Dec 01, 2020 City Council on 2020-12-01 4:00 PM (AMENDED 11-27-2020)

Good evening, everybody. In the absence of Mayor Watts, I, Rosa Rios, your city secretary, will convene the meeting today, December 1, 2020, at 4.01 p.m. The first item on the agenda will be to select any temporary presiding officer in compliance with the City Council Rules of Procedure as well as Robert's Rules of Order. You were provided earlier the process that we would follow in addressing nominations for the temporary presiding officer. And so, again, if you will raise your hand, hit the raise hand button on your computer if you wish to make a nomination. You should not raise it until the time comes in for that I read the nominations are now open. Okay. So, we're going to go ahead and begin. Nominations are now open. Thank you. So, first is John Ryan, Councilmember Ryan. Do you wish to make a nomination? Yes, I'd like to nominate Councilmember Jesse Davis. Thank you. And would you like to make any comments on the nomination? I think that Jesse has, between his legal skills and his time on council, shown us his balanced approach to everything. I think that he is the best candidate out there at this time. Thank you. Councilmember Davis, do you wish to make any comments and accept the nomination? Just to thank Councilmember Ryan for his kind of words and I do accept the nomination. Thank you. Thank you. Your next nominating councilmember is Councilmember Armenter. I nominate Councilmember Briggs. Do you wish to make any comments on your nomination? Yes, she has been on council the longest. She has served us well. She's shown leadership on a number of different committees and in respect to her experience, I nominate her for temporary mayor pro tem. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs, do you accept the nomination and want to make any comments? Well, I appreciate the thought and this is for the presiding officer, not the next item, which would be the mayor pro tem. So I am, I will decline the nomination and appreciate that Jesse Davis has, Councilmember Davis has accepted. May I ask a follow up question? Yes. So can the presiding officer cannot themselves be mayor pro tem? Be the temporary mayor pro tem? There would be nothing stopping from a nomination being made to that position. Okay. Okay. So I will, I will then thank you. We also had Councilmember Meltzer, you had initially raised your hand. Thank you. Thank you. Then that leaves only, are there no other nominations and the nomination process is closed? Does any member of the city council wish to make any comments? With no comments, we're going to go ahead and proceed and do a voice vote. I will proceed by the nominating, asking council members to make their vote known. We will do it by nominating council member first and then by council member district and place order. So first we have a council member Ryan. Aye. Councilmember Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Briggs. Yes. Councilmember Davis. Aye. Councilmember Armenter. Yes. Councilmember Meltzer. Aye. The appointment carries unanimously. I will now turn the meeting over to our temporary presiding officer, Jesse Davis. Thank you Rosa and thank you to my colleagues for that vote of confidence. I appreciate that. This is a temporary role and in that sense, we'll now move on to the election of a temporary Mayor Pro Tem. For those watching, we'll have another Mayor Pro Tem election once the results of the runoff election are final. The process for nominating and electing the interim Mayor Pro Tem will go just as the last process did. Council members will use the raise hand function on Zoom and they can do that just as soon as I say these words. Nominations are now open. Okay. Council members, I'm going to have to ask you to take down your hands that you just raised. There were two that came in practically. There's no discernible difference on when they came in. So if you'll take those all down to make sure we have none up and I'll now say that again. Nominations are now open. Okay. I saw Council Member Ryan first, then Council Member Meltzer and then two that came in almost simultaneously after that. So I'll go with Council Member Ryan first. I nominate to Council Member Jesse Davis. Thank you, Council Member Ryan, and I do accept the nomination. Council Member Meltzer, I believe I saw your hand next. Well, just so you know, John, I was prepared to nominate you because you've done the job before and I'm sure you could handle it. So I'll nominate you. It's up to you whether you accept or not. I think at this time I will decline. Okay, the next hand I believe that I saw was Council Member Armenter. I was saying to you, I would like to nominate Council Member Meltzer if he will accept. Oh, I don't think it'll make it to the second vote. I'll decline also because, yeah, I'm going to decline, but thank you very much. And I think that I saw Council Member Briggs' hand earlier, but Council Member Briggs, you've lowered your hand. Okay. There being only one nomination, we'll now proceed to a vote on that nomination. It'll be another voice vote, just like the last one, and an aye vote will be to elect Council Member Davis, myself, as the interim Mayor Pro Tem until December 17th. Well, I should say until the runoff results are final and a new mayor is seated and the Council proceeds with a formal election of our next Mayor Pro Tem. There we go. We'll start with the nominator. Council Member Ryan, how say you? Council Member Johnson. Aye. Council Member Briggs. Yes. Council Member Armenter. Yep. Council Member Meltzer. Aye. And the Chair is an aye as well. Thank you all for that vote of confidence. We'll move on to our next item on the agenda, which is Work Session Item 1, Citizen Comments on Consent Agenda Items. Now, I'm in a different room than most of city staff, but I'm not aware of any Citizen Comments for Consent Agenda Items. Is that correct? This is Rachel. That's correct. Very good. Then we'll move on to Item 2, Requests for Clarification of Agenda Items listed on this agenda, meaning Consent Agenda Items. I see Council Member Armenter. Yes. So I don't have any requests for clarification, but I would like to request that the Hot Funds Committee requests be postponed until we have a new mayor, and I want to explain why. These are Consent Agenda Items H through Y, not the sponsorships, but the Hot Funds. The reason why is because these are funds from hotel tax revenue to promote tourism, and this was something that the Hot Funds Subcommittee gave some serious consideration to earlier on in COVID. Our numbers have gotten worse, and considering that, tourism, at least as traditionally find, is not necessarily something that we want right now for this city, but we do want to support. I think we could all agree we want to support the other arts and other more creative forms of tourism. I think that this is something that merits discussion of the whole council. I'm speaking as somebody who is on that Hot Funds Subcommittee, but obviously doesn't represent the entire committee. I was the one no vote in those two-to-one votes because we voted on it all as a whole. So I would like to postpone that discussion to have it as a council after we elect a new mayor, and I hope I can get some consensus and direction on it now. Council Member, what I'm going to do now is note that that down is pulling those items. I think to postpone them, we'd need to pull them from the consent agenda and then have a vote on them as individual consideration, either to pass them, deny them, or postpone. So I'm going to pull those. That's H through Y, correct? Yes, and that makes perfect sense. If I could just ask that if we could discuss it all as one item, because I don't want to take up the time to go through everyone on its own merit, if we could pull them all together and just have that discussion as to whether or not to postpone, that would be great. I'll get with the City Attorney on the best way to do that. I think a motion to postpone all of those items could be possible, but which one has to be called and all that for posting. I'll talk with him on a break about that. Did you have any other consent agenda items? No, thanks. Did I see other hands? Council Member Meltzer, I saw your hand. Thank you. Yeah, I'd like there to be just a brief presentation on items A and AM just because I think people are interested in what traffic safety improvements are. Traditions continue. What traffic safety items are coming forward. I would also ask for a brief presentation preceding all the playground items, mostly because staff gave such a fantastic response to my question about how do we evaluate what goes in the playground, what's the current state of the research, the community involvement, and I just think the public would find it interesting. I don't want to take hours on it, but if they could give a, you know, summarized version of what they shared with us, I think the public would find it interesting. Do you have those letters available? I guess we've got AA, correct? Yeah, give me a second. Let's see. Yeah, AA, ACAD. AE is outdoor concrete. Do you need that one as well or just AA through AD? All right. Now I want to check you on AA. So AA is irrigation repair parts. So it's not that. It's BC and D. It's the playground equipment. So it's AC, AD. Maybe it's just those two. Yeah, I think it's just those two. This is Assistant Director Drew Huffman, Parks Department. Go ahead, Drew. Can you hear me, sir? Yes, sir. It's AC and AD for Joe Scholl's park and Mack Park playground. Yeah, that's it. AC and AD. Any other items, Council Member Meltzer? No, that's it for me. Thank you. Okay. And I think I saw Council Member Briggs' hand. Yes. I need to make sure and pull item D out of the consent. It is one of those that was listed or spoke up earlier. But however we do that, that needs to be separate from whatever items are postponed for recusal for myself. And then I believe Council Member Meltzer asked about AM. I'd like to have that pulled for a brief presentation. And I think see item S will be pulled as well. AB about Bowling Green Park and the master plan. Was there a community meeting for that or will there be for the neighborhood around Bowling Green? Yes, ma'am. This is Drew Huffman again. This is to hire a consultant to do a neighborhood meeting in a public meeting and also come up with a with different renderings for the neighborhood for our public meetings and for construction documents to have this project shovel ready for us to be able to go after different types of Texas Parks and Wildlife grants and other grants and secure funding for the redesign of Bowling Green. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. But there will, yes ma'am, there will be public meetings upcoming after we hire this consultant. Okay. Okay. So Council Member Riggs, you're pulling item D. Did you have any others to pull? AM. We've got, thank you. Yeah, that one. And then Council Member Ryan, did I see your hand as well? Yes. I guess it'll be a subset of the group that's already been pulled. Any item L pulled for individual consideration for recusal? Okay. And then I'm going to request that item O be pulled for recusal as well. I'm going to preside but not vote. So that needs to be a separate vote as well. Anything we missed. There are only about 100 consent agenda items today. So any others? Very good. Moving on to the next portion of our agenda. The first work session item is ID 20-2116. Receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the City of Denton's COVID-19 response, local disaster declaration and 10th order of Council for the City of Denton, et cetera. Good afternoon, City Council, Sara Keckler, Chief of Staff. I'm here today to provide an update on the city's response to COVID-19. We've provided a number of these work sessions through the last nine months to provide updates to City Council. By way of reminder, the city does have a local disaster declaration in order that is in effect through December 31st. Today we have kind of four sections of updates. The first three, we're really going to try to just provide some key highlights and updates for City Council. We sent some information through email, through press releases and otherwise. So we're really just going to try to focus on some of the highlights in these first three sections. The last section, staff will be seeking direction from City Council in regards to a potential extension of the declaration and order past December 31st. And this potential extension would be considered at the December 17th council meeting. We're just coming to you in advance so we can prepare that for the December 17th meeting. There also are a number of council requests that we have listed on the slide for council to discuss and provide any direction to staff. So I'll jump right into the intergovernmental updates section. We do have Juan Rodriguez with the Denton County Public Health Department joining us to provide a brief situational update. Dr. Matt Richardson was not available this afternoon. So I'll go ahead and introduce Juan if he is on the Zoom call at this time. Hello. Hi. Can you see me? Hear me? Yes. And I can take down this slide so we can see you better and share your screen if you'd like to as well. Sounds good. Well, thank you for having me. Please let me know if you have any questions. Let me know if you cannot hear me. But I'll go ahead and get started. I'll share my screen. So what you should see here is our splash page for COVID statistics. So I'll go over some of our newest numbers today. They do typically get updated at 4 o'clock. So this should be our latest information. Today we reported about 489 new COVID cases. Total we have 5,896 active cases. That is the highest we've ever had. I'll show that in a graph in a little bit. Over 18,000 recovered, 148 deaths. 24,000 cases total. We do report PCR cases and we do report antigen cases. So together that's 20,000 plus PCR and about 3,750 antigen tests. So I'll just go over some of our website and some of our features. The first thing you see is really just an epi curve. This goes by date, the number of cases that are reported by onset. They're broken down by PCR and antigen cases as well. In about August we did start reporting antigen cases. You can see that split of how that has changed more recently. Antigen tests typically is a rapid test and it's highly utilized by the public so we decided to add this feature as well. When we look at the number of cases recently, we really do talk about the second, third wave and you can really tell by the graph that this is a new surge that we're seeing now. Moving on to the number of hospitalizations. You can see the number of our hospital beds, our occupancy, our rates, and the number of ICU beds that we have. We have 14 beds as of right now. Earlier today it was 16, yesterday it was 11. So this does fluctuate but our capacity also grows at some time as we staff more beds. But there's not many, as you can see, information. One of the biggest talking points is the governor's orders of 32, which looks at the number of people who are hospitalized due to COVID. And the governor has set a threshold of 15%. Whenever you reach 15% as a region, as a rolling average, there really changes some of the things that you can do such as leg to surgeries, bars are open, the occupancy is reduced in restaurants from 75% to 50%. So Denning County itself has surpassed this 15% threshold for many days now. You can see the red line is at 15% in our number of days here. You can see day by day how many times we've passed this. Our rolling average also is the blue bars. You can see that we're past that 15%. But the governor's orders talk about our region. That is the trauma service region E which is north central Texas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton, and all the smaller counties around us. And as a whole, we're also about on day five that the whole region has been over 15% as well. So whenever you reach seven days in a row, that's really when the governor's orders kick in. So something to monitor for the next couple of days. We still have the cases by location, zip code in cities here. We have our cases by recoveries and deaths and cases active by jurisdiction, by municipality. Here's our cases by demographics. You can see our largest group is actually the 20, 29-year-olds followed by the 0 and 19-year-olds. So we've had many pediatric cases reported recently as schools have started back up as you would imagine. If you look at the different breakdowns in here, you can definitely see the number of cases reported by week, by the date we report it, and also by their onset. So when you look at weekly onset, you can kind of see not just the number of cases that are being reported week after week, but what kind as well. And this is all very interactive. So if you click away some of these features, you can tell specifically the rate of growth that you see. So this is 0 and 19 years of age. And of course, there's always a delay in reporting because people who are sick this week or last week need to get tested, need to get reported, need to get investigated. So you always see a drop off in the most recent weeks, but when you look back a couple, you can see that it's really quite growing significantly. But this is not unusual for the other age groups as well. This is the 20-year-olds. This is the 30-year-olds. You can see a common strand across the board. As you get a little bit older, you see similar numbers, but sometimes you get to be lower, since there's less people who are in these age brackets, such as 60s, as much fewer people in 70s as well in 80s. One thing that I mentioned when I started is the number of active cases here in Denton County. This is also an interactive graph. You can see we've never had this many cases active in Denton County, so every day seems to be a new high. So we surpassed our previous high in the summer a while back, and we continue to grow that trend day after day. So really, that's really the kind of the basic presentation I wanted to provide. I'm happy to do any questions at this time. Okay. Mr. Rodriguez, if you could take your screen down. We may need it back to answer individual questions, but we have to be able to see the council when they speak. And I'll just remind my colleagues we're going to have time for lots of statements at the end of this presentation if we could limit our comments to questions for this individual. And I think I saw Councilmember Meltzer first. Thank you very much for coming in and sharing that information with us. Are there areas where you perceive there to be policy gaps that you would hope without asking you to specify what policies you'd want to see? But are there areas where you think there are policy gaps that there are needs that need to be addressed that we should have in our minds as we look at this situation? Sure. No, I'm not sure if you're thinking anything specific. The recommendations are pretty standard, and there has been this resurgence, like I said. There's been more and more re-openings, more kids in schools, and just more travel, some fatigue. So the guidance that we do provide is really to try to minimize that exposure by staying home, by working remotely, those kinds of things. Wearing a mask when you're outdoors, washing your hands, social distancing. So those are the things that we look for. So the policy gaps, it just depends, I think, by organization or by employer as far as what practices they're implementing. Isolation and quarantine is something that may be difficult for some to understand. 10 days, 14 days, and those sorts of things. So when someone is sick, they go home for 10 days. Some look for a negative test before returning. That's not necessary. But that household is in quarantine, and it's not from the day they got exposed. It's from the last date of the exposure. So this can be very difficult and challenging for families. If someone is sick and positive, the family is quarantined until that person just continues isolation. And that's really when quarantine starts. So if you do the math, that could be 10 days plus 14 days. So 24 days of being at home is very challenging. And hard for employers and hard for students. So those are some of the difficult things. But the education that we try to give to every case that we are able to reach is how to do the isolation and quarantine appropriately to minimize further spread. Because it can happen at home pretty easily, as you would imagine from a spouse, from a child, from a toddler. And then often you get exposed before you even know that they have it. So symptoms start, get tested, I get that positive result. And then later you start doing some of those practices inside the home thinking, well, let's minimize exposures. But by then, those exposures have occurred. In work, what we tell is people do come, we do social distance, we do wear a mask, we don't congregate in meetings, we don't pass each other in the hallways without any mask. And we, of course, are part of the community and have routines and lives and are out in the community. And some of us can get exposed and sick as well. But we don't see that transmission happening in our office, which is what we hope happens in most offices. If you are able to do these things, then hopefully you can prevent the cases from occurring in your own household much more different, much more difficult. But if you're in an organization or a business, to do these things really are beneficial. Thank you. Yes. Sorry, I'm not used to unmuting myself. Councilmember Briggs. Thank you. I have a couple of yes/no questions and then another question that may take just a little bit longer, but not long. So we're talking about schools and we just cared about increased cases in younger kids. I remember our call at one time, Denton County Public Health made a recommendation to the school district. What kind of data are you looking for to make any recommendation to the school district to go online? Is that your call or is that strictly state or, you know, are there state restrictions or the district? Sure. So when we made the recommendation to delay the start of school, we were having a similar situation to now the week after week increase in cases, the week after week increase in hospitalizations. So when we saw that the reopening of schools seemed like not a great time for it to introduce one more element into this as things were increasing. That was in August. Late July and August when we made those choices. Turns out in August cases did dip and September as well. So we kind of had a lower of the cases during that time, which is helpful and beneficial. Now that schools have reopened, we do see week after week more and more kids and more and more staff members are becoming positive for the COVID. The schools are doing a great job, truthfully. They report these cases to us voluntarily. We have a dashboard for that. The cases themselves are able to pull the cases and contact trace and then remove those exposures as well. So what you want to happen is we value the education these kids have in the settings of schools if they choose to be there. We don't want to close down the school. We don't have to. But when there is a case, the school can do contact tracing and then pull those children out while they're incubating so they don't spread it further. It is challenging, difficult thing for them to do. It is going pretty well. I know schools themselves have chosen to close down the campus themselves when they do realize that there's just too many cases to contact trace. And that's okay. That's kind of the guidance that we've given them. Once you are not able to contact trace either because it's too many or the capacity is hard or the recollection, the history of the patients is just too much to identify those who are in our cases or exposures, then that's when you recommend a closure. So with the IAZs that we talk to, we have investigators and epidemiologists assigned to each district. We talk to superintendents. We talk to district nurses. And when they get ready to make those choices, we are with them to then collaborate and recommend that as well. But they're doing a great job. We do want them to stay open. We always monitor and we think they're doing good when they do pull out these cases to stay open and we're hopeful that they can continue to do that. May I go ahead and just put my questions out there and then maybe you can ask. Okay. So is there an emergency plan for hospital space? I know that at one time there were six ICU beds. It's gotten better since then. So I was just curious if the county is working with the hospitals on an emergency hospital plan or if that, you know, that may also come from the state. The next question is, are you hiring contract tracers as cases increase? And then just a question concerning because the deaths are different from the state, which 2015 versus 148 for Den County. My question is, do you guys use the same verification data as the state to, to call it a COVID death or is it, is it different? I'll try to answer all those questions. So let me know if I forget one. They're pretty quick. Yes. No. So thanks. Okay. So we ourselves, yes, we have hired more contracts. We actually have a re-task Denny County staff in public health and we have re-tasked Denny County staff in other departments to help us with contact tracing along with, with the contractors that we've hired. That's a yes, no question. The other question I recall you asking was about the deaths. So we, the deaths are reportable, required to be reported. The state at the belief has a process of looking at death certificates and looking at the test certificate identifying if it says COVID on there. But not much more than that. Test or no test. They don't look at anything else at any kind of public health. We review the case, the lab, the medical records and to identify the progression of illness and to see if someone died of COVID, not just died with COVID. Along with that, again, lab, which is very important that the state doesn't look for. So that takes time. Of course, it's a little harder to do the deaths as you request medical records. Of course, hospitals are busy and our staff is busy and they try to meet those demands as we request the information to then oversee those medical records to then make a determination on a case, whether it's a COVID death. There was a third question you asked. I think I'm forgetting it at the moment. Would you mind repeating that? An emergency plan for the hospital that... Yes. So I do know each hospital does have their own plans as well for search capacity. Much like a lot of people responding to this currently, the staffing has been the big concern lately. Not so much the space, but sometimes the staff as well as they are tired or they themselves become a case or themselves become an exposure that needs to quarantine. So these hospitals have been requesting lately to the state resources to help them, more staffing. So those actually go to Dane County. We review that as well where we push it on forward. These are called STAR requests. So I do believe... I'm trying to look up if I can see some numbers recently, but these hospitals have all requested staff recently and this has all been forwarded to the state for them to then return some help. Thank you. You're welcome. And Council Member Armenter, I think I saw your hand as well. Yeah, thank you. A couple of questions. One, so just to confirm, it's my understanding and would you confirm this, that we are not yet seeing the results of the Thanksgiving holiday get togethers and travel, right? It'll take a while, a few weeks before those numbers start to show up in terms of people getting tested and reporting. Is that correct? That's correct. If you are interested on our website, you can look at some of the activity of cases after Halloween, but the incubation period being two to 14 days for COVID. Thanksgiving Thursday is very recent and the travel from this Sunday back is very recent. We tend to see these cases incubate for two to 14 days, seek care, seek tests, and then that gets reported and then we report that back out. So most things take about two weeks before you see the most recent cases. So in about two weeks you might see the first cases of early December kind of showing up on our website. So it does take time for that process to happen. Thank you. And maybe even a month, up to a month as far as I understand it. By the time a lot of people get to actually report. No, you're right. So at the earliest, at the fastest, you might start seeing us reporting early cases in December in a couple of weeks, but you won't see the true impact for maybe three or four weeks. Yeah. And thank you. Just wanted kind of public confirmation of that from someone who's a public health official. The second question is kind of about workplace safety in general. And this is not so much from a government policy perspective, but just from a public health perspective, what's your sense of the safety of these plexiglass barriers to the extent that they, you know, do they really relieve one of, you know, needing to wear a mask or what is the most desirable? If you have to be in an office environment with others, be in a space, an office or whatever and kind of environment with others, if you have these large plexiglass barriers and physical distancing, wouldn't it be ideal as long as you're in the same room with people with a, you know, in an indoor with a filtration system of whatever, whatever kinds, whatever quality to wear a mask as well, if you're able, or is that not necessary if you've got plexiglass and physical distancing? No, I would, I would say physical distancing is one of the best things you can do first. Then the mask are just as good. There's new evidence that shows that there's also protection for yourself. For a long time, we've been saying that you wear a mask that protects others. And that's true, very true. So if you wear a mask and I wear a mask, that's a great benefit. The barriers are recommended in places where sometimes social distancing can't be observed and that's okay. Often for client facing offices, you know, if you exchange money or exchange paperwork, it's not a terrible idea to have that plexiglass barrier, but should never should never remove the need for the mask. The mask really is much more helpful than the plexiglass itself, as you can probably depend on the size and people kind of try to peek around or try to hear each other and they maybe look through the holes or look around. So it is beneficial, it is helpful, almost like a sneeze guard. But as people do have that proximity and air exchange, the mask is really much, much better. So we recommend that they continue to wear those and social distance. Thank you for saying that. And the reason why I ask and I don't want to embarrass anybody here, but I was concerned when I went to city hall for my swearing in a little while ago, you know, I was concerned to see what we're seeing now on zoom. It looks like, you know, those of us who are in city hall, I'm in my home, some of us are in our homes. Those of us who are in city hall, council member, I, I don't want to speak over or interrupt you, but can we hold onto this until later in the presentation where we can kind of give direction or is this a question for Mr Rodriguez? I just want to make the comment because I'm actually not going to recommend policy on it. I just want to say that if we could, if we could hold comment for the end and ask questions so that Mr Rodriguez can go about his day, I would rather express while he's here, just my concern about my colleagues who are in city hall right now. If that's the case, we're going to have to move on to somebody else because this is the time for questions of Mr Rodriguez. So is there another council member or did you have other questions for Mr Rodriguez? Okay. Uh, other questions for Mr Rodriguez. Did you have any other presentation or is that, um, we're back to Sarah. Yes, I have more presentation, but if there's nothing further for one, just want to thank him for joining us today. Really. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. And we appreciate your insight. Thank you so much for having me. Have a good day. Thank you. And back to Sarah. All right. I'll return to the presentation. Okay. Um, so just a couple of state updates and really this is more just a reminder for the current orders that are in effect, um, Governor Abbott, um, also want to just remind everyone that the governor's orders, um, state specifically that local orders cannot supersede or conflict with his orders. Um, so just wanted to have that as a reminder before we get into discussion of the local order later in the presentation, um, for his, for his orders that remain in effect. Um, GA 29 states that, um, all persons 10 years and older must wear face coverings. Um, and that is still in effect. Uh, GA 30, uh, limits outdoor gatherings to more than, to no more than 10 people unless it has approval from the mayor of that municipality. And then lastly, GA 32, um, provides regulations for the businesses. And really what GA 32 did is it enabled businesses that were operating at 50% capacity to increase their capacity to 75%. And it also provided a pathway for bars to reopen. However, both of those were contingent upon the trauma service area having low COVID-19 hospitalizations. Um, and so I'll go into the next slide and you kind of heard Juan talk about this, um, but in terms of our trauma service area region and where we are for COVID hospitalizations, um, we have reached that threshold, um, that was set out in the governor's order, um, four days ago, um, or it has been over that threshold for the last four days today is expected to be the fifth day that it is over that threshold. If it is over the threshold for seven consecutive days, governor's Abbott's order kicks in and all the businesses that were operating at 75% capacity must reduce to 50%. Um, bars must close and then any hospital elective procedures would cease as well. Um, so we're monitoring this closely. This information is accessible to the public through the department of state health services. Uh, anyone can go online and monitor where we are in our trauma service area. Um, we are part of the larger region, um, of basically the DFW Metroplex. And that is kind of the updates for the, in terms of the state, I can stop the presentation if there are any questions for that section and then go into the next one. Uh, council member breaks. Do you have a question for staff? I do. Um, it's about the, uh, rolling average. So you said we're today's likely day five. So in a couple of days, um, those rollbacks begin, is there a responsibility on our part as the city to communicate that to our, our businesses or how does that, um, get that information get out there? And, um, and also for those that are bars, but have turned back into restaurants or who have changed that, that does not, the, the closing, the closure of the bars does not apply to them if they, if they did that ahead of time, is that correct? Yeah, two, two good questions. So, um, the Texas department of state health services posts on their website regions that have met, um, have met that threshold and have to have those regulations come back rolled back. Um, so the city would definitely, if that's posted trauma service, trauma service area E, um, the city would definitely help to re communicate that out. Um, but it's going to be covered quite widely by the press as well. Um, as far as the bars go, um, the TABC will notify the bars if they need to close. Um, if the bar has a temporary restaurant license, they can continue to operate as a temporary restaurant underneath the regulations, which would be 50% capacity. Okay. And can you also confirm? So, um, cause we saw something about outdoor gatherings, but that doesn't apply to restaurants who have outdoor seating. Is there occupancy levels, um, once we cross this threshold for outdoor eating or is that unlimited still? I believe outdoor seating is still unlimited in the governor's orders, but let me double check that. I don't think the outdoor seating counts towards their total capacity. Okay. And council member, if I may, just one more on, on the, um, so it will automatically reverse too. So if, um, does it have to be seven days below 15 to automatically reverse back? Okay. Let me double check that in the order before I give you an answer. I'll ask someone to do that and follow up towards the end of the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Other questions on this portion council member armature. Yeah. Um, so it, this is about the state or specifically governor Abbott's, uh, rule that, or what he had told us earlier, which was that if the hospital capacity statewide, which is uncertain point, he's going to issue some rollbacks. You know, can you speak to, um, you know, any word as to why he hasn't initiated these rollbacks, even though we have hit those numbers for hospital capacity, our trauma service area region has not. And that is what the governor is using our county. Denton county has met that it appears from the data that Juan just showed, but the governor's rollbacks, he uses the threshold for the trauma service area region, which is the entire Metroplex. Got it. So he's not looking county by county. Correct. He's looking at those larger region based areas. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you, sir. You can keep going. Okay. Um, so the next section of the presentation is in regards to city facilities and programs. Um, so last week, um, we did come out with a, actually it was two weeks ago, almost a press release that announced some modifications of our city facilities and programs due to the rise in COVID cases. I'm just going to go through a couple of the key highlights, but all of the information is available on our city website. Um, so for the Denton public library, all three branches have closed to walk in traffic. However, they are still offering curbside pickup, um, and they're also offering their virtual services and programming. Um, customer residents can also come into north and south branch library by making an appointment, um, to use the computer or internet. Um, and I also want to highlight here, um, that the central library will be offering appointments probably by mid to late December. We're having to complete an electrical upgrade in that facility. And that needs to be done first, um, before we can offer those appointments at Emily Fowler central library. Um, for parks and rec facilities, um, we had planned to reopen junior rec center, senior center and civic center. Um, but we have delayed those openings and this is new information to, um, an anticipated date of March 1st. However, North lakes rec center and MLK junior rec center do remain open with modified hours and services. Um, two new pieces of information to share with council, um, beginning next week, December 7th, um, parks is going to start screening customers temperatures, um, before they are allowed into the rec centers and can use the amenities, um, just an extra health and safety precaution that we are going to, uh, pilot. Um, especially as those residents will be indoors for a period of time. Um, also, uh, the shower facilities will reopen at, uh, both North lakes and MLK, um, staff has come up with protocols to do, um, increased cleaning of those shower facilities, um, and ensure that they are being, being used according to the recommendations of, um, the DSHS. Uh, also, uh, we have set forth MLK junior, um, to be the primary inclement weather warming station. Um, the civic center will serve as a secondary, um, location if needed. However, based upon the use of inclement weather stations this summer, um, we do feel that MLK will be sufficient, um, to serve that need in our community, um, and as well suited and located, uh, near the MLK MLK OC, uh, overnight shelter, which would be open on inclement weather nights as well. Uh, for our parks and rec programs, we did receive, um, a couple of questions from council members. I just wanted to highlight that all of the current leagues are actually scheduled to end December 7th and no leagues or tournaments are, uh, planned to take place through the winter. They're not planned to start again until around March 1st. Um, so just wanted to highlight that, um, we've also published this parks and recreation reopening schedule. We've been using this throughout the COVID pandemic, um, to kind of share which facilities services are open, um, and just the visual format with our residents as we've been had to adjust, um, during these different waves of COVID that we've experienced. And then lastly, um, just wanted to touch upon, uh, how we are reaching out to our seniors and we did receive this question from council member Briggs. Um, uh, recently the parks and recreation department has set up a new dedicated senior talk line, um, and this will be staffed with volunteers and seniors can call in just to talk. Um, this will be on Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons. Um, in addition to this dedicated talk line, um, the senior center staff have also set up an email address as shown here on the screen. Um, they can, seniors can email at any time and the senior center staff will help to coordinate if there's special needs or anything that needs to be taken care of, they'll help to provide that assistance. Um, so you'll see to the right here is just kind of a visual of an email, um, that went out to, to those using the senior center. Uh, in addition, uh, parks and recreation continues to offer, um, all of its virtual programming and is really trying to connect, um, and reach out and engage, uh, senior residents, uh, in addition to youth and families and adults. So I'll stop the presentation at this time. Uh, Gary Packen and Jennifer Becker are also on the line. If you had any more specific questions for them. Hey, thank you very much. Um, council member Arminder, I'm going to call on you first, cause I think you had a comment about a city facility. I think this would be the appropriate time to bring that up and, uh, ask any questions you have about that. Okay. Yeah. Um, no. So my, my comment from before was just, just a plea that people, um, you know, wear, wear masks in city hall, you know, even if it's not required, um, that doesn't really apply to, um, to this, to the, um, um, this, this section, my comments about this section, I wanted to say, begin by saying I'm thrilled, uh, about the, this isn't to reopen showers, um, at the rec centers. That's really important to, to do it in a COVID safe way. I was thrilled to, to see that and grateful for staff, um, working with that, uh, listening to, you know, council and residents speaking out about that and, um, doing that due diligence. I was really, really grateful for that staff work on that. I'm also really proud of the virtual programming and the, the, the, the, the senior call one. Um, I know that none of that is fully substitutes for in person activity, but we need to protect lives. Um, uh, so I, I wanted to, um, uh, just pass if there was a reason why, um, the clinics and programs of smaller groups of 10 or more are still, uh, you know, continuing. I'm glad that the, um, you know, larger sports are going to be phased out anyway. And in addition to that, I also wanted to ask about field rentals. Um, are those being phased out too, because it had been my understanding that fields were still available for rent. I may be wrong about that. Gary packing is on the line, so I will ask him to address these questions. Uh, mayor city council. This is Gary packing. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Gary. Okay. Um, this Gary pack and director parks and recreation, um, in regards to field rentals, we do have field rentals. Those are not really significant. And with them being outdoors, we felt that that could still move forward. Um, and then the programming that we do have, some of the programming is outdoors in groups, less of 10. Um, and some of it is inside, um, homeschool a couple homeschool programs with, you know, five or less kids. They are spread out. Uh, so we felt that since it was a smaller group that we could move forward that and then maintain our, uh, social distancing and, uh, math as, as needed. Uh, so we felt that we could, we could continue to offer that program, um, at this time. Can I ask a follow up to that about the, are the homeschooling programs, uh, athletics? It, it, it, it varies. Um, it, it's in the gym. I think there's four or five people that are registered for that program right now. I could definitely pull updated numbers, but I think as of earlier this week or late last week, it was four or five people. Okay. Thanks. Cause, um, you know, that for me, that would make a difference as far as the, um, the policy requests, um, that is coming up later on on the agenda. I'm sorry, on this, in the, in the presentation under council member requests, you know, I had asked, uh, to, to, uh, suspend, um, all city, you know, youth and adult sports, indoor and outdoor, um, including, you know, the small group sports. I'm, I'm definitely in favor of using rec centers in a COVID responsible way for homeschoolers, connected learning for anyone to use it for internet access under, but for sports, when people are running around, um, uh, you know, sweating, respirating, um, I don't think that that's a good idea on indoors or outdoors for us to be encouraging people to do that in groups. So that's a distinction that's important for me. So if we could get that, I would love to learn about, to, to know, but, uh, I do think it's important that our rec centers are a place for people to take showers, um, people to have access to internet connectivity and such things. Um, for me, that's a distinction that's, that's important. Just, just as a followup, I mean, the, the field rentals are obviously limited going into the winter. Uh, we have a number of fields that closed down for the winter as well. So there's a handful that are open. Uh, so we don't have a lot of rentals in the, in the off season, especially during, um, when we went out, we don't have any tournaments, you know, there are times when we have some off season tournaments. So that's, that's reduced in use. And then the homeschool program, they are wearing, we are encouraging them to wear a mask during their activities. Um, so, so that should help for help as well. In addition to that, we have areas marked on the floor, the gym for them to space out when they're doing certain programs, whether it's a karate program or a fitness program, there's actually X's marked on the floor to make sure that everyone's faced appropriately. Thank you, Gary. Council member Armentor, did you have any other questions? No, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Who else has questions for this portion? Council member Briggs. Thank you. Uh, yes, I have, um, a question about the, um, MLK center used as the inclement weather. Um, is that also a reduced capacity? Um, I know that the civic center, um, is quite large, and you mentioned that that would be used as backup. I'm wondering how, what does that mean? And so, um, how many individuals can use the MLK for inclement weather with the other programming going on? And then, um, at what time, what, what triggers the opening of the civic center? Well, it would, it would be capacity. Um, we plan on putting anybody that needs to use the facility for inclement weather in the meeting rooms, um, at that time. And then if we reach a certain level, then we'll just open the civic center, especially if it's open, going to be open for a long period of time. And we're seeing heavy use. We can definitely, you know, shift staff around and, and do that. I can get you the specific capacity in a follow-up, but I think we can fit about 20 people in that room. Okay. Um, yeah, I would, I would really like to know the difference, um, a capacity at each location, because I know this next week is going to be in the low thirties. And so it's going to be several days of, of that and, um, having the information out available for individuals to know where to go ahead of time might, might be a little bit more helpful. Um, the next, the next question, our, um, comment I wanted to, to ask about was the, the seniors. I appreciate that we have the phone line and the email for individuals to reach out to call and, and send messages to. Um, but it's my understanding that at one point we were being proactive and calling members, which is more helpful, especially for those, um, in, in a, in a dark place, um, and feeling isolated and depressed that they would not likely reach out that they need someone to reach out to them. And so is that, um, something we're no longer doing and this is completely taking that place or will it be a little bit of both? The staff member that was dedicated that is no longer with the city. So that was one of the reasons. Um, and it was, so it was taking a lot of her time. She's primarily doing that. Uh, we still plan by to reach out to people, you know, as we can, uh, we're hoping that this would offset some of the, the, uh, the time commitments to reach out to, to customers. We definitely would encourage people to call us, especially if they know somebody's not, you know, feeling blue and they just need someone to talk to. Um, right now we're challenged with the staffing to dedicate to that, but if that's something that council just to move forward on, we could reaffirm staff to handle that. Okay. Well, I, I appreciate that. I just, I know how important our senior center was to many, um, residents in our community and they counted on that interaction and they're very filling, um, very isolated and, um, and lonely right now. Uh, so I get, that brings me to my next question. Our last meeting we had with you, we talked about senior programming and a few of those were going to go to MLK. Um, is that still happening or did that get nixed as well? Well, in the effort of trying to reduce our programming that right now is not occurring. We're focusing more on online programming at this time and some take home type activities. Um, so that's, that's kind of where we're at as of today. Okay. Thank you. Council member Meltzer. Yeah. Uh, for Carrie, if, if you were to reallocate some staff resources to senior outreach, what would you be reallocating them from? So, you know, what would the trade off be? Right now we have staff working at all the facilities. Uh, so we need to make sure that we're cleaning and providing those services on site. And then we have some staff that are working on programming planning. So we would have to take someone most likely from the, uh, planning stages or the, uh, on online programming to reallocate them to phone calls. Thank you. It's worth, we're thinking about, I don't have an immediate response, but that might be the trade off. Gary, I've got a, I've got a question. Do we have the, the staffing ability? We, we were asked about senior programs and some things that we had thought about bringing back online for seniors. We do have some in-person programs that we just talked about for our homeschoolers. Do we have the staffing ability if we feel like it's safe to bring some of that senior programming back online in those small groups, you know, people opt in, uh, the people who feel safe coming out and being in a small group like that, or is that, uh, just kind of off the table for the foreseeable future? So we had planned on reopening the senior center a few days a week for a limited amount of time, uh, at a reduced amount for specific programming, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Um, and so that's what we were planning to do and we backed off on that based on the pace count with the concern of that vulnerable population. Um, so, and that was going to be dedicated senior center. We talked about having some programming at MLK since that was open, but we decided that we were going to focus that time and effort at the senior center. But then with the increase in counts, we, we backed off on that and just wanted to hold off until we implemented that, that stage of program. Sure, sure. And I, I understand, I think we all understand, you know, that's a vulnerable population a little bit different than, uh, maybe our homeschool programs or the, the kids programs, but at the same time, I think we're all, I think what you're hearing from the councils, we're all interested in hearing updates on, um, maybe other ideas, uh, ways we can get people who are willing, maybe not opening the entire senior center for those reduced hours, but people who are willing to opt in and take part in some programming, they're, they're out there, they're probably looking for something to do. So if you could just keep us updated on that, maybe in the Friday report, uh, what you guys are thinking on that. We could certainly, uh, circle back around with staff and, and put some additional ideas and, uh, revisit that for you guys. And I think just to add to, if I could just to add to Gary's response to you, I mean, we have also been a little bit concerned after speaking with our legal advisors on, uh, you know, if something gets contract traced back to that population, we have somebody get very sick or, or even pass away. Are we putting the city at some liability? And so that we really need Aaron and his team to help us through that. So I, I'll get with him this week on that. Um, we have been a little bit, um, spooked in a couple of cases. We've had some programming, uh, um, issues out there. We've had COVID run, uh, rampant through a couple of our different programs. So it's happened. We've pulled those programs and shut them down immediately, uh, or made, uh, you know, different, uh, accommodations. And so you know, this is something we understand. We're seeing emails as well. And we understand that folks would like those, um, those programming options opened up, but you know, we are taking lots of different variables in and seeing and experiencing lots of different things right now. And, um, I think that if the, if the council's direction is see if there's some way of, you know, putting a waiver together, getting these programs put together and very limited, um, you know, participation, that's fine. But I do think we need to be very purposeful about this and support Gary since he has been experiencing programs with COVID involved and that really rattles our customers and our, and our residents when that happens. So it's, it's an extremely difficult line he's balancing right now. Yeah. And, uh, something else the public doesn't always think about is every time we do one of these programs, we're putting a city staff member out there on the front line as well with a group of the population. So I think, I think it would be useful just to have that information together in the Friday report, just like we're talking it through now. And I think council member Armenter, I think I saw your hand first. Did you have? Yes. Yeah. I just wanted to respond to, um, things that to my colleagues had brought up you and council member Briggs. Um, first, I just wanted to second, uh, what council member Briggs mentioned about, you know, the, the importance of, um, uh, uh, people reaching out proactively to seniors, uh, not instead of necessarily, but in addition to, you know, seniors reaching out. So I'm sorry to hear that the staff member who came up with that wonderful program is, um, no longer with us. I hope they're doing well. Um, and, uh, I would, if there's any way, um, that we have maybe staff who are, would normally be in charge of other kinds of in-person programming who maybe have more time because that in-person programming isn't happening. That might be a good way to help employ, uh, you know, keep, keep our currently employed staff still employed, being able to do something really helpful. So I really support that, that proactive measure, uh, of, of reaching out to people. I'm second in response to, you know, council member Davis, your question, I realized it was just a question um, about, uh, you know, the possibility of having, you know, limited group, um, you know, senior activities. You know, I, I myself, uh, would be, uh, against that. And I don't mean to single out the senior population, actually. I would reiterate, um, you know, until people look at the numbers and just see how the numbers are rising among young people, uh, that, um, no, no longer can we really say that seniors are, you know, more susceptible, if you ever could, than young people. The numbers among young people, you know, locally, um, nationwide has really been skyrocketing, um, as young as, you know, elementary school aged kids, um, all the way to, to 19. Um, so, and, and these are people who are going home and at some level they're interacting with seniors. Uh, so I think it's important that we scale back, um, uh, our, uh, uh, in, in-person contact, uh, sports activities of any kind. Um, and I suppose, so I support the measures staff has taken so far. I understand it's a real balance and I would stand behind them and, and I'm going to, later, I'm going to turn to the presentation suggesting that we roll back even more to protect our residents, protect staff, um, you know, and, and to help, uh, uh, to help move on, you know, past, past COVID because I'm, I'm deeply concerned even about these smaller activities where people are spaced out. Okay. Thank you. Uh, council member Melter. Yeah, I, uh, would concur, I think encouraging seniors to congregate as much as, you know, this is so tough for everyone. Uh, it's, it's just a terrible idea. Uh, I mean, there might be a way to do it. Uh, you know, and I wouldn't say never, never, never, but it's sort of the exact thing that we would most not want to do in terms of, uh, risk of, you know, serious outcomes. Uh, however, you know, the, the isolation and the need for outreach, I think is very pointed. Uh, and, uh, it occurs to me as we've discussed this, a lot of what we're seeing in the nonprofit world in Denton is the volunteer resources drying up because people don't want to do in-person things, especially because a lot of the volunteer community is 16 over. Uh, but I wonder if there's an opportunity to reach out to some of our nonprofit partners, perhaps through United Way to re-engage the, the, uh, volunteer force to do some of this outreach. Uh, you know, basically take the young old to call the old old, uh, cause that's something you can do from home. And I think, I think, uh, it's something that, you know, kind of, oh, the community can do to look after the community probably more, uh, more effectively than just one person. Okay. Are there any other questions or comments on this section of the presentation? Okay. We've been at it for about an hour 10. So if we could take a, a tight five and come back at, uh, five 15, that tight five was for you, Paul. Um, if we could come back at five 15, uh, then will the council be in recess until then? Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on December the 1st, 2020. We are still on agenda item three a receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the city of Denton's COVID-19 response, et cetera. And Sarah, you can continue where we left off. Okay. Thank you. Um, I'll go into the next section of the presentation, which is in regards to some of the community programs and assistance being offered in Denton County. Um, staff did present a work session on November 10th that included this information in regards to the cares act funding and programs available in Denton County. Um, but I'll just briefly cover this slide again. Um, the Denton County use its cares act money, its CRF funds for two programs to assist the community. Um, that was the eviction prevention program, which was providing housing assistance to those in need that are impacted by COVID as well as providing nonprofits or grants to nonprofits throughout the County, um, to continue to support them and their capacity, um, increased capacity that they've seen over the last few months. Uh, the city of Denton used its cares act CRF funding, um, to help support an alternative emergency shelter arrangement, um, to really take it from that congregate shelter setting and, um, provide more, uh, emergency shelter through the use of hotels. And staff will have a recommendation on that in the next few slides. Um, the city of Denton has also received additional cares act funding, um, in the form of our community development block grant funding. Um, and in terms of receiving an award for emergency solutions grant funding, I'll cover both those in the next few slides. Um, but we did present again on November 10th, kind of a plan for these funds. In addition, um, the United Way of Denton County has applied for emergency solutions grant around to funding, um, to continue hopefully, um, it's eviction prevention program and is waiting to hear back from THN and THCA, um, the state agencies that would be, um, providing that award of funding, uh, if they will be awarded and in what amount and when that timing would be, um, one item that is not shown on the screen here that staff recently learned about and we'll be applying for before the end of the month, um, is TDHCA has made available, um, it's CDBG, CV funds, um, available to some of the municipalities throughout the state. Uh, so we will be applying for that for, um, rental assistance funds. Um, if we were to be awarded some of that funding, um, it could be under contract by January 15th. Um, so we're continuing to seek out funding where we can and we'll keep council updated on that. Um, there was a little bit more information presented in the backup document in terms of, um, that program that we're applying for through the state. So, um, these are the two, um, funding sources that the city has received and that I touched on, on the previous slide in terms of our CDBG funds, CV funds. Um, we were awarded this as an entitlement community. So we were awarded it outright based upon a formulation, uh, based on population. Um, and that was a total of just over 1.4 million. Um, we also received emergency solutions grant funding. Um, this we had to go out and apply for and score high enough in order to receive and be awarded these funds. Um, this is really a testament to everything that has been done over the last few years, few years to create a housing crisis response system in Denton County and hall and have all of our agencies collaboratively use HMIS. Um, without that, without that collaboration, without that systematic approach, we would not be eligible for these ESG funds, nor would we be scoring high enough to receive a total of 1.4 million in ESG funds to help assist our residents. Um, so just as a reminder, we did review these, the slide as well. And then November 10th work session in terms of how we are proposing to use both of those funding sources. And so I'll kind of jump into the next slides. This is really a preview, um, for council in terms of the next steps and actions a council need to take in order to award both these funds and allow staff to begin using both these funds in the community. So we'll start with the ESG CV funds. Um, we again were awarded this by TDH CA. We have a contract with them that specifically lays out how these funds are to be broken down and spent. Um, so it's broken down into four categories listed here on the screen in terms of services for street outreach, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing. So this is for individuals that are currently experiencing homeless to help them be rapidly rehoused and then as well as homeless prevention. So this is really more around the category of, um, the eviction prevention, um, helping those individuals who are at risk of losing their housing, stay housed. Um, also per that contract that we have with TDH CA, it's stipulated that we had to go out and competitively procure. Um, so that means that we had to go through a competitive procurement process in order to award these $1.4 million of funds out to our nonprofit agencies to accomplish these four tasks set out. Um, we're currently in that process and we are completing it. Um, we plan to bring forward a list of contracts to city council on December 17th in order to get these funds awarded to the nonprofit agencies and out to them to begin to use. As far as emergency shelter, um, staff is recommending that we use some of our federal CDBG CB funds to continue a modified alternative shelter arrangement. Um, just as way of reminder and background, um, we have had an alternative shelter arrangement in place since March when the COVID pandemic began. Um, we are currently set to expire as of December 31st and that is because the city has been using its CARES Act CRF funds, uh, to fund this arrangement. However, the CARES Act legislation states that those funds must be used before December 31st. Um, just as a data point, we currently have approximately 64 individuals still staying in the hotel. Um, staff staff is recommending that we continue with some modified alternative shelter arrangement using hotel rooms into probably at least the first six months of 2021, uh, due to the rise of active COVID cases that we are seeing, um, and that we have continued to have limited capacity at the MKOC shelter, um, that they're operating out of their 300 Woodrow Lane location. Um, they're operating at about a third of capacity and only on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights and then increment weather nights. Um, however, MKOC and the junction, uh, now as it is called have been helping the city to manage the hotel arrangement so that the individual staying in the hotels are provided with case management services, um, and help to provide and serve their needs. Um, and, um, we're recommending to continue, um, in a hotel arrangement, uh, as, as we can use, um, some of the ESG rapid rehousing funds, um, to hopefully help these individuals that have still been without per permanent housing solution, um, to get housed and no longer be in need of a hotel room or in need of shelter. Um, and so we do have a budget in that ESG grant for rapid rehousing where we're going to be focusing a lot of time with the case managers to help these individuals hopefully obtain housing and then maintain housing, which is important. Um, but we do not feel it is safe to increase the capacity in a congregate setting and an emergency shelter at this time due to the rise of COVID and do not anticipate, um, being safe to do so to increase that capacity in the near future. So we're looking to continue some arrangement with hotels. Um, we have started a procurement process to select a hotel vendor, um, and we anticipate that that process will be completed, um, before the end of the month. And then we can prepare a contract, um, that city council could consider in January. Um, so there'll be two actions that will be brought forward to city council on December 17th regarding the emergency shelter recommendation. Um, we're going to seek temporary extension, um, with the current hotel we are at. Um, we're just increase recommending and requesting increased expenditure authority so we can continue to use that hotel past the end of December for the month of January. Um, we really want to make sure that we can bridge and continue to use the hotel that we're at until we get that new contract in place. Um, that would be expected to be done in January with city council. Um, and we really want to avoid any potential transition during, during the holidays, which could be very disruptive to the clients staying in the hotel. And then the second item that would play take place on December 17th, um, to help accomplish this recommendation that staff has put forward, um, would be an amendment to the city's consolidated plan with HUD, um, in order for us to use the CBG CB funds towards the emergency shelter recommendation. And then lastly, um, this is not related to, um, the, the funding sources and the housing programs I just discussed, but in terms of utility assistance, um, with United Way of Denton County wrapping up its eviction prevention program, um, using the Denton County cares act, CRF funds, um, they are no longer accepting new requests for housing or utility assistance. Um, so all customers that are in need of utility assistance are now being referred to interfaith ministries. Um, you can see some data, uh, listed out here on the screen in terms of funding that has been provided, um, through this calendar year. And there is approximately $131,000 in funding remaining available for utility assistance. Uh, and we'll continue to monitor these levels and provide an update to city council moving forward. So I will stop this presentation there. And at the end of the, that section, Hey, just real quickly, before we go to questions, I want to call out what you said at the beginning of this section, Sarah, that this grant funding that we've applied for, not that we were entitled to, but that we applied for only came to us because of the assistance infrastructure and staffing and staff work that we've been doing over years leading up to this. And then we had an additional grant application and anybody who's been dealing at all within this cares act funding, whether you're applying for, uh, the, uh, payroll loans or any of that kind of stuff, it's highly regulated. It's very complex. So I just want to give a shout out to staff, everybody that worked in this space and everybody in legal who's been working on it. Um, phenomenal, phenomenal that we have these resources coming into our community right now. Um, questions or brief comments for this section, we will have a chance in a little bit to take up a policy suggestion. So just questions and brief comment, uh, council member breaks a clarification. So at this moment in time, there is not any rental assistance available for our community. Uh, the applications, um, through the United Way of Denton counties did close on December 1st, um, so that they could process those through this month and meet before that deadline of December 31st. Okay. So at this moment in time, if you don't have an application and there's no other resources or anything in our community to assist an individual who, um, is having trouble paying their rent, there is no cares act funding programs. There still may be programs available. I'm not not at the level, um, uh, of the programs that were there. Um, but we still encourage anyone that is in need to reach out to our nonprofit agencies. Um, they still may have other funding sources that they can use to assist, um, clients and families. Okay. And on the, um, the 64 individuals, that number seems pretty consistent from, um, the, the data and information that we've had for individuals staying in hotels. It seems like it's been at least a 64 the whole time. Do you know, is it the same or have we been able to move anyone out of the hotels, um, into housing? Yes, we have placed, um, those who have been staying in the hotels and housing. I don't have the exact number off hand, but I think it's about 20 individuals have been housed from the hotel. Um, we have accepted new placements into the hotel where we can, especially based upon vulnerability. Uh, if they have high vulnerability, we did want to, and if there was room in the hotel accommodate them, uh, staying there as well. So there has been some in and out. It hasn't just been the exact same individual staying in the hotel at the same time. Well, that, that's great news. And I think it's good for our community members to know that, um, that we are doing that and that it's, it's not just the same people that there are individuals moving from hotels to a house. That's really important because that's the ultimate goal. Uh, my next and last question, if I may, uh, uh, so why is the Montenegro King not open seven nights now? Um, I know that we had that discussion. We had a long discussion and presentation here with his council. We funded that we, um, made that decision and, um, I know that there's COVID, but if it's reduced capacity, why aren't they staying open now, especially, um, since it's colder for seven days, we can follow up with them. I know they were going to plan to revisit that, um, to see if it was a possibility to go from three to seven nights per week. Um, you know, they are still heavily reliant upon volunteers and they've had some staffing challenges as well. So to open at seven nights per week just requires a certain level of manpower and the additional cleaning that needs to take place in that shelter, um, just to make sure that it is a healthy and safe environment. Um, but we can follow up with them to see if they have any indications, if they've had some return of volunteers, staffing, stability and so forth, um, to be able to maintain that at seven nights per week. Um, but they do plan, I know right now, um, through to be open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and inclement weather nights as well. Um, and, and they are also helping us to manage, um, the hotel location so that that is another, uh, function that they are providing to the city and another service. So I just have a follow up question if I may. So what the care sack funding or the funding, um, that we're receiving or may receive, would that help pay for staff to stay open those seven days? Because, um, it just seems that, you know, having a place for them to go consistently has always been proven to be better, especially for anyone who's, you know, trying to work or, you know, just stay off the street in general. Yes, that may be, um, part of part of, um, an application that the junction could make as a nonprofit, um, part of the, uh, CDBG CB funds. Um, we have also recommended a portion of them to be open for nonprofits to apply for just general grants for staffing, um, for capacity. Um, so they could apply for those as well. Um, but we can follow up with them and learn to see if their plans have changed. And, and, and I will just add that we did assist them. Uh, I worked with judge Edes office to access cares fund dollars to bring on temporary staff over the last several months. So, um, one of the things all these nonprofits are having to deal with now that we're relying on cares act dollars is when those money, that money goes away at the end of the month, they're, they're losing that temporary staff. So we're kind of holding our breath, hoping we see a second round moving forward to help them beef up their staffing again. But that is really the, um, what they've been relying on. So they did have that assistance. They've had a very difficult time, uh, trying to manage two locations and we will ask the questions and just see what the plan is in place. But we've been able to maintain the, the hotels all along in, in, in order to, to try to provide them some, some relief. Okay. Other questions on this section. Council member Armitter. Uh, yeah. So I want to start just by echoing, um, the kudos to staff at the beginning about all of the time that, um, you all have spent on applying for all these grants. I know it is just grueling paperwork a lot of time. Um, and it's, it's worked out that saves lives and it's really arduous. Um, so thank you for doing that. Um, I'm really glad we have the hotels. I'm in touch with, uh, constituents to a couple of constituents who are experiencing homelessness, who are temporarily staying in the hotels, working really hard to look for, um, funding. Some of them have, I'm sorry, housing. Some of them have circumstances that make it really, really hard, um, to find housing. Um, but it, you know, it's not that they're not trying and I know that in their case workers are really hard on it. Thanks to everyone for that. Um, the, my questions about this are, um, will number Council member Armentor, can you hear me? Your image is frozen and I'm not sure we've got your audio. Okay. We'll give that a minute and we'll move on to somebody else for just a little bit. Oh, you can hear, can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you. I'm so sorry everyone. My internet at home, it's fine for non zoom, but on zoom it's real bad with anything visual. Um, it's bad. So, uh, but anyway, thank you for your patience. Um, no, I was just saying that, uh, I agree. It would be ideal if, uh, my MKOC could be open seven days a week on that limited capacity. I I'm really glad that there is, uh, some, or might be some care funding available, uh, for, uh, for people to apply to, to get temporary staff. But because precisely as a city manager mentioned, you know, that's not entirely up to us. Um, I would like us to look to, and this will come up on the 17th. So I'm going to, I'll hold this on the 17th, but just so that staff is, can, um, know that I'm already thinking about this, you know, I, I really think that we should contribute some of our, our city dollars and some of our, uh, our people power, especially we've got that is willing people power. If people are willing, we've got staff, you know, rec center staff who are usually in charge of childcare and athletics programs that aren't happening right now. You know, I think that we could kind of kill two birds with one stone and keep our staff employed, um, under COVID while keeping some of these, um, you know, you know, crucial services running, um, as far as rental assistance goes. So I know that, you know, the money needs to be spent by December 31st. I understand that. Um, is there any way that any of that, uh, funding that was designated by council to go to making, uh, the new development building more COVID safe? And I know that was already voted on, um, you know, and I had my concerns about that, but, you know, is there any way that some of that could be, um, moved into a rental assistance fund, um, that people could still apply for since that is federal money? I'm not sure if that would, you know, how that would work as far as at the federal level, at the city level, if that's possible. I think anything's possible. I, I think the one thing that I would say to that is we've got to have the money spent, um, very quickly. Um, and I, and I think the thing that for council to think about with this is I need to rely on Sarah in terms of the timeline on when we might be able to access that first ESG grant, because in talking with, um, Gary Henderson recently, Denton has been seeing a spend of around 130 to $150,000 a month on that, uh, the rental assistance program. We've also got the ESG grant in as well that we're waiting to hear from funding on as well. So the idea was by putting the ESG one and two together, there would likely be enough funding based on past trends to see, um, to see the rental rehab program take us through at least August or September of next year. So there's, there may be a gap, okay. Um, in, in January, depending on what Sarah's answer is when we can access it, that if the council wanted to consider something that would probably be the gap, but we're trying our best to, to close it with these outside funds. So it's not quite as dire as it might seem right now. There's just multiple, um, revenue streams that we're relying on. It doesn't really make much difference. Quite frankly, even if we were able to move the dollars from the development services building over to a program like this, we're not going to be able to do it because it's the end of year, but it's, you're really just talking about reallocating general fund dollars. So if the council wants to, uh, step in and provide a little bit more cushion, uh, for this program in, in January, that would be the way to do it until we could get the grants lined up. Thank you. And thank you. That's really helpful to know. Is that something that we could decide on on the 17th or? Yeah, we could. Yes. And we just need to give Sarah a couple of weeks to, um, work together with Gary Henderson, um, to try to line up the grant dollars. Uh, once we find out exactly if we've been successful on his end and then sort of plan out the next several months based upon the last year of trends that we've seen. So I think we could do it. And, and my guess is that we're probably gonna need about 30 days of working capital, but in order to keep the program going, but if you give us a couple of weeks, we can give you a better answer. Okay, excellent. And then one more question related to that, uh, regarding the hotels. So as far as kind of, um, looking at, uh, our ability to, uh, put up more people at hotels, obviously we've got a lot more than 64 out on the street. Um, is this, I assume this all depends on what kinds of bids we get, um, that we'll be looking at on the 17th. So this we can all discuss more knowledgeably on the 17th. Is that correct? Possibly. I'm not expecting huge differences in the bids that are going to be coming back to us, but you're still going to be in a very similar situation. If you want to continue the program on absent some other revenue streams that we don't know about yet. And, um, we're going to be able to project out for you, um, how much we, how long we would be able to keep the hotels going. And if you wanted to add additional general fund dollars, so we need to do those kind of extrapolate based on the trends that we've been saying when we think we would run out of money and when we might be able to match up other streams of revenue. So you can make a better decision. Okay. Wonderful. Well, that's really helpful. And when we do have that meeting, I'll definitely be recommending, you know, that we do whatever we can, including general fund dollars to, you know, expand, um, the, you know, hotel room, uh, hotel room availability as much as we can. But thanks so much to staff for keeping that up and extending that. Sure. We can provide more information on the 17th, but what we are looking at and recommending is basically a 40 room, um, 40 rooms for the hotel to continue the first six months of 2021. Um, that is also just in collaboration with our partners and knowing how much we can case manage with the current resources, with the nonprofits we have, um, to really make sure that we're leveraging those funding dollars for rapid rehousing and helping to house folks. Um, we just need to be very aware of our nonprofits capacities at this time, um, and what they can handle and manage moving forward. But we can definitely provide some more information on the 17th on that recommendation. Other questions. I've got one real quickly, Sarah, you mentioned in that second round of, uh, grant funding and I've forgotten the acronym already. I don't want to get it wrong. Um, but we were looking at about $437,000 for homelessness prevention and you almost immediately after that said eviction prevention. Is there any portion of that that's also available for, that we could make available for utility assistance? I mean, that's another way people become homeless is, uh, they can't pay their utility bills or, uh, their, it becomes uninhabitable because their power is not on or their, their water is not on. So, um, could you break that down for us? Or if it's not available, kind of give us a picture of what we're looking at there. Sure. So that homeless prevention category would be awarded out to the agencies based upon the procurement process. Um, the majority of those funds would be used then for, um, eviction prevention. Um, and it, I believe it does, and I got to have Danny jump in probably, but it can be used, I think for both housing and utilities, um, for the agencies to use for an individual or family to keep them housed. Um, so I think it would be both eligible for housing and utility assistance, but I'm going to see if Danny is on the line and can confirm that. This is Danny Shaw, Community Services. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Um, yes, with the emergency solutions grant in the homeless prevention, uh, program, which is eviction prevention, utility assistance is eligible. Is that a decision that the council or staff want to undertake later on, or is that through the procurement process, the nonprofit would be making their application or their procurement process based on how they would intend to spend the funds? Yeah, they, the, each agency has already submitted applications under our RFQ and those agencies who would be implementing the program services that they're proposing. Anyone who's proposing homeless prevention under the federal guidelines, utility assistance is eligible. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. We have one more section in this presentation left. Any other questions before we move on to that council member Meltzer? There you are. I have comments and a proposal that I'd like to make regarding the next section as to how we should work through it. Okay. Would it be, uh, would it be helpful if I tell you how I intend to work through it and then you could make recommendations there or we might be on the same page already? Well, I, I think it's possible, but unlikely that we're that, you know, much of the exact same mind. I think it would be more helpful for you to hear the new thought, but, uh, if you don't want, um, it's, you know, it's not, uh, actually one minute pitch items, you know, that we're accustomed to seeing, which are posted items and are addressed in a very narrow fashion where if someone, you know, if a member responds, well, I like the intent, but I like it with a yellow shirt instead of a purple shirt. So therefore, no, it doesn't go forward. This is work session. We're allowed to work on it. So what I would like to suggest is that we look at each of these items, uh, in three steps and I'll be curious to see if you were thinking about it the same way. After we hear the information about each of these items, I would suggest that we first identify the basic need that is proposed to be addressed and take a sense of council on whether in some form or fashion we would like to find a way to address that need. Having taken that consensus, uh, then I wouldn't suggest we evaluate the specific proposal, its merits, possible alternatives or bills. Uh, and, and thirdly, if we don't arrive at something that we would totally be ready to move forward on, that a possible outcome, uh, would be to say, Hey staff, we've agreed that this is an objective that, you know, we do want to address this area, but we'd be open to policy recommendations, you know, beyond what it's been presented today. So that, that's my suggestion for each. And just to recap very briefly, uh, get us, get a consensus of whether we agree. It's an, it's an area we want to address what in some form or fashion. Secondly, evaluate the specific proposal and thirdly be open to asking staff to respond at some future point, you know, with policy options. Does that make sense? And was that, and how close is that to what you had in mind in the, in general outline pretty close. Um, okay. So I agree with you. It's not a one minute pitch situation. Um, so and we're, we're not quite to this section of the presentation yet, but when it does come up, so the public's aware, these are, uh, areas that individual council members at staff's request have submitted that they would like to see addressed in the upcoming declaration or extension of emergency declaration that the council will consider and vote on, on the 17th. And, uh, there are quite a few of them. Uh, some council members submitted them, some didn't. Um, and, uh, staff has also responded to each of these in a document that's in our backup material. So that's all posted on the city's website under public meetings and agendas. Um, that's all out there. So really what the council, I think ought to address, uh, this evening is, uh, just moving as succinctly as we can through those. And I think council member Meltzer, you and I are pretty close to on the same page. Uh, the way I'm going to deal with that is I'm going to ask, as we get to that section of the presentation, I'll ask staff to present, uh, very briefly, not reading off the slide, but very briefly in caption what the area is. And then I'll ask a show of hands of the council who would like to discuss that item. And if there are four hands for that item, I'm going to make a note of it and we'll come back around to it after we go through everything. Anything that doesn't get four hands, uh, we won't discuss the information's out there. The staff response is out there. The public can, uh, read that as they see fit, um, communicate with council as they see fit. And then when we come back to those individual items, um, I'm going to ask each council member if they choose to weigh in and give direction. It may be that we have a pretty quick consensus on those things that four of us have raised our hands on. It may be that it requires more discussion. And I think we're just going to have to take those as they come. Uh, and surely staff will have response to that, that conversation as well. Um, but I think, uh, I think that's how we'll handle it. But our first order of business is we have some lead up to that process. Uh, Sarah has some presentation for us. Thank you. Councilor Davis. And I'll try to try to be quick on this. Um, so city does have that current disaster declaration and order in effect until December 31st. Um, just a quick reminder of the purposes of why we have a declaration and an order. Um, the declaration establishes a state of disaster and it's really the basis for any orders of council. Um, and it is also a prereq for state and federal disaster funding. So we need to continue to have a declaration to be eligible, um, for any state and federal disaster funding. Um, the order of council, um, provides authority and enable certain measures to be taken for the city to respond to COVID-19. Um, so staff is recommending that we, uh, continue with a local disaster declaration and the order as is, um, for an additional 90 day period from January 1st to March 31st. Um, it's really to continue to be eligible for those funding sources and provide the flexibility, um, to respond as you see, um, there's some different trends in COVID and it continues to take different turns, um, and require different responses from city staff. So this is just a quick overview of the current order of council, um, really broken down into three different sections. Um, the first is in paragraph three of the order, and this provides a city manager, some authority to adopt procedures and directives to protect the employees and public, um, staffs recommending that to continue. Uh, paragraph four is really a council policy decision that council put into place to require that businesses have a health and safety policy that incorporates the face covering and social distancing requirements of the governor's order. Um, and also requires that those businesses post signs as well. Um, lastly, uh, paragraph five of the order, um, provides, um, authority and flexibility for emergency response measures. Uh, a number of different items are listed, including the ability for staff to apply for state or federal assistance for us to approve emergency purchases and really establishing that not to exceed amount for the expenditure authority related to the disaster. We did get a request from a council member if we could address our education and enforcement of the local order. Um, so back in early July, we did put a process in place using the engaged dent app where residents could report concerns regarding businesses to staff, um, and that we would reach out to do some education on our local order, um, in regards to the requirement to have a health and safety policy and to have the signs posted. Um, when we discussed enforcement, those are really the only two factors that staff are looking at. Do they have a policy and is it posted? However, while we're there and visiting with those businesses, if we're able to, we'll provide some suggestions or recommendations for health and safety practices that they can undertake for their employees and their customers as well. You can see just the trend. We have had less of those coming through engaged dent and, um, but we still continue to respond to those that we receive. So, uh, as mentioned earlier, uh, we are preparing to bring forward an item to council on December 17th, um, that would look at a potential extension from January to March. Staff is seeking direction on one item in the previous or in the next slide that I'll go over. And then as mentioned, there are a number of council requests that were made, um, that would either be required to be in the order, um, or it would require additional staff resources or policy changes. So I'll just jump into this slide, um, that staff is seeking direction on from council if you would like to continue, um, with this policy and practice. And if so, um, we would like to memorialize it in the order. Um, so since, uh, the initial order on March 13th, um, and, and throughout, um, with previous or, uh, prior council direction and subsequent council direction, uh, staff has waived certain utility, utility billing fees and charges. Um, they're listed here on the right. Um, and this provides a benefit to customers during times of the financial uncertainty. Um, however, it does represent a loss revenue to the utilities. And this is just a rough estimate, uh, of what can be attributed to non collection fees over approximately the last nine months since that practice has been adopted. Um, we are just seeking direction if council would like to continue, um, to waive these utility billing fees and charges. And if so, um, we would memorialize that in the order. And if not, we would resume practices of utility billing fees and charges. So I will pull that down for right now. Okay. I think the first question, Sarah, you don't have a slide for this, but I think the first question, uh, what you've said raises is that what we're going to see on the 17th is staff's recommendation for an extension through the end of March of 2021, March 31st. So before we go any further, is there any member of council who's not comfortable or wants to discuss that date? Is everybody on board with an extension through March 31st so that we can keep spending the federal money that's coming our way and continue our programs? Okay. And, um, who would like to be heard on the waiver of fees? It might be easier just to ask who's not who's not in favor of continuing staff's practice. Are there any questions on that before we council member breaks? Does this also include commercial? I think Krista foster is on the line. Um, so I will ask her to jump in and she's there. Mayor pro tem council. This is Krista foster customer service manager. And yes, that does include commercial accounts. Currently we are not charging fees to any customer. Perfect. Thank you. And council member Armenter, did you have a question? Yeah, I had a question. So obviously I'm in favor of, you know, continuing these practices and later I'll talk about how I want to us to amp it up. But the question about the credit based deposit, um, portion of it, I want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. It sounds like what is happening is that it's not that we're not charging the credit based deposits, but that we're not increasing them. We're not moving people up or moving people down the, the, the scale on that scale of the different level of credit based deposits that you're put in based on credit history. Am I understanding that right? Or is it, um, does it mean something different? No, ma'am. Um, so what we're doing right now is we are assessing a deposit on a brand new account. If the credit is not where it needs to be. However, we are still doing refunds of deposits. If a customer qualifies for that refund, but if they're interrupted and they have no deposit or if they're credit worthiness while they're with us, drops them into a tier that would increase their deposit. We are not changing any deposits that are on file like that. We are still giving customers back their deposits. If they qualify for that, or if they move to the prepaid program, we also are putting that deposit back onto their account so that it pays for their service. Okay. So thank you so much. And thanks also for mentioning about the refund. Um, cause I hadn't even thought of that, but that is you explained it in a much better way, more professional way. And in my understanding of what we were doing and what we're not doing, um, by the way, since we've got you on the phone speaking of the pay as you go, um, has there been a, um, and you know, an increase in people switching to pay as you go, anything noticeable, um, you know, over the course of the pandemic or has it remained, uh, pretty, pretty, pretty constant for what it was before as of right now, it's remained primarily stable. Um, I think that a lot of the customers are a little nervous about the fact that they would need to be able to have those funds continually. Um, but again, we are still seeing people move to that program. We are still seeing a lot of success with the people who are on that program. We are working with them just like we would some of the other customers in terms of trying to make things better for them through the challenges that they're facing financially. Council member Armenter, I think you're still on mute. Thank you. I was just going to say that, you know, on, on credit based deposits, I'm sorry, on pay as you go, you're not charged these credit based deposits, you know, if you qualify for pay as you go. So it's worth looking into. It's not for everybody, but for people listening, you know, if you're struggling with utilities debt, it's worth at least asking about and empowering yourself with that knowledge. So it looks like the consensus of council is to continue with that practice that we've been under and waiving fees. For the next portion, I think Sarah, if I'm correct, we're moving right into the council member requests. If I could amend what I said a little while ago, and actually I think in the interest of time, it'll be a little easier if we're just reading captions. If I just read those, but before we do that, if you could scroll through those next few slides and maybe give, you know, 30 seconds or so to each slide and then take them down because when we when we talk, the public has to be able to see us. Sure. So this is the first slide. And these are really requests that would be related to the city order, where we'd recommend placing them in the order of council. So we received three that were from council member armature in regards to requesting that no utility shut offs be done for the month of December due to nonpayment. The second and we did, I guess it just depends on how much information you want me to give. But there's more information in your backup that really details some of the data on our utility billing collection over the past few months in comparison to the past couple of years, in addition to past due accounts. Also reminder that utility assistance continues through interfaith. The second item was a request that there are no credit based deposit charges for utility setups for December. There was just some discussion of that. And a reminder of why we require credit based deposits for new utility setups, really to protect other ratepayers from the burden of nonpaid accounts if that is not paid. And then there are a number of Chris, Chris had just mentioned there are a number of options for deposit waivers and also the option for the deposit to be covered by utility assistant providers such as interfaith. The third request was that there broadly is no jailing for nonviolent crimes in the municipal jail. We did provide information in your backup, but just a reminder that all police officers currently have some discretion on class C misdemeanors in terms of if they provide a citation and release or if they jail. And it's really dependent on a number of different circumstances, not only for the health and safety of those individuals, but the public at large. I mean, we did kind of include an example in the backup as well, where the difficulties of having a broad policy applied to that. There's a lot of different scenarios and circumstances that need to take need to be taken into consideration. The last was a request from Councilmember Meltzer and that Sarah on my end, it looks like you're frozen. I'm not sure if everyone else is experiencing that as well. So anybody else there in the room with Sarah who can tell us if yes, we're working through it with her. Good deal. All right. We just had a little bit of a power surge in council work session room. So I think we're going to fix that other computer. But the last was a request from Councilmember Meltzer to include specific language on the signage that businesses are required that the face covering must cover both the nose and the mouth. Many of the businesses that have put up the signage that is required already include that language, or they include some image that really depicts that it needs to be placed both over the nose and the mouth. So that's just being done in practice a lot. Currently, the city also offers free signage to businesses if we were to go out and visit that also has that indicated as well. Okay, so since we're having a little technical issue, let's just stop right here on this slide. And for the public's benefit, that's available on the city website. And as well as the actual full request from each council member and the staff's full response. That's all in a document. So the first one is no utility shutoffs for December, if I could see a show of hands of council members who would like to discuss that item further. I see three there. So we don't quite get to four. The next one is no credit based deposit charges for utility setups for December. Show of hands of who'd like to discuss that. We have two there, so not to four. No jailing for nonviolent crimes. Show of hands. I see, well I think council member Armenter is frozen and council member Melter is trying to say something but is muted. Yeah. Where would the opportunity be? I guess you have to say, you know, I don't know if I'm for it or not. I'd like to hear what the police chief has to say about it. So I guess I've got a show that I'm interested in talking about in order to hear that, right? Sure. Yeah, that's correct. But the police chief had a response. Staff had a full response in the document that we were given that's available for the public to look at. We've also talked about that particular issue several times before in our COVID conversation. So in the interest of time, there are just too many of these to have a full work session conversation on every single one. We've got to see which ones have at least four council members wanting to discuss it. But this is just the point, interim mayor Pro Tem, why I raised the issue before about, do you want to talk about the underlying issue? For instance, give me a little latitude. Sure. About utility shutoffs. Well, this is a widely miscommunicated topic, right? The real topic is connecting people to assistance. And the shutoff is done as a last ditch way to communicate with people. Now, maybe there's a different thing we could do other than shutoffs to communicate with people. Maybe, however inconvenient, maybe it's door knocks or door hangers. I don't know, you know, where do we stop before? Because it gets communicated to the public as, you know, we're leaving people in the cold or something other than we're trying to connect people to assistance. So, you know, if people are saying, no, I don't want to talk about utility shutoffs, where do we get to the underlying issue of do we want to talk about how to connect people to assistance? See what I mean? I do. And to use your example, I think the request then should have been how do we connect people to better connect people to assistance? We've also, again, to use your example, we've discussed that item quite a bit. And you've made some very eloquent points about the fact that the goal of the shutoff is not to shut off people's power, it's to get people connected to assistance. And we've got quite a bit of funding that heretofore we've had available. So, I understand your point. I perfectly understand it. It's just we've got so many of these items there after this slide that we're already kind of stalling out on. We've got four more to discuss individual requests by individual council members, some of which we've discussed many times before, some of which we haven't. So this is the best I've got to be able to move us through. We have a regular session at 630 with a lot of items pulled from Consent Agenda. So I'll make my points as I find an opportunity. I feel that the underlying issues are much more important than the speed of our meeting. I don't disagree with you that the issues are important. There are also issues that we've discussed quite a bit on this council. And I don't know that there's necessarily been changes to some of these. And again, staff's response and the full council requests are all in a document that's in our backup. So the question right now is, if council members would raise their hand if they want to discuss in further detail, no jailing for nonviolent crimes. And do we have one there, two there? Okay, so that one did not receive four. The last one on this slide is- I'm sorry, I have my hand up to ask a question. I'm sorry, I thought you were raising your hand on the last issue. I am. So I have a question about process. My hand is up each time because I have a question about what's being asked of us. And so what I think you're saying is that we can't discuss any of it if four people do not want to talk about it. So questions are just a no-go from the start. Like that last one, I had a question about percentages. What is the percentage of those who are arrested for nonviolent crimes currently? Because we were told that they have latitude and haven't been doing it. So I'm wondering how often is it being done? That would help me understand if I needed to have that conversation go further. But that is being cut from the discussion, correct? So I understand what you're saying. The issue is if there are not four council members who are wanting to discuss that issue in further detail, then we can assume there aren't going to be four council members that are going to have consensus on putting that into our eventual order. So I think that's a valid question. That's a perfectly valid question. But whether this is the time to ask that question, if there's not going to be any action by the council on that as opposed to asking that question offline, we did have a number of questions asked of staff offline. I'm sorry, I just don't have a better way to work us through what if we discuss each item individually before we decide if there's going to be any consensus whatsoever. It's just like our one-minute pitch situation. We're going to spend three hours just getting through questions and conversation before we decide if we're going to be anywhere close to consensus on any of these items. In this one in particular, we've discussed before. We've had input from the police chief before. So I don't have a better way to move through this. I think this is the way to do it. And I didn't see four hands on that particular item. So I'm going to move us forward to the next request, which is requiring signage at businesses to include specific languages that mask must cover both the nose and the mouth. Do we have four council members that would like to discuss that further? Okay. So we have four to discuss signage. Now, Sarah, we had another, that's the end of that slide. Do we have the ability at the computer you're at now to share the remaining slides or should I just try to, should we take a break? Yes, I'm going to switch back. Sorry about that. That's just fine. I think I just skipped a slide. Let me make sure I'm in order. Okay. Yeah, that one. Yes. So this is the next slide of requests. I'll just go through these really quickly. These were from council member Armitter. The request was to cancel all city youth and adult sports programs and field rentals. We did provide some information earlier in the work session on this in regards to parks and rec plans. The second item was to add more inclement weather stations. We also provided some information earlier in the work session in regards to MLK rec center being the primary station, but the civic center serving as a backup if necessary, but it is not expected that will be needed on a regular basis. The third request was to reopen the rec center showers. We provided information earlier that those are being reopened beginning December 7th. There was also requests for the city to provide funding to open showers at our daily bread, an additional day per week. A nonprofit agency called streetside showers currently provides showers there once per week. We have reached out to that nonprofit agency, but have not had a response back yet in terms of availability of that nonprofit agency and cost. The fourth request was that no encampment cleanups are performed during COVID. We did provide more information in your backup in regards to our current process for monitoring, evaluating and the notification and cleanup process if any actions are recommended regarding encampments. We also did include some information that only two have taken place since COVID began. So very few have and it was due to significant health and safety concerns. And we also provide notification to council through a Friday report with a full memo of that assessment and recommendation before we take any action. So you are notified before we go forward with any action. The last item was a request to hire an eviction mediator. Just a reminder from staff that there are some programs out there, including the United Way of Denton County still has its information referrals assistance program. Anyone can call in for really any assistance that's needed. And the United Way will help to connect them with agencies that are performing those various services, which might also include tenant landlord mediation. And then, you know, staff is actively spending a lot of time trying to seek out housing assistance grants so that we can help individuals at risk of losing housing to stay housed. And all that information is provided in the backup. Okay, thank you. If you got the slide down. And Councilmember Armitage, I see a hand for a question. Yes. Yeah, actually, I just wanted to clarify two points on the slide and you don't have to put the slide back up if you don't want to. It might seem like a fine point of semantics, but when I'm requesting a no breaking up of encampments, that's the words that I used. I'm not against cleaning up if cleaning up means helping to make existing encampments more sanitary. But breaking up was the language that I used. So I just wanted to make that point. And then as far as the eviction mediator goes, what an eviction mediator would do that is not already being done is, and there are a number of examples of this in other cities, that do this. It would be somebody who would sit down in a mediating role with a landlord and a tenant and try to help them come to a resolution that would avoid having to go to the courts. It's something that cities can do because it's inside our jurisdiction. It doesn't involve the county. It's different than hooking someone up with funding or giving someone advice. It's a way to work within the constraints that we have as a city to be able to help prevent evictions. I just wanted to clarify that. Okay. Thank you. And just for the public's benefit, again, the full request as laid out verbatim by each councilmember is available in a document linked to the agenda on the public meetings page. So let's start with, Councilmember Armitage, when I read that item, I'm going to read it just in the way that you asked us to. No breaking up of encampments. So the first is cancel all city youth and adult sports programs and field rentals. Are there four councilmembers who would like to discuss that further? Okay. I don't see four. Add more inclement weather stations. Are there four councilmembers who would like to discuss that further? Okay. Let me make a note of that. Reopen rec center showers and add Monday showers at our daily bread. Are there four that would like to discuss that item further? I don't see four there. No encampment, no breaking up of encampments during COVID. Are there four that would like to discuss that further? Okay. I'm going to raise my hand for that one. Hire a city eviction mediator. Are there four councilmembers who would like to discuss that item? Okay. I don't see four there. Sarah, could you move us to the next slide? So this is the next slide. Continued request from Councilmember Armitage. The first one listed here was to prioritize locally owned small businesses on all city contracts. There's some information provided by our legal department in the backup and what is restricted by state law. Sorry. The second request was to explore a partnership with Uber and or Lyft to get groceries or essentials to residents at a discount. This would be a significant project for staff to undertake and we would have to scope out even what the staff hours would be. But we did reach out to DCTA to learn more about their current programs and initiatives by way of reminder that we do have an on-demand service area within Denton. It does not cover the whole city, but it does cover the downtown Denton area on evenings. And then they also have a reduced fare program that continues for those that need it for transportation assistance. The last item was a request to tighten up code enforcement of the mask ordinance. Just wanted to clarify that the city does not have a mask ordinance. What we have in our local order is that businesses are required to have a health and safety policy that incorporates the face covering and social distancing requirements of GA 29 and then a requirement that the business has that policy and post signage in regards to it. So our only enforcement is to check if the business has a policy and if the business has signage posted. Okay. Let's start at the top then. The first request is to prioritize locally owned small businesses on all city contracts. Are there four councilmembers who would like to discuss that further? Was it already concluded that that's not a legally possible thing to do? I agree with that. I think the city manager and city attorney both told us that in different ways at different times, but okay. Okay. I don't see four hands there. The next one is explore a partnership with Uber and/or Lyft to get groceries/essentials to residents at a discount. Do we have four councilmembers wanting to discuss that further? I'll go ahead and discuss. Go ahead councilmember. Go ahead councilmember Briggs. I have a note because I know that there likely might not be four people that want to discuss this, but we currently for those who are wondering and who are in need, we currently have a volunteer program called needs that will run errands and make deliveries to individuals in our city. And I have a phone number here that you can text, but I just wanted people to know that there is a volunteer service, people that are doing that in our city right now, that if this does not get any further communication called needs, N-E-A-D-S. How would you like to provide that number? Does that group want you to kind of read it out over the air or? I could do that. Yeah, go ahead. 940-453-1660. And that is a volunteer service that will run errands and deliveries for you in Denton, Texas. Thank you. So can I see hands again on that item? Councilmember is wishing to discuss that item further. I'd like to make a point while raising my hand. Go ahead councilmember Meltzer. Okay, that this was exactly my point before, that if we want to talk about the underlying need of delivery, whether or not we like that precise solution, this is not a one minute pitch. It was not a pre-posted item. You don't have to just say yes or no to that. You can say, "What about publicizing this program that councilmember Riggs mentioned?" And I think we should do that. Thank you. And the last one is tighten up code enforcement of mask ordinance for councilmembers who would like to discuss that further. I think we covered it in the previous item, language. Agreed. Okay, Sarah, could you take us to the last slide? Yes. So this is the last slide. These were requests from councilmember Meltzer. The first was more of an inquiry if there are any restrictions that we could loosen to allow more outdoor eating and outdoor product sales. Staff just provided some information that we have worked very closely with the downtown businesses and been accommodating for them to place out tables and racks on a regular basis. Some are almost even doing that daily, as long as there's still space for pedestrians and it's meeting the ADA requirements. We're not aware of any requests further from businesses that would require us to modify regulations. But if there is some from businesses or there's some businesses we should be reaching out to, we're happy to do so. The second request was to authorize TIF grants up to $10,000 for COVID adaptations for businesses to improve the health and safety of their facilities. Staff believes that the TIRS could fund some grant described for businesses that are only within the TIRS district. It would require some time, though, to develop program parameters and ordinance and so forth. And then it would have to be taken in front of the TIRS board. And just to note that the TIRS board would not meet again until January 27th, so it would likely be February at the earliest of when this could return to council. The last request was a request that in cases where businesses are required to close by Denton County Public Health in order to sanitize after exposure to cover up to two days' wages and average daily profits, staff reached out to Denton County Public Health and confirmed that they do not force businesses to shut down for a period of time if there has been an exposure, but more so they recommend that the businesses follow their specific facility-related guidance from the state in regards to the health protocols. So, Interim Mayor Portem, I'd like to amend a couple of those items. Sure, go ahead. So on the first one where I just asked the general question, I would say the topic would then be to make businesses aware of the opportunities that currently exist to provide services and merchandising outdoors. It's cold out. I know that that's going to be a great thing to do every day, but if in fact they're aware but they don't know it, they may not have made the request. So that's the modification would just be to make them aware. On the third item, I would change the word "required" to "recommend." In other words, in situations where DPH recommends closure for sanitizing, that we would provide that bit of coverage, mostly peace of mind, it's not going to be. Good deal. Those are good amendments. Thank you. Councilmember Riggs, I think I saw your hand. Yeah, I was just going to raise my hand because I have questions, and the only way to ask those is to raise my hand. Okay. Go ahead. What are your questions? Oh, no, about the items. I'm just— Got it. You're going to raise your hand for all of them. Understood. Right. Okay. On the first one, Councilmember Meltzer, correct me if I read this incorrectly, but I have "making business aware of their ability to make more outdoor eating and outdoor product sales available." Is that close enough? Yeah, closer. Okay. Are there four Councilmembers that would like to discuss that item further? The next one is "authorizing TIF grants of up to $10,000 for COVID adaptations for businesses to improve safety." Are there four Councilmembers who would like to discuss that further? Okay. And the last one, "in cases where businesses are recommended to close by DCPH, Denton County Public Health, in order to sanitize for exposure, cover up to two days' wages, and average daily profits." Are there four Councilmembers who would like to discuss that further? Okay. So what I have from what we just went through is Councilmember Meltzer's request about signage, more specific signage, inclement weather shelters from Councilmember Armenter, no breaking up of encampments from Councilmember Armenter, and more efforts to make businesses aware of their new options for outdoor availability. We've been at it now for almost an hour and 15, about an hour and 10. So why don't we take a short break to about 6.45, give folks time to grab a bite if they need to, and come back at 6.45. We'll be in recess until then. And we are back with the Denton City Council on December the 1st, 2020. We're still on work session item A, "receive a report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding the City of Denton's COVID-19 response, local disaster declaration, and 10th order of council." We have four items that the council had consensus on discussing further for either further city action or inclusion in our council order or disaster declaration that we'll vote on next week. The first one for discussion is essentially more specific signage. And Councilmember Meltzer, I'll let you have the first crack at that. And again, we've had response from staff already in another document. So we're going to kind of restrict this mostly to council discussion. Okay, great. Thanks. Well, if you are serious about the effect of this public health measure, people being encouraged to mask, it only really works if you cover nose and mouth. And that's why it's in the governor's order, as has been noted. It specifically mentions cover nose and mouth. But I think it's just a common place that we see people partially complying. They've got a mask on, but the nose is out. So for people who are really very serious and concerned, this is an unpleasant sight because people aren't being protected. Now, as to whether it would have an impact, I would suggest that it's all just suggestion. If we don't think signage has an impact, we should do it with stop signs and speed signs. People look for what are the norms. And I think if we just simply have the requirement that language be included, it doesn't have to be huge. It says must cover nose and mouth. Then I think people would get the message and more would do it and more people would be protected. That's really it. And the fact that many businesses already have that, good. There's nothing they need to do. The fact that city provides signage, which I think is great, also good. We can provide one that can be easily printed out that includes the line must cover nose and mouth. - Other discussion on that one? Council member Armenter. - Yeah, I strongly encourage this. I have heard reports of, and I've even seen in my other job, my day job, people walk around with the mouth covered and their nose exposed. I don't know what they're thinking. Maybe they feel like, well, at least I'm meeting you part way there, but as we know, that's not how it works. I imagine our graphic design staff, they do such a good job with getting the word out, coming up with creative solutions. Because I know the rhyming of the word exposed and nose, that might be helpful. I wish that people felt as shy about showing the world their nose as they do in certain other parts of the body. Maybe some kind of play on that, I don't know. It's getting colder, so hopefully that will make people want to cover their face more. But anyway, it really is a thing. People covering their mouths, but not their nose and having a false sense of security. - Council member Briggs, go ahead. - My question or comment was more about, is there a way just to make, because there was a comment from staff that it may be too frustrating, I think, for some businesses. I think that might have been the term used to require more signage. But if there was a way to have it easily downloaded and printable, if we put it on our website, would that be as frustrating? I mean, if it was that easily accessible? - To be frank, I think it will be very frustrating to the businesses if they have to change out all of their signage just to include that specific language written out in text. Most of them already have it. One. Two, some have very creative things that they've come up with for their stores. They've invested in some more expensive signage than others to be able to put at their entrance to really state customers coming into the store must be wearing those face coverings in compliance with GA-29. So I do think there would be a lot of frustration if they got this new requirement. One, we'd have to mail a letter to all the businesses to say, "This is a new requirement. You need to have this." So they may be frustrated to get that in the mail and have to spend time to redo this. And then, two, sending our code enforcement officers out there to check on that may put them in very volatile situations. I'll tell you there's some times where those site visits do not go very well, but we've been able to at least try to keep a relationship, get them in compliance so that they have some signage posted. So I'm just a little concerned if making it a requirement. There's a lot of things we can do to continue to provide. Maybe we can look at more ideas to proactively get out signage that the city can provide to the businesses if they need it with that language included. But I'm just not sure if it's intended. It's a good intention. I don't know if it will necessarily change the behavior of by the time you reach the back of a big box store and you see someone that's not had their mask up when they entered and now have pulled it down. I don't know that that's going to change that individual behavior and responsibility. If a customer sees that, they could report it to the store manager. And the store manager at that time would have the ability to ask the customer to comply with their policy, to ask them to leave. There's a number of different actions that could take place. But I think just to be frank, I think the businesses would be somewhat frustrated by the requirement. But I think a lot of them are honoring what is there. They've been very receptive when we come out, most of them with feedback, but there are still some very resistant. Just to follow up, not as a requirement, but as an option on our website. So if because I have seen our flyers used very frequently by businesses still. And so if that was an option available for a business to print, if they wanted to do that, if they were having extra issues or wanted to have city literature. Sure. That's something that's a great suggestion. We have some designs. We can even look at making a couple more designs. We could put it on our website for them to download. We can even make some printed versions here and let businesses know if they contact us, we'll drop off. We'll get you the signage that you need. Maybe we can do some more proactive outreach with Jessica Rogers through economic development. So again, reminder businesses that that's a resource we can help provide. Thank you for that Council Member Briggs. I think I like that happy medium a lot. It's kind of clear some confusion too if they have the option to put something that talks about how to properly wear the mask, but also, as Council Member Meltzer said, it's in the governor's order. The proper way to wear it is referenced in the governor's order. And a lot of the signage that's up now is our very first push back when our mask ordinance was out there and the governor's order was not. It's the very first round of signage. And so it'd be very helpful, I think, for people to know where the orders are coming from, what they're really supposed to be looking to. It would save us a lot of frustration, I know, in some of our conversations. Council Member Armenter, I see your hand there. Yeah, just wanted to say the word stickers, you know, a sticker. They're relatively cheap. People can, if it's something funny, cute about, you know, don't expose your nose with a kind of a, I'm not even talking about enforceability just as far as a kind of a cheeky peer pressure campaign because we wouldn't have to go and revamp everything. We can, we tried to come up with some creative ways, like the masquerade, maybe seen some of those different posts. So maybe we can put our creative heads together and see what we can continue to keep promoting that overall for our residents and businesses. I appreciate that. I think what I'm hearing then as the consensus is not to add it as a requirement in the order, but to call upon the creative resources of our public affairs staff, they've already been doing a great job. So the next one is inclement weather shelters, increasing those. And Council Member Armentor, if you'd take the first crack of that, tell us what you're asking for there and then we'll have discussion. Sure. Well, so, you know, I'm concerned that MLK is, you know, has the burden placed on it of being the one, inclement weather shelter. And given that we have to space people out, I think staff mentioned maybe a capacity of, was it 20 at a time for inclement weather shelters? Staff can correct me if I'm wrong. So it would be nice to have one other accessible location where we would know that, you know, spacing out would happen and wouldn't have to wait to hit that capacity. Okay. Any other council discussion on that question? Council Member Briggs? I have a question. How many did we have compared to like what we reduced it down to the MLK? We used to have a number of them, a lot including the fire stations. Even when those were removed, was it just the two, the Civic Center and MLK? So this summer, you know, we adjusted the inclement weather plan based upon COVID. So the Civic Center was the location over the summer prior to COVID. And we had an inclement weather plan that listed out all of the city facilities, really any public city facility that is open. And we designated those, you know, to the general public. You can come in if you need to warm, cool off, have access to restrooms and so forth. So it included, you know, parks and rec facilities, library facilities and so forth. But obviously with COVID and the impacts, we've changed some of our facilities being open. So we've tried to still provide really a dedicated space through one of those parks, rec centers right now just due to some of the staffing challenges that parks has had as well. Council Member Briggs, go ahead. I'll just say that knowing the Civic Center is a backup and once we get more data on, you know, how frequently the MLK fills up or if the Civic Center can open up, that helps. So I'm not sure how many Council Member Armitage was thinking, but knowing and learning today that the Civic Center was going to open up helps me feel a little bit better about it. Yeah, I agree with that. That helped me understand a lot better too, staff's presentation earlier. Go ahead, Council Member Armitage. Yeah, so I mean, I appreciate that the Civic Center is there as a backup. I would like the Civic Center to be, it wouldn't have to be the Civic Center, but since that is the one that the staff has mentioned and it does meet the qualifications of, you know, being relatively accessible in a number of different ways, you know, it would be my preference that that would be open and staffed anyway and that we wouldn't have to wait until, you know, MLK reaches a capacity where we wouldn't really want to crowd people there anyway. But anyway, so that would be my preference. Civic Center, I'll say Civic Center since that's the one that's the backup that we could plan to open that and implement weather along with MLK. Just a process question. Is this in our order? Yeah, go for it. Is this item going to be in our order that's going to be passed? Is that why we're discussing it now? Or is this just something? No, it is not in the order. Okay. Any other discussion on this item? It doesn't sound like there's necessarily consensus for one direction or the other now that we've got the Civic Center available. And I think also what I heard out of staff's presentation earlier was it seems like right now that we're meeting the need that between hotels and MKOC and just kind of fewer people out there were meeting the need now and that may change as weather changes, it gets colder. But it doesn't sound like there's consensus for any specific direction other than what staff is already working on now. And I'm sure, Sarah, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm sure that if there are major changes to what we're doing, we're going to hear about it, either in a Friday report or an email. Yes, we can keep you updated, especially on the usage of MLK during those inclement weather periods and if staff has changed to just change practice based upon the use to open that secondary location as needed or just all the time when inclement weather first. Councilmember Briggs, go ahead. One last thing real quick is just to the city manager, because the 20 individuals may fill up pretty fast. I know this week it's going to be below the low 30s, 29 one evening. So will staff be on hand? I'm just trying to understand at what point. So somebody's there and they call and they say, Mr. Hellman, we're full. Can someone open the Civic Center? We have people waiting outside. Is that kind of how it works? I'm just trying to understand so I'm more comfortable with the overflow. Yeah, I think right now until the election is over, I think it's a little bit of a complicating factor, but I need to sit down with staff and just see if there's a way to sort of wall that off to make sure that we could make sure that we're not infringing upon the voting system there. But once the voting and the runoff is completed, it'll be a lot easier and I will sit down with Sarah and Gary and our staff to see what we can do to make that happen. But if we can make the Civic Center work as well, we will. Thank you. Okay, thanks, y'all. Our next one is no breaking up of encampments. And Council Member Armenter, if you want to give us kind of a lead into this and then we can discuss. Yeah, first. So obviously that's encampments on public property that is city-owned property. Obviously, you know, private encampment that is up to the property owner. So I'm talking about on public property. It's really, you know, encampments are unfortunate. Cars would be much better if people were housed and we had housing for everybody or there was housing for everybody. But the problem with breaking up encampments is not the problem with people not having a place to go. It doesn't matter if they disappear. And people are finding other places to stay in Denton and we're kind of moving people around within the city. I'm sure some people leave the city, but others come in too. And this constant circulation of people in and out is precisely what we don't want for COVID. So I'm not going to pretend that this is some magical solution to anything. It's just I don't see the advantage and neither do experts. And I'm not the expert, but I try to stay well read in this area. People who are experts in public health and safety of people living in the street agree that the thing to do is to, until you have housing for everybody, to make encampments more sanitary by providing, you know, trash picking up, hand washing stations, things like that. Under COVID, there are those existing concerns and then the concerns of spread that we create when we're moving people around. So again, I understand it's not a perfect solution, but I'm concerned about the circulation of people that happens when we break up encampments. Other discussion on that item? I would just like to hear more fully staff response. Is there a better way to approach it or? I think right now, I appreciate that. I'm not sure that there is. We're not going to support not breaking them up. They get broken up for very specific reasons. We've had sexual crimes in there. We've had theft. We've had all sorts of sanitary issues that we just cannot condone. So there's no, I completely understand and appreciate the reasoning and the rationale. However, there's just a lot of different thought processes and variables that go into breaking up an encampment. And it's not quite as simple as just moving people around through COVID. A lot of times there's underlying concerns there that we've been, and our team does a great job of monitoring those on a pretty frequent basis and making pretty empathetic calls, quite frankly, when we have to, we feel like it's just gotten so bad that, or there's been so many issues there that we need to break these things up, giving folks plenty of notice, trying to be as respectful as possible and that sort of thing. But this is just not something where it's just done because somebody's complaining. There is generally a very serious underlying reason when we break those up. We've had fire issues. We've had all sorts of different variables out there that have entered into our thinking. If I may, I don't question any of that, but what do we expect will happen the next day? What is the concept when we break them up? We're constantly trying, and I think there's this issue that, or this thought process out there that staff isn't trying to connect them to services, get them interested in housing, connect them to social workers. All that is being done, and folks either choose to take us up on those conversations or they don't. We've also run across a number of issues where, quite frankly, people are being held in these encampments against their will. This is just something that, it's a very complex topic, and I just don't think that we can sit here with a straight face and make this a commitment to you, and do it in a responsible way. I think the other component is, I know Sarah is in close contact with not only our police and social service agencies, but we're also involving public health as well, trying to make sure that we're giving people the best information that we can, offering them transportation, offering them options to talk, to get connected to services. We cannot force people to take advantage of those services now. And just to add to that, in some of these, we're monitoring for weeks to months, and our Street Outreach team is making numerous attempts over a significant time period. Unfortunately, just as City Manager Holloman described, sometimes for the health and safety of those there and for surrounding, we may need to make recommendations. But when we do so, we provide, I think it's at least a 10 to 14 day notice period, that the signs go up, we offer assistance again. I mean, there is, we try to give as much notice as possible before any action is taken. If I can continue, Jesse. Yeah, go ahead. Is there some additional policy support that you would like to have in order to be more effective at what you're trying to do, the way you're doing it, which I gather is really hairy and difficult and unpleasant and imperfect. So what, you know, what additional support would you like to see, if any? Yeah, I think it's a very challenging subject for many reasons, as just articulated. But we do try to provide you some insight into the many, you know, the many things that are being looked at, the thought process through those memos that we compile in terms of the full assessment that we've done. So really just trying to provide you some information, some knowledge, some data, some facts about what was looked at objectively to make that recommendation. And just knowing that we take those very seriously. You know, we're thinking through them very carefully, because what we don't want to happen also is that just pushing it to another area, potentially. So there, you know, I think, you know, where we are right now for a policy and practice, I think we have a pretty good practice in place. But I would expect, you know, there might be conditions that come up where we have to continue to bring them forward, unfortunately. Thank you, Sarah, I appreciate that. And Todd, your insight to there's some pretty serious issues that you've kind of made us aware of there. I can say anecdotally, you know, I have North Lakes Park in my district, so I get calls a lot whenever there's an encampment in that area, Bowling Green Park, some of the new developments. And anecdotally, every time I've brought something up to staff, they've been aware of the encampment, probably before the neighbors, all of the neighbors even were that raised the concerns to me and long before I was aware of it. And they've been in contact with the individuals living in the encampments for some time. The street team has been out there, staff's been out there, police and social services. Any other council discussion? Councilmember Briggs, I see you there. Yeah, just I believe that there is increased encampments with COVID, right? Correct? I mean, it seems to be that, I don't know if there is there's more smaller ones or, or what, but so is it a it's a capacity issue with our shelters due to COVID? Do you think? I don't know that we can state that. And I can ask Danny Shaw on the line. But we have had encampments prior to COVID. And we continue to have encampments. I don't know that we've seen them grow in size or the number they continue to resist. Sometimes it takes a very long time to reach those that have been chronically homeless. It takes a lot of outreach, a lot of time to connect and get them connected to the services and support they need. Ask a follow up? Sure, I was just going to ask if Danny is on the on the line or available and could could speak to that or if we need to give her a minute? Yeah, this is Danny Shaw, Committee Services. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. Thank you. Um, yeah, there's no data to support that there's an increase in encampments due to COVID. What we are having happen at this point is increased development, as well as the temperature changes where there's less cover because of that. And we've been opening up some areas as well by clearing out some ground cover. So it's just more visible at this point. But I don't know that we have the data to show that there's an increase in the number of folks. We started monitoring it from the very beginning of COVID to get kind of an assessment. So we didn't account what we could see. And the locations do change somewhat, but we haven't seen any verifiable increase. Thank you, Councilmember Meltzer. Did you have a follow up? Yeah, yeah. So to, you know, kind of keep us more narrowly on the topic of encampments in the context of COVID in the situations where you are not asking for acknowledgement of the need to break them up where they're continuing to exist. Are there steps that you could use staff could see advocating to increase this, you know, the sanitary conditions? Are there things that we could do that, you know, that wouldn't violate other sort of boundaries that you have that would encourage hand washing, social distancing, mask wearing? Is there are there additional steps to be provide masks to provide any to provide sanitizer? Is there anything in that realm that you think you could be doing a better job at in order to protect both that community and the community at large? So through street outreach, we're trying to make continued attempts to connect with those living unsheltered, really get them connected to services where you can or at least basic services. So, you know, visiting our daily bread, making sure that they're getting the food and also the hygiene supplies that they need. So there is masks available there that they can hand out. We can check with our daily bread to see if they're low on some of those hygiene supplies we have in the past during this COVID pandemic helped to put out calls for potential donations to our daily bread when they run short of certain supplies. So that's one area that we could that's a good point that we can kind of look at and see is there more to be provided, especially going into the winter that our daily bread feels like they need to help those that may be living unsheltered, unfortunately. Thank you. And Councilmember Meltzer, I appreciate how you framed that question and a couple others tonight that you've asked where the policy gaps you've asked staff and then Mr. Rodriguez kind of to fill where we can fill the gaps. I think that's a really good way to frame the discussion. Any other discussion on this topic? Then we'll move on to Councilmember Meltzer's request about making businesses more aware of some of the flexibility they have for outdoor activities. Do you want to tee that one up for us, Councilmember Meltzer? Sure. And I'm really just building on staff's response to my original question that apparently there's a lot they can do, but they may not be aware. So I don't know if it's a flyer or whatever the kind of public communication tactic would be to say, hey, there are safe things you can do in this COVID environment to increase your trade. And I believe Jessica Rogers is on the line. So we'll see if she can jump on in terms of her continued ongoing communication with the businesses and the businesses associations. Hi, Councilmembers. I would say that in regards to downtown and the efforts that we have to let businesses know we work very closely with the Main Street Association. Main Street have very regular sidewalk sales or, you know, first Saturday events. Most businesses and retail establishments in the downtown area participate in those. In addition, we know many of the downtown retailers use carts or sort of temporary hangers and put those out daily as long as the weather allows. As far as we work also with development services, make sure that any tables or things that are put out still leave room for pedestrians. We still need to have that ADA accessibility, make sure that pedestrians and anyone that might have a mobility issue still has the ability to navigate sidewalks and around downtown. But we generally work with businesses as those requests come in and make sure we can find a solution that works for them. We can always do a better job of publicizing it. So we'll certainly talk to the Main Street Association and just make sure that businesses know that we're here to answer questions. Yeah, I guess that was the sort of just to the point was I'm sure we do a superb job at responding to requests, but this would be more putting it out there that there are things you can do that don't require a permit if they don't require it. You know, if you just observe these basic things, just kind of more putting the information out. Absolutely. We can make sure to do that. Thanks. Any other discussion on that item? Okay. I think then Sarah and anyone else, do y'all have what you need to do? Anything going forward? I don't know that we had consensus for any substantive changes to the declaration or order. We did have consensus on re-upping till the end of March, March 31st. So is that what we can expect to see on the 17th? Yes, we have our direction. Thank you very much. Very good. And I forgot to mention at the top of the hour, quick programming note, I spoke with the city manager about a work session item B. That's an informational item only. It's receiving a report, holding discussion and giving direction regarding proposed standard construction specifications, et cetera. That doesn't require council action. So unless there's objection from the council, we're going to move past that and not take up that item this evening. And with that, I believe we'll move right into our regular meeting. It was posted for 6.30. We're now at 7.19. So we'll move right into the regular meeting. And if the control room is ready, we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance, starting with the pledge to the United States flag. Please stand if you are able. And we're just waiting for that pledge screen. There we go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now the pledge to the Texas flag. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. Moving on to item two or category two in our agenda, presentation for members of the public. We do have one pre-registered member of the public. And Rachel, if you could go ahead and patch them through whenever you're ready. Yes, sir. We're attempting to get ahold of them right now. Very good. I'll go ahead and call that item then. It's item 2A, ID 20-2305, Jesus Ramos, regarding public safety, mental health issues, and police. Mayor Pro Tem, could I ask for a short break while we still attempt to get ahold of Mr. Ramos? Sure. How about five minutes? Is that sufficient? It should be. Yes. Thank you. All right. Well, then we'll we'll stand in recess until 726. Thank you. Welcome back to the Denton City Council meeting, regular meeting of December 1st, 2020. And we're ready for our first item after the pledges, hearing from Mr. Jesus Ramos. Excuse me. Do we still have Mr. Ramos? Mr. Ramos, are you there? Yeah. Okay. You're on with the Denton City Council and you have four minutes. Your time will begin just as soon as you've told us your name and address and you may speak. Oh, so I gotta say my name and my address first before we start? Sure. If you'll just say your name and your street, that'll be fine. And then we'll start your time. Okay. Can I also get my phone number in case people gonna ask me questions? That's up to you. This will be out on the internet where a lot of people can hear it. So if you feel like giving your phone number, you can use your time to do that, your choice. Okay, then I will give my information first and then we can start. Go ahead. Okay. My name is Jesus Ramos. I live in Denton, Texas. I will be 1501. Well, technically I'm homeless. My phone number will be 919-757-7173. I'm ready to talk when you're ready. Go ahead. Your time will start. Okay. I was arrested by the police officer. Well, what happened was I was waiting in Starbucks after I got off from work because I was working at Waterburg at University Drive. The security guard called the police officers on me and any moment they ever asked me if I was okay or anything. Pretty much they got close to me. I was asking for the name, badge number. Basically they was refusing and anything. Eventually the female officer decided to arrest me because they told, they believed I was not leaving. She pulled a handcuff. They say I was refusing seizures. They put me back in a car and when they put me in the back of the police car, I was having a panic attack. And then she was driving for like five minutes and then she stopped, opened the door and she hit me in the chest a few times. And then they get me out of the car and they put, after a while they put ammonia in my nose because they thought I was incarcerated, which is not even true. After that they took me to the hospital and I could not answer but one of the panic attacks is just basically you're still there but you're not going to be able to speak. That's the one that I got. And pretty much I couldn't give information or anything. They couldn't, they no tests or anything. And then they put a handcuff on me and they were yanking me that they almost break my arm. The question is, I'd like to know why a trespassing caused a citizen to get injured by the police. And the establishments of Starbucks do not tolerate any harassment of any kind. And pretty much the police officer doing CPR without checking the person's pulse and putting ammonia on people before thinking that that could be alerted. So I went to the hospital and I got internal bruise because that injury and a few weeks ago after that, like a month, I was using the bathroom and my hand just got stuck. I couldn't move at all. So pretty much that's what happened. So now I've got a criminal trespassing for no reason because I was sitting down with Starbucks for waiting, which is kind of dangerous for any person who's waiting in front of the store. You cannot do it anymore. Though I feel like the police should basically contact the paramedic so they could check my pulse, but they never did. After the officer hit me, then I don't know where the paramedics show up. They was trying to talk to me and I was just in a state of shock, which is in my opinion, like it's crazy where it just happened because I thought I had rights, but I feel I don't have rights at all. And this should not be happening to anybody because we never heard nobody getting a rest in front of the Starbucks for waiting. We got people before open the store just waiting to get a couple of copies. And this happened at 3 a.m. in the morning when I was came out from work and while I was inside the cell, they didn't offer me no water until I got into the prison cell, which basically I was crying the whole entire time. They was asking me if I was a clear like committing suicide. I continued saying, I don't know. I was confusing and basically the situation just messed me up mentally and physically. So I don't understand why the police officer feel like we're going to try to work with me and abuse you and cause you injury and mentally problem, which is basically that is your Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos, that's your that's your four minutes. There may be questions from council members if you'll hold on just a second. I do want to point out you're talking to the Denton City Council who employs those police officers. If you have a lawyer, you may or may not want may want to consult them about whether or not you engage further with this council or answer any questions from this council. So if you'll hold on just a second, I'll see if there are questions. Council member Armenter, do you have any questions? Yes, I do. And I want to echo, you know, obviously you want to, you know, talk to a legal counsel, legal counsel, COU and SEL. Don't feel obliged to answer, you know, any of the city council's questions. You and I have just to be perfectly transparent. You and I have talked on the phone. You reach out to me because you saw my name on a sign that was put actually put up something about me and policing. And you saw that my number on that. That's how we got in touch. I wanted to ask. So have you obtained the body camera footage yet? And also, did you file a complaint? And again, you don't have to answer. But if you want to talk publicly about that, you can. Yes. Yes, I've made a police complaint about it. And basically, basically, I speak the same story that told them that the police officer hit me in the chest, all that stuff. And he told me the person who was making the police report. Sorry that you see the police department like that. And I told him you need to train your officers more about people who have mental issues. Because this issue should not be happening to anyone. And the reason why I haven't gotten into the video cameras is not because the lawyer advised me, because I never be in this situation. I don't know if I have the right to ask for that footage. But if I see it, I probably want to be really, really angry. So I'm not a lawyer, but you do have the right to ask for anything you want. I myself would like to see that body camera footage. But of course, it's up to you whether or not you want to see it. Can I just to clarify, did you feel like they were or were you told that they were trying to administer CPR on you as if you were unconscious, but you were actually conscious and were conscious of everything while it was happening? Is that what you're saying? The CPR what technically is, I still cannot figure out, asked a few people and they told me, the detective, he basically told me she was trying to revive me. That's what he told me. So they were trying to revive you, but you were already revived? You were already conscious? No. I was already conscious because I feel when she opened the door and hit me in the chest and they put the ammonia, the whole time I can see it back and I speak because the state of shock. But I already spoke to somebody who basically is on a medical field and they told me in order to make CPR, you got to check the post before you do any CPR to a person because you can kill her. Thank you. Those are my questions and I will do a follow up with staff asking them to see to show me the body camera footage. I'm concerned about the story. We'd like to see it. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Ramos? Thank you very much, Mr. Ramos for calling in. You have a good evening. Okay? Thank you. That'll take us to our consent agenda. I believe what we have pulled are items A, D, H through Y, A, C, A, D, and A, M. Do I have that correct? I also have items I and L as well. I and L. Yeah, I have those as inclusive of H through Y and we'll treat them differently depending on what action is taken on those other items. Okay. Is there any -- the chair would entertain a motion on the consent agenda. Councilmember Ryan? I move approval of the consent agenda except for items A, D, H through Y, A, C, A, D, and A, M. And do we have a second? Councilmember Meltzer? Second. Okay. Then we'll vote in same order we usually do. Starting with Councilmember Ramos. Aye. Councilmember Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Johnson? I'm sorry, can you say that again, Councilmember Johnson? Okay. I see your mouth, but I think we have to actually hear it vocalized for the record. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm going to take you as an aye, but we're going to follow up on that little technical issue. I'm not sure we're getting your volume. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Armenter? Yes. And the chair is an aye, so the consent agenda carries. That takes us on to items for individual consideration. And what I'd like to do now if the council will permit me is call upon Councilmember Armenter to make her motion if she has one on items... No. I can hear somebody. Okay. I'll call upon Councilmember Armenter to make a motion if she has one on items H through Y from the consent agenda. And thank you for recognizing me. So I would like to ask that items H through Y be postponed until after we have our newly formed council resolved by our runoff elections for place two, mayor and place six. And this is the reason why. And I'll repeat it even though I mentioned in the work session, because there are people in public who might be listening who didn't hear the work session. These are all items that are hot funds expenses, hot funds awards, that is hotel occupancy tax funds, which are awarded to various groups that apply for these funds that do various things to promote tourism in Denton. Under COVID, and this is something that the hot funds committee has discussed and took seriously, obviously, tourism in the sense of bringing bodies to Denton is not necessarily something that we want to do. Actually, I think we would all agree it's something that we don't want to do right now with our code with our numbers like they are. Since we made that decision, our numbers have COVID numbers have gotten even worse. And a number of groups have, you know, have canceled made various accommodations. But there's kind of the larger question of what are we going to do about awarding these funds, some of these groups, you know, especially in the, just including groups in the arts, are really struggling right now. And so I really think that this warrants a larger council discussion and not just a consent agenda item because of these unique circumstances under COVID. And I would rather wait to do that until we've got our full new council in place right now. We're kind of a very temporary, we're a work in progress. And I don't see any reason to rush this when, you know, we could wait a couple weeks and have this serious discussion about what does hot funds mean in December 2020 with our COVID numbers like they are, and how should we best distribute these funds. Okay. So that's a motion to postpone. Is there a second on the motion? Seeing council member Meltzer. I'd like to offer an amendment. And if it's accepted, I would second. Because if it were only a matter of it requiring full council discussion, we could have full council discussion. That doesn't to me necessitate postponement. However, I would like to suggest that it would be fruitful to go back to the applicants and ask for a statement, could be a paragraph about what their plans are under COVID that would be different than when they initially applied and whether that affects their needs or not. And then to have that, those responses taken up by the new council hot funds committee. Because they may conclude that, you know, these same organizations need the same more or less in order to sustain so that they can come back and do a great job when they get on the other side of this thing. But I absolutely see the need for, you know, a little more discussion at some levels. That's what I'd like to suggest is that postpone until the applicants can be surveyed on their plans under COVID and any changes that would indicate in their requests and for the new hot funds committee to review those. >> We're kind of delving off into discussion. But I will point out that the hot funds committee did exactly that. We asked for them to update their applications and requests. Staff has been communicating with every applicant. Yes, during COVID, the hot funds committee meeting of July 20th is when these particular H through Y were taken up by that committee and that was discussed. But you've proposed an amendment. Councilmember Armentor, do you accept that amendment or does your motion stand as it is? >> Well, I want to respond to it and see if councilmember Meltzer would change his amendment based on and I don't want to repeat too much of what councilmember Davis just said. But, yeah, it's true. You know, we did all we the hot -- and I mentioned I happen to be on the hot funds committee. And we did ask staff to and they did go back to the applicants and applicants did a great job of reconsidering and there were changes made under COVID. So all this was done. It was in July. So things may or may not be different now. You know, I'm a little reluctant to, you know, require everybody to go in and come up with changes. I would be open to councilmember Meltzer if you would mind changing that to just ask people if they have updates that they want to share with us, kind of making it optional since their July updates -- >> Yeah, request any updates. >> Yeah, and I would -- so, yeah, I'm fine with it going back to the hot funds committee. I don't know if -- you know, I also kind of feel like it could come to -- straight to council. >> Councilmember, I don't want to cut you off. >> No, no, I'm just responding to his -- you know, it's your motion. >> Yeah, if that's the condition of your amendment, then I'll accept it that kind of have it go back to the hot funds committee unless you'd be okay with -- >> Councilmember, you can choose the wording of the motion. The second is dependent on what you say and then he gets to choose if he's going to second. So if you just want to restate your motion and then councilmember Meltzer can either second or somebody else can or nobody can, whatever happens next. So if you could just restate your motion as you'd like it to be at this point. >> Okay. So thank you. So, yeah, essentially, I will restate it to add that applicants be identified that they're welcome to, but by no means have to communicate with council if they have any additions to make since July. I would also add that all of council be -- and the public in the backup, you know, there are any subsequent additions that these applicants make. But I would prefer for it to go forward to council, not to go back to the hot funds committee. So I would leave whatever additions they make to come to council so we can all discuss it together because the committee has kind of worked really hard to reach this point. >> Councilmember, I apologize. I'm not clear on what your -- if you could just say the motion without any commentary, just the motion you're making to postpone to when with what conditions? >> The motion is to postpone with the conditions that applicants be asked to -- if they would like to submit any additional comments they have about changes, possible changes in their plans, but to make that optional and that it come back to council. >> Okay. >> After we've got a new council in place. >> The new council. Councilmember, do you second that motion? >> Sure. I'll second. >> Okay. I'm going to open this up to the rest of council for discussion. I'm going to start off discussion, though, as the chair of that committee, we discussed in great detail, again, July 20th is the meeting, go back and watch it, how each of these organizations is responding to COVID, that we had asked staff to go back to each organization. We also have a pretty strict policy on applications that they are due at a certain time of year because the timeline of how these things are approved, contracts are signed, tie not only into our fiscal year, but also the program year of each organization. Our fiscal year is October to September. Their year, their funding year, program year, runs January to December. The discussion that we also had in that committee meeting was about basically funding every organization's request level with last year and not drawing down our fund balance and the hot funds because we didn't know how many people are going to stay in hotels this coming year, how many people are going to stay in hotels the year following that, whether we're going to have additional shutdowns and whether hot funds will be available for anyone in the future if we funded increases. So each of the recommendations that you saw on tonight's consent agenda came forward from the committee with those considerations built in. So that's all the discussion I have on the motion to postpone and I'll open it up to any other council members to discuss the motion on the floor. Council Member Briggs. Thank you. So what I think I heard you say was that the money that has been allocated is already in the budget. There was no increases or decreases. It was just funding straight. Were there new requests that had been made with this? I'll have to defer to staff on new requests. My recollection is that we had some drop. Some organizations didn't come back and ask for money again. We also had a number of organizations that requested less funding than last year. So they had already changed their program based on COVID and their needs were different. But I think staff may have a more complete answer. Council Member Davis, if I could interject here before you decide to vote on this. I think we owe a couple things. We do have staff here with the presentation I think you should listen to. And the second item is there are several of these organizations who have events planned for Q1. So by moving this back to January, you're going to be at a very minimum making lots of people nervous and who are already starting to incur advertising and planning and that sort of thing. That's why we put it on tonight's agenda. I think if you can keep that in mind, listen to the staff presentation, it may provide a little bit of additional context for you before you vote. Council Member Briggs, go ahead. Right. Well, that was another one of my questions. It was that my concern is that a lot of these organizations, if it is a regular funding request that they depend on it and that it may be timed at a specific timing as the city manager said, so I don't want to put any extra hardships on these events that are already experiencing hardships by making them wait any longer if, if this is just something that is formality, something normally that they have gotten and they're not, we're not increasing it any significantly. Okay. Council Member Johnson, did I see a hand? Council Member Johnson, you can go ahead. Okay, I just want to be clear. The information has already been turned in, the applications have been filled out, and the money has been allotted. Is that correct? And they've already put in the requirements that they have given requirements and measurements that they intend to put forward as far as COVID is concerned. Right. All of that went to the Hot Funds Committee earlier in the year. There was a meeting where we kind of, some other items that are already passed on the Consent Agenda were for last year's budget year, and we took those up, and we also took up these H-Y. All those applications are in. We know the money is there, ready to be allocated, and the ones that we're seeing tonight on the agenda were the recommendation of that committee. And the organizations have already presented COVID plans. Correct. As far as counting what we have to deal with now. They're already doing as best they could. They've already given us a plan for what they intend to do as far as COVID is concerned. Thank you. Correct. Council Member Meltzer? Yeah, I had the impression before this that that was not the case, that it was all pre-COVID, and that the sort of impetus to wait was to kind of take COVID into account. So based on the information I've heard, I would withdraw my second. Someone else may want to. Okay. The second has been withdrawn. Is there a second on the motion to postpone items H through Y? Okay. Seeing none, the motion dies for one of a second. We will take those items up. Randy, don't get too comfortable wherever you're going next. We'll take those up in order as items for individual consideration as we come to them. So our first consent agenda item that we've pulled and turned into an item for individual consideration is A, and that is ID 20-2134. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute and deliver an advanced funding agreement for a highway safety improvement on system project at Loop 288 and Kings Row, US 380 and McKinney Street, and confirming ratifying prior expenses, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you very much, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council, Brian Young, city traffic engineer. Here to discuss the next installment of the highway safety improvement program. Okay. This, let me get my presentation on screen. Oops. Boom. Where's my share button? There we are. Okay. Can everyone see the presentation? Yes. And Brian, are you going to be presenting on AM as well or is your presentation just on A? I am just A. Good deal. Go ahead. Thank you. So a little bit of background on the highway safety improvement programs is a tech stop program sponsored by the state where we focus on safety improvements at intersections or locations on the roadway system that have severe crash, severe injury and fatality crash history. So in December of 2019, you approved a, an AFA for an HSIP program that was off system. These were city streets. This program in December of 2020 covers three intersections that are on the system. So that means it's a roadway with a number associated with it. I-35, US 77, 380, FM 1515, anything that's on a tech stop roadway network. So with, when it's on the roadway network with a text out, when it's on system, they pay for a hundred percent of the construction costs. We pay for design and their review fees. And, and if when they bid the project, it comes in over what the engineer's estimate was, we'll, we also participate with over, overruns and that's something we won't know until they bid this project. So the three intersections that we have on system that are associated with this particular HSIP submittal, we've actually already been awarded the funds. So it's not a submittal. This is the AFA where we execute the agreement. Three intersections on signalized intersections on Luke 288, that's Kings Row, US 388 University, and then McKinney. So the improvements that are involved in these three signalized intersections range in intensity. Kings Row is a complete reconstruction from the span wire, which is where you've got the signals hanging on the cable that's thrown across the roadway. We're replacing that with a permanent mast arm installation and upgrading all of the technology, LED luminaires, the new controller, which is the brain, the newest communication equipment, pedestrian crossings. We are making some, some geometric improvements to pedestrian crossings of 288. And then also our detection. Again, most of this technology stuff you'll see in the other two, but Kings Row is really a permit. It's a complete reconstruction going from that span wire design to its typical steel pole with the steel arms and the signals hanging on those steel arms. So US 380, primarily a technology upgrade here, upgrading our controller communication equipment, upgrading the luminaires to LED. And again, that same detection upgrade so that we have better vehicle. And we're actually working towards bicycle detection as well with some of this new technology. And then McKinney is the same. Basically the, we've got some temporary equipment that a previous contractor had installed. We're going to replace that temporary equipment with our standard and upgrade the, again, the technology, the control cabinet, the communication, the LEDs. And to this one, we're also installing the accessible pedestrian signal. And that's the audible signals, very similar to what we have around the square to better serve the pedestrian volumes in this area. So relative to the AFA, that's really what we're here tonight to approve. The estimated total construction cost is 665 and change. That's a hundred percent tech stock. The engineering design costs are roughly 88,000. That's the city cost. And we have already hired those consultants and they are nearing completion. So that, that money has already been allocated and spent. And then the review fees, which is really what we're here tonight to talk about is relative to funding. Tech stock, they require us to pay for them to review the plans that we're going to give them so that they can build it. So our total exposure is about 117, 118,000. That's total exposures, again, that 665 and change. So with that, I'll entertain any questions. That's really the, the, the subject tonight is the AFA and that's the agreement by which we transfer that 29, 652 to the state for their review fees. And then once they review those projects and they will put them out for bid and they will accommodate and handle all of the construction costs as well. Brian, if you could take the slide down for just a second. I am. And I think I saw council member Meltzer's hand first. Go ahead. Yeah. Really like the ratio of tech stock to city expenditure on that. That's a good leverage, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the detection, I think people don't understand necessarily how sort of sophisticated an intersection can be. They can know you're standing there, they know you're there in a bike and can adjust. Well, what does it adjust when it detects the presence of a pedestrian or, or a cyclist? So it basically, it tells the controller, that brain, that somebody's waiting on a side street, somebody is in a bike lane and we're not there with pedestrians yet. The, the vendor that, that grid smart that you saw listed there, that's a, that's a fisheye camera that looks at 360 degrees around the intersection. They're working on a pedestrian detection module, but basically what that detection says, it tells the controller where it needs to serve next, who's waiting in line, who got there first and where that green is going to go after it finishes a phase that it's on. Yeah, that's great. And, and what is the benefit of the fixed arm versus the signal hanging on a wire? We have a lot of our, a lot of our detection is actually mounted on those arms. And so without the arm, we mount them on the upright, we don't get as good a view and we can try and mount them on the span wire, the cables, so we can pull them pretty tight, but in wind they typically move. And when you get that, that sensor moving, then it has a harder time differentiating between a vehicle arriving at a stop bar or a pedestrian or a cyclist. That's great. I hope the public, you know, appreciates knowing that these improvements are coming. I move approval. Sorry, there we go again. I saw a hand from council member Briggs first. Council member Briggs, if you want to go ahead with your question and then anything else you want to do with your time. I'll go ahead and second and then I'll ask my question. That's okay. Go for it. So it said 380. Is that 380 in the loop east or west? Cause I know west there's a lot of issues that we've been talking about. So 380 and 288 only meet at the one place, that's the east. Okay. Oh, and you're not 380. And not in 35. No, this is 288 and 380. University out on the east side of town. Okay. So that's where that's where you are. So that's really good. And on, will all of these installations take place at the same time? Yes. So they'll be bid by tech stop as a package with not only ours, our intersections, but with other cities in the package, they just, they bid in, they're about to go to construction. Excuse me. They bid in May. It includes Frisco and Plano as well. So they try to get a better price by doing a number of intersections at one time, which order the contractor picks is really up to them. But yes, it, it pretty much in the same timeframe. So these are really good upgrades. We're looking at maybe one year, you think? They will bid this package in May of 21. And so you'll probably see construction starting in June and they may be able to finish by the calendar year. It really depends on how many intersections they group together. All right. Thank you. Okay. There's a motion in a second. Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, then we'll move forward with the vote. Council member Meltzer. Aye. Council member Briggs. Yes. Council member Johnson. Aye. Council member Ryan. Aye. And council member Armentor. Yes. The chair is an aye as well. The motion carries that item is approved. Moving forward to consent, consent agenda item DID20-2278. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton authorizing an agreement between the city of Denton and Denton county friends of the family in the amount of $5,000 from the hotel occupancy and tax, hotel occupancy tax and sponsorship committee. And we have a recusal from council member Briggs. I see council member Meltzer's hand. I move approval. Council member Armentor. Second. There's a motion in a second. We'll proceed forward with a vote. Council member Meltzer. Aye. Council member Armentor. Yes. Council member Johnson. Aye. Council member Ryan. Aye. And the chair is an aye. Item D carries as well. And Mr. City manager, we have items H through Y that I think I would like to call together and have one presentation on before we consider them. Can we, is staff available to take up A, C, A, D and A, M before we consider H through Y? Because that could take some time. I believe so. Let me double check here. We're just about due for a break too, so. Yeah, I think, is Gary on the line? Oh, Drew's here. Yeah, we're ready to go if you want to do that. Okay. I see some hands as well. So I'm going to recognize Council member Ryan. Go ahead. Yes, I guess it's a question for the city attorney. Since these are polled as a group, can they be voted on as a group as opposed to having to vote on them individually? They could, except for items L and O that would have to be treated separately because of recusals. Right. But otherwise, yes. Okay. Council member Armator. Yeah, I just want to say so because I was the one who made the motion to postpone and it failed. I myself don't need a presentation. If others on the council would benefit from a presentation, that's fine. But, and I appreciate, you know, if there's something staff wants to communicate, but if there's not the will to postpone, I don't quite see the need for a presentation on those items, but I'll leave that up to my peers. I just wanted people to know I definitely don't need a presentation. I just wanted to propose postponing because of how our COVID situation has changed dramatically since July. Let's do this then. Does any member of the council need or wish to see a presentation on these items? Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and with that kind of development that we've had, I'm going to go ahead and call items H through Y and then I'll entertain action on all but items L and O, and then we'll take up L and O for individual votes because those have recusals. So give me just a minute. I'm going to call these items. Item H is ID 20-2282. Consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute an amended and restated agreement with the Denton Festival Foundation in the amount of $88,750. Item I, ID 20-2283. Consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing the same with the Denton African American Scholarship Foundation in the amount of $29,340. Item J, ID 20-2284. Consider adoption of the same with Denton Black Chamber of Commerce Incorporated in the amount of $26,250. Item K, ID 20-2285. Consider adoption of the same with Denton Chamber of Commerce in the amount of $1,253,855. Item L, ID 20-2286. Consider adoption of the same with Denton ... The Qantas Club of Denton Breakfast in the amount of $4,500. Item M, ID 20-2287. Consider adoption of the same with Denton Community Market in the amount of $50,000. Item N, ID 20-2288. Consider adoption of the same with Denton Community Theater Incorporated in the amount of $20,430,000. Item O, ID 20-2289. Consider adoption of the same with Denton County Office of History and Culture in the amount of $160,500. Item P, ID 20-2290. Consider adoption of the same with Denton Dog Days Incorporated in the amount of $19,381. Item Q, ID 20-2291. Consider adoption of the same with the Denton Holiday Festival Association Incorporated in the amount of $23,500. Item R, ID 20-2292. Consider adoption of the same with the Denton Parks Foundation in the amount of $39,780. Item S, ID 20-2293. Consider adoption of the same with the Denton Central Business District Association in the amount of $35,700. Item T, ID 20-2294. Consider adoption of the same with the Denton Day of the Dead Festival in the amount of $5,500. Item U, ID 20-2295. Consider adoption of the same with the Greater Denton Arts Council in the amount of $150,026. Item V, ID 20-2296. Consider adoption of the same with Historic Denton Incorporated in the amount of $1,020. Item W, ID 20-2297. Consider adoption of the same with the North Texas State Fair Association Incorporated in the amount of $195,486. Item X, ID 20-2298. Consider adoption of the same with the Tejas Storytelling Association Incorporated in the amount of $44,929. And item Y, ID 20-2299. Consider adoption of the same with the Texas Veterans Hall of Fame Foundation Incorporated in the amount of $8,000. Now I'm waiting on somebody to tell me that I either didn't have to do that or have done it all wrong and have to do it again. Okay, we're good to go. So the chair would entertain action on items H through Y with the exception of L and O. Council Member Ryan. - Move approval of items H through Y except for items L and O. - Council Member Briggs. - I will second. - We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? We'll proceed with the vote. Council Member Ryan. - Aye. - Council Member Briggs. - Yes. - Council Member Johnson. - Aye. - Council Member Armentor. - Yes. - Council Member Meltzer. - Aye. - And the chair is an aye. Items H through Y with the exception of L and O are approved. Now we'll take up, the chair will entertain action on item L. Council Member Briggs. - I move approval. - Council Member Meltzer. - Second. - Any discussion? Proceeding with the vote. Council Member Briggs, I say you. - Yes. - Council Member Meltzer. - Aye. - Council Member Johnson. - Aye. - Council Member Armentor. - Yes. - And the chair is an aye. Item L is approved. That takes us to item O. The chair is recusing from the vote, but presiding. Is there action on item O? Council Member Armentor. - I move no, and I want to explain why. O is for $160,500 for the Denton County Office of History and Culture. And as I have said repeatedly in our Hot Funds subcommittee meetings, I don't believe that a taxing entity, that is a government entity that has the power to make their own taxes should be receiving tax money from another taxing entity, that is the city of Denton, where we have, if you look at all these other entities that are depending on Hot Funds, these are local groups that are really struggling right now. And the county, if they want to do whatever they want with county taxes, they can. I don't think they should be dipping into Denton City taxes for something like the hotel taxes for something like this. So I feel strongly about that, which is why I move no, and I'm going to vote no, even if this motion isn't accepted. - There's a motion. Is there a second on the motion? Okay. This motion dies for one of a second. Any other action on this item? Council Member Ryan? - I move approval. - There's been a motion for approval. Is there a second? Council Member Briggs? - I will second. - Okay. There's been a motion and a second. Any other discussion? - I'd frankly like to just hear the counterpoint for those who supported the committee, any response to the point that Council Member Armitage raised. Just curious to hear what the opposing view is. - Council Member Ryan? - Yeah. I'll just say that the hotel occupancy tax, one of its major things is to attract tourism, and this is a tourist attraction within our town. It's not necessarily 100%, which we consider as a normal function of your county government. It's just like we have other things within the city that might be somewhat attached to the city, but they're actually more really separated from it. There are boxes that have to be checked, and you have to do certain items. There's only certain areas that you can use hotel occupancy tax for, and this happens to be one of them. It is a good cause. It is the history of the City of Denton as well as the County of Denton. Because we are the county seat, we double up on that. - Council Member Briggs? I see your hand. - Is this the organization that's in charge of the historical park and the museum, and is this the same? Because I know that our ISDs before COVID took many... They offered many tours, and they were able to educate some of our students. So I just was wondering if that was the same. - Is staff available to answer that question or any other council questions on this item? - Yes. - And it's where the community market is held, correct, on those grounds? - Good evening, council. Brandi Green, treasury manager. Thank you. I believe the question at hand is if the Denton County Office of History, Culture is the same organization that runs the historical park, and they are the ones that own it and operate it under the auspices of the Denton County organization. So if there's any other organizations that are out there providing any tours or anything, I'm assuming under the auspices of the county, but it is directly this contract is with Denton County for that Office of History and Culture. - Thank you. - Any other questions or discussion on this item? Okay, I believe we have a motion and a second. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think that was a motion by council member Meltzer, Ryan, and second by council member Briggs. Is that correct? Very good. Then we'll start the vote with council member Ryan. - Aye. - Council member Briggs. - Yes. - Council member Johnson. - Aye. - Council member Armentar. - No. - Council member Meltzer. - Aye. - And the chair is recused and the opinion of the chair of the ayes have it and item O carries. That moves us to item AC. I'm gonna call it AC and AD both. I assume that's one staff member presenting on those. Item AC is ID 20-2372, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with World X Design Incorporated. That's the most fun thing I'll say all night. For purchase and construction of Joe Skiles Park playground equipment and expenditure of funds thereof, item AD ID 20-2373, consider adoption of the same with World X Design for the purchase and construction of Mack Park playground. - Good evening, council members. Drew Huppen, assistant director of parks. I'll start our presentation. - So the question earlier, thank you council member Meltzer. And we had a, we were asked to present some items for AC and AD, which are for Mack Park playground and for Joe Skiles Park playground. So I want to give a little history and a little background on how we pick our playgrounds out. And so the city of Denton, so for our playgrounds, these are future trends of playgrounds. And this is really what we look at. So also this all ties to funding. And so I'll go over that also in our presentation. So we have theme playgrounds. So this can be anywhere from your castles to your fire truck, police stations, different types of just different themes that you can think of that kids love to play with. And we all have movies about. And then we have digitally augmented play. So digitally augmented play is really what we like to think of is the ground is lava. And now with our new technology and all our apps and our smartphones and different kinds of technology that's coming out, these apps can augment the reality and the technologies are coming really soon. Like I said, assimilated outdoor activities with the children's, with their devices. So with their smartphones or their different types of headgear that they can wear. And soon they'll have like a Tony Stark ability to give the world its own digital play. So in a sense, the floor of the playground will turn to them and it'll make it look like lava. So we're looking at different types like that also. We also are looking in inclusive playgrounds. It's one of the newest trends in the playground concepts and goes just beyond the accessibility and what we define as kind of ADA by encouraging and enabling disabled and non-disabled children alike to engage with one another and play and discovery. So there are no special needs sections, but just equipment designed to challenge all children. We also have adventure playgrounds. Although they may seem like a new idea. They've been around since 1931. These go a little beyond the traditional equipment and you'll see those kind of an adventure playground in the two examples that I'll show you for Joe Scals and Mac today. We've also incorporated those in our playgrounds. One we're installing at the moment, which is in McKenna Park and one we just finished, which is at Bowling Green. So music, music education is another one. So to just simulate different kinds of echoes and speech, cognitive and motor development for children with all different abilities for just examples of instruments from drums to chimes and bells. We also have sensory stimulation. So this kind of follows along with the different touches and feels and different, just different ways that those playgrounds can be molded. We also have multi-generational playgrounds. It's one of the newest trends. So it's kind of what's coming on board where mom and dad and children can play on the playground at the same time. Traditionally, playgrounds are two to 12 years old and now they're kind of going beyond as mom and dad's wanting to play on the playground and kind of more or less get a workout at the same time while playing on those playgrounds. There's also new technology coming out. We have this at several of our parks where you can opt into an app at that playground and you can, of course, let it send you whenever you come into the app and it really tracks how many times you're using the playground, how long you're there. And it really gives us a sense of, is this playground something that's being used at a normal basis or is it being used, you know, it's one of our destination playgrounds where more and more people are going to those playgrounds and it tells us the times of when they're there. So it also has the geofencing and kind of the same kind of technology where it senses whenever you enter that geofence of the playground. Other playground capabilities are using drones really to monitor the playground and flow of playground safety. We as the Parks Department haven't really looked at drones, but this is something that's in the industry right now. Well, also sustainability. So our playgrounds are made of recycled material. The company WRLEX or LSI, which is landscape structures, they are eco-friendly and a lot of their products are made from recycled milk jugs and household plastics, which are shredded and molded into components for the playground equipment. So wide angle park planning. This is something that we also look at with high density and urban mini parks where we want to be cautious of just the different natures and play structures that are trying to make every playground, you know, do everything for every user. Cities like San Francisco are leading the way and they're efficiently view park planning with a wide angle lens and a boy cookie cutter experiences in every playground. And you'll see that in ours where our playgrounds that we're putting in, there's something different at each at each park. So shades and others, another feature we'll really look at. We've, we've gone and required our playground, our new playgrounds that we've installed in the last couple of years to have 50% shade on them. It just, depending on where that shade lays, we really kind of look at, okay, when's the hottest part of the day? When does the playground really need shade for, you know, our, our, our residents playing in that, in that area. So another thing that we do is as a, as a department, we go to each and every one of our playgrounds and really I, I do it and I don't do it on a normal basis. I try to find different times in the day whenever I'm available or I'm driving by and stopping by, whether that's, you know, during the week or on the weekend. And I like to ask different kinds of questions, you know, what is, you know, what do you like? What do you not like? You know, I like to talk, you know, of course, address the parents first and make sure that they understand who I am and why I'm asking these questions. But I want to know what, what's their favorite part of the playground, what their kids, what their kids' favorite part of the playground, what do they play when they're there? So, you know, what, what kind of different, you know, angles do they take to the playground? In another four different aspects, we also look at our physical development, which are strength and cardio. And this is a need due to an increase of reduced PE in school. Parents are looking for more ways to get their kids outdoors and then just being physically active. Also mental development. So probing, problem solving. You'll see in a couple in, in a couple of our slides where I'll show you, there's lots of different ropes and different angles to where the, the child playing on there really has to look at where, where's my next move and how do I work through this play experience? And then once they do that, it almost turns into, you know, the, the ninja warrior theme to where I did it. You know, it took me five minutes this time. I want to do it in four minutes, 30 seconds next time. So, Hey mom, time me. Another one is sensory development. So just a, the tactical way of going about the playground and different sounds and the color enrichment of the environment and kind of the, just the creative stimulation that enhances. And then fourth is always have fun. So the unique, are you, you know, these are unique designs that allow kids to really play on the playground and just keep coming back because this is something they really like to do. So with our playground replacements, we did do a couple years ago, Gary and I went through our director. We went through and did our playground replacement plan. We looked at each one of our playgrounds and really dialed in. We did, we wanted to, we went in and said, okay, the playgrounds, especially here in Texas, due to the heat and the environment that we have, that we want to do a 15 year replacement plan because after 15 years, the cost of keeping that playground keeps increasing and the safety of that playground decreases. So you can see here on this slide where we only went back to 2018. That's really when Gary and I started for the department. Uh, we replaced quite a few playgrounds in 18, 19, we replaced, you already approved two playgrounds for this year, McKenna and Joe and excuse me, Bowling Green. And now tonight we have Mack Park and Joe Scowles. And you can see on the side where we have all our other playgrounds listed here to where they're projected out and what our estimated cost of those playgrounds are, what their square footage is, when they were installed and when we really anticipate. And this is all the way out to 2035. So here is his example. What are we installed for Joe Scowles? As you can see, there's, you know, some traditional elements like your swings, but we also have, uh, instead of your typical or what we, but some of our playgrounds had or have at the moment are the real metal decking. This is more of a recycled rubber decking to where it doesn't create those jagged edges over time. It also has your rope climbing ability. Like I said, a lot of kids love to come on this deck here and play floors lava. So how do I get to the slide over here without touching the ground? And you'll, you'll see the, you know, they'll play in twos or threes and they'll kind of have a competition on, okay, you go left and I go right. And how do I get all the way over and get to the slide without touching the lava? This is at Mac Park. This is a smaller playground. This is, uh, on the north side. So it's on the north side of McKinney. It's behind the restroom and concession stand area bar, bar ball fields. Uh, this, this has the same kind of ability to where, you know, instead of just your traditional kind of box top to the playground, it has a real, unique kind of climbing feature on how they kind of work their way in and out and be able to get to the top. And of course we have a bar for them to climb over and then go down the slide because always the floor is lava. McKenna was approved a few months ago and we're happy to say that as long as the weather holds out, we hope to open this playground right before Christmas. Uh, the zip lines are already in, uh, this area right here was something that was asked by the residents. So not, not only for, especially for McKenna because it's getting, and you'll see this in January, but it's in, of course, I know you've seen presentations on this in the past, but we've done several public meetings with McKenna Park for its full redesign. And then this playground was picked. One of the big things that the parents asked for this area was a small two to five playground to be installed at McKenna. This playground still has your rope climbs for really your sensory and balance. And then this was something that was asked by the kids. They really, the kids that we talked to in the McKenna area and other playgrounds, they wanted another zip line. We have one, one's already there at McKenna and it is well, it still works, but it is well lived past its life lifespan. But the other one we have over at South Lakes, you know, the kids and parents both love the zip line over there. So, and that's what I have. Thank you, Drew. I can tell you, believe it or not, there's a five year old at my house who is going to watch every minute of that presentation you just gave with rapt attention and it checks a lot of boxes. Any other discussion or question from the council? Council member breaks. Thank you for that presentation. I'm really excited about our parks and all that you're doing. And I'm glad to see that Joe Skiles is on there. I remember a year ago, just sending a message like when is this going to be redone? It's really old. So to see that on the agenda is exciting. Thank you. And what's interesting is the exact same playground that was at Bowling Green is at Joe Skiles. So both of them are completely different. We're going to be completely different now. Council member Melzer? Yeah, you know, there's a there's a small convergently part of me that says swings and slides were good enough for us when I was a kid. But boy, I really believe you're contributing to making Denton competitively, attractively more livable. You know, I just think it's super engaging. And I like the fact that each of our parks will have something different, so that it's not just like each neighbor can get to the same thing, but you've got reasons to go to more. There's more places for kids to go and experience cool stuff. So I'm going to move approval on both. I don't know if you can do one at a time. I'll move approval on every you let me approve. Let's start with A.C. I'll move approval on A.C. OK, and I'll put you down as on the record pro lava in the playgrounds. Well, I wouldn't hesitate. I question the safety implications. And Councilmember Briggs, do I see your hand? I will second that's a motion and a second on A.C. Well, any other discussion before we vote proceeding with the vote first with Councilmember Meltzer, how say you? Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Johnson? Aye. Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Councilmember Armentor? Yes. Chair's an aye. That item carries. Now, item A.D., is there any action on that item? Move approval. Councilmember Meltzer moves approval. Question. Is there a second for A.D.? Councilmember Ryan? I'll second. Any other discussion? Councilmember Meltzer, how say you? Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Councilmember Johnson? Aye. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Armentor? Yes. And the Chair is an aye. That carries as well. Tell you what, let's muscle through this last one, A.M., and then we'll take a break before we move on to our I.C. items. Item number A.M. is I.D. 20-2201. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing a public works contract with quality excavation for construction of the 2019 intersection improvement projects in the amount of $1,809,570.63. We have staff available for that one, or should we go ahead and take our break? We do. He's pulling it up right now. Got it. Good evening. My name is Dustin Draper. I'm with the Capital Projects Department, and tonight I'm bringing you the 2019 intersection improvements project request for contract award. Project scope is much like you heard from Brian earlier. It's traffic safety enhancements at various intersections, actually at five intersections throughout town. The difference in his and mine mostly is the fact that at my intersections it's mostly turn lane additions other than the two that are at Nottingham in U.S. and Lincoln, and Luke 288 and Sherman. Both of them get turn lanes as well as signal improvements and pedestrian improvements. The other locations at McKinney and Woodrow, Luke 288 and McKinney, Hercules and Locust, they're just mostly turn lane work and re-striping. We received three bids from this, one being quality excavation, the second being PAVECOM public works, and the third being JAGO public with quality being the lowest responsible bidder at 1.8 million. This slide pretty much speaks for itself in the bench outside to award this contract. I'll have a pre-con January 5th. Notice proceeds shortly thereafter. Construction should start in the winter of 2021 through the summer of 2021. Staff recommends the adoption of the ordinance for the contract to award the quality excavation for 1.8 million as a challenge. Any questions? Okay, if you could take the slide down for us, we'll see if there's any questions from council. Councilmember Briggs. Yes, so I have a lot of questions, mostly well issues. I pulled this because this company is the one that's working on Windsor and for any of you who have been reading the Friday reports know that there have been several issues, stop work orders, and so I'm just, I'm wondering when we looked at them and said this is the lowest and best, did we consider all of the issues and the timing of that project and everything that we've put the neighbors through at this point? Yes ma'am, we did but I will let Rachel Wood, Deputy Director of Projects, speak to that more in depth. Good evening, I'm Rachel Wood with the Capital Projects Department. So Councilmember Briggs, to answer your question, one of the things that Becky Devaney and I are working on with all the project managers and the capital projects delivery team is making sure that there's consistency from the onset once we award these contracts. So we're going to have some standardization which we're already putting in place with the project managers on the pre-construction meetings. So with each pre-construction meeting, there will be a formal escalation plan that we established with the contractor, making sure that they know, we know who we need to call and they know who they need to call should an issue arise. We also have made sure that there is an issue log from the beginning and we're documenting issues not only with the contractor but issues that happen on our end as well. Working really hard to make sure that we're using those teachable moments so that we're not repeating the same mistakes that we've made in the past. So we're hopeful that through documentation and clearly going through those contract specifications at the beginning with the contractor at the pre-construction meeting that we won't repeat some of the same issues that we've had before. Go ahead. Well, I appreciate that all that has been taken into account is just being in it and living through it. It's so difficult, right? I mean, I have had someone who has a large hole in their front yard since May and it hasn't been addressed. So there's that and there's the quality of work and the timing of the project. So are all of these going to be, will Windsor be complete before these get done? Are they going to have enough staff to be able to work on all these projects to make sure that, you know, one isn't on hold while the other one's getting done? I mean, is that, do they have enough staff to complete these projects? Based on their evaluation, we do believe so. We will be monitoring all of these projects in concert that we have ordered to them to make sure that there are no concerns along the way. I will note in the contract that there is a period of 120 days. The contract period is 120 days. And from there, we could move to liquidated damages, which I believe is $1,250 a day after that initial period. Should there be any concerns from the contractor's ability to perform? Okay. I appreciate that. I just, I'm having an issue with it, but thank you for your answers. I just want to second those concerns. And I appreciate, you know, the, what Stafford mentioned about the desire to, you know, want to learn from history and make things better. I've seen enough and heard enough to have concerns, you know, about this contractor. One of the frustrations with TechStop is that they go with the lowest bidder no matter what there's a policy in. I'm really glad that that's not our city policy. But, you know, I'm concerned with what I see here. So I will be voting no to this. If it passes, I do hope it goes well. But I do not have the trust in this company based on what we've seen so far. And I will say, I think the 120 day time frame, it's a poor one. It's not nearly the extent of a project that we're seeing on Windsor. We have issues with several contractors. It's really a matter of making sure that we've got uniform documentation out there. The contracts, some of them are written very differently, giving us very different tools to work with. So we are currently working with our legal team in order to standardize the contracts and I am pushing the team as well to try to bring forth larger contracts and more of a construction manager or a risk type process right now in order to try to upgrade the quality as well of the contractors and their ability, our ability to insist on excellent subs. Right now we're just in a market that is so hot, pandemic or not, that we're having to really spend a ton of time out in the field managing these contractors very, very closely. So we are looking at different ways of contracting and different ways of delivering these projects in order to keep enhancing the quality. And I think you'll be seeing some different contract formats here in the foreseeable future as a result of all the comments that we just heard tonight as well. - Council Member Briggs, go ahead. - So my dilemma here is that the intersection of Nottingham and 380, which is extremely dangerous is listed here, which needs to be done. TextDOT, I think has approved the changes and we've been waiting on the light at Sherman for two years and it was supposed to be in this month, I think. And so that's been put off a year. These are very critical projects for our, I mean, we've been waiting on these for a really long time. So if this fails that pushes them off, I don't even know how much longer. So that's my dilemma. I just want to make sure that if it passes and the contractor is hired, that we are well aware ahead and we get in front of this because, I mean, I do not want to have another situation like we're living through right now. - Yeah, we understand that. And our team has spent quite a bit of time in the last month or so meeting with their executive teams and they're well aware of our concerns. - Okay, thank you. - Any other comments or questions? Council Member Meltzer, go ahead. - Yeah, I'm going to trust that just this conversation will lead to greater scrutiny and will help staff kind of make sure that our contractor's total line and I will move approval. - Okay, there's been a motion. Is there a second? Council Member Ryan? - I second. - Okay, thank you. And just by way of closing out the discussion, I really appreciate Council Member Briggs, you bringing this concern up and I agree with you Council Member Meltzer that this conversation at the council level, if that doesn't get through to this contractor, how serious we take their deficiencies in the past, then I don't think anything will and we'll remember it for the next time. So there's been a motion and a second. We'll proceed with the vote. Council Member Meltzer, how say you? - Aye. - Council Member Ryan? - Aye. - Council Member Johnson? - Aye. - Council Member Briggs? - This is really tough, but these projects have to go on. Aye. - Council Member Armentor? - No. - And the chair is an aye. Item AM carries. With that, we're going to take a break until, let's call it nine o'clock. We'll be back with items for individual consideration at nine o'clock and we'll be in recess. We are back with the Denton City Council on December 1st, 2020. We're moving on to item four in our regular meeting agenda, items for individual consideration. One programming note, item D has been withdrawn by the applicant. That's the rezoning case over at Mockingbird and Audra. That has been withdrawn by the applicant, so we won't hear item D today. We'll start with, I see item A, ID 20-2139, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, adopting a schedule of fees for the Denton Fire Department. - Good evening. Mayor Pro Tem, City Council Members, Nick Vinson, Assistant Director of Finance. Let me get the presentation pulled up really quick. All right, so I have a brief presentation to review the schedule of fees for the Fire Department of the City of Denton. The fees were initially established in 2014 to recover the cost of service of providing services through the Fire Department to the community. These fees were last adopted by the City Council in September of 2018. Each Council Members and the Mayor Pro Tem should have a schedule of fees that detail each individual fee in your backup material. But in summary, these fees include such fees to recover costs associated with the training facility, provision of emergency and paramedic services for special events, administration of medications, inspection and permitting of fire prevention and extinguishing equipment, and then cleanup of hazardous material. Staff does recommend the approval of these fees. These fees were previously approved by City Council in 2018, as I previously mentioned. We are looking to add a cancellation fee for facilities within the fire facilities around the city. When people do cancel events, there are costs associated with that cancellation and we're looking to add that fee in this fee schedule. But that concludes the short presentation. I'll pull it down for questions. Any questions or discussion from Council? Council Member Armentor, go ahead. I don't have any questions, but I'd like to move approval. We have a motion. Is there a second? Council Member Meltzer, I think I saw your hand. Yeah, I'll second. Okay, there's been a motion to second any discussion. Seeing none, we'll proceed with the vote. Council Member Armentor, how do you say? Or how say you? Yes. Council Member Meltzer? Aye. Council Member Johnson? Aye. Council Member Briggs? Yes. Council Member Ryan? Aye. And the Chair is an aye. That item carries. Moving on to Item B, ID 20-2234, considered option of an ordinance regarding disposition of a dangerous animal. We're getting set up. We'll be there. And while we're getting set up, I should ask staff if there are any callers or public comment or white cards on this item. No, sir, not for this one. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem City Council, Randy Weinberg, Animal Services. And this evening I'm here to discuss and seek direction on amending our current disposition of a dangerous animal-dog ordinance. This item first started in February of this year when staff recommended, drafted, and presented amendments to the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee. After the presentation, it was unanimously approved by the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee. Currently, the provision when the animal is deemed dangerous by magistrate, the animal must be registered as a dangerous animal, the animal must be restrained in a secure enclosure, and signs must be permanently affixed to the front, rear, and on the closure. Also, liability insurance coverage must be obtained. Staff researched 15 cities, and out of the 15 cities, six of those cities have the current provisions that I just went over, along with provisions that required the sterilization and microchipping of the animal. Two cities required either the microchipping or proof of sterilization, and seven cities did not require either the microchipping or the proof of sterilization, and that's where City of Denton currently falls. These changes will be to subsection B, where after the animal is deemed dangerous, along with the other provisions, we will require the animal be microchipped and registered with the National Registry. In addition, we would need to have proof that the animal has been sterilized by a licensed veterinarian within 30 days, or a time frame that's ordered by the magistrate. And with this, it will be up to the magistrate to determine if the animal will be sterilized or not, if it poses a danger to the animal, or if they have any pre-existing medical conditions, that conversation will be had, and the judge will determine it at that time. Also, we will be amending subsection C, which basically just outlines that Animal Services Department will be the ones who will be going out there, verifying that the enclosure is in compliance with what the magistrate set forth. Next steps, if this moves forth, the amendment will go into effect immediately, and the nine dangerous law cases that we currently have on file now, they will be grandfathered in, and they will not have to show that proof of sterilization or microchipping. And with that, if you have any questions, I'm going to go ahead and bring the presentation down. Okay, any questions of staff by council? Councilmember Briggs? Could you go over the medical reasons for sterilization, and why it would be recommended here? Yes, ma'am. Of the six cities that do require the sterilization, one thing that was consistent that they did bring up is that the main concern is if this animal does breed. Because of the DNA of an aggressive animal, research does show that if you have a litter of five puppies, two of those puppies might have that aggressive behavior that the parent animal did exhibit. So what we want to do is kind of take away that opportunity to have those aggressive animals born into the city by requiring the sterilization. Does it also affect their behavior? Does it make them calmer? Studies have shown that with the animal being sterilized, it does calm them down as well. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Other questions? Okay, do I see any action on this item? Councilmember Armentor? I move approval. Okay, is there a second? Councilmember Briggs? I'll second. Excuse me, we have a... Just a moment. Excuse me, and now, of course, all red in the face. We have a motion and a second. We'll proceed with a vote. Councilmember Armentor, how do you say? Yes. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Johnson? Councilmember Johnson? Aye. Councilmember Ryan? Aye. And the chair is an aye. The item carries. Give me just a second. Did I miss somebody? Yeah, I vote aye as well. Sorry about that. Councilmember Meltzer, also an aye. We'll put that in the record. And we'll move to the next item. Item for individual consideration, CID20-2368, considered option of an ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Rush Truck Centers of Texas. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, interior catered, fleet services superintendent. So the item under consideration is a contract with Rush Truck Centers. And this is for the purchase of Peterbilt trucks for the city fleet. A little background on Rush Truck Center. They've been around for approximately 50 years. They're a nationwide organization. They have a large presence in Texas. Any new Peterbilt product that's distributed in the state of Texas goes through one of the 23 Rush Center locations. We typically use the ones in Irving and Fort Worth. We partner with them for both purchases and warranty repairs and maintenance repairs when our capacity is exceeded in our current shop. They also have support from a company that's right around the corner from the Peterbilt facility, which is Custom Vehicle Solutions. That is under the Rush Truck umbrella. That's a support system. They have a large shop there with 23 bays. And they also do maintenance on trucks there as well as pre-delivery inspections. So they help both the factory and Rush Truck Centers out. And a little bit about Peterbilt Motors. You probably won't know more about the company than I do. But they recently celebrated their 40th anniversary here in Denton, opening the plant in 1980. And they moved their headquarters here in 1993. They have over 1,500 employees. And their truck production right now is about 130 units per day. So far this year they've made more than 21,000 trucks at the current Denton facility. And just a little bit about the city's Peterbilt inventory chart here. It just shows some of the departments that use the Peterbilt trucks. These are vocational trucks and used for a number of different jobs throughout the city with the different vocational bodies. You can see Solid Waste is one of the larger users. Peterbilt makes a chassis for just about any refuse operation. And they also, for Public Works Department, we use a lot of dump trucks, water trucks, and vac trucks as well. So streets and wastewater collections has quite a number of vehicles as well on their fleet. We tow about 125 units currently. Just a little bit about our purchase history. This is an extended contract. We're asking for authority to purchase trucks over the next five years. We average about 13 trucks a year in replacements and additions with an annual spend of just under $3 million. We anticipate that number is going to go up as technology improves and increases, the cost of trucks go up. So we've added a little bit to that total cost just so we don't have enough authority to complete our purchases over the five-year period. I put this slide in because the electrification of the fleet is a very important topic. And I want to let you know where Peterbilt stands in terms of their development of all electric vehicles. They've worked diligently over the last three years and have been testing Class 6, 7, and 8 trucks out in the West Coast for the last couple of years. This model pictured here is actually a 520. It's all electric. It's used extensively in a refuse application in our city. Their trucks are just now coming to market in limited production schedules. You can see the range has increased depending on the vocation of the truck and where it's used in the city and what application. So as technology advances, not only does the range extend, but the charging time decreases. And so we look at all those factors when we're contemplating the purchase of electric technology. There's a number of factors that we consider before we just jump in and say we're going to change every diesel engine we have over to electric. As much as we want to get more electric vehicles in the fleet, there are a lot of considerations we take. Look at cost being one. Operational applications is one of the biggest ones. We need a platform that's actually going to do what our operating departments need it to do to serve the public. And then reliability of the technology is important for fleet services. I want to talk a little bit about the contract benefits. Of course, standardization, there are a couple of aspects there and that comes down to training and parts stocking efficiencies, particularly technician training and as well as software and tool needs for the various trucks. The savings on the procurement side really amount to time, faster delivery from the time we plan to purchase until the delivery of the vehicle and reduce staff time in getting the trucks ordered, spec'd, ordered and approved. All these trucks are currently on a buy board contract and as these contracts expire, a rush truck goes back out and renews the contracts with the buy board or HDAC or source loan, depending on which truck that they're selling. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. Okay, do we have any questions from council? Councilmember Briggs. Thank you for the presentation. I'm just, I'm trying to understand for clarification. When you showed the electric vehicles, was it that we may purchase it at some point within this contract or we're not likely going to? Oh, I think there's definitely a chance we will do that. And a lot of that depends on, of course, the price of the truck. We know that they are actively working on applications that will work in our fleet. And so the ideal thing is that Peterville is right in our backyard and it's easy to partner with them on this new technology. And I think that we will have an application coming up shortly where we may want to try an all electric vehicle in the fleet. It may not be that 520 or 567, you know, a long haul truck, but I definitely see applications. I have to tell you, that's really exciting. I've been waiting a while to hear that. And I know you answered one of my questions when I saw that, because Peterpilt's just, you know, we drive by and we see it, you can't buy from them directly. So you have to go through one of these other places. Right. But you can take a tour of the facility. And if you haven't done that, I highly recommend it. It's a fascinating place. Thank you. Other questions or comments from council members? Very good. Chair would entertain action on item C. Council member Ryan? Move approval. Is there a second? Council member Briggs? A second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All right. Then we'll go ahead with a vote. Council member Ryan, how say you? Aye. Council member Briggs? Yes. Council member Johnson? Aye. Council member Armator? Yes. Council member Meltzer? Remembered you this time? Aye. Thank you. And the chairs an aye. This item carries. That moves us to item, takes us to the public hearings. Remember item D was withdrawn. Our first public hearing is item A CA20-0003A. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton regarding a comprehensive plan amendment on approximately 51.808 acres of land from rural areas future land use to moderate residential future land use designation. Will we have one presentation for both items since it's the same parcel of land? Unfortunately, no. We have two separate presentations just because they're slightly different. The second one should be a little bit shorter. That's just fine. I'll just go ahead and call that first public hearing item for now and we'll take up the next one as we do it. Great. Good evening, everyone. Ron Mingida, principal planner with Development Services. Hopefully you all can see my screen and can hear me. Again, as presented in the introduction, this is a comprehensive plan amendment for a property referred to as birch track. The slide that you see here identifies the 51.808 acres outlined in yellow. For some of you, the area is a recent annexation to the city. On August 25th of this year, the City Council approved an annexation of not just the area in yellow but also the area to the east, which is the larger area here as I'm drawing with the cursor. The property is located along Vantage Boulevard, the primary arterial that transects through the two separate parcels. And just for information purposes, the subject site is currently undeveloped as an agricultural use. There are storage tanks on site as well as a plug gas well. The request is to amend the comprehensive plan amendment, future land use designation of the area. Currently, it is designated as rural areas. The applicant is requesting that the future land use designation be changed to moderate residential. In concert with this application, the applicant has also submitted a zoning application to zone the property R6, and that is the item that is after this item currently. I wanted to just illustrate to you all where the gas well was located. As you may already know, this gas well was plugged and has been verified and inspected, so we know that the gas well is plugged and is now ready for any future development. So the outline in red is where the gas well is located. It will be not a developable lot. It's shown as x lot, which means that it will be an open space lot for the community. I wanted to spend a couple minutes with a couple slides here to talk a little bit about future land use map and designation and what that applies to. As you all know, we have a dim plan 2030 comprehensive plan. In that plan, it covers goals, policies and actions related to what the city's vision is for the city. We have the future land use map that offers the area and guides what that area should be, and that helps our city council decide on zoning applications as well as how we distribute our land uses throughout the city. The purpose of the future land use map and designation again is to depict the intended land use pattern for land uses in the city, establish a basis in which the zoning changes and zoning districts are in place, and also guides some of what we look at as far as transportation, utility planning and other future capacity studies and making sure that they're consistent with what our goals and again our vision is for the city. The specific designation that the applicant is requesting is modern residential. It is again from rural residential, rural areas to modern residential. I wanted to share a little bit of what modern residential is all about and what the purpose is. It is primarily for single family detached housing on small lots adjacent to key corridors, has a variety of scale and style associated with this future land use designation. Again, primarily single family but also has multifamily and townhomes located within this future land use designation. And again wanted to state that the whole modern residential also is considered of the scale style and the building orientation of the surrounding areas. What you see in front of you is what we currently have under the future land use map to the left is the rural areas shown there in green. What is being proposed is the modern residential which is designated or labeled or shown as orange. And as you can see to the north, the area that is currently a residential development is also designated as modern residential. So the applicant is requesting that that designation just extends south to their property. As we look at the comprehensive plan amendment, there are a number of approval criteria for the application and the section that is specific to all applications is section 245 of the development code. And you can see there's a list of criteria. I won't go through all of them. The ones that I've identified are shown in the bold are ones we'll spend a little bit more time as it refers to the consistency to the comprehensive plan and overall applicable plans in the city. Also any adverse impacts to surrounding properties and how the proposed comprehensive plan would support and provide compliance with utility services and improvement standards throughout the city. In addition to those criteria for approval for all applications, there are also criteria for approval for comprehensive plan specifically. There are a couple slides under this category. I'll just go through it fairly quickly. One of the things that we look at or a few of the things that we look at is was the future land use designation an error when the original comprehensive plan was adopted? Were there any existing facts, projections or trends that were reasonably foreseeable to take account of what the future land use should be? Were there events, trends and facts that was not in place when the original findings were made for the adoption of the plan? Again, trends and events, were there any that changed during the time the comprehensive plan was initially adopted that would amend the future land use designation for this area? Continuing that, in addition to those criteria approval, there are also the following additional review standards. Does the comprehensive plan, is it not in conflict with any proposed or portion of the goals or policies of the plan? Does it constitute a substantial benefit to the city? Will it avoid creation of isolated uses? Were there any optional sites where this use that is being considered in other parts of the city, again, will the comprehensive plan amendment adversely impact the city? And lastly, would this development, would it make development under the current plan designation inappropriate? I can tell you from our staff analysis, which is also in your backup, the comprehensive plan and the future land use designation that's requested is consistent in that the moderate residential is along Vintage Boulevard, which is a primary arterial and again, is appropriate for that location. Also, the proposed moderate residential is consistent with the future land use designation to the north as we have seen that moderate residential is to the north and again, the applicant is requesting that it be extended south. The surrounding area, we'll get into what is surrounding the area in all areas, but specifically to the north, the single family residential development, there's an existing pattern there that would extend south if this were to be approved and developed as proposed. The applicant is also preserving floodways and floodplains and environmental sensitive areas to the south and that is important and that's one thing that we always ask and want to see when any development is encroaching onto or adjacent to such areas. And again, it's the context and the scale and form of the adjacent single family to the north would be compatible with what's being proposed. The proposed roadway and connectivity to the north is also another criteria in which we want to see that continue. So again, what is being proposed is consistent with a comprehensive plan. So how does this relate to the surrounding areas, not just to the north, but what about to the other areas, to the east, the south, and to the west? As you can see, much of the area is undeveloped. To the east is primarily undeveloped with a floodplain area. This is part of the Hickory Creek tributary and therefore the area to the east of Vintage Boulevard is primarily a floodplain and therefore would be undevelopable. To the south is Fort Worth Drive and areas there as well are under a floodplain. So again, would not be able to develop as other parts of the city. To the south further to the south and southwest are rural areas. There are single family detached dwellings on large acres, also areas that are agricultural and also are single family to the west. One of the things that we want to also make sure is that we look at all different standards in relationship to utilities, services and improvements. Environmentally, there are no adverse impacts. As mentioned earlier, the applicant is looking to avoid the environmental sensitive areas in the floodplains and floodways in the area. There was a physical impact analysis conducted as part of the application that report or analysis was attached as an exhibit in your backup. Based on that analysis, the results and conclusions that there are no adverse impacts. A trip generation assessment was conducted based on the amount of trips generated. A traffic impact analysis was not warranted. Therefore, the impact that is or the trips that are being created from a future development under what is being proposed would not have any adverse impact. The Argyle school district was contacted and provided a proposal and study of what is being recommended or proposed. And according to their superintendent, based on the built out year of this development, if it were to move forward, the school district would be able to accommodate the student enrollment anticipated from this development. And the last few bullets here is really related to public services, utilities, and other reviews that we do to make sure that any future development under this future land use destination would be reviewed and ensured that any standards were to be met. Wanted to identify or provide the council. There were public outreach efforts made by the applicant as well as the city. There were notices sent out. Our typical public hearing notices to 200 feet, property owners within 200 feet, that is, as well as courtesy notices to residents within 500 feet. As of this afternoon, we have not received any responses to this public hearing notices. We did receive some calls on the -- during the planning and zoning commission. The call specifically was from a property owner to the west. And per the applicant, they were able to contact that property owner and was able to answer their questions as it related to adjacent buffer and adjacent fencing is my understanding. With that, with the staff analysis and with the responses that we heard or have not heard, the staff is recommending approval of this request for the comprehensive plan amendment. The planning and zoning commission also recommends approval 7-0 of this request. With that, I'll stand for any questions. The applicant is also available on the call. They do not have a presentation, but will be available for any questions if there are any from the council. >> Okay. Before I open the public hearing, any questions from council for staff? Just on the future land use map, we do have a zoning case to follow right after this. Council member Meltzer. >> You may be able to sort out whether this should be governed by the zoning portion. Is there anything that will hold the applicant to the layout that is indicated that basically preserves the tree area? Or is that just kind of a suggestion? >> Council member Meltzer, the only thing that would be held would be just the designation of the future land use of modern residential. Other than that, the site plan would not be conditioned as part of this. >> And would that be the case for the next item as well? Of course, I'm happy to re-ask the question then, but just if you can give me that guidance. >> I think you may want to ask that question during that consideration, since there is a response to that under that consideration. >> Okay. Interesting, because, you know, to me, when it's tied to the other, has anybody looked at it from a point of view of wildlife corridor? You know, we're getting to the point where the development is getting pretty dense, and, you know, we're kind of getting at the risk of some maybe unintended or not even thought of consequences, so is there -- I don't even know what the appropriate department would be to look at, is there continuity for wildlife? >> Yeah, no, that's a great question. I know that our parks department has been working with the applicant to identify any future open space that would be dedicated as part of their development, and in the illustration -- >> It's the kind of thing, yeah, outside the parcel that's really -- >> Yes, yes, just not only this area that we're talking about, the subject property, but I know the parks department is also looking at areas to the north as it follows Hickory Creek, to other developments, so they're working on a master plan, as we all know, and part of that effort is to look at how we can connect not only pedestrian trails, but also our corridors for wildlife. >> So I wonder if there still is anybody from parks available at the center to comment on whether this change in the plum designation would interrupt, you know, their plans or be compatible with it? >> I don't know if Gary's on the call, but again, if he is, be happy to have him chime in, but again, working with the parks department, we are working to make sure that any proposed open space would comply with their parks master plan and trails master plan. >> I appreciate that answer. Thank you. >> Do we have somebody from parks, or can we maybe get that answer later on? >> We don't have anyone on, but we will get you an answer. >> Thank you. To Councilmember Meltzer's question, Ron, it looks like -- so from this point, step one is the future land use map, step two is the zoning, and then at that point, what, they submit a plat, and they -- >> They would go through the planning exercise, correct. >> Okay. And so in doing that, that would be the stage at which things would be kind of preserved in their site plan, you know, where lots are going to be and where open space is going to be, that kind of stuff. >> That's correct. >> Is that correct? Okay. It seems like, too, there would be a financial disincentive for them to expand outside of what we're seeing in the proposed site plan. You know, they have to fill in some stock tanks and knock down a bunch of trees that they then have to mitigate or deal with an ESA situation. Is that -- would you say that's true? >> And I would agree with that, and as you can see from the site plan, again, we're not holding the site plan, but you can see based on what they're proposing. They're avoiding any floodway, floodplain. They're also avoiding any ESA, again, to protect those and leave those intact. >> Okay. Other questions for staff? Councilmember Armitage? >> Yeah, I have a question, and I understand if you don't know this off the top of your head, it's one that just occurred to me, and that is, when is the last time, roughly when there has been a development instigated -- developer instigated future land use map designation change application? I'm trying to recall. >> I know that we did one north of Duluth at one point to address some of the development there where it was -- it's currently rural residential and it was changed to something to consider the zoning that was being requested at that time. So just north of Duluth by Sherman is what I recall. >> And that was also brought to council by an applicant not from -- >> Correct. >> Not coming from staff or from council. >> That's correct. >> Okay. And roughly when was that? >> I'd say about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. >> Okay. Thank you. Thanks. >> Councilmember Briggs, did I see a hand earlier on? >> Yeah, I just wanted to clarify and state back what I thought I heard was that the intention is not to mess with either of the ponds or cut down any of the forests to leave that area intact, but that's not what we're voting on and there's not guarantee that it won't change when it comes back to you in a plan. >> That's correct. There's nothing that ties the timeline that I showed. What we're looking for here is the consideration to change the future land use from rural areas to modern residential. >> And so, if we change that designation, does it change the rules by which they play when they file their plat to you? >> No, they would still comply with subdivision regulations and obviously whatever zoning is approved for that site, so that's still undetermined. The property was abandoned recently, therefore there is no designation or no zoning yet, so that's kind of the second step in this process. >> Other questions for staff? Ron, I've got a question that a constituent asked and I thought it was a pretty good one. When these come up, and I remember the property you're talking about north of the loop, when these future land use changes happen, is there a particular reason why we take them kind of parcel by parcel or hand in hand with the zoning case as opposed to, you know, looking at the greater area around the parcel and saying, well, all these adjacent areas are full of houses now, maybe we need to change the designation? Or just to the east and south of this parcel, we've got a very well-developed area that still shows as rural on our future land use map. So is there a reason why we do it parcel by parcel and not kind of bigger picture? >> Sure, sure. I think that the bigger picture, to kind of answer your question in reverse, is that you all probably know or, you know, we'll see in the future. Our city is looking at updating our comprehensive plan, and when we do so, one of the things that we'll look at is a review of our future land use map, so look at it more collectively, look at it more comprehensively. But in between those reviews and those considerations, we do get applications from applicants wanting to develop their particular property, and therefore we need to process those applications. For this particular application, they're requesting the zoning, but in order for that zoning to even move forward, they would have to have a consistent or their comprehensive plan has to be consistent with their rezoning request, and so that's why the future land use plan amendment is coming first, and then the zoning comes after that. >> Understood. All right. Any other questions for staff? Councilmember Armator? >> Are there people lined up to speak? >> So we don't have anyone currently to speak, but I'm about to open the public hearing, if that's all of our questions. >> Okay. Yeah. I'd be curious to hear and -- >> Sure. So with that, I'll open the public hearing on this item. Sorry, Councilmember Melcher, do you have a question for staff? >> Well, yes. I mean, I guess the question is, will the applicant -- would the applicant -- I mean, it's a question for staff for the applicant. Would the applicant like to speak to address questions that have come up about the intended future use, especially in relationship to the ESA and ESA areas, the wooded areas? >> I know that they're on the call, so once we unmute them, they should be able to respond. Robert or Randy Rivera? >> Hello, Ron. This is Rob Bettencure with Zainal Land Development. >> And, Rob, I guess my understanding was you were going to be available for questions, if we had any questions of you, but you're also, you know, under our rules of procedure, allotted time to use. If you don't want to use the time, that's just fine. Do you have anything that you'd like to say in response to some of the things that have come up in what you've been watching? >> Sure. Absolutely. Sure. And, Randy, our planner is also on the other line if it gets a little technical, but I think to address a couple of the comments and questions that have come up specifically with regards to the ultimate use of the property, the intent is the site plan as it's proposed on the next agenda item as part of the zoning. We have been working with Parks Department for a park dedication of the southern, call it southern third of the property. I think on Ron's presentation, it calls it out as around 45% of the site is to remain as open space and/or floodplain, so that will be undeveloped. Parks Department has indicated that they have an interest in that for a park dedication. We are certainly interested in working with them to make that happen. Just as a side note as well, this property is owned by the Birch family, and they own the property to the, call it the north and the west as well, that additional 90 acres, in addition to another approximately 300 acres to the south. So as you look at that overall kind of aerial on that land use map, all of that land that's outlined there as floodplain is all owned by the same family. And so we're working with them as an authorized agent on their behalf to speak with Parks Department to work through all of this as part of their master parks plan. So I think just to address the initial question of this property, the intended amendment to the comprehensive plan and the next zoning case, you know, the intent is the 110 lots as it's proposed, that's what the concept plan for the zoning and the next item will be presented as, and the platting that would subsequently follow that in the process, you know, obviously we would just follow through with that same land plan, subject to, you know, the subdivision criteria. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Are there any questions by the council of the applicant? Okay. I don't see any. So at this time I will open the public hearing. We had one public comment against the ordinance, the amendment to the future land use map. I don't believe we have any other callers. Rachel, is that still correct that we don't have any other callers? Yes, sir. Correct. No callers. Okay. Then with that, I will close the public hearing and look to the council for action on this item. Council member Armentor. Yes, I'm going to propose, I want to move no to this and I'll explain why. I agree with the comment about the concern about taking this, this process, the future land use map process piecemeal as opposed to looking at the broader picture, although I understand and respect staff's explanation, I'm concerned about the conflict between this proposal to change the use from rural and our 2030 plan, which I know is being updated and it's always good to update and change our plans. But if I feel like this is kind of another one of these cases where we're changing the way we characterize whole areas of the city based on prior developments, the creep of prior developments in rural areas. For those reasons, I feel pretty strongly about voting no to this. Okay. I don't think it's a good characterization of the future land use. Sure. Okay. So you stated a motion. Is there a second on the motion to deny? I'd like to move postponement, which is a prior action. It's a higher election. It is, but we have to find out if the motion gets a second first. So is there a second on the motion? Okay. So if there's not a second on the motion, the motion is going to die on its own. Council member Meltzer, you have another motion you'd like to make. Yeah. I'd like to move to postpone so that we can hear a little bit more from how this larger area will look within the master plan, within the parks master plan. It's something that might be at least an indication of how this section of Denton will look in a future flood, which obviously is a bigger project, but you know, I'm not saying I would need to wait till all the flums done, new flum, but I would like to postpone until we can hear from parks how this will, how this will fit more concretely into parks master plan. Okay. I'm sure we'll have some discussion on that. But first, does that motion to postpone have a second? Okay. Council member Armator has seconded. I guess I'll kick off discussion by saying that planning zoning approved this seven zero. I know that there was a presentation they received, and I think that our, our parks presentation on trails and master planning had some rough outline for this area. I don't think it had anything specific on this parcel, but appealing representation made that, you know, that we're looking at dedication of certain lands and I'd like to, you know, hear from the other side of that discussion as well. Mr. City manager. Do we have anything else? Any update from the earlier request to parks? No, no update right now. Parks was not alerted that this might be a question. So we've not been able to get Gary on the line. So it'll be the next meeting. Okay. Council member Briggs did I see your hand? Um, no, it's what you did see it, but I withdrew my hand. Okay. There is a motion to postpone and there's a second. Mr. City attorney, I see your hand there. I just wanted clarification. The, if this motion to postpone six is successful at what, at what point are you pushing postponing this until after the presentation of the zoning item? Is that because if you're doing that, then you'll, once that is done, the presentation for the zoning item, you'll have to come back to the comp plan amendment. You can't act on the zoning item until the comp plan amendment has been done. It follows the comp plan. They both have to move. Okay. But I don't think I, I don't think I'm empowered to get to, to move on the item that's not opened yet. Right. No, it's its own public hearing and posted and it has to be dealt with separately. So, um, so there's a motion to postpone, um, and that was to a date, uncertain, um, to an event, certain event, certain that we would have a presentation from parks regarding the master plan and connectivity and wildlife corridors in relation to this segment of 10 and, and, and, and this, this property in particular, there was representations made that we have interest in a parkland dedication, but I'd like to hear what that level of interest is. And, you know, I mean, that, that may all check out and be solid and very persuasive, but you know, like a little bit like we're buying a pig in a poke. Sure, sure. But of course, you know, we would also expect an applicant not to have, you know, inked all the deals with parks until they get their zoning and then they dedicate the land over to the city for a park and run trails through it and all that kind of stuff. So it, I dunno, I disagree with you just a little bit. I feel like we're going in the right order, um, that if this family is going to give us significant acreage for parkland, that we've got to let them build their subdivision just south of another existing subdivision to make that happen. So listen, I, you know, I don't want to misrepresent my, uh, sort of attitude. I think, I think it sounds really good. I just want to be responsible about it, not just, you know, just, just button it down a little bit. My understanding is Gary Pack and director of parkland recreation is getting ready to be on the call. So that's something we can get done in the next couple of seconds. Maybe he can chime in for a couple of seconds. We'll, we'll hold off on discussion or consideration to that motion until we hear from Gary. We might have our questions answered. Should we take a, should we take a short break or do we have him? We, what we can do and we can, we can either take a break or we can go to the third public hearing item and hopefully we can have Gary back on call after that item. That's a suggestion. So we currently have a motion, a seconded motion on the floor. Um, and I think I would prefer if we're going to have Gary momentarily, I think I'd rather have time for that. So I don't have to do anything strange with the motion we have on the floor. He just got on. Good deal. Gary, good to hear from you again. Sorry about that. Sorry to pull you out of wherever you were enjoying the rest of your life. I apologize. It's my fault. No, not at all. Gary, uh, council member Meltzer has a question for you that I don't think anybody really anticipated before, um, before he thought of it. So, uh, Paul, if you'd go ahead and say your question for Gary and see if we can get an answer tonight. I didn't know it before I thought of it either. Uh, yeah, Gary, uh, just what, how does this parcel fit into the anticipated master plan for parks, uh, for this part of the city in general? And if I could say a little bit more about that, there's discussion about whether the sort of Southern 45% of it would in fact be of interest to you for parkland dedication. And I've also raised the question of whether there's kind of wildlife corridor continuity and the applicant described the fact that, uh, that there's a common ownership among the floodplain area extending outside of this parcel as well. So I just want to understand if all this fits in your understanding and, uh, commitments you're prepared, you know, to make. Great, great question. So, um, we have two major areas that we're focused on focusing on in that, that specific area of Denton. One obviously is just to the West and that is the 200 acres for Southwest park. We are currently working on the master plan for that just North of Southwest park is, is what we call the vintage area. Um, and we have a corridor, uh, for that Creek that eventually goes over to the property in discussion. Um, a majority of that outside of our, um, when you get to the Eastern side of Bonnie Bray over to three 77 is all private property. Uh, we would need to get an easement to connect this parcel over to the vintage or Bonnie Bray, um, and eventually Southwest park. The other major area is, uh, the Hickory Creek, uh, trail area. In our trails master plan that we talked to a few weeks ago, we have a trail following Hickory Creek and the wildlife quarter that, that is, it's part of that, um, from Lake Louisville all the way up to, uh, basically Northwest Denton. Um, so those are our two major areas that we're focusing on this, this property, uh, it is, it's nice in the sense it has a little bit of a water pond opportunity there. It is, uh, detached from those two major focus areas. Um, it could be a future quarter, but we'd have to get an easement to the property. Uh, we have had some discussions with the developer about accepting that for parkland dedication. Um, is, is it a number one priority location for us? It is not. Um, could we use it as inventory for parks and preservation of open space in possible future connection, um, over to the West, the Southwest park and Bonnie Bray? Yes. Uh, but there are some private property in between us in that parcel. Is there any downside to accepting parkland dedication when you say, is it a priority that, I mean, it's, we're not talking about buying it, right? So, you know, what, why, why would we hesitate or would we? There isn't, um, you know, we, we, we are looking for opportunities for, for land and preservation of open space. Absolutely. Um, the, the other option is the fee in lieu of that, that could be paid instead of the land. Uh, that money could be used for neighborhood park development in that general vicinity on other parcels owned by the city. Established tree canopy is pretty attractive though, right? Pardon me? Established tree canopy is pretty attractive. Absolutely. Yep. And there's, there's a large portion on the second half of the Southern most portion of that property that does have tree canopy. And that would be, it'd be great to have for our inventory. Uh, by no means am I saying we would not want that. It's just not on the highest priority level with the other two parcels that are there that we're focusing on, but we can continue to work with, uh, the adjacent neighbor to see if we couldn't get an easement through there at some point in time. Thank you very much. And thank you for coming into the call. Sure. No problem. Any other questions for Gary while we have him here on the line? Okay. Thank you, Gary. You can go back, back about your business like a regular person. No problem. I'll stick around just in case. Thank you. Um, Councilman Meltzer, does that answer the questions that you had? Uh, yeah, it does. Okay. The context that I needed. Very good. And, uh, will you then withdraw your motion? Yeah. Yes, I do. Well, the conditions of the most of it, so we can now consider. Thank you. Um, any other action by council on this item? Council member Ryan, I move approval. It's a motion for approval. Is there a second? I second. Okay. I heard a council member Johnson first with the second. So that's a motion by council member Ryan, second by council member Johnson. Uh, any other discussion then we'll proceed with a vote. Council member Ryan, how say you? Aye. Council member Johnson. Aye. Council member Briggs. Yes. Council member Armator. No. Council member Meltzer. Yeah, because of the substantial opportunity for, uh, for, uh, for us preservation and the potential for connectivity. Absolutely. Same reasons. The chair votes aye as well. So that moves us on to item B, uh, hold. Let's see. Item B is Z20-0008A. Hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton regarding a request to establish initial zoning and use classification of R6 on the same parcel we just discussed. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Um, share my screen real quick. And this is for the zoning amendment application. Hopefully you can see and hear me. Um, as we already seen, uh, this is the subject location, subject site. The, the current request is to establish an initial zoning district of residential six. Um, and the reason for residential six is because what the applicant is trying to do is build or develop a site with 110 single-family development, uh, residential lots. Um, because they are developing and leaving out a third of the site, uh, they are limited to a portion of the property that's not within an ESA or a flood plain. Uh, therefore their lot size, um, has, um, gotten smaller, uh, to make the development, um, work again per their request. Uh, therefore the minimum 6,000 square feet, as you see here, is what they're shooting for. And therefore, in order to get that, um, the residential six is what they're requesting. Uh, as you can see based on the columns here, the middle column is the residential rural, uh, that is what is designated to a property that is recently annexed. And you can see the dimensional standards under residential rural. Uh, again, what they are proposing is residential six, which is shown on the right. And, uh, again, the main criteria or standard that they're seeking is that minimum lot area of 6,000 square feet. And again, the reason for their request for our six, uh, as shown here, the current zoning map, um, is actually not colored in because it's not currently zoned, uh, as, as it was recently annexed. If it were to be approved, uh, the R six would be represented by the ground that you see on the right, uh, outlined there, uh, just south of the development to the north, um, also zone R six. Uh, again, I won't go through all of this. Uh, there is a criteria for approval for all applications. And, um, again, highlighting number three, eight and 10, as some of the criteria that staff, um, has, um, analyzed. Uh, in addition, there is a section of the development code that speaks specifically to zoning map amendment approval criteria. And there are a number of, um, those in there listed as follows, consistent with the future land use map, consistent with any small area plans. And there are none in that area, uh, consistent with the purpose statement of the proposed zoning. Staff feels that it, it, it's consistent. Um, there are, and have, will, sorry, there have been or will be significant changes in the area. Um, we know that, um, the area was recently annexed. Um, we also know that vintage Boulevard is a major corridor. Uh, and we know that there are other developments to north that's happening. So again, looking at those changes as part of this rezoning, um, there would not be any adverse impacts to surrounding properties or neighborhood. As stated earlier, the site is directly south of an existing residential subdivision. To the east is a floodplain, to the south is Fort Worth Drive, and to the west are large tracts of land that are currently agricultural or single family lots. Public facilities and services are available. The development review, sorry, development assistant team has looked at this site and reviewed it as far as capacity. And again, we talked to Argyle School District, and their capacities also have been reviewed and will be met. And the last criteria is that there was an error in establishing the current zoning. Well, there was no current zoning, so we're in that process of zoning the property, so number seven does not apply. We kind of went already through some of these consistency with comprehensive plan. Again, primarily along in arterial, consistent to what is currently zoned to the north. Again, that proposed residential single family development is continuing what is already developed to the north. Similarly, the site that you see here is similar to what we've seen in the previous presentation, so I won't spend too much time on this slide. Again, similarly, this slide represents the analysis that staff has conducted, and again, no adverse impacts on environmental, physical, or traffic impacts are anticipated. Similar with the comprehensive plan amendment, with the rezoning, we did send out the same notification and public hearing notices, and again, there was no response to those notices as of this afternoon. With that, staff is recommending approval of the rezoning, sorry, the zoning amendment to zone this property R6. The Planning and Zoning Commission also recommends approval 7-0, however, they do have a condition that they wanted to add, and just a way of background, there was a discussion during the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that the allowed uses under the R6 of duplexes, town homes, triplexes, and fourplexes be not allowed, and so there was a motion to withhold those uses or not allow those uses. However, before the motion was voted on, there was a friendly amendment to just permit single-family dwellings, and so you see that the condition in front of y'all is that the conditions that there shall be no uses permitted other than single-family detached dwellings. I want to also mention and note that after this was made and after the packet was sent out to the Council, there was discussion with the applicant and with some staff members, legal staff as well, and we know that there are other uses that should be allowed, such as open space, there are other uses, accessory uses, and temporary uses, so the applicant is requesting that the conditions for the Council to consider is as follows, that number one, there shall be no residential uses, a residential being highlighted, permitted under, or sorry, permitted other than single-family detached dwelling, so those concerns of duplexes, triplexes, town homes, and fourplexes would not be allowed because only single-family under the residential uses would be permitted. Number two, other non-residential uses that is authorized under the residential six zoning districts would be permitted by right or with a specific use permit under accordance with the Denton Development Code as amended. So a slight difference in what the Planning and Zoning Commission was, what they recommended as a condition, we understand that their concerns and my understanding their concerns was related to those residential uses as stated, duplexes, town homes, triplexes, and fourplexes were their only concerns, and so with the staffs, I'm sorry, with the applicant's request, I think it meets their concerns or addresses their concerns while allowing other uses that again are allowed under VR6 to continue to be allowed. So that concludes my presentation, and again, the applicant is available if you all have any questions for staff before that, and I'll stop sharing once. Okay, so we will have one public commenter in the public hearing, just so we have that question answered up front, but we'll now take council questions for staff, and I think I saw council member Briggs first. So am I seeing two ways out of this development onto the highway? Correct, let me pull up the cyclone again. And before, oh. Go ahead. So one would be from the main entrance of Vintage Boulevard, and then there will be a connection to the north, and that would be a second access for exit. Okay, and on this, I don't think you can see it very well, but behind the ponds and kind of in the through the trees on that same, there looks to be some kind of access or maybe an easement. Is that a future road? Are we along forward drive? No, it's just right underneath where it says open space. There's a dotted line that goes from this property all the way through. I see that, and maybe the applicant's committee knows if that's an easement or some sort of access. And if we can have the applicant maybe respond to that question. Hi, this is Randy Rivera with McAdams, the planner working with Zana. That is a 20-foot sanitary sewer easement. There is a sewer line running through the floodplain in that area. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. I have a few more questions. Go ahead, Councilmember. So how long has this well been plugged? Earlier this summer, I believe it was June, is when the report was sent to staff. Okay, so okay. And the other thing is that will these ponds be used for drainage when this development is built? If I can have Randy respond to that. I know that there's contours. I would assume yes, but let me ask Randy if she can respond to my question. Yeah, I'll be glad to jump in there. The site does drain towards Vintage and to the southeast corner. So we do anticipate the runoff will be collected in our curb and gutter system of the street and put into the floodplain areas. And it could, it would potentially go into these stock tanks. And we will analyze that in much greater detail and follow the engineering standards of the city when we do the preliminary plot. Okay, thank you. And can you tell me what the boundary is between the backs of the houses and the pond that I'm seeing? The distance, like is there a, it looks close. So I'm just wondering right in there? Yeah, and that in the narrowest point, it is probably going to be 20 feet at the narrowest. And that boundary line that you're seeing that follows, that is the floodplain line, the 100 year floodplain. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Briggs. Thank you, because I mean, if all of that, I assume that those drainage issues and questions will be worked out during platting. So if that's supposed to drain into the ponds and the ponds are that close to the backyards, like that, that's something that staff is going to look at, correct? Okay. All right, thank you. Thank you. And if I'm correct, there's a setback requirement from the back lot line too, right? So a house can't be built just right up on that back lot line. There's got to be a backyard. Correct. I think the minimum setback for rear lots for the rear is 10 feet, but that doesn't mean that they'll all be at 10 feet. Sure. If you had a 10 foot backyard, then you have a pretty deep front yard and some might not want to buy that house. Any other questions for staff or we also have the applicant? So other questions for staff or the applicant? Council Member Meltzer? Yeah, would you mind showing, it went by pretty quick, the table of the permitted non-residential uses? In case there wasn't questions. Maybe you can give us a quick guided tour of it? Sure. Excuse me. Let me get to it real quick. There it is. So I really wanted just to illustrate to you that this is all that is permitted uses as non-residential uses either by right or by SUP. As we go down the list, you see that public, I'm sorry, open space is one that actually we would like to see. Clubs, club lodges would require SUP. Take care of an adult would require an SUP. Religious assembly would be permitted with new specific standards. That's what the plus sign symbolizes. Private schools, if one was permitted or proposed, it would be required to require a specific use permit. Public schools would be permitted by right. Community garden, by right. Urban farms, specific use permit. Amenity center, I would hope that there's an amenity center. I think that would be permitted. Any outdoor recreational activity that would be permitted. RV park in offices as well as bed and breakfast would require a specific use permit and each of them have a use specific standard that they would have to comply with. Moving over to the other column, short-term rental, that is P plus. Gas wall would be P plus. We know already that they've plugged the gas well, so that would be unlikely. Basic utilities, substation if anything like that, that would be permitted. And then we get into the accessory uses. Accessory dwelling units, home occupation, sale of produce and plants raised from Primus, solar as well as wind energy conversion, these are your wind turbines and whatnot, would be permitted with an SUP while the other would be permitted by right. Temporary uses include temporary storage containers, temporary concrete and asphalt catching plant, field and construction office and portable wireless telecommuting facility, all would be permitted by right and each would have a use specific standard associated with each of them. That's all completely palatable to me. I would have been open to some small sections that had neighborhood scale retail. I'm not for this idea that everything's got to be a 20-minute drive, but thank you for reviewing that. Thank you. Council member Armentor. Yeah, so I find it sad that duplexes and townhomes are not permitted at a time when affordable housing is in real demand and gas wells are permitted, so I find that interesting, a P plus for gas wells. I was wondering if the developer or if the applicant could speak to what, what, at what range do you foresee these homes beginning? Are these single-family homes affordable, single-family homes? Yeah, this is Rob Bettencourt with Zainal Land again. I can address that question. We do not have a home builder selected at this point for this project, so, you know, pinning down a home price is a little tough at this point, but I would suspect we're going to be kind of loss leader, you know, starting price point in the upper 200s is what I would expect for this, this community. With regards to the other uses, townhomes, duplex, we are strictly just a detached single-family development company. We do not develop townhomes, duplex-type communities, so that's why we're agreeable and certainly acceptable with just the detached single-family zoning. Thank you. And by the way, I understand that that was, I guess, a request that came from planning and zoning. I was just surprised that that was a condition on their part, but I understand that that fits in with, you know, what your plans already were, so thanks for answering the question. Okay, Ron, as I understand it, I mean, that condition we can, if we approve this zoning request, we could take or leave that condition. That's council's prerogative at this point. We can either go straight R6 where somebody could build a duplex or a townhome, or these folks can build their single-family detached, or we can put in the condition either as planning and zoning recommended it or as the developer requested it, if we follow that recommendation. That's correct. My understanding is that planning and zoning commission is recommending that condition. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, Ron, can you give any context? I didn't re-watch this session, just what was the impulse behind adding that condition? Yeah, yeah, I think it was one of the commissioners was concerned that, again, keeping with the compatibility and the consistency of the area, they felt like if there was opportunity for a four-plex, that would not be compatible and consistent with the area, similar to duplex as well as a townhome, so they really just wanted to make sure that it was single-family, and that's the reason why they made that motion. Do you mean because those other housing formats aren't in the neighboring area? Primarily single-family detached is what's around there. They wanted to be consistent with that. Any other questions of staff or the applicant? Okay, we do have a caller, so I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing. To my knowledge, we don't have any comment cards on this item, but we do have one member of the public calling in. Caller, are you there? I am. Okay, and you will have four minutes to speak. Just as soon as you say your name and address, you can get started. Thank you. This is Eric Pruitt, 2111 Westwood Drive. If you'll permit me a few seconds to kind of go down memory lane so you can better understand where I'm coming from on this one. Our comprehensive plan calls for fiscal analysis to inform land use decisions, and I first brought this up in a comment card that I submitted in February 2019 in our development code update hearings. Since then, we have rezoned 354 acres for 1,175 single-family detached homes and approved ALT EASAs to pave the way for an additional 259 acres and 850 homes. We have platted over 1,000 more homes and amended the Honzerkohl MPC all without the rigorous fiscal analysis process our comprehensive plan calls for. When we have received fiscal analysis paid for by the developer, it either uses an average cost per resident model or a time-limited scope that ignores the cost to eventually replace the infrastructure. These models significantly underestimate municipal costs as demonstrated by academics and professional planners, including Coatwall, Mullen, Virchel, and Thompson, and organizations such as the Fraser Institute, the Institute for Smart Prosperity, and many municipalities. Denton has made strides towards fulfilling our comprehensive plans call for fiscal analysis. On July 21st, the city manager announced in a council meeting that staff was working on an RFP for such a tool. On August 13th, that RFP went live and closed on September 1st. The September 11th Friday staff report stated that staff anticipated bringing a contract to council in October. Nothing occurred in October or November. Since the December 8th council meeting is canceled and the 15th meeting is pushed to December 17th primarily for canvassing, it looks like any action may be in January, more than five months after the RFP was issued. If we don't have this process in place by the time the comprehensive plan update kicks off, we will lose an opportunity to have an informed candid conversation with our residents on the type of town they want and how those options affect our long-term tax burden. In the case of Birch Tract, I simply don't see a need to apply an overlay restriction to prevent single-family attached dwellings. The types of housing are code and planning departments say is appropriate in the R6 zone. The reasoning given in the planning and zoning meeting was to prevent the adjacent Meadows of Pecan Creek neighborhood from having duplexes or triplexes next to them, but that existing neighborhood also doesn't have an overlay. If we institute this overlay restriction, existing homes in the Meadows of Pecan Creek eventually could be split up or redeveloped in the future to adapt to changing needs, while homeowners in the Birch Tract would have their property rights restricted and require a zoning change to do what their neighbors can. This overlay creates the opposite problem P&Z was trying to prevent. Ultimately, though, it might not matter. Meadows of Pecan Creek is governed by an HOA and Birch Tract likely will be as well. HOA documents are not public, so we can't find out what homeowners are allowed to do with their property unless we buy a home there. They will probably prohibit single-family attached homes, and as you've heard, they're only planning on building detached homes, likely in part to keep out people who don't have as much money as their neighbor. Using the city's zoning code to further restrict adaptability adds an unnecessary layer of property rights restrictions. It restricts future Birch Tract homeowners more than their Meadows of Pecan Creek neighbors and keeps more housing unaffordable in Denton. I urge you to reconsider whether an overlay is truly needed here and think hard before we continue rezoning for large developments at the periphery without a fiscal analysis process which our comprehensive plan calls for. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Eric. If you hold on, we'll see if there are any questions. Any questions for Eric? Okay. Go ahead, Councilmember Briggs. Thank you for calling. Did you happen to read through the fiscal impact that the developers turned in? I did. It was actually performed by the same consultant, the Carolas Commercial, who did the Sagebrook Analysis, if you recall, which we considered previously, and it uses that average cost per new resident model, which I'm dubious of. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions for the caller? Okay. I don't think we have anything. Thank you, Eric, for calling in. I appreciate that. Thank you. And with that, I will close the public hearing and look to Council for any action on this item. Councilmember Meltzer? I'll move approval without conditions. With no conditions? Yeah. Is there a second for approval without conditions? Councilmember Ryan? I'll second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay. We'll move forward with a vote. Councilmember Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Councilmember Johnson? Aye. Councilmember Briggs? Yes. Councilmember Armitour? I'll just say briefly, I prefer it without restrictions than with restrictions, but I'm going to vote no for the reasons I said earlier, but I like this better than with the restrictions. Thank you. And the Chair is an aye. So that item carries. We have one remaining item, but we've also been going for quite some time now. So why don't we take a... Councilmember Briggs says no bio break necessary. Any other council members prefer break over no break, or do we want to go ahead and take this last item? Everybody wants to roll. Let's do it. So we're going to take up our next public hearing, item C, S20-0007B, hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, approving a specific use permit to allow a building of no more than 46 feet on approximately 1.57 acres at Stewart Road in the North Loop. The Planning Zoning Commission recommended this be approved seven to zero. Good evening. If you'll give me just a moment, I'll have my presentation pulled up. All right. Hopefully you can see my screen. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and members of council. My name is Sean Jacobson, Assistant Planner. I'm here to present item S20-0007B, Quincy Court. This is a request for a specific use permit to allow a building of no more than 46 feet in height. The building is proposed for a vacant 1.57 acre lot, zone MN. Multifamily use is permitted by right. The maximum permitted height in MN is 65 feet, but heights above 40 feet, between 40 and 65 feet, require an SEP for approval. Just to give you all a little background on the history of the zoning of this site, the MN zoning was applied in 2019 and that was in the city-wide rezoning. That was a combination of the NRMU and NRMU-12 zoning districts. NRMU permitted 65 feet, NRMU-12 permitted 40. So the compromise was to have 65 feet, but to have the SEP requirement above 40. So this particular property prior to 2019 was zoned NRMU and had a permitted height of 65 feet by right. As you can see here, just to give you an idea of this site, looking east above, picture below looking north, you can see loop 288 Stuart Road. So the details of this, it's important to know the DDC has a mixed use district standards that require a minimum ground floor height of 12 feet. That required minimum ground floor height doesn't leave a whole lot of room between there and that 40-foot cap for the remaining stories. The approval of this six-foot height increase would allow those upper stories to have standard nine-foot heights for all of those ceilings, as well as ground floor entrances that are at grade. Without the SUP, the alternative which staff could approve to get those four stories in is to construct the building below grade with steps leading down to the ground floor entrances and upper floors closer to eight feet in height. It's a less optimal design due to the impact on streetscape, the pedestrian experience, the aesthetics of the facade, so this SUP is from Bravo 40. Sorry, here you can see just a little bit better on that example of exactly what that height difference would look like, what's allowed now, and the six-foot height increase. So here's an idea of what the building would look like in concept at this 46-foot height. You can see there the six-foot increase proposed down on the front. So the question is does this meet our criteria for approval, and of course we have our general approval criteria as well as the specific criteria that apply to SUPs, and we'll look at kind of the key elements of both of those. First and foremost, the comprehensive plan and our future land use map. The primary future land use here is neighborhood mixed use to design and promote a mix of compatible housing types and densities, along with local serving non-residential uses. Moderate to high density residential uses are permitted. New higher density housing should be sensitive and scale-informed with the surrounding built-in natural context. The use is consistent with the future land use map. More importantly, the height increase would be consistent with the number of stories recommended for neighborhood mixed use areas by Denton Plan 2030 development criteria. As well, that pedestrian-friendly first floor height with the ground floor entrances at grade that this would enable is more consistent with the Denton Plan 2030 design principles and with the surrounding neighborhoods than the alternative that would be required otherwise. It's also important to look at compatibility with the surrounding area. This is located on two corridors at the Loop 288 corridor, where multi-story buildings at intersections are part of the current or planned development pattern. As well as the Stewart Road corridor, where the general flow is from a multi-story multi-family at major intersections to low and moderate in between and then back at the intersection. This proposed development, a taller multi-story building at an intersection, would be consistent with both of those corridor patterns. The undeveloped property to the north and to the west is also zoned MN, and it's expected to develop similarly with those patterns. It's also important, looking specifically at the compatibility with the residential neighborhoods to the south and to the east, that while the maximum building height in those adjacent R6 neighborhoods is 40 feet, we actually measure building height on a pitch roof at about the halfway point so you could have a house in one of those adjacent R6 neighborhoods that was at least 40 feet, above 40 feet, possibly over 46 feet. So there's actually a limited difference between the permitted height, the actual permitted height in the surrounding areas, and the requested 46-foot height for this development. Again, as we discussed, that increased height allows the at-grade entrances, more pedestrian-friendly design that's actually more consistent with the way the surrounding neighborhoods are built. So that six-foot height increase is expected to have minimal impact on the compatibility to building with the area. We also want to look at how we mitigate the negative impacts potentially of this request, and one of the key ones is actually already in the DDC. It's our building height and transition areas requirement, and that establishes that 50 feet from the adjacent R6 zone residential properties, or from any residential zoning, you have to match the surrounding neighborhood's height, and you have to be at least 100 feet away to go more than 15 feet above the surrounding neighborhood height, or as in this case, to request an SCP for height increase. That's why you see there that this building is at least 100 feet away from the residential neighborhoods on the south and 150 feet on the east. Those requirements, even absent the SCP, help ensure that larger multifamily buildings, larger buildings in general, are not immediately adjacent to residential areas. The site design itself also helps to mitigate any negative impacts. Landscape minimums, you can see 20%, but the applicant will be providing 35.8%. Same with tree canopy, 40% minimum, but providing 49%. This is all actually from the approved landscape plan. This has already gone through for zoning compliance. Buffers, again, well above what would be required. Lighting and glare, just important to note that all DDC standards would apply, so at any property line, you'd have to meet the light spillover limits. Traffic, it's expected to be the same, regardless of whether this SCP is approved, because it'd be the same number of units, but they are providing all of the parking that's required for the units proposed on site. Turning to adequate public facilities, again, just taking into consideration. Traffic, this is expected to generate 218 trips. It was not an amount that required a traffic impact analysis right on that corner of an arterial and a collector with significant capacity, and the applicant will actually be constructing curb gutter and new pavement to the halfway point of Stewart Road, as well as for the pedestrian infrastructure, sidewalks along loop 288 and Stewart Road. Water and wastewater service is available, capacity is there, and fire capacity specifically asked whether the height would be any concern. They said that wouldn't hinder their ability to provide fire service to this development. Important to look at our public outreach. We provide all of the standard notices. Did receive one response in opposition, one favor. Both those letters are in your backup. Two neighborhood meetings were held by the applicant. The first had no attendees, and so the applicant held a second meeting. We had two neighbors attend. They did have some questions, concerns about the safety of the intersection, property values, and the cost of the units. By the end of the conversation, they appeared satisfied. When specifically asked if they had an objection to this height increase request, they did not. So for all those reasons, planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the SCP with staff conditions. Those conditions are a little bit extensive, but to sum it up for you, there would be, there could be minor alterations made with staff approval to a planting plan or to building details, but overall we need to comply with the landscape plan and elevations attached to this item. Staff would have the option to require any change to the SCP, even minor ones to be through an SCP amendment. Specific elements of the SCP could be increased or decreased up to five percent, including dwelling units or parking, but again would have to meet all DDC requirements. And lastly, the zoning map would request the change to an SCP. So with that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to stand for any questions. I do believe the applicant is also on the line if there are any questions for him. Okay, thank you Sean for the presentation. Any questions of staff or the applicant? Any questions? Council member Briggs, I see kind of a tentative question there. No, I was looking at the the elevations in the building. Are there balconies on? I couldn't tell if there's any outside balconies. No ma'am, I believe there may be at the ground floor some patios, but no balconies. Okay, because I did read that somebody was worried about privacy is an issue and so that that makes sense. And the the building's actually on the the corner away from the backyards of the homes, right? So yes ma'am. There's some space there. All right, thank you. Okay, any other questions of staff or the applicant? Okay, then I'll move on with opening the public hearing. We have no callers. We have one online comment card in favor of the request, the SUP. And with no other callers, I'll now close the public hearing and look to the council for action on this item. Council Member Ryan. Move approval. Motion to approve. Is there a second? A second. Council Member Johnson has seconded. Any other discussion before we vote? Okay, Council Member Ryan, how say you? Aye. Council Member Johnson? Aye. Council Member Briggs? Yes. Council Member Armstor? Yes. Council Member Melter? Aye. And the Chair's an aye. That item carries and is approved. That takes us to item six, concluding items. Any concluding items for members of the council? Council Member Briggs? You're very quick. First, I wanted to say thank you, Council Member Davis, for today. You did very well. Great job. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I also wanted to welcome you to your first meeting. I enjoyed serving with you today. You may be wondering what you've gotten yourself into at this point. I'm just kidding. Next, I wanted to send Mayor Watts well wishes and hope that he feels better soon that we are all thinking of him. And then two things. One, I wanted to follow up on the fiscal analysis because I do recall that that was something that I asked for in that Friday report. And so with that, if we could just get a refresher on where that is in the process, that would be really great with the RFP that Eric mentioned earlier. And then the next, hopefully, at some point, we can have that future land use map discussion where we're talking about the overall area of our city and not just piecemeal sections. So that's all. Thank you, Council Member Briggs. Any other concluding items? I'll just add thank you all very much for your support tonight and helping us get through a meeting that had lots to deal with. And I'll second what Council Member Briggs said and send our best wishes to Mayor Watts and hopes for a speedy recovery. And with that, thank you all very much. We're adjourned at 1043.