May 18, 2021 City Council on 2021-05-18 2:00 PM (AMENDED - May 15, 2021)

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. Today is May 18th. It is 2 0 1 p.m. and we do have a quorum so I will call this regularly scheduled meeting of the Denton City Council to order. And the first thing on our agenda is comments from citizens on the consent agenda. And we had one person make a comment via our online forum. And so that will be added to the record. I think that's for this portion. Yes. And so no callers. And so that will then take us to the questions for staff. And there's a couple of notes here for the consent agenda just to kind of note that item EID 21890 has been pulled from consideration so and then also for those following along as far as speakers this during the public session speaker section B ID 21933 has been canceled so that speaker won't be speaking this evening. So that said questions for staff regarding the consent agenda. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you. I have a question or a request for clarification on consent agenda item B. Consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton stating no objection to the LDG vintage ranch LP housing tax credit application. So I received and I think that other council members received as well emails from several residents of the Hickory Creek the meadows of Hickory Creek and the houses near where this development is planned to occur. Expressing their objection to the project as a whole. So I just want to clarify that where we're at in regards to this project is we're kind of past the point of objecting to the project going forward. Correct. We're just we're only voting on whether we have no objection to this project receiving a tax credit from the state. Correct. Mayor Danny Shaw. I'm on the line. Thank you. And councilmember no this is actually the early stages of this project. This is only for the project looking at its financing mechanisms. You still have opportunities to comment on the development parts of the project when it goes through planning and zoning in front of council later. Okay. Thank you. I have a few questions regarding other other items as well. Okay go right here. Item G regarding a professional services agreement involving surveying and other things related to a perimeter landfill gas collection header perimeter road and water line at the city of Denton landfill. Can staff clarify what exactly a landfill gas header does and what is the goal of this of that particular project. Good afternoon. This is Brian Burner solid waste director with the city of Denton. Appreciate the opportunity to answer your question. As you know we have a current permit to operate city of Denton landfill under our permit 1598. This is our existing permit under our existing space for the past 30 or more years. We've been working to fill the south and the west side of the landfill. We're now working towards the eastern edge and as a result what we have to do is to install the infrastructure to ensure that that part of the landfill will operate correctly. So first and foremost we're installing a road which allows us and our customers access to that part of the landfill. In addition the gas landfill gas header is basically the big pipe that the smaller pipes that collect the landfill gas empty into so that we can send it to our flare and hopefully fairly shortly actually to a landfill gas to energy high BTU plant to actually process that gas and put it into a local natural gas pipeline for residents and businesses to use. And then tertiary there will be a reuse water line co-located with this facility that will allow us water to source dust suppression as well as wheel wash and other needs for water on the east side of the landfill. Thank you for that very thorough response. You answered all of my follow-up questions before I even had a chance to ask them. Thank you for that. You're welcome. One more question for staff regarding a consent agenda item O. Particularly the business interruption insurance coverage for the Denton Energy Center. In the backups it appeared that this did not go through the request process the RFP process and I was wondering if staff could speak to the reasoning for that. Good afternoon Debbie Skowinski with with risk management Deputy Director of Risk Management and Compliance. To answer the question about the RFP process we are exempted from going through the traditional RFP process to be able to use a broker to do that for us. So the broker actually went through the process on the back end solicited quotes and worked through their direct access to markets to receive the quotes and then supplied them to us and then city staff were able to evaluate those quotes and move forward with the recommendation. Okay thank you. You bet. Any other questions for staff regarding consent agenda? Councilmember Beck then Councilmember Arrometer. Sorry it was in the wrong screen. Thank you Mayor. Yes I have questions on BHK and O. We'll just take one at a time. B. Go ahead. B. Okay so on B. Let me just scroll down to my notes here. My apologies bear with me one second. Okay so on that vintage property because we have a representation of the DCTA board do we have the ability to recommend service map changes because staff indicated that this this property would not be serviced by DCTA. Is that something that's still available for us to recommend changes to that service map? Again Danny Shaw Community Services. Yes sir you have the opportunity to do the public comment period to recommend changes to DCTA as well as in your upcoming presentation you would have the opportunity to feedback there as well. Excellent thank you that that answers that one. Okay and I have a question on H. All right go ahead. So the this was the assessment of lighting design throughout the neighborhood and and while I'm you know that that sounds all excellent I just had a sort of follow-up question to staff response. So are we just are they the is the consultant just recommending general characteristics things like you know height shrouds lumens temperature of light bulbs things like that are we down to actually equipment recommendations you know types of poles specific equipment recommendations. I'm just sort of trying to get a feel for is it a general recommendation of features or specific equipment recommendations. Yes sir. Councilperson Mr. Mett. Sorry this is Jerry Filler DME we have already made the equipment selections it was made by the council a couple years ago when they approved the LED project. What this project is to do is to identify what the level appropriate level of lighting will be in residential areas. We know that for thoroughfares that we're going to go with an rph standard which is an industry standard but we thought that might be just a little bit too high for residential areas and so we've hired this firm to come in and do you know pick two or three neighborhoods we'll install some various lighting at different levels and try to determine what is the best lighting level for a residential area which will go into the standards in the future. Okay so this is this this particular request is just simply the lighting levels. Yes sir. Okay that that that clarifies that thank you so much. You're welcome. Then I had K. Okay. So what are the things that concerns me and I don't know if this is a question so much as a comment is it seems we've had a lot of change orders and I understand the nature of the beast of of doing city infrastructure things crop up you get change orders but seems like we've had a lot of very very expensive change orders and it seems like if you we did it a proper maybe proper is too harsh but if we did a full assessment of the needs of the region as we come up to that project that so many change orders wouldn't be happening seems like we're having a lot of very expensive change orders and and I wonder if if staff can comment on ways that this is informed them so that we can reduce potential price inflation in in in the future or on this project in the future particularly. Well and I think that maybe you have to factor in that the ongoing litigation that's been subject to this segment but I'll allow to I think city manager maybe or whoever she designates could speak to it generally for this purpose of this consent agenda but I think it's part of the issue is there's been a lot as long as I can remember legal issues surrounding this this last segment which adds to the redesigns etc so but staff will correct me where I'm wrong and the mayor is correct this is Sarah but I am going to ask Becky to Vinnie to follow up we're very aware of dealing with some of these projects where they've gotten a little scope creep and so we have hired a consultant to help us look at what was originally approved for dollars and how some of the price cost of steel and other things have gone up significantly during the COVID period so we're trying to do several things and I think Becky's on the line and can kind of fill you in. Thank you. Yes sir this is Becky Devaney city engineer director of capital projects and the city is currently evaluating like Sarah mentioned and going through a process with a company called OCMI to look at overall estimates of completion we are currently assessing several different projects this will be a several multi multi-year long process to evaluate the overall cost of the project that are in or conclusive of all the different phases of the project this one in particular being that it has had several amendments I will tell you not only if there have been a couple of changes to design there is also the fact that this project has been going on for several years and our teams committed to making this project come to completion with evaluating like Sarah mentioned the overall estimates and completion and so I hope with this last amendment we're going to be able to tackle all of the concerns that are being brought forward as we work through the process to complete this final step of the phase of the project. I appreciate that I guess I'm concerned that it's hard for us to say no because we've got all these sunk costs and it becomes challenging if we and this isn't really a criticism I guess so much as you know watching this as we go forward I don't want to see as Sarah called it scope creep any longer I mean not that sounded a little harsh but I mean I would like to minimize that because we understand it has we have to be flexible but it does seem like we've had a number of these and I hope we can avoid that in the future okay and then thank you Mr. Vinnie then my last one was oh and I had a question on the Aegis recommendation so I guess my concern and maybe you can help me feel more comfortable about this given the announcements that we're likely to have some sort of not likely but there is a non-negligible likelihood that that ERCOT's going to have some sort of power event this summer they think they won't but they can't rule it out and that that fills we know what Yuri did to us if we go with a single insurer and they have a number of claims this summer what kind of position does that put us in if they have enough to make them fail versus if we went with the sort of quota share and one or more of them failed I guess if we had no announcement that there was potential for failure this summer then I would feel more comfortable going with a single insurer than the quota share recommendation. Hi Debbie Skowinski deputy director of risk and compliance and if Terry Nalte is available he can speak to the ERCOT part of your question as far as you know the risk mitigation or risk concerns between using an incumbent panels it would be specifically the panel that we currently have versus a single carrier the likelihood of any of these carriers becoming insolvent are are very very low they're all a and best a rated excellent rating and the likelihood of claims coming in from their their members putting them out of business is is fairly low now there is always risk that's you know that's just the nature of the business and you know it's it's our recommendation that we finance that risk through a single carrier for cost benefit for increase in tornado coverage and also to allow for ease of the claim process because whenever you do have a panel of four different carriers that does you know cause a different kind of process to go go through whenever you do have a claim so in working with our broker a record locked in they did recommend that we move forward with Aegis I'm not sure if that answers your question yeah I think it's it sort of does I guess the the part you led with that there's there's little expectation that even a well let me let me state it as a question if there was a Yuri like power failure event with many claims it's not your expectation that any of these companies would fail I can't say for for one way or another that anyone would or anyone wouldn't that's kind of a crystal ball question at this point but all carriers are experiencing that the Yuri claims they're they're filtering through the process and I'm sorry and you know the the carriers would manage those claims as they are other claims currently council member back this is Terry Nolte assistant general manager DME just to clarify the types of coverage here this is property and casualty along with business interruption but the dam the claims that were made in Yuri were were are primarily as a result of damages from the weather those are property damage claims which you're alluding to is the potential claims for energy business interruption and energy costs yes yeah and so will we be bringing to you a outage insurance policy I think it's actually either today or next week that actually covers the outage insurance risk so we we ensure the potential commodity losses from loss of energy production in the market separately and outside of this property and casualty insurance okay that makes sense thank you right counselor armature yeah I had a question about consent agenda item P about the public art project not to exceed $35,000 I was wondering if this is gone to the public art committee and if there was any consideration of local artists to give this project to local artists before going to this global water jet LLC if someone could speak to that mayor Gary pack and director parks and recreation yes this has been shared with the public art committee and the current proposed business designer artist is a debt in business okay and thank you for mentioning that that's very good to hear and so the public was the public arts committee approval unanimous was it split no it was unanimous okay thank you all right any other questions for staff consent agenda counselor bird you're you're mute yeah um number number F but F let's take a look at F my question is is this a continuous project I'm noticing there are a lot of amendments as well to this one is this something that we should expect to be continuous or are we coming to an end of this is there an ending to this I'll sit back and listen and also does it have anything to do with the the growth of the city house is affecting these decisions here Becky Devaney should be able to answer that and is it absolutely is for the growth of the city that's number one I can answer that one but Becky should be on the line and be able to answer this question councilmember bird and city manager Hensley this is actually a question for the utility department as it is one of their projects so maybe Stephen day or pretend Deshmukh can answer the question okay yeah you had to name one hi mr. mayor members of the council pretend Deshmukh deputy director for water and wastewater and yes this this project is a is a combination of a total of three projects it is a legacy contract that has been around for a while we started with design design contract for one particular project it was the hickory creek detention facility then we added a west peak flow pump station design and then we added the hickory creek lift station design so moving forward we want to keep it more transparent this is not how we're going to move forward and that's why you saw multiple amendments and this is amendment number fifth for this contract this is not how we're going to deliver projects in the future but right now we need to wrap up these three projects and part of this is we are wrapping up the hickory creek lift station project there are still two pieces remaining on this the detention facility as well as the west peak flow pump station so you may see one more amendment if you may on this particular contract but for the lift station we are wrapping this project up this is the last as you can see in the backup material we have a cost for actually testing the lift station and then creating the final drawing the record drawings and wrapping the project up so i hope that answers your question it does and does that 1.4 million also include that additional work that you have to do are we expecting another cost added so that 1.4 million actually is the total since the beginning of this particular contract if you can see the contract actually began back in july of 2015 so this is a almost a six years ongoing contract and we've added and accumulated to the point where we've reached 1.4 million okay also uh thank you very much i appreciate that uh and also going down here to queue um my my question is revolves around insurance coverage i know that we want to uh foster the have the foster grandparent program and i think it's a wonderful program uh for the didn't parks and recreation children's program um i noticed that there was a cost associated with that how it's what's what's the cost associated with the grandparent program and also does that include insuring insuring the grandparents that should be um gary packen from the parks and recreation there he is he's coming up okay hi gary packen director parks and recreation do you mind repeating that councilmember burg the question was about insurance coverage for the grandparents the foster grandparents is there going to be any and also um i understand that there is a cost associated with it which i didn't see what that was um the expenditure of funds what what is that the expenditure of funds for um we we planned on providing a presentation i understand this might get pulled so we have a presentation for this evening we can go over all those details oh i don't have the exact answer to that so i don't want to answer it incorrectly okay thank you that's all that i am okay any other questions councilmember uh well i'm going to take others first councilor marmotor councilmember melzer uh yes uh since it's been raised i'll go ahead and uh request pulling item q for a separate presentation i think it's an uh an interesting sounding program the public would uh like to hear about you would enjoy appreciate hearing about okay anything any other questions no that's all right uh councilmember davis just a question to pull item r for a separate vote don't need a presentation thank you any other questions councilor marmotor you're you're muted sorry a follow-up question on item p took me a little while to formulate that after receiving the last answer just quickly for confirmation uh can you confirm if the money for that project is coming from the public arts fund budget or from the parks budget or some combination that gary are you there gary yeah there he is just switching seats um gary pack and director of parks and recreation so the sculpture for north lakes dog park is total 35 000 15 000 is coming from hot funds that was allocated a few years ago and then 20 000 is coming from the 2014 bond program that was dedicated specifically for art yeah okay thank you that's great and and then and finally um since our has been pulled i know that uh councilmember davis said a presentation isn't needed but if it's going to be pulled i'd appreciate it just if the text of the letter could be read by someone on staff i if we're going to take the time to pull that for a vote i don't need a big fancy presentation but it would be great for the public to be able to see the text of that letter the resolution rather well i guess how how do we handle that i don't know that i would agree um so i guess kathryn i need to understand that is that something that we can discuss how does that how's that decision made obviously um a singular member can't speak for the body uh and i don't know that i agree with the need to read a letter that's publicly posted that's been attached to an amendment that is publicly available you know i i just how do we make that how do we have that discussion um and welcome thank you thank you um you'll obviously be reading it you can read the caption of it staff could present it and put on the screen that's an option to do that okay got it so that would fall under the chair's discretion excellent okay so uh any other questions uh for the um consent agenda for for staff councilor marmotor yeah just just to say as just a point of procedure you know in the past it has only taken one council member to request that an item be pulled either for a vote or for a vote and presentation uh so i think the person asking for a presentation is fine and the text of the letter uh should be a part of that presentation i understand your your your your look at that so thank you very much and i think it is consistent with what we've done there'll be a presentation uh per your request so um with that any other questions for staff okay then that concludes uh that portion of the agenda we'll go to now to the work sessions uh so i'll call the first one's 3a which is id21101030 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding an update to the city's response to covid 19 updated uh united states center for disease uh control and uh prevention which is also known as cdc public health guidance and uh the wearing of face coverings in the city facilities uh good afternoon mayor city council sarah kechler chief of staff um one second while i pull up the presentation so staff has a brief presentation for city council this afternoon and i'll go ahead and just move through the slides and then bring down the presentation for council discussion and questions but this work session was added as a result of updated cdc guidance that came out late last week and staff's recommendation and plan change for administrative directives for city facilities so i'll go ahead and jump right in this is just a slide for background um we've went over this in previous work sessions but currently in city facilities employees and visitors are required to wear face coverings and this is based upon the prior cdc guidance some city facilities are open and then all other remaining city facilities that have been closed and only opened by appointment will reopen to the public on june 1st as well as in-person public meetings will begin on june 1st as discussed and directed by city council during the work session last week throughout the pandemic staff has come forward to city council through a number of work sessions emergency orders and declarations and brought forward recommendations to follow the cdc's guidance as the nation's leading health agency so we've tried to align our protocols and our public communications with the cdc recommendations and the latest guidance which have taken iterations as we've moved through the pandemic as a country so late last week on thursday the cdc did release did release updated guidance so i've taken kind of a snapshot from the cdc website to use their wording directly but they have come out with updated guidance based upon for fully vaccinated people and this is based upon their evaluation of the effectiveness of the vaccines and what fully vaccinated people can do so fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing masks or physically distancing it also has some guidance in regards to domestic and international travel and then some guidance as far as if a fully vaccinated person comes into contact with a known exposure and is not symptomatic so a fully vaccinated person if that happens does not have to test and does not have to quarantine unless they become symptomatic and then they should do both of those so that is the latest guidance kind of just as a summary from the cdc also just by way of reminder there is an executive order 35 in place from the governor that states that no governmental entity can compel an individual to receive a covid-19 vaccine in addition state agencies and political subdivisions which includes municipalities cannot adopt or enforce a measure that requires an individual to provide documentation of vaccination status and then again any public or private entity receiving public funds cannot require a consumer to provide documentation of vaccination status and then today actually this is new information that was added to the presentation that came out a couple of hours ago from governor abbott's office as he's issued an additional executive order ga 36 that is effective immediately today and what that does is it prohibits government entities in texas including cities from requiring or mandating mask wearing and that's effective immediately except for public schools public schools may continue to follow their mask wearing guidelines till june 4th and then after june 4th they cannot require a mask to be worn on campus by any student teacher parent or other staff member or visitor if local governments do not comply with this order there could be at risk of being subject to a fine and then and lastly this last bullet point shows that some entities are still exempt and this appears to align with some of the cdc guidance regarding hospitals and correctional facilities and this slide shows some research we did prior to ga 36 coming out we did this over the weekend i'm in regards to other entities that are found in the city of denton including denton county and unt which are eliminating their indoor mask requirements and then tw was reviewing the latest guidance and that was their status over the weekend in addition there are a number of cities across the the region that are not requiring face coverings in their city facilities and those are listed there on the screen so for city facilities based upon some of the information i just reviewed staff is recommending and plans to move forward with removing the administrative directive for requiring face coverings in city facilities this aligns with the cdc's latest guidance and findings vaccinations are readily available in the community for those who want to become vaccinated it also helps to avoid any potential conflicts in city facilities regarding if somebody coming in if they need to wear a mask or not wear a mask it continues our service provision and availability to the public and then lastly with the governor's order that just came out today it allows the city to be in compliance with ga 36 which states that we cannot require face coverings what we would do is we would continue to post guidance on our city facility and i include an example here on the screen and this would be available in both english and spanish showing if you are vaccinated a face covering is not required in line with the cdc guidance if you are not vaccinated asking that you please wear that face covering in city facilities and this would also be in compliance with ga 36 and that could be specified on the poster as well staff will continue to monitor for any updates from the cdc as we've done all along and there may be a potential that situation or things could change and updated cdc guidance could come out and we may come back before city council if that occurs to make any changes and that is the end of the presentation so i'll bring down the screen for any questions okay so no action here but comments or questions for staff uh so we'll go councilmember beck mayor pro tem melzer and then councilmember uh maguire then councilmember armature thank you mayor um so this ga 36 is um only in play while there's the state of emergency is that correct and it reverts after that i believe and i'll let catherine help me with this one i believe like i look back at his executive order that just came out but if it's done under the state disaster declaration then yes the state disaster declaration would have to be in effect in order for this executive order from the governor to be in effect okay thank you okay mayor pro tem melzer you're muted sorry okay thank you yeah i have a couple of i hope constructive suggestions uh and observations the the reason that the cdc uh still is leaving in place the mask requirement in schools is because children uh under 12 don't have any vaccines approved for their use yet and we have programs that are targeted to children so uh my thought is i wonder if within the kind of rubric that's been laid out for us if it would be possible for us to temporarily place any of our programs aimed at children uh under the um umbrella of disd and continue to require masking for children in those uh situations uh i'll give my next suggestion if you want or if you want to reply to that i mean there needs to reply it's just a suggestion and you know i hope uh i hope you'll consider that worth exploring sure so we have been monitoring the cdc guidance because they do have guidance specific to programs we have not seen it change for summer camps so far so we've been watching that website to see if there were any changes i know parks and rec was evaluating further if the guidance is still to continue your face coverings their plan was to continue that for those very specific programs regarding youth however we're going to have to review that closer with legal given this ga 36 if we still have the ability to do that which just from a first read appears that we do not um because it says person and does not specify any age in there so so uh you know then hopefully uh if that if your view comes out the way we both think you know maybe that that's an avenue that we could pursue is to use the envelope with the i of dsd just to add in as of june 4th the order stipulates that even a school district can't require it so it would yeah i i realize i mean we're talking about you know finite bits of time but um you know i think it's worth it even if uh even if we can only protect people then and you know that will be another day and we can talk on that day okay so and then the second uh thought is the particular if masks were the only thing that were available to protect people i might have a different feeling about this but that's not the case there are excellent vaccines that millions and millions of people have now had and the question and you know as you mentioned in the uh in the presentation uh now the question is specifically about people using city facilities so and i know that that staff is uh vigorously working behind the scenes to look at ways to partner with the county and i wonder if you know this suggests uh the the opportunity to to have uh vaccine clinics or the ability to get vaccines at city facilities because that that would exactly target the population that comes to city facilities yes that's an excellent point staff has offered to denton county public health to use any of our city facilities for those mobile clinics or clinics that they want to be setting up as as i passed along from dr richardson they are looking at their next phase of where they should target those clinics in the communities throughout denton county so we'll we'll continue to follow up with them and offer that as they're looking at where these clinics should be placed and where they believe they can reach the most vulnerable and the targeted populations that they're trying to reach i would just add just add a little comment on that in this may or not be within you know uh dr richardson span of control but uh i wonder if he would be looking at the the one shot johnson uh for those situations to protect people quick more quickly i'll i'll uh yield the floor thank you okay councillor mcguire so i first want to um clarify and please let me know i i know that that things are changing very rapidly um and i know that you're monitoring the the cdc website but my understanding of the guidance that was released on thursday is that this is guidance for individuals um to aid them in making decisions about their personal health um i'm particularly looking at um the excerpt that says fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask or physically distance in any setting except where required by federal state local tribal or territorial law rules and regulations including local business and workplace guidance um as far as i'm reading it um this this piece of guidance does not speak to the issue that we're discussing right now um there is no guidance provided by the cdc regarding whether an entity should require masks inside of its facilities um nor is there really guidance regarding whether an employer should require masks for its employees um so i i think that um to to say that um by removing mask requirements we are following cdc guidance is a bit of a stretch um because the the cdc has not provided guidance on that topic um i would also like to um and i'm still kind of trying to wrap my head around the new ga 36 because this is the first that i'm hearing about it um so i know that that um a local government cannot uh compel an individual uh to wear a mask right um is that referring to members of the public is it referring to city employees um is there any more information we can get about that i'll say it's not clear ga 36 says any person uh so that could just be members of the public um but it could it may not include city employees as an employer employee relationship okay thank you uh and then councilman marmotor yeah so uh first of all you know i wanted to thank uh staff especially the city manager for you know putting this uh on the agenda um and also for uh you know working so quickly to think through this new order from the governor which i just heard about maybe 10 minutes before the meeting it popped up in my uh news feed so um and for some reason this tends to happen he tends to come out these things on a tuesday right before our meetings um but uh so i'm still working through that too i want to thank those who have commented and asked questions so far i think they're excellent questions and points um i too uh i i believe that and and you know and my stance before this new governor order was uh that the cdc guidelines uh actually do still you know recommend um masks in public places uh for unvaccinated people um so i don't see so much that they're not offering a guidance but that they're not offering any new guidance um which which i take is meaning that you know their old guidance still stands um i agree completely with councilmember maguire that this is really about individual activity and it is it is scientifically accurate but it's not all that helpful when it comes to making public policy especially in a state where we have no way of you know legally determining uh you know who has been vaccinated and who hasn't um so more than anything else based on this uh today's news you know what i would like to do is is have us go back and reconsider our plan to move to a hybrid approach uh we had that discussion you know based on the understanding uh that uh there that this mask ordinance uh was was still in place uh and and before today's order saying that we couldn't uh keep it even if we wanted to um so i i as as much of a pain as it is for us to have that whole discussion over again because the circumstances have changed uh because of the governor's order i i think it's it's important that we that we have that discussion again that changes very much you know my feelings about the safety of going in public i'm still committed to accessibility for everybody and i think we'll have to also consider you know how what we'll have to do it's new or different to make meetings accessible to people but anyway that's kind of my my biggest point um several other just smaller points one um just a note uh you know unt which was mentioned in the slide they actually and you're right they did uh kind of come out with a policy saying um mass will now be allowed indoors on campus a tw you last i heard as you said was still considering it but then and i'm guessing in response to uh some complaints and concerns and including from me as somebody who you know happens to be an employee i'm not in a decision making role at the university but as someone who happens to be an employee you know i express kind of surprise objection to that um they uh unt clarified their position and said now they're requiring masks only of uh unvaccinated people and that vaccinated people don't have to wear a mask however that's before you know that came out yesterday before this new governor order so my guess is that the governor's order changes that i'll be following that i just wanted to kind of put that on on on y'all's radar so you can follow what their response is too it'll be interesting um to see what their response in the local universities um third uh i wanted to just kind of confirm that so austin's mask ordinance is still in place as far as we know right even as far after the governor's order of today is that correct i don't know that yeah whoever can answer that after you it is it is still um they are still under appeal and um i believe their response is due next wednesday so there's no there's no final determination on that yet they did make an effect there was no tro issued in it there was no restraining order issued prohibiting the enforcement on the part of austin or travis county they did make a number of changes or announced a number of changes i believe today or yesterday to that order so that and i do not remember all the specifics but it was a lot of changes that businesses no longer needed to require masks except for only in very specific circumstances usually with the size of the facility um i think that's the best memory i have of it right now but there's an article and we can share that thank you and my guess is that that's probably i don't know but my guess is that probably came out today and and it probably likely to change i might be wrong but i'll be curious to hear that um then finally you know i i would like to know more about and i don't expect staff to know at this point because of how brand new this is but i'd like to know more about this uh you know what are the consequences um for violating this order obviously it says you know the governor's order as i saw it and as you mentioned says a fine up to a thousand dollars as i see it well that's very affordable way to you know if council wanted to do this and pay a thousand dollars to safeguard uh public health however um you know i'm not quite sure what that means a thousand dollars every meeting you hold where you require it you know and then what would be the legal process uh afterwards you know would would we be challenged by the state would we have to you know invest in kind of taking them on or defending ourselves i don't expect people to know at this point i would be curious to know uh about that in the very near future but for now as i mentioned you know my direction based on the order my personal direction has changed to from uh let's let's keep our mask mandate uh for uh for vaccinated for non-vaccinated people until we reach 70 uh herd immunity uh to to best protect workers and staff in the community uh and and to fight fight this pandemic and end it rather than prolong it but now based on the order again you know my direction is that we go the first thing i think we should do is go back uh to our conversation about returning to a hybrid approach um and kind of reconsider that in light of the new context you know which has radically changed based on today's governor's order okay any other questions for staff councilman bird i'm still just a bit confused about the like you can hear me i'm off um just a just a clarification about the disaster order um so when we're when we're approaching all of this the state is still in a disaster mode is that right right and so he says something about when the state is out of a disaster mode what is what what what are we doing after that point this is a really basic question yeah what happens after that it's a great question so the there's still disaster declaration at the state level when that goes away the executive orders that governor abbott has issued underneath that disaster declaration would go away unless there's a different avenue for him to continue those through different statues or authorities and catherine if you can say that any better let me know that's good okay so my next uh point uh was to um um councilman mesler's uh connection with didn't isd i was just writing um on my notes here is that that sounds like a great idea but we all have to remember that not all kids that use city services are didn't isd students and so uh well if we even consider that connecting with didn't isd we'll have to keep that in mind also uh the vaccines for our underserved populations are hard to um serve populations i'm wondering if we could connect with the county in regards to the j&j vaccine you know that one vaccine i do understand it you know collectively across the country uh where we are having problems with people coming through and getting their second vaccine so if we are we're going to work you know in the arena uh to bring this vaccine opportunity for these underserved people that it would be one it would be the the one one stop shop you know it's just one time and then we can let them go because they'll more than likely not come back for the second shot i don't know if they will or not but that's our consideration and and sarah you can correct me where i'm wrong but the county doesn't have the uh the uh they don't get to decide what they receive the state tells them the day before or the week before i think it's the friday before a vaccination period at the speedway what they're going to receive and how much they're going to receive they're not placing orders and receiving what they requested the state distributes it uh and and they they work with what they have but correct me where i'm wrong uh sarah yes that was the case in the spring i can ask dr richardson um and just to share that information with council as well thanks uh any other questions council member yes also um sarah you know when you when you question him about that or uh consult with him on that uh make sure that it's noted it is for these hard to serve populations and um see how that goes from there i will do i have also heard him speak you know for the different efficacy of the the vaccines and so there might be something to do with that there again that's just i need to ask him and get his answer and i will share that with you okay uh then we're councilman back before i come back to you i'm gonna get uh give council member davis an opportunity to speak thank you mayor a couple quick things um i think council member mcguire raises a really good point that the cdc guidance is not for government entities however it never has been it's always been guidance generally and then we have to you know you hear dr richardson speak he never gives direct guidance on what the commissioner's court ought to do it's up to them to then take the guidance the general guidance and craft that into public policy so um to me the the challenge is there as council member mcguire said of taking that individual guidance and how does a city government react to that guidance but i think what staff recommended even before the governor's order was exactly what we have to do because every single person in america now knows that that is the individual guidance every person who will be using city services now knows that the government entity that is in charge of figuring these things out and telling us what to do has told them if they're vaccinated they don't need to wear a mask even indoors but the other thing i'll point out too that not everybody in america seems to be aware of is that the cdc guidance is very particular as council member mcguire said you read it and it says these are the situations in which it is safe you still have airplanes you still have buses you still have subways there's lots of places where you still need a mask we have come to the point where we have fully shifted to individual responsibility for masks governor abbott just put the nail in that coffin of the city having anything to do with regulating masks it is now fully up to the individual to get themselves vaccinated and or wear a mask and to make those choices for themselves at least in texas i'll also point out the ga 36 is pretty clear it doesn't tell you exactly when an individual violation occurs but it does say in the bit does say entities and officials can be fined a thousand dollars so i'm not signing up for that and the last thing i'll say is that dr richardson i hope will give us some good information on when and if the county can use city facilities for clinics i'll point out the one thing thing he said publicly one of the reasons we do these big clinics is that cold chain is that it's a whole lot easier when you have x number of vaccine doses given to the county to keep them in the cold storage at a location and to move a certain number of them to a certain cold storage location and then if you watch as they go through the process of vaccinating smaller batches obviously come out in coolers from the cold storage so it's a little bit harder to take uh you know 50 doses and go to a place you have to plan for how you're going to do the cold storage for just those 50 doses it's a little harder to do you know 10 or 15 or whatever and once they're out once they're out at that location if they're not in the proper storage that's it they're done uh they're they're spoiled spoiled doses so that's just one of the challenges they have in uh smaller events that's why they've focused on these bigger drive-through things okay um okay any other comments before we move on councilmember beck councillor marmot thank you thank you mayor um just as a quick comment to councillor davis that's that's not exactly right okay just taking them out of storage but but let's not yeah thank you but it's it's it's germane to my question okay and that is um it yeah cold storage is important but that's just if you have they're not spoiled if they're not perfectly cold they just have to be used and that goes to my direct question and that is um uh do we i know we don't have a public health officer but do we have sufficient public health authority uh to administer um uh you know vaccination clinics or must that all be done through the auspices of county health i i do not know that answer catherine do you know the answer based on our our charter and our ordinances can we administer vaccines i believe that we had to be signed up with the state registered with the state as a provider i don't believe that we have been we would have to have providers to do that okay so if we got a health authority we might be able to do that but we can't do that right now um i think it's something that some fire departments did our fire department i believe worked with the county to do it rather than being an independent provider that's something that um sarah may be able to sarah hensley may be able to speak to in more detail oh and i saw david pop on david sure david gains assistant city manager just going to echo what catherine said she she kind of summarized it correctly our other fire departments city fire departments did become providers so they can administer the vaccine our fire department decided to just go with the county's program so we did not become a provider so really the health authority question wasn't didn't play into that it was our fire department could have gone through that process but we just chose to go with the county so that you guys are telepathic and that was that's exactly where i was going um is that that we have ems staff that are medical providers and licensed to be medical providers so if the issue is vaccination and we are now being hamstrung um in providing safety by the governor's orders i uh uh coffin was uh particularly apropos counselor davis um at the but if we're being hamstrung then maybe we could double down our efforts to use our own health providers in the ems services to um dramatically augment vaccination efforts in our um in our auspices and then i would concur with uh counselor armator that i think we should delay uh my direction would be delay um uh going away from hybrid and sticking with hybrid while we reevaluate this this changing scenario okay thank you counselor armator uh yes just responding uh to some other comments that have been said outside of my general direction um i i agree you know and it looks like there might be uh enough council members to actually give direction to kind of pursue the issue of a j&j uh vaccine because of the one dose um and and because of how our our hands are tied right now as of today in a way that they they weren't previously um also to investigate the uh vaccination at city facilities and empowering our firefighters our ems staff who who already are our city public health uh you know uh grassroots you know uh first responder workers um you know they're the ones who are there on the on the front lines uh and so to give them the power to vaccinate people could really help us uh get more people vaccinated especially since they are mobile okay so mobile um and and then finally um also they the idea uh you know council our mayor protem melzer's idea uh you know which was also seconded by other council members uh to look into partnering with disd if the kind of current plan to adhere to the cdc rules for summer camps it turns out to be no longer applicable i hope it still is applicable but if we end up finding that it's not uh i i think if we could just get the disd seal of approval and to kind of formalize it and say their disd programs i wonder you know if it could help it could apply even to as council member bird mentioned you know students who are not uh even you know in disd if it could be a program uh eligible to all we can look into it but i i do not think that will be possible given how the order is written it's very specific to schools okay and and let me do this i want to i want to reframe briefly and then i'll let you you finish your your comments uh council member so we are at three o'clock we have a 6 30 hard start time for the next meeting uh miss city uh manager i'd like you to take a quick look at what we have left at and see if we need to shift the order of things uh because i i don't like our chances of finishing everything at this pace so just giving fair warning that we're gonna we'll just reload uh next week with the things that we can't reach because we have two proclamations that we need to get to at 6 30 and we've gone through uh the consent agenda and a portion of the first work session in an hour so uh just uh framing so uh councilmembers yeah thank you just following up and and by the way i i agree um you know i i think that's a good idea uh to look at the rest of the work session and see if there's something that is not time sensitive that could be moved to later to do that um but i i think that this item uh okay should have been on the on the agenda anyway so i think it's extremely important that we take the time sure by all means no one's advocating for not yeah and so i i just had wanted to plan to say just in closing because it might be obvious but i haven't said it yet that you know that i personally really strongly object uh to this governor's order uh and i you know it came out right before the meeting so i plan to let the governor know i encourage you know members of the public you know to let uh our you know state legislators and the governor know how you feel about this issue for or against right now obviously we're working with what we can do and can't do uh in in this recent news but i see it as an attack on local control and i do actually believe that the cdc has up until now been been giving advice with public policy in mind they don't determine public policy for cities but their advice has been from a public policy perspective this new point of view while it's still this new advice while it still follows the science is new in that it is now offering advice to individuals instead of looking at it from a broader public policy perspective so i i think that we're seeing in part you know some unfortunate consequences of that but i still concur with the science behind this and with what the cdc that the cdcs were relying on all right okay any other questions for staff councilmember wire thank you mayor i just wanted to clarify with mr gains because he had um uh said that you know some some fire departments had chosen to become providers and that our fire department had not made that choice um is it too late to do that is that something that that our fire department could do now sure councilmember i just asked our chief that same question um so uh not positive on that and we can certainly provide a response on the provider question and i also want to clarify the provider is simply the the entity that receives the vaccine right so as far as gets the doses from the state we can't administer the vaccine obviously we have firefighters who work with the county to do that and the the uh the fire chief already has a plan to get doses from the county and go out to underserved communities usually 12 passenger vans and firefighters out to administer those so we'll be following up with what that plan is but do want to make sure that distinction is clear just because we're not a provider simply is receiving the doses we can't administer the doses and our fire department obviously works closely with the county so we can get those vaccines from the county and mayor just to add on to that they are scheduled out already with the county for several weeks to give these shots so to pull them back in to try to start our own would be very difficult because they've already committed okay okay um and i i also want to just express um i believe council member armater and council member back already expressed the sentiment but i would like to see us um revisit and reconsider our plan for um returning to in-person um meetings as well as um revisit plans for reopening municipal buildings in light of uh the governor's order okay council member davis thank you mayor well i first raised my hand to say exactly what sarah and david have already covered we're talking about starting on vaccination program in a county that has the model vaccination program for basically the rest of the country they've been uh servicing homebound folks already anybody who wants a vaccine in denton county can get the vaccine even if you can't get yourself there i know that because i will drive you someplace and get it for you i know lots of people who will do that too they've been doing it anybody in denton county who wants the vaccine can get it and denton is already a part of those efforts like we already heard the other thing that i'm a little bit astounded about is this this idea of going back on what we discussed last week the cdc came out and said the country is safer today than we even thought it was that the vaccination rate is great that we are closer to herd immunity than we thought we'd be when we looked at this months ago i see council member beck shaking his head go listen to dr fauci go listen to the the news and they're telling us that we're better off than we thought we were so now the idea is that we're going to get back inside of our shells and put ourselves back inside the bubble and not have public meetings and not open city facilities the man the advice changed because the situation improved not because we're more dangerous we're in more danger today than we were before the advice changed because exactly the reason why we were starting to talk about these hybrid meetings and we're going to leave opportunities for folks to participate remotely if they'd like to no one's going to be handcuffed and drugged to city council chambers just because we've gone to a hybrid meeting format and that most of us will be here so i i object to this characterization that because the governor's issued a piece of paper that we need to go back on what we talked about last week or that the science has changed since last week or that the situation on the ground has changed since last week thank you any other questions so we move on item b mayor tim mayor pro tem melzer yeah uh thank you uh just back in the narrow point of you know how how well we or not we could potentially leverage our relationship with disd uh just two thoughts on that one is i doubt it's true that because it references schools that children would not have a mask requirement and for instance they went on a field trip that were not at the school so i would just you know suggest that as a way to kind of poke at that if you think that they couldn't do activities under disd umbrella if they weren't literally at the school and secondly to the extent that that is true i would encourage us to look at which of those programs that are targeted for children could in fact be done at on disd property if that were the requirement but as i said in the first part you know it doesn't really make sense to me that it would be so i hope we will you know really work creatively to make sure kids stay protected and can participate in our programs thank you any other questions seeing none um so any anything else from staff great thank you that concludes item a uh miss city minute city manager do you want me to just continue to be uh yes yes sir if we could continue to be we need to do b and c we may be able to take out the comprehensive plan update but we do need to address the small area plan and we just keep on rolling as fast as we can um but i if i have one here i can pull which is update on the comprehensive plan if necessary and uh we can add that back in okay very good well we'll take them and see where we go uh so i'll call item b which is id 21700 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the proposed uh changes to the mosquito response surveillance plan msrp manufactured to adjust at retail pricing good evening council mayor let me pull the presentation and thank you good afternoon uh today before you is the proposed changes to the mosquito surveillance response plan mrp my name is debra viara i'm with environmental services the mrp was and still is a response planned for managing the transmission of west nile virus um it was first created in 2002 and it has been revised on a multiple uh times to reflect new information new data and best control available to us it is important to say that uh west nile virus is transmitted by two species of mosquitoes that are common in this uh in this area not every mosquito is capable of transmitting the west nile virus the uh the plan is built uh along the the principles of integrated pest management uh approach and is broken down into five risk levels each level containing specific conditions triggers a recommendation based on the various activities that we observe and confirm during the trapping of mosquitoes and testing them for west nile virus as well as any uh west nile virus human epidemiological information that we get from the uncounted public health department the the program is pretty much a set in a progression basis where the first uh stage or uh way to manage this is by reducing the sources of potential breeding grounds that means eliminating any places where mosquito can actually uh reproduce the next step is laboratory which is killing the baby mosquitoes in the water and we do that by uh putting bti in any areas that we know that are holding water for long periods of time and the last step of it is the adult deciding or spraying and um at that point what we are trying to do is to interrupt the transmission to humans uh on on your slide you will see what that cycle looks like between the mosquito and the birds and that that actually jumps out into either human population or mammals in the past uh we have used duet as the um as the pesticide that we use for spraying into the last year uh with council approval uh we changed that to a uh organic certified pesticide called mero's three-point cereal so what is mero's all about uh it just formulated by with distillations from uh chrysanthemum the active name of the of the component is called pyrethrin and it has no petroleum distillates it is labeled for both ground and aerial application could be used along or in proximity to crops and it meets the national organic program standards as well as the organic material review institute uh standards and we will go into detail what does that mean to us it's also important to uh highlight that uh mero's 3.0 is still considered toxic to bees if the applications are done while bees are foraging and is also um considered toxic to aquatic organisms if the application is done to open water bodies so what do nop and omri means to us and pretty much uh what it is is um mero's 3.0 have an advantage over other pesticides available because um when that is when the spraying use of mero is conducted along uh or in close proximity to areas where organic farming is being conducted the certification that those facilities might be under will not be hampered uh by the use of the pesticide that's pretty much the benefit of using a organic certified pesticide um for the committee on the environment direction uh i have provided to you a side-by-side comparison between mero's 3.0 and duet which is our previous uh pesticide that we use uh this is a consolidated compressed version you have a more um uh detailed version in your packet as well as you can see and there's a lot of parameters and a lot of numbers here so uh i just wanted to go through the highlights of it and please stop me if you have any questions uh pretty much many of the toxic uh toxicological and ecotoxicological effects are the same for those um for those two pesticide however because duet is a combination or three different uh active ingredients uh versus mero's which is one is a side-by-side comparison some of the of the effects are a little bit more challenging to to assess uh both are toxic to bees both are if they are applied while the bees are foraging and also toxic to aquatic organisms if both are applied to open uh bodies i'm sorry open water bodies um another important aspect that i think is important to realize that duet have a chemical formulation for benign agitation uh what it does is when the droplex uh when the mosquito come in contact with with the pesticide it makes the mosquito to fly to to actively take off and the more the mosquito is in contact with the pesticide the more effective it is so it increases the effectiveness of the pesticide in killing or eliminating or reducing the the mosquito population uh we also did a survey among other cities in the metroplex in uh asking uh if they were using organic pesticides currently uh we only of the 16 17 uh cities that we contacted we got responses from 14 of them at hers the city of hers being the only one who actually currently use organic pesticides uh the other the remainder of the respondents they are not also uh the committee on the environment had questions about the public engagement strategies that we have implemented as a part of the of this program we used a multitude of of venues to put the message out both to our residents uh community members and these city employees we use the traditional media as a newspaper radio and so on but also we use heavily the social media uh we provide the information both in english and spanish we have a west el mosquito dedicated webpage for that and also we provide notification to any registered beekeepers and beekeepers association at least 24 hours prior any neighborhood spraying um with that that concludes my presentation uh staff is recommending approval of the proposed changes to the mosquito surveillance response plan thank you questions for staff councilmember beck then councilmember bird then councilmember armature thank you mayor um yeah i mean in general um i think we should switch to duet for the reasons that you outlined i'm sorry away from duet to marist for the reasons you outlined except both are pyrethrins which i i commented to staff that it's it's you know obviously if we're in a west nile virus emergency situation we have to do what we have to do to protect people but um and and while i i take staff's point that uh uh agricultural beekeepers and apiaries are notified so that they can have some opportunity to to move their hives not all agricultural hives can be moved and our native beneficial insect species including native bees and native pollinators native butterflies they they cannot really move out of the way um so um because mosquitoes generally move on order of a half a mile or less from where they hatch um i mean what i was going to recommend is not so much not adopting yes adopt maris because for all the reasons you said but um you know i i think we really need to modify our msrp to to say you know distribution in places that are less close to human structures um need to to we need to really curtail that to some degree and we need to uh you know do it minimally uh you know we so i mean that was my recommendation is it's just that yes this is good but but it's the application that concerns me greatly okay um councilman bird um i would say i would agree with the uh with uh what brian is speaking to the maris uh application um but i of course have a couple of questions here and i love bees and we need bees um but my question is about the um the aquatic uh areas are we talking about large bodies of water or are we talking about people's little ponds in their yards uh turned over trash cans uh you know that may be holding something uh and also the last thing that i have is code enforcement how is that um is is that being used how would it be could could it be used are we finding people when we um you know are going through neighborhoods i know code enforcement is very active in neighborhoods and in all over the city does that come to play here is that is that part of this this process code enforcement uh just to address the question of code enforcement yes it does uh if there's any uh we have regulations that prevents the uh stagnation of water when it is caused by a facility owner that impedes the the water the drain the water draining so in those instances the code enforcement or community improvement services uh they actually go and they um contact the the owner they uh explain the situation and they if they don't uh move accordingly then they might be fine uh also the city provides uh bti in those situations where um it reduces uh the amount of larvae present on in those uh stagnant situations the best situation is when areas could be fully drained and become dry because then those areas will not be breeding ground however there are situations and we'd like to for those to stay to be the minimum uh where draining is not allowed and then we will recommend that they apply bti or any other larva site on the regular basis the city provides free lava site to the city residents and there are two locations in the cities where the residents can go and obtain a free bti okay and could you speak to the aquatic areas yes that you're referencing the the aquatic areas mainly refers to creek or any uh sizable detention detention pond or areas that can hold water and again mosquitoes breed in areas that there's no flow so as the as long as the creeks are flowing then the chances for the breeding ground does not exist it becomes a problem when there is a stagnation of pools of water that the water is not flowing okay thank you any other questions council member okay council member armature then council member McGuire yes so i i want to concur uh with what council members beck and bird have expressed that the this is it's an improvement uh to go moving from uh this pesticide moving to this pesticide from the previous pesticide but it is not without its hazards and i i am concerned and would like to see um you know a more targeted and it can deliberate approach of this new pesticide that takes into account um the dangers uh you know to to humans and to bees i i know that we're not just uh applying it arbitrarily spraying it everywhere um but just making sure uh that we're not uh you know just weighing the the the pros and cons of the harms of west nile virus with the harms of uh of pesticide exposure and making sure that we're not spraying too close to to people and kind of operating with the understanding that uh no matter how hard we try to educate some people won't get the message or won't be aware you know that we're spraying at certain times in certain areas okay uh council member McGuire um yeah thank you mayor um i i think that um some of these concerns are are addressed to an extent on page 20 of the uh msrp um that um that the environmental services does take into account time of year extent of previous mosquito control activities current level of mosquito activity weather conditions species of mosquitoes that test positive for the disease a number of local mosquito pools etc epidemiological data is is taken into account so what i'm hearing is is maybe that um council would like a little bit more specificity in that section as far as um how those factors are taken into account but i do appreciate that um that they are taken into account um and and it seems to me like there's a pretty high threshold for using um the the adulticide uh chemicals which can you know potentially have have some negative side effects and and it's it seems like environmental services is doing a good job of taking that into account and only using it when and where it's absolutely necessary okay uh any other questions for staff mayor pro tem melzer and then uh council member davis oh i have to say i'm really troubled because you know my smart colleagues were the same thing i did and i feel like i drew a different conclusion so i just want to check my reading comprehension uh because it seemed to me that the benefit of meris uh was pretty much solely that it has the organic label which would be significant to uh people trying to raise organic crops but that we haven't heard that there maybe there is but we haven't heard that there's a functional or environmental benefit associated with it being whatever you know organic means whereas duet was if i read it right more effective less harmful to aquatic life and less harmful to bees which parts did i get wrong if i may uh council members both pesticides are highly toxic to bees and aquatic organism okay and that is stated by epa during the uh pesticide registration notice that's that's there what we do differently is uh all the additional precautions that we take during the application of it to reduce those risks even further the big difference between duet and the merus is the benign agitation that duet provides which bears doesn't and what it does is it creates makes the the mosquito to actually get activated and fly and the more the mosquito fly the higher the chances are that that must that a droplet or a higher number of droplets will stick to that mosquito and that mosquito will eventually die so if we are comparing if we're trying to compare apples to apples and again never it's never easy because one is one active ingredient versus the other one who have three of them and a combination of factors if you are trying to compare both of them duet provides that additional benign agitator that merus doesn't however both are toxic to bees both are toxic to aquatic organism merus is a mineral oil base which allows for to not the if if this were to get into the water and again we minimize those by preventing uh any uh spraying during raining conditions and so forth um if this were to get in contact with water being a oil base then it reduces the amount of potential chemicals that will be in dissolve in the water so uh for me the key factor here between merus and duet is the benign agitator factor that one provides versus the other so duet is a little more effective because it has that correct i confirm i talked to to clark which is the manufacturer for both uh pesticides and they confirm that because that agitator factor it increases efficiency however if our interest is the protection of any organic farming activities merus comes on the top because of that is that is that is that a reality is there are the people seeking organic labeled farming uh in our footprint that's a real issue and is there any other functional or environmental benefit to that organic label or is it just just a label going by what epa indicated on the uh pesticide registration staff position is that both are are are toxic to bees and aquatic organism it comes down to what other um more factors we we use to minimize those and then how um how much uh protection we want to provide to people who might have or uh farming activities organic gardens so is that a real thing is that is that there are people who are seeking the organic label on their farming in our footprint is that is that uh you know just a theoretical concern or is it an actual concern that we have well we we have heard and this is i'm going by complete memory here and um that they have said that they have gardens and uh uh that they cultivate vegetables and fruits and things like that and they have always have that concern that doesn't mean that they are pursuing a organic label an organic label is pretty much a certification that tells a a vegetable vegetable or fruit producer that they comply with certain criteria and they deem organic uh versus a person who might be actually pursuing organic uh techniques while they are uh having a gardening but they are not pursuing a organic label which is the difference you don't mind if i just take it like one step further mayor uh just so um is there a a toxicity difference to humans between the two let me go back to share my screen okay and i'm going to pull yeah sorry i should have already done that oh no problem so for human this would be the the top part of the comparison when it was um compared the routes of entry they were the same so there's no difference between the two when they tested that on rats as oral effects they were the same the toxicity were the same for both when they tested on a dermal application of rats they were the same both and then on the inhalation for rats the duet seems to uh be more um effective at a lower concentration so that's where duet starts showing more effectiveness than mirrors on the skin corrosion or irritation the uh density is the same for rats and that's what we're seeing that um mirrors uh didn't show any corrosive or irritating to the skin versus duet that shows slight irritation at 72 hours when it comes down to eye damage or irritation mirrors was found not to be an eye irritant and duet was irritation clearing in 24 hours when it comes down to skin uh sensitization uh mirrors seems to have an effect on the skin and duet doesn't uh when it comes down to specific target organ toxicity a single sport exposure um one didn't have data the other one was not classified uh on terms or germ cell mutagenicity uh none were neither of them were tested for carcinogenicity um they don't contain any carcinogens listed by osha iarc or ntp so in those in those i i tried to show you the comparison and where the the they were different and where they were the same uh for reproductive effects and they have no none of them have been tested and for um specific target organ toxicity repeated exposure the one didn't have data available the other one was not classified so that's the information that both um available about both um pesticides so the most significant difference between the two i'm left to conclude is that the duet is a little more effective so you know i'm inclined to want to uh stick with the duet frankly just based on that but you know just one okay sir can you pull down the presentation please thank you uh okay uh counselor davis so i just want to say i appreciate staff going through this with us because you know we live in a community that's sensitive these issues we're sensitive to um our pollinator population but we're also sensitive to public health as i think everyone is now very aware um and and the balance between those things for me it does not come down to which particular one of these we choose but for some people it does for me the more important thing is what staff's already gone over the judicious use the effective use and not over doing it that choosing the times that we spray choosing the places that we spray i hear from folks in the community who want us to drive through the neighborhood of the big truck like they did in the old days just spraying everywhere and we know that's not what we can do um i hear from other folks who don't want us to spray anything at all and we really can't choose that option either we went to the Marist because i think there are people who are concerned about organic methods in their own yards in their own gardens whether or not they're selling at farmers markets or anything like that for some folks that organic label is important so for me it's not really important which one of these we use i don't see a reason to switch away from if i'm not incorrect i thought we used Marist last year and the proposal is to use continue using Marist i'm fine with that the key for me is the proper application and just using it as sparingly as we can to protect people okay uh any other questions for staff counselor armature yeah just to uh to follow up on um some points that have been made um you know i i agree with uh uh with uh deborah avieras you know comment that you know there's a difference between the organic label and just wanting to use organic methods uh so and and we have um you know a number of people as councilmember davis you know and others have mentioned that who want to use and and do use organic methods and we also and this is what i wanted to add to it uh in our own ipm our city integrated pest management policy um which are you know new council members will be encountering at some point if you haven't already uh it states that uh organic methods are you know the preferred method um you know before we try something else uh so there is a stated preference you know whether we actually do that or not might be up for debate um but uh and i also wanted to mention that as far as organic farms you know we we do have actual farms uh in the etj uh that um while they might not be in city of denton you know when we spray whatever we spray uh you know pesticides don't know to stop at the you know at the city boundary you know they go where they go and they blow around here and so do mosquitoes um my point of my question and direction for staff and response to this is uh i take it this probably hasn't had time to go forward to the sustainability committee um but i but i'm wondering and and hope i'm wondering if that's the plan and i'm hoping uh that it is to have you know not only our our ipm uh but specifically our our mosquito and west now response policy go forward to the sustainability committee okay any other questions for staff seeing none okay so i need to so i'm sorry can i get a point of order can i get an answer on that first i didn't hear a question you said my question your statement was you hoped it went to the sustainability and committee and question sorry and it was my uh preference and question i'm wondering if if it if it has or i take it there hasn't been time to uh for it to go there but if not i'm wondering if that is the plan if i may yes uh the we can definitely take it to the sustainability committee that's that's that's not a problem i just wanted to uh and i should have said this before uh we already took it to the committee on the environment a couple of weeks ago and we got some feedback from both council davis and council melzer and those recommendations were added to the presentation but we definitely can uh take it to the sustainability okay great thank you i'd be pleased to know if if others uh concur if there's anyone who opposes that okay so my my question would be so so what i have is that uh council member uh pardon me mayor melzer has indicated the desire to continue with duet or switch back to duet to thank you uh council member davis for that clarification uh understanding that that the other was used last year so uh maris so the the question is who is other than mayor pro tem melzer is there anyone else against continuing with maris seeing no indication one more time okay so staff you have your direction yes i do okay and then if you're going to take it to sustainability committee just uh bring that that could be a friday report what they say and kind of their feedback and you can incorporate that live as you hear back from them with our with our uh with an understanding of this conversation sure well and and let me recap for you uh so i think there was some synergy around the application process and with specificity specifically to to page 20 so if you could bring that back or email that out uh that'd be fantastic all right thank you all right that concludes item b takes us to item c which is uh id 21924 receive report hold hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an economic development incentive application for dina grid construction group llc good afternoon mayor and council members jessica rogers director of economic development and i'm going to get to the presentation and again all right so before you today in this work session is an incentive application received from dina grid construction group they are a civil contractor that provides industry-leading civil construction services to renewable and conventional energy partners throughout the united states they were founded in 2012 and have a current annual revenue of about 88 million they are seeking to relocate their corporate headquarters to denton from lewisville their current employment is about 191 jobs and they plan to add an additional 82 new jobs over a five-year period to reach a total employment number of 273 jobs they also plan to invest in additional equipment and build a new facility in denton and they indicated that their interest in denton because of numerous suppliers and vendors in denton the site location factors and their ability to expand and construct a new complex i will say before we get started that we highlighted the word new there because a lot of this incentive presentation is going to focus on incentivizing those new jobs as opposed to relocated jobs within denton county so for site and project goals and the site that you see there on sort of the the overhead map here that's what the site looks like today out on mosh branch road they're proposing to build a 30 000 square foot office building to house their corporate team and a 10 000 square foot shop building for their maintenance and of their equipment their vehicles their fleet and that's what you see in the rendering down here is what that site will look like in the future the applicant stated goals in their application is to reduce the impact of the cost of relocation expansion and site improvement and to encourage high wage job creation through company expansion with that i'm going to move on to the review of the application um they indicate the company indicated that the goal primary purpose of the incentive application was to relocate their corporate headquarters and facility and create jobs and they were fell under a policy identified targeted sector of services to the renewable energy market under our new strategic growth areas and the NAICS codes provided in that plan NAICS code 238110 which you see there is actually identified as a targeted NAICS code under sustainable denton but because of this project's corporate headquarters factor and site location factors we also applied connected denton and competitive denton this project has a capital investment of about 4.7 million dollars in improvements in business and personal property generating a total value including the land value of just under six million and then as i mentioned before they're seeking to relocate 191 jobs and generate a new 82 new jobs and i'm not going to go over the jobs i'm sorry on this slide i'm going to hit it on the next slide in more details these are the same tables that you've seen in past incentives so here you see the 10-year new job creation table where you see kind of total jobs added in each year and then the cumulative jobs we also have the estimated additional payroll per year and the cumulative payroll of the new job so if we do all of this math and i have to minimize you guys so i can see see my whole table over here you see the wages broken down by the employment areas the average wage by job type you see here that the total jobs created of 82 and total payroll of just over six million based on the job categories provided the weighted average annual wage of the jobs is seventy four thousand two hundred and seventy seven dollars that means that a hundred percent of the new jobs created both exceed the denton county average and denton county median wages 62 or 51 jobs exceed the high wage threshold identified in our policy of sixty five thousand dollars or more and then an additional 53 or 44 jobs exceed that seventy five thousand dollar threshold which is also identified in our policy as a targeted goal of generating jobs with wages over seventy five thousand dollars in terms of strategic plan alignment we identified two areas within our implementation matrix that were related to this project one was attracting new investment in the connected denton and then under the sustainable dentin group targeting environmentally conscious businesses as i mentioned this company delivers services for renewable and conventional utility markets and so i'm not going to go over these in detail since i know we've gone over them multiple times before so i'm going to kind of summarize the policy parameters and you do have a sort of easy to read checklist in your agenda information sheet but in terms of the applicable general provisions this applicant meets three of five and in terms of the applicable applicable priority considerations this applicant meets eight of ten when we look at what mechanism we're going to use for this type of incentive we looked at chapter 380 in that section of our policy there are seven criteria that are eligible and this project meets five of the seven criteria that are listed on your screen and then we saw we thought this project could be funded by the investment fund and again it has to meet two out of three criteria and the two criteria that this project meets are on your screen being that it is creating higher wage jobs and it is a recruitment of a industry sector target very similar to the proposal you saw last week staff developed a recommended incentive package of a performance based relocation grant in this case forty thousand dollars is stratified job-based incentive which has a not to exceed amount of one hundred nine thousand five hundred dollars and a residency bonus grant for those individuals that the company can prove established residency within the city of denton with a not to exceed amount of nineteen thousand five hundred dollars the total chapter three three eighty grant would be a hundred and sixty nine thousand not to exceed of a hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars and this project is also eligible to the texas enterprise zone program and they would be eligible for a a grant of about two hundred and five thousand dollars through that program if they successfully were not making received that designation so the total incentive package and i apologize i think that number is wrong it should be three hundred and seventy four thousand dollars i'm not sure why you got a five hundred and seventy three there but it's three hundred and seventy four thousand dollars and this is our net revenue a really simplified version of our net revenue calculation so the proposed incentive here you see a hundred and sixty nine thousand that only factors in our local incentive obviously the texas enterprise zone doesn't have any impact to our local program and then estimated revenue in this case because it's really a property tax heavy investment and would generate about three hundred and fifty three thousand dollars of property taxes over the 10-year and as we've mentioned before we typically do a 10-year analysis to be consistent and capture all of the years of the pro of the project's impacts so moving on to our economic impact analysis we look at qualitative and quantitative benefits in terms of qualitative benefits we're looking at quality jobs pipelines for university and training programs recruitment and expansion of a company and diversifying our tax base in terms of our quantitative benefits we're looking at the direct revenue impacts of that three hundred and fifty three thousand dollars on our economic impact modeling that's the net benefit so we look at both cost of service job creation all sorts of things that get taken into account of that but it has a net benefit 10-year benefit of three hundred and forty three thousand dollars in terms of job creation we have our hundred and ninety one existing jobs 82 new jobs all with very high wages and then our spinoff effects which are 59 indirect or induced jobs generated with average wages of fifty three thousand five hundred and seventy nine dollars and then one thing we we do measure in our economic impact but we don't focus on it when we're talking about those local incentives is the additional revenues generated for our other agencies so to summarize our recommendations staff is recommending a five-year performance-based incentive the total amount not to exceed a hundred and not a hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars and we recommend utilizing a chapter 380 agreement that will be funded by the economic development investment fund staff does recommend nominating this project to the texas enterprise zone and the economic development partnership board recommended approval of the staff presented package 10 to 0 at our may meeting so for council's consideration today is these are these options direction to move forward with the staff and edp recommendation modify or develop a new incentive or recommend no incentive and that is all for today thank you jessica questions for staff okay uh councilmember davis i just wanted uh i've had the benefit of seeing that presentation once before at economic development partnership board so i wanted to add one thing that the applicant had mentioned that that i found attractive and that was that this this firm offers jobs at many different levels you saw kind of the breakdown there one of the slides but across all levels and one of the things they said they they kind of feel called to offer those jobs they're very involved in recruiting folks who um who are cut out for the vocations who are headed for one of the vocations or one of the trades um but are not necessarily college-bound so we focus a lot on that that goal that greater than seventy five thousand dollar salary which is good and they offered some some jobs at that level a good number of them um but they also are committed to offering jobs at all all levels of the spectrum and i found that very very interesting uh in an application for an economic incentive yes sir and i believe don clark with dynagrid is um on the line today if council had any questions i apologize let us skip that at the beginning of my presentation but he is available if we have if there are any questions for the applicant great okay uh other questions for staff councilmember maguire then councilmember armature yes thank you um i i appreciate councilmember davis bringing that up that was definitely something that stood out to me in this application um and i would like to um i ask uh mr clark um a few questions regarding those details so i was really happy to see how high the the lowest um uh salary was on that sort of pay scale that we were shown i think that um you know of course we we spend a lot of time talking about um high paying jobs and and jobs that would be a good fit for people who are graduating from our universities but the other end of the spectrum is also really important um so could you i'm kind of looking at um the the positions that were described as safety personnel operators shop mechanics and laborers first could you could you clarify what type of works work laborers would be doing uh in this project absolutely thank you very much for having us um we we have laborers working on different aspects we have we have a side work division which would compose of the laborers doing doing things like like traffic control uh putting installing drainage pipe uh running survey equipment we have a foundations of side that has has laborers that would do things like like finished concrete setup forms uh tie rebar uh things of that nature so you know that that's the two the two main bucks of the of the general laborers that we that we have and then we have some uh general office staff that would volunteer laborers to just some general admin things that wouldn't fall into one of the one of the management positions okay thank you um follow-up question um for those positions and i i know the answers might be different between them the safety personnel operators shop mechanics and laborers um are there education or certification requirements uh or experience requirements for those positions uh no no experience requirements uh once once you get once you get hired in we have mandatory in-house training as far as safety training and craft training that you you have to take to get certified in different tasks such as running running a forklift or putting in setting up stormwater items or uh different different things that make your traffic control so we have the members of in-house training programs for the general laborers and the safeties as well as provide long-term things to help them grow into the trade such as being a crane operator a grurik operator a heavy equipment operator or we even have a number of people that have moved uh into into management positions from the field over over a period of time as we mentor and grow that's wonderful i'm really glad to hear that um because of course as council member davis mentioned we you know we need good quality jobs for folks uh who who aren't on the college track as well and i'm really glad to hear that you're going to be supporting that um uh are all of those positions full-time with benefits yes ma'am absolutely at this time we have no part-time employees every employee we have is full-time and has has full benefits wonderful um okay oh i have a couple more questions sorry some of them might be more for staff okay so another question i have for mr clark is um has your company explored the opportunity of infill development or purchasing a vacant building um were those options um financially viable for y'all okay i'm gonna i'm gonna defer that question to our president ceo charlie ferrar he's here in the room i think he'll be better to address that yeah i mean the issue with us getting into an existing building our facility is kind of a unique facility where we have to have a separate office from a shop lots of concrete paving now if there was a building on a decent piece of property but a lot of times the paving is not designed for our heavy heavy equipment we end up having to replace all the paving around the building and it ends up being more expensive for us to do something you know remodel something than to go greenfield but if you guys have a building you know that you that's out there that you know and access you know we've got large heavy haul trucks so we got to be able to get in and out of the area or out of the uh the site facility or you know our office yard facility so we've got to be able you know bring in some long trucks so you know that makes sense my question is um have y'all done that that research to explore if those options are available in denton we have we have we literally have looked another for the last three months from some type of existing facility that we could rehab and there's we've spent more money having it and plus the fact is you know the environmental issues you know it's an existing facility that we got to make sure that there's no environmental you know underground issues that we're now going to be owning or you know we prefer a pristine site than taking over somebody else's issues if it's already been used as a you know like an oil and oil and gas company that might go out of business up in that area and now we're taking over their facility well then we would have to do all kinds of phase ones to make sure there's nothing wrong with the soil and there's other issues but if you know if you guys have something in mind we would be glad to look at it so we've been looking for the last three to four months for something besides a greenfield site and we can't find anything that we would have to spend a fortune yeah to make it work um yeah so it sounds like the answer is yes you have explored that option of uh okay i i another question i have is more for staff probably regarding the residency bonus um so i'm kind of um uh in my head i've created three categories of of residency so there could be folks who currently work for dynagrid who would be transferred to denton and might move to denton as a result right there would be um folks who don't currently live in denton and don't currently work for dynagrid who might be new hires who might move to denton as a result of their hire and then there are people who already live in denton um who could be potentially new hires for this company um are all of those scenarios covered by the the um residency bonus or what are the parameters for for that residency bonus sure so this was a little bit different for us we don't typically have a lot of companies that are looking to relocate from a location where they might have a large percentage of their staff that already live in the area and so one thing that's important to us is to make sure that we're we're incentivizing the expansion piece so for this particular proposal staff focused only on the 82 new jobs created so the residency bonus was based on an estimate of a percentage that would be new employees to dynagrid if that answered that was our logic was to keep it isolated to that 82 jobs only um that that that half answers my question so um so we're only talking about the 82 new hires does it include people who previously lived elsewhere who have who might move to denton as a result of being hired by dynagrid for one of those 82 new positions as well as people who already live in them it could um so that would come into the language how we write that section of the contract so we kind of have come up with what we think is a reasonable not to exceed amount um for us it could if we wanted to amend the language in that particular section from our template we could say well you could get there by either it being an existing hire relocating or it could be a new person getting hired that establishes residency we can address it either way um that's really up to council to decide the the number we come up with that not to exceed amount is based on our calculations and kind of looking at equal treatment of equals across the board through our incentive policy and balancing different company needs and we kind of come up with a reasonable number that's more art than science sometimes looking at specific case by case factors um but the sections of the agreement are are changeable they're not set in stone we work from a template if there's something that council wants to see that says hey if we want to incentivize uh add that relocation bonus to people who are relocating we can we can do that as well okay i i would i would um almost prefer the opposite um give give give some preference to uh individuals who already live in the city of denton as opposed to people who might move here as a result of being hired by dynagrid um but but i don't necessarily object to to either one um okay i i also i'm sorry i have so many questions um so the rate of return for this project i saw was 30 um and i have a pretty limited frame of reference my frame of reference is basically the ranchland foods deal where the the the rate of return was 37 i was wondering if you could speak to what factors um influenced that so the rate of return is calculated um as the average annual net benefits divided by the incentive amount so essentially how much are we getting back versus how much are we paying out um we typically are looking at um a few things when we model our economic development incentives um we look at our payback period um is one of our kind of goals we want to make sure that the incentive term is not longer than our payback period so we want to make sure that if the city is going to make an expenditure the city is made whole prior to the end of that term and so that influences that rate of return um because that kind of limits that time piece um the other thing that we're looking at is the total return back which is sort of if we invest something what what do we expect no different than any investment if we're investing something what do we expect back coming dollars coming back to our community and our typical goal is three to one um it's not a hard and fast rule there are sometimes other things that come into play um but that's sort of the industry best practice so we'd be looking at something in that 30 percent role when you kind of commit that to rate of return um i i don't know if it's necessary but if council is ever so interested i'm happy at another time when there's more time to walk you through the details of the economic impact model i know there's a time crunch today but you know please reach out to city manager's office and we can certainly um set that up okay okay all my questions all right um next council member armature oh yes just a couple uh excuse me questions for staff excuse me and then a question for uh the the two questions for the company um so for staff um well first of all before the question i i agree with uh with council member mcguire's you know point about the importance of differentiating between uh these you know different kinds of of new jobs and and i also agree that you know for me um and from uh the members of the the public that that i uh tend to hear from uh the the importance is on uh incentivizing jobs and just you know finding jobs for people who already live here taking care of our existing family um you know uh prioritizing that before you know branching out and and and growing the the family uh so i concur with that i was wondering if you could elaborate on um the point about uh indirect jobs jobs that are indirectly uh coming to denton uh from this this company if you could speak to what kinds of jobs and then you know maybe give some specific examples sure so this goes back again to the economic impact model so one thing that we look at is when a company comes to our community they don't come in isolation they bring employees they bring families they spend money in our community um the company itself needs support services they need vendors they need accountants they need attorneys um they may need food suppliers they may need equipment suppliers and so the economic model takes a look at what industry they're in and what are their sort of typical spin-off effects so what what types of expenditures would this company have what types of industries would be needed to support not only the company itself um but the people that are coming here the employees of that company so our model actually takes a look at what we would consider those indirect and induced effect so for an indirect impact in this particular case we have a company that's heavily involved in a construction business they're probably going to be buying equipment and supplies so there are jobs from their suppliers that are also supported by their economic activities and then we also look at induced impacts which means things like their employees are here um and they may go to lunch so they're going to go to a restaurant here in denton and spend money and so our model is taking into account the re the continual reinvestment of dollars in our community um not just the direct impacts that the company itself is taking into account but sort of what that company's activities support in the community thank you so much that was great um and can can you or maybe someone else from staff just speak to kind of what the timeline would be since we're looking at a new uh facility for you know this to come forward obviously today we're just talking about uh the the incentives but as far as you know if if an sup would be required etc to build here uh when that would be coming from council or if there would be no uh no sup no special permissions required i i am sorry that is outside of of my direct knowledge of this of this project you know usually we're we kind of hand it off to the development process um after this phase so i'm not sure and thank you that that makes sense i don't know if anybody from uh development uh services can speak to that you know if uh or if this doesn't come to them yet or or maybe if the company could just speak to at least what their timeline is i'm sure you've researched that issue we'll just if uh let me let me look at my notes here mr clark if you can speak to y'all's timeline best you can you can obviously it's the cart before the horse and and i want to can concede that we're not even to the point where we've given direction to move this forward but yet we're projecting forward as if they would build here uh without the incentive which is you know so we're a little bit ahead of the curve but whatever you want to speak to mr clark you don't have to but i'll give you the floor to to speak to it such that you want to uh yes sir thanks mayor we would anticipate uh you know depending on permitting process eight 18 to 24 months that's given uh we have preliminary designs at this point we'd have to have to shore up those those design models we anticipate that that the various permitting processes and approvals from the different city departments utilities and things would take about six months uh to get all those approved once we had that approval broke ground we anticipate about about 12 months of construction from from that point is is the in-house timeline that we have have set from that point thank you any other question are you aware uh yes so i just a follow-up question to that and then another question for the company uh you know to your knowledge are you aware of any uh hurdles in that process do you see any you know special you know use permits you might have to apply for assuming this gets incentivized or are you not aware of any we don't this is charlie we don't we don't necessarily believe we have hurdles except the fact that you know the economy is in short supply of certain materials which might delay our project right and as far as as far as permitting that goes we've had a pre-development meeting with with the with the city of dentin the various departments uh that that you know that was that was favorable so we we've got a lot of direction from that and feel like that that we addressed anything that we have foreseen so don't anticipate any undue hurdles just like charlie mentioned outside of uh just material supply because of the nature of things as we are right now thank you and that that makes a lot of sense you know the reason why just to speak to the mayor's comment about cart before horse you know the reason why i'm asking about this now so that any members of the public listening you know who have questions or concerns about the surrounding area will understand uh that uh that this that there's time you know for them to weigh in on that uh and that there may or may not be something that'll come forward to council which which i was asking about but i do like to think for the long term and i'm glad that that y'all have met with development services so my other questions for the company you know first of all thank you for you know the the work that the work that you do for a sustainable development and for your interest in the city of dentin i i do think that the spirit of the city very much aligned with um environmentally uh responsible building um and just environmentalism in general i was wondering if you could comment on uh what the uh lowest uh how how much your your lowest paying jobs pay by the hour i i know you already mentioned that uh you know there's there's uh benefits and and all that for all employees which is wonderful and in conjunction with that if you could speak to if you contract out any labor and and and if so you know what kinds of uh jobs you might be contracting for and what you know if any uh you know standards you have uh internally wages i'm sorry for for wages etc for uh for contracted employees i i think that's a lot there's three questions in there loosely maybe three and a half that i counted can you can you break that down let's take it one at a time right and give them a chance to answer so the first i think was lowest paid uh wage and the second is uh use let them let them answer that okay our lowest paid wage is probably about 18 dollars an hour yes okay and your next question yeah i just want just to comment on that i i was pleased that that was my understanding from what i saw and that looked that looked really good uh and and what kind of jobs are the 18 dollars an hour jobs they're they're laborers they're they're entry-level positions and you know within five years they can be making 30 or 40 bucks an hour i mean it's one of the businesses where you know the reality is guys craft craft labor craft the crafts are going down as far as people interested in them and there's a large demand for it and if you have any interest in you know starting out as a labor there's plenty of opportunity to move up via superintendent project manager division manager you know this is a business for everybody okay thank you i love that um by the way do you do any uh in-house training for these kinds of jobs excellent we do a significant amount of in-house training uh you know we have in-house operator training programs in-house safety programs flagging programs various just various in-house certifications as well as as in-house training for for management staff as well we do a wild spark leadership training and have many different avenues internally yeah i mean if you want a job and you care and you have attitude the sky's the limit all right next question yeah and that's wonderful to hear uh my second question is really just a simple question about if you could just speak to uh your the extent of your use you know if any of contracted labor and you know if you what your standards are in terms of wage and anything else you want to share we do not use we do not use leasing companies all our employees work for the company okay so that's awesome okay any other questions got it uh anyone else counselor bird okay um i've heard you say something about you are bringing in you know large vehicles um your your trucks and i'm thinking i can just imagine wherever you are at some point the roadway is going to need some kind of repair are we talking about large vehicles like that um also on the other question and what the city's responsibility compared to you know connecting with what you're doing so let's talk take them one at a time so that people can track along so the first questions with respect to your trucks and the roads so i guess just you want to speak to the fact that you're around the industrial park for that reason if i'm if i'm if i'm geographically correct uh if you can speak to the advantages of being where the the property you've located and how it fits your use thank you yes but the property is in the industrial park and that was one of the main attractions to the area that we chose we have great access in off of off of 380 the highways are already heavy for truck traffic they've got the future 280 expansion going around so we'd be in close proximity to that for for truck traffic as well and also during our pre-development conference you know we've discussed road impact fees and and paying those to the city up front as well as uh easements for future widening expansion so we we've explored those those possibilities possibilities and are fully aware of those uh if we you know decide to move forward and agree with the city so okay in a second we've been in lewisville for eight years nine years um i think the industrial park in denton is actually better suited for us and a better layout so absolutely okay no offense to my friends at the south but you're absolutely right i couldn't agree with you more denton is better no i'm biased uh okay and then councilmember birch you ask about their relationship with the city was your second question well in terms of the impact uh for the roads that's what that's where that was going with that but my next question is and i don't think i saw that um who are your clients who who are you who are you working with who are your clients uh we have you know we we work with uh denton electric dent municipal electric on core american electric power brazos energy all the all the large uh i'll use and electric corporations and the small municipalities like we work work across the board for all of them and then you know we get into the renewables with vista and excel and and all those different agencies so uh on the renewable side so so we work with all directly for and through other other general contractors both for all the major utilities in the market i noticed that you uh did not it didn't look like you were going to be hiring a safety uh safety personnel in the first year uh why not we have a large safety staff our company is built on safety our very first hire was safety so we have a robust safety department we currently have eight safety personnel uh in house now and with the amount of personnel we're bringing on board we can we can effectively cover that to a year or two now should should we grow more rapidly or at a greater pace than we anticipate and we would definitely add another another safety person but we have a very robust safety program and we have those those people already in place what is your uh liability uh right now in terms of health and safety what's your injury talk to me about your your injury rates i don't i'm just trying to connect it with uh you know whatever we're doing here in the city and and you know uh what how's the liability rate with you all our emr rating is a 0.6 uh the national average is a one we're to 0.6 our trir rate is 0.17 we've worked over a million man hours without a lost time injury our last lost time injury was in 2018 and uh you know we're we're very proud of that safety record uh the work that we're in it it requires it and uh you know we're a firm believer in taking care of our employees taking care of our people you know like i said as you get get to know us we moved to denton our our whole business was built on safety Enrique Carrone was our safety director he hasn't been since day one uh he was the very first hire outside the owners of this company and we take it take it very very seriously and uh in everything that we do we don't it's just not a paper program we don't just preach it it's it's the culture here and we we live it on a daily basis what's the difference between an operator and a laborer a laborer is is on the ground uh doing what we call spotting they're they're looking out for an operator runs a machine a piece of equipment it could be a a bulldozer a motor grader a forklift a crane and then we have laborers they're on the ground they they hook up the tooling and use use shovels and do manual labor that's that's the largest difference one operates machine the other is manual labor thank you yes ma'am any other questions okay mayor pro tim melzer thank you you know the answer to this question but others haven't heard it yet um i guess like i'll ask jessica can you can you speak to the uh history of labor and environmental violations of this company i can tell you we asked the question of the company and they reported no labor or environmental violations exactly so uh look i'm not interested in give direction i'm not interested in growth for growth sake i'm super interested in companies that are willing to come and provide career paths for dentin residents so to the extent that the language uh you know on the 82 jobs can reward uh bringing dentin residents you know into these great career paths uh yeah that would that would be my preference and uh i'd say you know good job for finding these folks and thank you for considering dentin okay any other questions questions councilmember marmotor questions uh yes just a follow-up on a council member bird's question of about the uh companies and entities that you do business with i was wondering if you could speak to um what kinds of work you do for entities like you know dme and encore you know some of which might not have uh actual renewable infrastructure um uh and you know versus uh the kinds of work that you do uh for those you know providers that have renewable infrastructure if you could kind of talk to the you know non non-renewable side of of the work that you do and if you could kind of put it in uh percentages you know how much of the work your company does is for uh you know non-renewable energy uh and and how much is for uh renewable energy absolutely so uh the answer the first part of the question is we do we do the same type of work for both conventional and renewable the the work is the same you know we we do site work drill pier foundations spread footers things that the infrastructure for for substations and transmission and distribution lines across renewables as well as conventional and you know battery storage is a is a huge thing right now we're very involved in in battery storage uh as far as percentages the national average right now the renewable market the renewable market generates about 17 percent of the electricity in the united states uh our current workflow in on the renewable side directly with renewables is 12 percent so you know we're upwards of two-thirds of the average just as one company across the whole market shares doing doing that type of work uh by 2050 it's anticipated that 37 percent of of all generation will be renewable and we're we're geared and ramped up to to grow in conjunction with that as that grows we'll add more things to step deeper into into that renewable market but uh we have we have a healthy share at this point we consider ourselves an industry leader uh you know cutting edge and we're we're proud to be a part of that as it grows and we'll make the push for for the electric cars but uh one one thing to note is inside that 88 conventional within that conventional energy they're doing what they call hardening the infrastructure and they're having to harden infrastructure to to support the ties and the cut-ins and maintain the additional loads of renewables are bringing bringing to the grid so although that 88 percent is classified as as conventional it's still in direct support of the renewable market as it grows and that work has to happen before the renewable grid can grow so that's you know just a just a side note okay thank you that makes sense since of course you know non-renewable and renewable power are all flowing through the same transmission lines and you know service by the same substations looking at those rooftops would you uh is there any consideration of putting solar on those rooftops it looks like that's an area that could get a lot of sun is that something y'all considered that is in our plan our plan right now is to to incorporate solar powered all of our exterior lighting and possibly our our irrigation systems and uh and the lower voltage items so that's that's definitely in the in the works and part of our plans as we we make our designs thank you okay councilmember guara i'd like to um echo mayor protem melzer's um direction to staff i think this is a great project um it sounds like it's it's environmentally responsible it's going to provide high paying good quality jobs to folks from a variety of backgrounds not just folks with college degrees um and i i would like to move forward with this plan um with the the clarification that i would like to see the residency bonus give preference to uh current dentin residents yeah so uh is there anyone that's i'm going to carve out that last component just to kind of get consensus because i i haven't uh i have a dissenting opinion on that but uh on the i think we can find consensus uh and then maybe parse out the other part so is there anyone that does not want to move forward with the offering as staff's laid out understanding we'll follow up this conversation with the conversation about the the nuanced uh employee designation so just as a whole the incentive for the project is there anyone that's against it need to hear from you seeing none okay so generally that's the thing but then i'll say this when you're talking i think i really like staff's approach to it there's a number and and you attribute it to that you could have a great person that's dynamic that's the best safety person available the best person for the job and and then we're seeing as a city we don't want that person because they didn't originate in dentin and with the housing market being what it is i think that's just it's too aggressive for this housing market when people can't find homes so someone may want to be in dentin and they can't find a home here and all of a sudden that becomes punitive i just i think it's a bit overreach we make broad policy decisions and asked and and i'm going to leave the hiring to the best possible person and it to me it matters not where they live i want the best available person in every job and and and and i understand the desire to uh incentivize people to work in dentin but at the same time are the hire people from dentin but at the same time if it's not the best person i don't want to incentivize that and so i trust this company to make great decisions for their business model and i don't want to get down into managing their business for them i want them to manage their business the staff's done a great job of setting out a parameter we didn't do this to the last applicant that came before us we didn't do it to any of the others it just it just seems like it's a bit micromanaging for for my taste so obviously the bulk of you of the council may want to proceed down that road i just don't want to and so uh it's just my my prerogative we'll see what we follow we'll give direction and we're going to move on and before i acknowledge everyone else so that staff can plan uh miss miss city manager we're going to go from this item c then we're going to go to we're going to skip d we're going to go to e actually the staff just messaged me and said please do d as they want he wants to share about an opportunity for another public meeting and then we will move e to another date okay well no no i'll take e before i take f i'm just that's chair's discretion i'm letting you know okay if anything gets pushed it's the stuff that we want because we're the ones we're going to take up citizen facing stuff and we'll push council facing stuff uh and that's that's on me you didn't have any warning on that but fair warning now um we'll go c d e and then f if we have time but if not it'll get pushed to next week so um yep thank you uh all right additional comments let me see where we are so council member daza davis you've only spoken once so i'll take you councilman maguire this would be your third it will do that and then and then council member armature so i i don't have real strong feelings on on the residency bonus issue i do lean towards the the way the staff has it now though i know intuitively we want uh we want to lean towards jobs for folks that are already here denton does not have a large unemployment under employment problem outside of covet times you know business being closed and that kind of stuff that's not our big problem when we're talking about an economic incentive an employee that relocates here presumably brings family with them like uh jessica talked about they're bringing new money into the city um if they're not uh if we're moving someone from an existing job presumably into this job who already lives in denton that's money that's already here already being spent and then rent that's already being paid a mortgage already being paid services already being used bringing that new person in that is growth that is economic growth those are new folks um new family members new services buying a new house paying rent that wasn't getting paid before all that kind of stuff so i i see the logic in encouraging folks to come here because we're not really needing to address an overwhelming unemployment or under employment problem and then if we had that problem then i'd lean the other direction and say we need to prioritize jobs for people who are here already but that's not necessarily the case i think a little bit of an incentive towards folks relocating here this is not a huge you know this is not you know uh this isn't going to encourage a whole lot of decisions one way or the other people are going to move for a job or they're not going to move for a job they're going to take a new job that's available in their city or they're not going to take it um this little bit that we're doing is not really putting a big thumb on the scale for individuals and their behavior all right councillor maguire um so i just want to clarify because i was a little bit confused by some of your comments mayor hudspeth um are you opposed to including a residency um a residency bonus at all in this plan because as written it currently does include a residency bonus no i i mean you you spoke i'm i'm for as written i'm against the uh and incentivizing or prioritizing if they live in denton first okay i see i see okay yeah that makes sense i i just um your your comment regarding um you know what if somebody wants to live in denton but they can't afford a house here because of our housing costs are so high um led me to think maybe you were you were proposing um doing away with the residency bonus no i'm i'm i'm for trust in staff and as they've kind of created it and she's created a lot of them and i i trust her analysis okay um and uh my other question i'm sorry um so i i think we need to be clear that that the residency bonus is going to dynagrid not to the the employees right so i mean that the the decision that an employee makes whether to move to denton or not move to denton um is not going to be impacted by the the residency bonus unless dynagrid really like strongly encourages their employees to move to denton that's correct um we do always as we're going through this process we you know the companies have that to use at their disposal whether it's a that they can pass along for a relocation expense for an employee you know if they want to get somebody located here the company has that discretion um our our goal with that residency bonus was to encourage two things um one was jobs for denton residents so you can meet the requirement if if you hire someone that already lives here and second is what councilmember davis spoke to which is you can meet the requirement if someone chooses to live here and reestablishes which is generating that economic development so you're either doing one creating a job for someone that's here who might need a job or who's looking to upskill or transition to a higher paying job um or b you're bringing in you know dollars that weren't previously in our community so the goal is to do both um obviously each individual can't can't fall in both of those categories but it can accomplish both okay so i i just need to so i guess i need to understand what you're advocating changes you councilmember maguire you and councilmember marmer armander said she agreed with you if you can articulate what you're advocating changing based on what staff's analysis is that'll give direction for the the remainder of the council to react to brainstorming a possible way of implementing that that type of prioritization like um maybe the the residency bonus could be um you know seven hundred dollars for per current resident or three hundred dollars per new resident still adding up to the 19 five number but just putting a little bit more weight on current residents okay so i i need to hear from everyone else so councilmember armater you're next so what i have now currently well we'll just summarize in a bit once i've heard from everyone i'll give you direction and we're gonna move forward so uh councilmember armater yes so uh thank you for that um i i agree uh that that that would be for me you know an acceptable uh way to prioritize uh jobs for people who already live in denton over you know in the uh residency incentive uh over but not to the exclusion of as is councilmember maguire and jessica mentioned um people who are moving in you know our incentives packages uh like our budget you know can be a a moral document in showing uh what our priorities are as a city and i think that this does a lot you know to show uh companies if that is what our priorities are as a government body it's what mine are uh that uh taking care of the people who are already here um is as far as well paying jobs go comes before uh expand expanding um and you know seeking uh more residents people people are going to come here anyway as councilmember maguire said i want to respond to councilmember davis's comment because i i disagree but it's an important uh comment and it's a subject that comes up that then that is the argument that well we don't have that much of an unemployment problem here you know so what's the problem um the problem is is is that people are don't have high paying jobs they don't have jobs uh we don't have enough people who have jobs uh that can keep up with the rising cost of living uh and so that is why um you know hype is not just any job it's not just any employment um but that's why we're incentivizing uh high paying jobs um then that's why you know people like councilmember maguire and i are also are specifically asking how much are you paying the people at the very bottom because if they can make more in these jobs you know then they can uh you know working at walmart or somewhere else uh then that might make the difference between them and their family staying in denton uh versus them them moving elsewhere and our job as elected officials is i believe first and foremost uh to the people we currently serve the residents of denton okay and others uh council mayor pro tem melzer yeah i'll just briefly echo i think the statement that there isn't an underemployment issue is categorically false it's why there's measure within the way these programs are evaluated that's about how the wage is compared to the average wage it's because we're trying to increase it okay so uh and uh you know there's no evidence that larger population places are necessarily prosperous than medium size or smaller so the idea that we just need to get bigger bigger bigger i see no benefit in that whatsoever however uh increasing the prospects for the population we currently have is an explicit goal and this seems to meet it and i'm glad we've got this opportunity to do it and i end as far as tipping the balance toward rewarding uh you know career paths for people who currently live here that that that was laid out as an option uh by jessica and i and i trust her to figure out how to do it i think okay so so i i just need to hear from you as far as it's it's written it's in the backup do you you either you support that or you don't that'll help me at least keep keep give direction so we're just trying to give direction that's either as it's written or or not uh my direction is to uh to support this uh initiative and to tip the balance toward rewarding uh hiring of uh people who are residents of den thank you and then uh counselor bet yeah i'm going to concur with uh counselor meltzer on that and counselor armater i i think that i i i support this measure but i would like to see more tipping in the ballot and direction of dent residents got it councilman bird yeah you're muted oh yes um i agree with what i've heard um but i do want to bring in wait help me help me track what you heard from uh everything that i've heard tipping in the balance of or for the um the residents here but to even go further than that i do remember in one of our in our one of our prior uh reports that we were looking at maybe veterans and persons of low income specifically uh that we you know the other of another company so uh just even add that into the the conversation i think uh needs to be that needs to be added got it okay so jessica you have your direction uh yes if i could speak i'm sorry i'm sorry sorry let me let me get this and then we'll wrap up counselor require um i was just going to say i believe that um those those requirement are not requirements but but incentives to hire um veterans and and people from enterprise zones is included in the texas enterprise zone programs which i think we're going to be discussing at another time right yeah yes so i when we come back so we kind of get direction and so the texas enterprise zone program we don't really have any power to change anything that's in that agreement or program but councilmember bird is exactly correct those requirements if we nominate this company to that program and they're designated they would have to and i i can't remember the map off the top of my head so forgive me so if they are within an enterprise zone um 25 percent of their hires um must be economically disadvantaged must be residents of an enterprise zone within denton or must be veterans if they're outside of an enterprise zone it's 35 percent of their hires um so that requirement is in that program we do have some language um in our agreement and and forgive me i don't have the draft agreement right in front of me but i'll make sure to point that out when we bring that back for individual consideration um about hiring practices and making sure you know to that you know equal opportunity and and making sure that those to the extent that the company can utilize diversity and inclusivity and their hiring those are parts of our standards um agreements and okay and so we do address that okay so uh do you have so we have direction to move forward you have direction to split the the evaluation based on what councilmember mcguire represented as a as a starting point uh and there is consensus around that not unanimous but consensus so other than that anything else you need from us jessica no sir i'll just point out that i i can't do that kind of math that quickly in my head given the number of jobs and in two calculations um it may not be exactly 19 000 once we make that split it may be a little variation but if i have consensus that that's okay that i have a little nudge room here and there i'm i'll go forward and i promise i'll do the math and check it twice yeah just just i mean i think if you bump it up just don't not down right i think that's only fair i mean so yeah we're good all right um and so any other comments for staff seeing none great uh so that concludes item b thank you jessica thank you uh uh charlie and mr clark i hope we uh can see you in denton soon that'll be great um thank you appreciate your time yes sir uh okay so then that that concludes c we'll go to uh item d per staff's request so that's uh calling item d i d two one nine one three and that's receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding a comprehensive plan update thank you mayor members of council um let me pull out my presentation and we'll get started hey ron yes just saying hello oh okay hello great um well i appreciate the opportunity to have this item heard uh it's an important plan of course as you all know and we'll get into uh the agenda uh on the slide that you see here is what i would like to cover this afternoon and that is just to uh help inform the the council and new council members what a comprehensive plan is uh kind of go over the purpose elements and the goals policies and actions within the plan itself where does the comprehensive plan fit within the other plans that we're currently working on uh both master plans and strategic plans as well as where the comprehensive plan fits within the development review process uh lastly i will go over the comprehensive plan update that we have started earlier this year back in february and we're um in line to hopefully get this done by october a nine month process uh talk a little bit about what the scope is included expectations from from us and the city and then the schedule as mentioned earlier we're looking at october as a end or completion date so what is a comprehensive plan um comprehensive plan is an overarching uh guiding document for which the city uses in making decisions our decision-making bodies such as the council the planning zoning commission other boards and commissions as well as our leadership and management team we look at the comprehensive plan as a way to identify uh you know our goals our policies and what actions we need to do to again help manage growth promote reinvestment and investment in the city and ultimately improve the quality of life for our residents the comprehensive plan sets priorities for the community and addresses those challenges that we see and and addresses also the opportunities that we would like to um to get uh there are 10 elements that are included in the plan itself two of them are more administrative that is the plan framework which is number one and number 10 which is the implementation monitoring which i'll get to in in a little bit but the rest are other elements that are within the plan number two is the land use element which includes the future land use plan that you see on the screen uh the future land use plan is a plan that identifies a very high level where we want to see development and what development we want to see uh in the city you can see that the area around the airport which is identified here in blue is a dark purple and and that is our industrial center area again we just talked about the company a few minutes ago they're locating here and we would like to in any attempt to help enhance and increase the number of those type of businesses in this particular area the yellow identifies residential on the green more or less is your your rural areas your agricultural and just lower density homes and then there's a number of other future land uses the lighter purple here i just want to illustrate is our what we call business innovation where we would like to see more corporate offices more you know a larger scale office business park that's where uses would be in this general vicinity so this is our goal this is what we would like to see happen in this time frame of our comprehensive plan uh physical and economic vitality is an element within the plan and again that identifies all the goals policies related to economic development jessica's obviously a big part of that effort community character in urban design how we would like to see our community and our urban areas to look like parks conservation and environment both debra and gary packen with parks play a big role in this in this element again how we want to see our park infrastructure our environmental areas protected all of that is within that particular element number six is mobility again mobility plan is an effort that we're uh mobility plan update is an effort that we're currently working on as well mobility is another important factor in how the city grows we want to make sure we plan ahead and in concert with what land uses and growth that we have planned for the area housing and neighborhood identifies and deals with not only the housing types but housing that is affordable neighborhoods how we address neighborhoods and the services that we would like to provide particular neighborhoods all within that element the last two community health safety and services community health safety police fire other services that's necessary to serve the then residents all are within this particular element and then last infrastructure and utilities deals again primarily on water sewer roads drainage all of the infrastructure and utilities again that makes what the city does for improving the lives of our residents and last on number 10 an administrative element implementation and monitoring basically summarizes and puts into a task of what we need to do as a city in implementing those goals then those policies and those actions are all covered within element number 10 so again i mentioned goals policy and actions as you all know goals are general direction that we we use in order to make decisions policies a little bit more specific and statement driven that guides our decision makers describes the content and rationale of desired outcome and then actions is what we do the specific step to actually achieving those goals and policies identified in the plan so where does the comprehensive plan fit within all of the other plans and strategic plans that we have the illustration that you see here shows that the comprehensive plan is an overarching plan that basically is what needs to be consistent with all the other plans so the plans that you see below are covered within or categorized within each of those elements so for example the mobility plan is under the mobility plan element small area plans and neighborhood is again within the land use the capital improvement plan is within the economic vitality element that is parks master plan again under conservation all of which is under and covered under the comprehensive plan so all these plans that we work on have to be consistent with our comprehensive plan so that's why it's so important that our comprehensive plan sets the the tone for for the rest of the other plans as far as how it fits within the development review process the comprehensive plan is the base i think of it as you know the starting point in any development that we see we always want to make sure that does it fit the the goals the policies the objective of the comprehensive plan from there we build on having the zoning area plans and site plans do those those particular plans again are they consistent with the comprehensive plan as you work your way up again you see infrastructure building plans and ultimately when a building is finalized it receives a certificate of occupancy so hopefully throughout the development review process the comprehensive plan is reviewed and used as a way of making sure that what's being built is again within the goals policies and objective of the comprehensive plan so with that you you may have heard hopefully you've heard of the dam plan 2030 i know some of you were involved when we did this back in 2015 earlier than that actually uh 2014 2013 is when we started the process we ended and in 2015 the plan itself is already five i'm sorry six years old um you know we're at 2021 so it's six years old uh typically a comprehensive plan is updated five to seven years and the reason is we want to make sure that the conference plan is um is practical and in that it it's it reflects what is happening today in terms of current conditions anticipated conditions as well it embodies the community's vision five six years ago the vision may be the same it may not be so we want to make sure that we touch base on what the community vision is for the city address major local issues again six years ago there may be issues that we didn't anticipate and we want to make sure that when we look at our update that we identify as well as address those issues as we move forward with the next 10 to 15 years again ensure compliance with state statutes every two years we we know that there are new laws we want to make sure that we're consistent with those laws the comprehensive plan is is um is one that needs to follow those those state statues so that again something that we want to make sure we comply with and lastly is that again changes in unforeseen circumstances there are places that we did not anticipate growth and so now we have to react and we want to make sure as we react that we also plan ahead in those areas that we see that the growth happening so we've developed a scope of work we've we've hired a consultant to help us in this process they are not going to completely update the plan because again we just did that back in 2015 what we're doing is just touching on what we need to address as far as current conditions so a city-wide assessment report has already been started and what they're doing is again looking at current conditions and looking at what needs to be updated and reflected on the next within the next update of the plan i talked a little bit about the major local issues they will prepare a report to summarize what those major local issues are ultimately there will also be a comprehensive plan evaluation report they're going to look at the comprehensive plan again looking at tables data goals and policies and all those those important things and making sure it's it's current and it's again reflective what of what our community is telling us we do have built in special topics the downtown master plan is one of those special topics we we wanted to make sure that that was included because we know that the downtown master plan is also a plan that's important but it's also an older plan and it's been over a decade maybe two decades of when it was first built when it was first drafted i think it was 2000 2001 when it was first drafted so we need to make sure we review that and make that part of the comprehensive plan update public outreach this would not have could happen that is without the public's input so we want to make sure that we have their input and we've built in a public outreach plan in order to make that happen and ultimately we'll have a comprehensive plan for for the city again for the next 15 10 and 15 years to plan ahead so that will that is our goal and that is what we're working for our towards expectations i won't go through this whole list i identified three major ones that we want to make sure we touch on and that is the community vision statement again six years ago the vision is is maybe different and so we want to make sure that that is reviewed and and made current the preferred growth concept map similarly as well as the future land use map we want to make sure we revisit those maps again and making sure that we reflect current conditions and and plan for for those areas that we need to this i will not read this is just for illustration purposes this is just to show you what our community vision statement looks like it is a lot of information but it does capture a lot of what we heard back in 2013 2014 from our community what they wanted the city to be in the next 15 to 20 years they wanted to see you know a downtown that keeps its character they want to see smart growth they want to see our economy grow so again just to summarize that a bit is is what this shows here is our community vision statement in it is in our comprehensive plan currently the the illustration or the map to the left is the preferred growth those in color are those areas that we feel or we we believe that should be developed again this back this was back in 2014 2015 when we prepared this preferred growth concept map again very core central located we want in our downtown we want in our core intersections to be the areas where we want to we want development occur we also shaded a little bit of the purple right by where the airport is located we also have areas along by golden triangle mall so again very centrally located core related as far as development activity and already i spoke about the future land use map so that is that is to the right so the schedule for the comprehensive plan update is a nine-month process we've already started with interviews and group meetings we completed community meeting number one we held two events both in on march 25th as well as april 5th we are planning on community vision i'm sorry community meeting number two and that is scheduled for next week wednesday so for those that are able to i encourage you to participate and be engaged in that community meeting we will cover a number of things hopefully when we get done with the workshops we'll have a public open house either in person or virtual the the hope is that we we try to get as much input from the community again both virtual or as in person if that is the case work sessions with the planning zoning commission and city council and at the end public hearing where we hope that the council will adopt an ordinance that will approve or accept the comprehensive plan update again october 2021 is the date that we're shooting for this is to help again describe a little bit of the workshops we we had a very successful workshop with community workshop number one we had over 140 attendees all of the presentations and information that was presented at community workshop number one is within our dedicated website which is you see here cityofden.com/den2040 those that were not able to attend have the ability to watch the presentation also to participate by completing some of the exercises that were done during those workshops that is also available on the website to do and will be used as as part of our analysis community workshop number two i talked a bit about it a little bit where we're going to have a community charrette or community focus workshop where we will be talking about four topics specifically which are the downtown economic development infrastructure and growth so those are the four topics that we will be having a discussion discussion on on wednesday may 26 so that is next week for those that are interested in participating please go to the city's dedicated website there is a way for you to register once you register you'll receive a link in order for you to attend the meeting so how how have we promoted and how have we reached out to the community as you can see here there have been a number of ways of how we've done this so the city website and the dedicated website again cityofden.com/den2040 social media e-blast in fact an e-blast was sent out today this morning to over 17 000 individuals that we have emails for and they were again shared with information on the community workshop number two and then we also work with the den record chronicle in promoting our our comprehensive plan update and any events that we're having in the future so again trying to get the word out and and hopefully with your help as well if you can let others know about the community workshop number two that would be helpful for us as we again want to hear from as many people as possible that concludes my presentation and i will stand for any questions so i would just again wanted to take the opportunity to help inform the council of what the comprehensive plan specifically where it fits within our development review process and other plans right and so ron just to make sure i set the the right understanding so there's no there's no direction needed just feedback suggestions that sort of thing got it right yes right thanks uh council member bet thank you mayor hey ron um i uh i appreciate all that i i guess i saw it once before on the other side of the fence um the the one thing i i said this in um in this comments to staff but i think one of the things that we want to be careful of because this is a vision statement because we're setting priorities and goals um uh one of the things that i thought was a little bit um problematic was that to talk about uh open space uh agricultural land green space as as a developable uh as places that we need to stick something um they have an intrinsic value um and it's fine if the community says that that value is to be maintained it's fine if the community says that value is to be have a structure put on it it you know but i don't want to necessarily get into our advisory committees saying oh we've got to absolutely you know put something concrete everywhere all the time uh so i i i think we should do that the other the other um comment i might make is um other than the value the intrinsic value of agricultural green space is um one of the things we we will all acknowledge uh partly because we're all free to acknowledge just because not everyone on council was on council back when the 2030 plan was developed so we have the political cover to just say yes those those terrible people back then um the uh the thing i want to be careful of is we have not always followed as a council the 2030 plan so as we progress forward i would like to see us you mentioned um uh getting advice from people about what's on the ground now what's on the ground now wasn't necessarily what was in the 2030 plan so as we as we mailed an update i would like to see us make sure that we retain some of the character of the original 2030 plan uh and um not discount what we changed because sometimes we changed it for very good reasons but um one of the common complaints uh that i i encountered uh recently uh in talking to citizens was that we were not quite following the 2030 plan so to the extent that we could um maybe add uh meld meld that a little better as we go into the 2040 plan that would be my advice thank you okay okay um anyone else councilmember mcguire then council member armature um yes thank you for this this is um i i think y'all are doing a great job of reaching out to the community with this i love the 2040 plan like interactive website tool it is so cool i'm very excited to play with it um uh my questions are well first i'd also like to i'd like to second what council member beck said i would like to to see us build in a little bit more teeth to to this plan and ensure that we actually uh end up following it um my i have two questions one um i i'm looking at the 2030 plan now um and and it looks like in 2013 the city held a community meeting that was specifically for spanish-speaking community members um is there any plan to do that this time around um we don't have that in our our current scope but certainly we can um see if we can build that in um yes when we did the 2030 i was actually part of that effort and we we did try to try to get as much input as possible and and we did attend a few events where there were already um you know the spanish-speaking events that were occurring so it wasn't having one for you know for the city per se but if there was one happening we were there to to participate as well so um it may be more difficult this time around with with what's going on however if there's an opportunity for us to team up uh we will certainly try to do so yeah i would love to see um uh y'all reaching out proactively to the spanish-speaking community which um i i mean it seems like there's there's definitely the will there to do that um my other question is um and this might be jumping the gun just a little bit um but if we were to move forward with um form-based codes as mayor pretend melter is about to propose pretty soon uh how would that impact the development of the comprehensive plan would we need to build that into the comprehensive plan the the short answer is yes i mean if that is um the direction the guiding doc the guiding um goal then that should be built into the comprehensive plan thank you okay councilor armature yeah so first i want to second um the remarks of council member beck and council member maguire about you know retaining um what is worth retaining of the 2030 plan and retaining the open space that the uh 2030 plan at least says that we should be uh retaining and preserving and and learning from and i think in doing so you know we can learn from and be be transparent about uh where the the current plan has kind of failed to up in in praxis it has failed to you know uphold that standard and how we can learn learn from that um and give teeth to this new plan i was wondering if you could speak to the category of stakeholders i know you know there will be meeting groups with various stakeholders and we we hear that a lot and uh you know i i would like to see you know transparency kind of with the public about um who these stakeholder groups are how they're defined and i would like to know uh i i would like the public to be able to see uh what what goes on in these stakeholder groups meet in group meetings uh often you know there's kind of a uh uh skepticism you know feeling among the public that um that uh there's an ear to the interest of uh developers and that there's a kind of a battle uh which invisible battle between the public and developers and i think you know we can um uh make that perception go away if these stakeholder groups are just you know meetings are fully transparent and well defined so anyway i was wondering if you could speak to that the plan is i can talk about that uh and really quickly you know those those stakeholders uh interviews as well as those focus group meetings are have already been held uh they were held again february march of this year and the individuals i think some of you were part of that um interview process uh through our consultants but to kind of give you a little bit of information on on who was invited or who was selected i worked with um with jessica i worked with danny shaw i worked with other staff members that obviously um we want to make sure that we have a wide range of individuals in in perspectives you know from from all sorts of um you know parts of the city so uh those include i mean i'll be honest that there were developers but there were also housing uh advocates there was neighborhood um leaders there were um other um you know individuals that had other interests in in say the environment so we we had a wide range of uh individuals representing on the wide range of uh perspectives thank you so much so you know just to follow up on that i would love love to see uh just a list of you know what those meetings were when they occurred and who was present and uh you know what what stakeholder groups they were invited to to represent and we yes and we have that information we can easily send that to the whole council wonderful and then um you know i i take it that there is uh you know either recording hopefully those meetings or um if not you know at the very least a list of uh the the outcomes and various recommendations of those meetings i would very much like to see that as a council member and i think it's important to public see that it certainly it will certainly be part of the community assessment or assessment report that our our consultants are working on they were the ones that held or facilitated those interviews but we do have a list of when those occurred uh and when who was involved in or included in those interviews so yes we can certainly provide that to the wonderful and that would be great just to be uh right up on the website and then finally you know just to concur with council member mcguire's comments about accessibility uh you know i think it's as far as accessibility to uh native spanish speakers um that you know there as far as i see it you know there's no need for a kind of a separate meeting but for for access you know we need to make all of these public meetings inclusive uh to people uh for whom english is not a native language and because spanish you know is is such a common language in our community i think it'd be really important to just have just plan to have translators at these meetings as far as in addition to you know reaching out to plan to have translators at the meetings and also you know if we could have uh closed captioning uh as well for for these meetings i know that you know there's a uh closed caption you know feature on zoom i hope i'm i am hoping and you know continue to advocate for closed captioning for all of our meetings but at the very least for something that's going to be determining uh you know that are that's getting input on uh our you know plan going out to 2040 we want to make sure that you know people with disabilities are included too so anyway thank you thank you so much for all you're doing towards those zens already i know that these thoughts are very much on your your your mind and part of your work so thank you thank you for your input uh other questions comments for staff uh mayor pro tim melzer uh yeah i'd just like to briefly uh amplify the theme raised earlier uh you know in the in the 2030 plan there's a lot of discussion about preferred development pattern and i would just like to suggest that we complement that by sort of uh flipping out of its head and also identify very explicitly our preferred preservation pattern i think that's critical to having the inevitably larger dentin that's coming be a place that we like in the end so that's the the connected green space that's wildlife corridors that's you know where watersheds are where the tree canopy needs to be preferred be preserved you know and then ultimately you know behind that we'll have to figure out the policies to fill in to achieve that but i think if we you know think of that it's not the negative space but but a goal uh you know that's super important i think this will be uh the most important thing this council does so thank you very much yes thank you all right any other questions comments for staff uh so ron i have a couple of things one i i you know you touched on it you you you um mentioned in your presentation but uh so we use the term charrettes and i don't know that that's just a garden variety term for everyone right and so i think when we when we set it out social media wise if we could uh maybe either in parenz or something uh modified generally just so that the average jo understands what we're talking about you know um and then two uh if you could tell me what happened in the first meeting that's obviously it's a source of consternation for me uh so we go out we work hard the first meeting get people tuned in only to find out the 100 person cap is still in place who who who was in charge of making sure that didn't happen and how do we make sure that doesn't happen again oh i'll answer the the second question first that will never happen again that was an oversight on on our part and you know we will take responsibility for that um we we were excited to know that we had a lot of people registered and and we when we found out that there was a cap we immediately made sure that we set a second meeting for those individuals that were not able to participate and again um those individuals did participate on the second date and again we still have it available on our website for those that were not able to attend both dates so again we are open and we want to hear from everybody and again um back to your question mayor um it was responsibility on my part and and i i didn't um forecast that and didn't anticipate that happening so we did address it though okay thank you and then i i just want to say for those tracking along because i think it's important and i'll hammer it home at every opportunity we're talking about preference right and so when you're talking about preference you're talking about this body the city council representing the interest of the community and those that kind of put uh just kind of representing the community as a whole right and so but i need people to understand uh at a very high level that this body is elected every year every year there's an election and then you have staff that has to execute based on the body that's here so there's every year there's a there's a potential for change in direction and then you have a staff that has a just adjust accordingly and then fold over that overlay that with a 10-year plan so i just need those following along to understand the complexity of that you have a 10-year plan you have a body that's given direction and that body changes potentially every year and so when you hear words about teeth and holding people accountable this that and the other it sounds great but this body cannot encumber a future body right we can't make decisions today that then dictate what the next council does so it sounds great and it's it's it's a noble goal uh and we should absolutely be clear in our direction but at the end of the day the people sitting here represent the community and may have a different opinion and that that that potential happens every year and so it's it's very complex i just didn't want it to be overly simplified that hey we got to make something that we stick to and it has teeth and we mandate those all are great great terms great verbs but very hard to execute because of the the system we have in place so uh ron you have the direction i think it's great i think it's a it'll be a dynamic document that'll continue to ebb and flow and grow and change with our community uh i already like uh this process better than the other one and i've been in both just like you uh and so we'll continue to fine tune it continue to uh get people tuned in but yes if we could reach out i know we have something posted that says charrettes yes we can if we can edit and and put uh you know whatever group meeting team meeting brainstorming session whatever we want to do there that'd be fantastic will do okay thank you um great i think i heard dinner here at city hall not certain um can someone check on that yes dinner is here perfect okay so let's do this we're not i don't like our chances of getting to um that concludes item d i don't like our chances of getting the f but we'll we're gonna we're gonna start e and get as far as we can uh we'll probably break about uh 615 looking forward to give us a little time before we go into our regular meeting but we're going to go straight through so if you uh if you need to take a break you'll have to govern yourselves accordingly because i'm not after this dinner break uh we're going straight through until a few minutes before 6 30 so um that being said uh it is 5 22 right now we'll take a break to let everybody get food and uh so let's come back at um 5 45 that should give everyone enough time and we'll take up uh item e and get as far as we can and then miss city manager you can just reload f okay thank you mayor thank you very much and so 5 22 will adjourn or take a break and welcome back to this meetings of the denton city council it is 5 45 pm on the dot we do have a quorum uh it's still 5 18 2021 uh call the meeting back to order our next item is item e id 21914 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the creation of a small area plan an area near interstate i-35 north and highway 77 uh sorry about that just just one moment ron councilor barmter is this yeah just a just point quick point of procedure before we begin um well i know the decision was made to uh have this item instead of the item f but i was just wondering uh from staff since item uh f is is kind of by definition brief it's it's limited it would be about you know 10 minutes maybe uh you know 20 maximum uh i i was just wondering what the time sensitivity is on this item e and if there's no uh you know if it couldn't be moved over to next week uh if if council and if the mayor uh would would reconsider you know prioritizing uh those items on the agenda that were uh put forward by council members and so john ron let me answer that so i'm going to prioritize the work of the citizens of denton uh before i prioritize the work of us as individuals we can wait while we work on the city of denton's uh citizen facing issues in my estimation and that's why i made that decision i just it is it is an absolute priority that we place the citizens above and beyond uh what we would advocate happen as for us as a body item f is not really citizen facing whereas e absolutely addresses citizen needs and the more we we belabor this item the less chance we have to get to f i i disagree i think you know that's your biased opinion uh i think all of these items are about the citizens and that's why council members put anything would put anything on the agenda uh because of the citizens we represent so i would just love an answer to staff on that question of the time sensitivity and to see if any other council members feel otherwise this is sarah um the only problem i would say is when we start moving these kinds of items um it starts to build up on the next agenda what we're coming up on is the two-week break in july so we've got a really heavy agenda uh the next few weeks because of what we foresee in july i mean at the will of council of course we can always do things punt something back but i would say the more we punt it back the more we then have a heavy schedule on another councilman and then another council meeting and we have items that are going to be added to the agenda for for council's review and then we get it to where it's six and seven work session items that are pretty unbearable all right so it will be fast and we'll be we'll have time for f i don't yeah he's going to be really quick he's going to be really thorough and give you as much i mean it's a pretty straightforward to the clear and to the point and i and i want to say this if it's important to us that we get to everything it's important that we manage our time wisely we got here at two o'clock today and i think it took us an hour as i noted to get through those things so that was kind of a time stamp at three o'clock to say hey we're off pace then i checked again at two hours or so to say we're off pace and so i've been more than clear on kind of the pace we're on giving milestones so that us as a body can self-regulate so that we can get to everything so it is imperative that we self-regulate to make sure we get to everything for the citizens and i'm and i'm supported of all those things but we have something has to give because we have four i think from memory speakers and we have two proclamations that are counting on us starting at 6 30 and so at that point you have people holding on the phone that then say hey you didn't call me back in time we have people that want to speak that say hey i had other engagements that i didn't get reached on time and so i the city manager's point affects our citizens that are waiting to speak this evening as well when you have this trickle down so i'm all for being efficient and getting things done and and talking to everyone and making sure everyone has gets addressed but on these days where we have a hard stop i don't want to leave four or five citizens sitting on the phone an extra 20 minutes plus while we take up stuff that is inward facing versus citizen facing and again uh that's that's my my priority you're absolutely right is item e in this small area plan so yes guilty as charged so ron thank you mayor let me go ahead and start my presentation all righty um good evening um ron mongito principal planner with development services again part of the as introduced in the introduction uh this is regarding a smaller plan specifically located north of the the city proper high 35 and highway 77 by way of background on on january 20th excuse me 2021 the planning and zoning commission requested a few that a work session be held on small area plans they felt that it was important to have this discussion for the northern section of the city again around i-35 and highway 77 primarily because of the activity and some of the cases that were held and heard recently in though in that particular area specifically a plan development so as a risk as a result on april 21st a month ago the planning zoning commission received a presentation from the city staff on the comprehensive plan similar to what was presented in the last item but also included small area plans to kind of give them an idea of what is included in a small small area plan and all the things that that goes into it a week later two weeks later on may 20th may 5th sorry 2021 the planning zoning commission asked that this item be brought back for their consideration and recommending to the city council that a smaller plan be considered for this area again i-35 and highway 77 unanimously seven zero so again that was a couple weeks ago may 5th is when they made this recommendation so just way of helping to inform the council of a small area plan what this small area plan does is it responds to localized challenges as well as opportunities it's not only to help solve issues but also enhance areas that need that need that extra help it also provides the opportunity for the community to provide input at a more detailed level where they can share their vision and hopefully direct or not direct but rather and provide input and provide that that information that's necessary for that area to have a smaller plan again back to the comprehensive plan we spoke about this last item again the comprehensive plan sets the goal the vision for the city and so hopefully that the smaller plan does follow and is consistent with the comprehensive plan and ultimately any actions or any implementation that comes out of the smaller plan is supported by the public as we have gone through the process of again getting input from the community so it is it is a process it's again help to help address localized issues and challenges as well as enhance opportunities where it needs to so what what is the what is that process in order to initialize initiate that smaller plan well it starts out with again establishing the purpose the boundaries the the stakeholders who needs to be included it also includes developing that engagement plan again important in this effort is to make sure we hear from everybody following that is the vision visioning and identifying the existing conditions we need to know what's on the ground what's what's happening and then from there we need to hear from individuals and start to start to vision what what that area could be then we develop the plan you know it's it's a plan document that we use the city council the planning zoning commission anybody that wants to see the plan or you know use the plan that is it's available for them to use and again the plan is drafted it is further reviewed and finally finalized by the city council by adoption either by resolution or ordinance it's typically by resolution and so then we have a plan and the plan now needs to be implemented so implementation comes in a number of ways it usually follows with an overlay district or maybe a zone change again to help garner the the need for which that plan was set forward so again if it's a an overlay district added standards or a new zoning district for the area to help you know direct how that area is to develop how this is included again i kind of mentioned earlier already how is this included in a development review process the small year plan is just another reference in which the planning zoning commission the city council uses in order to make sure that what is being proposed is consistent with again ultimately the comprehensive plan but also the small area plan they are used typically in the implementation side of it where again we talked about having the teeth right so the the small year plan is just that it is a plan it is a vision it is the wants the needs of that area however the teeth is really the overlay districts where it is incorporated into the development code it it provides that you know it provides that restriction on either uses or standards but it also provides you know on a modified enhanced standard so it may be different from what our development code says so it both does restrict but it also enhances in an effort again to meet what the smaller plans goals are in terms of development protection preservation all of the above so some examples of small area plans the one that we mentioned or i mentioned earlier the downtown master plan that was done back in 2000 2001 we have the fry street small area plan completed 99 and that is an area as you probably all know fry and hickory and the reason why that plan was started was because or published and created was because there was issues with parking there was issues with crime litter and so the smaller plan was to help address some of those concerns and issues the denia neighborhood smaller plan is another smaller plan that we have currently in the city again it identifies the goals the strategies of how that neighborhood should develop a lot of what comes out of that small area plan is really protection of those neighborhoods or the neighborhood of denia in terms of development along fort worth drive along highway or high 35 the encroachment of those non-residential development so that is why the small area plan was created for the denia neighborhood so again it was it was developed to protect the neighborhood while the the the downtown master plan was developed to not only protect but also to enhance the activity in the economic development of the downtown so how does the comprehensive plan you know influence or directs how smaller plans are created it's ultimately again needs to be consistent with the comprehensive plan and we use this in terms of how we want to look at where the next smaller plan should be for an example the future laying use plan identifies areas that are what we call neighborhood university compatibility areas and those are the light blue that you see that surrounds the universities of unt and tw you see a little bit of blue around them these are the areas that we identified in our future land use plan as areas where we want to see compatibility again between residential and the university and those are the areas that we feel need some protection or some further analysis we also see an area the downtown compatibility areas which is the lighter brown that you see here again surrounds the downtown these are other areas that are potential smaller plans because again we want to make sure that we address not only the concerns the issues that are happening in this particular area or areas but also see where we can help enhance that area by way of a smaller plan and ultimately an overlay district the oak gateway area plan some of you may have participated i know that there are a few of you that were involved in this and you can see that the university neighborhood university compatibility area almost mimics the area that we identified here again during the time that this was being developed we know we knew that there was development pressure in the northern part of this smaller plan but as we got into the drafting of the plan talking to the stakeholders and just having that public input we also recognized that there were the same issues to the west as well as to the south and to the east of the university so that is why you see an area larger than what we had anticipated but it does make sense because it all relates to one another the parking to the north also relates to the west the parking and the housing and open space and all the other items that were identified in the supply plan also affects the other areas surrounding the university so that's how you can see how the that smaller plan was sort of directed by the comprehensive plan as a recommendation and we actually did one for the oak gateway area but we also we know but we also know that there are other areas that we want to develop smaller plans but how do we prioritize that so here's a list of what we use we try to use and hopefully with council's direction on we we can prioritize where the next small area plans will be again we look at where there's a number of comprehensive plan updates you know there's changes to the plan because it didn't make sense so in those areas may potentially be a smaller plan focused areas corridors the change in land uses if there's a number of changes happening development pressure as a result of that infrastructure needs again ways of addressing those we can we can focus on with a smaller plan mobility plan any tech stop plans anything that would impact a neighborhood or an area we can help with with a smaller plan and then obviously community interest and partnership is something that we look as well you know we rely on our neighborhoods our communities our residents to provide us with you know what's going on on the ground we're really here to help them and so i feel that a smaller plan is really that tool that is used to help address those concerns and those issues but also opportunities that our neighborhoods our communities and our residents bring up one particular area that we we heard from is the north den area again i-35 and highway 77 i-35 is obviously the north south that you see here in highway 77 is the sort of diagonal looking alignment here along with the loop 288 that traverses across i-35 hopefully in the near future goes further west into and south and and head south towards the the airport area this area has been identified again as originally or initially mentioned by the playing zoning commission based on a number of cases that they heard and public input that they've received during that process and they feel and and want to have a smaller plan for this area specifically to plan for what this area should be in near the future you know right now there's not a lot on the ground but there are a lot of activity in the area this map that you see here to my right or to the right is a heat map basically identifying where activity development activity has occurred in the last three to five years so you can see that there's a lot of activity primarily in this area that activity is represented by a pd amendment our pd proposal right here there are a number of zoning cases final plats another pd zoning compliance plan so you see that there are already activity development activity and the pressure to see what this area could be and should be and again the planning zoning commission felt that a smaller plan and we we agree that that this area should be aware you know a smaller plan could be started the future land use identifies this area as business innovation that can help us guide what that future area should be and then the zoning informs us as what is on the current development code as far as what can be developed in the area you have mixed use regional you have highway corridor so again all can be input and in information that is to help in that drafting of that small area plan so with that being said again the planning zoning commission recommended that the this particular area highway 77 935 be the area that we create a smaller plan so the the option and the direction that we're seeking from the city council is should this area be created should we initiate the creation of a smaller plan is an option option two is not to create a smaller plan and number three is is to continue this item so that concludes my presentation i'm sorry let me let me go through this one more slide i do apologize if the council directs staff to initiate that conference sort of that smaller plan the next steps would be to start the process of developing a scope continue to look at the comprehensive plan update as we're obviously working on that currently monitor ongoing development activities and then ultimately to develop that boundary of what that area could be or should be it is a large area but again we want to be able to focus and identify where we can do a smaller plan and then that fits the goal of the area so that is my last slide and i will share my screen start sharing my screen thank you ron questions for staff go council member davis mayor portin melzer thank you mayor i'll try to be quick ron i appreciate you bringing this forward i think the first time you and i met was in your office talking about small area plans and one of the things i learned from you at that time is the only thing that really kind of gives me a little bit of pause about them is the expectations you know folks hear that something is in the plan right it was written down someplace in the plan that that's how something was going to be or what we intended but really what we if i'm not incorrect here what we rely on to be enforceable is really our overlay districts our underlying land use designations all those things correct that is correct um smaller plans is just that it is a vision plan it's a little bit lower in altitude as far as far as a comprehensive plan think of it as more detail more focus on a specific area but ultimately it just sets recommendations it provides goals policies and actions specifically for that particular area the next step typically follows with a overlay district or some zoning changes as a result of that smaller plan so by way of example when when you and i met all those years ago we were talking about our neighborhood my neighborhood and we in our neighborhood decided that you know continue to have that zoning fight and to pay attention to the underlying land use designation when somebody wanted to change it to stay on top of that that worked better for our neighborhood i think in this area a small area plan works better because there's so much greenfield still left up there there's so much area that is design if you looked at your slide 10 has all these different designations the future land use map has very wildly divergent uses across that area and so i think this one is ripe for taking a look at it and planning it and just the way you're you're talking about so that would be my direction uh my only uh my only concern would be managing expectations so that folks know exactly what the purpose of this thing is and that it does not have the the force of law it's not an ordinance it's a plan and then my last question is on uh defining the boundaries has the planning and zoning have any kind of input on so far on what the boundaries of this small area plan would be or is that kind of part of the next steps deciding kind of where the the parameters are yes um um councilman davis they they did actually ask the same question what is the boundary and and uh at this point we we don't have a boundary we know the general area the part of that will come is we will establish that boundary once we start the process of you know getting input and identifying the year we don't want to set a boundary right now because one it may be too big may be too small but we we certainly can draft one but until we have that information on on what area we want to uh we will hold that until uh you know we get that input when you say input is that primarily from folks like us sitting around here or are we talking about stakeholders um we're talking about property owners in that area because that's the other thing that makes a little bit different than like the oak hickory area a little bit different than the downtown area there larger parcels out there you have a smaller number of it's not neighbors really getting together it's probably property owners right of either agricultural use rural residential um some uh you know i'm talking about yeah yeah i think i think it'll be all the above but certainly the property owners will play a bigger factor obviously they're they're a big stakeholder in that area but the planning zoning commission uh other the city council and other stakeholders uh would also have that opportunity to provide that input um you know because again i think and i'm not i don't want to speak for the planning zoning commissioner but what i understand is when you know they were looking at the area and looking at some of these applications that were coming through you know yes the future land use plan says business innovation but what does that mean so they really wanted to have a little bit more refined understanding of what this area should be or could be um and so this smaller plan was their response and i think it's is a is a good response in order to identify what do we want this area to be and again it's not like you said it's not set in stone but it gives the decision makers the the property owners an idea of what this area could be and hopefully through the smaller plan process we can get there good deal well speaking for district three and i see district two down there nodding along um you know we share this area and uh and i think it's it's right for exactly this kind of focused planning there's a lot of potential there okay mayor pro tem melton thank you uh you know i'm generally supportive uh i have a couple of framing concerns when i asked in preparation about how many smaller plans do you think the city needs in total and you alluded to that one when you showed you know kind of the map you said something in the neighborhood of 10 and i asked how many we have the capacity to do in a year and you estimated two so kind of to do the whole comprehensive look at small area plans it's a five-year mission uh and i think it'd be important to have a sense of like is this the urgent one because you know it'll be a while to get to all of them and it may well be if the sort of the iron's hot community is interested but the other uh kind of framing concern is that we're talking about doing the comprehensive plan right now uh and you know i'm a little worried about uh what happens to big plans is they get nibbled away by ducks you know was one special development here one special thing there and this is like a super worthy duck you know what a community wants you know what a neighborhood wants but i think it needs to fit into the bigger framework otherwise if you've committed to a bunch of you know sort of little things that may or may not fit the overall plan i don't know you kind of end up with a mishmash so so so i guess i ask uh can you really parallel path it or to make a little get that comprehensive plan laid in and then have this work be done within that context you like you kind of need a smaller plan plan right one of these tend to happen i think it's the second if i can answer that real quickly this is i think it's the second part where you know the comprehensive plan is going to be updated and we we need to really have that be the main focus what we're looking for is um you know direction on basically just starting the the initial work right it's not it's not going to change the comprehensive plan um ultimately um the city council will give uh staff direction i think and you know we do have a large i'm not a large but a number of smaller plans that we want to accomplish and the councils can help us prioritize that um it is something that um you know we we can provide you with a list and then through that evaluation process we can identify what we want to tackle you know in the first two years and then and ultimately um if the list is is consistent or is the same then we can continue through that process okay i'll listen to you know other comments thanks councillor bet thank you mayor um i just want to uh double down on everything ron said and and having just transitioned from um planning and zoning uh you know where it was unanimous as ron said um this the part of the the issue was was the there was so there was so much chaos from west park the mpc to the east it's i-35 they're just there there needed to be a vision and unfortunately there just was not a vision for this region and yet it's a gateway so to the to the extent that i can double down on almost everything ron said um yeah we we we just did do need to really be organized around this area and figure out um and help planning and the planning department get a get a handle on this region because otherwise it's going to be chaotic and that's going to lead to conundrums and consternation and conflict all the seas um and so uh you know let me let me just double down on for ron and and give my my voice and my proxy to ron's efforts on this one okay uh councilmember guara councilmember armature i also like to express um support for for moving forward with this um i think that this is an area that is i you know we're there's a lot of pressure um from a lot of different sides as far as how to develop this area and and um i think that we need to get ahead of that um and be proactive rather than reactive okay councilmember armature yeah so i agree with the need for a small area plan in this area and i see the problems uh that need to be addressed uh you know at the same time i i concur with mayor protem melzer uh that uh that uh you know we need to make sure that uh the the comprehensive plan is still the larger uh framework and of course that's that's the way that it's set up to happen right but if we have uh the the egg before the chicken or you know cart before the horse um that will uh you know inevitably influence the way we do our comprehensive plan and and we don't want uh it to work that way so hopefully i hope that the timing will work out you know such that these these kind of these things can happen in tandem and these discussions can happen in tandem uh you know and and i do look forward to having that conversation about if only two can happen uh can can can be and in a way guaranteed uh a year you know given the amount of time that it takes um it would it would be helpful just to have a maybe a later item you know or just as part of the comprehensive plan discussion a discussion of small area plans in general you know looking at these 10 uh and in deciding on how we prioritize them because while i agree this one is really important i'm looking at this one in isolation right now because this was the agenda item for today you know and not comparing it to the others i know you've put them up there but uh this is the one we're focusing on now uh so you know i'll be very interested to hear also just from the public you know which which small area plans uh you know the the public considers the uh biggest priorities but i do agree that it's necessary to do something in this area just just kind of concerned about the the timing but it sounds like you're well aware of this the the timing issue and kind of want to integrate that into how this is done thank you council member uh yes i just want to um just voice my support and agreement um councilman metzler put it very well i appreciate that um it just seems like this is something it's got to be talked about anyway and it's just giving um it's just giving a path for what i am of course concerned about is mostly is the core of the city and the infilling of you know what we're going to be facing here and i think this is just a good um example of this is a this is a good one to start with so uh and it's going to help me you know as a person that's representing that area to be able to go to those folks in that area in a district one to explain what you know what the plan is so i like to see this come come to fruition it's going to be interesting great okay any other comments for staff seeing none i'll tell you ron i think you you touched on uh so council member davis started where i'll uh start as well when we're talking about boundaries and so just my insight direction would be and again just singular my thought we need to balance in this instance is probably a percentage right because you have that one landowner group that owns all that property to the north right and so we got to balance that against others and it's a huge swap so it doesn't do us any good to have a small area plan with one landowner our one landowner group right so we've got to expand beyond that and so i i envisioned something that butts up against the isd and then comes back and then we have a percentage analysis to say that this one landowner group can't make up you know whatever 50 plus percent of the the small area plan which makes it a giant small area plan but it it mitigates that one kind of uh elephant in the room so that's my look at it from that perspective uh i like your answer about there's there's no parallel path but more i pray pre uh work to it and and i and i agree with council member beck that just a priority and just kind of understanding i mean in their pnz meeting in our council meeting when we talked about the hersbach deal it just all kind of culminated around hey this is a gateway to our city you see our neighbors to the south lewisville that just purchased some property to then kind of designate the gateway into their city and just kind of the importance of that as you come from you know you come across coming leaving the casino you've won a whole bunch of money and you know you've entered then didn't when you see what you know and so that's kind of the that's the thing that's my that's my vision that uh i bet it all in one so anyway uh that's that's i think that's looking on any other thoughts for for staff seeing none all right thank you ron well done appreciate it yes that concludes e so we here's the plan so we have 10 minutes we can get to one uh of the items f or and we'll see how one goes how many people talk there'll be seven minutes each steward will go really quick introduction so it'll be seven and a half minutes total if everyone spoke uh we'll see how that goes and then my offer to my peers is we have the pledge which only i'm on mic i just need for you on the camera uh but then we have the presentations uh there's two uh then that's when you can catch your restroom breaks uh as it's again only me just uh not the same one so that we can have a a quorum uh as we go through those things so that's the only break you'll get as we try to get it all in so with that uh we'll take the first uh i'll call item f it is i yeah let me sort of like don't do the whole introductory spiel and just do do the items yeah i love it i love it uh so uh thank you mayor pro tem so let's see it's item f21 pardon me id 214 uh 36 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction on pending city council requests and so will rachel i have the timer uh and i'll just who's first and i'll time it okay super i'm going to go ahead and begin sharing and per request we're going to skip this and just go straight into council member melzer's your request sir is is written there for you of course um but i'm going to just leave this there for another few seconds so that people can read your request along with a little bit of the staff information that we provided per the work session request that you made and i'll stop sharing now mayor all right council member mouth so it's it's over to you yeah i think it'll be quick i'm just gonna read literally what that said let's talk about infill many of us share a desire to allow more affordable housing and increase density by filling in developed areas it's a more efficient way for a city to grow and provide services rather than create sprawl but many of us also want to do it in a way that doesn't create a visual hodgepodge destroying the beauty of dead neighborhoods that people want to live in one approach maybe to introduce foreign-based zoning in places where single-family neighborhoods would like it maybe in a small area area plan so that for instance a fourplex not a single family home a fourplex that fits right in architecturally could be built i'd like a work session to explore this concept okay comments council member davis council member armature so i like the way that this was presented i'm not interested in supplanting our current zoning with foreign-based zoning we just rewrote our whole ddc in 2019 we did a good job at that we put a lot of new things in there that we've wanted for years but i'm supportive of the idea that in a small area for instance or in particular places within a particular use designation there may be an additional place for form-based zoning my caveat there is that i would like to hear from the experts about that on how the the pros and cons of doing that i think that's exactly what a work session could be used for it may not work out it may not be what we need but it could it could be something that's helpful uh kind of nested inside our existing development code okay thank you uh council member maguire um i am in support of having a work session on this topic i'm very excited about it um i think that um in in a lot of areas of our city our current zoning codes are not producing the results that we would like and i think that we should explore alternatives okay councilor armature uh i i strongly support this request um and i would just add that i i would like to see uh what our affordable housing consultants have to say about it too because uh you know form-based zoning is uh a a really important way uh to desegregate neighborhoods that are uh segregated uh and to fulfill you know the the goal of uh house housing diversity uh and affordable housing that we're committed to as a city that takes cdbg funds and hud funds um so i would like to see it integrated more than kind of into just specific areas you know but i agree that it's not a matter of throw throw out uh everything that we have right now um but i i feel that it could be a way of improving what we have right now across the board and making it much more flexible and diverse okay uh councilor bet yeah i'll just be brief i support this uh because i know we have four so that's five and for the some of the many the reasons i think it should be an integrated and in zone i don't think we should throw everything else out but i would like to see how we could use it okay thank you any other comments again we do have a consensus uh so but i i'll say this for staff so since we're headed to a work session i'll give you this note uh i'll note in district one you look at 119 east oak street it's the infield of fourplex and then there's another one across from the cemetery uh and that's on uh bradshaw i do believe but i could be mistaken and then i'll double check that that first street address and get it back to you i just want to make sure i have it right but those are two fourplexes in southeast denton that don't i mean again i just i'm i'm always hesitant of stuff just getting dumped in our neighborhood because the land is cheaper right so blend is one thing but it needs to blend everywhere so there needs to be caps on how many times we do this and and that's a perfect example you drive through there you'll see it's like normal houses monstrosity and it's because the the land is cheaper and they just plugged it in uh to our neck of the woods and that's no good uh so it has the balance out it needs to be you know there needs to if it works in southeast denton it works in south ridge uh and that's you know that'll that helps regulate uh councilman bird oh wait no no can't go did you already yeah i can't well i missed it that's okay but you said what i was thinking yeah oh did you did did you already speak i just want to make sure i know i haven't spoke but okay well go ahead i was bombing i were to speak then no no go go right ahead i i'm sorry i i'm i was rushing so go right ahead you know as we were talking about infilling i had been hearing i heard that word and uh that is you know that's where i am it's just the idea of taking a certain neighborhood and just doing whatever you want to do with it i know that those and i'll talk about uh the southeast denton neighborhood the little smaller part segregated part i know that that is exactly what they're concerned about because it's a cheaper land and they are just really really on pins and needles about how that that area is going to develop so as we're talking about that let's just keep that in mind uh as we're making approvals and planning and zoning and all of that that those folks really really want to keep their neighborhood in a bedroom community style and so if we start putting all of these various types of things in there there's going to be a lot of objection to that and um i know how they can be over there so i'll just put it uh that way and they're very very passionate about what they want that's your turn yes thank you thank you okay so we have two minutes for staff to reload uh for the regular meeting and i have two proclamations to read that folks are waiting here so i'm going to adjourn the work session at 6 28 pm so that staff can reset we'll come back in now one minute but so i'll adjourn yeah we adjourned at 6 28 we'll be back in one minute to start our our regularly scheduled meeting thank you it is 6 33 pm it's may 18th we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order first order business for this evening's meeting is pledged to both the united states and texas flag please stand if you're able and join me 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 thank you that uh brings us to our uh proclamations of which we have two uh both people both entities are represented here at city hall i'll read the proclamations and then i'll transition uh to present the proclamations to the entities the first is the is item a id 21919 proclamation uh to internal audit awareness month and it reads a proclamation by the mayor of the city of denton texas to all whom these presents shall come greetings whereas internal auditing is a vital part of strengthening organizations and protecting stakeholders of both the public and private sectors whereas inter internal auditing helps identify and manage the organization's risk and ensures policies procedures and controls are in place working appropriately and whereas internal audit is an increasingly sophisticated and complex uh activity requiring specialized knowledge training and education and that's an understatement and whereas historically the global internal audit profession promotes awareness about its value during the month of may each year and whereas the contribution of internal auditors to the success of organizations and the global economy are at large deserve our recognition and uh commendations now therefore i gerard hutzpeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of may 2021 as internal audit awareness month in the city of denton and encourage all citizens to extend greetings and best wishes to all who observe internal audit awareness month and i invite the citizens of denton to join me in recognizing professional internal auditors for their contributions so i'll present that shortly give them a hand thank you and now uh it's item b which is a id 21931 proclamation for bike month and and shout out to the turkey roll i'm biased as a koanian uh proclamation proclamation by the mayor of the city of denton texas to all whom these presents shall come greetings whereas for more than a century bicycling has been an important part of the lives of many americans and today uh and today citizen of denton residents of all ages engage in bicycling for transportation recreation fitness and fun and whereas the city of denton encourages the use of bicycles for transportation to the benefit of all residents as it eases traffic congestion produces no air pollution and reduces wear and tear on our streets and roads and whereas bicycling is recognized as an activity that can be that can delay the onset of chronic disease and childhood obesity and through consideration of bicycling and public planning with programs such as safe roads to schools bicycling will help create healthier and more active communities in denton and whereas the city of denton texas recognizes people on bikes legitimate roadway users and therefore are entitled to legal and responsible use of the public roadway facilities in denton except highways constructed to interstate standards and whereas the city of denton recognized city of denton's recognition of these of the use of bicycles as a viable mode of transportation endeavors to promote safe and responsible bicycling the education of bicyclists and motorists as to the proper and safe operation of bicycles is important to ensure the safety and comfort of all users and whereas the american league of american bicyclists bike texas bike denton local bike shops and independent cyclists throughout our community are promoting greater awareness of bicycle operations and safety education to reduce crashes injuries and fatalities now therefore i gerard hudspeth mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of may 2021 as bike month in the city of denton and encourage all citizens to ride their bicycles to work to the store to the park around their neighborhoods and with friends and family to promote the personal and societal benefits achieving achieved from bicycling thank you very much appreciate that so let me present these and then i will be right back you're awesome hey well congratulations thank y'all very much you're amazing uh and and and i've learned so much just hanging out with you i learned so much by osmosis so i'll present that to you and then we'll look here and let uh steve say hi to steve hey steve hey steve thank y'all very much thank you sure appreciate it keep up the great work thank you thank you so much all righty uh-huh anything you want to say or add or encourage people thank you and uh you know inter-auditing is great and everybody should appreciate it yeah yeah so we have kids here at u of t t w u n c t c what kind of is the path to uh a exhilarating career uh i think the traditional path is is through accounting but um when you do it in government auditing you can actually do a lot of different things because we need a lot of expertise because cities are are a wide function right yes the out of the roads the finances utilities everything yes we need all that excellent well thank you very much i appreciate it thank you thank you thank you thank you uh-huh good to see you thank you yes uh-huh okay all right hey how are you good good well thank you for being here sure appreciate it so we have a proclamation for you so we'll uh so we'll look at steve here he's got us on the camera hey steve really great appreciate you and so so uh so tell us a little bit about you know uh cycling or anything you want to add to to what was what's been said um well we can start off by inviting everybody on saturday to bike with us and then we'll talk to you guys and then we'll talk to you can start off by inviting everybody on saturday to bike with the mayor at 10 a.m um this is an effort with bike dentin and a lot of other cycling groups that we have around the city and we want to show off the amazing infrastructure that the city has helped fund and um just showcase like make uh key points around the city and get to know you a little better and get you out on the bike yes yeah no i'm so excited so yeah it'll be this so it's this saturday yeah yeah we have a route and we're gonna stop and we're gonna get popsicles and all that fun stuff and it's gonna be a bunch of bikes so i can throw my kids in the front and yes absolutely yeah yeah i'm looking for a weird bicycle helmet i've been looking for one like a unicorn or something but i'm in hot pursuit but they're all kid sizes so i gotta work around but it'll be fun oh well we hope to see a lot of people there yes thank you yes thank you very much i appreciate you being here have a great evening you too all right feel free to stick around for the council meeting if you want to okay yeah we'll do thank y'all okay i'll transition so okay um so our first uh speaker is uh ready so i will call that item it's uh item id 21918 and we have dr stephanie rinky and i hope i think i said that right regarding uh children's advocacy center update now patch her through okay are you are you there yes i am okay great thank you good evening if you could uh first give me your name and address and then uh i will start the timer and you have four minutes yes okay hi i'm dr stephanie rinky and i reside at 3621 bentley court in denton i'm a lifelong resident and small business owner in our amazing city i also serve on the board of directors for the children's advocacy center for north texas i'm speaking today on their behalf to express our thanks to you the city of denton mayor hudspeth and the entire council for your financial support of the advocacy center and investment in our community advocacy centers are a place kids go when there's been a crime committed against them that crime is typically sexual or severe physical abuse though an independent non-profit the advocacy center is mandated by the texas family code to provide six core services to child victims of abuse their families and local law enforcement we are a neutral party that coordinates the investigation and prosecution of severe child abuse cases and we want to thank chief dixon and the entire denton police department for their dedication and service to victims we also provide mental health counseling and other services like helping with immediate needs such as food and clothing and clients are never charged for any service we rely on funding from individuals foundations corporations and local governments in order to keep the doors open for kids in 2020 334 children living in the city of denton were helped at the center they and their family members received 7135 direct services last year and so far in 2021 we've seen the surge in cases as predicted by industry experts from kids being out of school and each month is record-breaking month with april 2021 being our busiest month ever with 171 forensic interviews and this number represents kids all over denton and wise counties and hundreds of hours of law enforcement case coordination child abuse especially child sexual abuse is associated with some of the worst possible outcomes in our communities and by giving children the support to heal from their trauma you are restoring their potential to lead happy productive lives so your investment in the center is critical and i'd like to extend my gratitude to you for your contribution in fiscal year 2019 2020 you're our partners in helping children heal from their trauma and get to a place where they can realize their full potential i'm simply here today to just thank you so much for all you do okay thank you uh and let me see if we have any questions for you from the council and so um council member armature no questions just gratitude uh for the work that that you do uh to to to advocate uh for children and to empower them and and and support them thank you so much you are very appreciated thank you so much it's my pleasure to serve the community and again thanks goes directly back to you appreciate you so much okay we have another council member davis thank you mayor i'm going to take just a little bit of personal privilege and thank you on a not just as a council member for the city but as a prosecutor for the county um i dread getting those files they're they're blue in our office they're different colors so when they show up on my desk i know exactly what's in store but i can't imagine prosecuting those cases without the work that y'all have put into it without the coordination the work with the police department that you've done i've never had to practice without the benefit of your help and if folks don't know it's very difficult to keep the child victim central and their needs central to the process and there's a lot of very serious very adult things happening and keeping the needs of that child uh and remembering that they're a victim of a crime and keeping that central to the process is just what the cac does so thank you so much for everything you do uh at a on a personal and professional level thank you so much very appreciate that thank you any other any other statements comments i'll just echo what council member davis said and for those that are tracking alone that may not understand the value uh one of the key value adds to me is the centralizing of services and and limiting the exposure to reliving an event in life and just kind of sharing information so that it does not have to be repeated numerous times and and there's everyone's in the office and working together and that's just uh so important as council member davis said to for the the healing process of of a particular person that would have to come and utilize your resources so thank you very much and i appreciate your kind words uh and and we would say the same back to you as well thank you very much i appreciate you all okay well have a great evening thank you you as well okay all right okay and then for those that may not have heard us earlier uh item b id 21933 was pulled or removed or canceled uh and so that takes us to item c which is uh id 21969 and this is mr eric pruett regarding what a uh term what the term walkability means and what characteristics are common uh to places that may view as as walkable and so eric are you there i am okay great if you could give me your name and address and you will have um four minutes to speak and you are at the walkability slide of your presentation thank you this is eric pruett 2111 westwood drive what is walkability this term has been invoked by planning staff elected and appointed officials developers and members of the public like myself but are we speaking the same language last year mayor watts said quote each one of us could be asked for our definition of urban development and walkability and we'd probably get seven different answers he hit the nail on the head since i've invoked this term many times i'd like to share what i think it means its characteristics and benefits i don't claim that my definition is the right one but i hope this starts a productive conversation walkable places are those where people want to be their design entices us to park once and walk around rather than driving to everything we linger meet friends and interact this happens when walking is convenient useful and enjoyable next step next slide downtown is walkable raise a wrench and then crossing or not just because you can walk or there's a sidewalk and a crosswalk doesn't make it walkable here are some characteristics of walkable places next slide allow a mix of uses local schools small neighborhood park your parks diverse housing that attracts and serves young old rich and poor mixed land use is not where every building is necessarily mixed use but where shops offices and homes are allowed to commingle according to their intensity rather than their use type as jeff speck wrote if nothing is close to anything different and the only connection is a single fat roadway then the population is automatically conscripted into driving next slide mobility modes that extend the reach of walking bikes scooters and high-frequency transit next slide parking that is sufficient but fully utilized allow the market to determine how much parking to build instead of mandating excessive amounts of parking that push destinations further apart next slide road design that intentionally slows traffic to increase safety and enjoyment of people walking two-way roads narrow lanes curb bump outs connected street networks next slide encourage sidewalk activity put trees almost everywhere sidewalks should be commensurate with the activity letter level orderly but dumb rules are creating eight-foot sidewalks leading to freeways a mere five-foot sidewalks just north of our square on locust and an elm next slide interesting active street fronts buildings should have frequent doors accessible from the sidewalk narrow small lots with organic building variety instead of artificial articulated large buildings what are the benefits next slide where nobody walks nobody gets to know their neighbors research has found that living along heavy traffic arterials or having longer commutes is highly correlated with smaller social networks and lower social capital walkable places support stable connected communities next slide land and walking in walkable places is worth more higher value per acre creates more tax revenues to sustain our strained municipal budgets without increasing the city's costs supportive public transportation lowers total cost of living they keep our taxes lower they are more fiscally sustainable next slide walkable places associated with less chronic illness reduce driving distances transit and alternate modes reduce emissions we pride ourselves on dme's 100 renewable portfolio while we encourage pollution by making driving the only reasonable option in much of our city next slide i'm just an interest interested resident our planning staff is superb and does these things much better than i do but they need policy direction from you seek to understand the trade-offs between styles of development walkability is a combination of many efforts from private developers and government departments let's understand what we mean what we mean by these terms and cast a vision for the future of denton thank you excellent thank you very much um and so let me see any questions or comments for mr pruett uh okay council member back then council member armature yeah mr prude what areas of denton do you think um are ripe for or the most changes you know certainly the downtown is is the area that's already walkable um and and there are some places i would say still near the core of downtown or of denton um that that with some small improvements could get there um so for instance along locust and elm north of university there's already some businesses in that area uh but it's been hampered by really fast traffic on locust and elm that that will be addressing perhaps when we take those roadways back from tex dot um you know there's maybe some places in southeast denton that would be compatible with small neighborhood centers um i i really couldn't claim to know all the places but uh i think as we learn from our community members we should pay attention to what neighborhoods are asking for for more of this great thank you okay council member armature i was actually going to ask a version of this the same question so i won't i will just say thank you for advocating for more walkability in in denton okay any other questions comments councilman bird uh yes um i do this is very interesting to me i just spoke with um the chair of the traffic committee today and that was our primary talk topic of walkability and um bike safety so i am this is a topic that's very uh important to me he did give me some background on on what we had been doing and and i've asked him to come back the traffic committee to come back to me and uh give me a package so i'm really looking forward to getting all of that and i think this is a an excellent opportunity to upgrade whatever we're doing here in the core i know some areas myself that i've seen and i have concerns about uh off of mckinney street i'm very concerned about that area so i'm looking forward to it thank you okay any other counselor maguire hi um thank you so much for talking with us today eric um i would love to hear you expand a little bit on um uh parking requirements um and what alternatives to uh our current parking minimums system um you you could envision that would help improve walkability so it's a huge topic um i guess i'll just say that um my impression is that the majority of our parking requirements are set to sustain the peak parking demand that that building on that piece of property might experience over the entire year for instance um so when you have uh retail the you know the parking lot will be sized for black friday um and and when you do that you make uh you make building these things more expensive because they require more land and that it has to be spread further apart so it makes certain projects not uh feasible even if um that the context of the area they would be located in wouldn't necessarily ever need that many parking spaces so that's that's kind of how they're related in my mind okay uh thank you any other questions comments for mr pruett okay well thank you very much eric for your your insight and and very thought-provoking and i've taken some good notes uh that we'll get to i'll try to uh uh incorporate those those things you've mentioned so thank you thank you all right okay that takes us to we have one more uh caller and then we have a um or one more planned and then we have another uh citizen that's called in that's not on your agenda so i'll call the first it's id 211016 uh mr joshua hatton i hope i said that right regarding opposition to propose go zone um changes to denton county transportation authority dcta services yes sir joshua yes speaking yes sir if you could give me uh you're on with the city council if you could give me your name and address uh then you can go ahead and and and make your statements you'll have uh four minutes and we are at the no bus cuts denton slide if you have multiple slides that's that's where we are all right thank you yes good evening my name is joshua happen i'm at 1414 auburn drive in denton i'm an organizer of the no bus cuts denton campaign you can learn about our campaign on facebook or twitter at no bus cuts denton and contact us by email at no bus cuts denton at gmail.com i want to begin by thanking denton city workers ms rios ms wellburn and mr foresight for helping me to schedule and to make my presentation next slide please we oppose dcta's go zone plan to cut bus routes because it would hurt the agency's workers and riders and also the greater denton community next slide please dcta's go zone plan eliminates four of denton's city bus routes after only two weeks those are the one two four and six two more would be guaranteed to run for only another six months the three and the seven the plan replaces our safe six stop bus system with rides and minivans and pickups at undisclosed locations that have to be scheduled by app or telephone the plan also pays millions of dollars out of county funds for this inferior service to via transportation a multinational corporation with its headquarters in new york city next slide we're on page four slide four dcta's go zone plan is bad for workers bad for riders and bad for denton next slide please it's bad for workers bus drivers have risked their lives during the covet pandemic to provide us with vital transportation dcta's go zone plan says nothing about what will happen to these heroic workers when they lose their jobs during the layoffs that would certainly follow the elimination of the six bus routes next slide please it's bad for riders many bus riders do not have access to a telephone or cannot use the online app dcta's go zone plan would leave many of us without a safe way to travel to grocery stores public buildings and medical services including the denton va clinic on colorado boulevard which is on route two next slide please the plan is bad for denton dcta's go zone plan substitutes precarious gig jobs with undisclosed salaries and benefits for stable employment and a collectively negotiated contract it also sends money that should be invested in our own community to a big company in new york neither the downgrading of our jobs nor the transfer of our public funds to a private corporation is good for the people of denton next slide please the board and management of dcta should be ashamed of themselves for trying to push through this cruel attack they seem to think that bus drivers are disposable and bus riders are invisible they're wrong and we're going to do everything we can to stop these cuts next slide please i encourage city councilors and everyone watching to join our campaign and contact us with any questions and i'm happy to answer your questions as well councilors okay thank you uh questions uh council member guire mayor protin melzer council member beck and then council member armature yes um thank you joshua for speaking with us today um i absolutely share uh many of your concerns about uh the future of our fixed route uh fixed bus routes um i think it it's clear that having a robust public transit system is is really important uh to having a vibrant community where where you know everybody has mobility and and accessibility um in order to to keep those fixed bus routes viable i think that we we need to invest in measures that increase ridership um like making it safe and convenient to choose to ride the bus as opposed to driving and so i want to kind of draw a connection between our previous speaker eric pruett um and his talk about walkability um it needs to be easy and safe and convenient for people to walk to the bus stop in order to to keep our buses um viable so so i think that that it's important that we view these these issues as interconnected okay thank you mayor protin melzer uh yeah first of all i'd say i absolutely share your uh sympathy and concern for the bus drivers who were out there on the front lines during the pandemic and you know taking the risks to make it safe for people to have transportation my question is uh well first of all i'll say i have an open mind uh i think it might turn out to be worse it might turn out to be better but i kind of want to see but you know uh what if it turns out to be more convenient to provide better service you know i wouldn't wouldn't that be you know to have on demand i mean there's a maybe the buses run empty because people don't don't you know because it doesn't meet their needs so what if this you know turns out to be better for riders i mean i would wouldn't that sort of point to a different focus like let it be if it is better for riders do it but make sure that it's not uh you know a downgrade for the people whose uh you know whose job it is to to provide the transportation is that a possibility or how do you look at that well there the two uh things you mentioned right one is the the folks who have as you said you know risk their lives and and um what is to become of them um as i mentioned under the plan there is no discussion there's no plan at all for what will become of uh the people who have have done so and um that's something that i think should be discussed no matter what the outcome is uh second there's a there's a question of it sounds like you're you're talking about well let's let's see what would happen um what i'm wondering is who has discussed these questions with riders have riders uh what kind of data are there to show that um all riders or a great majority of riders are are capable able to use this proposed system i've spoken with a couple of human services providers um and here in denton and they've been very surprised well first they were very surprised by the news that i was sharing with them about the proposed plan and on the other hand they were really shocked because they know that many of the people they serve and provide vouchers for don't have access to a telephone cannot use an app if they do have access um so i think my concern would be that one would say oh let's see let's do this uh experiment um and the the human cost of such an experiment i think would be too great even if it were a several month uh experiment so i'm against that kind of experiment and experimentation on human subjects well i i guess i would just comment that i share your concerns i think and i appreciate you raising them in fact we've got mobility tomorrow we'll be talking to dcta uh i would say it would be you know an incredibly lousy uh proposal if it didn't take into account how do you serve you know people who don't have phones and all the people who are transit dependent but i but i you know i just don't i'm not close to the idea that that uh that it's possible to offer better service than we had before so anyway i thank you very much for your uh you know right on a list of of of concerns to to uh make sure we address okay urge you to follow mobility mayor yes this is this is sarah just to let everyone know that we're working with dcta now to get something on our agenda for june 8th for a presentation to council so you can weigh in on this as well and right now dcta is going through public input process and that's why they want to schedule a meeting with the council okay thank you uh council member beck then councilor robertor yes i i thank you mayor uh mr hatton i i want i share a number of your concerns especially about employment uh you know often bus driving is a is a lower income stable form of employment for many economically disadvantaged folks um as well as serving economically disadvantaged folks i wonder if um you would how you would feel if we kept the fixed routes but uh layered on the cupcake and icing of ride share well i think our our campaign is is focusing on on stopping the cuts um so that's that's our our main focus at this point one thing um that has really been interesting for us to see how much discussion um our campaign is generating and you can see this on on facebook and twitter and also on uh change.org that we have a petition there a lot of the conversation is about what should be done with uh dcta and the denton public transportation system um most of the things i'm reading at least the things that people are posting on our um pages talks about greater um greater investment in in the fixed uh routes now um i i'm i'm happy if our campaign can would be the impetus for uh a discussion about what should be done uh from this point forward i think uh all i could say at this point would be uh the same amount of investment or greater investment and a focus again on working-class people and their access uh to the service okay all right thank you councilor armature uh yes i just wanted to uh thank you for your your comments obviously uh you know i too share those concerns i was wondering if if you were aware uh of you know what has happened in other cities where they have gone to this uh you know privatized taxi service model away from from buses and uh how they've gone ended up um trying to go back uh to a bus model after it hasn't worked i'm wondering if you know any of the data on that no i don't i'd be really interested in seeing what the effects are and i i think uh maybe that's something that uh council person melts could uh be interested would be interested in as well but maybe rather than having an experiment uh where uh we see what happens uh don't really know what could happen and try it um maybe something like that would be would be really helpful and interesting i'm sure we have people here locally who do that kind of research i'd be interested to do that too you won't be surprised to know that of course dcta thinks there are lots of examples where it's been successful so look i don't know i'm not committed to it by any stretch but i'm not close to the possibility of making things better for people i'm in favor of making things better for people okay okay and so you know so i will say this uh from memory again they'll come back to us on the eighth but from memory my understanding is we received a presentation that said the bus drivers would be hired on to answer that one question and then two uh from memory this council was not all intact when it's happened but we had a bus rider that that talked to us about the fact that the bus stopped on the west side of i-35 and wouldn't take her to our destination on uh the east side of i-35 so these type solutions were brought forward for those type solutions when we have disabled people that are sitting at bus stops that either don't have coverage or have limited coverage and now they can get be picked up it is absolutely a the goal is to better serve those that are on on on using public transportation so i look forward to the eighth but i also will say fixed bus routes have brought a number of concerns that that need to be addressed as well and that's what this attempt is to do and to say that there's been no uh issues with fixed bus routes is not accurate because we had the and i forget where she worked but she regularly came to council meeting and said she could not get to work on the fixed bus route so i understand walmart well councillor armature i'm going to ask you not to interrupt thank you uh and so uh that's that's one of those things where we're trying to make adjustments to better serve those in our community and it is a noble goal by our uh our dcta in that board and and they're trying to get it right and trying to hear from constituents just as we're trying to hear from you so i appreciate the insight uh well absolutely those that are watching this meeting can go to the to the social medias and get that insight get that public feedback and incorporate that into their deliberation so thank you again for your time thank you mayor excuse me excuse me i think i want to make sure that i'm not misunderstood i i didn't say that there are no problems with the the current fixed route system that that wasn't a point i've made at all nowhere in my presentation did i say that and as i said i think our campaign is generating a lot of conversation around the question how could that system be improved so i just want to make sure that that point is clear i haven't said that i don't think there are any problems but i think the the solution is uh moving forward with improvements to the fixed system at least in the short term certainly and and i'll just communicate back to you that i don't the presentation did not seem i take your point but the presentation wasn't i didn't receive it as towards the middle as your comments uh would would represent so i i do take your input i take the notes we'll talk to dcta on june 8th and you'll hear those discussions from this body i'd invite you to also call in for that conversation and then i will also go to your social medias and see what what those that are following and asking questions are saying so that i can have that uh top of mind as well i think it's a valid uh point valid point great conversation we do want to get it right and we're passionate about that so thank you thank you very much i appreciate it okay that uh so then we have one more caller before the consent agenda and staff will pull that call up and just uh as a note this was not pre-scheduled so uh there can only be comments of clarification and um questions of staff i do believe i may i could be wrong and it's been a bit but uh katherine will correct us where we're wrong all right valid okay are you there i'm here okay so if you could turn down your volume so that you don't have the feedback that's a little behind us uh and then i'll ask you to give me uh your name and address and then you will have uh is it four minutes as well and you'll have four minutes to to address the city council okay the name is kenneth day that's da y address is 1111 empire central place dallas texas 75247 great thank you go right ahead good evening council honorable mayor and members of this great council serving the city of denton my name is kenneth day uh i represent the drivers that provide the service for the denton county service area uh i represent the organization as the amalgamated transit union local 1338 at 1111 empire central dallas texas 75247 on behalf of the members that i represent i call to advocate the concerns they have regarding the proposed service plan changes the members i represent has uh concerned about their job security and nothing that has been communicated to them that would give them assurance the men and women that i represent they provide a commitment dedicated service to the public so not only are they concerned about their own protection they're concerned about the public that they serve the relationships they have built with their riders they know a lot of their riders on a name first name basis they know on in a lot of cases what time their rider is going to be at a particular stop they know what time their riders has to be at a certain place i was listening to the presentation earlier and i listened to the presentation about the walking the parking and i think public transit coincides right a good fit with the walking and the parking concerns the emission concerns now the service that is being proposed there's always good and there's bad it's not all bad but what i know about this type of service one it's a service that's going to be operated by a provider that's looking at their bottom line and their bottom line is profits you dcta and ntmc looks at providing a public service the type of quality of service normally you don't get with private contractors in my experience with these private contractors you lose your control you lose the quality of service that will be provided some of the experiences i have the operators are not uniformed the equipment is not maintained to the best of operating conditions these are the things that i have experienced as a long-term local union president that has been involved with several companies that has hired these private contractors to go out and provide their service you lose your control and you don't do not receive the type of quality of service that you i think will expect and your customers your the citizen that rides your service expects to receive there may be some type of tailor a combination you can fit in that that may work as i said earlier it's not always a negative but my experience the negative outweighs the positive okay and that's your that's your four minutes but i i leave it open for you to uh summarize okay i may summarize it by saying on behalf or of the men and women that i represent they provide this service they're committed to the service and i'm telling they are the best they're the best advocates and the best probably resources i don't think that it's being used to the maximum of determining the type of service or what type of service should be provided and i thank you for your time and opportunity to speak before you thank you yes sir thank you mr day have a great evening thank you you too yes sir okay uh that concludes our citizen comment and proclamations uh very robust i appreciate that that's that's that's good i appreciate the community engaging in that way that takes us to the consent agenda i'll note before we get there that we've uh pulled um items q and r uh both are with uh brief presentations and uh i'll take a motion mayor pro tem davis pardon me let me download version 2.0 councilmember davis i move approval the consent agenda with the exception of uh item e which was uh pulled already and cancelled item q and item r thank you for that great point um okay mayor pro tem melzer i want to give you another chance to practice that thank you okay and and did you uh did you second i didn't hear you yes i did i second okay thank you okay great so we have a uh motion by uh councilmember davis second by mayor pro tem uh melzer excluding items e which has been pulled and and uh and we'll come back at a later date and then item q and r which will be both have brief presentations uh any other discussion okay seeing none uh councilmember davis how say you aye mayor mayor pro tem melzer aye councilmember maguire aye councilmember bird aye councilmember beck aye councilmember armature yes and mayor hutsworth has an aye as well so those other items pass uh seven zero that'll take us to first uh so uh do i kathryn do i need to note further item e that's been pulled or is that sufficient i believe that's sufficient thank you uh so then that'll take us to item q let me find that item q is uh id 21901 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton denton authorizing the interim city manager to execute an agreement with texas health and human services commission for the purpose of allowing volunteers from the foster grandparent program to assist with denton parks and recreation children's programs mayor city council gary pack and director of parks and recreation sarah ferris who oversees our camps in this program specifically i've invited her to give the presentation so i'll go ahead and bring that up and turn it over to sarah ferris thank you hello hi i'm sarah ferris i'm the recreation supervisor for recreational care for the city of denton parks and recreation and i oversee the summer camps and the after school program and one of the great programs that we have is the foster grandparents um it's a partnership with the texas health and human services commission um it provides income eligible adults who are 55 and older with um a meaningful volunteer oppo uh opportunities um they apply through the texas health and human services commission they get background checked by them they're um they're in charge of this program and we partner with them um the foster grandparents participate in the camp activities they do arts and crafts they do games they um supervise them when they're doing free time they provide mentorship we have them read books or help with handwriting one of the activities they're going to do this summer is letter writing and work on cursive we have about 15 foster grandparents throughout all the camps that's uh seven camps at six locations actually eight camps at six locations if you count the preschool camp and they work an average of 20 hours sometimes more per person per week during the summer and some benefits of being a foster grandparent they get a tax free stipend with sick time vacation time and holiday time they get supplemental insurance they provide meals when they are volunteering they get trainings and then they have annual uh recognitions for them and the um our recommendation is that um since this program provides additional support to all the camp programs um that uh and the staff that operate the camp that we would like you guys to approve the ordinance for the foster grandparents that adds value to the camp programs and if you have any questions okay thank you and there we go questions for staff uh councilmember guire then uh mayor pro tem melzer then did i see your hand as well councilmember beck no okay thank you okay councilmember guire mayor pro tem melzer thank you so much um this sounds like a wonderful program can you clarify what you what you mean by income eligible adults um the health and human services commission has them fill out an application and um they also have them um go through like a physical and stuff so they have their um requirements for if they are able to participate in the program do you know what those requirements are um i can find out for sure if um and get back to you guys in a friday report all right uh mayor pro tem melzer i just uh was i didn't know this program existed i think it's a really cool uh way to knit the community together a little bit i love the cross-generational contact seems like it's great for uh you know everyone involved so i'll just okay um so we have a motion by mayor pro tem melzer is there a second councilmember beck i'll second that thank you have a motion by mayor pro tem melzer a second by uh councilmember beck any discussion just for the record i'll note that staff you're going to follow up with in the friday report for with that information councilmember bird i don't have a question but i do have a comment and while you're going through the through the uh motions of your uh delivery there i was thinking about myself being in this program since i'm a substitute teacher and i don't have any kids this summer so that would be pretty cool but yes i am very excited about that program as well so uh the benefits i wanted to go back and clarify what kind of benefits are they getting did i see something about a stipend and they get insurance and they have a car allowance or something like that um they have it they have their benefits from the the state of texas and the health and human services they um they do provide a stipend monthly they ask that we sign off on you know time sheets for them and um you know that's just that's monitored by the health and human services the um foster grandparents program does more than just camp so some of these things like um the car insurance and accident insurance stuff like that that that may not directly pertain to us because uh we don't ask them to drive anywhere we don't drive them anywhere but uh we do provide meals for them through our um sth project um partnering for our free lunch they're able to eat that as well i think i remember um earlier that one of my questions was what was the what was the um i just did that there was a cost associated with it and i think you answered that question in terms of what what what are the city's cost is to that since they're coming through another agency yes they we don't actually pay anything for them yeah it's all provided by health and human services thank you okay great so uh any other questions comments seeing none uh mayor pro tem melzer how say you councilmember beck aye councilmember maguire aye councilmember burt aye okay councilmember davis aye councilmember armature yes okay and mayor hutzpah is a aye as well that passes uh seven zero that takes us to item r which is id 211008 consider approval of resolution of the city of denton supporting the insurance it pardon me issuance of a letter of opposition to senate bill 29 senate bill 1646 house bill 1399 which are being uh considered in the 87th texas legislature good good evening mayor city council sara keakler chief of staff i have a short presentation for you on this item one second please while i pull that up okay so this item is a resolution for city council to consider ratifying an opposition letter that staff sent out last week on behalf of uh city council the direction that we received during last week's may 11th work session uh the letter opposes legislation that limits health care and athletics access for transgender and gender non-conforming youth do the timeliness of these issues and the legislation that was moving forward we did send that letter out last thursday on may 13th so again this resolution would just be confirming that letter and that prior direction that we received from city council last week did want to provide an update on the status of the legislation that was opposed house bill 1399 which is the bill that would prohibit medical care to youth and create certain barriers to medical care that appears to be dead by calendar and not will not move forward however senate bill 1646 which is the bill that would classify gender affirming care as child abuse it is passed through the senate and it has been referred to the house at this time and then lastly senate bill 29 which would require youth to participate in sports based on their biological sex versus their gender identity it has passed the senate and it was voted out of a house committee and then lastly we did include a copy of the full letter in council's backup as exhibit three so that is available for public viewing and i just took a quick snapshot to put on the screen as well but in summary we looked at the testimony of mental health and child welfare stakeholders some well-known organizations that was presented to the legislature including the american medical association the american pediatric association and the american psychological association and some of the points that they made through their testimony of how parents and health care providers are best positioned to provide direct care to tgnc youth and that lack of access to medical care and equal access to athletics could compound some existing issues that tgnc youth face including you know stigma and disparate health outcomes so the letter was on behalf of city council and affirmed and supports the rights of youth tgnc youth to access health care and education that honors their gender identity and expression and then it urged rejection of the proposed legislation so i'll take down the presentation at this time okay i'll uh take a motion councilmember armater i move approval okay is there a second uh councilmember beck yes second thank you so i have a motion by councilmember armater second by councilmember back discussion see it councilman armater uh i wanted to to thank um this uh council majority uh for giving direction on this letter uh this this resolution of opposition i wanted to thank the community uh for speaking out uh about this so vocally and powerfully uh and i also really want to thank staff um whoever wrote this letter it's an excellent letter uh and really moving and effective um and uh i i know for a fact because i've heard from from people uh families and kids affected uh that no matter what happens in the state it means a lot to them uh to know that this letter came from their city council okay a difference and thank you any other comments seeing none councilmember armater i'll say you yes councilmember beck aye councilmember maguire aye uh councilmember davis nay mayor hudspeth is a nay as well councilmember bird aye and councilman mayor pro tem melzer aye and did i get everybody one two three i think that's that's everybody i miss anyone okay then that uh passes five two all right takes us to items for individual consideration uh i have uh so i have first item is item a id 21 859 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton adopting a schedule of fees for the denton public library superseding all prior ordinances establishing fees in conflict with such schedule providing the servability and providing uh for an effective date the library board recommends approval five zero good evening mayor city council members nick nixon assistant director of finance i do believe this is my first time to be in front of several of the new council members so i just want to say welcome we're super excited that you're here so let me let me share the presentation really quick um i do have jennifer becker the director of libraries here today to help me with any detailed questions that you may have regarding these fee changes in addition she has a couple show and tell items at the end of the presentation if you'd like to see some of the items that the fees that we'll cover she'll be happy to share that with you so typically for the new council members the fee schedules of the rate orange has come forward to this body for approval as part of the budgeting process and this typically happens in august or september of each year however we are in front of you today with some changes to the library fee schedule based on some improvements that's happened to the north branch of forge marketplace and the majority of that being new equipment that was acquired for that facility and now is available to the public a couple different categories that these materials fit into is 3d printing and filament costs that are associated with that and then market space materials with associated charges and i refer this to you or refer them we'll look at them here in just a second i did want to point out the great job that staff did getting a grant for this equipment at 54 000 dollars from the institute of museum and library services so definitely wanted to point that out these are the fees these are new this is not modifying the existing fee schedule or rate ordinance so these will be new and incorporated into it the first one being the 3d printing charges and this is 75 cents for 10 grams and laminating fees is currently 50 cents or what we're proposing is 50 cents per linear foot and just second bear with me the presentation automatically change market space miscellaneous materials range based on the size of the materials that are being used with the smallest being the extra small which is a dollar the perfect example that'd be key chains going up to an extra large which could be wood objects or acrylic material and and jennifer has some examples of that here in a second if you want to see that just wanted to show everybody what the equipment looks like that is in the forge marketplace and north branch library and you can see the small the medium and the extra large you can see that filament material there in the bottom picture and that 3d printing machine and so that concludes this presentation if you have questions for myself or jennifer both of us are happy to answer them or if you'd like to see the show and tell items that she had brought forward for your consideration today she's happy to share those with you okay questions for staff uh mayor tim mayor pro tim melzer i would like to see the show and tell items okay wonderful i'm so excited to share these things with you so i've brought a giant bag full of samples because sometimes it is hard to imagine what these things are so one of our largest items would be a sheet of acrylic this is our large size that we would be able to provide to the public and this would be for use in our laser engraver we have two glow forge laser engravers facilities is working with us as a safety to make sure that we get those set up properly and once they're going somebody could purchase something like this and create their own design or project whatever they're looking for another idea would be a leather folder with a notebook inside that you could engrave with whatever design you would like to give out as a gift or for yourself and this would be in the medium range for five dollars another popular item that we hear from other libraries that have maker spaces are cutting boards a lot of people like to engrave those to give as gifts and we've been able to source this one and it would be in the five dollar range also which is pretty reasonable this would be a small piece of acrylic that somebody could purchase for five dollars again for whatever creation they would like and then our 3d printing we got two new 3d printers that now do dual color printing so this is an example of 3d printing an item like this would cost two dollars and fifty cents no let me get you the correct price 225 so that 3d printing tends to be hollow it's got a kind of a hexagon inside for the structure stability but they're pretty light so those are the examples that i have today thank you that's great at some point jennifer you and i will put our heads together come up with a different word than library to encompass all the cool fun enriching experiences you know that uh our libraries make possible we do some neat stuff our staff is pretty amazing okay any other questions comments for staff counselor bird counselor back how uh how large does the 3d printing go i mean was that the largest that you can get oh no um so you could do something probably about yay high by kind of a square what i can do is i can get with our technology librarian and get you some actual dimensions and so i can email those out to staff as opposed to my hand signal so okay okay uh council member bet yeah i'm i'm not going to argue at all against 3d printing um the library actually got me started several years ago and now it's one of my passions so um it it actually um is a tremendously beneficial a resource to our our community so good how much do you charge per hour consulting fee if i if i gave you a design how much do you charge and knock it out for me or for the library for you i want to for for you mayor 45 an hour i mean uh for for anyone else free that's awesome it's a value it's it's a big value uh okay anyone else uh mayor for tim melzer if no one else wants to pop in uh look what you started you know through the library council member back you know became somebody who was a enthusiast he was one of several people one of the main people who helped make ppe for the community when it was short uh you know as part of shield dentin uh in part because you know they learned the skills through ten public libraries so thank you got it if there's no other questions i'll take a motion uh council member guire and then council member beck i move approval councilor beck enthusiastic second thank you we have a motion by council member uh mcguire and enthusiastic second by council member beck is there any other discussion seeing none councilor mcguire how say you i council member beck yes i council member bird i okay councilor uh may i pretend melzer aye and uh council member davis aye and mayor hutzpah is a i i do not see council member armature give it a second okay that passes six zero uh that takes us to uh item b which is id 21889 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton a texas home room home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager or their designee to execute a contract with fx5 utility construction llc mr mayor council members my name is rowdy patterson i'm the line construction division manager for dme and what we're going to bring to you at this time um is a presentation excellent for the rfp 7633 underground electric electric installation services a little background about the underground electric installation for the city of denton i started here in 1985 and at that time we had started an aggressive underground program by the year 2000 we we were doing so much underground that we decided we needed some assistance we either had to hire more employees or go out for contract for a contractor to come in and give us some assistance and so what we did is we went out for bid we've been utilizing this contract for the peaks and valleys of our construction projects and at this time we have approximately 57 of our electric distribution system which is underground over the last 10 years we our contractors have completed about 25 anywhere from 25 to 45 percent of those underground projects here is one one example out on western boulevard this was a duck bank that was installed prior to the the all of the construction that's going on out there on western boulevard and as you can see it was a massive undertaking it's a four by four six inch conduit duct system we encase it in concrete and our contractors have performed this work for us here's another picture of it as you can see it's covered in concrete concrete and we have a red ditch tape for protection on top of it and as you can see there are some poles along the roadway there that was the temporary line that we had to build so that we could get temporary power to winco as they were construct constructing their site dme currently has 35 different underground distribution projects in various phases of construction at this time those are just the ones that are actually being constructed a few of those country club estates bonnie bray phase five which is undergrounding down bonnie bray by the uh unt stadium from 35 all the way to willow wood and just some other ones mixed in there we have 84 residential and commercial projects in various stages of planning and engineering design that haven't been released at this time we have 31 feeder extension and improvement projects in the same stage some of these projects include cable replacement out by the old mervins eagle creek hunter creek hunter coal ranch those are some of the ones that are going to give us some uh concern because we we don't actually have a a good feel for when they're going to start when they're going to kick off but um that's part of what this will be encompassing uh for for this rfp we sent out proposals to 454 prospective suppliers we did receive five proposals and um we we use compliance with specification indicators of probable performance project schedule and price as our uh criteria that we rank them on uh we reached out for a best and final offer to clarify line item pricing and fx5 utility construction was the highest ranked and was determined to be of the best value um our recommendation is to award the contract for fx5 utility construction in the five year not to exceed amount of 15 million dollars which is based upon previous historic spend and approved budgeted distribution project not only was this uh contractor the lowest cost but also the highest evaluated score any questions got it if we can yeah thank you and i just want to join you rowdy and shouting out mervins man i had this purple shirt i bought at mervins never mind never mind that tells you how long i've been here mayor i love it uh councilman maguire um i just want to comment um i know mr patterson mentioned that they had the the highest um score among among the companies that uh responded to the bid request um including uh excellent scores and safety and proof of ability to complete projects within the requested timeline which is so incredibly important because we have an enormous amount of construction projects underway right now and i know that um utility lines can sometimes be one of the major factors that hold them up so um even though the the price tag is quite hefty i think that that we can be confident that this is a good value i agree thank you uh any other questions for staff seeing none do it okay uh councilmember davis move approval mayor thank you is there a second uh councilmember bird i'm sorry i didn't hear is there did you say second i'm sorry okay thank you appreciate it uh so i have a uh motion by councilmember davis second by councilmember bird any other discussion okay seeing none councilmember davis how say you aye councilmember bird aye councilmember maguire aye councilmember beck aye councilmember melzer aye and councilmember armature oops i think she's frozen we'll give her mayor hudspeth is an i yes there we go okay that passes seven zero yes thank you uh thank you rowdy thank you yes sir uh that takes us to item uh five c which is id 21967 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule a municipal corporation denying the distribution cost recovery factor rate request of encore electric delivery company llc made on or on or about april 8 2021 thank you mayor this is rachel walther at mendoza assistant to the city manager again and i will get this going for us okay there we are just as a little bit of background mayor and council um denton is a member of the alliance of encore cities or the aoc aoc is a 30 member coalition of cities that represents about 650 000 customers but of course because of our dme they they serve only a small number of accounts here in the city of denton the distribution cost recovery factor process the filing is it's very streamlined and it happens usually very quickly because it's a comprehensive base rate case and absent good cause and without action september 1st would be the effective date of the new rates that encore is filing to recover and that total that they're seeking to recover right now is 97.83 million dollars that would be spread across their entire system just as a as a note a settlement could still be reached during this process but just to to kind of in the interest of time and as is mentioned in your backup and in the ordinance the negotiated rates still there still could be time for that to happen with a settlement but given the very short time span that we're given to take action in between when their denial phase goes through this is the action that we're recommending this evening so the ordinance itself will deny encore's application to increase its rates and if we don't act the application is deemed denied and it's automatically appealed to the puct but the denial won't eliminate the possibility of resolving the whole matter through a settlement as i mentioned excuse me the ordinance also retains a rare law firm as our representative in the matter and as it would relate to this particular dcrf filing and it also directs encore to reimburse the entirety of the aoc city's reasonable rate case expenses so that's just a very brief overview of the information from the ordinance and the ais i can stand for questions okay first that's an impressive enunciation of that law firm name there's no way i get that uh straight away impressive okay questions for staff seeing none i'll take a motion uh council member guire um yeah i'm just curious about uh is this 97.83 million that that encore is trying to recover is that related to winter storm uri no no this actually so the filing period that this represents is from jan 1 2020 to december 31 of the same year so this does not encompass the period that uri represented in february okay thank you okay any other questions for staff council member this be uh equal will this equalize out throughout the uh each one of the cities or cities have different um rates that they are they're looking to to pull from so it's my understanding that it would be representative based off of how many accounts we have but at the same time it is still in in some ways equally represented in that the the the increase would be let's just say you know hypothetically speaking um what it would do over the amount of accounts that they have it would increase someone's bill by 15 dollars per month across the board it wouldn't just be that since denton has 42 customers for example that those 42 would see less of an increase of their bill i hope that helps any of them okay any other questions for staff councillor beth yes thank you mayor i just clarification on the uh this is an an ordinance to deny so approval would be denial if we correct the triple negative is is tripping me up a little bit so if we approve this that's an approval to deny that is correct okay okay i'm just being clear thank you thank you good point um so any other questions for staff i'll take a motion uh council member armature i move approval okay is it counselor beck i second thank you have a motion by council member armature second by council member beck uh discussion seeing none council member armature how say you yes okay council member beck aye council member maguire aye council member bird aye uh mayor pro tem melzer aye council member davis aye mayor hutzpah is a aye as well that passes seven zero thank you rachel uh takes us to our last um item for individual consideration it's id 21835 consider adoption of ordinance amending ordinance number 202075 providing for acceptance of an amended eligible non-annexation agreement with mont el and emory a wilkes for agricultural wildlife management and timberland use property property uh yeah properties within an area of land adjacent to the abutting adjacent to and abutting the existing city limits um sorry about that thank you mayor um members of council ron maguire principal plan with development services again i've got this uh presentation i don't have a powerpoint presentation but rather i've got a pdf that i like to share with the council the area that we're talking about um is the area in yellow also including this area here that is in white so back in october of last year the city council accepted a non-annexation agreement for the area in yellow uh at the time that was the only property that the wilkes owned that was eligible for a non-annexation agreement because it was an ag-exempt property in december of 2020 the wilkes removed or combined both properties both the homestead homestead lot which is this in white as well as the area in yellow into one lot by by doing so they've combined their lot and now the entire lot is an ag-exempt property and therefore they are requesting that their non-annexation agreement be updated to reflect not only the area in yellow but also their homestead property which again was combined in december of last year and that's really the purpose for the update to the non-annexation agreement and i'll stand for any questions thank you questions for staff seeing none uh i'll take a motion mayor hudspeth moves approval um is there a second i'll second thank you councilmember davis so we have a motion by mayor hudspeth second by councilmember davis discussion seeing none uh mayor hudspeth aye councilmember davis aye councilmember maguire aye councilmember beck aye council mayor pro tem melzer aye thank you uh and then councilmember armater yes and who i'm sorry bird thank you councilmember bird aye thank you when i go out of order it messes me up uh okay so that passes seven zero thank you um so that concludes our uh our agenda but for our concluding items so any concluding items announcements etc see none one more time okay i'll tell those uh that receive their evaluation for their uh property taxes in the mail that you make sure you don't miss those deadlines and make sure you reach out to a local realtor to help you with your comps etc uh the the i've heard a lot of and i've seen my own in its sticker shop but you you do have some people that can advocate for you please fill out your homestead exemptions uh for the following year uh as mentioned earlier on saturday 10 a.m there's bike with the mayor event so that please join us for that that's on uh facebook you can find that on on the my mayor's page or other pages there uh then bike pages bike denton pages and then um there's a rotary trash pickup i do believe that's monday night i do believe 6 30 downtown they go around and pick up trash so that's really good once a month and then um sunday i'm i'm going to be attending first christian church uh speaking event there so that'll be good my my buddy from the denton high newton razor days david triple so i'm going to hang out with david and the gulkies it'll be fantastic but it'll be good good neighborhood memories so uh with that any other announcements okay well thank you very much so at eight o'clock eight o'clock p.m uh right on the dot 5 18 still 2021 we will agenda uh we will conclude tonight's agenda yeah i'm ready and uh y'all have a great evening and we're back next week right is that is that a real thing so that would be the 20th yes we are back we are back next week the 25th very good so we will see you all then if not before thanks have a good evening good night everyone