Apr 20, 2021 City Council on 2021-04-20 2:00 PM

And good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 2 0 1 p.m. on April the 20th, 2021. We do have a quorum. So I will call this regularly scheduled meeting of the Denton City Council to order. We did not -- the first order of business on the work session is the citizen's comments on the consent agenda item. There were none. That takes us to section 2, which is request for clarification of agenda items on this agenda. Questions for staff? Councilmember Armitage? I don't have any questions for staff right now, but I would like items B and C pulled for presentation and discussion, item B, just to highlight the most significant changes that are redlined and discuss that as a council. And with C, regarding the Stoke, just because we received a number of emails about it, it's a significant investment for the city. So I wanted to pull that one for presentation as well. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Okay. I want to see as well, so is that considered okay? Yes. Thank you, Councilman Johnson. Okay. Is there anything specific, Councilman Johnson, you want incorporated into the presentation? I would like a report on it. I don't -- I'd like the report. Okay. Great. And then any other questions for staff on the consent agenda? Okay, seeing none. Got it. So we will pull B and C for a general presentation, and I guess we'll take questions at that point. So that completes item two, takes us to our work session reports, which I'll call item 3A, which is ID21500, receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding funding recommendations from the Community Development Advisory Committee and the Human Services Advisory Committee for the proposed activities to be included in the 2020-2022 Consolidated Plan for Housing and Community Development and 2021 Action Plan. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Danny Shaw. I did want to let the Council members know that we do have our two committee chairs on the call, Larry Barnes and Hannah Garcia. So after the end of the presentation, if you have questions, we also have additional staff on the call. Louisa Garcia and Courtney Cross will be available as well. So I'm going to share my screen now. Thank you. The purpose of today's work session presentation is to just go through the recommendations for city grant programs that will be included in the action plan and also for the general fund budget for consideration later in September. We also use this work session as an opportunity to let the public know that we do have a public hearing coming up on May 4th where they have opportunities to comment on the funding recommendations as well. We also would like to review a request for doing a substantial amendment to the 2020-2021 Action Plan for the CDBG/CV funds that have been recommended for allocation and this opportunity for Council to give us any additional feedback as well. We do the Consolidated Plan and Action Plan every three to five years. We are in the second year of that Action Plan planning right now. This prepares us for submitting our 2021-2022 Action Plan to HUD with the recommendations if approved by Council. And then the plan provides those priorities and strategies for the next year. This is just a reminder of what our eligible activities are. I think Council has seen this a few times, but we want to put it up just as a reminder. For this year's funding, we're looking at public facility improvements, social service funding, and housing programs out of the CDBG fund. And then in the home funds, recommended projects in affordable rental housing, homeownership in housing construction. This is the timeline of our process. Again, this is very similar every year. Right now we're in the presentation to City Council in April. And as a reminder, we do have that public hearing coming up on May 4th for the public to comment on these recommendations. A couple of things to note really quickly on this is that we are required to submit our Action Plan to HUD by June 15th. So that's the timeline we're on for this. But there are funding recommendations in this that are also for general fund, and those will be approved when Council approves the annual program services budget in September. Now all of the applicants for these funds did complete the same application. The application components are important to decision making on how the committees go through their recommendation process. Of course, make sure the projects meet the national objectives for the federal funding. They do have to benefit low and moderate income families. We reviewed the potential impact. So what is the value to the community in the services it provides, and those who are assisted, what's the improvement or outcome for those folks? They have an opportunity to provide a narrative that gives more detail in their program. And then they provide us an overview of their budgets, revenues, and expenditure. So we can see how the agency is performing and how it uses its funds. They do give us information on their human resources, specifically the demographics of their staff and volunteers, but also the number and salaries. And then we do a risk analysis that sort of helps us understand what are other risks that may be in potential funding sources for the particular program. These are the committees that serve these two functions, the Community Development Advisory Committee. It's a quick list here. Again, Larry Barnes, who is the chair of the CDAC, is on the call today. And then our Human Services Advisory Committee, our chair, Hannah Garcia, is on the call today as well. So for 2021-2022, the recommendations broke out as follows. Now there's more detail on the following slides, but this is the overview of how the funds have been recommended for allocation. We estimated a total of $2.6 million available for the CDAC to allocate. That represents about a million, just over a million for CDBG, just over a half a million for home. And then we have the additional CDBG/CV funds that we have not allocated yet, as well as unprogrammed funds and estimated program income available. Those figures add up to the $2.6 million. We did receive eight applications. The total request out of that was $1.8 million. And out of that, the committee did recommend $1.9 million of the available funding, and that's again in slide 10. You can see the overview there in a minute, with an additional $43,000 to be allocated to the existing hotel voucher program. Council earlier approved $800,000 for that out of the original CDBG/CV allocation. And then there was a remaining amount available that the CDAC did not recommend for funding, so those funds were included in the HSAC's funding availability for recommendations. For the HSAC, the Human Services Advisory Committee, they had then just over $700,000 available. $157,000 was the 15% social services cap that automatically gets allocated from CDBG funds. And then there was some additional CV funds that the CDAC did not allocate. There were also eligible projects that the HSAC was looking at. And then we estimate a funding amount from the general fund with a slight increase each year based on population growth. So that estimate was provided to the Human Services Advisory Committee at $352,000. Now they did receive 17 applications, totaling just under $1 million, $931,000 to be exact. And then of that, they recommended an allocation of about $722,000. That does represent a slight increase over what staff had recommended as $352,000 available, increasing the general fund allocation to $362,000, $250,000 as recommended. Again, this is just a brief overview of how the funds are breaking out. So what you'll see here out of the projects that solicited an application, those were recommended for funding in the following breakdowns with CDBG home and CV splits. I'll take questions about this later, but just as a quick overview, that's shown here, the CDBG funds with the additional recommendation for the hotel voucher program added to those eight applications. Again, these next two slides, just in brief, show the requests and recommendations that the HSAC considered and how those are recommended to be broken out by the different funding sources. And then just as a quick note, we are looking at Fred Moore as a potential agency that won't be included in the general fund. We'll have more information about that later. And then now for the last two slides, we just want to go through what our next steps are and what this presentation, what we're looking for for direction from council. Because we already have access to the CDBG CV funds, they've already been allocated to us by HUD in our account to be able to be used. We'd like to go ahead and put those funds into action. And so we'd like to do a separate substantial amendment for just those funds that are recommended for CDBG CV. On this timeline, again, we'll do a public comment period, we'll work through the substantial amendment to HUD, and then HUD will take the 45 days to approve it, but that would allow us to utilize that $685,000 and change that is available on CDBG more quickly than through our action plan process and through the budget process for our city council's general fund allocations. Hopefully that would put us in getting those funds out and being able to be used by those recipients by June 22nd. That would then be separate from our action plan process, which is detailed here, where we would go through the notice, our public comment period of 30 days, which starts on May 3rd with the public hearing on May 4th. That would allow council to approve the ordinance just for the action plan and then submit the action plan to HUD separately. Again, HUD's estimate usually is about 45 days for approval, so that gets us to our start date, which is our HUD program year of August 1st. And then we would then present those agreements to council in September. And then just as a reminder, the other general funds that are being recommended through the Human Services Advisory Committee would be approved through the general fund budget in September. So with that, we have the options that we're seeking direction on today, which is to give us the direction to proceed with our proposed recommendations as they were presented to you today and then to also include those as a substantial amendment and in an action plan. So both of those approvals today or provide us other direction if you're so inclined. Though this is a reminder of the funds that are available, this is in your backup as well. But it will be just an overview of the funds that we have existing for all of the services that are being provided through Community Services. That I'll bring the presentation down. Thank you. Okay, questions for staff, Councilmember Johnson, Councilmember Meltzer, and then Councilmember Armitter. You mentioned Fred Moore would not be included. Yes, ma'am, we're working with Fred Moore right now. There was an article in the paper recently about DISD potentially absorbing Fred Moore and absorbing those programs. They would be providing the same services at the different locations, but we're just working through to identify if Fred Moore will dissolve or will continue to operate as a nonprofit. If they do dissolve for some reason or are no longer able to be providing the services that they're recommended for, those funds would just be pulled from the recommendations for the annual budget. They are currently general funded. Okay, excuse me, are you expecting that to be dissolved? Is that what you're saying? We've been given information that that's a possibility. We're still working with Fred Moore and at NISD, so we've had conversations about what their future will look like. The services, again, will still be provided. They just may be being provided by DISD instead of the nonprofit, and so we're just working through that information. We'll provide more back to Council as soon as we have it. Thank you. Okay, Councilmember Meltzer. You're muted, sorry. Thank you. First, I'll express my thanks to the members of the community who served on the Community Development Advisory Committee and Human Services Advisory Committee and put their time into vetting all this. I appreciate that. I have some questions about the timing of all this. You mentioned the CDBG/CV funds wanting to accelerate those, but are there other items here that are more time-sensitive than others that need to be accelerated? The one that leaps to mind is, I know just from other activities that the Dent Community Food Center is dealing with about three times the client load that they expected to be by this time, and I know they're eager to get their expansion underway. I imagine there are others that are very much in the moment needing the support. Is there anything else that can be done or needs to be done in the way of accelerating the release of the funds? No, the project you mentioned was precisely why we were seeking to go ahead and expedite that because construction costs are going up and the need is there for the Dent Community Food Center, so that's precisely why we looked at it. Of course, all of the projects could use funding, but we're still under the timeline constraint that we have with getting HUD approval. They could actually approve our substantial amendment in two weeks, and we can get those out sooner, but they ask for at least 45 days for approval, so that's the timeline we provided you. Yeah. If I could just ask as a follow-up. In general, this is a very great list of worthy projects that we're unfortunately able to mostly direct federal funds toward, but the timetable is the most concerning, and I get that a lot of that is regulatorily driven, but I've seen that it's a full-year cycle from application to delivery, and then we start all over again. Are there opportunities in general to tighten up the timeline, and if so, could our own resources, in terms of people hours, be directed to other aspects of supporting the delivery of services? There are definitely opportunities to adjust the timeline to do projects. Our funding from HUD comes in annually, though, so there would be opportunities to do multi-year grants or there would be opportunities to adjust the timeline by not allocating the funding all at once so that we would space it out. There are certainly those types of things that could be done, and we can look at those, but it would still be dependent on the HUD allocation every year, so you'd be giving out funding that may or may not come from HUD in the future for some reason, so just making sure we're aware of those possibilities. With the federal funding, we're kind of locked into at least our program year timeline, which is August 1 through July currently. I'm happy already to give support for the proposal, and thanks for being willing to consider just what opportunities there are to tighten that up. It doesn't sound like there are many, but thank you. Okay. Councillor Armitage. Yeah, so first of all, thanks to Councilmembers Johnson and Meltzer for asking about Fred Moore and expediting the process. Those are two things that I was going to ask about. As far as expediting the process, I would be happy if there was any way that city funds could be kind of donated or temporarily substituted towards that end while we're waiting for that money to come in. That's something I would support. I don't know what legal restrictions there are on that, but given the need and the time sensitivity, I would support that. I was wondering, so two remaining questions. One, and of course, in case I didn't say it already, I support option number one, I support the committee's recommendation. The more we can give towards these crucial needs, the better as far as I see it. I was wondering if you could speak to FEMA reimbursement for monies already spent. Have we applied for that, and what's the process on that? If you could just speak to that, that would be helpful. I wouldn't be in the context of these recommendations. There's not any project in here that would be eligible as we understand it for FEMA, so I know that our finance staff and other teams are looking at FEMA reimbursements for other items. Again, I just wouldn't be able to speak to that specific to these funds and these recommendations. Okay. Well, actually, that is very helpful to know, so thank you for that. My other question has to do with childcare needs. I know that I recently read that due to decreased demand under COVID for pre-K childcare that the rec centers will be cutting down on childcare services, but as vaccination and herd immunity start ramping up, and our economy hopefully picks up, and people are ready to go back to childcare, can you speak to how CDBG funds could possibly be used or not to subsidize and make more affordable our own pre-K childcare at rec centers, because that need is going to go back because young children with working families and limited incomes are still there? I can't speak to it for Rick. I think you're going to say it already, Danny, but I'm going to step in here and say which allocation are you referring to on the schedule of VITS in front of us, right? So there's an exhibit. It's titled Exhibit 2, CDAC Recommendations. There's a list of 1 through 9, and then there's the HSAC Recommendations, Exhibit 3, List 1 through 10. Which one are you referring to? I'm referring to CDBG funds in general. So I wouldn't be able to speak to the recreation centers and how those could be used. CDBG funds through public services are eligible. So currently, with these recommendations and what is previously in play, we are funding 3 child care programs that are subsidized, which means they're providing some subsidy to the residents who are using those. So that's already in place. One of those is CDBG funded, Denton City County Day School. The other two are general funded, so it's eligible. With the cap on social services, CDBG funds is very limited. We can only use 15% of those funds anyway. And so with the requests and the community needs around a lot of different areas, child care is the second largest funding out of all of them, homelessness being first. So we're funding those projects. And then if you'll notice in the Human Services Grant Recommendations, Grace Like Rain switched their requests from housing assistance, eviction prevention, to child care. So that'll be additional funding for child care out of this next year's recommended funding. So again, that'll be increased funding for child care programs outside of what you've been funding currently. Thank you. That's very helpful. And so is that because United Way has been taking on more of the housing assistance funds or is that unrelated to that? No, I think it is both. It's both the increasing need for child care assistance and the work that those agencies are doing and recognition of that, but also that right now there is eviction prevention funding through the CARES Act, still the CAA, and then probably the ARP coming down the pipe. So there's just different options that are available for eviction prevention, which is a very dire need right now as a response to COVID. And so I think this is just filling that need from both perspectives. Thank you. That answer is really helpful. All right. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none. So I will just ask for if there's, so that staff can have directions they've outlined, two options, one and two, that's slide 14 on the presentation for those tracking along. And so if there's anyone adverse or against authorizing staff to execute both those requests, options one and two, give an indication that you're against those. Okay, I'm seeing none. Okay, so thank you, Danny, very much for your presentation. Both of those seem to have unanimous support. Thank you. We'll move forward. Thanks. Okay. That concludes item A. Take us to item B, which is ID 21678, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction regarding the Bowling Green Park Master Plan for property located at 2200 Bowling Green Drive, or Street. Hello, good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Adam Shorter and I'm a Recreation Supervisor for the Parks and Recreation Department. Good afternoon. Today I would also like to introduce our consultant here from Pacheco Cope, Tricia Wallover. She's been the project manager for them. And they designed and are going to present the concepts for us today of the Bowling Green Master Plan and Visionary. Bowling Green Park is located off of 2200 Bowling Green Street. Today we're seeing your input and direction in regards to the proposed conceptual designs for the park that you'll see here today. Just a little bit of information before I turn it over to Tricia. The Parks and Recreation Team, Pacheco Cope, presented the concepts to the public on Thursday, April 8th. And on Monday, April 12th, we presented to the Parks Recreation Beautification Board. We've received positive feedback from the community and park boards on these concepts and the presentation will touch on some key points for you here today. We currently have funds in the Park Dedication Fund for this and we are wanting to get the park plans shovel ready so we may seek grants for construction at a future date. So at this time, I'll turn it over to Tricia and she'll present for you. Good afternoon. This is Tricia Wallover with Pacheco Cope. Thank you for having me. I'm going to share my screen now. Okay, thank you. Again, as Adam had mentioned, we had presented our concepts to the public. This is the slide that just quickly shows a synopsis of the existing condition at the park. We wanted to make sure we made a good inventory of all the elements. We wanted to cultivate, keep, and enhance and preserve at the park, but also address areas of improvement and growth and expansion. This is the first concept we had shown them. This is the concept one that has more of a linear concept of the community garden. Here we created an approach that shows a linear approach to the garden plots. We have about a third of an acre of the garden plots, but increased the square footage to over half an acre, enabling more users to rent plots. We included raised garden beds for better accessibility and inclusivity for the community. As you see here also, we've doubled the trail and created a whole loop trail and added this new trail as a quarter amount to the existing trail system at the park. This closed loop trail should attract young bikers, walkers, families, and joggers, and we've made it wider to 10 feet for the new path as well. We've got a new parking area to the east side that added parallel parking with new curb and striping should accommodate around six to seven parking spots. You've got a covered pavilion 20 to 40 foot wide that offers shade, picnics, garden classes adjacent to the garden plots. We have included an area of fruit tree orchard, which shows about 23 here in this concept. All along the trail and all around the pavilion also, we have dotted the park with benches and trash cans to enjoy the viewing of the park and for some respite. Just to give also an idea of what these elements would look like, we've included these slides to help the neighborhood and for the board to understand what these elements could look like. These are what the images we use for our survey to give them to get feedback. This is concept two. Same as concept one, we have created a new loop trail. The new additional trail is another quarter mile, but now this loop trail again is agreeable to walkers and joggers. As in the first concept, we've added this future trail connection to the east side to take advantage of additional and future trail and open spaces. In this concept, this is a radial pattern for the argon beds. We increased the square footage of the existing beds to about half an acre and we've also included ADA raised guard beds throughout the whole edge of the back curve, back here. We have added angled parking with striping here that should add about 10 parking spots for the park. In the center here, we've got a 40 by 40 covered pavilion for shade, picnics and garden classes. Just south of that, we've created a whole fruit tree orchard and here we've shown about 30 in this concept and just to the west of that, we have a nut tree orchard and we've got about 17 here. We've also included a whole row of traditional trees for added comfort and shade along the trail. In all the concept, we've placed ventures and trees and treasure septicoles in select areas. Again, these are some precedent images of what these elements could be and helps them decide what images and what these things could be and how they could vote and see if any of these images can speak to them. This is concept three. This is the larger, more elements that we've included in this concept as in the other two. The trail here is a bit different. We've made it a bit longer and used quite a bit of real estate and added it all the way up to the north end and this created an additional third of a mile trail, but as in the others, we've continued that connection to the east side. The garden plots here is quite a bit larger as well. We have the larger square footage in this curvilinear garden bed, increased square footage for about an acre for this one and created a whole area for the ADA, accessibility gardens for right adjacent to our new fruit garden orchard on the right. We've got a head-end parking with striping for this concept and this created a whole larger parking area with 13 spots. This also has the largest covered pavilion area, which is about 50 foot in diameter with a canvas pavilion that comes in a variety of colors and formations and again, we've added quite a bit more shade trees and opportunities for benches and trash receptacles and these are some of those images that relates to those elements. In this concept as well, we've included in the middle a labyrinth. In general, this is in a meditative space, so we wanted to be sure we located away from the main activity space and thought it would be nice to have it under the largest tree in the center of the park and this is again, some images of what this labyrinth could be. This is the survey we had given the community and we had a good response as far as getting feedback from the community and also during our meeting with the park and with the chat, we had a good response with concept one and two and was pretty much 50/50 as far as getting, you know, wanting first and second concept, but we realized during our discussions and also with the park that concept two was the most favorable and also during our discussions and all the comments, we saw that the loop trail in concept three was the most favorable, so we think that we should go with the third loop trail concept and incorporate that with concept two. In all cases, they really liked having the ADA raised garden beds and making sure that we improve all the garden plots. They didn't like any of the fabric, the fabric concepts in three and they made sure to note that in any case, they liked having a pavilion, but didn't really matter to them what kind it was just as long as there was one and that it wasn't concept three. Another major point they wanted to make sure was the connections to the crossings at Windsor and making sure that there were other connections to other parks in the area and they had mentioned that there wasn't really some trails in their neighborhoods, so they were really appreciative of having the trail loop and making sure that there's connections to other parts of the park. They were really appreciative of having more site furnishings for the park and then when they were making their selections, it seemed to us that all the selections were leaning towards benches that have backs and same thing with the trash receptacles, all the responses were for receptacles that had covered receptacles and in general, everyone is really receptive to having and thankful that they were part of and included in their comments and in the process. With the park board comments, again, their main comments were making sure that the connections with the overall trail system, that we continue to have connectivity to the other parks in the trail system and again, also to keep providing all those places of respite with the benches and the trash receptacles, especially when you've got different ages that use the park. I know the park has had a great program with making sure and updating all the parks with ADA accessibility, so they were really excited and happy that they were continuing that with this park as well. It was also common in making sure that whatever concept that we selected, there was opportunity for expansion and again, they were excited that we had engaged the community in this process and hopefully, this was again, part of future processes. This is where we are now taking your comments and hopefully, then once we get everybody's comments, your comments as well, we'll take all of this information and then we'll come up with one cohesive plan and take that to final construction plans. Thank you again. Let me know if there's any questions. Okay, thank you and if we can pull down the presentation, thank you. Great. Questions for staff. Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Thank you, Mayor. Two questions. I'll go ahead and pose them both and you can answer them how you see fit, but the first one is, can you walk us through why the parking options are married to each of the concepts, why we can't get 13 spots into concept two or why concept one only has five spots, just the way those design elements work together and how we end up with that number of parking spots and then two, it might be my fault for missing it, but was there any positive community feedback at all for the labyrinth idea to me? It seems like a nice thing, but a lot of upkeep, one more thing to maintain and probably not a lot of folks. I don't know if there's a labyrinth appreciation society in Denton, I've never run into them. I'm familiar with a number of churches that have put in prayer labyrinths and after a while they just turn into another maintenance item. They just don't get the use you really expect to see from them. So those are my two questions. So to answer the first question, we can certainly use any of the parking schemes in all the options. I just wanted to show all three and that you are able to have all three options in three different configurations. And so I know that there, we didn't do a study as far as how much and how often people parked and needed to be there and we didn't know what the actual needs were for the park. And so we wanted to give that option. For the second question, the labyrinth, I know that was something that was brought up to us that, and we had just only shown that the results that 50% did not want it, but there was definitely some comments that wanted them. But like you said, there is a maintenance to that, especially with where we would want them and, but you know, if that's something that the council is willing to want to include in the program, we can definitely include it. Mayor, city council, Gary back and director parks integration, mayor pro tem Davis. We have had two people specifically ask about it, a labyrinth in our park master plan discussions. So not that we've had a lot of engagement or even really talked about it and provided opportunities for options. This is really the first time we've actually shown anything on a drawing, two people ask about it in the park system. The actual results is actually that 50% did not want them. Okay. Thank you. Mayor, can I ask a quick follow up on that? Certainly. Just a short comment. Yeah. The other thing I've also heard from the neighborhood is a desire for this park not to be over paved, you know, not too many solid surfaces, not too many covered surfaces. And I think you probably heard that in the community meeting too. So if there's a group out there that really would like to see a labyrinth, maybe someplace else where we have a little bit more real estate. Okay. Other questions for staff? Councilmember Melton, then Councilmember Armitage. A lot of really imaginative stuff here and I so appreciate the way that you, you know, pull in the community into this. There's a little bit of a counterpoint to the not paving too much, I know people also really like trails, I agree with the not paving too much, by the way. And I think people will use perimeter trail. I just, just a personal observation, I went to McKenna Park yesterday, the day before, and enjoyed using as much of the perimeter trail there as has been completed. So, I wonder about the 10 foot proposed width, for the portions that are 10 foot, and that's not all of it at McKenna Park, it feels a little more like a road, I wonder what the rationale is for that, if that's for vehicle access, wouldn't sort of 4 foot, 6 foot be more a typical like pedestrian or jogging trail? Mayor Gary Pack and again, our standard for our trails are 10 foot. Some communities have 12 foot trails and obviously there's some areas where you can't fit that wide of a trail. Sometimes you have people riding bikes and walking at the same time and so providing opportunities for people to pass is a consideration. But there are certain areas that we may only have eight foot trails, for sure. So that's, that's great feedback and we could definitely look at that to see if that would help as well, you know, try to reduce some of the concrete, but that's the rationale for trying to have a larger pathway so people can multipurpose those trails. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so question about ADA access and apologies if this was already clear, but you know, would you say that any one of the models one, two or three is more ADA accessible than the other? I know you mentioned ADA access in all of them. They all appear to have features and if this came before our committee on, our council advisory committee on persons with disabilities, which model they thought most ADA accessible? I know that that was their number, the city staff's number one priority and so we made sure that each one of these concepts were ADA accessible so I wouldn't and couldn't say that one was more ADA accessible than the other so that was our number one goal to make sure that that was their the highest priority. Awesome, thank you and I really appreciate that. Did it come before and maybe it's a question for city staff, is it come before the committee on persons with disabilities yet or is there a plan for that to come to them after it's been to council? Councilmember Armitage, Gary Pack and that is something we have not done yet, but we can do that in the next few steps. As we go through the approval and feedback process, we are conducting an ADA transition plan for the city, specifically for parks, all of our parks and buildings and trails to make sure that they're ADA compliant if they're not, they're being noted where changes need to occur so that is definitely a high priority for us to make sure all of our facilities are acceptable and compatible with the ADA. Okay, thank you, sorry. This is Sarah, I just want to reiterate though that part of that 10 foot trail issue is also for the purposes of ADA. So if you can picture someone that has mobility challenges in a wheelchair, you want to give them as much room on both sides. So that's another reason why the 10 foot trail, albeit concrete, is preferred. Thank you. Thank you and just to follow up, I really appreciate that I'm excited about the ADA process and these proposals, you know, I would want to know which they, that committee in particular thinks is the best planner if they have any other suggestions and I'll just put a word in, be curious what the committee would think about the labyrinth idea as something that is, that might be appealing and especially accessible to neurodivergent kids who, you know, would be more likely to meander around the outskirts. I'm not pretending to be an expert on that, just as a parent, you know, and a neurodivergent person myself, that is something that, you know, neurodivergent kids maybe like to do. So I'd be curious to know, you know, what the committee would think of that, but I really do, you know, find these proposals all exciting and I am really excited about the ADA access in them. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Yes, yes sir, Mr. Packett. Mayor, just to add one other comment, we do have some funding for this project improvement, but we do not have all the funding that would be needed to start construction. Our goal with this project as well as the next presentation you're about to hear with Villages of Carmel is to use the funding we have as a match and get these shovel ready so we could go out and find grants to help us build the facilities and try to find that additional funding source. So we have something that's more competitive that is basically on the shelf on the desk ready to go that we could start construction and go out to bid, you know, immediately after grant approval. So our goal is to get these two projects, you know, if they're approved, we'd move forward with construction drawings and have them ready for future grants, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and wherever we could find support to help build those projects. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Any other questions for staff? Okay, I have a couple. If you could help me understand that connectivity to Windsor, what do we envision there? So if we adopt the larger loop, so I don't have a map that shows the fireside development, but I think there's sidewalk all along there, right? So I envision something getting the map in front of me, I envision something at the corner of Hinkle and Windsor, then maybe at the end, you have that ditch there, obviously, so either to the east or west of that ditch, something kind of in the middle, and then maybe something closer to the neighborhood, maybe closer to Parkside, not all the way there. But so there's three segments is what I envision. But what do you envision as far as opportunities across Windsor to get to North Lake Park? Mayor, this is Drew Huppen, Assistant Director of Parks. We actually have construction documents for the Windsor section to connect to Bowling Green. We've never had funding in the past to be able to connect this. We didn't show it in this plan because we wanted to really focus on Bowling Green Park, but we plan on connecting the trail from Bowling Green up to Windsor, going both east and west to connect one to North Lakes. We'll have a crossing there at Parkside into the North Lakes Rec Center and North Lakes Park. We'll then go east to Fireside, connect over the little bridge that you just talked about and connect to the sidewalks that Fireside put in during their construction. And then we have been in talks with Traffic and of course Capital Projects about the potential of a hawk signal and mid-block crossing there at where Bowling Green and North Lakes kind of meet at Windsor for a potential crossing there. Got it. Okay. Yeah, that I'd be supportive of that. And then, yeah, so I think that's everything for me. And then so for my peers to frame the discussion. So the feedback is concept two with the larger trail of concept three, that loop trail. And so my question is, is there anyone adverse to those two options? Obviously there's a few more segments of this, but I want to kind of parse it out so that we can stay focused and give clear directions. So is there anyone adverse to concept two with a concept three larger trail? Seeing none. Okay. And then the next question before us is, I think the 10-foot trail width has been addressed, but by all means, as we get through this, if there's someone that still wants to have a smaller trail, say so. But I think the other decision point is parking design. And so looking at the presentation, I've tried to number them at slide five, slide eight, and slide 11. Those are the three kind of looks at the different parking lots. So I want to give staff some kind of indication of where we fall on preferences there. So is there anyone that would want to voice a preference, either concept one, again, slide five, concept two, slide eight, or concept three, slide 11? Mayor Pro Tem Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I think overall concept, I prefer concept two as a community did, but parking configuration, I think concept three is right on the money. Right now, a lot of folks will park on the street for playground access. If there's not a good sidewalk straight shot to the playground, they're going to continue parking on the street that may be safe for now. But of course, we'd rather have them off the street and use the street for driving and not for parking. Some folks are going to continue to park on the street. That's just how it works. But I prefer as much parking as we can get into an aesthetically pleasing plan. Okay. So as a discussion point, Councilmember Armitage. And I'll just state they all seem to have their pros to me. I would need to know the Committee on People with Disabilities take on precisely that question to decide. That's what would help me determine on that point. Okay. So as a discussion point, there's Mayor Pro Tem Davis has thrown out so that we can give some level of direction today. There's concept three, which is indicated on both slide 11 and slide 12. And so is there any one that would be have a different opinion as far as which parking scheme works best or a preference? Okay. Seeing none. So that would, Gary, that so minus one, there's a majority that would be in line with concept three parking, as I understand it. And then I'll give another opportunity. Is there anyone that's averse to the 10 foot? Yes, sir. Mr. Huffman. Mayor Drew Huffman, Assistant Director again, just to help clarify some of the conversation about the parking, no matter how many spaces we could put in there, really, it just involves how we stripe it that parking's already available. And then depending on, you know, we went with 13 spaces, then we would go to the committee on disabilities and, you know, ask them would to be sufficient or would you like three? And then the only thing would change was probably would probably be the pavement in that area of those three spots, we would have to make sure they were all AD accessible. And that's really not much of a cost difference in the end. So great. Thank you. Mr. Meltzer, Yeah, I would just say on the trails, many thoughtful response staff, but, you know, as long as we're going back to the committee on persons with disability, and that seems to drive the wider with, you know, input from that group would, you know, would be very important. Okay. Great. Thank you. And so is there anyone that has another comment for staff on the width of the sidewalk we've narrowed it to that, just kind of want to make sure staff has those notes with respect to input input from this body with respect to the sidewalks. Okay, seeing none. Okay, so, Gary, to recap, this is what I show I show a preference for our majority support for concept to with the concept three loop trail, then with respect to the parking option it would be the option three parking with an understanding that there will be some adjustments based on feedback, and then the, the trail with understanding the default is 10 foot, but if the community apartment, the committee on disabilities has different feedback force you'll bring that back. Absolutely. Great. Okay. Well, any other comments for staff before we close this item. Seeing none. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tricia, Adam. Appreciate the presentation. Okay, then, and I guess we'll do it all over again. So I have item C ID 21680 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the villages of Carmel master plan for the park property located at 5493 Edwards Road. Mayor City Council Gary pack and director parking recreation, Chris Escada is going to be bringing up the PowerPoint, but I wanted to let you know you're seeing maybe Tim and Chris for the first time. During coven, we have had staff work in numerous non traditional places over the course of the last year. And then one thing that we've done to really help our staff develop and grow in different areas that they're not used to doing is giving them opportunities to to work in some of those different areas. And both of these gentlemen have offered to help out with park development projects. So they're learning this, these opportunities for a different section of our parks department and a different section of our industry. So it's really broadening their experience and we've had staff across the organization doing this. So these aren't the only two people on our team that are that are learning more outside of their standard role. So I just wanted to, to, you know, applaud them for getting outside of the comfort zone and working on these projects and it gives an opportunity to to run a public meeting, you know, talk to city council park board and and work for with consultants as well. So we're proud of of all of our staff and what they're working on today and allowing them to grow outstanding. That's great. Thank you very much for that. And that's I applaud that those efforts. Thank you, Gary. As good afternoon, Mayor City Council, as Gary mentioned, my name is Chris Escoto. I'm a recreation supervisor with parks. Today we have a presentation for the villages are Carmel property located at 54 93 Edwards Road. We are seeking your input and direction regarding the proposed conceptual designs for this property that you see today. I am joined by our consultants ValleyQuest designs and today I'm joined by Jeremy Blatt and Michelle Davis. We currently do have funds, as Gary mentioned, available in our park dedication fund. We are wanting to get those plans shovel ready, so we may seek some grants at a future date. We have held a virtual public meeting in a park sport meeting similar to the Bowling Green project. Overall, the feedback has been positive in our consultants will highlight those key points for you today. At the end of the presentation, we will open it up for your feedback. And with that, I will turn it over to Jeremy and Michelle Davis from ValleyQuest designs. Hello, my name is Jeremy Blatt. I'm joined by my colleague Michelle Davis and we are happy to be here with you today and happy to be working on this project. Many of you may know this site but it is a small one so maybe not it's down in the southeast sector of the city. We've put together just a quick summary of the goals that we tried to accomplish for this project. Of course, the city, the parks staff provides us plenty of input and direction to go by and we try to summarize that and put it into, I guess, a form that is achievable that everyone can sort of latch onto and understand. So these four principal goals that you see off to the right-hand side is kind of a distillation of our discussions and work sessions with park staff. Number one being to preserve the existing cross timbers habitat and especially the post oak woodland. You can see that this site is generously covered with that type of habitat. Second is to create small areas of active recreation, in other words, playgrounds for the local children to use. The third one is to allow for flexible passive recreation such as seeding, picnicking, and of course walking and other trail type uses that we'll get into. You'll see here an analysis map of the park site here at the corner of Edwards Road and Swisher Road. It's directly adjacent to the villages of Carmel neighborhood. There you see to the west and then some more low density residential all around. You've got to preserve at Pecan Creek. In the bottom right inset, you can see our map where we've laid out a five and 10 minute walking radius. So you can see it captures pretty well a lot of single family residential, including some apartment dwellings as well there to the northeast -- sorry, northwest. The site is, as I mentioned, typified by native hardwoods, mostly post oak woodland. It's a relatively steep site for the city of Denton. We've highlighted the high point there kind of in the middle and it radiates downward towards Swisher Road. There's a proposed arterial road post oak boulevard that is part of the transportation plan which we understand may come through this area in the future and we've shown that to the west of the park site. The site doesn't have much existing development on it. There is one existing barn which is in relatively decent shape and we will discuss that here in just a minute. Otherwise, there's a few small debris piles and things like that, but it's mostly native woodland. This diagram shows really what we start to frame out as our trail and walking circulation. The reason that this was important for us to do and study is because of all the existing trees and our desire to not -- really not lose any of them, especially the hardwoods, as well as to provide ADA access was to actually go out and walk the site and that's why you get sort of this irregular trail in a -- I guess you could say a winding or meandering fashion because we're really trying to weave in and amongst the trees as well as in some of the steeper areas, we have to switch back a little bit to make up some of that grade. This first option, concept design one, centers around the existing barn that you see there in the center of the site and so as we go into a little more detail, you'll see how we're sort of clustering the development in that area. We've also shown similar to what we've seen previously a potential parking lot and we're showing two locations for that. Those locations are not necessarily tied to the concepts that we're showing. We've just given a provision in case that is a desired use for this site. I'll turn the time over to my colleague, Michelle, and she can go walk you through some of the details of the project. >> Yeah. So what you're seeing here is a little more fleshed out concept of the diagram that Jeremy just talked over and so a few things that I just want to point out on this is what you'll see on the left-hand side is that future post oak boulevard right-of-way that's kind of ghosted in and so we want to make sure that we're acknowledging that and then also with a future right-of-way sidewalk that there will be a connection from that into the park and so we have that and then also what you'll see scattered around the park site are these wildflower pocket areas which are in these openings which we'll see in just a second within the tree canopy to allow for this vibrancy that comes with being in nature and being in the woods and then as Jeremy mentioned on this particular concept which is concept one, the park, pavilion, and the playground are all very centrally located around that existing barn and we have two different types of treatments for that barn that we'll dive into a little bit more in a second but we we did want to try to utilize that existing barn because we did have a structural engineer come out on site and he said that other than a few minor things it's in really it's in good shape to convert into a pavilion. So moving on to the next slide what you'll see here is the existing tree canopy coverage and basically it's heavily wooded and so the entire playgrounds would be covered by tree canopy coverage so you wouldn't really have to worry too much about children getting burned on the playground equipment or getting overheated in the hot Texas sun you'll have that nice shade as you walk through the trails and really get this feeling of being in the woods and also with because it is heavily wooded and we want to maintain good safety and everything too it would be maintained and limbed up in such a manner that you would still have site visibility. So taking a closer look at this is concept 1a so the first treatment of how we could utilize the existing barn and so this one is a little more putting you into the woods feel with having like the pavement being kind of representative of being a tree canopy having some wood ramp ADA accessible ramps into a more picnic area within the barn and then something that you'll see on both concept 1a and 1b is this bench seating at a window cutout with you know more children doing remote learning and stuff you know maybe they'll want to be out in nature and enjoy the sunshine or have science class outside so we're proposing having a bench seating that could look out onto the park might be able to bring your laptop out and do homework or if you're a parent and you need to work but your children want to go play on the playground you could still have those sight lines onto the playground but be on your computer and having that and then also what you'll see is that with these playground shapes they are very heavily designed from maintaining that existing tree canopy we didn't want to knock down any trees so that kind of is how the form of these playgrounds took shape and on this particular concept you'll also see some playground equipment that has like musical elements and more modern to kind of bring in that musical element of ditten and musicality of being in the wilderness and then looking at concept 1b this is a similar the playground similar what's different about this one is a more linear approach to the interior of the barn so still with an ADA accessible ramp that goes down into a larger picnic area a little more modern feeling with modern different play equipment on this one as well and also something worth mentioning on both of these concepts is that you will see these boulders on the playground and those are existing boulders that are on site that we want to utilize to help help with the grading that's on there to maintain that grade and then also just give this fun naturalistic element that kids could enjoy as we've mentioned previously we did have the idea to maintain and keep the existing barn but then convert it into a essentially a usable park pavilion so these are a few images that we've showed during our presentations just to show some of the possibilities and some of the ways that this has been done before we also took the liberty of doing some renderings of how the existing barn that is on the site could be treated in this way and essentially turned into that useful pavilion obviously we would want to do everything we could to make it safe and usable so we're proposing to make sort of large cut out window areas removing walls in some places and allowing that nice open feel but also dressing it up with a few wood paneling accents and new canopies and shed roofs this gives a view looking into the side one of the few really the only recommendation for structural shoring was to add a few of these knee braces that you see here but the thought really was to cut away that galvanized metal in a lot of places to open up the view and make this really have an open air feel to it concept two then departs from the existing the use of the existing barn and proposes to create a new structure as we thought about doing this we the concept was to use that open space available after the demolition of the existing barn and use that for our playground since it now becomes essentially the largest open area on the site and to put the new shade structure off to the west a little bit a little bit closer to the road a little bit closer to the neighborhood for that increased visibility yeah so again this is a more conceptualized image of the diagram that Jeremy just showed and you'll see again that that ghosted in feature right away for the post of boulevard the wildflower pockets still within those canopy openings and then a larger playground with a secondary playground on this option which we'll take a closer look at and again the again you'll see that it's very heavily canopy covered you won't have to worry too much about getting overheated on the playground in the hot Texas sun the nice shade from the post oaks so taking a closer look at this option we do get to have a larger playground because we would be taking away that existing barn and this would allow for like a separation of ages so you'd have a two to five-year-old playground and then a five to twelve-year-old again if this would be accessible to with different accessible play elements ground elements accessible ramps throughout and then also maintaining sightlines for supervisors who might have like kids that are in playing on the two to five-year-old play equipment and five to twelve be able to just maintain those sight lines and then with this option we'd have a more prefabricated shade structure with a picnic area so kind of the one more of the standard ones you would see in parks generally and then having a secondary playground that would have utilizing those boulders for this climbing boulder element and as you'll see on the sides for this option we did show more of natural play type of play equipment to really bring in that woodsy nature feel and then to the north you'll see this option of an amphitheater so you could take kids outside to like have outdoor reading areas or give again if you're doing remote learning could give classes outside that just teach your children about nature have a little story time as mentioned the shade structure on this one is much more or likely to be a more of a traditional park pavilion there are some interesting more custom options oftentimes dictated by budget but again the thought is that the existing barn is quite large and if if we're able to keep that you know that's a nice big pavilion the same amount of budget will stretch a little bit not stretch quite as far as far as size on the pavilion so just wanted to point that out again just a refreshment of the three different options 1a 1b and concept 2 as we attended the and presented at the public meeting we had at the public meeting we had 36 attendees we felt like it was well attended and and the public seemed to be engaged a summary of the comments that we received there you can see here we definitely got a lot of comments about safety reusing the existing barn was definitely viewed favorably and there was quite a bit of commenting around the post oak boulevard unfortunately what that's not necessarily in the purview of this project and not all of the answers are known at this time but that that was raised as a concern we presented to the parks recreation and beautification board on the 12th comments there centered around access and again existing reusing the existing barn honoring using it or or highlighting it as honoring the culture and providing maybe different community activities to be used there and to tell a story of the site again concerns about the topography and the accessibility were raised as well as safety using the existing boulders on the property was also well received and there was a suggestion to combine elements from various options such as using the existing barn from one and the nature of themed playground from another and i'll get into that a little bit as we discuss the summary of our survey feedback as of yesterday midday we've had 68 participants feedback so far you can see here that most people did agree with our stated goals on the concepts 1a and 1b received a lot of support and on question three you'll see that the existing barn an option that keeps the existing barn received a lot of support as well question four was heavily in favor of nature themed play and so what we read what how we interpret that is that while we showed these things separately on different concepts there's definitely a desire and an ability for us to combine different elements the way we read this is that people are in favor of keeping the existing barn but going with more of a nature themed play you'll also see i'll just jump real quick to question eight there was a lot of comments about the amphitheater so while that was in concept two that's something that we can definitely incorporate into more of a concept one design that features the existing barn on question five you'll see that large play structures swings and boulders were fairly heavily favored and that's to be expected some of the more some of the more traditional things but boulders are definitely an interesting thing that children seem to enjoy there was fairly even support but a little bit more support i suppose for the small parking lot inclusion on this site again as i mentioned uh pretty heavy support for more of a nature uh nature nature native uh woodland type theme to the playground equipment and then some of the other notable things that were brought up um again was security uh you can see some of the comments here the amphitheater was well liked some people asked about a restroom the naturalistic feel and then a few other comments by just a few participants about playground surfacing dog feet dog friendly features and sports components i will point out that um the the side i forgot to mention earlier the sidewalks are 10 feet wide on this project as well i know that that's uh that's always going to be a question and and of course the desire to make everything uh ad accessible that concludes our presentation great thank you very much i appreciate that uh questions for staff uh councillor melzer yeah i think you've already got great feedback uh from the community and from the perch board that resonate with all of that uh one bit of uh input that i got was that the barn which uh i think is a great idea uh it's going to turn into a big sale so you need metal plates not just nails to hold it down i passed that along and no extra charge okay uh other questions for oh drew did you have something to add yes sir mayor council drew help and assistant director uh just to help ease your mind on that we did have a structural engineer uh look at that barn and that's what the concepts were of making sure that we added the knee braces and and all those good things to make sure that that barn was was stable and uh the barn is is is really has no historical value even though it's a really nice facility and it would cost a lot of money to build that size of a pavilion so we wanted to make sure that we looked at you know how can we you know add cost savings with something that we already have and the engineer really anticipated that barn you know a good guess that it's only about 20 to 30 years old at the most so it's still uh adds an element of authenticity just like the boulders do creates a gathering space has shade yes sir it does and it's very large so it it really adds to that space so thanks your inventory of places people can gather to do things okay other questions for staff councilman armature thank you i too am really excited about about this park idea i love the barn idea and i i love all of um the public feedback that went into this and appreciate it as as with my comments on the other park brought forward to us today i would just love to know uh you know which which of the options available the committee on persons with disabilities uh prefers that that said i really appreciate the conscientiousness about access for kids and families with disabilities given to this park proposal as well so i'm excited about this one looking forward to hearing the input of that committee okay other questions for staff councilman baker i was noticing that uh pecan creek elementary uh how far is this uh park from from the uh distance from it i'm trying to get my bearings exactly where where y'all are talking about it it is right on the i guess you could say the edge of that 10-minute walk um unfortunately or it's just that area hasn't developed quite enough to where there's a direct connection to it necessarily a sidewalk uh that swisher road does not have a sidewalk in this location so i believe the walk would probably take longer than 10 minutes but it is within that uh that radius or on just on the outskirts of it just just to add to that um one of the discussions was to put a temporary trail down the uh post oak right away that could go down uh and help improve that connection to the elementary school and really provide a connection to the the neighbors on the south side of that property so we could utilize that right away with you know just a very basic uh 10-foot gravel pathway uh that that way there's not a huge investment if it did turn into a road then it would be removed but that's an opportunity that could be added as well okay thank you councilman baker you have a follow-up question oh uh no that that clarified it thank you very much i appreciate it yes sir any other questions for staff let me see if there's a councilmember johnson all right i think the barn idea is a great idea and that will add to the look and then the second that is because it saves money so i think that would be excellent okay yes uh any other questions first go around seeing none okay councilmember armature uh yeah i just wanted to mention since you brought it up i really appreciated the idea about the temporary uh gravel uh path uh connecting the elementary school um you know my kids i grew up here in denton uh walking to the elementary school near us uh by going through one or two depending on their choice uh public parks and it just makes a world of difference for quality of life and safety uh so i hope that that temp that that that temporary um path becomes something permanent i think kids and families will really love it okay other questions for staff uh so i'll start there with my questions gary i have a little bit of a concern with that temporary path because are you saying that would go down and connect with swisher uh that would actually go i'm sorry go ahead uh major hoping it would connect from pocker's page to edward's let me look there bear with me got it okay but with respect to the school though the people are talking about it connecting with the school and it's so some point you have to go it would be really it would we would have to work out details on how to connect there's really not a good connection with the the narrowness that swisher has off of pocker's page to be able to safely connect and as you know when you come off of pocker's page on the swisher there's somewhat of a blind turn there and then you you know kind of you know dogleg to the right to connect to the school school's entrance so it really the idea was maybe a a temporary path to help connect people in the neighborhood area not so much just the school uh in all honesty i don't see with the you know time constraints since the school has a you know a 15 to 20 a 10 minute walk you know a normal walk for for students normally takes a little longer you know due to the amount of of kids in each class so that walk would probably extend a 15 to 20 minutes there 20 minutes back and that that doesn't give them a lot of you know a large time to actually play at the you know at the park but it would serve a really good connectability be able to get over to you know pocker's page and then those residents that live south of pocker's page and the the residents that live on the south end of villages of carmel okay got it uh yeah so that i just wanted to make sure we're clear so i'm tracking with you that's it's yeah that that swisher is treacherous for cars uh let alone humans uh and so uh that's i would navigate for kids walking that way so thank you very much for that uh then uh help me understand that road that ultimately is kind of sticking out into design is that maria is that marina is that the road we're talking about marina dry i see i see chris nodden yes marina dead ends to what what we're calling the future posto yes sir perfect okay that's helpful and then um from for whoever wants to speak to this obviously i support maintaining the trees can you talk to me about processes construction equipment to make sure nothing gets damaged as we're kind of we feel good about the path and the spacing to maintain the trees and at the same time get the work done yes sir what we did before we ever started is we had a a complete tree survey done on this property it gives us an exact location of each tree gives a you know what the tree is what the diameter is at this time uh that was handed over to valley quest and when they did the did the design they made sure that as the trail weaves through the trees they won't be impacted during construction so this would this would really be done in a a very uh you know a hands-on project it would be done with you know kind of what they call kid gloves you know we would we would go in with really small equipment and install and the way it would the way it would be designed is that it would almost really lay on top of the ground versus having the course you know what you see in typical construction where you you know dig out remove everything and then put it back in this would almost just really lay on on the top of the existing down okay that's helpful thank you and then i this is not for today but just a note obviously with that future edwards road if that were to materialize i'd like to have like this body or the future body to have a conversation on that sidewalk and see if we can maybe get creative so that it matches the theme better right so you know just kind of so that there's a blend uh obviously again that's not a conversation for today but wanted to note it before i forgot um and so that is all the questions i had question any other questions for staff seeing none okay so i'll frame where we are so it seems like there's a lot of support voiced and from the community with respect to the layout of of 1a that that incorporates the barn but then in addition so there's a plus the to add in the nature theme right which i which i heard is doable and then there's also an addition to fold in the amphitheater feature uh and so that's what i've heard so the before us as a body i need to hear those that would descent from that idea so just to let me get back there so that we're all on the same page concept 1a is slide it's early on um slide seven no i stand corrected uh so that's slide eight if you if you recall so um slide eight little unique shape pavilion thing or it maintains the existing uh barn shape uh and it's not the rectangular one so so slide eight just is easiest reference with the nature theme and and a amphitheater is what's before us any dissenting opinions on that idea okay great so that's good and then let's talk about parking lot so if you look at slide five one parking lot is proposed right at that marina street stub out um and then uh there's slide 13 which is on the east side um and so i'll just say i lean towards the slide five option because it's that stub out if the road comes it's already kind of there and if we do the temporary trail it's already there so that's kind of and as you're coming through the neighborhood you park it and you kind of enter in that way uh versus entering off a swisher trying to navigate to the other side but i'll take your thoughts or discussion around parking lot so that staff can have some feedback mayor just just uh add a comment to that so if if that um that parking lot would be most likely temporary if the roast oak did happen that would go away yes um so is is there anyone that that's uh adverse to that proposal again it's it's all going to go through through the community with disabilities and go through some other processes but that's what's proposed before us today and so it's again it's five is further away on the east east side yes and then there's 13 which is uh proposed closer to the neighborhood at marina drive so i'm gonna for sake of to to have something to disagree with i'm gonna say i prefer 13 it's closer to the neighborhood uh in in harm's way if the if the road comes through understood that but but at the same time i think it just kind of flows better uh for for use but is there anyone that would prefer it the parking lot either the area they've described or in a different area councilor armature again i i would go by uh the input of the committee on persons with disabilities when they have it okay well all right got it thank you councilor ron i think uh the uh having the parking lot on the east side makes more sense because it is a more of a permanent long-term facility and as long as that road is not put in we can have walking paths that the neighborhood would come in from if you're coming from the neighborhood you're more likely to be walking in um so i think along swisher road makes more sense okay uh others i need to mayor pro tem davis i agree with that as well and just from the slides not having the uh not having tree survey in front of me i think we maybe miss a few few more trees if we go with the area that uh on the east because i think that at least part of that area that we're talking about was slated for you know maybe wildflower meadow or whatever that already had maybe fewer trees so just back of the cocktail napkin tree survey i think we miss fewer we miss more trees if we go on the east side got it and i think the back of the cocktail napkin tree survey is an underutilized tool council member melzer yeah i would just uh say that would be the guidance is is we're concerned about tree preservation so do the actual looking and you know i trust that you'd be you know guided by that as well as the uh persons with disabilities and can we sort of adopt as a way of working going forward that we'll just we'll hit clpd before we come to council okay um and that's a that's a yes so we can have that discussion but i take your point on this item and any other thoughts on just feedback for staff on the uh okay okay thank you and then anyone else thoughts for staff okay so uh i'll jump on to the other you know that same option of what's less invasive and gives us a permanent option you know i was thinking the less permitted option works but i'll flip to give us a consensus uh to the whatever permanent option that's less invasive to the trees and is approved by the community the committee on disabilities so uh gary your thoughts are we missing anything no i think we have some good notes and we will go back and make some adjustments and provide that back to the the groups for continued feedback and eventual adoption by council okay great thank you very much thank you jeremy and is it michelle am i close yes all right great and good job chris thank y'all very much thank you so much thank you uh okay then uh the next item is probably going to take us a little time to discuss uh that's the heartley field road project so let's do this let's take a um 10-ish minute break come back at 3 45 we'll take that up uh and so we'll be take a brief recess that it's now 3 33 we'll be back at 3 45 to take up item d okay welcome back to this meeting of the denton city council it is 348 pm we are picking back up on our work sessions getting ready to start item d i'll call that item it's id 21383 receive a report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the the heartley field development project and the request for consideration of a public improvement district and before staff gets started i want to kind of frame this so that we're all of one mind or as best as humanly possible um this is a discussion on or the decision before us is it's kind of uh a few things the council set forth parameters this project meets those parameters to be discussed as a pid opportunity uh so that's why it's before us one two it's not to decide the layout of the the project it's to decide if we want to move forward in this process so it meets the qualifications do we want to move forward to discussion that would then trigger the the studies the research that sort of thing and obviously that process took uh six months or so uh with the hill wood uh project the hunter and cold ranch so that's kind of the the the discussion and the decision before us not to lay out the design that sort of thing that would come later uh this is really before us to say do we want to move forward based based on the parameters we set out for a pid opportunity so i just want us to be um of one mind best we can as we go and kind of consume this information and shape our questions and then staff i'll ask you to hold us accountable if there's something that falls outside of that process just succinctly let us know so that we can stay on task okay councilman armature you have a question for staff oh i just wanted to say that i think we should only limit ourselves uh to uh subject matter that uh pertains to the posted discussion topic i i don't think we should have to uh limit ourselves any further than that i think that's important i don't remember the emails to be received certainly and i don't think that i've said anything different uh this is what we're asked to discuss today so um it's not to discuss the layout uh that you won't find that in there because so anyway uh the the density and all that is one thing but where the houses go is a is a separate matter uh but uh i will turn it over to staff very good afternoon mayor and council members joseph rogers director of economic development and here with me is julie wyatt one of our senior planners from our development services department who will uh will be tag teaming this presentation and switching back and forth and then i'll also let you know we'll pause at one point with the staff presentation and turn it over to our developers who are on the line with us as well and so forgive me as i'm flipping back and forth but we'll go ahead and get started with the staff presentation so as mayor hudspeth indicated our goal today is to give you an overview um a summary of the proposed heartley field development just to provide some context to the related requests that we've received and then we're seeking council direction to move forward um with the project so today's presentation um i will take you through an introduction of the project a brief overview of the requests that are being made by the developer our process moving forward we'll pause then and go through the developer presentation and then we'll come back um and talk direction and next steps so just to introduce this project to make sure that we all are are starting from the same uh ground floor here heartley field um when we talk about that project we're talking about a specific piece of property that's an 800 acre site situated in the northeast sector of the city so if you're looking at the map right here this is fm 428 um and this is the site um out here outlined in yellow this property was annexed in the city in 2005 and it received the interim zoning designation of rd 5x it was transitioned in 2019 to rural residential or rr zoning the discussion today will center on a developer proposal to create a 1300 plus home highly amenitized development with a dedicated school site significant green space and preserve the history and nature of the site the reason that we're before you today a little bit outside of our typical process is that the developer is requesting consideration of three key items those are the comprehensive plan amendment the plan development zoning and a public improvement district because we uh as a staff need uh direction on sort of all of these but primarily on the public improvement district um and each requires really a significant amount of developer and staff time and resources um it was consistent with the public improvement district guidelines to bring it to council for direction at this point so in accordance with that pit policy um staff requested the developer to complete this initial work session with city council prior to consideration of any of the three requests so prior before moving the comprehensive plan amendment forward through its process the pd zoning through its process or the pit through its process the intent of the work session um in our discussion with council is really not to get formal consideration or approval of any of these requests but to get your direction on whether you want to move forward with the primary consideration today which is the public improvement district so just to summarize um and give a little background on each of these three requests and how they interact with each other um we've put up there a little matrix just sort of summarizing what is that type of request how does it work with the other types of requests um so the comp plan amendment is of course a modification to the denton plan 2030 a pd zoning request is a specific zoning uh excuse me a specific zoning designation in the development code and then a pd is actually a special district um that can levy assessments to pay for public infrastructure they each have either a code or a statutorily defined approval process that must be followed um you'll see the guiding council and policy document um i only included the city council um resolution um 18 10 39 and your backup which is the pit district that's because that's something that city council doesn't see regularly so we wanted to make sure to refresh your mind of of back to 2018 when that was adopted and then sort of who's involved in all of those discussions and what you'll see is that development services economic development legal finance and any impacted department are all participants in this process and i'm going to turn it over to julie to just give you a brief overview over the comp plan and pd zoning overview at this time good afternoon i'm julie wyatt um and first what i want to talk about is um is the comprehensive plan amendment so there are two uh land use applications that um in order for this to develop as it's proposed they would have to get approval the first one is that comprehensive plan amendment um as jessica said that is just a modification to the text or maps of the denton plan 2030 um their request would modify the future land use map from rural areas to low residential uh just to give you a um a quick um summary of those future land use designations rural areas that is uh predominantly low density residential it could be one acre lots conservation development or agricultural type uses so that's the intent of rural areas a low residential is intended for more single family neighborhoods it can be one to four dwelling units per acre but keep in mind um that that is uh that that density really is based upon the context of the site so for instance an urbanized area may may um there may be appropriate for four dwelling units per acre whereas out on the urban fringe um one to two lower density one to two dwelling units per acre those lower densities may be more appropriate um and just some history of this this area under the 1999 comprehensive plan this site and the surrounding area was designated as rural um the property was outside of the city limits um the property was annexed in 2005 as part of an an aggressive annexation policy as the dent plan 2030 quoted um and then the dent plan 2030 uh which was approved in 2015 it um it remained it kept that consistent future land use designation and kept it as a rural areas designation go to the next slide all right so as we're looking at the comprehensive plan amendment uh first of all staff has not completed um the analysis or the recommendation um right now we're still at the beginning stages stages of that uh that full analysis of the request but as part of the analysis we kind of look at the surrounding area and look to see how things have changed um since the dent plan 2030 was approved and then and then what that character of the area is so as you can see there's a map uh 2015 the zoning colors are a little different that was under the 2002 dent and development code but in 2015 um there wasn't a lot of residential development outside of loop 288 it was it was more rural outside of loop 288 um and then as as the city has grown and as development has um has proceeded we have seen developments um continue on outside of loop 288 so you've got the beaver creek development at locust and loop 288 you have stark farms um and then you also have additional um residential developments that have continued on as an infill um inside loop 288 so we've got additional residential developments there at fm 428 and just just to the uh just to the west of that and then we also have some commercial and multi-family development uh moving forward at the intersection that intersection as well go to the next slide so uh the 2019 dent and development code gives us the criteria for approval that we should be looking at when we look at those comprehensive plan amendments so i haven't i haven't listed them all out i won't read them all out to you but it's in sub chapter two of the 2019 development code and and i just want to summarize a couple of things so first of all with any application we have the general criteria for approval and generally that is an impact analysis as well as a public services analysis um for for the comprehensive plan amendment we also have that the amendment must be consistent with the dent plan 2030 purpose and demonstrate that events trends or facts have changed the character or condition of the area so that's that that's that criterion that we look at will really kind of zoom into that surrounding area and see what's changed and see if it warrants that comprehensive plan amendment um additional review criteria we look at any conflicts um with any portion of the the goals and policies of the plan um we look to see um the substantial benefit to the city and not solely for the benefit of of a particular landowner the compatibility with the land use goals and then um generally citywide that development pattern contained in the existing plan overall and does it provide adequate um and appropriate optional sites for the proposed use as i said we haven't completed our analysis um but our initial um thoughts related to this proposed comprehensive plan amendment that there is there has been um adjacent development to this site that residential development along fm 428 um and and that it may be appropriate for a low low residential future land use um designation to facilitate well-planned low density residential development and now we'll go to the next slide so the next request that the applicant is proposing is a zoning request and as jessica mentioned they are proposing um to rezone the property to a planned development district now we haven't seen a lot of these in the city of denton under the 2002 dentin development code um that the the option for a pd was was was not in that code so we really just saw a lot of straight zoning um development in in the last 20 or so years um but with the with the adoption of the 2019 dentin development code uh planned developments were added back into the zoning toolbox within the city and so it is something that we're seeing more often a pd is it's it's kind of unique zoning it is a specific regulations and a development map for a specific um piece of property so it wouldn't apply to properties generally within the city it really is kind of unique to one specific piece of property um so uh regarding the the uh proposed request uh the the subject property has a current zoning of rr uh rural residential district that is um one of our kind of uh lower density districts in fact the minimum lot size is five acres uh the permitted uses include single family detached um daycare agriculture indoor and outdoor recreation and then bed and breakfast so kind of those low density residential with those more agricultural uses rr is also um uses are holding districts so when a property is annexed into the city um that rr district is placed upon that that property until um a zoning case can be heard by the planning and zoning commission and city council through the public hearing process um and rr can't be difficult to develop that minimum five acre lot um can be can be challenging for developers um so the dent in development code sub chapter two also outlines the criteria for approval for a zoning case uh for a plan development uh once again that general criteria is something we always look at with any with any project within the city and then there are additional review standards um that includes compliance with the dent plan 2030 um pd should have a greater level of building design community amenities and connectivity um we want to look at compatibility with the surrounding character of the area and then of course we always look at public facilities in the next slide um and like the comprehensive plan staff has not completed an analysis there's additional review that has to be done as well as that um just um the research and analysis related to that plan development request but i did just kind of want to orient you to this area kind of introduce it to you um as this um as we talk through this project so um wanted to give you that surrounding context so to the west of the subject property across fm428 you may remember that stark farms development it was annexed in 2018 and it did go through the zoning process and an r6 zoning was was uh with an overlay was approved at that time so it has a mixture of r4 and r6 zoning with that overlay that restricts the maximum number of dwelling units to 4.7 per acre and then more recently the agave ranch development was approved in 2019 it was annexed actually with the subject property so it had that holding zoning designation until a couple of years ago um ultimately the property was zoned r2 and r3 with an overlay condition for open space and trails they average about 2.7 dwelling units per acre overall um to the north of the subject property it has that rural residential zoning designation as well as a lot of flood point to the north of the site east of the subject property that is also rural residential as well as a future public facility um and then to the south it is in the etj as you can see it doesn't have a color um but it is developed it's developed with large lot single-family homes um so our initial analysis we have looked at this um related to the adjacent properties and and how this area is developed and um and while that proposed use and density is consistent with those um nearby developing properties um the heartley field proposal as it's currently um devised is about 2.8 dwelling units per acre so it's it's generally consistent with that agave ranch development uh but right now we need some more specificity regarding those open space and amenities in order to make that final recommendation and continue our analysis additionally um there are challenges related to connectivity in the area as well as utility so we're going to factor all of those things into as we continue our review um and assessment of the project and i believe that's my final slide so i'll turn it back over to jessica thank you julie and i will just start stop here and pause and say um we're going to switch now to go over at the public improvement district concept sort of at a comprehensive and sort of global level and then i'm going to pause our presentation and switch over to the developer's presentation after about three more staff slides and then we'll come back and talk next steps but i thought it would be important to have council kind of have just a quick uh refresher on what our public improvement district so this is an economic development tool that's made available to cities under chapter 372 of the local government code in 2018 city council adopted resolution 18-1039 which are the city's adopted kid guidelines and just as a reminder under those guidelines and under the local government code a pit works by an assessment of fees specific to an area geographic area based on the benefits that they receive from public improvements that are made in that area so those pit assessments are made by the property owners who benefit directly from that pit infrastructure and then those payments are used to support specific pit projects or operations in general pids allocate their costs of service by having each property owner pay a proportionate share of costs or a portion thereof there are a couple primary benefits of pits they have the potential to increase the quality of development greater amenities lower density but they also allocate the cost according to the benefits received so directly to the property owners who are getting some special benefit from in the improvement and lastly it allows developers to use tax exempt debt or get reimbursed through pit assessments to pay for the public infrastructure so it could bring down the development costs there are also challenges to pits and they do increase the cost to homeowners through the pit installments and this could be you know as opposed to having to increase the home price it also there's sometimes homeowners don't understand a pit assessment so there is a requirement to disclose that information but even with that disclosure homeowners may not understand what that assessment is or agree that that assessment really justifies the added cost that they'll have as a homeowner so through the city's adopted pit guidelines we require pits to have a demonstrable public benefit and be fiscally feasible and i'm going to go over on the next two slides the definitions for each of those and then also talk about this the specific criteria that this development complies with which is what brought it forward so under the city's pit guidelines a development must illustrate one or more of the following criteria to show its public benefit so in this case i'm only going to address three you'll see that there are three up there that don't apply in this particular case but for this development and that the development number one is that the development will be higher quality or occur sooner than if left to the open market examples that could be used include greater amenities and less density or a higher value project so in this particular case the developers project proposed reducing their density they had originally proposed more than 1800 units and they're now proposing about 1300 1370 units this development will have four amenity centers a large number of conservation areas dedicated to conservation space 121 acres of open space and then a school site and some trails the second criteria that the developer and the development is compliant with is number three that the development results in the use of the pit as an economic development tool is not just a financing source for the development so as you'll see there the developer did provide an economic impact analysis of this project and their estimated build out value is about 509 million which would generate about three million dollars in recurring city property taxes at build out and the pit actually allows the developer to accelerate their project phasing and infrastructure development and the fourth criteria the third criteria they meet but number four on our list is that the developers voluntarily paying for some oversizing of infrastructure to serve their and serve their area and as what you'll see there is that the developer is proposing to dedicate the full amounts of right away and construct portions of infrastructure for wagon mill road heartly road and cooper creek road in terms of the fiscally feasible guidelines and the developer does need to be compliant with and though all of those guidelines so the first one is that the overall quality and sustainability of the tax base will generate enough generate enough revenue to pay for those services so we have received the developers proposal at this time but you'll also see if you kind of jump down to number eight the results of an applicant funded city administered fiscal impact analysis so that's the portion that hasn't been completed so any of the data that you see here that's being provided by the developer would be reviewed and confirmed as part of that fiscal impact analysis and then those middle criteria that the term of the pit and the pit bonds is limited to 30 years pit financing can only represent 50% or less the developer is proposing 30% and that the value to lean ratio is a minimum of three to one so that's the value of the project again you know how much of the project is going to be funded through the pit bond so it has to be a three to one ratio and the developer is proposing to be lower than that and then the pit assessment and cannot be more than 40 cents per $100 and so the developer is proposing a 40 cent equivalent tax of assessment rate and that any debt would be for reimbursement of cost now a lot of those again details that would come in sort of the creation and assessment process but the developer is proposing and to do a reimbursement of costs and that we would and then number seven is that the size of the development we would prefer residential tracts over 300 acres and this particular site is over 800 acres so at this point I'm going to pause the staff presentation and we are going to switch over to the developer presentation but we can also pause and do if there's any general counsel questions about the information we've shared so far and we can certainly do those as well great yeah let's take questions for staff so that before the applicant speaks they'll have those noted and they could speak to those that are applicable mayor pro tem davis so my question is pids as an economic development tool if the criteria i think it was three on your slide could have been four if the criteria is that a pit is primarily an economic development tool meaning adding to the city coffers as opposed to a or generating further economic development i suppose as opposed to just a financing tool for the developer wouldn't that imply annual tax revenue to the city over and above cost of service to the development certainly that's one way that that can be evaluated and one way we also look at it is is this particular development generating something that would be a benefit of economic purpose to the city and so if you think back to our economic development strategic plan we have a goal to recruit professional jobs jobs of certain incomes levels those people would be served by this type of development so that's sort of that connection between housing and economic development so we certainly do look at it from that fiscal impact we want to make sure that the development is generating enough revenue that's why we do that fiscal impact analysis but we also want to make sure that they're serving an economic development purpose that the development is in alignment with our economic development goals so i i understand that but from that perspective wouldn't any subdivision so we've decided in our affordable housing conversations and our economic development strategy we need housing stock across the spectrum right we need big houses for the executives we need starter homes for the young families we need everything and so couldn't you make that same argument for a pid for almost any subdivision if the idea is well it's adding houses to denton and denta need how it needs houses for economic development to me i read a little more don't you think we ought to read it a little bit more strictly that economic development means developing the economy of dent not just adding houses for the workforce yes and i'm sorry it's both of those components and i didn't mean to imply that it wasn't so housing is a component of developing the local economy yes okay and i think if i'm if i'm reading this right is it about five acres of commercial development that's kind of in their their current concept yes okay i think that's all my questions for staff right now okay thank you questions for staff seeing none councillor marmotor so i'm i'm happy to leave these comments for after the developer's presentation if that would be more appropriate but yeah if you have questions for staff let's let's address those if there's comments then let's do that after the presentation well so this this is regarding um something that came up early on in the presentation uh in in the slide that was listing uh the reasons uh for to accept an amendment to the comprehensive plan uh i was wondering why so it was mentioned that and and and please correct me julie if if i'm on miss misstating this the way you put it but it sounded like staff is saying uh that they might that staff might possibly recommend uh this area as a very low debt for very low density housing is that correct so we have initially looked at this project and there may there is there have been a lot of developments in this general area and there have been um residential developments within this area so it it although we haven't come to a final recommendation that there it could be um appropriate to to reclassify um that future land use map in this area from that rural areas to low residential but we have not completed um our recommendation yet and so if if that were to be recommended would that be based on uh the existence of places like agave ranch uh already in that area these new developments in that area that have come i would certainly factor into our analysis those the start farm stewart ridge and um and agave ranch yes ma'am yeah so uh okay i i just wanted to clarify that i guess i'll i'll speak my my opinion on that uh later on in the discussion but i just wanted to clarify that that was what i was hearing okay thank you questions for sat any other questions at this phase not seeing any okay great we're we're ready right um i believe our first presenter um is going to be philip thompson who represents taylor morrison so philip if you are on the line i'm going to bring up the presentation and you can get started sorry we just want to make sure that we've got everyone hello jessica can you hear me all right we can hear you now all right okay thank you so much jessica uh mr mayor council uh thank you for your time today my name is philip thompson i'm with taylor morrison the developer and uh want to be respectful uh of your time and and try to hit our presentation uh efficiently um but first just want to make sure that you guys can see what i think you're seeing and is that the first slide with the hartley field hanger on it can you guys see that at this time yes perfect um again really appreciate your time um you know over the over the last two years we've been working uh with staff on this project and the carter family and you know we we picked this first slide this hartley field hanger just kind of the representation of the project and the um the vision that we have uh of being kind of respectful of what what's out there and so as we look at this and as we've talked with the carters and and have visited with staff um you know we've tried to integrate uh the current current uh topo the current um community as it sits uh to develop what we see uh could be a great great place to live and so uh next slide jessica if you don't mind so just a brief uh going over the agenda real quick i'll do introductions we'll do a brief project overview development overview and infrastructure overview uh and then get into amenity and green space as well as the piz next slide and then just the development team introduction again phil Thompson with Taylor Morrison we are the developer we're a national home builder i'm office here in Dallas we have our team here jbi who are the planners and engineers for the project Sundance analytics or the financial consultants i'll be talking to you a little bit about the pit and tbg who are the planners and landscape architects on the project as well so really collaborative team that we've worked uh with staff over the last couple years uh really honing this in and uh really trying to achieve the original vision that we uh we set out and with this next slide and i'll turn it over to jerry with you jerry are you on okay i'll keep i'll keep going and then if jerry can unmute i think all right is it unmuted now yeah unmuted now thank you i'm i'm already through slide 12 okay well uh good afternoon council and mayor my name is jerry silo i'm with jbi partners uh we have the privilege to work with taylor morrison and a number of different communities throughout the dallas fort worth metroplex uh we started uh our adventure with harley field in september of 2019 uh so we've already been involved with this community for about 18 months the timeline that's up on the screen right now is just are just some of the major uh times that we've uh dealt with with the uh development i think julie has one time said all that space in between is what she calls sausage making uh where where a lot of the true work grinds out through there uh but but we uh we met with the city back in october of 19 uh and through from that time through uh june 2020 we worked to develop what we thought was a plan that corresponded to the denton 2030 plan uh the guidance that we received from the city staff uh and once we developed a design for the community uh in june of 2020 we had a couple virtual meetings with uh the neighbors out in harley field area uh ryan huey from taylor morrison also had a large number of individual meetings with people that were that lived nearby but we did have a couple of virtual meetings zoom meetings uh for our neighbors so we could tell them what we were going to do we didn't want to submit the zoning change uh and then just be blindsided by it so we wanted to give them a heads up as to what we were doing why we were doing it give them some of the rationale uh before we submitted we did make that formal submission last july uh from july of 2020 through february of 21 uh we worked with staff uh our initial submittals staff provided us a lot of great comments a lot of feedback we have a number of meetings with them uh and have come up with uh the plan that you'll see this afternoon uh which is what we're calling the just for nomenclature the 1372 plan um and then we are here today uh in april of 2021 next slide please what taylor morrison loves to do when they get started in the development of any community is sort of go through there and establish the major objectives uh that um that they try to accomplish and it doesn't matter whether it's a five acre development or an 800 acre development that first objective is always there there's you know philip ryan those guys their mindset is there's no reason to go forward down this path if we're not going to be able to create a neighborhood or a community that people that are living there are proud to live there you know they want people that want to live in their communities versus have to live in their communities so that that that is the number one goal number one objective every time we go through these projects um the other thing we want to do on a community of this size because as jessica mentioned it is about 800 acres uh and and most of the area north of loop 288 is not developed we want heartley field the heartley field community to be the benchmark for northeast denton we want any other development to come in after us to have to be compared to us because we know we're going to set the bar high and we know that everybody else has to meet those same standards because if you accepted development and you accept the plan development zoning everybody else is going to have to view those as the benchmarks and so what we want to do is as future developments come in future neighborhoods come in around us we want them what ends up happening is when you're that signature development everybody plays off your name you know you end up being the heartley field west or the villages of heartley field they have nothing to do with us but they want to associate the name with heartley field and in today's environment economic environment that fourth objective is extremely important to taylor morrison uh everything is just so expensive with regarding to new home construction and new homes uh and so the goal really with the heartley field neighborhood is to make it attainable so that people can afford to live there uh it's great to have a community that has tremendous amount of amenities tremendous amount of architectural control but if it's so expensive that people can't live there are you really providing anything to the community and taylor morrison does not believe you are if you if that happens and so that fourth goal is really important nowadays uh next slide please this is just going to be a brief synopsis of the site itself where we are in the process i think julie's hit on a lot of this but i'm just going to give you our perspective of where we are next slide please vision statement same thing when taylor morrison goes through these they want to establish the vision for what this community is and so what we've done is we've highlighted and read what we think are the really key points for the heartley field community which is number one to embrace the history and there's a lot of grades when we went out there met with the carters and walked the ranch and talked about the hangars and the airfield they've got a lot of great stories not only from the 1940s but also from the 1970s and 80s uh we want to celebrate the natural beauty of the site it's a fantastic piece of property as you'll see as we're going through here we have approximately 244 acres on the north side of the development next to clear creek uh that taylor morrison is proposing to leave as a conservation area uh they have an extensive uh relationship with the national wildlife foundation uh and they they're looking to uh to use use that resource uh very strongly in this community uh the carters have maintained this property tremendously a lot of great topography out there a lot of hills a lot of vegetation and then finally we want to make sure that we are the community is based on the environment what we truly try not to do is we try not to impose our will on nature nature gives us usually things that are fantastic they give us the creeks they give us the topography they give us the trees and the vegetation what our goal always is is to try to use what has been given to us and make a community that blends with it and works with it versus trying to fight it you know and i think and philip would have to confirm this but i think my opinion a really big reason that taylor morrison always focuses on this vision statement is it's a way to make everybody with the neighborhood or with the development of the neighborhood accountable for what we're doing because everybody can always go back to that vision statement are we are we holding to the vision are we are we slipping do we need to push a little forward do we need to push a little harder it gives us that anchor so that we go back and make sure that what we dreamed about originally that we're carrying through the process next slide please a quick overview of our requests next slide please as both julie and jessica mentioned we will be having a request to amend the future land use plan the slide that's up there is the current future land use plan that is in the dentin 2030 document the harley field area is outlined in yellow on the right hand side as you can see the 428 corridor is primarily green a lot of that has to do with the clear creek floodplain but when you look at the areas north of 288 west of 488 you see a lot of the typical suburban development scenarios you see a lot of yellow you see the green for the green belts some red for the retail the shopping centers at the major road intersections what you also don't see on this drawing but we have to take into consideration when we look at developing a piece of property is we also look at obviously the city's thoroughfare plan what do they expect the road system to be out there you know the road system for a suburban area is primarily the major roads are four lane and six lane divider roads because there's a certain amount of traffic that's generated by those homes this portion of dentin's master thoroughfare plan shows that that exact same scenario we have two six lane divider roads going through the community we also have a four lane divider road on the south side of the community which would be harley field road so the infrastructure plan for this area recognizes in our opinion a suburban type development scenario what it also what we've also taken into account too is the city's infrastructure system once again if we if we're planning for something we better make sure the city's also planning on the same path and so in looking through the city's plans that in the five-year cip the city has approved the clear creek lift station which is just northeast of our property along clear creek that's a 13 million dollar cip project that has been approved through the bonds and that they're in the design process right now next slide please so what our proposal is going to be is we're proposing approximately 558 acres of low density residential neighborhood approximately 244 acres of park slash open space at that north end and that's that conservation zone i talked about and a small area of retail as i think one of the council members spoke it's about five acres or so you know the retail environment has changed tremendously in the last five years 10 years as you notice as you're driving down the highways you see a lot of grocery stores a lot of anchors associated with the major corridors with uh loop 288 with 35 so we we really think that those types of businesses those types of shopping centers the the regional shopping centers the community shopping centers those are really going to be focused on in the 428 corridor or down off of loop 288 you know it's we can we can put red we can put red circles within our plan but if once again if they're not if we don't think they're realistic based on what we understand market conditions to be i don't know if we're serving anybody by doing that next slide please when we develop our plan we obviously have to correspond to the den 2030 plan the city went through an extensive process to get that plan approved we have a number of items here that are in the 2030 plan that we are very reflective of just a few to highlight about the fourth one down as we talked about respecting the environmentally sensitive areas a little farther down we're promoting we believe we're promoting high quality development and even farther down we're really focusing on the walkable neighborhoods really making sure people have the ability to access the benefits and the the attributes that are throughout the community next slide please so we looked at all that stuff as part of this you know julie also mentioned we'll be coming in with a zoning change for a plan development versus straight zoning districts agave ranch which was just to the west of us they came in basically and looking at some more straight zoning areas so what we originally proposed and this is what we call our 1864 plan this was the one we submitted in july of 2020 and it was for 1864 homes which comes out to right at about 3.4 homes to the acre so that falls within that definition of low density which is under four we were proposing to dedicate a elementary school site to dentin isd that's the purple area highlighted at the north end and we were proposing approximately 85 acres of open space above and beyond that 244 acres on the north side of the property which is that light green area so that that two that 85 acres of open space was supposed to be owned and maintained by the homeowners association not an extra burden of the city of dentin and their parks department when we submitted this part of that sausage making here it's on sausage making zone was working with staff working with julie and hers her group and they were pretty strong in the feeling that the harley field area was much more of a transition area versus a true suburban area respecting what was going on the development has taken place south of harley field road the acre development the homes that are out in the county not in the city so they they strongly suggested we go back to the drawing board reshuffle things around and see if we can get less loss out there next slide please this is the current plan that we have for the community which is what i call the 1372 plan and a couple things that want to highlight right off the bat and this this is what we have submitted here in february of 2021 first off we have taken approximately 500 homes out of the community so we're down to 1372 homes but if you compare this plan to the 1864 plan you will notice that the design of the community the vision of the community is identically the same as it was with the 500 extra homes we're still proposing the elementary school site in the exact location while we're not proposing 85 acres of open space anymore we're proposing 121 acres of open space we're still proposing the conservation zone about the north end 244 acres so we've increased the open space responsible within the community by 35 versus the 1864 plan that sort of goes back to what jessica was talking about an improved type of development or a community that can be followed through with the pit to put it in reference if we went out there today tatum morrison went out there today and developed the property as is currently zoned with five acre lots we would have to dedicate tatum morrison would have to dedicate seven tenths of an acre to the city for parkland if we went in there and tatum morrison asked for straight zoning for a comparable density which would be i think it's the sf2 and sf3 if i remember correctly uh zoning districts to get your ballpark 1300 1400 homes following the city standards without the plan development we would be required to dedicate 9.6 acres of parkland now if jessica can point out where we have the phase two numbers uh on that slide the green space that is immediately adjacent to that phase two number is right at about 10 and a half acres so that is for this entire 550 acres of single family per the city's development requirements we would have been required to dedicate 10 acres of 9.6 acres of land for parkland what we are doing is we are proposing 121 acres which is an 1160 increase versus what the city requires so we do truly believe that that in and of itself provides a a type of community that is not does not exist in denton today uh and i think most future communities will be hard pressed to create this type of environment and that's where i say we're really trying to create the benchmark out here next slide please these are just a few examples of homes that taylor morrison builds uh that they envision building out in the harley field uh community obviously if we you know we're as the mayor mentioned i think we're talking six months at minimum as we go through this pit process so you know you before homes start getting built you're talking another you know three two to three years before those all get up here so architecturally things may change uh but the quality that taylor morrison adheres to doesn't change next slide please real briefly on the infrastructure you know 550 acres of community has quite a bit of infrastructure involved with it if you go to the next slide please what we have here are is the infrastructure that is reimbursable through the pit process and we've we've separated that as to what we call off-site improvements and on-site improvements off-site improvements are things that would be built uh to handle more capacity than what is specifically required by the harley field community so for instance roads wagon wheel way harley field road cooper creek road uh that's about 14 million dollars of infrastructure that's going to have to be built as part of this development uh we have a small 55 000 dollar extension for a water line uh and then the other large off-site expense is the extension of a sanitary sewer line at that clear creek lift station and that's right at about 1.2 million dollars and that that that sanitary sewer line does handle additional sewer besides just that which is associated with harley field on-site everything that's sort of lightly shaded there that is the the crux of the community itself which is all paid reimbursable as well is roughly 61 million dollars so quite a bit of expense associated with a development such as this next slide at this time i'd like to turn it over to mark myer and seth atwell from tbg uh to really focus on all the a little more detail in terms of those amenities and the green spaces that are going to be dispersed throughout harley field all right this is mark myer can anybody hear me yes all right thank you very much mark myer with tbg it's a pleasure to be here today um it's actually nice to look at the screen and see some familiar faces and um some voices i was engaged on the hunter coal ranch entitlements that you guys went through a little over a year ago so um excited to be back and really um working with teller morris and the entire team for us to deliver what we feel is going to be a great added value community to ditton so if we go to the next slide what i wanted to start with um as jerry had mentioned not only do we have a story and we're looking at the comp plan but also one of the things that we critically want to do is understand what our design principles are when it goes to parks and open spaces within the overall community and i'm not going to go through each one of these but i do want to touch on three main issues that is because of the nature of the ranch that the carters owned and the attention they put into it is really picking up on the history of the existing home and also the on-site hangars that are there um creating a sense of an environment or a community that's based on the environment one of the things that you'll notice if you've been out to the site or seen photos of it they spend a large amount of time making sure that the creek corridors the open spaces and the mature trees stay pristine and that's one of the things that we want to work with is and around the natural environment to engage people in it and the last one is um connected connected not only to the people that you live around and are there all the time but also connected to the open space system and as you've sort of seen in some of the drawings already making a very easy connection from people that live in their homes to the parks and open space and to the broader open spaces within them next slide please um the development character these are just a few slides right here that sort of talk about a very relaxed nature of um sort of character that we're we want to bring into the community and also one that is engaged sort of in a environmentally friendly natural setting next slide what you're seeing right here is an overall amenity diagram what we're going to do is we're going to um then go into detail into these specific areas to sort of show you the proposal that we're wanting to bring forward but with this slide right here which you can see there is a large amount of um passive and also very active open spaces that are happening throughout the community as you guys saw in the earlier presentation we are bringing forward four amenity centers um within the overall project and a large percentage of passive parks in open space next slide um first we would just want to start off with the entry and the streetscape you know our intent here again is not to create huge monuments that um are glaring or sort of don't fit the context of the environment that is around them we are in the very sort of what i would call um transitional area between rural and suburban so we want to make a nod to that um idea of a more rural passive uh presentation as you go into the community so the idea of preserving large trees creating a pastoral landscape and the ideas of bringing in sort of low scale items to the landscape is very important to us in creating that vision the next slide if we go to it is a planned view of our phase one entry that would be coming off of wagon wheel in this plan right here one of the things that we wanted to do was to create a large open space extent uh they created a area that had um topography large tree masses large sweeping curves of native plant material and also low walls that created a little bit of a threshold coming into the project next slide the next slide is a little bit of a diagram that starts to show um some four of the amenity center areas not the four many centers but where we have pocket parks that we'll talk about in detail but also in areas right now that we're working with the parks department um to really understand where we dedicate other property to the city of Denton right now we've talked to Drew and his group and we're having ongoing conversation that the light green areas are areas that could be dedicated if the park department wants them as parks and open spaces for the city if not those are areas that we will maintain and improve too so that is an ongoing conversation but we did want to highlight that in this discussion next slide um quickly we want to talk about the pocket parks we do have quite a few pockets small pocket parks that are positioned through the community so people have no less no more than a five-minute walk to those pocket pocket parks um in those areas these are developer built and maintained the required elements that we have in those are playgrounds that are between for ages two to five five to twelve shade pavilions sidewalk park benches and trees so those are the baseline requirements that we're having within those as part of this middle one of the things that we also want to do is look at how we incorporate nature play and also bring in artistry to some of the pieces that could be the playgrounds or also the shade structures to make them unique to the place that they're at next slide please um with that a large portion of this is really pedestrian mobility and how we move people in and around and through the community so right here we're highlighting two layers of trails the first one is a regional hike and bike trail that is a 12 foot wide concrete trail in red that goes down wagon wheel and cooper canyon on here that is about 1.7 miles of trail and then the other trail type is one that goes through our open spaces and our creek corridor that is an eight foot wide hike and bike trail that is about 5.7 miles so all total a little bit over seven miles and trails which is quite a bit for this community that we're really proud of to be able to integrate that through the community next slide please with that these trails that are proposed are developer built and maintained with a public access easement required on top of those as we talked about there'll be eight and 12 feet concrete trails we will also have trail and mile signage trail heads where you engage these and also park benches every half mile to a minute time next slide please so the next area that we want to talk about is the club so this is a private amenity center that is for the neighborhood this is built by the developer and maintained by the developer and this is the area that is the old carter homestead that's on the site that we will be refurbishing we want to be able to create a very engaging environment and a very casual relaxing environment so the required elements on here is keeping the house and actually repurposing it which it is a very large area the idea of creating a resort style pool and on-site parking native wallflower areas a large event lawn and other things that would go in there the next plan if we go to the next page is a site plan and there's also a perspective up in the very left hand corner that is looking out the back side of the house to the resort pool but as you can see in this main plan right here the existing home that is on-site we are keeping trying to figure out how to renovate it to best be used by the community the resort pool behind that a series of flex lawns that go around it and then what you can sort of see in the sort of the yellow area those are native grass areas one of the things that we want to be able to reflect within this and we gained some inspiration from your park department is how do we decrease our irrigation usage in our big areas like this and i know you guys are now implementing the wildflowers and the native grasses within some of your meetings and medians in public parks and we'd really like to figure out how to adopt that into this to be better stewards of the environment next slide please the next one also are the hangers that are on-site and i think the lower right hand image is a great image these are large airplane hangers that create a huge impact on the site and they're really very unique there are no community developments that i know of in north texas that have anything like that and very few nationally so this is something that i think can be really a community identifier within here these will these areas will be restored to where they can be used as indoor outdoor spaces they can be used to have indoor playgrounds or indoor sports fields under there they can be flexible for bringing in farmers markets within the within the areas and also creating large functions spaces also so a very flexible space on the hangers if we go to the next slide this is the site plan of that area the two white boxes that you see here are the existing hangers that we are going to repurpose between those areas we want to create a intimate feeding and sort of almost garden area one that really sort of breaks down the scale from the sort of large scale of the hangers and then one that's more pedestrian and then around this what you'll see is a mixture of native grass wildflower areas an area that we'd like to collect some water on the side and do a low impact development rain garden that is along very east side of the development that's linear that goes through it and then flex lawns that are go around the hangers within this area next slide please the next slide is what we're calling the well the well is our very first amenity center that we would start out in phase one this is right along the creek corridor we really like it being positioned right along the creek corridor because it really starts to engage it into the natural environment this will be developer built main and maintained with the private access inside of the gates of the amenity center building and also the full facility the required elements that we have on here is a 2,000 square foot pavilion a 2,500 square foot lagoon pool creek connections with sidewalks a splash pad a trailhead and also sidewalks that connect the nearby school not only to this space but the overall trail system if we go to the next slide you'll see a site plan of this right here i think what you can start to see in this location this is a very sort of environmentally sensitive area you can see the amount of trees that are on the site plan right here how we're trying to be very careful and engage those areas with walks and decomposed granite walks to be sensitive and engage playgrounds within that area and then the pool complex itself sits outside of the creek corridor but close to it a nice view of that is the perspective that's up on the left hand side that would be under the amenity center building looking over the lagoon lagoon resort style pool and off into the creek corridor and the preserved trees that are behind that next slide please this is a perspective of the creek corridor i think really what this is showing right here is our intent to preserve and enhance everything that is already there but then to very carefully start to engage trails open spaces ideas of how to access water in a very passive way next slide please and then lastly is our fourth amenity center right here this is the landing this actually is thematic because it is the old landing strip that is on site that we're placing this is from an inspirational standpoint this will be developed or built and maintained with private access inspirationally this will include playground facilities it will have a lap pool so one of the things that we want to do within our swim program and aquatic program is to create differentiation so not all pools are similar so this will actually have a large lap pool that plays up a little bit of the inspiration as a landing strip i'm on here with a sort of long linear nature we can see small swims being here held here we'll also have basketball courts and community gardens surrounding the site next slide please so this wraps up the presentation sort of on the vision of the overall sort of theme and landscape architecture and open spaces with the master plan right here as you can see there's a lot of open space and green infused throughout the entire master plan and with that if we go to the next slide i'm going to hand this over to patrick so he can give a development and financial overview okay can everybody hear me now yes okay appreciate it mayor council good afternoon appreciate you giving us this time to walk through this project with you my name is patrick borne work with sundance analytics we're the financial consultants for the project particularly focusing on the pit so if we can go to the next slide please as we go through and discuss i think that jessica did a terrific job of explaining um what a pit is illustrating how the pit that we are proposing meets the city pit policy but one of the things that i wanted to kind of touch on it why is a pit needed why are we requesting it for this project and i wanted to first touch on the fact that a pit is an economic development tool it facilitates growth particularly where large infrastructure costs and anticipated amenities are often a significant burden to the developer and a significant burden in getting the project started kids and other financing districts are often incorporated or utilized in master plan communities because they incorporate coordinated infrastructure plans and amenities that promote responsible and desirable growth kids can do this by providing low-cost tax-exempt financing for public infrastructure as we mentioned previously in this presentation this project is looking to incur and construct nearly 77 million dollars in public infrastructure that will benefit the development and the surrounding area and utilize approximately 30 percent or fund approximately 30 percent of those costs through the pit in incorporating a pit and the low-cost financing that is available through the pit it helps to maintain the ability and create project feasibility so that we can still include all of the amenities that were just walked through and just discussed in detail and showing all of those graphs those aren't possible without some type of financing district to help offset the reduced density the increased amount of infrastructure the amount of amenities that we're looking to that we're proposing and looking to include in this community as what we talked about the reduced density dropping it down to 2.5 households per acre from 3.4 the open space i won't go into this in detail i think jessica hit on these with the conservation acres the school site the number of amenity centers and the miles of trails in the next slide please in addition to facilitating a successful project pids provide key benefits to the city and i just wanted to walk through a few of these one of the key things that i wanted to touch on that is unique from a pit standpoint is that the city council is the governing body of the pit unlike many other financing districts that are available that are available out there or that are often utilized the city council is the governing body this encourages collaboration when we go through and discuss the changes to the land plan the reduction in density all of that occurred through collaboration through discussion with city staff which is encouraged through pit it also enables and ensures that the city council is involved throughout the entire pit process the city council will go to city council when the service and assessment plan is approved as well as when the pit assessments are levied and ultimately through the bond issuance for the project through utilization of a pit it accelerates and enhance economic development okay we talked about the amount of property value that would be generated in this project we talked about the connection fees the property tax revenues another thing that i wanted to point out here and just to remind everybody is that the pit debt is secured entirely by the property and it is non-recourse to the city it is not secured in any way by the city or the city's general fund it is only secured by the property within the boundaries of the pit and is only paid for by the property owners within the pit all the costs of the city of the administration of the pit as well as the the the the pit creation costs the ongoing administration costs of the pit are paid for by the pit it is not expected in any way that any cost will be incurred or paid for by the city as part of the city's pit policy it's requested that the developer put up a deposit to ensure that no costs are incurred and no money is spent by the city it'll be fully funded by the pit in addition to these benefits one other item that i wanted to point out is that the pit provides a way for the city for the developer to construct and develop public infrastructure that the city then benefits from as we mentioned before nearly 77 million dollars of public infrastructure would be built through this project consistent with the city's mobility and utility plans if we can go to the next slide kind of in summary and to wrap up everything that we've talked about i wanted to we wanted to just prepare this quick comparison table which compares the current zoning with the july 2020 proposal and the april 21 the april 2021 proposal and just kind of highlight some of the differences and some of the changes that occurred through discussion with the staff and through our proposed development first of all i want to just kind of remind as we've talked about the decrease in density when we initially proposed this project we were looking at 1864 units through discussions with staff we've reduced that by nearly 500 units to a density of 2.52 dwelling units per acre the other thing i kind of wanted to to point out here was the total valuation as proposed based on the the current zoning the project would generate about 66 million dollars in total value based on our 2021 proposal we're looking at north of 500 million dollars in value that would be created from this development which would lead to increased property tax revenues impact fees etc the other thing that jerry i think jerry pointed out as he was talking through it is under the current zoning this project would be required to provide 0.7 acres of open space we've really tried to meet the vision of city staff what we think attracts home buyers by incorporating more than 120 acres of open space in the project seven and a half miles of trail one of the other things is as we made these changes even with the reduction in density you'll notice that we did not reduce the number of amenity centers we know that that is a draw and that is a desired of home buyers that's something that they come to expect from these types of master plan communities so even with the reduced amount of density we wanted to make sure that we still provided the four the four amenity centers and still provided that school site for the property owner for the property buyers next slide kind of with that we just wanted to we appreciate your time and the attention that you've provided to this presentation you just kind of want to open it up for any questions that you guys may have so thank you okay yeah we pull down the slide let's do this so dinner is here for those here and for those at home to give you an opportunity because it looks like we're going to run right up to our 6 30 meeting so let's take a break we'll get food come back if you have questions so it is five o'clock let's come back at really let's say 5 15 best case and we'll take up the questions and and try to give staff some direction so it is 501 we'll take a break till 5 15 come back and pick up questions thank you and welcome back to this meeting of didn't city council it is 5 16 p.m we just finished the presentations for in our work session for item d we'll begin now with deliberation and questions again want to redirect my peers to slide number four and it says the kind of scrolling underneath the bullets the preliminary work session and any council direction received is not equivalent to formal consideration or proof of any of the the request but more we need to decide if we're going to move forward into the next phase of this process so with that and i'll just cost one just one other comment so if you're if you there's nothing can be said or done that that's going to have you support this project i think that's kind of the just of it uh just to say those things and then allow the others to to ask questions that would be open to the project uh if there are any but just to kind of shape the discussion so that we can ultimately arrive at a decision uh councilman mounsler yes thank you um either you believe in the idea of comprehensive planning or you don't the comprehensive plan designated this as a rural area that was developed with a lot of community participation the applicant showed you know how different this area is designated than other areas that's the point of planning when you when you plan you make choices and if when you make choices you exclude others you know other options um now if in fact the community no longer wants to have a rural fringe a rural gateway to clear creek if that's not what people want there's a very clear process before us which is that the comprehensive plan is at this moment being revisited so you know if the community comes back and says this is not what we want anymore here uh you know i would i would listen to that but the plan that has been brought forward by the community is meant to guide us and if we in every instance uh when something comes up that is uh contraindicated by the plan if we just do it anyway then we don't have a plan so uh it doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on it this that uh i'm i'm going to support the comprehensive plan uh and i'll happily reconsider it if it comes back different next time as far as the pid uh it's i see no you know it's sort of not really worth considering given my comments so far but um it's i think an unfair advantage to one housing developer over all the other housing developers where who have to reflect their infrastructure costs and the price of their homes i think it's a bit of a flim flam uh for the buyer because you're you know you're going to pay it that those extra expenses either in a higher price through you know your mortgage payment uh or you'll end up paying them through the pid but it's it wouldn't be reflected in your you know in your retail price here so uh you know i i find that uncompelling uh and uh i'll uh let as you suggested mayor you know let others uh carry on who you know would be open to this okay thank you uh council let's go mayor pro tem davis and councilman marmotor mayor i have a number of questions i i have to admit i'm accustomed to having a little bit more information up front for these kind of conversations um i'm accustomed to having a little bit more information about the the developer and that's not a that's not a dig at all at staff staff's presentation was very thorough as was the developers uh although i'll say a picture is worth a thousand words um so my first question is for the developer um is is this parcel assemblage of parcels is this going to be developed on behalf of the carter family or will ownership transfer uh once the proper zoning and agreements are in place are they still on yeah yeah i am i'm sorry i was i was muted again so uh can you hear me councilman davis yes okay uh appreciate the question yes this would be developed on behalf of taylor morrison so ownership interest would transfer over okay i'm i'm familiar with uh a few of your communities around the dfw area and i know that you offer homes in a wide array of prices um all the way up past you know million dollars um but they tend to be on pretty small lots what is the the largest lot size that you currently have in your inventory or that you've developed recently uh the current currently we're building on some 70 foot lots over in the ridge at northlake which is a community uh you know not too far from you guys um just down the road in northlake so you're you are correct we offer a wide range of products um you know going down from a 30 foot uh lot all the way to kind of that 70 foot uh it's a 60 foot pad product so um that's that's kind of where we top out right now okay so 60 foot pad and the 70 foot is your is your largest lot width so that's uh can you tell us what that is um you know set back from the the side yard or the space between wall to wall between two homes yeah absolutely so you know on a 60 foot pad product you know a lot of that depends on on the municipal setbacks uh whether you know it can fit on as small as a 70 foot lot being five foot side yards of course you would have a larger side yard setback on the corner lot and then you would have lots of non-typical lots that were were larger but if you were just looking at the typical lot you could get uh you know 70 by 120 70 by 125 um somewhere in that range so that would be about the smallest you would want to put a 60 foot product on what is your target market for the homes in in this development and when i say target market i mean both you know your target buyer and then also uh the market price range you're thinking about sure and a lot of that you know uh obviously depends on the economics of the project but uh you know it's we're proposing that same product that we're building over in the rich community it's what we showed uh earlier on the screen as elevation examples that's current product we are building here in dsw and uh again that's 50s 60s and 70s uh so you know ranges start in the 300s uh and they go out from there you know into the into the fours and fives depending on the lot size but um again our original our original plan was a little bit less uh the lot sizes were a little smaller they were 45s 50s and 60s and so we have increased those lot sizes and decreased density you know as a result so kind of trying to translate that into dentin terms it sounds like most of your communities fall somewhere in the r3 maybe even r4 kind of uh kind of density range and that you don't really offer um a fully developed product that uh that would include you know your r2 your true r2 or r1 kind of density is that correct uh i'm not real familiar what the r1 density is so but it would fall our typical 50 60 and 70 foot program would be on a more dense uh community you know kind of that three 3.4 3.5 that we initially came in at um this one we've you know we have the area to include more open space and kind of spread that out to where we're getting down in in that 2.5 range okay so i guess to kind of translate then you you don't offer a product kind of across your range across your properties you don't offer a product that includes one acre lots or even three quarter acre lots and if we do not so if if the dentin community were were amenable to rezoning this property from you know five acre homesteads down to one acres or three quarter acres or something like that that's not a product that you as a developer could offer it's not a product that we could offer and quite frankly this this uh community specifically couldn't be developed under that due to the infrastructure um this that it's currently burdened with okay so you wouldn't be amenable to anything along the lines of a air park living or larger lots or anything like that for this property that's just kind of out of the the realm of possibility for y'all we would not be correct we would not be able to entertain that and then finally this might be something you have to talk about with your uh your team a little bit more but uh would y'all be at all amenable to a historic preservation easement for the uh the heartley field proper uh meaning the the hangars and out buildings there and uh and something that would submit would uh would put those properties that part of the property um under the supervision of the historic landmark commission uh so that you'd have to get a certificate of appropriateness or something like that before you made major changes um so short answer yes so we we've had numerous thoughts with the parks department with drew and gary uh kind of you know the way we have presented our initial vision this was all homeowner hoa and hoa uh maintained uh we do want to keep those hangars and we do want to preserve them so we're open open to uh just about anything when it comes to the parks department and talking to those guys and working something out so yes uh short answer yes okay well i guess what i'm asking isn't just you know working with the parks department i'm talking about preserving the historical character of the of the hangars because what i saw in your amenas amenity center uh slides it's all very attractive but all very different from what's there right now um some major some major changes you might have been watching when we were talking about converting an old barn into a park pavilion uh earlier and that kind of seems more like what y'all are proposing than historical preservation so am i off base there or do i have a pretty good read of it so uh you are correct so to answer your question we our initial vision was to make this a more amenitized area however we're open uh to looking at uh you know historic preservation things that this is not all concrete we do have some things to work through so if there was certain things like that that we could accommodate and be partners on um we would definitely consider it okay last question so y'all um y'all have some estimates on uh total value at build out you have some estimates on total tax revenue to the city annually based on that value at build out um what we're missing from the equation is cost of service and i realize that's part of the financial analysis but do y'all have any preliminary numbers on cost of service what it's going to cost us to service y'all over uh over and above the three million annually in tax revenue at build out so specific to just maintenance of these of these areas of the city and city accepted lines is that what you're referring to no i mean cost of service um that's everything fire police maintenance uh parks the whole the whole deal understood no that's that would be part of that um financial analysis and part of the reason we're here today is uh you know to date we have spent um you know two years and excess of uh you know we spent quite a few resources to get to this point and um you know happy to work through and provide those things but uh we're just looking for a little bit more direction before we did engage us of those kinds of analysis okay thank you that's all my questions mayor i think i'll have direction when everybody else asks theirs thank you uh councilmember armature yes uh so i have some some comments and some questions uh and i i want to begin by kind of taking issue uh with the proposed uh framework proposed by the mayor uh that we should either be expressing our opposition to the the project and then uh you know leaving the the discussion to those who are open to it um i want to do both i want to express my strong opposition to the project along similar lines that council member melzer expressed uh and i also want uh to offer some uh questions and suggestions uh moving forward uh given that it is quite possible that just like with coal hunter ranch uh this could pass but by a split council i want to make sure that even though i oppose it if it's go if it is going to happen um i want to to do the least harm so anyway that is the spirit in which my comments and questions are addressed uh so first i want to say um echoing what council member melzer said uh i i don't believe that in fact i i feel very strongly um that uh this plan does not conform to the 2030 plan that is all about keeping this area rural preserving the rural character of this area and focusing the additional density and housing and infill more on the center of town so i i don't see how any amendment um to the plan could still keep the plan as the plan it would it would literally change the nature of the thing so that it would be unrecognizable um i want to uh express my concern about the question um posed by uh mayor protem about the and it's a good question about uh cumulative cost to the city uh you know these kinds of plans um have been called by some growth ponzi schemes uh they in the early years um they cost very little uh to the city but if you go to the strong strong towns website strong towns.org you know they can show you how these suburban developments tend to uh increment in their uh infrastructure costs to the public and by that i mean not just the the residents who are playing paying extra taxes um but the taxpayers outside of these developments and it incrementally grows you know year by year in a way that uh tends to really overwhelm uh the you know whatever uh benefits in the form of additional property taxes um so anyway those are my big objections um uh as well as you know the fact that as i've made clear on on the subject of colander ranch uh you know i consider uh taxes something that should be only be uh be done by government entities democratically elected government entities so i i don't think corporation corporate taxes should be a thing um i understand why developers would want that that but i think it is uh opposed to the spirit of democracy it is however legal uh unfortunately um so it it is what it is um but now i now i want to kind of ask my questions uh which are opposed with in the spirit of the understanding that it is quite likely that a council majority could approve this and i want to you know ask these questions and uh and get answers to them in the spirit of trying to do the least harm and i want to can we have a clear record though we're not approving anything tonight i just want i don't want anyone to be confused we're not approving anything tonight so with that yeah so you said it may be approved i want to make sure everyone's crystal clear we're not approving anything tonight that was no that's not a correct statement at a few well no it was the future it was a correct statement uh i meant at a future date much like with coal hunter ranch we heard a lot from these developers you know for for a long time you know before it eventually came to a vote okay so that is what i mean at a future date um so and several questions about ferris road one i was wondering if uh the developer could speak to you know how this or or staff which whoever feels that they can best answer this question um how uh the uh the sewer line on ferris road the temporary sewer line that is there will be dealt with and the traffic around hodge elementary well let me ask staff to frame that for i mean because at this phase is that help me under just frame it so that the the applicant can speak to what's relevant at this phase if and i'll just any staff member can speak to that uh okay so uh so then to the developer uh well let me let me you you have a question out there let's let's i need staff to clarify sewer line traffic to hodge elementary help the applicant speak to that staff if you would please does that make sense it makes sense this is sarah i'm just wondering if becky daveny is on the line or pre-tim or steven uh gay because um i think it would be preferable to have them respond to that um and i correct me if i'm wrong uh jessica but i think it depends on the development as well yes so i think uh we have becky daveny um director of capital projects on the line and i believe julie also has some information as well let's see becky are you there all right well i guess my question is this is this the phase at which we would have this conversation just just a yes or no mayor this is becky daveny director of capital project city engineer yes can you hear me sir yes yes sir um i'm happy to answer the question i think the um question specifically related to ferris road and hodge elementary and is more specific to the location that is located west of this area and it's something that definitely i'm sorry due south of this area and that's something that definitely can be addressed as we look at this future development but they're not at this time directly related to each other okay and so is ferris road in the city of denton because i see it in the county yes sir i would have to clarify parts of the roadway and i can ask julie wyatt to also answer that question but parts of that roadway are located along the county it would be specifically in the area of which she is asking i'm not currently looking at a map to be able to answer that specific question but i know the concerns she's addressing are simply involving hodge elementary in that entire kind of vicinity of the traffic along loop 288 which is due south of this area got it okay okay and councilmember armature your your next question yeah so my next question is um is there is the developer uh you know planning on uh proposing an overpass at kings row and the loop uh to accommodate you know a traffic situation that further development in in this area uh would would would create uh i don't know that i don't know that we can speak to that that that area is even further what's even further south they don't that's a text well well so you know i mean traffic is fluid right and uh so it would affect it would affect traffic on sherman it would affect traffic on on the loop so i'm wondering that's just an area uh that that is affected by development in this area and i have a question about it maybe the developer doesn't feel they can answer it but i would like to hear it from them well mr city attorney can you help me is that an option for them to speak to that i mean it's it's so the area we're talking about is kings row further south and hodge uh which we just spoke to and it's a text dot road being loop 288 in a in an overpass over text dot road is that something that the developer could speak to you're muted i'm sorry as far as how we would pack the subdivision as because the traffic flows going down and it could be it really um um okay the way the question is worded but it can be uh answered sure okay mayor that that would be a part of a traffic uh impact analysis that they would be required to do as a part of their uh if they were to move forward that would all be required by the city for a traffic impact analysis that would look at all of those um in addition becky's just sending an email that that is out of the area so those i think that kind of answer would come later as if this development move forward right okay so councillor arnott are you well okay and i i hope that when that traffic impact study you know does come that that it is done by the city you know and not uh not by somebody picked out by the developer and same of course for a financial impact analysis of course it's always interesting to hear you know what what a developer has to propose but i want to know you know what what what city staff uh see uh as the the financial and traffic impacts of proposed development if it comes to that um so my my other questions are about uh heartley field road and uh and impact on trees so first i'll say um i i really like uh the mayor pro tem's question and suggestion uh about um you know the the possibility of uh historic preservation measures for for that hanger there uh which is you know however old it is just you know 20 or 30 years uh that is still uh history is is still historic it does have historic value uh so i i really like that idea i think it was a good one um and i'm wondering about traffic also traffic on heartley field road which residents in the area are very concerned about with the upcoming growth um if if there's a plan if the developer has has thought uh about uh how uh whether or not there will be an east wet or should be an east west uh four lane four lane road that would be north of heartley field road um not just on the on the western segment as currently proposed but also north i have to take some of that burden off this off that uh essential country road councilman armature thank you thank you for your question um i will say that you know we have uh worked with staff and the red and we have met with the residents uh and understand their concerns on heartley field road and as such um in that latest plan you'll see that we we have uh absorbed 100 of heartley field future right away onto our property which is a four lane connector we've also shifted uh you know there's there's uh we've heard some rumors about um a police officer and a nurse's house uh that's just west of our property kind of aligning there with agaves we've we've shifted that entire intersection to miss that out but also uh take that right away onto us so that future right away doesn't have to be taken uh from those homeowners as well so we we have um we have considered that and we do have the four lane uh you know we'll provide the two lanes but we have the four lane right away that will be dedicated by plat to the city okay so and thank you for answering that question and stating that about right away so my final question is about the trees um you know there are a lot of uh mature oaks and post oaks in that area you know including where their proposed sewer line is going to go uh what is your approach to tree preservation in this area you know obviously we have there's a city tree preservation plan uh but um some of this area is outside of the city and then we also have uh the the option of you know which some developers have chosen to do in kind of going above and beyond our limited uh tree preservation plan so i was wondering if if you could speak to that and in the the environmental sensitivity of this this area with the riparian habitat and all of that yeah absolutely i believe you can see in our slide presentation uh you know we did highlight tree preservation um and those things quite often we do want to be as i started the presentation off saying we want to be respectful of what's there um you know and that includes tree preservation adding more trees in so you know it's it's one of a of a nature uh community and we understand that you know shifting heartley field road north of where we currently of the current heartley field alignment creates a 10 acre uh linear park there that we're showing in that latest site plan that a lot of those trees are speaking of can be preserved uh you know when you're when you're talking about the county residents and going down ferris road uh yes of course we'll be respectful and try to uh you know uh and we did go out and survey and do tree surveys and things of that nature to make sure we were missing uh those and we did have there was a a uh a meeting on a virtual meeting with residents with those residents uh earlier in the year um you know where they expressed their concern about that and i i'll say the same thing i said on that call and that's uh you know we want to be good neighbors we're not we're not just going down and bulldozing through uh we want to be respectful and make sure everyone in the community uh sees this as uh what how we see it okay and can i ask for just confirmation from staff that uh if it comes to that point would the city uh do its own tree survey as well um on the subject property site i'm not aware of the city um doing any tree surveys we do have staff that can go out and look at sort of individual items but but typically we the applicant is required to have a design professional a um a landscape or i'm sorry it will a landscape architect or a botanist or a forester one of those design professionals to prepare that tree survey and any preservation plans they do have to stamp and seal those plans so that they um that it is um dependent on their professional assessment of the site that's correct thank you and for you know for for such a large area and also for pids that take uh tax dollars uh i i would like uh to if if and when it comes to that you know for the city to do a tree survey as well instead of relying on a private one from the from the developer so anyway that those are my primary questions for now i obviously i have a lot more concerns about density uh it but uh i i will save my my final comment uh for the the end of the the conversation okay questions for staff any other questions for staff councilman ryan yeah this is probably a little more for the developer um i'm kind of following up on what the mayor pro tim had had asked earlier because you were talking more about just what the width of the lot was and how what your setbacks were what is your square footage of the lot because that's actually what we go on now as to what zoning district so we can get a feel for what zoning district you you're actually building on these so developer still on yeah he's probably got to unmute oh there we go sorry about that can you hear me yes yes yeah okay uh councilman ryan thank you um you know these are these are 70 by what we propose in our uh 50 by 120 60 by 120 and 70 by 120 so the seven you know it's a mix uh the the average lot size if you took them all and said it was you know 40 percent of those are 60 by 120 um which is a uh let's see let me do a quick math is a 7200 square foot lot um and then the you know we'll have the 70 by 120 which is 8400 um and then the 50 by 120 uh which is 6000 square foot okay so in actuality that doesn't even fit in our our four zoning on your 50 foot wide lots and instead we're trying to keep the character of of this feeling a little bit more open if you were still able to build the 1376 and had less than the 100 i think you have 120 acres of open space to kind of eat back some of that to make just give the feel of that area that you've got the 10 foot setback on each side and you know slightly larger lots but still able to get all those in is that something that you would be willing to work on yeah absolutely i think you know given that direction and uh working working with staff if that was uh direction that we wanted to see if it was you know reduce you know we we we do want to keep a significant amount of open space um but uh yes we would look at we could look at um you know if we could reduce some of that open space to still keep the same density and and increase those lots we we would be open to that okay uh another question i've got is basically it looks like the pit is about 22 a little over 22 million that you would actually finance out so that when you divide that by the 1376 it's 16,000 so that's basically the addition if you weren't able to do a pit that's how much more you would have to sell each lot slash house floor is that correct correct you would you would well it's a function of time value of money as well but um you know if you just looked at it from a straight from a straight valuation um 23 million divided by the lot yes you're correct okay yeah so it's it's kind of a i feel like it's a there's two sides to this one is it means that the value of those houses coming on board on our tax rolls are going to be 16,000 less that works out to about 130,000 a year less tax revenue we're collecting um but by the same time we we worry about our our housing stock going up in price and if they sold for that 16,000 more that means similar houses when when a real estate agent does the appraisal is going to appraise for that higher value which means we lose more of our lower end stock so um it's it's kind of a two-sided issue on that so just want to kind of bring that out well and i would just add i would just add uh councilman that um the the lots the lots become and the house has become unmarketable at a higher price point you know there are there are limits to what you know when you're when you're looking at housing and and uh you know charging you know you you can't take it beyond a certain amount so there are there are limits to the sale prices as well right i understand that i mean i'm i'm willing to give you to let this move forward in the different areas but i don't think that you know we should have less than 10,000 square foot lots out in that area is basically where i'm going to okay um make a note okay and other questions for staff or the applicant okay seeing none real my thoughts uh kind of just to uh summarize um well let me add additional feedback staff did reach out to the isd for me and they do have some concerns about the location of the property dedicated uh and so there's if this were to move forward that's a conversation to be had but i have that conversation uh then i want to mention for those following along if you go to the city of denton website and you can search gis map and you go to the gis map and you go look at this area uh and and so there's radio buttons on the right side you can toggle on and off on your screen and what you'll be able to see is what portion of this falls in the county and what portion of this falls in the city and kind of that informs the decision but i also would advocate that those watch and go then also toggle toggle on the mobility plan you've heard a lot about respecting plans and and and that sort of thing well here's the plans that are in conflict and that's where we have to make a decision so there's a mobility plan that clearly delineates uh a it has a uh let me get my vernacular right there's a future collector there there's a primary arterial there and uh there's a future loop discussion there and so there's no it's not as cut and dry as hey we have a plan and let's follow it we also have a plan for a pit right we said if a project meets a certain parameter they can bring a pit forward so i've never heard no discussion about uh removing that as a discussion and so it's one of those things where it's not as cut and dry as there's a plan and we're going to follow the plan or we're going to ignore the plan what do you do when the pit plan and the mobility plan and the comprehensive plan contradict each other will you have a conversation and you have a discussion and you process that through and and you collect data to collect data we have to then move forward to the next step so uh and so just to make sure i put a finer uh kind of point on that can staff talk to me about a future collector what does that road look like in its capacity i'm looking to see if we still have becky with us and becky should i believe she's on the line okay becky you there mayor hudspeth i can speak to uh heartley field road which is the collector and this is just strictly coming from the mobility plan it looks like it's uh existing two lane with i believe two future lanes so a four lane is what i believe that heartley field is but i'm looks like becky's here she can certainly correct me if i'm mistaken uh let her unmute and watch is coming on i mean the same question because there's also a primary arterial in the area so i want to kind of understand that flow as well um well suffice it to say um if if she pops on that's great otherwise we're going to get moving uh hi mayor this is becky davini can you hear me sir yes yes sir so yes sir you are correct there are several roadways shown on that on the existing mobility plan where there are collectors or they are arterials uh several of those roadways do show uh four lanes and several of those roadways do show um two lanes and so it would be just specifically the location of where you're looking at whether the future right away is 110 foot wide and we will be working with the developer um on those uh future roadways cross-section specifically related to the development along wagon wheel cooper creek and also heartley field right okay thank you uh appreciate that and and so but yeah so so that's my point is there's a lot of moving parts here it's not succinct as as we'd like it to be and and so i think for me that the prudent thing to do is to move forward to get the answers that those in the county primarily those in living in heartley field want we need to produce the the answers to the question that uh uh mayor pro tem ask i think there's other questions here there's a school district questions and to to move those forward and and i think council member ryan makes a great point to say okay well if we increase the the density and take away from this collected uh parkland what does that look like the impact to the tax roll is obviously uh primary to me to understand if the we all understand residential doesn't recoup uh it's it's it's uh cost that's just that's not a real thing until you get up to about four hundred thousand dollars uh so we understand just easy math that's not the case now it becomes a discussion about amenities and how we meet our our growing community our need density those sort of things uh and do we want to increase commercial on that component to try to offset that i mean there's just a lot of moving parts and a lot of numbers missing uh and so for me i i want to i've received the same emails and the problem is i don't have those answers but what i do have is the access to to press the applicant to show a proof of concept and they so i i respect their uh desire to get some clear direction from us and and we've provided some of that with the the questions today and i look forward to future discussions and then we look and then we look at the numbers just like we did with the other projects and make a decision uh so that's where i fall uh council member melton and council member johnson yeah i just uh you can put it together the way you like but i just want to take issue with a certain way of framing the issues um there isn't uh a paid plan that says we must approve bids there's a paid guideline that says when we may consider pids which also includes the requirement that it have that have a significant public benefit and uh as mayor pretend discussed before the fact that it's for housing would suggest that every housing development would meet that criteria and we don't do pits for everything and the fact that the mobility plan uh may seem at odds with the comprehensive plan well there's a couple of ways to address that one could be as uh has been suggested that we take up this one project but another way to do it is the way we're already doing it which is as a community we're going to relook at the comprehensive plan and i think that's the right foundational step and everything else should follow from that okay council member johnson i just need some clarity here the understanding is we're not making any decision on one thing or the other we can't we're not voting on anything secondly what we're doing here is deciding concerning a pit and on that determination or whether or not we're in agreement that says whether we would go forward with this any further or is this going forward and then we'll go one decision at a time that's a great question council member um so our intent today is that we've reached a point in the pit evaluation process that we would need to conduct that the applicant funded fiscal impact analysis that would require the developer to escrow funds with the city to fund it that would also be a significant commitment of staff time as well as engaging our financial advisors and our bond council it would also require a significant investment on behalf of the developer so we felt that it was necessary before we took those steps before we made that investment of time and resources that we came to council for this for a preliminary discussion of does council want does council feel that this project meets enough of the guidelines that we could move it forward to that stage and for the benefit of those that weren't here for hunter and cole ranch can what is that jessica if you could speak to kind of those studies and analysis what's incorporated in that and not detail but just high level what type analysis is done sure so we'll look at um the financial information that's presented um that's in your backup so the developer printed presented us with you know here's how we think growth will occur here's the value when we think homes will be coming on board the value of the infrastructure that's being created what we'll look at is the other side of the equation as well how much will it cost us to maintain the infrastructure that's being put into place how much will it cost us to serve this area we'll look at that public facility impact like julie referenced you know will there be additional police or fire needs library needs parks and rec needs going forward so we'll take a comprehensive look at that as well as the financing components of the pit itself does the pit generate enough revenue to support the debt that would be issued for to fund the infrastructure okay thank you for that um any any other counselor johnson yes so what we're saying here we're going to go forward with gathering information at the expense of the developers is that does that sum it up yes so the fiscal impact analysis must be funded by the developer per the pit guidelines um however any of those costs related to the creation and formation of the pit would be considered pit reimbursement eligible so the developer could be reimbursed for those costs um and that if the pit was approved that and let me cut to erin i want to let the council now is just go describe that you know the development proceeding forward to do the research and uh that staff will encounter we will need to prepare an escrow agreement to define the terms as to how the money gets used so that there are no uh questions as to or any issues in the future the money wasn't applied appropriately so i just want the council to know that that would be part of the next step as well okay if it goes forward david i just want to add to follow up on jessica's point that it would the the studies would be funded by the developers but staff would choose who we would use for those studies and and be the point of contact for those studies moving forward so it would be an independent analysis okay counselor johnson do you have any follow-up okay uh mayor pro tem i know you had your hands yeah yeah i'm mayor i'm ready to give give my direction at this point i don't feel like a pit is warranted for this development um i think a pit is for economic development not for financing of uh residential development or financing of a private development um getting past passing off the tax to the eventual homeowners and getting past the issues of retail price versus increase in taxes etc etc it is an economic development tool i don't believe the subdivision is going to fill the city's coffers uh to any great degree i don't think it's going to generate any uh significant secondary economic development by contrast look at hunter coal ranch that we've all referenced many many times that's a six thousand plus acre development project with hundreds and thousands of acres of uh at least over a thousand acres of commercial development that will generate significant revenue for the city this by contrast will not generate significant revenue for the city and outside of some of my good friends who sell homes for a living there's not going to be a significant amount of additional economic development as a result of the pit activity the subdivision itself being being developed maybe so but the pit activity i just don't see as warranted for a residential development um if they had more commercial development if it was a slightly different kind of uh i'm not even going to go there i just can't really get behind the idea of a pit for residential development at this juncture okay thank you uh councillor armature yeah so i i agree um that that uh pit is not good for this particular development okay i know that uh you know just to speak to uh your uh comment earlier uh the mayor's comment earlier that um if we want to get these questions answered the only way to do it is to move forward with it uh but we can of course also you know save everybody including the developer a lot of time by just saying no now if uh we believe that that is the right decision so i believe no to a pig now i mean and i just want to offer um just one comment uh you know to my colleagues it's something that i i haven't talked about um but but it's something that i i think of very often uh when these kinds of developments come before us and i call it the the living room a parking lot fallacy and that is the idea that uh imagine if somebody pulls a car into your living room yes we have we have another item that we have to get to after i know i know i'm just i'm just going i'm going to say this because this is important i see it time and time again uh you've got somebody pulls their car into your living room and they park there and you say don't park in my living room this is a living room uh that is it is not a parking lot um then another car comes in and says i see there's a car parked here uh this is a parking lot um and then you start hearing uh that the new car justified by the existence of the old car and this is what i see in this area with these developments you know agave ranch stark farm in this rural area all of these developments that are named branches and farms that are actually taking the place of ranches and farms okay uh and so we don't need to keep going in in this direction if we stick to our our comprehensive plan we won't that's all thank you okay any other comments uh okay uh so i'm looking for direction what i have is uh just to to be crystal clear so we're all on the same page well first and i want to have one more comment i i completely understand the 2030 comprehensive plan i don't know who else sitting here on this body uh was part of that original board uh but there i mean i i fully understand it and i fully understand it was baked by the the uh consultants and shoved down to the city and the city has pivoted and grown since then so there's a there's a number of different reasons for a comprehensive plan uh and and and so it's not just that uh there's again i'll leave it at that there's a number of different reasons why we need a new one um so that being said what i have is i have three that would say we don't don't need to move forward being uh council armater melzer and uh council member davis so my question is outside of them is there anyone else that would lie that that says we don't need to move forward with this uh from my and just to give you time to think from my perspective uh i would tell the applicant i think i take council member um ryan's point about the 10k uh lots and i think i take council member i mean mayor pro tem davis's point about the uh increased commercial needs to to kind of make this make sense and so if any of those are uh if are a reason for pause uh then you you know buyer beware uh that's that's where i'm leaning and that would be uh obviously forth going forward but not to say we're gonna go forward just looking for some direction from uh if there's anyone else that would be um adverse to moving moving this uh forward to an analysis phase of this one more time okay so staff you have your did i miss anyone want to make sure okay so staff you have your direction uh as far as the the notes today uh i think there's a majority that says move forward with the analysis uh but there's some legitimate concerns and so i'll leave that to you after this meeting if the applicant decides they can't meet some of those thresholds or goals uh let out set out then then uh i i think they could uh come back and we could do it a different way uh is there unless jessica i'll take your direction if there's uh another way to handle that we could go back and discuss with the applicant if those changes uh or recommendations are something that they can consider and then we can begin discussions um about neck about next steps if yeah yeah i would i would suggest that right i mean there's you know all the self-help books say eat the frog first so if there's if those kind of those bad things are kind of significant changes the most significant changes if those things become uh untenable then that saves us all a lot of time and energy um but if they can get over those hurdles then sure let's let's take a look at it and have that conversation is that is that okay i'm sorry you're muted uh miss city manager yes uh mayor that is acceptable and i would ask that jessica does would have a conversation at least with the developers to make sure that that the information that the council members have shared today are are going to be supported by the actual developers my concern is that i'd hate to see the city staff or the developer move forward and then come to a conclusion after we've spent hours and dollars that is that excuse my language but that dog won't hunt right and so i think we have to get down to the nitty-gritty and say if you can't do these things if you can't do the things that were mentioned by council today then i really i would say we probably don't have a path forward that's right okay well that's great and and so and then and i open it up to my peers if there's something that you would want in that conversation email city management and staff and get that under consideration so that they can have a clear and candid conversation because i think that's that's important to to uphold that so um okay well thank you very much jessica and to the applicant and all staff and for becky etc for everyone helping with that is there anything else on that item we need to address okay thank you so that'll call us to our last um work session item and then i will update my my peers that we will not have a closed session today uh that hearing was was moved and there's discussions ongoing and analysis etc so that'll come back at a future date but so our last work session before we go to our meeting at 6 30 i'll call it it's e id 21631 receive report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the fy 2021 budget capital improvement program rates and five-year financial forecast for water wastewater drainage solids waste and electric funds good evening mayor city council cassie argdon director of finance um in order to um save some time i know we have to go into regular session at 6 30 um i'd like to get through the electric presentation if possible and we can move the water wastewater and solid waste presentations to next week if um if council agrees yes that works uh is there anyone adverse to that okay we're all set okay um and i let me share my screen and we will get started okay so as far as electric we wanted to bring you a budget update since um the post winter storm financial conditions we discussed several times the impact of the winter storm on the electric fund wanted to bring you a budget update as well as some debt funding options for our purchase power expenses along with the five-year forecast and fund balance recommendations so as you may remember the winter storm the city did incur 209 million dollars in collateral and ancillary charges associated with the purchase power expenses for the winter storm to date the net expense so after we um deducted all of the credits um and the that we received um the net expense was 140 million to date we've issued 100 million in extendable commercial paper to meet those cash requirements so we do have 100 million outstanding of commercial paper notes um and as you may recall standard and pours downgraded and i i do need to mention it was the utility bond rating not the overall city's bond rating so that um that bullet needs to say utility system so i apologize for that and then Fitch placed texas public utilities on a negative credit watch um and the finance department we completed an in-depth fund balance analysis which i'll talk about in a in an upcoming slide we still have some uncertainties with the electric fund um the uplift and re-pricing are still um we we do not know how that's going to impact the fund that's still being worked out with ERCOT so options for you to consider today the outstanding 100 million dollars in commercial paper notes um we're recommending that we refund those to 30-year long-term bonds as we continue to monitor the legislation related to the debt securitization for the purchase power expense we think there may be an opportunity in the future to have that that debt securitized through the state additional options for you to consider is issuing an additional 40 million dollars in extendable commercial paper notes to to cover that net cost of 140 million altogether of the purchase power expense and i'm going to show you what that looks like to the fund balance in an upcoming slide but additional option for you to consider is no additional ECP or extendable commercial paper note issuance but to have the the 40 million dollars just come directly out of the fund balance so we did prior to the winter storm we had started a fund balance analysis obviously the winter storm changed that analysis and our recommendation so we did look at several other municipal-owned entities as well as the industry best practices and you can see denton highlighted there on the top of the chart um our with our minimum reserve target of 16 percent and max of 21 percent of operating expenses post winter storm our financial advisors have recommended increasing our minimum operating reserve to 100 million dollars and we we would like we are recommending that we increase the minimum fund balance to 100 million with a maximum of 150 million and those those entities listed in the chart um these are all of their operating budgets and minimum targets before the winter storm we do expect that those will be changing as a result of the winter storm and so what would this look like to the to the five-year forecast and to the electric fund um so this is the performa for electric with issuing the hundred million dollars in commercial paper notes as 30-year bonds so you can see we tried to call out that that debt service payment right here on the line it's about 4.2 million dollars annually um this projection 2021 we did keep everything else all of the other expenses at budget so you could really see the impact of that purchase power obviously we still don't know how we're going to end the fiscal year and so that is one of the reasons we are not wanting to discuss rate increases because we do want to get through the summer months and see how we perform and if we can um see some expense savings and see where we land as far as the the fiscal year get a better projection to come back to discuss um the rate increase and how this will impact the the electric customer so we've removed the rate increase from this slide because we just don't know but you can see in this option we still are using 40 million dollars of reserves from the fund balance and so we're drawing down that fund balance pretty significantly in future years and so we're still staying within the current targets however if we move to the recommended targets we're significantly below those recommended targets and so this is what the forecast would look like if we issue the full hundred and forty million dollars um for in in 30-year um bonds so you can see that that debt service payment increases to 5.9 million annually and that would be for 30 years but the benefit of this this option is that it spreads that that significant um expense over a longer period of time allowing us to not impact the rates in in one in a single year so we're able to spread that rate impact over multiple years while maintaining the fund balance stabilization and we're we're able to maintain an increased fund balance as recommended by our financial advisors um so just a quick summary um the the hundred million dollars of outstanding commercial paper notes are coming due may 20th so we do we will need to refund those to long-term bonds um and we are we're we're recommending 30-year bonds and then we're really um we we would like your direction today on the additional 40 million dollars worth of purchase power expenses whether or not we issue commercial paper and convert those to to 30-year bonds or if we um just pay for those out of the the fund balance and then the next option for your consideration is the fund balance policy itself um you can as you as you saw on the previous slides you know we are recommending the increased fund balance from a to a hundred a minimum of a hundred million to a maximum of 150 million um if we get council's direction today to move forward with increasing that fund balance we will bring back a fund balance policy for your adoption at a later date and as we continue to move forward into the fiscal year and see how the financial situation changes we will be bringing back the rate discussion um but it will it this purchase power expense will impact the rates um i do want to be clear about that we will have to increase the rates to to recoup the cost of this 140 million dollar um purchase power expense but we will begin we've begun the the 21-22 budget process and so we will be coming back with um those discussions and the rate impact and so that is all i have okay um questions for staff mayor pro tem davis thank you mayor i have two questions one i understand the correlation between you know 100 million dollars and uh target revenue uh excuse me target reserve minimum based on what we've just been through i'm not sure i understand it as a target minimum going forward and and why wouldn't maybe a percentage range like we've had before why wouldn't a percentage of operating capital um be more appropriate and my second question is if we choose option two to not issue additional commercial paper walk us through uh if you could kind of briefly the the immediate immediate effects we know we're talking about rate increases in the future of some magnitude but if we decided not to issue additional commercial paper now what would be the effect in the short term sure so to answer your first question um the we can we can still um set the fund balance policy in terms of percentages so if we do the 100 million dollar minimum that is 43 percent of operating expenses um and so if that's council direction we can bring that back and we can frame it in the percentage um we can frame it that way as far as the impact so just to give you some reference the the five million dollar debt service payment would be um approximately a five percent increase overall for an average electric residential customer so if we were to spend 40 million dollars that's going to be a significant rate increase um council could decide to draw down the fund balance um however there will be long-term impacts to our bond rating we've already been downgraded by smps that more than likely would we would be downgraded by by fitch as well um which means we would pay more for our our debt in the future years so our capital projects would become more expensive um as well as um there's just are less stability in the fund for future um emergencies okay uh any follow-up questions mayor pertem just to say thank you and i the reason i ask about percentages is because we know what we spent on electricity we know what our operating expenses were last year we grow and we grow and we grow and if we express it continually as a function of the last emergency as opposed to a percentage of what our budget is when the budget grows next year in the year after in the year after we're constantly revisiting that that number as opposed to setting a target percentage of the overall operating budget okay mayor if i can mayor if i can just jump into address i certainly think a percentage is is appropriate and i would just add take to further cassie's point earlier and so there is one conversation of do we want to try to get to what's equivalent to 100 million dollars and that's our recommendation obviously after talking with our financial advisors if we don't issue the 40 million and we don't spread that 40 million out over 30 years and we still want to get to that 100 million it simply means over this five-year window we're going to have to have those rate increases pile up more quickly than spreading them out over 30 years so just to reiterate the point cassie made earlier okay thank you counselor marmotor and then counselor melzer so i just want to say that uh the rate payers wouldn't have to be uh saddled with that additional 40 million if it came out of the budget uh if it came out of existing if it not only existing reserve but just elsewhere in the budget so as far as i'm concerned i just want to say i'm against issuing that 40 million dollars in additional commercial paper and i would say take it elsewhere elsewhere from the budget such as our inflated police department budget for instance okay counselor melzer you're muted yeah can you talk a little bit about the interest rate environment like uh ultimately it's it comes down to what's the carry cost right for doing it doing it through commercial paper or doing it through long-term instruments you know or is is the interest is it or is it just term you know are we moving to a better interest rate as well by by using long-term instruments rather than the commercial paper well right now if we issue the commercial paper and then refund to long-term debt because we've only been downgraded by s&p we could potentially receive a better interest rate than if we were downgraded by s&p and fitch we will we will receive a higher interest rate but right now we're projecting about a 3.6 interest rate on that 30-year debt and and and what's remind me please what the interest rate is on the commercial paper or saying right now it's lower right correct right now it is low so we're trying to take advantage of that um while we can yeah counselor melzer just when i those really there really are two different discussions the short term commercial paper is is really just set stop gap to provide liquidity needs but the commercial paper is always going to be due every 90 days so ultimately you're going to have to refund it with long-term debt or reserves right so it's just two separate conversations it's commercially first and long-term debt to pay off the commercial paper couldn't couldn't you theoretically not necessarily saying it's a good idea but could you theoretically just keep rolling over the commercial paper for 30 years we have our um you know we have our financial advisors on they may be able to speak to that but i i think that would be a tough a tough thing to do for that long okay do they want to speak to that briefly uh while we're here or yeah i mean just why why why is it a bad idea if it's much lower interest rates sure it is councilmember belser this is adam lakehart with hilltop um so the ecp program can only be uh rolled out to a maximum of 270 days and so it essentially rolls basically every 90 days right now and at the 270 day period it has to be taken out okay that's part of the program yeah and i i entirely uh you know understand and you know see the wisdom of the recommendation to finance this very huge pill uh to make it you know somewhat more digestible i would just simply say that in my opinion we must at the same time blush less at the thought of insisting that our state delegation stand up and say because of price gouging during the time the entire time of the declared disaster there will be an impact on our ratepayers and it's not only the ag that can investigate you know and make proposals so in my opinion those actions should be paired you know we're we're we're lessening the blow but there will still be a blow on our ratepayers and uh i i lay it at the feet of you know entities we're not we're so far not willing to take on and we should and our our state delegation should in my opinion um any other comments questions for staff councilman ryan yeah um i think as far as rolling the 100 million into a uh bonds that's we're not going to reduce by more than that but i would say on the 40 million to to use commercial paper and we might want to roll that once or twice until we finally get to that last number and know what needs to be done with it um as far as the increasing of the target uh currently our targets are what we call them percentages they're actually a number of days uh 60 minimum and 75 maximum i would probably say we just over the course of maybe the five-year plan or possibly need to go to a 10-year plan that we increase it by a certain amount each year until we get to 150 days and 240 days okay um got it um councillor armander you've already spoken i'm going to speak and then we'll circle back and we'll wrap up we're a minute late as is but uh we need to have this discussion give staff direction so for me i i i echo i thank you for your point um council member ryan because i was looking for a way to kind of phrase that we need to incrementally increase uh so i i adopt that that methodology uh and and and then uh i do take your point on the 40 million to to see how that shakes out because that answers my other question of if we we do ultimately recoup in some way it leaves us the flexibility to apply those dollars to to that um commercial paper loan or something you know it allows us to directly impact that debt versus trying to figure out the best way to unwrap something but but i also want to kind of those watching i do want to touch on uh slide number seven for those that are watching and if you look in the margins there and go to the bottom we ultimately there's 14.5 million dollars that were saved from the uh from the uh team decommissioning of the coal plant and that's important to note it's also important to note that this body opted not to discount the everyone's utility bill to one one dollar which would have cost 20 million dollars a month and and put us in a worse position so this body has made a lot of good financial decisions uh that have put us in a situation uh better than we then it could have been a lot worse better said and so i i thank staff for your direction your guidance and i thank my peers for for holding true to sound uh financial principles to give us a best chance to be prepared for the unknown uh so with that i i think um i just kind of need to hear it so council member armature will speak but i need to hear after that uh we need to start shaping some discussions around one the uh transfer of the 100 million and then two the 40 million and uh our our fund balance council member armature uh yeah i just wanted to second what council member melzer said about a blame and accountability and just you know in response to what you just said about you know not discounting rates um our our rate payers are really struggling right now um and just as the city had its power uh turned off uh by the state uh our rate payers are many of our repairs are getting their power turned off because they can't pay okay do everything we can uh to try to get this money from from elsewhere in the budget uh to prevent this this their rates from going up okay so uh mayor pro tem sorry mayor was just raising my hand because i thought you were ready for yes sir we're ready let's do it um so i'd like to go ahead with the 40 uh 40 million and uh additional commercial paper the idea of taking 40 million dollars from the general fund because today we're talking about the utility fund take 40 million dollars from the general fund um and and sliding it over to the to the uh utility fund the electrical fund that doesn't make any kind of sense to me the idea that we would take it out of current reserves when our whole conversation is we need to increase our reserves and not lower them and what david told us earlier was if we're going to increase reserves the best time to start is now because if you take 40 million out you've got to add it back in one way or another and the only way to do that expeditiously on any kind of time frame even if you do it incrementally is rate increases so um ultimately the carry cost to our rate payers of spending that 40 million now out of reserves is lower than taking the bond uh the commercial paper now the impact to our our rate payers and that's really the the carry cost that i'm most concerned about because it all passes on to them um i i also like what we talked about earlier about expressing the uh reserve going forward as a as a percentage if we want to call it a number of days um however we we best refer to it um that's what i'd like to see that it if it grows or shrinks it does so a commensurate with with the budget um and i also want to be really careful when we use the that term price gouging i think it's important everybody remembers that we buy and sell power as a power producer and if our energy center was up and running during this event we'd be selling power during that time too so i think we need to be really careful and i want the folks out there to know that our staff and our folks in austin are speaking on a very regular basis with our delegation about the bills moving through the the house and the senate right now we are very active on that front okay so david do you want to speak to percentages versus days really quick to help us frame uh the the staff direction or who can speak to that i i i and i just i don't know the exact numbers unless unless cassie has it off hand but certainly have no problem and i i think our intention likely would have been to have those expressed in either days or or percentages one or the other or both so we'll certainly bring it back and in that in that manner as we go through the budget process and bring that fund balance discussion back to you okay so here's the question who is adverse to the 100 the the 100 uh million the the commercial current commercial paper being transferred to uh 30-year debt and the 40 million additional being funded through commercial paper that's that's really the question and in the the fund balance will come back to us so again the transfer long-term the 100 million long-term the debt 40 million commercial papers short-term debt is what's before us is there anyone adverse to that plan councilor armature uh can we break it up into into two separate propositions uh because i'm i'm in favor of the that 100 million you know that that unfortunately was uh we uh already spent or because we had no choice um but to to do that to keep the power on um but i i object to the 40 million in commercial paper um so i don't know if anybody wants to split those up but for me it's a divided issue great no problem is there anyone else that that has a comment or preference on direction seeing none okay so you have a majority you have it you have the dissenting uh comments there on the 40 uh commercial paper and you and you have the majority on both of those to move forward you'll and then the understanding is you'll come back to us with some kind of normalized plan for the uh fund balance yes okay and then you'll bring back the other presentation thank you for for uh uh expediting this so that we can get you some direction so okay with that let's uh it is 6 40 uh so let's call it um 650 we'll come back and start our regularly our regular 6 30 meeting it is 6 39 will be on recess good evening and welcome to this meeting of the denton city council this is a regularly scheduled meeting today is uh april 20th 2021 and it is 651 pm uh and we do have a quorum so we will uh get started with our evening meeting and please forgive the delay we were uh hard pressed to get through our work session but wanted to make sure every item got its deserved attention and debate so with that i will call uh i'll get us started with our the first item on our agenda which is the pledge to the united states and texas flag please stand if you're able and we'll do that okay i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible okay thank you uh we do have um this is the second portion of our agenda presentation from members of the public we do have one open mic caller and um staff will bring her up and it's eva and i i hope i say this right greco or she'll correct me if i'm wrong she will have four minutes hello hello uh good evening if you could mute your um if were you watching it there live because that's a little bit of a delay that'll help you okay thank you uh you're on with the city council if you could please give us your name and address and then you can go ahead and start your comments you'll have four minutes okay thank you my name is eva greco my address is 802 west oak street apartment five here in denton um i'd want to i didn't know if the council mayor and council were aware um dcta is supposed to be taking our buses away and setting up an uber type service um what i was told i am on their citizen advisory committee and at our meeting last week i was told that a flyer i mean something would be in the insert for the municipal i mean yeah the municipal utility bill um and it's starting yesterday for a certain time period the public can give feedback on this transition i personally am opposed to it uh it's removing the public transportation aspect out of dcta's public transportation and i was concerned if the city was aware i know the city gives a little over four million dollars um a year to dcta towards our public transportation and i've asked repeatedly how what happens with that funding and where is it being applied to if it's not going to be applied to public transportation um but i haven't gotten an answer from anybody at dcta um and this was my concern that i just wanted to bring to the mayor and council okay well thank you very much and you still have another few minutes if you if you want to speak additionally or if not i would suggest or ask if you'll email this is gerard hutzpah speaking yeah and if you could if you could email me i can ask staff to follow up with you if that's okay and they can answer your questions um yes i'm done speaking i don't want to get long-winded on the subject it was just the basics of it i mean there are more details i can go over with you um in an email so i will finish speaking and i will email you um if not later today i know you won't get to it today um you know then it will be tomorrow i will email you on this and yes if you can you know direct one of the council members or somebody you know to look into this matter further yes we've discussed it here on council so and so what staff will be able to do is give you some information on where we are and and answer your questions and then you can let us know what you what you think about what's being proposed oh okay great thank you so much for your time mayor and council and you all have a good evening likewise thank you for calling you're welcome bye bye okay that's great so that was the only caller and uh staff i'll forward that when i get that email uh and then so that takes us to um the consent agenda we had two items uh pulled b and c but i'll take a motion on the others council member ryan with approval of the consent agenda except for items b and c okay mayor pro tem davis i'll second thank you we have a motion by council member ryan a second by mayor pro tem davis to approve the consent agenda item items but for item b and c which were pulled for separate presentations any discussion okay seeing none council member ryan how say you aye mayor pro tem davis aye let's see council member baker uh council member johnson aye council member armater yes okay mayor hutzpah is an aye and who am i council member melchor there you are aye thank you i knew i was missing one thank you so that passes seven zero that takes us to uh item b i'll call that which is id 21271 consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton adopting a revised handbook for boards commissions and council committees and declaring an effective date thank you mr mayor my name is reza rios and i am your city secretary and i'm here to present the item let me share my screen thank you thank you so the proposed changes i'm going to go over them these are basically a very detailed summary of the major changes that are proposed we added language that the member information is subject to the public information act there is a public access form that we present to all newly appointed as well as reappointed members and it'll clarify that that form has to be submitted not later than the 14th day after appointment we added newly created boards including their descriptions and legislation and these were the denton police department chief of police advisory board the sustainability framework advisory committee and then the development code review committee which was just formed as a full committee we added the following board name changes the committee on community engagement which was previously known as the committee on citizen engagement the community partnership committee previously known as the hotel occupancy tax and sponsorship committee the discovered denton advisory board which we were informed was previously known as convention and visitors bureau so that was an external board and we were just notified of that change we added the denton county leadership teams teams that were added to the city council committee list this past session and of course it just included their descriptions and their legislation we also updated the notification process by the city secretary if a member happens to violate the attendance policy and then mandate the city secretary place an item on the agenda seeking the member removal if the member seek fails to respond within an initial time frame and of course also updated the removal from office provision to match the update to the notification process that i just previously detailed of course that removal from office covers other areas that are not being changed this time around um we um asking that we require the minutes reflect the date of approval by the board this kind of confirms that there were no minutes overlooked or you know maybe there's some minutes pending um we're recommending that we amend the election of officer provision to establish a clear time period for their appointment um as you know due to the covet situation we have to delay the appointment for boards and commissions processes and it kind of can be confused some boards that we were coming toward the end of the of the or the beginning of the year you know asking that they appoint an officer so this kind of clarified it a little bit more we also um establish a removal process if members fail to complete the ethics training that is established by and through the city auditor's office as you know all new members that serve on the board of ethics historical landmark commission planning and zoning commission public utilities board and zoning board of adjustment um have to do the ethics training um not only when they first come on board but also every year thereafter so um and there was really no removal process so it'll just facilitate in case that ever comes up hopefully it won't um we also um wanted to update the telephone and video conference provision within the handbook that made reference that um that that process would follow any regulations that exist not only by state law but also the city council rules of procedure because the rules of procedure do actually provide some more detailed information on those processes and then um we're asking um that we update the public comment provision that's currently in the handbook to provide that all boards and commissions that do allow kind of like a similar open microphone process for speakers that it'd be placed on the at the beginning of their agenda versus the end this helps plan for staff coverage uh answering phones etc and then of course we needed to correct moderate ordinance number references and citations and those were about the changes i'll be happy to answer any questions you might have and let me close out my presentation thank you okay questions for staff uh councilor armater yeah a question about the ethics training requirement and also a question about uh the the public input section at the beginning of meeting um so about the the ethics training requirement uh will and i i don't know if someone from the auditor's office is on this call or not but i i take it the training will be updated uh to reflect the ethics ordinance as as it currently stands uh right now the video that you watch as part of the ethics training um you know conflicts with a lot of the the ethics ordinance as it stands so i had had requested that it be um updated uh the the city auditor you know recognized those conflicts i just wanted to just ensure that that that will be updated okay um i'm not sure is that something that the council entire council would have to take up where are we with that well mr um i know that we can certainly um you know reach out to the auditor and and kind of ask that you know she work on updating the the training video similar to what we recently did on the boards and commissions training uh to add you mr mayor okay yeah i think that this is sarah mayor that i believe um madison is doing that as we speak working on updating that uh we will check in with her but i'm almost positive the last time we spoke she was talking about updating the the ethics uh information so i will um i'll check in with her okay thank you any other any other questions for staff actually i had there was one more component to my question and that's just regarding the the public input section will it be and it's not necessarily in the language of the handbook but will it be in the published uh agenda for for all uh things that for all board and committee meetings that allow public comments will it be published on on the agenda that there is a uh the opportunity for comment at the beginning of the meeting and will it also be included as it is in our council council agenda the you know instructions on on how to do that i know it takes up a lot of space but it's really helpful for people especially um who are you know who are first time participants yes ma'am so our office um does handle any agenda template updates and should the the provision be passed tonight then we'll adjust the templates to reflect all of that explanation and clarity okay wonderful thank you any other questions for staff okay i'll take a motion councilman ryan i'm sorry you're muted oh i guess i pushed it twice um uh in the table of contacts it has that on page 41 the there's about three united way boards but yet when you go to page 41 there's nothing about those boards on there and i know in your presentation you said you'd updated for that uh to be included i'll i'll make sure that they because that's um actually it might just be the page notation but i'll make sure and make that correction because you're talking about the denton county behavioral health leadership team homeless leadership team and workforce success leadership team yes sir we actually noted those i think under the council committees but i'll make sure that the numeration is is corrected okay are they subject to the same uh rules then is is what these is council committees are not it's my understanding that they are not they're external so they do have different processes they have their own bylaws yes okay all right with that i'll go ahead and make a motion to approve okay thank you uh mayor pro tem a second thank you uh we have a motion by council member ryan to approve with the noted changes uh and then uh we have a second by mayor pro tem davis uh discussion okay uh councilman ryan i say you aye mayor pro tem davis aye uh council member melzer aye council member baker uh council member johnson aye council member armature yes all right mayor hutzpeth is a yes that passes seven to zero that takes us to item c um and i'll call that which is uh id 202172 consider adoption of an ordinance approving an agreement between the city of denton and hickory and rail ventures llc regarding an economic development program for stoke denton and providing an effective date the economic development partnership board recommends approval 70 keeping mayor and council members jessica rogers director of economic development have a very brief presentation on this item let me share and get started right so the goal for this evening is to seek adoption of an ordinance approving a partnership agreement between the city of denton and hickory and rail ventures llc regarding an economic development program agreement for stoke denton uh stoke denton is currently under the management of hickory and rail ventures or hrv and it's become a hub for tech startups entrepreneurship remote worker connectivity and small business development beyond managing the co-working space hrv and stoke has extended programming to include such things as the flank conference big ideas the startup crawl the denton innovation group denton angels the making denton podcast coffee and combos which is the mentorship sessions and the accelerate her startup incubator program and a plug for our quarterly economic development report that we just put out that ended for the quarter that ended in march because we have details that heather from stoke didn't provided regarding that program and some really excellent outcomes so since 2017 hrv has held the management and operation agreement for stoke denton and stoke was created as a program of the city and the city held the lease for the co-working space if you'll remember we've had a couple conversations related to that lease and some adjustments to the management agreement based on making that lease and the management agreement come into alignment so the previous council direction was that we were working towards hrv operate operating stoke independently following the conclusion of the city lease in 2021 and so we're working through that full transition of the management from the city to hrv so i'm over the next oh sorry oh if you're at our last presentation we had a couple slides in this presentation where i went over the contract terms and stokes performance but i've summed it in one bullet point on this version and just to say throughout the management agreement hrv has met or exceeded all of the contract performance standards that the city has asked for in terms of managing and operating stoke um so just a reminder the management agreement ends on june 30th 2021 and that's also when the lease ends on the space so we are beginning the process to transition the space over to hrv if you'll remember we had this discussion i believe back in october that the economic environment with covet has impacted hrv's projections and their growth trajectory trajectory it's still overwhelmingly positive but it will delay their financial sustainability so we had a discussion in october about the city continuing to serve as a partner and provide support to hrv and it's to continue to operate and manage stoke and really our goal is to create an alignment with our economic development strategic plan and our efforts to support creation of a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem so at that october meeting we discussed with city council a couple deal points related to the negotiation of this program agreement the terms were that hrv and the city will enter into a partnership agreement focused on supporting the city's efforts in the areas of entrepreneurship tech and small business support we are proposing a one-year agreement for the initial term financial support will be provided in the amount of 133 170 and then two additional terms that we've negotiated with stoke is that we're going to transfer the existing security deposit and that's about 17 000 to hrv so they don't have to make an additional security deposit for staying in that space and then the city is going to transfer ownership of the furniture equipment and brand to hrv that's all of the furniture and equipment that was purchased directly when the city built out that space about five years ago the key activities will remain the same they'll providing in four key areas event support program support marketing support and ecosystem support all of those are detailed in the program proposal and agreement attached in your backup and stoke will continue to be located at their current location which is 608 east hickory in the hill rail yard development so i know that it's important that we you know have accountability and transparency in our agreements and we want to make sure that we're continuing to meet the goals that we set out for so like we've done with many of our economic development agreements and we put in metrics and reporting so we'll have continued monthly meetings between the stoke executive director and myself um they'll also provide monthly progress reports related to the identified strategic plan work items and then as we do with all of our partners we'll include them in our quarterly reports and we'll ask and stoke to provide key metrics that indicate their successes and lastly we'll have an annual report and presentation provided to city council so how we got here city council provided a direction to pursue this agreement on october 13th 2020 we've been going back and forth and negotiating the agreement we bought an amendment forward and and the economic development partnership board recommended approval on april 14th um seven zero and so with that staff recommends adoption of the ordinance approving the program agreement and i will stop there and stand for any questions okay questions for staff any questions for staff okay i'll take a motion uh councilmember armature uh i i just have a comment um and thank you for the presentation i just just wanted to say that i was hoping uh before covid hit before we even knew that covid was a thing um that uh the stoke would be uh financially independent by now uh since they they were you know becoming increasingly uh successful under the new management then covid hit and because of covid i am absolutely willing to okay uh extending this contract for another year under the current terms i would not be otherwise okay with it um but i think it's important you know that that we don't uh punish them or or anybody for um you know being in the same boat that that that all businesses are in uh under under covid so it really set everybody back for a year um and i i think it's only fair but i just wanted to make that clear that that's the reason why why i'm voting yes and i wish them all the best in their recovery uh from this pandemic and making it to a full independence okay is there so any other questions for staff mayor pro tem davis i was going to make the motion i'll take it i'll move to approve okay is there a second councilmember baker i'll second it thank you uh we have a motion by mayor pro tem davis a second by councilmember baker discussion i'll note uh in this in the discussion phase jessica i would like to uh have a conversation maybe outside of this uh for format but with respect to attendees to those events you know that that are outlined in those calls so i want to i have a thought around that so i'll share with you and then also i i think it would be prudent to assign a dollar figure to the the what's being conveyed that equipment etc so it lists everything in there but i'd like to see a dollar figure attributed to that just to to make sure we're it's transparent that way but uh i'll i'll follow up with you we can provide that information great thank you uh any other discussion okay uh mayor pro tem hasayu aye okay councilmember baker uh councilmember melzer aye councilmember johnson aye councilmember ryan aye and councilmember armature yes mayor hudspeth is a i as well that passes seven zero thank you uh so that concludes the consent agenda takes us to items of individual consideration um i'll call the first item which is it's 4a it's id 21588 consider adoption of an ordinance directing the publication of notice of an intention to issue 30 million 180 thousand in principal amounts of certificates of obligation of the city of denton for general government and solid waste projects and providing an effective date good evening mayor council cassi argon director of finance um mayor i do have one presentation for item a and b okay let me call that as well so item b is id 21592 consider adoption of an ordinance directing the publication notification notice of intention to issue 130 million 660 thousand in principal amount of certificates of obligation of the city of denton for water works and waste systems and electric systems projects and providing an effective date and i have a brief presentation we do have our bond council and financial advisors on the line as well as the the department directors if you have specific questions regarding each project and just to briefly go over the purpose of this notice of intent is required by the local local government code chapter 271 when we issue certificates of obligations and so this notice will be published in the newspaper as well as on the city's website we will public publish it once a week for the next two weeks and then we will be bringing back to you the the parameters ordinance before the actual bond sale so you have another opportunity to review these before the sale so just briefly go over the what's included in the notice of intent the projects that we're noticing for general fund it does include the 8.9 million that was been discussed the issuance of those co's for to finish out that 2012-14 street reconstruction projects as well as our annual vehicle replacements and our annual facilities maintenance programs and then you can see those additional general fund projects the the fleet expansion 311 system the loop 288 building that you discussed a couple of weeks ago and then the the initial funding for the city hall west for innovation as well as the solid waste fleet facility and then water you can see the individual projects for the water utility with a total of 35.5 million expected to be issued in in bonds to pay for those capital projects waste water has several several projects that we're issuing debt for to fund these projects in the upcoming year with a total of 32.5 million issuance specifically for wastewater projects and then electric you can see 61.4 million for all of the the programmed electric capital projects for the upcoming year for with a total of 129.5 million for water wastewater and electric so again just next steps we will be bringing back the parameters ordinance that actually authorizes the sale of both the geo and the co bonds and then we will we've slated the the date of the sale for june 22nd if the market conditions are favorable with the closing date of july 20th where we receive the funding and with that i will stand for any questions okay the mayor had to step away for just a moment but any questions from the council on these items either a or b council member melzer yeah i would just like to ask you to confirm uh that this is not about agreeing agreeing to new spending it's about moving forward on spending we've already approved correct all of these projects were um budgeted and the in the current year the 2021 fiscal budget as well as the capital improvement project budget and the utility forecast they're already folded into all of the utility rates um as well thank you for that clarification and i'll move approval thank you there's a motion for approval is there a second is that on uh item a council member melzer uh well yes and i guess we'll take them up one at a time so yes please so there's a motion for approval of item a is there a second council member ryan i'll second uh any discussion and look at that there's a mayor he can find out if there's discussion oh thank you i appreciate your uh mayor partem all right so motion by whom uh motion by council member melzer second by council member ryan and i just asked if we had discussion perfect any discussion on item a okay then uh council member melzer i'll say you council member ryan hi uh council member baker uh mayor pro tem davis aye okay uh and then council member armature yes council member johnson aye mayor hudspeth is a i as well that passes seven to zero uh we'll take up item b uh is there a motion council member ryan move approval thank you is there a second uh council member johnson i second thank you so we have a motion by council member ryan a second by council member johnson discussion okay seeing none uh council member ryan how say you i council member johnson okay council member melzer aye council member baker uh mayor pro tem davis aye okay and uh council member armature yes mayor hudspeth is an i as well that passes uh seven to zero that takes us to item c which is id 21613 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas amending the fiscal year 2021 budget and annual program of services of the city of denton to allow for adjustments to the the electric fund of 140 million dollars for the purpose of purchasing power during the winter storm yuri event so you get me again cassie auggen director of finance i promise this is the last time i'm going to present to you tonight um i will share the presentation it's just very brief um as we discussed earlier in the work session um the net expense for the for the winter storm for electric for purchasing purchase power was 140 million um so we are asking to increase the expenditure authority of their budget from 231 million to 371 million to account for continuing operations and budget expenditure um through the summer and through the end of the fiscal year so um we did take this to pub on the 12th and it was approved six zero that is all i have okay councillor melzer yeah this uh i'll just make a couple points uh again this is about spending that has already occurred uh and you know that we're formalizing uh it also gives me an opportunity to kind of uh follow up a little bit on some comments are made earlier earlier related topic um i would uh i'm going to move approval and i still would say that in my opinion uh this should also be paired with action uh to have our state legis our state delegation address undoing the heist that occurred due to price gouging and i use the term advisedly uh comment was made that we sell into the market too but i underscore our selling by design is purely defensive uh for when we deal with situations where you know the prices we're faced with are uh astronomic and if the whole thing going back to the declaration of disaster was undone i think we would be fine uh there's discussion about focusing in on certain hours and certain days but not the full time since the disaster was declared and that's what i feel uh you know our state delegation should uh should speak up and address uh that haven't been said i move approval okay we have a motion is mayor pro tem davis i'll second okay we have a motion by council member melzer a second by mayor pro tem davis discussion seeing none council member melzer hasai aye mayor pro tem davis aye okay council member baker uh council member johnson aye councilman ryan aye council member armature no okay and mayor hutzpah that's a i that passes six to one takes us to item four d uh which is id 21414 consider adoption of a or of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule home rule uh municipal corporation authorizing a city manager or their designee to execute a contract with whatzilla north america inc good evening council chasen brown plant manager of the denton energy center i prepared a short presentation this evening uh to briefly discuss the need for our maintenance parts and services for the equipment at the denton energy center in this we'll briefly discuss the major objective of this contract types of maintenance maintenance intervals and lastly a bid summary and time to answer any questions you may have the objective of this contract is to help achieve the highest possible unit availability for each engine the units must be available during high price hours to insulate dme customers from market price exposures for the performing and for performing equipment preventative maintenance to ensure the reliability and availability of the units despite best efforts mechanical systems are subject to random failures however performing routine maintenance and having spare parts on hand is the best practice to help mitigate potential premature equipment failure and forced outages by performing equipment preventative predictive and corrective maintenance we're doing everything in our power to ensure the asset is maintained in tip top shape to maintain efficiency reliability availability and to remain cost effective for our customers in the next few slides i'll briefly discuss routine maintenance scheduled parts the benefit of these parts to help understand why this purchase of routine maintenance parts is a long-term solution to achieve our objective the denton energy center much like your car engine it must be maintained routinely as recommended by your equipment manufacturer to operate correctly this is called the preventative maintenance program where preventative predictive and corrective maintenance activities occur many components require routine maintenance to proactively inspect for where premature failure and critical parts must be replaced or rebuilt the preventative maintenance activities are performed consistent with manufacturer's guidelines based on operating hours this chart depicts our current estimate of when these maintenance activities will occur you can see from the chart the red box is is basically the current years and the operating years for this contract all maintenance activities require a shutdown of the individual units but we want to minimize the length of time that they are unavailable for generations so having a maintenance contract in place and parts on hand is crucial as you can see in the chart we are due for minor maintenance activities currently and in the following years until the first major outage takes place when the units reach 12 000 operating hours we currently estimate that to occur in 2024 2025 however since the units are dispatched against the irkut market 12 000 operating hours could be a little bit before or after our current projections our objective is to make the units available as often as possible to generate the most revenue from the market so we must be prepared to perform the maintenance tasks to ensure efficiency availability and reliability of the dentin energy center the major benefit of entering into this contract is that the best overall price for the materials on the market was achieved we will have the oem support of on parts services troubleshooting and and a warranty period for the parts that we do purchase and best of all we're doing everything that we can that we can do to ensure that that we are maintaining the units to the oem standards to ensure reliability availability and that we're cost effective for our customers so in closing we we early um in in the spring of last year began began preparing for our future and and current maintenance activities and outages we we dug through the manuals gathered up all the parts lists all of the maintenance time periods call call periods and we we prepared a solicitation went out and hit the streets looking for the parts that we needed the set the specifications were posted and was sent out to about 95 or was sent out to 95 potential suppliers and where two companies submitted bids one the oem and the other was a partial bid and higher price than the oem oem being wartsilla the partial bid was rejected as an incomplete bid and also for not being qualified to work on all aspects of the equipment so at this time we are recommending and requesting approval of the maintenance parts and services in the amount of three million four hundred and forty eight thousand one hundred and forty eight dollars to wartsilla to be funded to be funded from the annual dentin energy center operating budget on an as needed basis throughout the contract terms and i will stand for any questions that you may have okay thank you questions for staff councilmember melton then councilmember monitor yeah um i'm not saying that uh you would necessarily recommend this because apparently you're not but would it be plausible to have the other bidder uh perform the work that they were able to perform and have the oem to perform the balance is there is is that entirely out of the question uh no no sir it's it's it's definitely not out of the question however not the ideal situation um in the event that the other contractor so to say is is working on a system that they they can work on however or they get into and it affects a system that they can't work on then ultimately we're going to be needing two contracts for two different contractors um getting them to communicate and double paying that contractor or not that contractor but the two contractors to be on site at the same time potentially is is not going to be cost effective in my opinion okay any other questions councilmember melzer yeah okay councilmember monitor yeah what is your guess as to why with a 95 bid solicited there was only one complete bid to only two bids and of those two only one complete so so my guess with with the the reach out and and the the participation of the two bidders i was actually surprised to get two to begin with um current current years it's always been been not really um parts available by third party operators or the parts are still under contract and and considered proprietary to the oem so as we keep growing in in operating hours and in years throughout throughout the lifespan of this unit more and more parts will be released by the oem to distributors and that kind of things as their contracts come to terms so we we're projecting that eventually we're going to keep getting more and more third party suppliers that we will be able to reach out to the problem with the the current solicitation that we got was there the parts that they could get they they were high they were they were expensive okay any any other questions no okay um then so any other questions from any other council members got it uh then i will take a motion mayor pro tem davis move approval thank you uh council member ryan a second okay we have a motion by mayor pro tem davis a second by council member ryan discussion councilor armature i'm going to be voting no on this and i want to explain why um i i think that it's it's it's a fair comparison to make the comparison that was made earlier to you know this uh gas plant uh being like a a car where you bring it back to the to the dealer for maintenance um in this case uh the staff and council uh that made the decision to buy this car which is not the current staff or council um there's been complete turnover since since then uh bought a very expensive car uh that is dependent uh you know at least for now and and has been on the same maker or whatsoever this this finished company for the the parts uh to to sustain it and and for the maintenance um i believe that this company misrepresented the the product that they sold us um and or sold to a previous council and i i don't like the way they do business um and i'm sorry that they are the ones uh that that we have to deal with uh but i want to be consistent and you know in in my objection to doing business with with this company so i'm going to be voting no okay uh any other comments okay uh mayor pro tem davis i'll say you aye councilman ryan aye councilman melter it's distasteful to me for a number of reasons but i'm not going to be against you know maintaining uh what we have while we have stewardship of it and uh i i often don't know with the mechanic whether i what the mechanic tells me is right or not but i don't have a choice of not having the mechanic anyway aye all right baker councilman baker uh councilman johnson all right based on the fact that whether or not i inherited a car i still had to maintain it in order to drive okay and let's see councilor armature no and all right and may we cut our losses and get rid of the car i wish thank you mayor hutsmith is a i as well that passes six to one all right that takes us to item four e thank you sir thank you jason thank you um and while he's on his way out he he makes a valid point during a break for those that have not been out to the denton energy center uh please circle back with uh city management and maybe schedule a tour uh if you've not been out there it's it's a worthwhile time to spend and get up to speed so thank you um and so item e is uh four e a e s a two zero dash zero zero zero six f consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving an alternative environmentally sensitive area plan for a site generally located on the south side of i-35 east service road approximately 672 feet west of sam bass boulevard in the city of denton denton uh county texas okay good evening christy upton and tonight i'll be presenting a continuation of alternative isa plan for a project called urban logistics 35 and this uh this is a continuation of from the january 5th council meeting in which council directed the applicant to improve upon tree preservation the applicant has been working with staff and to revise the site plan and present a concept that vastly improves the tree preservation and meets the request of the city council i thought i did that thank you so much the land is currently owned by acne brick and is located south of i-35 between south locust street and sam bass boulevard and uh the development developer is proposing to purchase this land in order to place warehousing the in order to develop the uh the warehousing project the developer is proposing to remove riparian buffer vegetation the purpose of the alternative isa plan is to in consideration tonight is for the um mitigation of the removal of that riparian buffer vegetation and uh for that mitigation mitigation um the applicant has um his project has remained the same in that the applicant will be revegetating the detention basin with a mix of grasses and wild flowers and a conservation easement will be placed over a forested area that has the um features of cross timbers upland habitat the site changes uh that are being proposed along with this alternative isa plan um and have been made since uh there and the revisions that have been made since january are to um that some of these revisions include the development will meet stormwater requirements and revise the second point of access for the roadway that will provide that that second point of access for the fire department the highlight here is that the engineer was able to remove the proposed eastern detention basin and um by doing so save more than 100 protected trees and in addition the second point of access road has been shifted to the south creating a 55 foot buffer between the multifamily and the development in addition to that i would like to highlight that this uh revision in the plan uh also um removes the the need to remove or has has revised the the impact to the forested area by reducing that that impact by two acres um the offset is that the riparian buffer will be more the riparian buffer will be removed and that the um there will be a little bit less uh revegetation of the native grasses in order to because of the nature of reducing the detention basin size in this slide um i would like to show you that the applicant has done a significant amount of work to survey the trees and this is a very detailed plan of all the trees that are on the site um i want to point out here that uh the actual urban logistics site is going to be located within the boundaries of this dotted line and all the uh all the land to the south of that will remain on act in acme bricks control on their property um this focused area this great area um we are going to um focus in on on the next slide and was the majority of the discussion on the january 5th meeting uh in this uh focus slide i want to point out a couple of things here that on the second point of access a roadway um they will need to remove the trees are in this color these colored trees here um that the area that is shown here is the conservation easement and the trees that are shown in color here will be preserved in perpetuity um and uh the area here um in between with the with the grayed out trees uh in is indicating that the applicant is keeping that outside of their development and thus those trees although not in the development impact area um will remain on acme bricks property and could be subject to development in the future and um any development in the future would have to meet tree preservation requirements as outlined in the development code there's been no changes to the notifications and no new responses in regarding this application since the january 5th meeting and last uh the planning zoning commission had recommended approval of this request with the following conditions and then staff has added to these conditions based upon the changes in the site plan and these uh conditions were outlined in your backup materials um there are eight of them and i'm not going to go through these but i just wanted to let you know that the conditions are in relation to supporting the the process by which the alternative isa plan is executed and um in this particular case uh the conditions are related to how the the conservation easement will be placed over the forested area and with that i will conclude this presentation and stand for any questions okay and before we take questions i'll note for this item we had one person make comments using an online forum there in that one was in support zero against the comment forums were emailed to the entire city council and our city secretary to be recorded questions for staff councilmember melzer yes thank you uh so is there any uh actually let me make a couple of comments first uh first i'll uh reiterate from the prior session that the underlying project is very good and very good for dent and i'm really looking forward to making it work and secondly i really appreciate all the thoughtful dialogue with the applicant and and uh you know the creative solutions they brought to bear my question is is there any required mitigation for trees that are being removed in this project um let me go back to that slide on the tree preservation from set of slides here there are some trees shown here uh that will be in addition to those that are being preserved that will be added um to meet the tree preservation and tree protection requirements of of the dent and development code so there are trees being added that are part of the mitigation and there's no there's no off-site um mitigation or payment into fund or anything it's everything is being done through planting on the site i believe so yes and then um the conservation easement is specifically to the alternative eases plan which is uh here this this area that is being set aside and preserved and uh it wasn't sort of obvious to me or maybe it's in there and i just didn't get it but is the on-site planting being done in such a way as to strengthen the the tree buffer against the apartments adjacent to the property i think i understand your question um the apartment complex is located right here so that 55 foot buffer that was created by shifting the roadway to the south and the trees that will remain um that are shown to be off-site of of the development impact area right now um this these areas these trees will remain as a buffer to the multi-family and these trees will be planted in addition to that that's the key part that and i'm not seeing the what you're pointing to right now but uh when you're saying the when you're saying these please these i'm sorry i i thought this was shared okay that's okay but i can follow you know okay definitely when you're saying these trees will be planted in addition to those my question is where will they be planted in a in the part of the site that would have the effect of strengthening that buffer area sorry i think this will help um let me go back to this slide i'm so sorry i thought this was being shared um okay let me try that again um this is the the apartment complex here and there will be trees that will be planted uh and that roadway is being shifted south um so there are trees that are currently existing um that are shown in gray right now here and there are trees that will be planted in addition to that um north of the of the um second point of access road okay can you switch back to the larger view so i can see where the planting is in relation to the apartments um so i think takes place where the apartments are where okay um sorry not very adapted to this apparently so sorry um okay so the apartment complex is here right and the plan this is the roadway that's being shifted to the south and these are the the trees that are currently existing and these are the ones that will be planted in addition to these trees here on the west side of the apartment complex and acme brick operations is where acme bricks operations is further to the south there's a detention basin that a pond a an operational pond here and then um there is uh acme's uh operations are located a little further south of the of this exhibit so the planting will occur between acme brick and the apartments correct i move approval okay uh is there a second may report tim davis i'll second i appreciate the developer going back uh back to the drawing board for us uh they've incorporated our concerns and fixed them and christy thanks for a great presentation and kind of walking us through where those little hexagons were on the map okay uh so we have a motion by councilman melts was second by mayor pro tem davis discussion council member armature so first of all i want to uh to thank staff uh for all the work that that was done to communicate these concerns to the developer and to work with them uh you know and i want to thank the the applicant uh for their flexibility i especially appreciate uh the ingenuity with which the problems of the uh buffer uh protecting the apartment complex was solved and also the the problem with the detention pond and the previous location of that detention pond back in january so those were i'm impressed by those improvements however um i'm i'm i'm still going to vote no uh because of because i'm not satisfied with the riparian buffer uh i still think that you know it's not enough uh to mitigate the the pollution that will be coming uh that that comes from from that plant right next to the site i i just don't think that that's enough uh but but i say this with with uh great admiration for the work that that that staff did on this that the developer did on this uh i i just i just can't approve for that reason okay any other discussion member tim davis couple quick things if you go out and walk the site this particular riparian buffer is an ephemeral stream meaning it really is just carries rainwater when we have real bad storms and it carries rainwater from the subject property into in the direction of the acme operation so right now it collects a lot of runoff and things from a dirt field where acme used to have more operation um and we're replacing it with this uh pretty spectacular piece of economic development um and detaining the water in a responsible way now they're on site and just the way we asked okay any other discussion seeing none uh council member melzer how say you hi uh mayor pro tem davis i okay uh council member baker uh thank you council member johnson council member ryan hi uh mayor hutzpah is i and i want to thank staff as well and i want to thank the applicant and look forward to this project it's a great uh addition to the city of denton it's a great uh fit for a very very difficult piece of property uh and so i i really look forward to uh just having a new unique uh space and i look forward to that being uh completed council member armature no okay so that passes six to one that takes us to item four f which is id 21652 consider nominations appointments of the city boards commissions and committees and there is no presentation but staff's available if we have questions questions for staff seeing none i'll take a motion council member baker i make a motion approval thank you is there a second mayor pro tem davis i'll second thank you we have a motion by council member baker second by mayor pro tem davis discussion seeing none council member baker how say you uh mayor pro tem davis aye council member melzer council member johnson aye council member ryan aye council member armature yes mayor hudspeth is as well that passes seven to zero that takes us to uh our public hearings and uh the first item is 5a id 21645 hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton adopting standards of care for recreational care programs administered by denton parks and recreation department pursuant to texas human resources code section 42.041b 14 good evening mayor and city council nicky sasinis parks and recreation each year we are required to bring our standards of care to council for review and approval these standards provide the minimum guidelines by which we operate our rec care programs our after school and summer camp programs by having these uh standards in place we are exempt from state daycare licensing staff is not proposing any changes to the standards this year however we did include our parent manual which does include our covid guidelines and safety protocols in regards to covid the parks and recreation and beautification board did review this on april 12th and voted to or recommended to approve it six zero so i'm available for questions now or during the public hearing okay questions for staff okay seeing none we have no callers but let me open the public hearing so i'll open the public hearing and give it a bit to see if anyone calls uh so i'll call for questions uh for any questions for staff on item four i mean pardon me five a okay seeing none no callers i will close oh well i'll close the public hearing and call on councilor armater questions for staff yeah just a question i was and i'm uh so supportive of this uh i'm just wondering if you might speak to uh the daycare the uh you know scaling back um in in daycare services uh and you know when you or if you feel comfortable estimating you know when you foresee um those city rec center provided daycare services um getting back up and and fully running again um as i've mentioned earlier you know we still have uh working families with not a lot of disposable income you know who depend on this and there's some really good quality uh programs so i myself am hopeful that they'll be up and running soon i was wondering if there are any any predictions you feel comfortable making at this point well and miss city manager you want to speak to that yes so um councilor armater uh the there one preschool program that we had in place uh we reduced and basically phased out due to the fact that the low there was low attendance we had more staff on board than we did participants however as we open up our programs not necessarily daycare as we open up our programs we'll have more opportunities to serve our young people preschoolers through programs but one of the things we're trying to do is not compete with our friends out in the community in services that maybe we are not as qualified to do and so that is something we're looking at and that was really coming under the cost of service analysis that we provided back to council so from a daycare perspective we prefer calling it a program and not daycare because it gets us into licensing and that then puts it into a whole other area so we've sort of phased out that one daycare or program that we had and then we're looking at offering just programs not a daycare setting and we are still offering a summer camp program for preschool age children so they're welcome to come to it but we're not actually a daycare so we do have programming for that age group thank you and thank you for uh for mentioning that you know i will say our uh private uh daycare providers are you know are struggling as well you know under this economy um and uh so i hope you know that together we can kind of all all work towards solutions because uh you know public or or private uh we're all trying to to help local kids um and uh actually i i had another another comment uh question i i should probably save that uh for for a later point but anyway thank you and i i do support this okay uh any other questions for staff uh seeing none i'll i'll take a motion mayor pro tem davis i move approval okay is there a second council member johnson a second okay we have a motion by mayor pro tem davis a second by council member uh johnson discussion seeing none uh mayor pro tem davis i'll say you council member johnson aye thank you uh council member melter aye council member baker uh council member ryan aye council member armature yes and i hope that that we will soon fully fund our rec programs so that our own city employees can afford to send their kids to our city summer camps mayor hutzpah is a i as well that passes seven to zero uh that the last item item thank you very much nicky uh that last item for in public hearings 5b has been um requested to be postponed uh to a date certain may 4th uh so i'll take a motion on that oh well let me call it first i'm sorry so it's item 5bz 200114a hold public hearing consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton uh texas regarding the change in zoning district and use classification for residential 6 also known as r6 to light industrial also known as li district on approximately 12.69 acres of land generally located on the east side of geesling uh road mayor pro tem davis move postponement of this item uh to a date certain that being may 4th 2021 okay is there a second council member armature i second that uh so we have a motion in the second uh discussion okay mayor pro tem davis i'll say you aye council member armature yes council member melter aye council member baker uh council member johnson aye council member ryan aye mayor hudspeth is a i as well that passes seven to zero that concludes our agenda but for concluding items any concluding items mayor pro tem davis just wanting to run everybody that early voting is going on right now lots of good places to vote you can vote anywhere um in the county at any early voting location in the county um and there's some great ones right here in town you can check vote denton.com to uh find the locations near you and a sample ballot uh city council and school board are all on the ballot this year okay thank you uh any other um announcements okay i have uh a couple let's see here so we have the texas veterans hall of fame grand opening that's tomorrow i think that starts at three they're at golden triangle mall it's near jc pennies from memory uh then there's the all-way crossing community meeting that is coming up i think that's uh thursday yes that's thursday uh six to seven p.m you can find that on the city of denton facebook page kind of sign up for that uh and then there's movie in the park on friday night which is a welcome uh return and that's seven p.m the and so i think they're watching the crudes and staff will have it uh circled off so you can keep your family together and then lastly on monday i do believe that's when we have uh the or is that yes footward drive ribbon cutting that that's been a a monster and uh famous stories to be told about mr frosty's read-a-board and all that good stuff so it's that's a welcome event so that's uh monday and i have that at um 130 so um that'll that'll be good good stuff so with that any other any other announcements councilman marmotor yeah i just want to say i'm glad to hear that they're showing the crudes i thought that was an underrated movie it got kind of middling reviews but i gave it two thumbs up uh and i think there's plenty for kids and adults to enjoy in that film yeah no it's a good movie okay well uh then at 8 0 6 p.m on uh it's still april 20 2021 we'll conclude this evening's uh meeting and uh we're back on what the 27th is that right yes so uh we'll be back that's correct thank you very much so we'll be back on uh 27 thank you very much have a great evening