Jan 05, 2021 City Council on 2021-01-05 3:00 PM

Welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. Today's date is January 5th. It is 3.03 p.m. And we do have a quorum. So we will get started. Just to make sure, I think we have the most updated agendas, but we'll get to those if there's any changes. But I'll call this meeting to order. And I'll note the first item is citizen comments on the consent agenda. And we have one, so I'll note that. For item 3Q, we had one person make a comment using our online form. There was one in support of that item and zero against. All comment forms were emailed to the entire city council and our city secretary to be recorded. Additionally, there are zero people that called 940-349-7800 to register their position on any matters. And finally, there are zero who have requested to speak over the phone during this session. That'll take us to item 2, which is requests for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda. Any questions? Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. Real quick, two to pull for recusal, if I could. Item T and item W. And then if I could also request to pull item A, I'm told that there's some citizen comment that couldn't come during the portion of the meeting you just mentioned, some folks who'd like to speak on that item. I don't personally need a presentation. The airport committee got a presentation from staff on that item. I don't know if any other council member would need a presentation. And then I had a question on K whenever that's appropriate. Okay. Yeah. So with A, let's just plan staff to have a brief presentation. And then Mayor Pro Tem Davis, you said you have a question on K. Correct. K is McKenna Park. And my question was just, could we get just a little update on what's left to do there and what the timeline is? The equipment's in. It's great. The kids are loving it. What's left to do at that property and how soon will that be completed? I think we have Drew Huffman on the line. All right, thank you, this is Drew Huffman, Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation. Can you hear me, sir? Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir. So what's left to do at McKenna Park is the loop trail and the parking lot that will go off of Thomas, it currently has the cedar trees there, it's across the street from the church. And through all our public input, the public would like us to remove those trees and that's where the parking lot, the permeable pavement parking lot has been designed to go. And then almost a half mile of a loop trail that will go around McKenna Park, tie into the sidewalks that were put in for the new playground, and really give a really nice experience to enjoy that park. Can I ask a quick follow up, Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir. Drew, you mentioned those cedar trees, are those the kind of the juniper trees that line the old driveway up to the water tower, they create kind of a dark alleyway with no lighting? Yes, sir, those are those trees. Okay, thank you. Okay, Council Member Melton and Council Member Armitage. Yeah, regarding, thank you, regarding 90K, is there a possibility that those trees could be moved to another location? Council Member, I don't believe they can, we looked into that, but they were planted so closely together that they're all intertwined now and with those being trees, as far as hardwood trees, those not being in that classification, then we do plan on, after this phase, planting some nice hardwood trees in McKenna Park, really on the bonnie beret side, to help screen the park and give a really nice feature up front, to really include the nice post oaks that are already there. Thank you. Let me ask about a couple of other items, if I may, Mayor? Yes, sir. Item I, I would just be interested in the public here, it could be now or it could be later, just a couple of sentences about what the, this program is that DBL is funding for the library. I believe Jennifer Becker is on the line here, in person here, she can respond to that. Thank you, yes, so the program that we have been awarded a grant on, it's a Denton Benefit League grant for 7,000, a little over $7,000, and it's called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten. It's a wonderful program that the South Youth Librarian, Rebecca Ivy, has been interested in for a long time, and it's a program where it encourages parents and caregivers to read to their newborns, infants, and toddlers 1,000 books before they hit kindergarten, and it's to encourage literacy and a love of reading, as well as language development, and studies have shown that children, children who have reading difficulties up to grade three are more likely to drop out of high school, so we're trying to get those early literacy skills built in, and children are young infants, and so that's the program. How it'll work is we're hoping to start registration possibly at the end of this month, could be the beginning of February, and parents or caregivers would register the child, they'd get an enrollment packet, and then they would hit reading milestones. At 250 books, they would get a book bag, which encourages the child to check out more books, or the parent to check out more books for the child. At 500 books read, then they would get a free book to keep, because owning books has been shown that children will self-initiate reading or practicing reading, just learning to turn the pages is literacy development. At 750 books, then they would get a color changing cup, which encourages play and discovery, and at 1,000 books they get a certificate, as well as another free book, a puppet for imaginative play, and an invitation to a graduation ceremony. Thanks for that great description, kids better get started reading, and thank you to Ten Patent Benefit League for supporting that. I might have one more item I wanted to ask about, Mayor, if I could. Yes, sir. On item U, we have a street being renamed because it was inadvertently going to be the same name as another existing street, but my question is, what is the naming process for streets? We've had, I don't know, it had to have been at least four sessions on naming processes for everything other than streets, but is it really that the developer can name it Reese's Pieces way and, you know, or just anything, or is there a process? Aaron, you're muted if you were, all right. No, Mayor, I don't know the process. Okay, thank you. There is a process. Haley can, Haley Zagurski can answer this one, but I think Sarah, I don't know if Sarah Hensley is on the line, but she's recently taken a couple of these through the process as well, and I think she can, either one of them can explain to you what that process entails. Haley, are you there, I don't want to step on your toes. Yes, I am, this is Haley Zagurski, a senior planner. So Councilman Meltzer, you are essentially correct, the developer does typically propose street names for new subdivisions during the platting process. Staff reviews those names, compares them to our database of existing street names to ensure that there aren't duplicates, in this case, unfortunately, it was missed because the name was spelled slightly off by one or two letters, but that is the typical process for naming for new development. Once a street name is established, the renaming either goes through a replatting process or comes back before the City Council, and I believe staff is in the process of working through an ordinance to adopt some formal procedures for street names, street naming procedures, and that should be coming before you all in the coming months, but currently it's a rather informal process, developer-driven. Given all the careful thought that went into, you know, other naming processes as we discussed, I look forward to, you know, our sort of aligning similarly. Thank you. All right. Councilmember Armitage. Several things. Number one, I'd like to pull K. I love the McKenna Park update, but I don't support the removal of those cedar trees, so if that's non-negotiable, then I will vote no for that. So you don't need a presentation for that, correct? No. No. Thank you. But I do love the McKenna Park update. I'm thrilled with it. Just I'm voting against the removal of those trees. I have questions on three items for staff right now. On item J, about the Waterworks Park, if someone could just explain briefly why we need to get these pool supplies now to have them in storage as opposed to later, considering that, you know, we don't know what the the status of the auditorium will be this summer, someone could just speak to that, you know, what is the economic benefit of doing this now? We have Tom Klenko or John Whitmore on the line. I believe this is a pay-as-you-take contract Councilmember Armitage will double check with either Tom or John. Hi, this is Christine, Safe Procurement, and I can answer that for you, Councilmember Armitage. So this contract is being put in place to secure the pricing. There's no obligation for them to purchase products now. They won't be purchasing and storing them. They will just have the pricing in place, so as we get closer to the season, if there is an opening, they have that pricing already there and can order and obtain the product quickly. Great. Thanks. That is good to hear. Question on item P, which is about the ADA update. My question is, if someone can speak to that, I just wanted to ensure that this consultant will be conferring with the Committee on Persons with Disabilities and also any local disability rights advocates like the Disability Inclusion Society, and I also wanted to see if they are going to consider or be involved in the hire of a new ADA coordinator. I know that right now it's kind of lumped in with a position higher. We didn't hear the last part of what you said because you were having connection issues. Yes. Sorry. I've got two kids who are in connected learning right now, so we're all using internet at the same time. Let's see. I don't want to repeat myself, so where did I cut out? It was with respect to the hiring, the position, I do believe, where they are going to evaluate the hiring process. Oh, thank you. Thanks. That was just the very last part. I was just going to ask if the consultant will be weighing in on that hire and the possibility of making it a separate hire for an ADA coordinator instead of lumping it in with the bike and pedestrian coordinator position. I'm going to defer to Sarah Hensley on that, but I don't believe we had an ADA coordinator position specifically specified in the budget, so at this point that person, Sarah, I'll let you go ahead and talk about the plan. So Councilmember Armitage, there's not a specific position just for an ADA coordinator, however, what we do have are the joint position that we're working with our transportation. Scott Gray is working with transportation and with Ethan specifically to look at a person that can work and work with the Committee on Disabilities. So your first question, will they be involved? The answer is yes. The second question is, will we do a process where we make sure that we're hiring the right person and they're looking holistically at all issues related to individuals that have disabilities, whether it's visually impaired, physically mobility problems, you name it, hearing impaired, and the answer is yes. But the benefit here of having different departments that have like Debbie Swensky, who is sort of the person over in human resources and someone in transportation for specifically mobility, and then someone in facilities to look at facility accessibility challenges, is that way we look at this holistically and when we look at new buildings, when we look at equipment, when we look at those kinds of things, we're addressing it with a pronged approach instead of one person trying to do it all. And so there's not one specific position, but there is, we will be hiring someone that will be kind of leading that effort and will be working with the committee with disabilities on disabilities, but not specifically just an ADA coordinator out by itself. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And then my final question, item X, I was just wondering if there was a change in the development review committee and the mayor's selections for that. I was wondering if staff or maybe the mayor might want to explain why the change on the development review committee and also why we're not having a second person on the Denton County Homeless Leadership Team. Why are we having just a staff person instead of a second council member? Certainly I'll document that for the record. That was the decision on the development committee was to have someone from district one and a renter on that body. I think that's important to have that voice heard. And the latter portion of your other part of your question was with respect to the staff. And I just think it's important to have, be it Danny Shaw or someone in her department in those meetings as well, so that we have the policy perspective and the elected official perspective in that room, it wants to act on that as needed. So that's my analysis of those two changes. And thank you. I love the answer to number one, I'm happy with that. As for number two, Danny, I believe is already on that committee or at least she already attends all those, the meetings. So we do already have staff on the Denton County Homeless Leadership Team. Well, I used her name. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh no, I was just saying, I don't understand why we can't have a second council member. We had Briggs and Watts on it previously. Got it. Yeah. No, I understand that. I just opted not to. So I guess that's the simplest answer. I just didn't think it was most efficient. So I'll leave it at that. Okay. Any other questions for staff on the consent agenda? Great. So what I have is we're pulling A for brief presentation. No presentation on the following T, W and K and if, did I miss anything? Any other questions before we move forward to the work session? Great. Thank you very much. So with that, that'll move us to work session reports. Item three on the agenda, I'll call the first item, which is ID 202505, receive a report and hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the potential sale of the Texas municipal power agency Gibbons Creek Stream electric station and related assets in Grimes County, Texas. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, Terry Nolte, assistant general manager at DME and currently serving as interim director of water and wastewater. I've on the phone with me today to answer questions when I finished the presentation, Bob Kahn, who is the general manager of TMPA, Carl Shahadi, who's attorney for TMPA, Al Axe, the outside environmental council and Robert McCormick, outside council on the primary transaction attorney for this transaction. If you'll give me a second, I will pull up the presentation. Okay. So today we're going to provide you an overview of the potential transaction to sell the Gibbons Creek plant site and to answer any questions that you may have in anticipation of council action on a concurrent ordinance, which will be before this body on January 26th. To be clear for all council members, this is the potential sale and it only deals with the 6,200 acres at the plant site, the adjoining 10,600 acres at the mine site is not part of the sale and not part of today's agenda posting. Little background on Gibbons Creek steam electric generating station. It is owned by Texas municipal power agency and you can see the ownership split between the four cities of Garland, Bryan, Denton and Greenville. The plant, the agency is a joint action agency formed to build and operate the Gibbons Creek station and for the transmission system required to deliver energy from the plant to the member cities. It was a 470 megawatt lignite and coal fire generator. For comparison purposes, the Denton energy center is a 225 megawatt gas fired generator. The site itself as part of this transaction is 6,170 acres and it includes the Gibbons Creek reservoir. The plant was in operation for 35 years from '83 to 2018 and since the shutdown, staff at TMPA has been doing a number of studies in anticipation of the closure of the site and decommissioning. Here we see an overview of the plant site itself. We have Gibbons Creek reservoir out here to the right, the power plant itself and then we have the various coal combustion residual units which are the areas of the plant where the residuals from the combustion of coal were stored and in many cases or in most cases disposed of for long term. We have landfill site A, landfill site F, the ash ponds and the scrubber sludge ponds. These are considered coal combustion residual units which are regulated by the US EPA's coal combustion residual regulations which were just finalized. The decommission and remediation costs for the site were estimated to be $88 million with an ongoing cost of approximately $500,000 a year for 30 years, so $15 million in ongoing monitoring, sampling and reporting. And then we also would have operations and maintenance of the dam and a natural gas pipeline that transacts the site. There have been several attempts to enter into transactions to sell the plant site. The most recent one was issued, a proposal was issued in 2019 and that proposal sought to decommission the plant and remediate all of the CCR units providing bonding, surety bonds for the remediation activities and post closure activities. The ongoing costs which I mentioned are securitized by the surety bond, the post closure security bond if the transaction closes. Direct proposals were submitted in August of 2019 and in September of 2019 the TMPA board directed staff to begin negotiations with Chara Melt Solutions and they have been negotiating that transaction since that time. Chara Melt Solutions formed the Gibbons Creek Environmental Redevelopment Group which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chara, it's a Texas registered limited liability corporation. The original transaction which many of you are aware included the potential restarting of the coal-fired power plant was not successful and the transaction before you for consideration requires the demolition of the coal plant and retains the original economics of the proposal. On December 10th of 2020 the TMPA board approved the asset purchase agreement which is anticipated to save the member cities $48 million as compared to self-performance of the remediation and demolition activities. Since that time the finance committee and the planning and operating committees have determined that extending the pollution liability policy is in the member's best interest at a cost of an additional $230,000 and the TMPA board will be taking that under consideration on January 7th. Under the joint operating agreement which governs the participation of the members in the governance of the of the agency and operations of the agency the concurrent ordinance required for this sale approval must be approved by all cities. We'll talk a little bit about the buyer, again I mentioned it's Gibbons Creek Environmental Redevelopment Group that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chara. Chara is a publicly traded company with half a billion dollars of annual revenues. They're a leading provider of combustion byproducts management in the U.S. and in Canada. They are currently performing a number of these types of projects across the country and they also can provide O&M services for ash management at coal-fired power plants and nuclear power plants, operations and maintenance at nuclear power plants. The performance of Chara is or the performance under the agreement is not securitized by the balance sheet of Chara. It's securitized by independent bonds and pollution liability insurance and so a default of Chara the corporation would still leave TMPA with sufficient financial security to continue the closure activities. The major provisions of the agreement include for TMPA the buyers to assume all the environmental liabilities of the site, they'll indemnify TMPA against any future claims, they'll remediate and decommission all the plant, the plant itself, remediate all the CCR units, provide a performance bond in the amount of $36.5 million, that bond will be reduced over the remediation activities down to a level of $2.84 million which will be retained until the post closure bond is delivered. Post closure is a post closure bond is required to securitize the ongoing costs of the monitoring and operation of the CCR units as I mentioned before. The property itself will be governed by special warranty deeds that extend the indemnification to future land owners and all future land owners of the parcels containing the CCR units must indemnify TMPA and the member cities. There's a $25 million pollution liability insurance policy naming TMPA and the members as additional insured and we are beneficiaries of all the obligations. For CHARA or the purchaser, they received 6,200 acres including all the structures at the plant and the reservoir, initially TMPA pays CHARA $6.584 million and we set up an environmental escrow of $28.546 million. That escrow fund along with the initial payment is used to fund the remediation projects and will be drawn down over a 34-month period which the draws will be controlled by the TMPA environmental designee. The transaction economics are fairly compelling. What we did here on this page is we looked at three different options scenario one is the sale of the plant. As you can see the out-of-pocket cost to TMPA is $36.63 million. Option scenario two is a default of CHARA during the remediation activities. We estimate the out-of-pocket cost to be $78.96 million and scenario three, which is used as a comparison, which I'll refer to as the self-performance scenario, has an out-of-pocket cost of $84.65 million. The sale that's before you for consideration or for questioning tonight and for consideration on the 26th is projected to save $48 million to the members. For DME and for Denton, it's a $10.3 million savings as compared to scenario three. Relative to our budgets, we had originally budgeted $21.3 million as our share of the remediation and demolition decommissioning costs. Our one-time cost under this proposed sale is $7.75 million and results in a five-year savings as compared to budget of $13.57 million. For next year, or sorry, for this fiscal year, it's about $1.8 million of savings as compared to the budget. Risk management is a key aspect of this transaction and a lot of effort has been put in to ensure that the risks associated with the remediation and the long-term potential environmental impacts of these CCR units is adequately managed. With regard to future land use, there will be perpetual deed restrictions placed on those parcels where the CCR units are remediated. Those deed restrictions will limit future land use so that the waste is not disturbed. TMPA will have veto rights on future land transfers if the deed restrictions and insurance requirements are not met for those parcels. The remaining parcels will be evaluated to determine if they are clean, that there's no known contamination on the sites, or dirty if there is known contamination on the sites. We expect that outside of the CCR units, all the other parcels will be clean. And those parcels, the buyer is permitted to redevelop the parcels without restriction subject to the Grimes County land use requirements. And then from an accountability perspective, I mentioned the environmental representative. So TMPA will have an on-site environmental representative who will monitor the activities of the buyer to ensure that they're following proper procedures and achieving milestones that are set out in the schedules and will consequently approve the release of funds from the escrow account to pay for the remediation. So in summary, this transaction represents a potential savings of $48 million to the members versus self-performance for Denton, $10.28 million of savings versus budget, and $1.8 million versus our 2021 budget. The environmental risks associated with the profile is greatly reduced for TMPA and the members. And we have the additional 10,000 plus acres of mine land that ultimately will be sold at a later date. The TMPA board will take action on that at some time in the future. We will retain, TMPA will retain all the transmission assets on the plant site. Those are valuable assets to the members. And again, on the 25th, we'll be coming back to you with a request to approve the concurrent ordinance. That's the ordinance that will be approved by all four cities. And with that, I will pull this down and answer any questions. >> Thank you, Terry. Okay. Questions for staff. Councilmember Meltzer. >> Thank you. There's some information that I've gotten in advance from staff that we've all seen that has been a little unclear. First of all, is there any scenario where there would not be environmental cleanup? I mean, sure enough, somebody is saying they're going to do it and not, like the default scenario. But whether we did this deal or didn't do that deal, is it the case that in any scenario the required environmental cleanup will have to be performed and will be performed and be budgeted for? >> Yes, sir, there is no scenario in which those CCR units will not be remediated to a level that is in compliance with U.S. EPA or TCEQ regulations. >> And then on the question of whether -- this I think is the big kind of environmental sort of Damocles over Denton, if you will, is there any scenario where the coal plant is recommissioned? I had the impression from some staff communication before that there's no realistic scenario at all for that to happen, but I notice in this presentation that that was in fact looked at earlier, in fact, with this party. So I'm a little unclear. Is there in any realistic scenario with the deal, without the deal, of the coal plant being restarted? >> I'm going to ask Bob Kahn, the general manager at TNPA, to answer that question. Bob, if you're on, you may have to press star six to get off mute. >> Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah, Bob Kahn, general manager at TNPA, and yeah, there is no scenario where they can restart it. We have the schedule attached to the asset purchase agreement as to what they're supposed to do, and the schedule has them taking it down. It is not going to restart. >> I understand that within this deal, this is absolutely a deal to permanently and forever decommission the plant. My question is, if this deal didn't happen and there have been so many deals before that didn't happen, is there any scenario where that plant could be restarted realistically? >> If this deal did not happen, we would take it down. No plan to run it. It doesn't make economic sense. >> Okay. So this isn't about then. Go ahead. I'm sorry. >> No, I was just going to say it doesn't make economic sense. That's why we shut it down to begin with. >> Sure. >> Yeah. >> So this deal isn't about whether we prevent the coal plant from restarting. There's no scenario where the coal plant restarts. There's no scenario where the environmental cleanup doesn't happen. Mayor, if I can just go a little bit further just to kind of get all the pieces addressed. So in the presentation, the cash costs have been addressed, but then there's the transfer of land, which ultimately is part of the payment incentive to GSERC. That has a value. Is there an understood value of post-remediation value of the 6,200 acres? >> Well, so I heard two questions. First, there is no chance that the site will not be cleaned up, and there's no chance the unit will run. And as far as the value of the site post-closure, it's difficult to say what it would be used for. We know that we believe the reservoir is worth some money, it's a lot of water, and the land is not worth all that much because of what was there, you know, what's there now. We estimate it's about $24 million, which we've taken into account in calculating your savings. So in other words, like Terry said, it looks like it's about $108 million to clean up the site, including post-closure, and if you subtract the $24 million, you arrive at a number that gives you the $48 million savings. And just for what it's worth, to me, one of the biggest headaches is post-closure, 30 years of monitoring is just a pain. >> Okay. I guess where I'm going, if I can sort of come to a point, if it's worth $24 million, it's worth $24 million, whether to them or to us or to anybody else who would buy it. Do we know what the price -- and I accept that on your saying so, that GSERG is apparently far more efficient and knowledgeable at doing this cleanup than we could be on our own. Is there a price at which they would want to do this work that did not involve the transfer of land? In other words, let's say at the point and time in the future where they would acquire the remediated land, if they acquired $24 million, would they be economically indifferent and would TNPA be economically indifferent because that land has that value? Whoever owns it. >> Right. I guess my first point is that that's our guesstimate of what an appraisal might bring. I have no idea what deals Chara is working on or negotiating for the use of the land. I know they're looking at dividing it into 10 parcels. And if we were to hire them, we've actually discussed this very point you're raising like, well, if they're so much more efficient, why don't we just hire them to do this instead of us doing it for $108 million, and the thought is, I don't know what their internal costs are, but I -- and Terry might be able to help me with this. He might have a little more experience on this, but I would think they're going to charge us a lot more than their internal costs to do this deal if they were going to respond to an RFP just to do this, they're going to want to have profit built into this. I'm not sure it would make sense. I don't know that they would even want to do it. If they did, it would be a lot more than their internal costs. Sure. Well, and presumably they're seeing that value in the 6,200 acres. Yes. Yes. I'll wait here for the rest of the discussion. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so I'm concerned that surrounding properties are listed at around twice the market value. If someone could speak to how the value of this property, the described value was arrived at compared to adjacent properties. Yes, Councilmember Armitage, could you be a little more specific? Are you saying that properties surrounding the plant site have a higher property value than what we've estimated? Yeah, this is according to the DECAD, the maps that have there where you can click and it shows the property value. I know that land is bought and sold at different prices that it doesn't necessarily determine with the selling price or the buying price, but I was just wondering if someone could speak to that. Yeah, let me just give you, I think one thing to remember is that obviously this is an industrial site surrounded by fairly pristine farmland and there's known contamination on the site from the disposal of coal combustion waste. That certainly reduces the value of the site and the long-term land used options for such a site would be less. And so, Bob, if you have anything to add to that, please go ahead. No, I agree, that's your spot on. So can I ask a follow-up question to that? So when Chara cleans it up, then that will raise the value presumably, which is part of how they can make money off or part of why they're interested in it, I would assume, because they're a for-profit entity. So they're going to do something that raises the value and the cleanup, I would imagine, is part of that, correct? Well, we don't know what the value is that they've attributed to the property and the resale and redevelopment of the property. That's not been part of the negotiation. It's not a deal term. And so we are conveying to them the 6,200 acres as part of the transaction, what they choose to do with it, given the restrictions that we're placing on them for those areas that have known contamination, the CCR units. That's their business. And any answer that I would give you would be pure speculation. Okay. Thank you. And one more to that. Is there any known contamination at any of the surrounding sites? I'm guessing that that hasn't been studied, but it's possible. What do you mean by surrounding sites, Council Member? Adjacent properties. I mean, TMPA is concerned, our concern today is this property, but I'm wondering if there's any known contamination on adjacent properties. I'm not aware of any, Bob. Are you? I think it's not really germane to the discussion because we're talking about only the property owned and controlled by TMPA. Well, sir. Correct. But I am not aware of any, though. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Great. Then Mr. City Manager, what do you need from us as far, do we need anything or just this presentation and we'll take it up in the future? Yeah. We're just trying to make sure that you understood the main deal points and get your questions out so we can bring it back for you here in the next week or so. Great. Is this teed up next week or the 26th? It is on the 26th agenda at this point. Yeah. Just to introduce you to the deal points and make sure that we had any questions out there and knew what your concerns were. Great. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else care to speak before we go back around to the same members? Okay. Council Member Davis. Yeah. Just to kind of maybe put a finer point of what we've been talking around, Terry, I really appreciated your slide on the economics of the deal and why it makes sense to us, like why it makes fiscal sense to the city. I think it would be helpful for the council to understand why this new group, I guess the new old group that originally was talking about potentially recommissioning the plant, what their economic interest is, how they're going to make their money, does it depend on them because the big concern is future land use, right? We know it's going to get cleaned up. We will never know precisely what the future land use is because it won't be our property anymore, but it would be helpful to know if they're banking on a model that includes putting a bunch of summer homes around the lake or if they're banking on the water rights or if they're going to make their breaking point, if their bottom line depends on selling the coal ash and selling the equipment, like how are they making their money off the deal? That would help us understand some motivations in the future land use side of the equation. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments before we go back around? Are we going to hear the answer to that? Well, I think that was a future ask. I don't know that they're prepared to answer that today. Well, there's some of that in the backup, obviously, that touches on that. So that may be what he's pointing towards, but I'm assuming Terry will bake in that and represent it, but Terry, correct me where I'm wrong. No, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, I think we can certainly ask the buyer if they would be willing to share those insights with us. However, I would point out again, as this is an arm's length transaction and the four points of the agreement, the four corners of the agreement do not require them to divulge their land use plans. I don't know whether they will respond. We do know what the land use requirements or regulations are in Grimes County, and that would be the extent of what I know I can provide to you, Mayor Pro Tem, if that would be sufficient. Well, I appreciate your offer to ask them. I think if it doesn't jeopardize the deal to ask the question, and if they say, "Well, that's not part of the deal. We don't have to divulge it," then that's our answer. It would be helpful to know, Denton County has certain PNZ-type responsibilities here. What does Grimes County have in place? What are the land use restrictions going to be? Then even just a little bit of what was alluded to earlier, we know people aren't going to be building houses on top of an old coal ash brownfield site. Is that the same for the rest of the area around the reservoir? What do we know about the land use that we can factor into our decision-making and share with constituents? Because I think that's the biggest concern people have is future land use. The economics of it make perfect sense. The future land use are the big questions. And we may never have all those answers, I understand that, but whatever we know would be useful to know. Understood. And Bob, do you want to have any comment or response to that? We will talk to the buyer and see what they're willing to tell us. And we will do some research on Grimes County zoning and how that would work going forward, and provide that to you, Terry. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other first comments? Seeing none, Council Member Meltzer. So in order to kind of pin down another question mark that would help us understand the full value of this opportunity and the alternatives, can we ask the question, what would the price be for them to do it as a contractor? We know it'll be more than their cost, I stipulate that. But what would that price be? And then we can evaluate how we might, it might be economically neutral to us, but leave control of the 6,200 acres future. For instance, let's say all parties agreed that that land is worth $24 million. They've got $36 million in various forms of payments, plus the value of that land, that's $60 million. So if there were a cash contracting deal where they were paid $60 million, presumably that would be economically the same to them. If you give, you know, see what my supposition so far, $60 million would be the same to them as the current deal. It would be the same to TNPA as the current deal, but it would leave the future land use under TNPA control. So that's why I asked the question, could we ask what that price would be? If you, is that your, list your questions, we'll have to go through that as a body. It's just one question. It's just one question. Okay, well, I just want to get them all, that's fine. I just want to, we'll take that up in a bit because as a body, we would have to make that decision if we're going to ask staff to go do that level of, and ask the buyer to do that level of, it's almost an RFP process for them to evaluate it a different way. It has potential harm to the deal, which is fair. I just want to make sure everyone in the body, there's a majority of the body that wants to move that direction before we do that level of work. And if there is not, then I don't know that I'm comfortable with staff proposing that without support to make sure that there's enough buy-in that if they come back with a number, it's actionable. And that doesn't take into account our partners in this deal and their feelings. And so it, there's a lot of moving parts there. So just wanted, I noted the question, we'll come back to it, council member Armature. Yes, so I thought that I understood what council member Meltzer was asking and that I agreed with it. I'm wondering the pair, the response just now, maybe I'm misunderstanding. So if council member Meltzer could restate your suggestion. The question is very simply, what would be their price to do the work without just to be paid with money instead of with land? That's really it. In which case, at the end of that process, if we were to go down that road, TMPA would retain control of land. Yes, so I like that idea. I mean, right now, you know, they're being paid with money and land. They're getting both from TMPA, but I do really like that idea. I support that. So I join you. Okay. So just simply put that that was, let me get all the questions. Are there any other questions for staff? Okay, great. Well, council member Armature. Oh yeah. So if staff could just confirm, I'm pretty sure I know the answer. But is it true that TMPA hasn't considered a solar array and battery storage or some combination on that property, some alternative energy source that would be owned by TMPA? I know it's a possibility that that might come there from whoever buys from Sarah, but is that correct that that was not a consideration of TMPAs? Terry, before you speak to that, I'm going to ask the city attorney if we're still on posting to talk about another energy plant. That's outside the scope. Thank you. Okay, then go ahead, council member Armature, you can speak to that. I'll just state it to my understanding that that was not it was not considered. I think that's unfortunate. I just wanted confirmation on that. Okay, and rest on my understanding that that is the case. Certainly, and you're not precluded from having that conversation with staff in a different format. So I'd encourage you to reach out to them and have that conversation so that you can get the answers you need before the vote. So that being said, I guess I need to see a show of hands. Mr. Mayor, could I interject one thing because I wanted to get a clarification on Councilmember Meltzer's question. So what I heard was that if the buyer was willing to provide a price to TMPA for the remediation of the site and that price was less than $60 million, which is the total of the $24 million of the land and the $36 million of out of pocket cost, that that might be something that this council might be interested in other councils, other city councils may not be interested in that. But I would just point out that there is a huge reduction in the risk profile associated with this transaction, that such an analysis would not in any way give credence to the fact that the risk profile is vastly reduced from one in which TMPA would continue to own the property. Let me first, if I may respond, first on the narrow point, I was saying it might be equal. Let's say, let's imagine that there's an easily determined value of the land, just for simplicity sake. And if it were equal, where we're economically indifferent, then we could have a discussion about control of future land use and absolutely the ongoing liability. So I think that there are two kind of probabilistic, big probabilistic factors that weigh on this. One is the unknown downside risk of the liability. The other is the unknown upside potential of the land. And just whatever you want to associate with land use, they're both sort of qualitative. But we don't know what the other alternative would look like. And it may be completely unpalatable. So I'm just asking that we know what the other alternative looks like so we can consciously make that decision. Okay. And so, Terry, I will note, I mean, I want to be very careful about that. To this point right now, there are two council members that have shown interest that does not constitute this council, if you will, or a majority of this council. So I want to be careful about that because there are other cities, there are other entities that are watching this, reviewing this. And we need to be extra careful about what we're communicating and how we communicate, in my opinion. You know, in fact, Mayor, if I could modify, it would probably be more appropriate to say, rather than to request that we go to the other party, it would be more probably appropriate to say that my request is that we go to the other partners to ask if they have interest in asking the question, right, because we're not acting independently. So in other words, you know, we shouldn't take it on ourselves. We have partners. So really, my ask is to take it to the parties, you know, to probe their interest in knowing this answer. Okay. So, thank you for the question. John, I take your point. Thank you. Good point. And so, I'm assuming, Councilor Armitage, you support it all the same, taking the question to the parties. But then I need to hear, so correct me where I'm wrong. And then also, I need to hear, are there others that are interested, that would support asking that question of our partners in this deal? So for me, it's just a Denton decision, but I'll go along with that so that there's two of us to have the, at least the agreement of two of us, for me, and you know, it is up to each council body to decide, you know, what they think is best. Okay. Well, let me... Can I just ask, are we going to have a conversation about this or because we're asking staff questions and people are making statements, but is there going to be opportunity for a work session style conversation? No, I don't. If there's no support for it, if there's not a majority support for it, then no, there wouldn't be further discussion. We're going to wrap this up. Well, because I've asked my questions, but I have some concerns to express. Okay, well, I thought you... Let's take it one at a time, so let's back up. So first thing we're going to do is resolve the question. Council Member Melters asked if we can reach out to our partners and ask if there's an appetite to have the contractor go back and cost just to do as a service and also a component of that would be, is there an interest to maintain ownership of the property? That's a component. So those two. So ask about them only being contractor and maintaining ownership of the property. That question being asked to our business partners in this deal. So the other cities, our municipalities, and so I'm trying to see if there is majority support for that. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I understand where Council Member Melter is coming from with the question, but the answer to his question in a roundabout way was found earlier in the conversation when the conversation was about here's how much it's going to cost for us to do it ourselves. The City of Denton's not sending guys down there to do remediation. We'd be hiring people, we'd be hiring a company to do that. So the estimated cost at that time was quite a bit more. And then Terry made the comment about a very safe assumption we could make that the internal costs for this company to do it would be less because they're already spun up. That's what they do. That's their business. And then on top of that, to hire them, that there's going to be a profit margin for them built into that for us to hire them. And then to somehow think that there'd be a deal worked out where we could hire them at a lower cost than the current deal we're working on and that would somehow balance out in our favor. I'm just trying to imagine what in the world, what stars could possibly align to make that happen. And I'm also very confident that TNPA has been working on this problem since what, 1980 something when we started realizing that someday this plant was going to get shut down when coal stopped being real profitable to use. So I don't need an answer to that question because I think it's baked into what we have already. If there's a better answer out there that TNPA has already analyzed, any information is helpful. I'd be happy to see that and thankful for it. But I don't feel the need to go back out there and reslice this deal up because the economics of it are pretty straightforward. Okay. Thank you. So again, just so the question is before the before the council, are there others outside of council member Meltzer and armature to support going back to our partners to discuss the possibility of hiring the, and I forget the company name as a Chara as a contractor one and then to maintaining owner ownership of the property. One more time. Okay, seeing no action. Again, Terry, I think the question remains simply with that question, we don't need an answer to but, but the other comments that Councilmember Davis requested. And if you if TNPA does have legacy data that they have in prior research, by all means, that's something you can sit out in the Friday report or and in the backup so that the citizens and council can review that and, and look at that legacy data around that topic as well. So that is Councilmember armor you had closing comments. Yeah, I was hoping for a discussion but I'll take closing comments. I'll just say that, number one, we can see that this is a site that is obviously zoned for industrial use because there's a coal plant there, and it is an industrial use is one of the possible potential uses, so it's something I'm concerned about. I also want to say that I'm not I don't agree that the economics of this are straightforward. I'm not saying that that these projections are disingenuous about what the cost would be for cleanup for TNPA over a number of years, but those are projections. I'd like to know more about that but you know it's clear that there's a real will to get rid of this property. It was mentioned, you know that this is an arms length transaction I understand that that's the intent but I myself don't feel comfortable with an arm length transaction of when it comes to public property. This is not in our backyard, but it's under our ownership. There's a plan that has been in the works by people at Texas A&M to turn this area into a recreational campground, not just the existing campground area, but the entire area. I would like to see that idea pursued, but I can tell that that's not the direction where we're going. I was hoping to have a discussion to try to get some language in there, but if we're not going in that direction then when this comes to a vote I'm going to have to vote no. Okay, well thank you and so Terry in summary, I think it's Councilmember Davis had asked about some figures around what and I didn't make great notes, but around those future uses and kind of that analysis so that would come back and then there's an understanding that some council members may circle back with you on independent issues that may be outside of scope that they have questions about. Is there anything else you need from us to make sure you have the proper direction? No, Mayor, thank you very much. I took good notes and understand exactly what Mayor Pro Tem Davis is after. We will provide that information to you. Great, thank you and thank you Bob for your insight and for providing that additional information. Yes sir. Okay, with that I will close, we'll move on to item B of the work session. So that is work session ID20-2252. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding legislative update and program for the 87th session of the Texas Legislature. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. This is Rachel Ballthorpe Mendelson, Assistant to the City Manager and this afternoon I'll present on the 2021 State Legislative Program. Thank you. Can you all see that okay? That looks good to me. Yes, all good. This afternoon's objectives, we're going to take a look at the legislative outlook and process and we'll also review some high level overview for the 2021 program and we're also going to try to seek approval of the resolution that will adopt the program and we'll discuss that as an IC item later this evening. So as far as an outlook goes for the 87th session, we expect that the impact of COVID-19 will be at the forefront. The currently the virtual hearings and testimony themselves, they're still uncertain, although there has been some discussion and talks about how Lieutenant Governor will open the Senate side of things, there's still no hard and fast word about how that will look this year so far. We're also expecting there to be some limitations and potential screenings for any in-person participation. We do know, we got word yesterday that the Capitol did say that certainly masks will need to be worn by anyone that shows in the Capitol and there may very well be some screenings that will take place ahead of time. We do expect possibly a minimalist approach this year as far as how the legislature will take a look at everything, but again, still so much is uncertain since we haven't heard word about how they're going to proceed. What we do expect is that we expect another round of legislature versus cities part two, if you will, where we think a focus on removing the authority for local control at the legislative level will take place, specifically where some unfunded mandates are concerned. The themes for this year, we think again, will be related to COVID-19 response and there are some public safety issues that we believe will come to the forefront, some elections concerns and also some revisiting of the 86th session. Just as a bit of an overview and a guide as far as what the legislative process looks like here in Texas, when a bill gets filed, they're read and referred to committees and once they reach the committee, they then get consolidated or amended, they could be passed or they could be stalled. Further, when they get to the floor, again, they could be amended or they may also be returned to the committee or they could get passed or not passed. Once we get a little further, they could go to conference where the House and Senate versions are then aligned and they then could actually get sent back again to each house for approval once that happens. After that portion, it would then go to the governor, a bill would go to the governor for his signing or his not to sign it and he also has the right to veto item. As far as our delegation and advocacy resources here at the city are concerned, our local delegates are Representative Lynn Stuckey and he's in the House District 64. He's on the Appropriations Committee, we have Senator Jane Nelson with District 12 and she's on the Finance and State Affairs Committee and we also have newly elected Senator Drew Springer who his committees have yet to be assigned since he was just recently elected. We should know more about what committee he gets assigned to appointed to once session actually begins next week. As far as our resources here go, our internal team consists of staff members from CMO, Public Affairs and Legal but we also have quite a broad cross-departmental team who are consistently reviewing bills and legislature as it comes in. We have the Texas Municipal League is a really big resource for us. They have a big city coalition which we're a part of which is exactly what it sounds like it's just the biggest cities in Texas and representatives of each where we get together on calls and discuss big issues that might be presented before us. We also have legal and advocacy support systems that are available to us and we have our legislative consultants. Right now we'll actually discuss this a little bit more later this evening but we're looking at focused advocacy on the utility side and Jackson Walker to be our general government representatives. Just wanted to provide a little chart a little flow chart if you will for what the internal evaluation looks like as it relates to bills here. So once we get them in we'll look at them initially and we could go one of one of two ways we'll either monitor them and potentially take no action if it's not going to be feasible or realistic for us to pursue anything but then further we on the other side we would then send it towards legal and operational analysis where we send it over to again our cross-departmental team members who would then provide some more in-depth review and from there we would take action in a number of ways but further we could just need to further monitor things before we get to that point. But once enough action is taken that means in Austin it could very well be in many different forms it could come in the form of testimony it could come by outreach it could be we would join a coalition with with other entities that may be interested in the same thing or it could need council action so that we can pursue something further with all the desired outcomes in those references being that we would either get the bill passed if it's a favorable favorable bill for the city if we might need to ask for a friendly amendment to a bill that's been presented or if we may need to delay or block a bill entirely. The purpose of the program itself is that it serves as the policy document of the City Council and it also provides a clear and pre-vetted position on statements that are just a wide range potential legislative issues. It also gives us direction and how we need to respond to proposed and filed legislation during session. We don't need for council to articulate a position on every possible issue but certainly our issue is going to our focus rather is going to be on municipal issues and broad themes and those will most likely be addressed in this legislative session. Just as far as our program is concerned the draft was attached to your backup and I'll not reread everything as far as the statement of preservation and support goes those are included there for you but just as another reminder those are our general statements there for you. Just wanted to just give another quick look at the general program policy areas that we're looking at this year those include general government revenue and taxation economic development land use and resources transportation utilities community development and human services and lastly public safety and municipal court. Our recommendation today is that City Council approve the resolution that will adopt this program our we will come back to you and subsequently present any necessary resolutions to council that we may need in order to clarify really specific positions on pertinent pending legislation that may come up. If there are items not addressed in the program specifically a council member can request through a one minute pitch to have a resolution brought forward in either support or opposition on proposed bill for the rest of council consideration and we'll certainly provide regular updates during the session via the Friday report. So with that I'll stop for questions and I'm happy to address anything you may have. Great thank you. Questions for staff council member Armitter. Yeah so I approve of the general program it's broad and kind of captures values that I think are shared by a number of Texas municipalities home rural municipalities of our size. I'm wondering if what my colleagues on council would think about maybe this year comparing our legislative priorities with other cities and seeing maybe if in future years we could collaborate if as I suspect we have very similar legislative priorities to certain other cities and therefore kind of spread the cost around. So we're not carrying the cost of having a special legislation just for Denton and also strengthening our argument by showing that we're part of a coalition of cities wondering if anyone on council would be interested in that as both the kind of strengthening measure and also to save money. Okay and we can take that up but I want to get all your questions for staff in first so I have that noted we'll come back to it and propose that. Do you have any other questions for staff. No okay great so then if is there questions from the council on what council member Armitter proposed legislative priorities and grouping of such council member Meltzer. I'm interested with a sort of a twist I'm particularly interested let's say in understanding what the legislative priorities are for other north Texas cities you know kind of our region I think generally the efficiencies and the coordination for for city legislative priorities in general in Texas is is well handled by the Texas Municipally. Okay any others you know so so I'd love to hear somewhere along the way what we know about what our you know our fellow Denton County and North Texas cities are thinking. Okay any other council members and then I'll allow staff to speak to that as well so council members on the question of grouping a legislative grouping legislative priorities with others other municipalities. Okay Mr. City Manager. Yeah Mayor thank you I think council member Armitter's point we already do coordinate quite a bit that's what the TML and the city's city lobby groups legislative groups do is we do compare and contrast you're going to see almost exclusively an emphasis on local control you know each city that especially their home rural municipalities having the ability to control their own financial fate and they'll will be united and kind of working with each of our respective legislators to to hold those back you're not going to see a lot of combination of legislative consultants because each city you know especially the large cities run their own specialized legislation in Austin there could be you know everything from PID districts to you know the small bills that they're trying to get approved to with with special legislative districts so we're all going to be slightly different but the overarching theme is is going to be on local control this last couple of elections and making sure that we understand what those impacts are so that that collaboration is already taking place you're just not seeing you're seeing each one of us has just slightly different perspectives there we all have slightly different approaches to dealing with the legislators depending on what our issues are for instance Denton there's not much commonality on our utility side with the exception of broad issues with Austin San Antonio Lubbock those types of garland but on the on the day-to-day things you're going to you're going to see mostly focused on financial issues and not eroding a local control home rule municipalities so that collaboration is taking place at this point already okay okay Councilmember Armatr before I come back any other questions for staff okay well Councilmember Armatr and Councilmember Meltzer yeah so just a follow-up to that to that point so I'm glad that we do that already and that was my impression I guess I'm kind of wondering if there's nothing that and maybe there is nothing unique that we're putting forward as a city this year you know you mentioned like a PID or something or some utilities deal you know that we need special permission from Austin to do might it be you know worth considering in future years if it's too late to do it this year about maybe not going in for the cost of a consultant or rather only going in for a consultant if we've got a specific specific ask that is unique that is different from those that we share with other cities yeah I think I think that's a good point it's something that we talked about in-house as well as you know do we really need to need this with TML and I think the advantage in several of us having our own groups our own legislative consultants is when we do need to touch base with different committees down in Austin and work the legislature a little bit differently there is a definite advantage to each of us being able to to bring our legislative consultants in with different relationships in Austin to try to unify that message and that is the that's really the issue with when you're talking about legislative consultants but I don't disagree right now I mean what we saw happen in the last legislative session if you remember those of you that were on the council at the time is with it with just a few days left in the session we started seeing number of specialized pieces of legislation come through that did in fact tax cap us did in fact you know do some things that and we were scrambling at the last minute trying to get all of our consultants together to just to have the conversation in Austin and you know but it's it's purely it's purely a call on the councils from the council's perspective whether you think that's a worthwhile expense okay thank you council member sorry mayor Todd if I can just add just a little bit on to that another benefit that the legislative consultants bring to us is during the interim they're also still involved with discussions and helping with our our delegation and and talks with us about any interim charges that may be brought forward so it's not strictly just during session that they're active with us that's true okay thank you for that and council member Meltzer yeah I imagine under COVID this would be very different but is in general do do we still plan to do some version of Denton County Days which I thought was you know a potentially very effective way to present a unified voice for a region you know lining up on legislation I don't know that we have that we can show that we maximize potential better that like our scorecard would show we achieved our objectives but you know to the point of organizing countywide coordination you know is that something we're looking at so I just add to that council member Meltzer that yes that that would be something that we would consider once we got a little bit more direction from the legislature as far as how all of that's going to look down there in Austin but also we will need to coordinate with our our consultants and the delegation alike all together to discuss how that might look for us if we are not able to physically go this year but a lot of it is just going to be coordination among those groups before we can say yay or nay whether or not we'll be able to go okay thank you any other questions for staff okay so you need a direction from us is that or do you think you have everything I believe it was just the recommendation we provided was for support of the resolution that will be brought forward this evening and then we can discuss that when it comes to the individual consideration item tonight yeah great okay a guiding document to these are the themes they're going to be looking out for this wasn't necessarily dealing with our legislative consultants but more the things we'll be looking for if we have if we come up with the additional acute bills this year that that affect debt and we'll be right back to you to get a policy position we like having the council and the mayor and real sensitive items that and having you pass a resolution to send down to our delegation great okay thank you well then that will conclude item B that'll take us to the last item of our work session and just for planning purposes for staff we'll take up this last item C then we'll take a I'll call the closed session and we'll take a short break to prepare the room for the for the closed session and then we'll come back after the break and take that up so I'll call item C which is ID 2100 to receive report hold discussion give staff direction on pending city council request for information thank you mayor that's actually me again I've got here with you hello I did want to check with you as far as timing for the one minute would you like to do that I have a timer handy if you need but I'm happy to help in any way yeah no if you have a timer that would be fantastic if you'd be so kind sure so what I will share the screen okay get it going there hello again Rachel still here to present to you today's pending request for information just by way of reminder and overview the work session process up to seven requests couldn't be reviewed per meeting which equates to one per council member I'll introduce each one and again today we just have one and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify it and then the room the remaining officials will have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support for the use of staff time to respond to the request and staff will respond to all requests where consensus of council is established today's is from councilmember armature to discuss the electronic blue card agenda item comment form to be revised to request people's email addresses and the request is there for you just a little bit of staff information that we provided for you in your backup so with that I'll stop sharing and councilmember armature I'm ready when you are excellent so yes what I'm requesting is actually very simple and that is the opportunity for members of the public who are providing written comments on specific agenda items to as an option as staff mentioned provide their email addresses so that their representatives on council can follow up with them lately under covid and zoom we've been getting these in the form of emails and I find myself frustrated that I'm hearing these great ideas from constituents and I have no way of responding to them other than mailing them a letter because they provide their addresses it would be an option so if someone didn't want to hear back from us or provide their email they wouldn't have to but I see no harm in it and only benefit in furthering the democratic process okay I'll open it up for discussion well I guess not discussion per se but if there's you would need to indicate if you're willing to have a is it a work session that's being requested let me make sure I'm setting the it would technically be policy sir policy okay got it okay councilmember Davis councilmember melzer so I've kind of had the same thought it would be useful to have the email address I think having it be optional you know that they don't they're not required to supply it because it's not required on our physical blue cards I was kind of curious about staff's thoughts in further depth on some of the information that was provided about changes in procedure and if we're going to have to you know edit the blue card that we hand out physically when we're back to doing things physically but none of those seems insurmountable or too problematic I think it would be helpful to have that information because a lot of times somebody will send a blue card and they they're misinformed about something I'd like them to know what the actual agenda item is or what things actually look like on the ground so I don't think we need a work session on it though I think if it kind of happened offline okay and then Mr. City Attorney and I just wanted to follow up with what Rachel said we would need a work session in that the work session is not specific to the general discussion the pros and cons it's more of a change in the rules of procedure if we if the council decides to go down this route we would have to put in our rules of procedure so that people are aware that if they do provide that information you know that they have the option to request under the Public Information Act to have their names excluded on any PIA request because they become government records so that kind of information it would be wise to amend the rules of procedure which would be a separate discussion which involves the actual amendment in the language so there would be one but not on the merits of the discussion of the email addresses it's just to make sure that we're doing this cleanly and the public understands you know that they have the right to exclude their names from PIA requests okay thank you for that insight and so I'll go to the others one minute to comment whether you support or not and so Councilmember Meltzer yeah stipulating you know everything Aaron just said makes perfect sense I think we should find the most efficient way to just do it and zoom into the 1990s okay Councilmember Ryan you're still muted sorry sorry I think I must been the other way as as presented I'm in favor of this I don't think there's necessarily in this probably go into the work session I need for to be added to our physical blue cards but on the electronic side maybe I'm fine with adding that in there okay all right and so Councilmember Baker or Johnson anything to add one minute to add to it if not that's fine we have four but I want to give you an opportunity Councilmember Johnson I think it's a good idea and that would give people a more personable information from us and so I think it would be great thank you Councilmember Baker so still muted there and I'm watching so while he's working on that I think they oh gotta go there we go no yes sir thank you okay well then I think if with that support Mr. City Manager if you can come back with the path forward that you with legal and staff and kind of what if it can be phased and that's great but otherwise we'll just take some guidance from you on what's the best way to do that I think it is important to hear that language the legal exposure just so people understand what's what's what their rights are so okay thank you thank you for that and so with that I will that concludes our work session item C and our work session I will call the closed session and I'll convene this closed session at 4 38 p.m. we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas government code five five one dot zero seven one and let's take a 15 minute break and come back to reconvene the closed session so I'll adjourn briefly for a break a 15 minute break at 4 38 and we'll be back at in 15 minutes thanks and welcome to this evening's regularly scheduled City Council meeting today is January 5th it is 6 30 p.m. we do have a quorum and so that we will get started with the first item on the agenda pledge of allegiance to the US and Texas flag please stand with me if you're able 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 pledge honor the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God one and indivisible thank you and that takes us to second item on our agenda present presentations from members of the public of which we have three that are scheduled and so I'll get staff to get those online okay got it and it'll be just one moment and if staff will correct me three minutes four minutes thank you okay. Thank you for your patience. Okay are you there this yeah this is Jonathan hello Jonathan this is Mayor Hutz within the Denton City Council if you could please again just give your name first and last name and your address and then you'll have four minutes to address council yes sir this is Jonathan King I live at 2916 frontier drive in Denton 76210 and just start yes sir yeah and we voted for you my wife and I thanks for coming by our doorstep and thank you you're too kind thank you yes so you know I was informed when I was doing a permit for a accessory dwelling unit in ADU I own nine properties here in Denton eight of which are rental properties and the trends now are somewhat moving towards smaller rather than bigger as far as ADU's go if you know you've heard of the tiny houses you've heard of the there's new pod houses which are basically like shipping containers that are finished pre-finished out in a very tasteful format and those are about 320 square foot and the tiny homes can go even smaller than that and I was told by some of the planning and zoning members that there there was a new amendment that was up for adoption on changing the ADU requirement to 400 square foot minimum and that really alarmed me because I was planning on doing some pods some tiny homes on a couple of my lots that are 320 square foot and I just felt like that was restricting unnecessarily the tax paying citizens of this city I've been here almost 20 years and I just felt like just making an arbitrary 400 square foot minimum was just unnecessarily restricting the citizens tax paying citizens to a an arbitrary number that would kill my idea of building these tiny homes just to on on some of my the land that I own here so I have the rental houses and in the back I was going to plan on doing an ADU that was 320 square foot and if we were to adopt the 400 square foot minimum that would restrict my ability to do that and I just wanted to speak at this at the city council meeting to say I'm against that because I feel that unnecessarily restricts the tax paying citizens of this county of this city so I just wanted to say my piece I feel like I pay my taxes I I pay them on time every year I'm going to pay them this month probably 10,000 plus worth of tax dollars and I feel like to make a 400 square foot minimum on ADUs is just not right at least make it two or 300 square foot so I could make my 320 square foot tiny home project work so I just wanted to say that okay and and if you'll hang on we'll see if we have any questions for you and we do at least one councilmember armator question yes thank you for for speaking I agree with you and I'm wondering you know I have not heard of any restriction to a 400 foot minimum I'm wondering if we can get someone on staff to comment on that and I think we'd be happy to put something together their Friday report I'm not sure I've got the right staff here to answer that question right now yeah I'll ask okay thank you I agree with you thanks okay thank you yeah so mr. King we will if you go to the city's website and if you'll send an email to any any of the council members we'll make sure we get you looped in but you can also check those Friday staff reports you can just go cityofdenton.com in the search bar just type in staff reports and there's a Friday report and comes out magically missically every Friday and so so that it will be there but please contact one of us we'll follow up with you make sure you get a link to that and you can review that information and I appreciate you bringing that to light and thank you for calling yes sir thank you for hearing me yes sir goodbye all right have a good have a good night yes sir okay that and then staff will bring up the next caller we have two more hello this is Brandy Price and I was at 2 4 2 4 West Oak Street apartment 245 and Denton 7601 I have a little problem hearing you through my computer so hopefully you guys can hear me can you give me a thumbs up someone yes we can hear you fine good thank you because I can't hear you through the video I just want to talk about the recycling issues at Northlake Recycling Center I know obviously that people had a lot of things to do after Christmas but I'm wondering if the city can do a better job anticipating the need for more recycling bins at that location since the location at the cupboard closed in the summer after the Dent independent coal district purchased the property all of those recycling bins which were heavily used at the cupboard have disappeared I don't know if they had been added to the Northlake Recycling Center site it would be nice if they could because I know that the city is still working on a painting of a placement site for the cupboard and yes people can go to the landfill that's way out on May Hill Road but apparently people are really using the Northlake Center because if you went there on December 26th and there were cars with a constant line of cars there was cardboard placed outside of every single bin there's also mattresses there was one mattress there were wouldn't been seen as things that are not recyclable but there was a ton of things that could have been recycled that might have been sent to the landfill I do not know because I understand if it's not placed within the city may not take it up but I even thought down with the sign and they did the right thing they folder the cardboard they had it ready to go that the city did not anticipate the need can we please anticipate this need next year if you have a recycling site that is closed please replace that I moved to Benton two years ago but I went to college here and I'm a native Texan I'm not a transplant my grandmother was born in Sangle I know that people live here because they like the fact that you have recycling 24/7 they also like the fact that you don't actually mow the parts property and actually have a donkey security guard that is cool what I'm asking is please step up and supply the demand for your citizens it's not that they don't want to do it 90% of the things I saw that I took pictures of and it's a councilwoman armature and also Paul Metso most of it was recyclable and I really hold up all the stuff outside of the bins and they go to trash and I have some questions for you Councilmember Metso actually sent me some great information I understand the city has increased the recycling site at North Lake by 52% since October 1st but until the city staff or someone gives them direction to update this or the comprehensive plan I guess for a solid work then we're not going to actually do anything to I guess have a permanent solution my question is why does it take a month or so from summer to find just the second place to go ahead and put your recycling bins that you already have possession of from the covered site that's not an act of Congress you don't need a huge ordinance you just need to put the recycling bins from that location either at North Lake I know you're getting a video that's great and I know you're going to get a gate to help curb any kind of illegal dumping which is great because you can find those people and get some revenue for the city and they shouldn't be legally dumping but to me it's really easy why can't we get another location and it shouldn't take an act of Congress to get it done that's why not and can the city better anticipate this May next December because I took pictures and I'll be happy to send it all to you and because I was not the only one who was quite shocked by it there's an older gentleman about 52 or 65 we had a long conversation about a total waste that was for the massive amount of recyclables and I have to commend the city's employees and environmental office solid waste office who actually update the recycling education on the Facebook page I am the door that gets on there and likes everything they cut out they need to raise something they need to help get that out and educate people so this is not the city's city staff problem this is just bureaucracy getting it done thank you and so I will update you though I think we've decided on a second location and staff will correct me where I'm wrong but it's at the new planning center which is under construction right now so it should be coming online soon the other thing I'll note is I would ask for your grace for staff understanding we have a reduced capacity due to the pandemic and assuming we won't have a pandemic yet next year and assuming that we haven't had a pandemic in 100 years it did affect staffing levels to a degree to be able to so it's not that it wasn't anticipated I assume it's that we're we're spread a little thin understanding the the current state of events and so doing the best we can your points are valid not dismissing those but I would just add that I think there's some extra unique challenges this year so yeah and so as you know and you've noted we we've stepped up a lot of things we have the the the video scheduled etc and the new locations identified we just have to complete construction so thank you very much for the call for information any any other questions for Mrs. Price from the council okay thank you very much thank you for the call thank you happy new year happy new year and we have one more caller hello good evening hello is this Stanton yes sir okay hello Stanton if you would give us again your name first and last name and your address your time will begin and you have four minutes awesome my name is Stanton Brazier and I live at 315 North Crawford Street thank you and you can go right ahead awesome so I've lived in Denton for 18 years I've received degrees from both UNT and TWU and as much as I love our city and state I fear that we are falling behind the rest of the country in one area and it's up to our community to make progress on a local level to send a message to Texas Congress about the needs of our people so I'm here with decriminalized Denton and what we propose is that Denton City Council adopt a resolution to ban the use of city funds for the prosecution of non-commercial cannabis offenses including drug paraphernalia and cannabis concentrate in Texas a conviction for possession of up to two ounces of marijuana can result in a jail sentence of up to six months and a fine of up to two thousand dollars while personal use of cannabis concentrate such as baked cartridges edibles and hash is a state jail felony which can carry up to two years in the state jail facility being incarcerated for cannabis related offenses is a potential death sentence due to the risk of COVID-19 exposure a growing number of incarcerated people and guards in Denton County at jail have tested positive for COVID-19 which poses a great risk for the community for community spread we should not be housing nonviolent offenders for victimless crimes for even one night due to potential exposure the science is in there's no debating it study after study shows cannabis is less harmful than tobacco alcohol and even several other over-the-counter medications it's often said that if you take a whole bottle of Tylenol it'll be the last headache you'll ever have the only way cannabis is dangerous is if you take a hundred pounds of it and have it dropped on your head by a CIA spy plane those who seek it as a safer recreational alternative or for therapeutic medicinal use are at risk for drug arrest and incarceration which can prevent them from getting housing going to school getting loans getting professional licenses getting and keeping jobs the war on drugs is creating medical and political refugees this is not hyperbole Alexis Fortale and her family were residents of DFW but due to her having multiple seizures a week with no prescription medication to ease her suffering her parents were forced to move to Colorado to receive help because our politicians in Texas were uninterested in helping her this is not some teach-and-chong argument these are real lives of our people in our city that could benefit from not having their medicinal needs criminalized studies show cannabis criminalizing cannabis and drug paraphernalia disproportionately harms marginalized communities such as people in poverty and black latinx lgbtq plus indigenous and immigrant communities Texas has had a site and release option on the books for almost 14 years now but it is up to the discretion of the arresting agency so far this policy has not been adopted in the city of Denton and not only is it cruel it's fiscally irresponsible for instance the average cost to Denton County taxpayers to incarcerate the entire Denton County jail retrial population per day is $51,566 cannabis prohibition has been just as ineffective inefficient and problematic as alcohol prohibition was in the 20s and 30s it has burdened otherwise law-abiding Texans with criminal records unfairly targeted people of color diverted policy resources from real crimes and handed over tax revenue to an underground and sometimes dangerous criminal market regulating and taxing cannabis will generate tens of millions of dollars for the state and create jobs and this is the first step that our city has the power to do and it is on a national level overwhelmingly popular and bipartisan I humbly ask that the city of Denton be leaders in this aspect so we can move forward to a society with safer access okay and any questions we have one councilmembrometer thank you Stanton and thanks for your work with a decriminalized Denton I agree with you as you know I was wondering if there's any legislation at the state level that you would recommend that the city of Denton add to our legislative agenda we met earlier today just to go over a general legislative agenda plan I was wondering if you wanted to speak to any bills in particular at the time well back in 2007 2006 it was section I think it's section 2.14 of Texas criminal code and that is the site and release policy that I mentioned earlier we do have the power to ask our police to cite and release users that way people are not spending the night in jail now that will still result in a class B misdemeanor and to me that's still problematic because if someone has epilepsy honestly if they're in our town and they have epilepsy and they have a way to get access to marijuana and that's the only thing that prevents their seizures which according to Alexis Bortel you know her dad was posting her seizures on Facebook multiple seizures per week a nine-year-old girl multiple seizures per week they took her to Colorado and got her put on Haley's Hope which is a cannabis oil and she would now go hundreds of days between seizures so this is a very real very effective medication and if someone in Denton if that's the only thing that provides them relief and we're going to put them in jail for it that's problematic to me even if they don't go to jail even if they get a class B misdemeanor and get put on probation even with just a ticket that's still problematic to me but that's at least a better step giving them a ticket instead of making them spend the night in jail and bailing themselves out that is a step forward all right thank you any other questions very good okay thank you very much for the call thank you so much you guys have a good day yes likewise thank you bye-bye thank you bye-bye okay staff do we have is there any other callers okay great so then that concludes that that will take us to item three of the agenda the consent agenda by my notes I have we have pulled items a K T and W with only a needing a presentation does anyone have anything that I've missed if not I'll take a motion councilmember Ryan I move approval of the consent agenda except for items a K T and W to be taken up individually afterwards thank you council mayor pro tem Davis I'll second thank you we have a motion and a second any discussion okay councilmember Ryan how say you all right councilmember Davis I councilmember Johnson I councilmember Baker I all right councilmember Meltzer I and councilmember armature yes thank you okay and mayor Hudson is an eye as well that passes seven zero that'll take us to item a and in the I guess would be now an item for individual consideration and so let me call that that's ID 2025 76 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton repealing ordinance number two zero zero eight one two nine relating to self fueling of aircraft at Denton enterprise airport mayor members of the council good evening Scott Gray director of airports facilities in real estate as requested earlier I do have a short presentation for you so just give me a moment to pull that up thank you okay this item is regarding the repeal of a previous ordinance and I have just a few slides to go over to give you the background and the process we went through with regards to this item the council did adopt an ordinance a 2008-129 related to self fueling that had a number of provisions in it regarding the tank size amount of fuel that needed to be pumped and so forth council then adopted ordinance 2020-40 which was regarding our airport guiding documents which included chapter three our airport rules regs and minimum standards which also had some reference to self fueling provisions and actually had a reference to the old ordinance in late 2019 med trans which is headquartered at at the airport and flies the medical air ambulance helicopters approached staff and asked if they could do self fueling with a smaller tank as such we started coordinating with the federal aviation administration compliance office that's located here in Fort Worth as part of that conversation with FAA one of the first things that we asked was could we provide an exemption or an exception for med trans giving that their medical air ambulance service and allow them to operate outside of the existing ordinance and FAA did inform us that that would be considered non-compliant to do that with our FAA guidance as they reviewed the existing ordinance they also said that the ordinance in and of itself was not in compliance with the current FAA regulations primarily as I just mentioned the tank size and gallons per year requirement they stayed it was not only arbitrary but overreaching from a standpoint of the city to its its aviation users they did recommend that we repeal that existing ordinance and put into place revised airport rule and regulation section 5-11 and lastly during the process we did get a request from our FBOs that asked to buy the fuel directly from the FBO and FAA also said that that was non-compliant as well they can buy the fuel wherever they wish just a brief slide on the public process we started with a presentation to the airport advisory board with a draft of the revised rule on March the 11th I believe it was only like five days later that unfortunately we COVID it out of the office so we didn't hold an airport advisory meeting on it on a monthly basis the next one was on June 17th where we did get some comments during the first presentation from the FBOs we revised it brought it back on June 17th then we had a fairly long hiatus there with no meetings so rather than bringing back for action we brought it back in November to the airport advisory board to once again review the entire process in case there was any additional comments and then lastly it was brought forward to the airport advisory board and and their approval was had on December 10th shortly thereafter then we had the council airport committee and they approved it as well on December 22nd so the proposed rule itself removes all of the provisions that FAA identified as being non-compliant which I've stated but specifically now it includes requirements including paying the fuel delivery fee of 22 cents per gallon fuel safety training for anybody that will operate the the fueling device and put aircraft fuel in requires insurance provisions it requires that tenant to have storm water pollution prevention plan at their expense and a spill prevention containment control plan it does require to meet all the fire code compliance which is building setbacks and so forth as well as permitting from the fire department and then lastly an airport self-fueling permit that spells out all of these requirements and that they submit to the city for consideration with that I will unshare okay and we do have one caller but I want to address questions for staff first and then we'll take the caller so any questions for staff okay seeing none if we could bring up the caller okay yeah and so are you there I am okay and if you could give your name first and last and address you'll have four minutes good evening Tony Featherstone my office address is 512 West Hickory Street in Texas and I am both a user of the airport and a commercial operator not at the Denton Airport but a commercial user of other airports my comments and I'm sorry I'm new to this zoom delay idea but my comments were basically related to the rule amendment I did see the airport manager comment about how the steps were followed from March to June and then there was quite a time in between there because of the COVID but it like most things at the airport we moved in a good direction but I don't know that there was enough public user comment for that frequently it seems like we have a lot of time but not we haven't had enough user input on some of these things and the things with self-fueling that just one that jumps out at me is we're requiring a tenant that requires or that requests self-fueling to have their own independent stormwater prevention plan the city as I understand most of the airport operates on a shared stormwater prevention plan and if that's the case why wouldn't a add-on user simply be able to pay to amend that plan because they are still on the same airport each user at the airport doesn't have their own standalone stormwater permit as I understand it so why would we require one individual self-fueler to have their own stormwater permit the second thing that is is of concern to me is that you know we should try to to make the city of Denton pro-business and and as pro-aviation as some of the other cities Arlington or Addison or any of those other cities and why are our self-fueling rates the self-fueling fees substantially higher than the flow fees that other users on the airport pay so the FBO pays one flow fee as some fueler would pay a different flow fee the city makes their same revenue gallon for gallon whether they regardless of whom sells that fuel or who dispenses that fuel so that would that would be another consideration and then my last comment is just in general about the airports promulgating of new rules this is a little off-subject but recently we've come out with some new rules that affect the private use of hangers and the use of private hangers and access to the airport while everyone in aviation is all about safety and proper and efficient use of the airport some of these rules just don't make good sense under light and an example I'm going to leave if that's my time I'll stop no you have about 30 seconds okay I was just going to say an example of one of those one of those rules is we now have access cards to the airport but we don't have a mechanism to pay for the access cards because the city can't accept money at the airport and the city doesn't accept payment for the airport at the city hall the other thing is the city airport enacted a driver's permit to be able to drive onto the access side of the airport and that is and and while we're all for that if you already have a pilot's license you have already passed the federal standard to drive on the airport side of the airport so there are sbo employees and other non-aviation users certainly that would require that training but just to have a blanket statement for everyone I believe is a bit excessive and I'll stop there thank you I appreciate it and and so um any questions for the caller I'm going to bifurcate those I have noted just for the for the council I've noted the two questions we'll come back to those but these are questions specific for the caller absent his own individual question so are there any questions for the caller council member armature yeah I was just wondering if you wouldn't mind sending a list of those concerns that you listed at the end would you mind sending those to council or to someone on staff absolutely okay any other questions for the caller great okay well thank you mr featherstone appreciate it okay thank you council I'm there yes sir okay and then so um the staff wanted so the two questions that staff would need I'd ask staff to speak to so that we can have an understanding of that would be the amended plan for self-fueling there's a difference in fees the caller would represent so just if staff wants to speak to that and then also the the and I'm going to say this wrong but there's the plan for spillage I think yes sir and so if you could speak to why the standalone requirement versus amending our current agreement certainly so let me let me go with the with the first question that you brought up which was relevant to the piece council some of the council members were around at the time in may of 2019 and you recall following a formal appraisal process with an aviation appraiser that not only appraised our land they also looked at our fee structure including fueling fees and the fees that were recommended by by that appraiser which happens to be the same fee structure that adison has is 14 cents a gallon for our FBOs and 22 cents a gallon for our private users so that's where that that difference came from and that's pretty standard across the industry they have differential fees between the FBO which is your primary service provider and your private operators the second part of that was relevant to the storm water prevention pollution plan yes we do have a a airport-wide plan that arm users have the opportunity to tag onto and sign off on however they're not required to they can each get their own if they so choose one of the provisions that was in the original ordinance and the fa did not have concerns with is actually requiring somebody that wants to put in their fuel tank at their own location although on city property to actually generate their own storm water provision plan that is separate from the cities and that's the recommendation that we did bring forward there was there was another comment mayor talked about user comments and we did have it at four of our meetings just so the council knows we do send out constant contact to all of our two or three hundred plus members of that group informing them of what's coming to the airport advisory board meetings we do post that information on facebook as well so we did engage with a number of users during during that process primarily it was the fbos we didn't get too many comments from actual less ease other than the fbos themselves so i think i've addressed the questions that were presented and be happy to answer any council questions okay any additional questions from the council seeing none i do have one follow-up and it doesn't have to be uh hammered out tonight but i hear you on the storm water prevention plan i hear that it is an option right that we opted for one versus the other but i didn't hear why we opted for that so it's uh that can you know come in an email later or you if it's to give you time to properly formulate that but i would understand and want to kind of put a finer point to that to understand we opted for one versus the other because and and that's kind of the what what i'm looking for so um and then we will go from there uh and does that answer coming later affect this decision tonight or can that be revisited um if there's and mayor because this is an airport rule and regulation if there's a desire to make a change we could take it back to the airport advisory board and make that change very easily okay great good to know so okay well thank you very much uh that's that's helpful uh and again any other questions if not i'll take a motion uh mayor pro tem davis i'm sorry you may be frozen i couldn't tell if it was me freezing or y'all freezing everybody froze i'm gonna move approval okay is there a second council member melzer actually uh will second but i'd also like to suggest that uh it might be a work session topic uh for the airport committee to just take a little more time on the items that you know that staff just went through right now just for greater understanding okay but i second great and so for discussion component of that uh council member melzer i'm with you uh i've met with mr featherstone and i provided uh staff a list of those uh concerns he has so he had they have those already uh and they're going to reach out directly to mr featherstone too so i think uh it'll be great we'll have those noted uh airport staff will talk with mr featherstone and then by the time you come back to the committee there may be some changes or at least uh uh we've had a conversation back and forth to to launch from so that'll be good uh okay so will any other discussion okay uh mayor pro tem davis how how say you i uh council member melzer aye okay uh council member baker uh thank you uh council member johnson aye thank you uh and and then council member armature yes and council member ryan aye and mayor hudspeth is an i as well that that uh item a passes seven zero um that will bring us to just items for individual votes on um item from the consent agenda item k i'll take a motion yes sir i'm sorry council member melzer yeah i mean i'm happy to ask the question after you have a motion a second if you prefer but i do have a question for staff about it okay yes let's do that if i can if i can i'll take a motion and a second council member ryan move approval okay uh mayor pro tem davis i'll second okay thank you and discussion council member melzer thank you so uh you know i attended the community meeting about that and uh i'm quite clear that there's a preference for having the parking lot uh moved to the thomas street side kind of everything along with the playground equipment moving up there but i don't think people understood when they were expressing that preference that they were were saying cut down trees so my question is uh is there a way within the you know what we're approving tonight uh to move the parking lot up there without cutting down the trees is uh is that physically possible mayor i can answer that question yes sir if you would please yes sir assistant director of parks and recreation so uh there was a few reasons why we moved the the parking lot on thomas one being the major reason that the original parking lot was taking out due to the body break expansion and the roundabout that was put in the second reason is because through our and i believe some council members were there back in 2000 uh march 18 2019 was our first public meeting that we actually held in person and we had a second one this year in september to show the plans and and really what came out of that public meeting and what the public really wanted so the second reason for removing those trees those are cedar trees there's 14 of them there there'll be 15 to 20 trees replanted like we talked about earlier on the bonnie brace side so we'll plant new trees there those cedar trees were planted so close together that if even if possible they were removed if they were transplanted someone at somewhere else there would only be two sides that would ever grow because they're just that you know the two sides two sides of those trees are right next to another tree and therefore they would never really grow in completely and the chances of their survival would be really low the third reason and i can read off some notes that we took really back from you know some emails that we've gotten and in that public meeting we had back in march of 2019 was that the concern was the nighttime use of the park the area in the park along thomas is quote unquote scary at night we had several members of the public really said that and they wanted the removal of the cedar trees along the alley to visit the visibly open up the space and really that input and with all the safety aspects of removing those trees and how it would enhance the safety aspect of the park and really that parking lot and it really makes it really close we've already completely designed and made sure that all the 88 expectations are met and require in court excuse me requirements are met so whenever you know you leave that parking lot to be able to go to the playground and experience these trails that all of that all those requirements are met so for us to have to go we would have to completely redesign where the parking lot was we did heywood urban forest headwood morgan our forest went out again today we already did an assessment on all the trees you know and he went out today to double just to make sure there are 14 cedar trees like we said and if we were to move that parking lot it would affect post oaks pecans and other more i guess desired trees than what those cedar trees have you know really give us at this time and of course like i said we wanted to foot stomp that safety aspect of removing those cedar trees if you weren't just as small if you were to redesign um uh you know is is there conceptual you don't know until you try i guess but a design that addresses having the parking lot be up on the thomas street side having it be less scary i know i wasn't at that meeting where people said that so i appreciate your your sharing that that actually came from from uh citizens but could you address both those issues with a different design the different design if we would we would have to stop this contract we would have to go back to design pay more money for design and really have to squeeze an area in somewhere else and really look at all those ada requirements to be able to be met and with that area where the cedar cedar trees are that that was the location that really worked the best for all those uh to meet all those requirements how much money you're talking about uh you're talking about having to redesign uh probably anywhere around 50 to 80 000 for the redesign okay okay thank you uh mayor pro tem davis kind of a quick question so drew you're like me you call them cedar trees but these aren't like the cedars of lebanon these are juniper trees uh you know there's right i mean in texas we call them cedar but they're not like quality wood they're they're kind of like uh overgrown bushes and we put them kind of in the same category as we do mesquite trees some places you know they're just they're treated like weeds right yes sir in some aspects you you can look at it that way yes sir so the i mean these aren't like the kind of trees that we would plant on purpose in a in a city park we we'd want to plant hardwoods good quality uh canopy trees right yes sir okay uh any other questions for staff and just to clarify because i think i missed this part so well i mentioned it's item k from the consent but that that number is id 20 uh 25 58 regarding mckenna park just for the record but any other questions for staff uh councilmember melzer yeah um give them just a second okay can you hear me now yes sir yeah so you know when when uh private developers need to cut down trees we require them to plant a multiple and are we doing that uh you know or can we plant a multiple of what we are of what we are taking down yes sir just to give you a little history on this so we'll be planting 15 to 20 trees in mckenna we're also going to be bringing you something very soon hopefully in the next four to six weeks we'll be planting 112 trees on vintage boulevard so if if we want to look at an asset that aspect we'll be planting you know upwards 130 to 140 new trees in the next three months okay thank you yes okay so we have a motion and a second any other discussion okay uh so councilmember ryan how say you aye mayor pro tem davis aye uh councilmember baker uh okay councilmember johnson thank you and um councilmember armatuer i love the mckenna park plan but i am voting no because of the loss of existing trees okay thank you and councilmember melzer yeah i i'm gonna i wish we had thought about it differently in the design phase okay and uh mayor hutchworth is an aye that passes five to two thank you drew um okay the next um consent agenda item that was pulled is let me get there it's item t which is id 2024 94 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton texas home rule municipal corporation renaming uh carina street between its intersection of loop 288 and kimberly drive to courthouse drive providing for servability and and an effective date and let the record show that um mayor pro tem davis has recused himself for this item i will take a motion councilmember ryan move approval thank you is there a second mayor hutchworth will second uh in discussion okay uh i was going to offer a little discussion okay yeah this is a sort of functional rename uh and i think that i think is different than the next item we're going to take up okay thank you any other discussion okay uh councilmember ryan how say you hi thank you mayor hutchworth is an aye uh councilmember baker hi thank you uh councilmember johnson hi uh councilmember armater yes thank you and uh councilmember melzer hi thank you uh so that item passes six to zero and our last consent agenda item that was pulled is w by my record i do believe and that is w item id 20 25 42 consider adoption of ordinance city of denton texas authorizing the city manager to execute a water a wastewater main costs uh participation agreement with denton independent school district and uh councilmember ryan i move approval thank you and uh councilmember melzer second thank you any discussion and again that uh so mayor pro tem davis is abstaining are recusing on this one as well is that right erin am i yes okay thank you perfect uh just wanted to make sure uh so any discussion okay councilmember ryan how say you aye uh councilmember melzer hi and um let's go councilmember baker uh thank you uh councilmember johnson i councilmember armater yes thank you and mayor hutchworth is is an i as well that passes uh six to zero that takes us to section four of our agenda items for individual consideration and we'll take up um the first item item a which is um and i'll remind those watching that you must call in before uh the item is called so if there's an item in the individual considerations that is of interest to you uh you would need to call in in advance of that item being being called uh to be heard uh so first item is item a id 21-001 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton texas home room municipal uh corporation suspending the january 23rd 2021 effective date of coast co-serve ltd request rate increase to permit the city time to study the request and establish reasonable rates thank you mayor this is rachel ballthorpe mendosa assistant to the city manager again if you'll allow me i'm going to share my screen sure you're in two places at once okay so as the mayor mentioned i'm just going to go over very quickly the co-serve gas rate filing suspension it's a little bit of background denton is a member of the co-serve gas limited co-op and the ordinance that we're looking at this evening it will authorize participation in a coalition of cities and this coalition it represents over 130 000 customers in denton kaufman and my screen is hidden call in counties i did not have that by memory thank you co-serve has over 2000 accounts in the city of denton and just a little background as far as the rate case suspension process is concerned um what we'll be doing here with the ordinance is joining the coalition and engaging council and uh this will allow the co-serve gas cities to further review and evaluate the rate filing to determine whether or not the filing complies with the law and if it does to determine what further strategy including any settlement we may need to pursue and just as a little fyi if the city fails to take action before january 23rd co-serve gases rate request is deemed approved the current filings effective date is scheduled to be january 23rd 2021 and the uh the filing uh the suspension rather is a request to suspend that for further review and this actually should say to the maximum allowable by law and not just the 90-day mark but um for some more information here the potential average customer impact for residential rates it would be an increase of seven dollars and 14 cents per month and that is a 40 percent increase for a commercial account it would be a decrease of 34.25 cents which is a 33 percent decrease um and that's based on the current request to the railroad commission the ordinance again it would approve the suspension of the rate change request for the maximum amount allowable by law and the participation in the coalition of cities as well as the hiring of loy goslink and other consultants to represent the city and the coalition in this matter and again if it's denied it co-serve gases rate request is deemed approved so with that i'll stop for any questions and just as um some more background we have thomas bruchato with loy goslink on the call as well should you have any questions for him there okay thank you and uh so questions for staff councilmember armature yeah can you speak to um percentage wise if not if you don't have an actual number um how many co-serve gas uh residential versus commercial customers do we have here in the city of denton i'm not able to speak to that right off hand councilmember but um tony puente is on he may have a better handle on that figure um i'm gonna defer to him i see he just got off mute for us uh councilmember this is uh tony puente the 2000 or so customers are predominantly residential and they're predominantly in the roepson ranch area so very few commercial if if any thank you so that explains why they were so generous with the commercial okay any other questions for staff all right so i have one uh what is the increase been in previous years do we know i'm sorry didn't ask that in advance but do we have kind of a is this of normal scale you know mayor i uh if you'll allow me i don't i don't have the ais pulled up um but with the previous filing i did put that figure in what we uh it was the it was the bigger settlement number that i put in there um but i don't remember the exact figure offhand thomas brachato may have that handy um if he's able to speak to that i'll see you there okay can see him on he just may need to unmute himself okay there he is i'm here and i'm available good evening mayor council members um thomas brachato law firm of loy gosselin i had another city recently request um the impact of the 2008 case which is the last base rate case the utility had i do not have that um right in front of me but i can pull that out easily i can tell you that the overall system-wide uh increase proposed by the company was significantly smaller than the 9.6 million proposed here part of that is due to growth part of it is due just simply to the fact that it's a larger increase and of course the company's position is that that increase is warranted due to a number of changes primarily increased cost okay and do you generally agree with that or are you studying that currently we're studying it currently we're currently in the discovery process we've asked five sets of discovery we're waiting on responses on january the 13th the company's supposed to present a significant updating of numbers across the board so once we see those new numbers once we get responses to discovery back we'll digest all that and then the consultants will make recommendations on or about february 1st and then we currently got on the schedule a settlement meeting for february 4th i don't know if we'll be able to reach an agreement at that point but i guess everyone's optimism we we go ahead and put down a time to to uh have settlement talks so that we can avoid the expense of a litigated case and thomas one follow-up question what does the submission packet generally look like so co-serve submits what to the railroad commission what's kind of overarching those documents what documents are submitted to support their their ask sure um the the commission has uh what they call a rate filing package which is just a series of schedules that the utility is required to to fill out when they seek to increase rates there are literally hundreds of different schedules that they have to fill out addressing all different sorts of their costs of service or all aspects i should say of their cost of service so they'll have to present all sorts of financial data with respect to really every penny that they want to collect from rate payers they have to present some type of documentation to support that request and then they separately will provide what's called pre-filed written testimony where witnesses for the company will um in question and answer format as though that they were doing it live but on paper uh where they they explain all the different schedules in the company's overall request got it okay very helpful thank you very much uh so if there's uh no other questions and no callers i'll i'll take a motion uh council member pardon me mayor pro tem davis sir i'll i'll move approval it's the same kind of uh cooperation coalition council member our mentor was talking about earlier in our meeting okay is there a second council member ryan i'll second thank you any other discussion okay uh mayor pro tem davis how say you aye uh and uh council member ryan all right and council member baker uh thank you council member johnson okay council member melzer aye council member armature yes all right and and mayor hudspeth is a yes that passes seven zero thank you and thank you thomas then that'll conclude item a take us to item b which is id 21-040 consider approval of resolution of the city of denton adopting the city of denton's 2021 state legislative program for the 87th texas legislator legislature and provide an effective date hi mayor me again hello one last time i believe for the evening um i don't have another presentation for this item this is what we did the work session on earlier today but this is the resolution that's attached as your backup i can of course pull up the presentation from earlier if you'd like to see it um but i'm happy to to show whatever you'd like to see okay no i well well let's see any questions for staff okay um then i'll take a motion uh council member melzer with approval okay council member ryan second thank you any other discussion okay council member mayor melzer houseau aye thank you council member ryan aye okay uh let's see council member baker uh thank you council member johnson aye okay and uh mayor pro tem davis aye council member armater yes okay mayor husbeth is an i as well that passes seven zero thank you that takes us to uh item c which is id 20-25-57 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton texas homeroom municipal corporation authorizing the city manager or is designated to execute a contract with your urova atlantic coast llc dba uh sun mount paving company as a primary vendor uh and jago public company as a secondary vendor but a supply of insta installation of hot mix asphalt concrete for the streets department evening council mayor daniel kramer deputy director of operations all right hot mix asphalt is used for everything that we use in the city in the streets department from potholes to paving um we use this on everything throughout whether it's base failures milling overlays reconstructs or like i said in potholes the city has on average spent about two hundred and uh 2.5 million annually on this contract and uh what we have asked is for this contract excuse me uh to be recommended so that the streets department can continue its work in the city it's a four-year contract not to exceed the amount of 12 million dollars okay thank you very much and uh are there any questions for staff okay daniel do you want to speak on it's rare that we see uh the kind of backup vendor or it just jumped out at me so i could be missing in it regularly but do you if you could just speak to that so that we have a record of kind of the decision-making process for that uh yes sir um this is a newer concept that we're trying to get to make sure that we can have multiple vendors for the same um same commodity so what this allows us to do is uh the primary vendor is contacted first we use our normal time frame that's given in the contract for when they can deliver and what kind of material if they cannot meet the time frame in there we do move on to the second vendor and go with them in order for that one and then we continue it for each different job that we have going thank you and have we worked with uh sun mount paving company in the past do we have a history with them yes sir we have they changed names recently it was a lane okay got it okay thank you very helpful all right um any other questions for staff or i'll take a motion uh council member ryan move approval thank you thank you okay thank you um uh council member johnson and any other discussion okay council member ryan hasayu aye thank you council member johnson aye council member baker ah thank you and um where am i sorry council member melzer aye mayor pro tem davis aye councilor armater yes thank you and mayor hutchpeth is yes that passes item c passes seven zero thank you daniel thank you that takes us to item d which is id 2020 2362 consider adoption of the ordinance of city of denton authorizing the city manager to execute a park development agreement between the city of denton and four star usa real estate group inc for the dedication of park land at the county at the pardon me country club terrorist phase one and phase two development authorizing acceptance of land and providing an effective date okay good evening again mayor and council members drew huffman assistant director of parks i'm gonna share my screen and start hey drew pleasure to see you this evening yes sir all right can you see it yes sir uh you may have to put it in presentation mode perfect better now all right yes sir so this is for the parkland dedication for country club terrorist property and uh i know this is gary packin but he can't be with us tonight so so the development overview so country club terrorist phase one will be 183 single family homes and five hoa lots phase two will be 53 single family homes and one hoa lot and of course the parkland dedication that we're talking about tonight is one lot and it's 34 acres so uh based upon our park dedication requirement and is we're doing a fee in lieu of land uh would be or excuse me if we did a fee in lieu of land it would be fifteen thousand uh dollars a little over fifteen thousand dollars it would only be 1.2 acres that they would technically owe us for our park dedication and development uh we're getting 34 acres with with this uh also park development it's 291 a home right now 183 homes so that would be fifty three thousand two hundred fifty three dollars uh the development intends to dedicate the 34 acres and part dedication to development fees and this course is valued at 11,000 per acre so uh with that it would be 400,516 dollars 20 and 22 cents that they would be giving us worth of land so really if you take the 15,053 you know divide the acreage in we're getting 34 acres for the equivalent of uh two thousand dollars an acre so here is a map depicting of our park spaces that we already have at lake forest park cross timbers north and south we have the country club terrace development that will that will be dedicating the land to us this is the park dedication area uh this orange here is future trails that will that's going to be planned for this area this orange trail here it depicts the hickory creek trail that we talked about a you know a few weeks ago when we talked when gary brought the master plan part of the trail our trails chapter to council so excuse me and then this really shows you a really good depiction of the the entire hickory creek trail that we that we've already started really in the planning process that we brought you so you know here it is we'll start up here at university you know us 380 all the way down work our way underneath i-35 continue over to us 377 excuse me continue this area this is where the country club terrace park dedication areas that we're talking about tonight this is where it's located so it really enhanced this area we've also really looked in of course you know the wild flower and prairie grass restoration program and planning program that i brought a couple weeks ago that we have we would of course use this land and do a prairie restoration and reforestation plan for this property and so i want to start it off with some questions if you have any and i'll take the screen down thank you questions for staff okay i have one drew looking at the map and correct me if i'm wrong but just east of the intersection of the park and country club road there that's where we've had some accidents along there's that that am i am in the right spot the fatal accidents in that creek yes okay so what i would propose is that we kind of put in the back of our minds to reach out to the community those affected and maybe we have an art installation in that park to some degree that that honors those those folks or at least tribute tribute to them maybe that's something that down the road that we can plan or save space similar to the dog park where we had a base and then we came back with the art all right thank you any other questions for staff okay uh then i will take a motion council member ryan move approval thank you uh councilman baker i'll second it thank you um any discussion okay uh council member ryan how say you all right and count uh council member baker uh thank you uh and council member johnson council member melzer aye council mayor pro tem davis aye council member armature yes and mayor hutzpah says aye as well item d passes uh seven to zero thank you drew all right thank you um item e is id 2025 75 uh consider approval of resolution of the city of denton texas creating a sustainability uh framework advisory committee establishing a change charge for committee and providing an effective date good evening kathryn barnett sustainability manager let me go ahead and get my screen up good evening can y'all see that yes all right i'm here tonight bringing back the sustainability advisory committee that we talked about back in september and october it was part of the sustainability framework that was approved in september in october at the work session we discussed some of the options for the makeup of the committee and the terms and the qualifications we discussed a seven-member committee to advise on the implementation of the framework we were going to have four members with qualifications three at large the four members shall have experience in one of the framework areas and they will serve two-year terms the initial committee appointment would be from march 1st august 31st to keep the committee terms in line with the other boards and commissions so it would be an interim appointment with the actual terms starting september 1st and we have a resolution for approval of the establishment of the committee tonight if the resolution is approved then we would start the application process probably this week except the applications and then in february look at the applications and then have nominations by the city council and look to hold the first meeting sometime in march okay that is all i have on that okay thank you questions for staff council member armator i'm really excited for this committee very happy to move yes okay is there a second mayor pro tem davis i'll second okay any discussion seeing none oh councilmember melzer yeah just to comment this is a you know very exciting opportunity to to tap the considerable expertise that there is in this community and enthusiasm for you know for leading on sustainability i'm looking forward to voting in favor of this excellent thank you uh so um councilmember armator how say you yes thank you uh mayor pro tem davis i thank you uh councilmember baker uh thank you councilmember johnson i okay councilmember melzer hi thank you and um who am i missing hi there you go councilman ryan thank you sir appreciate you making it easy on me mayor husbeth is a yes uh that passes uh item e passes seven to zero and um that concludes item e that takes us to the final item in individuals consideration item f sd 20011 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton extending their approval period for a specific use permit for a manufactured housing park originally approved via ordinance s17 0008 d for an approx for an approximately 126.1 acre property generally located north of east mckinney street and west of south trinity road in the city of denton all right good evening uh hayley zagorski with the planning department can you pull up the presentation and we'll get going good evening all right the request before you all this evening is a request for an extension of a specific use permit um this the subject property is located on the north side of mckinney street as you can see here on the map uh with frontage also on trinity road on the eastern side the ordinance for this specific use permit was originally approved in january of 2019 the subject property is 126 acres and the sqp was for a manufactured housing park wanted to go through with you just briefly what was approved for this project some of you may remember this but it might be new to to a few of you so the original approval was for 497 manufactured homes this is a site plan that's recently been submitted to the city for the project that gives you a better idea of how it would be laid out this the development also includes six single family lots along trinity road those are one acre lots the sqp had many conditions of approval tied to it it specified minimum requirements for environmentally sensitive area and tree preservation it specified the amenities that needed to go in the development the minimum amount of open space it had provisions for screening and fencing along mckinney street that included a berm and significant tree plantings as well as sidewalk extensions it also specified things such as the private ownership and maintenance of all the internal streets and utilities those will all be private and maintained by a homeowners association and then it also set requirements for other improvements on mckinney street and mitigation of traffic impacts for the lakeview ranch neighborhood that's nearby this property on trinity road so all of these conditions would carry forward if the sqp were extended as i mentioned this is a zoning compliance plan or a site plan for the development that was recently submitted to staff this does demonstrate compliance with all of these conditions specific use permits as some of you may be familiar with do expire after 24 months of their initial approval our ddc specifies that that expiration occurs unless the use is underway or construction is substantially underway by the time that 24 months is up this case is a little unique this sqp did specify that no permits could be issued for the development prior to october of 2020 due to traffic concerns along mckinney street at that time however in the the interim two years the developer has made progress towards completion of the development they just haven't gotten to that construction phase yet so that plan we just looked at has been submitted and approved as well as their preliminary plat their civil engineering plans have been through several rounds of review with staff and are getting close to the approval point and their final plat is also currently in review with staff so they they are making progress they just haven't met that threshold so they are requesting a one-year extension and the ddc allows that the original approving body can grant that extension for up to one one year if they find there is good cause and staff is recommending approval of the requested extension since the applicant has demonstrated that progress towards completion within that 24 month original approval period i will pull the presentation down now and take any questions and i believe the applicant is also on the line if you have questions of them okay so they're getting the applicant online not online yet but we'll be on shortly mayor pro tem davis hailey it's okay if you don't have a quick answer for this but obviously we have a we have a two-year timeline for a reason you know we want projects to get going but we also have that extension possibility for a reason for when you know the unexpected happens with staff recommending the extension can you kind of break down for us why why the two-year clock is important but also why an extension might be warranted in this particular case sure so most project types within the ddc do have a two-year expiration period tied to them typically it's assumed that that is sufficient time for someone to once they have that approval move forward with any other steps they may need such as platting or site planning and in this case they have been working towards those things however because it the sup in this case did have that unique condition that they couldn't pull permits prior to october of last year they they took a little bit of time getting things going and and they haven't been able to reach the construction point yet as most developments could within that two-year period so in this case it it seemed warranted because the city did impose a part of that delay on them because of traffic concerns at the time so is it fair to say then part of that delays on a good chunk of that delays on us the condition we imposed and then also they had some back and forth with engineering and comments and all that kind of stuff didn't they certainly they they have been through a pretty extensive engineering review process there were you know some some delays i believe you know could be fairly put on them in terms of getting those initial applications to the city during that time but there are some unique features to the property such as those environmentally sensitive areas that have resulted in pretty lengthy reviews of those as well so it's probably fair to say both parties contributed to that thank you okay any other questions for staff council member armature i move approval okay um is there a second mayor pro tem davis i'll second thank you additional discussion i'll just say i appreciate staff's explanation i and i appreciate that that they noted the progress that was made and the the requirements to trigger the or to meet those requirements so that we could have an understanding and evaluate those to make sure there's enough progress to or if we felt like it was moving forward and wasn't uh it's kind of just laying stagnant so thank you for that those kind of milestones to help that analysis uh that being said uh any other discussion seeing none council member armature house ayu yes thank you um mayor pro tem davis aye council member baker uh council member johnson aye council member ryan aye council member melzer aye uh mayor hutsmith is an aye as well uh item f passes seven zero thank you hailey that we do okay mayor can I suggest that five minute break before we take up the yeah we have the odd scenario where we have a caller though so we will need to erin help me out well we need to vote again after the caller we'd have to go back and reopen the item um the votes already been taken so technically the items closed but yeah they did sign up and it's only fair to allow the caller to speak on this okay okay if they still wish to speak okay we'll give staff a second a bit to give them uh get them online okay okay and yes paul will take you up on your suggestion after the call thank you and while we have this break for those watching and looking at your agenda in the public hearings section item z20 011 b uh is not being considered this evening so that's item c in the public hearings component it's not being heard this evening that's going to be that's going to come back on the renoticed on january 12 so that everyone's up to speed so should we okay well they they did they uh changed their mind so no need so we don't have a caller so that will conclude item uh f and what we will do is i have it just before eight so let's call it let's take a 10 minute break and come back at 8 10 to take up the um public hearing section of our agenda thank you it is yeah and welcome back to this evening uh meeting of the denton city council it is now 8 11 on january 5th and we're returning from uh break going into our public hearings we are going to take these in different orders so we're going to take item b first per staff's direction and so my question to staff do i need to call both or one at a time i'll answer for staff you can call both of them i i believe it's going to be one presentation typically that's their that's their um ml when they have two different zoning items for the same property okay thank you for that um okay so i will call both so bear with me here a bit uh so our first call item uh so under public hearings five b which is 720-0009a hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas regarding a change in zoning district and use classification for highway corridor district to light industrial light industrial district on approximately 10.47 acres of land and and then i'll also call item 5a which is aesa20-0006b hold public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving an alternate alternative environmentally sensitive area plan for a site generally located on the south side of i-35 east service road approximately 672 feet west of sam bass boulevard in the city of denton denton county texas adopting an amendment to the city's official environmentally sensitive area map right good evening so there will actually be a separate staff presentations for these two items but the applicant has prepared one presentation that they would like to do after the zoning item so okay thank you yes all right so the the first piece of this request tonight is the zoning is case z20-0009 urban logistics 35 so to summarize the request for you it is two pieces to the zoning the first is a change from highway corridor hc district to light industrial district on 10 and a half acres roughly that is the area outlined in orange that has frontage on i-35 the second piece of the zoning request is a change from heavy industrial or hi district to li district and that's for this 13 acres that is outlined in yellow just to give you a little more history on the property and the project this is all part of the larger acme brick site so you may be familiar with acme's brick plant that is further to the south this is part of that contiguous ownership by acme they did have a gas well on the property that's the red diamond that you see on the map that was plugged in 2019 in anticipation of selling off this this portion of the property for different development and so what's proposed here the urban logistics project is a mix of light industrial and warehouse uses the the part of the property that they're looking to develop is actually even larger than this zoning request as it also includes this area here that currently has li zoning so they're looking at a total of 35 acres so this is just a look at the current zoning map so you can see for their 35 acres they would have a total of three zoning districts so they're looking to consolidate that to to give them a one set of development standards and zoning regulations to follow across the entire property this is the proposed zoning map here on the right side of the screen you'll see there are two out parcels that they're leaving with hc zoning those are areas that texdot has indicated may be acquired for the i-35 widening project if that ultimately does not happen then those would be left with hc zoning for future commercial development so there are general criteria for approval for all applications those are outlined in detail in your backup so i won't go through these items in detail i will walk through these zoning specific criteria for approval in a little more detail in this presentation so the first of those criteria is whether the request is consistent with our dentin plan 2030 so this property if you look at our future land use map is designated for industrial commerce that is our most intensive industrial classification that's intended for areas with a mixture of both light and heavy industrial uses specifically the comp plan calls that manufacturing warehousing and industrial processing as uses that would be ideal for this areas with this designation the li district is consistent with this it does allow for a mixture of light industrial uses specifically warehousing and distribution and low impact manufacturing are permitted by right the next criteria is whether the request is consistent with the purpose statement for the zoning district so i won't read this to you but you can see on the screen here the purpose statement for our li district it speaks to those areas with high accessibility that would provide for a mixture of lighter industrial uses like assembly warehousing some storage uses as well as allowing some commercial uses that could support those so this location along i-35 and the frontage road is consistent with that purpose statement the area would have easy access off of the frontage road and could allow for that mixture of industrial or commercial uses and it's also consistent with the zoning in the area as we saw with that existing mixture of zoning with li districts of the south and west of the property the next criteria is whether there have been significant changes that would warrant the zoning change so a little bit of background this split of zoning has actually been in place since 2002 with that city-wide rezoning with the adoption of the o2 development code this split zoning then transitioned as part of our 2019 ddc some of the recent changes as i mentioned earlier there was previously a gas well on the northern end of the property they did plug that in anticipation of facilitating development for this area and then the staff did find that the zoning change would be warranted to make this area consistent with the comprehensive plan that designates this whole area as industrial commerce the next criteria is whether rather the request would minimize the adverse impacts on surrounding property so some of the things that it's important to consider here are the mixture of uses that are permitted in the li district versus the hi district if you're familiar with this area you may know that there is multi-family development immediately adjacent and that's zoned hc and currently there is a significant part of the property that is zoned for heavy industrial immediately adjacent to that while there are buffering requirements in the code the li district does permit less intensive uses than hi that would be more consistent with what we'd expect to see adjacent to a multi-family development and that would be more compatible and have less nuisance potential so this table shows a comparison of some of those permitted industrial uses so you can see some of the more intensive uses that are permitted in hi such as incinerators high impact manufacturing are not permitted within the li district so it would remove a lot of nuisance potential with some of these uses and the changes here are shown in red so you can see those more easily even medium impact manufacturing in li does require a specific use permit so those uses would have to come back before you all for consideration and then finally we are called to look at whether there are public facilities and services available to serve the property so as we've as we've indicated previously in terms of transportation and accessibility the site has access and would take access off of the i-35 frontage road this particular corridor in between 377 and fm 2181 or teesley down here is slated for improvement within the next five to ten years according to tex dot's plans so the accessibility for the site would be improved in the future but that with that widening project the trip generation for the proposed uses was estimated looking at this is all warehouse development the site didn't trigger a traffic impact analysis at this time with these numbers with only 770 daily trips and 85 or less peak hour trips but that will be analyzed in the future once these specific plans for the site come in and we know more about those uses that can be developed looking at utilities water and wastewater facilities are both available along the frontage road they were stubbed out with the multifamily development at the eastern boundary of this property so those lines could easily be continued down the frontage road and extended throughout this property to serve the development and of course our standard impact fees would apply at the time of permitting so to conclude the presentation for this evening public outreach was conducted before this case went to the planning and zoning commission those notices were mailed to surrounding properties and staff has received no responses in favor or opposition to date and no neighborhood meeting was held for this project the planning and zoning commission met on this case in december and recommended approval seven to zero and staff is also recommending approval of the request as it does comply with both the general and specific zoning criteria for approval in our ddc so with that i will stop the presentation the applicant is on the line as i indicated they have a a combined presentation for both the zoning and the alternative isa request okay we'll take that presentation and then we'll come back with or are there any questions from staff before we do that i better said okay so we'll take that the applicant's presentation combined presentation then we do have callers so we'll open up the public hearing all right i'll get that presentation pulled up now i believe amy good evening good evening mayor and council this is amy bissett can you hear me yes good evening good evening happy new year happy new year so so if you can give us your yeah thank you you bet my name is amy bissett i'm with 97 land company my address is 100 west oak street denton 76201 and i appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening and i'm proud to be representing the developer and the applicant urban logistics realty today i do have jason nunley here with me tonight and he will be joining me and making this presentation and before i jump in i do want to clarify that um hayley mentioned in terms of of neighborhood outreach that there was no neighborhood meeting may uh no neighborhood meeting held we did actually mail an invitation out to everybody within the 500 foot property boundary and even widen that slightly to make sure to encompass anybody that might be interested and receive no responses to to join that neighborhood meeting so i just wanted to point out that we did make an effort um i wanted we we have two items that you'll be hearing tonight the first one will be a zoning change and the second one will be an alternative esa plan and um hayley if you'll go ahead and advance to the second slide please um generally speaking this project is called urban district 35 it is located in the south part of built out denton just right off of i-35 as hayley indicated it's a part of the larger acne brick campus that has been a part of denton's history for over 100 years now um hayley if you'll go ahead and advance to slide three you can see here a little bit more zoomed in um location it is actually very near downtown denton it is adjacent to the southridge neighborhood is adjacent to mcmath middle school to southridge park so it's um while acne brick has been there over 100 years or um some former representation of acne brick and the city of denton has really grown up around it during that time frame although this particular 35 acres is um undeveloped at this point in time it is one of the the last pieces of undeveloped frontage through the core of denton i would say of um in terms of i-35 frontage next slide please hayley here's a little bit closer look where you can see this would be slide four this is um you can see where acne brick is um located immediately adjacent they still have an operating plant there today and and this in this particular opportunity would be where urban logistics realty would purchase the 35 acres that fronts i-35 for development and redevelopment i am going to ask you guys to be a little bit patient with us and indulge us for a few minutes here we are going to do a combined applicant presentation which if i recall correctly affords us 20 minutes total time among all of us we will in turn not do a presentation twice so we're going to cover the zoning and the alternative isa in one presentation now and then we'll of course remain on the line to be available if you have questions as we work through this discussion as well as the next discussion on the alternative isa next slide please hayley slide five i'm going to introduce jason nunley he's with urban logistics realty and i'm going to mute and let him unmute and he's going to talk more about um their company and their plans for this project in denton thank you jason you may need to hit star six to unmute yourself if you can hear me okay thank thank you amy good evening mayor and council can everyone hear me now yes thank you as amy mentioned my name is jason nunley i live at 621 Somerset drive flower mound texas 75028 do want to thank you for the opportunity to present tonight i'm one of the co-owners of urban logistics realty and i know we have 20 minutes but i'll try to be brief but just wanted to give you a little bit of insight into and what our mindset was and what we're thinking first of all we're we're extremely excited about this opportunity on a number of different levels we're excited to have the opportunity to work with the city but we're also excited to be part of the evolution of what's really a fascinating but often overlooked land parcel i'd venture to say most people because i have so many times driven by this site and paid little little to no attention because it's just always been acme site it's just always been there but we started looking at it through different lenses and really saw the potential to create something special with the site and and to do that we didn't just look at what the project could be but we also tried to take a hard look at what the project should be so we went back to the very beginning and in researching the history of the site has been fascinating for us as amy mentioned acme has owned this land for it's actually been over 120 years acme's presence in denton can be traced back to the city's incorporation and the city has literally grown up around the site which makes it unique over the past 120 years the site has primarily been used for a mining pit and as part of a larger brick fabrication plant but we believe it's time for the site to evolve into into something new and something better what we're presenting represents an opportunity to embrace and comply with the city's future land plan while also paying respect and homage to the history of the site in embracing what acne is meant to this city and what acne has meant to this site hayley if you could go to the next slide slide six please should show the overall site layout what we've designed is a state of the art for building corporate campus our goal in doing this is to create create a sense of place where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts i could go on and on because i get very passionate about this about how and intricacies and all the details about how how we make that happen i'll just highlight on one or two just to give a little flavor and then would entertain any questions at the end but orientation of the buildings it would be an easier simpler plan to just come and try to put one building in the middle of it but we think that really sells this site and this opportunity in this location short so we tried to orient the buildings if you if you envision yourself turning into the site and looking down that main boulevard that connects to an existing acne plant we wanted to give a sense of presence to all four buildings and it really gives us unique opportunities to take those corners all four of them for each four buildings and do something special and creative and unique in front of them so from the highway or from pulling into the site it speaks different it speaks different and it doesn't speak industrial i think as we've all been conditioned to uh to understand it hailey next slide if you would please a big part of how we create this this corporate campus is really trying to embrace the natural beauty of nature and making it an integral part of defining that corporate campus and environment our goal as we design this is to cater to the fortune 500 companies the companies that aren't looking to to lease space and and call a call a space home because it's the most economical but because it's where their employees want to work it makes companies sticky they don't want to leave when they get into to the parks that we've created and a place to really attract both talent and companies to the city hailey next slide if you would please another way we do this is through the aesthetics and the building design i think if you notice these buildings don't like i mentioned speak to industrial the design is a blend of what you'd expect from a modern office campus with inspiration drawn from the restaurant segment hospitality segment it's contemporary edgy it's groundbreaking it's uh it's different it's unique one cool aside or interesting aside that i might note and i know it's hard to show on these on these renderings but 12 years ago we pioneered a process for a vertically stained concrete to our knowledge it hadn't been done before at least not locally in in dallas but we got the inspiration from a really really cool texas bar had a beautiful stained concrete top and you'd indulge me a short story um we said this would look beautiful if we could incorporate this into a building and we literally brought people in from the coast we flew experts in trying to figure out how to make this work striking out all along the way finally hitting a point where we said we were about to give up until someone introduced us to a local dentin artist and she met with us and said i can do that and she proceeded to absolutely crush it and make this beautiful piece of art that was 40 foot up in the air stained concrete each one being individual the standing process is a seven-part process that takes the blemishes and imperfections and turns them into uniqueness it's been extremely well accepted by businesses and tenants cities and so as a result we've continued this process for the last 12 years in some form or fashion working it into every project that we do this building design that you're looking at is an evolution of 12 years of praying to perfect the technique we certainly don't claim to be there yet and we'll probably never stop trying but it is a testament to a never-ending desire to try to make things better and different haley next slide if you would please the next two we would we would present um just to show you a level of of some of the interior finishes that we've recently put into buildings exactly like this haley next slide if you would please again just to be a representative of uh the type of businesses and the level of finish that we would expect for this project we uh once we get it built so that's probably far more information than you needed i do appreciate you indulging my passion and letting me speak briefly about what we would like to uh bring to the city of denton i mean with that i'll i'll hand it back to you all right thank you jason and haley if you'll go to slide 11 please which shows the zoning districts and what i want to point out here is that we're looking at a 35 acre project that is essentially the uses that we are proposing are allowed under all three zoning districts today we are we are trying to create a cohesive design and cohesive development and so we are rezoning some of the area that's in hi and some of the area that's in hc zoning today in order to allow for one zoning district to be able to develop under additionally what that does is it removes the hi zoning designation that is immediately adjacent to an existing multi-family project to the east of this site so it's a significant down zoning and a zoning designation that is going to be much more appropriate considering how this particular area has evolved over time haley if you'll go to slide 12 please this is a just a little bit different view you can see on the left the current zoning the mix of zoning categories on the left that are currently a part of our contemplated project and on the right would be the proposed zoning which would be largely light industrial but protecting the highway corridor zoning that directly fronts i-35 if you'll go to slide 13 haley i want to point this out just briefly so that you can see how the community has grown up around the acne brick site i've outlined the acne site in in dark blue or black in the center of the screen and then if you look immediately to the east of that you'll see that mcmath middle school bumps up right up against it southlake park southlake park bumps up against it and the southridge neighborhood is immediately adjacent so taking an opportunity to down zone some of this heavy industry zoning in an area that has really grown into more of a mixed use residentially compatible area is a large part of our objective with this particular zoning change haley if you will go to slide 14 please and just to emphasize this a little bit further if you look at the city's future land use plan the entire acne site is currently designated as industrial commerce so our proposed zoning is consistent with the future land use plan and the city's comprehensive plan however if you step back and look all the way around that industrial commerce designation you see predominantly low density residential with some community mixed use and parks open space there so we believe what we're doing is taking a site that has a rich history in denton and taking an important opportunity to develop an area with a project that would be more compatible moving forward haley if you'll go to slide 15 please i'm going to briefly kind of walk you through our alternative efa proposal i'm going to let christy upton go into the details with it when she makes her presentation at the next public hearing that just in a broad sense i want to give you a picture of what it is that we are proposing and why so our site is outlined in red on this slide and you can see there's a little blue hatch finger if you will that comes up through the center of the site that is an existing riparian buffer we are proposing to remove that existing riparian buffer which equals about one and a half acres and in mitigation efforts to offset those ecological resources we're proposing two things we're proposing to create a new wildlife habitat opportunity in the two detention ponds that are outlined in orange that are just to the southeast of our site and furthermore we're proposing if you look towards the very bottom of the screen the yellow highlighted area is roughly 2.11 acres of what was formerly esa that was upland habitat esa when you look at the city's esa map this area that's all forested with post oak trees was formerly designated as upland habitat esa and a few years ago that designation was removed due to the fact that there's no longer 10 contiguous acres of upland habitat that remains on this site and so what we are proposing is to take 2.1 acres of what is remaining that is still upland habitat and put that into a conservation easement that protects those post oak trees over the life of this project what is not shown on here is that the gap between the detention the 2.5 acre detention pond on north and the 2.1 acre conservation easement on the south is actually a part of our tree preservation plan which so overall we would be preserving that that site between the detention pond and all the way to the bottom of the the highlighted yellow conservation easement in an effort to mitigate for the one and a half acre of riparian buffer that we would be removing i'd also like to point out while we're on this slide that if you look at the far eastern edge of our site there is an existing line of post oak predominantly post oak trees that heavily wooded area that serves as a buffer between our site and the multi-family site that exists today and that would be preserved under our tree preservation plan additionally we would be subject to compatibility buffers to further protect that neighborhood and with that i'm going to conclude our presentation but i do want to say that we have our engineer and as well as our environmental consultant who prepared alternate or alternative e.s.a plan online and if you do get into more specific questions as christy presents our full plan thank you okay and so do you want to present item a now or do you want to take questions on item b as the applicant we have we're we've presented everything we intend to unless you have specific questions so um we won't present another we won't make another presentation for item a perfect okay thank you so i'm going to open the public since i've called both i'll open a public hearing for both item b z 20 009 a and open a public hearing for item a which is a e s a 20 0006 b and i will just so i don't forget and then are those and let's take the callers first because that may either bring up more questions or at least allow people to speak to those concerns or comments give me just one moment and the speakers will have four minutes hello hello yes and if you could give uh so this is mayor hutsmith in the denton city council if you could give us your name first and last and address you will have four minutes to to speak okay you're ready now yes thank you okay okay yes this is clay thurmond 1524 snider denton texas and i'm opposing this as it's proposed uh primarily for the loss of a contiguous canopy looking at the proposed restoration we've got uh we're losing a large amount of canopy and we're going to wind up with a lot of edge environment which is not going to be very conducive to any habitat and it's just with stuff like this a lot of our green space around town is starting to look very gerrymandered uh so what i would like to see is that the um existing pond be increased and then the western pond of 1.9 acres be increased also to preserve as much as possible of that two and a half acres to go with the 2.1 that's proposed for uh permanent preservation and if those could be combined that we really need a larger canopy area because when we have a lot of these um well we've always complained about all the pollution that denton has and we've said well there's nothing we can do about it because a lot of it comes from the south from midlothian and everything but i-35 has also been identified as one of our pollution sources we also have a brick plant which cannot help but be the pollution source and what we'd like to do is mitigate that and if we can leave a larger canopy area intact that we can have that canopy area that larger area help to mitigate the any pollution through the actions that trees provide in their environmental services in taking in uh pollutants transferring them into the ground and UNT has recently had some nice studies on this also this goes right up against McMath and at one point we will have a full campus there full of students and i'd like to see these trees stay in place to help protect them on this as well as the residents in those neighborhoods okay and that's pretty much all i have okay thank you clay just one moment we'll see if any questions for the caller okay uh no okay so no questions thank you very much clay okay thank you yes and do we have okay there's another caller okay hello hello if you could uh so welcome to mayor hutzpeth and the denton city council if you could please give us your first and last name and then your address you will have four minutes to speak yes uh this is brian beck 124 mill pond road so uh i'm calling in to um to say similar items uh that mr thurman just proposed and um some of the issues that he proposed i won't reiterate to save the four minutes um i will say that part of the reasons we're up against this issue um is that the the 10 acre fragmentation um ordinance is is arbitrary um and in fact if you ask staff they will they will admit as they did in planning and zoning that that is simply the ordinance there's no um there's no rationale for it it's not scientifically based or legally based it is simply the the ordinance um and so if you look at the entirety of that that section to uh to to be altered you're really robbing peter to pay paul you're putting in a riparian buffer um compensation maintenance mechanism on top of an upland habitat uh compensation mechanism and the only reason those two are not in conflict with each other is because the the eight or nine acres doesn't technically count count as an upland habitat and instead i urge you to um uh first approve this plan this is a really good plan i think it would be really great to have this uh this light industrial in this area uh and along the i-35 corridor it's a great use it looks pretty uh the plan is nice i have i i think i encourage you to change the zoning for consistency all everything about this plan i think it will be a benefit to them the issue is not to rob peter to pay paul don't don't take a creek and trade trees for it and i think the way you solve this is as i i believe mr thurman said you you expand the existing detention pond you expand the proposed western detention pond and uh you create the proper amount of volume for detention pond and you leave a continuous greenway between the buffer trees that protect the apartments on the west and on the south um with a both uh detention pond so so you have both aquatic and upland next to each other which would be nice for um the the environment there uh you maintain a continuous greenway with a park that's east of the apartment complex just caddy corner you maintain a continuous greenway to south to mcmath and down into the south lakes park you have wildlife corridors and and all this just by moving the ponds to the west and expanding them slightly and not trading trees for a pond so i think i mean you would find the community uh entirely excited and interested in in this development and and you know kind of obscuring and hiding the sort of heavy industrial use of acne brick if if we simply made a small adjustment to the pond uh the the two ponds um and one existing the western one and then in addition i i think uh the um the engineers um miss besetz and mr nunley's uh statement that they they had the ability to flexibly move the building layout around to give a better aesthetic feel i mean there is some flexibility to the layout and so i think if we could expand the northwestern pond and and or sorry the the proposed northwestern pond maybe move the road slightly over to the west to allow for additional pond i know that there's some issues with the uh the gas wellhead that's right there but we could certainly work around those and save save you know move the road save the road save the development and simultaneously save these trees which are are critical for maintaining our green corridors and wildlife and habitat and that's all i have okay thank you any questions for mr beck councilmember melzer i suppose uh the answer is going to be all the above but is is your interest primarily in preserving the green corridor as a wildlife quarter or is it primarily because of the particulates and emissions associated with acne brick you know necessary byproduct of them doing what they do you're creating that barrier between acne brick and the apartments so i i think mr thurman alluded to some of this when we talk about the people but it is it's obviously both it's all the uses of a green corridor so you know we we do we don't want to have wildlife necessarily interacting um they'd rather be away from the people so we need the wildlife corridors to protect them and keep them separated from the people for the coyotes badgers whatever well um and and uh and then in addition to that um the you know the more the less we fragment these green spaces the more they will survive as a biologist i can tell you that you know fragmentation is really the issue and in fact that's why technically they're skirting under the rules here that fragmentation is allowing for them to be under the 10 acre arbitrary rule and so if we were to maintain the largest contiguous and actually i think that's that's like one of our dentin ordinances seven seven four four seven four eight i i'm let me get my notes up here but uh you know we we actually have in our ordinances that we upwind habitat seven four eight uh sections a one and two say we're supposed to have as large a continuous upwind habitat in the forested region on adjacent properties as we can that's actually in our dvc and the only reason it's not applicable and i don't blame development for this is this crazy arbitrary 10 acre rule and in fact actually for future council efforts we should revisit that 10 acre rule and use a scientifically based number okay any other questions for uh mr beck see none okay thank you thank you uh mr beck for the call thank you council uh okay so no other callers and uh so hayley do you have another presentation for item a before i close the public comment yes christy upton will be presenting the alternative e.s.a plan but i did want to note that the applicant does have their engineer on the line if if council's interested in discussing the detention pond locations further perfect uh council you're does someone have questions about the detention pond and and that connectivity mayor protem davis i i do i have the same questions as the the callers suggested but i'm wondering if if we have the staff a.s.a presentation if we shouldn't take that up first um i just don't know if they're maybe going to address it in that uh well while we let's take the engineers uh comments to to address those while they're they're fresh and then we'll we'll shift to staff's comments our our presentation for a so if we could bring on the the uh engineer this is dan gallagher can you hear me yes and give me an is it dan with a d yes sir okay thank you mr gallagher uh sure address is 13455 noel rose t700 dallas texas 75240 uh the question about the detention ponds did come up at our tng hearing as well so as a point of clarification there is a pond that exists south of our site it does not serve as a detention pond um this is a a stock pond i believe that actually constructed in our site does not drain to that pond so there's there's not really a way that we can utilize that it drains uh back to the west so it's it's kind of a non-issue for us from a drainage perspective um we are constructing two separate ponds to the north the reason it is not a single pond is because there is a gap pipeline uh that runs north south between those two proposed detention ponds um and they they do need to be located on the south side um the site drains to the south so we've we've looked at a number of options from a detention perspective we have tried to place them in a location that is the least impactful to trees that there's a lot of um things that we're trying to dodge on this property that's been active for over a century so um from an engineering perspective there's there's not as much flexibility as you might think purely from where we need to place um and can certainly you'll you know elaborate if need be but i did want to be available to to just cover that because i know it's been asked a number of times okay and if we can pull down the presentation thank you for that so i'll pick back up with mayor pro tem davison and council member armature i've got a follow-on to that uh you kind of addressed the question of why not just enlarge that pond i follow what you're saying i'm not sure i have the same conclusions but you're the engineer um my other question is kind of about the ownership of these sites i guess right now it's all acme brick land and you are building your your zoning uh your project in your zoning case is on one site the detention ponds are proposed to be on another site will the same will all those sites be under common ownership or is this an arrangement with the will actually remain the landowner where the detention ponds are going to be and and what i'm getting at there is you know what happens if this upland uh habitat is not part of the deal we're working on now if it's not part of the mitigation for the riparian barrier who retains control over it and what happens to it um if it's not part of the mitigation efforts that we're talking about tonight and uh i think for the jason i don't know if you if you'd be more appropriate but the uh each of these areas will be dedicated in any detention will be in an easement dedicated to the city of death and um i i know it is outside of the development parcel um i may need you to clarify jason if it's being conveyed to urbans and then dedicate to the city or acme is dedicating it directly to the city either way it will be in an easement as well as the alternative sa conservation easement area the uh the trees that we are preserving to dedicate as a new conservation easement those as well will be in a dedicated easement um i would have to defer to urban as to who owns the fee simple title of the land okay this is amy bissett can you guys hear me yes i think that um a lot of this can be cleared up with the alternative efa presentation by city staff they do go into considerable detail about how that upland habitat conservation easement will be um recorded and enforced in terms of being able to um ensure its preservation in the in the long run and um as well as how the detention plays into that and how the tree preservation plays into them but ultimately acne will maintain ownership of the conservation area and the conservation easement will be entered into between the city of denton and acne brick company and there will be a maintenance easement between the developer and acne brick that obligates the developer to maintain the conservation easement and cure any defaults okay so questions so councilmember armature and then councilmember melzer yeah so i don't know if this is possible with the share screen it should be but if somebody can kind of trace for me where exactly the gas pipeline is underground um where uh where people are saying that uh it would be a good idea to expand um those expand those ponds to avoid taking out the trees you mentioned that there's a gas pipeline underground that gets in the way of that and i've just called in yes hailey may be able to pull up the gis map um hailey or christine maybe will be great yes so i've got up your alternative esa slide amy and it's my understanding the gas pipeline essentially runs um north south through this area here um it would be along the eastern boundary of the site um between those two ponds through this corridor here there is also a gas well that is existing in this location okay but so so couldn't the the ponds be expanded in a way that or actually could the ponds be expanded in a way that avoids that to benefit uh drainage and um and avoid taking out those trees no there's the uh the western detention pond is bounded on the north side by the proposed building on the south side by the wellhead on the west side is bounded by that access drive that actually uses so there there is not really an opportunity to expand it um in order to to mitigate the trigger for the western excuse me the eastern detention and now can that is that drive a dirt road yes i believe it is it's uh and the portion is going to be improved to a heavy duty concrete section obviously through our site up to a point and then there will be a transition back over towards the existing section that actually breaks uses so if it's a dirt road i wonder if it could be um it wouldn't it would it interfere with with uh your plans to move the dirt road it i think he said it's going to be improved maybe you it didn't come through but he said he's that that road's going to be improved no i asked moved if it was moved moved to make room for the pond expansion well west of where it exists today is another uh environmentally sensitive area so i don't know that there's really an opportunity for us to move that in either direction because we have a we have an ether to our west and we have to provide a certain volume for detention so maybe i'm not understanding the question but there's there's not much of an opportunity to move that dirt road without creating another impact elsewhere okay thank you okay and uh so let's do this so thank you you can hold on oh thank you um the existing pond that's i guess it's to the south um we heard that well first of all let me ask is that a naturally occurring pond or is that an engineered detention pond it is not an engineered detention pond i believe uh acme brick built it well in the past i don't i don't have the history there i believe it was it was likely man-made at some point but it does not provide a detention impact from a drainage perspective okay but it's not a naturally occurring pond so so uh you know you made the comment that it that it it couldn't you know the we uh the drainage couldn't go to that pond but i but i mean it's a it's constructed pond so i i imagine it could be engineered to do that what would it take to make it possible for it to drain to that pond may not do it now but what would it take to make it do that we would have to raise our entire site to provide enough fall to actually get to that pond which which would make the project not feasible from a financial perspective i guess what i'm saying is it's because we don't drain there today there's not a way to get us to drain there without raising our entire site which from an engineering perspective is not a feasible option all right well you can you wouldn't it be true that you could either raise one side or lower the other well we still have to be able to uh even if we lower the pond it has to out fault them so we we can't just lower it indefinitely or else that that pond wouldn't be able to drain i think so i look forward to hearing the presentation okay so let's do that so let's do that next um hayley let's go ahead and have staff present item a if you'd be so kind yes i believe christy's pulling it up now so okay uh good evening uh council members christy upton and i will be presenting the alternative isa plan um i'm going to kind of breeze through some of the information that was already provided and discussed and christy if i may there you go thank you sorry um okay so as um as mentioned this is in relation to and in in conjunction with the zoning request for the uh acme brick property and we'll be impacting 1.26 acres of the riparian buffer and um a little bit more information on the riparian buffer this is a vegetated area that surrounds a waterway and typically the city promotes their the preservation of 50 feet in each direction of these waterways in order to support those waterways with ecological functions and in the case of of the upper reaches of this ephemeral stream it was found that the berm that was placed there for that road roadway that crosses the the stream that caused a disruption in flow and um and the area does not support riparian vegetation and thus the designation does not apply and the proposal is to remove the 1.26 acres and that is for the construction of the warehouse and um the extension of the drive and extension and improvement of that drive that will be uh similar in this generally in this area the proposed mitigation as discussed is for the two detention basins and um those will be constructed per the city of dentin stormwater design standards and the proposed restoration or transfer of the ecological functions of the riparian buffer is to vegetate these detention basins with this wetland fringe mix the drain field mix and at the upper reaches of the detention basin with the wildflower mix and that that kind of creates a habitat wildlife area that will continue in the future and is not a typical design standard so that is the the main restoration or mitigation component that is being offered the other preservation or mitigation that is being offered is the preservation of some of the upland habitat as discussed this 2.1 acres would be preserved the environmental scientists with Kimberly horn did confirm that this area is does meet many of the have many of the characteristics of upland habitat but again it does not meet that 10 acre criteria that is required in order for the city to impose a portion of that upland habitat to be preserved thus the upland habitat could be removed by placing a conservation easement over a portion of it that portion of it will be preserved in perpetuity and that includes the 1.1637 inches dbh inches of the post oaks cedars cedar alms and hackberries that were found on site notifications were sent out to the um and to the 200 legal notice requirement and we did receive one response i do want to mention that and that was a um but that was not a property owner so that response did not get counted there was a no no neighborhood meeting as amy mentioned because um they did not receive any responses and interest in the neighborhood meeting and um it's planning and zoning commission did recommend approval of the request with the following conditions and i want to point out there is a lot of red line here and that is because um as as we were working through this with the applicant we identified that there were um areas um that the land description um that we were we were updating the information with that land description and improving our requirements uh to um to better um secure the easement um so i'll just kind of briefly go through these um the first one is to permanently remove the repairing buffer and that is limited to the 1.26 acres um the alternative easement um will be filed um and recorded with denton county and that this filing will go with the land and that within 14 days of the construction of the detention basins that the applicant will apply a vegetative cover of the detention basins as was described in the um in the alternative isa plan and that the vegetation be established as part of the proposed revegetation plan um be established for three years and that that be achieved at a minimum of 90 survival rates and then following the installation and inspection of vegetation the property owner shall submit an annual report and um that report then will at the end of those three years that staff will inspect these areas and confirm that the work was performed and that the survivability has been achieved questions okay thank you if you could pull down the presentation for us thank you questions for staff mayor pro tem davis and then councilmember armature i just want to thank staff for working on this i have more questions for the engineer and the applicant um but i really appreciate staff working through a creative trying to find a creative solution uh to a complicated issue okay well i'll circle back in just a bit councilmember armature questions for staff um i'm sorry you may be frozen we'll come back councilmember mayor pro tem davis your question for uh the applicant or the engineers sure whoever on the applicant side thinks they're uh best equipped to answer the the question i'm going back to what we were talking about a little while ago because i'm really trying hard to process the answers about the detention the existing stock pond and the detention pond i'm looking at a contour map of the site and it's it's probably what 200 foot um that's 10 foot contours so it's pretty detailed and i'm looking at where that stock pond is and i'm looking at where your proposed detention ponds are and i'm wondering if the problem is outflow where does that proposed detention pond where's that proposed to outflow from the site it drains to the um kind of the existing efa west of the dirt access road that we were discussing earlier so there's going to have to be a a pipe outfall from our western detention pond that goes into the issa area west of that dirt driveway but what about that eastern detention pond that's on the east of the gas pipeline it will be connected to the to the western detention there's going to have to be a pipe that equalizes the volume between the two so those two ponds will be connected and they will be taken towards the west okay and you're telling us the same thing can't be done with that um with that uh in the general area of that detention pond that has lighter tree cover and has a or that stock pond that's already there that we can't do something similar in that area no okay um so here's my other question and i'm going to frame it kind of generally and if you don't have an answer that's okay so you probably gathering from the questions that we're less concerned about the riparian buffer that you're actually proposing to build on top of than we are the mitigation strategy that you have which involves the upland habitat um can you tell us are there other solutions you've tried to find for that mitigation um other than than removing so much contiguous canopy i mean you can tell we're already a little myth that it's as small as it is there taken down from the the larger acreage it was years ago so can you tell us what else you've looked at to try to solve this problem so this is amy this is i'll yeah you go so just from a from a kind of a 30 000 foot view um typically when when we discussed when when we looked at what measures have been taken in the past by other projects to mitigate for the riparian buffer removal it it generally involves how do we treat the water quality volume that the existing riparian buffer is currently treating so that is essentially being done by the detention pond the enhancements to the detention ponds that aren't required that are in an area that is currently not protected so that area where the trees are being removed has no protections on it today there's no environmentally sensitive designation there today so we could we originally our original conversation was let's enhance our detention to the point that we've mitigated for the water quality volume associated with the riparian buffer and we we wanted to go above and beyond that we could have proposed that where trees were removed that aren't protected today in order to accomplish the detention needs of the project but we looked at the fact that there is an existing um upland habitat on the site that used to be protected and made the decision as a team to go above and beyond to offer up and a protection of over two acres of upland habitat that today has no protective designation on it we understand that there's removal of trees associated with the detention pond but there are there are some significant site constraints that left us with that location being where we needed to put the detention pond including dodging an active gas well to our south and a significant gas pipeline that that bisects the property and acne's needs to be able to maintain their you know their their their access into their site and the use of the site that they currently use today so we've kind of maximized what is the site that acne is not using today that they're willing to enter into an arrangement where it can be developed and how do we best um how do we best lay out that site in a way that does protect the most trees so and while i i understand why you're focusing on the trees that must be removed there's no protection on those trees today and we are what we tried to do was say we'll go we'll go above and beyond what a normal mitigation for for riparian buffer might look like and we're going to put over two acres of upland habitat in a permanent conservation event um that that's beyond um what would really normally be um offered up as a part of this um as a part of an e.s.a plan so um we maybe called out the fact that there used to be an upland habitat here and there no longer is and i think that that's a um a larger issue associated with the current city code and how they define upland habitat and what qualifies as an e.s.a but there's no there's no e.s.a there today and we're offering to create one essentially and we we wanted to do it in such a way that we could create the most contiguous tree canopy possible we did talk about how could we use that existing stock pond to the south and dan explained that um the you know the drainage the topography of the site doesn't doesn't accommodate that but we also talked about could we pipe it all there and if we did we'd have to remove just as many um trees to get that done um so there there really was a lot of thought and care put into how do we preserve as many of these trees as possible and we do and we we propose to utilize a tool um this conservation easement that is a relatively new tool in the dentin code to try to maximize um the protection of the site into the future okay okay mayor pro tem davis is that i've got one more if i can i think it'll be a much shorter answer by all means um amy on one of the slides earlier you you called out the area between the orange boxes which were the proposed detention ponds and the yellow box yellow shading below which was the proposed conservation easement and you said that strip between that gap between was going to be part of your tree plan but it wasn't part of the conservation easement um can you tell us why if those trees are to be preserved why that portion is not also part of the proposed conservation easement yes sir absolutely so and the way the dentin code is written as it relates to e.s.a. plans um we can't double dip we can't say that our e.s.a. plan is also accommodating tree preservation um so we were specifically asked to delineate between the two and not show tree preservation as a part of our e.s.a. plan and a part of our um conservation easement there's a possibility that it could all be put in a conservation easement that's not been something that we've talked about because um we've been told that we have to kind of count those two separate efforts um independently of each other and even in doing so though we still wanted to try to create as much contiguous um up in habitat as possible okay thank you uh council member armator and then council member melzer and hopefully i won't freeze up this time um yeah i i want to kind of second uh the concern that council member davis expressed i i agree that um you know i too am not so much concerned uh with the riparian buffer as with the upland habitat um you know and and i would also add to that that uh i'm not concerned with so much with creating new upland habitat as i am with preserving the existing um because there is existing upland habitat there that provides a a buffer um between the residents who live nearby um and the the acme acme brick company i am concerned about the particulate matter that is coming uh from that from that factory uh that this habitat helps mitigate as well as the wildlife that lives in that habitat um so uh can can staff speak to uh you know your sense of you know we've heard from the developers of you know um they seem to to feel that um uh because of you know complications with the the gas line and whatnot and where their proposed building stands um that uh that not not much can be done outside of the the current plan does staff have any any input on that what can you put a put a what is the question specifically what does staff have to say so we've asked the engineers you know what would you think about say moving uh about extending expanding those detention ponds um and and moving them out um to avoid um taking down this these trees in the upland habitat um and you know we heard their answer i'm curious for uh for staff's answer uh since for me anyway this is the main question and the main concern particularly as a concerning the people who who live across the street for you know for whom this is their one buffer so the question is on the pipeline if staff has evaluated i just want to understand your question there's any aspect of the feasibility i mean including including but not limited to the pipeline but kind of what staff's impression is of the you know developer's explanation of the feasibility um of moving those detention ponds out well i guess staff staff could speak to they're limited to the code i will let i'll let if hayley's still there she's gonna are they i've not looked at let me look i mean i think they're recommending approval but i'll allow i mean i'll ask um either hayley or if you are if you want to speak to that um christy i just don't know who wants to speak to that staff's analysis of the project generally i guess well i'll speak to the environmental services or environmental science as an environmental scientist and explain um again that the the area that was originally identified as upland habitat um was placed on that map um regardless of size of the contiguousness of the forest so when they originally created that map um there was they they were not considering that the future code requirement that it be the 10 acres and then in 2002 the council at that time you know this being a unique regulation to the city of denton the protection of these upland habitats that policy decision was solely on the 2002 city council so that adoption and that policy is something that um you know has been in place since then and has not been reconsidered um but that requirement that 10 acres was considered in 2015 staff did an analysis of the maps and found that it was it was not beneficial to continue to keep that designation on these areas that were less than 10 acres it created confusion and difficulties and so um the the decision was made that in strategic areas where it was evident that the forest was isolated and less than 10 acres and um the the designation um did not apply um that staff um removed that designation so that's that that would be when that that designation got removed in that area um it's still less than 10 acres and less the protection requirements do not apply and there is nothing in our code today that would um um prohibit the removal of any portion of that upland habitat okay thank you thank you for that that's and uh councilmember armatou do you have other questions i'll wait to see what other people have to ask rag okay councilmember melzer yeah um first of all i i'll just express that i'm coming at this from a point of view of trying to figure out how to make the project work because i i think it's a good project and i hope it attracts you know great employers for denton and it's a great place for it uh in terms of highway and so on um the environmentally sensitive area i'm concerned with is the apartment building the people who live in it it's only in the topsy-turvy world of government that you can remove trees and call it creating habitat but it's still removing trees now you got acne brick plant that is because of its great productive work it's blasting particulates and you've got people with lungs there that are protected by the trees and you're removing trees so if you want my support you will be talking about the additional trees you'll put on the eastern border of the property to continue to protect them not talk about how what's left will still be more protection than if we took it all away you're taking trees away so i want to hear about what trees will be added to continue to protect the human environmentally sensitive area so the i guess the question is amy in there is uh what additional trees are you going to add to the eastern boundary that in terms of additional trees that um comes a little bit later in our in our site planning in terms of like full scale landscape plans i will say that we will be required to add significant tree canopy and um would happily take direction from the city council about wanting to see that um tree canopy and landscape buffer be protective of that existing apartment complex on a broader scale we're we're down zoning we're taking a heavy industry zoning that immediately buffers that and down zoning it to a light industrial which removes many nuisance uses that would be allowed to encroach up right next to that multifamily project today so overall we do see it as a benefit to the to the multifamily project and we would be happy to consider how we can further take council member melzer's request and suggestion that we that we do add trees in that area dan i believe is um may be able to speak to that a little bit as it as it relates to how that would work with the topography of the site and um how the how the landscape planning is coming along today but i do know we'll be required to have significant tree canopy added and would be more than happy to look at how we maximize the protection of the the multifamily project in doing so got it no i i do want to keep our processes separate they are our processes and we've we've set them out so i don't want to break our own rules as far as how we phase this and so i want to take it in order best we can and so if you could just note that when we come to that process if we get there we can we can have that conversation but i do think it's important to keep them by bifurcated to to make sure we would adhere to our own processes and treat the projects uniformly that being said i do do you have a follow-up question uh council member melzer if not i had a couple yeah well i i completely disagree with bifurcating i need that i need to uh hear some concrete proposals as part of this discussion for you to be able to support it okay but that's not our proc that's not our process i mean they're adhering to the city council and the development process and so if i understand you take issue with that process but it is ours and we set it out that way and so we as a body uh so i i i understand that but i'm uh council member arbor i'm going to speak and then we will you will be next um so my um question amy or dan is the two retention ponds are those by mandate of the city uh to as part of the mitigation or is that is the only the one detention pond the 1.9 acres mandated and then the uh other is trying to go above and beyond i just i couldn't track with that and before you answer i'm going to close the public hearing for items a and b uh just to for for clarification uh but could you speak to the retention ponds and the requirements yes and i will touch just briefly on the prior question we are going to be preserving trees along our eastern property lines that there's heavy tree cover and it is it is our intent to maintain those trees uh to provide a buffer there's around 50 feet between our edge of pavement and that property line so we will certainly go into more detail but we do respect and acknowledge that comment regarding the detention ponds it's uh we've performed a drainage study following city drainage criteria the total detention volume required is around 16 acre feet we've looked at what we call a timing study in an effort to try and reduce that as much as possible we are at the furthest upstream section of the overall watershed which which has proven that we are not able to reduce that tension area so that 16 acre foot requirement basically means that we have four acres of surface area and the approximate depth is four so that is following city criteria as well as water quality okay and then understanding we can't connect those two per your analysis give me a visual of what that looks like between the detention ponds is that from a surface level will the trees remain and the water will be able to cross from detention pond left to detention pond right what does that look like um from the from the uh surface level there would there is there will be a a a pipe probably a a three foot diameter pipe that connects the two ponds underground and so essentially the water um water in both ponds will will be held at the same water surface elevation during the significant water rainfall events and um we just they need to be connected by a pipe in between the two so that they kind of that's when i say they're going to be connected that's in practice that's what thank you and then help me understand and pardon my ignorance but uh just so that i can understand why can is there no methodology that allows so i've seen pipes exposed before in a drainage that's type situation why is it best practices that this pipe in this particular segment not is there no opportunity for it to be exposed and have the water uh flow be connected without you know those ditches in theory being connected with respecting the pipe not asking you to move the pipe just saying the pipe is there and it's exposed either underwater or you know just kind of what is the what are the the i'm missing something i'm certain what is that and i'm trying to understand the question on the question there so sorry so let me let me let me clarify if you were to connect okay the reason you can't connect the two is the gas pipe between the two uh that's right between the two uh ponds why can't you dig around the pipe leave the pipe and connect the pond so it would connect the pipe would be exposed if you will does that make sense yeah and that yeah that that very well may be possible we have uh we are going to be forming um hot pulling that gas and we haven't gone out there and dug a hole to confirm exactly how deep it is um and so i mean there may be an opportunity more than likely it's going to be four feet plus or minus in that ballpark and so uh with with the depth of pond being four feet um um there's there's really not an opportunity that gas company is not going to want to expose and compromise the cover on top of it so um we're going to have to go below it i want to make sure i'm answered correctly i think it's a situation where the uh the cover on top of that gas main may be compromised if you start to excavate to connect to uh on the surface level it's something we'll certainly explore once we confirm how deep it is right but is there a best practices reason why you don't want that exposed the gas pipeline exposed yes sir and i say exposed it's it's beneath the water if you will if there's is there a reason if you connect it to and the pipe is underneath the water that's against best practices oh well i'm sure from a maintenance perspective that that gas company is not going to want a drainage feature on top of it where if they have to go in and maintain it it's just something else that might get in the way so they're certainly going to prefer that if you see that area is clear okay that's helpful um okay and then um just a just a note it would be good in consideration and this is hindsight uh to have uh the typography map included in the backup and if i if it's there somebody directed to me i missed it uh and uh then too um the um can staff email me during this discussion or let me ask you this uh miss beset do you have a overlay of the proposed building that is trans transparent where i could see the property and where the buildings sit i'm having a hard time kind of connecting the two obviously you have it in your presentation but i'd like to see where the buildings are if that if you have one that's transparent where i could see where the property is and then see where the the property where the buildings are proposed if not can staff email me just that one slide so that i can see kind of what was proposed while uh while we're discussing this project mayor hudson i don't have that readily available this is amy but um dan may have an exhibit like that that might be able to put his hands on but um i i'm not positive at this point how quickly we could produce that for you no problem no problem at all uh does staff have your presentation by chance yes i will email that to you thank you okay uh and then so council member melzer and then who else had questions and get it and councilor armater so my question is for uh the city attorney uh is approval with conditions an option with respect to the zoning ordinance or the alternative visa plan uh or both well let's say for both since both are on the table you're able you're able to put conditions on of course the the zoning as long as they're you know the typical conditions that you normally apply on zoning ordinances and then the alt visa plan you know there's conditions there those tend to be more technical but you know based on what you've heard today if you feel that you have sufficient factual findings to add conditions to the altisa plan you may do so well uh to be more specific would it be out of order uh for me to move approval of the altisa with condition that uh that the green buffer be added adjacent to the project to the protected population on the east uh to directly capture the particulate matter coming from acne's direction that would compensate for the proposed removal of trees from a language perspective that's yeah i would say yes from a technical perspective i can't tell you if that is something that is actually feasible or or can be actually performed you would need an engineer or christy upton to weigh in as to whether that is a condition that could be met but my question to the reason i'm asking you is to ask if it's been suggested that it'd be out of order to connect those issues so i uh so not talking about technical feasibility but from a legal point of view i'm taking your comment to mean uh that it would not be out of order to to some i i guess i would need to to be very crystal clear in my head i'd have to look again on the map i mean we've been talking these issues and we take down the actual what we're discussing and what we're proposing um you know if if perhaps bringing it back up to be able to describe exactly what you're proposing or have a staff interpret and and for the benefit of myself and the rest of the council exactly what you're proposing how that would work well and you know what i'm proposing is that is that the applicant create an acceptable plan so i'm i don't claim technical expertise you know other than trees are being removed that protect the population on the east and that a green buffer would need to be adjacent to that population to capture the particular matter coming from acne's direction uh uh so you know that that's the problem uh so a plan that that mitigates for the removal not which is different than saying we're still keeping some of what's there i understand that i'm addressing the fact that trees are being removed that protect that population so what i'm asking for is or what i'm proposing is approval with the condition that an acceptable plan be produced that mitigates for the removal you can work that in a motion if if you want with the added condition you will need a second and of course or to go along yeah okay thank you and i i will uh move approval with staff conditions as well as uh the condition that an that an acceptable plan be produced to mitigate for the removal of trees uh such a plan to uh involve adding to the tree buffer on uh adjacent to the protected population on the east in order to directly capture the particular matter coming from acne's direction that's my motion um so i'll need staff to we we've got i'm assuming we have to put that in in some kind of context that um the applicant can consider and we did hear the applicants say they'd be open to to entertaining you know that that that concept right i guess my concern is simply that it lacks specificity and so if it's approved and then they come back for the next phase which is the planning phase and we say you agree to something that's a little ambiguous and and then we there's nothing to hold their feet to the fire just want to make sure we're all on the same page okay uh council member armature i second that okay um and so uh miss beset you've heard the the conversation is there um i i guess i need to hear from you to understand if there's anything that gives you pause in that i i think generally as a concept we're we're fine with that um i think it's going to be a matter of how we measure that we have met that mitigation right so um whether that is um maybe in some sort of definition related to an increase in the required compatibility buffer in terms of the density of plantings because we are required already to create a buffer there between the multifamily and the industrial use that has a certain level of density of plantings that's intended to mitigate but i hear mr melzer's concern that what he's looking for is an additional mitigation for the trees that are being removed for the detention pond um if uh if you'd like to maybe clarify that that is related to um a mitigation that is equivalent to how we mitigate for uh tree removal and additional tree plantings i think that might be a um a measurable outcome i'm just a i we're in concept i believe we're fine with it it's just a matter of how we meet that criteria and how it's verified that we meet that criteria well if i can respond to that mr mayor yes uh the the uh i think we're sort of moving in the same direction uh but the the key attributes would be that it adds to the buffer on the eastern border uh i mean i propose it's a complete lay person i'm eager to hear from staff an additional 10 foot densely uh planted border but that uh since the purpose is specifically not just maintenance of canopy generally but protection of particulates protection from articulates for the people on the eastern border it's not just about trees distributed throughout the property it's about buffer on the eastern additional buffer on the eastern border to compensate for the removed trees does that help i believe that does help um if we could quantify that in either um a mitigation rate that's equivalent to what we would have to do um under the tree mitigation um requirements with the code but it must be integrated into an eastern border i believe that is um it's quantifiable i would ask jason as the developer to respond to it in terms of um agreement with it but i i think that that gets us to something quantifiable and measurable and doable mr nunley your thoughts well i'm trying to play along on the phone you know without the benefit of looking at the shared screen or being there in front of you so um but i think i'm understanding the request for an additional or tree to be replaced or left or buffered in a 10 foot wide strip on the eastern property line uh in between the proposed detention pond and the existing multifamily it's not about what's left it's not i would just uh uh sharpen that a little bit it's not about what's left it's about replacing what's being removed so it has to be in addition to what's left because things are being removed so we need we need an additional buffer added to compensate for what's being removed it's not about what's what's left um so let's council member armater and then we'll come back yeah and so um i'm sorry you're breaking up i would want to know specifically from staff if if um council member armater you're breaking up we're only getting every fourth word yes okay can you hear me now yes so i i will let okay thanks sorry about that um i would like to know uh specifically from city staff uh crispy for instance if if um she could suggest or kind of speak meet the recommendation made in that motion and and maybe specifically to what kinds of trees for instance you know might um create such a buffer and have that effect of mitigating the particulate matter from the plant for the people who live there this is in other words a a question uh for staff not for the for the developer so i would like to hear from staff specifically because staff is the one you in in council member melzer's motion would be making uh you know fleshing out this recommendation for us i i agree but here hayley correct me where i'm wrong this conversation and these details will be discussed in the and what phase of this process so typically this level of of detail with the landscape plantings for example would be it would start with the zoning compliance plan which is kind of their next step once they get entitlements in place that's the site plan essentially and then would be further defined and finalized with their civil engineering plans which is a kind of an interim step during the plotting process the developer was able to send over that kind of aerial with the the buildings transposed though and that may help shed some light on on that eastern buffer so if you like i can pull that up now and show you all what they've sent over yes please and and i guess in future discussions we need to have that baked into the the our process right we're the city council has a process that people have to go through in these phased uh ask and so we need to have that probably as part of the uh powerpoint so that we can stay um uh follow our rules so thank you with all due respect i i had that sidebar with the city attorney to ensure that i was not out of order and i i don't find it helpful i do that i i don't i could not uh agree with you more but then when we get into specificity of what type of trees that sort of thing then we are crossing that line so you had generalities that then led to details that then get us in front of where we are so um i think we're saying the same thing but i'll allow hayley to uh go through what she was going to present yes so this is um this was based on your request earlier mr mayor regarding where the building locations would be in the actual development um with you know with respect to the the aerial imagery of the site so you can see here the four buildings that they showed um earlier and this is that eastern buffer i was emailing with the the engineer just now and he confirmed that this is approximately 50 feet wide and they are intending to preserve the existing trees that are currently along this eastern property line within that buffer um this if if the buffer is in fact 50 feet wide that is 20 feet wider than the compatibility buffer that our code would require which would be 30 feet in width so this this alone would meet the minimum requirements for a landscape compatibility buffer if if they leave this in its existing state and it is uh wider than 30 feet so it it exceeds the our minimum our minimum better said our our requirement correct if this if this were a totally treeless area and they were required to plant this they would be required a 30 foot wide area uh with with 50 buffer points and they could meet that with any combination of perimeter walls uh landscaping trees shrubs any number of things but the code does allow for existing vegetation to meet that requirement um so if they can confirm the width of this when we get to that site plan um this this could meet that requirement as it stands today and and i did just want to clarify on the motion that was made were those conditions for the alternative isa or the the zoning i made them on the alternative isa and just to be clear trees are being removed just so everyone is keeping track because we keep on talking about how well it's already there and look how much is already there trees are being removed so that's what we're trying to compensate for yes sir the tree removal that you saw for the pond would be would be this area here to the south of the multi-family site um but they do want to confirm that eastern buffer would remain okay thank you so if we can pull that down we're gonna we're gonna move forward uh mayor pro tem uh davison and staff has comment just by way of discussion on the motion i i think what's pretty clear from the council's conversation tonight and the questions that we've asked is that we we like the project we like it a lot it's got a lot going for it going to light industrial a well is already capped making good use of what was previously just a sandpit and open nothing and putting that onto the tax rolls is a good improvement what i think i'd like to see rather than the motion that's on the floor now is we have two things two separate things and they're presented together for a reason but they can be done separately we have the zoning and we have the altisa i would propose that we approve the zoning tonight as a show of good faith and postpone the vote on the altisa to give the developer and the engineer time to get what to get back together they know now what our top concerns are they know what we care the most about whether it's buffer along the eastern edge of the project or whether it's showing us kind of some more detailed hydrology because some of us have expressed some skepticism on that front um that's what i would rather do is vote on the on the zoning give them the zoning they've asked for for a good project and postpone the altisa conversation um for however much time they need to to circle those wagons just point out as a point of order there's a there's a motion on the table and that if there's a motion to postpone it that would be that would be prior okay thank you uh so i have a question for you for my peers and well let me let me start with making sure it's possible so dan if you're still there i have a question for you i'm still here okay thank you so is there a way to shift the 2.5 acre retention pond to the south slightly because what that does is gives you a buffer on the south of the apartment which would in theory be comparable to the 50 feet to the east and so you have almost a 50 feet all the way around the the apartment complex of mature trees it would um on the uh site plan that hayley brought up you may have seen that we did have an emergency access secondary point of access for the fire department that does run along the south side um my only concern and we could shift it south it's going to it's going to heat into that efa area that we are proposing to preserve um so if if there's a larger concern in maintaining that buffer and and we're dedicating 2.1 acres of conservation instead of 2.2 i forget the actual acreages are um but but that may be more appropriate and i think that we could shift itself and maintain a larger buffer existing in the conservation area okay well and i don't know if there's traction for that just a thought i had uh to to then fully surround uh the apartment complex because i i just i don't want to just speaking generally i think to say that your project is you know it's all tied together it's acme it's your project it's i get it that there's some there's some crossover but your use is not their use and their use is to the south and so um i think it's more important and that existing uh tree line to the east is already planned to be there or west of the apartments uh and so i think that already established if we're if we're not right up against the apartments to the south to the south that to me is is productive and i'll point out something to my my peers we have a we have a ready mix plant in the middle of our downtown area that that never gets discussed and so it's i think it's important to just um keep it all in perspective um best we can that doesn't mean we we compromise that i mean we do better every day we absolutely have to but there's we have challenges in other parts of the air the city that don't get uh scrutinized as as much as it should probably uh mayor pro tem davis then armature and then we're going to move on this this motion mayor at this time i'll move to postpone item a the the altisa public hearing item um and uh i would post move to postpone to a date certain of february 16th um if there's a better date i'm open to amending my motion and uh and picking a better one i'm just trying to give us enough time for them to come back around okay uh the miss bisett do you have a thought on that i don't know your timing the i i think that the critical item tonight for sure is zoning however um it is in order for for the developer to stay on their timeline with acne we need to submit a zoning compliance plan immediately on the heels of of tonight's meeting and i don't know whether that can be considered while the altisa is still outstanding um i'm gonna let i'm gonna ask jason to um step in and and talk about timing a little bit more and may ask hayley to to speak to whether or not um we could have the zoning compliance plan in review while the altisa was being resolved okay so can i make a point of order real quick one moment amy yes point of order i just wanted to second the motion well i'm not accepting seconds until we're certain that the applicant would agree to it uh so i'm trying to get clarification on that so uh jason i think from our standpoint can can everyone hear me yes sir thank you um to amy's point i think as long as the zoning compliance plan could still proceed uh while we work through the altisa then from a timing standpoint that could still work for us um and when i say for us it's not dictated by us we're very much beholden to a seller and a contract here so it's not me making rules it's we're governed by a contract understood if we delayed all of it uh and the zoning compliance plan could not be considered then i think that would um wouldn't wouldn't work for our timing in our contract understood hayley if if you're available yes to the if those can run concurrent yes the zoning compliance plan could be submitted and reviewed uh concurrently while they work through the the alternative isa if everything else were to be in an approvable state um and the the alternative isa was the only outstanding item that could be a conditional approval contingent upon them getting alternative isa approval um but certainly the review could occur concurrently and it it may even assist in this endeavor because they would have some preliminary landscape plans as part of that zoning compliance review excellent okay thank you uh council member armatuer you you wanted to second is that still the case yes i second got it so and and so the motion is to postpone item aesa 2020 0006 b to a date certain which is february remind me again mayor pro tem uh 16th february 16th that is the motion for and this is exclusively for item a5a uh and so we have a motion by mayor pro tem davis we have a second by council member armatuer to and we're going to vote on that any other any further discussion okay um mayor pro tem davis how say you aye uh council member armatuer yes okay uh council member johnson aye council member baker uh thank you council member melzer i look forward to a very happy resolution i think this is a great project aye thank you uh council member ryan aye thank you mayor hudspeth is a i as well that um that postponement to february 16th passes seven zero that's five a again for clarification for staff and then uh so mayor pro tem davis mayor i move approval of item b z20 - 0009a which is the zoning case for the same parcel thank you uh council member melzer i second okay any discussion on that item okay uh mayor pro tem davis how say you aye council member melzer aye council member armatuer yes council member johnson aye council member baker aye council member ryan aye and mayor hudspeth is aye as well so item 5b 720 0009a passes seven zero as well and that uh so thank you um miss beset mr nunley and uh dan i thank you very much for your time and insight thank you mr mayor yes so that concludes our public hearings understanding items c uh z20 001b has been uh moved re-noticed will be remoted and re-noticed for january 12th uh the last item on our agenda is concluding items anyone have concluding items okay i have a few uh because i have so my grandma on my wife's side but i claim her so my grandma grandma lopez is in town and she's watching her first uh city council meeting in texas so i wanted to say hi to grandma and then uh aunt barbara and uncle michael drove aunt grand grandma lopez of texas so i wanted to say hello to them and then my mom and dad castro i missed them to those of my in-laws uh so i missed them and they gave me this awesome tie clip and i want to thank alice for this awesome custom-made glow-in-the-dark uh tie she gave me so she's a she's an outstanding little 10-year-old so with that uh we'll do it all again on a future tuesday uh so thank you all you have a great evening and a great discussion so i'll close the meeting at 10 04 p.m january 5th 2021 uh everyone have a great evening