Feb 09, 2021 City Council on 2021-02-09 2:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

and welcome to this special call meeting of the Denton City Council. It is now 2.01 p.m. on Tuesday, February 9, 2021. We do have a quorum and we do not have any calls for the consent agenda items from the public. That will take us to questions on the consent agenda from the City Council. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. If I could just ask to pull E and F for recusal. Okay. Let me make a note there. E and F. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions on the consent agenda from council? One more time. Seeing none, then Mr. City Manager will just pull E and F. No need for presentations. Okay. That takes us to item three work session reports and I'll call the first item which is item 3A ID 21238. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding a Denton County Transportation Authority update and proposed plan for on-demand service next steps. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. David Gaines, Assistant City Manager. I'm going to introduce our presenters for this item. First, I'll introduce DCTA Board Chairman and Denton's representative and former Mayor Chris Watts will kick off the presentation and then Brandy Bird, our transportation consultant, will go through the PowerPoint. So with that, I will turn it over to Board Chairman Chris Watts. Thank you. Thank you all for having us today, Honorable Mayor Husspeth and council colleagues. We wanted to just bring to you an update on what's been happening with DCTA. Can y'all hear me? Yes. Thank you. How are you Mayor Watts? Doing well. Doing well. And Brandy will give more of the detailed analysis of sort of the proposal, but I wanted to just sort of give you some context and some historical context on how we got here. A couple years ago during my last term, you know, the city manager and I began to look at the sales tax allocations and the services provided by DCTA and we began to look at also some pilot programs in some surrounding cities regarding on-demand services. And what we realized was that that was something that was worth exploring. And so over two years, we basically worked together with the other member cities, with the county, to put in a new kind of governance structure with DCTA to more accurately reflect the contributions of the member cities and to streamline the board so that the decision-making could become more effective. And over those those last two years, we have transformed the board. We've also started an efficiency study to where we're looking at the whole department, the whole organization in order to provide the best value for our citizens and to provide not only the best value but the most efficient options for public transportation. And so this presentation is the culmination, quite frankly, of a vision that that we we've had to provide better service, more cost-efficient service for our member city citizens as far as the public transportation needs. And I'm excited about this opportunity. I'm excited about what this could do for public transportation in our community because I think it's going to provide people with shorter wait times. They will get picked up and dropped off closer to their destination. And quite frankly, we can offer more services, I believe, for less money. So with that, I will just turn it over to Brandy and I will stay on the call muted if there's any questions for me. But I'm excited about the presentation to you all here this afternoon. Great, thank you very much. And Brandy? Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, former Mayor Watts. So Mayor Watts really gave you an overview of how we got here, and I will just say that this has been a two-year effort and both he and Councilman Ryan, who's the alternate on the DCTA board, and your City Manager Todd Holliman have all been extremely involved in this effort, as well as Assistant City Manager Sarah Hensley. They have spent a lot of time getting to this point, so we're really excited to brief you on where we are. And I won't spend a lot of time on where we've been, but we really want to take the time to talk about some very important decisions that the DCTA board has to make in the coming months. And Mayor Watts wanted to get your inputs, and so that's really why we're here before you today. So Mayor Watts already mentioned that we passed the legislation last session to restructure the board. We have since then revised the bylaws, worked heavily with all of the member cities and the counties to really get to this point. We also implemented, or the DCTA board did last month, a TRIP program that would dedicate 15% of the net available fund balance each year back to the cities to fund complementary infrastructure. So I believe you approved your application last month, but Denton received 2.6 million dollars out of this program to help fund sidewalk projects, trail projects, various improvements that would be complementary to the DCTA system. And so that was really an effort and a vision from the City of Denton and the City of Lewisville and Highland Village to adopt that program to help the cities build infrastructure that's necessary to complement DCTA system. And this just gives you a little feel for the historical trends. So before we get into the future and some of the upcoming decisions, we just wanted to give you a recap of what some of these historical trends really look like. So this gives you the rail ridership numbers for the last five years, bus ridership numbers, as well as sales tax contributions. And I think it's important to note that since DCTA was originally created in 2002, which we're almost coming up on their 20-year anniversary, sales tax contributions from the City of Denton have more than doubled in that time frame. So that speaks a lot to the growth in your city, but it also speaks to the level of funding that's been received by the agency over that time frame. And I should mention all of these numbers are pre-COVID numbers. So ridership is down substantially now during the pandemic, but we're really, and the board is really basing all of the decisions that they're making currently on pre-COVID ridership. They certainly are taking into account what ridership looks like currently but they also don't want to make any long-term decisions based on current ridership. So these are all pre-COVID numbers. And these are really the trends that led former Mayor Watts and Todd Heiligman in the City of Louisville in Denton County to really focus in on restructuring the board, refocusing the agency, and really talking about how we can improve ridership in the City of Denton and also just improve service for your residents. So everything that we're talking about for the future really focuses in on these three basic principles to protect taxpayer dollars, to increase ridership, and to improve service for Denton residents. And so before we get into talking about any of the service changes that are being contemplated, I wanted to just give you a quick overview. And I know all of you are very familiar with the existing routes in the City of Denton, so I'm going to go through these very quickly. But I did want to include them here and to be able to reference back to them as we talk about the service changes in case any of the Council or Mayor has any questions. So this is Route 1. There are 5.7 passengers per hour on this route. And again, this is pre-COVID ridership. This route runs every 45 minutes from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and it really runs from the downtown Denton Transit Center over to the Unicorn Lake area and covers some major destinations like Denton City Hall East, the Police Department, Workforce Solutions. This is Route 1. This is Route 2. This is current existing route and there are six total routes in the City of Denton currently on Denton Connect service. This route pre-COVID had 7.4 passengers per hour and runs every hour, basically from 7 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. And all of the existing bus service runs Monday through Saturday, so there's not currently service on Sundays or holidays. This is Route 3. It currently or pre-COVID had 9.5 passengers per hour, runs every 45 minutes all day long from 7 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. and again is Monday through Saturday service. And Route 3 runs from DDTC over to Ryan High School and then also covers the County Courthouse, the Police Department, Salvation Army, as well as many other destinations. This is Route 4. Pre-COVID had 5 passengers per hour, runs every 30 minutes during peak service and then 60 minutes off peak and from these hours 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. approximately, Monday through Saturday. And Route 4 covers the Denton County Administration Annex, Denton High School, Medical City, DPS office, as well as many other destinations. This is Route 6. Pre-COVID had 6.6 passengers per hour, runs every 45 minutes all day long, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Again, Monday through Saturday service. And it runs from the DDTC to Discovery Park and then also covers City Hall East, the Civic Center, several libraries, and TWU. This is Route 7. This is one of your highest ridership routes in the City of Denton. Has 14.5 passengers per hour in fiscal year 19. So again, Pre-COVID runs every 30 minutes during peak and 60 minutes off peak from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. And it runs from the DDTC to Razor Ranch Shopping Center. It also services MHMR, the County Courthouse, the Civic Center, Our Daily Bread, and UNT. So those are the existing 6 routes in the City of Denton currently. And so we talked a little bit about all the accomplishments earlier in the presentation. Mayor Watts talked about that. The efficiency study was something that was an initial goal when I was first brought on two years ago to work on this project. And that study just wrapped up. And Accenture was selected as the consultant to perform that study. They looked at a number of aspects for DCTA, including a service analysis. And that's really the piece that we're going to focus on today. So they did an analysis of all the existing services that are provided by DCTA, including the existing bus routes. And part of their analysis made some recommendations that looked at transforming some of the lower ridership routes to on-demand service. And that's really what we want to focus on today and get your input and feedback on that aspect. So this slide is a little convoluted, but let me please explain. So this was from the Accenture study, the efficiency study that I just mentioned. And what you're looking at here is productivity criteria for bus service. And this is not just Denton. This is across the entire DCTA system for Denton, Lewisville, and the North Texas Express. And what they did was looked at industry standards, which is the very minimum criteria that justifies fixed route bus service, is 10 boardings per revenue hour. And so that's designated here by the orange line on this slide. And so what you can see is that the only routes pre-COVID that justify, even at the most minimum level, fixed route bus service are routes three, seven, and eight. And during the pandemic, DCTA looked at the ridership on all their existing routes, and they also looked at the routes themselves. And they determined at that time, which was in March of 2020, to eliminate routes five and eight, because they were duplicative of other routes that were already being served in the DCTA system. So route seven and eight are very similar in nature. And so the DCTA board voted in the March, April timeframe last year to eliminate route eight and continue to service route seven. So when you look at the recommendations from Accenture, they're really focused on routes three and seven, because those are the two highest ridership routes in DCTA system in Denton that justify fixed route bus service. And then their recommendation is to move all of the other routes to on-demand service in order to provide greater frequency, meaning better service, more frequent service to your residents. So I know you're all very familiar with on-demand service, but just wanted to cover this very quickly in case there are any council members that are not. So on-demand service, when we say that, what we're really talking about is something very similar to Uber Pool. So it's app-based, but they do have a call-in number. They have a customer service center in order to schedule trips for anyone who does not have a smartphone. These bands, which is exactly the type of vehicle that's being proposed for DCTA's on-demand service, can carry a maximum of six passengers per trip. And the technology, as you're requesting a ride on your phone or you're calling into the call center to request that ride, the technology pairs riders within a short walk from their pickup or destination. So it's not necessarily door-to-door service unless you are a disabled passenger who needs wheelchair accessible service. And then that, of course, is door-to-door. And so again, what Accenture recommended, and this is what the DCTA board is currently contemplating, and again, they're very early in the process on this. So the board has just recently seen a very early proposal from VIA. They have selected VIA as the provider, but now they're going through a very lengthy process of refining the service to determine exactly what that service is going to look like throughout the DCTA service area, meaning the three member cities of Denton, Louisville, and Highland Village. And the initial proposal contemplated, again, as I mentioned previously, replacing the low ridership bus routes with on-demand service, retaining routes three and seven for a six-month pilot so that the DCTA board at the end of that six-month time frame can determine whether it is most cost effective and provides the best service for your residents to continue operating those two bus routes or if residents have already migrated over to on-demand and if there's a preference to then eliminate those two routes as well and go to complete on-demand throughout the city of Denton. But that's a decision for much further into the future, and the goal is really to have the data from that six-month pilot for those two routes for the board to then contemplate that decision. This will also give you greater coverage of the city. So you'll see the on-demand, the proposed on-demand zone in a moment. I have a map that I'll show council here in a moment, but it is a greater coverage area than what's currently provided by the existing bus routes. It also gives you much better frequency. So VIA is proposing a 10 to 15 minute wait time for these trips, and as you saw from the bus routes as I walked through them earlier, most of them range between 30 and 60 minute frequency, and the majority of them really hover around 45 minute frequency. And then also longer hours of operation. So they're proposing a 5 a.m. to 9 30 p.m. as the initial hours of operation. It'll be consistent across the entire city of Denton, whereas the bus routes are not. They currently fluctuate. A lot of them really, their hours vary. So this would give your residents a consistency so they would understand when this service is operating. And DCTA is also in the process of scheduling a workshop with city staff later this month in order to be able to refine the service. So that's really why we're here before you today is to get your feedback on this proposal as well. And then they will also be going through an extensive public involvement process. So from March through May, they will be going out to the public in all different avenues in order to seek public opinion about this particular proposal. So the current proposal that's being contemplated, and I think I mentioned there are a number of different aspects to this, and the DCTA board is still looking into all of them. But even at its most expensive proposal, which would be a much greater service for your residents, it's still a cost savings of 2.6 million per year. And I think I mentioned earlier, this is the hours of operation that they're proposing 5 a.m. to 9 30 p.m. Although all of that is still subject to revision and approval by the DCTA board in the June time frame. 10 to 15 minute frequency is what is being estimated. And then the DCTA board has asked VIA to also price Sunday and holiday service. So this would be a major expansion from what's provided today. And it would give your residents very predictable service. So 365 days a week they would have access to this service. The DCTA board has also asked VIA and DCTA staff to include connectivity at Trinity Mills to the DART train. We've heard from the public and from your residents and in Louisville as well that the DART train hours of operation are much later than DCTA's A train. And so there's currently a connectivity gap where if you take the train down to Dallas you can't get back to Denton in the hours of 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. And so VIA has proposed at the direction of Mayor Watts and the DCTA board to provide this on-demand service so that there would be vehicles in the Trinity Mills station, the DART Trinity Mills station area during those hours to bring people back to Denton if they took the train down to Dallas. And then VIA is also proposing an overlap in service. So the bus service will operate for at least two weeks and that's really a minimum but that's still being discussed with the DCTA board and staff in order to help customers transition to ensure that all customers that are currently using bus service are aware that this service change is taking place and how to use it. And then again as I mentioned previously they're working on putting together a very proactive community involvement plan in order to communicate to individuals who are experiencing homelessness, unbanked customers or just customers who require additional assistance, making sure that all of those populations have all the information they need as this transition takes place. And so this is a map of the proposed Denton on-demand zone and again this is very much under development. The Accenture team did do an analysis to look at different populations in the city of Denton who would need public transportation service and so this is actually a larger zone than what's currently provided by the existing bus service but it's certainly also under discussion and city staff and your DCTA board representatives Chris Watts and John Ryan will be meeting with DCTA staff later this month to talk about tweaking this zone if necessary so that that's part of the feedback that we would like to hear from council today. So again we're just very early on in this process Mayor Watts was very adamant that we come before you and get feedback and solicit make sure that we've answered all of your questions, solicit your feedback so that all of that can be implemented as this process moves forward. So I will just stop there and take any questions or feedback from council. Great thank you and if you could pull down the screen for me that'd be great. Absolutely. Okay and Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Let's see if we can do kind of the I think it's probably the easier one first you know when you look at the ridership numbers per hour on some of those routes and you find them consistently falling under you know 10 or 12 and there are other vehicles available for bus service right we've got big buses why on demand as opposed to what some would say you know right sizing the buses making the buses smaller changing hours around why the on demand versus changes to what we already have. Yeah that's a great question so the bulk of the cost for fixed route is really your labor and so allowing vehicles to serve a zone so that they're able to truly pick up passengers within a short walk I think we talked about this but what via is proposing is on average 500 feet or less walk the maximum is a fourth of a mile so very short walk to your pickup and then very short walk at the end to your destination so it just is able to maximize the labor as you're picking up several people taking them to those same destinations that's really the purpose of why smaller buses don't usually reduce cost because the labor is the bulk of the cost did that answer your question? It did thank you and mayor can I ask one other before me um my other question is about the zone and maybe maybe you can answer this uh by telling us kind of what went into determining what the zone was or maybe you can just kind of defer to the the process that you're still going through to to set it up but I noticed that for instance the Denia neighborhood is not included in the zone that there's some student housing on the other side of 35 um 35 uh north and w kind of close to where they come together that's not included um those are folks who I think may uh want to make good use of that service as well not to mention we have some city city services in the Denia area that people might want to want to get to public transportation so can you tell us how the zone was kind of determined and how much flexibility there is going forward? Absolutely so the zone was developed by via so DCTA has yet to have input at all in the zone that's exactly the process that's about to begin but I will say that they looked at the existing bus routes and then they also did an analysis of the city that showed where the larger percentages of populations low income disabled populations seniors and so they added in and aggregated all of that analysis as well but that's really the purpose of this discussion today is to get exactly that feedback from you so I've certainly made note of it and I'm sure city staff has as well and those are the conversations This is this is Chris Watts if I could if I could also address that uh Mayor Pro Tem that's a great question in fact at the last board meeting we asked them to come back with a proposal to include the Denia neighborhood and the neighborhood you were talking about I think it was originally left out because that's not where they're currently serving with the fixed route system but as you all know that area is fixing to explode with a tremendous amount of rooftops both on Bonnie Bray and then the zoning so we are we've asked them to look at that and I think from an incremental cost perspective um hopefully we will be able to potentially increase these zones we just have to get those uh proposals back but that was a question that we asked and for a proposal back from them okay great thank you and uh any other questions Councilmember Armitter yes so I have a number of questions but I'm fine splitting them up as we go around to hear from other council members well no no no by all means you can exhaust your questions that'll be fantastic that that way once we move we'll have all your answers okay well I'll see we'll see I'm almost curious to hear what other people have to say um but thank you so I'm speaking as it you know a proponent of advocate of public transportation as y'all are I applaud the goals of DCTA to you know use uh public money to get people where they need to go um I am very skeptical about uh on demand service versus fixed routes so I have a number of questions that that you probably heard before number one um I'm trying to figure out how this is a more cost-efficient model in terms of getting the maximum number of people uh to their destination buses obviously are bigger they have bigger capacity uh and I don't see how a some scale down on demand service with shuttles that could only hold six uh could uh compete with that in terms of efficiency as with just one driver getting that many people where they need to go so if you could speak to that and also to mention you know on a a DCTA bus what is the capacity um and also uh these numbers about riders per hour is an average or a median I'm not sure which um but if you could speak to you know at their at their peak hours uh you know do we see you know half full third full buses um and uh do you anticipate that each of these shuttles will regularly have six people on them if you could speak to that that issue absolutely so first question is the the ridership numbers that I gave you are average a DCTA does not have the ability to determine ridership per hour on their buses currently they do not have the technology to be able to have ridership numbers per hour so that's really part of the benefit that we see in going to on demand is once you have operated this service for six months to a year you will have better numbers and the goal really uh if if if a threshold is reached where fixed route bus service makes more sense and the ridership is at a volume where it does then I think DCTA and the DCTA board is very open to then migrating to fixed route bus service at that time but that is the benefit of on demand as we will then have the data to determine it may be that it makes sense to operate fixed route just during peak if the ridership volumes are high enough as you're suggesting that they could be on some of these routes in order to do that thanks and and what's the capacity on an average DCTA bus I believe it's 30 passengers I believe they're 30 passenger buses but we can certainly verify that with DCTA to be sure and get you that information thanks and there are I think I remember from one of the DCTA meetings that hearing there are 80 drivers now for on DCTA how many drivers would be needed for via and how many of these these vans would be available at any given time versus the number of buses that are operational with absolutely so via has a pretty sophisticated model or modeling system and so what they're doing is and I think I know I mentioned that all of the numbers that we presented ridership wise or pre-covid so via is suggesting launching a model to to address the ridership currently but they're currently experiencing so they're suggesting 25 vehicles in the initial fleet which will actually service almost pre-covid ridership so between 300 and 500,000 passengers in that first year and so they're suggesting that they believe there will be more riders that will appeal to this service than are currently being served by the fixed route bus service but then they've also got an analysis for year two assuming that ridership comes back and also just increases because of the convenience of the service so they're suggesting in in year two that they would need 32 vehicles in the fleet in order to meet the ridership numbers of 775,000 riders in year two okay thanks and so that would be you know 25 to 32 drivers that would be working for via in denton okay and let's see what about people without smartphones is is this on-demand service only do you need a smartphone or how you know what kind of technology and access do you need to do this on-demand service absolutely so a big part of the push from the dcta board has been to integrate the technology with dart so that it's truly a seamless service that you cannot determine between dcta and dart because passengers really don't care they see it as one public transportation system so darts go pass app if you don't have that on your phone currently you should download it just to take a look at the functionality dcta currently uses that for a train trips but they're not fully integrated into the go pass app and so part of the technology piece to this launch is to fully integrate with that app so that you can then go on and the way the technology functions you put in your your starting point and your destination and it will tell you what is your best option is it train bus on demand it even has uber lift it even has scooters bike share it gives you all of the modes so that you as a passenger can decide from a cost standpoint because it also shows you both cost and time which mode is the right choice for you okay thanks and so what about someone who doesn't have a smartphone that can download apps how can they and obviously that's a question for you know for dart as well and you know and then my other question but before i forget it is were those numbers um that you gave about the predicted numbers of ridership with via are those based on the the idea that they're that each of these six person vans would be full with six people so first question is um for people without smartphones they have a customer service call-in center and via will operate that service it'll be fully functioning during all the hours of operation of the on-demand service so anyone can call in and book a trip if they do not have a smartphone and that will be a big part of the marketing and the public communication plan is to ensure that all the existing customers are aware of that option and via has launched in 120 cities around the world and of course that's the number one priority for for them and for all of the agencies is to make sure that all the existing customers know how to utilize the service that they do not have a smartphone and then the second piece of that um councilwoman remind me what was your second question well there was the question about smartphone and the second question you i it seemed like you you nodded or answered uh that does do the number the projected numbers that you gave for via ridership in these two years do they assume full full vans of six people that there will be six person per trip they do not so the maximum capacity is much higher than the numbers that i gave you the numbers i gave you are based on current dcta bus ridership and then via estimating what percentage based on their experience of launches in other cities did they believe new riders could be drawn to the service so so the maximum capacity is actually much higher and we can get you those numbers if you're interested in okay thanks and i don't i don't need the maximum capacity numbers i'm actually i'm glad to know that that's how the numbers are calculated and also that there's call-in people who don't have a cell phone i'm sorry a a smartphone that can use apps um can you speak to so with with the cost savings where has it been determined yet or discussed where that extra money is going to go because we have you know we still have that half penny of sales tax that goes towards public transportation you know where is that savings going to going to go or is that to be determined absolutely and i'll let mayor watts address this too if he would like but the dcta board has not really contemplated where that saving should be invested they have discussed investing it some of it in better service for the on demand so extending this service to sundays and holidays that's something that's not currently provided that would be better service longer hours of service as well which is something that's part of the current on-demand proposal and then they've also asked for proposals that may cover a larger portion of the city which may eat up some of that savings but provide more access to a larger number of your residents and then the the service that i talked about the connection from the dark train after hours when the a train is no longer running that's also an expansion of service that the dcta board has already pushed for and then the next steps once this process is complete the dcta board will have some decisions to make there's certainly lots of opportunities to expand the a train potentially to provide greater frequency or longer hours there's there's a lot of ways that those dollars could be reinvested and those are conversations that the dcta board just hasn't had yet mayor watch do you want to add anything to that sure sure yeah let's let me emphasize the goal here is not quote unquote savings the goal is how the money that we're paying in fact if you you go back and look at that slide where uh and that's really what precipitated this whole conversation a couple years ago was when we realized that our contributions uh the city's contributions the member city's contributions to the agency were continuing to increase but ridership both on the bus and the rail were decreasing well those are going the wrong direction so the emphasis is not trying to save money and but it's to how can we the money that we're spending maximize the public transportation opportunities and options for the the citizens that dcta serves so we will be looking at how do we reinvest that money along that same principle and that same philosophy how do we maximize those savings and spend them in such a way that gets more people moving it gets more people on public transportation that's really our ultimate mission how can we provide the best service so that people see public transportation as an alternative so it's not so much an emphasis on the on saving money it's how can we maximize the efficiency of that money uh that uh that we're contributing to the that the member cities are contributing to our organization dcta uh to provide better options and better opportunities okay okay thank you uh what when uh dcta came to this uh uh proposal was an alternative considered of actually expanding uh the the number of fixed routes to better serve the public this is i'm talking about before covid obviously ridership is down now and i i i applaud that that goal of of wanting to better serve the public um can can you speak to why the just why there was not a decision to expand the number of fixed routes and if it's not about the saving money okay is that mr city manager yeah when you isolate the contract that unt has the ridership on those other routes was absolutely anemic and there you know so it was it really got down to what is the most effective way to move people um you know because you had bus after bus uh moving throughout town with very few people riding on it so and so that's what really got the conversation started is are the buses in the right places you know how do we get more people interested are they close enough to folks but just adding routes adding payroll adding buses is not the movie it was really not seen as the the way to solve this issue it's what is the most effective solution here with the dollars that we currently have but you can see the downward trend you isolate unt and the really hardly any of the routes were justified so you know was there is there a solution that where you can take advantage of those routes that are already leveraged and then those those other times where you just have very little if any ridership is that where the on-demand solution can kind of come in and buttress it to make sure that we're not leaving people behind so that was that was the rationale for it okay absolutely uh councilman if i can just add a couple of things to that the the short answer is that dcta could not afford to provide fixed route bus service at 10 to 15 minute frequency which is really the gold standard of what you want in order to encourage additional riders and really build that ridership so the cost would just be completely cost prohibitive to have fixed route service at that frequency that the on-demand service is going to be able to provide okay thank you another important question is how many can you speak to how many dcta bus drivers will get laid off with the the switch if the switch to via happens and how many admin staff in dcta will will be laid off or not needed with the switch i'm gonna ask uh aaron to give me some guidance here does that fall into our purview and you know assuming it's it's on post but i just don't know that it falls in our purview it certainly could be considered on posting since the there the dcta reps are talking my proposal and for on-demand services it's to the existing services as far as something that comes within the council's purview as for deciding you know whether to lay off dcta employees or not no that's typically not decided that's dcta's purview yeah and i would i mean obviously brand if you want to speak to it but i would add just a lot of caution here because you then begin to start a panic that is unnecessary if if you know things don't materialize as projected and i want to assure those that are currently working for dcta that i'm certain that board is sensitive to their jobs their uh how they fit in the community and they've done so and they've indicated that by reworking contracts and being a good partner a matter of fact i think they displaced the union to make sure they could pay more and do some other things and so they are there are they dcta has put those drivers first and foremost in a number of different ways and i don't want any of this conversation to reflect negatively on those or cause a panic in an environment where we're under a pandemic people worried about the jobs just want to preface that uh that we so that if it does get out or if someone is watching this there's no kind of panic started or concern unduly uh based on the the question and or answer but by all means brandy speak to it uh in the best way you feel and i can i can i can um qualify no no it's fine they have the question we'll get you an answer absolutely mayor and councilwoman so the short answer is we don't know yet the dcta board is still having all of those conversations with via this is just an initial proposal but certainly via is interested in recruiting the existing drivers we do know that the pay for the via drivers will be comparable to current bus driver hourly wages so that that was a question that the dcta board has asked and was sensitive to and also we know that cdl drivers are very much in high demand from other providers like trinity metro and fort worth and dart and dallas so so there are many open positions at all times dcta has actually struggled to recruit the number of cdl drivers that are necessary to provide the service they need as well so so we the dcta board is very sensitive to that question and that topic and we'll be focused on it absolutely thank you and and i'm speaking to actually there was a discussion i don't remember if it was in a january or a december meeting of dcta but somebody i forget the first name but gilmore said something about 40 percent at that time i understand now it's not known but at that time the projection was that 40 percent of the bus drivers so there are 80 80 bus drivers i believe was set at that meeting it was predicted at that time that 40 percent would be laid off with the move to via so is there now um uncertainty about about those numbers after i'm not going to ask brandy to speak to something that that we don't even have a source for or i mean by all means brandy if you if you can you can follow up with her and and get that information but do you have another question uh for okay yeah um and thank you to my colleagues for your patience i hope these are some questions that that y'all have gotten from constituents too um this is about a kind of short-term need but a pressing one um does via uh plan to or have the capacity to drive people in denton to and through mobile covid vaccination sites like the one at texas motor speedway that's something for instance that a bus full of people couldn't do so i'm wondering if you've thought about that because that's a real need right now well and let me ask you but just before you answer that brandy help me understand the timing again because we're anticipating does that does the timing of this rollout synchronize with the need for vaccinations at per se texas motor speedway or is this so early in the process that we're not going to reach that point and if all goes well absolutely mayor and i apologize i should have covered that earlier so the intention is for the dcta board to make final decisions on the service changes in the june july time frame and the rollout would be august september time frame so these changes would not take place until august or september but councilwoman you bring up a great question and i am not aware of the interaction between denton county and dcta about providing transportation to the vaccination sites so so i know mayor watts heard that he's the dcta board chairman i did as well we will definitely take that question back to dcta and suggest that they do so wonderful and thank you for answering my questions okay great any other questions for staff councilmember melzer and then councilmember ryan and then councilmember johnson all right thank you i'm very intrigued at the possibility of savings being reinvested in greater service uh i'm a little concerned that when you've got a very ambitious project like this and you're far down the road you know that can it can kind of lead to creeping conviction where you start filtering out you know facts that kind of contradict the the direction so just what do you make of the fact that when this was initially proposed ridership was steadily declining but bus ridership pre-covid seems to have pretty sharply rebounded to levels we haven't seen for a few years well what do you what do you think is driving that and what you know what can we learn from whatever is driving that absolutely so if you look at the numbers on that slide that showed the bus ridership from 2015 to 2019 i'm sure that's what you're referring to so you do see an increase of about 50 000 trips in 2019 and i should also clarify when you're looking at that slide that is unlinked passenger trips so you can basically divide those numbers in half to get a pretty good estimate of the number of people per year that are utilizing the service and then obviously divide that out six days a week to give you a better estimate of the number of people per day that are utilizing that service so even in 2019 which was pre-covid on the bus system which that is all of denton lewisville and howland village those numbers that i gave you it's not just denton but that equates to 891 people per day just to give you a kind of a magnitude of what we're really talking about here and that that is in the three member cities so uh dcta did implement a reduced fare that year so they do believe that that is what led to the increase in bus ridership in fy19 but if you look at fiscal year 15 from 15 to 19 it's still a reduction even though we saw that increase in fy19 so i think that's where the dcta board was really coming from is that even though there was a slight bump due to the reduction in fares we believe i mean there could be many factors of course that could result in that increased ridership in fy19 but still over that five-year time frame it's still an overall declining ridership that's where i see the blinders going on 17 and a half percent is not a slight bump right that's a really significant move so maybe there is something to do with the what the fares are we haven't really talked about what the fares would be you know uh for on demand just i'm just pointing out the obvious just to encourage taking in all the data finding all the good nuggets you know um absolutely i would also uh just underscore there are a couple of missing pieces of analysis that you know just could help refine the the whole thing uh we don't really have an assessment of the door-to-door time right if i know that the bus is arriving every half hour or every hour you know i i mean i can uh adjust my activities so that i hit the bus and it's not a 15-minute wait uh because i i know when it's going to be there and i wonder if at peak that's another missing analysis we don't really know the pace of riders i think you may well want to have fixed schedule uh that people can rely on uh so clearly the opportunity of doing this trial you know can help pinpoint those opportunities so that's more of a statement than a question and i'll make one more step going on if i may um i love the idea that the efficiencies could go into uh completing the public transportation solution for debt so you know connecting to uh dart after hours the a train after hours great you know extended hours potentially greater frequency great and i would just suggest that if that all works that that's probably a pretty strong factor or maybe a factor that would help us with economic development as well to know that there's a workforce transportation solution that actually works so uh thanks for presenting this today okay council member ryan and then council member johnson oh you're muted council member john uh ryan sorry oh there we go all right um just a couple of different questions have we has there been any discussion um on a possibility of doing two zones that one is a 10 and 15 minute zone and one where we could increase the area of coverage if you had a second zone that was maybe a 20 to 30 minute zone that's a little further out that via would be able to do that absolutely council member that's a great question and that that's part of the purpose of the workshop with city staff is to have those kinds of dialogues and you point out a great or you make a great point there that obviously if you want to serve a larger area you may have to have slightly longer wait times but you would get much broader coverage so i think that's a great suggestion to have a shorter frequency and maybe the core of the city if i'm understanding you correctly and then to have a larger zone that would still provide connectivity but could potentially have slightly longer wait times so i certainly think that's a great suggestion and i'll make note of it and i know city staff will as well for the workshop that's coming up in a couple weeks okay and so basically the way it's structured with the map is shown and that's you know subject to change but if you lived outside the zone or your destination was outside the zone would it take you to the edge of the zone and drop you and you would be you know kind of that last mile would still be on you or how would that work that's a great question too my understanding is that you could not utilize the service if your pickup or destination was outside of the zone but i will make sure to verify that so that we understand if that's what the via proposal includes or not okay and then a couple of other ones has there been any discussion with unt about the their service and how it interlocks with ours right now because right now i know unt students get to use the dcta system and with this going away how would that work absolutely and mayor watts may want to comment on this as well but i will tell you that and i should have said earlier this does not impact the unt bus route so those will not change all of the unt contract service will remain in place this is just the didn't connect service that we're discussing in this effort and those conversations with unt will have to take place as you know there's an access fee as part of the contracts that allows unt students to use all of the didn't connect services for free and so as the dcta transitions to on demand those details have not yet been worked out with unt and that is a conversation that will have to take place absolutely the dcta board also has not set a fair for this on-demand service yet so that's a conversation that has not taken place yet as well okay and just from conversations i've been in so my fellow council members kind of understand this some of the talk has been like on route seven that that goes around unt and up to razor ranch is to increase the frequency during the peak period so that we're not getting overloaded on on demand because they can get there quicker and then maybe even have lesser hours during the non-peak for those buses to to be able to adjust that way and i know that the the county has recently started in on a transit study will the areas of the city that are not in the demand zone be do you know if that would be included in that that might be outside the scope i'll let city attorney have a second to decide erin your thoughts could you repeat that question one more time counselor ryan well the the county is kicking off a a study of you know all the areas within the county that are not currently covered by dcta well the city of denton is covered by dcta but yet we have an on-demand so i'm wondering if uh if it will be sent to whoever's handling the county study that hey within the city we don't cover everywhere we don't we don't go down 35 to ropes and ranch we don't handle you know down off of uh you know tisling hickory creek area so that when they're looking at what they want to do for the county that they can take that into account i mean that's certainly possible to do that but i i'm uh i what is what is the exact question that you from a legal perspective that you're well i'm just wondering if talking about a county study is within the scope of our that that's why i asked if you wanted to weigh in on it at all i'm certainly happy i think i think it's something we can certainly provide you that information staff like information on future or a separate report to council that that is straying away from the from the current topic discussion okay all right uh just a couple real quick ones here one is on data share uh currently dcta does not have a very good way of tracking ridership so we don't know how much is unt students how many actually are per per peak hour we just know while the route was running for this many hours this is how many people got on and off the bus will via be able to supply us with much better data to be able to project into the future yes absolutely and that's really one of the greatest benefits that the dcta board feels will be a result of moving to this on-demand service is to have that kind of data and using dart's go pass app we'll have a lot more information related to that and then of course via data layered in on top of that so so yes that's one of the greatest benefits and again the dcta board is not opposed to at some point migrating back to fixed route bus service if the ridership demands it and so this will give us the data so that at some point in the future when ridership rises to the volumes where fixed route bus service would be warranted and would be cost effective then we'll really have the data to be able to design those fixed route bus or fixed route bus routes at that time to be much more effective to serve the ridership because we'll know the the pickups and destinations for riders over that time okay and then the last one is more of a comment and that is in my opinion we're looking at technology is what is allowing us to do this type of a situation you several years back we had no uber we've all depended you know anybody that depended on transit was depending on a fixed route and while i haven't seen any studies yet i would venture to guess that there will be some in the future of cities that transition to this or use this as opposed to fixed route on the things like greenhouse gases and other emissions being lowered because those large buses run on diesel and have a higher uh pollution output so and i'll leave it at that thank you thank you uh councilmember johnson thank you mayor i was just wondering as we collect data for this uh if there's going to be some data that will include that if it's more it's if it's more friendly to the seniors as well as our disabled and that we can find out if this is a friendly a service where it can get them close come closer and the fact that it's going on 365 and holidays this will be a friendlier service perhaps for those who are not getting out as much because of the way the route is set up and also with the coal center provided there would possibly be some kind of eta as far as uh where they're getting and what time they're getting there okay absolutely and via has done uh extensive surveying of customers and their other deployments and so that's something that they have the capacity to do here as well so i think that that both dcta and the city of denton will be able to get that direct rider feedback more frequently and there are nine wheelchair accessible vehicles in the fleet that's being contemplated so that's 25 percent of the fleet that will be wheelchair accessible which is a high number compared to other deployments in other cities and and i fully agree with you that the door-to-door service for passengers with limited mobility which they do not have currently with bus service this is a much easier service for them to be able to utilize for passengers who were either all in that senior population or disabled thank you okay any other questions for staff uh council member baker can you hear me yes sir uh i just want to know about the funding how is this going to be funded is it going to be funded through the uh transit authority for uh yes sir so the funding is coming directly from dcta from the sales tax revenues that flow to dcta from the three member cities of denton lewisville and highland village so as you know uh denton residents voted in a half cent sales tax for dcta and so did lewisville and highland village and so that's where the revenues are coming from to fund it okay okay the uh hubert are they going to be how are they going to be paid are they going to be paid out of the funds or are they going to be how's that going to work so the drivers for via are actually hired by via so they are employees the vehicles that will be utilized are those mini vans similar to the pictures that i showed on the screen earlier but they will be branded dcta so the drivers will be employees of via and paid hourly wages by via so no taxes as far as taxes nothing nothing will be on the citizens i mean no taxes or any increase or anything that's right no tax increase required to provide this service it's all within existing funds that are already dedicated to dcta there will be some fare to passengers who choose to use this but of course there's a a fare currently for all public transportation provided by dcta okay thank you absolutely okay and before we go a second time around are there others so that mayor pro tem or i don't know if you've spoken already but i just want to make sure we've we've gotten everyone on this first go around okay great councilmember marmiter if you could and then councilmember melzer but if you could uh focus on questions and we'll take the statements after we we get all the questions in yeah yes absolutely yeah this is a follow-up to councilmember johnson's question which i really like really important question um you mentioned that 25 percent of the vehicles via vehicles will be wheelchair accessible uh i had actually just figured that they would all be wheelchair accessible but can you speak to how that compares uh to the accessibility on dcta buses right now what percentage of of dcta buses are wheelchair accessible so the short answer is all of them all of the dcta buses that's what i thought i wanted to make sure but let me further explain so when a person requests a ride they will indicate that they need a wheelchair accessible vehicle and that vehicle will be provided it's also saved under their settings so if they're requesting the ride on the app or they're calling into the call center in both cases they will know that that person needs a wheelchair accessible vehicle every time they're requesting a ride and that number of vehicles has the ability to be tweaked at any time so that's based on the number of wheelchair accessible vehicles that they both that dcta and via have modeled are necessary and they believe that's actually a high number to cover those patrons but that can certainly be scaled up as necessary and and thank you i i would uh i i think it would be a good idea to have 100 percent of them um just for ada access because this is now be of course as a private company it's up to private company but in in contracting with the public entity i think that personally think that's the best okay absolutely and and excuse me mayor let me just say the dcta board has the ability to set all parameters so this is a private company but they're needing the the needs the needs and the requests of the dcta board so we'll certainly take that under advisement and appreciate your feedback all right thank you counselor melzer uh he may be frozen yep i can't keep track whether i'm muted or not uh you did allude to fares uh and we hadn't really talked about that is does the modeling assume that the fare to the rider remains the same in going from fixed route to to on demand so the modeling actually does not take into account any fares so that's really a dcta board decision as you know the current day passes to use any dcta service or three dollars and so the board just has not had the discussion yet about the appropriate level to set the fare for this service at but i certainly don't and and i'll let um the dcta board chair chris watz speak to this also but i i certainly can't imagine a scenario where the dcta board intends to charge more for this service than is currently being charged for bus service uh mayor watts do you want to add anything to that sure no yeah that that discussion has yet to be had but uh the proposal that via has made is is turnkey in other words the fare the fare box is purely at the discretion of dcta so we'll we'll be having that discussion but as brandy said i would be uh surprised uh how can we you know increase the fare but um we just got to figure out those parameters okay thank you uh so any any other questions for staff seeing none uh so just to just as a comment for me i don't really have i think all the questions have been addressed pretty pretty thoroughly but for me this is a uh one it's a it's a pilot opportunity to collect data to understand uh what have a database decision and that's i think in the best interest of all our citizens and then i'll touch on that it becomes a custom-made uh policy or a custom-made service right so it's it's for me it's it's a true distinction to say a person that that is disabled has to make their way to a bus stop to get 100 access to a uh to a vehicle versus a customized vehicle that will pick them up at their door and keep them out of the elements not have to take into account the city's lack of infrastructure and sidewalks etc but and that be stored so that they can automatically have that data saved there uh and it just touches on all the problems we've heard we've heard all of us probably the same people or or enough people talk about the lack of service uh to go to dallas use public transportation to make it back to dent and it checks that box when the when the i forget the citizen's name that talked to us about uh being dropped off on the other side of i-35w and couldn't get to raise a wrench it checks that box and then it's and for me i think the other box that it checks is uh the timing it's not just because those routes are what they are that's not a fixed time that's not a certain time and they run behind periodically and so it's not just to say we know that bus is going to be there because it's scheduled that way they have to abide by traffic laws they have they get behind there's detours and and news alert there's lots of street construction going on in denton and so uh i think uh for us i think it just kind of helps give some certainty where there may not be certainty right now only in paper do you see a route but they they could be running late and then so someone's like today you're you're in the elements uh but unnecessarily so so i think it checks that box as well and again i i just think everything i've heard today is is valid i appreciate staff taking the notes and coming back to us but i think at the end of the day i want to make a decision based on data and not a hunch that we need a percentage of cars but to say here's the educated we we have this many experiences in this many similar cities and this is how many cars we we think we'll need initially uh and and we can scale up and so i think those things are encouraging to me uh and and obviously the the sunday and holiday box is another one that it checks that that we've heard from constituents that we're missing opportunities to better serve our community so this to me sounds like a custom-made ability to serve the needs of the people that have come to us saying we're missing opportunities uh so look forward to it coming back uh look forward to uh future discussions as we refine uh this opportunity and again to have it it's a pilot program no different than we did on the square uh with the crosswalks it's to see uh what what kind of feedback what the user experience is and then better serve our community based on their input um so that's again no questions i think we we got most of those in um from other folks any other thoughts for uh staff before we move to the next item mayor pro tem davis council member uh melzer and then council member armature thank you mayor by way of direction i want to echo some of your sentiments first that a data-based data gathering pilot makes all the sense in the world um you know we're we're living in a different transportation age than we had in the past i know there are a lot of people who have you know built livelihoods that depend upon bus service they've they've uh they've ordered their lives around bus service when the bus service isn't available it's a huge disruption of their ability to carry on their affairs to feed their families all those kind of things um but uh so i'm not surprised that there's some resistance to making changes to the way we do transportation but at the same time if we can meet the needs of those folks and help them be educated on a new system if it does in fact meet our needs even better than you know big empty buses driving around um you know practically door-to-door service not exactly but better than a bus stop then why not explore that opportunity um we don't have to pull the trigger on it right away the dcta board will come back to us i'm sure for uh more conversation in the future but why not find out more makes all the sense in the world thank you uh council member melzer uh yeah i'm i'm very interested in the learning i think it's critical to understand the demand over the course of the day uh you know and to design around that i think it's also critical to understand what has been working and not brush it aside and try to tap whatever learnings are available in you know very significant movement among bus riders i don't know if they've done that over the last year uh and uh just uh uh last point this wouldn't be relevant for the trial but uh perhaps this would ultimately be an electric you know non-polluting uh fleet as well which you know would meet other goals of ours or help me okay thank you councilmember armature writing down some comments i'm just going to read read those uh i i am still very opposed to this and i'm concerned about title six equity and efficiency issues i'm glad that this is just a test pilot for two years so i will be looking at the the data that that comes very closely um i'm concerned that uh the law says that half a penny of sales tax is supposed to go to the public good of public transportation for all dentin residents with via being a private for-profit company um that runs a taxi shuttle service and serves fewer people i'm concerned about how that will serve the goals of that half penny sales tax law concerned about how the users of mnsk and our daily bread will be accommodated walmart workers and service industry workers i'm pleased that these are also concerns of the dcta board and i know y'all will be looking at this too i'll be closely watching the data as far as direction um i would like to see that uh the fairs remain the same or less uh than they they currently are for for dcta council member melzer pointed out that with the uh decrease in uh fair that led to and or or correlated with a an increase in ridership in 2019 and so i think that we could assume that if if the fair goes up um that uh that could lead to fewer riders so i hope that it either stays the same or goes down i would like that all customer service complaints be forwarded to the city mobility committee and city council and ideally shown to the to the public on on a weekly basis ideally for the first six months of this uh launch so that we could see what the the customer complaints and also customer praise just any customer feedback uh so that we get to see that i'd also like monthly uh data for city council and mobility committee again ideally for the public too um about uh the neighborhoods being served uh and ridership numbers you know by the hour it'll be really interesting to see i know y'all will be watching it and so if you could please share that that with us that would be great and finally i would also like to know um because we've got this affordable housing study in the city of denton this is a direction for city staff you know i'd be curious to know how they would they would weigh in as we go into phase three of that affordable housing study how they would weigh in on uh on fixed routes uh versus on-demand service and if they could look over this proposal and and comment on it as they consider other things regarding you know meeting uh meeting low-income residents in denton and in their needs meeting them where they're at thank you okay and that last one obviously you know we have a process for submitting new items and so obviously you'll need to submit that as a separate item to staff to have that that that component um forwarded or sent an email i just want to make sure it doesn't get missed um and so with that any other comments from any of the staff members pardon me council members okay thank you very much brandy thank you mayor watts always a pleasure uh very well done i appreciate it and look forward to uh you seeing what you come back with thank you mayor thank you so much all righty bye bye okay uh so that concludes item a that'll take us to item b i'll call that now item b id 21 206 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the may 1st 2021 general election and any runoff election if applicable uh including locations dates and times good afternoon mayor and city council my name is reza rios and i am your city secretary i'm going to share my screen here so bear with me for a moment you should thank you thank you so i am here to present information on the polling locations for um of course dates and times for our upcoming may and potentially a june runoff election later this year sorry i'm having um i'm not able to scroll so on january um on january 26 we did present the first work session and provided historical information on the use of polling locations that covered the period 2017 through 2020 at that time council discussed election day early voting locations for the upcoming may general election and had a brief discussion uh as they were relate those locations could relate to the june 5th runoff election if any were needed council did provide direction on locations to use with additional follow-up required by staff so to summarize the discussion and follow-up for election day locations the desire was to have two per district with the exception of district three to decide to have more additional locations based on the public input that had been received in the past we were asked to identify an alternate location in the unt vicinity since the unt gateway center was not available this year and the preference order here was were vortman's denton westley foundation and then the osher lifelong learning institute at unt was also identified vortman's has agreed uh for use of their location both for early voting and election day and denton county has vetted the location and determined that it meets all of the eligibility requirements as a polling location so we're good to go on that for early voting there were two locations per district with the exception of district four with only one location at south branch library as it was centrally located within that district again all of these were preliminary discussions we're here to finalize what the potential locations will be we were asked to identify a second location in district two if at all possible and we did work with denton county as well as other city staff that's more knowledgeable about the facilities and areas around the city and we were unsuccessful however we will continue working with staff in denton county to hopefully identify a second early voting location in district two that is not close to an already identified location within the close proximity of other districts or other voting locations also the issue of additional 12 hour days were um was discussed and and follow up with denton county they reported that a contract amendment would be necessary as this is a joint election and they have already started receiving signed agreements from other participating entities therefore they indicated that this for this upcoming election that would be a little bit too late now however they are willing to entertain you know the opportunity to extend the hours what we would ourselves would need to present to them would be to identify the how many days what days of the week that we would like to have additional 12 hour days you know rather than just the two required by state law and that discussion could take place here or we can actually have a an additional input possibly send a survey and kind of find some common data on what city council would desire to have and we will make sure to follow that up for the next upcoming election in 2022 well in advance so to summarize the locations that were initially identified here you can see that for election day we have a civic center in mlk for district two the denton isd6 service center um north branch library for district three the denton fire station number seven north makes recreation center robeson ranch clubhouse abortments and then for district four the denier recreation center la nelson elementary for early voting um again preliminarily identified were for just within district one uh where the denton civic center denton county elections administration north branch library in district two and then robeson ranch abortments in district three and then south ranch library and you can see here that we are scheduled of course to order our election later today and the locations are part of the election ordinance although the locations are very much subject to change based on the final list of participants that will join the joint election contract with denton county and we will not know that until early next week for the early voting locations we did provide some general information here as you can see on what the historical number of election or early voting locations based on the number of participants for the year 2017 through 2020 so you can see that while we may have you know a certain amount of early voting locations actually within the city of denton there has always been a large number of early voting locations based on the number of participants available to the public that they could they could actually also go at any time during the early voting period so issues to consider here um are that denton isd does have at large board seats up for election at first discussion um they are a bit concerned that there are too many early voting locations and too many election day voting locations in district three in view that it is a may uniform election and then the historical you know election returns on the vote results so again we're not really sure at this time whether denton isd would agree to cost share the locations or if they could potentially maybe cancel the election that they have been able to do in previous years and again we wouldn't know that till later either late february or too early march and denton isd could if on the ballot decide that they want to select their own locations in which case denton county would step in and and be make the deciding factor on what locations we could use and based on those factors um there's a very high probability that we would have to cover 100 of the majority of the costs that we have if if we go for a large number of not only election day but also early voting sites and of course the other participating jurisdictions primarily um denton isd then you know we do the share cost here so the direction we need here is we want to finalize the early voting locations for the general election again a double check just to make sure that we don't have any changes to the proposed locations for election day and um finalize the early voting and election day locations that could potentially be used if any runoff election was needed and um as you can see here um oh also we would also need to identify the number of extended early voting days and hours decided for the future um and again because the number of participants are unknown from election to election um the actual cost um it's going to be very difficult to come up with an actual cost but denton county has done a very good job about trying to you know identify what the potential cost could be if we ourselves would cover the full cost of any um early voting locations so you can see the election day here potential early voting and um again we are ordering the election later today and the last day to order is this coming friday february the 12th and i will entertain any questions you may have thank you rosa questions for staff councilmember melter and then councilmember armater uh yeah uh actually i think you just said that we have until friday when is the deadline for candidates to announce and the reason i'm asking this is uh especially as we start talking about moving money around if if there's an uncontested election you know in a district you know i might feel differently about the number of polling locations although although i guess you do have city-wide uh dist matters but anyway that's my question is when when when's the deadline for candidates um i'll be honest with you at this point right now i do not know um well the deadline to order of course the right the deadline for a writing candidate um the deadline for um and a candidate for a place on the ballot would be this friday writings are next friday um so um we would not know until that time whether or not we would be able to cancel maybe an election for a district i really couldn't i don't recall right now what the deadline is to cancel in order for a name of a candidate you know to not appear on the ballot should somebody withdraw as well but i could certainly find that out for you yeah i might might you know uh guide us uh second if i if i can hit a couple of points mayor yes sir um uh i think we've all received uh a number of of emails requesting that denia be uh included in the early voting as well as election day so i would just tee that up for for discussion since uh it's it's the only district that wouldn't have at least two and uh people are saying it's quite a distance from denia to that's so central uh that's quite a distance from denia to to the the library um so i just tee that up but uh last point is uh about guidance for 12 hour days for future is it possible to have there be 12 hour days the whole time but not necessarily at every location for instance you know could there always be uh early morning and evening hours available but say just at kimberly and senate center for example um state law did change recently and an early voting location has to be open for the full voting period so we would not be able to you know deviate up among locations okay that answers that thank you okay council member armature uh yes so i was going to ask about uh denia too i'm glad council member melzer asked that um about i'm just going to kind of go through district by district so for district one um why is mlk not an early voting site as well as the civic center um well the the initial discussions um were the desire to just have denton civic center and the denton county elections administration so obviously it's up to council if you you know wanted to add that location well what about you know mlk instead of the denton county elections administration i'm curious how others would feel about that i i feel like consistency is ideal you know to have both civic center and mlk for early voting and election day so if possible i i think that that would be ideal curious to know what what others think okay and if you can go ahead and list all your questions we'll we'll take them up because council member melzer had some open questions we'll have that discussion but if you can okay okay yes questions okay so again just going kind of district by district um for district two uh it would be nice to have that second location and i i understand i see the asterix where it says that uh the county looked for another location you know couldn't find one you know i would uh so apparently the denton isd service center annex is not available um for early voting uh but it would really be ideal to have a second one so i'd encourage them to look at the at churches if they haven't already um be curious to know why that uh service center isn't available for uh early voting uh i i don't have any um questions about or comments about district three very pleased that that vertman's was available and is ada accessible um and then just to add to what council member melzer said uh about district four um in addition to uh the question about why is denia not an early voting location it would be really good for each district to have two uh early voting locations and there's that distance issue there were also um questions expressed by a couple people though not not all the people who asked about uh denia questions about accessibility at south branch library and also uh there seemed to be consensus that uh la and this is just from the the people i heard from um who also uh emailed city council as well uh that everybody else in city council that la nelson was inaccessible to a lot of people that there were some issues at at la nelson so there was concern about that as a voting location so what did the if you could put some specificity to that what did the email say was the access issue i'm sorry you you muted yourself sorry um that it was uh hard to figure out where to park uh hard to figure out exactly where it was you know where to enter uh those were the concerns expressed okay all right any other questions for staff councilman ryan thank you mayor um just to verify this in the past when you exclude 2020 which was an unusual year because our city elections were held in november as opposed to uh you know on the may date the uh south branch library and has never been an early voting site in the past on a may election to the best of my knowledge um ropes and had for the last few years and burtmans takes the place of the unt somewhere near unt uh early voting site that we've added probably about three or four years ago to have something there and the reason that district two has two locations is the civic center has always been a location and the election administration always has one and people can vote in any of these so as i look through this while i'm not opposed to the denia it's really we should be looking at areas within the city because it doesn't matter whether or not it's in the district it's how how close you are to the district fire station three is right across the highway from from denia but yet it's in district three so if that were you know if that hadn't ever been in the discussion it would make sense um but i i do think that the way that this is currently set is is probably the better way to go that the denia neighborhood has easy access over towards unt and can use the burtman's location i'm more looking at it from a fiscal standpoint and based on what was on the slide earlier am i correct rosa that we would have to pick up the school district could say look we're not going to participate in that at all and we would have to pick up the full cost of of all of this that's correct for the very early voting sites if we have too many okay all right any other questions for saff okay uh council council member answer question yes yeah uh is is that a law or how do we get such a bad deal where the school district could decide not to participate financially but still have the exact same benefits you know yeah do we have any say in this matter um no sir what happens is every entity that participates in the joint election has the opportunity to select the locations that they want to use and if they so they they decide not to use certain locations they do not have to cost share but because of the way because it is also a joint election they do again get to partake of the location even though maybe they said that they couldn't agree um one point of view is um again if you have a very small entity that um has a very you know more of a limited budget doesn't really have all that many registered registered voters very super low voter turnout then a lot of times the smaller cities you know don't have the financial ability to um cost share in some if so many in so many locations why would dist ever contribute a dollar if they always get the same benefits whether they do contribute or not well again it's because because it is a joint agreement it is a joint um a joint election again under it would be under the contract with denton county if all of the elections can be used but because each entity can separately decide what locations they do want to use then they don't have to cost share in that normally the cost share comes in where you have two um participating jurisdictions that overlap each other denton isd and the city being one of those but pardon me but they do have to cost share in the locations that they do want to use you you do not have to cost share we don't you don't have to cost share that is correct okay that's interesting thank you okay any other questions i'm gonna council member baker because he's not spoken and again questions for staff will parse through all the the kind of comments but we're gonna we're gonna kind of streamline this decision making process to make it easy for staff to take these notes to make sure we get it right council member baker yes on on district two it shows only only two locations i know we've been having problem or problem uh south of uh what we used uh concrete and i just wonder how those people are going to vote or where they will go vote if they're down in that location go back up up to the denton isd part to vote they do voting early and can they vote there early but or how or do they go to somewhere else i'll take a stab at it and then roll so it can fix me fix fix it where i'm wrong early voting as council member ryan points out you can vote anywhere any at any location during early voting and then day of voting depending on their precinct would direct them where they they would either go to the annex so they they'd work their way to mckinney uh i think yeah that's mckinney and mayhill intersection there i do believe or they would be directed to north branch library all right thank you okay questions for staff oh councilor armor till you had another question well it was more a question for fellow council members not a question for staff so more for discussion so okay what's what's that discussion point uh well so number one um i wanted to mention and just see how my colleagues felt about this uh so i understand of course that for early voting you can vote anywhere no matter what district you're in um but because there's a lot of confusion around voting time especially for people who don't usually vote in city elections it's nice to have consistency so that somebody can write down on their calendar for instance you know i vote at at the civic center um whether i vote early voting or for election day uh if if that is where you can vote on on election day so it's nice to have that that consistency to avoid confusion i i think that's the argument but i'd be curious to to know what my colleagues think about the consistency issue um how important that is to people also about uh denia and mlk if we can get can hear from that i think um council member melzer and i and john ryan each gave our opinions on denia that i would like to hear from other uh council members and i would also like to hear from other council members on uh mlk okay well yeah we i have that note so here we go so if there's is there any other discussion points seeing none so we we start off with uh the the time and so this would be forward looking with respect to 12 hour times rosa one if you could give me one point of clarification uh if we extend the time that time is available to all voters it's just the city of denton would be paying for those entities that for all entities um well what denton county would do is um as that whenever they first start notifying or asking everybody um you know for an upcoming election if you know they're going to if they feel that there's going to they're going to be on the ballot basically they would go ahead and and survey the cities and say you know we're looking at increasing um the early voting days would you be willing to cost share in those so again denton county would kind of take the lead and try to identify if the participant the other participating jurisdictions would be willing to um depending on who says no then um the more nos that they get then the more increased um our potential of having to pay the full cost of those extra hours got it okay so that that's the context and so i'm just going to get a number of days from from everyone so that staff can have a note uh to take on that so to frame it again it's uh others may participate they may not so in your evaluation it's how many days above and beyond 12 days i mean pardon me above two days uh the state mandated two days do we want 12 hour voting options understanding others may participate or others may not and we would and that cost would fall on us so i'll just start mayor pro tem your thoughts i think uh in the last round of elections people became accustomed to being able to vote uh 12 hours a day uh seven to seven that put a lot of strain on the system but i think it's something that people have become accustomed to and we'll expect in future elections okay uh and then uh so council member armature this and and succinctly just the the the issue of the hours please i can i completely agree feel very strongly about that okay counselor melzer yeah i'm for all the days but you know we're saying this without knowing yes if others will cost share but also we also just don't know the the actual dollars and where we get them from and so on but without knowing all that just you know would i want 12 hour days all the election days yes sure okay uh council member ryan yeah i think i'm kind of with uh council member melzer on this a little bit in that without knowing the actual other participants and what the actual cost is going to be um i'd love to see 12 hour days throughout but unless the other entities are willing to to participate i don't know that uh i want our citizens to have to bear the cost of of that threat because as i would understand it i might be wrong but once you set set early voting locations and you can vote anywhere in the county would they is it possible that they would have to extend that at all voting locations within the county since they all have to match up on their hours fair question rosa do you not answer that sorry are you saying that if they were ever to go to um like what we call vote centers or i mean you can during early voting a citizen from denton who works in carolton can go vote there correct at one of their locations yes and so if the locations uh from what i understand you have to allow it extended hours at all locations so we would actually be on the hook for uh paying the additional hours throughout the county because we couldn't have just our early voting locations go for the extended hours it would have to be anywhere someone was able to vote is that true our locations would be required to have all of the voting hours but i could certainly get a better response from the county as to that okay because they did indicate that if we the city wanted on our locations then then that we we would be able to have it but a location is required to be open the full early voting period so it would be our locations that would be open we couldn't mandate that another location in another city have that same number of hours got it i don't i we don't anticipate that they're going to want to use our locations for those or cost share for those extended 12-hour days okay got it okay um okay well that that's the majority uh then um and and i think i'll point out this that if i understand the staff's point correctly uh that even at this late date we don't know the cost and who's going to participate so i don't know that we'll have enough that'll just be a decision we'll have to make seems like um because it doesn't doesn't seem like the information and the pricing rolls around timely for us to vote but what that that gives you some direction and then i'll open it up on the hours thing uh councilmember baker uh johnson if you have anything to add but we have a majority uh consensus on around that but want to give you the platform to to add if you want counselor johnson i think the hours would be good because people work in early morning risers that it will cover everyone okay okay mr mayor if i can get some clarity so typically um the um early voting schedule for a general election is uh one full week okay and then there's a saturday typically we don't have sunday voting however denton county did add it this time um so that is the potential um also for another day usually those are like from 11 to 4 um but then and then there's also that monday tuesday um schedule so are we looking at for whatever the early the full early voting period will be a good question so let's let's hear let's do it simply if you don't intend to indicate 12 hours on saturday and sunday which is not the tradition i mean i think it's only been eight to five over the weekend traditionally so if you're if you're speaking to extend to 12 hour days on saturday and sunday uh give that indication councilmember marmot okay anyone else councilmember melts are okay anyone else one more time okay so rosa no on on saturday and sunday just the first week in monday and tuesday all right and then just one more question um are you planning to consider extended voting hours the same for any potential runoff or is that are we going to leave that this is the way that the county typically schedules it yeah no i would think you would councilman ryan i'll let you answer that and then i've got a clarification when she finishes with that certainly uh no i i would think the hours would be let's just go worst case or consistency wise that it would be that it would mirror and and run off and then that way we'll have kind of a feel for uh the everything and then we compare that back as needed is that okay yes okay great councilman ryan thank you man just for clarification well i said i would like to see 12 hours my actual statement was that i because we don't have the cost associated with that that i did not want to burden the taxpayers with that much uh an unforeseen cost at this point i think that's something as we go forward in future elections these questions need to be brought out far enough ahead that we can have some estimate on what the full cost is going to be so i would oppose unless we knew that there was going to be full cost sharing on the additional hours yeah no and i think we're at the mercy of the county and they even at this date we have to decide before we'll know the cost so we'll have some idea i'm sure they'll have some but and rosa correct me where i'm wrong but we don't have a fixed cost now uh for this election and so that's one of those things where because the other entities are all partnering with the county the only way for us to have a clear understanding is for us to to manage our own elections almost and then we would have a cost because we would be just renting the machines and but the staffing and everything would fall on us and so we're kind of at the at the mercy of others that contract with the county my understanding but but rosa please correct me where i'm wrong now that that is my understanding as well mr mayor is that um you know it would be very difficult for us to know so far ahead of time because the deadline to order the election because of the way that it falls and then the way to the candidate or you know the when a candidate could withdraw that when an election could be canceled so even though we may potentially have at least a cost estimate that could still change based on those those factors okay thank you councilmember melzer you had a okay great so that that that covers the time the 12 hours unless i'm missing something uh seeing no no indication they're missing anything we're going to go to um now looking at the facilities uh i think everyone has it in their backup i think the the conversation just to try to shape it and move us along um first let's take up the issue of early voting locations and really to pair it down i think what the the the question becomes there's four five early voting locations listed on staffs in the backup is that sufficient or we do do we need a six location being denya that's really the the people advocating for denya but the early voting is at any location so we're not it's not pragmatic i don't think to to to kind of single out one but just to say take a holistic approach so we can serve the entire community better um so councilmember armature and there there was also the question about mlp yeah i'm taking them one at a time in in order that it came in so i i understand uh okay so the the the topic at this point is early voting locations and denya uh but a holistic approach there's five locations listed just want to can we i need to hear from my council members on how to proceed with early voting locations mayor pro tem davis i think ideally denya would be a polling place and i think in a perfect world it would but i think you used the right word when you said holistic uh you know fire station seven's not that that far from the denya neighborhood um the vortman's location isn't that far from the denya neighborhood i would prefer to see a polling place at denya but not at the cost of losing cost share from disd or not at the cost of the county saying you know what we're just going to figure this out for you because y'all have given us you know 20 places you want polling places we're just going to make the decision for you and your input has come to nothing so um that's that's my direction okay excuse me mr mayor just to clarify too there are actually right now six identified locations already for early voting for early voting yes sir okay so i have the civic center the elections administration north branch okay yes robeson ranch fortman's and and south branch thank you uh councilmemorandum yeah i will say that i think it's worth the cost because of the importance of getting as as many people out to vote as possible and there's that consistency issue okay that i think that we should not ignore people like consistency so if we can have the same locations in early voting as regular voting uh even though anybody can vote anywhere early i think it's really important it makes the whole process less confusing for people so that's why uh i i advocate for denya okay and also the other location when that comes up yeah please thank you it helps to streamline uh okay any other thoughts uh councilmember melzer yeah i think the the cost share argument now that i understand a little better cuts the opposite way i mean they never need to cost share there's nothing compelling them to cost share under any circumstance so we might as well just meet the needs of our constituents i do think that the consistency uh argument is strong you know we're not famous for having high turnout uh you know in our may elections uh so i'll say half the input i would be for denya okay all right uh any other thoughts okay uh so i uh here's where we are i don't have a consensus for denya at this point for early voting voting location so if there's if there's another council member that would uh be for adding denya in the early voting location i'd need to hear from you and while you're just to add context to that rosa i don't have that slide in front of me historically has denya been a early voting location or just a day of location um actually just a day of so historically it was um in 2019 that city council had started identifying you know the two locations at least for election day for early voting historically um we have had um just two locations for early voting and those have been um the denton civic center and then the denton county elections okay those were the historically okay never mind that we did of course add unt and rosen ranch okay so for consistency purposes there's not someone that's used to voting at denya uh during early voting that's not a thing um in 2020 being a little bit different because yes sure yeah no okay well then that i i think that i'll take the argument about consistency and say that i think it is it does not uh fit that that mold uh and so we don't want to cause confusion and so to be consistent uh we'll stick with the for my input uh with the what we've used traditionally for early voting locations for consistency purposes as my peers have pointed out uh any but i'll open it up one more time about denya early voting um okay well councilmember melcher i mean pardon me councilmember marmotor you've you've uh given your thought on this are you pivoting uh no i just wanted to clarify i'm not sure if there was a misunderstanding but when i say consistency i i don't mean year to year uh i mean from early voting to election day uh so there has been consistently confusion uh when there is our different locations for election day than there are for early voting i agree okay uh so rosa you have your direction with respect to early voting locations from that component from just that one now to uh the next kind of component we talked about was uh was mlk tradition and we'll start the conversation the same way rosa has the martin luther king center traditionally been an early voting location um no sir and um it has been denton civic center and then the town denton county elections i've been also we do have to identify a main early voting location and that has always been um the denton county elections i've been building okay uh main got it okay so is there anyone that wants to uh let's just go this way who wants to add the mlk center um as an early voting location okay councilmember armature councilmember melzer anyone else okay uh discussion on that before we move on so this is mlk center councilmember armature oh yeah i i thought i saw councilmember johnson raise a hand and i'm not sure councilmember johnson i'm sorry if i missed that your thoughts uh my thought is that i agree with the part where it becomes a confusion when you change and start moving places around and also there are just a lot of people who don't travel outside of that area okay so you do want the mlk to be an early voting location yes okay got it great okay so we still don't have a consensus though so we need uh if there is there anyone else that wants to add uh the one the king junior one the king junior center as a early voting location okay seeing none mayor pro tem davis at the buzzer i was thinking a couple things through sure by all means yeah i'm i'm fine with that i'm fine with mlk got it okay rosa if you can note that um thank you and then um so and then that takes us to councilmember armature you mentioned you wish you wanted more locations in um district two and then you also mentioned uh district four do you have a proposal for staff at this time or do you want to follow up at a later time are you talking about for election day well i don't know you you just mentioned uh so no i'm assuming this would be um okay go ahead yeah so we uh we talked about the the dna issue already um there was a little concern about la nelson i don't know if others uh have heard that as well about accessibility problems at la nelson i'd be curious to know especially council member ryan um but also the at large representatives and and yes for district two uh even though again i understand that uh early voting you can vote anywhere it would be nice uh if that um dentin isd service center annex could be available for early voting too so that uh people can just put down those those two locations you pick your location you want to vote at and you know you can vote there early voting or election day okay well i'll give you my feedback i mean la nelson is elementary school and parents drive there every day students go there every day and i couldn't imagine an elementary school being difficult to find or get to or access just my just my honest opinion uh i if someone would agrees with council member armature sentiment or uh has a different location council member uh ryan yeah i'll just repeat what i said a couple weeks ago when we had this conversation if we could have early voting at la nelson i would prefer it but it's the school district we cannot have it there we have a safety concern with the construction on teasley lane for either one of the locations but especially for south branch library uh because of the construction and no traffic signal la nelson has a traffic signal that can get you out onto teasley or crossed onto ryan safely and that's the reason why that has been used for the last several may elections okay got it so anyone else that is adverse to la nelson as a location if i may mr mayor if you'll please excuse me certainly just to kind of reiterate that um denton isd did make it very clear that they will not authorize the use of any of their schools or facilities for early voting okay thank you for that um okay then uh i think that's that resolves the questions about district two and four that were raised la nelson issue is is addressed uh then i i guess the other point is the main council member melzer yeah uh if i can double back a little bit just based on you know with uh recent comments if in district four you've got the issue of the construction on teesley which is you know formidable uh and if and if the desire is for there to be only one maybe the one shouldn't be there maybe the one location should be attenuated where the where you don't have that issue offered for consideration council member ryan yeah i would just advise uh my fellow council members to look at the map in the backup and see where denia sets in district four versus where south branch library is in district four we're looking at a centralized location with you know for the others and again denia is closer probably to the vertmans for early voting than what it it is to uh the south branch libraries and again anybody can go vote at any early vote location it okay and mr mayor has previously discussed we would work with the staff on putting additional signage as well as putting um directional maps on our website just like we did for november and then um you know blasting accessibility issues through our meeting yeah no and i'll just say for from my perspective that that area was one of the highest voter turnout locations in the last election uh so south branch library i mean the the the numbers are significantly higher than a lot of the other ones uh and so that access was was proven out to me uh in those numbers when i did the research so i'm comfortable with south branch library but if there's someone that's not and and then we can we'll circle back but uh to the last kind of component that staff needs to understand is the main voting location so main voting location discussion uh is is there anyone that's not comfortable with the denton county elections administration office so not comfortable anyone not comfortable with the denton county elect uh elections offices being a primary administration often office being the primary main location council member baker okay on on administration building the county head out there you're talking about for early voting or for voting early voting and regular voting too well so it's not early voting i don't think but so if you but uh council member i mean pardon me council member miss city secretary can you uh explain the purpose of the main or the function of the main voting office if you will well it it basically serves as a focal point where all of the election returns will go and how they're all processed and again because we do contract with denton county historical historically that has been the main early voting location and it and we're allowed to use it only for um early voting but not election day there we go okay does that councilman baker is that does that answer your question for you okay well it helps a little since there's not that many places in two to vote it seems like going down to two two locations i'd love to see another location if if we can find one okay um well during the break if rosa if during the break if someone comes up with a uh location and they get that to you that that does that do any good or we have to vet them through the county well we would so i would still need to get with the county to see what um their thoughts are about changing like a main early location or um the need to vet a location um i think we're getting pretty tight on the time frame there are all during the election here later we're identifying those locations as exhibit a uh with a caveat that um of course you know they will change based on who all the participating jurisdictions are got it okay um council member mouncer i i seem to remember if this would be helpful and i would uh you know i defer to council member baker's uh knowledge again council member armatures but i seem to remember somebody suggesting at some point uh the lds church on old north road in d2 so i just i have no idea if they'd be interested or supportive just uh offer that up as a possible lead okay yeah i don't know that uh i don't know that we have time but you know it's it's out there and those that want to act upon it can um try to um i just don't know that we have time i city miss city how do you want how do you want uh council members that have a suggestion like that to proceed well um mr mayor again we're ordering the election here later today and we need to identify the locations however we can certainly look at that next you know for next year we'll look at i i can't recall the church we did look at a church that was kind of within the center of the district but they were non-responsive and one of the concerns expressed by the county for the use of any church would be that they would not be available for the sunday voting due to church service so that was a um you know a concern on their okay great so i'll summarize and then we'll we'll wrap up with any other statements just to make sure i'm i'm clear uh so miss miss secretary so for with respect to the hours for the future elections our inquiry is about uh 12 hour voting on the first week eight to five voting saturday sunday and then 12 hour voting monday through tuesday at our locations uh with respect to the early voting locations the only addition uh that we had a consensus for was mlk junior center uh denia was not we did not have a consensus for denia then with respect to the main location that would be at the denton county elections administration office and um la nelson was affirmed and i think that is everything i have uh did i miss anything are there any comments before we move to the next item on our agenda um well mr mayor i know that we were going to try to decide um that if any of the districts were to be in a run-off election um what locations not only you know obviously for election day would the city council propose to use the locations that we're using within those districts for election day um again that would be based on whether or not the districts are in a runoff event or the specific districts are within the runoff election and then what about the early voting locations are you seeking to maybe reduce those um since it's really unknown what district or how many districts would be in that or would you like to revisit the runoff election maybe at a later time however time constraints you know from the time that it comes to canvassing and ordering a runoff election and trying to identify those locations it was a concern to the county got it okay so runoff elections let's focus there for a second uh let's let's zero in on the existing early voting locations that's where the bulk of the votes happen so just from a discussion standpoint uh thoughts on uh reducing the first thoughts on reducing the number of election locations early voting locations then two uh then which would you uh carry forward for runoff so runoff early voting locations is the topic your thoughts and i'll leave then to say that i i think we should reduce it to uh the civic center denton county elections administration roberson ranch and let's say vortmans i think that kind of covers the key areas of the city councilmember melter councilmember armature i realize this could change right up to the deadline but i just want to point out i don't think there's any races that have uh more than two candidates in them uh presently although just as a historical note i am told there was once a race in denton for school board that came to an exact tie between uh two members and then they had to do candidates and they had to have a runoff then okay do you have a thought on uh early voting locations for the runoff uh no i i no i don't okay councilmember armature and then count mayor pro tem davis uh so what were the what were the early i'm sorry what were the runoff voting locations the last time there was a june runoff i think that was sorry well again um the historical practice was that there were only two early voting locations so for the 2017 the 2018 runoff elections um we did use the denton civic center and denton county elections admin um those were in june and of course we did have a runoff election here in december and uh we actually used the denton civic center denton county election admin but then also ropes and ranch and and the location near you you know unt at that point since it was available so it kind of goes goes in line with what the mayor proposed okay yeah so so the so mayor again so you proposed a civic center denton county elections ropes and ranch and there was another one yes uh vortmans vortmans okay that sounds that sounds pretty good to me um okay thank you any other thoughts mayor pro tem davis what if we um i mean ultimately this is up to the elections uh administration right we contract with them and we say where we want to be but ultimately they make the decision what if we said we want four locations during early voting that two of them have to be the civic center and elections administration because we always vote in those places for runoffs uh and for early voting and then leave them flexibility on the other two because we don't know where runoffs are possible if if we're going to have runoff and it's going to there's going to be early voting at ropes and ranch for a runoff in district two or something like that um we don't have to worry about the school board they're going to figure out their locations that they want to get on board with based on their own considerations um but if we don't know where those runoffs are going to be it doesn't really make sense to for us to nail down exactly at this moment that you know ropes and ranch is going to need to set up a runoff location uh if it's just district two folks or district one vote folks or something like that okay that's a fair point uh other thoughts councilman ryan well typically the school district does not have runoffs because you know for the city council it's 50 plus one vote for the school district it's it's a simple majority as long as you've got more votes than anyone else so uh unless there was an actual exact tie they would have no reason to to have a runoff for the school district but i'm good with the locations you proposed okay councilman rometer yeah i think council member davis makes an excellent point about you know ropes and ranch uh because if the runoff is not in that district uh it it's it would seem be silly to have a runoff for another district at ropes and ranch so uh rosa is does the county need to know about runoff locations from us uh by friday as well or is there a little do we have a little more wiggle room in terms of time on that obviously we don't have up until the occasion of the runoff there's a little um there's there's some time to try to finalize the runoff election however one of the things that you may want to consider is um you know we have cleared the the availability of the locations um for a potential runoff election and so we would be leaving these locations hanging um on whether or not you know we're going to use them or not so and i think they may want they would i believe prefer to know whether or not you know they can free up their space for maybe other potential uses or or not so and then um so it would obviously you know be up to you on on how you want to proceed and thank you what about um as a possibility just kind of confirming that if if these other okay so we've got civic center and county elections administration what about uh just confirming that they're available for the runoff and then assuming that they are that we can could we tell the county whatever district there's a runoff in we want a that polling location in that district well i think in addition to the civic center and elections administration okay uh i'll let you i'll let rosa answer that and then um right well certainly certainly you know at least identifying the two locations and then if if um you know let's just say i mean we could we could actually go ahead and kind of have a preliminary decision on the locations that if if there is a runoff election in district two then we would use the north branch that is one of our facilities again we would just have to make sure that they understood that they cannot book anything um all of the locations that we presented are available for the full um election day early voting and then any potential runoff so we have pre-cleared them for all of that time period and then in district three which would be your choice uh robeson or boardmans and then of course for district four we have only one location so that would be very easy and that is one of our facilities so that makes it very easy yeah i think that's the that's that if i have a new proposal it would be that so we would communicate that picking up where a council member apartment where mayor pro tem davis left off we we confirmed the civic center and the uh denton county administrative administration or elections office and then we then use our city facilities to subsidize as needed in in the individual districts so does that work uh for for most except for district three potentially because those are not ours those are either robeson ranch or boardmans yes and and boardmans being a private business there's a probably have a little more flexibility i would think as far as they don't have as many bookings if you will uh or events being booked there so i would think there's some wiggle room but i'm not certain um but i i'm counselor melzer i i um support the direction you're going uh and i would just add let's give a little more input once the deadline is passed for uh candidates having places on the ballot this will all be you know could potentially be a little clearer than okay so is it okay and so those that don't agree please uh give an indication uh is it okay to to communicate to the county that yes we want to reserve the civic center and the uh denton county elections administration building then as it becomes clearer and as it gets closer we will use city facilities and in addition vortmans to as options uh for depending on how the panel of candidates shapes up is that is that agreeable anyone any does anyone have a different idea or not okay with that general plan at this point seeing none one more time okay rosa does that give you everything you need it certainly does um and just to make you aware that i will be um updating the exhibit to the ordinance order in the election uh for the item that's being considered later uh in the evening meeting um so that this is at least the general election locations are appropriately reflected in that exhibit awesome okay well thank you thank you great conversation uh very important um so with that that concludes item b let's take a 10 minute break so it's 421 be back at 431 uh so i will adjourn uh not adjourn we'll take a 10 minute break for this meeting uh right now at 421 p.m we'll be back at 431 p.m thank you and welcome back this evening to this special call meeting uh for the denton city council today's date is the 9th february 2021 it's 438 p.m we're back on the record and we're still in our work session and so i'll call the next item the next item is work session reports item c id 20 21 82 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction direction regarding the downtown denton tax increment reinvestment zone number one good afternoon mayor and council members jessica rogers director of economic development and here with me you see travis james of txp incorporated travis is our consultant on this project and so to start the presentation i'm going to take the first few slides and then travis is going to jump in um and we'll kind of go back and forth from there so okay thank you hold on frozen there we go all right so council members txp was retained at the end of 2019 to review revenue projections related to the downtown turrs or the tax increment reinvestment zone at that time the focus of the analysis was going to be on the peck four phase three and four project and that was because the city had been approached by a developer that needed that drainage project to be completed for their development to happen and so as we worked through that initial project that application for the development was withdrawn and then certainly as we went through 2020 covet changed the timeline and the analysis parameter so we shifted focus a little bit to the broader use of the tax increment reinvestment zone and we looked at a variety of projects so i'm going to cover and the background of the tax increment reinvestment zone for you and then we'll jump to travis when we get into the analysis analysis so the downtown turrs was created in 2010 it took effect on january 1 2011 um it is a 30-year turr so it terminates on december 31st 2041 or when its revenue of 24.8 million dollars is collected so it could terminate sooner if the revenue is collected sooner the city of denton is the only participating jurisdiction and we participate at a declining rate over time so in years one through five 100 percent of the increment value generated by the turrs went into the turrs fund we're now fiscal year 2021 is actually year 10 so we're in that last year of the 95 increment and then next year we'll drop down to that 90 increment so as of the previous annual report we had about 2.4 million dollars in revenues and about 1.9 million dollars in expenditures but to give you a little sneak peek we've just wrapped up our 2019-20 annual report and we'll be bringing that forward to city council and with that report we had another 750 000 generated in revenue so we have a total of about 3.1 million with about 1.99 million in expenditures and just over 1 million dollars in fund balance so with all of that information the most important number that you need to remember is that the turrs right now today has about 21.7 million dollars of revenue remaining to be collected so that 21.7 represents that area under the cap revenues that have not been collected to date so when the turrs was created the mission was identified as providing a source of funding for public infrastructure improvements to encourage and accelerate necessary development and redevelopment within the downtown turrs per the project plan the turrs was formed to focus on specific project areas those included parking and transportation complete streets support for downtown projects which included grants loans chapter 380 agreements and general maintenance and utility or drainage improvements so expenditures to date have been under the categories of downtown projects which things like the rail yard development or the downtown reinvestment grants come out of and complete streets we've done a little bit over a million dollars in lighting and sidewalk projects through the turrs and then on january sorry i'm going to switch to the next slide and just say this is a map and that shows the downtown turrs boundaries so this is the area the properties within this boundary represent the turrs where that increment is generated from and so with this slide i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to travis and he's going to kind of walk you through the feasibility studies and the additional studies that we've done travis great thanks jessica travis james with txp it's good to be in front of all of you so this is the boundary for the turrs this was the turrs boundary that was created 10 years ago when the turrs was put in place and on the next slide i'll use the different consulting firm to help with the turrs and financial feasibility analysis and that firm identified five key catalytic areas where they thought they would see development or the turrs would see development over the next 20 to 30 years so these areas were identified as a through d or e we've only seen a little bit of development in area a that's the east end apartments and on the next slide you will see they projected about 126 million dollars worth of new development not appreciation but this was new development and as i said we've only seen a little bit of that take place in area a so on the next slide despite not seeing a tremendous amount of new development appreciation of existing properties has been much higher than we thought so as jessica said about four million dollars has been collected to date there's an additional 21 million dollars remaining that can be collected and it looks like we're going to hit the cap in about year 27 so about three to four years earlier than what was originally projected in the financial plan on the next slide you will see how the turrs has grown from you know 70 to 80 million dollars it's now up to about 235 million dollars 28 million dollars has been reported by the appraisal district for new construction right if you remember the previous slide was 126 million dollars that was projected but about 28 million dollars of new construction has occurred and appreciation has been 124 million so again there's lots of room for new projects to to happen they just haven't happened yet this is the annual revenue stream so we were approaching about a million dollars a year in turrs revenue now that will somewhat decline as jessica showed you the slide earlier about every five to ten years the percent contributed by the city stair steps and goes down and on the next slide you will see when we will hit the cap between the year 2036 2037 and that assumes no new development so if we have a new development that's fully taxable we should hit this cap earlier right so what did we do on the next slide as jessica said i was originally brought in txp was brought in to look at what would it do to the turrs and how could we finance paying for a project the pec three and four project that project that development is no longer going to happen so she said we pivoted and then covid hit so what did we do we originally had some in-person meetings in 2019 with the turrs board we met again with them virtually in 2020 met with five to ten developers in person in 2019 we had some virtual follow-ups in 2020 and then we had a number of virtual meetings with existing business owners through the denton main streets we got a fair amount of public input from developers existing businesses and the turrs board during the past sort of year to two year and a half so what did we find out what did we hear this first slide is what we mostly heard from the businesses the consensus was is that more downtown parking is not a priority don't spend the money on a parking garage we think there's lots of parking maybe need to do a better job with signage and letting folks know where it is but a parking garage is not needed today that's not priority one downtown businesses as you know we're struggling with covid so if we think about doing another hickory street type project that's going to take a long time and impact the businesses maybe let's wait a few years so the businesses can recover from what happened during covid they like the idea of smaller projects focused on lighting and sidewalk improvements they thought those would be more appropriate in the short term than a multi-block project drainage improvements they thought were important and necessary but they might not bring a short-term impact the drainage improvements are longer term without that short-term catalytic project on the next slide again this is a combination of existing businesses and shifts into what we heard from the developers downtown needs more daytime office employment and traffic to balance the nighttime activity so we've got to figure out a way to get folks downtown during the day get more office workers downtown to balance some of the residential projects that have occurred unfortunately they didn't think office fronts were high enough to justify new construction so that's potentially where the tourists could step in and provide some incentives to encourage those office type uses in the downtown probably no surprise to you developers would like to use the tourist funds to incentivize larger new projects you know figure out another source of revenue for sidewalks and infrastructure existing businesses also told us they'd like more tourist funds to expand the existing building improvement and facade program that some of the limitations are 25 and 50 thousand dollars might not be enough for the type of infrastructure and work they have to do on an older structure so maybe we could increase the amount of funding to help those businesses and then i think overall we heard downtown lacks an overall vision where they felt that it did and so that it made it difficult to prioritize tourist projects or how to spend that tourist funding since there wasn't consensus on what's the vision for downtown so i know i covered a lot but that's what we heard okay so then what did we do next we said okay let's talk about the kinds of projects that might make sense projects you all have talked about in the past and let's see if the tourists could be a force a source of funding the red line that's the existing tourist boundary the pack for phase three and four project is to the left the projects or the parcels that are within the flood plain that would be impacted are in purple the majority of the parcels impacted and the majority of that project is outside of the current tourist boundary so if you wanted to use the tourist funds to fund that entire project you would have to expand the boundaries because state law requires tourist funds be spent within the boundary okay so if you all said yep we want to use our tourist funds this is the most important project we think there is you would need to expand the boundary and that is the black and white dotted line that jessica's sort of moving the cursor around other projects we've talked about that you're familiar with are the new streets project around the courthouse that's in that orangish color folks also said what if we did some corridor projects along elm and locus we just highlighted those because those were two streets people thought long term you know medium term there's a lot of redevelopment in fill opportunity and then because of the success along hickory street a lot of appreciation has occurred as a result of that project or in conjunction with that project something that might be similar and so we identified oak just you know we drew a map drew a line that roughly matched the length that's about a half mile project so these are the kinds of projects we talked about that could be funded and on the next slide we tried to make something that's complex relatively simple so what you see on the far left is the name of the project the next column over is the estimated cost so one of the takeaways is you can't pay for all of these if you want to pay for the peck four phase three and four when you add in interest the project's about 17 million dollars when you add in interest that would take up the 21 million dollars that's left that would come into the turf so the project cost plus the interest the new streets is about a seven million dollar project the corridor improvements seven to eight million dollars developer incentives would vary by project but we think based on the kinds of projects that have been looking in the downtown area those might be in the five to ten million dollar range per incentive you could expand the grant program and then the downtown business owner said just make sure if you build something new that we leave some money for maintenance then you see a column for back one more real quick project specific some of them are linked to a project some are not so the incentives would be linked to a specific project tech for not a specific project longer term that's what the next column is and then we finally went through a process to identify how it would impact the values in future development so then we went back to the tourist board one more time and got recommendations or at least the consensus for how to potentially move forward to take to this group number one expand the tourist boundaries so the entire peck four three and four becomes an eligible tourist project doesn't necessarily mean you use all the funds to pay for it maybe you pay for part of it but again expand the boundary just to make it eligible the second recommendation was to to get feedback from the council to have you all decide how much of the downtown tourist should pay for peck three and four so should the tourist be used to fund a hundred percent fifty percent none of it so once that decision is made they thought that developer incentives and smaller sidewalk and lighting projects should use whatever funds are left and in conjunction with that remove the 25 million dollar cap to make sure there are enough resources available to pay for what's needed in downtown so again to repeat quickly the three things three recommendations expand the boundaries make a determination about how much of tech for you want to use the tours for and then consider removing the cap and fund developer incentives and smaller sidewalk and lighting projects but have the tours terminate after 30 years and though i covered a lot of material with that i'll stop and turn it over to to jessica so we're going to switch gears just a little bit before we um start discussion because we want to provide some additional context and analysis that we did after we received direction from the tours board so let me jump to the next slide so we focused our additional analysis specifically on the peck four project and there were two main reasons that we explored that project a lot further and one is that that was the recommendation we received from the tours board so we really wanted to do some in-depth hard look at that project and then second that project on its own has the most significant impact on the terse fund of all of the projects considered it's the only one that sort of limits our ability to do anything else so today um to kind of frame the discussion that we'd like to have with council we'd like to focus on how to prioritize projects so really two central central questions does council concur with the tours board's recommendation and want to move forward or down the further down the path on funding the peck four phases three and four projects or are there other projects or goals that council has identified that we can continue our analysis and effort and maybe bring back some some additional analysis on those projects so i'm going to put up a slide um it looks complicated but i'm going to walk you through what each column represents so if you'll remember from travis's last slide he kind of had that 100 and 50 as the options we thought those represented kind of the best range of possibilities so it could fall somewhere in between that in terms of supporting this project but we thought this gave council kind of a good idea of where that support could fall and what the impacts would be so let's focus just on this blue column right here so if we funded 100 of the peck project out of the tours the cost of the project is about 24.8 million dollars when we factor in financing costs of that 17.7 million dollar project one thing we also did because we heard pretty strong consensus of wanting to continue the downtown grants so at a hundred thousand dollars a year over the next 20 years it would be another two million dollars in downtown grant costs so that means that we would kind of book 26.8 million dollars in future tours expenditures so what would be required for us to get the revenue to to get there so we've already said there's really only about 21 million dollars of revenue left under the cap so we expanded the boundaries um that map that travis set up we actually pulled all of the parcel data for all of those parcels that fall in that new boundary and we took the cap off and we just forecasted growth um on the existing tours and those new parcels so we as forecasted that the total revenue to be collected would be about 35 million 35.4 million so again we've already collected three million so we'd have about 32.3 million left to be collected we have about a million left in fund balance like i said before so that gives us about 33.4 million dollars if we took these actions to fund projects so if we subtract these two known projects from this total revenue we'd have about 6.6 million dollars in the remaining years of the tours that could be used to other for other projects and that's sort of the exercise we went through for various funding scenarios so we did that same thing for the 50 scenario we said what is the 50 if we financed uh 50 percent of the project through the tours so just divide that number by two and you get the 50 12.5 million same two million dollars in downtown grants and we'd so we'd have about 14.5 million dollars in expenditures now in this scenario we had two options um we have enough room under the cap to cover those expenditures without removing the cap so in this left scenario here you see we're just expanding the boundaries but we're keeping the 24.8 million dollar cap in place we'd have about 8.3 8.4 million dollars to fund other projects in addition to the peck project we also ran a scenario where we said well let's expand the boundaries and let's keep that or take that cap off again again here you see we generate that 33.4 million dollars in this scenario we'd have just under 19 million dollars for projects and then over here in the green is the simplest scenario we said what if we did nothing we don't prioritize the peck project we'll keep that hundred thousand dollars in there for the downtown grants we'll keep the cap in place we'll keep all the terms the same so we have like i said about 22.8 million uh it's probably around a little less than that right around 21.8 million um remaining for other projects we do have some interest income um that we weren't factoring into our analysis so right in this uh row right here you see the actions that would be required for each of these so if we were going to fund 100 percent of the project council must expand the boundaries and remove the cap to make that project financially feasible to fund 50 percent or a portion of the project you would only have to expand the boundary you could consider removing the cap or you could also do it and then prioritize other projects out of that 18 million and then again in the zero percent there's not really anything required other than if you want to do the peck project we'd have to identify another source of funding um and then certainly we could prioritize other projects and then here's just a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of kind of the different approaches and you know the good news is is that there's advantages in every scenario so there's positives that we would see from any of the projects and even from this project in different funding scenarios so mainly the advantages of doing the project is that a large portion of the area becomes available for redevelopment and increased value the advantage of kind of not funding the project is that the turz has a lot of capacity left to fund other public private partnerships that's what p3s are i apologize that's sort of a jargony abbreviation um but we also uh wouldn't have to make any amendments to the project or finance plan we could move forward with doing projects under that scenario we wouldn't have to go through the public hearing and changing of the central documents process and then of course there's disadvantage with any of those so the disadvantages of the project and you'll see is that as travis said the stakeholders didn't really believe that that project benefited the central part of downtown which they felt the turz was designed to support and then also developers didn't really feel that that project would result in significant return to the city immediately they thought that's a much more long-term type of investment and then under the peck or sorry under the zero percent scenario um really the disadvantage there is that we'd probably be looking at um some co or geo issuance for that peck project so it may push that project a little bit further off so to kind of summarize the other options the zero percent options um is that if council doesn't want to pursue that peck project um we've kind of identified these as the projects uh that are kind of in that ready to go place something that council might want to consider but you'd have about 22 million dollars um to prioritize in different ways and again this is the same kind of chart you saw before it just takes that peck project out so before i open up for discussion um really we've kind of summarized all the all the options as best we can here um funding the peck for project out of the turz at 100 percent or 50 knowing that there are actions that council must take to make that project turz eligible um certainly the other option was that zero percent option we could prior to prioritize other projects and then lastly there are other options so we don't want council to feel limited by you have to make a decision today um the turz fund could continue we could kind of wait and grow um continue to use it as a pay-as-you-go turz where we're just kind of looking at projects as they come along and then lastly is something that council has discussed before um do you want to even consider what continuing with the turz and using and using that money specifically for downtown improvements um but that's really what we wanted to to focus our discussion on today and i'm going to stop sharing and let everyone see each other and then we have a whole bunch of questions i'm sure uh because we threw a lot of data at you so great well thank you well done thank you jessica thank you travis all right uh mayor pro tim davis i think i've got some direction stuff too but i'll start off with questions and you sound a little distant you have to pull down your there you go there you go i was eating a sandwich for anybody was curious how was it um delicious good job mccallister's over in uh district three probably um and uh so my first question is you mentioned that the kind of the genesis of this whole conversation was a development in uh south of the square that uh that deal has since fallen through or isn't going forward you know deals fall apart for all sorts of different reasons but is the the kind of deal that got us talking about this is that something that's replicatable is it something that may come our way again or a similar deal where we're we're looking at this area south of the square thinking man if we had just pulled that area up out of the floodplain starting in 2021 man we would have been so far ahead on this thing so i think yes and and no um the i don't know if we could really replicate the exact terms of that deal for various reasons um but we've had interest in other areas of the city as well where this project wouldn't have been required so it is replicable in that we've seen developments kind of developers approach us and say i'm interested in developing in this general area what would a public private partnership look like um and then in terms of what specific interest we've seen in any property um and i can only speak to my experience since i've been here so i'll defer to to todd if something happened prior to kind of me being in this role but that development is is the only interest that our project that i've worked on that's in the pec for floodplain and i think i think sometime in the future you know someone would like to develop in that area and it's challenging to develop in the floodplains in general so i think maybe some people have shied away from that area because the floodplain was an issue and they didn't want to tackle it so i think at some point in the future there would likely be development in that portion of the terrors where the floodplain exists mayor can i ask a follow-up yes so the discussion uh one of the things you're asking us to give direction on also is both expansion of the terrors and bringing the whole for the purpose of bringing the whole pec three pec four project into the terrors if we were to expand the terrors in such a way that didn't bring the whole project in not the whole boundary of the project then our options would probably be not just the 150 50 zero it would be 100 or zero and then that portion of the project that's in within the new terrors boundaries right so it could depending on how the math works out it could be 100 zero or 45 55 or you know 40 60 or whatever that that works out for the parcels it would that be an option too correct you can only pay by law for the portion of the project that's within the tourist boundary so however you apportion the cost that's all you could pay for that is correct thank you okay and mr city manager you have something to add well i i think this in this initial exercise uh was was really you've got this area of debt and it's sequestering dollars our own tax dollars and so the idea was you know do you do you try to pull you know some of that money out to help uh fix a pretty significant flooding problem down there and put some land back on the you know the table to be redeveloped you're likely not going to be able to pay for the whole thing it's going to be have to be a combination of grants co's you're right it's going to be a patchwork quilt of funding unless you go out for a bond referendum i think the other the other project that we've really seen at this point that we've been working on we we have not been able to make it pencil out to the extent that it would be eligible that we would feel comfortable making that recommendation but they're they're making it a little bit smaller and looking and we've asked them to refine the numbers to come back to the council but i think the idea was the the turz has been on the books for well before i ever got here i'm sorry the uh back three and four well before i ever got here and is this a way to lift that up and um kind of do have a double bang from the buck um knowing you're gonna have to put other dollars at it if it's something where the council just isn't interested in using the turz for that then we need to know that because you know this this the turz has been locked up for years uh first to try to build a parking deck um got it kind of backed off that we've looked at the mew streets and now the uh the pec three and four so you've got some significant um possibilities there and we're trying to get some input i i think uh you know before we can move forward but the incentives there's going to be enough dollars there on the incentives to deal with a couple of projects that we've been working on no matter what but it's really more or less you know would you like to get one of these other things moving as long as we're continuing to sequester our own tax dollars in this area okay um council member armature then council member melzer uh yeah so question for jessica i was wondering if you could speak about the cap and what the advantages of you know advantages and disadvantages of having the cap for the city versus removing the cap sure and i'll kind of defer to maybe todd and travis on that as well um certainly there's advantages and disadvantages it did put a hard cap so it said you know the turz will terminate so it's not here forever um and so that meant if if development happened really quickly then the turz would hit the cap quickly and that revenue would flow back to the general fund um the cap and then the the other side of that um is is if development isn't occurring very quickly this thing can live out its 30-year term um and it may never hit that revenue now we're tracking kind of on that first scenario where we're going to hit the cap prior to that the term being hit but but i'll kind of defer maybe travis and todd your experience with these things i think i think the cap it's a simple academic exercise when you first put a turz in place you don't know how it's going to perform so you essentially you're putting a pro forma in place your best guess on how it might build out what kind of value you might see over the next two to three decades so now that we've got some history behind us and see that it's performing well um that that risk starts subsiding a little bit unless you have a huge crash in the market and it gives you that it gives you the ability today to talk about real projects which were in essence theoretical and aspirational when the turz was set up so that's the only thing it is it's just really it's you're setting the goalposts up front and planning and then as you get more history you've got more accurate data more confidence to actually pull off real projects as you see how it performs i would say we do these all over the state i think caps tend to be more common when it's a large site owned by a single developer let's say one master plan project where you have fairly certain what's going to get built and when you tend not to see these in a downtown when you have multiple owners don't really know what's going to be needed and the only thing i would say not to not to disagree with the city manager is that oftentimes turz are used to fund incentives and so if you spend the 21 million and now this is the accounting and maybe david can talk if you spend the 21 million to pay for pec 4 you can't then use the turz to rebate a private developer an incentive because you hit the cap so it gets a little bit tricky what's pretty common in these is that the money goes into the turz and the turz rebates the developer for their infrastructure costs or whatever makes sense so turz tend to be used as an incentive fund as well so what's that cap that's all you got is the 25 million to work from however you spend this the way it's it's written today okay it continue go ahead uh councilmemorater this is a follow-up question it's it's really not uh a recommendation at this point maybe by the end of the conversation but for now it's really just a question um can the turz could a turz uh be used uh for to uh help in some way existing businesses um outside of you know incentives for developers to um develop a new businesses or a new location for an existing business um i i know that that's been done in the past i'm just wondering if their ideas being tossed around and also um can the turz be used for uh small smaller forms of affordable housing as infill or you know apartments you know on on on top of businesses um you know between businesses or you know something like that so yes you could use turz for affordable housing um number two you can do 380 grants you can use a turz there are some state laws but in general you can use a turz for those types of incentives you're talking about and in the past i believe in just go correct me you all use general fund dollars for the downtown grants and recently those got shifted over to the turz so when some of those downtown grants beside programs the turz is the source of funds you're now using okay that's correct um and i will say in your backup you have the turz project plan and in that project plan it outlines specifically what this turz can be used for so any expenditures have to be compliant with that project plan but uh economic development grants loans um the chapter 380 agreements are considered eligible under the downtown projects category in this project plan got it and before we go to council member melzer he's next up uh with questions uh todd who's on the who's on the line that could give uh those watching kind of a a 30 000 foot view so we say we throw around the word peck and peck three peck four and as though everyone's been watching us for the past you know three years or so so i think it would be good just to hit the reset and say what is a peck what's peck what's the number uh that sort of thing good point mayor good point you're right we do throw those around um we have we have set garcia with us time is that is yellow okay here um all right okay i'll kick it over to seth i can generally describe it but i know he's been working on it himself so we'll have seth to answer that thank you so we're getting set set okay set up in here all right so he can so we'll get paul's question and then he can he can jump in behind that so that give him time to get set up so paul your question yeah and i'll come back around when you're ready with observations and comments but has anyone looked at whether or which of the original catalytic areas were in floodplain whether peck three peck four floodplain or other areas see just eyeballing it looks like probably was i mean i wonder if that was just sort of potentially you know a missed factor that could have contributed to the fact that there's really been very little uh development in those areas i think councilmember you are correct area c which which is the northern portion of the turrets has floodplain issues and that's another area that will need a significant amount of resources to allow development to take place no the uh a catalytic area was not identified in in the peck four area and i don't know if that was because it was in the floodplain so they left that out on purpose or they didn't anticipate the project i don't know why that area was not identified as a catalytic area thanks okay uh staff ready yes and we have seph garcia from capital projects one of our project managers thank you yeah so if you could just give us an overview for those so assuming someone's brand new watching this meeting and wants to know what a peck is and what does the number mean uh help them out yeah no problem so once again i'm seph garcia project manager with capital projects um peck four three and four is a continuation of peck four phases one and two so peck stands for the concrete tributary phase three and phase four are kind of the geographic locations for uh the project so phase three begins where phase two is currently terminating that is just west of elm street on prairie phase three will continue north crossing stroud sycamore and end at mulberry street where the current existing channel kind of cuts in front of the carol quartz building and then phase four picks up there moving west across carol boulevard down mulberry street and all the way to bernard so with that uh like i said before it is a continuation of phases one and two um the primary objective of phases three and four is to bring a lot of this floodplain um out of the floodplain so even with construction of phases one and two uh quite a bit still stays within the floodplain just based off of that existing channel being so undersized um and kind of how the topography works all that water pushes towards the downtown area so without construction of phases three and four a lot of the work that we've done with one and two doesn't come out of the floodplain um along with this project we do have substantial utility relocations so we're installing 16 by 8 12 by 8 and 10 by 8 boxes on a 20 24 foot wide road that's essentially curb to curb so with the size of these boxes you have a significant amount of utility relocation that's driven by the actual drainage project okay let me ask a follow-up you know that kind of builds on what you just heard certainly thank you um so just again for the general audience what is it that you're allowed to do in a floodplain and what is it that you're allowed to do that's different if you take an area out of the floodplain why are we just talking about that something might flood or are we talking about development potential might be not a question for for the same right so that yeah do you jessica who do you have that could speak to more of the planning zoning side of things sorry we're i think i think the answer to your question follows it is it once in there once that uh project was would be completed you go back in and ask fema to do a map amendment army court and do a map amendment and once once it's pulled out of the floodplain that area is deemed not in the floodplain it becomes buildable but they have to they have to agree that it's met the criteria and and it's uh you know it's basically taking those properties out of the floodway or floodplain and let them build them so army corp and fema will actually have the final say on that so anything you do they're going to have to sign up on those engineering plans up front yeah you got to hit the threshold but i think one of my question was the term uh buildable you can't build new structures is that right if the if the if there's a map amendment and the property is taken out of the it no longer meets the definition of a floodplain that changes the buildable uh the ability to build on it however it's got to be certified up front through the your stormwater map amendment and if you can it's also difficult to get those projects insured which means it's difficult to get those projects financed which makes the project more expensive and so without it getting insured it's hard to get a loan it essentially means you don't change what's there today right so when we're talking about peck three and peck four being in the floodplain it's essentially projects can't happen there and then if we and then if we meet all these hurdles then projects could happen there but yeah that's correct that's the short version yes right well so and councilmember armature i'm gonna check with others to see if they they want to speak and i'm going to share a thought uh before we go around for part two and then we're going to really start giving staff direction moving towards and and some some conclusion so any other councilmembers want to speak for the first time that have not spoken councilmember ryan thank you mayor have we determined uh i mean we can kind of look at the map and see it's probably a little better than 50 of the property that would that's outside is that correct because the project is divided up into phases um we assumed phase three equaling 50 percent and phase four being the other 50 percent so that's kind of where we got to that 50 percent number is if you split the cost between the phases but we would still have to expand the boundary to get all of phase three into the terse suite to even be able to fund that phase to make if that makes sense that's why we included that expanding the boundary even at the 50 funding level okay that that makes sense has there been any discussion because i know one of the properties as i look on the map is uh owned by the county have we discussed anything with them as to potential for at least some funding from them we have not at this point primarily because we don't have a good conceptual engineering plan uh they they were certainly interested a couple of years ago but we just have not been able to move the project forward in uh because we've been dealing with um financing shortfalls on pec one and two so we needed to get that uh taken care of first and then get into conceptual engineering on three and four so we could have an intelligent budget to talk to them about okay thank you all right anyone else okay i'll share my thoughts just tracking along with the notes uh so if you first i thank staff for their analysis travis for your analysis but i i will take i'll direct my my peers to look at the map that staff has provided and for those following along so this is uh page 15 of the the powerpoint presentation and and so i just ask you to envision with me the lower portion of the map in the purple is along bell avenue and it shows houses there one houses don't recoup their cost and so that's not a good use and then two if you could imagine no homeowner would ever get out of their home on the bell avenue we've all driven it enough to know right there around morrison milling prairie street that's just not steeped in reality from a pragmatic approach and from a pragmatic application it looks great here but i just don't think it's it's realistic then you go around prairie street stroud those houses are already those areas are already developed and then you get and i think councilman ryan rightfully pointed out you get into the county property around carol street where we can't really develop anything there so for me my direction is going to be pretty succinct that we don't need to expand it and if we do need to expand it it's not this way it's it's the other way so then i look at the data that was provided originally so option a so if you're looking at pardon me the catalyst area a is where they saw a lot of money so then you look at there if you look at that so that's mckinney street which we're going to be widening to those potential there and then you have that large develop a large space there mbsc to whatever so that's just on the other side of the railroad tracks and so there's a large swath of land there if you bring that out of the floodplain now all of a sudden you're connecting the civic center and the what used to what used to it's now red used to be backyard and bell you're connecting that area extending towards down mckinney that to me makes sense so for me in summary it's going to be we need to not do the peck projects one because the board that reviewed it agreed it's not that big of a that's not the top priority but two is we as a city rarely get to dictate what development comes from our dollars right so in this instance if we do the peck work we don't really get the say we have some say but we really don't get a direct say in what comes from that why not take this opportunity to take what we our dollars and say here's what here's what we're the options are on the table take that back to the stakeholders get community input and then invest in a project that the community wants that everyone wants and we have a say so and and what goes there so that that control oh because that's what you hear right the city manager touched on it well i thought the dollars were going to go to a parking garage i thought the dollars were going to go to this we elite we remove that argument because we're clearly saying these dollars are going towards this project and we have a new level of clarity versus a peck project that then may or may not produce as we want it and the issue with the existing homes and affordable homes or those sort of things i mean the existing infrastructure what's built is over producing what's new so the deficit's not in what it's not the evaluation of what's on the ground that's not what we need we need to we need new development and again that goes to targeting specific development so my sales pitch would be either we target the catalyst a area that's mckinney street or if you drive the area and it's in the it's already in the existing zone and this makes a lot of sense so we're talking about transit we're talking about increasing traffic from dallas and and those sort of things in rail traffic and with our last example from for for people going to dallas coming back to denton well there's a large piece of property that used to be trinity industries that was just purchased and is undeveloped and it's in the ters now so and it's right next to the downtown transit station so when you're talking about revitalizing an open area that then brings traffic from out of town and from in town to invest dollars downtown that then also feeds into the hickory streets that sort of thing then then you have my complete attention what are we going to do what's the end goal so for me the end goal is either to activate large open areas uh to to select the developer in those areas to move on using the the ters dollars or activate the other end of hickory street because if we're talking carol and um we're talking carol and hickory now if we activate that area all of the sudden we have an entire stretch of hickory that let's say you talk about closing the street down on the weekends or having almost like a six street effect the entire stretch of hickory street would have been revitalized and now you have kind of a walkable uh area that that's connected to a large parking lot with the carol courts building and i'll also forecast lastly that the carol courts building is going to get reactivated as the county grows out of its current courthouse on mckinney they're talking about sending judges to the carol courts building so that is going to get reactivated in a different way not just the jp courts and so there's going to be a lot more activity in that stretch of of hickory that we could capitalize on and so i think there's there's a lot to be done but really it's where do we want to go uh what what development do we want to target what area do we want to target and the only way we can do that is not the peck projects but to uh do an incentive on a project that we want that the that staff i mean pardon me that the citizens have an input on and uh the boards and committees have an input on and so we have unanimous not unanimous consent but we have consent on a project moving forward and there's no question about hey i didn't think we're going to get this for that we we know exactly where we're going and so that to me makes the most sense so my direction is to forego the peck projects and use it as an incentive to find a project uh to target a development large open area downtown that then feeds the other parts and so new development is where i want to go but uh i'll open it up for a discussion so we'll go council member uh armature ryan and melter okay so uh i i'm still struggling with with a number of these issues weighing alternatives i want to just say a little bit about where i am right now and then ask a question and i hope that the former will help kind of explain the context for the question why i think it's an important question um so you know on the one hand uh you know ters or no ters um local businesses are struggling right now uh and there's also a real need and always has been but you know now more than ever uh for more affordable housing um and there are smaller forms of housing and infill middle housing uh that are would be consistent with our 2030 plan uh that is about you know infill and more density in in the uh this downtown area um at the same time um these you know peck projects are you know this is really important that you know drainage and flooding issue is not a sexy issue but it's extremely important um but of course that could come from from other uh funding sources so my question as i weigh as i weigh all these things is um and the this the slide that mentioned uh that the the projected uh growth in in development uh and the the sales tax revenue or the property taxes whatever that would come from that um the projections ended up being uh significantly off so we ended up getting a lot less than we're projected and i'm wondering what you imagine and this is really to who whoever wants to answer this um including multiple answers i'm interested to know what people think might be the reasons for that whether is that because of the cost of construction is it because of the floodplain um does the floodplain really prevent that much uh you know new development and and in addition to that could it also be our our zoning uh rules are our zoning or permitting policies okay too restrictive in in some way um so there might not be one right answer but i'm curious to know what people are hypothesizing about the reason for it because that'll help me david i see you queuing up i can definitely at least get a portion of it i'm sure um if there's follow-up questions when you look at the tourist specifically i think travis mentioned this on his on his slides and he was showing the growth it actually exceeded projections on our on our assessed values within the tours and obviously we've seen that throughout the city over the past number of years but specifically in the tours the growth and the assessed value in the tours is outpaced where we are in the city and that's why we see even if we don't do anything else as far as as far as expanding the boundaries we're going to hit that cap earlier than we initially thought so we've actually continued to see growth there now the growth has come from those properties that have been there year over year as opposed to new value coming into the tours but the tours growth itself from assessed value has been higher than anticipated okay yeah well let's let's let's get let staff answer your question your first three questions yeah i think here was a statement about the numbers being off or whatever and that's that's not really accurate i mean the dollars that were brought into the tours actually have outperformed the pro forma what happened is there was the there there was much more investment in redevelopment than new construction likely because of the cost of land and building parking that sort of thing which is what we've seen with the new developments that have come in to us is there's gaps there in terms of land prices and their ability to sustain new construction so that's why they're asking for assistance so i i think that is part of the issue the issue about the small businesses that's a real slippery slope this money is being taken out of the city's tax screen and diverted you know to a specific area so if you set up a program to benefit those folks in the tiff you're essentially taking everyone's money into the city and only providing assistance to a small subset of businesses so that needs to be thought through in terms of the equity of that decision in terms of the affordable housing it's most likely not going to be enough to close the gap on affordable housing we could probably set up some programs where you're likely to see possibly some assistance there would be in mixed use developments and incenting folks to keep certain units at you know as part of an overall development is affordable there's that's that models all over the country where we've seen those types of things so they're good ideas but you need to be careful here because this money belongs to the entire city and you know just just funding a few business owners out of that i think you're you're setting yourselves up for a lot of criticism okay okay thank you so thank you so much by the way both of you for your for for those answers that really helpful and i i do like the idea of mixed use mixed use development um to to what extent can i just ask us a follow-up to what extent would resolving the the floodplain issue uh open up more possibility for this i mean i see these two even though these are two competing possibilities i see them potentially working well hand in hand i don't know that we could give you a great answer on that right now um you know where we've seen some theoretical development proposals come in for where the that datq building is across from the old development services building which would be a candidate but right now that we've seen lots of ideas um and also in the area that the mayor was talking about but we we have asked them to come back and give us refined performance that they will actually perform on because right now where our negotiations have been they're they're asking us to pick up what i consider to be a an indefensible uh subsidy on the you know on those projects so until we can get their numbers refined which means their project scope refined a little bit and get to a get to a proposal that we can bring you that we can back it's hard to answer your question we just haven't seen um haven't seen numbers there that that we can answer you i guess with our credibility there yeah okay thank you so much i just want to say just as far as as direction response to that while that comment is fresh um i i really appreciate that uh and and that makes sense i myself feel really unable to decide today okay i need i would need um more public input i i've gotten i haven't gotten any uh emails or phone calls text messages about this but it's an issue like you said that affects the whole city so maybe um at some future point when when more is known uh hopefully before too long we could have some sort of public hearing uh to get input beyond the the downtown area okay what people in the whole city think about this all right because there are such important issues thank you councilman ryan thank you mayor uh as i look at i think it's page six where they had the original catalyst projects and you know area d is where the frontier building is that's never going to be redeveloped there's too much infrastructure right there too costly to to change it area c the city's now developing a portion of that for our new development services uh e is partially owned by the city um it i just i don't see where the original plan was good uh when it comes to tours i don't believe in 100 funding any single project out of the tours i believe it should be more of a split uh i don't really i know this downtown tours has been very questionable by some for a number of years so i do not feel like uh expanding the area is in the best interest but if it's uh that we don't have the funds for the engineering on pec three and four right now uh you have to fund the portion that's within the existing tours to get the engineering done so then we can start looking at where we can get those resources at that point we may change our minds and we might be willing to use some of the tours but i don't want to commit to that project out of this fund uh at 100 once we get that engineering done we can look at 25 50 what can we do with grants will the county maybe kick in a little those types of things okay thank you uh councilmember melzer you're you're muted yep uh that's very interesting uh what councilman ryan just said um first of all i would say in general i i i'm more inclined to favor making the conditions for prosperity uh and for development by using public funds rather than writing checks to you know individual uh projects or to individual individuals um as far as the the tours uh there's a a few things that just haven't been said and then some comments might lead people to make incorrect conclusions as i recall there's something like 140 uh parcels that are in the floodplain that are affected by pack three and pack four and that and they couldn't develop further and just to give you an example of the kind of thing that could be uh everybody's familiar with the railyard project that's not in the floodplain there was a an industrial building there it had a value of something like four hundred thousand dollars because it was not in the floodplain they could add the east end apartments to it very needed dense housing close in and now that's something like a 20 million dollar property so i'm not saying every 140 every one of the 140 parcels could be a 20 million dollar project but the upside is you know it's quite great the the price per square foot a floodplain property might be more like ten dollars take it out of the floodplain you could be looking at 25 35 dollars uh and you know think of the impact of that on tax revenue if i could make a couple more comments i had asked for us to reverse the sequence of what we talk about today because after this we're going to talk about the economic development plan which this is clearly related to and just as a preview to that under competitive denton it says successful downtown development and an authentic town square are among denton's top economic achievements the city should continue to prioritize the downtown area by incentivizing residential and commercial development beyond the square to create a more mixed use pedestrian friendly development extending off the downtown square and that that's essential to denton's success so you know look i don't know why our founders i'm sure has made sense at the time to make our downtown on top of a little hill uh but that's where it is and so you know there's not a lot of uh room to grow but i think that uh the tremendous upside from no development potential to whatever you can imagine is so great with these drainage projects that i i certainly wouldn't want to exclude it i rather like what councilman ryan said about let's at least take it a meaningful next step and you know kind of prove it out of it addressing the areas within the ters i think if you're looking for is it column a b or c you know that would look something like d that we can continue to look at some things that aren't uh this but that we should really move uh you know move smartly forward on on seeing what the potential is here okay so uh i'm gonna i'm gonna um frame where we are because we're gonna we're gonna move towards an end uh or at least a consensus so uh councilmember ryan has touched on a split councilmember melter has touched on a split so let's let's just get is there anyone that is not interested in a split in 100 percent pack uh spending if there's anyone that wants to spend 100 of the dollars exclusively on the pack for three and four project i need to hear from you otherwise we'll take that off the table so that staff can can have that note well mayor let me just add uh if well if there are in fact these other sources of funding that could make up whatever it is 50 to whatever we should be pursuing them i understand but we're just talking about the ters at this point right yeah thank you uh ters 100 peck three and four is there anybody that supports that that would be column a the blue there on staff slide 20 so slide 20 the blue column hundred percent anybody going once okay seeing no action so jessica we have that much so now we're looking at 50 percent or uh only a other project councilmember melzer i mean pardon me i did that wrong mayor pro tem davis so i i weighed in on the questions i had some questions but i hadn't offered any direction yet yes sir um i i want to first uh give a shout out to councilmember ryan for pointing out what i think we all kind of intuitively knew about those catalyst areas huge amounts of public land not actually very useful for cattle there's not a lot of redevelopment potential in those areas why we chose those couldn't tell you i wasn't around um but i think um my direction would be to not expand the ters to the west because primarily residential development already they're not likely to redevelop we're not going to have any added construction value over there that's going to be appreciation value only west of carol but if we do expand uh the on slide 15 it's the black and white line if we do expand to the south that's organically connected to our downtown that's part of our downtown already that's the area that we've identified not just in the economic development plan but in i don't know how many different ways and forums we've identified that we want to revitalize that area south and north of the square so uh if you expand that that far south to just about eagle uh taking in the boundary we've got on slide 15 you've got peck 3 entirely within the boundary of the ters if we say peck 3 and peck 4 roughly 50 50 i think peck 3 is probably a little more expensive than peck 4 well there's our 50 50 so i would say expand the boundary to the south not to the west uh fund peck 3 not 4 out of the ters and that leaves a little bit of cash still in the ters and remember this isn't cash coming right out of the ters every year this is like borrowing against the ters because that money comes in year over year over year if i'm not mistaken so with that money that's left over i would say the next priority needs to be a combination of the corridors and the muse streets if you look at south elm and south locust those are underutilized assets if those streets looked like east hickory if east oak street looked like east hickory if west hickory looked like east hickory those are corridors into our crown jewel into our downtown and those are real basic infrastructure kind of things i noticed i didn't say anything about back-end parking on east hickory but just make it look nice put in some nice uh sidewalks some good press stamped concrete and some nice uh lamp posts and you're you're well on the way to improving um the property values down there and then again putting money back into the ters that way with uh with rising values so that would if if it were my call that would be my direction expand the ters to the south fund peck three out of the ters and the next projects on the docket would be corridors and muse streets i kind of put those two together the muse streets have make their little box but that's really kind of a piece for me the corridors and the muse are all infrastructure improvements downtown okay so to frame where we are for everyone going forwards for direction so obviously 100 off the table variations of 50 percent on the table uh and and here's what i need to hear from people either it's a we've basically boiled down to from what i've heard so far a uh a split funding with just engineering and so split funding out of the ters portion would go to engineering and and analysis of the peck construction projects another would the other portion would go to other projects unknown staff would come back with those or we could dedicate uh commit to peck three development and leave the remaining for a project undetermined uh it's kind of those are the two those two options out there obviously there's other options uh so is there anyone that hadn't spoken that wants to give their thoughts mr city manager and then we'll go to uh well councilmember baker go ahead and then we'll come back to you miss city manager can you hear me yes sir um i agree with uh councilman davis uh like say native on the streets and i'm glad to see them do locus and elm and getting it done uh like say i grew up here and one time the hub of this town was downtown and i think we can bring uh help the businesses and bring some more uh businesses back downtown i think that would that would help out a lot if we just uh do it north and south i think that would help us a bunch because i could say at one time this that was downtown was the hub of the city okay uh mr city attorney i mean pardon me i was looking there mr city manager yeah mayor i i think uh councilmember ryan's point was kind of where we were already heading when we were talking to the army corps and about possibly going after grants we actually initiated design a year or so ago and i didn't realize but our city engineer just came back in and said that we're we're getting pretty close to getting a solid design for you so i think basically if it's okay based on everything i'm hearing from you from the council as a whole it may be that once we get that design wrapped up and we have a real hard number for you to work on we could bring back potentially a couple of options with a cip for you to look at um you know it could one of them could be along the lines of mayor pro tem's points there where you expand it and kind of knock out all these projects another one would be where you just leave it in place and give you the list of projects i think if we can do that you can get some things moving that's really what the criticism has been as we keep collecting this money and not investing it back in the downtown area so we can bring back a couple of cip projects for you to see if you're okay with with heading in those directions program them out the next five or six years and and get moving but that's really what we've needed from you is you know are you okay with building this plan and having staff go out and implement it yeah no and i think a component of that if i've if i've read the room wrong right but if i'm wrong please tell me but i think the other thing of the other component of that so the short answer is yes the longer answer is also bring us back an analysis of the available land or developable land you know is it you know that sort of thing is it i just think there's an important analysis to say uh it's pulling out of the the flood zone but if it's all residential how does that affect our thoughts right and so i think there's that that kind of land analysis that goes in with how what property is coming out of the the uh flood floodplain and we've done a lot of that work so we'll have that for you because we had asked for dcat values to try to build the case for why pec three and four should be done so i know that we've got some of that information ready and uh we'll put it in a uh in a cip kind of with a list of menu choices for you and and uh get your get your feedback there so staff knows what uh what direction to head okay brief thoughts whatever else what are the notes for the city manager to bring back council member melzer yeah just to put a fine point on what you're already saying uh city manager you know i think it'd be helpful to the extent possible for for uh each of the menu items to be able to see what's the cip and how big is the upside you know as quantitative as as we can even if it's ranges okay any other thoughts for for staff to take away seeing none okay thank you mr manager thank you jessica and and travis we appreciate your insight okay that concludes item c that'll take us to item d i'll call that which is id 21124 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the economic development strategic plan and strategies for implementation well hi again council members still jessica rogers director of economic development um so i'm going to do a pretty brief presentation on the economic development strategic plan and get you updated um on where we are you'll have to apologize me i have quite a few presentations today so i'm getting to the right page in my notebook thank you all right all right so for this presentation and i'm going to kind of focus in four key areas first i'm just going to give you a brief overview of the strategic plan um just as a reminder a resolution to adopt the strategic plan is on the city council agenda this evening so i'm going to do my presentation now um so i don't have an additional presentation during the individual consideration item and then we'll also go through um the proposed policies programs and scoring matrix i'll kind of give you an update on what work we've been done as we've kind of shifted into the implementation phase and then i'll give you just a very quick one i think maybe two slides on where we are on the catalyst fund discussion and then just really update city council and kind of talk about what are those future discussions that we'll need to have um as we are uh moving into that implementation phase so i love this slide because this really describes kind of the winding road that we've taken to get here um with the plan for adoption this evening we actually began this process back in november of 2019 and our world has really changed a lot in economic development um from when we started this plan so there's been lots of pivots and shifts as we've kind of gone along um but here we are in february of 2021 we've had um lots of round tables interviews discussions lots of data analysis on qualitative and quantitative data um but we're really happy with where we've ended up and we're really proud of the plan that's going to be before you tonight so just a quick reminder of sort of the framework elements of the plan now there's a lot of details there's a 74 page document i think attached to your backup um that gives all of the detail of each of these and we've gone through them quite extensively before um but the framework really is based on the guiding principles of core resiliency future focused inclusive growth entrepreneurial spirit and cultural vitality so these are the principles that reflect the values of our community and how denton defines economic development so as we move towards goals and strategies these are really the principles that underlie what we plan to do in the next three to five years and then the plan itself moves toward three major goals so the first being accelerate recovery um we can't underscore how important and uh our work will be in helping our community recover from the covet 19 pandemic and then moving to foster growth um as we're looking kind of to the short medium and long term in the future what are we doing um from a planning perspective to make sure that we're focused in our strategic growth areas of creativity sustainability competitiveness and connectivity what are those key investments that we can make in our community and lastly making sure that we're strengthening community inclusion and making sure that our economic development policies work for everyone in our community so what you see here is a really abbreviated version of the plan itself what were those strategic recommendations and what things will we be implementing over time so you do have the implementation matrix in your backup um that partners with the plan itself um that goes through each of these and so these look pretty simple but i can tell you for each of these our team has been working behind the scenes we actually have a program plan a project manager and a work plan really laid out for the next uh five years on each of these of what actions and steps and resources that we need to be building to position ourselves to deliver on these goals the last major section of the plan is the capacity and resources section and this is about us looking internally and what do we need to do to set ourselves up for some success organizationally keys here we're about the catalyst fund the incentive policy and programs that need to get updated what are those internal systems that our department needs to really operate and implement the plan and really just making sure that our marketing efforts and our programs and policies are really in alignment with what the strategic plan has outlined and so i'm going to end this section of the strategic plan with a statement i have been telling my team as they are getting ready to celebrate um kind of ending the creation of the strategic plan is this isn't the end this is just the beginning and so the hard work begins following adoption of the strategic plan because as i said we use this to build our work plans and our goals moving forward we will provide regular updates to both the economic development partnership board and city council through the quarterly report you saw our new quarterly report i believe back in january that had one page entirely dedicated to the strategies that we've started initiation and implementation on and then lastly is the key to keep in mind is this plan is not intended to be static so as we work through these processes as we learn and as our community grows we intend to bring back any changes or amendments to the city council in the future and so i will pause just briefly if there are questions about the the plan itself um before i move into sort of the implementation phase discussion but since i don't have a separate presentation i wanted to give council an opportunity um if there's questions about the plan i believe it's councilmember baker and councilmember johnson's first time uh seeing it so i wanted to give you that opportunity thank you very much so questions exclusively on the plan that that's in our backup and and laid out in the slide presentation any questions about the plan uh councilmember armature then councilmember melzer briefly yeah i'll just say you know i don't have any questions at this point because as you mentioned i know i just want to mention that um since since this is a work in progress and this is just the beginning uh it seems pretty open to change over over the course of time so i don't have any questions right now but i i just wanted to state that that's all i have to say on this thank you councilmember melzer yeah i was having a little difficulty connecting sort of the the middle of the plan with the part where it talks about incentives and uh the the only things that i could find within the sort of foster growth part let's say you know the plan there's a discussion of incentivizing professional office space incentivizing developers to adopt green building standards and then there's a discussion of um revising the funding requirements so that they could apply to uh innovative startups but is there a different role for incentives other than you know what i've been able to uh sort of sift out of it so what we identified in the plan were a couple and i'll go over them in the next section there were a couple of what we call program areas that were identified that additional resources could be used to support so one is the general area so that's kind of when we think about business attraction business retention and expansion sort of the traditional economic development incentive component so that's outlined i believe in section 2a and probably and probably some in 2d so that's going to be on supporting there's this is going to get really technical but if you look at 2a14 in the implementation matrix it says provide incentive or grants to existing companies so that's that bre component and then there's also about attracting and businesses so it may not say the word provide incentives to attract businesses but it might be something about a strategy to make the city more competitive and as we're developing that work plan it might be looking at that incentive as a component of that the other areas that the plan that we identified was providing support for infrastructure utilities and development related costs i think that's outlined in either a or d as well then what we call the innovation entrepreneurship and access categories program categories and those are in mainly the creativity section so that's in b and then we also talked about targeted green incentives so that's in the sustainability category and then lastly the targeted office space so that's in the d or uh competitiveness category so we intend and this is just a preview the next section of the presentation but we plan on having really intense program discussions about each of those with the council kind of moving forward as we're moving to to implementation we're just in that research phase right now okay yeah and those that's you know you mentioned the ones that i that did pop up to me the green incentives the office space and so on okay all right ready for the next session or any other questions one more time got it okay we're ready all right so in the next section i'm going to talk about the policies and programs that are outlined so it's specifically again relating back to that capacity and resources section so i like to think of three elements of our plan as the building blocks for economic development so the first is our tax abatement and incentive policy so this sets our guiding document that says this is how the city council will consider incentives it will also outline the council's priorities um and it will also include that scoring matrix and i'm going to talk about that in this section as well but really this says here's the resources that we're kind of providing staff to implement the strategic plan and here's how we're going to do it here's under the circumstances under which we're going to consider sort of taking using our resources to support development the second component of that is those economic development programs so those are the items that i just listed for council member melzer so these are outlined in the strategic plan in various sections and those might include our general economic development programs our infrastructure utilities and development related programs innovation entrepreneurship and access green incentives and targeted office space development and so as we're working through this process over the next year council will be able to consider each of those programs and help us work through the program criteria we'll have to go through a process of developing the application and sort of the workflow of how we review and analyze those sorts of applications and then the last piece the last building block is that catalyst fund so that's the pool of resources from which those incentives grants or programs can be funded as long as those first two building blocks are are met as long as it's compliant with our policy and as long as it meets the program criteria then we may activate the catalyst fund to support a particular type of development or a particular project we will still have our other economic development tools that are exposure exposed excuse me we'll still have those other tools available so that includes tax abatements and if we're using the ters fund or we're using some other development tool we still have those the catalyst fund will just be one of the tools in the toolbox and so i like to like to give a good hypothetical because this is a change in our process so what i did is thought through kind of in my mind how do these building blocks work at the really organizational and operational level so let's say we have a prospect that's interested in didn't so the first thing that we always do is our due diligence are there sites available for the perspective development are there utilities can we serve them yes so we'll probably submit information and we've entered now into that recruitment phase so in that phase after we kind of have back and forth and discussions a prospect may apply for an incentive so the first we get that application the first thing we're going to do is go to that first building block does that application comply with our incentive policy does it meet the parameters that council has adopted that's these are the types of projects and these are the things that are important to us we're going to do that by utilizing the scoring matrix which i'll introduce in the next slide once we've determined that our projects eligible or if a project's eligible let's say in this hypothetical it's a general incentive program then we would complete the analysis of the application and we would figure out which program in this case the general incentive program that this project met the qualifications for we then bring back that presentation to council or to the partnership board first and then to city council and then if approved lastly if it fits the program parameters that project may receive funding from the catalyst fund so that's really just to help council understand kind of this is a change in process both for my team and for city council how those things will work together so what you see on your screen right now is our proposed development timeline so it really lasts kind of the life of the plan here so our goal is 2021 to hopefully 2026 on top here in green are policy and program timelines so we are actively working on this right now in developing those new policies and the program criteria one key is that our tax abatement and incentive policy is required by state law and it does take a three-quarter majority of the city council so six affirmative votes to amend or change the policy and it's adopted to your window our current policy does not expire until april of 2022 so any change that we make to the policy itself would require a six affirmative vote and then our goal so we kind of assume that we won't be implementing a new policy until our current policy runs out so we move to implementation here in 2022 policy review updates really going in through that annual cycle of making sure that we're staying on top of what are council's priorities for economic development the bottom part here is that catalyst fund development and so we are currently working on that right now and i'll touch on that in the last slide but our goal would be to consider that as part of the budget process and then move towards funding and capacity building over the next few years so now i'm going to go back all the way back to october 2020 which feels like a very long time ago now when we introduced the concept of the scoring matrix so the goal here was to develop a tool that staff and council could use to understand and evaluate both what are council priorities but how do individual projects meet those priorities so what you see is the scoring matrix that you saw back in october just a blank version so these priorities are tied to the existing tax abatement and incentive policy so all of these exist today so the scoring matrix again is compliant with the existing policy and i'm going to work you uh walk you through how each of these sections play so in terms of targets these were the identified kind of broad categories of targets and related to the strategic plan so industrial office retail or hotel development there are specific targets listed in each of these strategic growth areas i've put some examples here on this slide just for one example for a connected project that's where you might find an e-commerce or logistics related target in sustainability you might see someone that's using alternative electric energy for creative that's where you might see fin tech or ed tech related businesses and then under competitive that's where you might find a corporate headquarter a financial service or a credit service type of business so i've put the pages here 15 22 30 and 37 of the strategic plan provide a list of key targets under each of those areas so just an example over here of how those targets would fill in the strategic matrix so the next two components of the scoring matrix are the priority and bonus considerations so this is where we previously discussed assigning points to projects so we developed the priority and bonus considerations based on what's in the strategic plan and what would still be compliant with the existing tax abatement and incentive policy so we've made recommendations regarding the allocation of points that's pretty kind of neutral across the board we do want a little bit of counsel direction make sure that you're comfortable with those point distributions because what we'd like to do as we're kind of moving towards a new policy and programs is really try out that scoring matrix and run some parallel evaluations making sure that projects are still compliant with our existing policy but going ahead and trying this new matrix out and making sure that we're getting the background and the information we need to make those assessments and then lastly we'll use that scoring matrix over time integrate that into our policy and then develop incentive packages or program packages based on a project's eligibility and overall score so here's a a lot of words on a slide that i'm probably not going to read all of them off to you but really the priority considerations we provided definitions of what they are and kind of assigned points again pretty generically based on how we evaluate projects our focus is on expanding the tax base and generating new utility customers because those have such a direct return back to the city and then we also ranked highly increasing high wage jobs and knowledge-based jobs but some of the other priority considerations that council has identified are things like encouraging new business market so if it's something that we don't have here encouraging entrepreneurship engaging in sustainable practices encouraging those knowledge-based jobs or some sort of infill development or redevelopment in a really key area of the city and then knowing that with every project there comes a new twist or turn or something that we haven't thought of yet we left a category that just says other priorities as determined by city council so as we're kind of trying this out if something kind of hits you know catches our attention we have the ability to score on something new and different under the bonus considerations and same bonus considerations we have in our existing plan is it a public-private partnership are they invested in the community and are they able to prioritize the use of local contractors and vendors and we just kept the scoring really equal across those areas so here's a completely hypothetical example of how projects might score so as you see here a distribution company might score higher in expanding the tax base and a new utility customer than a software company or a downtown hotel but those might see investments in a sustainable practice or we might see more investment in those high wage or knowledge-based jobs and so in the end we'll kind of end up with this point total and we'll be able to use that over time to evaluate projects both against the priorities but also making sure that we're consistent in how we um develop and implement any type of incentive package and then i'm going to go over i think it's two slides on the catalyst fund and this is the slide council seen before this is text that's really directly out of the strategic plan as well but our goal is to develop the catalyst fund primarily to meet the strategic objectives of the plan and that it does require building resources over time and that knowing that it's such a big decision and change in funding for economic development i'm going to kind of jump to this slide and just hit the headline is that we feel like given the impact that any decision on a catalyst fund might have on the overall um city budget that we'd like to have those discussions as part of the fiscal year 2021-22 budget that way we can give the best financial picture um to city council so that you can make that decision and with that that uh move to the last slide so uh after this evening we can finish the draft scoring matrix and we'll start using that concurrently we'll start drafting that new tax abatement and incentive policy and scheduling out those discussions on the program guidelines and then we'll come back as part of the budget discussion on the catalyst fund and that i believe is all i have for today okay thank you so what direction guide guide us what direction do you need um from today so the direction points that we had today is just if council is comfortable with staff's um recommendations on the scoring matrix we'll begin using that concurrently with our existing policy and test that out and we'll be able to bring information back to city council um once we're not working with hypotheticals but we have some real data um so are you generally good with the policy considerations and how we've divvied up this the scoring okay got it thank you that's helpful okay council member melter and then council member armature thank you uh that can be a little coy jessica i know you're an mpa not an mba but are you acquainted with the three c's and four p's not part of okay it's just an mba so when you're forming a strategy that is taken into account the company the customer and the competition so this uh i think it's a you know a great working out of sort of the company's priorities you know what do we want but what i what i i'm going to make a statement then it's ultimately a question to you where does this fit in uh where's the part where we see what the specific needs are of of this customer uh which may be different than just a check like there may be other things that are that are equally or more important like it could be the key thing they need is uh you know an infrastructure supplement or project or something that's not a check to them and before you respond and then on the competition part and i know you're going to tell me we don't always know but you know can we ask as part of the process what other places are you considering so that we can investigate what does our competitor do you know we're we're instead we're sort of bidding against ourselves you know uh you know there may be unique factors about dentin for instance and we know that data centers are electricity users this is the plan right and they may be attracted to the idea of a renewable portfolio that's totally different than writing a check you may not you know the burt the idea that we got a formula and you will get a check of this amount doesn't take into account customer and competition issues that's sort of all a question where would those factors come in and then weigh in on our evaluation of what to do so i think our goal is really to move away from that concept to not make it so formulaic if you meet these criteria that it's a guaranteed incentive it's really about making sure that the projects we are incentivizing one match the direction and the adopted strategies and priorities that the city council has in terms of i'll answer the second question first of we do ask that question we often don't get the answer as to who are we competing with um the first time that it has happened in my career it happened this weekend um and the first thing that i did was that i went and i pulled the tax rates of those cities what potential property they might be offering um and looked did an analysis for that project specifically that i said uh our tax rate is lower overall so here's kind of the the um we're doing kind of supply and demand charts here in our mba school of or the when are you going to um whatever they're going to offer in terms of an incentive at a certain point it's not going to be worth it because you're going to end up paying higher taxes over time and so we do that type of analysis when we have that information but that's the first time in two years i've had the opportunity to do that um that a that a prospect shared with us but it is important we don't negotiate against ourselves um and so we do normally um go in and say these are our priorities these are the priorities you meet here's our opening position but come talk to us if you're really interested in denton our door is open um and so the first part of your question um how do we know what they need um is it infrastructure is it land is it something else that comes to us in their rfi usually that information is confidential but they usually tell us we need access to a highway we need an airport within so many miles we need access to workforce that's in this specific wage range um or we need this many degreed individuals or certified individuals within a 45 minute drive time and we do all of that analysis as these projects are coming forward so again it usually happens when it's in the confidential state um of negotiation but we do that analysis we do get that information and recently our team has implemented a crm system different from the 3-1-1 crm system but we track all of that information so that over time if we start identifying trends um that we can bring something forward to council and say we've been seeing this and we can address this issue well i certainly appreciate the the idea that it's not just a formula and you turn the crank and that these you know all right and i and i think just to add to jessica it's not a straight up negotiation in that sense that you don't always know who you're competing against there are cities out there with four b's that are very desperate uh either politically there's also corporate owned private sector owned um parks and they make decisions for different reasons than we do so you you just kind of basically get to a point where do these do these check enough of your policy boxes do we feel like we've kind of got a deal that we can support that's pushed the edge it's it's never quite as linear as one would think you don't oftentimes know what you're going in every community's politics and political tolerance for making deals is different so i think you know by the time we bring something to you it's the best deal we feel like we can recommend and support but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know we we just don't always have the facts and what's motivating our competitors and it may be completely irrational to all of you why a deal gets done but to them it's perfectly normal so it's just sort of the deal it's in i mean the best thing that we have going for us right now is the growth in our location and uh and we play those up as best we can but uh that's often that's often the position she finds herself in as these companies come in they they negotiate multiple uh ndas and non-disclosure agreements mayor and um and we will uh just saving you the correcting there um you know and and we don't often know what we're negotiating again so that is the that is the real field that she's playing in okay thank you if i could just yeah yeah hopefully if we do some of these more of these things that are in the uh economic development plan it won't be so much of a mystery who comes to us that will be reaching out to the ed tech cluster and to the you know high energy users and the you know we're going after the targets instead of just you know comes across the transom right it should it should help us a little bit um again we don't always control the motivation of our competitors okay council member armature uh yes so i want to comment on the uh scoring rubric and to give um my my personal uh direction on that i'm really pleased that sustainability is a part of that i also like uh the holistic aspect of it that it's not a yes or no but it's just a you know cumulative points um so i i appreciate that three things um that i think uh should be in there are one um points for having representation of underrepresented minorities and gender diversity at uh at all levels especially the at the top levels of the company that's really important uh to to people in denton and i and that would best benefit our town and making up for disparities in our town um also a commitment to hiring locally um i i know that that uh that that gets talked about uh but to be able to give points for you know what percentage of these high paying jobs all the way up to the top are going are going to go to just to local people um or and what will be are already reserved for or might be reserved for transfers you know that's a big question that comes up um and uh connected with that but i'm i'm listing this as a third uh point category would be wages um do you uh across the board but especially looking at the very lowest uh salaried workers make what would be a living wage in in denton uh so those are those are three three categories i would love to see uh as um uh attributed uh points on this rubric okay and uh any other uh thoughts scoring matrix or general policy for staff to take notes anyone else okay seeing none great thank you jessica appreciate it thank you okay that takes us to that concludes item d takes us to item e and then uh so we'll finish item e and then we will uh call the closed session we'll take a short break going to close session before our evening session uh so item e is id 2022 73 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction on pending city council requests i'm mayor and council members this is rachel ballthorpe mendelssohn assistant to the city manager and i'll take you through those requests today if you'll give me one moment while i share my screen there we are just by way of a little bit of reminder um the process is up to seven requests will be reviewed per meeting which is equates to one per council member i'll introduce each request and we do have two today so the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify it and then the remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support for the use of staff time to respond to that request and then we'll respond to all the requests where a consensus of council is established item one today is from council member armenter about forming a formal partnership between the city of denton and solutions addiction treatment center to help fund their new group homes and the request as council member armenter describes it herself is there for you as is a little bit of extra staff information for a few extra examples as far as some projects that are funded by the grant programs i have listed here some current public facility projects that are already underway and for the the current or excuse me program year 2019 2020 those include grace like rain pre-development costs for supportive housing the same program year is casa and the ada accessible parking lot the same program year 1920 habitat for humanity and some land acquisition for a current program year 2021 the denton city county day school and phase two playground improvements as well as serve denton and sidewalks and ada improvements council member if you are ready yes is the do we need to take the screen share off sure you can do that happily thank you perfect okay thank you mayor you're muted were you sorry sorry yeah once once you start i'll start the timer thank you very good okay solutions fills a very important need in our community there is nobody else here who who does this right now and i think it's important that we formalize a relationship with them like how the county has to see how we can better help them provide the addiction treatment and also affordable housing that they provide to our residents so i'm proposing a work session on a formal partnership between the city and solutions to help fund their new group homes that save money for the city facilitate employment promote public health and prevent homelessness if there's consensus on council to formalize this relationship then the exact terms of the partnership and the dollar amount could be worked out in an upcoming work session where solutions can make a proposal and council can deliberate on it if council agrees then solution staff could meet with city staff in advance of the meeting so their proposal and presentation that's time included as backup okay mayor pro tem davis i want to respond to somebody who's been on record very consistently as supporting solutions and their work somebody who works with them in a professional capacity at my day day job at the da's office i have nothing but the highest respect for the work that they do at that group but one this is not how contracts with the city are entered into we have a purchasing process where the city puts out a request for proposals and we get bids back of what a private entity like solutions which is not a non-profit they're a for-profit entity what they could do for us and what kind of contract they could give us or we have the grant process the other reason i can't support this and i i hate that it's come to the need to say this publicly but the leadership at solutions has not been kind to our city staff they've misrepresented words that our city staff have said they've misrepresented the position of our city staff when this city has bent over backwards to provide solutions the zoning it needed for projects and everything it needs from the city perspective to do their good work so i cannot support an arrangement with them right now thank you anyone else um and just so we know we're on the same page we would need forward to move it forward and you would have to if you don't speak that you have to speak in the affirmative otherwise it's assumed that you do not support the the request anyone else care to speak council member melzer yeah i i concur that uh they they uh are a great asset to the community and i would certainly be uh very open to you know consideration of working with them through either the rfp process or the grant process where we look at all the many good things that the city can do with for instance cbdg funds and you know kind of make a holistic decision okay got it anyone else um i think i'll use my minute to add clarity so those that are following along the the the items that city staff has listed go through are as council member melzer pointed out the cdbg fund and that's federal dollars that come into the city that then are allocated through a committee and evaluated so you you put in application for that you go before that board make your pitch and then they allocate the dollar so that's the process for that that's so i don't i want to make sure people don't think there's some uh it is even in its approach and similarly i had a project that i wanted to move forward but i had to redirect the individual through the bidding process so that too is consistent with how we all have to introduce new opportunities okay is there anyone else who care to speak okay then that fails for lack of a consensus ready for the second one okay there we are we'll get to number two this one is from council member melzer regarding evening board and commissions meetings his request is stated as shown here as is a little bit more staff information about it and more was put into your backup as well council member i'll stop sharing yeah it actually says so that i request a work session i'm not sure that's exactly right uh yeah basically uh because of our constraints uh boards of commissions other than p and z you think i've been advised that nothing can occur later than 3 p.m on a work day and we've got people who work for a living and i don't think it's right to ask people to step off their positions uh because they because they work that that wasn't part of the rules so i'd like staff to uh put the time in to develop some alternatives that maybe it's in order to be efficient maybe it's longer less frequent meetings but that can be done at a time when uh current board and commission members can meet and and i would also say poll them to see hey maybe some of them have members that can all meet during the day but i don't think the question has been asked okay thank you comments council member armature i support this proposal uh and i think polling committee members is key not only in their what their ability uh what their availability is uh but also to what degree do they think that expanded hours uh would better open up uh these boards and committees uh to members who have who have more traditional nine to five jobs and time constraints okay anyone else uh mayor pro tem davis i'm really glad that this has come up so at least we're we're aware of it and we're talking about it um i think it's a good concern i don't i don't need a work session on it i'm comfortable with letting staff poll the committees and um and then allocate resources it's significantly more difficult to manage these meetings and to be the staff liaison for these meetings in covid times and managing a zoom and all those sorts of things than it is to everybody show up in a conference room at the civic center or something and you just kind of roll with a regular evening meeting so i'm comfortable leaving it with city management to figure this out um knowing what our concerns are and uh and polling the groups the different committees okay thank you anyone else okay i'll use the time as well so yeah no i i would not support this i do defer to uh staff and i do uh echo mayor pro tem sentiment that there are a lot of moving parts uh that make these meetings work and this is as all the council members have said at one point in the time it's extraordinary circumstances is a once in a 100 year issue that we can't uh we have to absorb right and there's just no way around it we've cut staff uh we've done a lot of uh things that we ordinarily would not do and so this is just part of it and it's unfortunate but it's and i'm passionate about it we we have to get these processes and these meetings uh down to where the average person can participate at a high level and and i and so i i absolutely share that sentiment but uh this mechanism to to address that i can't get behind so uh so if there's anyone else that would care to speak council member baker yes uh i just want to know how many how many meet at night and how many meets during daytime the committees okay you you can you would have to follow up with staff on that this one the the process is you you only have an opportunity to you only get the limited information we had before us and so i i i feel you i understand you pain uh trust me but that's that's the limited hand with doubt so uh you're at you're at five seconds then i'll give it back to you if you want to continue uh it's up to you i i i believe it up uh about the staff let them look into it and see what what we can work out okay thank you sir uh any other thoughts okay that uh that also that second request fails for for uh lack of a um majority that i'll tell four men four people spoke not into dad me mayor pertain connie connie said he was going to leave it to staff you're asking for you have to look into it which is which is the request okay am i misunderstanding i didn't understand his request to be that but help me understand might have a few seconds left on the clock i don't know okay thank you uh rachel am i am i understanding wrong i if if i could ask council member baker to clarify his position on the matter if he is in favor of the request as it's written as it's been discussed or if he is not well maybe i'm a little confused i i i think what uh councilman davis was talking about i think that's that's what i was talking about look in let the staff look into it you know about the committees about how the how the best way to on what people can show up and can can serve on it like you say some can't during daytime some nighttime so maybe i'm a little confused yeah let me let me be clear where i guess where it throws me off is here at the end just this is a request for staff to develop options other than workday meetings that may include having less frequent and potentially longer meetings i ask the current board and commission members be polled as to who cannot attend day meetings so if any boards or commissions can meet during the day without losing members those be identified so that is that something you get behind councilmember baker uh yes i can get back for that yes mayor pro tem davis yes sir i can get behind that okay then i stand corrected that is four and uh so staff i'll allow you know you can move forward with that with that understanding great thank you all right so let me uh that concludes item d and that will take us to um our closed session so i will uh will now go into uh we'll now convene in closed session at 6 37 p.m we were considering the following items consultation with attorney under the texas government code section 551.071 deliberations regarding real property under the texas government uh code section 551.072 and we'll take a short break to set the room so it is uh 6 38 p.m uh let's return at um 650 thank you good evening and welcome back to this evening's uh special car city council meeting um we are back for our consent agenda and items for individual consideration we're back on the record it's 7 38 p.m uh again this is uh february 9th 2021 and we do have a quorum uh the first item for this portion of the agenda is our consent agenda uh please for the record note that items e and f have been pulled not for a presentation but for recusal so i will take a motion on the consent agenda uh mayor pro tem davis i move approval of the consent agenda except for items e and f okay is councilmember baker i'll second it thank you any discussion on the consent agenda seeing none uh mayor pro tem davis how say you aye councilmember baker uh councilmember johnson all right councilmember armature yes councilmember melter aye councilmember ryan aye and mayor hutchpeth is a i that passes seven zero uh then let the record reflect that uh council pardon me mayor pro tem davis has recused himself and i will call item um e if there that is item id 210170 consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager or his designee to exclude execute a an interlocal agreement with the denton independent school district for distance learning through operation connectivity wherein the city agrees to contribute an amount not to exceed 571,167 dollars and 74 cents i'll take a motion councilmember ryan move approval is there a second councilmember johnson second thank you um any discussion okay councilmember ryan how say you aye councilmember johnson aye councilmember baker uh thank you councilmember armature yes councilmember melter aye and mayor hutchpeth is a i as well that passes six zero that takes us to the next item which is f which is id 21-142 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute an addendum to memorandum of understanding with the denton independent school district for an reimbursement to the city in the addition an additional estimated amount of 571,164 dollars 74 cents for compensation and benefits of student resort resource officers assigned at disd for the period of january 1 2021 through january 30 2021 and providing an effective date i'll take a motion councilmember ryan move approval is there a second councilmember melzer yeah councilmember melzer i second thank you uh any discussion okay councilmember ryan how say you aye councilmember melter thank you uh councilmember johnson aye councilmember baker aye councilmember armature yes and mayor hutchpeth is an i that passes six zero thank you that concludes the uh what was the original consent agenda uh let the record reflect that uh mayor pro mayor pro tem davis has rejoined us takes us to number section three in our agenda tonight items for individual consideration i'll call the first item id which is a id 20-1635 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton adopting an economic development strategic plan and providing an effective date the economic development partnership board recommends approval eight to zero good evening council members yet again um i don't have a separate presentation for this item um i just want to say thank you to the economic development partnership board to the city council and to all the city leadership um for helping us on what has been a very long journey and we're very happy to be here and we're very proud of the plan that we have okay thank you and is jessica just so i'm so i can give direction for for those watching is your report uh and everything that was in our backup attached to this item uh okay so if they were to go to the so if you go to the city website and you go to agendas for today's date february 9th uh under item 3a you would see the attached report and presentation etc for those that in future would want to look at that uh so mayor pro tem davis i move approval of the economic development strategic plan thank you is there a second council member ryan i'll second thank you uh discussion council member armature yeah i have a question for staff just by means of confirmation so as i mentioned in the work session there are some items in the the scoring rubric that that that i would like to see um that that i think would would really benefit the public um but i also understand from the uh work session discussion that this is a work in progress and this is the beginning of the discussion of the the plan so if i vote yes to this without the uh additions that i was suggesting uh which which were um giving points uh for having for companies that have underrepresented minorities in in high positions in in the company and through as well as throughout the company and gender diversity uh also uh commitment to hiring primarily locally at all levels including the highest levels and living wage uh points for a uh living wage at the bottom level um if i vote yes to this without those items um and am i uh accident would i be accidentally you know cutting off any possibility of the addition of those items along the way i believe the answer is no which is why i'm inclined to vote yes but i just want to make sure that i know what you know what i'm voting yes to because i think it's much better than what we had before but i would really like to see more some changes to it in the near future i'd really i'd really like to be careful with that because i didn't feel like we had you know a majority of council give us that direction and i want to be real clear that um you know we have not had that kind of that direct um direction from council to change the matrix in that fashion so um i don't want any misunderstandings or or you know at all i think jessica will gather the information based on the matrix it's going to be a while uh it's you know as she starts using it and bringing it to you it'll eventually get refined but we do not specifically have that kind of direction i just think we need to be very transparent about that right now um down the road if the council wants to change the matrix some of the variables they can do that but she's going to test drive this new matrix and then it will be an iterative process down the road and i think that's what she's told you at this point but we don't have four people telling us that those variables need to be in the scoring sheet okay thank you thank you so if that's um you know not a possibility for the near future then i will be voting no to this but i do think that it's a big improvement on what was before and i'm glad sustainability is in there but i'll i'll vote no for now thanks okay any other discussion seeing none uh mayor pro tem how say you aye council member ryan aye council member johnson aye council member baker uh okay thank you councilor marmotor no thank you council member melzer aye and mayor hudspeth is aye that passes six to one thank you uh jessica that takes us to item b which is uh id21-171 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing a city manager to execute a lease agreement between the city of denton and the denton chamber of commerce for the use of and use of pardon me for the use and occupancy of uh approximately 1600 square feet of office space and 100 square feet of storage space in the city building at 401 north elm street and providing an effective date so for the last time this evening i am jessica rogers director of economic development and i will be presenting this item for your consideration thank you for your patience today right so for background on this item again economic development has relocated to the new development services center for better coordination with the development processes over the past year the city and the chamber have explored the possibility of co-locating economic development in the chamber staff to improve coordination reduce duplication and provide better support to the business community the lease before you tonight um will allow the chambers to lease approximately 1600 square feet of office space and about 100 square feet of storage space in the new development services center the lease rate has been negotiated at 17,600 per year will be paid in equal monthly installments the lease rate will include utilities office space furniture and reception services at the new facility it is a five-year lease term to begin on february 15th 2021 and then on january 31st 2026 there is an option to renew for an additional five-year term and the ability to adjust the lease rate based on the market during that renewal period now with that staff recommends approval of the lease agreement as presented okay thank you very much questions for staff seeing none counselor armature yeah so uh i had asked a couple questions that were uh answered uh almost almost entirely um but i was i was wondering if you could kind of speak to those for the benefit of the public number one if you could just speak briefly to how the the rent price was uh arrived at um if you could mention the the dollar or just roughly the dollar value of the furniture in this space not for the whole building but or the the furniture in that 1600 square foot i assume the 100 square feet of storage space is unfurnished um and then if you could just uh just speak for the benefit of the public to what this receptionist uh service entails certainly i can speak to the determination of the rent price and then i believe we have scott mcdonald on the line to answer the additional questions so the determination of the rent price we went through a process where we looked at the cost per square foot in the market of similar spaces and then we considered additional factors such as negotiating and the sale of the current building and then we also looked at reserving a drainage easement in the sale process and we also talked about the public benefit of co-locating economic development and the chamber and what efficiencies that would gain from an operational standpoint and then we also looked at our ongoing agreement with the chamber in relation to the office of economic development and what savings we were able to um achieve this past year and we want to continue to support the chamber in their efforts and and helping us uh really fulfill our economic development mission and so i will turn it over to scott i see he's on the line um and he can speak to the cost of the furniture um as well as the receptionist services good evening scott mcdonald director of development services um i i can't tell you specifically on the the cost i can tell you that we budgeted um 2500 dollars per workstation for all of the workstations throughout the building um they have uh originally had that set up it's approximately 16 workstations that would be in that space um they've reduced that by a couple um with those numbers so i but i can't i can't tell you exactly what that was when we purchased the furniture it was really utilizing um the entirety of that workspace the hundred and 130 workstations um throughout okay and then the receptionist question is the last um yes there are no receptionists in the building the building is going to be denton's one-stop shop for just development related um items we have staff that have been operating in that capacity for years uh working for development services building safety office of the fire marshal that same staff will be operating as the receptionist for the building as we expanded this space we've included engineering public works inspection we'll be hosting even some meetings i think for procurement bid opening so anyone that comes to the front counter will be greeted by city staff um specifically staff that works for development services they'll just uh act as that receptionist or just greet any customers that come in for services from the city of denton and route them to the appropriate person or phone okay thank you additional questions councilmember monitor yeah just and thank you just to follow up to that uh what about appointment making and phone service so if someone says i want to set up an appointment with someone from the chamber of commerce can they do that through the the front desk and same for phone calls would the the whoever's uh at the front desk you know forward calls uh chamber of commerce is this that's not part of the lease agreement am i it is it is receptionist service reception services it says so i'm wondering what that constitutes well i i'm asking uh to know more about it because it's it's something the public's paying is paying for i think it's relevant well i'm going to speak is that everything because i don't want to speak over you but i'm gonna okay great uh mr city attorney are those terms as to um a function of a receptionist in this agreement you're you're muted i'm sorry i'm looking to the terms of lease agreement um i know i have larry colister here who drafted uh negotiated the agreement on behalf of the city i'm calling him to answer that question larry thank you and i can also provide some commentary erin if you would like okay and i think trey is on the line erin trey landsford okay so scott if you could speak to it then legal will address uh if if they need to uh yes the chamber is going to utilize the same number that they utilize as far as phone service they intend on using their same administrative staff to coordinate and schedule all of their meetings answer their phone lines um we're we're merely rather than having a staff person located at the front counter which would be confusing um as we're augmenting that service by virtue of reception as it is in a building when you come into a building someone greets you and then we treat it from there it's it's not the intention for us to provide phone services got it thank you uh any other question any other questions for staff oh i'm sorry mr city attorney yes uh trey you can speak to the secretarial services i'm i'm looking through the lease now i see where we've agreed to provide utilities and janitorial service as well as the the shared spaces such as training rooms conference rooms stuff like that um i don't think it's in there i don't know reception service and the agenda item so it's relevant to the posting if that was your concern mayor uh thank you for your insight i appreciate that and uh any other questions for staff okay uh i will take a motion mayor pro tem davis i move approval of the item and the lease thank you is there a second uh counselor melzer yeah i'll second also comment uh that uh the chamber is in a is in large part doing work that council unanimously voted to ask them to do uh and in this agreement they're paying the city so i happily second thank you we have motion in a second any other discussion so i i will say uh that uh the my understanding of review of the lease is that just for the the record to be clear uh the chamber as staff pointed out is is transferring their reception of staff uh they are bringing over they're reducing from 7 000 square feet to 1600 square feet which is significant uh concession on their part uh they're paying their own utilities bringing over their own servers that sort of thing uh so i i think this is a fair deal uh we're going to it's a it's a public building and we're going to furnish our buildings so i i just want it to be important to note we're not having staff work in buildings where there's no furniture and this was this was put in place well in advance of this agreement that we're going to have furniture in this building nothing new and i'll point out one other thing if i would i would hope that just like the other building when when staff was there at city hall west for those who recall that there's a staff member at the at the front of the door that greets you so that you one don't wander around the building and two i want a city staff person to greet people and if it's someone that walks in and off the street that needs to use a public restroom in a public building they should be greeted and directed to those services and that's not punitive that's to say that's just good service and we're welcoming in this community so i think there's nothing inappropriate here matter of fact it meets my expectations for how i would want people to be greeted and treated when they enter a public building so uh i just want to clarify a few things for me and then and then from a financial aspect of it i'll point out for those that aren't following along or if you look at the contract we're getting half the money for a building we don't own where is that that never happens that is a heck of a deal so i kudos to staff for for negotiating this thank you for the chamber for being a great partner in this community and i i encourage everyone that's listening to this meeting to discover denton so any other comments okay great uh mayor pro tem how say you aye council member melzer aye council member johnson aye uh council member baker thank you council member ryan aye council member armature no i i think that that the rent is too low okay i think that what they're getting is is too much of private gain at sure public loss thank you and mayor hutsmith is an aye that passes six to one going to the next item that's item c which is id 21094 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton supporting the texas legacy denton lp 9 housing tax credit application to the texas department of housing and community affairs for proposed new construction of the legacy and denton apartments to provide affordable rental housing committing to provide fee reductions in the amount not to exceed 500 and providing an effective date good evening mayor council danny shaw community services uh i'm going to share the presentation that we shared on february 2nd for the work session on this this request for the resolution of support from council and then just to remind you that the developer is on the call should you have questions as we go through i'm just going to run through this uh quickly as a reminder of what we talked about on the second and then um we'll go from there with questions as a reminder this is a part of the housing tax credit program that's administered by the texas department of housing and community affairs there are two different types of housing tax credit requests that developers can make for these the four percent and the nine percent this request is the competitive nine percent and it is where tdhca ranks those applications and scores them for points in order to be considered for housing tax credit program tdhca also requires the resolution of no objection at least as a minimum threshold for four percent this is based on a policy that the city adopted back in may in 2018 for this particular project the the group is working with rise the developer for this construction project and rise has experience in texas and new mexico some of those in the last five years are listed here but there's a fuller detail in the previous application this is a 33 acre project it is proposed multifamily with 232 units currently proposed it is a zone r7 so an sup will be required and then the taxes get status right now the developer is still planning for this to be tax exempt and i wanted to issue a reminder from our conversation on the second that once the resolution is approved council won't be able to discuss anything around other than the development items with the sup excuse me it looks to be a six building two and three story buildings on the on the project and the proposed unit size is anywhere between 703 square feet to 1146 the current proposal is a spread of bedrooms 84 bedrooms that are one bedroom 162 bedrooms and 32 three bedrooms this is the proposal from the developer on how the incomes will be assigned to the particular project they are using income averaging which means the average of all rents would need to stay under 60 so they can run the span between 30 and market rate for the project right now their proposal is the 232 units between 30 and 80 this shows their market breakdown for that from the pricing so 10 is proposed at 30 20 at 50 and 50 the units at 60 and the rest would be 80 or below as a reminder the affordability on this project would be 40 years and then again just just as a quick reminder the project still has to go through that sup process before it's approved so all you're doing today is providing the letter of support should you vote to do so that would support their application for the tax credit program and with that we'll bring the slides down and okay thank you questions for staff councilmember armature actually at the end of the question i raised my hand to move approval okay any questions for staff council member ron is it within our power to ask the developer that the non-profit that he teams up with is located within denton county or or city didn't want to tell you we've had that conversation with them if it would let i would defer to legal as to what your what your authority would be in this scenario or what you would want to do in order to encourage that okay uh mr city attorney i guess i'm calling on mac rine one on this item i'll answer that question thank you but would provide a reminder that in our previous get into an mou with another developer and or the resolution potentially could okay that's good note matt good evening mayor council this is mac rine month the city attorney's office and i'm i'm needing the question repeated on this certainly councilman ron yeah what i was wondering because they're talking about going for tax exempt status which means that they will partner up with a non-profit housing authority and i'm wondering if we can require that that non-profit be located here in denton county that it's it's not an outside basically trying to just keep the tax dollar savings that they're going to that that non-profit is going to gain in denton county i'm not sure if that could be a valid condition of this request this seems to be a request for us to support the proposition but i don't think we can add those types of conditions to our support better for this or enforce them if we did okay can the is the applicant available to speak to that question make sure hello this is jack treger with the developer yes sir uh did you were you on the line to hear council member ryan's question yes i was it i think the question if i understand correctly is uh can you require us to have a have the non-profit be a local non-profit and i i can tell you we will make our best efforts to do that i have actually reached out to raymond wajardo who is with uh he represents dha denton housing authority uh we're in the process of he's gathering information at this point in time we're trying to uh work out a resolution with him or where he would be a part of it uh but but we are going to um work toward um that using our best effort yes and that is currently language we have in the resolution it's not a requirement but that they would make every effort to do so okay very good okay and then uh i guess uh danny similar to question i have is but let me make sure any other questions for for staff or comments seeing none so i have a question regarding the materials in the past we've had that conversation maybe that's a memorandum of understanding it takes a form of but want to see ask danny can we discuss source materials at this level and if those are sales tax dollars are sourced through uh the city of denton is that something that's available at this juncture i think you could ask that of the developer what their plans are or yeah currently currently we we have plans to use acme brick westchester which is built out of the earth it's formed out of the denton plant for acme you know acme has various plans throughout the u.s but this one is particular to denton um the those the materials that we're currently planning on using are going to be stone and brick and and some hearty board the brick is identified as acme we like that and and it is local we do try to make an effort to the best effort that we can to use the local labor um you know we have to see who's who's out there have them bring in a bid but that's that's always our intention to use local labor if we can and local supplies and unfortunately acme is is a local and it's a quality named brand okay but uh and i i may be doing a bad job explaining i always do uh mr city manager can i elicit your help to explain what i'm saying with respect to because of this that's just more administrative administrative is my understanding what i'm asking are you talking about running the sales tax uh through the city yes sir yeah jack i think what he's what he's asking you is that if you if you do get the project built or approved then when you uh when you do uh build it that the materials used to to build it are sourced through denton so denton gets the sales tax yeah uh we we will you know i'm not sure and this is just my probably lack of knowledge whether or not there's you know hardy board suppliers and some stone that that has already been uh picked out if those if those can be sourced in denton yes we will we will um do that if we can yes okay does that did that answer your question it it does i and i yeah i think my understanding is it's just administrative but i i you know i'll defer to your your folks and and we'll follow up but and then the only only only other thing um that and so if that's not in the agreement danny is that a minor adjustment we can make just that they will just a commitment that they'll do what they can to source i think it is yeah i think what i what i would recommend there is that we have david gains work with us our city attorney's office and just kind of drawing up an addendum to that as part of your motion and you know they'll they'll he'll have a better idea as far as far as it's tracked you know for auditing purposes perfect and then the last thing we've done in the past and danny i'll take your insight on uh in the past i think we've we've said that we would add language that the uh proposed rents or allocations would not substantially change is that needed or is that is it kind of understood that they will hold to this uh what they proposed to us or do we need to add that language that if council gave that direction you would have to have some sort of other agreement that the way that income averaging works is they can adjust rents as long as they're staying under the 60 percent total so if council had some direction for the developer to require certain income limits and a certain percentage of those at those levels it'd be something else you'd have to look at with the developer separately okay uh what and let me just um i'm sorry let me let me just say that uh within the application that we've put in we've committed to tdhca that we're going to have at least 10 of our units are going to be at 30 ami 20 at 50 um and and i think it's 50 i think it's uh 50 at 60 so we're already we were committing to that it's going to be in the land use restrictive agreement the what we call the lura uh that we are going to be uh hitting those targeted um income income uh levels for the residents excellent i appreciate that clarification so make sure that they were meeting those requirements okay great so yeah i'm comfortable with all of those except for and i would just add one that one component that that staff work a work the language uh to include the the the sales tax component but um that's the only thing other than that it seems like everything else is captured in there um and so any any other questions for staff uh okay i'll take a motion counselor armature i move the approval okay with the with the condition of the sales tax sourced and didn't or no that that statement be worked in uh is that is that even possible in in our in this resolution of support or it's possible in the motion that was the city manager's suggestion yeah um that that the sales tax be sourced in the city of denton he's they're going to have to come back for other approvals and so i'll have to defer to erin as far as what the process is but if that's a if that's a condition of the uh moving forward um i'll have to defer to him in terms of what that next process would be to enforce something like that yeah i i'd rather not include that in in my motion okay erin you're can is that part of the sub process because that would guide my decision it's part of the scp process that would be outside scp altogether that's scp is for zoning and development right and that's the only next phase we have yeah no i i think it's important if if they're going to get tax-free property that they uh that they uh at a minimum commit to um source on the product the sales tax dollars here so i'm not going to support it as is but we'll see what what everyone else says uh so we have a motion uh councilman i mean pardon me uh mr city attorney erin i i just wanted to clarify when you're talking about the sales tax source in the city of denton are you wanting that as a condition are you are you asking that to make their best efforts similar to what we danny explained earlier on a different condition the latter the latter the best efforts to yes yeah and that's what's the city man i mean pardon me but the city attorney has suggested that that you know staff worked that in tailor to you know tailor the language best we can in the resume we can include that in the resolution mayor yeah it's along the lines of they will make the best efforts to source the sales tax in the city of denton right but does that does that have to read does that is that required in the motion or can that be done yeah so yeah that's why it doesn't appear in the motion that you have before you so it would have to be a motion right to approve with the additional length uh condition that that we just discussed right so i'm all for the project but if we're not going to add a document that we're asking for the sales tax to come through the city of denton so that the city of denton benefits from that uh but then we're going to give away uh the tax dollars going forward for 40 years with the project i can't get behind it so i understand your motion uh council armature and your resistance to that so we'll see if there if there's any traction for it at that uh is there a second for what councilman marmiter has proposed the agreement as is excluding the sales tax language looking for a second one more time okay that motion is the question that uh whether or not we would i mean could we put in the resolution that we will make the best efforts is that the is that the only issue yes sir and i think we'll get there that motion that to not put that language in there just failed for one of a second so we'll see if we can get there uh and and get you get you move forward is there a note is there someone else is there a motion because i'm not opposed to me we could make the best efforts we have a what we're trying to do is make a submission to tdhca by march 1st yes sir no i i understand yes sir 100 councilmember melzer especially in consideration of their happy willingness to do so while i move approval uh with the added language uh requiring this condition best efforts to move sales tax eligible purchases through uh city of denton sales tax eligible channels thank you is there a second councillor marmiter i will happily second that i i didn't ask to put that in it first because i get nervous about putting too much in in a resolution unless we hold anything up but anyway i'm happy with that so sure okay thank you any so we have a motion to second any discussion okay uh councilmember melzer how say you i councilmember armature yes mayor pro tem davis aye uh councilmember johnson aye councilmember baker uh councilmember ryan aye mayor hudspeth is aye that passes uh seven to zero thank you thank you mr traeger yes sir thank you we're looking forward to it yes sir okay that takes us to item uh d which is uh id 21179 consider adoption of ordinance ordering an election to be held in the city denton may 1st 2021 and if a runoff election is required on june 5th 2021 for the purpose of electing council uh members to districts one two three and four of the city city council of the city of denton texas and we do have two callers after staff's presentation thank you mr mayor thank you my name is reza rios and i am your city secretary and i'm here to present information on the upcoming election so for our upcoming general election the city the election will be for the purpose of electing members to city council districts one two three and four and of course any potential runoff ordered after the canvassing for june 5 should such be needed however um to officially order the june 5th runoff election that would be a separate um item at the time that we canvass the election results so there will be a contract with denton county for the administration of the elections which is expected to come in either around mid-march according to the report and we are scheduling canvassing for the may 1 general election on tuesday may 11 and again over the runoff if anywhere needed so you can see here um based on the final discussions during the work session held earlier today uh what the election day locations will be there were no changes from what was initially discussed back in january and then for early voting you can see here that we did add based on the direction provided during the work session that the mlk recreation center will be an additional location and that is located in district one although for early voting any individual qualified voters can vote at any early voting location during the early voting period you can see here what the early voting period is for the may 1 general election and of course for election day and i will answer any questions you may have thank you uh any questions for staff and i want to correct the record so we have one comment online and one call one caller so not two callers there's one one each methodology so any questions for staff seeing none one more time okay then i'll read this into the record for this item d we had one person make comments on our online forum there were none in support and one against all of these comments forms were emailed to the entire city council and our and our city secretary secretary to be recorded um finally there is one who has requested to speak over the phone on this item staff is currently loading up the phone lines and will allow them to speak for four minutes this caller is allison maguire and we'll let her get on the line hello hi hello you're on with the denton city council i am mayor hudspeth if you could be be so kind as to give me your full name and your address and then you can begin your comments and you'll have four minutes to speak thank you so much my name is allison maguire i live at 2208 miranda place denton texas zip code 76210 i live in district four and full disclosure i am running to represent district four on city council i'm calling to ask that council designate denia rec center and the south branch library as both early voting and election day locations the area around denia has a large population of renters latinx folks and working-class families many of whom do not own cars while it is true that folks can vote at any location in the city during the early voting period i don't feel it's equitable to burden the residents of the denia area by requiring them to cross 35 or to travel to a remote part of the district to vote early also in the interest of promoting voter engagement it may be beneficial to maintain as much continuity as possible between early voting locations and election day locations even though this has not been done in the past having denia and the south branch library serve as both early voting locations and election day locations will help with clarity of communication as we try to encourage greater participation in our municipal elections so the estimated cost of operating an early voting location as i'm sure most of you know is nine thousand dollars nine thousand six hundred and seven dollars and 71 cents while the estimated cost of operating an election day location is four thousand one hundred thirty seven dollars and 78 cents eliminating la nelson as an election day location would help offset the cost of operating an additional early voting location bringing the cost of adding denia as an early voting location to just five thousand four hundred sixty nine dollars and 93 cents approximately um eliminating la nelson and maintaining denia and south branch for early voting and election day would also streamline our early voting and election day processes and minimize confusion for voters trying to find their polling place also while i've got you on the line i'm sure you're aware that we are about to have some weather that's pretty extreme for our area and will not be safe for folks sleeping outside so i know that there are plans to open the mlk center as a warming station but in light of the need for social distancing i would like to urge the city to open all parks and rec facilities and libraries as warming stations and keep them open through them i ask you to speak on the item before us if you'd be so kind thank you yes so is there any other comments regarding yeah is there any other comments regarding the actual item d no that was everything i had to say thank you for your time thank you very much any questions for the caller with respect item d councilmember armature uh yes i was wondering if you've had a chance to watch the work session and if so uh what what you you think about the the arguments uh for the argument for consistency in early and uh election day voting location versus the argument that you can vote anywhere you want for early voting so uh you know so so what difference does it make i i obviously am in favor of deanie and advocated for that but i was wondering if you wanted to speak to those arguments from the work session well did we we may have lost her or she may have hung up better said she's still on the line okay well she yeah she disconnected uh so um any other questions for staff okay uh with no other questions i'll uh take a motion councilmember ryan move approval thank you is there a second councilman pro tem davis all second second okay we have a motion and a second uh any other discussion okay uh councilmember ryan how say you before i say something councilmember armatores raise your hand okay i'm sorry uh councilmember armatore uh thank you um a uh a member of the public who uh wrote in on a white card i believe you said there was just one one of the white cards uh comments that was submitted and asked uh that that'd be read into the record uh so i wanted to ask if either you know the uh the mayor or a staff person could read or i myself could read it uh okay i'll i'll direct you to the our agenda uh i'll i can read it to you uh but it it's explicitly says those are not read and so i'm going to follow the policies and procedures that are on our agenda as to not prejudice uh those that would follow the rules uh the the process we have in place so i'm not going to deviate from those um because i think that's not fair to everyone else that would follow those processes uh but if you well yeah so with that being said any other any other discussion councilmember armatore yeah so just to respond to that um i don't uh approve of that policy but i will say uh that that uh commenter and some other emails that we received have have highlighted as did the caller uh the fact that that denia is a majority minority neighborhood and that uh it's a really bad look for the city um to make them go to a more affluent and a whiter part of the city if they want to vote in their district okay and to not have that consistency for early voting is really a disservice uh to the people who live there so i think that that's a bad look uh for for voter representation i'm thrilled that we've added mlk center to early voting on the list i'm really happy with that but i'm very sad and disappointed about denia okay that that's not there for early voting thank you very much and i want to just for those that are following along i would direct you to the fact that uh the city has never hadn't in the recent elections had denia as a uh voting location in that capacity and so this is a long-standing process or and and so it's i'm interested to research more and why now this year somehow this is uh becoming uh such an issue but i would direct people to look at the history of this voting location and you can draw your own conclusions but i i did want to make it clear that this we're staying true to form in the with the previous elections and so i think that's that's noteworthy but by all means i'd encourage everyone to do their due diligence on those and and we we look forward to having hearty discussions about these election locations we've given staff some insight going forward and we're going to try to continue to maximize the opportunity for people to vote at every opportunity we have so that being said thank you for your comments any other discussion before uh we we uh vote we have a motion in a second seeing no other discussion uh council member ryan how say you all right okay uh mayor pro tem davis aye thank you um council member armature yes but i'm very disappointed thank you i understand uh council member johnson aye council member baker uh okay and council member melzer i am glad we added mlk i do think we have a history of confusing the heck out of people changing these locations around i hope we support in our tech in our legislative agenda voting centers i vote aye thank you mayor hutsmith is a i as well passes seven zero that concludes item d thank you rosa uh that takes us to well you're still here for item e which is id 21178 consider nomination appointments to the city boards commissions and committees yes sir um there is no uh presentation however exhibit a on the item also available to the public to show all of nominees uh applicable terms and of course to what board um they have each been nominated to okay thank you questions for that mayor pro tem davis oh not a question i was just gonna make a motion okay i'll take a motion i move appointment of those folks listed in the exhibit to their respective boards and commissions okay is there a second uh councilman baker i'll second it thank you discussion okay i have one thing uh miss miss uh city secretary if it's found out after the fact that someone uh their application uh you have to be a resident of denton if if it's found out after this vote that someone does not live in the city do you bring that back to us if that's reported to you or how does that work um right so we do have a certain vetting process where we do verify residency if um we were to get a formal document that showed that the individual actually resided elsewhere my office would consult with a city attorney and then um report back to city council if there were any issues okay very good all right uh any other discussion okay seeing none mayor pro tem how say you aye okay councilmember baker thank you councilmember johnson aye okay councilmember ryan aye councilmember armature yes councilmember melter aye and mayor hudspeth is a aye as well that passes seven zero that concludes item e takes us to concluding items uh section four of our agenda any concluding items one more time any concluding items seeing no movement that'll conclude our meeting we will adjourn at 8 32 p.m it is still february 9 2021 and uh we will thank you very much for for watching and have a good evening