holman there is a ribbon cutting at the Municipal Court also located in W 4 um I want to say that the Highlight Reel that I watched on Instagram was a nice preview and I appreciate that um and if you can't make it maybe navigate over there and take a look for yourself last there is a new a Norman question about parks recreation and open space that was recently posted please go to a norman.com to participate and while you're there check out the schedule for Community Workshop opportunities running from now till March 14th thank you council member monor you good evening Norman Oklahoma and word three I hope this evening finds you all well um first a message to the citizens of Norman that are members of a marginalized Community I hear you and I see you and I care about you and you matter and if there's ever a time that you don't think you matter call me or text me and we can talk about it and I'll tell you why you matter my phone number is 45876 3143 calendar items so a week from today we have a special election on our 25 year oie franchise agreement please make sure to make a plan to vote and go see your pool workers then April 2nd is the Norman Public School Board seat for election and Ward three March 11th from 6:30 to 8:30 at Truman Elementary located at 600 parksite road is an aim popup shop so that is our master plan you're with our land use plan water and so on so you have an opportunity to provide your input on how we shape the next 20 years of our town and lastly um holding a town hall has been on my mind for quite some time it's a matter of scheduling finding the right time location and so on so it is on my mind and I do hope to get one scheduled for the month of April thank you all for being here and have a good evening council member sh yeah I'll keep it brief I was also going to talk about um super Tuesday which is next Tuesday uh March 5th um we have a we're the on the ballot is the OG&E franchise agreement um as well as the presidential primary preference um so early voting will start uh this week Thursday and Friday 8: to 6:00 p.m.

Um and then since it is a federal election they will also have satday um 8:00 a.m. to 2: p.m. available um I will also draw your attention to April 2nd um which is the runoff for the W two election that will be going on um so w two you will have um an election on April 2nd um and then that is it for me that's ball all right uh first and foremost and most importantly today's my wife's birthday so I'd like to wish her a very happy birthday and just to say thank you to her and my family and pretty much all of our families for the sacrifices they make that allow us to be here and to do what we do so um next about two weeks ago uh the city of Norman assisted a private property owner in the removal of a homeless encampment um myself along with a few of the other counselors here were out there um and I took the opportunity to see the effects this en camama had on the property the surrounding properties and to meet some of the individuals being removed as well as members of our cooc um I recorded the entire time I was out there um and I shared two videos in particular uh with everybody here I shared on my Facebook account and I shared it with pretty much every department head we have here in the city um the first video I shared was with an individual who was homeless and who was being removed he told me that he was a drug abuser and this was the primary reason why he was there he told me he didn't want help I asked him what I could do I said if I get you to a rehab right now would you do it and he said hello he said I like being being here I like doing what I'm doing we're out here because we want people to leave us alone and it goes for 99% of the people there now if that's true I don't know but that's what he told me about himself um so what's more compassionate allowing these people to slowly commit suicide through drug abuse mental illness and exposure or to force these people to get help if someone was about to jump off the physical science center at OU we'd have 100 cop cars there and we'd do everything we could to save that person's life but because somebody's slowly committing suicide with drug abuse we just turn our backs on them but I guess when there's so many people here profiting both financially and politically from the suffering of our least fortunate the incentive has let them remain where they are and in my opinion that's an absolute disgrace and when not if one of these people can Su succumb to this lifestyle and lose their lives I don't think we need to look any further than the people up here on this dis and the people who work for the city and that are sitting in this room on who to hold accountable now the second video I shared kind of proves this point um I talked to a group of IND individuals who claim to be members of our Continuum of Care uh they said they worked for a friend's house Norman Caravans and food and shelter to be exact these individuals claimed that they couldn't do poop to keep it familyfriendly they claimed well um I asked them what they needed I said' what do you guys need in order to get these people help you know what it was they need more of your taxpayer dollars because they can't do anything their their admission with what they have but they want more from you to continue failing us and those people out there um I don't know it's an absolute absolute disgrace um now for those of you who saw the videos are these the people we want working for our Continuum of Care their behavior was an absolute disgrace and if this behavior is a general attitude of our Continuum of Care then it's pretty obvious to see why our homeless population keeps increasing here in Norman um so why keep wasting money on these programs and when those who run the programs admit they can't do anything and want more money to continue failing now I sent like I said these videos to every department head and I asked them I couldn't I didn't get an email back to verify if these people were part of our Continuum of Care I didn't get a single email back nobody has any answers so may maybe I mean i' I've talked to some of our department heads one-on-one and asked them what we can do and and I've looked outside the box because obviously what we have right now isn't working but we need ideas and we have a vote tonight that can actually help and give some of these people a place to go so hopefully we do the right thing on that so that's all I have thank you mayor has not next item is consent docket this item is placed on the agenda of the city council by unanimous consent can designate those routine agenda items that they wish to be approved or acknowledged by one motion if any item proposed does not me with the approval of all council members then that item will be heard in regular order staff recommends that item four through item 24 be placed on the consent docket I'll entertain a mo so second second thanks we didn't put that in have a motion and second on uh uh approving items 4 through 24 uh I also need a a motion in a second to place them on no I'm Sor you talk louder right it motion on the four is Place items 4 through 24 on the agenda move second council members you may cast your votes all votes have been cast items 4 through 24 on the consent docket passes unanimously thank you ma'am I need a motion to approve items four the the consent motion to approve second council members you may cast your vote all votes have been approve the consent docket passes unanimously thank you thank you for your patience to item number 25 a resolution of the Council of the city of Norman Oklahoma conducting and closing a public hearing to determine the appropriate action for abatement or condemnation of or woodrest Creek Drive as a public nuisance and Order city services to be disconnect Ed for a period of 6 months I'll entertain a motion to open the public hearing so move second have motion and second motion on the floor is to open the public hearing council members you may cast your vote we're just opening the hearing we're opening the meeting all votes have been cast and the motion to open the open the hearing hearing passes unanimously the public hearing is now open recognize Jannie Schneider assistant City attorney to make a presentation thank you mayor council members rice don't go anywhere you know I can mess up these things pretty darn quick um this is a public hearing to determine as the mayor just stated Genie can you pull your mic down closer that better yeah okay as the mayor just read this is a public hearing to determine the appropriate action for abatement or condemnation of 3104 would Crest Creek um drive as a public nuisance and order the city services be discontinued disconnected for a period of six months this is a single family Residence at 3104 woodrest Creek Drive drive it was purchased by Eric Scott Hudson in February of 21 for $188,000 he's got a mortgage on that property with Veterans United Home Loan and has the property has a tax exempt financing riter uh I'm not going to go into right now all the details that have been happening on that the Norman Police Department is going to join me in this presentation tonight but there's been at least over 60 calls for service and uh since the purchase of properly most of them have come in the last two years there's illegal drug activity disturbances involving weapons uh shots fired harassments threats suicide ATT tents and a fentanyl overdose at one time the neighbors feel extremely unsafe um Mr Hudson uh currently has a case at district court in Cleveland County for maintaining a dwelling purposes for the purpose of Narcotics that was filed in September it's been continued a number of times because he has stated to the court that he wanted to get an attorney and he's not done that yet a resident of the property Daniel Owens and you'll hear more about him from the Norman Police Department Department uh he also has a number of District Court charges and Municipal cour Court charges for things such as agravated assault there's a third resident there that had been a a resident of uh a local Assisted Living Center who was evicted from that Living Center for the use of meth uh the the police department is going to go over that they've done an excellent excellent job of the investigation of this over the last two years they spent quite a bit the time with the neighbors regarding this property but what brings us here and what gives us the authority to be here tonight is section 16304 and uh that outlines how to declare a property a property of public nuisance uh I may be stumbling just a tad about this I've been here almost 24 years we've had this happen one time in the past in 2013 and that never went through a a completion because that property ended up being sold so this is not something we do often it's something that we take very serious it's Unique but at this time with everything that's happened at this property the city staff felt this was our only option was to come to city council and ask you to declar a public nuisance uh this the ordinance states that a p a nuisance property means a location zoned residential where the occupants or invitees or owners or other persons utilize the property in a manner which shall annoy injure or endanger the safety help health Comfort or Repose of any considerable number of persons shall offend the public decency or shall in any way render any considerable number of persons insecure in Life or use of property Bingo this is that property uh it goes on to say that it can be determined to be a nuisance property if within a 365-day period on three different dates citations resulted in guil your no contest we met that burden with Mr Hudson he uh in three different chapters in October he was cited for a health violation another violation later in October he was operating in advertising in short-term rental without a license he played no contest to all those three violations Mr Owens one of the resident also has three disturbing the pieace charges pending he was charged with another disturbing the piece in September of 23 and entered a no contest plea to that in October of 2004 these charges just those alone clearly meet the requirements of the nuisance property stated the the ordinance goes on to authorize for the city to hold a public hearing which we are doing tonight and upon a majority of vote by the council you can determine if it's going to be a public nuisance and to disconnect city services for a period of to six months then we will just deem it uninhabitable and I stated in the staff report what uninhabitable is uh it's just a structure unfit for human occupancy because it doesn't have the property utilities attached the city um we've worked well together with legal the police department and code uh we have met a number of times about this property when we decided to take this direction and LA on February 16th a notice was sent to the property owner a notice was posted on the property uh by the Norman Police Department we also sent a notice to the mortgage holder so they would know what was going on with this property um I'm going to let uh I'm going to turn this over to Major Chad Vincent of the Norman Police Department and he's going to introduce uh one of the officers who has done a tremendous amount of work and excellent work and go through more of the particular things that they had found in their investigation good evening Council my name is Chad Vincent with the police department I'm the major of our community and staff services Bureau uh just as Miss Jeanie said we're here tonight really to capture and share the work that's been done in the neighborhood this is probably the point where I would come up and share what we've done specifically from the police department standpoint but as she mentioned we have two exceptional officers that have done a tremendous amount of work in this neighborhood really to restore peace um and try to bring order and instead of me trying to relay the work that they have done uh but they've done a tremendous job I we thought it was best that we just bring them up um and let them share the work that they've done in this neighborhood so we're going to bring up Master police officer Ben Gomez and Sergeant Chris Allison and then they're going to share the work and what um what our involvement and what our experience over the last 10 or 12 months looks like so I'll turn it over to officer Gomez and Sergeant Allison that's okay get any Council um just to recap uh what Miss Snider said um I'm officer Gomez we've been I've been the primary officer investigating um this address and trying to address the issues that have Arisen um at 3104 wood Crush Creek Drive this my partner sarden Allison and he's been there for the majority of this as well um and we're going to go over some of the details that of the cases we've worked um the main complaints with this house uh as you can see uh the illegal drug use uh namely meth and fentel um the amount of foot vehicle bicycle traffic to and from the house day and night um there's been disturbances involving weapons multiple health and safety code violations um there's two companies being operated out of the house one's a landscaping company one is a bicycle sale repair chop shop however you want to describe it um operating an Airbnb without a license and then just some really erratic and violent behavior from individuals inside the residents um some of the concerns that have been expressed to me by multiple Neighbors in this neighborhood I've been flagged down numerous times receive emails phone calls uh from the neighbors talking about how unsafe they felt because of this one particular address um you'll see on the map this address lies directly across from Vineyard Park um residents have told me that they found needles uh in the park signs of uh encampments there we've walked the Back Creek behind this address as well as the park I haven't seen any like wellestablished encampments um in these areas little bit of trash signs that maybe somebody spent a night there but nothing that's grown out of proportion to some of the other areas we've seen um I've had people tell me they don't feel safe though taking their kids to the park just because they don't know who's going to be in the area at any given time what state of mind they're going to be in um and it's it's sad that they don't feel safe using that Park um they've sought help from us we've made numerous arrests um upwards of 15 16 people uh over the last year from this address um and it's very clear that we cannot eliminate this problem just by arresting it away so um gennie Snider went over both of these um to our knowledge the three current occupants of this house are the homeowner Eric Hudson um who currently has a district court case in Cleveland County for maintaining a dwelling um for the use of Nar n otics um another individual Daniel Owens um who is operating the turfman landscaping company and the bicycle shop out of the house um with Eric um he has an officer safety alert on him due to past incidents with the Norman Police Department um he has two cases currently pinning in Cleveland County for uh two separate assaults and batteries on different days um he's a guy that I've had numerous encounters with uh both good and bad we've had very civil conversations and we have worked really hard to establish rapport with him um to keep situations from es escalating so there's been times when he's done what exactly what he's supposed to times when he hasn't and we've done our best to really navigate that um the last person um is an older female um we had a case back in or I think June of 23 where staff at a Assisted Living Center here in Norman found drugs in her room meth in marijuana um she went to the hospital and she was subsequently removed from that facility um she made her way to got connected with Eric Hudson has been living with him uh we have made a APS referral uh for her we went out with APS to uh do a welfare check on her and through their investigation they found that she was cul culpable in the living situation at that address uh a big concern from the residents uh in particular is Daniel Owens history um you can do a Google search and find his uh criminal history down in Texas multiple interactions with uh law enforcement there um in be County with us we've had the SWAT team activated on him at a past address here in Norman um it's kind of hard to see with all the lights on but traditionally when we or typically when we encounter Daniel um he's wearing tactical body armor um he has has retractable uh baton or an asp and mace on his vest um he has retreated into his house to get dressed in that attire and come back outside just to talk to me um so he makes it a point to where this when we encounter him which is naturally escalates our uh you know get yeah concern when we contact him um never have never had to use force on him um like I said we have worked extremely hard to build rapport with this individual uh on two occasions when he has had warrants he has turned himself into me and I have driven him to jail in and out of handcuffs um so it's it's just unpredictable what state of mind you're going to be with him I've also had screaming matches at the front door where we're trying to get inside to check on somebody and we're unable to do so because he was preventing us from getting inside um these are the two businesses that are being operated out of the house uh the first is the turf and Landscaping Company you can find rolls of turf uh rolled up in the driveway alongside of the house and then up against the wood line uh in the creek uh just to the north of this address the other is called Ana Bike Shop which I think they started in December um I found this art this uh advertisement online um listing Eric Hudson as one of the operators and his address as the um location of the business and then from Daniel owens's Facebook account under Fus Tyrone Clark he's got a he posted a picture of a letter from the IRS to 3104 woodrest Creek Drive these are also posts from Daniel owens's Facebook account um advertising his holiday bike sale so that's from the inside of the garage at 314 wood press Creek Drive the individual you see there working on a bike we arrested in early 2023 for possession of methamphetamine on our traffic stop he was with a female at that time who was also arrested for trafficking CDs um when we found 50 grams of meth um inside her person um as we went over earlier there have been 59 calls for service at this address directly um many disturbances some are contact of subjects which are would be officer initiated if we saw somebody at this address um went to talk to them but you have disturbances suspicious people found items welfare checks um alarms noise complaints and all but two of these have been since Eric Hudson has owned the house so prior to his ownership there were only two calls for service at this address um these calls do not account for calls that populate at a nearby location that are associated with this address so these are specifically ones that either we are dispatched to this house or we contact someone at the house so say for instance a car left the residence we conducted a traffic stop at 12th and Rock Creek that call would be built under that location so there's more people that we've contacted leaving the house that just don't show when we uh search the address to give you kind of the backstory of how we learned about this address and how it came about um we started by investigating a series of porch piracy incidents in that neighborhood um to this individual the male um was caught on a ring doorbell Cam and by a person uh on cell phone stealing packages we located his car parked in the driveway of 3104 Wood Crest Creek um while watching that house we observed him leaving that car Sergeant Allison conducted a traffic stop um he had felony warrants lied to us about his name once we figured out who he was he was arrested um we found methamphetamine and paraphernalia inside the car at that date in time he was charged with that as well and then the female passenger with him also received a docket for um paraphernalia he also uh confessed to stealing the packages in the neighborhood told us where he pwned them and I think we were able to follow up and um close out some of those cases that was April 17th of 2023 on May 1st that same female overdosed uh on fitel inside the address Sergeant Allison responded to that scene as well she was transported out of the house and he obtained consent to go inside um during our search of the residence we found methamphetamine uh signs of fentel tin foil digital scales used syringes just strewn about the house these are some more pictures of that um just UNCA syringes baggies with residue baggies with methamphetamine obvious signs of drug use in the house on May 3rd uh the individual on top there uh goes by the street named monster we have a pleth of uh contact history with him here in Norman he's known to use methamphetamine he had an apartment here in Norman um of the last few years that was similar to Eric's house tons of foot traffic believe he was selling drugs there were rumors that he was also trafficking unhoused women in and out of his apartment um we've had numeral people numerous people report that we're unable to corroborate it or have anyone come forward to us and um any victims willing to speak with us about it but um have arrested him on numerous occasions uh the three individuals on the bottom we stopped on a traffic stopped leaving that house on July 31st um they had pulled into the driveway observed my car immediately turned around and drove away the driver of that car was not charged with anything but um told us that he had just been released from prison from another state the uh female passenger there had prior criminal history lots of uh drug charges including a duid she had uh drugs stuffed in her uh shirt um at that time and was cited for paraph that day as well um the third individual on the far right it's hard to see with the lights on um had the most history he had been seen on ring doorbell cam coming to and fr of the house on a bicycle approaching the next door neighbor's house um apparently by a mistake um so I know he had been at Eric Hudson's house prior to this stop so when they tried to tell me they were lost and turned around in a random address we knew that was not the case so his charges you can read manufacturing CDs laring of Auto bail jumping burglary um long list of crimes there while we were stopped with those individuals we we wrote uh the second or the female and the second male dockets um a car passed by us with three individuals one of them was Daniel um there were two other males one of them was this uh Gentleman on top he had Municipal warrants we've had history with him recognized him so we went back to the house and um arrested him for the municipal warrant August 21st we contacted uh the gentleman on the bottom riding away from the house on a bicycle um we've encountered him numerous times in Norman never this far north or at any address in this neighborhood um admitted that that's the house he came from he had 10 Municipal warrants that day um so we arrested him transported him to Municipal Court left him with the bike he uh was released from municipal court and another individual uh recognized him the bike turned out to be the that individual stolen bicycle so that individual assaulted him and uh he received dockets for an assault over this stolen bicycle August 23rd we stopped this car uh leaving the address uh I recognized the passenger who was the gentleman on the left uh he had three Municipal warrants um lots of criminal history with us as well the driver is pictured on the right he uh we called a can9 to the traffic stop the K9 alerted to the odor of Narcotics we conducted a search of the vehicle Sergeant Allison located methamphetamine in the driver floorboard and there was a 22 revolver that was loaded and cocked stuffed under the front seat he's a prior felon and not allowed to have a firearm so we charged him with that as well and uh he currently has a warrant out for his arrest for that as well on August 28th we stopped this vehicle leaving the house um the gentleman on the right is a notorious drug dealer here in Norman um low-level deals mostly to our unhoused population we have arrested him numerous times uh for possession of CDs possession of CDs with intent we have served a search warrant on his cell phone and found evidence of drug sales um occurring at his residence and exactly how he was doing it um we arrested him uh on January 30th of this this month I believe and uh he had gram or Methamphetamine um with him in his apartment on his bedside table in plain view that day um his driver that day was the gentleman on the left who did not have uh any criminal history that I could see um however a k9 alerted to the odor of Narcotics on a vehicle that day as well and we found methamphetamine and paraphernalia in a compartment um near the driver seat of that car so he was charged with that um I also stopped him leaving a separate address where we believe similar activities occurring um on the 17th of January um of this year uh two more on September 12th these two individuals who we've contacted at 3104 woodrest Creek Drive numerous times left together on bicycles um we knew that both each of them had warrants uh they observed sh Allison and tried to avoid Us by riding their bikes through a field um Sant Allison was able to apprehend the woman on the right I was able to catch up to the woman on the left and arrest them for their respective warrants uh recently February first of so this month um we got a call of two individuals walking the neighborhood streets looking into cars they approached the front door of 3104 wood Crush Creek um Gentleman on the left picked up a broom and they walked into Vineyard Park when officer or Sergeant Allison sorry attempted to contact him the uh Gentleman on the right took off uh running and I was able to apprehend him probably two blocks south in the neighborhood he had Municipal warrants he has extensive history um and then Sergeant Allison arrested the uh and other officers arrested the gentleman on the left for uh Cleveland County Warrants um in the midst of all that um so August 30th this is uh where the maintain and dwelling charge uh when I file when I was able to file this charge um we stopped Eric Hudson on a traffic stop um during that stop we located paraphernalia in his uh in his belongings I was able to have a ation with Eric just about the activity that we'd seen at that address up to this point and express our concerns he voiced some of the same concerns for that address and admitted that it had gotten out of control um part of it he blamed on other people that were living there some of it he took responsibility for it himself um I asked him what we could do to address the issues at his house and if there was a way he needed to evict certain people to improve the conditions there um he hesitated but said that no it was fine and he could take care of it during that conversation he gave consent for us to go and he admitted that there was a still drugs inside of his house gave us consent to go in and check on the condition of the house and remove what little bit of drugs he had so we made entry that day um this is a screenshot of my body cam um from inside the house um and as you can see these are UNCA syringes that were not in the box when I initially walked through but collected as we went through the house so so the lights are kind of glaring it but inside the living room multiple bicycles um that's a picture of the bedroom uh where we found the drugs on the table this box of syringes were in the closet um and when I when I talk about just safety concerns walking through that place is dangerous and these were several of them were on the table on the floor on beds uncapped laid in the open obviously used um Eric told me that he buys them in bulk and passes out clean syringes to friends so they have a safe place to use and a clean method of using um drugs this is uh screenshots from the attic which was in the process of being converted into an extra room um and then once again just the box with not probably not all the paraphernalia in the house but everything that I could locate near my walk through um additional police calls for service uh he should play so this a this is a disturbance there's a woman out front of 3104 woodrest Creek involved in a disturbance with Daniel Owens she was screaming acting belligerent in the street he live streamed it to his facei at the same time a neighbor was recording her from a different angle um she's yelling out uh racial expletives directed at Daniel he's pretty calm in the video but recorded her and asked her to leave the property um I went back later that day to attempt to find her and trespass her arrest her take her to the hospital whatever she needed um and was unable to locate her uh when I followed up this is body cam footage from a disturbance on October 22nd how's it going so what happened they were getting shot at by BBS house it would have been my house basically um me and my ex are in the process of separating i' been over there the last 4 days so it was a BB gun it was it's a airof rub rubber pellets I guess shooting officers R it was a airsoft gun it wasn't an actual AR but I I have video okay I need everybody's IDs in so officers responded to a shots fired car call there at the address um the time they were did not know exactly what they were walking into but it was a disturbance at that address um where Daniel Owens had come outside and assaulted three individuals with a ar5 style airsoft gun um he's this is what one of his uh current cases in Cleveland County is pending from additional police calls November 1st um the two individuals pictured here uh were actually contacted I think 3 days before on a search warrant served at a separate location where we suspected fentel of being used um they were both convicted in 2020 of unlawful removal of a body after an acquaintance of theirs overdosed on heroin and they helped dispose of it into a dumpster um she's recent he's recently out of prison um both of them had stayed at 3104 woodrest Creek Drive there was some sort of falling out the male went to the address that day and was allegedly assaulted by Daniel with a baton um it's hard to see but there's blood running down his face he declined to uh press charges and was uncooperative with law enforcement so no charges stem from this um but the in incident was documented as well this is a disc servance I responded to on November 8th um this was a woman who was barricaded inside the address it was Daniel owens's girlfriend at the time um when I'm trying this is one of the inst I spoke of when I was trying to get inside to check on her um we had a relative of hers calling saying she was barricaded inside and was unable to get out um as I try to go in the front door uh we were in a yelling match uh and Daniel was preventing me from going in um but you'll see she was able to escape out of front window um and we were able to get her in a car and drive her to a safe location yes I am nothing happened to her her get theu what are you doing stop sit downar scared sit down my son's the one that called for me I was just trying to get out the window cuz he's scared me cuz he's telling me to unlock the door unlock the door and I'm like there yeah so this same female um the picture of the two women on bicycles that we arrested earlier um that day when we we arrested them they told us of a girl um and provided a name inside the house who they alleged was assaulted by Daniel Owens we uh they said that she was badly bruised and we probably should go check on her um so after we dropped them off we went back to the house and attempted to conduct a welfare check um on this woman didn't know who she was at the time had never seen her all we had was a first name didn't even know how to spell it um but we made contact with Eric that day and asked him if she was home he went back to the bedroom and reemerged at the front door short time after um told us she was not there on this day when I contact her she told me that she was at the house and that Eric told her not to come out of the room so we were able to talk with her that day um and remove her from that situation and send her with her family um we asked her about drug use at the house and she also admitted to being an addict and said that the drug activity at that house never stops and that's probably the most she's ever used in her life is when she's lived at that address um these are definitely not all the ring doorbell footage uh that I've seen over the past year but captures I think kind of what the neighbors are seeing on a regular basis uh these are from the neighbor to the South um and when we talk about foot traffic to and from the house bicycle traffic constantly Walking In The Yards um through the driveway coming up to the front door the bottom right you have a mail on a bicycle riding to the house carrying another bicycle um Daniel claims that it's a legitimate business and he has receipts for all his things Eric has told me that people show up with bicycles um out of the blue um this one's hard to uh see but zoomed in we had calls about a male carrying a machete down the neighborhood Street and this is one of Daniel Owens wearing his signature tactical vest walk in the streets what so Municipal uh citations that have been issued Health violations nuisance violations animal violations the short-term rental license and violation Dan owens's Reserve or has been issued disturbing the peace tickets um interference dockets um on multiple different occasions as well so just it's not simply a drug issue or a noise complaint or a foot traffic issue it's a combination of everything that we've uh experienced here at this address and uh the amount of time and resources we've spent responding to the various calls at this address is what's gotten us this far so um we ask yeah do you guys consider this um motion for reatment any questions from councel regarding this incident there are none thank you thank you officer um this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak Mr Hudson uh uh you mentioned that you wanted to speak yep you can get up and talk right there I'll stay right here uh no sir you have to be up there so it's recorded my name is Eric Hudson um the alleged public nuisance so yall had two years to put together all of this Grand um report and I was given five business days to rebut so I'm asking for an extension I don't have I I I haven't even retained an attorney yet because I was giving five business days you all had two years and you guys give me five business days so um I'm forly requesting uh extension thank you sir um are there anybody signed up to speak um we'll start with Terrence Whitten okay um my name is Terence Whitten I'm sure you guys are aware of my name all the emails and videos you get um I live at uh in ward 6 310 Wood Crest Creek Drive um my family's right over here as you can see in the videos that I I mean I have no words for what you can describe um I'm trying to hold all my emotions and it's not fair to my children to having to be in a situation like this um we live in a in a great neighborhood that's one of the reasons why we moved to that neighborhood because we wanted to there was neighbor kids out playing whenever we drove through we saw the house we said this is it and then a short period of time afterwards all this started um I had a whole list of what I was going to say um I would say that the police officers did a great job of preventing uh uh showing it um also I want to point out that um everyone that's here on behalf of our neighborhood to if you don't mind standing so we can show that we're all here because we're I'm sorry but we're fed up with it we don't we don't know what else to do we're reaching out for to for y'all's help um I don't know that's all I got I guess I can go into stories if you want but I think they did a great job at showing it so thank you all thank you sir Mark Tracy good evening uh I uh I've always had dogs I've lived in that subdivision 28 years would you introduce yourself oh I'm Mark Tracy sorry I'm I live a couple blocks from where these guys are so personally I've never met them but what I can tell you that I've personally seen I've retired from mental health for 40 after working 41 years at Griffin in the last year and a half I I have two dogs that walk me every day and I've walked out my front door and that's what I personally have seen I've seen a guy going by on a kid's bicycle with a I guess it's a legitimate bicycle on his shoulder rides right to that house I've seen people on bicycles going to that house day and night during the middle of day I'll take my dogs for a walk regardless then probably one of the most interesting ones is I walk probably 2 miles every day what or the dogs walk me the uh I was up walking the dogs up blocks from where this residence is and there's this guy on a bicycle wearing a wearing a uh little backpack and he's obviously lost cuz he's down on the other end of Leaning Elm riding around I'm walking I walk the dogs for 30 minutes and he's still riding around and he's trying to find this house he's asking my across the street neighbors this last Sunday where is this house down the way they my neighbors know what house they're he's they're looking for but they're not going to tell them where the drug house is so that that happened just this last Sunday where I know who belongs in the neighborhood I've been walking that neighborhood that whole subdivision for 20 years and we have got a lot of foot traffic there people that obviously are I can't leave my garage door open anymore because of of people that are they're stealing mail they they're opportunists thieves fors Pirates the whole nine yards so it's it's bad if you know a guy at worked for mental health for 40 years got a problem but I've got a problem with this house thank you sir Caitlyn Whitten even again um I know that I have already spoken on the issue but I just wanted to reiterate um tell us who you are oh Caitlyn Whitten um 3100 with Crest Creek Drive uh we are right next door to the problem house and I wanted to let you know a little bit um about some of the arrests that have happened um the day that you guys were given the presentation was the same day those two gentlemen had the warrants and one ran well my daughter goes to school at Longfellow and she has to walk the block down to the bus stop I saw those those gentlemen and I went that's suspicious so I went back home got my daughter took her to school and I call my husband tell him what's going on he calls that's when everything transpires I have to miss work because I've take middle school starts later I started at 8 at work they have to be there 8:15 um on one of the times that uh the gentleman called monster he actually got arrested because of me because he was outside our house yelling profanities as an imaginary person I couldn't leave my home I was 30 minutes late to work because I couldn't go outside to my car because this guy was so out of his mind this house is a nuisance and I hope you guys find it as a nuisance and I also want to let you know that my children are here um two reasons um One is because we want to show you guys their real they're here I do have the children living next door to the drug house and another reason is I can't leave them home you know they're of the age I can be left at home but I can't because I didn't want to leave them not knowing if they were going to show up to the hearing or not if they would do anything to my home so that's all I've got thank you thank you man uh the next speaker all I have is Shane good evening ladies and gentlemen of the council thank you so much for hearing us I'm Shane Rody and I live probably 60 70 yards east of 3104 Wood Crest Creek Drive guys I spent eight years in the United States Marine Corps and have extensive participation in the global war on terror and and after having to deal with that mess I wanted a place that was safe and peaceful that I could raise that my wife and I could raise our babies and we could have chosen any place in the whole world literally to move and we moved into our the neighborhood that we live in now and for 15 16 years that place has been life is good we love our neighbors get along with everybody we have a park right behind our house we've never had any problems until Eric Hudson and Daniel Owens moved into that house and since then we've had nothing but the only way that I can describe it as absolute Madness I have found a bag of meth in front of my house yes we find needles yes the people that you saw on the screen I have personally seen in our neighborhood I know Eric came up here and asked you guys for an extension for him to move out but guys this has been going going on long enough it is not getting better it is escalating to the point that I'm seriously concerned about everybody's safety when I look at my neighbors and our kids and our babies my neighbors are Live and Let PE Live and Let Live good people they're peaceful kind people we Have No Agenda against Eric or HUD Eric Hudson or Daniel Owens whatsoever but it's not too much to ask to live in a neighborhood where we don't have have to have criminal elements literally patrolling our streets every single night my wife and I live near the park and we have the the sidewalk that goes up to the park we we see people back there all the time it's become almost common place to find people back there melting down under the influence of methamphetamine and other drugs and just a couple of weeks ago I was driving around in Ada Oklahoma and I had to say to myself oh my God I have forgotten what it's like to drive through an area that I don't see this element because it has become s so common place so I just really hope that you guys Tak in the serious consideration the weight of this issue because myself my neighbors we're not just giving up an a an evening to come up here and talk to you guys these guys are actually risking their safety because the behavior that I've witnessed from Daniel Owens yes sir would you spell your last name for me r r o d d y thank you sir yes sir bavor I seen sir you're out of time okay thank you so much guys you know what we're trying to say thank you we appreciate it all right thank you George droser sorry if I pronounced the last name wrong I'm George drer I live at 427 Elm Crest Drive which is the second house on Elm Crest Drive our house backs into the park my wife and I moved there back in 1997 that was a quiet in fact that was total Woods cows in our backyard that Vineyard since then has come into being with a retaining pond there's a children's park my our kids our grandkids have uh played in that Park we never worried about uh August my wife was with our granddaughter at the Children's Park about 10:00 in the morning I looked out our back window and there were three individuals and there were eye on who knows what but you could tell that they were it scared me so much I I'm military retired for 22 years I've carried weapons I I have weapons in my house I found that I wouldn't carry one because it puts you in a situation that you have a completely different mindset but it scared me so much that I loaded a 9 mm and I went up to the park where my wife where my granddaughter was and let me tell you I never want to be in that situation again and we ask that you do something about it because we shouldn't have to live in this country in that sort of situation where we feel we have to carry weapons in order to defend ourselves in our children thank you thank you sir William Hawkins did you sign up for this one too okay I thought so so I don't live in that neighborhood just so youall know uh my name is William Hawkins I've I've lived here in Norman almost 40 years I've been a resident suton place for 15 over the past few years uh concerning things have been happening around uh around and and near my neighborhood as well as Sutton Wildlife Refuge that caused me and my neighbors fear for our safety and our homes as a marine I was trained for threat assessment just like Shane and all these different situations that I've been seeing last year after the police came uh there was there was a woman that was actually screaming out in the woods I called the police she was yelling for help and notified the officer of what I had heard and this screaming goes on all the time uh my concern is that the homeless who have set up camps there they're doing drugs and they're starting fires uh and that wouldn't happen uh it wouldn't take so much for a fire to burn out of control quickly especially in Oklahoma with all the wind uh get back on tracks here I have walked uh the woods here behind our homes uh taken the trails and and many times and seen trash needles uh trees being cut down and loose dogs everywhere there are families and young children and women who take these Trails this is a high potential for something very bad to happen in an unsafe environment last week while I was away from my home I received a call from my neighbor letting me know that there was a big fire behind my home just like I told the officer before the Flames had started he had heard gunshots I felt helpless angry fear for my family and my home after taking the police uh after calling the police about this incident I was informed that the city of Norman is using taxpayers money to bust homeless people up to Oklahoma City to get their drugs and then busting them back and then there's needles being handed out to them this is an uh this is facilitating an unsafe environment for our community uh that could very well result in the potential life and property I as well as my neighbors are putting the Council on notice that if this happens loss of life or loss of property due to the compliance of criminal activity that you will be sued I'm also giving you two weeks to clean up sutt and Wildlife Refuge at the end of this time I will be calling the EPA and Peta they will be notifying uh will be know sir you run out of time I'm afraid thank you Paul Wilson cheryan Deno sorry cherine Deno I have property and WS four and six and um very familiar with the wood crust Edition um have seen individuals you know riding their bikes through the neighborhood Etc um I take Umbridge with some uh council members that think that we need to um provide safe places for um drug use um this is what happens when you provide safe places for drug use I personally uh demolished I duplex in the old Silk Stocking neighborhood that somebody decided they could break into and set up housekeeping there um trespassing and um Lord knows what else was going on there um and I want to thank Norman PD for supporting my efforts to clean up my neighborhood um and and now my other neighborhood so thank you gentlemen very much I appreciate you um I also want to thank uh councilman ball for his efforts and his wisdom in going and viewing the um uh demolishment of the camp down by the river um there's a lot of bad that happens when people are living in the woods um um certain individuals uh get very enterprising and praying on other individuals and the fact that um there's a lot of Grant monies being filtered down to support um particular individuals U making money off the less fortunate um that's a travesty and that's got to stop thank you you Chelsea gravel hello I'm Chelsea gravel award four I'm back tonight um well I think this goes to show what kind of crime we're facing in our community um it's really hurtful to hear about this happening in my community when I've been coming for months to speak with you uh today I had a very interesting occurrence down town with the officer from the crime that happened last year in February on my property we're talking about this house yes and the crime that's occurring at this house is also on Porter as I live off of Porter and the crime that's happening at this house is happening all along Porter in my community on Main Street I was followed today and yelled at as a criminal chased me down the street once again there is crime in this community I've been having criminals down Porter for a year now who are you going to save what crime are you going to stop What Child is not going to be followed with a hatchet who's not going to be chased or asked for drugs what middle school child can go to school without being approached by a sex offender asked for a cigarette when are you going to hear your people that there is crime in the community the crime at this house is the crime that is allowed on all of our streets just walk downtown see a drug deal happen I've seen sever R now they're happening at all of our gas stations this is no surprise it's terrible it's sad but you are allowing it you're allowing it every day every single day the crime at this individual house that is hurting our community that keeps us separate from someone else we're not Oklahoma City a big city but you're doing this I've been coming for 8 months are we going to keep doing this and not save anybody from crime from the crime at this house down Porter more crime thank you man' carlanda carinda gravel w v Council mayor I am shocked I am absolutely shocked and thank you so much for for coming and speaking up on this I did not know that other people were having people carry additional bicycles as I see on a regular basis I did not know that when I see increased activities that I have had to tell law enforcement in my neighborhood this is what could actually be happening behind those closed doors do you now believe these people are committing hyperbole do you now believe that the citizens are coming and lying about this as you have told me to my face in public do you now believe that the citizens who come up and speak up about this issue are making this up this is what this turns into I'm shocked that's all I have to say is I'm absolutely shocked we're going to keep coming we're going to keep asking for help citizens are rising up citizens are posting photos to show what's actually happening in our neighborhoods because we're not being heard no one's listening there are law enforcement that are now coming forward and trying to take action I want to appreciate Norman Police Department I want to let you know how much the citizens are noticing what you're doing Sheriff Amon and your deputies we know what you're doing we thank you so much thank you for stepping up thank you for law enforcement today that is coming to present to you all of the details surrounding this issue this is a very serious issue for our city very serious and I hope you're taking it as seriously as I'm shocked thank you that concludes the public comments mayor thank you ma'am um so could City attorney or Janie Snyder explain why this process would have taken two years of incidents is it just based on the owner of the property or is it in incidents happening at a property that accumulate to get to the this point and also um if we've been building this case for two years what is the standard for notifying the person who does own it like Mr Crawford or Hudson saying he only had five days or something like that so what is that what is our process officially on an issue like this so I'll answer the first question um first uh the reason it took I think it wasn't two years I think it was more the last year right um we needed to get three convictions or three guilty pleas no contest pleas two charges within the house as one of the criteria under our nuisance ordinance and so that's one of the things we were looking at um we we were building that information all all of this time and so uh that's one of the reasons it took a while as far as the notice that was posted in accordance with the ordinance which I think says 10 days uh prior to the hearing we posted it in his yard um look at my calendar I believe it was uh February 16th is that correct 16th um and then also mailed notice by certified mail on that date as well so You' say Mr Hudson's had more than five days to arrange yes a lawyer or whatever he needs to respond to this yes okay um okay and then I don't know if officer m officer Sergeant Allison or Gomez would like to come up I have a question for you both of you maybe um an incident like this is the are you two investigating this because this is the area of town that you're assigned to or would you two be investigating an incident like this anywhere in the city of Norman this could be anywhere in the city of Norman we're on our proactive crimes enforcement unit um part of what we do is a address specific issues uh that are expressed to us so it could be something as broad as an area where there's a whole lot of collisions that are occurring that our crime analyst gives us and they want to do traffic enforcement it could be hey there's a entire impartment complex where we're seeing activity it could be a specific address like this it could be one person who's could be car thefts gang related things just whatever the the big ticket issue at the time is that's kind of what we're assigned to a snub before it grows out of control are there other residential addresses in Norman that you're currently investigating to take this same action against there are several addresses in Norman where similar behavior um occurs as you can see it took we started when we learned of this address was April of last year and it's taken this long to get to this point so this is not something this is the first time we've made it this far um it's not something we've ever done before and it's something not something we could do just because of the amount of work that you have to put into it to get to this point um what made this one a tremendous difference was the community support behind it um they actually established their own neighborhood watch group as a result of the activity at this address um which helped us create this case and there's other addresses but you don't see the same level of community involvement in it and it's it's clear every one of those people that we showed earlier um I I don't think any of them are currently incarcerated they've all been arrested released arrested again at different locations um so it's not a problem we can solve simply by law enforcement action is that a matter of local city law no not is that a state law or so it depends what they're charge some of them were arrested for Municipal warrants they're not going to do prison time for their unpaid tickets um so they might stay a weekend get o they might sit out their City fines and be released um that's that's standard and and there's this is in the middle of a neighborhood it's in the middle of a a section you know quarter section so there's not any services that are provided in this area there's no public transit in this area uh if we Abate this problem is it your belief this this issue would very likely go away for this neighborhood I think it would make a tremendous imp yes yeah there's others please let us know um is it the Department's policy that if a crime is reported to you that you will enforce the law equally against anybody in the city regardless of their housing status or not that's always our goal and I think we're to the most reasonable officers and work people and spend time to get to know them and um I think that's evidenced by this work yeah I think you've shown a lot of patience um am impressed that you've been able to interact with this address in a way that hasn't escalated to a situation where police are having to use force or a situation like that and I think that goes to your deescalation ability so um okay well I appreciate the presentation you put together I would be interested in knowing what ways that it could be done differently so that it doesn't take a year or two or an entire neighborhood uh if there's a problem like this that is consistent and ongoing like that at the same address it would seem like there might be a better way to address it or a more efficient way um so that may be a bigger discussion but I appreciate both of you guys thank you much thank you okay yeah say there just because I want to say thank you for that presentation um I pushed the button to speak because I'm your council member but I have no words and you just kept slide after slide after slide and it's just overwhelming for me to hear it I couldn't imagine living it so I'm a big Fredy cat so thank you for being so brave and willing to do this um for us and serve your community in that way um to the residents you absolutely have my support um in moving forward with this I have no words I'm so sorry this is not far from where I live um w six is almost predominantly residential in a very quiet very peaceful um neighborhood and so I'm so sorry that this happens anywhere within our community and especially next to a park with um families and children um so I don't know I'm so sorry and then thank you to you Chief Foster give them a raise yes I want to say uh just thinking you know this neighborhood has my empathy I'm not shocked that this happens when I moved into my neighborhood in 2016 somewhere before the pandemic I did have a house uh that I did hear a small caliber firearm and did call that one in and called in on a couple that was uh substant substance dependent living in a shed of a rent housee behind my fence so um not shocked but this leads into the next part which is about harm reduction because we do this and we understand that these people will likely pack up because we've made their house uninhabitable where are they going do we as a city have a plan has Social Services engaged with these individuals uh you know have they been offered Pathways uh through going to treatment Court potentially um that's kind of where my thoughts are as we work our way through this process ask the city manager one question uh based on a comment we heard is there a city funded program that sends people to the city to do drugs and then brings them back to I am not aware of any City funded program that does that the city we are not aware of a program um to deliver people to Oklahoma City to acquire drugs there is a program that the city council did authorize uh the reimbursement for mileage for Norman Caravans to provide transportation services to the homeless population um their I couldn't tell you their um point of origin or the destination of those trips those are the only dollars we're paying for for uh any type of individual person Transportation okay appreciate that answer and clarification that's the only question I had thank you yeah I I was actually asking a question has social services or any uh Pathways for treatment Court been offered to these folks director sure or Municipal Court whoever needs to answer that I'll uh I'll sneak in on this one um they were obviously very specific address this issue but from a broader perspective um we certainly from Police Department standpoint we we want to connect them with all the resources we have in the community and seeing um our officers engag in the community and the resources and that's I think you saw the heart tonight what they would what they would have liked to do so we certainly that's always our first option is there an agency that you would contact to specifically address drug abuse at with these people as they exit this residence ask a question like Shred the stigma would you call an organization like that to say hey you're getting evicted basically um have you thought about a plethora of options these are people who were substance abuse um addicted themselves got out of it and their whole mission is to make sure that they can help stop this cycle and it's through harm reduction so I'm asking what organization are you contacting we'll contact the Continuum of Care and we will work with the state to help plug them into resources just like we would any call or any encounter so what organization in the Continuum of Care is doing harm reduction uh we we will call care Fritz for example and she will be our first many times our first connection um who does she represent okay is there a question council member I'm sorry I just want to know the organiz what is the plan you're telling me it's careit it sounds like it's kind of being made up on the flly I'm totally in support of this I would just like to see because I know that this isn't the only type of drug house in this community that we have a plan in place for the others uh because this probably won't be the last time hopefully we don't get to this point again but I would like to see moving forward like oh we're contacting these people because it's this situation with drug abuse and needles and drugs it's the violence MTI neighborhood yes ma'am we can but but from the police department standpoint we we aren't we can't be the only solution we certainly want to help engage all of our resource in the community but the police department can't be the only answer thank you close so moved second I have a motion and second motion on the floor is to close the public hearing council members you may cast your votes thank you officer all votes have been cast and the motion to close the public hearing passes unanimously thank you ma'am I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the resolution second have TR it motion on Flores to adopt the resolution council members you may cast your [Music] vote all votes have been cast The Resolution passes unanimously thank you m'am item number 26 awarding of the bid for the purchase of 16 million General obligation bonds series 2024a and vote to award said bonds to Robert W bar and Company as the lowest and best bidder I'll entertain a motion to accept all bids meeting specifications and award to bid to Robert W bar and company motion to approve second have a motion in second Mr Francisco good evening Mr Mayor members of council I'm Anthony Francisco the finance director um on October the 10th the voters of Norman approved um and authorized $50 million worth of General obligation bonds to be issued for repair and replacement of bridges throughout Norman um this is the proposed first trunch or first portion of that $50 million authorization $16 million to to um begin the program um we did have a successful bidding process uh for the placement of the $16 million of General obligation bonds we had five qualified biders with um interest rates ranging from 3.4% to 3.66 6% robbert W bear from Milwaukee was the successful bidder we would recommend approval of that bid and the ordinance that accompanies it yes um I had asked the City attorney and other staff if they could talk about um the the uh bidding process how we why do we go with the lowest best bidder on stuff like that and with the in with this being interest rates why do we go with the lowest person uh it's actually required by Statute en title 62 section 354 we're required to competitively bid the interest rate when we issue General Obligations bonds and uh we're required to uh I believe take the lowest interest cost is that how it works on construction projects like the library other projects too the standard for construction projects is set forth in our code and in state law and the competitive bidding act uh one says lowest and best and one says lowest responsible bidder and so typically uh what we try to do is is look at the bids both from a money standpoint but also from a quality standpoint that's been something we've been working hard to incorporate more into our bid specifications for uh projects like the library uh going forward some sort of ranking process to to determine what's the best or most responsible responsible bid not just the lowest because sometimes for example if you get a really low bid that's a lot lower than all the other bids that's a red flag and you're going to get change orders or they miss something so so you aren't required to take the lowest bid uh and certainly we look at all the factors okay thank you for the clarification council member Nash so a few months ago when we uh voted to put this on the ballot now I would never vote vote to uh withhold a proposition based on how I'd personally vote for an item uh but this was before uh the city started kicking off its campaigning its marketing of this project and you know this project at its design phase in October 2022 it was presented to council with erroneous information uh you know is we're presented with a list of bridges that like when we uh when it's being sold to the public is presented with a list of bridges that aren't even on the ballot um and then ultimately this Bond program is going to catch us up and it's not going to address uh all of Norman's 18 highest need Bridges and I simply can't support the sale of bonds that uh to fund a program that was sold to the public as something that it's not and that's I don't know where to go from here I don't know what to uh do to to fix it I'm probably the only one up here that thinks that it needs fixing but I'm the only one up here that I think has actually looked at the project and the program and all the details that are going into it I'm the only one that's brought any raised any kind of issue on the fact that uh seven of these bridges are uh with the Federal Highway administration's highest rating of good they're not structurally deficient they're not at risk of becoming structurally deficient they're not functionally obsolete yet millions are going to be spent to rehabilitate and replace bridges that don't need to be rehabilitated or replaced so when it comes the only thing that I can do now is just to vote against the sell the bonds thank you Mr STS would you please give your side of the story good evening Scott SZ intering director of Public Works uh we did put together a PowerPoint to try to address some of the concerns that were voiced am I going the wrong direction BR begin very beginning just a minute technical difficulties um this bridge bond program uh obviously bridges are a serious concern there we go uh the and as we looked at this we've been doing inspections every two years as part of the federal program those inspections are done through OD do that actually pay for it we select the consultant from a list of pre pre selected Consultants they award it to them they Pro provide us with that information we've done this for many years we have years of data on the bridges um but on this one for the special election just kind of want to govern some of the history that we had here uh so we took some of our information of the 2019 uh and we looked at that and we determined there's a real need in Norman we had heard uh multiple times from council members that yes when you do something about our bridges we've been looking for funding for my entire time here for over 10 years funding for local Bridges just really is not available we kept being told to go to the county we could not find funding at the county we could not find funding at the state we did successfully take care of a couple of the bridges that were in in very serious need through Transportation Bond programs uh the Main Street Bridge also the Lindsay bridge over mhof mhof Creek so we took care of some of them that way but as we went through this we got to this point and and then so we we reached out and we we this is when we first came to council we did a bridge Discovery project which Council awarded back in January of 2022 we did a propose a bid proposal a bond proposal to cpnt back in October of 2022 uh we had Council study sessions regarding this issue in January June and July of 2023 there was a first reading of the ordinance on July 25th and I'd like to say that back on July 11th that meeting uh that was when we came back we did some independent survey by an independent company Amber uh company did that work for us and that's what we came back where we came back with the terms of the bond uh there have been some early discussion regarding whether it should be shorter term bonds more like our Street Maintenance where we do a very short fiveyear programs and keep moving forward and asking for reissuance or whether to go for a larger more longer term program uh the information that we got uh after discussion with Council and after getting the survey information back was that the the program we came up with the longer term program would be the better way to go and a lot of that stemmed back to the fact because these bridges are expected to have a lifespan of 30 to 40 years to look at at as a longer term program and a larger issuance would be a better way to move forward with this program so had the first reading on July 25th the second reading was on August 8th uh there's a lot of discussion that night about the program and we went through that and a lot of questions were answered and then uh eventually on October 10th 2023 the citizens of Norman voted in favor of this uh proposal uh one of the questions that's been raised is regarding the length of the term um up there if you see there on on your right we have the proposition language and at the end it says that this will become due within 20 years from the from the date so in the bond language the proposition language we stated it was going to be a 20-year Bond program again just to show that we were trying to be as transparent and upfront as we could this is a a mailer a flyer that went out uh to all the voting to all the the registered uh accounts in Norman you can see there on the right it listed all of the all of the locations for those Bridge projects and they're at the very bottom under how does this affect me uh it's over that the bonds will be paid back over 20 year that's a 20-year Bond program so again we were very consistent with both the messaging and on on both the locations and on the bond terms so i' let's go back to how these Bridges were selected again we started with our 2019 bridge data uh this is again it's a federal form that is filled out for each Bridge there's five criteria and I'll kind of discuss how that criteria is utilized here in a minute but we looked at that and we kind of took that and we put it in a ranking order um you're all very familiar with how we rank our sidewalks we have a ranking criteria we put in different things we have a format in the end it gives everything an equal rank well we had done that we took that data we put it in we we put it in including factors such as the age of the bridge the sufficient sufficiency rating which is that that data that comes from the bridge inspection so it's the raw number uh if it was a load poost of bridge and also the status and the status is where I'd like to expend just a moment discussing there are several statuses that are discussed in the bridge program the first is structurally deficient what structurally deficient means in that term is that there are five rating PR uh areas if you get a four in one area it is structurally deficient it doesn't necessarily say the bridge is safe unsound it's really just a categorization it puts it into a descriptor category the other one is f functionally Obsolete and what that means is that that bridge does not meet current design standards that can be Lan withd there's there's many factors that go into that again it is not really discussing the structural safety or the safety of the bridge maybe uh the safety factor of the traveling public but not necessarily of the bridge itself and then in most recently they've included one that's called at risk or ar and that one really is Loosely defined um in fact it doesn't really appear in the federal program but in the state program they call that if you get a five in one of those five ranking categories so structurally deficient is four that's a five so it says you're getting close where we see a lot of the program that a lot of the bridges fall under is it's actually on scour and erosion around the base or Behind the Walls and that's something that that Council has given us the program with Bridge maintenance and we're able to go out and repair a lot of that with that that program so you can be structurally deficient and have a score of 40 out of 50 but you can actually have a bridge that is not structurally deficient that has a score of 24 so it's really subjective so to say that those do not indicate whether the bridge is good or bad doesn't just put it into descriptors for further investigation and for further their inspections once you're on the SD list you have to be inspected more frequently so it's just a way for them to check some balance so after we went through our rating and we picked what we thought were the top in fact at the time it was 20 Bridges we reached out to wh lochner they'd been doing all of our inspections for about three years and they took our information they looked at it said that they would have applied the same type of a ranking system they concurred with what we did they said we think that you've also picked the right ones they put together the report that's cover there on the right that said that here are the costs and what we think that needs to be done to each Bridge so after that that's when we began looking into the the funding and what would be appropriate funding levels and amounts to go forward to bring to council so just kind of some of the raw information here this is a map of the 80 Bridges and oddly enough we've added three in the past two years and I think we got two more coming online with future development so that number changes anytime a new bridge is constructed that's over 20 feet in length it goes on this list and we have to start uh tracking it on this list so this is a map that shows you the six load posted bridges in Norman you can see them there ranging from four tons which by the ways a 60th Street Bridge which is currently closed due to the significant damage to the beams all the way up to 20 tons and that's the bridge uh on Porter and then another one down further south so the projects that were selected uh they are shown here on this map you can see that the the triangles represent replacement structures and the hexagon show uh Rehabilitation structures and then there's a discrepancy there between green which are the ones that we're guaranteeing in the program and then the blue that are the ones that we are holding that we will get to uh later in the program so as we look forward and we look uh forward we start looking into those programs these are the 10 projects were selected to be the priority projects and they will be constructed in years 1 through five uh you can see them listed there they're about 38.5 Million worth of the total $50 million Bond program and this first trunch the 16 million will take us down to that red line so it'll basically take us down through the first six projects for construction and will also get us the design on North Porter Bridge which is the largest largest bridge and largest project in the entire Bond program and then there were eight projects s that were listed that were shown uh to be there for the projects that we would put in at the end um and those are about $15 million roughly uh so that adds up to the total of the 50 million I think that there's been some uh confusion here these were not listed in the bond language as to specifically what projects are being added however in our opinion this is part of the bond program and if we were to change anything on this list we would come back for Council action to accept that uh we've had a history of doing that with all of our bond programs uh we've done it on Street Maintenance where we've come back and asked for a street to be added because we found that we had funding left at the end we've also done it for things as small as switching from bike Lanes to a 10ft bike path on 36th Avenue Northwest so while these were not literally listed in the bond language this is what we presented to the public this is our bond list but by holding these out with the last $ 11.5 million it gives us an opportunity to be able to be fluid within the program if next year a bridge that's not on the program fails and we need to be able to move in an emergency situation this gives us a fluidity to be able to move into that and to be able to take care of the public quickly and effectively and at that point we come before Council we would say we'd recommend that this bridge be postponed or looked at at a later date but that would be a council decision that we would come to you for would not make that decision within our own uh staff uh per view with that I'm happy to answer any questions or try to clarify any further information anything from Council yes sir so those eight anticipated Bridges aren't in the bond language or aren't in the weren't in the ballot language correct none of the 18 bridges are listed in the ballot language but they're presented to the public like they were I the the language that we have that we went out and all the information that we presented and all the presentations that we made listed it exactly like we just presented presented here in fact the two slides that I showed you of the the priority and the anticipated those are actually directly from all of the public meetings that were held regarding this this this program no I know those 18 Bridges were presented consistently to the public but they're not in the in the ballot they weren't on that language they're not it's quite common for the ballot language to refer to the ordinance and in this case um that was the case the ordinance listed the individual Bridge projects the voters approved the ordinance no I you know and I see the uh I see the justification in it that only you know 30% of that of the uh you know bonds can go to something else that only 70% has to be committed to what's listed in the in the ballot and it kind of takes a step out of that equation if you take these out and present them as an anticipated secondary list rather than committing to them in the ballot language because then people might feel like there's a bait and switch but still that could have been presented to the public rather than these 18 bridges are going to be addressed and aside from those 18 Bridges can we go back to the map it's got uh the all uh two more that one so seeing there's four structurally deficient Bridges listed here there are four there have been four structurally deficient Bridges listed one has been Dlisted it was mhof over mhof Creek and after we completed that work after they came back and did the new inspection that actually removed it from the SD list so it is not listed as structurally defens def uh deficient so there's only three all right so what about Willow Grove Drive Willow Grove Drive is a very unique situation that's actually a private road we do not even have access to access that road so it it's been a long history we're currently working with the county uh there is some documentation that the county has that shows that the county took uh ownership and responsibility for that bridge it was never transferred to the city the city has never had responsibility for that bridge uh the county is working uh with the state and the homeowners at this time was that one at least removed from this map it has not been removed from the map because that's been uh conversations that's been ongoing as we got this last round of bridge inspections okay are there any uh structurally deficient bridges that are not on this Bond Pro uh there is there's the the bridge on Indian Hills and there's also the bridge on 60th uh or on Robinson excuse me between 72nd and 60th uh those were not on this because at the time uh they are actually directly in the path of the proposed turnpikes and we did not want to expend City funds on on bridges that may or may not uh make it through that program uh and since then the Indian Hills Bridge has actually been uh put on the state list for scour uh mitigation uh the bridge on M on excuse me Indian Hills is on there for scour uh mitigation so we're putting the safety of our bridges in the hands of an eny that we have no control R over when was uh the last update on when the proposed turnpike would be constructed do you do you know what that that is uh it's I'd have to go back and look at what the date on the access Oklahoma is last time I heard is around 2034 and the opportunity there if we did find out that either it was not going to happen or we determined it this uh that this bridge the let's say the Robinson Street Bridge was in in it really needed to be addressed in a quicker manner we could look at putting that in that last 11 half million dollar so if and this is all assuming that it would be constructed in 10 10 years time is that bridge going to be fine why couldn't that bridge be listed to begin with because put the safety of our bridges in the hands of some other entity that we have no control over I'm sorry sir I don't have an answer for that I was not in the room for every one of the conversations because I was not in this position at that time however all the decisions were made with the best interest of the city in mind right the guy that was in the room for all these conversations has since retired and gone to work with contractor that's trying to build this thing that the turnpike let's stay stay on the topic sorry so are there any uh bridges that are load rated that are not on this list the only one is that Robinson Street bridge and that's also going towards a dead end uh serves very few people has a very low uh average travel Vehicles ambulance way just general cous Adam I don't know how much an ambulance weighs I don't have that data in front of me probably 20,000 maybe a little bit more school buses wait so is that bridge able to support an ambulance you'd have to give me I'd have to do more work on that okay so anyway my intent wasn't to nitpick the items my problem is that erroneous data these maps that are that still have uh bridges that aren't relevant you according to various individuals from Public Works was presented to council erroneous incomplete what have you 18 Bridges were presented to the public as though they were part of the ballot language but they're not uh and then ultimately it was presented to as a program that is going to catch catch us up and addressed our highest our 18 highest need Bridges but it's not and that's that's why I can't support sale the bonds thank you sir council member Grant um I was just curious so for clarity sake uh let's say one of these Bridges goes down this Bond having funds available would be able to address that immediately since it would be something that the community would need to use I mean one of them that's within the bond program currently no if one there was like a little 11 million set aside yes ma'am to do emergency repairs if well we we set that aside but we named the projects would go to that okay so if one of those bridges needed quicker repairs we could move it within the program but if we had another bridge that was in need of repair we would come back to council and make recommendations to look at that that list of projects and if there was one that we could replace that we felt that had a that we could deal with at a future time we would come back and ask councel to make that change within the program okay and the other thing is since I have the luxury of waiting to speak next I looked up how much an ambulance weighs they say 10,000 pounds to about 14,000 pounds uh so that's five five to seven tons and that's a six a five ton rated Bridge okay thank you so I put it at borderline council member hullman thank you um so if I understand correctly from Mr Francisco's comments and yours that the ordinance that the council passed that listed out the projects and then voters voted to approve that we have to do those projects that are listed in that in the ordinance is that right those have to be done yes sir Anthony get your get the microphone closer to your mouth hey oh sorry I did different operator error so yes in the ordinance that Council approved and that was ultimately approved by the voters um there was a list of projects that at least 75% of the proceeds of the bonds have to be used on there was an additional list of projects that are more flexible that on an emergency basis Bond proceeds could be used to address those Bridge projects um that were not individually listed in that ordinance I think that came about during the discussions that Council was having because Council remember that for example The Haven book bridge and the mhof Creek Bridge were not the highest rated Bridges to be dressed at the time they washed out so I think Council wanted to make sure that there would be some proceeds available in these bonds for bridges that may not be the highest priority right now but conditions change and when conditions change if there's a a flood on this side of town but not that side of town that wases out a bridge over here there are some Bond proceeds available as Mr stur said as by Council action to be used to address those emergency needs so uh if we didn't approve this tonight what position do that put us in that we have a voter approved program that we have projects we have to build that may get more expensive the longer we wait so what impact would it have if we don't approve this and how would we address the concerns of council M Nash if we didn't approve this tonight um issuing these Bonds in and receiving these Bond proceeds the $16 million if you enables the public works department the engineers that they hire and ultimately the contractors that they hire to get to work on addressing those bridges that the voters approved to be done if the bonds are not issued obviously there would be delay obviously um ultimately costs go up and yes we would be in a more of a bond to address the the full list of bridge projects that the voters approved to do and the interest rates that we the lowest being 3.40 uh do you see foree that improving I know we've been in a point before we had like 05% interest or no interest basically yeah those are for some of the fiveyear uh Street Deals they were below 1% um bond market conditions change constantly um that's why there's an emergency clause on the ordinance um but we would hope that Bond rates would stay fairly stable we'd be somewhere around 3.4% if we had to rebid it but we don't want to rebid it we have a very competitive bid rate right now very close bids as you see which means that this is reflecting market conditions and we would like to move forward and are these is this the type of debt that we can refinance at any point in the 20-year program um if I believe that the bonds will be callable after 10 years um um my my feeling would be that over the next 10 years who knows what may happen uh but I would suspect that $16 Million worth of bonds would probably in 10 years not not be worth the cost of reissuing debt okay thank you thank you all right now you're happy uh this a mo um opportunity for members of the public to speak has anybody signed up to speak Madam yes we'll start with stepen Ellis Steve Ellis Ward for um I have been sort of trying to follow the issue with the bridge bonds and particularly the evaluation of bridg neediness uh I don't know anything about bridges I do however know a lot about sort of like formal issues in evaluation stuff I'm trained as a decision theorist so thinking through sort of ranking type issues are uh are sort of important in stuff that I do at my day job uh I usually like hearing from Engineers because they usually agree about that stuff and most of the time they're right so it makes me really nervous when Engineers disagree about what the most important kind of issue is because it should be a pretty algorithmic decision you know based on some factors uh so one of the things uh suggestion and then a question um one of the things that I think would be helpful to do is is to just ask staff in particular to just sort of spell out where the evaluation criteria come from and how they're they're building them up it's relatively easy to see when things make sense but it also exposes that sort of stuff to the non-engineers in the crowd who might be useful but the the question then is uh suppose it turns out that we didn't do a good job of evaluating what Bridges needed to be done I mean I think that's really the fundamental concern that council member Nash has talked about if we've got 18 and there are five other bridges that belong on the list and four that don't belong on that list um does that put us in any potential trouble in terms of like Bond risk or anything like that what are the financial implications of worries that we might have got this sort of thing wrong because uh my financial expert had to go get our daughter so I I haven't got anybody to to talk me through that sort of stuff so I think it would be useful for you guys to think about you know if we screwed this up are there Financial risks to that by offering these kinds of bonds thanks thank you sir I don't see Dr bird here so we will move past that um and Cynthia has gone so Paul Wilson Oh no you didn't I need to go cheryn Deno um I'm Charlene Deno W 4 and six um I want to thank thank councilman Nash for bringing up the point that a lot of times when we do uh get um the Flyers sent to us on a bond issue or you know uh something that the citizenry uh is to vote on and approve or or um just generally you know where are we going to spend some money um there's a lot of fear uh tactics used in in the in the what I would call flyer propaganda that goes out and uh I want to I and and I understand that in looking at the language on a ballot and the flyer ballot is completely different and um um so not understanding the legal ease of some of the ballots um you know the the citizenry goes by what was sent to the mailbox okay and if the language that's sent to the mailbox is vastly different than what actually the language in the ballot is I I find that very egregious and I want the citizens of Norman to be aware that we have an upcoming election on the OG&E um issue and there's a lot of fear in what's being sent to the mailbox stick to yes thank you Chelsea gravel Chelsea gravel award 4 I'd also like to thank Nash for bringing up some really good topics for us to discuss and think think about as we move forward with our bridges thank you for representing the citizens as you question what we should do moving forward for our infrastructure and our streets thank you carinda carinda gravel word for I would also like to thank you uh Mr Nash for bringing this information forward there's a lot that you guys have access to a lot more information than we as the citizens sometimes are made aware of or have the time to invest in I realize there's a risk if we wait or postpone this but use some very strong language to explain the issues concerning this and and due to that I would really like to I know you guys should be working as a team so each of you will have um strengths and weaknesses and hopefully you can work together as a team to complement one another it sounds like you have some really good information to bring forward that might need to be hashed out just to make sure that you're all on the same page and these big decisions are not made without taking those things into consideration I think I'd still like to see um I it doesn't sound like your concerns have been resolved so I realize the risk involved and I I thank the Departments for bringing the information forward I would like to see the concerns that you have be kind of hashed out before we decide what we should do this is a this is a big deal for our city and I just I don't know all the details that that you all know but it sounds like there's a lot more we the citizens aren't necessarily aware of thank you thank you ma'am that's the last one yeah that was the last one any final comments from Council seeing none the motion on excuse me the motion on the floor is to accept all bids meeting specifications and award the bid to Robert W bar and Company council members you may cast your votes all votes have been cast and the motion to accept the bids and award passes by a vote of 8 to one voting against council member Nash thank you ma'am item number 27 an ordinance providing for the issuance of General obligation bonds excuse me Series 2024a in the sum of $16 Million by the city of Norman authorized that an election duly called and held for such purpose prescribing the form of bonds providing for registration thereof designating the registar for the issue providing for a levy of an annual tax for the payment of principal and interest excuse me on the bonds and fixing other details of the issue approving the forms of a continuing disclosure agreement and an official statement authorizing executions and actions necessary necessary for the issuance and delivery of the bonds and declaring an emergency I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject on second reading motion second I have motion and second this is a companion item to the previous item any further an question from councel your buttons on okay I was just gonna Anthony was going to maybe answer a question question I don't know if you want to give you a chance to do that about financial stuff it was a question came up from Mr Ellis but I don't remember it was about risk Mr Francisco risk um oh yeah okay so I think the question had to do with the downside risk if we did not issue the bonds um understand that what the what the investors in the bond are interested in is only that you do what you told the voters you were going to do um so we will be doing Bond projects and we are bound by that ordinance to do bridge projects we can't do anything else we will be in compliance with that that's what the continuing disclosure agreement is about we have to continually disclose that the bond proceeds are being used for what we said we were going to do as long as we were in compliance with that and our staff you as counsel will make sure that we are in compliance with doing what we told the voters who were going to there would be no downside risk unless we violated thank you councilman Roman I think there was a component in that in that risk question about um you know what risk the bond holders might have with a voter approved General obligation Bond Mr Francisco prepares an annual Levy that goes to the County tax collector's office office these are about the safest investment anywhere these These are backed by voter approved U obligations to attach to U property for tax levy so the risk is almost non-existent that's why the interest rates are thank you any further questions okay hearing none are there any speakers registered for the item stepen Ellis Steve Ellis Steve Ellis W four um yeah I think I was the person who was kind of pushing on the risk issue and I didn't make myself clear so maybe try to be crystal clear here the the concern raised by council member Nash was that um we told the taxpayers you know via the bond issuing process that we were going to be doing two things one is working on the most important Bridges and the other is working on these particular 18 Bridges and I think the concern is is there any issue with say a a taxpayer or someone um claiming that we're not doing what we said we would with the bond proceeds because we we booted the assessment of the bridges so I I I think I understood your answer to the previous question which was look as long as we say we're going to do what we did that's really the Financial Risk question is there any concern and I guess maybe this is partly a legal question is there any concern that we're on the hook for doing the larger project that we said we were after which is getting the most unsafe Bridges fixed to if those two things were different does that put us in a bind in any way thanks thank you Mr Floyd would you mind answering that question for us please and I to mention that we are and our financial advisory teams uh David Floyd with Floyd and Driver also here is Nate Ellis with the Public Finance Law Group um the the risk that he's talking about is if you don't do the projects that you said in the ballot you were going to do and and that is correct there could be a challenge that if you don't do what you said you were going to do in those 18 projects on the on the ordinance um the way that it's set out under the bond issue proceeds Act is you have to tell the voters where 70% of the the bond dollars are going to be spent and then you have to actually spend 85% of those dollars on those projects as long as the city does that as long as the city stays in compliance then then there's no risk thank you sir any other speakers Cynthia good evening uh Cynthia Rogers W four I had to step out play Uber driver but I'm back now um so I didn't get to speak on the first part of this and I think it's always um a concern that uh voters have a good understanding of what it is that they're voting for and I know that can be nuanced and difficult so I too share concerns about whether the package itself um was being marketed as um you know taking care of priority Bridges even though I understand also um it's hard to pin down what we mean by priority um but in in reference to the item right now um I'm always a little miffed by emergency Clauses um when it's something we know we're going to do and we know in advance and then all of a sudden we have to have an emergency Clause to push us through quickly um we knew we were issuing bonds and so I guess I'm asking why if there was such a rush it wasn't on the agenda sooner thank you and the need for the Emergency again is that the bond market conditions change by the minute certainly by the hour certainly by the day and investors and biders in municipal bonds cannot be expected to hold their bids for 30 days so that's why that's the need for the Emergency is to move along the closure of the bond process such that we can hold to the rates that were bid and that changes the amount of vote that we need does it not yes sir you need to you need to have a three4 majority or seven votes to pass the emergency Clause thank you sir other speakers um Sheran Deno Chelsea gravel and carinda okay so that is all all right any final comments from Council hearing none motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section council members you may cast your vote all votes have been cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance upon second reading passes by a vote of 8 to one voting against council member Nash thank you ma'am I'll entertain a motion to approve or reject emergency section 10 motion to approve motion and second motion on the floor is to uh approve emergency section 10 council members you may cast your votes all votes have been cast and the motion to approve the emergency section 10 passes by a vote of 8 to one voting against council member Nash thank you ma'am I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on Final reading to adopt have motion and second motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on Final reading council members you may cast your vote all votes have been cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading passes by a vote of 8 to1 voting against council member Nash thank you ma'am item number 28 an ordinance rezoning property located at 305 East Boyd Street from CC uh ccfb Center City form base code to Center City planned unit development we have a motion motion on the floor to uh um I learn to speak excuse me we have a motion on the floor that uh came from the December 12th meeting uh to adopt yeah and is there representative of the applicant there you are you're fast thank you mayor gunar Joyce with rer Law Group on behalf of the applicant here and I'm going to present uh on 28 and 29 both of these are right next to each other so I'll talk about them collectively to try and speed up discussion um it's 221 and 305 East boy and as you can see there the two properties are outlined in yellow uh just to kind of Orient us there's a multi- develop multif family development to the north that's under construction uh we're north north of Boyd and we're east of manette and here's a current picture shows that multif family under construction has zoomed in a little bit more on these two proper properties and the current zoning is Center City form based code and we're in the urban General section we're requesting a resoning of these two to CCP UD let me tell you a little bit about the timeline I know we have talked about this um with many of you going through the process and as you just mentioned we were going to be here uh in December but we pushed off for two months to allow uh to kind of work through some very minor items to get across the finish line and so I've got that proposal here tonight but uh this property owner this developer has been invested in this section of boy Street for quite some time he worked to acquire these lots and at the time they were the old um platted 25 foot lots and so he bought um I think two in what is now the 221 and three of them in 305 and we worked through the city process to do lot line adjustments so we take those multiple Lots we create two Lots now uh to simplif the development into more align with the vision of the center city form based code um after we got the lot line adjustments filed we then began working on a site plan under the then form based code uh guidelines in 2022 uh and then what happened was uh the buildings uh on the corner of manette uh were installed and at the time the required build line on boy was 9 ft um we went through a process to make that uh 3T and you guys are all aware of that uh but this developer was watching that intimately because he was working on a design uh and this went to Planning Commission not this project but the rbl move because of the building on the corner uh and the proposal was that the rbl would be moved to 3 feet um this developer watching it was also kind of aware of the protest that that item received uh and was watching the Planning Commission hearing and Planning Commission denied that move 6 to1 in July 2023 and so he knew he wanted to kind of Meet the spirit of of those neighbors uh but also wanted to take advantage of some of the positive comments the Planning Commission did make uh and then that city council actually reiterated the next month so Planning Commission said no City Council next month said yes we actually do want 3 feet and so bill was the developer caught in a little bit of a limbo trying to ride that wave out and and M meet the middle and so what he did was filed these two ccps in September of 2023 and what he believed to be a middle ground requesting six feet so not the 9 ft that he originally planned at for over a year not the three feet because of the Planning Commission denial and the protest that was received uh we went to Planning Commission with the proposal for a six-foot build line and were approved at Planning Commission and also received no protests worked with the protesting neighbor uh but then reached out to many of you at city council and learned uh that you were not in favor of that middle ground 6 feet but instead would rather see uh matching the intent of a 3et rbl up and down void uh last time we were working through that got all the way up to Council in December um essentially through you know very transparent communication realized it would be best to take this two-month break and look at a design see if we could find that midpoint that's exactly what happen so I'm happy to say now tonight uh the request to modify the rbl has been removed so this project is at 3 feet as you guys have approved in July and we have also worked through some other items to make the ground floor of these uh town home projects more commercially adaptable in the future so I'll walk through those items I would like to point out that throughout this entire process the move of rbl and that Dan this developer done there has been no protest on this project so the map you're looking at was the rbl move not tied to us we've never received any protest on this project I will quickly just take you down the streetcape because I know you saw this many times in those meetings we referenced this is the existing building on the corner of manette and Boyd at 3 feet that is the rbl that we are proposing so we'll be building just like that to align with those two B excuse me those two buildings and then here is the site plan as you look farther to the East and you see that open field and then past that um that house that is built uh we would be right there so that's the site plan for these two projects it again is is a three-story town home type of uh project this is the original site plan this is what went to Planning Commission was approved by Planning Commission at 6 feet so you got to watch closely as I click because it's going to shift just slightly but there's the change we've come up now 3T to match with the rbl on the corner uh we also have retained some of those variances that we've developed throughout the pro throughout the process to make the project more us user friendly and livable one of those as you can see here is an allowance to go farther recessed into the building which gives us those uh really gorgeous uh balcony spaces that are usable uh you can get up to 5T of recession back for the the door the stoop the coverboard elements as opposed to the two feet that you would be allowed so we believe that a request that is uh more to the spirit that we're going to have open usable space uh I will just briefly call out we're talking about both of them the 221 is five units it's five thre story vertical town home units uh the 305 to the east is seven units uh We've also asked for uh additional density than what would be allowed we believe this is a great area for density just north of the campus of OU and also in the time where we desperately need good housing uh and this is an added density request which we believe is appropriate to the area so let me quickly walk you through the details of the CCP UD like I said additional density than what's Allowed by right it allows four bedrooms maximum of four bedrooms per unit we no longer are requesting a modification to the rbl we're going to build it at 3 fet uh we do propose usable open space which if you look at some of the other buildings that are built in this area the required open space and Green Space is really just uh strips of land along the parking space here we're going to have on both of them and see if you can see the clicker or not there we go uh this is a active um kind of patio grill area and then over here we've got a dog park and then more active you have patio benches and Grill area so it it's open space it obviously is tight to fit the required parking and to maximize density but it does allow for usable open space and green space that the other projects of this type lack uh we also have gone above and beyond on bike parking there would be one bike rack per unit that uh is above what is required by code we've also shared uh a dumpster and a shared parking arrangement to reduce pervious coverage throughout and to be creative in the uh in the design to maximize again the usable Green Space I mentioned the allowance for recessed elements that allow the building to go back farther uh for the balcony and the Stoops and then we have uh taken the last two months to really look at how we can make the ground floor units usable for commercial uses in the future uh and the biggest portion of that is now the ceiling of the ground floor will be at a minimum no less than 10 ft so that's a substantial change in what was originally in front of you it'll be elevated ceilings uh and let me go one more slide to talk a little more there's a potential commercial retail space layout for the ground floor uh the applicant and his architect have worked tirelessly on this in the last two months and they're really excited about the potential this brings for live work units it really lends itself to somebody that could have an office space uh a professional service maybe a retail on the ground floor with the living up above it uh the elevated first floor ceiling uh We've also added uh substantial language about fire suppression to the CCP UDS in both of them uh the design right now does not have any loadbearing walls for a residential layout on the ground floor so it means if somebody is a second owner or later comes in and acquires a unit they could retrofit it easily without having to take out any loadbearing walls and it is Ada accessible with enlarged uh ground floor doors that's the last slide I have so happy to take any questions and uh from the applicant we are extremely appreciative of uh the effort you guys have all done working through this because it's been a very long and timec consuming process appreciate the efforts that you've given us thank you hi thank you Mr Joyce um I was going to ask about the Ada accessible ramp um just because the conceptual drawing just looks like Steps where is that ramp going I think it's I don't know if you're able to look at the packet well but there's a image of the rear that's in the packet that shows it um if I can get this pointer to come back up there we go um this this little white strip very difficult to see but right here is a white strip that is the ramp and then connects and it's this White Strip here is the 8 accessible ramps that we get from the from the parking to the building and really just the ground floor units would be Ada accessible that's correct right okay um I do like the creative shared parking layout um I really appreciate uh the applicant working with us um it was a process but here we are yep we appreciate your efforts thank you thanks any council member H button's not working still um okay yes uh we've talked about this project a lot too um okay so the rideway that's in front of the buildings between Boyd Street and the sidewalk um there's currently overhead utility lines and I know the project on the corner I think with their own money paid to have that buried um that's not what this one's proposing is it or is it so we've had that talk with the applicant and um we are going to try our best to to do that in a financially feasible way if at the end of the day uh the only way of building P permit is attainable is that those are buried then that's very likely what'll happen uh and then we would look at creative financing situations where it may be possible whether that's a request of Center City Tiff funds whether that's a a dialogue just with that power company uh or whether that's just private funding but um with moving the rbl all the way up to 3 ft I think that's something that you can expect at the time this Project's built okay um I would definitely encourage our Utility Partners to take a look at that section because along void street right there there's only overhead utility lines from uh basically Royal Pipes and tobacco that Alleyway East to the alleyway that's right behind the University Falls apartment so it's a very very small section of boy street that even has that and it has created issues for other developments and potential added cost uh as well so you know I think that's a great example of how a utility partner could uh do a gesture of Goodwill and help out a lot of people and it would look a lot nicer too and allow that um ride of way to be either have street parking or uh Street trees is there a plan to put Street trees in the right of way with this project or so the CCP UDS specifically ask for um that that requirement to be lifted now it doesn't mean that we've said uh we are not going to plant any landscaping or trees there was substantial discussion about that at Planning Commission great points were made both by staff and current Commissioners the the difficulty with planting trees now that we bring the building all the way up to 3 ft is there are water and sewer utilities right there and if you bury the power lines they're also going to be right there and so uh we've had this discussion many times with with Richard Macau on other projects where he actually would love to put trees there and what he calls the tree lawn uh but a lot of times you run into those roots grow out and then damage those utilities that are in place and so we've asked that since the center city form based code was drafted at a time before the requirement was pushed up all the way to 3 ft that we not be required because we believe it'll cause issues with the existing utilities uh but we have eight trees shown on both properties currently with expectations to do substantially more Landscaping okay and then uh the units um so it's three stories and one unit is all three floors correct okay so when you said seven on one of them and five on the other right seven on 305 boy five on 221 and just like you said one unit is the vertical town home three-story walkup with allowance for each unit to have up to four bedrooms so you could build it out with less not more but essentially the whole uh Target here is is added density you could have four bedrooms correct is there a bedroom on the first floor yes like likely each one will have one and that that that has been basically the last two months of how do we design to where those bedrooms that are developed in the first phase of development don't remain bedrooms forever and I think we've worked really hard with Council mayor peacock on how do we make sure we've not locked out the potential for commercial on void so that when more density more demand and and maybe you know more Street friendly infrastructure projects on boid happen now that ground floor would be a great coffee shop you know retailer what whatever uh we think we've done that really well by lifting the um required ground floor elevation and not having any loadbearing walls okay so the buildings are all ad accessible as you confirmed Council M Grant but it also means that someone can access it but they'll there'll actually be a bedroom that they could use in in there too so absolutely correct they're not all on the second and third floor right perfect okay that's all the questions I had thank you all right this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on this item do we have anybody signed up stepen Ellis thank you okay Charline Deno well the only observation I have is that person in the middle between these two lots will never see the sun rise nor set on the east or west which is kind of sad to think about but life Marches On thank you Chara gravel corinda all right anything else from Council hearing none motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on second reading section by section council members you may cast your votes have been cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance on a second reading passes unanimously thank you ma'am I'll entertain a motion to adopt the ordinance on Final reading motion to adopt second motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on Final reading can you go council members you may cast your vote all votes have been cast in the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading passes unanimously thank you ma'am item number 29 an ordinance resoning property located at 221 East Boyd Street from CCF BC Center City form based code to CCP Center City planned unit development we have a motion to adopt on the floor from the December 12th meeting just second um the same people Steven no Shan okay good okay the motion on the floor is to adop a vote have been cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading passes unanimously I'll entertain a motion to adopt or reject the ordinance on Final reading you motion on the floor is to adopt the ordinance on final reading council members you may cast your votes all votes have been cast and the motion to adopt the ordinance upon final reading passes unanimously I misspoke earlier that was the last vote was on second reading drive plus closing costs authorizing the city manager or his designate to execute any documents on behalf of the city of Norman to effectuate the transaction and appropriation uh of general fund balance I'll entertain a motion to approve or reject the contract and subsequent authoriz ation and appropriation approve second change spots and hopefully I can remember how to work the mouse going the right way yes it's easier with a laptop okay um this will be a review of what you've seen before really uh but we've talked to council a couple different times in executive session about uh the opportunity to purchase the property at 545 1 hutner drive this is a picture of the properties you can see now um it's hard to see on the screen but the little blue dot is the partial we're talking about here north of Johnson Controls and sort of east of the extended stay hotel it's 6.17 Acres it was listed for a million dollar uh they shared their appraisal with us it was $940,000 uh this is completely undeveloped property as you see um had come forward for Council a couple of years ago to have it rezoned as a PUD for use as an upscale RV park it allowed for other uses as well and my understanding is they have alternate plans where they could develop this property in accordance with those uses um here you can see uh the property again with its with its zoning pink denoting uh the Pud uh purchase price as I said 9 $40,000 we would be depositing uh $225,000 as earnest money uh from that point on we would have 60 days to inspect the property um during that time if we couldn't finish our inspections within the 60 days we could extend that upon written notice to the uh seller and get another 30 days and we can terminate at any time prior to the end of that inspection period and get the money returned to us that we paid during that time we would be intending to do our due diligence inspections because of the proximity to Industrial sites and environmental surveys is really important for this property um and we would also be setting the closing date post inspection period with that I'm happy to answer any questions questions from councel hearing none okay thank you ma'am thank you this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak uh Diana Hutzel Diana Hutzel W five purchasing the property is not the fiscally responsible thing to do tonight it's about the money not about what it's the purpose at the finance committee meeting on the 18th of January Mr Francisco Norman Finance director told city council that the city Norman will spend 4.8 million more than it will generate in Revenue this year he also told councel and I quote we're going to be drawing down the general fund balance spending more than we're taking in in each of the next five fiscal years to the extent that if our projections are exactly right we will have wiped out our fund balance four years from now end quote and its current rate of spending much of which is recurring near year to year Norm will go from a $1 13.4 million surplus to Broken four years the $940,000 to buy this land is not included in that $4.8 million deficit nor does that deficit include a multitude of other projects council is actively pursuing this year including V not limited to the $300,000 to renovate and expand the Grave Street Shelter and the increased contract costs to run it the 360,000 to fund a recurring litter collection Outreach contract and the $6 million to buy the must have Griffin property this deficit Al does not also does not include the unplanned and as of yet undisclosed and potentially non-reimbursable costs the city is fronting to repair the Main Street Library that money is coming from the city's rainy day fund which as at the finance meeting on the 18th of January is already $655,000 short of its targeted fund balance at the special session meeting on the 6th of February Council was given a $60 million Capital Improvement project wish list for next year however projections during that meeting show that Norman will actually have less than $300,000 available to next year for any new capital Improvement projects Council cannot look to sales tax or increases in the next in the near- term to reduce the funding Gap the recently passed grocery tax bill prohibits municipalities from raising their sales tax rates until at least July 2025 additionally it's unlikely that property tax owners will help the city reduce the funding Gap by approving another property tax hike in the near term given the recent 20-year $50 million bridge bond and the ongoing controversy over what was promised versus what's being delivered the Cleveland County Treasures website shows the city already owns over 360 Parcels of land ranging in size from under an acre to over 150 acres has the city evaluated each of these for potential use each property purchased by the city is a lost opportunity for private investment potential sales tax revenue taxpayers haven't even been asked yet whether they would consider funding the building of a permanent shelter even if this land were purchased the property's been on the market for over a year I believe it can wait Council needs to take a strategic pause evaluate current obligations and expenditures and start to make changes to reverse Norman's negative Financial trajectory now tough choices need to be made including delaying scaling back under or cutting projects thank you thank you ma'am Stephen Ellis Steve Ellis board for I'm also opposed to this proposal but for the other reason because I don't think it's a very good deal for unhoused folks if you vote for this proposal to locate a shelter so far from Services then you're going to need to be prepared to dump a ton more money into relocating those services and then completely reorganizing Norman's Transit options none of that's even been discussed much or less committed to and we learned somewhat weirdly in the discussion of crimes committed by a pair of homeowners that Norman just does not have adequate resources to handle services for the poor the mentally ill the addicted and the like already moving what we have and incurring those costs out to the boonies will make things worse the perfect may be in conflict with the good but the pretend is the Real Enemy it's a fantasy to think we're going to be able to move this out there and then be able to afford to make things better for unhoused people it's clear that the number one priority of this location is assuaging the worries of some vocal businesses as someone who thinks the priority should be on the neediest that actually kind of goes down hard with me but this proposal will be exposed to something worse than just po priorities really a sham merely performative if it doesn't actually improve the situation of the unhoused and that's going to take a lot of money the current shelter on the other hand isn't did no I can hear myself good wait uh there's no time up here so uh the current shelter is in a good location for serving the unhoused it has room to expand if you prioritize the unhoused expanding Grey Street is the way to go if you prioritize business owners but you really do care about the unhoused as well you're going to have to open the city's checkbook so I suggest we just keep things on Grey Street and expand the property thanks thank you sir margarite Larsson Margaret Larson W 6 I uh have several concerns about this property concern number one is I think it's overpriced which I have already mentioned concern number two you're paying for something that you're not committed to there has been absolutely no commitment from any of you that there's going to be a permanent shelter that there's going to be transportation for the unhoused that there's going to be Services out there no commitment whatsoever you're investing in something supposedly as I think to cover something else or to maybe invest and get proceeds later on should you decide to sell it to somebody else I don't think this is a good idea I don't think this is the place for the shelter and I am very concerned that what you're promoting is really not what you're intention is thank you thank you ma'am Andrew golden hello Andrew golden I own the property of 5450 Huer been there for about 12 years and um I've had a homeless problem out there I've had drugs out out there had people defecating out in front of my place so I've gone through that I am not against helping the homeless at all and I'll read what I say what I want but I thought I'm sure that almost everyone in Norman has some empathy for the homeless although I've since learned that there are two opposing views and forces some feel that we should do our part in a conscientious way others want to appear like like they are concerned although not in a realistic manner pardon me mayor as our mayor stated in the video I saw he said he'd like to have a homeless shelter out by the lake I guess I'm a little slow because I didn't know which lake Lake Dallas lake eala or Lake Thunderbird if it's just a matter of getting them away from us the lake is out of the question I suppose so that I decided the location though they decid the best location no I'm sorry I suppose they decided on a location at an industrial park at the far edge of Norman with absolutely no services in regards to infrastructure where is the feasibility study to support the $940,000 to purchase this um I was in involved in when Joe Carter came to me to get the new animal shelter and him and I had to allocate and and uh put up our money for the bond issue in order to get that I'm not um I am very charitably oriented to many things so I don't want you think and including the homeless I feel um I own the property I own property all over Norman own several businesses and I pay a lot of taxpayer dollars to have something done um I can live with something that is thought is that is uh throughout you know it's thought through and it's reasonable the only word I can come up with this is it's wrong my neighbors in the area that I've talked to are all opposed to this including I found out about this from people that lived behind our property in actual homes and they were against it that's how this thing's been so quiet matter of fact when Channel 5 covered me covered my uh the first time in 23 I mean July 23 they uh showed my building as being the new homeless shelter the red building out there and I tried to get a rebuttal from them people you've run out of time Juliet golden thank you for doing that I'm Julia I live in but um our family business is located at 5450 hutner Drive Andy was talking about that in speaking to today I want to note the following we've first heard about the city's plans to purchase the property across the street on January 23rd the day the item was first put on the agenda no one from the city has approached any of the owners in the area to understand our businesses to understand our neighborhood our concerns as Citizens and taxpayers or even our Readiness to help the location is right next to Johnson Controls plant our neighborhood operates as an extension of this industrial site apart from our manufacturing facility and Warehouse in the area we have a car repair Workshop a youth gymnastics centers a Lawn Lawn Care Equipment Sales company and a long-term stay facility occupied by individuals and families many of us follow the homeless situation in Norman we are all impacted by this growing problem and we recognize the city must take pract iCal steps uh to wisely and compassionately respond to this urgent challenge however utar drive is not a suitable location and solution it is remote located far away from a range of city services needed for the proper functioning of such an operation like a homeless shelter because of its isolation the homeless shelter located there will put the brunt of the burden on those small number of businesses operating in the area and the individuals living and working in the area according to Google Maps depending on the route the Huer site is 5.2 to 6.3 miles from the main post office or this building Where We Are Tonight it takes between 1 hour and 54 minutes and 2 hours and 18 minutes to walk to the site from the center of the Norman most of the route does not have sidewalks or bike paths that link the area with any part of Norman it is located between I35 and the railroad tracks the site does not offer any infrastructure or Services some questions in our changes with some of the city council members it became clear that some have never visited the site have all of the council members visited this site by now in preparation for this discussion or for this Vote many of us on hutner have asked ourselves if this shelter will alleviate the homeless crisis in Norman given the fact that it is so remote will it indeed be sought out by people experience home experiencing homelessness won't many experiencing homelessness opt to stay in the city to have access to public infrastructure Health Care shopping retail services finally apart from the money to purchase the property and build a facility on the uer site how much money and public funds will be needed to bring the necessary infrastructure to this site such as public transport sidewalk health facilities and Public Safety Services without such considerations and Investments the burden of the shelter will not be shared equally by the residents of Norman but instead will fall disproportionately on the property owners renters and residents of U drive thank you thank you ma'am Russell Russell Rice doing today Russell rice word too um let me pull it up sorry forgot I actually wrote something this time all right so uh are there any Norman homeless experts in the room Norman area homeless experts any just me I'm the only one is that a safe bet uh well this Norman area homeless expert does not recommend this area for a shelter I also don't recommend you spend a million dollars or the general fund but that doesn't have to do with Hess area you know um here also the transparency on this has been kind of I kind of has been wrong uh most people didn't even realize that there was the potential to votee for a homeless shelter on the agenda tonight until uh one of y'all said it in the in their opening remarks I I don't remember who that was but uh if you're going to put a homeless shelter on the agenda do it validly let all the COC members come and talk about it don't try and do this wishy-washy stuff where you buy a piece of property and then you get here and you find out that somebody has plans to turn it into a allinclusive homeless shelters the way it was referred to to me sorry uh so um yeah I hope you all vote no well all of you most of you vote no we know one won't uh thank you very much have a great day thank you sir Caleb Creed hi Caleb Creed W five so I support the purchasing of the property provided that it has anou for a service that isn't the homeless shelter I obviously support the creation of a shelter but not here I'm guessing this location is chosen because it's far away from everyone and the advantage of this is that the abject misery that ACC companies being without a home can be contained out ofs side of most of us it seems like this is a strategy of hiding and containing the miserable sometimes that's meant jails sometimes that's meant other institutions sometimes that means isolating people who are experiencing this on the periphery of our community and maybe this is the exact problem with the way we see homelessness here we see them as something other than us other than community members other than human if we were to humanize the unhoused we would understand that a homeless shelter here would fail even the dehumanizing mission that this kind of isolation is intended to achieve humans after all have bodies that must be fed treated for medical problems treated for mental health issues body that must move through the city and occupy space along the way will it really solve anyone's problem to have a mass of unhoused traveling miles through the city to Services certainly not the unhoused themselves but will it even solve the problem of those who complain about the unhoused those who have recognized with some clarity the misery that accompanies this dehumanization those that report and regularly document the symptoms of that dehumanization not to humanize but to further dehumanize further stigmatize and further em miserate those who describe in LD detail the bathroom lless urinating or those who have nothing but public space doing things in public spaces will even those people be happy with this Choice when our community members lose homes they become transformed by some sort of mental trick into something other than humans and have we chosen this spot because we're doubling down on this cruel misunderstanding and does it point to a solution what would we do if these were our ants and our brothers and our wives we would locate them within our community both in relation to us and in our spaces we would prioritize their care we would build support in community we would emphasize their healing we would become curious about our fellow humans who have lost their homes more than 40% of whom have disabilities directly contributing to their homelessness people who we could easily humanize when they were special needs students in our beautifully humanizing special education classrooms but who are effectively dumped from that care into the cruelty of being both disabled and without homes we humanize people not just to be kind but because when problems involve humans we need to understand what humans are and dehumanization Cuts against that and leads to alien and strange decisions like this one thank you sir Cynthia Rogers um me again still W for it's tough to follow Caleb um in urban economics we talk about location location location it's important for where businesses locate um it's important for where you put airports where you put roads um and it's especially important for people that don't have resources people that don't have cars people that either walk maybe ride a bike or use public transit this location fails on all three accounts I would not I ride my bike all over Norman I have an ebike so I cheat a little bit I couldn't ride my bike safely there not at all there's no sidewalks it's not close to anything and we're talking about putting people who have the least access to transportation to Mobility far far away from the places they need to go and I don't see the budg having the capacity to actually provide the sort of transportation and Mobility that they would need to get jobs to get health care to get counseling to get drug treatment none of that so this would be a horrible place to put it and it would be a waste of our money to even propose putting it there so please vote no thank you man' Michael Undercuffler oh good evening my name is Michael Undercuffler um I absolutely agree we have a major problem with how the homeless uh are handled right now but to relocate them to uh to this location is not the solution sir where do you live I'm sorry what what w do you live in seven thank you yeah thank you um 11 years ago Victory gymnastics established a location at 5721 Huer drive to serve as a place for young children to learn new skills build friendships experience new Endeavors and encourage them to be the very best that they can be very much like what is done at school like schools safety is of utmost concern uh of utmost importance protecting our youth should be at the Forefront of everyone's agenda when the city of Norman relocated its homeless to downtown Norman private citizens bu and businesses uh noticed an increase in crime and disturbance es and this has caused many issues and resulted in where we are today that said the city's plan to relocate the homeless to huon drive exposes the children to attend Victory gymnastics to the violence and unsafe atmosphere that comes with being so close to a homeless shelter many sex offenders find themselves homeless due to limitations of not living near schools or being denied housing because of their convictions Oklahoma state law prohibits sex offenders from permanently or temporarily residing within 2,000 ft of a school school this is for the safety of the children while Victory gymnastics is not classified as a school over 475 young girls between the ages of three and 17 attend regularly on weekends of competitive meets over 900 girls attend over the course of the weekend Victory gymnastics is only 1160 ft from the proposed homeless shelter location these classes take place primarily in the evenings outside of school hours and often After Dark Victory gymnastics must already combat the trespassers and loiterers from the residents at the extended state America next to the proposed site that houses primarily lowincome guests we ask the members of the council to consider the safety of these children in your decision tonight thank you thank you sir Michael Blan good evening can you guys uh sorry about that can I just how's that okay uh Michael blun uh a development Ward one I have moved yeah it's been nice so far been digging it um so we've already covered quite a few details already but I want to go ahead and add some numbers to give us some more context uh when it comes to that specific parcel uh so I went ahead and checked out the county assessor website so we have in our proposal tonight that's being sold for just under a million dollars but according to the county assessor site uh that's only being listed that parcel is only listing at uh 6 uh 6,7 sorry $674,900 65,0 sorry $99 difference from the market rate that's the market value being put put there by uh uh by the county assessor now unless the county assessor just does not update their public facing website that might be an issue that the county should address but if that's accurate information then the parcel that we are talking about potentially even if we're just putting Earnest dollars towards to an inspection for if we still keep with this rate of purchase we would be purchasing a piece of property that underdeveloped uh already would be away from services and would we'd be spending almost like you at least 265 you know ,000 more than we have in like for for a piece of property that we have to put more more money into so not only is it cruel to put people on the edge of town to say they don't need the services they need not only does it not solve the problems of homelessness or get anyone any kind of Mental Health Services if something is out there right uh but on top of that we be we buying a limit of a piece of property like it it's just a waste of money I I mean don't get me wrong and I'm someone who cares about social issues I care about working people and poor families and any of us could be unhoused at any moment but just honest face this is a bad deal it's just like it's bad uh and but on that other note moving back forward to it right we also talked about again the real issue which is that if we care about taking care of unhoused people then and if we have a a legitimate Financial issue with our budget in town moving forward then the financially responsible and the morally correct decision is to put these resources elsewhere into I don't know expanding the shelter we have currently on Grey Street making sure that building is is usable and can house more people there um on a final note uh previously when that cold snap came through and again we don't have the uh we're not seeing any any time there so how close are we seconds 90 seconds thank you mayor I got you so a final note uh back in January I couldn't figure out how many Fig okay thank you sir Paul Wilson I get a 30 second countdown when it's no sir hi guys Paul Wilson Ward one um I'm opposed to this mainly because of the location I mean if we're going to use a homeless shelter out there it's away from services and unless the city's willing to pay $9 for every Uber that brings those homeless people to the city center and that's going to be a lot of people we're going to be spending a chunk of money bringing them to this uh services that they need on top of that who's going to use it if you're unhoused how you going to get there you're not going to go out there you you want to keep near the the services I know Moore doesn't have a home issue um but if you go to the next city north of us Oklahoma City we all know they have a huge homeless problem we're all their shelters literally within a mile of downtown I go by there every day so why are we trying to put them in the boonies it's not right it won't get used it's not fiscally responsible I mean I want to help him too I'd rather put this million dollars in the Grey Street I know that it's been discussed in uh study sessions I'd rather see $940,000 go towards Grey Street it's in downtown and regardless of what people think as been stated many times Norman has had a homeless shelter in downtown for years before food and shelter moved to Reed Street it was current it's current its location was literally where the well is now now it's at gry Street before that commanche well now gry Street the city owns it's already owns it we don't have to buy property just improve it put more beds I know it's on a lot of people's ideas from Council because I was there I watched it I listened to it I was actually happy that you guys thought about we renovating and expanding the facility at Grey Street I mean why do we keep pushing this down the kicking this can down the road yeah something might come up in the future that could be better like when we if we happen to get the Griffin property we can move it over there by food and shelter that's an outstanding spot for it and then we can do what we want with grey street but until then don't put them out in the middle of nowhere it's it's not right there is literally no resources for them out there so please vote no on this thank you guys thank you sir Sherine Deno Cheryl and Deno Awards four and six okay so downtown Norman is uh in the business owners there are the heart and soul of this community um that's why we we we are have the moniker the city of festivals because we hold a lot of festivals a lot of events downtown Norman our downtown Norman uh business owners are very are suffering right now with the shelter where it's at the capacity of the shelter is overrun we have more people that need housing than we have capacity for that building will never be what we Aspire it to be okay we have to start somewhere we have to have more room to expand if we had a bigger piece of property I'm not saying where I'm just saying if we had a bigger piece of property then Services could be located on that property this is a first step we have to be able to invest in something move somewhere move that needle somewhere to have have a more comprehensive plan for this uh crisis that we're in right now I've been saying this for months to have come up with a comprehensive plan like San Antonio did like some other cities in North Carolina did with their partnering with private public and institutional like universities coming together to work on this problem we can't do it just by ourselves the taxpayer dollars can't do it by itself Charities can't do it by itself it's got to be a comprehensive plan this is one step for that comprehensive plan thank you thank you man Chelsea gravel Chelsey gravel award 4 this location has some interesting features with the York plant to the Extended Stay Hotel right there and the jail just across the street zoning being a PUD the lower level could offer potential tenants jobs it sounds like a few potential options for jobs and housing just to add a few extra Embark stops in order to get people help and off the streets we must have a facility that provides enough beds will this be the help we're looking for with the asylums shut down and the hospitals that didn't pick up the bill and no private in getting involved to guarantee oversight when providing care to Our Community Hospitals have limited resources prisons experience overcrowding and have to release people felons struggle to find jobs jobs are easy to lose minimum wage won't pay the bills education is expensive housing prices are too high even when Oklahoma housing prices are not nationally low and they are still too high even with a degree having a job that pays the bills is hard to find fast food and minimum wage jobs are not meant for they're meant for students not to provide for a family this generation is lazy and doesn't want to work drugs are easier to find now than they have ever been dealers come into communities that purchase drugs we can all agree that no one should have to live on the streets according to the Constitution everyone has the right to a bed but why has the city involving themselves in pursuing this project if that's flipping the property or building a shelter citizens have already voted against a shelter and yet you must take every effort to go against the people our city involvement in purchasing and potential plans for this property goes against the responsibilities of city council to work to improve and maintain streets and infrastructure whatever happens moving forward the city should not be involved in anything on this matter Norman doesn't have the money to handle this burden Norman will be out of money and and water in 5 years at this rate according to your own voices I look forward to seeing this go before the people so we'll at least have an opportunity to vote on a shelter again thank you thank you ma'am carinda Council mayor carinda gravel W four so first I would like to thank you for your considerations to our downtown businesses who have made it abundantly clear how they are struggling they've signed petitions they've given you surveys so I do believe that the location could definitely work um in regards to our downtowns and how our downtown is struggling however um so you've been taking into consideration we also have now the property owners there that have voiced their concerns here to take into consideration which are already struggling with some issues so I think as we can see it's not just about location here it's about much much more we have a low barrier no barrier shelter we've lost our mental health facilities people who do not want to get drug rehabilitation as the individuals stated at the encampment are not required to they're allowed to loiter our street shoot up in public defecate urinate and do everything they can we're short staffed with our Police Department there's not enough Staffing for that what are they going to do when they do encounter an individual we have a lot more issues here than just the location of the shelter so I'd like to point out to you that um that that location is also near a community Christian School I'm not sure how close it is but as we take into consideration that identifications are not required and individuals can sign in with a fake name may not be able to identify a registered sex offender um we plan we have studies that plan for our stop signs we do $100,000 St studies for one single stop sign I realized that you did the gaps analysis even though the citizens voted no on funding a shelter but there is so much more at stake here than just a location the way it's being done now in Grey Street cannot continue that way any place you put it it will destroy the community other things have to be considered for example the pit count made it clear that it was inaccurate as according to numbers it's just to monitor yearby year what's happening in that Community our pit January 23 was 213 we had 639 individual homeless people arrested in the city of Norman during the year of 2023 how many beds are we going to provide if we don't provide enough beds for every single homeless individual residing in Norman they are legally allowed to sleep on the benches in front of the businesses in our downtown area that's what's legal so what we don't even have accurate numbers how many beds are you going to provide if you don't provide enough we're going to be in the sameed vote we're in now those are things I would like to bring to your attention as you make this decision and I wish you well thank you thank you m that concludes our public comment all right any further comments from Council take a break oh you want to take a break now before we vote vote all right I just have one thing to say I I do have a comment from from me a lot we don't have a plan we're going to buy a piece of property and we're going to make another fit to it would it not be a better solution to look at the things that want to happen we know that jci would like to buy that property they didn't know they could buy it before then now that we put in an offer and all the rest of that's gone it's come up on their radar they're willing to buy that piece of property so it will be used to expand what one of our wonderful employers that we have here we don't have a plan as to what kind of facility is going to be on there I just don't think we need to spend the money without an impact study uh without all kinds of things that need to go in there we need to go in there more informed uh I would ask that you vote against this if you would anyway anything else from Council council member Homan thank you okay so so um with this property for a long time many of us have said out to the public and in public meetings that if you have any ideas or suggestions for where a shelter could be relocated please let us know and that's how this property came about is a resident property owner in Norman sent us this and said hey here's a piece of property that's probably big enough and it's not near any residential and it might not get most protest but as we know and through my experience Through The Years every single solution that we've Pro proposed this is the response that we've got to it every single one and so a resident suggested this property so we sent to the city manager investigate this property see what it would cost um and go from there uh city manager pile I don't know do you have an idea of how many properties we've asked you to look at over the years I mean dozens um and um and actually for uh over the course of a year Our Community Development block grant fund uh staff members made contact with virtually every property owner in the downtown area uh looking for that opportunity and we found one and that worked for a handful of months and that uh building owner lost their insurance on the building for the type of occupancy so uh we're right back at it but you City staff at the direction of council has been looking for land or existing buildings for a number of years is that right correct and so I agree with the comments that have been made pretty much by everybody tonight uh I do not think this property is ideal either uh for the reasons it's mentioned that it's not near Services it could be costly to provide transportation seven days a week 12 hours a day to and from that place um the situation that I found myself in is that we've had no other options nobody has offered any other property in this entire city for us to consider or said hey not Huer look at this one uh there is one I if I think you're the same person I'm thinking of that we are looking at that would probably be more suitable for affordable housing but um we've been looking everywhere and my personal opinion that I've made public many times times is I think the Griffin property is the most logical location it's near food and shelter it's near the health department the County Health Department's not moving it's staying where it's at on 12th Avenue in Maine other state run services are in that area that are not planning to leave with the Griff whatever and we don't know what's happening with Griffin property honestly it's like a stalemate or they're ghosting us because they announced this decision that they're building a new hospital in Oklahoma City early last year and then nothing's happened there's been no groundbreaking in Oklahoma City for it I've heard Kirk Patrick Foundation stopped running their sponsored ads about it on Facebook so I don't know what's happening they could solve this problem for us right now if they could just carve out a little sliver of property over there for us and I'll say before we decided to locate the shelter on Grey Street we had we were this close to an agreement with the Department of mental health and substance abuse on an empty building in the middle of the Griffin property that they are not using for anything it's not near anything and it's close to food and shelter nobody lives over there but it was 950 ft away from the L man school and so the lman school parents protested even though L man School located in that area after food and shelter for friends was already built across the street and they located in an area that's had Social Services in it for over a hundred years so that frustrated me because all of a sudden the State Department of Mental Health I don't know who called them in power and told them don't make that deal with the city of Norman but it got pulled right out from under I felt like that was a great location again it was in the middle of the Griffin campus close to food and shelter close to the health department people that stayed there would not need to be walking through anybody's neighborhood or walking through downtown to reach the things that they need but that was pulled out from under us and we were left with the only option being what buildings do we own that we could use and the gry street building over here was being used for Box Storage there's a bunch of storage in there from years and years of City stuff and so the decision was kind of do we use this building to house boxes or to use it to shelter people from the elements that we know are pretty harsh in Oklahoma so it's extremely frustrating that every option that we've looked at every suggestion that we've looked at has been met with a brick wall at every single turn and it's clear I mean nobody wants this anywhere near them I've heard a lot of people say yeah I support the shelter just don't put it next to my house or my business put it next to somebody else's house or business so I just I continue to be frustrated about it because again I don't like this location at all but when this went to a vot of the people four years ago there was no location identified there was no plan at all and it was put together at the the last minute because a global pandemic had just started and we kind of anticipated there would probably be a lot of people they're going to find themselves homeless over the next few years and we're right it's happening nationally and so we tried to plan ahead then uh that vote did fail uh by about 300 votes Citywide in one of the largest turnout elections we've ever had it was the one item out of the four Bond proposals that actually almost did pass and did Garner support in multiple of the wards including my own and so I've seen other City projects fail a vote of the people before because there was no plan and because there was no location it happened with the original library in 2008 there was no location identified and voters said no in 2015 a Norman Ford came up a location was identified and the city already owned it and that and it passed you know with a large package of other projects so part of the thinking for me has been this location was suggested by a resident who was trying to help at our request we have no other options on the table that we've that are available um we need somewhere and for me this is a land purchase and could a shelter be the use there yes could it be the future home of Red Rock yes could it be the future home of a County uh sobering center yes maybe it could be all three of those maybe it's two of those maybe it's one of those but that's been my thinking on this is that I wouldn't want to just put a shelter there by itself I absolutely think that if we did do that it would have to have some kind of medical wraparound services that are there with it um it could not just be an isolated shelter out in the middle of nowhere so um that is where this came from again and from my perspective when we talked about this in committee you know City staff said we would have 90 days if we approved this tonight that we could back out of this deal at any time and not lose anything um if in that 90 days somebody from the public or a group of citizens that were looking at property Citywide came to us and said hey Council we've identified this location that would be much better we think then we could back out of this deal and we could go with that instead but right now we've not been given any other option we haven't been able to find any other options and we're this is like a last resort and I could promise you I would not support this at all if it wasn't a last resort and now I came into this meeting thinking this is the only option we have I don't like this but I if I vote no then what are we doing we're just standing still not doing anything yet staying with what we have which people complain about out so tonight though I've only heard one person speak in favor of this purchase so now I'm faced with the situation of it's our only option nobody has suggested any other options but nobody's in favor of it either including people that are for shelter and people that are maybe against a shelter both don't seem to want this property so I feel frustrated I feel Council Ball's frustration Council foran everybody's frustration about how we keep coming up with something and keep running into these roadblocks so uh just to reiterate I don't like this property I don't want to purchase this property I do feel like if we did purchase it uh and we want to build a shelter that's going to require a vote of the people to fund the construction of a shelter um and if that were to fail then we'd have an empty piece of property that apparently our largest employer private employer wants to buy so it seemed like we'd have options to where we could build a shelter maybe if voters approve it if not we'd have a valuable piece of property that's on the front edge of the highway that's probably not going to decrease in value and I was looking the distance I don't know what the CL I Community Christian has like two locations but the one that's right by here with their football field and stuff I mean is from property line to property line is 950 fet basically from the edge of the community Christian school so I don't know what kind of impact that would have either um some of the positives that people have mentioned is that when people are released from the jail we see that a lot people that are arrested in South Oklahoma City which is in Cleveland County or in Moore or Lexington or Noble or anywhere they get brought to the Cleveland County Jail in Norman and when they're released the Lexington Police Department doesn't drive up here and pick them up and take them back to Lexington they're just released out into the wild basically and so one of the pros of this uh would be that those folks who might under otherwise be homeless when they're released from jail might have an opportunity to access a shelter that's in this location but uh yeah there's not there's really no great positive side to this other than we don't have any other options that we've been given and if we could sit and just maintain the Grey Street Shelter and hope that the state gets off their butt and does something with the Griffin property and figures out what they want to do um or we continue looking for property hoping we find the perfect one but I don't think we're going to so I don't know I I'm very frustrated by this so anyway thank you council member U Nash did you want to comment uh I'm just going to agree with wrong way I saw I saw n it was actually Grant okay my council member green yes I have a question for staff um as I understand it we're voting on the option to explore buying this property with us finding it maybe not suitable for what we're looking for which I'll clarify later um we could pull out at the end of a 90-day period right you're voed on the purchase and sales agreement tonight um within that contract it allows for 60 days to to inspect the property and do your due diligence we can provide written notice and gain another 30 days and if within that 90-day period we decide for whatever reason that we don't want to move forward we could uh terminate the agreement and get our earnest money back um and that last Point potentially a termination moving forward that would or even just buying it like after we get done exploring it this still has to come before Council again correct no oh not for a vote we would ask no I'd ask Mr Francisco would we need an appropriation we've got that as part of the item tonight yeah yeah so we would be able to if within we would come back to council certainly before the end of the 60 days to see if you wanted to extend another 30 and then determine whether or not you wanted to continue on after that but um it would not require another vote of council we would able to set a closing date and then another point was this item I could see would be confus using for the community as it wasn't really agendized to with our intent um and I know that we had these conversations and executive session so for the community that doesn't get to be present you get didn't get to hear that um but we had talked about Red Rock Behavioral Health Center I can talk about that right sure um and potentially collocating a sobering shelter um which is ultimately what I would like to see come forward out of this this I also agree it's not an appropriate location for a homeless shelter although I see when our feds uh would be Sam says what I call them but substance mental health abuse Administration Services hopefully got that right um they do have a criteria key elements for re-entry for people leaving from prison which include access to services like a sobering center um actually safe affordable housing employment um but the Red Rock portion interests me because it's not only um a 23-hour stabilization it's also inpatient outpatient services um which you know sounds ideal to be next to something that is also a sobering center um so I am supportive of investigating potentially those resources um but I think if we're still talking about this and we do vote to like explore I would probably pull out if it is going to be a homeless shelter honestly and would be a hard now [Music] um and to that point I also think that there is potential for this land uh to be sold if we're not going to be using it but if we pull out for the 90 days we don't even have to mess with that um I would say s talking about this has uh brought forward some other land options and so I don't think uh continuing on this path to explore is necessarily a bad option because that shows we are actually looking and thinking about how these pieces are supposed to fit together across the city so um I hope if other people are listening with land that uh could be a permanent Supportive Housing or affordable housing solution you know it might not be the shelter you think it is uh who knows maybe Griffin gets moving I know why we can't carve off a sliver it's because State Statute says that it has to be sold as one piece um that said I do think that the citizen group that's looking for land is still looking around there and so I do see options um thank you now all right I want to make this quick because I'm I'm ready to get out of here yeah um I'm going to Echo most of everything that council member Holman had to say I think there's a lot of positive things about this location um not least of which is that it's not right next to a neighborhood it's going to get a whole bunch of people out it's going to have people coming out to protest but not as many as anywhere else it's the best location we could possibly have that uh can get approval from both sides of the aisle there is the hiccup of services Transportation things that we do have control over that we can address um but the proximity to the jail is one of the biggest perks in my mind when people uh find themselves there and and are released uh they then they have the option they can either go back to the bad situation they or just they just came from or they've got this uh facility right down the road and I'm not thinking like a 24-hour or overnight shelter but facility that's got all all the services built into it it's got places for their dogs and everything else something that can actually go the full distance to help the homeless something that we can't afford out of the general fund so when we do come to that uh that kind of plan it's going to have to go in front of the voters the voters can choose whether or not they want to have this uh constructed um but the elephant in the room is can we afford it and that's what I can't I just can't get past that even if this came fully complete with the homeless shelter already on it that had a 100% success rate we still can't afford it um and that's where where I'm hung up on C so when we talked about this in executive session I was pretty snarky um in that meeting if I'm going to be honest with you I feel like we keep looking at things that we just spin our wheels and we're not getting anywhere we're not addressing real problems um that's great that we could buy a piece of land I know that in that session we talked about what we could do with it if we bought it and we didn't use it for that and selling it or whatever but to me that's just kicking the problem down the road we're not addressing anything and we buy land we got to what get the public to support us to build something on it that doesn't help us at all everyone's just going to be mad no matter where we pick so we can't even let that be the guiding Factor too much but I think it's a waste of time and money just to buy a piece of land we need to find something commercial that we can transform and go from there and hit it hard and fast and buying this just delays it so I'm going to be a no tonight seeing no more questions the motion on the floor is to approve the contract and the subsequent authorization and appropriation council members you may cast your vote all votes have been cast and the motion fails by a vote of two to seven voting in favor council member Grant and council member ball thank you we're now going to take a 10-minute break if you'll be back here at at 35 after we'll finish with miscellaneous comments we got five we're good this is the item is next item is miscellaneous comments this is an opportunity for citizens to address city council due to open meeting act regulations council is not able to participate in discussion during miscellaneous comments remarks should be directed to council as a whole and limited to three minutes or less mam clerk do we have anybody signed up to speak and we'll start with Diana hudle evening Diana hudel again W five as a citizen we're blessed with many privileges one of which is the right to have our voice heard through our vote I lived for five years abroad in a country that had limited Free Speech basically no free speech and predetermined elections that experience among other things is what drags me to the poll no matter what to vote certainly not everybody's had that experience though the Norman transcript described the recent election turnout of 15% as good but was it really I suppose it was if you compared it to the turnout for the five special elections the city held in January May June September and October last year where Citywide voter turnout was six six 11 6 and 8% respectively some of Norman's low voter turnout may be due to voter fatigue those five special elections coupled with W primaries runoffs in state question 820 asked the majority of Norman voters to go to the poll seven some eight times times last year individuals get wrapped up in their own sphere of interests when it comes time to vote they may think their single vote won't make a difference they may not understand the issue or they may feel that the issue being voted on isn't relative to what concerns them tragically even some individuals don't realize that there's actually an election regardless of the reason low turnout is a sign of decreased citizen engagement studies show that results of elections with low voter turnout are not typically representative of the entire Community I would like to see the city take action to determine why voter turn it is consistently low and take whatever measures it can to increase civic participation a start to that would be Consolidated voting putting multiple issues on a single ballot and where possible combining Municipal elections with state or national elections it would reduce the number of times voters need to get to the polls to vote and it would reduce the amount of funding the city spends for elections and one last item I have for tonight um has to do with whether a situation creates conflict of interest I'm not stating or inferring that one exists or anybody's done anything wrong during the election process I reviewed many of the online campaign reports and it gave gave me cause to wonder although many campaign contributions were small some were rather large and did the multiple thousands of dollars the question is this does a campaign contribution create a potential conflict of interest one given that the contribution is used to help the council person get elected two that the council person gains from it financially through the salary they receive when elected to council and three if the individual organization associated with the campaign contribution comes before you Council on something that requires the vote of the council thank you thank you Stephen oh excuse me Ben plumber hi my name is Ben plumber and I'm in Ward four and I would just like to read some notes I have about about what is you know about this meeting so first I'd like to say that I'm a disabled vet and I'm a child abuse Survivor and a former Air Force Security Forces police officer and um I was also homeless as a child and um I have some spicy things to say and they're not going to be what you would imagine um first I'd like to say is that you you actually have to stop helping homeless people and the reason is simple the supply is unlimited if you were to build a shelter of one for 1 million bets you would get two million people coming here um transients have a grape vine as somebody who was homeless when I was 16 17 and 18 okay they have a grape vine and they talk to one another and word spreads so if you create a hospital hospitable environment more will come what you should really do is you should get out of the way of the free market you should allow unlimited housing development of 50 stories tall um in Japan they have a unique Z zoning system where every commercial Zone can also be a residential Zone so if I if I had I could just wave my magic wand and have absolute power and do whatever I want I would replace all commercial zoning with flex zoning where you can build housing and you can build you can you can build a 50-story apartment building next to a Walmart or even on top of a Walmart if you want and I would abolish any requirements for the size I'd allow people to build capsule hotels Japan has almost no homeless because if you can rent a capsule hotel for $3 a day you can beg for the money on the side of the road and now you have a place to say and I would not build shelters I would build uh Mental Hospitals but I would never build any shelters anywhere and I'd outlaw them actually because all they do is fa facilitate crime and degeneracy and that's that's the first remark I have to say and if I'm still if I still have time you got 17 seconds Sir 12 seconds and that's all I'll say thank you Steven Ellis Steve Ellis W 4 uh I spent my morning looking at some body camera footage from Norman police officers from the incident where they shot those dogs down by the river on February first I'd filed an open records request and part of it at least was satisfied uh so I want to fill you in on a little bit on stuff that I learned there um the main thing is that things really didn't need to go the way that they did uh according to the 911 notes which was also part of what I got on the o request the call for service was about unhoused people on the golf course property uh Norman Police immediately sent at least five because that's how many I saw in the body camera footage uh to trespass those people and they sort of dove into it with a will because within an hour of getting the call they were down there and running warrants on people who were down by the river um note all of that's really in sharp contrast with the encampment destruction that took place just to the west of that property on February 15th on February 15th there was a lot of preparation for that event including contact with the Continuum of Care and the norm police sent some officers that were trained in deescalation actually the same guys who uh did the report on the the nuisance house were the guys who were down there on the 15th and uh that was not the case on February 21st uh the officers knew that they were going to be potentially encountering dogs because they knew who was down there and they knew that they had dogs uh and the plan such as it was seemed to be to just cross that bridge when ever they came to it with whatever tools they happen to hand have in hand and the tools that they had in the hand were their guns uh they were walking the two officers uh I saw mostly the point of view of one who uh had the body camera that was the one body camera that I saw noted to the other officer who is with him I'm not skittish you are right so they were kind of nervous walking down this or at least they were giving each other a hard time about being nervous when they were walking down to where those dogs were uh They Came Upon an empty structure which was where the owner of those dogs was camping out uh the Dogs showed up second and the officers were sort of in their Camp there's a brief period just a few seconds when the sort of lead dog stopped and was just barking um at that time the officer who had the body camera already had their gun out and uh the rest was the stuff that you saw if you saw the Fox TV cut of the same footage uh the second dog ran past the first dog toward the officer with a gun in his hand that officer shot that dog twice and the other dog was coming up to the other dog and uh hit him with four shots so the contrast between February 15th that's the problem thank you sir cythia Rogers good evening again we're almost done uh I didn't get to speak about the um the properties on Boyd Street but I will make a few comments now um I like the threefoot setback because then there's no driveways in my experience I walk or ride my bike or walk with um somebody who uses a wheelchair along there and the three foot setback means there aren't parking spots that people Park in and block the sidewalk so yay for that that's much better um for those that use the sidewalks um and I appreciate that there are first floor Apartments but no access from the front if we're contemplating that might be commercial use is problematic um you know always sending the mobility limited people around the back of a building to get into a commercial space is just not very welcoming so I hope in the future we can think about that I would have said something before or maybe ramps can be added if that does get used into Flex space the comments about capsule hotels and things I think those sorts of innovative things a lot of space at the mall I've seen those converted to affordable housing for seniors um capsule living capsule a day place a day place to sleep is a very inexpensive way to go and then in terms of housing um you know one size fits all shelters probably not what we need there are people with mental health problems or people with addiction problems and then there's people that just had some bad luck and are going through some bad times and they don't necessarily need to be mixed with other people um that have other struggles and the one size fits all thing probably isn't the best option we have so I hope we can keep working on it and I appreciate your diligence thank you ma'am sorry Sherine Deno good evening again chery and Deno Awards four and six um I I uh I want to address something that uh was a little bit disconcerting to me and I understand why it happened but um I just want you to be aware that it's very difficult for folks to come to City Council meetings um and if you change the time to an earlier time it's going to be even more difficult for the public to come to the city council meeting so I hope you don't change the time again ever um and make it earlier than 6:30 um and then second thing I want to address is uh I noticed a lot of City Council Members um on their cell phones um the City of Tulsa has banned cell phone use by council members um because they don't want a lot of chitchat and and outside influence um to the city council members and um and I think that's a really good idea and I understand that there's um a little bit of a rule where you know um it's not an open meeting if there's sidebar stuff going on whether it's three people or four people or all of you all together um that's not really an open meeting so I would encourage you to um uh monitor that and maybe create an ordinance for yourselves to put away the cell phones during our city council meeting I think that would be more respectful to the citizens of Norman thank you thank you man cheryan I mean sorry Chelsea gravel carinda word for Cara gravel mayor counsel um so I got some information today I'm going to tell you what I was told that was legal even though I'm not going to tell you what's legal and I'm not going to give you legal legal advice so in regards to using my pepper spr I almost had to use it today as an individual is chasing me and aggressively yelling at me down Main Street so I was told that I don't have to wait till that individual is lunging at me to actually use my pepper spray if I've let the individual know I need you to stop following me you're scaring me stop following me that if they continue to do so I can defend myself with that but I'd also like to point out as we kind of continue discussions about a shelter I hate to be a Debbie Downer but we are never going to find a location for a shelter should we have some place for people who are unhoused to go and get back on their feet those who want access to Services absolutely we should how do we go about doing that well we don't allow people in the community that are unhoused to do things that our housed individuals would not be allowed to do we don't allow them to threaten people to behave erratically and dangerously just the other day took a photo because it was frightening and I'm like okay this person's over here you already know that we do a Facebook page I was sitting on the corner of porter in Maine had a large dog three shopping carts loaded to the brim those aren't a concern for me at all I'd be happy to walk by the individual if that were the case I'd be happy to sit on a park bench with an individual that may or may not be homeless doesn't bother me a bit I don't feel threatened I don't feel unsafe I'm not afraid of unhoused people I'm not concerned about that I'm concerned that the gentleman had a large chain wrapped around his neck tightly I've watched him play with it on Main Street while he makes eye contact as an act of intimidation I watched him shining up a chain link fence post was he greasing it as you would put a sock on a baseball bat was he shining it up was it an act of intimidation I have no idea would I walk by that individual absolutely not I would cross the street on the other side I would be an idiot to walk by someone who is doing that just in case so these are the issues that we're facing in our city it's not that we can't put in homeless shelter it's the kind of homeless shelter that you want you want no guidelines you want no restrictions if we were going to have a mental institution and we were going to allow mentally insane people to roam our streets in a state of mind that could be harmful to themselves or others of course we shouldn't do that it would be unsafe for them and unsafe for our community so as we move forward to try to make decisions that are happening in our community I would just encourage you to keep in mind that it's not that what we need to do in regards to an actual location for a shelter it's the way we need to conduct that shelter because no matter where you put it there are going to be residents and business owners and it would be terrible to have to destroy that thank you that's it all right Council we are adjourned

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