Feb 23, 2021 City Council on 2021-02-23 3:00 PM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. Today is February 23rd, it is 3.01 p.m. and we do have a quorum so I will call this meeting to order. It's a special called meeting and the first thing on our agenda, we do have some callers and we had one person comment on the consent agenda using online forum. That was item GID 21252, they were in support of the item, the comment was emailed to all the City Council members and the City Secretary to be included in the records. Additionally, there are three people who wish to speak on item H, ID 21255. Staff is loading up the phone lines now and we'll send the first caller into the meeting Hello. Caller, are you there? We're trying again, bear with us. Okay. Okay. Okay, hi, this is Mayor Gerard Hutz with you on with the Denton City Council. If you could please give your first and last name and you will have three minutes to speak. Okay, my name is Paul Jenkins, I live in the Lake Forest retirement community at 3101 Montecito Drive. I would like to talk a little bit about the Lake Forest Park. Yes. I have been a resident here at Lake Forest for almost 15 years. And during that period of time, I saw the lake getting clogged up and starting to deteriorate and die. And we've talked to you about that and the Council is fully aware of that situation. So what I'd like to do today while the park is used for a lot of different purposes by a lot of different people, I would like to relate to the Council, my personal experience in making friends by being a frequent user of the park. There are five of us actually, and we met, bonded by visiting, getting friendly at the park. I'm by far the oldest, I'm retired. The other four I'll call middle age. The man, I couldn't think of another term so I thought I'd pick that one. The man who worked for Marriott and he's in the real estate department, there is a lady of color that is one of the professors over at UNT, there's another lady I've met who is a long distance marathon runner. And she also takes in stray dogs and she has some of them agreement with the dog pound where she takes in dogs and nurses them back to health. These are dogs that have been mistreated. And then the last person is a cabinet tenant for American Airlines. And when the five of us get together for lunch, we have a really great discussion because of our varied backgrounds. But they're great people, they're all residents in the Denton area and I enjoy the company. About almost exactly two years ago, we put on our Say the Lake t-shirts, we came down to the council and explained to them how the lake had deteriorated. And as a result of that, the council authorized all the preliminary engineering work and everything necessary to really fix the lake and the dam. And I understand that has all been accomplished and they're ready to go to work. So what we're asking today is that you give your final approval and let the work begin. So I would really like to thank you for your support on this program and listening to what I have to say this afternoon. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Jenkins. Thank you, Mayor, for listening. I will hand it off to Paula then. Okay. And before you do, I'll tell you, I wore my Save the Lake shirt yesterday. So that's awesome. Oh, wow. Well, thank you very much. Okay. So we'll... I'll hand it off. Okay. Thank you. I'll hand it off to the next... Okay. Well, thank you, Mayor. Hello. This is Paula Blind. Okay. And Paula, you'll have... If you'll give us your address, you'll have three minutes. Okay, I live at 3900 Montecito Drive, and I also am a resident of Lake Forest Village. And we love this lake and this park. So naturally, we want you to approve this proposal. However, I wanted you to know that during this COVID pandemic, our neighborhood that surround us like Forest Ridge and Montecito and the developments up and down Teasley have discovered this park for the first time because they were tired of being cooped up in their houses. And so my friend and I, most afternoons, we ride around with our dogs in the golf cart. So we see many new faces all the time, fishing and walking, walking their dog, biking, picnicking with their children, bird watchers, and professional photographers, actually, and even kayaking. So this park has become a great place for social distancing and enjoying being out. So I just wanted to stress how Lake Forest Park has become important and discovered by many of our neighbors. And when this project is completed, I think this park will become very popular place for the great outdoors. So that's all I wanted to do was stress the fact that now it's not just us that loves this part, but it's all the neighborhoods around here have discovered it. So thank you. And we're just asking for your approval. So I can pass this on, I guess, to Lavona. Yes, please. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Hello. Mayor Hudson? Yes. Yes, ma'am. So yes, if you'll give us your first and last name and then you'll we know the address, so we can skip that, but and then you'll have three minutes. Okay, my name is Lavona and I live here at Lake Forest Village also. I've been out here since about 2013. When I came here, the condition of the lake was of concern at that time and it only has gotten worse as the years have gone on. Parks and Recreation has spent many dollars over the past years attempting to put patches on different areas of the lake, the spillway, the dam, the overgrowth of vegetation, and the lake's fragile declining ecosystem and all of this patchwork has eventually failed and the lake is in dire straits right now. Two years ago, a group of residents from Lake Forest Village and surrounding neighborhoods brought this to the attention of the council and Parks and Recreation were fortunate to obtain $380,000 at that time for a study to determine the projected cost of completely repairing the dam, replacing the fish and fauna and protecting the lake from further upstream runoff and now before the council is the completed contract to restore and preserve this beautiful lake that we have that provides enjoyment for so many residents in the Lake Forest, Montecito, Forest Ridge, Teasley, and Ryan Road developments and protects downstream neighborhoods and so today I basically plead with you all to please save this beautiful lake, approve the contract as presented to you by Parks and Recreation, and allow them to begin this work immediately in March. I just want to say now is the time and I thank you Mr. Mayor and all of the council members for allowing us to speak to you today. Outstanding. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Have a great day. All right. And keep wearing that Save the Lake Man shirt. Certainly. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Uh huh. Bye bye. Bye. Okay. And okay. So that was the last caller. Thank you staff. That'll take us to questions on the consent agenda from the council. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I'd like to pull out item B, please, so that we can have some discussion on it. Okay. Do you need a presentation? It would be okay, but your brief one would be fine. Okay. And is there anything in particular you're looking to highlight or so that they can be prepared? Nothing beyond what's in the posting. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for on the consent agenda? Seeing that. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. I had a question, a follow-up question about item G about the Locksmith contract. And then there's another item that I just wanted to pull because I wanted to vote no. Okay. What are you? Which one is that? The one I want to pull and vote no is item E. I don't have any questions on it. Okay. Got it. And then, Madam City Manager, who could speak on, did you say, which one did you have questions on? That was item G, I believe. Yes. Scott Gray. Okay. And then Melissa Barrett can answer the questions. Are they on the line now? Yes. I know they are. Okay. So thanks to whoever answered my preliminary questions about this. I had just noticed that there were 243 entities who were contacted about this Locksmith contract and only one qualified. So that caught my eye. And I had asked in advance what was the qualifying factor or factors for the one sole eligible bidder. And what I was told was that there were solicitations sent out to existing city contractors or something like that. Can you explain about the solicitation process? I had a follow-up question about it. If you could just explain. Hi, Councilmember Armitour. This is Christine Taylor, Purchasing Director. And so what our response was is that when we send solicitations out, we had 200 and I believe 76 that vendors that had registered under that they can provide services. So that's a broad category that could be building maintenance, Locksmith services, a variety of things. So we cast a broad net out saying we have the solicitation and we only had 11 out of that 273 that actually viewed the solicitation. And then we only had one response. So we were indicating on the AIS that 273 suppliers were notified, but they may not have all been able to provide Locksmith services. Okay. Thank you. And so these are suppliers that the city had worked with before or just registered suppliers in the region? They're registered suppliers from our website, so anyone who would like to do business with the city can register as a supplier through our website and then they indicate what type of services that they provide. So when we put out a solicitation, we'll grab those categories and notify them of what they're interested in responding to. Okay. Thank you. And then one more question. That's very helpful. One more question, you mentioned that if facilities management had reached a cap on what was able to be done internally, dollar wise, and so that's why it's coming for an external contract. Am I right in understanding that and what was the cap that was reached? Sure. So what we do is we look at collective spend, cumulative spend in three years and as expenses are reaching the $50,000 mark, we work with departments to go ahead and solicit that and obtain a contract to follow state procurement guidelines. So spending collectively was reaching the $50,000 mark over three years citywide. Okay. So this contract is for up to $150,000 or $150,000? Correct. Okay. It's $150,000 over the contract term. Okay. And then just one more final question then, can you explain why that $150,000, if we were coming close to the $50,000 mark, why did we set the cap for this contract so high? Sure. Absolutely. So with facilities bringing that in, they needed to do like a master key program and then kind of handle that internally versus, I think we had said in the response, departments were kind of just ad hoc going out and getting copies of keys or having locksmith services. So bringing that in, facilities management did an assessment of how many locks they would have to determine that contract cost. So that's based on how much we think we're going to need over the term of the contract to bring the program back in house, create a master program, and then have on call and during business hour services over the next several years of the contract. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for answering all my questions. You're very welcome. Okay. Any other questions for staff on the consent agenda? Seeing none. Okay. So Sarah, by my count, that's item B is pulled for a brief presentation and item E is pulled just for a vote. So that'll conclude that portion. That takes us to our work sessions and we'll note for those that are watching that may not have seen the update that work session A was pulled and that's item A ID 21231, that item was pulled. So then that will take us to work session item B, which is ID 21227, receive report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding an audit follow up of COVID-19 response disaster reimbursement. Hello Mayor and City Council. I'm Madison Rorschach, the City Auditor. I'm going to present our findings from this follow up review. So let me pull up our presentation. Thank you. Here we go. All right. Here we go. So as a reminder, follow up reports are intended to provide information on what changes have been made in response to an issued audit. And this review was based on the recommendations and management responses originally compiled in the COVID-19 response disaster reimbursements audit, which was issued in July of 2020. So in general, we found that guidance has been issued to help maximize current and future disaster reimbursements. So to begin, the original audit found that little guidance had been issued to employees about what COVID-19 related expenses were reimbursable, mostly due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and the lack of guidance that had come from the granting agencies like FEMA and the county as well, just because it was so early on when we did the original audit. In addition, the city's disaster finance plan was focused on weather related events and did not contemplate pandemics or their kind of unique challenges with remote communication and things like that. So the follow up review found that the finance department had issued additional guidance to employees in September of 2020 that further clarified what would be reimbursable under FEMA guidelines. And issuing this additional guidance to employees further helped to ensure that all reimbursable expenses were correctly identified and coded. In addition, the disaster finance plan has been revised to include references to pandemics and to allow for remote communications during emergency situations. Once these revisions have been reviewed by all stakeholders, the revised disaster finance plan will be finalized and implemented. In addition, the original audit found that there were some issues with the supporting documentation for non-public safety personnel expenses and some purchase orders. So in particular, some of the non-public safety, the physical time cards that were being used were missing signatures and requisition forms for some purchase orders were inaccurate or incomplete. So based on the follow up review, we found that some of the non-public safety physical time cards were still missing signatures. However, we should note that all city employee time is approved electronically via the systems, the city's timekeeping system. So it's not like they weren't getting approved. It just wasn't being approved physically on these specific COVID time sheets. But in addition to that, based on additional guidance issued by FEMA and Denton County, those personnel expenses for non-public safety employees aren't actually considered a reimbursable expense for COVID. So for this reason, basically we concluded that the recommendation has been implemented through an alternative solution because the risk is addressed that basically the risk was that if we didn't have adequate signatures on these time cards, we might not get reimbursed for those expenses, but we won't be reimbursed anyway because it's not actually eligible. And in addition, the time is being approved electronically. And then finally, we found that of the 15 purchase orders issued between May and December of 2020, all requisition forms were complete and only one was inaccurate. And the inaccurate requisition form was submitted to procure $50,000 in housing assistance. And basically it was just marked as using like a quote solicitation method when instead it was actually just procured as an emergency and was approved via ordinance by the city council. So in summary, found that all four of the recommendations issued as part of this original audit were adequately implemented or alternatively addressed. And based on this, a further follow up review will not be needed. Although I do want to mention that I think I believe finance believes that there might be some additional reimbursement opportunities just so that y'all are aware of that. Okay. Thank you. Questions for staff? Any questions for Madison? Seeing none. Okay. Well thank you very much, Madison. I appreciate that follow up. Okay. That concludes item B of the work session. That'll take us to item C. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an overview of a draft management services and operating agreement with the junction for the 909 North Loop 288 facility and a project update. Mayor, city council, Sarah Keuchler, chief of staff. One second while I pull up the presentation. All right. Staff is before you today to provide a project update on the Loop 288 property. Myself and Danny Shaw, the community services manager, will be presenting this today. We also have our partners from the junction on the line. Wendy McGee, who is the executive director of the junction, as well as Emily Taylor, who is the board president of the junction. And we've kind of outlined the goals of today's presentation. So we'll be providing a project background, a review of our current collaboration with the junction, the agreements that the city currently has in place, and then what is proposed for the new facility on Loop 288, including key terms of that proposed agreement. We'll also be providing a brief update on the initial design of the Loop 288 facility, but more information will actually be coming in March regarding the design as well as estimated construction costs. So that will be kind of wrapping up the presentation as going into next steps and some more information that will be coming forward in the next few weeks. So I'll jump right in. So just wanted to start with some project background. So just kind of as a reminder of how we got to where we are today. So it actually goes back a couple of years when the Denton County Homeless Leadership Team identified a need in the community to have a co-located day center and food kitchen and overnight shelter in one location. That was identified by the Homeless Leadership Team as well as a shelter work group that had assessed kind of our current inventory and environment in the Denton County overall and some recommendations and that was kind of one of the longer term recommendations to trying to get to one co-located center. So we did have an opportunity come up in the spring of 2020 when staff identified a facility that was for purchase at 909 North Loop 288 and we had brought that forward to City Council and also discussed collaborating with the junction so that they could relocate their two locations, which is our Daily Bread in the downtown area and then as well as Mont Senior King Outreach Center into one combined facility. And I've just provided a quick recap of this property and really why it was well suited for this use. The building on Loop 288 is over 34,000 square feet. So it's a very large building. It's only one story and it is in an H frame as you can see here with four wings in a common area and that is really useful when we have multifunction, multifunctions that will be in this building in terms of how we can separate those into the different wings of the building and we'll go through that a little bit more when we go over the initial design. Also this building is on a major arterial roadway, is not adjacent to any residential uses. It's actually surrounded if you can see here in the red perimeter. This is all city property. So to the west and to the north is city property and then to the south is undeveloped land. So just that's just kind of a quick review of that property and some of the factors that were looked at when going through the purchase of the facility. So in April is when we brought that contract forward to city council, between April and August, there was a number of subsequent amendments to the contract for sale for the facility, including the owner having to remediate issues on the property. So he actually had to remediate in the building. So the building is actually completely gutted right now. In August then the city took ownership of the property after the owner had successfully completed those remediation and other terms of the contract for sale. And then since that time when the city took ownership of the property in August, we have done additional steps to make sure the building is secure is also adding it to our landscape maintenance contract, making sure that we're up keeping that building right now since we are the current owner of it. And then in October we went through a notice of intent process. And that was really to notify the public that we intended to award a contract for services to a sole source, the junction of Denton County, as we had previously discussed with city council, due to being able to relocate both of the two key functions to our community into one single location. And due to them also having the experience of providing all of the services that we were seeking. And then also in October, the city approved a contract with an architect for design services for this new facility. Since that time that the contract was approved, both city staff and the junction have been working collaboratively with the architect to create a design concept. And we'll go over that towards the end of the presentation. But first we wanted to provide kind of an overview of what we've been working on with the junction in terms of a master management services and operating agreement for the new facility. So before I give you kind of an overview of the proposed terms for the new agreement for the Luke 38 facility, I just wanted to take a moment to review what our current collaboration with the junction is and the current agreements that the city has in place with the junction. So we have two main agreements with the junction. The first is a lease agreement for 300 Woodrow Lane, and that is the current MKOC overnight shelter facility. The city is the owner of that facility and provides it. And it was a 10 year lease agreement until 2025. We also have an enhanced shelter agreement with the junction. And this is an arrangement where the city provides $400,000 per year in order for the junction to have an increased level of service to seven nights per week, as well as provide enhanced shelter. And this is it was a two year agreement through September 30th of 2021 through this year with three one year renewal options. In addition to those two main agreements we have with the junction, they are also able to completely competitively apply for annual grants from the city. So they have received additional grant awards through our human services grant process, which happens annually. And then as well as rapid rehousing rental assistance to provide that to individuals and families in need. So I'll move in now to our proposed collaboration with the junction for the Loop 288 facility. So the city would maintain ownership of the facility. We did use or planning to use CO bonds for this facility for a public purpose. So we'll continue to be the owner of that facility for a public purpose. We will also be the city will be responsible for any capital and major maintenance of the facility moving forward. What's proposed is that the city and the junction would enter into a master management services and operating agreement. And this is really to combine and just have one master agreement so that the junction could operate and provide services at the facility, as well as also receive annual funding from the city to assist in providing those services. So what we've done through the last few months is negotiated that draft agreement will give you an overview of the key terms here today. We did start with the template of the agreement that we already have in place with the junction with that enhanced shelter agreement. So a lot of the terms and provisions are the same with the current agreement we have with the junction. And then concurrently, if that new agreement is executed, the city and the junction would terminate the two current agreements we have, which is the lease agreement for 300 Woodrow Lane and the enhanced shelter agreement since the new agreement would be in place. So these next few slides are overview of the key terms. And really, we just wanted to provide this kind of overview now before we bring forward the agreement in March for your consideration. It is about a 50 page agreement. So we thought it was valuable to go through and kind of go through some of the key points with you and see if you had any questions. But again, we've been working closely with the junction on negotiating this agreement. So the start date for this agreement would be October 1st of this year, or upon when the Loop 288 facility is available for occupancy. We do expect just from initial estimates, it'll probably be early 2022 before that facility is available. So it will likely be early into next year, again, more on dates and timeline to come. The term of the agreement would be for five years with the option for three one year extension options. We would for that first five years of the agreement continue to provide an operational grant of $400,000 per year. It does state in the agreement that the organization must seek to diversify its mix of income sources and become less reliant upon one source. And this is common of what you'll see in agreements and what we've looked at with similar agreements between a city and a nonprofit, being able to help them start into a new venture. And then as they are able to grow, become more successful, show their success with a public private partnership as well. They can go after more funding sources from whether that be federal or state grants, private foundations, other local governments, it's a way for them to diversify their income sources and, again, have more financial stability than just be reliant upon one major source of funding. And that is very common of what we've seen in other agreements. So after year five, if there would be an extension of the agreement, there would be a step down in funding in those years six, seven and eight. The agreement also includes provisions for the city's right to review and monitor operations, reports, financials. And we have this in all of our grant agreements, just allowing the ability for the city to understand how the organization is performing and operating. There are also provisions for any defaults and cure that would be needed. And that's kind of laid out further. These are pretty common of what you would see in an agreement if there is a default in allowing the organization a time period for which they could cure and then continue to move forward. Also, what we have in all of our grant agreements is two main provisions. This is our social services grants for any agencies that are providing assistance to those experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness that would require participation in the homeless management information system and also participation in the Denton County homelessness leadership team. The junction currently does both of those functions, but they are in all of our agreements, so it needs to be consistent. And also it's very important to how we systematically approach addressing homelessness here in our community as well as countywide and continue to take that systematic approach and strategy to addressing homelessness. And so I'm going to keep moving ahead and maybe take questions at the end, Mayor, if you're okay with that. Yes, please. Okay. So the scope of work is detailed much more in the group and the agreement, but at a high level, there's really three different programs we're looking at. The first is day shelter services. And so this would be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, includes a number of different functions, including care coordination, housing search, providing case management, meals, showers, laundry, storage, and a number of other recommended services to take place in that day center. The second program would be the overnight shelter services that would operate from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. daily. This includes not only emergency shelter beds, but also continuing an enhanced shelter program and also reserving five beds for the City of Denton Police Department's mental health unit. So if they come in contact with individuals during the day that need immediate placement, there would be some beds reserved so that they could get them connected to the resources. However, if the police department doesn't need those, those will be released and they can just be filled as needed. But that was something we worked closely on with the junction as well and the police department trying to help support their new initiative as well. And then lastly, we want to take advantage of the facility and making sure that, again, we're continuing to collaborate with all of the wonderful organizations that are providing services to those experiencing homelessness or at risk. So ensuring that the junction has a plan of how they will coordinate and collaborate with other providers and really trying to enhance the level of service that they can provide to those in need and that will be a requirement of the agreement is that they have that plan in place. Another key component of the agreement is the good neighbor policies and practices. And this is something we've learned from other cities as important to being able to establish and then develop good working relationships with the neighborhood and the community. So a number of different practices are laid out, some required, some recommended, such as regularly meeting with the neighborhood organizations, having established contact for any of them, doing some surveys if they need to, just anything to help maintain that communication between the shelter and the surrounding community. One key aspect of that that will be required is that the junction does daily monitoring of a designated property zone. So making sure that the area is free from, you know, any trash or debris, if there's anyone staying out there to have them come inside the facility, make sure there's no loitering, anything, just trying to abate those quality of life nuisances and make sure that they continue to be a good neighbor. And then there are a number of scope of work requirements laid out in more detail as you'll be able to see. These are things that are in our current agreement with the junction for an enhanced shelter in terms of how the facility should be operated and maintained, what are the minimum regulation and guidelines for shelters, and then as well as the personnel that are employed by the junction and some requirements there in terms of having housing folks focus case management, diversity, segregation of duties and responsibilities, a number of best practices that should be in place for a nonprofit. And then lastly, requiring monthly partner meetings between the city and the junction just to continue that ongoing communication and collaboration that we have built. And one last key slide here for the proposed agreement is really important that we track the performance and the metrics and understand what are the needs, how is the junction meeting those needs, and really as we strategically plan what would be next steps, it's important that we have this as part of the agreement. So there's three different key components. The first is really important. That's the system performance measures. And these are actually laid out and tie into the Denton County homelessness leadership team's strategic plan. So to understand at a county-wide level, a number of different organizations reporting in these system performance measures how we are doing and where improvements can be made. Again, that really reemphasizes that collective impact initiative where it takes many stakeholders to address the complex problem of homelessness. And then secondly, we do have other just performance measures and service metrics that we would like reported to the city on a monthly basis. You can see some of them laid out here to give you a feel of what that would be in terms of guests served, housing placements, and so forth. And then lastly, they will be required to report operational updates to us as well on a monthly basis. So this could be, you know, slight adjustments to programs, new personnel hired, just anything to kind of keep us informed of how they are operating, and that can also take place during our monthly meetings. And so that's kind of a quick overview of what you will see coming forward in a proposed agreement with the junction. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Dani Shaw, who will give you a high level overview of the initial design concept. And again, we'll be coming back in March with some more detailed information and estimated construction costs. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Dani Shaw, Community Services. What you're seeing on the screen right now is a view of the design concept. We have three slides we're going to show you. We've laid out the initial perspective design in what we're calling three phases, and this gives us an opportunity to look at different options in case the scheduling and costs aren't able to accommodate a full renovation initially. So what you're looking at here in the first phase is the wing towards the back of the building on the northwest side, which would be the emergency shelter wing. This would be approximately 120 beds as it's currently designed, which is an increase over the current capacity of the NKOC shelter, where it's 92 pre-COVID and about 47 now. This includes shelter beds, showers with access to the main building, a lounge area, and additional intake in this area so that people can enter the shelter from this center courtyard and not just from the front of the building, giving a little bit of privacy and access to the people who may want to access the shelter services separately. And then with the second phase, we're looking at more of the programmatic side in the kitchen. So the backside of the building there, the largest squared off area, would be the commercial kitchen along with cold and dry storage and then staging areas for deliveries for other services that will be coming in. The central area, as Sarah mentioned in the initial design, allows for a flexible space, which is considered main dining, but could be converted and used for many different things based on the design layout now, offering a place for people to be during the day, provide meeting space and other opportunities later. The front section here is the programmatic wing, and this is where there will be staff facilities and able for staff to sit, but also intakes, additional programmatic rooms, classrooms, where the larger service delivery will happen for those folks who are receiving day services in addition to the overnight shelter with the front entrance. And then on the third phase, this is the enhanced shelter wing. This wing looks a bit more like the original intent of this facility with separate rooms that allow people for extended stay, the ability to store potential for long-term work programs, and people in a more transitional phase who are working towards permanent housing and other options here. Currently, this phase is anywhere as it's being looked at. There are two different designs we're looking at here. There are at least 28 beds and up to 40 beds, depending on how the layout is. What you're looking at here would be a layout with private bathrooms in those rooms, which would be a little bit costlier. The smaller room number at 28 would put the restrooms at the end. So that's what we're looking at currently. We did work with the architect and the junction representatives to lay out this design and offer it in this different phasing view as well. With the design concept, of course we presented to council on the 10th based on feedback we got from the neighborhood as well. So some of the design concepts will also be incorporating a plan for fencing and lighting and barriers that will make sure that access is controlled and not have a full open facility. And then we'll be working with some of our other divisions later to talk about how we extend sidewalks to this location and what opportunities there are with existing plan developments coming in. And then coordinating with accessible transportation options in the future. And Sarah went through a pretty comprehensive view with the good neighbor practices are going to look like. But again, this is looking at how we continue to maintain those positive relationships with the neighbors and the neighborhood around including the residents and the businesses. What we're looking at for a proposed timeline next steps. Anything in green you see here we've already completed. Of course we did the purchase where we looked at the facility assessment, did some repairs and developed the scope. Council approved the zoning in November that moved it from suburban corridor to public facility. And that included that neighborhood meeting where we got the feedback from those local folks about what they're interested in seeing for this facility. And then we initiated phase one with the architect and they're in the final processes of getting us the design development. And then our plan is to come back to council in March to approve us to move to a phase three with the architect, which would then allow us to do our construction documents or rough budget, finalize the schedule and move forward with our final concepts before we do the renovation, which would kick off in phase four and then phase five with the full construction with the goal that we would be able to open the facility somewhere between nine and 12 months from the start of our phase three. So this is the final slide in terms of what council can expect those next steps. So in March and I believe it's March 16th, we're targeting to come back with an item for consideration of the management services and operating agreement as we provided an overview today that would be with the junction, as well as then concurrently consider terminations of the current lease agreement and the current shelter agreement we have with the junction and that would line up appropriately in terms of the time. And then over the next few months, as well as Danny kind of just went through on these are really key as we will be finalizing the budget and the schedule for the construction of the facility, then moving into preparing those final design and construction documents going into procurement and then beginning construction. So a lot of key steps to take to really get us moving and hopefully continuing along on a timeframe to hopefully get by early 2022 to having this facility completed for occupancy. So I will take down my screen. Happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you. Questions for staff. Councilmember Meltzer. Thank you. First, I'd like to comment. Great to see it coming to fruition and there are many thoughtful components of the agreement, the partnership and collaboration, the good neighbor policy, the metric on percent exiting. My biggest concern is just looking at the rendering. I'm wondering how many beds it accommodates and how does that compare to what's currently at 300 Woodrow Lane? So as we mentioned in the presentation, there are 92 beds at the MKOC facility currently. That would be pre-COVID capacity. Since COVID, they've gone from 30 beds up to 47, so they're currently at 47 beds total. And then with the new facility, the way the design is looking, the emergency shelter section would increase to 120 beds, so that's an increase over the existing capacity with MKOC in the phase one. With phase three, once that's completed, then we would have an additional 28 to 40 beds for a more transitional or longer term housing for folks in the enhanced shelter program. Do you think there would be any sense in not immediately terminating 300 Woodrow Lane and seeing whether there might be a benefit or a need to operate both in terms of emergency shelter? Well, Sarah can pick up where I leave off, but I'll say there's been an agreement with the county that is tentative that they would take that back over and contribute. Yep, that's right. Let me move on. Thank you for laying out the bed numbers. Just a couple of small items. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the access to transportation that you touched on, the sidewalks in DCTA. I'd say that's one of the most frequent questions I get. The point of co-locating was because there's this sort of daily trek from when senior came to our daily bread in the previous iteration. So now the question is how do people get back and forth to this? It's not, you know, it's a little bit on the outskirts. Yeah, there is a bus stop right in front of the building. So there is current access to DCTA just in general. And with the day shelter, with a 24 hour facility, we're probably going to see traffic a little bit different than we would in our existing programs. So we'll be looking at that intentionally. It's also in close proximity to the serve Denton campus. So we'll be having conversations with them about the opportunities for they have a shuttle bus that's available that potentially could be something we could do back and forth. And so those are just some of the ideas I think we're looking at in addition to the sidewalk potential. I think people are also worried about just, you know, people wandering into heavy traffic from there, too. Correct. Yeah. Those are also I appreciate you bringing them up again. We may need to have other conversations with TxDOT as well. So all of those will be on the table. I appreciate that. And just lastly, I just didn't know what the rectangle was to the west of the facility. Is that the parking lot? It looks like a structure. I just couldn't tell. That is actually one of DME's substations. Okay. So there's a physical barrier between the facility and the neighborhood. Right. With the brick wall around it as well. That's pretty high. Great. Thanks for filling that in. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Davis and then Councilmember Armitage. Thank you. Two kind of related questions since your slide mentioned barriers, fencing and all that kind of stuff. Just checking to see if that's intended to be those kind of physical barriers are intended to be part of phase one of construction. You know, as soon as we're moving folks into the building, we've already got some of those fencing and things in place. And then also in kind of in conjunction with what Councilmember Meltzer was talking about, do we intend for there to be some kind of physical barrier between the facility, the parking lot and Loop 288? Like right now there's some landscaping and things without getting into TxDOT's right of way over there. Sometimes preventing people from, you know, putting something across kind of behind the sidewalk where they can still get to the bus stop, still get to the sidewalk, but you don't take that path, that quick path through the bushes out across the street. We kind of force you out to the edges of the property before you start thinking about crossing the street. Does that make sense? Yeah. We looked at in design drafts for that, what it would look like to either have it three sided or to add that fourth side. So those will be options that we'll be looking at. And it's a long walk to the intersections though, one way or the other. So we'll look at that and take that into consideration where that puts people. Sure. Thanks. Okay. Councilmember Armature. Yeah. So I had several questions, one or two of which was asked by Councilmember Meltzer about beds in the Monsignor King facility. Another question is, if you could just explain a little bit more why it is taking so, why we have to wait until 2022. I know it's a lot of work that needs to be done, but is it a budgeting issue? Because obviously this is a real public need. So is there anything that could be done to speed up that process? No, there's no budgeting issue at this time. It's just the design process going through to be intentional about communicating with the potential partners of what it looks like, working with the architect. Everything next will be based on our ability to get in front of you and have you all give us direction to move forward. And then the procurement process, however long that takes, if that's the direction council gives us. So those are just, there's natural inherent in the process. That's our shared goal as well, to try to open the facility as soon as we can, but we have to be realistic in expectations, especially having to follow the procurement processes and then also just the construction industry right now and their timelines. You know, we have to be realistic and that's why we want to come back to you with that more defined timeline in March of what that will be. And it might help us to do the phases of the construction as well. So we might be able to use portions of the building while still completing other portions of the building. So we have that shared goal and we're trying to look at some number of different options of maybe how we can get in there, get occupancy as soon as possible. Okay. Thank you. And is there any flexibility or what flexibility is there in the agreement with the county on the senior King facility? Can we, is there still some wiggle room to advocate, you know, for, for it to be continued to be used as a shelter, at least until this new facility starts up in 2022? It will continue. MKLC will continue to operate as a shelter until the Loop Treaty facility is available for occupancy. And that's one of the points over here. Excellent. That's what I thought. And I had, I had misread an answer to Council Member Melser's question. So my bad. Thank you. That is really good to know. Two more questions. What possible uses could we make of both the interior of the building and the land for this purpose in the interim? For instance, just anything from having a place where people could legally park their cars and sleep in their cars to a campground, or maybe making it an inclement weather shelter now that we see that's a need once the rec centers open up. I mean, we've already always known it's a need. But, you know, to be better prepared for inclement weather scenarios. Have those possibilities been entertained now that we have this building in this land, how to use it for that, for related purposes in the interim? Not, not yet. I mean, I know this came up during the discussion of the Council priorities and a week or two ago as well. We're focusing our time and energy right now on being able to get a plan for this building to get it up and operating. If there's potential for future phases of the land, whether that be additional needs that we've identified through the Denton County Homeless Leadership Team, or those can be brought back forth to City Council at a later date. But right now I can tell you this is a substantial project for us in the junction. And really all the time and energy we're going to focus on getting make sure you're getting this facility up and operational and successful. And then we'll continue to let as we do with all of our partners and in that leadership team is really understanding how we're operating, making strategic the next strategic goals. So there may be an opportunity in the future. But right now we're focused on on this. And thank you. And so I look forward to hearing if the leadership team has any ideas about alternate uses for the space in the interim. And also the question of, you know, what if somebody were to, you know, camp out there, maybe feeling safer because it's a city facility for that purpose, what would be the consequences? You don't have to answer that now. But just something to keep in mind. So as I kind of went through the good neighbor boundaries, that was one thing we've heard over and over again from neighborhood and surrounding business community was the concern for camping in the area. And we've been very clear that we will be a good partner for their quality of life. And that will not occur. And as well as the junction will be doing daily checks in a surrounding area around the property to ensure that they are connecting with those folks in need and helping connect them to shelter where we believe will have the capacity to serve them. And then the interim, the facility itself is not accessible. Once it was remediated, it is down to the studs with no no finishings, no fixtures, no way for anything to be to be used in the interior until it's renovated. Thank you. And that was my suspicion about the interior. I was thinking more about the exterior, but that's it's good to know about the interior. And then finally, my question is about the the step down funding plan. You know, I'm I myself consider this facility as meeting an essential public need. And so I'm not really concerned about of course, I want us to be good, you know, stewards of fiscal responsibility. But I'm not so much concerned about this facility becoming more independent. So I'm wondering, and I understand you said that this is, you know, an arrangement that other other cities have with public private partnerships. You know, why we don't, I can think of, say, our relationship with the Chamber of Commerce, where we don't have that that mechanism. I'm a little wary about the this the step down plan, I would rather not have that. But so I'm wondering if if you could say a little bit more about that, if there's any precedent in the city for having a plan like that, with a public private partnership? I don't know if I can speak to that this time for precedent, but we can certainly get a response on that later. But it is a recommendation from staff. Just as the organization can grow and show its success, they're going to be even more eligible for different funding sources from state, federal, private foundations, and they will be able to go after those, where do you want to make sure that they have a diversified funding sources, so they're not just relying upon any one major source for their funding. It's just about best practice that we're recommending at the end of the agreement after year five, if the council wanted to make a different decision, they could choose to do so. Or maybe they, you know, maybe it could be brought forward that they they want to even enhance their services even more. And they'd be asking for funding for this. But we also one thing I did fail to mention there is since the city is going to be owning this facility, and we are going to be paying for capital and major maintenance, as we get into those outer years, the city will have additional costs as well. So that's we're trying to look in account for the city's financial position as well, we're going to have increased investment into this facility for many years since we are taking that on in terms of the capital and major maintenance. We're going to see that more in the outer years of the city actually funding that as well. Okay, then thank you so much. I that that eases my mind somewhat. You know, I hope that there's that the the junction facility. The people running the junction don't feel pressure to feel like the funding is going to just disappear, but instead that that we're encouraging them to apply for whatever federal and other resources that that they can I think that's wonderful and essential to get as much backing and diversify. So anyway, thank you so much for that answer that that puts my mind at ease. Okay, I may approach him Davis. Thank you, Mary. Yeah, I think Sarah hit the nail on the head with a response, but I think it's important for people watching at home to know that that's not about the city reducing its commitment to this facility. It's about the junction being able to be less reliant on one source of income. What if we have a bad budget year? What if we have a bad tax year? What if the city for some reason can't fulfill its responsibilities for something completely beyond anybody here's control? It's better for the junction to be less dependent on just one source of income. That's just that's just a smart way for them to be set up. And I know that that's something that they work on already. That's already something that's one of their long term goals when those two when those two groups came together. And I also want to clarify for anybody watching at home the comment about the the Chamber of Commerce, we just went through a major renegotiation with the chamber last year of our relationship. And the idea that we're not asking the chamber to be more reliant on the business community or something like that. That's just not not true. That's false. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff? Okay, I had a couple of things just just notes will counter melter. I just comment that at some point we have to figure out what to call this thing. I don't know if it's going to be the Shaw Center. I don't know. I'll have to talk about it. That is also part of the agreement and the city will maintain naming rights for the facility. However, in the interior of the building, we will allow the junction to name, for example, a room or so forth, as long as the revenues that they gain from that interior naming are put back into the operation of the facility. Okay. No. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Okay, so I just had a quick thought or two. I just want to reiterate my thought from before. I would like to see when that comes back some sort of discussion about auxiliary, some sort of auxiliary building and discussion about storage how we can the temporary building then transitions to something else down the line, but initially it's storage. Then also, when it comes back, I would like to see that the look at where the proposed space would be for library uses, computer and books. I think that's important. That's a big part of the kind of transitioning, you know, to get access to services. And even if we wanted to have a kind of, again, that auxiliary building or just an open space for if we want to bring in exercise of some sort, you know, so that they can, you know, maintain that activity and whatever kind of uses the rec center would provide so we can kind of have turnkey services around that. And the only other thing that I've not mentioned that is of interest to me would be, and it's more on the business side of the business. I wonder if we could have some sort of open space available, and it may be that center space that's able to be a flex type space that could be rented out. And so what I envision is maybe some of the long people that are there long term, that is kind of a job training type thing. Maybe it's some sort of, and I don't know if the insurance company would go crazy on us, but just I think that we've gone to different cities and seen, you know, no different. Oh, I'll use it kind of zero coffee as example, where you kind of have this business model where you have volunteers that work there, the money raised goes to help fund the facility treat teaches job skills, kind of that sort of thing. If there's some sort of business use that again is not is deemed, you know, insurable, that sort of thing, but then also allows those that are there longer term to to have some sort of work experience. Not sure if that's an option, but if that fits in the room and fits the business model, that'd be something I'd be interested in hearing about. Yeah, I appreciate that comment as well. We are looking just in long term vision as well, with a phase four with a collaborative partner, potential collaborative partner in a works works works program. So I think I think that's definitely an option for the future once the building is up and running. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? Okay, Wendy McGee and Emily Taylor on the line. So I just wanted to see if they wanted to say any brief comments or remarks. Okay, let me do let me do this. I'm gonna recap where we were so that it's top of mind for them. And then they can touch on any of those things. Is that okay? I was just wanted to offer the opportunity in general just to say sure. Yeah, yeah, I want it to be I want their minds to be fresh on kind of what we touched on. And then and then they can speak to they'll have the floor. And so what I what we've heard thus far as a discussion around sidewalks and, and kind of the answer has been we're going to monitor that process and user experience and potentially look at shuttles. Then when we're talking about traffic and best kind of that kind of thing goes goes a hand in hand with that. And then we talked about barriers kind of along 28 to directing traffic. And another topic was the timing and we and Sarah articulated that we have that shared goal to to move as fast as possible while being diligent and purposeful. Then we have the the timing of the agreement with the county and that those will sync up at the same time. So no worries there that the transition won't happen before we're ready. And then the good neighbor discussion around no camping that sort of thing. So it's important that we maintain that agreement for the neighbors and that commitment to the neighbors. And then we talked about best practices around the step down process and that financial kind of opportunity for for them to diversify their their finances and make them eligible for other financing. And then lastly, we talked about naming outside of the facility will be maintained by the city. But there's interior opportunities as long as that money is is directed back into the into the project. So that's what I have. And I'll I'll I don't know who wants to speak first, Wendy or Emily, but by all means. Wendy, are you there? I'm here, I can certainly speak up. This is Emily Taylor. And first of all, Mayor and council members, I just want to say how much we appreciate the support that you have already shown us. I'm just so encouraged and excited about the future, and really just so appreciate how you have been supportive and really cheering us on. That means the world to us. I really think that Danny and Sarah did a great job explaining our vision. Hopefully it was very clear to you. I don't know that I really have anything else to add. Danny spoke at the end there. To your point, Mayor about some sort of work project, some work program, we definitely have that on our radar and want to see that happen. Excellent. So I just want to say thank you to y'all. I appreciate the time today, too. And hopefully things were clear. But of course, any I don't know, I can be of any help. But if there are any questions that you have on the junction site, there's something that I can help with. I'm more than happy to do so. So thank you all very much for your support. Absolutely. And Wendy, are you there? You must have had to go do something. I'm sorry about that. No problem. And then if it's okay, I think, Emily, I will extend this opportunity for you. If someone wants to get prepared for the future building, making sure it falls on the agenda, they want to get prepared for the future for the future building. How do they get plugged into your get plugged into volunteering that sort of thing now so that they can be ready when the building's ready? That's a great question. I appreciate that. Really, we feel like in a lot of ways, we are I don't want to say practicing because we've been at this for years. But this is a great experience for us what we're doing now to prepare for the future. So the best way to have to connect with us in terms of volunteering is to go on our website, our daily bread denton.com. It's pretty clear there where there's a tab for volunteering. It's laid out beautifully where you can pick not only the day that you want to volunteer, the times you want to volunteer and even the specific job that you're interested in. I'm not sure if that answered your question there. But that would be the best way to connect with us is to go on the website. It'll walk you through everything and then our volunteer coordinator would personally get in contact with anyone who signed up on the on the web. That's excellent. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Okay, and is anything else for staff on this item? Seeing none. Okay. Thank you very much, Sarah. Thank you, Danny. And that will conclude our work sessions that takes us to our closed meeting. So I will open the closed meeting. And then we will take a break come back, I'll call that that item. So I will convene the closed session at 412pm. We will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 deliberations regarding personal personal matters under Texas Government Code section 551.074. And so it is 413 will take 10 minutes. Come back for let's say 425pm to take up our one closed session item. Thank you. And welcome back to this special call meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 550pm on February the 23rd 2021. And we're back into our regular session. And we are if you're following the agenda online, we do have a proclamation lifted but listed but that's going to be pushed to next week. So that takes us to our consent agenda. And I'll take a motion noting that we've pulled items B and E, B will be a brief presentation, E will just be an individual vote. Councilmember Ryan. I move approval of the consent agenda except for items B and E. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I'll second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the consent agenda? Okay. Councilmember Ryan I'll say you. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Aye. Councilmember Baker. Aye. Councilmember Melzer. Aye. Councilmember Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Armitter. Yes. Okay. And Mayor Hutsmith is an aye as well. That passes 7 to 0. That takes us to consent agenda item B. And I'll call that it's item ID 21127 consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager's designee to execute an interconnection agreement with Encore Electric Delivery Company LLC. Good evening council. My name is Jerry Filder. I am the division engineering manager for Denton Municipal Electric. I don't have a formal presentation for you, but I will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the contract or not the contract, but the agreement. Okay. Councilmember Melzer by all means. Yeah. Thank you. So first of all, the AIS, the agenda information, whatever AIS, the background document says that this is required or implies that it's required as part of our participation in ERCOT. Can you explain what the relationship is between those two agreements? We basically have two regulatory entities that kind of give us the direction of what we need to do. One of them is FERC and one of them is ERCOT. And so as a member of ERCOT, we had to participate and follow the rules that ERCOT sets out for us. And at points we have interconnections between us and other electric utilities like this case, we've got Encore. We also have a couple with TNPA. So this is just basically the legal ease to establish those interconnections and to make sure that everybody understands what the rights and responsibilities are associated with it. But it's typically because we're a member of ERCOT, we have to go by the rules of ERCOT and they like to have everything tidied up. But does ERCOT require us to have separate bilateral agreements with all the members of ERCOT? For this interconnection agreement, we only have the interconnection agreements with the ones that we have connections with and that's Encore. We have two with Encore and that's what this agreement is. And then we have two with TNPA. So it's the geographically proximate ones. That's the idea. Yeah. Basically it's where Encore's transmission lines and our TNPA's and DME's transmission lines meet. Power flows both ways at that interconnection. It can flow into Denton. It can flow out of Denton. Isn't it correct that Encore shut down our water treatment plant during the events of last week? No, Tony, in a separate call I was on with Tony, he had to walk that back a bit. So he had said co-service, who he mentioned, but they'd never turned us off completely. There was some miscommunication there. So he apologized to co-serve directly, but there was a miscommunication. Okay. Forgive me for not having totally digested all the details of the agreement. Does it cover sort of prioritization of each other's critical infrastructure? No, sir. It's just related to the connection between the two transmission owners. It basically says that, you know, Encore, you're going to be responsible for this equipment. DME, you're responsible for this equipment. And, you know, as far as the maintenance goes, who's going to be responsible for us? It delineates the point of interconnection. So there is a recorded point in the field and it's typically a transmission tower where we know that Encore will stop and DME will take over as far as ownership goes. So the fact that this just covers transmission kind of settles that a bit. I'll just make a last comment, Mayor, that if this is required because of our relationship with ERCOT, you know, I would urge that part of our legislative agenda be that, you know, if we're going to keep, you know, shackling ourselves to this great resource, potentially, that we urge in our legislative agenda that all providers on ERCOT have to maintain 24/7, 365 service under a wide variety of conditions. Mayor, this is Tony. Yes, sir. Let me just add that as the city adds critical infrastructure and as customers of any other electric utility, be it Encore or be it CoServe, we provide that information to that utility so that they are aware of our critical infrastructure and can add that into their plans for any future planned outages. And so, again, we do have communication with CoServe and in the event that Encore or any other provider provides electric service to any of that critical infrastructure, we do provide that information to them. Actually, Nolan, if I may ask just one final question. What is the time sensitivity on this agreement? There is no time sensitivity. I mean, it's basically the agreement's already in place and what this agreement's doing is just really correcting some legalese. The original agreement had it between Encore and municipal electric and for the most part, this agreement takes place between Encore and the city of Ditten with the electric utility named Ditten Municipal Electric. So, the agreement's already in place. It's just clearing up some legalese associated with it. Well, I'm going to be inclined since it's subordinate, you know, it's driven by an ERCOT requirement, I'm going to be inclined to not move forward on things of that nature until we have assurances through the legislative process or otherwise that member providers are required to have 24/7/365 service under a wide variety of conditions, including, you know, ones like you just experienced. Thank you. Okay. All right. Any other questions for staff on this item? Okay. Then I'll take a motion on, well, back up. Councilmember Armitage? Okay. So, I'm inclined to agree, but I'm wondering if it's off posting for me to ask Councilmember Meltzer to specify a little bit more what he means by, you know, 24/7/365 service. Yes. I think I do, but is that off posting for me to ask that? I'll defer to the City Attorney. I think that that would push it over the edge. I know Councilmember Meltzer was teetering along the edge and that would definitely... I didn't go over it. Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That makes sense to me. Thank you. All right. I'll take a motion. Councilmember Ryan? I move approval. Is there a second? Mayor Pro Tem Davis? I'll second. Okay. Discussion? Mayor Pro Tem and then Councilmember Meltzer, Councilmember Armitage? I don't think I disagree with Councilmember Meltzer's general premise. You know, there's lots of things that we all need to kind of learn more about with our grid. There's some things that we need to maybe be advocating for in Austin regarding the grid, but the fact remains DME is part of a grid. Today's not the day to start, you know, unwinding that or dismantling that or holding that, you know, using that as leverage to have a big conversation in Austin. I think that conversation continues independent of what we're voting on today. I think we continue business as usual, keep the lights on and parallel to that, unpack everything we experienced last week in its proper course. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer? I move postponement for three months until we have a better picture of, you know, what are cuts, of what changes may be coming with everything that drives this agreement. I understand it's not time sensitive, but it's driven by that agreement. And, you know, I'm not, we already have an agreement that's in place. It doesn't imperil, you know, anything to do with services that are provided to to Denton families. And I think it's appropriate for us to, you know, take a little, take a little time and learn more before we just say business as usual is good enough. So three months, do you have a date or an action? Well, I pick a date and we can move, you know, we can, we can always undo that. That's a council's discretion. So if I, but I, you know, I want it to be far enough out that there's a possibility that things would actually get settled by then. So let's call it May 25th, 25th, May 25th. Thank you. Councilmember Marmotor. Well, is there a second? Councilmember Marmotor. Yes, I second that motion. I was actually going to make a similar amendment myself to postpone to the end until after the ongoing legislative session. I'll just say in support that I think it's a wise idea with con with only pros and no cons since this is not a time sensitive decision. It's not going to affect our relationship with with ERCOT or with Encore in terms of transmission. And it can't, it can't hurt to wait and can only help. So I think it's a smart decision. Okay. So the motion on the table is to postpone this item until May 25th. We have a motion in the second discussion. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I'd like to ask that question of staff because that's not exactly the takeaway I had. The question was, you know, why are we doing this? And the representation just been made is it doesn't hurt anything to postpone it? Is staff of the same opinion? And then if this is being brought forward because of you're correcting legal language, I'd like to hear from the city attorney also. So first question is for staff, is that true that it doesn't hurt anything to postpone this three months? And then from the city attorney's office, why is it important that we're cleaning up this language now? And why are we seeing this on this agenda? Well, again, what it does is basically, does it hurt anything? I don't know if it's going to hurt anything from that standpoint. We do have an agreement in place. We have been working with Encore for close to a year, I guess, to get this contract, get this agreement in place. So it's not something that just has come up recently. It's just bad timing whenever this has come forward. But, you know, there is an agreement in place. We can certainly continue to do that. And what this mainly does right now, again, is just change some legalese as far as the relationship between Encore and DME is now Encore to the city of Denton. Mr. City Attorney. Oh, you're muted. I'm sorry. There we go. It's my understanding that what we're doing is cleaning up this agreement. I know that in the past, there were various agreements that indicated the agreement was between DME and the particular third party entity. I know that for the last few years as these agreements have come up, as we've gotten to them, we have been correcting them to reflect the correct municipal entity that enters in these agreements, which is the city of Denton. And that is my understanding of this item. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem, does that answer your questions? It does. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments? Mayor Pro Tem Davis and then Council Member Ryan. Council Member Ryan can go first. I've had a crack at this one. Council Member Ryan and then Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Thank you. I will point out that this was on last week's agenda when our council meeting got canceled out. So this isn't something that's happened because of last week's weather events. This was in the works for quite some time before that. Our issues with ERCOT, not with Encore. And so I don't see any reason why we wouldn't want to clean up legal language with an ordinance. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I mean, I had the same basic thought, but I'll add in that this has nothing to do with what happened last week. The fact that we have connection points with neighboring electric generators and providers has nothing to do with what happened last week. It has nothing to do with restructuring ERCOT or who's to be held accountable for what happened last week. This is about us being connected to the grid and the timing is unfortunate. It got pushed from last week to this week. The only reason to postpone it is if we're somehow confused about what our relationship is to Encore with this agreement. Okay. And Jerry, I have a question because I think there is some cleaning up of terminology and entities, right? So you correct me where I'm wrong because I'm reading fast and furious and trying to get up to speed. But my understanding is ERCOT is almost a contractor that won a bid per se to manage the grid, but the Public Utility Commission is the entity that almost puts out the bid for management of the grid. So it's really the Public Utility Commission, PUC, that is charged with managing the grid and they sent out a bid that ERCOT won to manage that. Am I wrong? Because I absolutely could be. I don't know if a bid went out, but I know that Jerry's understanding is that, yes, the Public Utility Commission is the oversight for the electric utilities in the state of Texas. Yeah. But is there agent to do that work? Yeah. So Terry, I see you. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Terry Nolte, Assistant General Manager, DME. Just to clarify, Mayor, the ERCOT organization is a quasi-government entity that was charged and is regulated controlled by the state legislature through the PUCT. This agreement that we're discussing right now is simply an agreement that puts in place the terms upon which we're interconnected with an adjoining system from which we receive power from our generation resources that are outside of the Denton area. So this is purely an administrative change that we're asking for in this contract in order to clarify the rights and responsibilities of Encore versus DME with respect to this interconnection point. And that's all it is. It has nothing to do with the ERCOT market structure or the governance of ERCOT or the PUCT. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments? So we have a motion and a second for a postponement of this item until May 25th. And so we'll take a vote. So Councilmember Meltzer, I say you. Aye. Councilmember Armitage. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Aye. Councilmember Ryan. Aye. Councilmember Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Baker. Nay. And Mayor Hutspeth is a nay. That fails five to two. I'll take a motion. I think you have a motion already. I'm sorry. Yes, sir. Thank you. Appreciate the clarification. So we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem. Is that right? No, no. Pardon me. Motion by Councilmember Ryan and second by Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Is that that we were? Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we'll take that vote. Councilmember Ryan, I'll say you. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Baker, I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I'm just not in favor of rubber stamping anything as if it's business as usual on this matter. So I vote no. Okay. Councilmember Pritzker. I agree with that. I vote no as well. Okay. And then Mayor Hutspeth is an aye. That passes five to two. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Terry and my peers. So that takes us to item E, no presentation, but individual vote. So I'll call that item. Item E is ID 21203, consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas homeroom municipal corporation authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute a professional services agreement with WMM Coleman and Associates Inc. DBA Coleman and Associates Land surveying for landfill surveying services for landfill cell 4B-C-D. So no presentation. So I'll take a motion. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I'll move approval. Is there a second? Councilmember Ryan. I'll second. Thank you. We have a motion and second discussion. Councilmember Meltzer, Councilmember Armitter. Yeah, can we get clarification? I think I'm correct that this has nothing to do with landfill expansion that this has to do with working within the existing landfill and just moving to the next cell. Miss City Manager, can you give me who would speak to that? I'm sorry, you mute it. I'm trying to unmute. It's not working very well tonight. That would be Brian Borner. Okay. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council. Brian Burner, Solid Waste Director with the City of Denton. Mr. Meltzer, you are correct. This is for our existing landfill under permit 1590A. It does not have anything to do with the expansion that's proposed under 1590B. Okay. Any other discussion? Oh, yeah. Councilmember Armitter, thank you. Thank you for that clarification. I had asked a similar question and I must have misinterpreted or misread the answer that I got. So, again, this is not for a new cell regarding the landfill expansion. This is only for the existing landfill under the longstanding permit. That's correct. That is correct. Under existing permitted space. Okay. Okay. So anyway, in that case, I will vote yes. Apologies for I had asked in advance in writing and I misunderstood the answer I was given. So thank you for that. You're welcome. And Brian, just to be abundantly clear, because we'll have people watching that may be confused by this. So that future cell wouldn't be activated. I think staff has reported 15, 20 years, even if it's authorized, it's 15, 20 years out. It's not even close to being activated. That is correct. We would have to fill up our existing space before we even consider starting to, you know, pursuant to getting the new permit. We would fill our existing space first and then we start working in the new permitted area. And that timing? I mean, our forecasting says how many years? 15 to 20 years. Okay. Just making sure I understood that right. Okay. Great. Just didn't want any confusion. Okay. Thank you. So we have a motion in a second. Any other discussion? Okay. So Mayor Pro Tem Davis, how say you? Aye. Council Member Ryan? Aye. Council Member Baker? Aye. Thank you. Council Member Meltzer? Aye. Council Member Johnson? Aye. And then Council Member Armitage? Yes. Thank you. Mayor Hutzpeth has an aye. That passes 7-0. That concludes our consent agenda items and that takes us to our items for individual consideration. Item A, which is going to be AESA20-000. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, which is approving an alternate environmentally sensitive area plan for site generally located on the south side of I-35 Road, approximately 672 feet west of Sam Bass Boulevard. Mayor, I believe this was postponed. Yes, this item has been requested to move to March the 2nd. Yeah. I got a motion. Let me see. I don't know that I, Mr. City Attorney, the printed version I have is older, so I'm going to work off of here. Mr. City Attorney, do I need to postpone or do we just? It's to postpone. It's my understanding that this item is supposed to be postponed to last week's meeting, but we canceled it, so it's on this one. So you would need another motion to postpone to the requested date of March 2nd. Perfect. So I'll take a motion. Council Member Meltzer. I move we postpone this item to May 2nd. Is that what it was, May 2nd? March 2nd. I move to postpone this item to March 2nd. Thank you. Is there a second? Mayor Printem Davis. I'll second. Got it. So we have motion and a second to postpone to March 2nd. Any discussion? Okay. Council Member Meltzer, I'll say you. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Aye. Council Member Baker. Aye. Council Member Johnson. Aye. Council Member Ryan. Aye. Council Member Armitter. Yes. Mayor Husspeth is aye. That passes 7-0. That takes us to item B, consider approval of resolution of the City of Denton adopting the 2020-2021 City Council priorities and 2021 work plan for the City of Denton and providing an effective date. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm Stuart Birdseye, the assistant to the city manager. I'm coming tonight with a resolution. Hopefully it will work. There it is. For your consideration for the 2021 council priorities and 2021-2022 work plan, just as way of review and for anybody who's watching who may not have seen it, the council held an annual retreat on February 12th. That's an opportunity to ensure that the organizational goals align with the elected body's goals. It helps guide policy, operations, budget development for the upcoming year. And then once adopted, these priorities serve as the foundation for budget development and the primary staff focus for the upcoming fiscal year. So on February 12th, we held our retreat. Prior to the retreat, each council member submitted their list of priorities. As we were organizing them as staff, we noticed some common themes. And a lot of those were that there were items already in progress, there were revisions to current policy or program, and then there were new items. And so that's how we organized them and had that discussion with council. Each council member was given five minutes to introduce their item. And then the city manager went through one by one, facilitating those individual discussions. And staff developed a list at the end of the retreat with council priorities that have been discussed in the work plans, items that can be included in the work plan that had received the support. This is a list of proposed council priorities as we discussed at the annual retreat. I can go buy these one by one if you'd like, or they're up here on your screen if you'd like to view those. Yes, no, you can just, we can review them. Perfect. And this is exactly as it was presented at the end of the retreat when we received that direction from you all. And then additionally, these are items that received direction from the consensus council to include in the work plan for FY2021 and FY2122. You'll see here that the topic is there on the left hand side, the vehicle or the way that staff proposes to get this incorporated is there. And then just to give you an idea of the department that or departments that is taking ownership of these items. And so tonight we're asking you to consider adoption of a resolution that will affirm the 2021 council priorities and include the expanded or new initiatives that are going to be included in the work plan and budget preparation. So with that, I will take this down. Okay. Thank you. Questions for staff. Council member Meltzer. Oh, I'm sorry. You're muted, sir. But it was fascinating. Well, I have comments to make that question. So you're okay with that mayor? Yes, sir. By all means. Thank you. First of all, I think it was great process, very well run and very consequential. I hope. I think it's, you know, a great list and everybody contributed, including staff to a very great degree. I would just like to, you know, kind of get into the record a couple of a few things that were said already at that time, but we're understood in the discussion to be subsumed into some of the topics that are on there. But just, I will feel better represented if I just get to say that in the comprehensive plan update, it would include, you know, consideration of an identified preferred green network in the city of watersheds, wildlife, carters and trail connectivity, the economic development strategy was discussed that we're not just talking about the narrow portion of financial incentives, but there would include consideration of other types of strategic investments as well. There's acknowledgement that there'd be consideration of the idea of a development map, no idea if it's feasible or not, so that people can see here's what's happening with the possibility of signing up for alerts when something is happening within, you know, your area. And then there would include consideration of a traffic pedestrian bike safety map that would be visible to the public and internally to track where incidents occur. It would alert where safety improvements are needed and last that the sustainability plan would include consideration of composting and commercial and multifamily recycling. I am at peace. Awesome. Thank you. Good list. Other, so questions for staff. Seeing none, I'll take a motion. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I'll move approval of resolution. Councilmember Meltzer? I second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Further discussion? Seeing none. Mayor Pro Tem Davis, how say you? Aye. Councilmember Meltzer? Aye. Okay. Councilmember Baker? Aye. Councilmember Johnson? Aye. Councilmember Ryan? Aye. Councilmember Armitter? Yes. Okay and Mayor Hertzberg, that passes 7-0. Thank you very much staff for your hard work on that project. Thank you. That takes us to item C which is ID-21204. Consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing a city manager or his designee to execute a contract with JRD LLC doing business as Meloska Powerline Service LLC and forgive me for saying their name wrong. Good afternoon mayor, members of council, Mark Zimmer, DME engineering. Good afternoon. Currently DME has 13 transmission line projects in its approved CIP budget that require transmission line construction services. Shown here on this slide and they include. Oh it's not shared yet sorry. Perfect. There we go. Sorry about that. Thank you. Yep currently DME has 13 transmission line projects in its approved CIP budget that require transmission line construction services. They're shown here on this map. They include rebuilding existing transmission lines, tying in new substations into existing lines and rebuilding or rerouting existing lines around future textile projects. To obtain the services needed for these projects DME assembled an RFP with the services listed here on this slide which includes installation of transmission line or transmission pole foundations, transmission poles, erecting and assembling transmission poles and installation of the overhead conductors. We received four bids back on the RFP. They're shown here. We evaluated those bids based on price, delivery, compliance with specifications and probable performance. Masalanka received the highest evaluated bid and was the lowest overall cost. The projects included in the proposed contract are shown here. There's three projects included for TMPA which are reimbursable by TMPA and there's also two textile projects which are also reimbursable by the state. So based on the results of the RFP, Masalanka Powerline Services received the highest score and had the lowest price. Staff recommends approval of agreement with Masalanka for $15.88 million. All right, thank you. And if we could, there we go. Perfect. All right, questions for staff? Seeing none, any questions for staff? I'll take a motion. Councilmember Armitage? Along the similar lines to the recent vote we made, I would like to move that we postpone this until after the Texas legislative session. I have no reason to be opposed to working on our transmission lines but because anything that we do with transmission is related to ERCACOD and this is a big expense. Again, I think that we should wait to vote on this until after we see what happens with this current legislative session. Again, I don't anticipate necessarily anything would come out of this, would come out of it that would affect our need to reassess our transmission lines but I just think it's a good look for the public to hold off on such a large contract regarding transmission at this time. Okay, is there a second? I'm not raising, sorry. Yes, sir. Well, I don't want to go into discussion until we have a second but I want you to be able to make your point, so make your point. Okay, yeah, let's wait and see if there's a second for the motion to postpone. And is that a postpone to an event certain or a date certain? A vote to, sorry, postpone to an event certain that is after the cessation of the current state legislative session. Okay, so a motion to postpone. Okay, Mr. Senior Attorney. I wanted to clarify that, Councilmember Armentor, does that mean just the session ending in May or including any special sessions beyond May? After May. Okay. I'll say May 25th. I could say May 25th, I guess, if that's a fixed date. Okay, and then that would be preferable. Okay, so motion to postpone till May 25th. I might second after I hear, you know, my question answered. That's why I'm... Okay, well then let's take that up to forego the... The torment. Yes. I would just like to understand whether there's any material time sensitivity to this. Terry, welcome back. I apologize, Mayor, Councilmembers. Terry Dalte, Assistant General Manager. I'm gonna throw Mark a lifeline here. He looks great. He looks like he's holding up well. He's doing awesome. So, Councilmember Meltzer, there is criticality to this contract because as we currently sit, we do not currently have a transmission construction firm under contract. Were we to have any type of a disruption of our transmission system, be it a tornado, a straight line wind, some sort of a construction incident that knocked down one of our transmission lines, we have no way to restore that equipment unless we have a contractor. And this is part of the scope of this work beyond the projects that Mark had mentioned, is to be on call for the type of work that we may need. So, there is criticality to this contract. Very much appreciate that answer. I resonate very much with the sentiment that we must, in defense of our residents, bring full attention on the legislative session, but I'm not... I won't take any step to risk the safety of ten residents. I suspect Councilmember Armitage feels the same way. So, I'm not going to second. Okay. Well, let's see if there's a... Are you gonna withdraw your motion? If not, I gotta see if there's a second. Well, possibly based on the answer to my question. Okay. Go ahead, ask your question. Can you explain both to Council and the public whether we currently have a contractor who is providing this service, who works on these transmission lines? He just said we don't. So, if we don't, then how long have we been without that is what I'm wondering. Because it was my understanding and maybe I'm wrong that this is the kind of work. Anyway, if you could just speak to that. Sure. Councilmember Armitage. So, currently we do not have a contractor in place. The last major transmission project that we did was in the fall. We have been working through the city's required purchasing process in order to get this contract in place. That takes time. And we felt like we were adequately covered because in the event that we had an emergency condition, we could hire an emergency contractor to come in and take care of it. This contract will allow us to have this contractor on call and we will not have to go through the emergency procedures. So, thank you so much. So, I'm gonna stick with my motion. If this left us without the ability to hire an emergency contractor in an emergency, I wouldn't want to wait a single day and I would be concerned that it had taken us this long. But since we always have that possibility, I don't see the harm in waiting only until the end of May. Again, I'm in favor of doing this, having somebody on call, but I don't see the harm in waiting until May when we can always have an emergency contractor and it's been that way since the fall. All right, is there a second? One more time. Seeing no motion, is there a second for the motion on the table which is to postpone this item until May 25th? Seeing no movement, the motion fails for want of a second. I'll take a motion. Council member Ryan. I'll move approval. I think that the reliability of our infrastructure within our town is very important and we need to get these projects up and going. Thank you. Is there a second? Council member Johnson. A second. Thank you. So, we have a motion and a second discussion. I have discussion. You know, so Terry, could you pop back on and speak to the cost of the emergency service versus this regular service? Yes, sir, Mayor. The cost of emergency service would be kind of whatever the contractor will want to charge us and we'd be willing to pay. And part of my concern with not executing this contract and getting approval is that it would be as available. So, if a contractor was tied up on repairing systems elsewhere because they had a contractual commitment to that, let's say Encore for example, there's no guarantee that we would be able to pull them away to help us and we would be forced to go potentially out of state and incur those delays as we try to get an emergency contractor in place. And then could you speak to the other point you made about the contract? I'm assuming it's pretty delicate and it's worth the time to get it right? Yes, sir. I mean, we've spent quite a bit of time on this contract in negotiating the contract itself and going through the purchasing process. So, we feel like the terms that we've settled on are equitable for both parties. Okay. And then, Mark, just briefly, you touched on those other projects from TMPA and TxDOT that they're going to be participating in those. So, there's those dollars that also come into the mix that we jeopardize if this doesn't pass. Is that correct? Yes, sir. It would also delay their projects as well. And it would also delay some city projects. Yeah. Okay. So, my statement would be I'm not willing to put the ratepayers who are not willing to ask the ratepayers to pay more to protect the ratepayers. So, this contract protects them one time and doesn't put them in jeopardy of having to pay more for emergency situations. And I think that's what we're here to do, be fiscally responsible and protect them and make wise decisions that help give one, the system stability, and two, protect them from unnecessary cost just because. And so, for that reason, I'm going to be in support of this item. But any other discussion? Council Member Ryan. Yeah. I just want to say anybody who's had to get a plumber this last week, if you didn't have a long-term relationship with a plumber, it took a while to get them out. This contract gives us an emergency plumber, so to speak, for our electrical lines. It gives us the ability to get someone out much quicker than not having that contract in place. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? Council Member Meltzer. I, you know, it's consistent with the lesson of the need to be prepared for the unforeseen. True. Okay. Any other discussions? Seeing none. Council Member Ryan, I'll say you. Aye. Council Member Johnson, I'll say you. Aye. Council Member Baker, I'll say you. Aye. Council Member Meltzer. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Aye. Okay. And Council Member Armitage. I'm going to vote no, but I will say I support this. I just think we should wait to spend almost 16 million dollars, and I'm not convinced that it would necessarily cost us more to hire an emergency contractor, but I'm not disappointed in this, and I do support it, and of course I see the need to protect our infrastructure. That's a very valuable lesson. Okay. Well, okay. I'm going to say yes, and I'm going to trust the Assistant General Manager of the Municipal Electric in his estimate that it would cost more for an emergency and trust his assessment. So with that, it passes six to one. Okay. So that concludes item C. That takes us to item D, which is ID 21233. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager or his designee to execute a contract with Hammered Excavation, Inc. And before we do that, I didn't think, so Mark and Terry, thank you for your presentations and for your information. Sorry, Brian. Go right ahead. Well, good afternoon or good evening, Mayor, members of council. Brian Berners, solid waste director with the City of Denton. I have a short presentation here. Let me show the screen. Purpose here today is to discuss awarding a contract to Hammered Excavation to construct a new land cell at the City of Denton landfill. I want to talk a little bit about the cell itself, talk about the process of going to identify the contract or the cost, make our recommendation and answer any questions that you might have. City of Denton landfill is located at 1527 South May Hill and operates under state permit, municipal solid waste permit number 1590A. This is our existing permit. It does not have anything to do with the proposed expansion permit number 1590B. This is a regional facility that provides solid waste disposal capacity for local and area residents and businesses. We've operated this capacity since 1985 when the landfill first opened in this location. Current cell that we're operating has approximately one year of capacity remaining. We're going to use this year to construct our next cell and as such prepare for our next six to ten years of disposal capacity at the landfill. Work to be completed, we have approximately 23 acres in the cell number four BC&D. What we'll be doing is include constructing earthwork, installation of a liner system, a leachate collection system pursuant to our permit. It'll be a two-foot thick clay liner. We'll put in 60 mil smooth double texture geomembrane. We'll cover that with the geomembrane drainage composite and then two foot of protective soil cover. It's a highly engineered system that's designed to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the environment and the surrounding community. In November we submitted bid number or we put out for bid number 7540. Construction documents are provided by our consultants Park Hill. We sent the request to 426 companies. Five responses were received in December 29th. The lowest responsive company that was identified was Hammett excavation at 3.2 million dollars with 233 days to construct. Hammett is highly regarded in the construction of landfill cells. They have immense experience constructing this type of facility. They do good work and a lot of times they come in ahead of schedule or under budget. So we staff would recommend awarding cell for contract construction to Hammett excavation incorporated. Be glad to answer any questions you might have regarding this proposal. All right thank you. We'll pull down the presentation and great questions for staff. Okay seeing none Mayor Pro Tem Davis. I just want us to be absolutely clear. So earlier we talked about surveying for this same project right? That is correct. Okay so this is under an existing permit that this is an expansion of our landfill. It's filling out the landfill we already knew we were on the hook for. Correct. Okay then I move approval. Thank you is there's uh Councilman Baker. I'll second it. Okay all right we have motion and a second discussion. I'll just point out that uh Brian you note in your presentation that we have about a year left and now we're just working on this project that'll take just under a year. So I appreciate our diligence and making sure we we time these things up as close as possible and don't move in advance. So I thank you for that that you and you're all involved. So thank you. All right so we have a motion and a second further discussion. Okay Mayor Pro Tem Davis I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Baker. Aye. Councilmember Meltzer. Aye. Councilmember Johnson. Aye. Okay um let's see and then Councilmember Ryan. Aye. Councilmember Armitage. Yes. And Mayor Hutsworth's aye that passes seven zero and that's going to take thank you sir have a great evening. That's going to take us now we're going to take the next items out of order um and so we're going to jump down to item g on your agenda and for those following along um and that's uh that you know so I'll call that that's item id 21361 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton extending the effective period of the declaration of local disaster executed by the mayor on February 19th 2021 approving an updated order of the mayor and providing an effective date. Thank you Mayor Council. Ryan Adams customer service and public affairs and let me pull up this presentation. Yes sir thank you. All right great well thank you Mayor and Council um Ryan Adams customer service and public affairs uh I do want to let the council know that uh while the meeting was ongoing we did have to make a couple of updates uh to our uh declaration and order and so I've sent you a draft in your email but I'll walk through uh some of those changes in my presentation I'll speak to them as they won't be written in the presentation itself. So just to give a little bit of background for the council uh with a a very um crazy week uh we issued two declarations of disaster mayoral declarations of disaster uh last week one on February 15th uh that uh really pushed forward the full activation of the emergency management plan uh then again on February 19th we had another mayoral declaration of local disaster which included provisions similar to the fifth February 15th order uh most importantly I think council uh was pleased to see when uh that came out that we did waive some of our plumbing permit fees uh for repairs that were related to uh damage received from the winter storms uh it also the time it also stipulated the time for action on plats and plans would be told so the items before you today are actually extensions of that February 19th uh declaration it would take the effective date uh through uh March 16th and it would also adopt an order associated with that declaration and I'll walk through each of these precision provisions with a little bit more detail uh the order would also extend through March 16th that's a Tuesday it would continue the waiving of some plumbing permit and associated fees uh it would waive certain plat reapplication fees and it would relax some ordinance restrictions uh for winter wastewater averaging and leak adjustments that would provide additional relief for our water customers so to walk through the provisions uh permits that that does not really change from February 19th it does waive some plumbing permit fees and other associated fees as I mentioned before some plat reapplication fees would be waived uh there were a number of uh plats that were pulled when we had to cancel one of our planning and zoning meetings so we do not want to charge them to submit another plat application when they voluntarily pulled those items uh voluntary pardon me voluntarily pull those items so that we could cancel that meeting uh the leak adjustment provision in the new order of council uh just to give a little bit of background uh our current ordinance uh only allows leak adjustments in cases of hidden leaks uh and it phrases those as leaks that are not immediately and reasonably detectable uh it does not include leaks to fixtures appliances or equipment and we have interpreted that to mean including piping within homes so it really restricts leak adjustments to say your water service line what this order does is it allows applications for all were prepared leaks to pipes to be considered so if you have a leaking pipe or a burst pipe in your home if you meet all the other qualifications we would consider that uh with a leak adjustment uh application and we are going to allow any leak in a pipe that occurred between February 14th through the end of this month knowing that some leaks may not be uh readily uh apparent uh but still could be tied to that that bad weather that we had last week now as you know uh a lot of folks won't get their bill until say later in March or even early April and so what staff is going to do is we are going to bring forward at the next meeting an ordinance that would continue this provision through that march billing cycle this way the disaster declaration can eclipse on March 16th if that's the will of the council but this one provision can carry forward so that people when they receive that march bill and they determine that they want to apply for a leak adjustment they can do so even though this declaration and order have expired another provision that we've added in the order of council is a winter a change to our winter wastewater averaging so as most of you know wastewater usage is based on water usage we don't have a meter on your sewer service line to tell how much water flows out of your system so we base it on how much water you use of course in the summertime many people are watering their grass using their irrigation systems and that water uh while it does raise your usage up that water does not necessarily go in your sewer line it feeds your grass feeds your lawn so what cities typically do is they take an average of water use from December to February your winter months and apply that year round and i'll note this is applied to residential customers only the challenge is is that many homes if they had a burst pipe they may experience a a large spike in February usage that could really skew that average and so what we are proposing with the order is that only December and January usage be considered so we take February out of the equation so if a home experienced a large spike in water usage due to a burst pipe we are not going to count that and to take a step further and this was one of our most recent changes is that if your December and January usage is higher than what it was last year so the the average that you've been using for the previous year we're going to take the lower of the two so we don't want anyone to be negatively penalized for instance if they didn't use any water at all in February and we take that month off we're giving another option that we can take the lower of last year's average or the December and January average that we're going to calculate again like with the leak adjustment provision we are going to prepare another ordinance to apply this change through February 2022 so we can continue to use the lesser of those two options until we do a whole other set of winter averaging in December 2021 through February 2022 so i do want to just give a brief preview of some upcoming work session discussions that we're going to have related to last week's winter storm staff has planned over the course of four meetings presentations by different operational areas of the city and it's an opportunity for staff to walk through council how we responded to last week's winter storms how we responded to the outages to the boiled water notices notices and what our response what it would have been if it was just limited to a winter storm how the other elements caused us to have to shift and also look forward of how we can learn from the this event and improve our operations and so that will be brought forward separately and this this slide is just a preview to let council know that we know you and many of our residents have a lot of questions there's a lot of unknowns even now things that are still changing and being defined and being evaluated but we do commit to bringing that forward to council so that the discussion can be had publicly and council can receive the answers to their questions speaking of questions i'm happy to take yours okay if you can pull that down and what we're going to do one moment paul what we're going to do is i'm going to call us there's some legislative things that are happening that we need to discuss in closed session in conjunction with this item g so we're going to need to take it mr city attorney i mean i just i can announce the basis for going to close session on if you permit me there if you'd be so kind uh mayor and council as you all know there's a lot of activity going down in austin related to the weather event involving er cot i just appearance of being held uh today the earliest afternoon we came across some information that has caused us to have some legal and competitive matters concerns that we wish to discuss with you in closed session which uh in the updated uh ordinance that was provided to you by brian adams you'll see section four would uh after the closed session we'd be requesting uh the city manager and myself to be um to be authorized to take any legal action including filing suit to protect the city's financial interests in regard to purchasing power and say and selling power and other competitive matters and with that i um the mayor we're now if the council is agreeable we can go in a closed session okay any objections to that seeing none i'll call it so at uh six so let me i'll just read the preceding language i will convene the closed session at six fifty three p.m we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under texas government code five five one dot zero seven one deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under texas government code five five one dot zero eight six uh so with that we'll take a let's call it a 10 minute break uh that so i'll bring us back it's seven oh five uh to take up the closed session thank you and welcome back to this evening city council meeting it's a special call meeting it is eight oh one p.m and we're back in open session thank you for your patience uh while we were in executive session we left off with item g which is id 21361 and it's titled consider an ordinance of the city of denton extending the executive period of the declaration of local disaster execute executed by the mayor on february 19th 2021 approving an updated order of the mayor and providing an effective date um so uh madams city manager i don't know who wants to do the presentation or pick up where we are ryan okay ryan adams he's there ready to go thanks i'm there so we previously gave the council the presentation i am happy to revisit any slide or answer any questions that the council may have perfect questions for staff council member melzer um question and comment uh one is can we uh have the postings particularly in the early work sessions you described broad enough to permit us to discuss uh legislative agenda um related to the events of last week that would be the question so if i understand correctly the when i was discussing the the work session discussions by departments if the postings can be flexible enough for legislative policy items or discussions can they be included yeah i believe that can that can happen yes i appreciate that and uh my comment is um it's maybe a little bit tangent but mayor i hope you'll uh allow us um for those who don't know uh staff has been memorably dedicated and going just so far above and beyond through this whole thing uh we must never forget when we were you know in our homes and you know suffering through the cold and the blackouts the folks at dme were suffering every time they pulled the switch and i had the good fortune to work on the water distribution this sunday and i just want to share with everyone it's city staff frontline workers and the people that you see presenting to you in these meetings they were out there jumping on the trucks hauling the water serving the residents of the city we must never forget they're truly truly dedicated very impressive and we're so grateful agreed thank you uh other questions for staff councilmember armater yeah i i had a question about the uh march 15th um no suspensions through march 15th if you could just go over one more time uh exactly you know what happens after them after march 15th that that will come back to us for an extension then or could we include an extension in the current ordinance and the reason why i'm asking you know is because my concern being that not uh not everyone will have their uh usage for the for the past week covered in that billing period there we go uh so we originally designated that march 15th date to uh from from now until then to suspend any interruptions for non-payment the primary driver behind that was that many customers who have experienced say some damage related uh to their water piping where uh they either have a a significant amount of uh water usage and they want to go through say one of our leak adjustment processes or they have a lot of damage uh generally and they need to understand whether or not they need to seek out say a payment arrangement or utility assistance and so we wanted to provide a three-week time where those residents just did not have to worry about being interrupted they could understand and assess their financial situation plenty of time for them to contact customer service see what their options are and uh for anyone receiving a bill of course the same uh the same process remains that you have two weeks after your due date roughly two weeks after your due date before you are eligible uh for interruption so even if someone receiving a bill after the 15th they would still have about two weeks including notifications before they would ever be eligible for interruption so we thought that would be a sufficient time for people to have a better understanding of the financial impact of this storm on on them and uh we wanted to put that out there just simply ahead of this meeting we wanted to get some assurance out early of course council if they wish to make this a part of this disaster declaration um i think that's something the council can discuss but i believe that would also necessitate extending the term of this declaration beyond what staff has recommended on uh tuesday the 16th okay um any other questions for staff okay i'll take a motion council member armature yes i i move to approve uh this declaration uh with the addition of extending uh the the period through april 15th okay um so the the motion is to approve this with the a new date of april the 15th um is there a second counselor melzer yeah i'm not opposed i just want to uh i just think we'd like to understand what the rationale was for that particular date yeah well my rationale being um to give it an extra month um because i had heard some concerns from constituents that and i i i understand the reason uh for this three-week period i think you explained that that really well i'm glad that there's those three weeks in there um but residents had expressed concern about um especially for those who have uh lost wages uh due to not you know people who are hourly workers who were not able to uh get paid uh during that one week so to give them some more catch catch up time give them a whole extra month uh in addition to this uh march 15th this three-week extension to allow them so what what would be the features that would continue for the extra month the the uh no no interruption of service no shutoffs for failure to pay late late payment i think that it's it's really important that we that we do that and i can't see the harm in extending that i think that would meet with meet with a lot of goodwill and be really good for for public health to make sure uh that that we don't see more uh that we don't see people's power shut off after we've uh just you know been through these these uh all of this this trauma that we all experience together yeah i'll second all right so we have a motion a second for uh this to be postponed till april there are the shutoffs apart i i you understand i understand i'm just gonna fix my words okay so uh to postpone the shutoffs till april 15th which is a thursday so um then is we have a motion a second i'll just say i i can't get behind this i i want us to have data-based decisions and i think three weeks is plenty of time to gather the data to understand what we're looking at what we're facing and then if we need to extend it at that point then it's based on uh facts on the ground not an assumption uh looking forward so i understand the struggles i understand the need to communicate but i don't think that requires us to um select an arbitrary date uh to to move that forward out the data i think having we this is no different than what we did before where we uh extended the the the period the grace period but it was based on what we were seeing the number of disconnections and and that sort of thing so our apartment the payments and and who was eligible for shutoffs so there's a lot of data that accompanied uh the decision to extend it further and so i i think it's it's that was in the middle of the pandemic which is an emergency this is no different than it's a natural emergency but i don't know why we would uh depart from our the practice we used in the in the heat of a pandemic so uh that's where i fall any other discussion mayor pro tem davis and then councilmember johnson i'm fine with approving it as it is and um as it's been emailed to us with the additions that have been made that we kind of discussed a little while ago and that's because it all it all falls as a piece right there the disaster declaration is all one document we come back to it and we have to come back to it we're probably going to have other things besides just the shutoffs to continue to talk about including the plumber the plumbing permit fees including the the platting stuff including the um we already know we're going to come back to the uh the wastewater calculations and all that stuff um i'd rather just keep every piece of this together with the disaster declaration like we've got it okay and councilmember johnson i understand that we do have uh already have something set up for emergencies and for different things that will happen this is all looped together under the same thing as uh we were already in a disaster situation so we are being lenient toward anyone who has problems doing bills am i correct in this what i'm saying yes i am not please correct me because i don't want anybody to have any bills shut off or anybody shut down but at the same time if it's already provided there's no reason to repeat the same process that's correct councilmember johnson and in addition our staff are very in tune with different situations that come up where someone may need help they do an enormous amount of referrals to nonprofits for helping with the bill assistance so there are mechanisms in place and if we find we'll bring back information as the mayor mentioned as far as data that talks about uh where we're seeing if we're seeing an increase or what happens we'll come back to council and talk about that but our goal is not to cut people off it's to give them options on how we can help them right uh okay any other discussion before we vote on the motion that's on the we have a motion and a second for this as written and then amending the date to april the 15th a prohibition on shutoffs any other discussion before we vote okay so um let's see so we had councilmember armater how say you yes okay councilmember melzer hi okay um mayor pro tem davis name uh councilmember ryan night okay councilmember baker night councilmember johnson i'm sorry i didn't hear you well okay and uh mayor hudspeth is in a as well i'll take a motion on uh mayor pro tem davis i move approval uh as of the drafts provided to council uh by email okay is there a second uh councilmember ryan a second okay we have a motion and a second any discussion seeing none uh mayor pro tem how say you aye councilmember ryan aye uh councilmember baker uh councilmember uh johnson aye councilmember melzer aye uh councilmember armature yes mayor hudspeth is a aye as well that passes seven zero uh thank you staff thank you uh to my colleagues great conversation that takes us to item e id 21355 consider adoption of ordinance amending the city of denton utility system extendable commercial paper program to increase the authorized amount of notes to 300 million dollars good evening mayor and and city council david gains assistant city manager we'll pull the presentation up now this item is amending our utility system commercial paper program from 100 million dollars to 300 million dollars we uh much of the presentation that i'll go over here here briefly was presented to city council on friday as we had a work set a emergency work session to discuss a similar topic so i will go through the presentation again much of it was presented on friday as well so in the presentation itself we'll review our power expenses and the impact of the winter storm emergency and then the ensuing financial impact to the electric fund and then we'll revisit our recommended plan and how this this action on this item fits into our plan to address those immediate and critical cash flow needs and as i go through the present presentation obviously be focused on what those cash flow needs are and how this item itself gives us flexibility for the cash flow needs that we may have over the coming months so obviously the energy demand is uh has far exceeded the generation available i think we're all aware of that and and we've seen that especially over the past week our average price to put that into context of in february 2020 for for power was 23 24 dollars per megawatt hour the maximum price that we paid last week was nine thousand dollars per megawatt hour adjusted this number slightly from the presentation on friday with more more current information nine thousand dollars is the maximum price that can be paid um through urqat dme purchases necessary power supply through urqat on the day ahead in real-time market so i will i'll touch on this a little bit more on the next slide when we when we show our daily amounts that we contributed to urqat but it's important to note that each day urqat essentially lets us know how much we need to contribute into our fund with urqat to have power for our load on on the given day itself as you'll see power expenses and again as we reviewed on friday for a single day exceeded our entire expenses for the entirety of fy20 while operational the deck did help mitigate which is obviously one of its functions some of the power expense costs at least over 45 million dollars and very likely greater than that amount and we'll know that further as we get settlements moving forward so again the the what we presented on friday and what we're presenting today is to deal with the cash flow issue that we're presented with as we go through the next weeks and months we will be coming back to council with a more more fully realized picture of what the financial impact to the fund itself is but that will take some time as we get settlements and work through a number of issues with urqat itself and also any other mechanisms we have for other funding sources so i think it's important as we have this conversation to keep that in mind that this is really focused on having the cash flow needs we need to get through the coming weeks so as a reminder our total payments last week just for the four-day period you see there tuesday through friday were 207 million dollars and again those were the amounts for each given day that urqat told us we needed we had to pay into our account for what they anticipated our load to be or what our load was as we move forward we'll have settlements that true that up and and where those funds are used so those were regardless those were our cash needs last week so we had a 207 million dollar need to contribute to urqat from a cash perspective and we had a 100 roughly 100 million dollar fund balance in the electric fund so obviously this presented issues for us to find those funds available and we obviously had a number of mitigation efforts to get to that point we looked at how can we use the reserves not only in the electric fund but other funds to make those immediate payments we looked at our capital program and were able to pull a number of funds from our capital program itself to make the immediate payments and took all those into account obviously i think the important thing we want to point out as we went through this process is we did not want to reduce the cost through we didn't want to look at the the scenario we were faced with and try to reduce costs through reducing our load through additional outages in excess of the outages we were required by urqat so we had to make the payments as they came to us to provide the load we had to provide so the the option that we that we did have for immediate cash needs was extendable commercial paper this was a program that was approved by city council for the utilities in january of this year and i will say we were very fortunate to have this program in place at the time that we did it allowed us immediate access to funds in one to two days and commercial paper as we discussed when we implemented the plan itself and as we discussed on friday has the lowest short-term interest rates and also applies that gives us that immediate liquidity that we need to pay the bills so the program was approved at 100 million dollars in january and then we issued 100 million dollars on friday of last week and received those funds immediately so we'll have had those funds in the bank by the end of the week last week so our recommended plan the first step was as i said to issue the 100 million dollars in notes through the commercial paper program we did that on friday we have those funds in the bank our next step the recommendation here with this item is to increase the program itself from 100 million dollars to 300 million dollars so to be clear we've already spent the 100 so this would be a 200 or i'm sorry not spent issued the 100 million dollars this would be a 200 million dollar increase to the program itself we are not saying that we are going to issue the entire 200 million dollars this simply gives us flexibility as we move forward with the uncertainty of what cash needs we'll have it also gives us the benefit of the program itself if you recall from january and from last year when we looked at this on the bond program the benefit that we get of the commercial paper program is the excess capacity allows us to enter into contracts for appropriation purposes and issue issue the debt along with cash flow needs so by increasing it that the the excess funds allows us to continue that benefit as i mentioned we will give regular updates on the electric funds financial situation as we have settlements and a number of the variables that are out there but the immediate concern today is meeting our obligations to provide service to our residents and customers so that's it for my presentation and i'll pull the presentation down and see if you have any questions okay council member melton and council member armature yeah um thank you david and thank you for you know keeping finding ways to keep us afloat through this can can you explain for the general member of the public uh well first of all one thing you already did clarify we're not going out to borrow this money you want the authority to as uh you know as a resource if if kind of in case of emergency break glass but can you explain uh what are we paying for have we already paid for everything we've already used are we paying for something we're going to use who are we paying uh who is receiving this tremendous windfall can you sort of give us the you know the basics of the transaction i think i can definitely answer uh portions of the question and some of them will take a little time as we get settlements and can give a more full picture but as we get um every day as we have to go into whatever load whatever electricity we need to provide to our customers that we need to go into the market for we we we know the amount that we need we go into the urquhart market for that on the day ahead or real-time markets and they tell us here's the here's what you need to contribute to the fund to fund for that day for your load so each day we contribute to that and that fund sits there with the amount especially in this situation where the amounts are just have this magnitude sits in the in the account essentially until there's a settlement the following week or some other other some other time period where they say here's how much you actually spent here's how much you actually use for this day here's what the prices were and then draws from that so we again we're really talking about cash flow needs here so we really have to focus on here's what urquhart told us we needed for those four days there's a number of pieces that come with the settlement first what we actually used second any kind of credits that will reduce that amount for us so those are the pieces that we just don't know the answer to yet and we'll be bringing that forward and give a complete picture and that's why we're so focused right now on just meeting these immediate cash flow needs and we'll be able to come back and have that more full discussion on what happened and then what it looks like to the fund itself i just want to make just one comment on we do not plan on issuing the 200 million dollars for dme at this point i do think it's very unlikely we'll not we will issue nothing of the extra 200 because we've essentially drawn our fund balance down to zero so we will issue something i'm sure it just will not be the entirety amount unless unless there's something more catastrophic which obviously we would come back to council and let you know so can you address the part about uh who is you know just for the benefit of the public who is it that we're paying and we and it's urquhart but urquhart is passing through charges from i mean can you sort of give any you know i'll give a very high level answer i'll give a very high level answer it's basically just power generator so all our urquhart doesn't generate power themselves they just the money kind of flows to them to the power generators um so anything outside that i think we'll we'll be able to hit on as we have the more yeah no that that was the kind of that i was looking for and i'll just comment and then i'll sort of listen to the conversation um you know well first of all i'm going to share a quote from one of our elected representatives the uh the recently vacationing ted cruise senator cruise uh said or tweeted this is wrong no power company should get a windfall because of a natural disaster and texans shouldn't get hammered by ridiculous rate increases for last week's energy debacle state and local regulators should act swiftly to prevent this injustice and just expand on that point a little bit here we talk about this is a market and when you talk about a free market operating properly they're willing buyers and willing sellers and you know what i deeply question is to what extent we are really a willing buyer uh when you're talking about freezing temperatures it's like a kind of tony soprano transaction you know oh you've got people on uh be ashamed if something happened to people on medical devices and children sleeping in beds i see you've got some reserves i imagine you can borrow some more money too try you know that's so i i uh hope that well while i'm grateful that we're taking the steps we need to because we have good financial leadership to keep the ship afloat you know i hope that uh the legislature uh is is is going to act um because it's not what's illegal that concerns me and maybe there's literally illegal price gouging or whatever i really have no way to know what concerns me is what's legal and i'll just listen to the conversation from here okay thank you councillor armature so uh so first just to uh clarify and clear up because i think there were um some some misconceptions that this money was for uh this 207 million dollars but just to clarify as you mentioned this 207 million dollars has already been paid and that this this new uh cap extended cap that we're being asked uh to vote on is for as you mentioned you know uncertain uh future expenses that might come uh but we don't yet have the data to know uh how much or what we're going to owe is that correct well uh i think i think that's a part of it i think um also you know we had a 207 million dollar cash flow that we that need that we had we had 100 million dollars in our fund balance so that that essentially took up our fund balance in the electric fund itself so as we move forward we are going to have cash flow needs and we are going to need to um to to to at some point at least match the 200 million dollars or have funds as we move forward for regular cash flow needs so i think that's a piece of it the other piece is we don't know what immediate needs we're going to have on the electric market and we'll need to have the funds available or for other dme expenses and then i think the third piece is also because we've used the entire 100 million of the 100 million that we that we had in the program itself there's we're not left with any of that capacity for the uh appropriation benefit of the commercial paper program which is really one of the main reasons that we originally uh implemented the program itself which that again allows us to enter into contracts in anticipation of issuing debt down the road so we can issue debt as we have cash flow needs which is a big benefit not just the electric fund but also to our other utility funds as well so i think all of those are what led us to to request the increase from 100 million to 300 million so so thank you so i'm thinking about debt um and we've got for for dme about a about a billion dollar uh debt if you add on to that you know the recent expenses that that we just paid so i'm concerned uh about the uh public who's going to be at some point paying this debt you know of course it's not um directly tied to rates rates don't change as the as the debt service increases or the budget goes up that takes a vote of a vote of council so there was misconception about that and the public as well but still you know the fact remains that it's the public is going to be paying for it so how would you answer the question of um if we don't know when we're going to need this money and we don't know uh or it actually is as you mentioned um fairly certain that um that that full uh 200 million you know wouldn't be needed in the near future why take on such uh unprecedented debt in in cash uh now as opposed to later is it is it really just to you know so so that we can keep uh keep borrowing more and keep increasing the debt you know so obviously the increase from 100 to 300 is not us issuing additional debt at this time i mean to be frank this is the way this is the way that we have access to liquidity the way that we had to have access to cash if we are if we if there's another situation in the market itself and we're we have a large bill due to keep power on we need cash to keep the power on so we're going to have those conversations as we move forward and we'll see what the settlements look like and what the true financial picture is and it hopefully it is is quite different than what we're talking about for cash flow needs but we do have the cash flow needs so um this is a mechanism to do that what's a benefit of the commercial paper program is that it's a 90 day short-term loan with very low interest rates so when those 90 days come up we can either pay those back with cash we can pay them with some other source or at that point we could take long-term debt out to um to pay off to pay off the short-term note or we could roll it for another 90 days so that's a benefit of the commercial paper program is that we have those options over those 90 days to see what it looks like and then we'll have to just assess our financial picture at that time but you know we this is without this facility we just we are we would not necessarily have the cash available in the electric fund to pay bills if they come up to keep power on and thank you and now one more one more question um what about uh rebudgeting is that something that staff uh considered about rebudgeting our our current uh finances in the and i realized that dme has spent you know in this crisis um you know spent up what they had but what about rebudgeting in the general fund uh in in this crisis to see what we can come up with with the money that we have well let me let me stop there because we're talking about this commercial pro paper program so the general budget would not come into this but i i still think we well let's let's let's let me answer it this way the utility roi is going into the general budget and then you're asking us to evaluate the general we had to escalate the the roi from the utility to stabilize our general budget and then you're asking us to look at our general budget to see if we can take money out of it and put it back into the dme budget and we're already taking money from dme and put it in into the general budget and furthermore it's not related to the commercial paper so there's two issues i have here uh so if you want to rephrase your question with respect to the commercial paper or the fact that we don't have money in the general budget because we're taking money from the uh utility roi already okay so so i can speak to that so number one i'm not asking at this point you know what what what your opinion is i'm just asking staff uh what it what you know if any considerations were made about rebudgeting whether that was considered is is what i'm asking okay then that is off that's off subject no no no it's not it's a point of order it's not because i'm asking about alternatives if we're coming to this is the decision we've come to i wanted to know what alternatives were considered and i don't need an exhaustive list but i would like to know if rebudgeting was considered councilmember arenter this is sarah um i can tell you that the staff spent hours looking at every single option both in other utility funds capital projects and the general fund and all of those combined would not have helped us out in addressing this issue so um it would have literally taking any money from the general fund would then negate any kinds of programs or plans or any kind of work that we're doing now but they looked at every single option and came up with this even talking to bond council to figure out a way to do this that would not in in such a word penalize the general fund or another utility from being able to continue the work they're doing okay so can we do you have any additional questions great uh councilmember melzer um yeah i just want to uh make a comment for perspective the general fund the entire general fund is as i recall something in the neighborhood of 120 million so yeah so this you know dwarfs the general fund um so i mean i i accept the uh explanation that this requires you know an entirely different um kind of source of of of security and and also i uh underscore the fact that you're not asking that you're not expressing intention to go and borrow the money you're asking for authorization so that it's there so that you can act quickly because as we've seen these things arrive in 10 minute intervals we often need to act very quickly unfortunately you know in large dollar amounts okay councilmember johnson did you have something yes these monies will be uh the council will have oversights on these monies so with the fact that the monies that we had was totally depleted within one day means that we need to be prepared even more so in case something else should happen so i don't see what would be a bad thing about being over prepared clearly we know what underprepared feels like okay thank you mayor pro tem davis i i appreciate everything my colleagues have said and i also want to point out that you don't get to this kind of borrowing capacity and the kinds of uh the ability to do this in kind of quick order as we have without years of strong good management of your funds and especially in those utility funds and it wasn't that long ago uh actually maybe i can't remember with cobit uh you know we we consistently get reports from dme on our bond ratings and our bond ratings have gone up and up and up and that kind of good management up to this point is what's given us the ability to have this kind of capacity so that's why we do it okay uh any other questions comments for staff okay i'll take a motion mayor pro tem davis i move approval thank you uh okay is there a second councilman ryan i'll second thank you we have a motion in the second discussion councilmember yeah i i'd like to move to postpone this until may 25th after the current state legislative session okay is there a second councilmember melts will you second no that's not the only option is it can i comment you want to see well we have to have a discussion after the second so that's that's the process so i wouldn't want it to die without a second for lack of a second without having had a chance to comment that's a problem i understand well okay i want to go ahead by anybody who might be contemplating a second i completely resonate with the sentiment uh but you know where i'm drawing the line is what protects us and uh we we know very vividly that we need the flexibility to react uh you know sort of rightly or wrongly to how we're being abused by by the market in order to protect our people we need the ability to respond in very short order and and that's why i'm not seconding okay so is there a second the the the it's a motion to postpone till may the 25th and i'm looking for a second see none okay motion dies for want of a second um and so the motion on the floor now is a motion to approve the motion was made by counts mayor pro tem davis second by mayor uh pardon me uh council member ryan any discussion and i will say uh that i staff is just trying to keep the power on and the utilities flowing for our residents i don't know what else we can ask for a municipal electric but for to provide for those that have had a really tough week to make sure that we don't have future tough weeks so uh i just can't see anything wrong with having money available to make sure we keep the power on for our residents that's that's what we're tasked to do we are the board for the municipal electric and that's what we're tasked to do is take care of our citizens first and so i'm passionate about that so uh i thank you david and and terry and tony and all and and city management for for doing what you have to do to keep the lights on for our residents uh any other comments okay council member armature uh yeah i i will just ask that you know that for my my colleagues who uh as i do feel so strongly about keeping the lights on for our residents uh that people consider when it comes before us next extending the shutoff period because for a lot of people uh what we experienced last week is just a a regular part of um being a low income uh person in in denton uh low income family working families in denton uh go through shutoffs often and uh anyway i i just hope that that we extend uh that that same desire to keep the power on to individual families as well all right thank you any other discussions okay uh mayor pro tem houseiu aye council member ryan aye um council member baker uh council member johnson aye council member armature no council member melzer hi and mayor hudspeth as i pass is six one that takes us to item uh f which is uh id 21356 consider adoption of an ordinance amending ordinance number two zero two one zero seven zero authorizing the issuance of a city of denton utility system revenue funding bonds series 2021 to increase the authorized amount of bonds that may be issued to 300 million dollars sure go ahead david david deans assistant city manager again this this item i don't have a presentation for but it really is just a follow-up to the previous item this gives uh gives staff the authority to issue the funds from now the additional funds up to 300 dollars 300 million including the 100 million uh issued last friday from now until a date certain on january 12 2022 this was approved the same ordinance was approved with the only change being from 100 million to 300 million in january so really this is just the proceeds procedural step that comes after the action from the previous item so happy to answer any questions there already mayor pro tem davis i'm just going to move approval i'll take it um is there a second councilmember baker yes i'll second it thank you discussion one more time discussion seeing none uh mayor pro tem houseau aye councilmember baker houseau uh councilmember johnson houseau aye councilmember ryan aye uh councilmember melzer aye councilmember armater no mayor hudspeth is a i that passes six one that takes us to item h i'm going to call it and then i'm going to call on uh mayor pro tem davis so uh the item is a uh hid21354 consider adoption of ordinance declaring an unopposed candidate in may 1st 2021 general election declaring jesse davis elected uh to office and canceling the election in district three providing servability uh clause providing an open meetings clause and providing an effective date so uh with that i'll call on uh mayor pro tem davis thank you mayor i'm going to move denial of the item and um very quickly i'll give my reasons why and i hope that there's a second from one of my colleagues um the the item is asking whether we would declare me the um elected to office without an election in district three um it's my strong opinion that every person district three uh deserves an opportunity to either check the box or draw draw a frowny face or write a swear word if they want to um i don't think we impose any additional uh cost to the city by running an election and it's our tradition in this city that even if someone is the only name on the ballot that we put them to the vote and so that's why i'm i move denial of that item and i prefer to stand for election okay and is there anybody with the little portable thermos the the temperature taker that can go make sure no just kidding so we we have a motion uh to deny by mayor pro tem uh council member baker i'll second it okay so we have a motion and a second discussion council member melzer first of all uh i didn't know you had the option of making a little frowny face i'll take that under advisement um i just know without without respect to you know individuals i am curious what practical implications there might be what comes to mind uh the only thing i can think of is that the election sets a threshold for recalls uh and then if you don't have that i don't know what what the sort of threshold would be for a recall so that's a question to staff or you know to the city secretary if she's available okay or i know i think erin if you have that answer just to clarify you want to know what the threshold would be for a recall in the event that's a unopposed election or yeah well well if we had held the election there's it's a certain percentage of those who vote right and then if we didn't hold the election in front i don't remember what that percentage is and if we didn't hold the election then what would it be that's that's an unknown um questions has not been litigated i know that you know if there is an unopposed election we would for the record i still do so rarely happens just for the record i stop i i have a legal legal opinion that's just i'm just saying that then it's not uh it hasn't been litigated in texas but what i can tell you is that we would follow past practice in the event of an unopposed election which we calculate 25 from this most recent election even though the charter provision adds requires the total of all not just the council member but all the other opponents in the election that's what we did with council member joey hawkins back in 2016 i believe and if and if the person is unopposed the only way you have to you have another provision in the charter that says any any council member is subject to recall so the only way to give uh effect to that provision and also the 25 would be to look at the previous general election which would be in this case 2019 may 2019 yeah that that would be the only way to to make the the charter be consistent with law stick well i think you know it is a sort of tangible thing like for instance uh council member former council member briggs ran unopposed twice uh and you know the first time there was 1743 votes the second time i think it was in the neighborhood of 900 votes so fewer people turning out means there's a lower threshold for reclass you know so it is an election of the popular will you know uh that like well you know you're on a little bit thinner ice if people aren't showing up to vote so uh okay thank you i appreciate that i'll i'll i'll support the motion to deny okay uh mayor pro tem uh well good to know you're thinking about it paul i appreciate that and uh the but that uh exactly what you just asked erin uh about did cross my mind i did read the charter provisions on that and um i would much rather us be on very firm legal footing and not if that unfortunate event were to occur that that's not some uh protracted back and forth battle of legal opinions that uh if i'm sitting here with you all that i'm here because the people sent me here and not because there's some uh legal argument to it okay thank you any other um comments seeing none okay so uh pro pro tem how say you i one more time no just kidding uh so council member baker uh thank you uh council member ryan i council member johnson council member armature yes i'm very pleased by this all right uh council and mayor mayor husbeth is i as well and uh so that passes seven zero but i was going to vote i too oh melzer i'm sorry forgive me it's still seven seven is the total steel i didn't add one so there we go thank you thank you uh council member melzer hold me accountable um so that that resolves item h last item is item i there's no presentation and i'll call it it's id 21266 considered nomination appointments to the city's boards commissions and committees um airport advisory board at al and um we you have the names in the in the emails in the backup and in your email i'll take a motion council member ryan move approval councilman baker i'll second it thank you discussion okay uh council member ryan how say you aye council member baker uh council member johnson aye council member armature yes mayor pro tem davis aye mayor hudspeth is a aye and paul i um i'm still here i'm having a little technical difficulty i'm an i got it got you down okay that passes seven zero uh that concludes our agenda takes us to concluding items concluding items council member armature i just want to say that uh council member melzer is still here he's not a cat awesome uh any other concluding items i know we have what date is that is it the 27th we have a black history program it's virtual this year i think that's right and then uh i want to i want to pick up where council member melzer left off and thank everyone that volunteered in any kind of capacity uh this week and and those that coordinated uh volunteer events etc don't want to leave anyone out it's been a really bright light for our community uh between the the fifty thousand dollars for the mosque to be rebuilt by the uh church that donated i mean just amazing acts of kindness and generosity and support for our community very proud of our staff management volunteers etc it's been just dynamic to watch so uh really appreciate our community coming together and appreciate my peers volunteering in so many different ways as well so uh any other any other thoughts around that before we go council member ryan well i just want to announce some other good news that we heard earlier today on the uh the uh denton county uh in the area e which is all the dallas fort worth area has fallen below the 15 mark on hospitalization for covid which means that and it's been that way for over seven days that means that restaurants can now go back up to 75 percent bars are now able to reopen and you know several other items that uh related to the governor's order thank you for that that's good appreciate that okay anything else all right then i'll conclude the meeting at 8 55 p.m on uh it's still february 23rd 2021 so everyone have a great evening and we will see you uh next week thanks bye