Feb 12, 2021 City Council on 2021-02-12 12:00 PM (Planning Session)

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council on February the 12th, 2021. This is a planning session with exactly one item on the agenda, so it'll flow a little bit differently than most council meetings, and most of the conversation will be led by staff. The item for discussion this afternoon is ID 21234, hold a retreat discussion and give staff direction and priorities concerning the following. And then if you need the rest of that posting, you can check it out online because it basically describes everything the city does in a given year. So I'll turn it over to Sarah. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, Sarah Keuchler, Chief of Staff. One second while I pull up a presentation that will outline the agenda for this afternoon. Okay, so this is the agenda we have for the retreat, I'll review it quickly and then turn it over to Manager Heilman, who will be the facilitator for City Council for this retreat. So we've broken the retreat into two sessions. During the first session, we're going to briefly review the agenda and goals of the retreat. And then we're going to move directly into council members being able to present their top priorities. So each council member did submit their top 12 priorities to us in three different tiers. And we've posted those online and then council members will have five minutes each to provide an overview of what their priorities are. After that time, staff will move into reviewing an overview of the priority topics submitted and how we've tried to organize those to facilitate the council discussion for you all to agree to your priorities for the next year. And then we would look to move into a break during that time in which we'll try to reorganize refine based upon what we heard and go into a second session with some further council discussion to get to that determination of the priorities. And then lastly, kind of an open opportunity at the end to go through a few other items to discuss council management relations, organizational items, and a few other topics. So I'll move right into this first part. This is a review of the retreat goals. We've reviewed these with you previously during the January 26th work session. But these goals really help us as management and staff to make sure that we're in alignment with what your priorities are for the next year, really a calibration of sorts to make sure that we're dedicating the time and resources to what is most important and understand what is most important to get accomplished. Once council goes through this exercise today and determines priorities, they will be used as a foundation to help with budget development for the next year and also to help with where the primary staff focus should be. And then we'll come back on February 23rd work session to city council, put this together into a resolution format for city council to adopt and then going forward once those are adopted staff plans on doing regular updates and public reporting of how we are doing towards those council priorities on our website and doing that on a quarterly basis. So we'll move into the next part of the retreat agenda, which is to do those council member presentations where each council member will have five minutes. So I'll take down the slide at this point. And then Mayor Pro Tem, would you like us to do the time management for each council member? I've got it here. I can, I can do that and we'll just go by district number or place number rather. So we'll start off with council member Johnson. Whenever you're ready, you'll be, I guess, giving us a rundown of the things that are on your list of priorities and your time will start, you'll have five minutes whenever you're ready to go. All right, thank you. I am concerned, I guess my top priority is the youth and the seniors within our area that they become, that they're educated and that they are able to access programs and to do things that after school programs, it all seems to fall on the parking rec, but I want our seniors to be computer savvy. I want them to understand how to get A and B. I want them to be very versatile on their travels and where they can go and things that they need. They can be, they're able to access that our youth, I want them to have the programs that when they're out of school, that they can come to our different facilities. They can have a constructive classes. The classes will benefit them and they'll be able to afford to take the classes. I want the housing to develop into be just distressed areas and neighborhoods. They need to be addressed and perhaps they need to be addressed and they need to be rehabilitated. I want affordable houses. I want domestic violence programs to be looked into so that the domestic violence, those things can be educational and people can learn how to get the help that they need because a lot of the things are lack of education. And I think we could, we could set up programs that will help people. I also want to address affordable quality equity park recreation programs. These programs will consist of perhaps art, language. And when these children are out of school, they'll have somewhere to go and something to do and something effective. I want the infrastructure and our neighborhoods and our streets to be looked into, addressed and taken care of. I want the program to be come in immediate action. I want to revitalize Southeast Denton and have the program to where we can perhaps re-name and re-own and put the same businesses in the neighborhoods that we have and bring them back to life or the public art. I want the flowers in the program so that we can all live and be happy. And if the environment is a good structured environment, we need a safe environment and I want the public environment to be a safe one. I wanted it to be also to where, when we, we're proud of where we came from and where we're going. For the most part, the suffer is our seniors, our disabled and our children. These things need to be addressed and give them for the most, the things that they need to survive and to become the youth productive citizens and give them the guidance that they need. And then as we go through our neighborhoods, instead of taking down and destroying, some of those projects can be revitalized and some of the heritage can be kept in the same places that they are. Everything doesn't have to be torn down and redone. It can be fixed and it can still have a history and our children can learn our history and know where they're going. We've already addressed the problem with our neighbors and our friends who don't have a place to be, so that is in process, so that is why that's not under this discussion because it's already in progress and I think Denton has a great program for that. How am I doing on my five minutes? I'm trying to talk as fast as I can to cover it. You've got more than a minute and a half left, so. Okay, good. Okay, and as we revitalize Southeast Denton, the programs need to be set up so that we will understand. Most of the time where the work is done or there's a delay and people fail to get the information. I think if we educate and provide information, it'll be an easier process for us to go through as to where we stand. I think that most of the time our programs are cut short and we're taking things out and not putting other things into for supply and demand. Our developments are great. We've got a great system going, most of the things that I have addressed are already in progress. I think they're just adding a few things to that and maybe defining the programs, but most of all, I want to concentrate on our children and our seniors. By the time we become seniors, we've earned the right to be comfortable and to not put aside but to continue to learn and to grow, and our children, if we are putting those things into them as young adults, they will become stronger and perhaps even the GED program associated with our schools, let's set up where we get this education done and that people can go forward and prosper. Thank you, ma'am, and you have a little bit of time left, but if you're good to go, then we are. All right. Mayor, that was the first of our council member five minutes each to go down our list of priorities and kind of make the pitch to our colleagues, and so I'll hand the baton back to the user. Awesome. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Sorry about the delay. I am pulling the slides up now, if staff can help me, who's next on the list? Sorry, we started with Council Member Johnson in District 1, so we're on to District 2. Perfect. Okay. All right. In five minutes, I will keep time here, that'd probably be just as easy, and District 2 is Council Member Baker, so you can unmute, and once you get started, I'll start the timer. Thank you very much. My first one of my priorities was to help the property owners with tax rates by keeping them down, also bringing in more commercial businesses to Denton, let businesses come here and locate, this is a great city to come and locate new businesses to come here. We need to promote Denton and get businesses to come here. That was also my other priority, promote economic growth by adding new businesses and in turn will create new jobs. Also, we need to help with our local businesses and restaurants, keeping them going. One big thing that I've seen the other day when I was out was shopping Denton first, and I'll agree with that. We need to shop here in Denton, help our local businesses stay going and getting them back to operating, and like I say, just help our businesses here in Denton, our local businesses. My other priority, keep up with the progress of our streets, sidewalks, utilities, sewer and waste. Stay up on getting the streets done, we're doing a good job on that, the streets, redoing the streets, redoing the sidewalks, that is helping a lot because I've got a lot of people telling me that they like what we're doing with the streets, staying up on the streets and the drainage and sewer, and I appreciate everything that they're doing on the streets and the sidewalks here in the town. Another priority that I had, support our city emergencies by helping the police and fire improve their equipment to protect the citizens of this city, give them how the equipment, the training that they need to protect the citizens of this city. The police department and fire department are doing a great job at that right now, but it would help them with new equipment if they need it, like I say, to protect the citizens. My last one is our new facility out on Loop 288 to help our homeless people. You notice the weather is kind of bad right now, and we need to help the homeless as much as we can, find them places that they can stay during the cold weather until we can get the place on Loop 288 open. That will be a great facility. And like I say, for the veterans as well as the homeless, it'll be under one roof, which that will be great. I think that will help our homeless people and our veterans. I think that's it. Okay. So you're right. Just over three minutes. Anything else? Just in case? No. No. Okay. Not right now. Thank you very much. Okay. That takes us to District 3. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Very good. I hope you got that timer ready, because I bet I use my whole time, I'm known for it. So my priorities have a number of, a number of my priorities are notated as in progress, but I wanted to take the opportunity in listing some things that we all know we're going to be working on next year, just to highlight how much of a priority they are for not just budget setting, but all the work that we do in the city. For example, one of my top priorities is recruiting and hiring a best fit city manager. We all know we're going to be doing that, but we also need the staff to know, we need the people to know that that's going to be one of our top items this year and that they're going to be a part of that decision along with us. Another is updating the comprehensive plan. We know that's in progress, but we need to communicate to the rest of the world that the comprehensive plan dictates a lot of what we do. It constrains a lot of what we do, and then we need to take it seriously and treat it as a priority. One of my new ones, I've talked about it a lot in the past, but it's new in the context of these priorities, is a robust road maintenance fund. We have a road maintenance fund. We have, obviously this has budget implications, however, you heard me mention it during the Hunter Cole conversation. We've talked about it during the bond conversation. We cannot be dependent on bonds every five to 10 years for repairing massive sections of our road. We need to be more proactive, even if we know we're going to be weaning ourselves off of bond budgeting over a long period of time, we need to start that process. Same for the economic development fund. Staff has this marked as a revision. I think of it as more of an in-progress personally because we're working on the economic development strategy and implementation of that means that catalyst fund. Completing the mobility plan, we all know what that entails. We need to pick that back up off the drawing board and get back to it. Others have already mentioned the Loop 288 building, but also City Hall West, we need to come back together as a newly constituted council. We have some new faces with us. We need to get everybody on board with a common vision of what that building is going to be because costs will just keep going up. It's not going to get cheaper to do what we need to do with that building. It's a major asset downtown. It's not being put to use and we need to get together on the same page to decide what we're going to do. The solid waste strategy is in progress. Again, just highlighting that that needs to be on our list of priorities, not just something we're doing, but because it's something that we need to do with an eye towards reducing the waste that we have in our city, even to the extent of establishing a zero waste policy, excuse me, a zero waste strategy. Same for the affordable housing strategy. We had the presentation, we had the consultants come in and tell us what's going on there. Now we have the data. We need to develop that into a strategy for what the council can do. We only have those two big levers, taxes and land use zoning kind of stuff. We have to figure out how we as a city can apply those two big levers to do what we want to in the housing space. Also I have down there completing the stormwater and drainage master plan. We kind of forget about this until somebody comes through and digs up our road or digs out the ditch that's next to our house or whatever. This has major implications. Every time we build a hard service in the city, we are adding to stormwater capacity that we don't actually have. Some of these negotiations have been going on for years with UP, for instance, just over here to the east of City Hall, we've got a big bottleneck in one of our major creeks. We've got to get on the ball with that and clear in these issues now because otherwise we're going to add a bunch more stormwater here in the next few years to a system that doesn't have capacity for it. We've got to plan for that. And then finally, my one really new one at the very bottom of my list is developing a strategy for undergrounding overhead lines in major corridors. One of the things you notice in nice new subdivisions is you don't see a power pole. You see light poles. You don't see power poles. One of the things you see in our neighbors to the east that are growing pretty rapidly is they've undergrounded their major utilities in major corridors. It'd be nice to be able to drive down 380 and not see a power pole or lines going off the businesses. It'd be nice to drive down Carroll Boulevard, which is almost completely undergrounded but still has a row of power poles. It adds aesthetically and it's inviting for businesses. It's inviting for new residents. Let's replace the power poles with some nice trees. And undergrounding technology is a lot better these days than it was decades ago when those power poles went up. The directional drilling that Atmos does to get their lines in, the things that Frontier does to get their fiber lines in, much more advanced than the old cut and cover that we used to do. So I think it's worth talking about on those major corridors, clean them up a little bit, get rid of the poles, and replace them with trees. All right, is that everything? You have eight minutes to spare. Well done. Okay. Thank you very much. That takes us to District 4, Council Member Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. At the, as I have to look through my list, a lot of these things have been in the works for a while, but it's important that we follow through and we complete them. To add new ones before these are finished overtaxes our staff, one of my top priorities is one of the things that has been taxing staff quite a bit lately, and that's the COVID. We need to continue to work on plans for reopening as summer goes on. We're probably not at a point yet where we can make final decisions on those, but as this year progresses, those decisions will need to be made and how that's also going to affect our budget this year, how our appraisal is going to come in due to this. Obviously, we want to complete the mobility plan, as Mayor Pro Tem already talked about. That's been in the works for a couple of years, and in my opinion, that should be updated. That and the Denton Plan 2030, those should be more of every five years, so really they're going to have staff who work on it for three years, have two years off, and start packing on it again, is the way that those types of plans normally work from what I've seen in this organization and others. One of my new items on here is something I know our staff already does. I don't know how many other council members realize how much we interact with the North Central Texas Council of Governments, and I want to make sure that things don't slip through. I think it needs to be something that more council members know about. As an example on that, our former city engineer and a couple of other people from the engineering department and myself and John Polster went down and talked to the executive director for transportation at Cog last year, right before COVID hit, about adding funding or getting funding for help with Hickory Creek Road, because it's regionally significant, and Bonnie Bray, because it's regionally significant. As 35 goes under construction, that's going to be the route that citizens of Denton will be using instead of getting on 35. We've had a two-year reprieve of not having construction all the way down for that. Other items, as the mayor pro tem talked about, the City Hall West. We've been working on that for a number of years. It's time to get it up and get back on to that, getting that rolling on how we're going to proceed. We just passed the economic development strategic plan this past week. I want to make sure that we're following through on how that is being implemented and that the strategies are being put into place and working properly and any minor changes we may need to make to that. I know Gary's been working on the parks master plan for quite a while. That's another one that we've seen little sneak previews of here and there. I want to see that get completed this year as well so we can start looking at how to implement parts of that. Obviously, we're on a cycle that every so many years we put out a bond package. We need to have these plans in place before we can come up with what all is going to be needed on that bond package. That's what makes these very important. Again, one other item on the Denton plan 2030 update is we're probably already five years behind on that. This is probably going to be the 2040 plan. Right now, regional transportation has a 2045 plan for regional mobility and they're currently working on the 2050 plan. That's how far out I think we should be really looking at on some of these plans. You're going to implement a new plan five to 10 years before that last plan is exhausted. Let me see what I've still got on here. The DDC amendments, we'll be talking more about the development committee's makeup in a future meeting. I saw that listed so we do need to make some adjustments to it as in all plans. There's always going to be something that's slipped by us and we need to come back and correct it. I would venture to guess most all of us have the building on Loop 288 included in our plans. That is important to all of us. Then the last one on mine was just to, because of COVID, we're not going to have the same kind of Denton County days down in Austin. We need to be very cautious and watchful of what's happening down there and be talking to our legislators on a regular basis to make sure that things that could harm our city are not passed down there. That's it. All right. Thank you very much. So it takes us to place five, Councilmember Armitage. Yes, thank you. So first I want to say I was really interested to read my colleagues' ideas and excited by them. I see a lot of intersectionality among our various ideas, so I'm excited about that. I tried to focus on things that are new, but that fit really well, in my opinion, with things we're already doing. So starting with Tier A, remove barriers to desegregating all Denton residential neighborhoods by removing unnecessarily restrictive development code policies and cost prohibitive fees on ADUs and by opening up residential zoning restrictions and removing density barriers to allow townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, condos, bungalow courts, and tiny to small home infill in all residential neighborhoods where single family homes are allowed. Also in Tier A, remove barriers to desegregating all Denton residential neighborhoods by legislating a waiver on all permitting fees and impact fees for all forms of affordable housing and increase heavy industrial fees to cost of service. These are both ideas I have talked about before. Also on my Tier A list, further housing practices in Denton by requiring biennial fair housing training for city council, planning and development staff, planning and zoning, HABSCO and the legal department, and ZBA, and commit to a fair housing policy mission statement. We already have a fair housing coordinator in Danny Shaw. A lot of people don't know we have a fair housing coordinator. I think this will strengthen us and our priorities as a community. Finally in Tier A, prevent gentrification and empower homeowners and tenants in southeast Denton, Green Tree Estates mobile home community and other endangered at-risk and/or historic neighborhoods that are naturally affordable and/or in which 65% or more of residents are by POC, immigrants and/or disabled. Through a bond election to fund permanent land trusts to help low income homeowners stay in their houses and help tenants actually buy out their landlords and form a cooperative so that people who might get pushed out by rising rents become the owners of their apartment communities. Those are my Tier A items. In Tier B, contract with local legal advocacy groups for tenants, immigrants and people with disabilities to provide free legal advice to Denton residents in these groups. San Antonio does this. It's not coming from our city lawyers in our legal department, but it would be contracting with other legal departments so that people who can't afford a lawyer can have one. Two, improve the health and safety of people experiencing homelessness in Denton and minimize unsanitary encampments by buying a hotel for temporary housing for Denton families and individuals in need and creating a legal campground with solid waste collection, water, toilets and showers where people can stay who are experiencing homelessness while waiting for permanent housing solutions. This would be a response for people who are concerned about the proliferation of illegal campsites and also for people experiencing homelessness, especially women who have safety issues on those sites. Address uniquely Denton health needs and emergencies by hiring and creating a new position for an experienced public health coordinator for the city of Denton to advise council, work with all relevant departments and work with Denton County public health on city of Denton issues. So this is not instead of county public health, but it's to work in conjunction with them representing Denton issues. I think it'll make us all stronger as a city and a county. Finally in tier B, remove barriers to healthy food by developing a food desert and food access solutions plan for Denton that removes financial barriers and other barriers to food delivery, to new grocery stores of all sizes, to existing and new food trucks. There are some barriers that food truck businesses have. It's a great way to start an affordable business and a great way to get deliver food to people and also to local farmers. How am I doing for time? Anybody? How am I for time? Yeah, you have 30 seconds. Can people hear me? Yes. Yeah, you have 30 seconds. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Tier C, address unemployment in Denton and raise the bar even further on economic development tax incentive agreements by requiring that all employed and contracted workers for the company are paid at least an adjustable $15 minimum wage and commit to hiring at least 80% of their workforce from the city of Denton. And that's five minutes. Address unemployment in Denton and address cost of living concerns by giving preference in all bids for contractors to the contractors that pay them. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. So that takes place 6th, Council Member Meltzer. Yeah. First, so glad we're having this process. It's the most consequential one we have. I'll try to just highlight the aspects that are new, things that are regarded as in process. Obviously, we're going to have to focus on managing through the pandemic and focus on recovery. On the 2030 plan, which others have mentioned, the specific part that I want to put a stake in is a green network that's got to be, in my view, part of that, where as the city develops, we determine that we will have wildlife carters, that we will protect canopy over watersheds so that when the bigger developed end results, that it's well designed in that respect. Everyone's talked about the 288 facility, most of us have. I think it's important that we do that as a first step and then see how does that meet our total goals and kind of what's left on homelessness. On economic development strategy, sort of no matter how much we talk about the whole strategy, it always ends up coming down to writing checks, writing checks, writing checks, which is not actually what the strategy says. And I think we need to be talking about what are the strategic investments we need to make in those four areas that will help make Denton different and better. I'll keep moving now. Skipping ahead, it says here in process, but I haven't heard anybody else ever talk about this. The next two are sort of smart city type initiatives that instead of having this haphazard process of people complaining or accidents happening, and then people create a priority around we should do something about a safety issue, incidents should be routinely tracked and mapped and the public should have the same information that we have internally. And such is there, but that when thresholds are reached in terms of traffic, pedestrian, bike safety issues, that it's alerting and it automatically creates a list of these are the areas that require focus. Similarly with development, let there be a transparent map of what's in progress where and so that people can sign up for things that are to be alerted about changes that are happening within the range of them. We routinely see that nobody responds to any of the notifications that we send out, very few. Commercial and multifamily recycling comes up perennially three times bigger waste stream than single family. There are challenges on pitching for a breakthrough, learning from what we do in the ballet program to see how can we have this very big part of our waste stream done with a manageable level of contamination. Sustainability plan is touched on. Performance venues, to me it's strategic, particularly when one of our four areas is create a dent in for economic growth that we'd be a place that arts are very visible and we're really very short on performance venues. We can list once there are, but we should have differentially, noticeably more and we talk about the city hall west, surely having destination places in downtown will help all the businesses that are related. Resting is kind of a one word thing. This has been brought up for years and it comes under lots of other strategies we talk about, but can we get to the point where we see just the analysis. How is it done elsewhere? What are the economics? What are the challenges? What are the options? Can we just get off of having it merely appear on lists for years? And then in a city with so many renters, I don't know if the answer is inspections or some other that's probably cumbersome. We're not at a scale, we're gonna have lots of big bureaucracy, but let's talk about what cities are successful at establishing standards for the quality of rental property and how that's enforced. I think that's gonna benefit a huge part of our community. How am I doing on time? I'm done anyway. You're at 30 seconds. I cede my 30 seconds to the greater good. That's awesome. Okay, that leaves me. Let me get to that page and all right, let's see here. So good afternoon. And so for me, I think I'm just gonna hammer, touch on these briefly. You've touched on the homelessness, so I look forward to that discussion. I think the nuance I have for that is a ramp up process to say, not so much the building. I don't wanna focus on the building as much as I wanna try to get us started on the storage capacity in the open space behind the building, such that we could do some sort of metal building or something that either would allow for our daily bread to start stockpiling more dry goods and et cetera now helping with the clients that we're gonna future serve, kind of organizing a shelving system of some sort that clearly communicates how much materials each person will be able to bring onto the facility. I think that's important going forward and to have that conversation. We're going to have to limit the amount per individual so that we can serve people to the max and those institutions need extra space now as they get ready for a move and those kinds of phased things. So I think there's a phased ramp up that we're missing an opportunity to get rolling on now. If someone wants to donate a bunch of materials, dry goods, et cetera, we could take advantage of that quickly as we're designing if we're diligent about how we address those things. That's gonna obviously require a discussion about the neighbors to the west and that buffer and those sort of things, but we nail those things down early, have stores available early, get it activated and everyone comes in with a clear understanding. The other thing, so parks and recreation component youth sports, we are absolutely losing this battle and it's something that benefits every segment of our community as an economic driver. So talk to anyone that has that youth sports age child, they tell you they're on the go every weekend, they're traveling to Frisco, they're traveling to McKinney, to Grapevine. You get a hotel room, you forgot a glove, you got to go to the store, you're eating out at restaurants, family's coming along. In a nuance that I thought of and I'm talking economic development about it, we could have a multi-generational facility where you have grandma, dad and grandchild going to the same place for the same different activities, but going to the same destination every weekend. So all we have to do is incorporate basketball, volleyball, those are kind of tried and true, there's indoor soccer, that sort of thing, but then the kicker is pickle balls going through the roof. And so now all of a sudden, if we have a pickle ball tournament where there's a basketball tournament, where there's a soccer tournament, we have the entire, we have four generations going to the same place and it just happens to be located in Denton and we just happen to have, our businesses here in town are the benefactors of that. Another thing is the ice rink, we have a lot of people and a lot of minor sports teams driving out of our area for that. And Gary's done that research already on the ice rink, it was part of his options he put forward. Another thing, then you talk about the capital projects component there. We just need to revise, so we have a parking issue and I think it's kind of generally understood, but we don't have the ability for golf carts or some sort of service similar to carry people from lots to businesses, that sort of thing. So if we can work on a policy that allows us to address those things, that would be great and I think we allow Teslas on the road, obviously it's a little more secure, but there's a variation somewhere between Tesla and golf cart that we can authorize, I believe. And then I just want to spend the last minute or so talking about just the function of how I see this. So we have, I would like staff to come forward with a time analysis of how long it takes these projects, because you have to have a plan in place, you have community buy-in, and that's the only thing that's going to get these legacy processes going forward. Otherwise, every election, a new person potentially comes on and debunks a process or plan we had or individual goal. But if we are together as a have a consensus, have community buy-in, have a plan, those things have a chance of living beyond our service on council. So I look at me specifically, so having six years potentially is the max, and if these projects take four, three, two years to get going, how do we want to make sure that that project lives beyond that time, and the solution to that, the solve for that to me is to have community buy-in, to have a clear plan, so that the future councils and the community holds the future councils accountable and says, "Hey, let's move those projects forward." And that's my time. - Okay, Todd, would you like for me to move back into the presentation? - Yes, please. - Okay. Let me share my screen. Okay, I'll review this next slide and then I'll hand it over to manager Heilman. So this is just an overview of kind of the discussion we're going to go into next. So as mentioned, we did distribute to council members and posted online two lists organized in two different ways. The first list was organized by council member, which is the priorities that each of you just reviewed. And then the second list that we provided to you was a list that staff organized by status of the priority item submitted. So was it processed in some way? Is it a revision or a change or enhancement that a council member desires or would it be a new initiative? And so based upon what was submitted by council members, when we started looking and reviewing the items that came through, there was a lot of commonalities and there was a lot of commonalities for priorities of things that we've already received council direction on to move forward with and that we know are going to take significant time in the next year. So based upon those submissions, we've modified the process here today just to better utilize council's time and focus the council discussion. Really trying to understand if you want to affirm what we heard were common council priorities that we've already received direction on and/or if you want to add additional priorities, we may have the resources depending upon the department or the staff necessary to add to that list. Depending on what it is, we may have to adjust priorities or maybe it's that we need to start working on what would additional resources be required to also address that. So we'll take you through three slides of how we've tried to organize the best we could by the status of the item submitted. So that first slide we're going to go over is the in process, so those things that we've already received council direction on that are going to take significant time in the next year. And then we'll go into two slides after that which will lay forward what we saw as a change or an enhancement to existing policy programs or services or a new initiative. So I will turn it over to Manager Heilman who will kind of review these slides with you and help facilitate that council discussion. >> Okay. So thanks, Sarah. So before we kick off, I'd just like to thank Sarah and Stuart Birdseye and Rachel, also Mendoza for all the background work that went into trying to get this into a format that we thought we could move through fairly easily. And it's been pointed out a couple times while they did their best, you know, when we get those notes in where they're making their best attempts to make sure that we're accurately stating all of your concerns and your ideas. So I appreciate the clarification on a couple of items. The submitted priorities and how this is going to work is when we bring back -- staff brings back the resolution to you on February 20th, it's going to be broken down into those submitted priorities which are in progress that you want to continue having staff see through, make sure that resources both staff and financial are being spent in these areas, and then whatever there'll be another section in terms of priorities that are added to those goals which will tend to take priority in the upcoming budget requests that are brought to you throughout the summer. So what we wanted to do is just confirm the priorities that are in progress. Council is just recently, as you know, did adopt the strategic plan. I think as Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Meltzer have noted, there's still some work to do there in terms of future funding strategies which will be forthcoming as well as actually getting to utilize the matrix and how that's going to be administered. So there's no doubt that that matrix and the plan will be sort of iterative in nature as you see deals coming through, which is the beauty of that plan is you can modify and adopt it as you see new proposals coming in. The loop 288 building is... Excuse me. Yeah, go ahead. Pardon me. Mayor and City Manager, should we talk about each of these as we go through? To what extent do we affirm or are there wrinkles? Well we certainly can. I think the fact that you just affirmed it, if there's a couple things that you'd like to flesh out with the economic development plan, we can certainly stop and make sure that there's a check in on each one of these. So I have no issues with that. Is that all right? If you could... So we just... What I'm trying to balance is we just did the five-minute kind of uninterrupted pitch, and so it's... What's the specific difference? Well, it's because now we're at a different phase where it's like, okay, how are we going to boil all this out into what we decide to do? So the first slice on it is things that are already in progress. Well, okay, but I noted for myself and I imagine others may have had that too, they had differences or builds on those items, and if you just go, "Yeah, well, we already got it," that doesn't capture that. So I can be more specific, and I just think it'll be appropriate as we go through before we say, "This list is now put to bed to make sure we've made whatever adjustments members agree to make." I think we can certainly do that, and if you have a suggestion on the economic development strategic plan, and we have a few of your colleagues that want to agree that that should be further refined, we're happy to work our way through, because these are in progress, but if you want to add or alter these, that's fine. We can certainly talk about that, and we're going to be keeping a list of each one of these areas to where we see if there's four or more of you that are interested in it. We'll continue talking about it after the break. Okay, so probably nobody knows what I'm talking about because I keep bringing this up, and then it's like as if I haven't said anything, but within the economic development strategy, I've asked, and I asked today, in each of the areas that are the pillars of the foster growth part that's connected, creative, sustainable, and competitive then, that we identify what the priority strategic investments would be for the city that will help differentiate us. We can't do them, but at least identify what they would be. So those are things that are ways to use money that are not just writing checks as incentives. We may need to write checks, may not. It's just the other piece just never seems to get addressed, and I'm making the ask very broad without prejudice, just what are the strategic investments the city should make to help us further our goals in those areas, connected, competitive, sustainable, and creative? And correct me, Mr. City Manager, I'll defer to you, but from my perspective, I think Paul, your ask is, I'd need to hear it in a policy perspective. You have to make it apply to all situations so that it can be applied universally and then evaluated individually by a individual council member. So you can't prescribe how I analyze the deal, but you can absolutely prescribe how staff evaluates universally, but I don't know how that can be done for all projects because they vary so much, and then if I'm missing something, I'll take your point. Yeah, I have once again succeeded in not being clear at all. It's not about evaluating deals, it has nothing to do with evaluating deals. It's about what strategic investments we should make. I'll just pick on one that I mentioned before as a new thing, performance venues. Let's say our strategy is we want to stand out as creative den and attract a certain set of businesses. That's already in the plan. I'm not saying anything new, and so the question is, what investments might the city consider making to make us stand out even further in that area of creative den? So an example could be we could consider performance venues. That's just an illustration. So what I'm saying is to just go through each of those areas and say what are things the city could invest in, could consider investing in that would help make us, you know, move us even further on the dimensions of creative, sustainable, competitive, connected. So maybe there's something we should be building in our infrastructure that'll make us even better at being connected. There is one that was identified in the plan, one, which was enhancing Jim Crystal Road so that we have more capacity out there. That's another example of investment that should be, you know, that we might want to consider. It's something different, a different use of money than just the incentives. It has nothing to do with the incentives. Have you followed me now? Yeah, if I can kind of jump in here, I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on this primarily because we're going to be bringing forward, staff's going to be bringing forth the funding mechanisms for economic development. And it's exactly, the other side of the ledger is exactly what you're talking about in terms of are there strategic investments that if we go ahead and aggregate the economic development fund with the use of dollars that we've been talking about, are there specific investments that should be made in order to expedite development, in order to make sure it's happening? Now when we're talking about a performance venue, that's very different than basic infrastructure to open up an industrial park or to make these sites more attractive. But we could certainly, if there's consensus with the council, we can certainly weave that, some of those priorities into that work session because we're really more focused at this point on giving you things to respond to that are more infrastructure related, that sort of thing. Because that's really what we're hearing from the folks that are looking at the business parks and the industrial parks. If there's consent, so that's already coming forward to you in a work session in a few minutes. Well, that's within the context of specific deals, but I'm talking when I say no. No, it's not, it's not. It's being brought to you, in fact, because we're starting to talk about what do we need to do to start opening up the next iteration of the business park, industrial park, where's the next one going to be as we're getting built out? It's a perfect entree for you to be talking about these types of things as we get, as we get to go through the policy discussion about how do we, you know, should we build the economic development fund and what uses should there be for that fund? So you're really on point with that conversation. I'm going to move on, put PEC 3 on that list. Those are things that are strategic investments, but we've got a lot to cover. Yeah, Jessica will have that to you shortly. The, so that's, that wasn't readily obvious by the, by the way, so I just wanted to clarify that was coming forward to you, but we will be hitting those issues shortly. The loop 288 building, you know, we've got obviously had council direction to get into the design process for that for that particular building, it is ongoing right now, and you should have a contract to start pouring through some time in the next two or three months. It's my understanding. So if there's any other questions about the loop 288 building that came up from several of you just wanted you to know that's obviously taken a ton of staff time and resources right now. We know it's a big priority for you. The comprehensive plan update also came up from, from some of you, you know, modernize and you're updating the, the 2030 plan, as you know, that was placed in the, in the budget contingencies this last year, the project just kicked off this month. In fact, there was a meeting today on that, and that will continue throughout 2021 trying to get some of those policy objectives that the council has, as well as addressing some of those areas that where you're getting pressure right now that hadn't been contemplated in the last comprehensive plan update because there's growing so fast. So if there's any concerns about the plan as well and adding to it, we can certainly talk about that as well. So if I may, yes, sir. So with the concept for discussion, maybe no one else wants this of an identified green network with appropriate policies, you know, to make it come to fruition. To be part of that discussion, what are the watersheds, wildlife corridors, connectivity of parks, which is part of the map? Mr. City, the city manager, I'll let you, yeah, I'm, I'm Richard or Scott is on the line. Scott just texted me and said, yes, it will be. So that will be part of your, your discussion. All the departments are involved. This is Sarah, Gary was on the call, our environmental, Deb Vier was on the call today. So all the different departments will have a major portion of looking at how we focus on the, our comp plan for the future. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The affordable housing strategy, you know, came up obviously again from, and it's a major priority. It's a carryover from last, the last retreat that we did. So there was dollars budgeted in. You've seen phase one and you've authorized phase two, to start developing strategies and tools. So given the, the seven O vote last week, we assume that's continuing to be one of your major priorities COVID-19, you know, just the overall response to it. This is, is the council knows this has taken a, an enormous amount of staff effort over the last year. There are some product programs and projects that have been placed on the back burner as a result of not having, wanting to allow the public to congregate in certain facilities until we believe it's safe. So staff is continuing to monitor closely with the, the county health department, continuing to monitor the information that's coming out and we'll be back to you as soon as possible in terms of reopening some of the facilities, that sort of thing. But really right now it's been making sure that we're enforcing the, the emergency orders that you have put in place, that we're tracking down complaints and making sure that we're connecting folks to resources throughout the, the community and particularly going after as many dollars as we possibly can to help our local residents and businesses. So I'm not sure if there's any questions about COVID-19 and anything else that, that anyone would like to talk about on that. The mobility plan, as council's aware, staff has done, has been reviving that plan. Obviously, the Zoom meeting public input is not what we had initially intended, however, that's going to continue, we're going to continue working our way through the zones in the city and continuing to get as much public input as we can. We are also utilizing some online tools as well as Zoom meetings and you will continue to have updates as possible here and as frequently as we possibly can in the summer of 2021 as that plan starts coming to fruition. The capital planning, improving the capital project planning and communication. This is something that Councilmember Meltzer and several of you have been inquiring about just in terms of, can we make some of the more of the status of these projects more outward facing as we're starting to make progress in closing out the 2012 and '14 bond projects and starting to implement the 2019 project. Are there communication plans that are in place and how is all that going to work? Staff is actively working on tools where you can go online, point your constituents to exactly the best updates when things might be bid under construction, that sort of thing. So that will continue to be a major point of emphasis over the next several months. And the other thing that Council requested that staff is also implementing to this effect is just more frequent meetings on the update of the CIP just so you can answer your constituents as well and provide any input and questions that you're getting. So these particular areas did not seem as if there was it seemed like there were a lot of agreements and we tried to aggregate and kind of move off to the side things that have been worked on that you voted on that you've given budgetary authority to move forward on and or previous directions. We wanted to sort of isolate these areas unless anybody says, you know, I really think something needs to be removed off this list. There's quite a bit of resources going into each one of these particular items. So unless I hear that, if anyone's concerned about any of these goals, we'll go ahead and move on to the next section, which is those programs that we may currently have as a baseline, but there was some interest in expanding or adapting those programs. So any questions on that first set of goals, anyone want to question or talk about something that staff is working on, Councilmember Armitage? Yes, no question. I just wanted to thank you for that explanation. I too I was a little I was concerned to see that in progress or in process designation for a number of these these items. But now I understand that that means essentially this is going to be coming forward to you for a work session, maybe not, you know, individual council members, particular suggestions will be coming forward, but this is already the forum that is planned in which you can bring those things forward and it will be 100% on posting. You know, if you say, well, let's make a solid waste because that was that was one question I had for the solid waste plan. I had proposed a zero waste strategy and it said, you know, in in process, I wasn't so sure about that, but now I understand, OK, this means this is coming forward to a work session and there's already a scheduled time to discuss that. So I'm I'm I'm fine with that. Yeah, I'm glad you said something. I think we have Brian Warner on the line who is who is managing the construction or the development of the solid waste plan. And there was a lot of ideas, zero waste, multifamily recycling, those sorts of things that are components of the solid waste plan. So that's I think where you saw in process and in Brian, if you wouldn't mind just kind of expanding upon my answer there just to make sure that everybody is understands that those are components of that plan. And if I'm if I've missed anything, please let us know. No, you're you're totally correct. This is really a stem discern soup to nuts evaluation of not only our solid waste system, but also comparing and contrasting other solid waste opportunities that are existing across the nation, looking how they may be put into place here in the city of Denton, looking at it not only from an environmental standpoint, but looking at the three to three three pronged stool of sustainability, we're looking at it environmentally, socially and financially, so that as we start looking at these different components, we are making a eyes wide open decision understanding that if we decide to do X, whether it be food waste composting, whether it be, you know, eliminating glass from our recycle stream for whatever we know what the the fiscal as well as the social environmental impact is to making that decision. And that gives us the springboard we need to make the policies and implement the plans as we go forward over the next 10 to 20 years. Okay. So does that answer your question, Councilmember Arintero? Okay. So not hearing anything in terms of the goals that were in progress understanding that there's points that might be discussed to further refine these when they move forward. I wanted to go ahead and focus this next section, Sarah, on the the areas that were either changes to existing policies or enhancements. And the way the way this next section or two will work is we've got staff will listen to the conversation, similar to how we did it last year, we'll kind of we'll ask to see if there's, you know, if there's four or more of you interested in pursuing a policy. If so, staff will keep track of that, and we'll basically continue working on funneling these issues through to where you have a few more additions to the work plan by the end of the day. So the first item, Councilmember Davis brought up was establishing a more robust road maintenance fund, I think that I think the question there is, yeah, and Jess, I'm gonna let you are, you know, kind of articulate on that you're looking at more of a more of an expanded, new ongoing source of revenue for the maintenance fund, was this was this something where you were looking at, at possibly creating a new revenue stream, you just wanted it studied, you want to, what exactly was the outcome you're looking for? I think the study is a good place to start, we kind of started this conversation back during the Hunter Cole ranch, like I mentioned, that we expect there to be some new tax revenue added to the books. And I think the phrase we used back then was keeping our hands out of the cookie jar. I think that was one of yours, Todd's. I think that, you know, we're going to continue to see growth, we're going to continue to see opportunities to allocate tax dollars to new places. And can we set up a, can we find a way to set ourselves up for success that we're setting aside the right amount of the new growth dollars, not just, you know, kind of relieving pressure as we have done the last few budget cycles, you know, just as you've made us leaner and meaner, but also, you know, keeping our hands out of the cookie jar, giving ourselves a structure that says some percentage of X or some formula of Y goes to roads specifically. You know, and we could even, if we had to expand that to infrastructure generally, but the roads is the one that comes to the top all the time. I mean, roads is the one that we're always going out for new bonds. And maybe that's what happens in a city our size in Texas, but it seems like we're caught in a cycle with the bonds. So when I'm hearing from you then, because practically speaking, the way that would work is segregating some portion of the new EAV each year into some percentage of it into a fund that would go in to help fund road maintenance, which is essentially, it's similar to how the franchise fee dollars were handled. They were being segregated and placed in the road maintenance fund. But what we're talking about, when we're talking about all the new EAV coming in from these particular areas, I think the concept would be if our assessed valuation for new growth jumped 5%, maybe taking a half a percent or a percent of that and putting it into a restricted fund for road maintenance in other parts of the city. Is that accurately sort of describe the concept you're wanting to talk about? Yeah, I think that's a starting place for conversation, and I'll leave it to better heads than mine what those percentages look like or what kind of dollar amounts we're talking about. Because I could see a scenario where we're just bumping that percentage up in our own minds and hamstring ourselves in other parts of the city. And that's not what I want to do, but putting roads right there at the front of the trough. Okay. So I guess in terms of getting feedback from the rest of council, are there, what's the most efficient way to run through if this is something that council would believe this should be a priority of staff in the upcoming year, I could just certainly, I'll ask Stuart to just sort of keep track of these one at a time and I can run through real quickly and Councilmember Armitage, do you agree this should be a source of emphasis in the next year? So can you just clarify, does this mean, you know, all of these, these changes and enhancements are just one of them? Well, I think we're focused right now on number one and it would basically be what Councilmember Davis is suggesting is that some percentage of new growth, new EAV growth and the revenues that are created from that new growth would be segregated and isolated into a road maintenance fund. The idea being that some of these larger new developments would help contribute to pay their fair share for the rest of the city. That way, they're not just basically spent in one part of the city. There's an active plan going on that new growth should help bring our roadway infrastructure up to speed. Yes, I agree that this is something really important. I think especially if we're talking about looking at neighborhood streets and sidewalks, you know, and not just road, not just road expansions. And I would assume that, actually, I shouldn't assume, scratch the hat. I wonder if this would also involve kind of revisiting weight, raising impact fees on certain heavy uses. Not at this point. This is solely the road maintenance, just to pay for the basic upkeep of roads each year. Well, I am for it. Again, if it is about neighborhood streets and sidewalks, and bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure, not so much if it's going to go towards road expansions. But I like the idea, and I think it makes a lot of sense. So I hope we get to talk about it. Todd, if I may, just to help streamline, and kind of how we discussed, is looking for if there's four that are interested in discussing it further so that staff can go back and create a slide for those interests where there is commonality in discussing any items further, just so that you can streamline and focus your discussion a little bit better. So we'll take that just to be clear that I think that's how we had intended. Yeah, and I was looking at the five, but I don't see all the counts on the screen. So I'm just having to kind of go through and ask real quickly if each one of them thinks it's a priority. So Mayor Hudspeth? Yes, sir. Are you good with this? Yes, sir. Okay. Councilmember Johnson? Could you just take the slide down? Yes, I can do that. Sorry. That's a good point. Something we've done before. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Councilmember Johnson, are you? Yes. Okay. Councilmember Baker? Yes. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer? So I know this is like expressed in shorthand. Yeah. But I think the right process, in my opinion, is to set clear goals. We have an inventory of what all the roads are. We can project when they need what, you know, based on their lifespan. From that, we can project funding requirements, and I agree with the idea that having set clear goals and done that projection, that we should, yes, we should identify future funding sources for when they're going to be needed. That's it. That's the shortest way I can put it. Okay. We'll help you throughout the day, maybe hone that more. Councilmember Ryan? Yeah. I'm for this one. Okay. Very good. I'm going to go to the next one. We've got the homeless policy ramp up to allow time for acclimation. So I'm going to, Mayor Hudspeth, in terms of the policy ramp up, can you give us just a 30 second to most revision on that, exactly what you're asking for? Absolutely. I'm going to try to lead by example, and we can refine things. So at 30 seconds, it's basically build a shed in the back or metal structure of some sort for storage, one, for our nonprofit partners, and two, to set parameters for those that would occupy the future homeless day center. So would it be fair to assume that as the design of the new building on the Loop 288 is being constructed, that this would be a topic of conversation you want to have? Because I think that's already going to be occurring. We'll be bringing the, staff will be bringing the preliminary plans to you pretty soon. Sarah, within the month or so, for some at least feedback? Yes. We'll have a couple upcoming work sessions. We actually have a work session plan next week for a general update on the project, as well as an overview of the agreement with the junction, draft agreement with the junction. And then within the next month, we'll be coming back to you with the final design and estimated construction costs and next steps. So is that covering exactly what you're looking for, or was there something in addition to that? Well, it just helped me understand. Will it include the design around the building, not the building footprint itself? It will include the fencing, the surrounding of the building. It will not include any additions to the building, I believe. However, I think it's important for us to review the current design we have in terms of what's planned within the facility, in terms of storage, so for personal belongings of individuals that may be staying, as well as storage for this food kitchen and some other storage. And then seeing what maybe future phases, if any, are needed, or maybe what planning can undergo if, as council member, I think Meltzer had stated, are we meeting the goals or is there next phases for long-term planning, anything additional that could be done on the property? Okay. So, if I had to summarize it, Mr. City Manager, I would fall under the future phases. And it would be, to give you a visual, it's the church that builds a basketball court that turns into a sanctuary until they'll build their main building, right? So that next phase is where I think I fall, what does that look like and how can we get in front of that? Okay. So, what I'm hearing is you'd like that incorporated into the workshop when the internal design is brought back. Yes, sir. Okay. I'm going to just, council member Meltzer. So two things I heard in that that I would resonate with is, sure, you know, I'd be interested in hearing about contemplated future phases. And second thing is accounting in the kind of first phase for however we do it, for storage of residents' personal property, you know, whether that's a shed or blockers or whatever. I don't have an opinion about that yet. So I would support those two things. Is there, can folks show me by kind of doing this with your fist if you're okay with this or not? We'll try to keep rolling this along. We're okay adding this to the, thank you. All right. We'll go ahead and move on. Thank you. Good idea, Paul, with having able to look at everybody. Yes, yes. Mayor Hudspeth has asked as one of the current priorities be that the staff develop a budget to the no new tax rate. You know, and as we're taking a look at that, I feel like it's very critical that we be clear with the council from an operation, the city's tax rate, tax levy rate is broken down to by operations and maintenance and debt service. So I clarified with the mayor yesterday, as I had to pick our CFO up off the floor, that he was really just talking about the operations and maintenance aspect of the tax rate. The reason that's important is when staff was meeting with the bond committee in 2019, one of the things that, and they decided to set the size that bond at 221 million, there was, it was made very clear to them that, you know, it may very well require, even if there was a four or 5% annual assessed valuation growth, which is somewhat conservative, but still a pretty healthy clip, that you'd probably still need up to a one to 4 cent increase each year to handle the debt associated with the bonds for that program that the voters voted in. So I think what we're hearing it, you know, how this would be set up is we'd be directing David Gaines and Cassie Ogden to provide you a budget that clearly shows no new tax rate impact on the operations and maintenance side, and then clearly communicate to you what, if any, increases on the debt service side and still meet the spirit of that, of that goal. And is that fair, mayor? Yes, sir. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. I had just a follow up question on that for Mr. Heilman. Does that assume that the spending department by department will remain the same? Is that built on that idea? Yeah, there's, there's never an assumption that the spending by department would remain the same. When staff budgets to a no new tax rate, the spending in departments could go down or up based upon the amount of revenues and resources that we have each year, but it gives you the ability to build the budget to a number of known dollars. So it could mean contraction in some departments, yes, and it could mean expansion of services in others. It just depends what the public wants to see each year. And then I think most importantly, every budget starts off with all one time dollars or programs that are no longer needed being removed, and then we start building the budget back again. So I think that's what you're asking. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Councilmember Meltzer. I'm fine with saying that is a look that we would have, you know, and then we'd have to see that like, okay, here's how we could do the best we can within the same revenue. And then, you know, we can kind of discuss from there. That's fine. And we have done that and have, you know, passed the no new taxes rate last two budgets and we're pretty darn close to it here before. Yeah. Is there, is there anyone opposed to leaving this in anyone want to talk about this? Okay, let's go ahead and move on, sir. So, youth and senior citizen programs. So, so Councilmember Johnson is wanting to ask that Park and Rec staff study and develop a proposal to expand technology instructional workshops. Is there is there anything you'd like to add Councilmember Johnson or if I sum that up well enough. Thank you. I'd like for them also to be affordable because, you know, there are some families with multiple kids that possibly that may the price may be a big part of why they can't maybe some kind of certificates or scholarships we could support. And then that we have people that are willing to work with and patiently with our seniors and to kind of baptize us into computer error. Okay, and from your perspective, if we're still operating a code environment. Are you okay, you want to program to develop whether it's online, virtual or in person is that correct. Yes, we may have to start virtual but at some point maybe we can be hands on one on one. Okay. Any conversation on Councilmember Omer chair. Yeah, I completely agree. I think that's really important with, as Councilmember Johnson said with the emphasis on affordability, because I think you know we tend to think of all of our parks programs as fairly affordable a lot of times they're more affordable than private alternatives, but, you know, for low income people, it's real cost prohibitive. You know, for me, my ideal would be free, because I think that there's a real benefit, a real public benefit, not just to individuals, but to the community. So and I see this theme, you know, interwoven in a number of Councilmember Johnson's recommendations about parks and rec, I was really happy to see that because that can I get a show of hands that if you're interested in asking the park and rec director and his staff to take a look into this please, just kind of raise your hands or. Okay. All right, Sarah, we'll move on. On that last one, I was kind of thinking that when I read it, I kind of thought maybe it was more like a just in scope, you know, we're talking about big global priorities for the city, you know, I kind of wondered if it wasn't more like more like like a work, a work session or an ISR from parks or something like that. I'm just thinking about the next phase of the conversation is that the opportunity that we might have to kind of move it to a different matrix from the one we're working on right now or. Yeah, no, I think, I think we can, we'll ask Gary to go ahead since so many of you are interested in that to put an ISR together plan development, and then he can work with the agenda committee to get that scheduled knowing Gary, he'll have a plan ready to go before we're done today. And just to add to it, this would be an enhancement possibly some new programs new services the library does offer some, but obviously they go back and explore the partnership with parks and Recreation, how are their current classes or programs doing pre COVID and I think they've been paused, but definitely some opportunities here for an enhancement or new. Yep. Okay, let's move on. Yeah, Councilmember Armon to do something else. Yeah, just real quick question and request that when that comes forward. I think it would be nice helpful for us and also for the public. If as backup, the, the, the parks pricing study that was done I forget the name of this study but this was before Councilmember Johnson got on council, which they basically looked at the, the cost of different parks and rec programs. That is how much the city pays versus how much people who are using those programs pay. Right. So, it intersects with that so I think it'll be helpful to have this study. And you know, and maybe before then an update on, you know, where we are with that. So you would like to understand what the proposed pricing philosophy would be with this program as well. Or, yeah, yeah, to, to be able to discuss it anyway, you know, in, in, in full transparency I was, you know, I didn't like that, you know, the way that I think it was called public benefit or something like that was interpreted in this study. So I thought that, that, you know, programs for for seniors youth sports programs should be more heavily subsidized that's just my personal opinion, but I feel like any discussion on, you know, affordable parks programs intersects with that discussion so whether we agree or not with the consultants, I think the the practical the pragmatic way this is going to work is once once the program is vetted out by my counsel. If you want to move it forward, and there's, there is a cost to it, it will take, if they can absorb it that's great if it's going to take additional dollars above and beyond and that's going to be part of the supplementary package that we'd have to take a look at just for the exact reasons that you're bringing up so if the council decide you, if it was, this one isn't going to move the needle I don't think very much but there could be a program that was created that they did have a substantial impact where something else might have to be scaled back so that will be part of the discussion once Gary gets his research done. Okay. The domestic violence educational programs support agencies and strong laws so be sure that this were accurately portraying this Councilmember Johnson is this is this a an expansion of a program you'd like to see out of police social services. How did you envision this working so your colleagues can can understand that. Well, I wanted, it can be an expansion of what the police is doing as well as the services we already have something is a matter of not being educated on the process of what to follow and some people there is fear involved. And I think that the domestic violence is really starting to rise and think we need to do more to try and stiffen the laws were that there is a different law, when there's this, when this occur and maybe even though some of the services set up maybe a hotline or something where people can perhaps report or just to have somebody to explain to or if they need help, sometimes just to help, because it has a lot of possibilities and a lot of ways that can be spread out that it would become valuable for the community, and perhaps just cut down on the violence. So you're looking at kind of an interdepartmental approach to improving domestic violence outreach programming and outreach. Yes. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. So I completely agree, you know that that's a huge need. And it's so I support that. It's part of that. I would love you know, if that comes forward to us as a work session, to hear, have part of the presentation be about, you know, what police policies are in certain kinds of situations. So to give an example, you know, without getting too in the weeds or taking too much time. You know, I recently learned that there's a kind of policy that or practice that tends to be followed. When you've got a situation where somebody has had an overnight guest, and they're they come back to the apartment or home. And there's some some question about, you know, if somebody is an overnight guest, do they have a right to to come back if they're not wanted? My understanding was no. But there seems to be, you know, some kind of different interpretation of law. I'm not a lawyer, so it involved kind of law and police. But I'm curious to know about how, you know, police department interpretations of various laws that might not be specifically about domestic violence, but laws about when you can and cannot, you know, issue a restraining order, or a I forget the word for the other thing that's like a restraining order. Um, but anyway, you know, those those kind of policies that intersect with domestic violence that might not have domestic violence in the title. So we got to two council members that would like to see a program policy discussion. Yes, Mayor. Yeah, no, just want to understand the process. All right, because I've been I've been holding back my thoughts on individual work sessions, because that's if we agree that it's coming forward, it's coming back for that discussion. Am I wrong? I mean, we'll you where we're heading at this point with some of these ideas is you're starting to take up your work, your work session spacing right now. So, you know, that's going to be that's going to be something we need to talk about is we've already had a couple of ideas here. Some of them are budget related, so it can be woven into the budget discussions, others such as this one would take a dedicated workshop to protect to potentially look at this policy issue. So you've got a limited capacity for workshops, you know, each each month or so. And is this work? Is this something where you're a majority of you're interested in having this program developed as policy developed and for future discussion? Right? No, but moreover, is it because these I mean, there's just there's we're presenting workshop topics, if it comes back for workshop, we don't know if it's going to be scheduled. I think this phase for me is more yes or no. And then we can get to when it's scheduled details that week. I mean, it just seems like we're getting a little detail for this conversation. But I want to make sure that I'm not missing opportunities to speak if now is the time. No, I think that's fine. A lot of what Councilmember Armitage just discussed would be something that Chief Dixon would be able to answer immediately anyway. So in during a workshop, so it's just with the way that we would actually notice that particular discussion. So really what we're in this particular case, we're asking for are there are there four of you that are interested in having this workshop on possibly developing these policies? But you're right, Mayor, we're starting to this would be taking up another work session slate already. Okay, got it. So I've got some air. Where were you? Where did you stand on this? I don't think there's much we can do policy wise, but I want to have the conversation, I guess that's the point. I mean, but I don't think there's anything we can do policy wise, I think it's a handout that we can share information and that sort of thing. But I don't know that it's, but I'm willing to have the conversation to make sure I'm not wrong. It's that important. But at the end of the day, I think we're a little limited by state law and county laws, etc. But willing to have the conversation. So can I show it and see a show of hands who'd like the police department and can you make a comment? Show of hands? Can I say something? Yeah, okay. So I'm not I don't have a preconceived notion that has to be a work session, or whether it's a report, I don't claim to know what the policies, you know, are. What I would say is, it's a big issue. It's a big part of police activity. And I would what I would propose is just an assessment of what are best practices in terms of policies and programs, what do experts recommend, what's been successful, and where are there gaps between that and what we do currently. But I don't have a preconceived notion that that has to be a work session. Okay. Airport Tim. Yeah, I'm just having a little bit of trouble with this one, because anybody can always do better. Any department can always do better. Any entity can always do better. Chief Dickson, we just heard from a couple weeks ago how they're very active in this space. And I may have just a little bit more insight from my day job than other members of the council, but Denton PD is very active in this space. And they're working really hard under Chief Dickson's leadership to get closer to the community groups that they need to to get the training that they need to to each of the officers. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to to look at new programs and stuff. I just don't know that we necessarily need it at this level. I think we've got an excellent PD. And they're working really hard on this issue. So I'm not going to raise my hand here in a second. I just want everybody to know why why I'm not. And it's not because I don't think it's a worthy conversation. I just think we're working really hard on it already. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, just want to add something, you know, so as far as whether to have a work session or not, I think it's important to have a work session. You know, and I think, you know, it's it's significant that we've got a council that has it has two women on it. Two women are keen on having a work session on it. And I would hope that that others who are who are interested in pursuing this at some level would allow us would get on board and support a work session as well. So I hope we can have four in favor, at least four in favor of having a work session discussion on it. And it's of course not just a women's issue. OK, thank you. Mayor, is what we're doing? Are we deciding what we have work sessions on or we decide all czar? We're deciding whether or not this is worthy is something you would like to direct staff to work on the upcoming months, whether it's an ISR that gets pulled up to a workshop, whether it becomes a workshop is going to be really in the hands of the of the council members. So I'm interested in the gap analysis that fine middle work session. OK. Yeah, if I may. Yeah. Two seconds. We council member Davis, Mayor Pro Tem Davis has a daughter. I have daughters even regard. I've given my indication, but I just want to distance from that last statement. That's not what this is about. No one's anti anything. Everyone supports each other. Mayor Pro Tem Davis has pointed out explicitly why he's not going to be in line with this, that it has real objectives and distances from this kind of male versus female, black versus white. We just have to distance from that. We're making policies that apply to our city that we're trying to embrace our city, make it as safe as possible for everyone, irrespective of their gender, color, et cetera. So that entering this conversation just is just I can't let that pass. I don't want that out there. I don't want that narrative out there. We are all very passionate about our community, and we're not going to get into, I hope these kind of, you know, soliloquies and dividing this this group and dividing or organizing our city in certain categories. If you will, we're all passionate about taking care of our citizens. Yeah. Councilmember Ryan, I'm gonna put you on the spot here to like to understand where you are. Yeah, I think I'm probably with Councilmember Meltzer, Mayor, in that you let's look at it. If there are some gaps, it might just be an ISR from the police department. And then once we get that information, then we see if it needs to to move up another level. Okay. And your point is somebody can do a one minute pitch, but at least the ISR. Right, right. If we get an ISR on it first, and then if someone wants to do one minute pitch to bring it back as a work session, then we handle it that way. As the mayor said, there's not a lot policy wise that we can do at our level on this. And so, you know, we're having a discussion today on what policies we want to work on over the next year. So, you know, I'm not sure that this 100% fits in there since there's not policy necessarily that we can do. But you know, it might be the police department comes back and says, hey, we could use some funding that we had fliers. That's, you know, that's the things to look at. Okay. Councilmember Baker? I'm like everybody else. I think their police chief is doing a good job. And I think leave it up to him and his officers to do their job. I think they're doing a good job. Ms. Sarah Stewart, we'll go ahead and move that on the list as a potential ISR. Councilmember Johnson, did you have something else you'd like to say? Yes. My intention for this statement is that we increase the education. I don't want to have a whatever, I don't want a division or anything of that sort. I just, this is, we'll go along also with the things I said about the seniors and then you, let's provide more pamphlets. Let's do some classes. That is, that was the intention for this is just to increase the, what we have and just to add some classes, some workshops, things that people may not already know or understand. Don't want a complete division. Just want to be able to educate and to help where it's missing. Yes, the police department is doing a great job, but there's always room for improvement. I don't want to divide. I just want to, just like Parks and Rec with everything that's placed on there, let's pass out another pamphlet. Let's get a hotline. Let's do something. Let's work together with friends of the family, not a division. That's just not what this is about. Okay. I think we've got, I think we've got four of you that are interested in hearing more. And, and I like, I like the term gap analysis. So Chief Dixon's on the line. He's hearing you talk. So we'll, we'll move to the next one, Sarah. Domestic violence education. I'm sorry. Maximize the use of resources from our regional partners and strengthen our relationships. Council Member Ryan, was there a specific action you wanted to take? How would this fit into a policy enhancement from your perspective? Well, I guess my concern has been that while we do work quite strongly with COG on a number of things, there are often times I've seen where because of changing in staff, that's something that was working, you know, kind of falls off the map. And so I'd like for us to have some type of a matrix that kind of lists where we're doing this stuff. So it's, it's also just for more, more clarity to the public and to my fellow council members. I would venture to guess on one of our previous ones that Gary's probably on the phone with the director of aging down at COG to see what they can help us with. So people don't realize how many areas that we get help. You know, I'd asked a couple of weeks ago about the fact that we got the gold award in the clean fleet this go this year to have that included in in our staff report. And it's just things like that. I want to have it such that we're everybody's seeing what's really happening in how much interaction we have. And if there is a spot that I happen to see that I'm not seeing interaction, then I can bring it up. But I don't have to bring up every initiative I see to staff because I know they're generally already on top of it. Okay. Are there any other any concerns with that? Or anyone like to support Councilmember Ryan in that? Councilmember Meltzer? I think Councilmember Ryan would even agree that it's basically something we already do. It's good to have highlighted it, you know, that it is important. And I think that's sort of enough right there. I don't think it leads to like, you know, it needs a place on a list of things to work on. It just, you know, points as well made. And that's it. Any other comments? Councilmember Armitage? Does it just question for Councilmember Ryan. Does this include text dot? Well, yeah, I mean, our relationship with text out is pretty strong as well. I'm like, I'm the only council member that sits in on the city combo meetings with text out. And that's because I'm on the Regional Transportation Commission. So I mean, I encourage you to go to nctcog.org and kind of look at all the different things that they have. There's a number of presentations that are given to to the executive committee and to RTC that we can grab they they allow us to reuse them and present them to our groups that would be great for some of our subcommittees, the mobility committee, the sustainable the sustainability committee on the environment, all of those, you know, they've got some great stuff out there. And I just want to highlight and make sure that we're not letting some some fantastic resources and the funding. I don't know. I know we didn't get approved for any safe routes to school this past year. But we've gotten approved in the past for that kind of funds. And that's where I say we want to make sure we keep those those relationships good. It's developing those relationships that make sure that we continue to receive our fair share of funds from from the region. Yeah, I would I would really be, you know, strongly in support of bringing that of bringing that more before the whole council as a body because whatever funding sources there are out there, you know, be good for all of us to know about it and be able to give direction on and take advantage of it. And thank you Councilman Ryan for your service on those committees and be great to learn. I would love to learn more about what's going on there and what the opportunities are. So I support that. Yeah. Any other comments on on this is a policy objective in the next year? Any any other supporters of this? Okay, we'll move on. Authorize electric car traffic on city streets if registered mayor, I'm going to ask you to take a couple seconds and just clarify that. Yeah, no, Mr. City Manager, this is pretty simple. If we had a consensus here and you felt that good about it, I just asked you to rework the policy and we'd be done with it, or at least revisit the policy. But that's my ask is that as people have to park in remote parking lots that we enable some sort of safety or procedure or car level or level of golf cart that can carry people to and from the square, people get off jobs at volume board and have to park far away that we cart them back and forth. It's really I don't think that I think golf carts are prohibited on the streets. So trying to get something so that we can shuttle people like other cities do. Okay. So are you are you envisioning this is a I guess, first of all, before before I ask that question, I'm going to ask Chief Dixon, while I've got him here, I'm gonna put him on the spot here, Aaron, and just is there any concerns with this from a policy perspective? And how would you go about that? I mean, is it preempted anywhere? Or how would how would that be operationalized? Yes, in the chief or me, either one, I, the I can answer, I've researched this issue about a year ago, but golf carts can operate on city streets in very limited circumstances. So what the mayor is requesting would allow the you know, expanded use or on city streets, so it'd have to be done by an ordinance. If that is approved and by council, then there's certain requirements that state law sets forth that they'll have to comply with, you know, with headlamps, tail lamps, reflectors, parking brake mirrors, as well as financial responsibility, i.e. proof of insurance that they'll need to carry. So it's but the policy decision comes more about what to to align it to what the mayor has proposed is, you know, limiting it down to the downtown square or surrounding area. The those kinds of issues that come up with that hours of operation. But it can be done, but it would take some type of a policy decision from council. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. Yes, so there are some things that I support about it, but other things I, I don't. So I love the idea of having some sort of shuttle service, whether golf courts, golf golf carts or or something else for people with disabilities and seniors. I would just want to be concerned. I would be concerned to, you know, not only as far as kind of look at limiting area. And in fact, maybe we wouldn't even need to limit the area, but I would be concerned about the use. So I would want to limit it to, you know, specifically those those kinds of uses people with disabilities and seniors, bringing them from parking to in an event or, you know, wherever they want to go. What I wouldn't want to do would be to open it up for four wheelers, you know, through through a loophole or something, you know, so that people could be driving around those four wheelers, which are so dangerous, or, you know, going to the neighborhood liquor store in a golf cart, you know, because those things are really dangerous. I want to make sure that it's not just a free for all. I'm not saying that was intended, but that would that is really my only concern that there's not an hole in there. Okay, so, Mayor, if I if I could paraphrase specifically to get this moving, you're looking for, at a minimum, kind of an ISR from police and legal, where, where this and how this could be operationalized for the council to kick to kick this around and decide whether or not to workshop it. Is that accurate? Yes, sir. Yeah, I think if that's the if that's the process to get to a policy, kind of what he said, that's the first step in that discussion and then yes, I think after listening to city attorney, that's probably the best route to get some traction on it. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Ryan. Yeah, I'd say on this item, and I'm forward for limited areas, as was said, we probably want to talk with some of the people over at UNT, because they use similar facility or similar devices, you know, when freshmen come in and taking them around campus and showing them places and their maintenance, people use a golf cart style that they probably knows a little bit more of specifics that we could list in there to designate what is considered a safe vehicle so we don't end up with, as was said, four wheelers all over the place. Okay. Anyone else like to speak on this? Like to learn more about it? Anyone else want to raise their hand? You're not on, Jesse. I think I unmuted and then remuted. Yeah, I'm in support of finding out more about it. I think there's a lot of these on this page that sure, I'd like to know more. I don't put it at the category of major priority for the city, big strategic priority for the year, but I think it's worth exploring. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, I think I would go along with those sentiments. I'm certainly interested in hearing more. As I say back east, with respect, I don't really see the benefit of a specific type of vehicle. If there's a need for some kind of a shuttle, we can talk about that. We can talk to DCTA about that as well. And I would hope that anything we would use for a needed shuttle would be safe and street legal. Okay. And Councilmember Johnson or Baker? Any comments? Councilmember Baker? Well, I'm like everybody else. I would kind of like to find out a little bit more about it. Okay. About the law and everything and sound like it might be a pretty good deal. Thank you. Any concern, Councilmember Johnson? I'm interested in hearing the specifics. Okay. Let's move on, Sarah. Ah, yes, City Hall West. So Mayor Pro Tem, would you like to just remind everybody, what do you see as the success in the next year? What are you proposing to your colleagues? A plan and at least one step towards the plan. So we have some, what did Councilmember Armenter say, intersectionality between ideas here. Councilmember Meltzer talked about performance space. Councilmember Johnson's talking about community education. We've got a resource sitting right there. If we can figure out how we're going to pay for the thing and who we're going to house there, then we can start doing a lot of really cool stuff downtown with that. I've got plenty of ideas. I'm not going to go into them right now, but I think we should put that right up towards the top of our priorities and use that beautiful building. So just to clarify, so we understand if there's a budget component to this. When you say plan, are you talking about working on it and funding the architectural design that has been talked about in the past? Is that what you're talking about or is it a little simpler than that? Well, no, I think that's kind of step one is we've got to, do you mean, let me ask you to clarify your question. Do you mean funding the design that we already have or do you mean funding the next stage of design? You have funding the building of what we already have or? It would be funding the next stage of design. You're getting to a point now, there's a high level conceptual plan. So now you'd be talking about, I think these two phases would be actually funding the, at least a 30% design on the building and most likely going through some kind of an RFP process to determine potential uses in the building. That's where our conversation stopped last time. Yeah, I think that'd be a fantastic development and I think you brought up RFPs. I don't think the council has talked much more about RFPs since that last conversation and having some folks share that responsibility with us in that building who can help carry the freight. You know, we've talked a lot about who could be in the building. None of those proposed partners so far could help us carry the freight. We need to find some folks who can help us get it done or otherwise we're not going to do it. Responses to this? Mayor? No, I'll kind of gather around that phrase, uses in the building. I think that study is key. I've always been there that once we figure out what we're going to put in it and then I would just shout out that the only difference I would say to Mayor Pro Tem Davis' point is I do believe the Texas Veterans Hall of Fame has shown an ability. They're in their second building, second facility in the Golden Triangle Mall and I think they have real potential to shoulder a heavy load. Yeah. Councilmember Armitage? So I agree that looking at, you know, not just design, but uses of City Hall West is really important to the community. It's important to me. I'm not exactly sure what Councilmember Davis means and you don't necessarily have to elaborate on it here, but about who can carry the freight. You know, that can be discussed at a later time, but I definitely think it's important to look at uses and I'm very interested in the Texas Veterans Hall of Fame and their interest in having something here. It's a really small space that they have at the Golden Triangle and so it shows that they can do a lot with the small space. I really love the idea of having it be an art space for arts and performance for the community and I think that that's something that veterans and maybe other groups could intersect with as well, but that was a really strong voice from the community and from the City Hall West community, that it be an art space. So I think it's important to take up uses. Councilmember Meltzer, did I see your hand up? Yes, strongly in support of that as being on a short issue list. Discussion of design, uses, and Councilmember Davis, if Mayor Portem hadn't gone there, I was going to go there about us seeking partners that can participate financially in it. Okay. Councilmember Ryan, would you like to weigh in on this? Yeah, I think the partner aspect of it is more who's going to manage the facility for us? Is it something that we would want to do in-house through our Parks Department? Probably not the best way to do it. We have some great organizations that handle arts, Campus Theatre right now. Before Campus Theatre was rebuilt, that's actually where they performed, was in City Hall West before it got redesigned. So I don't know if anybody remembers back that far, but some of us do. But yeah, it's a process that I think it's almost four years ago now that we started the committee and promised the community we were going to move forward on it and it's something we need to figure out. And if it means that, as I stated earlier, it's something that needs to be put on a bond package in the future, let's at least get to the point where we're ready for that, that that's shovel-ready job. Mr. City Manager, there's another point I wanted to add, I'll neglect the two. Sure. Yeah, I would ask that we also just find out what we can about the destiny of, as far as uses of the County Courthouse in the Square, just so we're conscious about what's truly additive and just being more holistic about our intentions. Councilmembers Baker, Johnson, any concerns with this being a priority? No, I don't have any problems. I think we need to hang on to the building and it's been here a long time. Like I say, it was City Hall at one time, had the City Council down there. I was in that building a few times as a kid growing up here, so I think we need to hang on to the building and use it if we can. Good. Okay, you're good. You're good as well. Councilmember Johnson? I agree. Okay, let's move on, Sarah. Nine. Mayor, City Council limit lower boards and commission staff time. Is this a repetitive on the last slide or is this something, let me turn that over to you to go ahead and speak with what you've got in mind? The last slide, this is just kind of a one minute change in the policy with boards to make it a one minute pitch type approach so that those lower boards and advisory boards aren't spending a lot of time on things that don't have traction. I don't know how those two work, but it seems like sometimes there's policy discussions at that level coming up, but if there's not traction, then we should focus or narrow their time spent on that, so it's a policy change on how we manage advisory boards is what I'm suggesting. Okay, so if one of the boards and commissions that recommends something, the council wants to recommend a policy change or have research done in the same thing as council in excess of an hour or two that comes to council first to make sure that you want staff spending time on that. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay. Thoughts on this proposal? Council Member Meltzer? I'd like to understand, is it a problem now? This issue has been brought to our attention, to the mayor attention in mind by staff members that are being asked to do policy research and provide policy discussion or research on topics related to issues that you would ultimately have to approve, that their concern is do they spend time doing that or not when we've got a process set up for council, and is that something that you should be vetting first before time and resources is spent on it? Well, then I would propose that that would be an interesting role for the chairs of those committees if they can collect their asks and they can pitch to council. Okay. Council Member Armitage? So I don't support either idea because I like knowing that we have people on our advisory boards who are asking questions about policy. It serves democracy to empower the members of the public to advise whatever policy changes that they want to make to council. Our committee on people with disabilities, for instance, I want to know what the people on that committee want us to do in terms of policy and if it comes through us first to decide whether or not they're even going to get anything on these policy issues to have it come before them. I feel like that kind of defeats the purpose and is kind of top-down. So I like the bottom-up model that we have now, and I would be open to if more staffing is needed to make that happen, I would support that because I definitely don't want to overload staff, but as our city gets bigger and people get more involved, I love seeing this. So, again, I don't want to overload staff, but I think it's important the way we have it now. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem? So I've seen Council Member Meltzer ask if this was an issue. I don't know from the staff perspective, but I've definitely watched when we have an item coming up, I go back and watch these committee meetings, and I've definitely watched the concluding items and then also what we used to do in these meetings, where we'll just kind of be riffing on some topic, and in the course of one work session, we'll ask for three or four more work sessions. Before we had the one-minute pitch thing, we would say, "Oh, I'd like to see one on this, one on this," and then soon enough, we had a list of, you know, like 100, 150 work session proposals. The committees are not at the level that we were doing that, but they are definitely asking for a lot of staff time. Some of those things, if they, one, kind of vetted those big requests for time through us, or if they kind of had a little bit more perspective on what's going on outside of their area, they're kind of in their own little silo too, right? We had at one time, the Committee on People with Disabilities is a good example. We had one member who's no longer on that board who is using a lot of staff time and was kind of representing themselves as being, you know, part of the city and going around town with a lot of authority they didn't have and using a ton of staff time dealing with those issues. So committees are here to advise us. Some of them have a statutory role like PNZ, where they have their own thing that they do, but they're mostly there for the benefit of us as the policymakers moving things up the line. So I don't think it's top-down for us to ask them to bring big requests of staff time up here to the folks who appoint them and who liaise with the city manager in his office and figure out what's necessary or what's deserving of staff time. And I like what Councilmember Meltzer said about involving the chairs. When I came in front of the Council as the chair of the Ethics Board, that was pretty novel. The Council doesn't see board chairs hardly at all, and I think it'd be great to hear from our board chairs from time to time on what's of concern to your committee, what's so important that staff's not putting on your agenda that you think ought to come in front of the Council, and then we put on your agenda for you. I think that's a great idea, getting them involved. Councilmember Ryan? Yeah, I'm on board with this. It makes sense that if it's something that's coming from the bottom up that is going to have to come through us eventually, that we should weigh in on it before a lot of staff time is spent on it. Okay. Councilmember Baker? I'll agree with Mayor Pro Tem about that and Councilmember Meltzer. Okay. Councilmember Johnson? You're muted. I just need to clarify that I know exactly what we're saying here. We're just asking that things that cannot be changed or solved not occupy four days of discussion because it has to be going through another policy. Somebody just clarify for me. That's all I'm asking. Right now, if a Councilmember wants a change in policy, an informal staff report that's going to take more, or research that's going to take more than two hours, that has to be approved by the body of Council. The question is now is we've got some staff members of a couple of the committees in particular that are being asked to do research well about the two hour mark and take positions on and do research for policies that their question is should the same logic apply to the boards and commissions that it applies to the City Council? I'd like to add a different wrinkle to it. I think there is something to be said for giving them some rope to do their investigations. Could there be a tier, certain number of hours work and then a higher number of hours work where within the committee, they can do what we do. We've got to have four members or whatever their majority is to say yes, consensus of us is interested in having this work done. But then above a higher threshold, maybe it's two hours and ten hours, just for argument sake, but if it's really that higher level amount, the Chair comes to Council and makes a bench and then we do our consensus thing. Okay. Councilmember Armitage? Yeah, I'll just state that I'm opposed to that, but I also don't like the way we do it on Council. I feel like if there is any one Council member or one advisory board member who is representing members of the public or representing themselves, their community, then they should be able to have the information they need to move forward, even if it turns out they're in the minority. I know that we're not discussing today how that applies on Council, but just for the record, I want to retain the way it is on advisory boards. I'm glad to know that's happening. And if we need to hire more staff as a growing city to do that research, I would be totally okay with that. As far as chairs, I'll just say that if you've got a situation where a Chair is on board with a policy, a proposal coming forward to Council or a research proposal coming forward to Council, I can imagine them doing a very good presentation, but if you've got a situation where a Chair might be on an opposing side, it could put the Chair in an awkward position. I'm not opposed to Chairs. I think it's great when Chairs come and present to Council, but I would say if there's a situation where a Chair is not on board with a policy, a staff member could present it neutrally. Okay. Well, we've got at least five to move that one forward. Sarah, let's go to the next. Okay. Who are we? And Council Member Melcher, I think we, did we answer your question on the solid waste plan here, that this will be a component of that? Brian brings it up. If you want to restate that, that's fine with me. I believe the topic has been addressed. Okay. Thank you. All right, Sarah. Good job. Let's see here. So we've got Council Member Armitage. I'm going to, can you take like 20 or 30 seconds to just let everybody know your thoughts on number 11 with the tree ordinance to pervert. Oops. Excuse me. Yes. Let me go to the slide. So, I mean, pretty self-explanatory, revise, update tree ordinance to preserve a bigger percentage of trees on lots and preserve a wider variety of trees. Basically, you know, I think it's time to move even further in the direction in which our latest tree ordinance update was already moving. But I still think, and I hear a lot of outcry from the community, especially over recent development where there were a lot of trees taken down, but it was totally okay with the tree code. It wasn't okay with the community. So I think we've test driven this model and now it's time to revise it. Okay. Would anyone like to speak on Council Member Armitage's proposal? Council Member Meltzer. Unquestionably, we agreed that there would be a revisit. And I think we said it was going to be at six months, and that didn't happen. So that, you know, I absolutely support revisit to say, you know, what has occurred. You know, the specific thing that we agreed we would revisit was over the exemption of single family and duplex zoned properties from tree preservation requirements. So, you know, let's revisit what has happened. The allegation at the time was no one cuts down their own trees. It'll never happen that anyone would just acquire single family property and cut down the trees in order to do bigger development. Well, has it happened or not? You know, I think we definitely need to revisit what has happened and then assess what changes may be needed. Anyone else? Mayor Pro Tem. I'm definitely okay with having the conversation. And I think one component that could be really valuable of that conversation is one, we've updated our urban forestry plan. We have a little bit better context now for what we're really trying to do. What's the goal? But I think also it's important to have the conversation so the public knows the city's goal is never going to be don't ever cut down a tree. The city's goal is going to be preservation where we can, where we're not running afoul of private property and takings, you know, where we're not making it to where somebody has absolutely no use for their property. If that's the goal, then some folks need to kind of reexamine where they're headed with that because that gets us into some real legal trouble if the goal is there's never going to be a tree cut down in Denton again unless it's dying and diseased. I think we can improve on what we have a little bit, but I think we can also improve on our communication some and educating the public. For instance, the project that was mentioned that people got upset about trees coming down. Very few people have actually been to that site and know what those trees were, were those quality trees, were they protected under our current code or not? What kind of undergrowth was there? It's easy to get really worked up about something when you see it on social media. But if we, if we educate our folks about the purpose of the tree code and what it actually does, what it actually protects, I think we could help ourselves out that way too. Okay. I just want to be clear, my understanding was that this was a request for to revisit the policy itself to make it more restrictive. We've got, we're talking about a workshop to talk about what's happening. Is that what has happened since the implementation of code? Yes. Are you viewing those as one in the same council? Absolutely. And thank you to councilmember Meltzer for bringing that out. You know, I didn't mention it specifically, but I can't imagine a discussion of where to go from here. If we don't have a discussion of, you know, what has, what has happened, not just what the policy is, but how it has played out in practice. So I'm really grateful for him to, for mentioning that. Anyone else like to weigh in on this? Mayor, Mayor Hesbitt? Yeah, I just want to say, I'm not going to support this request. And here's why. It, you're absolutely right to point it out. It's a, it's a pain point for me. We've reviewed no data. We've reviewed no analysis. We've reviewed no progress, but yet in this request, it says to revise ordinance, make it bigger, to preserve a bigger amount of tree, percentage of trees. We don't know how many we've preserved. We don't know how well it's worked in the first place. So that is the very problem that scares away developers from coming to talk to us. If we come into a thing and we're talking objectively and we're talking that we're just going to look at the data, make a database decision. Everybody can get behind that. But just to come in and say, we're going to be more punitive because I feel we need to be more punitive with no data around it. That makes no, I can't support that. So as it's written and as it's intended, I'm not interested. I am interested in making sure we grow our tree canopy. And I'm interested in a policy that goes forward about how we plan the bond dollars. The, the, the citizens have voted on that bond issue and they support that issue more green space. So there's no question about the community and where they fall, but I'm not interested in going into some sort of gotcha for a pre-planned escalation us against uh, people that develop property. Councilmember Armentier. Yeah. Just to say to clarify, um, Mayor Hutzpeth, uh, I had just, just said in, in answer to the city manager's question that I do believe that data is a very important part of this presentation. Um, what I read from just now was the hundred character limit description. I added just a couple of words to it. It wasn't comprehensive, but as I mentioned, having data and discussing where we are right now, uh, is absolutely essential and, and what has happened and not happened under the new ordinance, uh, is, is essential to deciding where to go from there. Uh, so, you know, consider, uh, you know, uh, maybe I should have said, uh, consider possibly moving further in the direction in which we're headed, but again, I'm not talking about, um, something, you know, radically different, just now should we look at how it's been working? Uh, and consider, you know, amping it up more. Maybe the answer will be no. Um, maybe I'll still think yes, but others will think no, but the data is an essential part of it. And if that's what, uh, people who are developers, as you're saying, you know, would like to see, um, Ben, this is a discussion that would fit, uh, them new. So I just wanted to clarify that this is about data. Other council members want to weigh in on this? Okay. Sarah, let's go ahead and move on. Okay. Uh, where are we? Let's see. Councilmember armature. I don't really understand where we settled out. Like I didn't. Okay. You're fair enough. I saw, I saw three of you, um, interested in there in his, in his rejection, it has written expressed an interest in seeing the data. So, you know, well, I think it's a consensus for that. I think with all due respect, we need to let the mayor speak for himself. He came out, the first thing he was opposed to the request. So go ahead and let him clarify. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm here's the thing. If we're editing this, what's stated here, cause this is all we have to go by an explanation. Even in her explanation, she said, she gave an example where the tree canopy fail. I mean, the tree policy failed in her, in her purview and how she wants to increase it to make it more, uh, more effective in her words, whatever that, that terminology was. So even in the wording and in the writing, it has nothing to do with objectivity. It has everything to do with she's interested in cranking up the, the, uh, the punitive nature of the tree ordinance. And so based on her words and her work writing, no, I'm not interested in that. If she wants to edit this to say a update on the tree canopy, I'm a hundred percent behind it. I mean, the policy and how, where we are with the tree canopy, has it grown? What do we need to understand about it? But, but I'll just be very transparent parent. I'm not interested in changing it at this point. It's not been in place long enough and people have, they, it took forever to get it in place. And so there's just, we can't continue to yank the steering wheel. We have to let it play out and collect data and understand what we're doing. Uh, so if we're talking about an update, certainly, if we're talking about anything punitive or action items at all, no, I'm not interested in that. It's just too early in the process. Okay. Well, I'm mayor. If this would help get you on board, uh, then I would be happy to, uh, clarify, just to say an update on where we are with the tree ordinance and getting council direction, but, uh, you know, we already excellent. Okay. We've got, we've got, we've got four in that now. Interesting process. Okay. All right, Sarah, uh, let's go. Councilman armature. I think you're up again. I mean, uh, yes. So, uh, uh, about a wafer, uh, on all city fees and permits for, uh, all forms of affordable housing. Um, you know, at a work session, we could talk about, uh, what that exactly entails. Um, and I see this as something that, uh, could dovetail really nicely with the affordable housing study. I would like to know, um, you know, what, what, uh, what those consultants think about this idea, but I know from talking to people who do affordable housing, uh, not just people who live in it, but, but, um, you know, people who are, are activists for affordable housing that the costs, uh, at every level are a big barrier, not just the zoning, but the cost. This is something that I had brought forward to council really early on when I first was first elected in my first term. Um, and what council ended up deciding to do, uh, which, which I was, uh, okay with, um, but it was a very scaled down version of what I had proposed is having a fund, uh, not a waiver, but a fund that only applies to owner occupied single family homes. Um, and you know, in my view, you know, that's an extremely important kind of affordable housing, um, but it's just one kind of many. So, you know, I, I would like to open it up, uh, to a waiver and I think now it's a really good time for that. I, I, I think that before we, before we spend council's time responding to this, I really need to ask our city attorney to weigh in. I think the word waiver is a problem, but I think we can get there through a grant program. But Mckinney has a, Mckinney has a waiver, um, and that's the term they use. So I'm not a lawyer, but I'd like, I'd like to weigh in before we move on. You know, in, in the normal, I guess, everyday language, it may be called a waiver, but what you really see is, uh, programs that have been set up by municipalities that have a funding mechanism that is paid, uh, you know, applicants apply whether it's single family, uh, um, multifamily, they apply to the city for, uh, that they're promoting affordable housing. However, that's defined whether it's in the federal standards or something that's more in the state. I, uh, you know, and then, you know, they compete with, there's only a certain amount of, amount of money that's there. The program will list what, what, uh, where these funds are going to be, uh, used for with respect to different fees the city's had, the city has. And then the final decision is made as to whether or not an award is made. That's how you can do that legally. And so the program is going to be very similar to the hot, uh, hot funds and sponsorship program we have. And it's going to take an infusion of capital, uh, city funds to do that. A, a straight waiver of where you, where you just come in and say, you don't have to worry about it, you know, because you're affordable, affordable housing. It's going to get you, uh, uh, open up the door for legal liability with respect to some of your taxpayers out there that you are gifting funds unconstitutional, unconstitutionally, meaning there's no, you're just giving away the money. And, and so the way that you can do this is by creating the public purpose through a, a grant program. And that's in, in reality of what is happening in other cities, the big cities, they have these programs set up, uh, where they, where they pump in millions of dollars to help fund these expenses. Okay. Well, well, and, and thank you. I know that, uh, colloquially in McKinney, they call it a waiver. Um, and I know that, you know, as you mentioned, one has to apply for it. It's not just the city doesn't decide, okay, you, you count as affordable housing. Um, the affordable housing has to apply for this. And if you meet the qualifications, then you don't have to pay the fee. Uh, and the city absorbs the cost in this way. Um, but yeah, maybe a staff report on exactly how the McKinney program works. I'm just, I'm just singling that one out. Um, but, uh, it's not, it's not a true waiver. Okay. So, so, so when, so a, a, a program that would, uh, subsidize completely the, the cost for, uh, uh, affordable housing that quali, that qualifies for it. But basically I want something, um, that makes it so that, that where the, the result is that, uh, affordable housing that meets our, whatever we had read upon as a definition, uh, does not have to pay these fees. Um, so they can, uh, come, uh, here faster, sooner and pass those, uh, savings on, uh, to the people who will be living in this affordable housing and the benefits more immediately to the community. If I can take a second to just state what we currently have, we, we do have a development fee grant program, um, where, uh, nonprofits can receive a grant that would pay, um, for some of those development fees. Um, it is limited to, uh, nonprofits developing public facilities. It also includes some affordable housing, um, but that is limited. So if this would be an expansion, probably a pretty significant, um, research and expansion of a program funding source as well. Um, and I, I think some of that may be addressed as we go through the phase three of the affordable housing assessment, um, in terms of, um, if the council desires to put more funding investment, uh, how is that best utilized? Is it, is it more into the development fee grant program? Is it into other types or other programs? Um, so it's a little difficult to speak to you right now, but I think we'll get to that as we go through the affordable housing assessment. Yeah. And I think that one of the reasons that we have these meetings though, is, is the budgets being developed in 21, 22, we've got that policy direction. So mayor pro tem. Yeah. I really appreciated what Sarah had to say about the program we already have. You know, we, the last time we really talked about this was when, uh, there was a zoning case coming forward and that organization a couple of years ago was having some trouble meeting some of these fees. And so we talked about, we can't gift them those fees. We can't waive them those fees, but let's set up a program for nonprofits. I'm not interested in limiting it to affordable housing because there are basically only two nonprofits operating with any kind of scale, actually building affordable housing in our city. Um, the rest are developers that are coming in with a mix of affordable units for the kind of tax relief that we talked about with the developer last week. If you want to hand a big chunk of city budget money to developers, that's a way to do it. Start waiving affordable housing fees. That is way too nebulous an idea to say, well, you know, anybody who builds something that meets some sort of threshold gets all their, their city fees waived or, you know, reimbursed through a grant or whatever. Um, if it's a nonprofit, uh, if it's something that has no, you know, at market or above units, that's a very different conversation than the kind of affordable housing. I think our study told us that we needed. So I'd rather look at this in the context of the study in the context of all nonprofits, not just affordable housing, but nonprofits specifically. Um, and I think we do that with the budget conversation about the funds Sarah just talked about. I think we do that in the context of the study that we had, um, because there's, it's just a much bigger conversation than handing some apartment builders money. Other comments on this customer Meltzer? Uh, well, to stay on the topic of affordability. Um, my main view is we have a, you know, we have a process underway. We just asked them to come back and solve for, here's the number of units we project we need. Here's how much we think the market's going to fill for that. Here's how much you could address through policy changes. And then, you know, here's what else you might need to do through grant program and so on. I, you know, I'm, I'm, I don't see the need to say, to jump to the end and say, we specifically need to do this tactic and in all cases at all times. Uh, I just don't think that's the road to good policy, but, uh, is it, uh, going to be part of that discussion and to be weighed among all the other things in the context of all of our objectives? Yeah, you know, sure. Anyone else want to weigh in on this? Okay, let's move on Sarah. And it's, uh, Mayor Pro Tem established a well-funded permanent economic development fund. This might be pretty quick. I'm not sure how what I'm proposing is different from the catalyst fund we're already talking about. Um, so we, we started that conversation a long time ago. Uh, we need to continue the conversation in the context of the plan we just passed on Tuesday. Um, I've kind of putting out there, I think the council needs to stay involved in that conversation and we need to get real aggressive about it. Yeah. Um, David, uh, Gaines and Jessica Rogers will be back to you shortly, I think, to address both yours and, uh, Councilmember Melcher's, uh, earlier comments very shortly. Okay. Let's move on to new requests. Sarah, the next slide. Okay. I pulled it up on my email, so I'm looking at the wrong one. Okay. All right. It should be on the screen now. Yeah, it is. Okay. Councilmember Armitour, uh, remove zoning restrictions and density barriers prohibiting middle housing and residential info. Would you like to give just a very quick explanation? Yeah, just real quick. Uh, so what, what, what I, what I would like is to kind of to return to and see where we are with this new council, a conversation that was had, um, in the, when the previous, the current development code, the last development code update was brought forward. Um, when it was brought forward last time by staff, there was, uh, a much more expansive, uh, um, zoning for, uh, town, for, uh, town homes, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes. And, uh, I, uh, I myself was very supportive of that and would have liked to have seen even more expansion of that. Um, I know that people, you know, in some neighborhoods really riddle at the idea. So there was pushback. Um, yeah, but now, you know, we're, I think we're seeing a real cultural shift, uh, conversations about missing middle housing. Um, people are starting to see that even though we can't, the edu's are allowed, uh, there are certain barriers, uh, in, in the process in, uh, what's allowed, what's not allowed, uh, tiny homes, for instance, the way tiny homes are, uh, described in our codes, it's with the idea of more of a tiny home village model than kind of individual tiny home infill. Um, so I think I'd be happy with, um, this being part of this affordable housing discussion moving forward in phase three of the affordable housing consultant study. I see it as, as tied to that. I wouldn't want to discuss this before they come back to us with that phase three, but that's essentially what I had in mind. Okay. Input from other councilors. Mayor Pro Tem. I like that last part, especially that we talk about it in the context of the affordable housing conversation. Um, I, I'm not in favor of a blanket, all single family, neighborhood you're in, any place is now eligible for a fourplex. Um, I think it's more granular than that. I think it's, um, we need to remove some barriers where that kind of development is appropriate and even helpful. Um, but I think the original pitch was kind of too broad a brush. I'd like to look at it in the context of, um, something more specific and more granular and in the context of the affordable housing conversation. Council Member Meltzer. Definitely resonate with the, put it, look at it in the context. Uh, I think several of us saw this missing middle presentation, uh, that was quite persuasive. And to me, the key new thought in it was form based zoning. So I would just suggest as part of the process of the formulation of phase three, that we share that presentation with the consultants and see what role, uh, they would see, uh, for a layer of form based zoning to be considered along with potentially relaxing and other types of use space. So fourflex can look really very appropriate in a certain, two kinds of neighborhoods, depending how you do it. You can do it well, okay? Anyone else like to weigh in on this? Council Member Armitage. Yeah, just to respond, I want to thank Mayor Pro Tem Davis and Council Member Meltzer for their comments. I'm, I'm happy to, uh, you know, integrate that into my request, um, because, um, you know, my, my requests were kind of worded as, as you can see, I want us to have a policy sub policy discussion and here's what I think right now about where we need to go. Um, but I'm happy to, uh, kind of, you know, widen the focus to let's have a discussion, uh, when this phase three of the affordable housing consultant study comes back on where and how we need to open up to remove barriers, uh, in zone for middle housing, including a discussion of form-based as opposed to density-based, um, models. Uh, I, I too found that really compelling, so I would like to at least discuss that. Is anyone, is there anyone else interested in, in having a discussion on this topic? I want to weigh in on something. Okay, Council Jackson. These discussions, and please, if I'm wrong, forgive my ignorance, but at this point, we have so many moving mechanisms in each one of these things. We're using the words interchangeably waivers, fees, free, affordable. That is too broad to narrow this down to one or two items. And my interpretation of what may be affordable cannot possibly match maybe others, but at the same time, that word and, and where we throw it around and the way we waive and give, let's put it to perspective as one, everybody that attaches themselves to affordable housing isn't about affordable housing. Everybody that attaches themselves to the word waiver or free, let's investigate the situations and let's put them on an individual basis because I'm sure that at this point, there's some things that are not being weighed. Okay. That's fair enough. And I think what you're seeing a little bit here too, Councilmember Johnson, is a little bit of negotiation. We've taken this, it was initially perceived this request was going to be kind of a amendment to the zoning code, the development code. And now we're narrowing it down to potentially a tool in the affordable housing toolbox. So sometimes this happens in order to get four people interested in it. So is there anyone else that would like to weigh in on this? Okay, Sarah, let's move on. And Councilmember Armitage, it looks like you're up again for the next couple. So would you like to briefly discuss your proposal here? Can someone put that, or I can get that slide. Yeah, I'll go ahead and read it. Found election to fund land trusts and communities at risk of displacement and gentrification. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I explained it in my opening pitch. I don't think I mentioned though that Austin recently announced that they had this big affordable housing bond election. Of course, they're a much bigger city than we are, but a big bond election for affordable housing. And they recently announced that they're going to put $23 million of it towards the Permanent Land Trust to help people, homeowners, low-income homeowners, keep their homes and to help people who live in rental homes and in apartments, including mobile homes, own their communities. It's a really creative and effective way to strengthen neighborhoods, to keep people housed and fight gentrification. So anyway, this is a very specific request. I imagine the affordable housing consultants will have it somewhere. At some point, they'll have to address Permanent Land Trust as a possibility because it is one of the big things being talked about in affordable housing circles. So Mayor Pro Tem. I just want to point out that I've heard the words revitalization and gentrification both used in our conversations today. Those are two sides of the same coin. They depend on who you're talking to. And I don't, from my perspective, I don't feel like these land trusts are an appropriate use of public money. Okay. Other comments, opinions? Council Member Meltzer? Well, like the last several items, you know, perfectly interested in seeing where that ranks among, you know, kind of other tactics that we might use in addressing the strategy. My guess is it's, you know, just from the sound, I don't know a lot about it. I appreciate the research that Council Member Arbiter has done into these topics. But, you know, sounds expensive, you know, and may work for a city 15 times bigger than us. It may not be within our scope. But let's, you know, if it's not in their list of things to consider and rank order, you know, I don't mind sort of putting it into the hopper for them to look at and opine on the affordable housing consultants. We have any other Council Members interested in pursuing this topic? Okay, let's move on. Create a fair housing mission statement and require fair housing training for Council and relevant departments and boards. Council Member Armitage? So again, you know, not much to add to what I stated initially. This is pretty basic. We already have a fair housing coordinator. But there's a lot of, I think, you know, questions about what is the Fair Housing Act, both, you know, on Council and the community. And I think that because of the importance of the Fair Housing Act, which applies to City of Denton, it's federal law. I think it'll strengthen us as a Council with every time we discuss housing, zoning, people with disabilities, low income and majority minority neighborhoods. These are all issues that are covered under fair housing. So I think it's a training like our security training that we could do. There are a number of different ways we could do it. You could do an online training all the time, even after COVID. We could do in person. I would prefer whether it's online or in person. And I do think we should do online now, just some form of in the beginning anyway, interactive where we've got an actual person who's presenting to us. Maybe our our city fair housing coordinator would want to conduct it. There are agencies that would do it for free that are very reputable. So anyway, I think there was recently a closed session on this on this topic. And I think we should have these discussions out in public, not about specific cases, but just about the affordable sorry about act. What's on this proposal? Yes, we're melting. I'm totally fine with that. I would love to learn more about it. Mayor Pro Tem. I'm fine with a pretty simple training, you know, webinars, something like that. I think it's good information for us to have. So we know kind of where the bear traps are and what to be careful of and in doing our duties, I'd be really careful about. There are a lot of groups out there doing these kind of presentations. There are a lot of groups out there that have a particular slant or a particular perspective. I think we'd want to be very, very careful that we get something maybe available from National League of Cities, maybe something available from TML, something from a completely neutral and detached. I wouldn't want to go much further in the proposal than you know, just a quick a webinar that's available for council, something that if it has to get paid for that we find a way to pay for it from city coffers. So we don't have to find it as individual council members. But the proposal goes a little further than that. And that's where I stop is kind of the webinar, good solid training for council members. Other comments on this? Are we? Other comments on this? So we've revised this to kind of an initial training for council from what I'm hearing and is that therefore, is there anyone else who's interested in the training for council? Mayor? Just a question. Here's my concern with supporting it. I think on its face, it sounds great. But if it's not aligned with what our city attorney thinks, are we sending people out to gather information and then come argue with our city attorney? So if it's baked from inside out, I'm good. But I don't know that that's been, I don't know if we need that level of specificity. But I without that level of specificity, I'm not, it's just we're fighting against ourselves, right? So if I go get go to a webinar and come back and tell the city attorney how to do his job or her job, that to me is counterproductive. We've now sent, we've spent city taxpayer money to go come back and argue with a city employee. It just doesn't make sense to me. So if we, if we're empowering our legal department to come back and give us a presentation, their analysis or find someone that they think they're comfortable with, then that's going to be, I need to hear that before I can get on board. And I could, I could respond to that just, and I'd be curious to hear what the city attorney would say. I don't anticipate that being a problem because especially if we, you know, as council member Davis said, you know, get a, whoever does the presenting, have it be somebody who is like Texas municipal league who we agree is, is pretty neutral. And they have experts there in, in affordable housing. The law is the law. And of course it's subject to interpretation, but this would be at a very basic level and introduction to what is the fair housing act. I can't imagine that there was anything that the city attorney would disagree with because they're not talking about individual cases. Maybe they might mention some famous cases like the, the, the Beaumont case or something like that. But these are cases that have already happened and been decided. All right. Aaron. Mayor and council, as, as the mayor pro tem pointed out, I would be happy to look to see one, a neutral source with your TML national league of cities. We, we can work with that. I understand that the FHA is not just a legal, which is, I mean, there's plenty of legal issues, but it's more also involved in it. It impacts our engineering streets, development services. So it's more comprehensive than that, but we're looking for a very, a basic presentation, which we'll be happy to work with staff to, to find one. I do agree with the mayor pro tem that even there are organizations that will say that this is a very basic presentation, but it does have a slant to it. So I, I probably look at, at, at a, at a more recognized neutral organization that puts one out. And I will be happy to provide that to, to the council and to some of the relevant boards that actually get involved with this. If that is what y'all want, I have no issue with that. All the attorneys in the office, we, we have been attending webinars for the last several years on the fair housing act and ADA. We're all pretty proficient and competent in it, but, but we, but if the council so desires, I would be happy to look up for that webinar along the lines that, that's described by the mayor pro tem. Mayor. No, I, I, first I want to add some context. I think that's important. I think, or just for those watching understand this, it's never as simple as it's purported to be. We had a four, three vote on an infield development surrounded by houses. This, this, you know, so it was the simplest thing ever and it was a split vote. So I'll just say, I don't subscribe to us just this simple. It's the law. I don't subscribe to any of that. That being said, my preference is I'm on board. Let's start there. So yes, if for the webinar, singly, I would prefer it be done by internal staff, but the, it's not a deal breaker. If it's done by another organization, I just think if the organization doesn't parrot what we believe as a, as a legal department in the city, then it's counter counter, it's counter intuitive and sets up for an argument later to say, but the webinar watch said this, you know, versus our legal department presenting to the city council, which would then you'd have that consistency. It's not a deal breaker. It's fine. We can move forward. If, if there's four that want to do it a different way, but I just did want to, nothing is that simple. And it's, and so those watching, it's just important to, to lay that out, to make sure we're, we're sending a clear kind of for me to send a clear message that it is everything gets complex at times. So just to restate, so we're clear because I think four of you are there. I just want to confirm the councilor Armitage since it was her request, we're talking about a pretty substantially scale back request here where you've got four people on board here and that is to at least provide a fair housing webinar to city council and staff. And that's what you have support for at most right now. Are you okay with that? Yes. Okay. Council member Johnson, you're okay. Yes. Okay. All right. Sorry. Let's move forward. We have five there. Okay. And youth sport public private partnership, Mayor Hudsburg. Yes, sir. Just succinctly. I'm looking for a policy direction for staff so that they have guardrails on where this council is comfortable with public partner, public private partnerships. This won't move forward with just the city being able to finance it itself or go forward itself. We're going to have to partner with someone to get it done in any with any kind of speed. And so I'm seeking policy guidance for staff and for you to then understand where the guardrails are so that economic development and at all can begin to work something around this specific use. So public private partnership around this bit specific use of youth sports and and kind of a mass facility basketball to to refresh the center. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And your your specific request is is that in the in the upcoming year research in the form of an informal staff department conducted or is that is that not accurate? No, it's not accurate entirely. So I'm seeking to give you you and city manager and staff guardrails from this. So here's for a discussion amongst the council to say, if here's what we're willing to do in this space, generally bring back something close. It's almost like, you know, like, settlement authority, if you will, something along those lines. It's like, here's where we can get comfortable. This is the value we place on this in our community, that sort of thing. If that if that helps. Okay. So trying to vet this out for everyone. So we're all clear, short of research happening in a work session, how would you move that forward? Well, I think it can happen there. But I guess what I'm saying is also if there's no if there's no appetite for public private partnership, then it's moved. Okay, fair enough, because we can't we can't. If you know that we as a city can't move forward by ourselves, so it's not worth doing the research. I think there's value across the entire community, especially when talking about hotels and restaurants and that bounce back thing. And so it's part it's a critical component to me of the city of Denton bouncing back and being competitive. Okay, customer meltzer. If I can just ask a couple of clarifying questions. The part that I understood clearest was youth sports. And then but then we're talking about a big facility. And what would the possible roles of the private partner be in such a facility without getting, you know, obviously, we're not settling in here, but I just don't really understand exactly what you're proposing. So are we open to private entity doing things like what? Yeah, so a private entity building a building that host host multi sport events. And then they would have some ask, right. And so city staff would or city staff would source them understanding here's our here's our flexibility. Here's our kind of leverage that we have or what we're willing to commit to this. Does it work or not? So just basically giving them kind of pre authorized. Here's where we can go. This council feels comfortable with respect to youth sports, a multi use facility. So it's basketball, volleyball tournaments, I mentioned pickleball, those sort of things. I don't know if that answers your question well enough. Well, probably enough for me to respond. Because I would just say, I'm totally interested in hearing thoughts, proposals, you know, possibilities for the youth sports complex. And I definitely see all that kind of knock on, you know, benefit. And I would, you know, I would leave it open at this point about whether it needs a private partner or not, you know, like the kind of first, what is it? What are the possibilities? How much is it cost? Like, I haven't you've already thought it through to the point where you said, yeah, it's definitely not going to work with a private partner. I mean, I don't know. I'm open to hearing whether it is or it isn't. I'm interested in discussing further the idea of a youth sports complex. Okay. Other thoughts on this? Mayor Pro Tem. I think the flip side to the mayor's proposal from what Councilman Meltzer was saying was opening it up for the private partner to find us also, that maybe they've got something in mind. You know, we've got an idea of what we might need. Gary's done lots of research in this space and could probably tell us exactly if the sky was the limit, here's exactly the facility I would build today with city money. There's also somewhere out there potentially a partner saying, here's what I'd like to build with a little bit of help from a city and get a value add to the city. In the area of youth sports, I think unquestionably, we're leaving some money on the table. There's some cities that are hosting these big tournaments. They've got lots of hot funds coming in from these things because the folks have to stay overnight for these travel league tournaments and stuff. I'd like to explore this this space a lot. And to the mayor's question, I'd like to explore it fully. Let's get let's get some proposals out there. Let's see what Gary wants to go after. Let's see who wants to come and court us and see what what they can bring to the table. You never want to give Gary that much open range. He spends money but let's just see what happens. Councilmember Armitage. I'm fine giving Gary that range because you know he loves parks and we do too. Yeah, I'll say I kind of echo the comments of Councilmember Meltzer. And I will add to you know what's been said for me the benefit of exploring this issue and I don't know where I'll end out. But I definitely I don't want to shut my mind and eyes to the possibility is I want to know our youth and and seniors and adults in the community people who are already here being served by this and how and so really important part of that is the affordability issue. You know I want this to be whatever the this is you know if there's there's something an ice skating rink a multi-use facility. I want it to meet the needs of our local schools our local school kids in a way that is not inaccessible to them in cost or in use. I don't want it to be just a place where oh well that's where you know the out of town championships are and we get you know tax revenue from that. I want it to be a place where you know DISD could go you know they could have a hockey team something like that. I would really want it to be in the spirit of parks and rec community use. Okay we can start we've got anyone else want to weigh in on this. Councilmember Ryan. Yeah I think if I remember correctly at last year's retreat we we just discussed or had one of our priorities was public private partnerships in general. So this just as a continuation of that and so I can definitely support this. Yeah Councilmember Johnson. I support this as well and I think it would be great that every time that my grandchildren or children are in something I don't have to drive 15 miles or at least and the monies that I spend there would be put into this community instead of outside of it. I think it's a great idea. Okay Councilmember Baker were you going to speak or you okay with this? I'm in support of it. Okay let's move on. Councilmember Armitier. To create a food desert and food access solutions plan for Denton to remove financial and other barriers. Okay. Yeah so this is very you know unlike some of my my other proposals which were very focused on specific policy this is more of a strategic plan issue. Food deserts are a concern in Denton and so is food access and I would love to come up with the plan that looks at all of the different you know ways of solving this problem that sees it not just about you know can we get grocery stores in this neighborhood right but in addition to that how do we get food to people. So I don't know the answers but I tend to read I'm just attracted to you know news items and you know articles that are about this issue and creative ways in which other cities are addressing it and there's so many different ways so I'd like us to have have that discussion and come up come up with a strategic plan. Okay other thoughts. Councilmember Nelson. I would definitely be interested in analysis basically in analysis and recommendations. Where does that problem exist and what are alternatives what are policy options. Is there any other input on this issue in this request. Okay sir let's move on. And buy a hotel for temporary emergency housing you create a sanitary safe and legal campground with amenities. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah well you said it well. I think that as you know temporary shelter in a isolated way continues to be a need. Whereas we're spending a lot of money on hotel rooms it's now it's money well spent because we need to to save lives and people need to isolate they can't we can't have just a bunch of people in a big group living session situation. But what we're seeing also in other cities including Austin is cities buy will buy a hotel. The hotel industry is struggling now. I don't even know if anybody in Denton would be willing to sell their hotel. But now is a time where that industry is struggling and the city could make an investment in real estate where we wouldn't have to pay you know daily rates to house people. It's not a solution to it's definitely not a solution to homelessness. The solution to homelessness is permanent homes. It's not even a solution to have shelter but it's a it's a big piece in the puzzle of shelter which is which is part of the path from going from from homelessness to housed. And then a campground also you know we've got these campgrounds that exist now. It's unfortunate they exist because everybody should have a home everyone should be a homeowner. But while we've got campgrounds we need to find a way to make them to make them safe and have a safe option especially for women a place place where they can go that is that is safe and sanitary. Mayor Pro Tem. Just want to point out that Austin's hotel they bought is in Williamson County. So they bought a place where they could ship their homeless and put them someplace else. I'm not in favor of the city operating housing. I'm very much in favor of the city partnering with folks who do operate housing. So similar to the earlier conversation ways that we can grease the skids for nonprofits that operate in this space I can get behind the city operating or owning housing or the city sanctioning encampments I can't support that. Other thoughts anyone else like to weigh in on this Councilmember Meltzer. As we've all just discussed we did just buy a nursing home wasn't hotels nursing home. And we're in the design phase we don't yet know I don't know anyway you know kind of how many units how many people that's ultimately going to accommodate. So you know I think we got to get just a little bit further on that and then assess where does that put us against the total need. I'm not opposed to considering you know whatever whatever additional things we need to do. But I'm also not opposed to the idea that what we do ought to have like heat and utilities. I'm not like I totally get it that people are camping now in campgrounds and and it's you know it's a terrible system but they don't have sanitary facilities. They're on private property. I mean it's sort of unmanaged but I don't I don't yet know where we're going to be versus that issue once we do the big thing we're already committed to doing. And I also don't know whether whether there might be a way to accommodate if there is still a gap you know indoors and you know I'm not like committed to the idea that people must camp because they're camping now. Would anyone else like to weigh in on this idea? Okay Sarah let's move on. And we have a contract with legal advocacy groups for tenants immigrants and people with disabilities. So go ahead and let you clarify anything you'd like briefly Councilmember Armitage. Yes thank you. It's a pretty self-explanatory but just to underscore this would not be about the city legal department giving people free legal advice. It would be the city would be contracting with like they do in San Antonio with legal services from say just for for instance RAESIS which can provide legal services you know for people who are undocumented immigrants. Our local legal aid is not able to do that even though they do provide free legal services so it'd be kind of a way to to fill the gap. There's the Texas Tenants Union that's just enough just an example. They serve Denton too but they're based in Dallas. Maybe they might want to set up an office here if the city would form a partnership with them. So I just mentioned those two as equals but if we look at what people's legal needs are that are not being met. I think this is a real big need in the community. Thoughts on this? Anyone would like to weigh in? Councilmember Malson. Yeah San Antonio is a million and a half population. There's a lot more things that can get into but I wonder if there if legal services comes under the umbrella of any of the many nonprofits that we help fund currently. I mean I'd be interested in having that you know that question answered and it could well be you know sort of part of the portfolio if you will of the social services that we support. I doubt that you know we could stand up a whole agency and and that we would prefer to do that over other needs that we provide for people you know kind of just becomes like a budget question but I think knowing how that need is met in our nonprofit community now if at all. So currently any nonprofit legal advocacy groups could apply for the annual Human Services Grant so they could be you know a number of nonprofits that apply for that pool of funding and then the committee reviews and allocates those funds. I believe there may have been one agency this last cycle and I'll ask Danny Shaw if she's on the line to confirm if there was one or not. I may be wrong. I could see though that it could become part of what sorry to interject before we hear from Danny. It could be part of what like a case manager might need to do with someone who's you know in a stress situation. It's just one of seven things they might need. That's correct. Danny? Yeah we do currently fund an organization called RISE which is a new nonprofit formed by lawyers who are providing resources and counseling to folks who need those. Denton County Friends the Family also has counseling services in its program. We don't fund that but that's part of their services for domestic violence victims as well. And then there are other nonprofit groups that interchange with legal services where they need to around navigating evictions for example the Emergency Solutions Grant. That's an eligible expense for that as well. Okay so I'll ask one more time. Anyone else want to weigh in on this? I can. Sarah why don't we go ahead and move on. So hire a public health coordinator for the city to advise, cancel, work with county on city health matters so the city would hire its own public health coordinator. Okay. Thank you. Just a clarification if you think you need to. Yeah I don't think I need to clarify that if people feel that that's understood what I'm asking for. If people remember from my original pitch early on earlier today. Is there interest in supporting this request? For a public health coordinator for the city. Yes. To work with the county and represent the city. Yeah I think it's a duplication of effort and not a good use of money. Okay we'll move on. Councilmember Armit your preference in bids to contractors paying $15 adjusted minimum and hiring mostly locally for city jobs. So people that want city I'm sorry let me make sure I have this correct. So would this apply to the city for anyone the city contracts with that they pay at least $15 an hour and that workers come mostly local or is that not the context? Yes yes that is the excuse me that is the context yes. We recently raised our minimum wage for city workers or rather our lowest the base level salary for the bottom category on the pay scale for city workers and that was a really a big deal and so this is applying that same bottom level of the pay scale that we have for city workers who are employed by the city to contracted workers. It would also but I should I should add you know there would also be an exception that if there are no bidders that meet that qualification you know then that wouldn't apply. Do we have anyone on council like to weigh in on this? Councilmember Meltzer. There's a $15 federal minimum wage that's on its way through Congress. I'd at least like to you know wait a couple of weeks and revisit I think that if you look at the if you look at the map I think it's you know that may well take care of itself. Anyone else like to weigh in? Okay. Next item required that companies receiving new tax incentives pay at least $15 a minimum and hire locally. Okay. So this and this is something that could be part of the economic development strategy discussion coming forward. So I would I would like that discussion to come before us sooner rather than later. It doesn't have to be even just about this one issue. But you know as we continue to discuss this the new economic development strategy I would like those those categories of you know points given to be opened up more for revisiting and discussion. That was my original impression of what we're going to be doing anyway to opening that up and being more of a work in progress. Okay. Any council members like to weigh in on this? Same same point you know it's it's we just heard yesterday it's going it's federal federal $15 minimum wage it's in the bill the House is going to be taking up it'll go to the Senate like to at least see how that goes. Okay that would cover this. Any other comments? Okay. Number 11 develop a new develop a strategy for undergrounding overhead lines and major corridors. Mayor Pro Tem. Gosh I wish I picked something that had a bill going through Congress right now. So this is really expensive and I'm not going to sugarcoat that. Putting power lines underground can be very very expensive. What I'd like to look at is not necessarily you know this budget year going out and burying all these lines I'd like to look at a strategy for doing that in the future and a strategy for as we when it's time to repave Carroll Boulevard we look at the feasibility of of undergrounding those things. I think it is cheaper than it used to be by a lot like I said in my pitch earlier in developing a strategy that maybe even starts to incorporate the development code and you know when new new subdivisions go in all that kind of stuff. So a broad looking forward strategy not necessarily an overnight solution that costs a bajillion dollars. Okay. Councilmembers like to weigh in on this. Mayor. I'll defer to Councilmember Johnson she was getting ready to. Okay Councilmember Johnson. I am not against looking into this as a future strategy as far as saving money and but that's it as far as looking at do it yes let's look into it let's investigate. Okay. Mayor Hatspitz. Yes sir I think I see it similar as the street discussion we talked about a strategy on what we if we sock away a certain percentage of money and kind of build up a fund. I see it as something along those lines that we could and especially as we return the ROI from the utilities it may be something that we can flex or substitute you know maybe make a policy decision down the road about that percentage a percentage of the ROI going to something like this. So interested in kind of a fun structure conversation. Okay. Councilmember Melcher did I see your hand up. Yeah I'm kind of at the ISR level of interest. Okay. You know if it's gigantic I don't I could probably think of things that would have more tangible benefit. You know I get it it's visual clutter but let's see how much you know what kind of scale of magnitude order of magnitude we're talking about. Councilmember Armitage. Yes so I'm not in favor of this because the cost is so high. It's my recollection that this actually came before council. I don't remember if it was a one minute pitch if there was an informal staff report on it. We got some numbers about what it would take. Of course this was last year it doesn't mean it couldn't come forward again but my recollection is that everybody kind of had sticker shock and it anyway I can't imagine it would be any less now. If anything it would be more. So I don't see the need to go through that again. Okay. Councilmember Ryan. Yeah I'd like to have the discussion at least to the point of what areas we're looking at because obviously we're not going to get everything underground but yeah I remember before downtown started redeveloped that was one of the things that happened was everything all the electric went underground throughout downtown. So it can help and it can be an economic development tool but we need to be wise in how we do this and not say oh well I think this street needs to be done right now and you know the assets that there is still in good shape but if we're already going in to replace it let's look at what the difference is and what the feasibility is and maybe identify you know areas on the map that would best benefit from that type of aesthetic improvement. Councilmember Johnson did you want to speak? I agree with that. Looking into it and as we go forward as we the beautification takes place that's something we can look at I'm not saying that that's something we're investing in I'm just saying that let's look at it this may be something we you know in the future this is the future just to look at I don't think we're making a sound decision here are we? Okay and and so if just so just so we're accurate with the scope Mayor Pro Tem you're you're essentially asking are you asking DME and the planning staff to get together and and are there specific corridors you'd like to see would you like this more holistically citywide what are your thought processes? I certainly have my own preferences right you know the streets that I drive every day I'd like them to look nice and have nice trees and flowers and no power lines but I think ideally I mean because we had that that come up already in one of the councilmembers responses was well we don't want to just be Councilmember Ryan said well we just don't want the the streets that we want to look nice the ones that are going to have some impact you know kind of like the corridors we looked at when we were talking about the the TURZ the other day that their corridors that need some attention that we could have some real impact with I think staff is best positioned to weigh in on that not necessarily you know me or any other councilmember where some areas where we might be thinking about digging up anyway in the future what are some areas where the infrastructure is not so intense that we can't get it underground at something like a reasonable price and then also I'd be perfectly happy if we just kind of had a stated policy going forward that certain corridors when it's time to tear them up we have a preference for undergrounding you know we'd rather that in this area if we have the opportunity we'd like to we'd like to underground if we can like we said earlier we can't do the whole city that's not that's not anywhere close to on the table so the the planned projects come first and along with potential corridors down the road so we take a five ten fifteen year look at it come with some budget numbers I can have Tony Puente work with Scott and Richard from development to get that prepared sure maybe that helps since we already know we're looking into some high budget dollars and we try to keep this stress level under control okay so Sarah we'll go next okay council member Meltzer performance venues just you know just that that ought to be something that we would make as a you know as a goal I actually frankly we already talked about it within within as far as indoor venues so I was talking about City Hall West I think we also ought to be looking for you know a large amphitheater type opportunities you know just it really just has an objective as something that would enhance the community but would also fit under kind of creative Denton as further differentiating Denton in terms of economic development something that would you know the performance venues would you know kind of add to the evidence of our appeal you know as a place as a place to locate so are you I guess I'm trying to understand your specific request are you looking for something along the lines of the mayor with the public private partnership are you looking at having an assessment done by an outside group that might specialize in this world to give you some ideas what exactly is the request I guess it would start with with having a strategy so I don't know how to preconceived notion that it would have to be from an outside point of view but I'd be open to that to see you know if we want to in fact stand out as a creative Denton how do we stack up versus you know other communities you know that we might compete with you know what other facilities would would you know kind of add to our meaningfully add to our reputation and capacity that way you know basically a strategy okay customer armature I support this mayor adrenaline as a as a rule don't like to tell Paulie as a good idea but I'll flex that rule today I think it's a great idea well I like the youth sports thing so we're even and neither mention it again no I think it's I think here's and I think here's where you write on it Paul because in a in a pre covid world I think that's a very different conversation but a post covid world I think a we don't need as big of an arena so kind of an analysis to say what do concerts look like our gatherings look like going forward I think they're going to be a little smaller and puts us in and right and it makes us right for those type shows or the type events or at least to step up a notch and and because you're going to have groups looking for more modern sized venues I would assume going forward so yeah I'd really like to see where we fit in this post covid landscape and then have a plan going forward yeah my favorite word of the pitch was strategy you know if we evaluate what we've got we look at what we've got we've got this arts district downtown what's available and what what else do we need and then we we pitch it where we can or we take take proposals where we need them and I'll say if anybody in the development community is watching you have a council that is interested in performance venues and if you happen to have a spot for a nice amphitheater in your project well maybe you ought to dust off those plans so I'm hearing kind of a joint research venture with economic development in parks and bringing back some research that they've had that we seem to have at least four five of you on board with that am I reading the tea leaves right john did you want to weigh in you're on board I'm on board okay okay let's move on composting Paul did we answer this question for you already it's part of the solid waste strategy I think so it's gonna come up right yeah are you okay with that that's it okay and then last one customer Meltzer Reynolds standard strategy yeah and again I'm not you know preconceiving you know what the answer would be but it would be to say yes we would have a goal to have a mechanism to ensure that rentals are you know are kept up to snuff and you know I'm not entirely close to the idea that it might include an inspection regime although I'm skeptical of our ability to execute that and particularly do it in a way that's not overly burdensome but let's see you know what other communities similarly situated do to ensure that you know we don't have kind of the abuse of of renters and giving you know substandard conditions okay we have other counselors Mayor Pro Tem I'd like what Councilmember Meltzer said about kind of being agnostic on the idea of needing an inspection regime I don't I don't personally feel like we're at that point the size of our city that we need rental inspectors employed by the city going out to units and that kind of stuff I'm interested in finding out if there's another way to get the same kind of job done because I know lots of really good solid very compassionate landlords out there they're doing everything right there are some others in our town that are not and if there's a way to make sure that our units are are up to snuff without burdening the city or without you know penalizing the landlords out there doing the right thing I'd like to see how to do that I think that this is something that the city really needs there are many different models of how to do it and a number of Texas college towns have it College Station has a model there was a you know we don't even have to reinvent the wheel on doing research for this there was I don't remember exactly what year but years ago maybe you know 2015 2016 something like that this came forward to City Council before I was on Council so there's been some research done on on what different options are but it is a really great way to do the kinds of things that you know Councilmember Davis was saying you know some landlords are good others who others aren't this is a there there are ways that a program like this could could help the landlords who are the good ones and they could say look I've never you know been dinged by this or you know ticketed by this by this program but it's it's a really good way for us to help tenants who are the majority here okay anyone else like to weigh in okay right now right so I'm seeing three that are in support of this any any other takers are we moving on okay I'm sorry come Councilmember Baker uh I'm in support of it okay Councilmember Johnson I am along with uh Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Davis it needs to be done and it could benefit both sides I just don't know what our plan is for doing it but I'm all in favor of coming up with a plan that it happens so so if I compare what I'm hearing from the five of you is there a minimum we want to we want to workshop on it we want to see research that's being done in other college towns the business models and enforcement options and that's something we'll have development services work with legal on it might is anyone disagreeing with that okay all right well I would like to ask Council to give us until uh four o'clock and we're going to put um everything back into a format based on those particularly those last two sessions sections we worked on with the new and expanded and the new pitches and run them by you one more time we've got one to make sure that there's no disagreement or if there's anything you want to talk about again um otherwise um and then we'll have like 20 minutes I'm sorry you realize that's only 20 minutes yes okay yeah okay we've got we've got a nifty mate matrix paul it's uh it's a Dartmouth model um so we'll be good we'll be good all right uh so four o'clock we'll see you back here right and welcome back to uh this work session of the Denton City Council it is uh February 12th and um it is four oh six p.m. we're returning from uh a short break and uh Mr. City Manager I'll turn it over to you okay thanks Mayor um staff has put together a an updated a uh a matrix real quick just to uh show the uh the Council's draft priorities the the first page is largely uh things that you had already agreed on uh which we started the presentation out we did add that last bullet since we had so much interest in it on developing a plan including the architectural design RFP strategy or RFI whatever that might be to get you the information and funding options for City Hall West and then the real work began with these were the items that had four or five or more nods to move forward and I'll just review them real quickly um and to make sure that everybody's in agreement before this is brought back to you uh there was a request for road maintenance funding strategies to be included in our budget presentations uh and and essentially what that's going to be is potentially a policy discussion on utilizing the new uh EAV some some funding from the new AAV to create an ongoing revenue stream for road maintenance to make sure that that new development is helping with with the road program the second one is understand the loop 288 property and future phases so this is just in addition to an already scheduled workshop uh uh Council did agree that we would also take a look at what uh you know what the exterior would look like and uh potential phases uh we got several of you are interested in targeting the no new tax rate on the O&M side uh so that will be uh that is an important piece of well it may seem like an interesting or just a benign discussion that's important in terms of how the budget's going to get uh presented to you uh throughout the summer provide a technology training for residents um there's something that we've asked to do through an informal staff report parks and library we'll team up on that and get that to you um education and review of domestic violence response and resources and i heard the word gap analysis there are things that we could be doing additionally to educate our residents so that will be something that chief dixon staff spearheads additional electric vehicles i think that was more in the vein of like golf carts that sorts of things so we'll specify this a little bit um possibilities and where that could uh you know where we might have uh opportunities to to allow that so we'll ask development services to work with police and our legal staff get you some ideas in a work session one minute pitch which would also include the the uh request that for any policy uh research that lasts more than two hours from boards and commissions and there was a preference uh to have the the staff person and uh or a board chair from their respective commission uh request that of city council so that would be an update of your current policies uh provide an update on the implementation of the tree ordinance so we went from so it's basically how is it working checking in on since it's been implemented you know what have been the impacts of the tree ordinance and it was the conversation was limited to that scope uh fair housing webinar training for city council so uh city manager's office and legal will work on uh helping to schedule um that webinar and training for council and pertinent staff members there was a request for an informal staff report for a sports complex including public private partnerships so we'll take a look at what's currently out there what models are out there who's in this world and you know how some of these ideas or these programs might be uh funded and operated today that will be shared through an informal staff report as well uh there was consensus to move forward on an electric line undergrounding strategy uh with specific requests that where's dme currently looking at doing work along corridors where do they have you know and what what would be the most likely areas that could be considered and also asking development services staff to weigh in on that as well study and strategy regarding performance venues so essentially a SWOT analysis what are the opportunities out there what are some possibilities that the council could kick around in a work session from a economic development quality of life perspective and then research on rental housing standards and i think that rental housing enforcement standards how are people monitoring that licensing that enforcing that uh through an informal staff report so community services development services and likely legal staff will need to weigh in on that and you'll have the ability if you'd like to pull that up for a formal work session to do so so this is what we heard today these are the items i got four five of you to support them we've got the vehicles and the department's working on it i just wanted to be sure are there any questions concerns disagreements with what you're saying anyone councilmember melzer exciting list and appreciate the substantiveness of the discussion today without too much unnecessary kumbaya yeah we don't like kumbaya all right anyone else like to weigh in councilmember armature yeah i i like that you know we didn't play charades we didn't hold hands and sing songs but this was really uh we we got business done um and in a really compatible way so thanks to thanks to staff um i think this this proof can be done this way any other comments so sir do we uh so everybody's okay with the list this will this is essentially uh two sections of your resolution coming to you on the 23rd okay so uh sarah do we have anything left on our presentation so let me go back here and see um just a reminder that this would be in a resolution on february 23rd and i think the last slide here was some time for other items to be discussed this first item has already been discussed regarding boards and commissions and the one minute pitch process however we may need some clarity if that also includes council committees or not otherwise there was no further items okay there any concluding items there well mayor i'm gonna turn it over to you then to uh close things out okay very good yeah no so a good healthy discussion and uh again making sure all bases are covered uh sarah is there anything else we need to anything else to touch on just one more time before we uh adjourn i do not believe sarah is there ton i think we're good we've got what we need well um thank you mr city manager i think i see a future in uh leading city council meetings and from a different seat in your future maybe you're great at it no thank you very much i appreciate my peers great day's work and and i i i want to echo uh councillor melzer i that's uh encouraging to look at that list and and looking forward and some of those policy and vision goals are really really exciting uh and so i think um it'll be good to communicate to our community where we're going and get that input and and hear back from them and and so that that direction should uh be be fruitful so with that it is 4 14 p.m and it's february to 12th uh so everyone have a so i'll adjourn have a great uh afternoon stay warm happy valentine's day happy president's day and if there's something else i'm missing let that be happy as well so thank you very much