Jun 07, 2021 City Council on 2021-06-07 11:30 AM (SPECIAL CALLED MEETING)

And good morning. Actually, that's a rare thing to say it is 1130 in the morning. It is June 7. And we do have a quorum. So I will call the meeting order. This is a special call meeting. So first of the month kind of meeting we have and then the first thing on the agenda would be -- let me get there a little out of practice. So do we have any -- I don't know if we have an opportunity for people to call, but I don't think we have any. So take us to our next session item which is request for clarification on agenda items. Any questions for staff? Okay. Seeing none. Okay. I'll frame this -- the time for us just so we're all on the same page. So we have five items. We have an hour and 15 minutes. We have a hard stop time at 1245 -- or hard time stop at 1250. We'll start to wrap up about five minutes before that because we have a meeting with the Denton Housing Authority that has to start at 1. So that being said, that's the ground rules. And we'll just kind of adjust accordingly if need be or push things that we don't get to. So work session reports the first item is 2AID 21855. Receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the funding for a new economic development catalyst fund. >> Good morning, mayor and councilmembers. Director of economic development and with me I have Cassie Ogden, director of finance, and we will be doing this presentation jointly. Can you bring up the presentation? So for the benefit of everyone we're going to do a little bit of deep background to kick this off and take you back all the way to November of 2019 which is when we started our first comprehensive economic development strategic planning effort in 17 years with the City of Denton. And so we worked through the process for more than a year engaging with our community stakeholders working throughout the pandemic to develop our goals and our strategies. And ultimately that led us to February 9, 2021 when the Denton City Council adopted the economic development strategic plan. That plan is now the basis for our economic development programs and operations. And we've initiated implementation of that plan as well as City Council indicated this as a priority at their February 2021 planning session. So right now you'll find our quarterly reports where we give an update on all of our strategic plan related activities but certainly our focus today is talking about the policies and programs that are associated with the plan that are being reviewed and drafted and evaluated and we're working to bring them into alignment. So if you had to see what's in the strategic plan in one simple graphic I would say look towards the guiding principles and the goals. These are of course broken down. I think over about 75 pages in the actual strategic plan but those guiding principles really represent the value statements of how we frame economic development in the City of Denton and those goals represent sort of the areas in which we are focusing our efforts. So the first and foremost of course is accelerating recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, fostering growth in our four strategic growth areas which are connectivity, creativity, sustainability and competitiveness and then lastly strengthening community inclusion and making sure that we have an economy that works for everyone. In addition to those sections of the strategic plan there's an entire section dedicated to capacity and resource building and those are the areas in which we're looking at operational changes or strategies internal to our own operation that we can make adjustments that will enable us to implement the strategic plan. One of the recommendations contained in that section is the creation of a Denton catalyst fund made up of contributions of various financial resources and this is just a screenshot of that page in the plan showing breaking down between the recommended contribution between utilities, the City and local businesses. So why move forward with building a catalyst fund? So through the strategic plan effort we focused on a number of reasons and considerations of why a catalyst fund would work for Denton. First and foremost being that the goal of building a catalyst fund is entirely to meet the objectives outlined in the strategic plan. It's very directed towards specific programs and policies that are outlined for the City to implement over the next three to five years. Knowing that you know things change over time and we don't want the plan to be static we're focused on flexibility and investing in economic development over time and then certainly keeping in mind that the level of resources that we need isn't going to be static as bigger programs or initiatives are needed to implement. There may be a different amount of funding that is required and so we want to make sure that we're taking advantage of all of the toolbox resources that we have all of those mechanisms that we have to support economic development. So how does it look different than what we have today and some of you might say this looks really familiar to what we've seen before. This is pretty much straight from a presentation that we gave to City Council back in February. Our current state is that we have an investment fund that's the fund that we do any type of cash incentives from. Of that fund about $150,000 a year is put into it dedicated from mixed beverage sales tax. So if we were to move forward with that catalyst fund we'd actually be replacing that investment fund with a new set of programs a new dedicated revenue source and it would be tied directly to the strategic plan. So again just to reiterate the catalyst fund is an investment and implementation of the strategic plan. Over many months we completed an analysis of all the programs and funds recommended in the strategic plan to come up with what we with our long-term funding goals for the catalyst fund. We worked with our consultant to develop an estimated investment value of $7-9 million. That was the if council remembers we kind of did a there's a normal level and sort of an aggressive level and that $7-9 million was in that aggressive level but it's broken down on the screen on the right. Sort of how those funds would be broken down into various programs and then we work towards determining a value. It's a little bit different than a set funding amount per year. We used a targeted fund balance so getting to an investment level and kind of maintaining that investment level in the future which is slightly different than how we do it today. And so if you'll remember back we've talked about this I think three times the specific piece. August 18th, October 27th, 2020 and then lastly on February 9th, 2021. We kind of talked about the various options on how to get to funding that catalyst fund and at this point I'm going to stop and turn it over to Cassie and let her kind of walk you through the financial pieces. Thanks Jessica. So you may remember we've talked as Jessica said we've talked about this several times to this point. Council did go through several different options to fund the catalyst fund and those are listed on the in the chart that you see on the screen. Ultimately staff recommended and we landed on the one-time utility contribution from the utility fund balance as well as an increase to the utility ROI of a half percent and these would be transferred from or to the general fund and then over to the economic development fund. And so if you'll go to the next slide. Ultimately this is what our current ROI for the utilities electric is currently at six percent. You may remember we increased this from three and a half percent during the COVID pandemic last year and that is set to go back to three and a half percent FY 22-23. Water is currently at three and a half and wastewater is at three and a half. When we were discussing kind of moving forward with this catalyst fund during the upcoming budget year we really staff's recommendation is is tied to this the budget uncertainties. You can see the electric rate increases are still undecided or undetermined yet council will be considering those later this summer during your budget discussions when you review the electric budget as well as the t-cost return on investment. So that's the transmission cost of service. We are undergoing a full rate filing with the Public Utility Commission and that ultimately will change how much revenue we receive from our transmission for our transmission assets in the future. And so just to recap again those current ROI you can see on the screen in the chart that's the dollar amount that's currently coming from the the utility funds and then what a one-time contribution would look like from fund balance and then the proposed half percent increase amount. But ultimately the recommendation is to hold off because of the electric rate uncertainty. And so we wanted to come back to council and recommend that we wait to fund the catalyst fund and until FY23 to give staff time to work through the electric rate increases as well as the t-cost return on investment changes. And with that if you have any questions we are we are here. Okay so the recommendation is just it's a basically a presentation is an update and then the recommendation is to have it come back so questions for staff. Councilmember McGuire and Councilmember Melcher and Councilmember Bet. Thank you Mayor. So just just to make sure that I'm clear on the purpose of the catalyst fund would it be an option to if we were to move forward with the catalyst fund would it be an option to use those funds to provide assistance to small businesses in recovering from COVID related you know profit losses or is this not related to that type of assistance or recovery? Councilmember I think that's a great question. I would say yes and no. So in the immediate future if the catalyst fund were on the ground today or in the future we may be able to use those funds to support recovery efforts that are outlined in the strategic plan if that was Council's wish. There's nothing limiting or preventing that from happening but the goal of the plan is really more long term. Building a fund like this takes building up resources over time and so our ability to leverage that for immediate needs is would be very difficult. And I do if I could we we do have the American Rescue Plan Act funding that we we are looking at doing some small business relief with. Thank you that was going to be my very next question. Okay Mayor Mayor Proctor Melcher. Thank you. So I just want to make sure I'm really tracking the recommendation. You're saying don't do it now. We're not necessarily saying do it next year. You're saying let's see where we stand. Is that accurate? We definitely want to move forward with the catalyst fund. It's just as far as timing. Storm URI really changed the the financial picture especially for the utilities and so when we initially recommended this funding option the fund balances were much higher in the utilities and there was no rate uncertainty and that's not where we find ourselves today. So you know when I look at the impacts that you're referencing those are things that are if I'm not mistaken that are going to go for 30 years right. The debt that we've taken on long-term debt in order to pay off the impact of you know what in my view be price couching during the declared emergency. But you know why would that be how is that going to be any different next year or in any of the rest of the 29 years following. We really wanted to give council the opportunity to discuss the electric rate structure and the come back with some proposals on rate increases because it will we're looking at possibly 5% now but that could be different for the different rate classes that's just for residential. So wanted to have that in-depth discussion before we started working on implementing the catalyst fund which would also increase or have an effect on the electric fund. So if I'm kind of reading you right here are you saying that we may in a year's time or whenever we look at rates next actually we may look at a rate structure that's higher in order to fund in order to fund the catalyst fund is that the concept. Well ultimately with the recommendation that is to increase the ROI which will be funded by the the rate payers that won't have an effect on the rate structure necessarily. But we didn't want to recommend increasing rates and as well as increasing the ROI all in the same year. Okay well I guess we'll wait and see. Thank you. Okay Councilman Bet. Mayor Mayor. Yes. Who did I miss? Who was that? Is that David? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry I just added Mayor Portina if I could just add a little bit to Cassie's explanation of kind of the process moving forward. I think as Cassie said knowing that we're most likely going to be looking at some sort of rate increase related to the debt service for the impact of the storm didn't feel like this was an opportunity to to increase the ROI right now this fiscal year but also knowing that our current plan is to reduce that D&E ROI next fiscal year that could be an opportunity to not decrease it as much and use some of that for the catalyst fund. So it seems like a more appropriate conversation next next fiscal year and really the reason we're having the conversation today was during the council retreat one of the action items was to bring this conversation forward during the budget process. I wanted to have that is the onset of the budget discussions and ensure that we circle back with council. Okay thank you a bit. Thank you Mayor. So it seems like there's let me piggyback on Mayor Portim's questions and say in going forward do we anticipate that we would change the fund balance from that option number two which is you know the ROI to maybe ROI plus property tax or one of the other options that you listed in the table. If if rate levels continue to remain high and then I have some questions following up from that. We can certainly bring those options back for council consideration like I said when we were having these conversations initially the fund balances were high rate increases weren't on the horizon but it's definitely up to council as to whether they want to do something different with the or you want to do something different with the catalyst fund funding mechanism. So I guess I was maybe you can explain since since I wasn't on council at the time what was what was the prevailing explanation for why tagging this to utilities was seen as a better option than one of the others. Just real briefly I don't want a rabbit hole is too much here. Yeah I know I ask a big I ask what what I don't know that I mean so it was a council decision so I'll give my three cents worth and then maybe yes that would be fine member David's wants to to to help me out or add to what I'm missing but the just of it is we had 100 million dollars in the in the fund balance and the recommendation was 48 million so it's just rather healthy and we're light years below everyone else as far as ROI into the city from I say compared to other municipal electrics light years below everyone else that ROI from that fund into the city for example San Antonio is in a double digits you know and so it just kind of was an opportunity to not to normalize right to theirs were well below what other institutions are doing and so it was kind of a and you had a 100 million dollars in the bank and that was before we got on the record on the radar of the transmission I don't know what that committee is but they're going to give us a haircut as well and so that is something we didn't we didn't foresee and that's going to be I mean we're doing very well on the transmission side and I don't think that's going to hold and then Councilmember Davis oh okay the only the only other thing I'd add to that is I've already started to hear rate increases attached to economic development it was never contemplated pre-yury that economic development making use of utility funds was going to precipitate any kind of rate increase we had very good healthy we'd had good conversations about holding the rates where they were and we had all the ability in the world to do that the other the other reason why we tied those things together that may not to the general public look like they go together is economic development already involves the utilities we do the utility riders and those kind of things it's business development for our especially our electric utility so it made all the sense in the world at the time whether it continues to make sense that's what this conversation is for Councilmember bet back to you sorry you know I and I read that thank you mayor and Council Davis I read that and especially on I guess that's on like page 49 of the economic strategic development plan or at least that's in the general vicinity of it so I just want to make sure that was the thinking is not surplus but a revenue that we had liquid assets that we had basically available but we see the danger of tying it to utilities to somewhat because now we're we're having a yuri event that now makes us go oh we got to revise our entire economic strategy because we had a yuri event so I guess I'm I'm trepidatious about some of that just sort of the point that Councilor Davis just brought up and I guess though I could feel lots better about this if if those utility if we if it was tied to utilities if if the the kinds of development economic development that we incentivized were infrastructure related development if you were saying we're going to incentivize you putting solar we're going to incentivize you you know changing things that were you know improve the infrastructure of Denton then it would make sense to me that we tie it to these kinds of rates otherwise I feel like we're shifting it from rooftops to economic development and it feels like we're we're potentially you know tying it ourselves to to risk your proposition unless we we go ahead and sort of semi-ear market to infrastructure improvements rather than just general economic development and I'll leave it there okay thank you Councilor Armater and then Councilmember Berg okay so I just want to weigh in and first say that I you know greatly appreciate the decision to delay this conversation because of you know the effects of URI on our utilities revenue and I will say and this will be a repeat for long-standing council members but maybe new for the new council members that you know I maintain I remain consistent in my position that I believe that the utilities revenue specifically from the electric from from Denton municipal electric should be used only to keep rates low for for ratepayers and to keep the power on and to keep the and to make sure that we have you know the kind of power you know sustainable power that the people want so I'm against I was even before URI you know against this idea of an economic development fund that would take from our utilities I'm not against the idea of an economic development catalyst fund in general I'm open to that but I think that you know even though URI was unanticipated I think it's a really good example of of you know some some of the dangers that can come from you know taking from one area that has a very definitive purpose to invest it in in another area although of course I do understand there's a connection between utilities and economic development I believe we owe it to our ratepayers to to really bracket these the revenue of DME and keep it towards keeping rates low as much as we can okay Councilman Burke good morning everyone's good to see everyone miss you all in the last couple of weeks last week or so just have some questions here about the six percent during the URI situation and understand that that was temporary is there any discussion on maybe just leaving it there rather than going back what's the reason for going back the other question is is that necessary the other question is the new growth I understand that we're going to be growing exponentially here in the city how does that new growth that anticipation of the new growth affecting this this rate that we're talking about and also the last question is would we be having this same conversation if we did not have that have had that catastrophic event those three questions thank you so if I could address their first question on the ROI the six percent the three three and a half to six percent increase was done at the beginning of COVID when we were seeing revenue reductions on our general fund side that was one of the levers that we pulled to address the the lower revenues on the general fund side and so that is set to go back but that's obviously up to council's discussions we can bring that forward in future budget discussions if council wants to look at doing something different with that with that option and then I the third question kind of ties I think I don't think we would be having this discussion if it wasn't for storm URI it definitely had a had an impact on our electric fund and did change just our current state of where we were we were we had high healthy fund we had high reserve levels and we weren't forecasting rate increases and now we are and then your second question on new growth are you talking about new growth on the residential as far as property value growth or rate both if you can answer also I guess I would throw in the the new businesses that are coming forth I know that we've been the last couple of meetings we've given the go-ahead for a couple of new industrial type businesses so put it all together let's see how it how it it comes out with the with the all the growth what does it what does it look like that's definitely an option we can consider as we move forward we can look at the growth I think we did look at dedicating a portion of the sales or the I'm sorry the property tax to fund this fund however you know that it's something that the general fund relies on so it would have to be made up or reduce services on the general fund side you guys you all say that you were going to transfer you go from transferring from the catalyst fund to the economic development fund when does what would that generally happen is that something that's going to happen this year or were we talking about a couple of five 17 years from now we were discussing if we were to implement the catalyst fund this would be an annual transfer is the way that we've kind of envisioned it but and as Jessica said this kind of gives us we would be targeting kind of a fund balance in the catalyst fund so if we didn't maybe need the the revenue one year we wouldn't necessarily have to transfer it um that that was the I think the intention okay um yeah so other questions for staff mayor pro tem melzer then councilmember davis maguire and bet thank you um I think councilmember davis's characterization is uh is is spot on that it was sort of uh a way to fund it that wouldn't be that wouldn't be visible or obviously felt uh given the um the financial position of the utilities fund at that time but now that things look different and we're looking at rate increases another option that was on the table uh when we initially discussed this uh was the idea of bringing it to the voters uh because it's if especially if you're in the current environment and it's done as a rate increase in order to fund economic development I mean it's basically a tax uh and whether you do it through utilities you do it through uh an incremental property tax and I think if the you know if the voters if we can make if you make the case to the voters and they support it uh I think that uh you know I think there are lots of benefits to that so I would just ask that that at least be back on the table as an option to discuss okay councilmember davis thank mayor um I heard mentioned earlier I can't remember if it's jessica or cassie that said uh you know we can we can certainly go back and look at some of those options to me that feels like the thing to do when we have this conversation next whether this conversation happens next uh in the next six weeks or happens in the next quarter or happens next year I I don't particularly like the punt of let's talk about it again next year because this fund is very important um the the purpose of the fund will remain throughout the year some industries did not feel the covid hit some industries uh grew and expanded during the the shutdowns and everything and they're looking for places to be uh we're a great place to be and a great place to to bring new employers so I'd almost rather I know it's a lot of moving parts budget season is maybe the worst time to have that conversation but at the same time we had a good idea it got stress tested and now we know that we need to have a maybe a different a different look at that than than our kind of narrower idea that we had last time so I would I understand the need to postpone the convert to postpone the implementation but I'd hate to put it back on the shelf completely for an entire year I'd much rather do some kind of toe in the water approach maybe we look at those incentive roll offs again maybe we look at some of our other possible revenue streams as hard as that to make the budget process the budget process is always about dividing up not enough to too many good ideas um and you know we have uh we got road stuff to talk about in the budget process we've got fte requests to talk about the budget process if we don't start carving out ed in some some revenue stream for it pretty soon then we're just going to keep punting and punting and punting and we'll be in the same position we were the last time we had this conversation many years ago with the the budget the beverage tax uh and we just rolled along with that for a long time and it wasn't sufficient for our needs okay um council member McGuire thank you mayor um I uh definitely agree with council member Davis that um you know it it doesn't seem like uh the wisest choice to to postpone a decision on this for a full year um I it seems to me that moving forward with tying this fund to utilities is definitely not a feasible option right now and probably won't be a feasible option in the near future either um so I would love to get um more information perhaps in another work session or um something uh that could come before us in the next couple months um regarding incentive roll offs and I'm interested in in exploring that option council member bet thank you mayor uh I also wanted to concur that with uh councillor Davis that I don't think we should um put this for a year uh I I like the idea of revisiting at least some toe in the water kinds of approaches um I I do um I am I am like councillor McGuire a little concerned as I said earlier about tying this to utilities unless we actually tie it to utilities and I actually think the idea of tying it to infrastructure improvement actually isn't a terrible idea it it provides synergies uh to some of the goals uh of the city uh that being said I I do um I have a sort of semi question and that is I I know that Lewisville's um type b uh nine million dollar edc's um those those aren't actually easy to hold those go straight into parks right so I mean they're not a comparable so if maybe if staff could check on that I'm I'm 80 sure that that money that nine million dollars that we're using as a comparable isn't a comparable it goes straight into the parks now if we want to give a bunch of money to gary I'm all for that um but uh I'm sure very happy too um but uh you know that that would make us a comparable with Lewisville so if we could check on that I'd appreciate it okay uh and so staff just to kind of wrap up this item I think there's a conflict point and I and I don't think we fix it today uh but I'll leave it to you to bring it back and that is past direction versus and all that we've worked up right so we worked on this and put ours in at council's direction right so I think there needs to be some sort of graphic when you come back that says some line in the sand that says here's what we can here's what can be modified uh without redoing all the work or doing all the work for not right that's just the consequences of how this body ebbs and flows uh that you can't recreate the will every year uh and so it's a challenge uh so best you can if you can give us that hard line in the sand that'll guide some of our direction right so I need that from you and I think also the timing is comes into play right so if uh kind of I hear not a year but then I hear put it on a ballot where those are two different things and probably put it on a ballot as longer than a year and so uh if you could come back with some timeline kind of direction to say here's when we expect uh the uh to have some clear direction because my what I take away from staff is that we need clear direction on what the state's going to do as to life after yuri and what we're going to be forced to spend uh and and even again talking about not controlling your own destiny if you look at the uh the the staff report about the 9.3 million dollars you know that that's up in the air as well uh that uplift additional uplift so there's a lot of moving parts and I so understand a need to find traction and a foundation or a launching point and then go forward so I think it's it's really the the either the how long I guess the direction would be how long it'll take to get it on the ballot right then the other thing is how long we could bring it how quickly we could bring it back with understanding of the state's kind of decision and what that that resolving the electrical issue would be and then I guess the third component of that would be if if there's some other funding mechanism how long it would take to work that up and then that at least gives us a hard line in the sand to know where we can and cannot go and then two the funding mechanisms that are available to us and then three kind of a general timeline based on those options and you know and then you can go back and watch it and see if I summarized incorrectly but I think I'm close uh anything else for sir just to say you know this discussion is why we wanted to have this conversation at the very onset of the lender process so we can certainly bring back options um you know there are some constraining factors obviously as we bring those back on the property property tax side is one that will report and that's fairly straightforward so we can certainly bring options back on what that would look like um but you know and I know Councilmember Beck mentioned that um the 4b sales tax in Lewisville and not and the 4b is still an economic development portion but as you mentioned council members did a little bit toward um to parks and museums and affordable housing and things like that but that really was the kind of the crux of why we started having the dissection on the utility fund because we don't have the 4a 4b what other sources of revenues could we use so property tax is certainly a form of that and just to preview the bond election conversation the the difficulty when you look at a lot of the bond elections for economic development is that they're tied to specific projects as opposed to creating a brand new fund that is in in the election language that would be associated with that it's just more difficult but we can we'll certainly bring back all those options but wanted to at least give some context to some of those conversations because i know we had those previously from the new council members great thank you very much look forward to that coming back um that'll conclude item a take us to item b um quick time stamp it's 12 10 round numbers rounding up so uh item b pardon me 2b is id 211084 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction on filing the city attorney position and the recruitment process i believe tiffany thompson is here okay there she is good afternoon i'm just getting our presentation pulled up good afternoon thank you all right good afternoon mayor city council tiffany thompson director of hr here today to go over the executive proposals that we got for the city attorney on may 11th council gave me direction to go and seek proposals for the recruitment of a city attorney last week we provided a legal status report with all the proposals and today i just have a high level presentation to go over the highlights of that happy to answer any questions and today i'm just seeking which firm you would like to select and i just need your direction okay uh if yeah there you go okay and then if you whenever just a bit you can pull that down and and obviously tiffany can you start off with for the council so obviously ralph anderson was highly recommended but did not bid uh for workflow or whatever reasons uh so can you help us give some just your knowledge base of uh kind of a review of the other entities have you worked with them or just if there's any background information again obviously uh ralph anderson is one i heard regularly but just kind of what you thought of the other ones yeah unfortunately ralph anderson couldn't take on the recruitment due to capacity so we did get four other proposals um highlights on athion they only had two previous city attorney recruitments um back in 2007 and 2013 and these are just listed in alphabetical order baker tilley has had um multiple city attorneys and many in in texas as well and they did the recruitment for the city attorney in 2018 as well and their proposal was pretty extensive extensive and did offer some things that the others didn't gov hr had three city attorneys recently um that they've done boulder colorado jackson missouri and inglewood and then for sgr they're currently doing a city attorney recruitment right now for amarello but they've done seven other ones as well um i do have a recommendation if council is seeking that but if you have a clear direction or questions that you want to ask i definitely am happy to answer those as well okay we'll take questions and then we'll see if it backs into that that question councilmember davis councilmember armature yeah i mean i don't want to make the other other places feel too bad but did ralph anderson have any uh timeline on their capacity uh did they have you know we've got 75 searches going on but next month we hope to only have 50 um is it is it possible that if we adjust our timeline a little bit it may line up with their workflow or there are lines to be read between here that i'm not picking up i don't know if there's lines to be read here i genuinely think that that is a capacity thing because they are very sought after executive recruitment because they do just a great job um obviously and they're kind of a go-to out in the market for that i think even if we just did our timeline there may be concerns there but i'm always happy to ask that question if that's the direction from council okay councilmember armature and then right is that right is that where i left off or no yes yes so yeah i'm gonna require for that sorry um i had a a similar question uh uh you know i i have been impressed with ralph anderson's work and you know their professionalism uh and so my question was going to be you know is it do they have any is there anything we can do uh to um to open up some room for them it sounds like the answer is no um because they're they're both dealing with a number of different cities and not just denton uh but i just wanted to say that it was my question too because i was impressed with them um to me right now uh baker tilley uh seems like you know the the obvious choice um and but so i was just wondering you know your thoughts on the advantages of baker tilley uh but it could be that staff's recommendation be different and would change my mind but for now i'm very curious to hear you know what you think about the advantages of baker tilley for baker tilley they were very extensive in what their proposal was and they offer other things like just the profile of different um candidates that would be applying also we had a very good experience with them and not to make it awkward but judge atkinson is over here in the corner but when we did the selection for him um they we worked with council for for his recruitment and from an hr perspective communications they were they were very diligent and responsive and they would be working closely with council on this recruitment as well and so that is you know lining up with with the recommendation for sure okay uh councilmember mcguire thank you mayor um i just wanted to kind of share my perspective just based on the the presentations that we uh got in the special status report um i you know i don't know anything about ralph anderson um i'm unfamiliar with their work but just based on on the um presentations that we received uh i have to say that i was pretty impressed with with gov hr um it's it seems it seems to me like although they are um you know maybe not quite as large or or um don't have the the amount of experience that some of the other firms had um that that their experience was very in line with what we need that they've they've worked with um cities that are of of similar size to ours that have similar kinds of um institutional values to ours uh and i was impressed with their presentation okay and anyone else counselor beck thank you mayor uh yeah i just wanted to say that i i'd be more interested in proceeding um than than waiting i understand that you know that ralph anderson is um you know well respected company but i'm not it's not clear to me from tiffany and others that the crystal ball and or tea leaves or whatever you want to call it suggests that they will get unbusy um and we have a number of searches that we need to do and so uh you know generally for me i'd i'd rather get going than delay so uh and i i also liked baker tilly and gov hr uh those two seemed reasonable to me okay any other thoughts comments counselor davis a quick question trying to remember who did we use for the city auditor recruitment or is that the internal one the city auditor we that we did that internally all right making sure i remember that correctly thank you and tiffany d what is your recommendation or you know i have to discussion so that it was important not to poison the pool but do want to understand what your recommendation is uh baker tilly was one and gov hr was the second look at that okay great okay um so looking for some uh guidance again counselor davis counselor beck did i see you or no yes then counselor beck uh between the two i'd rather go with gov hr over baker tilly okay um counselor bet yeah i i uh i think i'd rather lean towards gov hr as well okay uh so anyone anyone against that that recommendation counselor armature so i for me you know gov hr is a second choice um i prefer baker tilly because of their uh just you know the the extensive work that they've done in recruiting city attorneys and the city's experience with them i really appreciated you know as as a council member um how how they organized uh the materials how uh responsive they were uh to the the interest concerns and questions of various council members you know not just me but everybody uh so for me you know they're more of a known entity and uh seem to have more experience with city attorney searches so they're a very strong kind of far and above first for me but i'm okay with gov hr as a second choice okay so uh that'll conclude item b if there's nothing else anyone else have notes for staff said to confirm gov hr that is right sort of yeah majority for gov hr to move forward and i think the key is uh making sure uh we have some clear concise dialogue about you know so that we get the right candidate and they know what they're stepping into uh councilman maguire councilman melzer um i i do agree uh that that i mean i support gov the choice of gov hr but i didn't hear a consensus on that well i'll recap it for you you council member beck council member armor just said it was a second and then council member davis that's how i got there because i i heard council member armenter express support for vapor tilly she said it was a second but yeah so that's i mean distant second well okay then i support gov hr that's four and a half so anything else councilman melzer it just won't change the outcome i'm fine with that uh outcome incidentally but uh i found that the case council member armature made for paper tilly was persuasive so i would have come down on that side okay very good any any other comments for staff council member i see your your no no sorry i thought i saw an icon there want to make sure to miss anyone okay great so tiffany you have everything you need from us yes thank you council awesome thank you uh that takes us to item c which is id 211065 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding uh fyi 2021 22 departmental budget presentations for municipal judge municipal court uh internal audit and economic development good afternoon mayor council cassie ogden director of finance and we have our new budget manager heather gray here to kick off our budget presentations with just a a quick uh review of the council priorities as well as the schedule and then we'll get started with the department presentations hello heather hi good afternoon mayor council members heather gray budget manager may get my screen up for you welcome thank you okay so today we have our first set of department budget presentations for you but before we get started before i turn it over to municipal court i just wanted to give you a brief status update of where we are in the budget process so just as a reminder our fiscal years run october 1st through september 30th we started preparing for fiscal year 21 22 budget with budget kickoff in march and over the last couple months the departments have been working on their budgets for next fiscal year and going through a series of internal reviews to kind of fine-tune those budgets and prepare them to come to you so today here we are starting with department presentations we'll have those in june and july and then in august we have the budget workshop to city council and finally in september the budget is adopted this is just a reminder of the fiscal year 21 22 budget priorities that were established during a council retreat and these are helping guide our decisions during the budget process here's the upcoming department presentation schedule so as you can see today we have three departments for you we have municipal court internal audit and economic development tomorrow we'll have five additional presentations for you and these presentations will continue through july 27th here are some other important dates in the budget process we'll have the proposed city manager's proposed budget book ready for you on july 30th and then as i mentioned we have a budget workshop in august that's currently scheduled for august 2nd we'll continue with presentations in august as needed including discussions on the capital budget and then finally in september we have the public hearing and then budget budget adoption so that concludes the brief recap i have for you on the budget process are there any questions before i turn it over to municipal court okay if you can pull that down please and thank you all right quick questions before we get into presentations councilmember armature i i just wanted to say that i really like these budget presentations uh and i'm looking forward to them coming up even though it is it is hard work it and it's representative of the hard work that staff have done in the various departments um and you know i just just wanted to you know encourage uh you know fellow council members especially the new council members uh to you know ask whatever questions you have at these these uh budget budget discussions um because this is really when you know things get decided uh that that have lasting impact uh i wanted to ask staff is there um uh an opportunity will there be an opportunity uh for public input at the work sessions i i have of course coming up a pitch a one minute pitch um that will come up later for a work session on uh having public input at work sessions but i don't but it's quite possible that that won't you know come forward before uh the uh budget season at least that it won't be decided you know so i just wanted confirmation will will those public hearings after the work sessions be the only opportunity for the public to weigh in at public meetings so we are working on something right now um to give to allow for more public input we're looking at um some budget simulation software that will we're trying to make available on our website so that the the citizens get to make the see the council decisions and see how they would make those decisions if they were council um and so we're working on getting that going live this month um as well as at each um one of our um department meetings obviously uh there's a the opportunity for citizens to call in and make comment on all of the agenda items wow so can i ask a follow-up question about that because that sounds really awesome um so just i want to make sure that i understand what that is so is that uh software would that enable uh people to be able to say you know to kind of play around and say so say i take from here you know and and put this here what effect will this have if i lower this raise this is is that how can we cassie i'm sorry but we have i just want to make sure everyone understands so we have 20 minutes and we have a budget presentation and a closed session item if this can be taken offline uh for the good of the for the good of the group to get to as much as we can that would be my that would be ideal but if it's a quick one word answer then certainly but i i just want everyone to be aware that i'm trying to get it all in as best we can but we have a hard stop in 20 minutes i i understand mayor but this is very exciting and new to you i can provide more information to council in the friday report thank you so much i i really look forward to that it sounds awesome okay uh okay i think we're ready for this yes so we're having municipal court now thank you so all right good afternoon mayor and council my name is jamie lindsey and i am the court administrator for the denton municipal court and presenting with me today will also be the honorable judge atkinson the court's presiding judge so i have been with the court since may and judge atkinson joined us in july of last year and i just mentioned that to give some context and to highlight the amount of great things that we've been able to accomplish very quickly and amidst the pandemic of course so we hit the ground running with a great team and we intend to keep that momentum going so before we dive into details i want to make the note that there are actually two separate budgets for the court one for the court administration or clerk's office and one for the judge's office so we are printing presenting together you get a two for one because we do work in coordination with each other daily and many of our goals and accomplishments are the same or they overlap so this is the organizational chart for the clerk side of the house we currently have 12 full-time employees and as the court administrator i am the official court clerk and the rest of the team serves as deputy clerks and the judge's office includes the judge of course a full-time judicial coordinator and associate judges that fill in as needed so what have we been able to accomplish we have launched a virtual course we launched that in june of last year via zoom which you're obviously familiar with and we have continued to conduct all court hearings including non-jury trials virtually since that time so this has prevented us from having a tremendous backlog of cases that many other courts are trying to dig their way out of um present day so it has also proven to be more convenient for many of our defendants and we plan on keeping this around even um beyond the pandemic so our first hearings weren't the smoothest but over the last year the judge and the docket clerks have continuously improved the logistics of the virtual courtroom we've seen some interesting things but haven't had the experience like zoom cat just yet we'll see what happens in the future we do utilize templates and digital signature applications no longer necessitating passing papers from the clerk to the prosecutor to the judge to defendant and so on and we've also contracted with an interpreter service that provides remote translation so we are required to provide these services to defendants and this allows us to continue doing so with the virtual format so we do have certified Spanish translator on staff but the interesting fact is uh two last languages that have been requested were Tajik and Uzbek so we're fortunate to have this translation services that offers many different languages that we can't obviously keep on staff for all those as we were given the green light to resume warrant issuance judge initiated a second chance campaign of sorts so we reset court hearings for those that missed their initial appearance state toward the beginning of the pandemic we also utilized a new system which the judge will highlight shortly to notify defendants and resolve cases so we've had a larger response than even expected and we were able to resolve around 50 percent of one of our case cues that were in pending warrant status versus them actually going to warrant we've also completed an internal audit in 2021 and we're in the process of implementing the remaining recommendations from that audit all right good afternoon mayor council um i have a couple things to go over as far as accomplishments continuing on from what jamie went over already so uh with the court being moved fully virtual it was a perfect time to start a courtroom security renovation project council had set aside funds for this project the main goal was to redirect the flow of persons in and out of the courtroom and to provide more safety for court staff and people appearing before the court and then also to install ballistic materials throughout the courtroom that project was finished mid november the last accomplishment that we have for you is our crowning achievement that we're the most proud of over the last year the goal for this project was to go above and beyond the legal requirements for providing information to court participants and then also providing notice of next steps and notice of any delinquency of any cases the project is designed to increase faster case resolution and decrease the need for negative outcomes on class c tickets or warrants the court team worked with a vendor a local vendor here in denton county to develop a web-based platform that combines text and email notifications with a complex logic based system to provide defendants with options that are unique to their case those options automatically update as the case moves through the various stages of resolution the system also allows for payments and uploading documents like course certificates community service proof insurance proof further the system sends out text message reminders that are specific to this stage of resolution for that case as an example for new tickets within a couple days of it being issued a text message is sent that allows the individual to log into the platform online after reviewing their options the person can select select one of the options and submit a request to the court for that being how the case is resolved we'll give you some stats here in a little bit but that text message alone has more than doubled our oca category reporting category of dispositions prior to a hearing also for cases that are set for a docket the system will send out a notification the morning of the docket that gives them a link to log into our zoom courtroom so that they don't forget that's the virtual equivalent of us sending out like an uber or a lift driver to pick somebody up and bring them to court but it's all virtual this is a unique to denton platform that i hope will set the standard for the automation of court communications the vendor did not charge the city for the development of the platform and then also the actual fees that we do pay under the system are less than what we were paying for credit card processing online before this system was implemented on the next slide i want to quickly walk you through what the system looks like for someone who received a ticket so we'll switch over to that next slide the text message that you'll see pop up there is the initial text message on a new ticket it was important for me that we display an individual's rights and information before we get anywhere near a button that requests payment so the first thing that we'll see is a detailed explanation of their rights and if a person wants more information they can hover over a term in bold and it explains what presumption of innocence is the first screen or first option that we'll select is a request for a payment plan once we scroll down here a little bit you'll see that instead of telling the person how much they have to pay on a payment plan the system actually allows them to select based on their budget how much they believe that they can pay on a monthly reoccurring process also the system does not require a first payment up front unless the person requests that they can choose a payment that starts the following month the system will prompt for updated contact information a signature and then payment if it's appropriate we'll let it catch up to us there awesome the next screen i'll show you is a request for a driver safety course dsc or driver safety course in texas requires upfront payment of the state court cost and then submission of proof of insurance and texas driver's license before we had this system an individual even in the middle of the pandemic we would either have to mail in that information to the court or bring it up to the court to officially sign up but through this system they can choose a file and then upload proof if they're on a smartphone it'll um it'll convert over to their phone's camera you'll see here a judge in the tardis i think we have one uh dr hu fan and council member beck but it allows them to snap a picture of their proof and upload that the final notification which will pop up here in a little bit is a payment plan reminder text a few days before a payment is due on a payment plan the system will send out another text message that allows them to log into the website to request a payment plan again none of the reminders that you see here that we've spoken about are required by law all of these go above and beyond the legal required notifications for a municipal court um that last message is going to take a while so i'll go ahead and turn it over to jamie uh she's going to go over a few stats regarding how successful the program has been for us okay so early adoption of this system that we have been super excited to have has been even better than expected and we've gotten extremely positive feedback even from defendants who say how much they love the text messaging system and so either they've been a a customer per se of hours before and see how much more convenient it is or they just love it's maybe their first time um doing business with us and love the convenience of it and when we focus on case resolution versus dollar figures the chart on the left is just to show you the dramatic increase in payment volumes through the online system so it is quite low in february because we only provided the link to the odr to a controlled group we were still working on tweaking the system so we wanted um we didn't publish the link or any information about the system out on our website or anything at that time in march we did add the link to our website and started providing it in text messages we started using some of those reminders and alerts and providing that to more and more customers or defendants and in april we got even more diligent with regular text reminders and received many payments and requests due to that second chance warrant campaign which i discussed earlier so we'll likely see a spike in april for even the rest of the year because we were doing that campaign and sending out hundreds and hundreds of text messages for those defendants that were impending warrant status so as judge mentioned prior to the odr defendants had to come in to make payments for driver safety requests and as you can see on the chart on the right that would have been 198 defendants that had to come in person to make a payment or mail that in previously and again this is just for february to april that 198 and so providing that remote service alone is greatness especially since not everyone that receives a citation is a dentin resident they may even live out of state so i wanted to make some points about our overall activities so far this year as well not just in the odr so as you can see almost 4500 cases have been filed and that is through march of this year so about the first half of the year reporting shows we have handled over 9 000 cases this year and so why there's a difference and why cases handled is larger than cases filed cases filed are simply the the citations issued by the public safety agencies are then filed with the court and then we handle those whether it be through the prosecutor decides to proceed with those cases or they're dismissed or they go to see the judge in court or they choose one of our other options so a case is not simply filed and then we're done with it we do have a lot of processes that we go through and depending on what options the defendant decides upon then there may be multiple touch points along the way and while we try to reduce multiple touch points there are some steps that are required by law so while we want to be efficient we can't skip some things so again we are focused on resolution versus requiring a court hearing or issuing a warrant in this mindset and our new options have resulted in over 50 percent of cases being resolved before a scheduled court hearing and while we haven't issued new warrants until march of this year we did clear 870 warrants before that time and the bottom right chart shows that even having resumed warrant issuance in march we still cleared more warrants than we issued that first month so we're working diligently to get those taken care of to reach out to defendants and so our goal is not to arrest them we just like we don't want to turn off their utility services we're just trying to help them resolve their case just like you just you need to collect on their bill so we have done great things but there is still more to do so in the year ahead we hope to upgrade our case management system and further enhance remote options and to have more of a real-time paperless court environment so while we are paperless within the court and can do everything virtually right now we're using kind of an email out system and wait for a defendant to send that back which can take some time sometimes so we're going to have a more real-time system that we have a vendor working on that did our odr system for us and hopefully that will be online soon to make that even quicker and more efficient and more convenient and we're also working in conjunction with customer service on a kiosk and virtual teller rfp and we also want to continue to improve efficiency and automation and want to highlight all of that by implementing a performance dashboard just a few quick extra goals here to add on top of all of that there's a partially funded project that was started back with judge ramsey to upgrade the technology that exists in the courtroom itself and there are fun some funds that are already set aside for this project and so we've already reached out to vendors to kind of look at what that will entail for the courtroom itself for implementing legislative changes unlike prior years municipal court operations will not change drastically or have huge headaches involved in implementing changes that the legislature has thrown out at us however there were some bills that will alter responsibilities for magistrates in a jail in our jail facility and that could also bring changes kind of on a county-wide system as presiding judge of the municipal court there's two metaphorical hats that i wear one of the hats has judge written on it and the other hat has magistrate written on it and when i've got my judge hat on i'm presiding over class c tickets that are actually been filed with the court and when i have a magistrate hat on i'm performing smaller functions on higher charges so higher charges being class b misdemeanor charges all the way up to capital murder every morning i start my day as a magistrate i go into our jail facility and arraign or magistrate individuals who are there who have been arrested overnight for any number of charges i review the arrests at bail read the person their rights issue orders mental health orders protective orders um after i see the person they bond out of jail there's a gap in time between when i'm done seeing them and when the case is ultimately accepted and filed with the higher court that gap could be three months it could be a year and a half it kind of just depends on a lot of factors um covid kind of messed up that time period and extended it the law strangely leaves me as the last magistrate over the case in charge of monitoring bond conditions and handling the the charge before it gets filed with the higher court the challenge though is that municipal court judges um aren't fully equipped to handle higher charge cases any action i take requires um that a court appointed attorney be assigned to the charge to the case if the person is indigent but as a municipal court judge i don't have authority to appoint a court appointed attorney so that challenge is something that that county has started looking into um judge ramsey started a project up at the county level um to see if that process could be more streamlined and brought under the county umbrella instead of that process being left with me as the presiding judge um with that said though they're um one of the two special session possible topics that governor abbott has on his list includes a bail reform bill that could shift responsibility for certain pre-trial events back to the magistrate and require that certain actions be taken such as pre-trial risk assessment forms before bail is set before the bond amount is is set and the person can bond out on on their charge so if that pops up in special session bills are passed then it could alter how we how i do things in our jail facility and could create more time requirements on staff um all right for our next slide i wanted to quickly go over to vision points for our next year by ordinance council has directed the presiding judge of our court to issue standing orders which govern govern proceedings in the court when the law doesn't clearly spell out what's supposed to happen the first page of my standing orders focuses on a few key principles the first is that the court should not equal fear um beyond the fear of i don't want to get a ticket therefore i'm not going to speed that's a healthy kind of fear um beyond that fear individuals should not be afraid of contacting the court interacting with the court presenting opposition to their charge however built into the system through either media portrayal or actual past interactions sometimes people feel like it's better for them just to ignore a citation rather than make an appearance and resolve the ticket our key initiatives moving forward at least this year will be in evaluating every process ensuring that every contact in every contact we are building trust and reducing fear this year we'll be looking at reducing the need for warrants coming out of the court and then also reducing the total number of outstanding warrants that are currently in the court system i often say that is very difficult to get a warrant in my court and very easy to get one pulled back second principle here is that technology increases access to justice i think you've gotten a little taste of that over our presentation this afternoon focus will be placed keenly on evaluating what court should look like post-covid based on our goals as a court and then also the public's expectation of a court experience some key initiatives here are potentially community deployed hardware kiosk zoom screens and then also the upgrade to the courthouse and courtroom technology i'll turn it back over to jamie and and jamie just as a a time stamp i have a hard stop in three minutes uh so we will have to follow up with questions after the fact but i wanted to give you kind of uh i know you only have two three slides but just to give you an update okay sounds great um so just previously mentioned uh we went over the staffing so the court administration has 12 fte's currently the judge's office has 2.75 the 7.75 being the associate judges and we are requesting one fte be added back to the court which we'll talk about in just a minute um so we do have our revenues are generated from the fines and fees collected for citations issued by various public safety agencies and we have those listed out here so we have the police department but also animal services fire community improvement unt and cwu so the bulk of our expenses are personal costs and refund transfers that keep the court going the interfund transfer is to tech services for annual software maintenance expenses are included in that and we try to maximize our paperless processes as we've discussed whenever possible however we do have some legal requirements for printing and mailing certain documents which accounts for the bulk of our materials and supplies costs which also includes postage for those required mailings judge budget carries over um from the year prior um almost entirely they're just a few changes but um no extra request here so the one supplemental request we have as i mentioned is the reinstatement of an fte that was vacated during the vsp initiative in june of 2020 we opted not to fill the position at that time for covid savings and due to the lower amount of citation volumes that were coming in during covid and while we've been able to get by thus far we don't feel we're in a position as a court or a team for this to be sustainable without this additional position um we are getting a collection specialist position that was recently vacated by retirement we are actually reclassifying that position which will result in some savings for personnel to help out a bit with reinstating this position that we're hopeful to get we're going to have some new community focused initiatives that judge mentioned and also the increase in cases just getting back to normal quote unquote means caseloads potentially five to six times higher than what we've had over the past year or so so we're trying to anticipate that and be staffed well enough to be able to handle those citations that volume adequately for defendants and that would be our time for questions awesome uh yeah so if you can pull that down i will talk to katherine and see how we can proceed to one so katherine my goal is to get questions maybe if we could have an extension of this item uh on the back side of our other meeting to uh note questions so that the the judge and and jamie have kind of an archive of that and versus uh the alternative because all things been equal we would present those things now and then also to uh carry over the last item uh into uh after our our joint meeting your your direction and then we're going to conclude you could recess this meeting until following the conclusion of the dha joint meeting or you can choose a time certain like i don't i don't know what appropriate inappropriate time is maybe two o'clock that's moving your discretion yes no no so okay thank you so uh judge and and jamie if you so we'll recess until after that meeting's at uh picks up right at at one hoping uh it won't take too long so if you wanted to watch on the back side we'll just kind of pick up here give you notes and and kind of thoughts thank you for the great presentation thank you for your flexibility so with that i'm going to recess this uh items who are on item c we'll we'll pick up with uh questions that are more said comments on the back side of item c and then we will also take up our one closed session item after the conclusion of our one o'clock joint session meeting with the housing authority did i did i do okay kathryn great uh councillor davis thank you mayor so we had two separate zoom links for different meetings so if we're recessing this meeting do we then need to leave this meeting if we're joining by zoom and then uh then come back to this link at the conclusion of the next one the great point yes you do yeah so you'll need to log out of this link and if you're here at city hall staff will be running around doing that now uh but if you're at home you switch to the other link and then switch back after that meeting councillor bet uh depending on how they got tech services develop the link they they may not be able to do that you should check with tech services okay we'll check uh okay if you have any issues getting back in or you can't find us please call city manager's office and they'll get you in the right direction so with that at 12 52 p.m i'm going to recess is that the right word great and then we will uh and we'll pick back up at the other meeting and then we'll be back in this meeting after the recess will pick up directly after our our joint meeting thank you and welcome back to this meeting of the city council it is 2 54 p.m we are picking up uh and and help me with the vernacular is that is that the right term uh miss city attorney so resuming or resuming from recess okay resuming from recess we left off at item c which is id 211065 the presenters concluded the presentation but wanted to have a central location for questions for staff to pass along to the judge and court staff so i'll open it up for questions with respect to the uh municipal uh court and judge budget and then we have one other presentation that will die oh very good okay so questions or oh look at that both of them what a treat thank you all very much so councilman armature yes thank you so i i wanted to start by just thinking um the judge and you know and the court for all you're doing under these really difficult circumstances um you know to not just keep uh the court afloat but to improve uh the court under these difficult circumstances so that's no small feat i'm really pleased uh with the uh you know apparent philosophy behind what what you're doing these changes you're making i see a real consistency there in uh you know reducing warrants uh and reducing the impact of uh class c misdemeanors and really making everything more accessible um for for people uh along those lines of accessibility i was wondering um you know and and i love the uh texting and um emailing updates and reminders that'll that'll have a really big impact i'm wondering about uh what you all uh are are doing for people for whom english is not a first language you know to provide those uh written communications in in text and emails uh do people have opportunities to select uh a you know a spanish option you know for instance uh in receiving those updates and notifications and along those same lines uh for people who uh you know don't have easy access to to transportation uh or you know are mobility impaired um uh or whatever the access issues you know to can could you speak to you to what extent uh you'll be continuing these uh virtual options even after the pandemic uh to make things more accessible to people oh and also sorry one more thing i thought of to uh for people who don't have uh cell phones you know will will will calls also be an option for people who just have a landline thanks mayor you want me to tackle those now um if if you can high level if you can just touch on them but i mean if it's going to be um if you need more time then then by all means um take it okay um so for language the vendor does translate into several different languages um and then also the kiosk when they're if and when they're implemented will have language selection on the kiosk and those actually have um like verbal instructions as well so it's not just what the text displayed on the screen um there could be somebody reading whatever it is on the screen in the language of the individual um for zoom court is is here to stay it'll have the option of coming in person in a more official way we currently offer that the court's open if somebody needs to come appear in person they can appear in person um but the access that zoom provides or zoom court virtual court provides is um it's not going away and the legislature um approved the court operating in that way um people who don't have cell phones can provide us email addresses the um when a text message goes out an email also goes out with the same notification and so if if an individual has email then you know they get the alert on email as well um i hope that answers the the questions also the notifications are provided to the individual beforehand so they're already told exactly what they need to do in court or over the phone by um a staff member these are only reminders of what they need to do so it's not first time notification coming through um the new program okay thank you other questions counselor back thank you mayor uh judge edkinson um well first first fair faith in advertising my son ran through this process just recently with judge edkinson because he california rolled through a stop sign and was caught doing it um and i can attest personally that it it's smooth but that being said um for these new technology um implementations uh the do is it anticipated that you'll need um uh a fractional or complete fte to to help you maintain this or that fte uh is generally going to be distributed across the the functions or i maybe i'm not sure who is the appropriate person to answer this i could try taking that one um so we do have a lot of backend work that we do um in relation to the odr system we still have to process certain things on the backend so there is manual work that as of right now we've kind of pulled one of our window clerks since we've had slower volumes in person we've pulled them and kind of designated them as our primary person to process those requests as things are going to be picking up more in person and that person obviously going to have less time to devote to that um and there's some other responsibilities that are going to be shifted there's some things that are currently in the judge's office that are going to be shifted back to the clerk's office and and some other initiatives that we plan to implement to get more out in the community so we do feel like the fte is needed not just for these new processes but some other ones and to maintain as again we get back to the what was normal volumes um as a pandemics proceeding on okay that that answers thank you thank you any other questions seen none okay well thank you very much thank you for popping back on we will reach out uh if if if anything else jumps out of us or if there's any likewise if there's anything else we need to know uh following up on your supplementals etc and uh i'll have to get over and see the new designs hadn't i hadn't seen it now and then let me ask you this briefly will any anything on your in your world change once the expansion is going on in the police station in the back are y'all set and and kind of separate and apart from that or do you transition during that process we're staying put but we're enjoying all of the wonderful construction okay okay well we sure appreciate you thank you again have a great afternoon okay and so staff that'll bring up so and for my for my the council we are we'll push the um conversation on economic development uh budget presentation council member beck thank you mayor so i was just going to ask you or tech services are we going to split this video from this zoom session and attach this session to the to the to the morning session so that the public can view it in in continuity and contiguity i recommend that ryan hi council member ryan adams public affairs we are going to make sure that the videos line up on the back end it'll take a little bit of work so they may not post immediately after the meetings conclude currently anyone accessing either link for the dha or this morning's meeting can view this proceeding right now and the videos will be corrected uh within 24 hours uh and it'll all be uh smushed together awesome thank you yeah shout out to smush uh so uh there's a basketball player smush smush parker and so um madison's going to present we'll push the economic development um presentation till next week um and so that'll be the last thing under item c is is madison's presentation but um yeah i'll turn it over to you all right hello mayor and city council madison rorschach and city auditor i'm going to pull up my presentation here we go and um my first slide is really just um kind of a quick overview of where we are in our audit plan for this this current fiscal year um so just to save some time i won't go into detail on it but if you have any more questions if you can visit the internal audit webpage on the city's website uh and we have some quarterly reports there so you can get more information kind of on where we are through those reports so moving on uh for our goal to our goals for the next fiscal year um just briefly we want to continue to provide uh high quality value add audits analyses and advice to city functions and programs but we also kind of want to expand this work to include routine audit services such as inventories and cash counts and i'll go into how we're going to do that a little bit later in addition we would like to undergo and pass a peer review which is essentially an audit of our department to help ensure that we're providing quality work to the city and that peer review is funded in the current in this proposed budget and then finally i'd like to establish a community outreach program to get direct feedback from bitton's residents on the city's programs and services and we'll use this feedback to help develop our audit plan going forward and uh for and i think this will further promote transparency and accountability uh throughout the city so um this slide just summarizes our our budget and compares it to the previous budget years as you can see our biggest expenses expenses for personnel services operations is the next largest category and uh kind of the bit and it's it has the biggest increase for from last fiscal year about 20 000 of this is due to our external audit contract increasing um and then additionally the preliminary amount this preliminary preliminary amount sorry includes um the reinstitution of about 40 000 to create a contingency fund for potential audit consultants which i'm going to discuss later in the presentation so just to talk about our staffing briefly briefly we currently have three full-time auditors you can see there was a reduction from the fiscal year 1920 budget which is due to us now sharing an admin assistant instead of having our own and then in the fiscal year 21 22 budget year we're requesting an increase of a half full-time equivalent as part of our audit intern program supplemental package which i'll discuss now so this audit intern program would aim to work with local universities to provide students with real world government audit experience while also allowing the department to expand its services to perform those routine audits i talked about earlier under the proposed program audit interns would be hired for a single semester they would be paid and they could also receive college credit um interns would perform routine audits like surprise cash counts more annual inventories of the warehouse or the police property room and these routine audits are not really something that we currently have time to do so this program would result in expanding our services in addition we would make sure to work with human resources to ensure that this program aligns with what i believe hr has a plan citywide intern program so and at our may 28th meeting the audit finance committee was you know generally responded positively to the the supplemental package and lastly um that covid reinstatement reduction request so this uh budgeted funding was originally in the approved fiscal year 1920 and was eliminated as part of the covid 19 cost reductions mainly because we had never actually used the funding and we didn't have any plans to use it that fiscal year so reinstating the budgeted amount would provide us with the flexibility to hire specialists to help perform audit projects however at this time there are no projects planned that would require the use of the funding um that being said it also acts as kind of a contingency funding in case we do need to hire a consultant um if there's a fraud identified to help investigate that so since this amount was originally approved by council prior to my appointment as city auditor i just kind of wanted to run it through the budget process to see what y'all's feelings on it were when we presented the information to the audit finance committee they generally responded that they didn't believe that having this kind of contingency funding was necessary but asked that we bring back some additional information about if other audit shops had similar funding so i reached out to a couple of other well really 10 other texas-based audit shops about half of them said that they had some sort of funding and then three said that they did not but that they believed they could get a budget amendment if needed and then we didn't receive a response from the remaining so you can see the kind of the results on the slide so really based on the results of this benchmarking survey and the feedback from the audit finance committee and kind of historically what's happened with the money i'm actually going to recommend that we not add the 38 000 to our budget and instead we just if we need the budget any um instead we take a budget amendment back if we identify any audit projects that need that kind of specialist consultant specialization but that would mean that there's no contingency funding available if we need to hire a consultant for a fraud investigation so that's the end okay great questions for staff let's go councilmember davis councilmember mcguire councilmember beck and then armature thank you mayor i think both of those are really uh exciting things one um exposing as many young people as we can in the exciting world of government audit um is a good thing um there are lots of things you can do with that experience as you well know and that's uh that's a good thing to get them into that into that world but also i appreciate your recommendation on the 38 000 contingency that's not something that we couldn't take up in a budget amendment later in the year if we needed to and some years might just might not need it thank you okay councilmember mcguire um i agree with councilmember davis um and i i just want to um you know sort of make sure that that that you feel free to come to us with any needs that you might have um regarding additional investigations or anything um and i want to make sure that you feel do you believe that um bringing this forward in a budget amendment at a later time if it's needed provides you the flexibility that that you would need uh in that situation yeah i do think that um that that would be that's the best option at this point because um i don't think we need it in the budget just to have money sitting there um and i think with the council as it currently is and you know we have a really great relationship with city manager's office i don't think we'd have any problems um getting a budget amendment through uh if we needed it okay all right then then i'm satisfied with that okay councilmember bett uh yeah thank you mayor uh yeah no i had the same question as as councilmember mcguire i wanted to make sure that you had the flexibility but you answered that um on the on the half fte uh is is that going to be treated as as like a full intern position at 20 hours um and so i guess my a subtext of that is is it a benefits eligible position or not um i don't believe it's l uh benefits eligible um when we talked to hr kind of about how the position would be framed they already had some kind of intern categories according to classifications basically intern um positions and so we were we would just take basically one of theirs kind of customize it to have a audit job description and use that and based on my conversation with them it would not be benefits eligible okay so so extensively if i can read just restate that we're going to plug in your half fte if we improve this into existing intern mechanisms correct okay all right thank you uh councilmember armater actually my uh question has already been covered so i will remove it okay any other questions counselor bird going back to the internship is this i'm understanding this is going to be one intern per year from either either one of the universities or both or or from the high school level what what are we talking about in turn i think the goal would be to try to have one per semester so or really three a year um and then i think i think we would mostly look at the universities and not look at the high school level thank you okay any other questions sienna okay i have one question uh madison uh just what is the process i have uh i've kind of identified something that i i i want you to take a look at but i need to phrase it properly and how and then understand how to introduce it to you so the justice of it is around the um uh development kind of planning development review process uh so i i need to understand how to phrase that but my concern is um there's comments on the plans that aren't that don't they come in later in the process right so initially there's an interview and then there's coming back later and there's more reviews added on that weren't there initially so just to kind of evaluate that and and the reason that's noteworthy to me is because we have this outside contractor right and so when we have to renew and renew the contract i want to understand how they're performing with respect to looking at the plan all the reviews are there and then consistently uh eliminating those reviews versus new comments coming on that then you have to start all over i don't know if that makes any sense but my question is how do i phrase that and then how do i get it to you first for consideration are you talking about the audit plan or the or like development services development services so for example i have a project i'm bringing forward and has that it goes through initial review and here's the comments that i'm curious if there's comments that are coming in midway through the process that weren't there originally that then complicate things and and that's a function of this third party entity that we have a contract with so if they're having a miss rate i want to identify that before we have to renew the contract or if they're spot on you know then then note that during the contract review process okay um i'll email you separately about this just to make sure i understand what you're saying but i we're currently doing a an audit of building permits so that might be something we can try to look at as part of that okay okay great yeah email me and we'll we'll either schedule time to talk or i can uh try to type it up and get us close and then we can fine tune it sounds great thank you uh so any other questions for for staff seeing none okay thank you thank you madison thank you okay so that concludes item c noting again that economic development will come back to us um and i thank staff for that accommodation due to the time that leaves us with um another so this takes us to to our closed session um can someone tell me how long we need staff needs to set us for closed session i want to not take i can't you're i think we're i don't five minutes max i think we're um you know jiffy's here okay well is there anyone here is there anyone on that needs to pop off or we'll just go straight into it i think we're all good here okay so i don't have i don't think i have a sheet that says but i i can just read the caption as to why we're going into closed session so i'll just say we're going into closed session at uh 3 16 p.m and it's consultation with attorneys under the texas government code section five five one dot zero seven one and then the first item is item a which is and then this is the only item id 211157 uh and i'll note the time is 3 16 p.m and so uh this is uh consultation with attorneys regarding legal issues associated with uh contemplated litigation and settlement offer offer involving tracy witten where a public discussion of these legal matters would conflict with duty of the city attorney to the city to the city of denton and the denton city council under texas discipline disciplinary rules of conduct of the state bar of texas or would jeopardize a city legal position in any administrative proceeding or a potential litigation so before we get into it i'm going to turn it over to the city attorney uh to kind of frame the discussion because this and welcome back to this uh we're back in open session it is 3 40 p.m still the seventh and we have one item for individual consideration i'll call that now which is uh item id 211153 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton authorizing the interim city manager to execute a separation agreement and general release of all claims with tracy witten authorized expenditures and providing an effective date so i'll take a motion there is no presentation uh councilor armature i move approval okay i and i uh miss witten for her service okay okay thank you sorry uh and is there a second council member bird i second okay so we have a motion by council member armature a second by uh council member bird any discussion seeing none council member armature i'll say you yes council member bird yes council member back aye council member mcguire aye council member davis aye mayor putin melter aye mayor hutzpah is an i as well that passes seven zero okay thank you that concludes our meeting for today uh we get started tomorrow oh we do have concluding items so if there's any concluded items uh i'll i'll take those up sorry councilor back i will just say for those of us that live in d2 that woodrow wilson elementary does not exist anymore it is now a pile of rubble uh there along winter so wow it's it's gone and netty schultz is the only building left standing that is amazing i just drove by this weekend so thank you for that update that i knew it was coming but man that's fast okay any other uh concluding items council armature i'll just uh say happy pride month everybody very good any other uh any other concluding items okay well then we'll conclude this meeting at 3 42 p.m and what time do we get started tomorrow two three o'clock okay very good so we'll be back at two o'clock tomorrow so well thank you all everyone thank you for your time and thank you staff see you tomorrow