Jun 08, 2021 City Council on 2021-06-08 2:00 PM

and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 2 o'clock p.m. and we do have a quorum so I'll call this meeting to order today is June 8th 2021 and I do not think we have any questions from the citizens on the agenda so that will take us to the we don't have any citizen comments better said so then that'll take us to section two which is requests for clarification on agenda items listed on this agenda from the council questions on the agenda so council member beck council member maguire thank you mayor I had questions on one e and one i do you want me to take those in order give you them both how do you want to handle that sir uh let's take them in order please one e first okay so my my one e question is is pretty simple is is this a uh substantial change to the existing policy and uh you know so I'm just trying to gauge what the change is in in because I know we have an existing relationship that is similar and I just trying to understand any uh any changes yes hi this is bobby smith assistant chief of police do you want me to go ahead and address that yes please uh yes sir this is uh this is just formalizing the relationship that we have there's no real major change but it uh twu they need for their accreditation process they need an ila and it just sort of solidifies it and formalizes our relationship but yes most all of that we're doing already anyway okay that that clarifies thank you so much I appreciate that okay and then who wants to who's speaking on one i I guess you got that question and then they'll speak to it but my my question is also pretty simple um I I looked through the the documentation provided looked online and I couldn't see uh the mechanism of action of error pure um and I just would like a little uh it doesn't have to be at this meeting but if staff could get back to me at some point um with a clarification of how this works and and specifically any byproducts uh from odor elimination I would appreciate that I meant to include that in staff questions and I just forgot to okay oh good afternoon yeah good afternoon this brian burner director of solid waste uh this uh uh material is actually uh aerially applied so we have a high weight what's called it's a high volume system uh that basically this material is uh uh emitted into the air where it captures uh the the odor causing chemicals and then destroys them uh uh and then the the uh byproducts uh are are uh non-harmful uh and biodegradable that answer your question sir no and and unfortunately for you uh brian you're you're dealing with a chemist and so the the question I really have is rather than say we're spraying it into the air and it and it changes the molecular confirmation I guess what I'm seeking is clarification as to um you know what the oxidation products are that are then bound and fall back into the landfill so I'm looking for clarification of what the resultant products are not in the air but but from interacting with aeropure um again it doesn't have I know that's maybe a beyond your knowledge at this point so I'm perfectly comfortable with you getting back to me at a later time uh but it is um I I would like to know what the byproducts in the landfill are if you could yeah we can provide that information okay thank you thank you and yeah that'll be great and and so counselor beck you have any other questions uh not on the consent items are we limiting ourselves to consent yes sir thank you that's all right thank you thank you council member guar thank you mayor has said um my first question is um regarding consent agenda item f um regarding a professional services agreement with trc engineers inc um I'm seeing that you know this does represent a pretty significant um savings for the city um compared to the status quo but I'm curious if um you know because I you know full disclosure in my personal opinion that the city should not have to incur any costs at all um to provide for private telecom companies to do business in our city and use our right away right of ways um is there any kind of mechanism for um the the companies that are are going to be um using these services uh to reimburse the city for the cost of this contract is that something that is possible jerry fielder is here to answer that question thanks jerry sorry you're still you're still muted don't want to I'm just excited to answer the question um yes ma'am there actually is this contract is um virtually what's going to happen is they're going the the company trc is going to bill each of the joint users directly um for any of the services and everything else based upon a rate fee that we've reviewed and is comparable to what we've seen with san antonio austin and everything else um so there should be little to no cost incurred to the city of didn't the only possibility is if we actually need them to do some sort of study for us then we will incur a little bit of cost associated with that but the intention is to be to the city of didn't no cost okay so just to clarify so the the five-year not to exceed amount of fifty thousand dollars um is that like like a contingency fund in case we decide to contract with trc engineers for an additional study exactly yes ma'am okay all right so okay that answers my question thank you thank you okay customer bet sorry I just oh no I'm sorry just follow up on that I want to pull up right on that one just um so if this is just a contingency fund do you anticipate projects that would need to use that fund the projects that I anticipate would be where we're going to actually do some joint use with possibly another company like txu or encore well encore or co-serve and we need to have that attachment stress analysis done we would probably contract with them to do that for us but but we anticipate doing that I can't tell you that I'm going to do that or not it just depends on what happens over the next five years if we have the opportunity and we need to do it then that's what this money is for is basically to allow that to happen okay thank you thank you counsel maguire yes uh counselor maguire thank you um uh so my next question is regarding item i also um and council member beck asked a question that was much more specific than mine I just felt like I wanted more information regarding um particularly the environmental considerations of um the the chemicals that um we would potentially be using at the landfill um I'm not 100 clear on the procedure here can I um request that that that item i be be pulled um so that we can discuss that separately since it seems like two of us have some questions about about that item yes so yeah you would pull it and then I'd just ask you for some indications so that staff can build the the presentation to to address the specific questions okay yeah I would just like um you know I don't need quite the level of um uh chemistry details that council member beck wants but I I would just like to see um a little bit more information regarding the uh environmental safety of uh the the substances that are being proposed uh for for um solid waste to purchase okay um and then my final question uh is regarding item l and I just want to make sure that I'm clear um that at the time that council approved the uh ordinance back in 2020 was count was that council under the impression that the amount of the contract was 169,804.37 is that is that the amount that was voted on hi this is Christine Taylor a procurement director and that is correct the electronic backup that was received by council was the higher amount and that's what was voted on okay excellent thank you that's all my questions okay any other questions on the consent agenda uh counselor Davis thank you mayor on item g um is it anticipated that there's going to be any change to the the footprint of the project or any major change to what the neighborhood had discussed and approved on that project and then related to this project will the substation that's across bonnie bray remain in place or will it be uh replaced entirety in its entirety oh sorry this is uh telling point then jerry's there but i'll go ahead and respond uh the the answer to your first question is no the footprint still is the same this is really just out of a need uh resulting from the delay in the water project so we're taking over a piece of that that's what this change order is for so we can go ahead and continue with the timeline on the project the answer to your second question is eventually that that's that substation will be torn down and demolished and so we'll be very happy the day that that happens it's it's literally the oldest and probably the most dangerous substation we have currently in our in our assets thanks okay thank you uh any other questions seeing none uh so staff what i have is item there's one item pool which is item i and the request is for a presentation regarding the environmental effects and any notables around that um and then also there's an expectation that we'll follow up with some more granular details for council member beck uh to to address his questions so okay great uh that'll take us to our work session uh first item is item a3a which is id211 let me get that right id211 185 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding a presentation by the denton county trans transportation authority also known as dcta on the proposed go zone on-demand service good afternoon mayor city council sara kechler chief of staff we do have representatives from dcta here this afternoon to present their proposed go zone on-demand service and before i turn it over to them i did want to also let council know that brandy bird who is the city's consultant is also on the line or on zoom um so she can turn her camera on if she's via zoom and then also chris watts who is the city's dcta board representative is also on the line so at this time i'd like to turn it over uh to raymond sores and nicole record with the cta thank you very much we do have a presentation to share so as i pull that up i will hand it over to raymond to um start the presentation well good afternoon mayor and council on behalf of dcta board and staff we thank you for this opportunity to present the proposed go zone on-demand rider rideshare service as part of the public involvement period that's open to the public from april 19th through june 25th we're out making presentations across the county to provide an opportunity to learn more about the services and also to gather feedback and before i get into the presentation i think it's important to note that over the last year we've been analyzing mobility trends across the nation and and frankly worldwide with a significant drop in ridership predominantly because of covid 19 certainly businesses retailers schools and of course transit authorities have seen a significant reduction in travel and so we've seen a shift in travel patterns nationwide and as we talk to our our other transit authorities across the country we've seen ridership drops across the country as much as 80 to 50 percent in more densely populated areas with that said we are seeing ridership starting to grow across the nation as retailers and others start going back to work but for the most part the major employers and urban canyons have not come back as we had hoped because of covid and we're expecting that to certainly trend toward more employment in in the downtown centers in the fall as the universities also start planning to come back pretty much in full in the fall so we're anticipating a major shift but we have seen these shifts in travel patterns and as we're looking at transforming the transit authority we spent the past year working with our board really looking top to bottom across the agency what we can do to improve our effectiveness and our efficiency ultimately our mission is to improve mobility improve air quality and spur economic development in our cities and be an asset to our cities to make our cities more livable and so we've spent the last year really looking at the transit agency we're really excited about the the services that on-demand ride share provides and i will just move through the presentation to give you an opportunity to provide some feedback as well so the goals really of the the go zone service is it's a zone-based service it's on demand it is a ride shared service it's not intended to be single single rides like you would typically see with uber and lift it is an app-based booking process but there's multiple ways to book service and i'll get into that in a little bit our operator that we're going to be working with is via or company by the name of river north the service delivery places the majority of the connect fixed route bus service will continue to run access service throughout a period of time and eventually look at integrating the access service with via in the future but at the launch we'll continue to provide access and mobility services we will also provide the unt service with the big buses and shuttle services originally planned the good news on the service side is that when you tend to look at service there's usually two opposing thoughts it's the frequency of service and the coverage area of service and our service with our bus service has predominantly focused on frequency of service but trying to reach the the service area within denton has always been a challenge to make sure that we can afford to deliver bus service to the far reaches of the county or in this case the city of denton and to make sure that the service is economical efficient and so those are always challenges that we have i believe that this on demand service solves both of those problems in a very efficient and elegant way and that's what we're looking to do with this service improve the customer experience to try to drive down the wait times and also increase the area that we cover and to streamline the booking process so what are the benefits well i just talked about a few of them it should improve the rider experience look it's going to be a big change this is a different way for people to to travel and certainly anytime you make big changes in travel services there's going to be some training involved but ultimately we do believe that it'll improve the service it'll enhance the delivery of the service and it'll be more efficient you'll have shorter wait times a lot of the vehicles will actually all these vehicles will have bike racks so it'll provide better connectivity to your trails to the a train service another big offer with with this on demand service is we're moving to 365 days of service which is a big change and i think it's going to be a very positive chain a portion of the fleet will be wheelchair accessible and of course we'll have our access service that we'll continue to look at and eventually migrate these two services together to make it seamless for all riders in our in our service areas you'll see extended service area coverage as i mentioned before and a convenient mobile app that'll be available to to folks so river north is the company that doing business as via they were founded in 2012 it's a very dynamic agency or company private company they have over 200 partners operating on six continents the city of arlington has been using their service successfully for several years training metro or the footwear transit authority has also adopted via in several areas and they've implemented their own zone service throughout tarrant county so let's talk about the fleet the fleet's probably the biggest visible change that you're going to see we're going to go from big buses which have challenges getting into some of the neighborhoods and some of the tight areas i'm always amazed at how our operators are able to to maneuver around park cars but the biggest challenge with big buses is it doesn't give us the ability to get into the neighborhoods and of course transit has always had existing barriers from the perspective of having to walk a fairly lengthy distance to get to a bus stop to get picked up these chrysler pacificas or something very similar to chrysler pacifica will be branded with dcta it'll seat up to six passengers and the will have the ability to scale the the size of the fleet based on demand and ridership up or down depending on how travel patterns change the other big challenge that we have with with two universities in the dinton area is you see very large changes between summer and fall semesters and so this provides us with the ability to be very flexible in how we shape the the service deployment with the demand and that'll make us more effective and efficient throughout the year another big change is that you're going to see the physical bus stops go away but they'll be replaced with virtual stops that for all intents and purposes will allow people to to walk a much shorter distance and stay sheltered within either their homes or an establishment until the time the vehicle actually shows up so you can imagine that just about every intersection or close to it would have a virtual stop where somebody would walk to the corner of a particular block and get picked up by one of the vehicles and then go on their their way so these virtual stops is a bit different it's going to be a little bit of a change for folks but it's going to provide a lot more accessibility and knock down one of probably the biggest barriers to transit is trying to find a bus stop especially if you're not familiar with the area this makes it so much easier for you if you just download the app and you're able to use the app so let's talk about fare structure for the first six months because we receive federal funds we have the opportunity to do what's called a fare promotion and that'll allow us to launch the service with a promotional fare that gives us an opportunity to really understand the travel patterns of frequency how people are using it we'll gather continue to gather information and allow the board of directors and staff to come back at a later date if we choose and modify the fares before we actually set a final fare structure for people to to use our system again we're trading fixed route service for go-zone service non-demand access but the the final date would be roughly mid-march of 2020 before we'd have to set the final fare from a promotion overview it's going to be pretty simple so we're going to offer a single ride somebody wants to try the service for 75 cents if you buy an am/pm pass a day pass or monthly pass you'll be able to provide or use the service as much as you want because it is a it is a replacement for the connect service so you'll be able to use the the go-zone service as much as you want within the time frame of the pass that you purchase so that should be fairly convenient and seamless for for the customer the booking process is pretty simple if you've used uber left you're probably familiar with it but the operator or the customer will use an app they'll select their location their destination the app will give them options for when to ride what the fare structure is the rider receives a virtual bus stop location they walk to it they get on the vehicle and then from there they're able to actually track the the the service anybody that's going along that same path would be picked up and and they would all go on the shared ride to their final destinations and be dropped off and then at the end which will be a big benefit for the transit agency is customers can leave they can leave feedback for the trip so we'll get immediate feedback from customers on how the rider experience actually worked so let's talk about the implementation approach we spent a significant time with with the the board with staff with via themselves we did round tables with with city staff and our board members and we looked at at the cost of the service and we determined that phase one would include the base service which is this on-demand service that would replace connect but a significant which i think are game changers set of services that i think will benefit not only increasing ridership but just the value to our communities for the first time we'll be providing sunday and holiday service sunday a train replacement service which i'll get into in a little bit extending the hours of service which is something that we've heard quite often over over a few years about can we extend the hours so that it has a better connection not only to a train but just to local establish the establishments that are staying open later on saturdays for the first time as we've seen density grow off of business 121 just north of castle hills which is in the lewisville service area we'll be providing services just north of 121 under this proposition and then again for the first time we'll be providing connected service to the dart frankfurt station during monday through friday which are commuter hour services to connect the stations and and making it more accessible for businesses and retailers and the communities to have access to transit from the dart stations into the lewisville highland village zone and we'll also be providing that connection as well from train mill station so that's phase one and that's due to be implemented on september 7th of this year and then following that with the annexation of castle hills we would look to provide another public service opportunity or a public involvement opportunity to get feedback about launching a castle hill zone so that those folks that live in those neighborhoods will have access to the the denton highland village zone and will have the ability to to move more people across the county from denton and from lewisville highland village and then lastly based on ridership trends we'll look at another area which is we've received some feedback over the years but we really would focus on late night service from monday through thursday only if ridership really suggests that we need to add that service because it will add some significant expense later on so we'll keep an eye on that but that's kind of the launch calendar and sequence of how we would implement the services so the base service launches september 7th it replaces the connect fixed route service it enlarges the zone in denton and lewisville and highland village so it's going to be basically two zones one is the denton zone one is the combination of highland village and the lewisville zone but as you can see the coverage area is going to be much larger again going back to coverage versus frequency it'll cover much more of the neighborhoods and establishments around the city of denton will have extended service hours monday through saturday and you can see the service descriptions friday will stay open basically and providing services from 5 a.m to 11 p.m and then as we move on the add-ons which would also be launched under this proposal on september 7th we would extend the the saturday hour services to 11 p.m we'd add sunday service which is intra zone so within the zones themselves we would be adding if you'll notice the the yellow box the deanian neighborhood which is an area that we currently do not serve we'd be adding that area so they would have connection and access to the go zone and a train the dart frankford station i mentioned the business 121 north zone expansion i've mentioned and then the guaranteed ride home expansion which basically guarantees folks that are on the a train that may have transferred over the green line gone into let's say seeing a mavericks game coming back will guarantee them a ride home in either one of the zones from the trini mills station back to wherever their final destination is access service so our ada paratransit will continue to operate as it is we would be looking at the opportunities to integrate that with this service to make it seamless to make it more accessible and more timely and and to basically lay lay the level the playing field if you will for accessibility to our service we may look at the the fare structure which is is different for access today and we'll look at that and how we want to apply that and then as i mentioned the castle hill zone is a new expansion that would only happen with the annexation of castle hills then the weekday late night service as i mentioned would be only looked at if in fact ridership demands and the trends which we we expect that there could be the possibility that we see strong ridership growth and this would be something that we would look at in the later phase so this can be a bit of an eye chart but the best way to look at it is on the far right this is what's being proposed as the offering and what we're getting feedback on versus the far left which is the current hours of operations you can see that we start a little bit earlier monday through thursday we end a little bit later friday we certainly have a much longer hours of operations in the evening saturday much better opportunity to provide services and to to ride across dcta and in and out of the dart service area and then of course sunday which is a big game changer in my opinion would provide availability where we don't have it today so service comparisons a train service would remain the same although we are looking at through the budget process and talking to the board about getting back to pre-covid levels which was basically running a 30 minute frequency pretty much all day during the weekdays which will provide better connectivity with this new go zone and provide a lot more frequency on the train the dent and connect bus service would for all intents and purposes be replaced although we're going to continue our runs routes three and seven for six months to compare and contrast how the zone service is working ridership tends to be at least on parts of the day at peak the ridership on three and 17 tends to be fairly significant so we want to keep an eye on those two routes look at it over the next six months and then make a decision whether we either retain or go ahead and discontinue that service lewisville connect bus service will be replaced with go zone routes 21 and 22 will be removed and then we've been running for a couple years now some on-demand service with lift in the lewis lewisville lakeway zone we have a highland village lift zone and a couple of other zones that we've been running this new go zone service would replace that we did have a service that was running through lift from lewisville into flower mound into some medical facilities for the elderly and disabled ridership has not been very strong on that so we plan to discontinue that with the support of the city of lewisville with this implementation the north texas express we've been running that for a couple of years now in partnership with with training metro and we do believe that based on the the low ridership that it makes sense to discontinue that service we'll take another look at it maybe as a local service option later but right now i think both transit agencies agree that it's probably not efficient or effective for us to continue to provide that service the monsignor king 101 will remain the same we'll be running that for and and the dcta board actually approved last month to run that that service throughout the next fiscal year so that will remain access service remains the same until we get to phase 2a which is what i've already covered and then vanpool programs will remain the same our contracted services with other cities there'll be no change to that the unt shuttle services won't change for the exception of the student faculty and staff we're working with them to figure out currently they pay a a fixed amount for the year to provide accessibility to their faculty staff and students on our connect service so we are working and discussing how to get the best value not only for the agency but for the university to make sure that there's a connectivity there and then we've walked through the new areas of coverage with extended hours and the annexation of castle hills when that will actually happen so ways to provide input well we're here today presenting to the council we are in the review process for the go zones we've we're looking at the fare structure the go zone service we're certainly looking for feedback from the council from the general public we're out talking to social service agencies just about anybody that's willing to listen to us we're out in the public online several different ways to provide feedback through our dcta feedback.net we're going to continue to to collect that feedback through june 25th you can request presentations or there's somebody that wants to learn more about it certainly direct them our way mary worthington does a great job of explaining the service we can do one-on-ones we can do zoom calls we're certainly interested in getting as much feedback as possible on the service and that concludes the presentation and with me is nicole wrecker crimb she's been the kind of all hands on deck making sure that we look at this from the procurement all the way through implementation she's our expert on this so we will work in partnership to try to answer your questions thank you. Okay and I do want to open the floor for the board chair to add anything if he would want to do that mayor watts probably getting unmuted okay it was pound six it's star six instead of pound six hey uh mayor thank you so much for that I would like to maybe save the comments for the end because I'd like to hear the the uh can you hear me okay yes sir mayor yes okay uh so that I can you know hear the the questions and comments of your colleagues there on council so if that would be okay uh with you that's that's that's how I'd like to do that absolutely okay very good questions for yes sir so let's go council member mcguire mayor for tim melzer thank you um so uh you know I want to make sure y'all are aware that we've we've definitely received a lot of public comment about this plan um the public is pretty concerned about it I'm pretty concerned about it as well um there are a lot of things that I really like about it um I I'm in favor of anything that might expand ridership I think it's that's an important goal and it sounds like this has the potential to do that um it will be more convenient for some some folks who live in the city um I love that that it offers expanded hours um I love that it offers uh improved connectivity to dart those those are all great um great things but uh I'm very concerned about the plan to cut fixed routes um we have a significant number of residents in our city who really depend on those fixed routes um we have many folks who do not use smartphones for whom an on-demand service just would not be accessible in the way that that a fixed route bus service is um I'm concerned about um loss of of jobs um for drivers and for other DCTA uh employees um you know and I'm aware that uh drivers will have the opportunity to apply for these you know to drive these vans but um there's certainly no guarantee that that they would be hired um and as far as I'm aware um they would no longer be represented by a union um if they were to lose their their union their full-time with benefits union job driving for driving buses fixed bus routes and and go to this this on-demand service um I'm very concerned about that um we are a really rapidly growing city um we are we are going we are in the process of transforming from being a small town to being a a metropolitan city and we are also in the midst of a climate emergency we urgently need to be working to get cars off the road and the best way to do that is to make it safer and more convenient for people to choose to walk or bike or make or ride public transportation instead of driving right and I'm concerned that from my perspective over the last few years DCTA and the city of Denton and the county and the state have consistently failed to take steps that would make it safer and more convenient for people to use our fixed bus routes and now that the predictable outcome has occurred that ridership has gone down now we're saying oh I guess we don't need the the fixed bus routes and we it's time to cut them um I I don't think that that's the right move um I'm not necessarily opposed to adding on-demand services um but I I want to see us investing in making it an increasing ridership on fixed routes um by making it safer and more convenient for people to to choose those fixed routes um so I'm I'm just I'm very concerned about about the the cutting fixed routes portion of this so okay thank you for that feedback okay and then thank you Mayor Pritz and Meltzer yeah uh uh thank you I have several questions uh I'm I'm personally very open to the possibility that people will find this more convenient it was initially presented to the mobility committee as a as a trial and now it seems to be have gone full tilt into the sort of you know no no element of trial uh about it uh so I just think we need to ask some questions that we would have asked had it been a trial in other deployments I understand sometimes ridership has gone up and sometimes ridership has gone down now it seems very plausible to me that if if you're going to go on my schedule that that's going to be more convenient than me having to go on your schedule so I can completely see that it may have uh been very effective but what about where it hasn't do we know anything about the circumstances that favor ridership going up versus the circumstances that led to ridership going down when on demand has been deployed sure I'm happy to answer that question so of the 200 programs that via currently has we've done quite an extensive deep dive into those case studies and white papers to understand what worked with their programs and what didn't work with their programs overwhelmingly their programs were very successful and and showed increasing ridership as the programs began and in the case where areas transit agencies or cities had existing ridership the via programs did show an increase in ridership there were two scenarios where via did report low ridership adoption in the very beginning which is not what they had anticipated and one of the benefits of doing an on-demand zone service is the flexibility that it provides and being able to either move that zone or modify that zone so in these two scenarios via just modified the zones based on some feed the passenger feedback that they had been receiving and some additional research they were able to do that within the first three weeks of the launch of service which then resulted in a major spike in ridership and both of those programs have seen increased ridership since they made those modifications I appreciate that uh mayor shall I go around yeah go ahead thank you so uh you know I'm aware from uh just people that I know who have relied on span disabled passengers relied on span that it has required them booking travel a day ahead which isn't how I live and I wouldn't expect anyone else to uh could you contrast uh the span process for disabled passengers with what the the go zone process would be yes absolutely so regarding ADA qualification the process is very similar in regards to both uh passengers for both programs have to apply and have to be approved but the booking process is much different so for span you're required to book your trip by 2 pm the day prior you then have to call by 5 pm the day prior to your trip to get your actual pickup time and your pickup window is what they call a 30 minute window so it can be 15 minutes before your desired pickup time or 15 minutes after your desired pickup time so the major differences with the go zone service is that users would be able to book the trip in real time so if you decide you know hey I need to be picked up in the next 30 minutes you could book your trip um using the mobile app if you're ADA qualified that service goes from curb to curb to door to door so that's what that ADA qualification is can get you is that is that the go zone vehicle would come directly to your door and so it provides a lot of flexibility you can still book your trips ahead much like you do on our existing access service or like you can do with span as well the differences is that you don't have to call to confirm and you don't have to book your trips um much earlier 24 hours in advance the other difference is that we provide service um extended days of the week and extended hours of the day so currently span provides service um monday through friday from 7 a.m to 6 p.m where raymond reviewed the days and the hours of operation for go zone and so those days and hours of operation would be available to those using the service who are ADA qualified is there a difference between the sort of physical uh ability to accommodate a wheelchair between span current fixed route bus uh compatible capabilities and these vehicles that were you know that we've been shown that's one of the things we're going to analyze uh span operates a very similar vehicle configuration called the cutaway a small smaller bus that has a wheelchair accessible either ramp or lift we do the same so as we talk to and one of the reasons this is a second phase there's it's really is a lot to to try to unpack and and uh deliver uh from a vias perspective but we want to look at integrating some of those same vehicles into the service so that there's no question that the the service delivery would still be the same type of service there's other folks that are qualified but don't necessarily need access to a cutaway because they're not in a oversized wheelchair that can i think as we've learned more about delivering this service through taxi cabs and lift the large percentage of folks that are covered under ADA paratransit qualifications connect our ambulatory can actually use this service more conveniently so we want to make sure that whatever we do we're taking our time we're doing it right i think that's the the the the goal we certainly have i believe via shares that goal and that's why we're going to take a little bit more time to make sure that whatever we deliver is actually going to be value added not taken away from something that they have today and just on thank you and on this topic uh service animals uh you know are they able to be transported in the go zone yes yes so both service animals as well as animals in a lap gauge okay mayor i'm sorry if i'm taking a lot of time i've got one more on kind of rider one more riders than one of the labor side um so there's uh i think a misconception going around that i had uh until you you came and presented to mobility committee that you had to have the app uh to access the service and you know we've heard about less people particularly transit dependent people may not have smartphones but uh i understand you can just call from any phone from the landline just and there's people on who will talk to you and schedule your ride uh how does the payment work if you do that right if you do within an app i assume you've set up payment within that but how does it work if you just call so users can use the mobile app they can use the online uh the desktop application they can call customer service or they can visit the downtown dent and transit center in person those are all ways that we can book trips um any trips that are booked over the phone would take a payment over the phone and so it would require a credit card or a debit card or some type of a um a generally accepted gift card in order for us to process that i wanted that answer but i'm sort of hoping it would lead to another uh possibility of another topic i'll just throw it out just something to think about when i think about the slice of customer experience that this wouldn't meet uh it would be awesome if at some point there could be a hailable aspect of the ride right any any city you go to anywhere in the world if you get out of a train the cabs are there you know whereas here the driver would say no i can't take it you got to call me you know so if it would be possible for the driver to initiate the ride in effect you know so that you're there get in and then once you've got the that worked out you know for the ability to be hailable in effect uh you know could you be also hailable on route you know if the driver has if the driver is running one person and someone's on route could they hail you know if there's a way to pay then then maybe that'd be possible don't expect it to answer that now that's quiz for the mill uh but i'll go to my last topic uh which is on the labor side i think the driver behind so to speak behind all of this is trying to be more efficient in delivering a you know a more convenient experience but that that also will produce some some savings too i think that's in there but i don't know that at least you know from my input toward to our representation i don't know that that i need that to be on the back of the driver so uh you know of our current uh crew of drivers and and these are the people who had significant personal risk to themselves were our frontline during coven 19 you know making sure that transportation options were there for people who needed to get to work and wherever they needed to go uh so my question is is it possible entirely separate from the fact that you know we're going to a different we're apparently going to a different set of vehicles and so on uh entirely separate from the fact that via becomes the employer is it possible for dcta to keep that crew of individuals whole on paying benefits in some way i think the the short answer that is it it would be very challenging and not impossible for dcta to dictate to a private entity that they have to pay a certain rate and certain benefit package it's certainly not that the way that we tend to procure transit services it's not the way that via with its other clients has has delivered service there's no question this is a very different type of service delivery model no one is no one model is perfect even with our best big buses there's always been challenges that transit historically have been faced with and i mentioned a few of them having to walk in in adverse climate not having the infrastructure necessary in place and by the way this isn't dcta's problem it's a problem nationwide you go to any transit authority people are standing in the grass when it's wet or rainy there they don't have ramps where they need to we don't have sidewalks where where they need to be so they're accessible and it's not necessarily a transit agency is the transit agency working with the cities to make those investments over time so i i think that the the big challenge is and by the way dcta has has always contracted for services our bus service our has not been dcta's employees we contracted for the first 10 years with a company by name of first transit their corporate office is in cincinnati ohio and they provide services to hundreds of of transit properties across the u.s there's there's a handful of them that do that and they pay their you know they they're in some cases privatized in some cases they're contracted some of them have unions some of them don't so every property is a little bit different and and i i agree that it is a challenge that staff has been working with with the board to find solutions that have many variables that that need to be taken into consideration again i'll state that there's not one service type that really meets every need i wish there were i think as we look to council members mcguire's comment that we're we're growing up and density patterns are changing i'm paraphrasing a bit here but you know we we've had to take into consideration input from our boards and cities as we've outreached as to what the service strategy needs to look like and probably our biggest challenge has been there's two philosophies you can you can phase something in over time or you can try to come in and change everything at once and the opportunity that presented itself was with covid because ridership was significantly down we know the travel patterns are changing significantly and based on the input that we had at the time there was an opportunity to say well maybe we maybe what we do is we implement it all at the same time but certainly there's other options to look at but this was a direction that that we were asked to to move forward with i think there's there's certainly the public involvement process that we're going through now is a very important critical aspect because it provides an opportunity for our cities and councils to weigh in and the riding public to weigh in i will say that that even people that that work for transit authorities if you go to another city it's still challenging to figure out where to find information where is a bus route going and so there's a lot of value that comes from technology that presents itself and as you both have commented that that make this a very intriguing opportunity we certainly will be providing this feedback to our board and to staff so that we can figure out a path forward that that tries to take on in some cases they're they're a set of of requests that we won't be able to meet every one of them and so we need to take that information and figure out how to best respond to the information and then map a a path forward with our board so that we can figure out what's going to be in the best interest of our stakeholder communities and so i appreciate that i'll turn it back over to you okay just as you know concluding thought i want to be clear i i separate entirely the issue of how best to deliver convenient affordable service which you know entirely open to why wouldn't you be open to longer hours bigger service area responding to the passenger instead of the passenger having to respond to you better service to disabled people connecting with cyclists all of that i think it's you know very intriguing i just think it's a it's a separate question of what responsibility do we owe to those people and how can we meet it and you've been as a you know as a group uh very creative in crafting this offering and i would ask that you see how creative you can be in responding to to that as well thank you very much for your input okay uh councilmember beck councilmember bird councilmember armature thank you mayor um uh i want to you know second uh the concerns mentioned by uh councilors i'm a guire and melzer or maripurton melzer and i have i share those same concerns and so i won't reiterate them i'll instead just sort of leap off of them uh and say um i i guess i one of the things that you know given the exciting potential in the use of technology i you know you know i i work in the technology field myself and and so i understand the concept of fail fast but the problem with fail fast when you work in the public sector is the failure is on the backs of the public and uh you know if if i'm making a poker app that's great it fails and and i have to go to a different game if i make a if i if if uh the middle class that will likely use this service doesn't materialize and you have the ridership concerns that were mentioned by other counselors um then you've failed really fast and you've almost abandoned the people that can do the least response to that failure uh particularly in a time when we're trying to respond to covid and so that's germane to my question um i guess i don't understand why we're using the extreme outlier point of the covid time as a data point during when we're trying to fit our ridership data um uh in in you know in in my work we are throwing out the covid years for like a lot of epidemiology modeling whatnot because it's just so weird and then the only time we're including it is when we're modeling covid um and so these are you know you know it feels like you're we're trying to match to an extreme outlier event and so let me so you know maybe answer that and then i'll piggyback in immediate second question and that is are there any municipalities who have completely transitioned to a via only and what was their similarities and differences to our metroplex are they actually comparables that we can say okay a pure transition thing you know worked out and this city was basically identical to denton so if you could maybe approach those two and i think i have another follow-up after that sure with with respect to the the i'll call it the rip the band-aid off effect that we're attributing to covid the reason i mentioned covid is if you're going to make a a significant change and you want to do it all at once you want to impact the fewest riders possible and that's why i think the timing was was looked at is is this something that we want to do now um we did look at different models a phased in approach is what i'm hearing from the council members fairly consistently is um did we look at phasing in the service we certainly have have looked at that um i think there's opportunities that could present itself to do a phased approach working with our roundtable discussions with our cities i believe that the city of denton is is different than the city of lewisville as far as their transit needs when you look at the city of lewisville they have two very large lengthy routes so replacing that with kind of going all in with this type of service isn't isn't a a bad strategy because that it's a very it's very challenging to have long routes that take a long time again frequency versus coverage to get back denton poses a a different set of challenges because of the university schedules because you have a lot of density and population and travel needs during the fall and spring semesters and not so much during the summer it does create some sweeping challenges just in employment alone because you have a lot more operators that are needed during the spring and fall semesters than you do in the summer semester so just trying to staff and manage a workforce can be incredibly challenging and so again i think from from staff's perspective it there are two in my opinion two different ways to look at the service and we're certainly taking your feedback very seriously we we will need to talk to our board about it the direction that we were given at the time was let's look at because there's a certain i don't want to get too philosophical because we we rarely recognize as uh as the leadership of the organization our responsibility to our stakeholder communities and the writing public and we don't necessarily want to inconvenience or do something that could potentially damage their ability to traverse your city and use the services that you're paying for that means we do have to get feedback from from our board representatives from stakeholder communities when we reached out and we asked the question and we looked at the data the direction that was given is let's look at doing this all at once and i think the main driver of that is when you look at it from a business perspective is how many passengers is the transit authority actually carrying per hour so that's one of many metrics that we look at and the goal of this service was actually to try to increase the passenger per hour um 10 plus passengers per hour on the service and so when you look at how you move people about your city there i don't think there's a an easy answer to say well one is better than the other because there are differences in how they're deployed i will say that we were asked to provide this as the go-forward plan and that's what we are presenting today but your feedback is very important and we will uh we'll have to bring that back to our our board as part of this public involvement and see what kind of options there are for how we move forward um it was saying that the you know the riders didn't quit during covid out of choice correct uh so um they have actually been you know busting at the seams to get back to their jobs and and and utilize your facilities and and and so you know regardless of what starts now that we're beginning you know to decrement our covered response it we're going to see an uptick in ridership uh just because of pent demand pent up demand and so uh i guess you know it maybe you can follow up with uh our staff and get back to us this this idea of of um comparables that completely adopted via and got rid of their fixed route and what were the impacts and partly because it's a follow-up to the council or mayor pro tem's question um of you know certainly other municipalities have gone completely this route had those same issues of of of paratransit and access and and and service animals and everything that was just mentioned over the last 15 minutes so i mean it it certainly seems that you know we're we're not leading on this one we're following and so those answers should be valid so maybe if you could you could bring those answers back to us um that would be helpful to me at least sure with with regard to arlington they didn't have a transit service when they implemented so the feedback there has been very very positive but they weren't necessarily losing fixed route bus service either uh well that's not really a comparable then right correct and then the second second portion of the answer and we'll certainly go back and do some analysis for you thank you that that's great insight uh the second point that i would like to make is that when you look at transit authorities like train metro and dart they have moved much more of their service that was inefficient in neighborhoods uh which is more like suburban than which which would apply to i think more appropriately to how dentin is laid out you're seeing a significant growth in this type of zone service it's called go link for dart and it's called go zip zone in train metro you're seeing significant increases proportionate increases in that type of service and elimination a bit of fixed route service in those areas because it is more convenient more accessible it gets into the neighborhoods it causes less potholes it's less expensive to operate and it does provide a better value so i i can't off the top of my head but we need to go back and look at the analysis i don't know that there's been an agency that is completely replaced there there are a couple agencies there are some white papers on those that we can provide but i will say that we did do extensive research on the city of arlington's program as well as turning metro so while arlington doesn't have their own transit agency they did have max running which was a series of fixed drop services that provided connectivity between the university the athletic complex and the t.r.e train station they did remove that in its entirety and replace it with their via service they also had a paratransit service that was provided by a third party that they use via for that program has been so successful that they actually just experienced a or planned a massive increase in service and they expanded the zone coverage because it has been so successful and then specific to trinity metro we did look a lot at their zone service like raven mentioned they did pull away some of their inefficient six routes and replaced them with these zone-based services that uses the exact same app technology that we would be looking at and they've had incredible success with their programs so much so that they're looking at their third expansion on their program as well but we can certainly follow up with some direct case studies you're making the incredible case for a phase transition i love that unfortunately that doesn't seem to be what we're doing and so that is my concern it's one thing to to hang some some some nice limbs off a already stable skeleton and then slowly you know transition to a different way of doing it or even quickly if it works great but it feels like this ripping the band-aid off is happening at the wrong time for the wrong reasons at the wrong moment so anyway i'll stop there thank you well i i will add to that that i always like to remind people that this is a proposed service the fta does require us to do this public involvement process to collect all feedback and our board is not allowed to to formally adopt a service plan without reviewing that feedback first and so that's why we want to have these great conversations so that we can have that conversation with our board to share the feedback that we've collected thank you councilman berg privatization is um always a bit unnerving for me because it just seems like going that direction um tends to not allow for enough um enough feedback we we find ourselves having to go back and redo and rethink uh when we um fall into the whole process privatization uh aspect so i'm not really keen on that first of all point blank but i wanted to talk about the finance part of it uh i wanted to talk about the the are we are we talking about convenience more than saving money or getting money i want to talk about the funding tell me about uh how much all of this is you're proposing that this will cost upfront to change i know we've got to you got to purchase vehicles you got to put some people in those vehicles and what's the payout of all of this i know there's going to be some people that'll be inconvenienced there's going to be some people that appreciate it there's going to be some people that don't want to get in a vehicle with six people because they're just happen to be on a route and they i mean are they required to do that um i don't want to be scatterbrained about it so i'll just limit it to talking about the finance part of that is talk about what what the city of denton is is is going to be responsible for in terms of these finances to make this happen so and and so i want to interject there so i don't know if raymond you you want to speak to the city side of things but it is a bifurcated answer the city pays in a flat mount regardless and then it's so it's separate but so i don't know if staff wants to take up what the city pays in or raymond if you want to speak to that uh but just separate your answer so that we don't confuse the public i mean you get what you get from the from the member cities whole chunks and then you you parse that out but just i want to again just have that answered succinctly so that uh the council can process your answer uh appropriately thank you mayor uh and i'll i'll do my best to give you a summary answer and we can certainly go offline and get you more detailed answers because i think it might take a considerable amount of time and i don't have the the the but we're putting together budgets uh for these different types of services and um it is uh a bit of work to try to to look at we do this uh but to provide by city by types of services how much it actually costs to do business i will say that uh the amount of service the coverage that you're getting all of the add-ons that we talked about that we've never provided before as if we look back at 2020 it's it's a bit more expensive but it's not outrageously more expensive and the the main reason is because we're getting a lot of services that we haven't had in the past our from a financial perspective our largest uh contributions of funds come from sales tax which is about 51 percent of our funding followed by federal grants which is high 30 percent so i want to say around 35 36 percent i don't know what it is yet for the budget year budget year of 2022 but it's somewhere around there and then there it's followed by the fair revenue that comes in through what we call the fair boxes but passengers that pay for the service and then there's a little bit from investment income and other sources so those are the the major portions of it transit agencies tend not to try to split it out by by the type of service by city because we have to look at the service as a system which includes the a train so if you think about the a train runs it connects to train emails to the dart system runs all the way to denton so there's some revenue sharing around a common service when our board makes decisions about let's say the mk 101 service which ties monsignor king to our daily bread the entire board has to vote in favor of that and they did because it supports the system and so while we can look at those numbers and we can provide them to you i can generally say that this is a little bit more expensive but it's because of the amount of service and the additional services that we're adding we're about adding about i think the add-on services were a little over 30 000 hours of service so that the agency's never provided before so when you just look at the raw financials it looks like it's more money when you look at the the frequency of the service the convenience of the service and the area that we cover it's more broad than than we've ever been able to provide before i hope that answers your question i don't know that it answered it directly but we can certainly come back to you with a more or less of a balance sheet for for denton to show what the old service is costing what the new service is costing and that's part of our our budget presentation to the board that we'll be reviewing on the 17th of this month is there some kind of profit margin of with this kind of system no transit we transit authorities typically in the u.s don't work off of off a profit it's subsidized so it's much like a utility if you want to look at it that way this is an asset to the city it provides services it makes it more livable hopefully increasing ridership is i'm not not hope i know that ridership is certainly going to grow from the covet perspective pretty drastically as as you know businesses start coming back but we're not charging a profit fee now when we do provide services to non-member cities or to the universities we will cover our administrative fees we'll make sure that there's no no dollars or cents for that matter being contributed by member city to some other authority so that's that's the only place where we charge a fee over and above what the actual cost is for the service delivery the predictability of the service we know that it's it sounds like it's from you all from from what i've heard that you're predicting that the ridership will go down in the summertime because of the universities are you all making the arrangements to to handle that predictability it just sounds like to me that that hasn't been looked studied yet well no that actually we we do as a matter of fact and nicole one of her jobs is to sit down and we do this monthly with the universities to figure out what they're and we forecast all of this into our financial plans we have currently with our fixed route service we have multiple bids where where the operators have the ability and they will continue to do this through the unt contract service where they get to bid on on a particular um scout uh route and schedule based on seniority and that's all based on the number of hours and miles of service that the the university plans on running because that's the biggest change uh the the largest ridership comes from the universities so we we sit down with them we plan out the hours and miles of service that they're planning to budget we know exactly how many hours how many miles when they're planning to start a session when they're planning to end the session all that goes into the budgeting scheduling and planning for the operators to pick their their runs and so much like with fixed route service we'll do the same with on demand the beauty of the on demand is it's it's very flexible it gives us the ability to change um hours of operations if we need to very very quickly um so i think that's that's a benefit to this type of service well and bs technology actually optimizes the fleet count in real time so it's truly based on ridership demand so if all of a sudden there is a huge influx in ridership for maybe there's a special event going on in dekton then the system itself will optimize the fleet assignment and it will assign more vehicles into that specific area during that time to keep the wait times to that 11 to 14 minute window um conversely it also will optimize if there is not a ridership demand and so it will actually pull vehicles away from the fleet so that we're only paying for the services that we're using thank you okay uh councilor amater yes uh so thanks for talking to us today um my fellow council members have made a number of really good points uh and raised a number of concerns that i concur with i i have spoken at length and you know in the past about my my own concerns which overlap with theirs so i'm going to try not to be redundant on those today and just uh focus on new concerns starting with my my main point and if you see me looking down i wrote notes try to make sure that i i stay on point i think that what you're seeing today is that a majority of council members on the current denton city council have significant concerns about this move to an on-demand service from the a from bus service um concerns uh that you know if if this was to come for up for a vote on this city council uh i get the feeling of course of course i don't know um but but i don't think you'll be surprised to hear me say that i get the feeling based on what you're hearing now and what you've heard in the past uh that you would probably find that this council majority is not supportive of of this this plan um this has felt like a uh bait kind of bait and switch from the beginning and i'm not blaming the two of you who are here i'm speaking to you but just you know this this plan um you know coming uh you know initially with this idea that this would be a test pilot uh now you know this is suddenly a a permanent permanent change uh and as you know council member beck said you know it's an experiment that we're doing on the public that's paying for it and that's what makes it different than a you know private company we're just having a private corporate board deciding to change directions um i i want to urge uh that no major decisions be made until until the city of denton um can elect a new uh board member to represent the city uh who who better represents uh the you know the views of this new council and uh the public that each of us represents uh that is my view i feel pretty strongly about it um if the current uh dcta uh board representative for for the city of denton who happens to be the chair has views uh that are at odds uh with a majority of the council who represents uh the people of denton i just think that's a really problematic look uh for for dcta and so i think it's important that the city of denton switched to a new uh board member uh expediently uh and that in the interim in the meantime that at the very least dcta agreed not to decide on any changes you know until we can have that new leadership um so just moving on you know i've been clear about what my objections are others have stated it well um i'm i'm not against uh you know the idea of you know testing out a uh public you know a taxi shuttle service um but just not at the expense of of buses if you hear what denton workers and low-income people who depend on buses if you hear what their complaints are and and i know you are hearing and paying attention you know complaints are that you know they're not enough routes um and that there's not enough accessibility in bus stops but if you just do the the simple math um a small number of uh shut of of vans that can only fit six passengers max um can in in no way uh transport the the the capacity that you can get from buses and so i feel like we're kind of throwing out the baby with the bath water of course there are problems with the bus system that need to be fixed um but we're throwing out the baby with the bath water if we throw out um buses we already have a private excuse me lift uh and an uber type taxi services and so it's a little redundant for the city to compete with that but there's excuse me but there's no replacement for buses uh for uh especially for working class and lower class riders uh so just moving on um i've had i had a question um uh for uh for brandy bird who i'm really pleased that she's here um because i know we have this consultant um that that that uh miss bird is serving as a consultant for the city of denton and as i just found out recently also i believe for the city of lewisville as well um so i was just wondering if if miss bird could speak you know about uh her role uh for the city of denton and lewisville you know and and uh and her her contract and and what she does uh for denton and lewisville and and dcta is she on the i don't know is she on the call she is on the call yes she's getting there i am yes and i'm happy to speak to that if you would like me to at this moment please uh absolutely so council member i have represented the city of lewisville and denton since 2018 and initially was tasked with passing legislation that restructured the dcta board and ensured that the paying member cities had a representation on the board prior to that there was a 14 member board of dcta 11 of which were non-paying entities and so there was a desire by the county and the cities of of lewisville denton and highland village to to restructure and to ensure that the the entities that were funding dcta had the majority of board positions on the dcta board now my role is more of an advisory role for the board members and the city staff in denton and in lewisville to ensure that the the mission of the two councils are being enacted at the dcta board at the dcta board level and also just to ensure consistency across those board positions as you've had several different representations during that time frame okay thank you so much it does it does yes and and so question uh for uh for for raymond and or nicole um follow up to that are there any other uh cities represented on the dcta board that uh are to your knowledge that are either working with a private consultant or sharing a private consultant well i don't i don't have an answer to that i don't and if we can get i think it's city attorney can you can you help me get us i'm done i'm done that's all i need all right thanks uh councillor davis thank you mayor i have a few questions um but i'll start by saying the presumption of one member to speak for a majority or much less the entire body is just outrageous to me that's the equivalent of saying me and my buddies are in charge now we'd like to change the rules and you need to hop in line with our program i find that highly offensive this council speaks with one voice when it votes on an item before it that is not the case today so moving on to my question i have questions about the folks who are going to be affected uh specifically affected by this change who have don't have other ways to connect with the change and so i'll do that through a series of questions the first one is how does this change affect folks who currently use vouchers provided by a service service agency could you speak to how those vouchers are currently handled or how folks who get their rides from service agencies or non-profits currently get those those rides and how do they get plugged in with the via service sure absolutely so we currently provide discounted passes to the social service agencies within our service area we also have a quarterly round table with those agencies to make sure that we're staying in touch with them letting them know of any updates as well as providing support for their needs so currently they purchase those passes at a discounted rate and they can do so monthly weekly some of them do some of them purchase annually the only difference and those passes are processed through our department and so i'm very i work very intimately with the social service agencies on that the the switch over to via actually has a really positive impact on purchasing those passes so what would happen is that a social service agency would let us know that they're interested in purchasing so many credits so go there would be goes on credits if they purchase enough which is a fairly small number we can actually work with via to set up what's called a client portal for that social service agency so that they can book trips on behalf of their clientele or they can actually issue a credit to that person's account and so then the representative from the social service agency themselves would have an electronic means of distributing and also tracking those passes whereas today they do them kind of in a print format and so we have talked about that quite extensively with the social service agencies throughout the county and we've actually had some really positive feedback thus far about the change to the program good deal i'm glad to hear that my second question is about the university buses recognizing that the i guess the second largest source of your revenue annually is these these contracts with particular entities like the universities and recognizing that those are contracts that have to be negotiated do you anticipate what changes to those service levels do you anticipate i mean are we still going to see as many unt branded dcta buses are we going to see a a change in their routes what do we anticipate from that or is it too early to tell so the when we sign an agreement with the university the university of purchase vehicles that dcta was operating it wasn't a full complement of vehicles a couple years back so this won't be a very lengthy history lesson the university was really concerned about ensuring consistency in your point of service delivery so we engaged in a a 10-year agreement with them to provide transit services to the university and and from various routes throughout denton and the certainly it was impacted by covid students weren't on campus we're starting we're hearing that they're going to be coming back in full complement in september or august the i think their plan is to bring back the services and the budget levels isn't at the same level as it was prior to covid but it's not far off of it so all the planning and discussions we've had with the university thus far is that they're planning to come back pretty much in full complement it means that there's certainly not been any current reductions in the number of routes they're they're always tweaking the frequency of their service depending on when they're opening a particular hall where students might be so there's always small tweaks to the to the service we i want to say two years ago suggested that they move some of their late night service to a lift program and it'd save them money be more convenient and that actually has produced fantastic results for the university so we're going to talk to them about maybe expanding that that service a little bit more they they have provided some feedback that they're intrigued by the via solution to see how students will either react positively or negatively but there might be some options to to work with them during off-peak hours to provide these this i'll just call it a a a tool set of different mobility options as the university looks at to continue to to grow their services i would think it was probably roughly two years ago that they started an on-campus bike program you're probably intimately familiar familiar with some of those attempts um i know the city works with the university on that bike share program so they're looking always at better mobility options to serve their students i think this might be a really good opportunity to sit down with them um nicole has already had an initial conversation she and i talked to their their head of transportation about it so that's kind of where we are with them um long-winded way of saying that they're not quite back to what their prior service levels are but they're definitely moving in that that direction okay next last question i'm hearing kind of a strange logic unfolding in some of our conversations here that you're telling us that the a majority of the clients you're currently serving you think will be better served or you anticipate will be better served by this new program we know that there are some small percentage of folks those 10 people per hour some small percentage of those folks who will not be as engaged with the via system as we would prefer that might have been better served by a fixed route bus but i'm hearing this logic from some of my fellow council members that we ought to then design the system around those few people for whom fixed route may not be better than via if he is better for the vast majority of folks can you kind of and you've kind of nibbled around the edges of this but can you in a nutshell tell us if we know that there are some folks that fixed route worked better for either because they can't connect very well to the app or the system is onerous for them or some other reason can you tell us how you're going to identify those folks how you're going to find them and how we can design the system to be best for the most people and then design the fail safes or the workarounds for the folks who actually need it as opposed to the other way around i sure wish transit was was simple simple enough to give you a straight answer and i don't want to give you a consultant answer but typically in our let me walk around this one a little bit and i'll try to get very quickly to a pointed answer for you when transit agencies when they're looking at delivering service use either in-house or third-party consultants to look at how to shape transit services along corridors and that's consistently done because density patterns change maybe some new apartment complexes multi-housing or new businesses come into your marketplace which has been happening a lot and then come in and so you constantly have to look at social economic data you know housing density patterns infrastructure that's available in a certain area to to try to determine what ridership might look like now dcta hired um eccentric as part of our transformation analysis well over a year ago and they brought in a well-respected partner cambridge systems to look at those types of options and i think what what i'm hearing is not inconsistent i've been doing this for over 30 years in transit is not inconsistent with what you hear in a lot of different councils or in some cases board meetings where you have folks that that want to see change want to see technology because it provides benefit and also the important thing about honoring people that worked here that that have been through cobit i mean we've certainly written notes on all of these um the to target the answer is the the biggest challenge is is the service that we were that we were delivering the right service the answer is probably not is the service that we're planning on delivering the right answer it may not be for everybody right because we can't be everything to everybody um i will say that some of the feedback that we did receive from the consultants was again just another option that was looked at is reshaping some of the fixed routes because the the ultimate thing that to make it um digestible in this context is think about your fixed routes being um main arteries of your transit system that carry more people and frequency but you don't want to have fixed routes everywhere i think we had way too much fixed route and that's why the when you look at the economics of the equation of transit that's just one one thing you have to look at is is it cost effective is it efficient i would say the amount of fixed route service that we had probably wasn't cost effective or efficient the other issue is you have to take in a lot of variables like road coat closures and street repairs and i'm sure the council was very well or very familiar with the level of that those infrastructure changes that that impede the ability for transit to actually work on main arterials or they're being under construction for a year so it is it is a multiple multitude of different variables that go into deciding is something effective or is it efficient is it meeting all the needs and transit will never meet all the needs unless there's a very good healthy mix of these types of services what what i'm hearing pretty consistently is that there's concern about going all all connect service all but fixed route service there's also concern about going all on-demand service but a mix can can work i think it was fairly a fairly rigorous analysis by the consultants that were hired by the board of dcta to look at but it really came down to a decision about what's the desire of the cities and at the time the desire was let's let's implement this service while ridership is low while people have time to learn how to use a new system but certainly i think as you look at on demand it reaches a point where you're providing so much on-demand service so frequently that it winds up costing more money to the agency and there's a natural push or tendency to say well based on where the travel patterns are happening that would drive the decision to go back to a fixed route so i don't think one answer is right or wrong i do believe that going to the to the um the ends of a of a bell shape which is what we're really doing is we're saying well it's either all connector it's all um on demand is something that i think our board needs to need to needs to listen to the feedback from this council and and um we'll take that back to our board and see if there's a change in in direction and philosophy on how to move it forward i think that's probably the best answer i can give you at this point and last question that i have um and being cognizant of time i'll try to do a little tiny bit of setup i appreciate your arteries uh analogy but i'll point out that the city of dentons never had very good blood pressure our ridership has never been significant we have a certain population of people that depend upon the buses we have a a whole other segment of the population who's never set foot on one your farebox receipts have never been significant they've never been uh much more than a drop in the bucket of your of your budget our sales tax and the contracts have uh been floating those big buses and empty trains and all that kind of stuff that doesn't that may sound like a little bit of an attack i don't intend it to be i think public transportation is really important i'm glad we have it we just don't have a lot of people who take advantage of it for the amount of money that we send into it and i and i would like to just add to to your point i share your your sentiments it it goes back to design um and and there's certainly interest in using the service we pre-covid we're carrying 2.8 to 3 million riders a year that's that's not insignificant um but i think the design it really comes down to design frequency accessibility there's roughly 10 to 15 different variables that have to be looked at and for the most part the the service had not changed for over a decade so think about that if the service doesn't change for a decade and we're hearing from council members that the the city is reshaping itself um in some cases we can't control it none of the cities can control it because there's so many people moving into to the to the service area so it's changing around us we have to look at our service if it's ever going to be effective and efficient and i do believe that the the best transit authorities across america whether they're small because i've again i've been in this business for 30 years and there's been some some wonderful implementations of multimodal transit with transit hubs in in smaller cities that didn't that that are vibrant they love the service they love their transit authority and it has a smattering of fixed route bicycle um on-demand scooters because just like going to the grocery store people want variety and options the technology affords it and i think that's the feedback that i'm hearing today that we need to bring back to our board because it's a very important aspect dentin is a very large part of the ridership the universities are a very integral part of this i've taken personal um time to make sure that we're engaged with the universities that we understand what they're doing what their challenges are financial um what what they're doing with development student housing because it's it's it's shaped so much of the of the transit system so i i appreciate that answer and again trying to move on to my question here um the uh and i i agree with you 100 that it takes a number of different approaches to get the best possible fit to get the right fit and serve people the best way um but i'll ask a question that i've asked you before um i'd appreciate just as direct and brief an answer as you can possibly give and i've asked uh this question of staff before if our farebox receipts are so low and we have a ridership issue why are we charging for the bus why don't we if we have some small number of fixed routes make them free and then charge a fare for the direct get you door almost door-to-door service and then we'll see then we'll see if ridership goes up on the free buses then we know that what the issue was and if it doesn't like i predict it'll stay about the same or maybe even go down and people are willing to pay 75 cents to to get a door-to-door uh service why don't we do that why are we charging for these buses um and why don't we right size the buses themselves and why don't we right size the fare to the amount of money we're paying for these buses i feel like i'm already paying a good bus ticket price uh in my tax my sales tax dollars why not open the buses up for free thank you for that question um i'll make it short so your feedback is something that we did and it proved itself out well we actually lowered the the average fare and ridership increased and our our revenue increased so it's not illogical at all transit authorities use that supply and demand retail they do it all the time you lower fares more people tend to use it fare policy is something that transit authorities work on with the board because it does impact our revenue it's something that we can certainly discuss with our board most transit authorities do not um by nature give away the service because there's some other issues with just making sure that people aren't using it as a form of shelter not as a form of transit so i think across america through apta most agencies don't do it but some have and so it is a it's something that we should we should consider and have a discussion about thank you for that input okay um so we've been at it about an hour and 45 minutes so i'll just tell you and we're on item a so uh those as you need to take a break throughout the remainder of this the meeting do so at your leisure because we're not stopping uh we'll stop at uh when for dinner but other than that just giving everybody full disclosure that i'm not taking any breaks uh so adjust your schedule accordingly um and with that uh so everyone's spoken once uh so i see indications to do it again uh so and then i'm gonna ask for succinct answers if you would be so kind from the dcta side and i'm gonna ask for questions i think we've all uh everyone's opined uh so so that we can keep it to getting q and a at this second round that'd be great uh so that we can make sure we get to the other things uh councilmem armature councilmember require uh thank you and i will be brief um i just wanted to respond to uh raymond's uh comments and and one of councilmember davis's comments just to say you know i i really appreciate uh your uh listening uh raymond and uh to you know what you're hearing today um and uh appreciate you know this openness uh to looking back on on this with with new eyes i want to second um councilmember davis's you know suggestion about uh explore question about you know exploring you know reducing uh rates even further you know for me free public transportation uh would be the ideal you know for me that's the goal um but of course you know we also have to look at are the what are we giving people for free and i think now part of what you're seeing is a city council that's really invested in public transportation um obviously we all have a lot to say about it you know whereas councils in the past might not have um and so you're getting all this this new direction i just wanted to say i really appreciate uh and i understand this sense of going back and forth you know that you've been experiencing as dcta staff um but i think and hope that ultimately these you know changes will be will be positive if we're representing the people and not experimenting on them thank you for your input councilmember mcguire thank you mayor um so the issue of of declining ridership has come up quite a bit um but i i don't know that we've discussed much um what has driven that um you know i know councilmember davis um you know brought up the the issue of fairs um and suggested that perhaps if if fares were lower or non-existent ridership might go up um i i would like to suggest as well and get get your perspective on um you know headways uh and um transportation to and from stops a great deal of which is the responsibility of the city more than it is dcta um i mean do is it your opinion that if headways were shorter ridership would go up on fixed droughts headways uh shorter headways always help more frequency the the less people have to worry about getting or sitting at a stop certainly helps um so so headways are important i do believe that there is a point where it doesn't matter how much service you put there it's not going to improve ridership because the whole concept of origin and destination really is part of that equation when transit planners look at where folks need to go as an example you can put in a train system but if you don't if the city's not the cities along that that corridor are not developing therefore there's no reason to get on or off your ridership's not going to change over time no matter how much you advertise no matter you know what you do there so it it truly is a partnership between the city the um multiple uh folks within the or the city social services businesses and we gosh nicole and her team spend so much time um working with businesses talking to them we're just in a very interesting time and why fixed route you're seeing such a a a shift from even some of the larger transit authorities in north america to more mobility on demand because it does solve some significant issues it does solve the on-time performance issues you can get around a construction zone so much easier where you can't do that with a fixed route service so again i'm going to go back to the comment where uh if you design the system properly with the appropriate frequency of a bus service and you design it in such a way that it's accessible with on demand i think you solve or we can solve a lot of problems that we've had from a from a efficiency and effectiveness perspective from a financial perspective i'll say uh but also and more importantly because transit in north america is not a money-making proposition it is a service and i don't want to be talking at you as a as a council but um this isn't only true in the u.s there's other countries the united kingdom actually makes profit off the transit systems but it's a very different very densely populated continent in the u.s it's an asset it's a question of how you want to design that asset to make it to to bring the qualitative things that you want for your city and we have to do it together sorry i know you want me to be brief but transit philosophy and how to shape something isn't always a short answer and so i want to be respectful not only of your time but i want to be respectful of the question that you ask so that i can provide you with the best answer possible okay um any other questions um i'm in oh well i just want to um also clarify um kind of the the the input that i gave earlier um you know of course um fixed routes should be flex should have flexibility should change over time um with shifting uh you know population centers and mobility patterns um and i do think that that the the proposed um go zone uh program could be a great um tool for helping us determine what those changing mobility patterns look like um but i i um yeah i just want to reiterate my um uh support for keeping something resembling our current fixed bus route system obviously it's not something that should be carved in stone and can never change but um i think that significant cuts um are something that i am not in favor of okay any other questions seeing none um let me see um so here i will uh so that the chair uh your board chair can have the uh full slate i'll give you my my thoughts but for staff simplicity uh to keep it easy for them to carpet compartmentalize the follow-ups that i've noted from the discussion thus far has been one uh a uh follow-up with the conversation of a driver uh initiated ride or hailed services mayor pro tem mentioned so if you could follow back up with an answer to that i think that remains unaddressed and then uh comparables that uh for the on-demand transition that councilmember back touched on so that's that so that that's segmented then i have kind of questions and just to kind of frame it for me and again i'll try to keep the questions uh brief uh and so the question is who makes the final decision on how this is implemented is that the dcta board member cities and their councils who makes the final who's going to vote on what's finally approved the dcta board is waiting to vote on july 22nd if we have significant public comment that would necessitate modification to the program we would hold an earlier board meeting with the board to discuss those modifications in an effort to fully modify the plan and bring it to them on july 22nd for approval perfect and so for those watching and those watching this that so i'm just redirecting people to the right source right to get their voices heard to get their actions addressed this body won't vote on that final uh decision that's right okay just wanted to make sure that's out there uh then um so you and t is a client of dcta is that my understanding yes okay got it and then um let's see uh your slide 13 um raymond was very good it just kind of had the three kind of where we are now and to the far right it was kind of where we're going but i i was a little confused so forgive me is that all under phase one that those changes were having or those changes kind of in that phased approach i just couldn't make that connection phase uh thank you for your question uh the the one that's on the far right is what's being recommended by the board of directors which is what's being communicated to the public is that would be the phase one implementation is the add-ons that would go into effect on september 7 got it okay got it thank you uh and then the bus drivers come up and and and so currently you touched on it but i want to just confirm so you said the bus drivers have always been contract labor not employees of dcta is that is that did that pivot did they become employees currently or where are we so for the first 10 years they were contracted out to first transit who was a third party private entity over the last two plus years we uh we moved them into a local government corporation so the local government corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary if you will of dcta but it's still an independent third party has its an independent board so it is still um they're they're not sharing in the same benefits and insurance policies and that thing as you would as an employee of dcta that was done potentially as a transition to some of this new technology and services but i would say for the for the last 10 years and then the last two years those employees have never been a direct employee of dcta under the leadership of the board or under my leadership authority right and so and is there a contract in place currently or is it kind of what's the contract correct so dcta um has an interlocal agreement with the north texas mobility corporation for mobility services okay and how long is when does that contract expire sorry that contract i believe was a seven-year contract and it was signed two years ago i would let me let me follow up with the exact timing but i believe that it was a seven-year contract got it and and i want to just kind of just put a put a pin in what you just said raymond because i think it's noteworthy if if anyone has gone to the grocery store understands that there's not as many grocery store clerks as it used to be due to technology you go into mcdonald's there's technology that has replaced employees so that i mean it's it's a it's a it's an issue across all industries right i mean it just technology has a way of helping and hurting at the same time and so that's that's good and then you answered my question about the phone's service and connectivity and then you answered that okay great so that's my my questions and so for your for your board notes for the board and then we'll turn it over to uh the the um board chair and and these are extensive i just kind of picked up from everyone's kind of notes so bear with me but i i think here's here's what highlights to me that the the pivot the change the benefits um there are concerns but the benefits are safety people will have to wait outside in 100 degree temperatures and rain etc currently and and so it moves people from having to do that i see people all the time and for those watching i would i would advocate you see people walking down the street from the dollar general store from areas that are that have uh food deserts carrying tons of plastic bags that they have to walk down the service road where we don't have a sidewalk and so visualize that and visualize the opportunity to remove that concern and at the same time get a large bus off the road that then has environmental hazards so every time you're driving around the city of denton and you see a person carrying a poor person that's and i say poor and it's unfortunate that it's in the situation that they have to walk with a whole bunch of bags from the grocery store to their to their home we can replace that and and that's to be celebrated that's to be that's to uplift those people every time you see someone that unfortunately has to take the shopping cart home with them i don't begrudge them if it's raining and you don't have another means of transportation that that's a cost to the grocery store to lose that that piece of equipment we can then have a service that says hey it's easier for me to call this service than to take this shopping cart home with me you know and so there's opportunities to to make our business partners and the citizens we serve whole uh and so and then service more area what's here's what's been missing and here's what's stuck with me from a conversation from our last conversation here's what i heard i heard from someone in south ridge area that says there's no buses over here right this group just kind of overlooks the fact that you know what there's people that need service in the south ridge area it may be have larger homes than the rest of us but that the need remains the same it it knows no barriers that way and so we don't have fixed bus routes over there you know so it allows us to serve our entire entire community with with with with the the ride service they need and so that to me is to be celebrated um and so those are things um that jumped out at me initially and then you look at the the the conversation came up about the pandemic every business on the planet has changed due to the pandemic that's not unique to dcta and it's interesting to me that this that the the words were saying hey we can't look at this as a look at it as a singular moment but at the same time when you're talking about utilities now all of a sudden we're changing everything because of the pandemic because of not the pandemic but the the winter storm so it's a one it's a 10-year event the winter storm that now we're saying we have to change everything we do but at the same time we're not afforded that opportunity or that that same grace or that same understanding is not extended to this bus service to say hey the pandemic has had lasting effects we could not get margaritas to go but now you can get margaritas to go because of this and so there's systematic wholesale changes that have happened that won't go back you know remote work more people are working remotely now and that will not we'll never go back to the to where we were pre-pandemic there are just more opportunities to work remote there's efficiencies and so to yes that's a fact the pandemic has lasting effects that's not nothing that's not anything new and then i'll tell you them the employee side of things is important to me no question but more important to me is that we we are efficient with our sales tax dollars and for those watching we the city of denton is on pace round numbers 14 million dollars goes into dcta regardless of what how it's spent that's just it's a fixed number that the citizens have didn't voted on it's not this council it was the entire city went and voted and said this is what we want to have in place and it's a fixed number that goes and so it's a it's incumbent for me to make sure we get as much efficiency out of that and that's why i'm grateful for the grant programs and the other opportunities to to kind of show value to our community so that's important to me and then let's see got that got that i think raymond your point about the seasonal issues is is so significant right i mean that's a business model where you have where you're on and you're you have 40 000 students on unt's campus and then you know seven months later you don't and and to have that bath you have to be able to be flexible any business owner any anyone has to be flexible in that way and this this i think gives you that flexibility to have the high level of service but at the same time understanding the business models is difficult to manage and let's see got that so i'm just making sure i touch on everything i think another thing that's important to me i live in southeast end right and i was there when carolyn phillips was uh this is before y'all's time but she was she was very concerned about dcta and that bus station that's going on that's in our neighborhood right and so i think it's important to note less buses less traffic less maintenance you know and i know i'm not saying dcta has done a great job of that sound dampening and facing everything away from the neighborhood but it's still noteworthy to say there would be less bus maintenance traffic etc that's to the benefit of the willow creek neighborhood and those that face your facility regardless of how how well you've dampened the sound and done those things and planted trees i i commend you on all those things but at the end of the day i still think uh that willow creek neighborhood is benefited by by that less traffic you know uh and and environmentally it's also a benefit uh so that's important to me um and then uh touched on that touched on that yeah yeah i think that's the the just of it uh from from my perspective so i will turn it over to um mayor watts as our as our board chair and then any closing remarks you have uh from your end raymond and and we will move on to the next item okay sorry about that yeah i had to navigate the technology i apologize for that first of all thank you for all the valuable feedback um i think it's good for us to get together and hear what the concerns are just just to correct or to to place some facts out there that i believe uh are not known number one this initiative was not based upon post-covid numbers this initiative was looking at ridership numbers and trends over the last three or four or five years and seeing that sales tax uh and budgets for bus service were going up while ridership on a train and bus service was going down uh non-unt students in other words those riding the buses in den i can only speak for den uh who are non-students in other words take the student ridership out of it well actually it's across the whole bus system both lewisville holland village and any contract services uh the last numbers i remember where we were moving about a thousand to twelve hundred people per day throughout the entire bus system excluding unt students a train was about 900 to a thousand or 1200 people uh per day now when you see these 2.3 million passengers there's a formula there and most of those probably at least half or more are unt students so i just want to make it clear that this is not about basing this on post-covid numbers this is and there was a comment made that yes there are some people that are dependent upon buses i'm gonna i'm gonna change that last word there are people who may be dependent upon public transportation and so dcta's job is to how can we provide the most convenient cost-effective method for all citizens but especially those who are dependent upon public transportation i remember on many instances where a woman came before the city council who was one of these individuals dependent upon public transportation at that time the buses who had to cross underneath the i-35 bridge to get to work over in razor ranch because it was a fixed route so i couldn't imagine that if this this person had an opportunity so i think that uh this is great feedback to take back to the board uh but i i just want to make sure that when we that we base this upon the facts that are on the ground we i would encourage all of you to get that study and read it through from the consultant because the fixed route the fixed routes that were proposed to be uh altered or changed or eliminated carry 10 or less people per hour now that doesn't necessarily mean 10 or 10 individual different individual people it just means 10 people got on and it could have been the same person uh a couple of times so i understand the concern but i've worked with uh certainly i've worked with city councils who are just as invested in public transportation as you all are and i appreciate that you are and i appreciate your interest and i certainly appreciate your feedback so i would really encourage you to get that study because i think that i'm confident i'm more than confident that we can meet the needs of those who are impacted because those same people are also impacted by fixed routes or by fixed route bus service they may not have the right times as far as headways bus service headways are very expensive as you increase or as you decrease the headways with on demand whether it's a combination or however it's configured that cuts it in half almost and gets you closer to your destination so i just simply ask that you pull the study look at the facts because some of these things that uh some of the comments have been based upon i'm not so sure are uh exactly accurate and that's not your fault that that could be our fault by not making sure that we've got enough out there to uh present that so i'm excited about uh the conversation i'm excited that no matter what happens we're going to be able to provide better public transportation more efficient public transportation and let me say quite frankly i'm the one that after the last mayoral election realized we were paying some money but for some reason our people were not riding the bus but i will say dcta has responded the best if they can before i even became on the board to meet the needs of the member cities when they ask them to just like they have with the special route from i daily bread to monsignor king just like they did when they asked for shuttle service out to the speedway for vaccination so i'm very confident that the organization no matter what path they go if they if they go ahead and move forward with the path if we move forward with the path that we uh that we've described and that was presented to you that we will find a way that will assist those people who may be impacted in a way that makes it better for them than a fixed out system so i would encourage as you hear the concerns i hope that you are emailing those specific concerns of what if they don't have a smartphone what if they don't have a credit card what are they going to pay some of those specific questions that we heard today to email those to dcta staff so that we can continue to brainstorm because it's not our intent to leave anybody out at all uh in fact it's the opposite it's to say how can we bring more people in and there was a comment made that this program was being just implemented for the middle class well i i just reject that this program is being implemented for all the citizens of vinson to make sure that we meet as many needs as we can in this regard because in the end we had a strategic meeting and they asked us all what is the vision of dcta you know we laid out economic development we laid out you know climate to get you know to try to get some of these diesel buses off the off the streets because we were concerned about the environment and there was one other thing well mine was we got to move more people we've got to transport more people because if we don't transport more people all those other things are meaningless and to get to one of the council members comments about that via doesn't have the capacity to carry the number of people that have bused us that may be true in five or ten years right now they have more than adequate capacity to carry our pre-covid numbers and to provide closer stops quicker times and just like in this situation i mean the mark of a good organization is you are able to be nimble and move with the times so somebody said this is a permanent thing i don't you know we talked about a pilot and a permanent there's nothing permanent i mean you can implement this and if all of a sudden you've got people riding everywhere well then you can find a way to meet that need so i i really just encourage you to uh if you haven't read the study read the study look at some of the historical data from four or five years back about ridership sales tax because what we're charged with on the dcta board is how do we move people in an efficient way and provide everyone an opportunity for public transportation so again the feedback was invaluable i'm glad that everybody's engaged because i think we've got some good things to talk about and look forward to those conversations and thank you mr mayor i know i went a little bit over but i appreciate your accommodation yes sir thank you and and raymond before before i turn it over to you for closing remarks i'll note that to staff fair points if you could email the study you may have already done so but staff if you'll get that to us and then also staff city staff if you could help us by creating a graphic to direct comments to the dcta you know get with dcta get whatever email address is best for them and let's put that out on the social medias because what i what i really want to avoid is someone emailing me and i miss it or and their their comments not be heard they need to send it to the body that's going to make the decision to ensure their comments their suggestions are received and i don't want to be uh i'll just put it on myself i don't want to be a cause for someone's concerns not being heard so i want to make sure we have a graphic that displays and educates the public where they can reach out uh and and have those comments and get questions answered and lastly i i think that's a great point and it's a miss on my part i i certainly thank dcta for their role they played in the vaccination center and getting people i mean i volunteered out there a couple of times and it was just beautiful to see uh you know the buses of few people properly distance uh you know so thank you very much for being a great partner in that way and then i'll turn it over to you uh for your for closing comments thank you thank you mayor i just on behalf of dcta and our board i appreciate all the invaluable input that you provided the fact that there's so many opinions about uh transit it was said earlier means that you you care and this is a vested council and i will echo the the board chair's comments and i will i will say that he is correct and i did mention that the trend in ridership across the nation has been trending down which is why transit authorities across the nation have been looking for more effective and efficient ways to provide transit we believe via is a great partner can provide a lot of opportunities to improve and enhance our communities that we serve and i do believe that they are an important part of the future of transit moving forward so rest assured that we will take this information under a very strong consideration we will get that report out to you because i think there's a tremendous amount of valuable information a lot of strategies at the board took a lot of thought and comments and input to create the what they felt was the the important strategies technologically and from a service perspective that we needed to focus on over the course of the next several years and so i think that's a great idea i do appreciate the board chairs uh input not only while he's been on the board but when he was mayor because he did challenge dcta to say look we need to be more effective and we need to be more efficient and it goes back to my earlier point that if the service hasn't changed in 10 years uh and the city around us continues to change it's obvious and evident that during my leadership we we made significant strides not just in this area but many others um and and one of the main focus has always been from from our perspective as staff and as the the ceo dcta to bring value back to our communities and we do that by making it more accessible more available and at the end of the day the board chair's comment is absolutely correct that it's all about ridership if we're not moving people then the rest of it really doesn't matter and so we have to stay focused on that thank you very much for this time i really appreciate the the input and uh we'll we'll get back with our board and and chart a path forward thank you okay thank you very much have a great day thank you nicole okay uh that concludes item a takes us to item b which is id 21451 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding fy 2021 2022 departmental budget presentations for community services uh city council city manager's office public affairs dtv legal and animal services good afternoon mayor council cassie ogden director of finance just here to kick off our department presentations for today we do have five that the mayor just listed and with that i will hand it over to danny shaw to start the community services presentation good afternoon mayor and council i will bring up the presentation all right um today we'll be talking about our community services budget uh cortney is here with me louisa got to go on vacation this week so uh we'll try to answer your questions as best as possible without her and this is a view of community services organizational chart it does show a bit more how we operate rather than just the traditional hierarchy and is representative of all the different services that we're providing within the different staff functions to go through our budget overviews um for 2021 a few of accomplishments we'd like to share obviously code was a big impact on our work uh really since february of 2020 and initially right after the covid event there was some funding that came available very quickly and we're pretty proud that we were able to secure the first round of funding from the cares act for the 1.4 in esgcv and we are administering that now and then we also did receive additional funding through the cares act for cdbgcv which we're in the process of expending the 1.4 million covid also put us in a lot of situations where we are working with our partners in the community to assess community needs related to our covid activities and so we've done significant amount of work with that uh from the initial response to congregate shelter activities and opening up the hotels to make sure we had appropriate social distancing and to prevent the spread of covid until now where we're working with additional funding resources for eviction prevention and rental assistance we also had the opportunity to complete our affordable housing assessment phase one which we presented to council the first phase of that was just the analysis report that's giving a lot of data to council to make decisions on the next steps which we're initiating as well which is phase two which we do expect to also finish before the conclusion of this fiscal year and then ultimately the completed the design phase and received notice to proceed from council on the loop 28 project moving forward loop 28 project is going to be a significant amount of our work and the finalization of the the affordable housing strategy and toolkit the next three bullets are really combined but a lot of our work is going to be then next even though we're working through the loop 28 project our next steps in strengthening our housing crisis response system once that facility is underway but also in our free time working on our ability to to innovate and look at program opportunities as we're learning from our data and building opportunities from that to to make sure that we're including process improvements and iterating along the way a lot of our work over the last couple of years has been to understand how we work within the organization so it's always been a goal of ours to increase that coordination effort across with all the different departments that we impact so we'll go through our budget highlights later but just really quickly we wanted to show a reflection of all of the funding and all the projects and programs that we're managing so when we look at the budget highlights you'll just be looking at general funds impact in our administrative and operations but this is really the work that we're doing around all the different types of projects that we're managing and so hopefully it shows council a little bit more detail specifically about how the projects are being implemented with the funding available a little bit more on our workflow and our metrics i just wanted to show council the growth and the amount of work that we're doing we certainly kept legal very busy this year with some additional items that we've taken to council in the contracts that we're managing with the addition of our new funding sources as well as the projects that we've added in the improvements in our housing crisis response system over time and then there's a little data about code enforcement here that wanted to show just um to kind of talk about some of the differences that we're seeing the number of cases that has lowered a little bit over the last couple of years um but it wanted to focus on our voluntary voluntarily abated cases we're still at 96 compliance with a new process that we implemented which is a seven day courtesy period so 60 of that now is within seven days without any notice of violation or any impact to the resident in order to get those code cases abated and then there's a little bit of change over the last year with those that were complaint versus proactive so our complaint have have risen a little bit and our proactive has decreased but i think that's just a view uh with our smaller uh smaller size staff we do expect that we'll be continuing to manage additional grant funding through because of covid through the arpa and then the home funds over the next couple of years and we expect that we'll be taking on more with our neighborhood services such as the neighborhood empowerment program grant this is hopefully to give council a view of how the funds are being allocated by different focus areas with our public services our administration number three our homelessness prevention homelessness and prevention activities our housing rehabilitation activities and then our public improvements being the three highest in our in our work of how we invest the funding overall right now that's about 10 million dollars invested in projects will benefit about 40 000 different residents depending on the different activities and we work with about 27 community partners most most commonly local nonprofits in order to make impacts in these areas with the funding that's available so our budget highlights today just to kind of focus on our personnel services budgets remained relatively consistent our materials and supplies budget you'll see some fluctuations i just wanted to highlight a couple of things here pardon me the uh the estimate in our 2020-21 is a bit a bit lower um than our budget that's because of cost savings that we've implemented some because of covid some because of just efficiencies we've been able to coordinate but it does go up in our budget this year because we are now from a philosophical perspective allocating a little bit more of our grant our federal funding towards the general fund for just admin materials and supplies and to make sure that more of those funds go to help residents then our miscellaneous is really relatively consistent you'll notice the estimate is a bit lower and that's just because there haven't been any requests for the development fee grant this year as of yet for the for the 250 000 that's allocated and then the modest increases are really what council generally allocates towards the human services grant excuse me our operations relatively consistent as well and then so our our budget is just slightly increased but really it's a decrease over the previous years with internal transfers and insurance being slightly higher than our previous years for our full-time equivalent summary community development does have six staff in its area three of those are federally funded and then community improvement services had has 11 staff at the beginning of 2019-20 but we're now at seven so our total fte is currently for the division are 13 i just wanted to point out here too that that 11 is actually started that year at 15 so community improvement services has seen a you know a significant decrease in the number of code officers available for services and then we've taken additional responsibilities on over the year especially in covid with the disaster declaration enforcement of mass and then a couple of other things with the response to the hotels so i think we've done well to manage the resources we have but we're certainly seeing more impact on our services as we've gone along for our budget request this looks maybe slightly different than what was in the presentation we did remove one of our supplemental requests we think we need a little bit more time to do some research and refine that and then we have one request for a full-time for our neighborhood services coordinator position that we'd like to add to our division to take some of those responsibilities on both from what staff are already doing but also to add a few additional responsibilities as we grow what we're doing within the neighborhood services area so with that i'll take it down answer any questions thank you all right questions for staff councilman mcguire and council member armature thank you um uh first of all i thank you for the presentation thank you for the work that you do for our residents um i'm interested in um uh staffing particularly in in the community services area um do you feel um that that the the additional staffing that you've requested is adequate because it seems like there has been a pretty significant decrease in staff at a time when um need is increasing well i'll answer it this way this is the request we felt like was available and we are working with the city manager's office to look at some other options that might be available to us in the future for the increasing demand that we're looking at so i think that we would you'll probably be looking at additional uh proposals uh just at the timing of this this was the one that we could really identify as the most pressing need i see thank you um and you know i i also want to say that um i'm pleased to see um kind of the trends i wish i could remember who said this i feel like this is a quote if somebody recalls hearing this before tell me who said this but that the budgets are a moral document um and uh i i feel like um dentin residents both in in their verbal and written communications with us but also in the way that they've voted um have really communicated to this council that the work that your department's doing is of a high priority and is something that they want to see um additional investment in uh an increased investment in uh over the years so i i hope that we can um continue these trends of investing more heavily in the valuable services that that um that your your department provides thank you okay councilmembers yes so i want to second uh that quote i was definitely definitely not the one who coined that phrase but i have used it um to say that uh budgets city budgets are moral document all budgets are uh and the the values and the goals of community development are goals that are essential uh to to us as the city uh to dentin is the city um they're certainly essential uh to to me and i have heard them too um i know that the uh housing consultant won't be till august uh but it is shaping up to look like you know they are already recommending uh a a bigger investment in brick and mortar housing among a number of other things and to me community development would seem to would be the obvious department um to which you know funds would have to go to to make that happen so i hope that uh supplemental budget requests aren't you know finalized until uh we we hear from them from that consultant on our affordable housing needs and council has a chance to discuss you know what that means um for prioritization of funds to community development i i continue to see this as this department is the one department in our city that is not funded uh to meet its goals um it we are uh you know by anyone's admissions we're not meeting the the goals that we're supposed to do in community development and as i see it it's because we're not um you know putting our money you know where our mouth is in this area uh so anyway um i support the request for a neighborhood services coordinator uh and you know look forward to additional supplemental requests having to do with actual brick and mortar housing i'm wondering just one question um uh is is there uh any need do you think for a room for a uh housing department within community development or is that just encompassed uh or is housing just neatly encompassed within the department that's how we're already organized yes so we do i mean housing is the focus of our housing's program to manager for the programs that we offer through our federally funded programs okay thank you so if so there's no need so for the city to dispense hud funds or any other grant funds you know there's no need to create some sort of other entity or to have some other entity serve as a uh middle middle person no i don't i don't think so i mean we're we have it in our our growth and our goals to continue to do housing focused uh programs in the three areas that we're in so i think it's just growth within what we're already doing that would be the potential thank you council member um one question is your area just this is area rehab houses speaking of housing your area this area just rehab houses or do do you have opportunities to build homes does it work yeah that would be eligible under the under the federal funding um either through the city or through investment in a partner who does that and so right now we primarily focus on rehabilitation and minor repair and even our partner where we're working with debt and affordable housing corp on projects with them it's generally real rehabilitation although this year they're going to be requiring acquiring housing but it will be existing um we've attempted to run some infill programs and some other things like that in the past um but as you know the the federal funding that we have is limited and hasn't we haven't been able to identify properties or projects that you know would we would be able to purchase with the cost of land or the cost of taking over a property at this point thank you okay any other question counselor bet come here uh danny first i'm going to give you huge credit for having the only org chart uh that is topic based in the venn diagram i love that i hate tree-based org charts they suck um and i like that it's my nerd sticking out right there no very much kudos and the reason i like it is that it immediately points out um you know all the projects that you're involved in and it immediately points out an issue that counselor maguire raised which is the the the too many hats um concern um you know you have to take on the project you have to take on that's part of the services that that you provide uh but i do love that it clearly points out that uh um there is a lot of projects and that you know you're expanding those projects and yet at the same time your fts are going down so i i would encourage um you know budget proposals to to as counselor maguire and others have said to be aware of that and and uh you know maybe maybe take that to heart and so i i support that at least the fte's that you're proposing so thank you thank you okay any other questions for staff seeing none uh thank you very much i appreciate it danny great job thank you sir uh-huh good afternoon mayor and council this is rachel walther at mendoza and i will present for us this afternoon city manager's office budget okay here we go like i said i'm rachel balfort mendoza assistant to the city manager sarah keichler is also here with me should we have any extra questions this is your basic organizational chart here with uh interim city manager sarah hensley leading the uh chief executive team here that we show little budget overview for us so some some 2021 accomplishments that the office um had were that the office led the city through constant changes brought by the ongoing covid 19 pandemic we also led through the emergency response to winter storm uri this past february we responded to 711 city council requests over the last year and we held 25 city council meetings with 520 total agenda items over a six month period from october to march for the goals for 21 22 we're right now already implementing a safe return to the office work strategy for all the departments we'll continue to of course coordinate covid 19 health and safety response programs with our community partners we will continue to execute city council priorities and our responsiveness to council and community requests also we will realign and and realign the organization to streamline more operations some highlights here for us so as we can see we we the just the basics that we've been seeing throughout the other departments our personnel services takes into account the the three percent and excuse me less than the three percent for the salary differences and for 2021 hour on the miscellaneous expenses here this does include some increases for elections expenses and then the operations also includes now two legislative consultants and extra occasions where we needed to call in some translation services just to give a little bit of background there i'll continue on this just shows shows the city council budget highlights if you have any questions here but nothing major changing over the course from year to year for the fte summary we have 11.5 and we are requesting one additional fte for the next fiscal year that will be with rosa's team the records mecca excuse me records management specialists that jobs responsibilities will be to help support rosa and her team as they continue to prepare agenda and respond to public information requests and again the budget request is for that one records management specialist for the full fte now taking questions for us great any questions for staff councilman beck yeah i i just wanted to uh publicly apologize to rachel and sarah i didn't mean to to insult their org chart um by praising danny's um i i just really like danny's your org chart is fine no you're that's okay thank you but it um she does it danny does a great job you're absolutely right uh okay any other questions comments for staff councillor maguire thank you um so you mentioned that um i miscellaneous costs um included uh like occasional translation services um and i know that we're about to probably have a little bit of a conversation with public affairs and dtv about increasing accessibility uh for residents or employees or anybody else who needs to interact with the city um who either doesn't speak english or maybe has a disability um is is there a need for um for the city manager's office to uh have expanded access to translation or interpretation services or is that something that kind of would fall more under public affairs i can answer that rachel it would it would fall more under public affairs and you're going to see a breakout when you see that budget of the options that we we can that we're offering council so that we can either increase our translation services you know um all the different uh you know offerings that would be available to make um our our community more engaged thank you i'll bring it up then thank you he's next okay uh questions comments staff okay seeing none thank you rachel sure afternoon mayor city council let me pull up this presentation and we'll get started good afternoon okay my name is ryan adams i'm director of customer service and public affairs and i will be leading you through the public affairs and dtv budget presentation just a quick rundown of public affairs leadership uh i am the director we also have two managers a communications manager justin harman who manages a lot of our broad-based communication efforts and we also have billy matthews who is on vacation and escaped this presentation uh he manages all of our broadcasting our public meetings uh how they get out to uh to denton through our streaming service and our cable channel and also our videography so we make videos that we often post to social media that is his team and he is in charge of that so uh knowing this is an imperfect uh organization chart uh this is our team we have 11 total employees including the director most of those are under the communications manager and the dtv manager our digital strategies coordinator is another name for the person who manages primarily our website one of the projects that we are currently going through to update and bring the council a brand new website uh this winter so we'll get to the budget just a couple of accomplishments from the current fiscal year of course one of the big ones is managing uh the internal and external communications for our two significant events of course covid has been around and continues to be around and then our winter storm event that occurred last february and when we show you some metrics we'll show you a little bit of the impact of that storm a couple of the other uh events from this year of course we have talked about previously managing the uh work for the 87th session of the texas legislature which just concluded and we'll be bringing back to the council for more information throughout the summer a couple of new things that are in process and have been launched of course our website we are doing a complete redesign of our website that's going to have a lot of new features that are going to really make engagement and communication through the web a lot easier for the city and make it a lot easier for our residents to find information that they need in addition to that we have launched an engagement platform discuss denton so discuss denton.com is how you can reach it which is a way for us to better engage and really carry conversations with the community relating to projects topics and issues and so that launched here in may so it's about a month old right now going forward of course we are we're going to continue to try to curate really good social media oriented content uh content that draws people in and make sure that they know what's going on in the city and know what the city government is doing on their behalf. We are working to really broaden our reach from our crises that we had particularly the winter storm you know we've come to understand that having people already plugged into the city is very valuable when something critical happens and we have to push out communications quickly so we're going to be looking to really expand those who are following us on our various channels and who are kind of like I said plugged into to what we're saying and what we're putting out. One of the big things and you'll actually get more information on this when customer service does their presentation is we are going to be promoting and really communicating the value of the 3-1-1 system that we are going to be deploying over the course of the next year. Again more information will will come on that and what the mechanics of that is but that will really really update and and provide a new paradigm for how people can interact with the city make service requests and get information and then one of the things that I'll talk about with one of our supplemental requests is we do want to go through another citizen survey community survey. It's been about four years since we've done our last one which was in 2018 I believe and a lot can happen in four years and we need to find a statistically valuable way to gauge resident sentiment and so this is something that we want to go forward with in the next fiscal year. I won't describe everything here but this is just a snapshot of everything that public affairs does from media relations to video and broadcast to neighborhood engagement. Just a little bit of our metrics so I probably don't have to tell you what happened in February that caused our social media engagement impressions to just skyrocket. They were already high and have been high since the start of the pandemic but we had an all hands on deck event and it was a very valuable learning experience for how we can communicate during a crisis and so we are taking that and of course we have presented previously with regard to our winter checklist about what we're doing to to learn from that event and go forward. We have great growth in our social media followers so we are and we've done the same thing last year increasing on an annual basis by about 25 percent across most of our platforms. One thing I do want to point out with this one is actually Engage Denton so on the left column you'll actually see the most recent 12-month period and what our metrics are in terms of requests average days to close and the number of users and then on the right you'll actually see what we did the previous year before that so if you look we had a significant increase in requests but we have closed them out in a short amount of time on average with less people so if you look at the bottom with our staff users and I will say that it takes a lot of really quick closing of tickets and completion of these service requests to bring the average from 2.9 down to 2.6 days to close so a lot of requests got cleared out much faster than that and so we're very proud of our ability to be very responsive to residents when they use Engage Denton. Just quick budget highlights so to bring you to the bottom row our budget is not changing much from year to year I do want to point out that you do have some what will look like low numbers in the 2020 or pardon me 2020 to 21 estimates and and I'll note that a lot of our materials and supplies and operational items are dedicated towards construction communications postage paper things of that nature and of course the the construction season is really just getting started in earnest additionally we had some costs particularly our legislative consultants that did not come on until January February time frame and so we haven't realized a full six months or so of those costs in the current year. This is just a quick recap of our FTEs so we do have just a one reclass that occurred from a part-timer to a full-timer in DTV and now we'll get on to the the budget requests so as I mentioned before one of our supplemental packages that we are requesting is thirty thousand dollars to do a community survey and this is to gauge resident satisfaction what we would like to do going forward is to create an annual survey perhaps alternating every year between business and residence so that we're not measuring you know not much changes from year to year with residents but if we could alternate every year I think that'd be an effective way to to get that resident sentiment and then also the business sentiment and of course this would inform everything from how we communicate to our community to how the council creates its priorities and just understanding what people feel are are as important to them and and where the city should should apply its efforts. So we do have this slide what I'm going to call council option supplementals so these are actually being offered to the council we are putting them in this presentation but they are not sourced from public affairs but they are our source from requests by the council or individual council members or a committee and I'm just going to run through those they will be included with all the supplementals that the council will have to review and then I can answer questions on any of them because I believe this is our last slide. So one of them is a closed captioning solution so this actually came before council I believe a couple of years ago in 2019 and this was discussed by the committee on persons with disabilities and they gave a recommendation and requested the staff bring this forward as a supplemental request for both live and on-demand captioning so anyone watching say this meeting right now with this technology would be able to see the live captioning with a pretty high degree of accuracy and then as we put it on the website for later on-demand use and viewing we would have a more accurate captioning for that on-demand viewing. It would take within three to four days to get that more accurate caption service completed. The price you see of course there's a one-time cost for the technology the recurring cost we give a 75 meetings per year of closed captioning for a grand total of 55 for the first year and then of course ongoing would be about $30,000 in operational costs. So everything below captioning were items that were mentioned by several council members and so we just decided to go ahead and do the research and bring this forward. So we have actually two options for live Spanish translation for council meetings and so the first one is just budgeting in and having a Spanish translator ready to translate for every single council meeting and given our current interpretation contract we estimated that to do every meeting and at the length the meetings tend to go that would take about $60,000 in a given year. If we decided to do this by request we would kind of scale that back to about a quarter of the amount and this again is just an estimate and we would just have a bucket of dollars available so that if anyone requests Spanish translation for a particular meeting we could do that. We also add in the ability to additional remote production if you recall and some of you some of the members were on council at the time but we did have the ability through Swagat for their staff to actually remotely produce stream and broadcast meetings that it would not be done by our DTV staff. We had roughly five or six I believe boards and commissions who took advantage of that and this was all pre-COVID. If there's a desire for council to expand the number of meetings that are remotely produced it's possible to do that. They come in buckets of about 50 meetings with a recurring cost of $6,000 for a bucket of 50 meetings. The $50,000 line item is in the event we need to configure another space for remote production currently only the work session room is configured. The estimate to install the cameras get the technology going is a one-time cost of $50,000 which would be paid through our PEG funds. And then the last item is what we're going to call a public meeting attendant. There was a desire on I'll also say there was there was a comment by several council members of the possibility of keeping the call-in feature for council meetings going beyond the pandemic and having that be a permanent feature for resident comments on council agenda items. Going forward if that would be a permanent feature we would want to hire someone who could manage the incoming calls and ensure they get plugged into the meeting. We estimate that this would be a part-time position and we allocated about $20,000 of that ongoing personnel cost. So these are the council option supplementals. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about this or any other part of the presentation and I will pull my make sure I don't have another slide yes I'll pull my presentation down and stand for questions. All right questions for staff Mayor President Meltzer then Councilmember McGuire then Councilmember Bet. It's the last and probably the smallest item but on the public meeting attendant would it be possible to test it for a few months see if the public you know I mean beyond when we need to have it see if the public actually uses it before you you know commit to a year-round part-time position. I think that we could although we might council may get a feel for it as we move into our hybrid meetings when people have the option of coming in person versus calling that might give us an indication although if at the end of those hybrid meetings we still don't feel like we have a good read on it we could look at a one or two month call it a pilot period. Thanks okay Councilmember McGuire. Thank you first of all y'all have done such an outstanding job of managing the craziness of having everything online during COVID. I know that it's been a big burden on your department and I just want to thank you for managing that so well. Regarding the supplementals so the the survey I agree is definitely something that we should be doing as an avid user of Google forms. I had a little bit of sticker shock. Could you speak a little bit more to what that survey would entail and why it would cost 30 grand? Sure and this would be a continuation of similar surveys that we did in 2018. One of the critical things that we want to do when we put a survey out there is of course with a Google form you have individuals who take the survey self-select and it's very difficult to to get really a statistically valid sample. So it'd be hard for me to say this is representative of your community not representative of a neighborhood or a demographic. So what we do is we we get with a third party who manages all aspects of deployment manages the information flow coming in and provides a report and one of the advantages of doing that is they also do peer comparisons so we'll be able to see how we stack up with similar sized and similar situated cities on a lot of these similar uh you know common questions that you'll find in a lot of uh community surveys and so I think those are two of the values with going with a third party uh they they manage it and make sure that it is uh it's a good sample across the town across the city but also that we can get those comparisons as well that way you know if is is 68% metric is that good bad neither it's a lot easier to tell you when we compare with others. That that makes sense and and I would support um you know a a more robust uh survey than just a Google form uh so that we can get data that's a little bit more meaningful for sure um uh I I absolutely support um uh captioning services um uh the both the live and the the um sort of after the fact going in and making sure that it's accurate um I think it would it would have been great to have that during COVID um but I I know that your department um was was juggling a lot so um you know the the the sooner the better but um uh yes I would absolutely support that supplemental um I have some questions about um Spanish translation because sort of on principle um I I support the idea of of having Spanish translation just broadly available all of the time I do think that um it's it's the right of every Denton resident uh regardless of whether or not they speak English to both address the council and also to be able to watch council meetings and understand them and have access to to what's being said. Um can you speak to what would be involved in like the 60,000 for having live Spanish translation available at all meetings? Are we talking about a translator who's just on call in case somebody comes and wants translation? Are we talking about having somebody translate literally every single thing that we say like from inside the council chambers? Are we talking about subtitles on videos like what's included in that? So there's a little bit of of operational digging that we have to do to get to the details but essentially we we went through a little bit of this when we uh had meetings relating to Green Tree Estates uh so how we would envision it is we would require two uh interpreters so that they can trade off because as you can probably imagine it gets tiring after a bit and they would if you chose option a which is to have one here ready to go in the event someone requires it uh they would essentially uh speak not only into a we have devices a set number of devices where a an interpreter would speak into it uh and residents would be able to listen through a headset almost like those devices that you take and you hear descriptions in museums very similar to that uh and additionally we would likely uh have some sort of online call it a zoom meeting uh call it just any anything where you can call in and be able to receive a uh a kind of as it goes uh interpretation based on what's being viewed uh streaming one of the issues that we will have to figure out is that there pardon me is a delay between what's live and then what comes uh through the computer and so we will have to kind of work on that to see what the best route is and and if we need to to hire additional interpreters to be able to do that if it's desired to have both live and uh both live interpretation and interpretation for those watching at home did that answer your question sorry about that that did answer my question yeah um uh yeah and i i appreciate that there is um uh included in that a provision for um spanish-speaking residents who who just want to know what we're saying and don't necessarily want to speak before council because i feel like that gets lost sometimes in conversations about translation so thank you for for considering that um uh i i'm definitely in favor uh certainly in the short term of um having a public meeting attendant continuing on to facilitate um residents calling in um i i do uh like council council member uh mayor protem melzer's uh suggestion that that maybe that be done on a on a pilot basis sort of like once everything is back in person and we're through our hybrid period um you know seeing if if that's something that the public wants to continue um perhaps we could do something similar as far as um having a spanish translator available for every meeting regardless of whether um a resident has requested uh having a translator available to address council um if that makes sense it does it may be we would have to have two interpreters um so i think the cost would probably uh would probably be a pretty close to even on that regard uh and with a third party we would get redundancy so of course if our translators call in sick or one of them calls in sick we we have a backup from the service so i might recommend that we do stick with the third party on that one uh but but i do see your point if there's an opportunity just for efficiency's sake to to bring that in house that's something we would absolutely look at okay uh so then any other questions councilmember weir no that's all thank you thanks council member beck and then council member davis thank you mayor um brian i'm never going to live down that org chart comment i made earlier and now um that's i might as well start making t-shirts now um so one of the things i really appreciate about ryan's office is that he's the window onto the city of denton um he really is he's he's the public facing side and and it requires a tremendous amount of uh uh tolerance and and uh forethought at times and and we do have a great team i appreciate that and i i one of the things that i think that yuri and covet highlighted is the increasing uh tech demands that are being asked of your office and so i guess this is this is germane to your your budget supplement requests and overall budget requests like i don't really see your tech budget decreasing as as our as our population grows as our as our online presence grows as as your um public facing uh push approach rather than poll to use you know web parlance um increases um i don't do you anticipate have you seen any signs that it's flattening or are doing anything but increasing you know we continue to find way and our goal is to be efficient with how we use you know technology most of it is platform based internet platform based such as discussed it and being a great example or engaged in being a great example um we we try to find efficient ways to do it uh there is probably going to be a leveling out at some point uh as new technologies come on old technologies tend to drop uh however we've been very fortunate that we can continue to be nimble and make use of when we do make use of technology find something that's not just applicable to public affairs maybe library could use it too or parks and we can share those items because we all benefit from it uh but generally yes those those costs kind of probably with every city uh in the nation are going to go up over time just the state of how things are we're becoming a more digital world yeah and i agree with that i i it was a negative comment it was a supportive comment um and and so uh you know i i guess that it actually goes back to the comment i made to danny's office budget earlier and that was you know looking at your projects those are increasing uh your 3-1-1 system is increasing um or so first a rabbit hole sub question and that is is is 3-1-1 going to replace engage dentin in all likelihood it will uh yeah so i i really i do really i mean this is this is self-serving because i i one of my hats i work on a ticket desk partially but uh uh ticket desks really do help i mean you and i are going to be big proponents of that but they they really do help get the the issues and tasks oriented so i'm a big fan of of those i've said that publicly many times so um i i'd encourage you to actually expand that perhaps more than um uh you you represent it here simply because it's a way of increasing your your responsiveness like you said you you went from 2.9 to 2.6 um through efficient use of ticketing and i i love that uh in regards to um that sort of uh technology streamlining that you talk about in regards to um uh counselor maguire's question uh how are you using uh ai auto translation services or this is all human or we have legal requirements there or speaking in reference to just like things we may put out on uh social media or just general communications are you speaking specifically to council meetings um well i'm glad you clarified because a little of both i know that we have different requirements for you know you know it may be easier to uh translate a written document perhaps than than live speaking so maybe you you you and legal could address both a little bit i don't want to speak for legal but i think there are definitely some documents where we would like to have a a measured hand in the translation particularly legal documents financial documents uh anything perhaps election related to where you you don't want anything lost in translation um when it comes to crisis communications obviously you don't have the time to necessarily go out and do things so we we typically do is we have uh we get a start using some platforms everything from from google translate to one or two others that uh kind of give us a little bit of a varied translation and then we work with our internal staff to go through and make sure that it is it is accurate and and you know if three people on staff who are who are uh bilingual and and very um uh very experienced in reading documents and dual language if they all agree it's a good translation then we'll move forward with it uh that being said uh one of the things coming out of the winter storm is that we need to get a better handle on how we can effectively uh put certain things into a language in spanish uh particularly in a tight time frame and so we're going to be looking at any technology that gives us an edge on that so if you don't mind mr mayor let me can i can piggyback that on on the legal do we have requirements about that apologize do we have requirements about translation for uh sort of the difference that ryan was talking about um uh non-live uh translation versus synchronous translation whether we could use um ai tech technologies rather than um purchasing a human service you're talking about to translate in the course of a meeting not papers correct okay um off the top of my head i don't know that there's a specific requirement for how that's done the requirements that apply to your average shows like what's normally broadcast and has to be translated does not apply in our case so that requirement whatever requirement is there may be different for us okay and i don't want to rabbit hole us so i'll bring this up at some future point thank you okay uh any other questions for staff councilmember davis that's right thank you no problem just quickly weighing weighing in on the translation issue if this council wants to go forward with providing a spanish language translation in real time for meetings i'd caution against kind of a piecemeal approach uh if it's by request of course the question becomes who can request it if it's a council request because we think it'll be a certain item or whatever i would anticipate the council would probably request it more often than not and then also if it's something where um it's by citizen request i can tell you just from working in the courts sometimes something will show up and you don't expect them to be there and suddenly you need a translator and you've got to find one so unless you have a pretty good heads up if the service is just kind of a you know ad hoc as we need it um it may be difficult to pull that off on the fly i'd say if we weigh the cost and decide that it's what we want to do to have spanish language live translation um it probably makes more sense to go ahead and contract to have that all the time rather than uh on an ad hoc or as needed okay um councilor armature yes so about the spanish translation services i agree uh with council member davis's and council member maguire's uh points about just the the practicality uh of of having having someone there to translate at all times both for people who are there and as council member maguire emphasized you know for people who are watching uh both in real time and uh later uh people who might be calling in uh so uh anyway i i'm really excited about the supplemental budget items uh i i support them all including the additional remote capabilities uh the closed captioning uh and thanks so much to the committee on persons with disabilities uh for helping to push that forward i think that all of these supplemental requests fit with the new city value of inclusion or rather the new city emphasis on inclusion so i'm really excited about that i i wanted to uh to ask about um the uh time this department spends on media requests because i know that's a lot of what what you all do uh and there was a um in the recent friday report there was an item about a a media request and you know misunderstanding or something like that i i was wondering you know if you could speak to the amount of time spent on media requests and uh and and what can be done if you have any ideas to uh to streamline that you know to make sure that you know information can be uh given to media uh most efficiently without um you know having to go council member and i have to apologize you froze up there for the last bit so i i think it ended with you saying what can be done to get items to the media more efficiently yeah yes i don't want to speak for you oh thank you thank you and i apologize um avoid for instance you know avoiding the need to uh uh for the media to do public information requests you know or uh kind of you know shoring up um you know i'm thinking of the the recent uh uh item in a staff report about just you know uh just clarifying who uh you know which uh staff members requests are for um you know uh basically you know improving our on on all ends our uh you know relationship with the media and streamlining um these you know these lines of of communication because i know you spend a lot of time on it on it and it's a lot of work and important sure uh so in in question to answer your time that we spend with media request uh you know it varies uh very much so uh there's usually uh an average of anywhere from three to five uh story requests per week uh some of them are answered by our office uh pretty quickly others they require setting up a meeting with staff uh one to two days later uh generally we respond to the media within several hours if we're not able to so if there's an email that's pretty instantaneous uh at least an acknowledgement and letting them know that we're we're going to get the information they've requested uh if we can uh and then if it's a phone call generally there's a call back within one to two hours depending on staff availability so i would i would say i would characterize it as us being to all our media outlets uh incredibly responsive uh particularly with the uh influx of interest after the winter storm uh with dme and and dec related uh media stories uh in terms of of creating efficiencies uh so we we do work with the city secretary's office and the city attorney's office if there's ever requests where it looks like it may require uh a public information act that request and but generally our philosophy is if there's a way to provide it without a pia request we're going to do that certain items maybe they relate to personnel records may relate maybe they relate to other documents we at the very least need to keep a record of that request and when it was requested and by whom uh we will ask media to go through a public records request and we will return that as promptly as possible but that is a very very very small percentage of overall media requests okay well thank you so much and and once again i'm really excited about these supplemental budget requests and going back to this idea of city budgets as a moral document um i think that these requests uh all speak very clearly to you know the value of of inclusion and i really like having a having a budget shape up that that holds together from that perspective so thank you absolutely councilman Burke just real quick question i was just wondering um what is the if you've seen or uh an influence of other languages is there a next language that we need to keep an eye on have you noticed anything well i can tell you i'll be very interested when the census results come back uh later on this fall because i think that will give us a very uh accurate view of what the the next step languages are um as you know i believe the city of louisville has a pretty significant chin population and so they actually operate uh for important uh documents and and crisis communications uh they operate and have to consider uh three languages uh so it's something that we definitely want to look at when the census results come due all right any other questions comments for staff uh seeing none just run one note for me i think if there's a way to have efficiencies of fte's for example danny's group needed more and kind of community services that then also would parlay in the translations to some degree right and so if there's efficiencies amongst departments that we could kind of overlap i'd love to see that when you come back uh you know just kind of some ways to diversify the cost and and and uh get more uh get more bang for the buck if you will um mayor pertin melton yeah just sort of a process question and it may have already been covered uh for the budget as a whole are we going to see all the supplementals in some later session you know with a sort of uh add up in relation to revenues and the tax rate and then we'll be able to prioritize within them you know how's that going to work i mean all these things are good you know uh right but we've got to ultimately look at it holistically and make choices well i see that david is on and i think cassie is jumping on so you may get two folks ready to answer sure mayor pertin i'll answer first obviously cassie could jump in as well certainly uh you know obviously you're seeing kind of piecemeal right now the departments by department presentations all leading up to that proposed budget at the end of july and then august second is our budget workshop so it'll be our layout will be similar to what we've seen in past years where we say here are the supplementals that have already been included in the proposed budget and we'll also have a number of supplementals to discuss with council in adding to the proposed budget as presented i will say most just throughout all of the supplementals that you see during the department presentations will be in the proposed budget uh but we'll also be proposing other supplementals that are open for council consideration at that time as well so really all these presentations are leading up to that proposed budget so supplementals that we see in the departmentals will likely be in the proposed budget so i was kind of uh withholding comment just because like i said all these things are good there's always there's no limit to good things so you know uh but um so it sounds like you you we should be offering uh direction at this time not wait till we see all the supplementals because it's not going to be in the list of supplementals necessarily is that a fair uh you know i mean i think getting getting direction at this time it certainly helps us as we prepare the proposed budget but you know there is the opportunity throughout august and september as we present the proposed budget to to make changes based on council's feedback so we'll we'll have the presentation presented in that format to get your direction from the budget workshops and make adjustments and changes to supplemental packages at that time as well so so you have the full picture yeah i guess i would just say if uh if it's going to get baked into the proposed i'd like to still be able to see that it was presented as a supplemental now being proposed so that no if we have to solve for x we know what all the pieces are yeah and that's that's the way it will be presented exactly great thank you so much yep cassie did you did were you going to add to that or no okay i think david covered it great thanks councillor bett thank you mayor and and i think count uh mayor protem's point is is well taken um um i i i think you can see the example that the mayor gave he he was listing synergies uh that was excellent uh appreciate the mayor's comment that those synergies are available and and yet it becomes difficult to see those synergies without a comprehensive sort of um line item ranking uh where we can i mean i i don't want to put one department against another but you have to sometimes um and uh so i mean both the mayor and mayor protem i i i concur that if we could see a a holistic view um that would be helpful um otherwise yeah i'm gonna just say um you know ryan gets all the money and the rest of you can go uh pound sand so and if i may i again certainly agree and the intent of the department presentation is just to give the departments the opportunity to present their budget piecemeal but the the truth of the matter is we just don't know the full picture until the end of july when we get those appraisals from the from the appraisal district so that's why we're just leading up to that point to have that full conversation thank you great okay great any other questions and uh okay and david just a note i know if you come back to us with a proposal under 10 increase no just kidding no just kidding uh yeah i know you'll do great great things okay so uh that concludes that thank you ryan um so dinner is here for those here at city hall it's 5 20 now so we'll take a brief recess we'll come back for uh what i show to be legal and animal services to finish up this item but we'll take a 20 minute uh break we'll be back at uh it is 5 19 now we'll recess till five well it's 5 20 now recess till 5 40 and pick back up where we left off thank you welcome back to this meeting of the ditton city council it is 5 40 p.m uh and we uh do have a quorum we'll get started back we left off on item b and just for just in case that number is id 21451 we are to the legal portion of the budget presentations i do believe this will be our fourth presentation we have one following this so uh i will turn it back over to staff hello mayor and council mac ryan juan with the city attorney's office you go ahead and pull up the presentation here hello so just to get started i'm sorry council member beck but we're going to start with the this uh slide it's i do promise there will be no pie charts involved there's no pie charts in this presentation so um i want to spend a little bit of time on this because i think it tells the story of our office uh during the last year and we'll get into this a little bit more when we talk through accomplishments but we've had a lot of changes in the office over the year within the past six months we've had two attorneys retire and then two attorneys resigned to pursue other opportunities so um the experience cumulative experience of those four attorneys was about 100 years so uh with the departure of uh city attorney aaron layel we're currently at three vacant attorney positions in our office um the other side of that is we have also hired four attorneys during this year um i just want to highlight them quickly we have amanda brown who came to our office from the city of austin and she works on open records and public information act she also was helpful very much so with the legislature this year uh kayla garcia came from the city of little rock and his litigation attorney for office is the uh the only litigation attorney in our office kendra kennedy came to us from american airlines and works with the airport and the facilities folks and then marcel alone marcel alone came from big law she was at baker box and does procurement and contracts and has been very helpful in that area so we still have three empty positions like i said that we need to fill which presents a challenge and an opportunity for our office and we'll talk about that a little bit more so the accomplishments during the year obviously with covid we continued supporting the city and the council with declarations and orders throughout the year certainly as the council is aware the city had to continually adjust to changing conditions and gubernatorial orders so in the context of understanding the city charter and ordinances and state statutes and finding a path to protecting the public during this time frame we've been heavily involved in that it was also the winter storm uri which had its own separate declaration and order as well as very unique legal challenges associated with budget and finance as well as the resulting litigation department we've also helped the city council with interpretation of all the laws during this time we worked also remotely a great deal during this past year we think that we did so without missing a beat we did have some practical issues initially that we worked through such as getting signatures on documents and ordinances and resolutions but we worked through that and i think we have a more streamlined process now one of the major projects we worked on through the year was the mk oc and this just is a quick highlight of why it's good to have an office with so many attorneys that have so many specialties because this required so many unique levels of legal expertise to have various properties being transferred also working with the attorney general on getting approval for the financing there was also deed restrictions and errors and all kinds of issues associated with the properties working with non-profits in the counties land use issues there was just a lot involved so it's good to have an office where you can have three or four attorneys with different specialties jumping in and helping out we also worked on creating a standard set of documents to support the vertical and horizontal construction the city the city wanted to pursue new alternative delivery methods and so that required a whole new suite of documents and contracts so we worked through that and put those together as far as parliamentarians we've had five people in the office take and pass an exam to become members of the national association of parliamentarians in an effort to try to support the council and all the other boards that we advise as parliamentarians as i mentioned on the previous slide about half our office is new to the office so the knowledge transfer has been a real focus point for our office throughout the year i think we've been pretty effective in this we have been fortunate to have some attorneys be able to step in into areas that they had experience and be able to pick up and and so we didn't miss too many beats with having the support for the staff and the council there i think the bottom line on this is a lot of changes in the office a lot of vacancies in the office but we've asked our new attorneys to jump right in and we've asked all of our attorneys to take on additional work and we want to recognize and especially appreciate all the attorneys that have put in in hours and and the time to keep the city's work flowing so our goals for this next year um covid has helped us see some new ways where we can be more effective i think it's a theme throughout a lot of the presentations we realized that smartsheet we can use more effectively um there's some efficiencies where we could put together an interactive smartsheet to have collaborative workspace with the departments so we're we're working on that and and putting that into place we think there's some efficiencies with docusign and other um electronic contracts that we can pursue as well um dashboards we certainly have new dashboards we'd like to roll out both to other departments as well as public facing on our city attorney's website to give the public more information cross training has been a big emphasis we need to build redundancies in the office we need to have new attorneys get experience and more specialized training we think we can simultaneously broaden the knowledge base of each attorney while also helping each attorney become more specialized in their areas um one thing we also look forward to is working through with all the construction contracts last year we realized there's other contracts the city works with and and especially on the development side and there's a lot of agreements that need to be uh improved and finalized and and standardized so um we look forward this year to working on a lot of the new development agreements which include oversized agreements impact fee agreements there's three-party agreements escrow agreements so there's a lot to do there i want to get a new suite of documents there for the the department as well as developers in the city this is a slide we've shown each year just gives you an idea of one of the major things that our office does which is support boards commissions in the city council with coven we've seen numbers go down but not terribly if you look at the chart you can see that there's been a lot of meetings that we go to and and we're there to attend and support uh all the boards in the council budget highlights um as you can see the primary cost for legal is always personnel the rest of budget is pretty small in comparison uh the increase you see for materials and supplies comes from an increase in subscription for research we've had new attorneys come in and um tell us that we were a little bit outdated on some of our subscriptions and databases so we've been need to update those and get the access to the materials so our attorneys can do their work um you also see the operations costs were reduced from 19 to 20 um last year we cut out all of our travel and training almost entirely for the cost containment and based on the anticipated revenue shortfall the attorneys are required to have certain ongoing legal education hours but even more importantly with so many new attorneys in the office it's important that we keep them up to date on evolving parts of the law and and so we want to make sure that we get some portion of that put back in to get more training um during this year for the training we used a very valuable asset we used the internationally useful lawyers association association had a cle subscription that we participated with and we were able to get a lot of our attorneys their their continuing education credits through that program but like i say we do need more specialized and especially in texas very state specific um training and we'd like to be able to pursue that and have a portion of that funds put back in there and finally fte's we're asking for the same as budgeted for last year we really do look forward to having a fully staffed office in the in the near future any questions all right we'll pull that down first and then yep okay uh so we'll line up to vordire mac no or vaudeer if you're in east coast council member guire and then council member armature and then council member vett thank you um are the costs associated with um the the search and the hiring of a new city attorney included in the budget that you presented to us today no they're not there are costs associated with helping to hire the two deputy attorney positions that are empty but there's not associated with the new city attorney that is not in this budget all right um i can anybody on staff speak to uh what um the funding sources for those costs may i yeah yeah david if you will i mean i think the the short answer is we set the the amount and then david if you can say where it goes or where it comes from sure i mean ultimately it'll be paid from the general fund and we'll we'll attribute the cost to the legal hpu i mean most most likely we'll have salary savings as as mac just kind of went through all the vacancies that we have there that'll fully cover those costs so it shouldn't be anything that needs money moved around for thank you yep okay uh councillor armature yeah so um i'll just say that i i uh you know look forward to the uh search for a new city attorney and i you know anticipate that uh whoever it is will take a fresh look will be obliged to take a fresh look at uh the uh department budget um and to ask and and and get answered questions about is there any uh inside legal work that we do that should be contracted out and vice versa is there any legal work that we're contracting out that we should be doing in house so i'm not going to put you on the spot and ask you those questions um but you know but i will say that i look forward to a new city attorney asking and answering those questions you know and i anticipate that there will be would inevitably uh be changes uh to the budget uh accordingly uh so anyway i hope we can do that search in time so i'm kind of putting a pin on on these these budgets requests for now for me this this is a a picture of the way things look now um and i have a feeling they'll change i i just don't know how okay uh david if you want to pop on we can we can uh probably set some expectations uh so but you you understand the budget time frame you understand kind of the the hiring search process what what are what are the windows there i know i'm putting you on the spot but just want to i don't want to leave that unchecked um you know if if we can address it sure you know obviously council approved the next fiscal year's budget in september um but that doesn't i think a lot of the you know the that task that council member armature laid out are things that the new city attorney would um would be open that could could move forward with and we would make adjustments to next year's budget as appropriate so i don't see any budget limitations on that okay great councilman back thank you mayor excuse me um so one one of the things often happens in the corporate world and i don't know uh or in the academic world as well and i don't know if it can happen here i don't know if we have restrictions against it is um bringing in deputies with a with a primary is that something that we can do as an incentive package or i mean that those kinds of things happen and if we have uh our head attorney and two deputies open uh i'm just curious if we can get a synergy out of that um in terms of attracting um the best candidate is that allowed so i understand you correctly are you saying basically propose it as a a bundle package whereas perhaps yeah i'm more hypothetical than than direction i don't know if it's ever happened that's not to say it can't or hasn't possible i don't know if there's any legal restriction on that but it's not a a political world position per se but yeah there's nothing that i can think of that would stop that from being pursued so i guess then the flip side of that coin is uh do we anticipate um i guess uh doing the the head search uh the the head attorney search and and then hiring the two deputies over this next fiscal year as well and that's that's part of your 18 that that number that you cited yes sir yes that's um exactly right so then there there there would only be cost savings up until the point that we hired and there's initially i mean there's often search and and starting and initial costs and you know moving expenses that that would offset some of those savings am i correct on that yes yes exactly right and i i think we've pursued in the past where we've had multiple uh positions vacant we've pursued an options with recruiters where there's a discount for multiple hires um if that's an option as well that we may want to pursue is if if there's some that we want to tag along with uh the council's um chosen recruiter we may have opportunities there okay and and there's is there is there any particular barrier to the the that that sort of was the major factor the plurality factor in in um in replacing the the missing deputy or it's just a timing issue just a timing issue okay all right thank you okay any other questions for staff seeing none thank you very much appreciate uh the entire legal department for stepping up filling the uh big shoes in my opinion right and and uh hitting the ground running so thank you all very much for uh adjusting quickly and uh i'll close with uh a happy belated birthday to uh former city attorney aaron leal his birthday was saturday so i sent him a text message but at least want to give a shout out here i sure appreciate him thank you very much i can do it again yeah uh okay and so that takes us to uh the last uh budget presentation animal services this will be great afternoon just give me one moment to pull up my presentation i have a photo op coming up with y'all yeah okay good evening mayor city council uh randy weinberg with animal services and before i get started i do want to formally introduce y'all to the uh screech owl that is on your screen this is a owl that we acquired um out in the field one of our a co's founded and we were able to successfully rehab here at the shelter our animal services management team is comprised of sarah kieffler chief of staff myself randy weinberg animal services manager uh d johnson animal services supervisor and a coal hire animal services supervisor our current org chart um this year i did add in our two vet contracted vet techs um into our org chart as they are part of the operation um and they are a vital part as they do our spay and neuter surgeries and some of the operational decisions are funneled up through me so i didn't want to make sure that i capture that in our current organizational chart accomplishments that we've had this fiscal year one of the biggest ones was the passing of the animal restraint and tethering ordinance back in november this ordinance prohibited tether tethering within the city of didn't limits um it's been kind of a groundbreaking ordinance not many municipal cities have passed an ordinance and i've had several actually reach out asking for details on how we were able to get the ordinance passed as a result of this we were able to establish the animal enclosure fund which is a fund that helps residents who are not able to properly secure their animal because of maybe a fence or they can't bring it inside and their only option was to tether this removes that barrier and today we've installed one enclosure for a resident within the city of denton additionally we've implemented some intake diversion programs to help keep some of the animals out of the shelter and into homes and we've also installed a shelter sound system compliments of dasf generous donation our animals are able to get at least two hours of classical su the music in the morning and then two hours in the evening and with all the storms that we've had lately we've been able to play it overnight so that they don't have any anxiety or stress from the sounds of the weather outside goals that we're looking forward to this year is to continue review our ordinances to make sure that we are standard throughout the other municipalities in the state state of texas to review our denton county interlocal agreement to upgrade our shelter operating system and to hold off-site vaccination clinics currently we do have three vaccination clinics here at the shelter sponsored by did animal support foundation however we want to extend that out to the community for the residents who are not able to make it out to the shelter location we already have one scheduled uh october the first which is going to coincide with national rabies day and that's going to be at the mlk center animal services um is comprised of basically three areas we have our shelter area that's at the linden mcnatt animal care and adoption center our field operations that responds to fields of service calls and also our veterinarian clinic so i want to share some data with each of those operations for our shelter what we look at is our positive outcomes that's going to be our adoptions return to owners and transfer or rescues we also take a look at our live release rate which is how many animals we were successfully able to have positive outcomes from this fiscal year we are at a 93 live release rate and that's a two percent increase from where we were this time last year so we are very proud of that number also our intake diversion programs has helped us decrease the numbers by six percent of the animals that we have taken into the shelter our calls for service have increased by 37 percent this year and the reason for that increase about 20 percent of that is because we did deploy a night time officer april of last year this officer traditionally ran calls during the day however we saw that there was a greater need in the evening hours when people are returning home from work kids are getting out of school and such so we deployed that officer in the night time and so that increased our call volume because the officer is responding to all calls and not just emergency calls only we are averaging about our call time about 1.2 hours right now with three aco2s that we have out in the field the call time is extended for us because we are not able to run code meaning like a fire department or police department they're able to you know bypass any traffic laws in order to get to their destination however we do have to abide by traffic laws and it does take us a while sometimes if we're in north of town responding to a call in south denton and we're in the middle of traffic for the day in addition to that our bike calls or maybe our stray animal calls do take about 45 minutes on average to complete so that's where you're seeing that 1.2 hours of our average call we are in the process of adding a fourth additional aco who will work mid-shift that's tuesday through saturday 10 a.m to 7 p.m that aco is a position that we actually reclassified just recently so we were able to find a position and fill that need for that fourth additional aco2 and that's our field officer our lobby operation we have seen just a slight decrease in our call volume from this time last year the biggest decrease we've decreased we've seen is in our voicemail percentage that's one of the biggest numbers because we want to make sure that our residents are able to reach us in case of an animal emergency so we can put that call in and dispatch an officer just to give you some data to about two and a half years ago this percentage was at 80 so we are very proud to show that it's at a 14 for our voicemail also we have the assistance of did municipal electric dispatch in our 911 emergency dispatch who are actually part of our call flow and help us with our call volume because our csrs are both customer facing face to face and they're answering the phone call so that helps out in addition our volunteer hours have decreased slightly because of covid when we did have to discontinue our volunteer operation however they are trickling back in we do hold two volunteer orientations a month or every other saturday and we are getting a good response of volunteers coming back so we are happy to see that number increase so like i stated previously we do have an on-site vet clinic at the shelter it's it's not a full service clinic like you would have out in the community however they do perform spay and neuter surgeries for us this year they've done a total of 912 surgeries they've treated heartworm positive dogs which is a lengthy strenuous treatment they've treated 12 of those dogs and also they've performed other surgical procedures for for us such as an fho surgery a removal amputation so those are 15 other surgeries that we would have to actually refer out to an off-site clinic and pay for but they are handling that in-house for us so our revenues we receive those from our fees and fines our fees are going to be comprised of an adoption fee a reclaim fee any fee that's being taken at the shelter our fines are going to be a result of citations that are done through municipal court there has been a slight decline in our fines number because we are proactively educating in the field for the first time and even second time offense instead of just writing them a citation for that first offense so we want to make sure that we are educating and that decrease in fine revenue is evidence that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing so our budget of course our biggest line item is going to be our personnel and second to that is our operations our operations line item is where our outside contracted services are we do have five contracts i'm sorry four contracts within animal services the biggest is going to be our vet contract so that number does encompass those contracts as well also in our materials and supplies there is a slight increase with that this is where our food for the animals is we have to make sure that we are providing our animals with adequate food and make sure that it is nutrient and that cost of food of course with anything has increased so we want to make sure that we are adequately funded to provide for the animals and currently we have 20 fte's within animal services and we will be asking for an additional fte animal control officer so our budget request is an additional animal control officer now this is not an animal control officer too that you that i spoke about in on the field slide this is an animal control officer who will be primarily working inside of the shelter but they also do help in the field as well if we have a staffing deficiency there so with that i will take any questions questions for staff mayor protein melzer thank you very much for the presentation i hadn't noticed the the fine decrease before i wouldn't call it a slight decrease it's it's half which might be a great thing how are you measuring whether this change in approach is working do you track sort of whether the same people uh recur in you know the uh those types of violations or how will you know if the new approach is working well one thing is that our officers we make sure to tell them to if it's a first offense that they are not issuing those citations um if it's another calls to the same address of course uh they would maybe educate one more time and then if it's a third offense of course we would have to move forth with with the citation so it's basically just tracking the addresses that we are going to and making sure that what level of enforcement that they are at at that point i i don't go on and on about it but i understand that you've got a new way of doing it uh how would you know that that was a good decision you know once you've been doing it for a while well uh one of the things and i'll just give an example like for our barking dog calls um that if we are not going out to that that resident time and time again for the call uh to us that is measuring the success because in turn we are spending more time going out there to address the concern uh with you know a citation rather than doing the education okay did that answer your question i'm sorry sort of i guess okay it's not a huge deal i mean i i'll be interested to hear you know we have to say in a year like if that uh most definitely oh thanks mayor you're muted sorry councilmember uh thank you council member bird beck and maguire i was just going to ask a question about the animal enclosure fund yes and you said you've only done one of those this year or last year yes since implementation in november we've only had um one there was another one that we were going to install however the uh residence landlord did not want us to put the enclosure on their property and so they have to meet a certain criteria for you to install those or or does it can anyone call and make the request and it's kind of automatically done how does that work well we want to try and reserve that for the residents who are not able to financially provide that that enclosure for their animal we don't look at income at all it's an application that they just fill out we want to make sure that they're if they're renting the property that their landlord is on board with us put in that enclosure there however it's basically an honor system but we want to make sure that it is reserved for those people who who truly need it and you mentioned a term landlord so uh if i had my own home i would just use myself as an example i don't have a fence around my own yard but i like for you all to come in and and structure something for my little puppy dog uh is that something and i'll fill the form out are you going to come and do that and you'll tell me how how are you going to tell me how much you can do i mean five by five three by two how does that work um well it's a 10 by 10 so it's pretty it's pretty big but uh what we would do first um is the aco out in the field they do educate on the options that a resident does have in lieu of tethering so maybe they do have a fence and they can install something so the animal does not either dig under it or over it or if you're able to provide the enclosure we'll provide you with the you know the proper type of enclosure to provide to make sure that the animal does does not escape the enclosure but if the if the need is there you're like hey you know i've tried these other options i can't afford it then we'll we'll give you that application and then we'll work from there to get the enclosure installed how much does an average enclosure cost five hundred dollars um you mentioned something about the or stated something about the off-site vaccination at the mlk on october the first yes that's on your website no this is something that that we were just in talks with with mlk and tcap that's who we actually who actually administers the vaccinations so just within the last couple of weeks we've actually been able to get that on their calendar as well so um yeah it will be advertised when it's closer to the time for that clinic to be administered okay so i don't have to say anything to my folks about that yeah no ma'am we'll do the advertising for you you'll do that okay thank you very much no problem councilmember bett thank you mayor randy uh so piggybacking off of uh uh council bird's question if uh how much is the sort of average lifetime cost of the per animal to care for the animal at our to care for animals about 16 dollars a day about 16 dollars a day yeah and the average day is is roughly about seven days in the shelter about seven days awesome that's and then um so two more questions they're real brief uh do how much volunteer capacity uh do you have not not counting like covet ramp ups just sort of like you know i guess pre-covid or what you anticipated post-covid how much volunteer capacity could you support if you had like a waiting list for volunteers so there's not really a capacity um council member beck what we look at is the hours that people um can actually volunteer uh right now since covet we did move towards a scheduling system for the volunteers because we want to make we wanted to make sure that the foot traffic in the shelter was kept at a minimum however we have opened that up um for more volunteers to come in so those decline in numbers was because of what we had to do in order to make sure that we can social distance and things of that sort um but on an average sunday we could have upwards to maybe uh five or ten volunteers in the shelter doing doing various things and that was pre-covid and and then thank you um and then my my last question is um i've seen reporting uh across the country that um in addition to learning to bake bread that people adopted a bunch of pets uh while they were in quarantine have you seen an uptake in intakes um especially as we've kind of begun to go out of covet quarantines yes there has been an increase however this increase um is kind of what we were seeing prior to covet uh being a thing so um our operation has had to kind of pivot from the comforts of covet to being open fully again and taken in those surrenders however with our intake diversion programs that we are kind of honing in on um the foster to adopt program if someone brings in an animal and they can hold on to it for the 96 hour straight period we offer vaccinations we stay in contact with them if the owner comes forward they bring the animal back so that animal doesn't have to enter the shelter um also we have the pet food pantry that's uh sponsored by dent animal support foundation so if someone comes to us and they're reasoning for surrender and it's hey i can't i can't feed my animal you know it's it's either the kids or the the animal you know to feed uh we provide them with two weeks worth of food no questions asked to keep that to to make sure that they can keep that animal um their pet with them and i i guess my my question more and i think you said it but i maybe lost it um in the answer and that is have you seen a an uptick in in intakes or or intakes and or let's just say general uh animal attempts let's lump it all together like um oh of course yeah has there been an increase yeah there has been an increase i don't know the the percentage off top of my head i would have to look into that but yes there has been a percentage of being i'm sorry an increase of animals to the shelter okay thank you okay councilmember guara thank you um i i had a few questions regarding um kind of the positive uh outcomes for animals that that you had mentioned um uh am i recalling correctly that um there was a six percent um increase in in diversion rate um decrease in intakes decrease in yes okay um uh and and i saw that number kind of next to a bullet point about um the the pet food pantry um i do do you feel that that six percent decrease was uh a direct result of um you know helping people to to feed their pets and and keep them in the home most definitely um last year we did see about a um about an 80 percent decrease uh part of that was because of the pet food pantry and that we were um scheduling they had to schedule to bring their animal up to the shelter of course you know because we wanted to make sure that we didn't have a lot of people in the shelter uh we have kept that scheduling module however we've expanded how many animals we can accept on a day-to-day basis um and that has helped as well to to keep that decrease down okay um uh my next question is um so what do you see as like the most um kind of the keys the most effective the most impactful um things that you can do or that or that the city can can support you in doing um to increase those positive outcomes both diversion and um the the live relief rate well the biggest thing is we promote you know our animals on our facebook page a den animal support foundation promotes our adoptable animals and basically it's just it's sharing those posts you know making sure that we get as as much reach as we can for the animals that are there um as far as uh the diversion it's it's education you know on our wildlife what to do when you see baby wildlife or what to see do when you see kittens you know the first thing to do isn't just to pick them up and bring them to the shelter because the mama might be out getting food you know for the for the kittens so it's those educational things that we are going to focus on this year um to make sure that we're pushing out going and going to some hoa meetings and just putting a face uh and educating the public on things that they can do as well to help us out okay um uh that's great um uh i'm also curious about um your spay and neuter programs um do you only spay and neuter animals that are being adopted out or do you have a a relationship with like uh uh what is it t cap that does the low cost a spay and neuter program um what's your your role in spay and neuter well our spay and neuter are solely for the animals that we have at the shelter um after 96 hours uh unless they've been surrendered by our owner if it's if it's a stray then we uh spay a new animal because it becomes our property at that point um we don't spay and neuter any animals for the public because of liability reasons um but t cap the partnership we have with them they do administer the vaccines for the clinics that we have at the shelter the rabies and other vaccines um and uh if there is anything else that is needed like our off-site vaccination clinics they're going to partner with the with us as well for that okay excellent thank you okay any other questions for staff seeing none thank you very much i appreciate it randy okay that concludes item b takes us to item c which is id 21616 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the scope and connectivity options for the westgate roadway improvement project good evening mayor and council becky devaney city engineer i'm going to share my presentation with you so thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you today about what the westgate improvements um i wanted to start off by thanking rachel wood our deputy director of capital projects and she put a lot of effort into this presentation coordinated with several different departments and unfortunately is under the weather tonight so i am going to be making this presentation on her behalf today we're going to take an opportunity to talk about some development updates i do have other personnel from several different departments that are here to make part of the presentation with me um discuss the westgate reconstruction project as current scope um discuss improvement options for westgate um a little bit of the feedback that we received from the may 20th community meeting um talk about connectivity considerations some next steps and receive direction from council as to how we can proceed forward with the westgate project and then of course be available for questions so i'm going to turn it over to julie wyatt who is going to make the presentation on this slide good afternoon i'm julie wyatt i'm senior planner with the city of denton and before we get to the that infrastructure piece we just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the projects that are under consideration or under construction in the area so we're going to start on the north side of the map on your screen first there is an outlined in orange there's a build to rent pd that has submitted to the city that is a proposed plan development that should be coming before you in the next in the upcoming months it's a horizontal multifamily development just south of that y'all may be familiar with the kings ridge development that is also a planned development it came before council a few years ago as a single-family neighborhood it's being developed into two as two phases the first phase you can kind of see on that map is under construction the second phase the final plot was approved a couple of months ago and so it'll be coming forward soon the mark is a multi-family development on the east side of bonnie bray and it is under construction now south of the kings ridge development is something you're probably familiar with and that is that new denton high school building that is under construction southwest of that is the windsor apartments that is that is under construction now they're at windsor and i-35 and then perch denton is is another horizontal multifamily that will be coming to the through public hearing in the upcoming months it is it is under review now with the city and then finally we have residences at razor ranch that's a townhome development just south of perch denton so quite a few developments moving forward in this area the next slide so i want to zoom in a little bit on the bronco way area bronco way is currently planned to be a four-lane divided roadway it is going to extend from bonnie bray toward the west near west gate kind of where that that white line ends it's being constructed by two developments first the the denton high school to the south they are denton isd is constructing the southern two lanes of that four-lane roadway and the anticipated completion date is august 2022 and then the north two lanes are being construction constructed by the kings ridge development you could see that first phase those those platted single-family lots and then that second phase is anticipated to be under construction in the next six months thank you very much julie now we'll walk through the bonnie bray phase six project i'm sure many of you are very familiar with this project it is to widen bonnie bray to four lane divided roadway from university drive all the way to 77 this project also includes traffic signals at the windsor intersection riney road and also 77 along with that our new sidewalks and a 10-foot shared use trail and there'll be drainage system improvements water main upgrades and street light installation as a part of this project the estimate at completion for the job is 30.5 million dollars and the schedule is to begin construction quarter four of 2021 so later this year and we anticipate complete construction to be completed in the quarter two of 2023 just to kind of give you a coordination piece there are multiple meetings that we've been having with disd on the project we're working right now coordinating with them on riney road as this appears to be a future extension from an elementary site also we have ongoing engagement with the upcoming community meeting prior to construction so that's an overview of the bonnie bray phase six project and we do have the project manager here today at the end of the presentation if there's questions specifically in regards to that project the next project we wanted to talk about is the windsor drive overpass this project is a actually a tech stop project that's being completed the windsor drive overpass is to be constructed as part of the 35 35 e 35 w merge project that project is from 35 e w interchange to us 77 north of denton the ultimate configuration will connect to windsor which will be widened to a four lane divided roadway the construction estimate is approximately 1.2 million for the city to fully widen windsor from west gate to the frontage road with that extension current we text dots as scheduled that they've given to us is they're in the process of the right away acquisition it should be completed it was anticipated to be completed in april of 2021 they're actually working through utility relocations they estimate those to be completed in june of 2022 with 100 design complete for their project in march of 2022 and then that let date of january of 2025 i can't find my mouse so first of all i wanted to go through and kind of walk through different options so you're going to see three different options option a b and c and then four different connective options so i want to walk through first option a option a is currently what is planned as a part of the 2014 bond program what you can see on the screen are some needed drainage improvements in this vicinity where you see that in yellow along with some water line extension from flager to coffee there's also a 15 inch sewer line crossing that will be crossing west gate in this area and then roadway construction that was a part of the 2014 bond program includes construction from windsor all of the way to flager and that's to rebuild that street in its current condition and current configuration the estimate completion is about 2.49 million dollars the schedule will be planned in coordination with the bonnie bray phase six project and also the denton high school and we are working to minimize impacts to the surrounding residents the denton high school traffic and wanting to work through that connective issue that you can see is right now the only way that folks can enter windsor or i'm sorry enter this neighborhood is off of windsor to head northbound into their neighborhood so i'm going to describe that in a little bit more detail right on this slide so the west gate improvement considerations that really we want you to think about as we kind of look at this project from a holistic approach is currently the individuals who live in the west gate neighborhood only can access their property from windsor and head north as the connection between where this dead ends and west gate that runs east and west no longer is a connection piece as part of the mobility plan you can see that it's anticipated for windsor and then also this connection of bronco way which also connects to west gate to be made along with west gate shows to be a collector and access to the residents to their homes during construction is ultimately what we're asking you to discuss today as i mentioned this is the only way into the property in this area because this connection currently does not exist so part of the connectivity options that we're going to walk through are the access to the future bronco way access to west gate and as bronco way is in this vicinity west gate is in this vicinity and the potential connection to the east west corridor along with the north south corridor i understand it is a little confusing because west gate is also named north south as also is west gate is east west in this area so the project extent considerations are to improve the southern stretch of west gate as intended in the 2014 bond which i just previously showed you on option a from flager to windsor to improve the full as a part of the current north south extension of west gate with an option of adding sidewalks so that's what you see in this blue line and the permanent connection to the east west west gate and or bronco way which is what you see in the east west connection so those are the different considerations to you for you tonight option b will be the first one that i discuss essentially is the full reconstruction of the north south portion of west gate and it does not stop at flager as the option a that i just previously showed you it goes all the way north to the west gate option it will include the drainage upgrades the water line the sewer line so basically the difference between option a and option b is the connection from flager all the way to the north the estimated completion is about 4.9 million dollars the schedule will be dependent upon the completion of the design and then the selection of a contractor and the funding availability the considerations we'd like to bring forward to you today is additional right away that would be required the access for the neighbors during the construction in this area like i've mentioned several times they only have one way into their neighborhood and this also does not include sidewalk in the connectivity option b would be to rebuild the roadway to a collector and it would also include that eight foot sidewalk it would include the water line as i've showed you previously the drainage culvert culvert installation and the 15 inch sewer so the major difference between the previous option b and option c that you see here is the improvements of the sidewalk from windsor all the way to the north all the way through the extents of the north southwest gate the estimated completion for that project is approximately 5.1 million it's also dependent upon schedule dependent upon the completion of the design the selection of the contractor and the funding availability the right away acquisition would also need to be acquired and we will be wanting to coordinate with neighbors during construction that's one of the major issues that needs to be addressed so those are the three options i'm now going to walk into the different options so the first option that you see before you is the west gate connectivity option one the scope which could tie into any previous option basically shows that the temporary connection would be made from west gate where it currently ends northbound and then connect into bronco way so the southern two lanes are being constructed by disd like julie mentioned and the northern two lanes of bronco way are being constructed by the king ridge phase two development so that's an asphalt overlay with a minor base improvement so this would be just a connectivity piece a temporary roadway from west gate to bronco way so that during construction of whichever option is selected whether it's a b or c is selected to move forward we would have an opportunity for individuals that lived in this development to continue north and be able to access and leave their property along bronco way this estimate completion is approximately 32 000 as mentioned on the previous slides it's all dependent upon the design that selected the selection of the contractor and the funding availability some of the considerations for this option is the heavy traffic projected in the area this temporary improvement may not be sufficient for the actual traffic and the traffic patterns and we know that traffic patterns will be changing with the new high school and once it's established it may be difficult to remove the temporary roadway the next option is option two it's similar to what i just showed you before although the difference is that this would be a permanent connection and this connection would also be a 37 foot wide collector with curb and gutter it would connect to the most northern portion of west gate and then connect into bronco way this is approximately 230 000 to make this permanent connection it would be dependent upon the design selection of contractor and the availability of the funding this would help and improve connectivity and provide another east west corridor within the high growth area and the connection to the bronco way it would also establish the alignment of the intersection of west gate and bonnie bray which could impact future development and the right-of-way considerations in this area the next option you see is option three instead of going eastbound now we'll be traveling westbound so this is a temporary connection to improve the west gate from the northern area that you see on the map across the west gate existing west gate that was formerly closed in this area this would be a temporary roadway connection an asphalt overlay with some minor i'm sorry let me go back minor base improvements the estimate at completion would be approximately 180 000 and this would also improve the connectivity provide another east west connector would help establish the alignment of the intersection of west gate and bronco way which could have future impact on development and right-of-way considerations and it would also require the repeal of the ordinance from 1993 ordinance number 93-108 to allow for the temporary access to be repealed similarly option four would just be that permanent connection this would be the permanent connection to the existing east west portion of west gate and it would also require some drainage upgrades and some sidewalk connectivity and this project is approximately 2.1 million dollars and we would plan the coordination with the bonnie bray phase six and the ditton high school construction and work through this really to improve the connectivity and provide another east west roadway if you recall from the overall map the only other east west roadway in this area is the windsor drive that i showed you previously this would help provide an alternate east west roadway for folks entering the high school area it would establish the alignment of the intersection of west gate and bonnie bray it could help and impact future developments in the area and allow for that right-of-way to be established it would require also the repeal of the 93-108 ordinance so to talk a little bit about the ordinance from 93 it's 93-108 basically that ordinance was put forward to support the closure of the west gate north of borough street as a public street or thoroughfare indefinitely the reason cited that staff was able to find the information about was that it was due to the amount of traffic generated by the opening of the stone hill outlet mall which is just north of west gate drive and it was approved june 15th of 1993 so back on may 20th we had a community meeting we had 34 participants and we just wanted to kind of walk through the folks that were against the permanent connectivity versus some of the comments were received from the folks that were in favor of the permanent connectivity and the folks that were against the connectivity obviously had speeding and safety concerns they had a concern that the temporary connection would eventually become permanent they had a concern of the broken promise of the repeal of the 93 ordinance they were open to sidewalks along west gate and also open to the full reconstruction of the existing north south west gate folks that were in favor of the permanent connectivity were understanding that it was to help address connectivity and mobility issues in a very high growth area they were open to sidewalks on west gate along with that full construction of that north south portion of west gate they also saw that would provide another access point to denton high school and would provide a safer north south route for bicyclists and pedestrians so some of the connectivity considerations for your consideration tonight are that the permanent connectivity to bronco way and east west portion of west gate is consistent with the 2015 and the proposed 2021 mobility plan i showed you that a few slides back the permanent connectivity provides additional transportation options in a high growth area and especially with the new high school being developed in that area the temporary connectivity is the minimum requirement requirement needed in order for the construction of the southern portion of west gate to be completed regardless of which improvement option is selected we do know that once traffic patterns are established for temporary connectivity it may be difficult to remove that connectivity piece and the full reconstruction of the north south portion of west gate will need to be completed to address the existing roadway condition those drainage concerns in that area and bringing the roadway to a collector standard is consistent with the 2015 and 2021 mobility plan also this would allow for an addition of the eight foot sidewalks along the north south portion of west gate which improves the pedestrian access in that area and one of the comments that we did receive was specifically related to folks that would be using west gate as you saw some of the concerns that we received for speeding and safety concerns one of the options that staff looked into is actually some traffic calming options at the intersection of the north southwest gate and the east west west gate bronco way to include a right in right out island in that area which could be installed to address some of those concerns if permanent connectivity was considered so next steps are to seek direction on a project scope from council and that's why we're here today and then our staff will work through submitting a capital improvement funding request based on the direction we receive to secure the funding we will work through finalizing that design and coordinating that project with not only tech stop but also disd obviously tech stop for the 35 widening project i showed you and then disd with the coordination of bronco way bonnie brave phase six and also ronnie road it would also require the potential repeal repeal of the 93 ordinance based on which option is selected and we will bring this forward to mobility traffic safety and also any type of city council considerations that are required as part of the project and then we will work to select a construction contractor and actually begin the construction so just an overview that kind of shows you a map of the area i just wanted to kind of highlight this and i'm going to show you a table with some costs and bring a few other things to your attention so option a just to recap is to reconstruct the southern three southern sections three sections of west gate this is what you see in green and that was already included in the 2014 bond program option b is to rebuild the street as a collector and option c is to rebuild the street as a collector with eight foot sidewalks and so that's from windsor all the way to where west gate ends so then the west gate connectivity options option one was the temporary connection to bronco way and that's what you can see in dark blue option two is the permanent connectivity connection to bronco way of which you can see in light blue and then option three is the temporary connection to the east west west gate which you can see in orange and option four is the permanent connection to the east west west gate which you can see in the lighter orange also just wanted to mention again to you that the northern two sections two lanes of bronco way are being constructed by kings ridge face two and the southern two lanes are being constructed by disd so just an overview of the project scope description matrix we talked through these different options just wanted to make sure that you all saw the different funding considerations and these do include utility funding so option a that i just went through is approximately 2.4 million option b is approximately 4.9 million and option c is approximately 5.1 million and then those connectivity pieces the temporary connection is approximately 32 000 the permanent connection to bronco way is approximately 230 000 that temporary connection to east west west gate is approximately 180 000 and then that permanent connectivity of west gate would be 2.1 million also just to give you an idea of kind of the construction schedule we estimate that option a would take approximately five to six months to do the construction option b would take approximately eight to ten months option c would take approximately ten to twelve months and then as far as the the connectivity pieces we expect any of the options that were selected obviously with the temporary connection option one taking the least amount of time which would be approximately two months all of the other options we anticipate to take in anywhere between two to four approximately months could turn into six months depending on which which portion and then which connectivity piece is selected and i just want to remind you that this project is not currently scoped completely and the meeting is intended to follow with our best practices to develop and determine the project scope in the initiation phase of the project and we want to make sure that we have the stakeholder engagement along with the city council engagement purpose of holding that public meeting was to make sure that we understood you know what the residents concerns were and whether folks were in favor or against any of the options that were presented and once we receive direction then we will be proceeding forward with the next steps and with that i'm going to take the presentation down and open it up for questions hey thank you questions for staff will go council member davis mayor protein melzer thank you mayor i've got a question but i want to point out a couple really brief things first the first one is if council members hadn't had a chance to either talk to folks in this neighborhood or read some of the backup material i highly encourage you to do that the history on that that ordinance is pretty interesting it's pretty clear if you look at the pnz minutes and the council minutes back then that word indefinitely was used pretty loosely and probably on purpose um i don't think i think it's pretty clear to everyone back then that there were going to be other ways in and out of this neighborhood at some point you can see there's stub outs to the to the west there there's lots of talk about the hunt property developing the property that's across west gate was anticipated to develop what's now the school so it's kind of a backdrop i think to that decision to to uh to cut off that portion of west gate the other thing i'd point out and i'm sure uh mayor pretend melzer will correct me where i'm where i'm wrong here but we spent uh quite a bit of time with the uh some neighbors out in that area individually through emails and then also at a neighborhood meeting staff spent a lot of time with the neighborhood out there and they have exactly the concerns that you would expect that they have a neighborhood that's not been subject to collector traffic um not anticipated by them to be subjected to that kind of uh traffic especially with the high school opening up um but i i think overwhelmingly recognized that if the neighborhood was built today it would require more than one way in and out and in a safety situation either construction or there's only one way in and out during construction or in an emergency situation fire trucks tree across the road flooding there'd need to be another way out so i think um i don't want to speak for all of them but i think the one that kind of options that rose to the top in those conversations seemed to be a combination of option c reconstructing all of west gate doing all the work that we need to do out there but with the sidewalk uh the caveat to that of course is land acquisition that a number of folks were very concerned about losing large portions of their property and there are some very significant trees especially there on the west hand the west side of the road where the homes are um some very important trees to the neighborhood and then also option some some version of option four where they can connect out to west gate um i'm saying option four as opposed to option three i'll tell you why with my question here in a second but with the caveat that that be a temporary connection that we could build it whatever quality of road we wanted to build it but with a gate after construction is done so it's the same thing we did on montecarlo i know it's not best practice i didn't really like it when we did it on montecarlo down near forest ridge off of ryan road it was not my favorite um the difference i think here is that these folks had a city ordinance telling them there was not going to be a connection to the north the folks on montecarlo didn't have that um but i think that gate would solve some of the problem that we're talking about the road would be there under the gate for emergency access fire department can get in when they needed to but you wouldn't have the high school traffic coming in and out of the neighborhood um and the reason why i said option four as opposed to option three the temporary road is a combination of one i don't see much sense and building a temporary road you know for hundreds of thousands of dollars that we're then we're going to chew up and put a million dollar road on top of in short order and that's my question if we don't do option four where as part of this project we build that western portion of bronco way connecting bronco way all the way out to the frontage road do we have any kind of idea what kind of timeline that would be for finishing bronco way to what's now the east west west gate and getting it all the way out to the access road that seems like a really important mobility point uh for all that new high school traffic regardless of the west gate conversation uh sure councilmember davis um the anticipation of the bronco way um we talked about that earlier in the presentation and that's going to be an adherence with um you know really what that overall project is and i want me to flip it back i'm looking and julie i may need to get you the anticipation for the phase two is approximately six months um that's for kings ridge and then the anticipation for disd to construct their two lanes is august of 2022 now for the temp the permanent connectivity piece that east west piece from north southwest gate to east west west gate that's a mouthful um we anticipate that to take about four to six months to make that connection um and so you know depending on how long it takes us to actually get the design um the funding associated with that and then um the construction um you know we could put together that that overall schedule but the the dates that i'm giving you that four to six months time frame is just really specifically related to the construction so there will need to be designed before that and then the funding and then part of the need for having this conversation today is to be able to put that as a part of our capital improvement program through the budgeting process so for that funding to become available to actually do that design of that portion so overall i would say that you're estimating that that's probably a nine to 12 month process in order to get that project designed and constructed um but staff will need to go back and look at an actual from start to finish um once that design contract could begin if that's what you're specifically asking no i'm sorry that's all really good information but that wasn't my question my question was not the construction schedule should be capital improvement project schedule let's say we did not choose option four let's say we chose some other option whether it's a temporary road or something else and take the connection west gate out of it completely let's just say we've got the developer building part of bronco way we've got the school district building part of bronco way and there's a whole strip of pasture land between or old roadbed between bronco way and east west west gate all other things being equal at what point would the city take it upon itself without any of these other external things to make that connection it seems to me like that would be it should be a high priority connection it should be part of our capital improvement projects regardless but that it may not if it's not driven by this project we're talking about it may not rise to the top of our priority list it may get kind of shelved for a while and you have a bronco way that dead end into nothing within side of a frontage road does that does that make sense i'm asking where that would come up in our priorities if we didn't choose option for tonight sure i understand i apologize for misunderstanding your question earlier um so the project is currently a part of the 2015 and uh proposed 2021 mobility plan it's not currently a scheduled capital improvement program part of the reason we're having the conversation today is to talk about those temporary or permanent measures but in order to address your concern of the gap i would say between the existing west gate and where bronco way construction will be completed that project is not currently planned as a capital improvement project does that answer your question sir it does thank you very much no problem about what i apologize it's okay mayor proctor melzer and then councilman armature yes thank you oh i'll underscore uh you know where i can the areas where i heard the same thing and i'm going to uh maybe add some different emphasis first of all in terms of the long-term mobility uh i think that is you know clearly a fate we can anticipate even if it's not planned yet that that as a community need that will want the connectivity from stonehill center east west west gate through the bronco way as far as the neighborhood need and priority uh they have absolutely no interest at all in connecting to bronco way it's if you've been there and i encourage you to go it's a super quiet kind of cul-de-sac uh the rural feeling it reminds me a little bit of hardly field road in that respect a wonderful at some point makes some kind of designation as you know desirable walking areas for people in debt because people from not from the neighborhood go there too we're told it just because it's a peaceful place to walk around um so uh you know i thought it was interesting that in the presentation why you shared you from the community meeting not the neighborhood meeting that councilman davis and i attended that these are the things that the people who didn't want connectivity said and these are the things that people who did want it said but you didn't share what the numbers were on either side my estimate it's just an estimate that the percentage based on our meetings of those who want the connectivity is zero percent it's allowed zero percent uh so you know the net of that is if you're going to be rebuilding the lower portion there uh you know where there's no access out to windsor they need some way out they far prefer even if it's a long way around to have a temporary connection out to east west west gate and not not to even tempt somebody in the future to make a permanent connection out to uh bronco way uh although i would uh acknowledge that council member davis's inventive proposal to uh have a gate there so there is additional emergency access is well received now if if you say that at least for you know a generation or something uh that there's no desire for connectivity for high school traffic through there um then it raises the question what's the driver for making it a connector street when i look at the the proposed you know the developments that are currently on the map uh you've got the mark you know adjacent to bonnie bray built through npd jason to bonnie bray kings ridge it's on bronco way and bonnie bray residents at razor ranch and perch detner on bonnie bray windsor apartments connect to windsor none of that needs west gate to get anywhere so i think you know uh there's a bit of puzzlement there particularly if by collector you mean going from a 15 foot wide street to a 65 foot wide street there's puzzlement and why you'd want to do that i think resurfacing because it's a pretty pitted uh low oci in segments street uh you know i think everybody likes their street resurface sort of they're not i would say it's a super high want that they you know would acknowledge that uh but the idea that it ought to be a way bigger street i don't hear any interest in that and uh similarly on sidewalk i would say there's some interest mostly uh not a negative if it's not coming out of our property you know if it's if it comes out of the dist property okay that's not a bad thing it's still not 100 obvious why it's needed if it's a path for school kids potentially although there isn't it there isn't an entrance planned to the school from that direction so you know so uh i think a little bit of a question mark so i would say the net of that is gate's probably a good thing connection all the way through east west is uh at some point is almost certainly a good thing uh no connection uh temporary connection only out to east west west gate only not permanent uh and uh certainly no desire to widen the street by 50 feet okay i'll just say one last thing i know like my voice dropped as if i was done um uh if there is some case to be made for there to be a collector street i think there would need to be the same kind of proof you'd ask of any developer in terms of of traffic study you know or traffic uh modeling uh to support that because it's it's not obvious to to me and so and definitely not obvious to the neighbors down there yes so i i concur uh with the mayor pro tem's comments that reflects very much what i um have heard from people in the neighborhood uh i've heard that the neighborhood has been uh promised by a dent in isd that west gate would uh never become a connector street and or be be opened up and you know now that we're you know discussing the possibility of that happening um in my sense is that it you know it feels like uh kind of a betrayal of that that neighborhood and so there's concern in that neighborhood um i second uh the uh request for or maybe at least as i heard it mayor pro tem correct me from wrong that request for a a traffic study uh you know i think a a traffic study and a bike and pedestrian study uh the kind that we would require you know of a private developer i think we should have those same high you know standards even higher uh when we're doing this as this city and so can staff uh i'll kind of you know interrupt my list of concerns here can can staff just confirm that was there a you know traffic impact or pedestrian impact study no ma'am a traffic study has not been performed at this time um the overall uh plan that you see came directly from the existing mobility plan and the proposed mobility plan looking at the future roadway uses in this area um the determination of a traffic study would need to consider all developments or any future developments in the area and because we're still in the planning phase um and talking through different options staff has not chosen to move forward with the traffic study at this point and so for me uh you know those um studies would be essential in deciding which option to take if that makes sense uh you know you know for now i'm going with the the concerns of the neighborhood and the you know the knowledge that when you make a street wider uh it makes and have more connectivity on it it makes track you you've got faster traffic and also my my you know knowledge of or familiarity with with the area and what mayor protem said about you know it having very much a rural feel that would be uh completely in quality of life that would be really completely transformed um by such a you know radical expansion in in all ways uh you know laterally and you know vertically of the street um has there been a preliminary uh trip generation assessment done my guess my sense is no because that was that would be something that would come later and no ma'am that would uh be something that would be done later a traffic impact analysis or any kind of traffic study would be something that would be performed at a later date once we had and knew what options we would be proposing okay thank you and so hopefully you know even though i'm requesting um that uh the that a a traffic study uh and you know pedestrian study and trip generation assessment come first um i hope that you know you you can take that as reflective of the concern uh about can about transforming westgate into a such a wide connector street um there's uh the uh let's see the transportation design criteria manual prevents residences from having driveways that go directly onto collector streets uh and in an email or you know pointed this out uh to me and was asking and i'm wondering if you could answer you know why uh we're you know uh violating appear to be uh considering anyway you know violating that rule as a city that that developers are supposed to adhere to can you explain that and maybe that's a misunderstanding of that rule or what's being proposed um so staff is looking at the project from the perspective of what's currently on the mobility plan and would look at any design exceptions or variances that would be required just as any developer would and those would all come through the engineering department for us to evaluate at that time there are many times when those requests or exceptions are requested to be made and then it's a determination from a safety and a mobility perspective okay thank you so anyway i i hope it was clear that my a lot my concerns align with uh with with mayor pro tems and i i don't feel that this is ready to uh go forward as is okay council member beck council member bird council member mcguire thank you mayor uh i'm i'm gonna triple down on uh armentor and mayor pro tems councilwoman armentor's uh comments and mayor pro tems comments um i i i think we're i mean we're i understand the need to try to do some planning at this point but we're a little bit of cart before the horse chicken chicken and egg problem where we're asked we're being asked to decide on options before the the uh the need for particular impacts and so my questions particularly are um two um i believe mayor pro tem uh said and i that's my recollection as well that there's no connectivity planned between um or anywhere along west the north southwest gate with uh the detonized property is that correct no pedestrian no no walkways nothing right it's a fence correct i guess sir i can ask julie wyatt to expand on that but my understanding is you are correct there are no connectivity pieces julie would you like to respond to that that is correct there is no proposed sidewalk along west gate so if if if one of the impetuses was to put a sidewalk in then we're connect we're not connecting even anything we we're running a sidewalk up into the neighborhood which might be great for that neighborhood to connect down towards you know windsor or something like that and i don't want to take away the idea of some sort of walk path or something but that's that's far different than the kind of side path that would go along a major collector those would be two different kinds of side paths um with different maintenance schedules and and and the rationale for that is now becoming a little vague and nebulous if there's no real rationale to get into the detonized property um and then and so i you know i i concur with either sort of taking it out west gate or or or putting a gate in uh as uh counselor davis said if we if we have to make an option now but um the other question i had relating to um expanding is um i this is probably a question for julie um i i'm not clear that the city uh has the same uh easement rights on a detonized deep property as we do on on regular residential property is that correct i don't know the answer the answer to that but what i'm going to do is pull their plat and see how much right of way that was dedicated so so i guess my question goes to while you while you try to look that up real quickly is is if if i'm correct on that then uh and you have to expand it to 65 feet uh to make it a major collector then you don't have the option is my understanding and you're about to confirm that of pulling some of the right of way out of dentin isd because they're another government agency um and so yeah i think that's really germane if the entire widening has to come out of private property rights of way um that would be concerning to me um and and it would you know anyway i i think those are two in addition to you know tripling down on the earlier comments uh those are two or three additional concerns of mine and and i'll let i'll stop and let you look that up and maybe let other counselors ask questions okay councilman burke for the sake of future use and expansion of that area we did recognize that there's going to be quite a bit or we have properties that are already being built around there and um i just think that right now from my perspective uh c4 would be my my choice because i want to look ahead well ahead of of what we're doing and i think if we had something already in place that would um that would be more feasible because we don't know the cost of what's going to take place here in future terms right now as far as concrete or whatever rebar salaries i don't know about you know all of that but it doesn't seem like it would go down for any reason so i'm looking at the costs i'm looking at the future uh expansion i'm looking at all of that development that's coming up i do empathize with um the homeowners on that roadway i experienced the same thing myself in in the area where i live i don't like i said i don't have a fence in my backyard because we always had this open field uh behind us and we had enjoyed that open field for about 20 years uh near the alexander elementary school and so uh we were doing fine we used that field we camped out in that field we had this home uh we had this loving place to where we enjoyed using knowing that it wasn't our property but we appreciated it and then one day we saw those pink flags come up and we had uh went to our city council a person i think was wrote in at the time and we just had a fit but it was what it was it was coming up behind us and they put about i don't know maybe 90 homes behind behind me uh and i had gotten so enraged with it that i actually went out and tried to get a mortgage i think i was approved for a mortgage to buy the house that was going to come up behind mine because i didn't want anybody living behind me uh but that that played out but meanwhile i'm just really concerned and and just want to um support uh the future i want to support the future expansion of that area and i know there's details and i actually even went on here to find out what a collector street is it sounds like it's one of those streets that we have numerous streets like that here in the city and the folks that live on those streets they complain about the speed um even in district one particularly uh and then i also took a look at the right end right out design which i think is a a great idea to control some flow that's going through there so again i would look at c4 if i had an opportunity if i had a choice thank you okay council member maguire thank you um so yeah i think that we're all kind of expressing um a desire to address the concerns of both mobility and access in a rapidly developing area um as well as really wanting to honor the concerns of current residents and that is a tricky balancing act um i think that um uh some some things that i i think we can all agree on and which which the residents expressed um support for was reconstructing the full north south uh extent of westgate not just stopping at flager um and then um a sidewalk of some kind um i i would um as kind of an aside i definitely um want to see you know traffic and pedestrian studies um sooner rather than later um i share some of the concerns that have been expressed over the the idea of a 65 foot collector street that is very wide um i i think that um you know if if what we're trying to support is um access for the people who live there um and you know an updated roadway that can can support um you know moderate amounts of traffic it seems to me like 35 feet or 37 feet would be more than adequate um you know especially if we're putting in the drainage improvements and curbs and gutters and all that um i i don't see any reason why we need more than 37 feet um uh i do have a question regarding um the sidewalks um i know that option c included an eight foot sidewalk along the eastern side of of north southwest gate um uh could someone on staff speak to um the need for an eight foot sidewalk as opposed to a four foot sidewalk and why just on the one side of the street sure the answer to that question really um revolves around the cross section that we were anticipating that area was just to provide that connectivity piece from a sidewalk perspective um with the eight foot wide being some of the new standard of which we're following um and really just on the eastern boundary um you know it could actually be on either side um but we were looking at it on the eastern boundary just from that connectivity speed uh piece um and the eight foot standard is standard with that collector cross section um and i didn't want to make mention the 65 foot wide right away is specifically for the right away itself the actual roadway and the travel lanes width would be approximately 39 feet um and so it's not actually a 65 foot that's just the right away that's needed in order to adhere with the actual sidewalk and then also um the other components of that cross section okay all right that makes sense um uh thank you yeah uh uh to speak to the sidewalks again um i i share council members beck's uh uh desire to see that that sidewalk connect to something um uh perhaps uh i um you know it maybe even if um the north south extent of west gate drive doesn't connect to to bronco way um perhaps the sidewalk can connect to the sidewalk which hopefully will be running along the south side of bronco way um if there's going to be a school there i would hope that there will be a sidewalk there as well um uh i i want to um reiterate some concern about taking so much of that right away from the front yards of of the residents there um and suggest that we see what we can do with the disd um as far as as um you know asking them to chip in a little bit more of that of that width um let me see sorry i have lots of notes and then i changed my notes um okay i have a harebrained idea um so because i since we're picking apart this already very uh complicated plan that you presented us with so many options i'm going to add more options would it be feasible to have the east west extent of west gate connect to bronco way to provide that east west connectivity um but instead of doing either a permanent or a temporary connection from west gate drive would it be possible to take that western most extent of barrow drive and connect it up to the east west uh west gate just you know and because it wouldn't be um particularly practical for large amounts of traffic to go through there um perhaps that would you know provide that that second access for the residents of the neighborhood without encouraging traffic to cut through the neighborhood because it wouldn't be a straight shot just a just a thought just throwing another idea into the base sure no i understand so on barrow drive you're discussing and recommending to take that north to west gate instead of taking west gate north to the east west west gate is that what you're mentioning um yeah as as just another possibility um not necessarily saying i think that that's a better option than than connecting the north southwest gate to the east west west gate or to bronco way but just um just another option possibly staff could look at that option definitely there would be additional right away um acquisition that would be required because there's not current right away in that area we would also still want to look at possible traffic calming measures i know multiple times gate has been mentioned and that was really kind of the the solution and the purpose of the right in right out um so folks can only come into the neighborhood or exit the neighborhood and not have that full turning movement in that entire intersection so it's definitely an option it would be an option that would be more uh we would have to evaluate from a cost perspective because we do not own the land for that area and so additional right away would have to be acquired from where borrow um dead ends all the way up to west gate yeah so we'll see if there's more traction for that if it's before but so here we go so um looking for direction right i think we've all opined i think i have everyone uh yes uh one two three yes so direction i have one kind of direction but if we can either succinct questions or direction and uh that would be fantastic so that we can get some move forward uh councilmember davis thank you mayor i i want to kind of respectfully point out here that what we're talking about are all basically permutations of option c4 with a gate with a sidewalk over here with a more narrow street they're all basically versions of that i think we have minimum responsibilities here if we're going to redo the road we need to redo the whole road and not leave them with a broken up west gate if we're going to redo the road we've got to provide a sidewalk that sidewalk connects to bronco way the kids will take their bikes and their feet up west gate regardless of what we build there even if it's not a collector for cars it will be a collector for pedestrians and bike and bike riders our minimum safety responsibility here is providing a sidewalk we do eight feet so you can have bike and pet in the same spot um i don't think we need necessarily a traffic study to narrow this a little bit the traffic study comes in i think people are bringing up traffic study because they want to show that the car counts don't justify a through connection but that gets to the other minimum safety thing we have here there has to be another way in and out of this neighborhood in an emergency situation there has to be something for construction in an emergency situation build the road make west gate connect to where it needs to connect all the way up to that right away and put the gate there so just fire trucks can get in and out when construction is done close the gate and lock it for me that's a strong option c option four and we can work out the design aspects how far it gets into the yards what trees are in the way all that stuff in the next phase okay counselor back i have sort of a bifurcated issue um if we're going to move ahead then i i agree with counselor or counselor davis um that i would prefer a c4 the the the question is it and i see four with the gate the the problem that i have is that i haven't seen the rationale yet for um the extent of the the uh upgrade um and so if you're not going if we're not we don't have that rationale for the extent of the upgrade except east west not the not the north southwest gate then then that suggests to me that we really do need to show show a rationale for north south traffic at least anticipate at least modeled um i mean it being asked to make a decision but without with uh with sparse data i know we have to do it all the time uh but it feels like this is a piece that we have a handle on um and so before i would want to give direction i would want to see that i'd actually my direction you know in a perfect world would be to bring this back after that information is available uh and then uh you know make that decision you know to say okay yes we we do absolutely anticipate traffic then my direction would be to agree with with uh counselor davis that c4 is a better c4 with the gate is a better option let me take a stab at this counselor back i respect that that position um and so let me let me give you a historical look at it from my standpoint and and i think we hadn't even talked about the most important part of this and maybe i'm just missing it in the backup but here's to answer your question about traffic i've heard it i was trying to sandbag and and deal with mine all at once but it keeps resurfacing so here's the thing we all are familiar with 380 right and you understand that tech start's going to rework that entire intersection right and so then the fact of the matter is your traffic study i-35 will exit directly onto windsor it'll line up perfect with windsor where now it lines up with university drive every car on i-35 that misses university drive or wants to avoid i-30 i mean university drive will exit windsor and turn right they'll either turn right to bonnie bray they'll turn left to go to westgate thinking they can go somewhere and they can't but there will be a mountain of cars exiting windsor drive and let me understand let me help you understand the timing they're doing easement work at that corner where that chevron used to be right now so understand it's coming and we have to be in front of it because we're going to have a ryan high school situation where tech start sneaks up and this is the one project that happens on time and we have one million cars exiting windsor drive right in the middle of construction because we waited the the cars you don't have to worry about those they're coming and that's so that's your traffic yeah every card it turns a percentage right a quarter of the cars turn right on university drive which is a ton will now turn right on windsor drive so just just just just respond to that though there was more of a consensus across council at least by my count for restricted access a gate or something else that in that scenario you just described that is full throated full collector access through that area so you know that would if you know if there's no other choice if for whatever combination alignment of the stars that that's what's going to happen but i think you know we are the people that that to some degree determine the alignment of that stars so uh no no and i was simply i'm not going to put a gate there then we don't have the need for the collector it can simply be a regular residential roadway sure and and i'm not advocating yet on direction i'm just saying where the traffic's coming from is i-35 so that's that's only that's my only point there so um let's see just to be clear in my direction i would prefer to see the the some level of anticipated growth mobility plan traffic plan that that includes this idea of a gate and whether we're really going to punch through there before i would feel comfortable saying upgrade to a collector if we are for sure going to upgrade to a collector then i believe council day councilor davis is correct and we should do c4 that's where i stand thank you mayor pro tem melzer yeah thank you uh i'm pretty much right where council member beck is uh but i want to acknowledge a couple of points i think uh quite right mayor that uh a lot of traffic is going to come down winter but i i neglected to mention one other last little bit of community input which was have signage that says something like not a through road so that right because you're saying they're going to go up there anyway because they think they can get somewhere well it's on us then to have appropriate signage so that they don't bother doing that and i would also uh underscore uh agreement with uh council member mcguire and i'm pretty sure council member davis kind of affirm that as well that just because the road doesn't go through doesn't mean the sidewalk shouldn't go through if you're going to have a sidewalk and it's on the school side it's meant to go to the school probably out of connect to the school i think that makes sense okay councilor armater direction yeah so um my direction and i'm counting now i believe three uh on this council giving direction uh that a uh traffic and bike and pedestrian uh safety study and trip generation study be done uh before the before we even decide on these options um so some so please correct me uh if i'm wrong those of you who i thought have spoke for at least the uh traffic and you know bike and pedestrian safety analysis that coming first that council member beck was was talking about uh so i'm really adamant about that um i want to remind you know uh those of you talking about sidewalks that it's my understanding and staff please correct me if i'm wrong that uh the sidewalks would have to come out of the uh the adjacent uh properties is that correct the the private properties no staff said they they have to do a study and and then the basically the law you cited an ordinance you saw it they would have to look that up and have to go through the planning process so to uh to staff's point it's they know how much easement they need but you don't know which side it's coming from at this phase there's just it's not known thank you mayor i just just want confirmation from staff on that because that was my understanding that as far as we know you know it looks like it will or might have to come from uh the the the private properties but but we would need a traffic and pedestrian study for that to determine that the traffic and pedestrian study doesn't have anything to do with the right of way that would be required the right of way that would be required would be performed through a study to look at the actual cross-section where the properties are located where the property boundary of the dist property is from there we would prepare a design that would actually look at what that cross-section of that roadway would be the traffic study and bicycle and pedestrian requests that you're making have nothing to do with the survey thank you thank you okay so that survey that would be a separate study um so that then i will add that you know to my list of studies that i would like to see come before uh these these options come before us because i think you know it it will affect how the neighborhood sees sidewalks okay if they were to know that the sidewalks would be coming from their own right of way from their own properties you know or from the street um i'm also you know not in favor of uh of removing this this ordinance you know right now so we can get these these studies done so i want to keep this ordinance in and preserve that for the time being got it thank you um councilman maguire direction um i i would say that um i i'm definitely in favor of moving forward with reconstructing the full north south extent of west gate um i'm definitely in favor of a plan that includes sidewalks um i am also not in favor of repealing ordinance uh nine three the nine the 1993 ordinance at this time um and i i want to see a a traffic and pedestrian study before i give any further yeah okay and can we again i want to give staff an opportunity i mean it's they they explain the process and i feel bad because we just ignore it uh you know it's like you can't it there's a sequencing that has to happen and and so if you could again i'm sorry uh becky can you give your explanation on the timing and why we can't do a study before we do the other processes and and at least those watching will understand uh and we can take that direction sure sir i'd be happy to um the traffic study would help with determining um and considering all the developments and all the roadway networks and the forecasting of the demand and the west gate um nearby the hope of today's conversation was to give direction from a planning perspective so that we can start moving forward with that initiation phase and work through those steps such as the studies that are the next steps um such as the survey um the survey is not a study a survey is something that's a standard procedure that's done on every project to see where the boundary roadway a survey is needed for every project that's done by design in order to prepare um a set of construction engineering plans and so you know really the direction we're requesting at this point is to receive um which option we can move forward with so that we can start talking about the initiation phase this is all really just a scoping effort at this point so that we can work through what those design implications and what those different phases are and through those options so i hope that addresses the concerns and the questions um every project has a survey we will and can do a traffic study of this area i just want to mention that the proposal that we've put forward is in concert with the 2015 and the proposed 2021 mobility plan so staff is simply presenting it from the perspective that's been done from the research that's been done in the past and with those projections of those roadways and the roadway network in this area um just like mayor husbets mentioned due to the traffic volumes of not only the haskell traffic but then also the traffic to connecting to bonnie bray westgate winzer 35 etc yeah and and so i'll go ask my questions and i'll start where you left off right we we've talked a lot about mobility plans and how we should stick to mobility plans and we have a plan right i mean and so i thank you for pointing that out that's very noteworthy and my questions are these um so uh first the 2014 bond you mentioned that was voted on by the the citizens of denton and goes forward am i am i wrong i mean the the citizens of denton approved that bond package yes sir they absolutely did and that's part of the reason why we brought this forward today is we currently can't construct the 2014 bond program without some kind of alternative connected for these residents because there is only one way in and out of this property we also have a failing drainage structure of which needs to be addressed in this area right so so either way the the when we're talking about citizen input we the highest value of that is these citizens the citizens of denton went to the polls and said hey we support these projects and we've all been uh we all receive emails when we get behind on bond packages or hey where's this bond package and why hadn't we completed it and so this is staff if i'm understanding right this is staff's effort to meet their obligation to this body to be accountable for to the voters and to this body to say hey we need to complete the bond packages that the citizens trusted us to complete am i am i understanding that right absolutely sir and when we evaluated the overall project we ran into the concern that's been mentioned over and over is that alternate connection you know we cannot complete the project at this time without finding some other way to provide the connection got it and then i'll tell you the two things that i think are missing that no one's talked about and it may be in there and i just may have missed it so forgive me if you did but uh but lighting right have we talked about lighting we have not discussed lighting um but that's an alternate um discussion that will be had as we start working through you know the overall project um you know something that we're looking at is trying to exactly like you're mentioning is look at projects from a holistic approach and that'll be something that's talked about from the initiation phase we're a few steps behind that at this point as we're just trying to kind of scope the overall project and work through that initiation phase you know it's not truly scoped completely at this time minus the 2014 bonnet package that was already approved and voted on sure yeah no and that's and i think that's spot on and i think i hear you right we're trying to get past this phase so that we can get the details that the residents want so that we can clearly communicate but we can't clearly communicate without step one you know so i'm tracking with you and then um i think the um my concern is exactly i think where council member beck was that we build that full road and so then there's you're inviting traffic down that road and so for me i think there's some version of windsor that has a temporary barriers maybe like they did at dallas drive the text i did or something that prevents that immediate left on north south i guess that's right yes west gate and so maybe you have to go and make a u-turn or something some kind of minor inconvenience uh a mechanism that then kind of uh discourages people from driving down this what would ultimately be a very long dead-end road but i think there's there's some kind of machination there but i think i mean i think that's once we get there i mean that's probably the primary conversation for me is we're going to be shining lights and in some way in an area where there has not been any lights right and so i think that's really big uh but so i think here's here's what i i recap and i see hands but i'm going to recap um everyone has centered around some version of c4 but for council member armature has not given any direction other than to say she wants a traffic study and survey first and that you know i respect that but the the majority is around the c4 a version of so maybe that's i mean that's not clear direction by any stretch of imagination because it's all over the place c4 and i don't know how to to narrow that i mean without i mean i can't speak for and and i can't get more succinct than you know than they allow me to so maybe staff can watch this maybe we just i don't know what to do i mean i can't uh you know we're at impasse without clear direction you know we we we gave clear direction that we want to follow the mobility plan a couple of weeks ago but that's varying so i don't know what to uh do we want to have another neighborhood meeting i don't i don't know um how do you want to what do you what are you your thoughts becky on how we can proceed or another way to reload do you want to bring it back and we can have this whole uh but we don't have any new information is my concern i mean it's just we've got to give you direction before you can move forward but we don't want to give you the direction you at least to get that process started i mean i think i have five people uh around c4 versions of that's that's what i got sure i would appreciate the direction so that we can move forward we're very interested and anxious to get the 2014 bond program in this area underway like i mentioned we do know the drainage concerns um we did hold the community meeting on may 20th um you know we did hear questions and concerns in both directions and i will mention you know in the west gate area there are um you know 20 or so homes um and during the mobility process we also heard um the individuals were interested in that connection being made from a mobility perspective so at this point staff is really working forward to try to address the concerns and move forward with the project and also adhere to the current mobility plan and the proposed 2021 mobility plan and i do think that there are design exceptions or design um you know processes that we can go through such as you know the right in right out suggestion instead of the gate suggestion my fear with the gate suggestion is folks are going to take that north south connection get all the way to the end um completely miss all the signs that say dead end road and then have to find a way to turn around so then additional um right away could have to be required in order to have a cul-de-sac or something in that nature especially if someone um decides to take that roadway that needs to be able to turn their vehicle around so there's a lot of design considerations that need to be looked into similarly to how the Windsor and um existing Windsor and Westgate connection can be evaluated so you know we are interested in moving forward with the direction and as we work through this process coming to you know the the council if there are other things that would like to be addressed so at this point i feel like we spent quite a bit of time with the community we're happy to have another community meeting if that's the request but i will tell you and we had a great number of community individuals present and we received i believe it was 80 some odd questions during that community meeting so i'd encourage anyone to go back and listen to that specifically yeah so i'll just go in order again council member birch you were very clear and so i noted council member davis was very clear noted in order again we'll reload council member council member beck you were c4 with a gate but uh so i'll open it up to you do you want to specify any further yeah i do i do have that did we find out whether we have the right to take a right of way from dentin isd was that able to be looked up if you don't mind me jumping in here becky um i did pull the plat for that um for the uh didn't high school site and they did dedicate 32 and a half feet from the center line um on on their property so that that would allow some degree of eastward movement of the road um less of an impact let's say on the pro the private property owners um yeah i i still um i still have concerns but i still fall back on uh uh you know if we are moving ahead if we one direction then c4 i i still think though that it is still a chicken and an egg problem if we're not if we're going to have a gate if we're going to have a bear if we're going to have a dead end then that's a different kind of road we need then if we are going to punch through then i i agree with becky that you know like okay it doesn't make any sense to have anything else if it's punched through but if it's a dead end even because it's a gate then there's no reason to put the large larger development in there and so that is the chicken and egg problem and so if we have consensus on a gate then we have consensus on a dead end and then we have a consensus on a smaller road so i mean that's sort of where i'm going with that and and i'd be interested what other councillors said okay uh mayor proctor melzer well my hand was up a while ago i probably would say i think we've probably given more direction than than you think mayor i look to becky to say if that's the case or not that we've narrowed it down and expressed our concerns there's clearly some next steps and some vetting uh you know i mean i'd be happy to go around again if you want but no certainly i'd love to i'd love to be wrong uh do you have everything you need um my understanding at this point is that the majority of the council is interested in option c4 um they'd like for us to evaluate a gate at that location instead of the right in right out i think there is concern with the classification of the roadway but i would mention that we're just adhering to the mobility plan and that staff would proceed with the project along with the surveying and evaluating the disd plat that julie mentioned and looking at what that overall cross section would be in the overall project so i did hear c4 i did hear several different versions of c4 in some special requests i guess i might mention um but you know that that is truly what i have heard sir okay great so if there's i mean i'm going to reset so there's though i need to hear from those that disagree with that so let's just focus on those that disagree with what she counted okay noted councilman armatuer any anyone else disagree with what would she we're going to have discussion but i just need to give direction i just need to take it in bite-sized pieces so that we can move forward so disagreements what how staff explained our consensus seeing none i stand corrected thank you mayor pretend melzer thank you becky and then final comments for staff to take notes councilman armatuer okay so the nature of my my disagreement with that uh is connected to uh the what uh council member beck so how council member beck so eloquently kind of summed up the problem um i the reason why i'm not giving direction on an option uh is because you know once you follow the uh directive to you know if if you if you follow a path to uh uh keep the ordinance uh to not have uh it be a connector street then these options that we've been given don't make sense anymore because you know they don't they don't fit uh with with this idea um i also want to mention that the mobility plan the uh is is still you know a work in progress has not been decided on yet uh so i hope that uh that you know when we come to you know finalize the new mobility plan that we take into account um this this wall we're we're up against here and not try to you know pretend that it it doesn't exist um as for the bond election it's my understanding that uh that the bond that people voted on did not include a connector street on westgate you know that this is this is related uh to issues surrounding the bond election but that this is not i don't think it's fair to characterize this as i'm not saying that staff characterize it in that way but i think you know that um mayor did uh as something that people voted on in the bond election uh and and just finally you know i want to emphasize that we as a city council absolutely have the the right and the authority to uh you know weigh in on our opinions on the the process and the timing of things we don't have to accept it as a given uh that the traffic studies uh come afterwards just because you know that's the way it has always been done we can decide that that we want uh this uh uh you know horse and cart uh to go in a particular order that makes more pragmatic sense for us okay thank you and and and just for just for my just a discussion point uh the is the ordinance becky is the ordinance specific to westgate drive is it is it specific to that road the ordinance specifically is the um not only the east west connection but then also the north south so it supported the closure of westgate north of borough street as a public street or thoroughfare so it's the so it does include that section sir right and so i just when you come back i would like your analysis on what's worst case if the owner of the property of the of the antique mall area says okay well i'm going to invest in the road behind there to come through right so if the ordinance is specific to westgate and you have and you build a road to the north of the outlet mall and punch it through now all of a sudden is that a way to circumvent that ordinance you know just to put in a new road to the north right i mean because that's i just think i just want to understand what we're up against so that we can give direction for that next phase but i want to understand either your or legal's analysis to say that ordinances if it specifically spells out westgate it doesn't does it apply to just bumping it up basically a block to the north and having a punch through you know so just a just a question to leave behind so very good thank you very much for your patience and and for your your detailed analysis look forward to when that comes back and so if there's did i miss anything from your perspective becky no sir i appreciate all the questions and conversation thank you for allowing me to present awesome have a great evening you too sir okay so that completes uh our third work session i'll take us to our fourth id 211143 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding tex dot required electric transmission line reconstruction i 35 loop 288 mark simmer here dme engineering and bring up the presentation here so so in light of the previous conversation on westgate dme thought it was appropriate to inform the council of the electric transmission line project that's in the general vicinity of the westgate area the intent of our discussion today is just to give council a high level overview of the project no no direction is being requested at this time we don't know all the details of the project nor nor all the information on the options we're considering right now so we'll we plan to come back to council at a later time for your decision as with other departments within the city dme is faced with relocating existing facilities that are in conflict with the future textile project to widen i-35 from the 35 split up to highway 75 this impacts two of our transmission lines one we'll talk about today is the 138 kv mosh branch the north line this line is owned by texas municipal power agency about a mile of the line is in conflict with the textile project the line is shown here in blue you can see its proximity to the westgate neighborhood it's it's north of the neighborhood here right around the loop 285 interchange texas is requesting that we relocate this line by next summer and due to our transmission operator maintenance and construction services agreement with tmpa dme is responsible for construction all the transmission tmpa transmission facilities in the detonary dme will be doing the construction to relocate this line and since this is a federal project interstate project and the existing line is isn't an easement the cost to relocate the line is is reimbursable by texas and since it is being reimbursed by texas texas is not eligible for transmission cost of service reimbursement now as i mentioned earlier the final route hasn't been determined yet once we have more information on all these routes we'll come back to council and we'll also come back to the owner of the transmission line which is tmpa for approval of the route i want to point out a couple of the routes we're considering at this point are somewhat close to the westgate neighborhood the red route and the pink route here you can see the cost for for all the proposed routes at this time it's worth noting that all the routes shown here will require new easements from the landowners however no easements will be required from the westgate neighborhood there's three large landowners in this area the harris family attracts our trust the westview commercial and cat dentin 35 a few of the routes for showing here today are attempts to alleviate the impact to some of these large landowners like the pink route here the yellow route and the green route we understand there could be potential future developments on this industrial developments in this area so that's why these routes are being considered so this slide is an overview of of the two routes that texdot and dme have been discussing and that we believe texdot would fully reimburse for the red and yellow these are the two least expensive routes the red route as you can see by pat or bisects the harris family tract the the yellow route which includes part of the red route is an attempt to alleviate the impact on the harris family tracks the next slide is are the routes that attempt to follow the outside edges of these large landowner tracks they are more expensive than the previous options and and due to the cost and the length of these uh routes we're unsure at this point whether texdot would reimburse the full amount to relocate these lines and this slide shows two options where we are attempting to uh leave the transmission line in the existing right away the the first option here is an underground option and after conversations with the owner of the line which is tmpa they have stated their disapproval of this option so at this point we're not exploring that one anymore the other one is an overhead route which wasn't initially considered due to conversations with texdot with them not allowing transmission poles and transmission facilities within their right away however due to the aggressive schedule with this project that texdot has with their project i mean they are willing to look at relocating some of their facilities here to allow the transmission line to stay in the existing easement so we're still in the initial phases of looking at this option and as with the other ones the this these will probably be more expensive than the than the first two however well the underground will definitely be the overhead i don't have a cost estimate yet so i can't comment on whether texdot would reimburse that amount or not so in summary the the point of our discussion today was really just to inform council of what's happening with the transmission line as it relates to the proximity to the west gate area so at this time i'll take the presentation down and answer questions all right thank you so no direction needed but input questions let's go um uh council member davis council member back mayor pro tem melzer sure thank you mayor just really quick and easy um you mentioned that there might be some issues requiring easements and that we are trying to track property lines as best we could have we been in actual contact with some of those landowners and is that why we can anticipate some difficulty or are we just assuming that based on cutting across large tracks as opposed to following property lines yeah it's based on some very preliminary conversations with the landowner um y'all mentioned surveys earlier we do surveys for all of our transmission projects as well so um to do those surveys we have to get right of entry from the landowners and that's that's how we um that's how we were starting to discuss these projects with the landowners and how we are feeling that there's going to be some pressure to give us or big pressure from them to not give us easement okay council member back thank you mark what i'm just curious why tmpa was objecting to the underground mines what was the rationale well there's the expectation that tmpa might not fully reimburse the amount for underground because it's so so expensive and that there's also the concern especially on the transmission system of using underground transmission due to the reliability concerns uh tech dot wouldn't reimburse i'm sorry yes so since this is a tech stop project we're having to relocate the line because of the i-35 project and because of that they should reimburse us for um the cost to reroute the line however if we're going to choose a an option that's really expensive they might not fully reimburse for that but then then who would be on the hook for the remainder outside the tech stock reimbursement yeah that that would be so it would depend on what tmpa would want to do with the line so they're the owner as well and it would would depend on tmpa and also depend on this council on what's decided thank you mayor pretend melter uh thank you uh to be honest i'm not 100 sure how it impacts westgate well i see it's sort of near but but not not exactly overlapping uh so if i'm missing something that's kind of my question and then and then uh i guess i would just ask so are you leaning to the blue line doing it overhead yeah yeah either the red or the yellow or the blue line um since text is just blew it up again all right i'm sorry i narrowed it down to blue yeah the the blue line has become increasingly favorable uh just do the we won't have to require easements from the landowners and we can we can keep the line in the existing easement and i'm sorry what was the original question am i missing something like it you know i i gather you brought this forward because it it's near the westgate area but it wasn't obvious to me how it might impact any of our thinking about that area what what the implications were for westgate so did i miss something no city engineering had involved dme and the the preliminary discussions when they're creating their presentation that you guys just talked about and so dme management thought is appropriate for us just to bring it to you at this time yeah mayor procham this is sarah that i asked them to do this to one give the council heads up because of the proximity of this project uh two uh quite frankly to show that there are other things in addition to the development of property uh in relationship to westgate but there's other things such as this uh replacement of this line which is in close close proximity but also will you know there will be construction work going on at some point in that area so i asked them to do it so you'd have a continuously look at the bigger and bigger picture so to speak and mayor procham if you look at the the options the pink line does kind of abut the westgate neighborhood pretty closely so i think that just that being an option out there made some sense to bring it forward yeah i see that okay thank you appreciate that thank you david spot on uh okay um so uh councilman bird councilman mcguire i was just wondering about the the total cost that you um noted there what's the percentage of the actual work in moving the line versus the the funds that would need to go in to acquire you know to run through those properties are the homeowners i'm sorry landowners are they is it a money thing you know for the lack of a more decorum on that is it sure if i can comment on that specifically okay but but i do know the construction costs are generally a third of the overall cost sometimes more um the for the red line about a million dollars of that was just easement acquisition so if that gives you some kind of idea okay thank you catherine mcguire thank you um two questions so the the non blue lines so i know that there's a there's an underground blue line option there's an overhead blue line the option are all the other options um that that you presented to us today um underground no they're all overhead overhead okay um uh okay so basically everything that's on the table is overhead yes okay that answers my other question thanks okay okay well thank you very much i appreciate the presentation and and yeah i'll tell you what's noteworthy for me the cat dentin 35 as we had a conversation with them with respect to um uh hersbot on the other side and so i didn't know their property ran this far to the south that's great to know but uh yeah so uh thank you very much it is helpful thank you uh city manager for bringing that and kind of give it it giving it some perspective uh thank you mark for having a project that doesn't need direction thank you all right have a great evening okay that takes us to um uh e which is id 21560 receive report hold discussion give staff direction on pending city council requests good evening mayor and council i'm back and i will share my screen let's see i don't want to do that one i'm going to stop sharing and change over just make sure i get the adobe version that's the one i wanted so that we can view it full screen okay thank you this is rachel ball through mendoza assistant to the city manager and as mayor mentioned i'll be presenting to y'all this evening our pending city council request just as a little bit of background for everyone the uh we'll we'll hear up to seven requests tonight and we actually have three um and i'll introduce each one and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify it and then the remaining officials will have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support for use of staff time to respond to it and then of course we'll respond to all the requests where consensus is reached so first this evening we have our one from council member davis regarding off-premise signs and it's there for you along with the staff information that we put in the backup and here for you as well and i'll stop sharing council members so that you can begin and mayor um or would you like to keep time uh yes i will thank you sure no thank you okay um so council member davis thank you sir i think the request generally speaks for itself especially if you read it along with something in our friday report about the uh the mr frosty sign down on fort worth drive we've got a goofy provision in our sign code because we don't allow billboards in the city of denton that if you put a sign or a mural on your building that's not an illegal billboard but if you put it across the the parking lot from you on your neighbor's building it might look pretty cool and attract business to your to your establishment but it is runs afoul of our sign code now it's an illegal billboard not a mural not a piece of art not a sign it's a billboard now because it's not on your property my request is really just to address that narrow issue in the sign code the consultant stuff that's in the staff response comes into something that's brought to my attention uh by the legal department there's been a lot of developing case law on this point and some other aspects of the sign code it is probably time for a refresh of our sign code regardless that's where that consultant comes in i'm happy just with the work session on my request that one narrow kind of goofy issue to make sure that we don't have business owners putting up perfectly thank you okay uh so uh comments council member guar thank you i would be in favor of a work session on the the narrow issue that council member davis is referring to um i'm not sure whether it would be worth the time and expense to um look at our entire sign code though thank you others councilman beck sorry i was in the wrong window uh yes i i actually uh want to reiterate that exact same concern um uh that i would be in support of a very narrow work session i'm concerned about the cost of a of a broad work session or a broad broad review okay thank you okay uh councilman roberter uh i support this actually would be very open uh to a adding on to that a broad look at issues that uh members of the community have brought forward to us regarding the sign ordinance in general i do think it's time okay okay um anyone else seeing none okay i i'll be in favor of the narrow look at it to get us to four uh so we can move that forward and and that and so that gives us uh so that was um council member uh maguire beck armator and myself just for those keeping track all right um so then the i'm sorry what i would just say i'll go to the next one okay great mayor hudspeth this one is yours for a work session to review the council committees and discuss their relevance and viability okay uh will you keep the time so that we i sure will thank you uh when you're ready again thank you uh so yeah just want to have a a discussion about boards committees viability uh function that sort of thing so that's just of it um just want to um open that door take a take a look at it give staff notes on your thoughts uh and then pull that together see what we can strip down uh build back up that would be viable and be effective and for example currently we we allow felons to serve on our boards i don't know if that's something we want to do or not but we need to have that discussion that's it okay uh council member and now i can keep time because i'm i'm not as biased mayor protein melzer okay uh well i'm very open to having this conversation interested in staff's input in that as well and as we discussed last week i would like to include in it discussion of some aspects of the appointment process for council committees i'd like us to consider allowing nominations from council members other than the mayor and i would like members to be able to remove themselves from consideration for a given committee a certain amount of give and take by council members was in effect part of the process under mayor watts because even without enshrining in the law he understood the need now our current mayor has graciously decided to take council input into consideration in the nominees he's putting forward today so i'm not insisting we do this before taking up nominations tonight i'm content to have these points come up along with the broader topic on council committees uh perhaps at the council retreat okay thank you so let's go council member davis councilman mcguire councilman berg thank you mayor i don't think i'll use my whole minute so i think i'll get started but um just a little i also concur with that i think these are worth a look some of them been around for a long time some of them have been amended and changed over time they have different processes and often staff will kind of either wonder aloud or bring up to these committees well what do you exactly do you see your role being in this particular conversation when airport committee is a good example uh when we formed the new sustainability committee that was a good example we had to have that conversation what's the role between the citizen committee and the council committee so i think it's a conversation well worth having okay and then so council member guire i'm not 100 sure if this is allowed but um mayor are you intending for this conversation to be regarding council committees citizen boards and commissions or both both both okay i am in favor of that and i am also in favor of mayor protem melzer's uh suggestion that we also discuss the appointment process as part of that session okay uh council member berg uh i'm in favor of us uh taking a look at our um process and i'm also uh in favor of allowing felons to serve on the boards if they've completed their time if they've done their restitution if they've done everything that they could do to finish out their time we should allow these people to um get themselves back into the community and be a part of the community i think that's one of our problems in this country is that we say that we forgive we say that we are um you know amenable to uh restitution but we don't continue we don't allow that to happen so uh that's my point thank you okay thank you counselor bet i think we're at four already but i'll just chime in that i support the variant of your suggestion uh that council or maguire and mayor protem uh put forward okay thank you uh counselor armature i just want to second and reiterate what but council member bird just said uh about uh second chances you know somebody has done their time they need to be able to re-enter society in all aspects i can't say it more eloquently than than council member bird so i i will stop right here but i could not agree more okay got it okay uh rachel so then we'll take up the third one okay our third one from council member armature is a policy direction to fly an lgbtq plus pride pride flag and a juneteenth flag at city hall and other city buildings staff-damed fitting for the entire month of june alongside the u.s and texas flags i've got here we are mayor will you keep time please yes thank you first one update to my request based on input by members of the southeast denton bulletin board requesting to fly the juneteenth flag just for the weekend of the 19th instead of all month long with an eye to a possible community made denton specific juneteenth flag for next year and also for this year to add the mlk rec center to the list of juneteenth flag locations nationwide and locally uh black communities and lgbtq communities of color have historically and currently seen their rights lives and bodies at risk and have consistently resisted and spoken out against oppressive legislation and practices in spite of the objections of naysayers raising juneteenth and fully pride flags are a zero liability way to advertise the denton city government doesn't just tolerate and support but visibly celebrates these communities and non-partisan holidays today the aclu texas and lambda legal sent a three-page footnoted legal memo showing zero liability in flying these two flags governments have free speech rights just like individuals do and that's okay um council member davis thank you mayor i actually have a point of order at this time okay state your point of order so we have a couple of procedure problems i think with the request as it's been stated um the pitch is to give policy direction but i think under section 229 g5 it takes four affirmative votes of the council to take any official action on part of the city on in the name of the city and the one minute pitch has been pointed out many times by this council is not a vote it's gaining consensus to give staff direction for a future agenda item and that gets us into section 230 which outlines the one minute pitch section 230 does not say we can use a one minute pitch to give policy direction it says we can use a one minute pitch to ask for a work session or for an isr i was quiet about this a couple weeks ago or maybe three weeks ago now when we did the letter to the legislature um it seemed like a one-off thing in retrospect i should have brought this up then i don't think we should make a practice out of using the one minute pitch to circumvent our normal procedure which is if we give direction we do that with a vote of the council or a work session not with a one minute pitch if the whole objection to one minute pitches is it's not enough time to fully vet an issue and have a conversation then we can't in seven minutes give full-on policy direction to the city uh point of order miss uh city attorney uh do you need those sites again uh we need some direction i i do need those again but it is a point of order for the chair to make a determination about okay so i'm gonna but can you so let me do this councillor davis can you give me those sites again sure uh section 229 g5 and that requires an affirmative vote of four members to take official action and then i just cited generally section 230 which is the entire one minute pitch it says nothing there about policy it says work session isr's information requests okay um well then i mean but legal i do need some direction i'm not familiar with those sites i mean i could take a break and pull them up or you can give me some interpretation to by which to to make a decision i'm sorry um council member davis one more time g229 g5 five okay and 230 yes that's correct if the if the request is to take action it's not posted for that under 230 that's absolutely correct that it's posted to for a future work session to come back to take additional action okay um then so you if if the pitch is to bring this back for a work session that's possible okay sorry uh point of order point of order well i have one that i have to decide on first right so we got to take them in order you got to take the points of order in order um so i i i'm going to uh adopt the the legal interpretation again not having read it myself but understanding generally that it's captured correctly uh so i'll adopt that point of order uh and then uh i guess then legal help me stay on the on the right side of things is there an opportunity to rephrase a re-request or does it need to come back um how do we handle that it's posted as policy direction that that is that specific request that's asking for policy direction i think that that gives adequate notice to the public that there's going to be some discussion of that and it would be reasonable to take direction to bring it back for a work session to have that policy discussion if there's direction to do that okay uh so i'm going to agree with that analysis and then so we'll have that conversation around understanding it it will come back uh if if in affirmative it would come back for forward discussion right am i am i phrasing that right i want to make sure i get that right thank you okay so um okay councilmember orange you can state not a not a statement it is a point of order because you've already spoken and the rules stipulate you only get to speak once even if you you know even if you don't like what was said before the rules are you get everyone gets one opportunity to speak for one minute so if you have a point of order state that but if you're going to respond i have a point of order i have a point of order great then what is that point of order i received assurance in writing from the city manager uh that that what is the point of order though my point of order is that i was given direction by the city manager uh that we could give direction on this and actually be taken there's press and there's precedence for it and i will say that that we can still it's my understanding uh and maybe the the city attorney and he could you know correct me on this we'd still even in this work session uh you know suspend uh make a motion to suspend the rules if the interpretation of the current rules that i was given by the interim city manager is not correct it honestly it feels an advantage that this is just okay well let's have this moment no i okay uh so miss miss city manager yes you're not an attorney we don't expect you to to handle those things and so i know i'm not going to let you um speak to that i i you know i'm just not i'm not going to recognize you for that uh and then uh then i will take well no no i i no no that's it's the chair's discretion who i recognize right and i'm not going to recognize the city manager at this point and so not going to do it and so let's take a break i have another one well we hadn't ruled on your first one so we have to take them one at a time and so let me we're going to take a break and i'm going to read up on uh points of order because i don't know that you've stated one in the first one but i don't want to say that without doing my due diligence so we'll again it's uh unfortunately we're going to have the rules up so read up on uh motions to suspend okay we're going to take we're going to take a break councilman robert or a procedure thank you for yielding the floor so it is 8 19 p.m we're going to take a brief recess uh let's come back at 8 25 just five minutes uh and we'll pick this up thank you and uh welcome back to this meeting didn't city council it's 8 31 p.m we took a brief recess and so that i could kind of get up to speed on uh the procedures to make sure i'm given clear direction so um uh where we are is um councilmember davis made a uh point of order that point of order is upheld uh then councilmember armator made a point of order that had that did not stipulate a meeting procedure issue and for those following along a point of order is a meeting process issue so if you feel like the meeting is not managed properly you raise a point of order that was done properly but there is no there was no meeting procedure issue raised so there's nothing for me to decide on so we move forward uh councilmember armator yeah and this is again you've you've had your one minute to speak on the topic make a motion oh i know you know i this is procedural i'm making a motion okay what is your motion why can't i make a motion i can always make a motion to my motion is to suspend the rules okay this is a bare minimum okay based on the fact that this item was posted on the agenda okay that there has been a precedence for giving i was told by the interim city manager in writing that i could do this okay so based on the fact that through no fault of his own councilmember davis has just at this moment uh thought to raise this issue today i am making a motion to suspend the rules of procedure to allow us to give direction to staff at this one minute pitch session okay today rather than having a go to a work session if if i can't get a second and vote on that uh then we can proceed and uh put this on next week's uh agenda however uh juneteenth is approaching really quickly um and pride month will be halfway through so i think it's outrageous on something that's so meaningful to the community okay at this time when we claim that inclusion and being a welcome so i'm going to ask you to not make your statement in the middle of your um your procedural request or your motion right that's that's thank you so the the the point is this uh for the for the fellow for my fellow council members the request is a motion to suspend the rules understand that the one minute pitch process that was noted in chapter 230 that councilmember davis cited is an ordinance it is not a council procedure and cannot be circumvented the way it's it's lined out by a motion to suspend the rules we can't suspend the rules to circumvent a ordinance so there is no there is no path forward down that line and so again we're back to the one minute pitch councilmember armater is exhausted her one minute councilmember davis is exhausted as one minute i will hear from the others and then forward looking so that we're all on the same page here's here's the process uh going forward i will hear from other council members that want to speak we'll tally those if there's direction i'm going to take the unique uh approach to make sure we we get everything in and open the floor for what people want to be in that in that work session you so you can just note hey here's what i want to talk about give some detail so that staff can research that and come back with that work session understand this as well though chapter chapter 230 the ordinance stipulates you cannot you can't use this one minute pitch process to then get something to take action so this one minute pitch process only allows a work session from that work session you would then be able to take action going forward but you cannot do both in one at one time that's prohibited by the ordinance cited check councilmember armater please i'm asking councilmember armater i'm asking you not to interrupt me so that people can understand where we are thank you very much so as i was saying chapter 230 is uh an ordinance and that ordinance stipulates we cannot um take action uh take action in that you can get it on the agenda only at chapter 230 stipulates you can't have an action item come from the one minute pitch so an action item comes from the work session one minute pitch to the agenda agenda then to the to the action item that's how that flows it's prohibited it prohibits you leapfrogging those or putting those on the same agenda you can't have a action you can't have a work session in action item on the same agenda because it would all would have come from the one minute pitch which is prohibited by ordinance so that's where we are councilmember armored see armater spoken councilmember davis had his i stand corrected you you made a point of order we've arrived at that so i'm going to recognize you again if you if you are wanting to be recognized if not obviously if you don't speak on the item at hand then that's a no but i at least want to give you an opportunity so that we can get back on track so uh did you wish to be recognized to speak not at this time thank you other councilmembers okay thank you very much councilmember mcguire thank you mayor headsmith i would like to express support for councilmember armater's uh suggestion that we fly a philly pride flag and a juneteenth flag i think it's important that we celebrate and support our lgbtq residents and our residents of color um particularly in light of recent events that have revealed just how much discrimination is still out there um i would like to see this item placed on the agenda for um june 15th work session and um placed on the agenda for a vote at june 15 council meeting um i i would also um like to say that these these um symbolic gestures are wonderful but i really also want to see us pass a uh a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance uh to have a more tangible impact thank you okay and just i mean again i touched on it but i don't want to i don't want to leave it unchecked we can't do both that's just prohibited by ordinates and so just just let me know uh sorry okay um so got it sorry let me keep it notes councilmember beck yeah i support the work session and uh i would be interested in calling a special meeting of at least three concurring council members uh to address the work session such that the vote could be actually had on the 15th okay all right let me see one okay thank you sure i got my notes anyone else mayor pro temelton i wish i understood what that three members thing is uh you know i was prepared to comment on what i thought was before us to say if you celebrate juneteenth or pride month i celebrate with you if it does come to a vote i'm certainly for pride and juneteenth recognition and for inclusion and i personally be heartened to see these i don't actually agree council should start making the flags over government buildings the next thing i don't want to see city council turned into a weekly show of symbolic witness test votes because we have the power to make real policy housing homelessness a 2040 plan that balances growth and quality of life these are priorities council resolved to address this year and real policy matters much more than symbols including non-discrimination policy and that's our job our charter leave ceremonial matters to the mayor so if council has to vote on it i'll try to vote for everything i hope in a work session we would try to craft a flag policy or process that would allow me to vote for every citizen request hopefully on the consent agenda so that we can work on policy and not just have flag debates that's done from real progress to me thank you um okay did i miss anyone council member i am with um i am going to agree with um council pro tem um metzler i think that our time should be spent on the hard work of policy development and procedural implementation i am very supportive of any group out there that wants to celebrate themselves but historically this is something just to the side for educational purposes i just don't think that uh i i don't think that the um support for african americans and the support for lgbtq community plays together i just don't think that that is something that needs to be connected because each one of those groups have their own special issues that uh that they have at hand and of course uh so i want to just stay focused on what our responsibility is to policy and procedural and implementation and direction and we can celebrate cultural things on its own thank you thank you um and so rachel if you'll keep the time for me please and let me know when you're ready begin thank you uh so i just as as the uh mayor of the city of denton i think it's important to to make a statement in this and i will read a proclamation and i read the proclamation i do do believe last year uh in in mayor watt's absence i forget it all runs together but i'll tell you this i'm a i'm a citizen and i'm a resident of denton we're all residents of denton and i want to take the lead of my peers that served on the uh it was the um i mean i made a note because i knew i was going to forget the the committee on the citizen and gates committee on citizen engagement my peers that are here a couple of them that spoke already changed that from citizen to community because they wanted to be more inclusive so they didn't want to limit it to uh citizens they said we need to be more inclusive and backed it out to include to change it to community and i embrace that's time there thank you okay so um that's everyone that wanted to speak and we do not have four in support uh so that that request dies for want of a majority support that concludes item e we do have our closed session now um and so um do we what how much time do we need to set the room okay i'm not sure that's accurate uh i mean i expressed my views about kind of the ultimate disposition but i said i'm open to the conversation in which i said i'd hope that we would create a policy that would lead us to not have to basically have flag debates so if you're counting how many are in favor of the conversation i count for and well i and councilmember bird i don't i don't want to speak for it i know she uh expressed support for parts of what i said i don't know for sure if it was all the parts but so so you at least have four matters not we have four so then i'll open it up for um uh discussion on our notes for staff so uh miss city manager if you can take notes um we will uh i'll recognize whomever wants to uh have comments on what goes into that discussion so that they can bring it back in its entirety uh counselor davis thank you mayor if the conversation is going to be had i think councilmember melzer put it very well there needs to be some shape or policy going forward so there's not confusion in the future so there's not confusion from citizens on how you get you know your your group's flag flown at city hall if that's what we go forward with doing that there's a a clear way forward of how to get that done um if if that's the the conversation we're going to have um then i think we have to have a full conversation not just one flag in a vacuum one time ad hoc yep okay anyone else uh i'll add to that to say i would like to hear from legal because my understanding is uh that would open the door uh in perpetuity so uh we would we would lose my understanding so i just need to understand if we can then uh once we start down that road can we reverse course uh and then i would like to hear from legal obviously we had uh one opinion from a group but i'd like to hear from uh our our own legal analysis if we do um deny someone an opportunity to um fly their flag and they file a lawsuit i just need to understand the the cost and what budget that comes from uh because that would need to be uh accounted for uh my understanding is you and and i'm right about this you can't control when someone sues you right you just have to respond and we all get those emails so uh i just want to understand it doesn't have to have merit for them to sue us right so i just want to understand understand the the repercussions if that happens cost forward looking and what budget that comes from and um how how many of those that'll help me understand how many of those we could have before it affects the the tax rate um and i think and then i guess also i'd like to know if staff could look into um what are we what legally are we prohibited from enforcing i guess there's some religious uh kind of issues to circumvent so then we would we would then uh have to exclude certain groups and then also furthermore the united states supreme court spoke to what it has a very broad definition of religious organization and so i'd like staff's analysis applying that new uh supreme court definition to groups so that we can understand uh if we approve if we're approving a group that's uh seen as a as a this is longer than a minute i'm given this is this this this this conversation shouldn't even happen i open the door so that staff can can note what we need so they can come back with the uh agenda item right fully baked or i can just wait and give the input then and it won't come back in time so i'm trying to give a heads up on what i want to talk about so that they can have it fully baked if that's okay you know so i think i'm doing the right thing here someone correct me if i'm wrong okay thank you so um then so on the united states i just want to understand it right the supreme court's definition of religions are different than the lay person and so i want to understand that analysis based on staff's opinion so point of order this is having the session clear in order man all right are you okay okay me yes no no i'm saying i'm saying point of order you're starting to ask questions about supreme court decisions okay that's the discussion that now we're saying we're going to have at a later date in a work session so you know if those were your concerns you should have mentioned them in your one minute uh but now that you've had your one minute uh you know we should not be having that conversation now okay well chair's discretion i outlined the process i said if it had four we were going to have this conversation so that staff could have the notes so that they could bring back whatever uh questions concerns and so that they could research that and bring that back that was stipulated at the beginning and i have that discretion to chair the meeting that way i understand you disagree and that's noted i respect that but i respectfully disagree that's to let my last note more you know you've uh so you've been heard uh miss city attorney just for clarification you've counted to four to come back for a discussion in a work session about developing the policy is that correct that is correct and and so yes yeah mayor that was my question because i'm trying to write this down is exactly what we're going to be doing so it's really more about setting a policy and the discussion regarding the policy not about that is that's that's my understanding yes so so and and that's a fair point and and let's get have a very clear record we are coming back for a policy yes that because if if you're if you're implying something else and i guess this all is on you mayor pro tim melzer so you said policy discussion and you're the fourth in so if you're if you're good if i'm if i'm miss phrasing then let's get let's have that out now because i'm not gonna i don't want to get i didn't say you know i want to have a very clear record on what's being requested well we had a lot of discussion about what was an acceptable use of the one minute pitch and what wasn't and it was clear uh to me anyway at the end of that that a work session would be the result so the only thing we were voting on was whether or not to have a work session uh on the the matter presented so i said you must include me in the counter core of those being willing to have the discussion in the work session uh you know i expressed my point of view about the substance of the request but i said that the thing that i would want to come out of that work session would be a flag policy and i think you heard councilmember davis uh you know concur on the need for that but to to then say therefore it's only that and not the substance of the request i don't really see how you could get to that so i think you know you'd have to say that it's uh a work session about the proposal that would include more broadly the policy that you know that uh would affect it okay well then i'll just i'm not gonna i'm not going to poison the pool um katherine if you can and you and your staff analyze it because obviously it's it's going to get scrutinized to the nth degree um so just uh make sure where you're clear you're comfortable on how it comes back um include the quotes as needed uh to to make sure where you're comfortable and we'll go from there okay anyone any other notes for staff great okay that concludes that item takes us to our closed session how long do we need to set the room mayor i think we're ready to go here great okay uh then i'll call uh call us well let me get the the wording okay i will convene the closed session at 8 52 p.m we will consider the following item and welcome back to this meeting didn't city council it's 9 17 p.m and we're back in our um we're at a closed session we're taking up our consent agenda so for the for though for my peers uh the only thing that was pulled was letter i for for a presentation i'll take a motion uh council member davis move approval of the consent agenda accepting item i counselor back i second that okay we have a motion by council member davis a second by council member back with the approving the consent agenda but for item i which was pulled any discussion okay seeing none council member davis i'll say you i council member back how say you i council member guire i council member bird i uh council member pardon me mayor pro tem melzer i councilor armature yes sure uh mayor hudspeth is a i as well that passes seven zero uh then i will call item i which is id 211073 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager or their designee to execute a contract with uh with probe america inc for outdoor control chemicals for the city of denton landfill good evening uh mayor members of council brian burner director solid waste for the city of denton appreciate the opportunity to talk to you a little bit about our odor control process at the landfill let me share my screen purpose of tonight's meeting is discuss the purchase of aeropure chemicals for use at the city of denton landfill i do want to review chemical safety information as well as discuss the odor neutralization process uh that results from the aeropure chemical use so what is aeropure it's a product of a company called probe america that basically is a biocide a cleaning agent and a deodorizer that is used to to eliminate mask and destroy uh odors and control dust now this is an odor eliminator not a masking agent so even though it does have a a good excuse me um even though it does have a a pleasant scent it is not a masking agent uh as such it does uh destroy and eliminate the the chemicals that are causing the odors causing them to be removed from the area we use these areas uh we use this chemical as perimeter odor control and a dust suppressant and also we directly apply it to the the trash in the working face to keep that area odor under control so why do we use this product under our existing landfill permit we are required to use various measures to control uh odors and dust within our permit boundaries uh we have uh over the over several years we have used and tested different products we found this to be the most effective uh product to use as well as being one of the easiest to apply so is it safe uh we have obtained the safety data sheet from the company and as a as stated on the the data sheet the hair appear does not represent an environmental or toxicological hazard pursuant to uh regulations seven uh 1272 uh it is not toxic uh to be on the skin to take internally or to inhale it in those exposures it is not found to be a carcinogenic not to be a cause mutations nor is it expected to result in any sort of reproductive toxicity so how does it work what it does is it breaks down and it breaks the bonds within the offending chemicals to cause less offensive chemicals or elements now granted the odor the materials that cause the odors in the landfill are varied based on the material that we get so trying to identify a specific oxidation state a reaction equation is going to be difficult but based on the testing that was done by the company in the preparation of of and and evaluation of this material there were several uh surrogates that were used hydrogen sulfide ammonia betanoic acid methyl methyl mercaptan trimethylamine and between these uh confirming their their reduction and elimination using various uh uh analytical methods either the chemicals were either totally eliminated or reduced up to from between 85 percent and 99.4 percent so it does do a good job of breaking those chemicals down uh staff recommends approval of id 21-1073 be able glad to ask or answer any questions uh that you might have questions for staff seeing none i'll take a motion councillor mcguire uh thank you so much brian for uh addressing the questions that we brought up uh earlier in the work session um i feel uh much more informed and i would like to move approval is there a second councillor bird uh second thank you we have a motion by councillor mcguire second by councillor bird discussion councillor beck yeah i'm gonna vote approval but the same token brian just just for clarification um i was interested i mean it does the top the the the aeropur itself um isn't isn't the uh i see that you you know you've shown that it's not toxic carcinogenic minogenic uh not a reproductive hazard all that um the the question is really after and and i guess for future reference you can get that back to me in the future is what are um at least samplings of the breakdown products once you've done oxidation of the uh trash uh organic compounds so what what is the result of aeropur plus trash is what i was asking not is aeropur carcinogenic um so i'm not going to hold things up for this but i wanted to be i want to take this time to say what my actual question was but allow you time to get back to me on that thank you okay thank you for that clarification any other uh discussion okay councilmember meguire i'll say you i councilman bird i councillor davis i councillor beck i councillor melter gotta i'm sorry you're muted i thank you councilman marmotor yes uh mayor hutz with his eyes well that passes seven zero thank you brian appreciate your patience um got it okay that takes us to our items for individual consideration i'll call the first item which is 2a id 211068 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager or their designee to execute a contract with jago public company for construction of the 2020 street bundle sector two project with geographical limits as follows north texas boulevard from from west oak street to eagle drive stella street to south bonnie bray street to north texas boulevard chestnut street from welch street to bernard street and welch street to from fannin street to collin street providing the expenditure of funds therefore therefore and providing a effective date thank you good afternoon my name is dustin draper i'm with the capital projects project manager for capital projects and tonight i'll be bringing you the 2020 street bundle sector two for award for construction contract the project over you as stated is for roadway reconstruction wastewater upgrades and water upgrades on the following streets stella street north texas boulevard chestnut street and welch street as shown in the map right beside us stella will be from north texas to bonnie bray north texas is from oak all the way to eagle and then chestnut uh hold on i have to look at my deal because it's covered up by the deal real quick just sorry about that chestnut is welch from bernard and welch from fannin to collins this one was shows on a csp which was an alternate delivery magic competitive seal proposal instead of using the low bid methodology for ifb uh as prior council gave us direction to look at alternative means of the methods for delivery of projects this is what was chosen basically the it's sent out and we sent it out to it was roughly 475 different candidates only five replied out of those four out of those five only four made the final cut did all the deals filled out all the forms were acceptable they break into personnel quality reputation detailed schedule written plan safety record and of course price for the total cost of ownership each one is rated as shown below you get a score of 100 categories breakdown in 10 35 10 5 and 40 for price uh as you can see here jago public is the company that's going forward tonight they had the highest rating at 76.05 uh the only other thing that i like to bring to your attention is always get a question about why reliable commercial construction in this case got a zero for safety it's not because they're an unsafe company it's because due to the scoring some of the forms that didn't get filled out it doesn't allow you to write them any higher than that because the forms weren't fit out properly in the future what we've been doing is we've been working with setting up for town hall meetings with our contractors to show them how to properly bid make sure all the forms so we can get a more competitive style bid the competitive sale proposal also gives you your best for a lot of a better word it gives you your best value for construction and quality of contractor our project schedule was this one was designed and prepared in house completed in february 2021 we went to public utilities board on may 24th council ward tonight notice received would be june 21st and the construction completion date would be june 21 2022 and of course that is depending on whether as you all know this month of may has been a rather wet month staff's recommendation is to authorize approval for the contract with jago public for 2020 street bundle sector 2 and a not to exceed amount of five million dollars 44 thousand six hundred and ninety one dollars which includes the five percent contingency sounded really quick to have any questions no it's perfect thank you uh if you can pull that down we'll see um if we have any council member guara thank you um if i recall correctly um that section of welch street from fannon to collins it there's also a dme uh a project happening at that location i think um can staff uh confirm whether that is the case and what the timing will be will those um projects be happening simultaneously so that the road doesn't have to be closed multiple times or like what's the plan for that so on that part of that i can't necessarily primarily speak for dme but what i can tell you is that we are coordinating with schedules try to minimize impacts any way we can uh dme's project wouldn't be the same style closure as mine is since mine's a complete reconstruct of the roadway mine is more intrusive uh those are things that we factor in with our scheduling uh on the order to contract when we went to say when we go to our pre-con meeting with the contractor that's when we usually work out all scheduling conflicts or any internal conflicts with other departments okay excellent yeah just as long as y'all are being uh cognizant of that of course um i was wondering if you could speak a little bit to the safety rating for jago public i know that you you mentioned that um one of the other companies that put in a bid had a zero rating but it was because they just so essentially yes ma'am since this is a new methodology for the city or the way a lot of cities use this method here and then we just recently started using it what we found out is when we took this to our procurement for the rating the way it's rated is if you don't fill out your forms and completely you do get the zero all these points can add up to your deal the safety for jago public it's based off of basically your safety reports for your proposal what your safety rating is your insurance things like that of that nature that's how you're graded and it was graded by uh the internal stakeholders review the initial proposals that are submitted by the contractors and then it goes through the procurement process for the grading system so it's a fair format okay hello this is christine taylor a procurement director i just wanted to follow up on answering for that so jago definitely had a safety score that was in the good range and so since this was our first csp we did a formula based ranking for safety when we looked at that so the company that have the five points received the highest score and then we did um then we went down from there on ranking so moving forward for the safety portion and csps we will have a range so if they meet on the safety scores they all could have a score of five whereas we and this one we did formula base so the person with the high with the best safety record received the highest points and we did went down from there so jago's safety record was definitely in a good range for us to go forward with them okay so what you're saying is it it just looks kind of bad because it was graded on a curve correct so this was our very first competitive seal proposal and so we did it formula based like how we you see the pricing so the lowest price gets the maximum of points and then we go down from there but when we looked at that in hindsight we definitely thought we should have applied ranges but with this one the way that we applied the scoring it did not signif significantly impact any of the overall ranking jago still would have been the winner regardless so we will have a range methodology moving forward okay thank you yeah that that helps um uh the last thing and i i just want to make sure i'm sure that uh the answer is yes but i just want to make sure uh given that that commissioner cheek on the public utilities board is the general manager at jago public um i want to make sure that he recused himself from this vote can can staff speak to uh to whether he recued recused himself on this i'll send that to christine taylor yeah so any vote at public utility board he does recuse himself from the voting when there is a jago contract on the agenda okay thank you all right any other questions for staff councilman burke basic question i was just wondering um the lot about the liability of um since we were talking about safety i just brought up the the opportunity to talk about the liability when something pretty much goes wrong with that does that fall back on the city or is that um is is that included in the contingency or is that directly on the uh the company that we're that we're contracting with so yes ma'am so essentially when you're when you go to construction if you award a contract night jago gets her nose for seeing they start work anything they damage is their responsibility it doesn't fall back so if like for instance if a sprinkler line gets damaged or somebody's mailbox gets hit the city facilitates to help with that but we know it is not a cost for us it's a cost to contractors and say cause the damage okay any other questions for staff councilor beck yeah i'm just going to encourage us for since we're taking out these big strips of property area road while we redo them one of the things i've noticed during our current renovation capital improvements is communications a little lacking so to the extent that you can encourage jago who is a longtime partner to maybe step up their game and be a little more communicative of scheduling and allow ryan's team or your team to to get that word out a little better i think they would be received by the public a lot more favorably yes sir on that account uh this capital project's foremost and upfront priority to always try to be as good at communication as we can we've you cannot in our in our world you cannot communicate enough the citizens are the constituents of y'all's and enlightened they pay my salary yeah if i can't take care of them what can i take care of thank you appreciate that uh so any other questions for staff seeing none motion uh council member davis move approval counselor beck second thank you motion by council member davis second by councilman beck discussion seeing none council member davis how say you aye council member beck aye councilman mcguire councilman bird aye council member armature yes mayor pro tem melzer your husband is a aye as well that passes seven zero thank you dustin Texas item b id 211031 consider adoption of ordinance considering all matters incidents and related to issuance sale and delivery of up to 59 million 410 000 in principal amount of city of denton general obligation bond series 2021 and mayor i do have one presentation for item b and c okay let me call that uh item c is id 211032 consider adoption of an ordinance considering all matters incident and related to issuance uh issuance sale and delivery of up to 100 million 104 million 240 000 in principal amount of city of denton certificates of obligation series 2021 cassiogdon director of finance here to discuss the upcoming bond sale with you and get your recommendation i do have a brief presentation and i'll share my screen um just really quickly the the total um that we are requesting to issue this year um is 163.6 million um that is um between general obligation bonds and co's um you can see the general obligation bonds are tied to that 2019 bond election um and for streets and public safety facility um and then the certificates of obligation are um some are for general fund that i'll go over and just in a in a subsequent slide and then for our utilities so again um the the geo portion of the the bond sale projects um the street reconstruction we did increase this amount slightly um from what we originally budgeted due to some of the the projects moving up in timing um trying to get those streets reconstructed faster um and then um the hickory creek road also moved up as far as what we originally scheduled for um in the bond election um and then the public facilities decreased slightly from what we budgeted but it will be we'll we'll sell that additional uh bond issuance next year next fiscal year to complete that project so with the co's they do have um a different uh requirements than the gos obviously the gos were voted on by the the citizens uh the co's have notice uh requirements that are in the that we we advertise in the paper as well as on our website um and this um the bond ordinance authorizing the sale of the co's has to be at least 46 days after the date of the first publication per state law and i do want to mention we have our bond council and financial advisors on the line if there are additional questions and so with those co-funded projects um you'll see the 2012-2014 reconstruction the 8.9 million um that council authorized to to close out those street projects and then our vehicle replacement um fleet expansion 3-1-1 system that ryan mentioned earlier in the evening as well as our loop 288 building we did initially budget 2 million for this project however the cost came in a little bit higher we are going to go ahead and issue these bonds if council decides later on that we can use the arp funding to fund this project we will come back and request to transfer that money to a different project as well as the city hall west renovation council gave direction to sell bonds for that project as well for water we water originally budgeted 35.5 million in projects due to some scheduling and timeline changes where they are requesting to issue 18.8 million this year to fund that the their water projects and wastewater originally budgeted 32.8 million dollars you can see we're issuing we're scheduled to issue 18 million um some of their projects we were we did decide to revenue fund um and so we're only issuing 18 million in debt for wastewater projects again if you have any specific um project questions the the directors are on the line should be able to answer and then electric funded projects um our original budget was 61 million we're requesting to sell 40 million for those electric projects for this fiscal year and so um the next steps if the council passes the ordinance tonight our preliminary date of sale is june 22nd with a closed date of july 20th okay thank you um questions for staff seeing none council member guara um thank you uh i was wondering if um cassie if you could speak to you know how um the sale of these bonds would impact um you know in the coming year the amount of our general budget that goes toward debt servicing sure so um we do the the general government debt is paid out of um our debt tax rates um and we're estimating about a five million dollar payment so that was included in our budget and in our projections is when we when we um brought the budget to council last year before when the the this fiscal year when the budget was adopted so um it will we we are expecting to increase the debt debt tax rate and that's really we've been projecting that since the 2019 bond election um was programmed and voted on and approved by the the voters so that that will be increasing as we issue that those that debt over the next several years okay any other questions i'll take a motion for let's so let's be specific so let's take a motion for item 2b first to be id 211031 that's we'll take that up first uh council member beck motion to approve council member guire second thank you motion by councilor beck second by council member guire discussion okay seeing none councilor beck i'll say you aye council member guire aye council member davis aye council member bird aye uh mayor pro tem melzer aye aye thank you councilor armature yes thank you uh and mayor hutchford's as well that passes seven zero i'll take up item two c which is 211032 i'll take a motion council member beck uh motion to approve thank you is there a second council member bird i second thank you so we have a motion by council member beck a second by council member bird discussion seeing none council member beck i'll say you aye council member bird aye council member guire i'm council member davis aye mayor pro tem melzer aye council member armature this is 2c that is correct yes okay uh may has with his eyes well that passes seven zero that takes us to uh thank you uh cassie takes us to um 2d which is id 211107 consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation approving the settlement agreement reach between co-serve gas cities and co-serve gas ltd good evening again mayor and council this is rachel ballthorpe mendosa assistant to the city manager i have a brief presentation for you okay as the mayor mentioned um tonight i'll be discussing with y'all the co-serve settlement case just as a little bit of background um didn't is a member of the co-serve gas limited cooperative that represents over 130 000 customers in denton coffman and calling counties co-serve has over 2000 accounts in the city of denton the rate set case settlement process um we the process that we've gone through so far council approved the suspension in january to allow for a full evaluation and review of the rate filing and to see what strategies y'all may want to pursue and during that 90 day suspension time frame the case did settle and new rates were established so as part of the negotiated settlement the effective date will take place no later than august the 10th of this year and that reduces the company's requested rate increase of 11.5 million dollars down to 6.25 million and that represents a 45.6 reduction to the company's request just for a little bit of perspective there that means that the average customer impact and again where we look at just the average monthly bills here which are exclusive of any revenue related taxes and rate case expense recovery so for a residential account that might look like about a four dollar and 53 um cent average increase per month and then for a commercial account that would be 41.89 average decrease so in that ordinance that's a part of your backup and that we're putting forth for your approval this evening it approves the negotiated settlement and the new rates and just as a little bit of information if it's denied the co-serve will appeal the decision to the railroad commission where it would be consolidated with the ongoing case before it so once the commission adopts that settlement and it otherwise sets new rates they'll they will take effect within the city so that could have an impact on the recovery allocation of our rate case expenses if that's what ends up happening there so again that's a real brief presentation there's more meat in the backup documents that were shared but i along with several of us here on the on the call are here for questions should you have any all right any questions for staff seeing councilman maguire always me um i could you speak a little bit to um why there's this discrepancy why why residential costs would be going up while commercial costs went down yes so if um i'm gonna i'm going to refer back to the ais where that was documented a little bit more thoroughly um but it does have to do with how the the settlement was structured to where there is a monthly fee that did go up but then the the monthly rate went down but um i do want to call on jamie malden she's our consultant with loyd gossink in the matter she can provide um some more detail on that regard for us if we need jamie could you unmute yourself and and maybe discuss that a little bit with them hi yes good evening council uh this is jamie malden with loyd gossink uh the answer to that question is yes you are right the customer charge for commercial customers did go down but the volumetric rate went up so um the cost will actually be um they wanted to be more competitive with atmas but the company did which is why it was structured that way um but i will also let tell you that the residential rate increase for um the customer charge is actually still it's still pretty low in comparison to other gas regulated gas utilities in the state including atmas okay any other questions seeing that i'll take a motion council member davis move approval there's a significant reduction from what the company wanted to charge to what they would charge under the settlement okay is there a second mayor pro tem melzer second thank you uh so we have a motion by um council member davis and a second by mayor pro tem melzer any other discussion okay seeing none council member davis how say you aye mayor pro tem melzer aye councilman maguire aye councilman bird aye councilman beck aye councilman marmiter begrudgingly yes mayor hudspeth says aye as well that passes seven zero uh that takes us to thank you rachel uh that takes us to um item e 2e which is id 21911 consider nominations appointments of the city's boards commissions and committees and uh katherine has helped me out is this where we left off no it's the next one correct the next one okay so um i'll turn it over to staff one moment mr mayor trying to get my computer going um so for the this item you actually there is no formal there is no formal presentation however you do have the nominees noted on the exhibit to the item yes sorry i always i always forget about these first uh so is there any questions for staff regarding the names presented seeing none um i'll take a motion uh counselor davis i move approval of the appointments as presented thank you um is there a second council member beck second thank you so we have a motion by council member davis second by council member beck any other discussion seeing none councilor davis i'll say you aye councilor beck aye councilman maguire aye council member bird aye mayor portin melzer aye councilman marmiter yes mayor husbah says aye as well that passes seven zero thank you now that takes us to f which is id two one one one one two consider appointments to the city city council committee development code review committee discovery discover denton advisory board at al thank you mr mayor let me go ahead and share my screen okay my name is rosa rios and i am your city secretary excuse me so i'm not sharing that's it thank you so to provide a little bit of background during the may 25th 2021 work session and then the regular meeting that followed city council did review discuss and consider appointments to internal and external boards and commissions preferred updates by individual council members were noted as well as the legislative authority as to the appointing who can appoint city council member davis did move to approve the committee board assignments proposed by the mayor for the noted committees here following that mayor pro tem elzer did move and council member arm enter seconded in a majority of the council members voted in favor of the motion to postpone the item to today's meeting henceforth council member davis's motion seconded by mayor hud spath remained on the table as a point of order for consideration today proposed changes identified by mayor hud spath on the may 28th friday report will be detailed a little bit later on this presentation so you can see here for the council committees for the audit finance committee it'll actually show that council members the existing vacancy was formerly occupied by former council member ryan and the mayor's proposed appointments for council members mayor pro tem elzer council members arm enter and bird for the community on committee community engagement there was an existing vacancy created by former council member birdie johnson and the mayor's proposed appointments were mayor pro tem elzer council members arm enter and bird for the committee on the environment the existing vacancy was formerly occupied by connie baker and the mayor's proposed appointments were mayor pro tem elzer council members davis and beck for the council airport committee there was a vacancy occupied by former council member john ryan and the mayor's proposed appointments were mayor pro tem elzer and council members davis and beck for the community partnership committee keep in mind that at least two of those members have to participate on the discovered denton advisory board there were actually two existing vacancies as you can see formerly occupied by former council members baker and johnson and the mayor did propose to appoint council members mcguire and bird to fill those two dual seats and then of course council member davis to continue for the mobility committee we have council members or the former the vacancy was occupied by former council member john ryan and of course the proposed appointments were account mayor pro tem elzer and council members mcguire and bird for the development code review committee we do did or we do have two vacancies as here you can see formerly occupied by former council members johnson and ryan and the mayor proposed to appoint council members mcguire and bird for the unexpired term for the external committees of course we kind of used the term committees just kind of just to encompass all of them but the dallas regional mobility coalition which is a coalition we did have a vacancy formerly occupied by john ryan and of course mayor hudspeth proposed to you know be considered for the appointment and of course he would be appointed appointed until a successor would be appointed for the discovered denton advisory board again keep in mind that two of those members have to occupy a seat on the community partnership committee we have basically three existing vacancies that are proposed to be appointed by council members mcguire and bird to fill that dual seat and of course council member beck for the unexpired term noted for the lake ray roberts planning and zoning commission currently occupied by mayor hudspeth mayor hudspeth would continue with no term end date based on those by laws for the leadership team for the dana county workforce success leadership team there is a current vacancy formerly occupied by john ryan and of course the mayor had proposed to appoint mayor pro tem melzer and of course you see here for the unexpired terms that we are requesting now points of interest via the may 28th friday report mayor hudspeth did proposed a few changes for the audit finance committee and the council airport committee he proposed that during the one minute pitch held earlier during the work session to discuss making at a future work session should council agree to possibly discuss making these both inactive so therefore postpone the appointments to both for the committee on the environment he proposed to appoint council members davis beck and armentor council member armentor would take the seat in lieu of proposed mayor pro tem melzer and of course for the development code review committee he withdrew the proposed appointments and provided for city council to determine the membership um as normal your appointment uh or authority was to appoint that let me go ahead and stop sharing my presentation and i'll take any questions you may have great so we pick up with uh with the motion am i correct kathryn right okay thank you so we pick up with the motion as is so i'm going to recognize the movement uh first counselor davis mayor uh in order to proceed kind of the most expeditious way possible i would propose to amend my motion i moved approval of a number of committees including some that were not in the posting that was my bad it's kind of late in the evening i included the uh like ray roberts pnz that wasn't even part of that particular posting so i would propose to amend my motion that's on the uh been taken up from the table now to read i move approval of the mayor's nominations as amended on may 28th to the council audit finance committee council committee on community engagement council committee on the environment council airport committee and the council mobility commission excuse me mobility committee stop thank you and as the second i'll adopt those that that motion so we have a motion and a second uh that's been amended discussion uh mayor pro tem melzer sorry you're muted uh thank you i'm just trying to track here just the current motion then incorporate uh mayor your recommendations that were in the points to consider is that the may 28th yes that is correct okay slide six so uh if if uh you're amenable uh the only uh opportunity i would like to open up is to just give a little background i've in the past been on most of the committees because i had the time to do it and uh you know and i've done most of them for three years or at least two years but if there are if i'm if if there are others who would like the opportunity it doesn't it's not necessarily important to me to be on them in lieu of somebody else as covering uh i'd like to stay on mobility uh and if there are if there are other council members particularly new members who would like to be on one another committee but don't see a space uh you know i'd be very happy to yield you know if you uh uh would you know would accept their interest in it get where i'm going okay so yeah and so obviously if others want to speak here's here's what i'm gonna have a hard prohibition against uh i'm gonna cut you off if you're speaking for someone else i mean and i'm not not nothing to do with what you said mayor pro tem just setting the game rules going the rules of the game going forward if you will if you want to speak up that i as an individual want to be on a board great if you want to nominate someone else or volunteer someone else to do something i'm going to cut that off individuals can speak on what they want to serve on you don't get this to then serve up someone else or you know those sort of things so i i just don't think that's appropriate i think it's perfectly fine if you say hey i'd like to be on this board great let's have that conversation if you're but not to say hey i want to put mayor hutzpah on this board he'd be great at it not so much so uh any any other discussions uh counselor bet i just want to be clear on counselor davis's uh revised motion for that includes the may 28th this is also your your make your you're amending your motion to include the vacancies and to extract the dcrc and all the other items listed in the point of interest slide is that correct that is correct because that's a whole nother conversation because we don't have a process by which we prioritize uh nominees for the dcrc and there's more than uh than allowed so we'll we'll we'll parse that out there's individual items that will allow us to have that conversation after this but this is just a sweep of stuff that that uh we can knock out at once hopefully is that thank you yes i think that answered my question that we're matching the slide of point of interest yes sir thank you councillor foyer thank you um so just to clarify we are the motion on the floor is to approve audit and finance committee on community engagement airport and mobility as presented in the presentation but to approve committee on the environment um with the the notes from may 20th which would make that uh that committee made up of arm and turd davis and back is that correct that is correct okay um now it also said in the notes um that that you wanted to um postpone uh nominations for audit and finance and council airport committee um because you want to potentially propose making those inactive in the future um i would like to suggest that we go ahead and just do those nominations and then if we have to undo them later we undo them later well simplicity sure i mean it could be who's who's not there's just not enough people i guess if i take the the so yes we can just we can adopt them as is who's available but there's not enough to fill the boards uh but we'll just you know we'll leave we'll leave empty space matters not and if you have proposed appointments i'm here and i'm i'd like to nominate i'd like to vote to approve them okay councillor bird oh well let me hear so with all of that being said uh and i guess i must have gotten a little bit confused towards the uh d the uh code review am i on the code review am i not on the code code review i'm just a little bit confused i'm sorry guys uh rosa tell me what am what am i on again well and i can that's an easy one thank you great great great question so uh the code review we're going to carve out and do separate it has a separate process so there's more people that want to be on it than space is allowed so we're going to take that separate and and have that conversation so you're not right now and then um we'll discuss that as a as a body and and come up with a game plan okay i can i can deal with that awesome i got everything else i think i'm okay with everything else awesome counselor bet yeah i i just want to be really clear because there's a bunch of things being bandied around here so is the redone motion to postpone uh those two uh boards or um or a point right fair question so councillor maguire would like to see those a point that is but i'm gonna have to defer to yeah councillor davis i'll get you an answer councillor beck so my motion as stated is to fill those spots as the mayor made nominations to them and then we'll have the conversation well we decided earlier in the evening to have the work session to talk about committees and and all that kind of stuff later on but um in the interim my motion is to go ahead and fill those spots um just as the nominations were made and those committees can do what they're going to do and while we figure out what to do with them thank you very much uh councilmember davis that's very helpful councilman back back to you uh yeah that was the clarity i needed i just i just didn't know if we were voting on emptiness or something miss yes no great question thank you for the clarification there was a lot of moving parts any other uh questions discussion seeing none uh let's see we have a motion an amended motion by councilmember davis second by mayor hudspeth uh and so councilmember davis how say you aye um mayor hudspeth is an aye as well councilmember maguire aye councilmember bird aye councilmember back aye mayor pro tem melzer aye councilmember armater yes great okay so uh then that takes us um miss city attorney help me identify dcrc i see it so then we we do i need to call these others that we've uh resolved or no i don't believe that you need to call g i think those were all handled in the motion that you just made or that was just approved i think that h and somebody can correct me on this i don't think partnership was handled in that group or was it it was i'm looking yes community partnership uh committee would have been in well it's on slide four as maguire bird and davis councilmembers um and so i'm assuming it's it's captured in that tweet but uh councilmember davis okay so i'll read out what was in my motion again audit finance community engagement environment airport and mobility because uh community partnership the old hot funds committee is council appointed uh not mayor appointed we found that out for the first time two weeks thank you thank you then okay great so we'll take up item h uh so that's h which is id 211114 consider appointments to the community partnership uh committee thank you councilmember councilmember wire i'd like to move approval okay so put forward uh so then let me let me see here so it's so that everyone's on the same page what's put forward is councilmember maguire councilman bird and councilmember davis that's what's submitted that we have a motion to approve by councilmember uh maguire do we have a second councilmember um bird i second that okay all right so we have a uh motion by councilmember maguire second by councilman bird discussion on the uh on this committee seeing none councilmember maguire uh how say you councilmember bird aye councilmember davis aye councilmember beck aye uh mayor pretend melzer aye councilmember armature yes all right mayor hudspeth is a i as well two h passes seven zero uh i'm gonna call item i i don't think we have a presentation i think we do have a caller rachel am i correct no sir the caller is for item k21-1117 got it uh okay oh so uh so i'll call item i because we we do need to resolve that so that's id 21115 consider appointments to the development code review committee and i don't uh rosa i don't have my notes can you tell me who all expressed an interest to be on that body yes sir so the um let me pull that out and i can find that email if i need to no you're fine so the council members that indicated an interest were maguire beck indicating a very high interest armature bird and davis got it okay so and so here's here's the discussion point no one we didn't give out instructions on ranking interest so i as i noted everyone's considered high interest i'm not we're not getting you know it's just hard to weigh that uh so everyone's high interest we have one two three four five people uh and uh we have three spaces so let me do it this way wait let me see if we can fix it is there anyone listed here that wants to remove their name from consideration uh councilman maguire yes i would like to remove my name from consideration for this and i would also like to just point out and remind everybody that council member davis is serving is currently in the middle of serving a term on this commission on this committee um and so there are actually only two positions that are up for debate because council member davis is on that committee okay thank you for that i appreciate that i need all the help i can get so that's council member bet council member armature council member bird are the three we have two spaces so i'll ask between those three is there anyone that wants to remove themselves from consideration councilor armature i yes i will remove myself from consideration uh because i i think that bird and and bec will be excellent new addition okay so the so now we have a slate uh so to answer your earlier question councilman bird yes you're you're on you're awesome uh okay so uh then i need a motion for that may i pretend melzer yeah i move uh approval of the appointment of uh council member bird and council member back to the uh development code review committee awesome okay is there a second councilmember armature i second okay okay so we have a motion by mayor the mayor yeah rosalie yes yes if i if i may just clarify so the appointment tonight uh would be for the unexpired term ending august 31st to 2021 at the same time that council member davis's term will expire and then what we will do is we'll bring the item back closer to that date for again submission of nominations what we'll probably do is go ahead and do a friday report asking for you know members to identify the interest to either continue serving or to serve for the upcoming term which would be um september 1 2021 through august 31st 2023 i just want to clarify that for the record mayor pro tem melzer is this committee even going to meet between now and august 31st you don't have to answer that anyway oh there you go mayor pro tem injecting logic into a perfectly good conversation uh okay so we have a motion by mayor pro tem melzer and a um second by council member armature noted that this will be back it's uh unexpired terms uh and so any other discussion okay mayor pro tem house say you aye council member armature i'm sorry yeah thank you uh council member thank you council member guire aye council member davis aye council member bird aye uh council member beck aye and mayor hudspeth is a i as well that passes seven zero i believe okay yes okay great uh that is i and then j is okay so let me call this this is uh item j which is id 211116 consider approval of the resolution of the city council of the city of denton texas appointing members to the discovery denton advisory board uh and obviously the city secretary will probably touch on her her email i think right yes i actually do have a presentation mr mayor excellent okay great there's some points i feel are important to reference absolutely thank you thank you so again this kind of rose i didn't come up it didn't come up okay i'm not sure why i'm not sure why it's in the coming up it's a yeah no it's this one that's awesome no that's the uh yes that's it thank you thank you i apologize for that i actually had my whole folder with all of my committee stuff on there and apparently i'm having a problem accessing them so um the first slide does uh present a um kind of a recap of the discussions that were held during the may 25th work session and regular meeting and of course the item presents for appointments um to to uh two of the seats so for the discover denton here actually for three seats so um as you can see here um there are three existing vacancies on the discover denton advisory board formerly held by council members uh johnson baker and ryan who are no longer here and of course the member selections as far as preferences were um council members maguire beck bird melzer and uh armenter and of course this would be for an expired term to end us noted and um again two of those members do have to serve on the community partnership board and we kind of just made a reference here to the community partnership board on who was interested in serving on that so points of interest and of course uh you know something that we would ask that you kind of look look or consider because the mayor is actually already a member that's automatically serves based on his election as a member to this board and then with the three seats for three seated council members to serve on that that will make four total council members serving on that board which of course kind of unofficially establishes a quorum and in order to eliminate the probability that a quorum of the city council will attend the meetings staff is recommending the appointment of only two members to the discover denton with those two members um serving as the community partnership board uh appointees which of course were earlier appointed and then our we have put out some feelers to discover dentin staff to discuss you know the the makeup membership of the committee and how many dentin seats should actually be on there and of course i would take that the two appointed members may lead that uh that discussion between the board and i'll take any questions you might have and i'll stop sharing okay so discover didn't i talked to them and they don't have a preference so they're amenable to the to the reducing it they'll do whatever they whatever uh they want us whatever we want to do so um just need to get some direction if we want to reduce it uh councilor marmotor yeah so so correct me if i'm wrong because uh we've been voting on a lot of things just now uh so i'm not on the the committee that is that was formerly known as the hot funds committee right the community partnership committee and i'm not on the new new formation of that correct correct um correct there is one what we consider kind of just a general seat so there is that one opening and then the two members that would comprise the in that case i remove myself from the discover dentin board okay let's get here okay so uh rosa can you work with them do you need to bring that back uh for them to um to nominate just the two or is that something you can amend tonight you would be able to amend it tonight if you want to just a point two okay got it um okay so the two that are nominated are uh it would be well is there not three no wait a minute mr mayor you would need to keep in mind that the two of the seats uh those two seats have to represent the community partnership board so kind of by acclimation you know having appointed the two council members mcguire and burg to the community partnership board then they would automatically kind of automatically serve on the discover dentin but council does have to approve the resolution with those two appointees got it so so what's being proposed is by ordinance council member bird and mcguire is that right that's correct got it okay so um is there any other questions about that so discover dentin board would be councilman appointees would be councilman mcguire councilman bird and then me by ordinance as well a counselor bet i just want to make this clean since my name was on the list and i'll just take my name off the list so then it's real nice and clean got it thank you i appreciate that uh so those two being put forward is there a motion counselor back motion approval thank you um make my notes thank you okay is there a second a counselor bird a second thank you so we have a motion by council member back second by council member bird any other discussion okay council member back i'll say you aye council member bird aye council member mcguire aye uh mayor protin melzer aye council member armature yes council member davis aye mayor hutzpah is a aye as well that passes and for those who can get that information to uh discover dentin that'd be great okay i'll call the next item and then we'll see if staff has a presentation and then we do have a caller so it's uh item k id 211117 consider approval of a resolution of the city of dentin the city council of the city of dentin texas appointed a member to the dallas regional mobility coalition would you like for me to present first before the speaker yes please thank you let's see if i can get this to work okay i'm going to have to be really nice to ryan tomorrow um so i'm here to uh present the appointment to the dallas regional mobility coalition again the first slide kind of recaps the discussions during the may 25 um work session and regular council meeting um and per the dallas regional mobility coalition city council is the appointing authority and the item presents for appointment to an existing vacancy the dallas regional mobility coalition bylaws do not establish a term end date for any appointee to this coalition um as you can see here the the seat was formally occupied by john ryan and the members that selected that indicated an interest were um the mayor hudspeth and council members maguire and beck and again the drmc bylaws do not establish a term end date and now i'll stop sharing and answering the questions you might have okay questions for staff seeing none uh so uh i i put my name forward if there's and so uh mr mayor yeah i was waving my hand sir i'm sorry it must be frozen or something councilman beck i didn't see any of those uh thank you uh i just had a clarification could the the no apparent end date could could i get a little clarity on what that means for starting and stopping you know i guess i'm a little unclear on what no apparent end date implies so the appointee the appointee was just basically continuing so such time as the board is presented for to the city council for another appointment or a successor depending on who it is that is appointed if the vacancy would exist maybe on the next election cycle or the next two election cycles we would bring that seat up for appointment unless you were to direct us otherwise so that's basically whoever we appoint tonight is in perpetuity until they're not a council person anymore yes or they choose to resign okay that that was the clarity i needed thank you okay and who else who else did i miss wanting to speak anyone okay uh i'll take a motion mayor pro tem melzer mayor sorry to interrupt the caller oh yes thank you struggling no it's okay one moment please while i patch her through she should be in now mayor okay carl are you there are you there hello hello i don't know i forget what the button is to unmute is it star six yes mayor star six okay um looking at who's in the meeting to see i don't know uh rachel what is the are you so i've got let me um what does it mean can you unmute the on phone i'm i'm not understanding why because i've got her and she can hear the mayor but she's not able to get them i can only ask to unmute through zoom i can't actually unmute it is it amanda brown right is it no no this is going to be eva greco mayor can we take the next one and then i'll i'll try this one more time to get her back through okay thank you for this okay uh so we'll we'll lay that on lay that on the table come back so we'll go with uh id 211118 consider approval of a resolution of the city council on the city of denton texas appointing a member to the denton county workforce success leadership team rosa hello oh hello hello oh super super eva you're on now we got it we got it unmuted apparently okay so rachel you're on both so i'll ask you that you'll mute and then so eva are you there yes i am sir okay okay so give me just one second so we will go back to item 2k i'll pick that up it's id 211117 consider approval of a resolution of city denton city council in the city of denton texas appointing a member to the dallas regional mobility coalition and uh eva if you can give me your name and address uh you'll have four minutes um to speak okay uh my name is eva greco my address is 802 west oak street apartment five in denton okay go right ahead okay um i would like to speak on this item and i've shortened it quite a bit because of the late hour so basically what i would want to see in a council representative if someone who will listen to the public and not give the public false hope or mislead the public as in today's presentation i would want someone to represent my concerns regarding monies received in particular by dcta by the from the city of denton being utilized appropriately towards enhancing public transportation and not going with private transportation i would want someone who will not misrepresent to the public what i say at a public meeting when i voice my real life experiences and concerns on enhancing public transportation my words were turned around by mr watts mr hud smith and mr suarez of dcta um i'm not going to go into the particulars due to the late hour but any council member is more than welcome to contact me at any time and i can go into more detail um in closing i would want to see a council representative on the dallas regional mobility coalition who has empathy and is not a member of the good old boys club i thank you ladies and gentlemen for your time that is it okay do we have any questions for the caller councilman armature yeah so thank you for speaking uh so just to clarify so you um in your previous uh addresses to city council about your concerns about uh dcta bus routes um you are not advocating uh for less bus routes you're not saying that fixed bus routes are bad but instead that they need need to be improved is that right i'm not trying to put words in your mouth i'm just trying to no um you're actually getting from what i have said um yes um my concerns at the council meetings for the last three years have been to enhance the public transportation um not eliminate it i don't know if the council is aware i assume you are but texas workforce commission is moving from teesley where the number one bus has a bus stop right there now for the workforce commission they are moving to route 35 north the stone hill um mall to and there was absolutely no transportation and a lot of the unemployed people have to go through workforce use their services people don't have computers use their services and this is going to be detrimental for the unemployed citizens of dentin the city of dentin thank you thank you so much our buses can hold a lot more individuals as opposed to a van which can hold only six individuals with no social distancing so in answer to your question yes i'm definitely opposed to the on demand and i have been being from new jersey i am have always been led by dentin council members and dcta members employees to they want my ideas and and things about public transportation but yet everything i've said has been turned against me publicly line for a moment okay well i asked staff a question related well um no no what question was just related to her or uh what what she just said i just wanted to ask staff um if it if it's possible to uh just a point of procedure question of procedure if it's possible to elect a member of the the public for this position or does it have to be a member of council i'm just wondering well you can you we have a nomination we have a we have a procedural question i understand i understand i understand we can have that conversation but let's wrap up the phone call and then we will have a discussion around council and you can nominate and you can ask your question about nomination let's let's do you have any more questions for the car okay sure sure if it's so uh eva are you still there yes okay yes ma'am i don't know um if it's possible uh to nominate a member of the public for this position i i understand that's not why you were calling um but if it is possible uh would you accept that nomination i think it might not be possible it might not it might just have to be an elected official in which case i'm going to be uh nominating a council member maguire but if it's possible to have a member of the public uh would you accept that nomination not if it's if it's possible you can say no or be honored i would be honored to accept it if it's possible okay okay thank you thank you and if not if not then i think um an elected official being on this maguire would be perfect for the position okay any other questions for the caller seeing none okay uh thank you miss you're very welcome good night ladies and gentlemen night okay um so uh councillor armature question for staff uh yeah so my question and apologies because it would take me too long right now to look it up on my laggy computer and phone uh but um does it have to be an elected official uh on on this committee or could it be a member of the public the language if i may is a single member being either a mayor or another elected official okay um so in that case uh i i would like to uh nominate allison maguire council member maguire uh who you know has has put her name in as uh interested in the dcta position which i know we're not voting on uh today uh but i think it's really good to have uh it's not i think it's good to have the same person on these two really important uh committees i can't i think the justice was a nomination now how does miss city attorney help me understand so there's a name put forward and then there's a motion at the same time how do we which which order should we take that up if you have well this is this is captioned as a resolution so presumably your motion you have comments about interest but then you have a motion to approve the resolution okay with the addition of a name for it oh okay so uh is that council member why is that something you would accept um if if my colleagues want me to serve in that position i would be willing to okay is is there a second and then i'll have plenty of discussion councillor melton a second okay we have a motion and a second and um i'll just say this i would ask uh for those that aren't in on this i guess there was there was a discussion uh had and i guess there's another discussion had um but i'll ask uh those remaining this is a board of approximately 14 people that are primarily mayors and it's uh it has been our practice and i think when you're talking about advocacy you're talking about city staff uh for example i'm in quarterly meetings with unt twu and those type organizations uh regularly that the rest of the council is not in on so it would be duplicating efforts and they would not have um all of the information at the ready and it would not uh serve the citizens as well in my opinion i'll say that i had this conversation in private uh trying to avoid uh this conversation in public uh i had reached an agreement and an understanding with council member maguire and something has changed and that is regrettable because i didn't want to um advocate this way in public um i figured we would have a private conversation and resolve this and that has failed uh so again i just say uh for the for the fact that the priority of the information that i receive from my office uh i just think it's important so uh that being said and i could be absolutely wrong uh but that's just uh where i fall on it and and uh someone will correct me if i'm wrong um but that's where we are so correct other other discussion councilmember maguire um i'd just like to ask um and actually i'm not sure if this is within the council rules but but um i you know either staff or mayor hudspeth um how uh those issues related to um mayors having access to more information than council members how how was that resolved when council member ryan was serving on this board i i am not aware of any information being provided outside of what has been provided to the full city council so i'm not really sure what you're referencing well for example we have a we have a quarterly meeting uh within what pardon me with t Texas women's university and uh in that conversation we talked about mobility etc etc same thing with unt and so it is a meeting that the mayor and management attend that the other committees do not attend i can't speak intelligently about the answer to that i'll just say uh from a from a kind of representative standpoint um again there's just that is a fact um and so um just putting that out there for the for the remaining voters uh that i'm just asking you to um obviously there's gamesmanship at play and that i respect that but uh council member bet thank you mr mayor um you know i i i want to listen to um issues where uh there there is uh needs of synergy and you know so you know you're you're expressing a desire to have synergy i i take that as an important point that but the question that councilor maguire asked was how was the synergy um taking place when it was uh councilor ryan and mayor watts or councilor ryan and yourself uh it seems like there's no difference in a district four representative and a mayor uh other than the person in the chair well i guess i'll just i'll just answer that with saying for example you say you cite your experience on p and z uh as a value add for different you know perspectives so i served on p and z as well right i've been i served on different committees since i've been here i am you know so i've been here the longest i'm not going to cite all the different committees and experience etc etc but just to say if you if you take my experience uh being elected since 2017 and give it no additional value than someone that was elected in 2021 that's your prerogative i just look at it differently right i think there's experience levels there's relationship levels at the county level at the state level where i can reach out to doctors matter of fact i can reach directly out to i did so recently to to work with dr stuckey on some issues here in town that doesn't come to this body that's just because i have a relationship having served for a number of time for for a period of time that then helps me advocate and move things along faster with greater uh outside back channels right i mean so i can go and reach out and connect someone so it's not the same as far as experience and it's not the same as far as active advocacy for the city of denning and moving things forward now if you want to i'm happy to share with you offline the emails and advocacy from all the different things that we get done outside of things but i just i don't think councilmember wire all due respect has the same relationships and the same access to advocate for the city of denton when you're talking about federal dollars state dollars etc etc i can i can pull those things together with greater experience but if you're asking me to have an intelligent conversation about how mayor watts did it don't know i mean no no i i know the point of clarity was not that um place seven representative uh hudspeth has a lot of experience that's a different argument than the argument you made earlier which was that the mayor has a special relationship that should be taken into account so i mean if you want to argue that that gerard hudspeth has has special knowledge that's that's that's a valid thing that we should consider but if you want to argue that the mayor does that's a that's a different argument that i don't think stands because john ryan was in the position that we're talking about so uh if you want to say that john ryan or gerard hudspeth have special knowledge i think we should take that into consideration uh but that you the point you were trying to make was the mayor and that's what i was confused on yeah and and i see you councilmember davis but and i'll just say this i i think i see it all at one right i think there's brian beck's experience on council brian beck's experience on p and z brian beck's professional experience you know it's just it all is it all rolls up to say here's a individual and here's the the kind of the tentacles of the qualifications experience levels value adds that sort of thing so it all rolls up into one but the fact of the matter that so it's it's a component of again hoping not to have this conversation in public but here we are councilmember davis just real briefly to say that the the appointment to this coalition is requested to be a mayor or other public official there's a reason why it's mostly mayors down there and that's not at all a knock on councilmember maguire's stature as a member of the council just like mayor hudspeth is an equal member of the council i do happen to agree with the mayor about his experience and relationships and those things but it is generally expected that we would send a mayor john was the representative uh former councilman ryan was the representative because he was the transportation guy that was that was his role in that particular iteration of the council um it it wasn't something that mayor watts wanted to take as his prerogative as mayor and put himself forward you'd have to ask him that but john got sent to all those transportation committees because he was mr transportation guy keely was typically backup transportation person and but they both served on the mobility committee committee for the council so it doesn't have to be the mayor but there's a reason why there's a strong preference for that in the coalition and just a very brief aside i think my favorite part of the meeting all day long was the part where the lady was asked to call in obviously by a council member to talk about how her words had been twisted and she had been manipulated and then the same lady gets put up as a stunt nominated to this committee uh that was probably takes the cake point of order okay it's not a stunt okay all right all right uh okay so um council member work thank you um i uh am very uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation i i'm not comfortable with the implication that there have been some kind of back backroom deals happening i would like to remove my name from consideration for this position okay um then that we have a motion council member i i i hope that uh council member maguire would uh reconsider i think the solution to you know what you're objecting to uh in these these implications i i i don't like these insinuations either um i think that uh you know under your representation uh it would be very it would look things would look very differently i see the fact that uh you you don't have a close personal relationship with lynn stuckey i think is an advantage um and and i think that i'm not a i think that there might be members of the public who might feel that way too and are tired of of seeing a you know what looks from the outside to many people uh like a a good old boy network um but so i would love to see you in that role if you wouldn't like to do it uh i would love to see if council member bird would accept my nomination if not i'd be happy to uh you know nominate myself okay it's it's but i think it's important to have some somebody new a new direction yeah and that's i would say that's okay so i'll just say i would ask as as a note i'm i don't know how else to say this but to say maybe we should come up with a new phrase besides the good old boy network right when when referring to me maybe that would be a better maybe there's a better term out there if you would be so kind i i greatly appreciate that your consideration and adjusting your vernacular accordingly thank you i appreciate it very much uh we just have to anyway okay so um councilman wires removed her name from consideration um is there a motion well you councilor armature you you can renew your you who else do you yes council member bird you mentioned yourself not to put you on the spot again that was my earlier rule and by the way i did put that member the public that okay okay we're not gonna we're we're not councillor do you want to that was not a stunt i was putting her on spot yes i want to nominate uh council member bird okay council member do you accept that i decline the nomination okay so councillor armature then i would like to nominate myself okay got it is there a second one more time okay we have a motion and a second for councilman mayor i said i'd like to speak if i may i'm not raising my my hand to move on this no council member bird seconded i do believe right am i correct yeah so we have council member armature has been nominated uh we have a motion by council member armature for herself and a second by council member uh bird my my statement remains uh we for the sake of the city i mean again people that are watching this it's got to be exhausting and so this is the second time we've done this around committees and and that sort of thing but i'm asking for those that remain outside of this network to um uh support vote no i'd ask for the nomination so that i can advocate uh for our citizens and i i think uh i've proven the ability to be fair and uh represent the majority and not a particular ideology not to circle around a change for change sake but to advocate for uh what's best for our community um and and move projects forward so uh that is that's my statement we have a motion any other discussion council member davis i will be the first to admit that council member armature possesses many skills many professional qualifications merit many areas of competency even areas of competency that i have no expertise whatsoever in and have no business speaking to forming a coalition is not one of them she is very skilled at breaking barriers bringing forward conversations that are uncomfortable but need to be had and i will fully acknowledge that i do not feel that council member armature given all of her other skills would be skilled at forming a meaningful and productive relationship with the folks in this coalition i do not think that she would best represent the city in this role others absolutely in this particular role i do not okay any other discussion okay uh council member armature how say you yes council member bird how say you no uh council member mcguire how say you yes um council member back how say you no council member to melter how say you i uh council member davis how say you nay mayor hudspeth is a nay as well that fails four zero i'll take a motion uh mayor council member davis um i move approval of the resolution with mayor hudspeth's name as the appointee is there a second council member bar i second okay there's a motion by uh council member davis second by council member guire um discussion seeing none council member davis how say you aye council member guire aye council member bird aye council member beck aye mayor pro tem melter aye council member armature yes mayor hudspeth is aye as well that passes seven zero that uh concludes item k takes us back to item l id 211118 consider approval of a resolution city of city of council city of denton texas appointing member to the denton county workforce success uh leadership team thank you i think we so is there a presentation or anything rosa there is mr mayor but it's basically the same as it was last time there's a vacancy created with uh mayor pro tem melter and um council member bird indicating an interest okay let me take up this council member davis i move approval of the resolution with mayor pro tem melter's name as the appointee okay is there a second uh council member back i second okay we have a motion by council member davis second by council member beck uh discussion council member davis thank you mayor i just want to say both members that express interest uh i think would be good additions to this uh workforce success leadership team i happen to nominate council member melzer because i think his uh particular professional experience and his experience with the city is going to be helpful with that particular group of people and it's a team uh outside outside uh opinions and public input are always welcomed with that group okay thank you any other discussion seeing none council member davis i'll say you aye council member beck i'll say you aye council member mcguire aye council member bird aye mayor pro tem melter i was wavering but since council member bird voted aye i'll vote aye as well council member armature yes mayor hudson says aye as well that passes seven zero that takes us to concluding items thank you rosa best presentation ever uh council member davis thank you mayor i have just a couple i'll try to be brief um my colleagues and most of the public i think is aware of this but it's uh with sorrow that i note the passing of jim jim englebratt uh he was a giant in our community um anyone who's been in denton any length of time uh knew jim and knew his work in the community he is a vietnam veteran a lieutenant colonel in the army reserve a businessman an educator a rotarian a president of the noon club chair of planning zoning and served three terms in the seat that i now occupy and i'm not being funny although jim would have laughed i have big shoes to fill um in this seat uh he sorely missed and services are going to be friday the 18th at 11 a.m at first united methodist uh families asked for memorial donations to the children's advocacy center den county friends of the family or first united methodist children's ministries and this is going to sound like an abrupt segue but i happen to think jim would have liked it there's an alligator in district three uh it's been documented we kind of know where it lives at uh it's all over social media kind of proud to have it in district three other districts got otters earlier during the pandemic now we've got a we've got an alligator um i'm trying to get folks to name the thing our gal had tom the turkey i think we can do better than that i'm kind of partial to crofford because it was found on crofford road walking around um but anybody who's got ideas uh let us know it'd be kind of cool to name the alligator got it councillor melzer first thank you very much for uh talking about jim minglebrecht i'll add to the list of his um noteworthy uh roles he's played he was just a a really good guy memorably good guy and i i'll never forget shortly after i met him and he knew i was interested in city government he almost insisted that i spent an afternoon with him riding all over the city to show me places where affordable housing had been built by different organizations mostly that he'd been involved in over the course of his time and then it's just a really committed uh good guy uh secondly um i would like to congratulate my wife on enduring 35 years married to me tonight is our anniversary i love you baby this is how we spent our anniversary awesome that's beautiful councilmember armitage um my deepest condolences to paul's wife no just kidding happy anniversary to you um they're amazing couple uh but but my sincere condolences uh to family and friends and community uh knew a former council member anklebright i only met him once he was a real gentleman and i'm really glad to have met him i will say about the alligator when i first read about it my my pet name for it was karma but that that doesn't really mean anything in particular uh you know relevant to this council uh but it's certainly you know this is what happens when we overdevelop creatures start coming out of the woodwork so anyway i hope nobody gets hurt by later okay any other anyone else including items i just want to also say thank you uh for to all that i've mentioned councilmember imbarick uh yes didn't get to serve with him but knew him well see him it's all in the community always a smile look forward to um kind of just um uh recognizing him and it's unfortunate but again just recognizing all the greatness and recognizing that his contributions to our great city uh we did so that all of our everyone knows we did reach out and and we did extend a card and flowers etc etc as a city so that's that's there um and and so i thank the city manager for helping me uh get that organized and happy anniversary uh mayor pro tem that's outstanding uh very cool so all right uh if there's nothing else seeing none okay i'll conclude it is 11 02 p.m and still 608 uh say is the six six month eight day of 2021 uh we're done until uh next week thank you