Jul 20, 2021 City Council on 2021-07-20 2:00 PM
July 20, 2021 City Council
Full Transcript
Okay and good afternoon. Welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. We are
back. It's been a good break but today is June the 20th. It is 2 o' 2 p.m. We do
have a quorum so I'll call the meeting to order. First item on the agenda is
citizen comments on the consent agenda and I think I heard someone on the phone.
Mr. Mayor, there are no public comments on the consent agenda. Got it. Perfect.
Thank you. That takes us to request and clarification on the agenda from from
the council. So let's see if this is up and running. It may not be. So we'll
figure that. Okay. I'll just take them. Okay. Questions? Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer.
Yeah, thank you. I'd like to pull item H for separate vote. I don't need a
presentation but if others want it, that's fine. And then I'd be interested
in a brief discussion or presentation now or explanation now on just what is
happening with items P, Q, R, S, and T just for understanding because they're all
similar. Okay. I think I have to share my screen. There we go. Good afternoon.
Council Courtney Cross, Assistant Community Services Manager. So as a
reminder, we initiated contracts with four ESG emergency solutions grant
vendors in December. In April, we requested an extension from the Texas
Department of Housing and Community Affairs based off of feedback from our
vendors regarding their ability to expend funds by the original contract
term which was July 31st. So we did request an extension from TDHCA. We were
granted that extension. Soon after we, well before the extension was granted, we
initiated a contract with United Way in addition to our existing four vendors
and made some adjustments adjustments at that time to the budget amounts for a
few of the vendors based on the feedback that they would not be able to expend
funds in time. So once we did the first round of amendments, TDHCA allowed us to
request an additional or an extension of our grant from July to October, a three
month extension. So we were granted that extension and that is the reason, the
primary reason for the amendments today. Each of the five contracts is being
extended to October and then I believe three of the contracts are having
additional adjustments made to their budget amounts. So after the first
amendment in May, there was some funds essentially left on the table for one of
a few of the programs and so we are adding those funds back to some agencies
who have stated they are able to expend additional funds and then as I
mentioned, all of the contracts are being extended through October. I
appreciate that. I don't need a separate vote. Okay great. Any other questions for
Seth? Councilmember Bett? Thank you Mayor. So on the same thing and according to
staff we're leaving, combined we're leaving about 40,000 in unallocated funds
roughly. Just under and that's because all the vendors indicated they wouldn't
be able to spend that. It's a specific line item in the budget that they all
indicated they wouldn't be able to spend. And so I guess that's really
germane to my question is not that we're doing that because that happens,
that's just the nature of the beast, but have we learned any lessons about
how we couldn't expend and duplicative efforts where we were
unable to expend and allocate the funds so that we don't leave money on the
table in the future because you know collectively 40,000 could have done a
fair bit of good. Absolutely. We've learned plenty of lessons. We could bring
back a whole other presentation another time with what we've learned, but it's a
couple of things. At the time that the city staff submitted the application
there was no additional funding of this type foreseen to be coming into the
community so that was A) the reason for such a large grant request to begin with
and then B) because of that our agencies have all had a rather big adjustment
period in terms of building infrastructure where there hasn't been
to spend money that hasn't traditionally been in the community. So some of those
are a bit operational, but definitely from a staff perspective we've also
learned a lot more in terms of if we were to apply for a grant of this size or
this type again in the future that would go out to multiple vendors how to offer
some more of that strategic direction throughout the process. Okay, I mean
that's really sort of the reassurance I was looking for. I just don't I don't
want us to I mean it was there one or two particular things that we could have
done better that you could you could highlight here for council or the public?
I think for starters just figuring out what building the infrastructure for
these agencies was actually going to take or what that would mean. So for
example you know there were agencies who went from having no rental assistance
funding to almost three hundred thousand dollars in rental assistance funding
and needed to quickly hire the staff and build the processes to be able to
administer that type of funding. So just being able to more intimately know what
that process takes moving forward. I will say additionally soon after we were
awarded our funding another rather large amount of the same type of funding came
into the community. So you know we're kind of looking at a lot of agencies
with a lot of it's a good problem to have a lot of funding to spend within a
certain time frame. So just kind of strategically timing you know the rate
at which we apply for this type of funding as a community as well. Okay that
makes sense a lot of infrastructure issues. Yes. Okay, thank you. Any other
questions for staff? Councilmember Armitage?
Okay H has already been pulled. Oh I thought you said A. Okay, okay.
Councilmember Beck? So is Councilor Meltzer or Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer done with his? I
don't want to jump in front. Yes. Okay, thank you Mayor. I'd like to I don't have
a problem with that but I'd like to have a presentation about AF rather the flock
cameras. So if staff could do that later when we go into into presentations. And
then I had a couple of questions so we just did the PQRST one. So 4J by the
biomass facility demolition. And just while they're coming down so for AF is
there anything particular you're asking to present on? Is there any specificity
you can give so staff can prepare? In particular exactly the the kinds of data
gathering and that that might go on. I don't have a problem but I think it
should be. My general issue is that I think it should be public that data
gathering of license plates is being considered. Just that people are aware.
All right. Okay so in the biomass facility real quick there's there's no
opportunity to to reuse or repurpose that building. The only real option is
demolition. We can't I mean it seems you know we're gonna throw 200,000 to tear
it down. Yes sir Terry Nalte assistant general manager DME. So when we ceased
operation of the biomass facility in October of last year we had always
anticipated that we would scrap and demolish the facility equipment. And when
we issued the RFP we included the potential for the reuse of certain
equipment and the bidders in their response were to incorporate any reuse
of the material. So there were some spare parts and some things from the engines
and usable parts of the engine that are included in the price that we received.
It's called a demolition contract but it also includes the reuse of anything that
is usable by the winning bidder. Okay but the building itself is is not we can't
reuse that for anything or it's too expensive to maintain. No sir we can't
because that's actually part of the landfill expansion is gonna be taking up
that footprint. Okay that that clarifies that. Thank you. Okay and I think so I
think well I ask just a further pinpoint if we need a work session on AF. Chief
Dixon's gonna speak to that. What it entails I guess is the question and I
guess specifically around data gathering. Good afternoon Mayor Council, Chief of
Police Frank Dixon, Councilmember Beck to your point. This system is not gathering
data for the Denton Police Department. This is a private system that is owned
by an HOA and they are allowing us to access data should we need it for
investigatory purposes. So we will not be housing the data, collecting the data, or
retaining it is simply to be able to use as an investigative tool. And so
there I guess we're sort of getting into is that okay Mayor? Yes sir. Okay it so
there there it's their camera footage of their surroundings sort of like if I
wanted to sell my ring footage to the to the police department. Correct only we're
not we're not paying a fee for this. And and so yeah you did mention that in the
in the report and and so but the primary data being collected and recognized by
their AI systems is license plate data is that what I understand. Correct. And and
do we have an idea of how many cameras are in our area of control that we would
be filtering from using if as needed kind of basis. This is just in one
neighborhood so I don't know how many cameras. It's just in the one Argyle
neighborhood. Okay thank you that that helps me understand a lot thank you. Okay
so do you still need a presentation? No I don't need a presentation thank you
Mayor. All right we'll come back. Councilman Beck go ahead I interrupted
you. Then I have a you and AG. Thank you Chief. Are my last two items. Yeah we'll come back. Yeah but I
interrupted Councilman Beck so I'm gonna let him do it. It's okay with me Mayor if you want. Okay well Chief if you will.
Okay go right ahead. Okay so this is being paid for by the HOA do you know is
it being monitored in real time by the by the HOA I know not by the police
police department police department just has access to the data but do you happen
to know if anyone in the HOA is monitoring it in real time? And if we don't know. I do know.
Okay. Yes ma'am. Okay thank you. Certainly thank you.
Councilman Beck. Thank you Mayor. My penultimate was you and my last one was AG.
So you the the DNV energy. Sorry Terry don't mean to make you oh you're gonna
do it good. Good afternoon. See if I can find my presentation here for you. I don't
need a presentation I just had a quick question. Okay. Did you do you have a
feel for I noticed in the description that there's a certain amount of buffer
overage being allowed enlisted in the AIS. Do you know happen to have a feel
for what percentage of the overall contract is that that buffer and overage?
I don't right off the top of my head. We always add a little bit of extra because
we do have studies that come up that that we need to have done and DNVGL is
the I guess the best source for us for doing that. So I don't know what the
exact percentages that we have over. I mean is this that something we could we
could find out and maybe get back to me. I'm just curious. Sure. Thank you I
appreciate that. And I guess the last one was AG.
This is the Atkinson D's settlement. Okay. It's a tax settlement agreement. Who
would speak to that? This is Ron and Gita. I can talk to that if there's a question. Okay.
Thank you. Go ahead with the question. Thank you. My question was um what if if
substantially this property has taken on the characteristics of the other NAA's.
What's what's precluding us from lumping it in with the other NAA's? Why do we
need a separate? I mean I understand why we had to have a separate in a
settlement initially but now that it is substantially maybe I'm misreading the
backup but now that it's substantially the same as the other properties why why
why didn't we just include this one in the other NAA settlements? Why why is this
one continuing forward as a separate item? Sure. Sure. The property was
actually annexed in 2010 therefore it is currently in the city of Denton. So in
order for it to have a non annexation agreement it would have to be deannexed.
So we're not going into deannex at this time. Okay. I yeah all right. I just had
to put some some some things in order. All right. I think that makes sense. Thank
you Ron. Okay. You're welcome. Any other questions for Sam on the consent agenda?
Councilman Davis. Thank You Mayor. I just need to pull for recusal D E and A E.
Okay. Got that. Got it. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none. Okay. So for for
the for staff to prepare. So pulled was H D E A E. No presentations on any of
those. So just be individual votes. All right. Then that takes us to our initial
work session and the first one is item A I D two one seven zero three receive
report hold discussion give staff direction regarding audit project zero
two two building permit process. Hello Mayor and Council. Just share my
presentation. And while you're doing that just so we have a clear record we have
obviously a an impactful public hearing and so we to get to that to get through
this session on time so we started 630 but also going beyond just letting you
know I'll work in breaks best I can but you're free to adjust accordingly as
needed because I'm going to try to have large sections so that we get done by
630 and then looking forward to 630 anticipating a lot of citizens speaking
this evening. I want to make sure we're as efficient efficient as possible to
make sure that they're not waiting here a long time and to that they're they're
able to be heard and the people watching can can follow along as well. So I'm
going to manage the schedule pretty tight with to that end to make sure our
citizens are one not trapped here a long time and two they can that everyone's
able to hear all the comments and see the vote council armature. I want to ask
a question on that topic actually since there are a number of people coming for
that public hearing and it's scheduled to be the last public hearing of the
evening. A number of them are seniors. I was wondering if it could be pushed up
to the first in the public hearings. No because they people have planned and I
don't want to do that day of I don't want to change that but okay fair
concern. Thank you. It's been requested by seniors in the neighborhood. Excellent.
Okay thank you. Thank you madam. All right hello I'm Madison Rocha Denton City
Auditor. I'm going to present our findings from this audit project. There
we go. So this audit generally evaluated the effectiveness of the city's building
permit processes. So in just a little bit of background in order to construct in
large or alter a building an applicant must receive permission generally
granted by a building permit from the applicable jurisdiction. In the city of
Denton the Department of Development Services their building safety division
is responsible for ensuring buildings are constructed to meet adopted life and
safety codes by reviewing and approving building plans and performing inspections
throughout the construction process. In addition the building safety division is
responsible for collecting payments for all city permitting fees not just those
for building permits and so over the past two fiscal years the division is
processed just over 46 million dollars in payments and fee payments. So this
audit evaluated the city's building permit processes including application
and plan review fee processing and inspections. So I'll begin by
discussing the city's application and plan review process. So based on
review of a statistical sample of 95 permits all permits appeared to be
handled managed and issued in accordance with the city the current
procedures and rules. In addition we found that the permits were generally
approved and issued in a timely manner as shown on the slide. That being said
about 10% of approvals and 10% of issuances took more than one month.
Previously the division had a process to periodically identify pending
permit applications however this process was discontinued due to staffing
constraints created by the COVID-19 pandemic. So we recommended that the
process be reinstated to provide further assurance that the outstanding
permits were not due to the city's inaction and to just help expedite the
permit issuance process. And based on their management response this process
has already been reinstated and some applicants have already been contacted
to determine if they're moving forward with the project their projects.
Furthermore the city does not generally process building permit applications for
properties located outside of its city limits. However in 2010 the city
executed 265 non it non annexation agreements with property owners in the
ETJ. These agreements require the property owners to have any building
improvement permitted through the city instead of Denton County. Based on a
review of Denton County's permit data just over 80 permits have been issued by
the county for properties with City of Denton non annexation agreements
since they were established. So based on discussions with city and county staff
this occurred because there was no because there was no process at either
municipality to verify in which jurisdiction the property should be
permitted until about three months ago. According to the county they now
require property owners to complete an ETJ verification form before processing
their permit application. In addition the city has recently flagged properties
with non annexation agreements in its permitting system to ensure that they're
not inappropriately denied a permit and then sent to the county. We
also recommended that the division ensure permit technicians who generally
typically determine whether the city has jurisdiction over a property that they
are trained on non non annexation agreement property requirements and
based on their management response the division plans to work with the planning
division in the next few weeks to develop a review process and implement a
training program for the these non non annexation permits. Next once a permit
is approved any assessed permit fees must be paid before the permit is issued.
The building safety division is responsible for assessing and processing
payments for all permitting fees even for those services completed outside of
the development services department. In general we found that the department has
established effective controls over cash handling and payment processing
including having a daily cash processing manual they do not accept cash as a form
of payment which limits the ability to steal cash using an effective daily they
have an effective daily reconciliation process and they maintain a safe within
their office though we did recommend that a process be developed to
periodically update the code to this safe. When assessing fees the city's
permitting system limits which fee can be which types of fees can be charged to
an application based on the permit type. Once the fee is charged the system then
automatically calculates the fee based on information provided by the applicant
including square feet and valuation. In addition building safety staff generally
verify that in entered information is complete in order to ensure that fees
are accurately assessed. So based on a statistical sample of 95 permits all
fees appeared to have been properly assessed to the applicant. While fees are
generally processed effectively based on our different statistical sample of 76
issued refunds we found that a process has not been developed to formally
document supervisor review and approval over these refunds. It should be noted
that of all the ones that we reviewed they appeared to have a reasonable
purpose however ensuring each refund is properly reviewed and approved by a
supervisor prior to being processed will provide further assurance that the
refund is appropriately issued and based on their management response a refund
process request process policy is currently being developed. So once a
permit has been issued the applicant begins construction in order to ensure
construction is completed per the approved plans and in compliance with
adopted rules and adopted building codes the city requires applicants to schedule
building inspections. For each inspection building inspectors document the result
and any applicable notes in the city's permitting system to ensure contractors
and in other building inspectors can understand if there are any identified
deficiencies and what those were. So while this helps facilitate correction
and re-inspection there's currently no process to review completed inspections
to ensure that they were conducted according to the divisions quality
standards. In addition the divisions current inspection scheduling practices
do not limit the number of inspections that can be scheduled each day instead
all inspections requests must be completed by the next business day. This
practice could lead to inspectors having to rush through inspections in order to
complete them on time potentially impacting quality. So for this reason we
recommended that the division develop a process to provide assurance that the
daily inspection workload does not impact the quality of inspections. Finally
building inspectors may charge a re-inspection fee if an applicant fails
an inspection. However there's currently no formal guidance to inspectors on when
the fee should be assessed. So based on a judgment sample of re-inspection fees
there appeared to be significant variation in the ratio of the number
inspections failed to those that were charged and assessed or assessed a
re-inspection fee. So it may be appropriate to allow building inspectors
some flexibility when when reassessing inspection fees, re-inspection fees.
However without any formal guidance there's a risk that applicants will be
charged inequitably or inappropriately for re-inspections. For that
reason we recommended that there be guidelines developed for
re-inspection fee assessment and that inspectors receive training on these
guidelines. Based on their management responses the division is developing
check sheets to ensure quality control inspections are documented as well as
guidelines for re-inspection fee assessment. In addition the
implementation of development services updated permitting software will allow
the time taken for each inspection to be recorded which should help to provide
assurance that the workload is not impacting quality. Moving on we also
found that the division should formalize some additional procedures.
Specifically we found that licensing and certification expectations for building
inspectors were not clearly established based on a comparison of job
descriptions to actual certification information. In addition while the
division has helped has developed a career progression plan for building
inspectors it's informal and does not clearly match up to the the job
descriptions. Based on this we recommended that the building inspector
progression plan be formalized to clarify the expectations and
requirements for promotion within the building inspector roles and in addition
building inspector staffing capacity should be periodically evaluated to
identify potential licensing and certification gaps. This evaluation
should be used to inform and update the building inspector progression plan so
that those gaps are filled. Finally the division has developed many standard
operating procedures for application and plan review inspections and fee
processing however the majority of these have not been formally approved and
implemented. In addition standard operating procedures have not been
developed for some critical processes. Most significantly the division
currently relies on staff to verbally inform management if a conflict of
interest arises during the course of their duties. The building safety
division is particularly vulnerable to conflict of interest as it involves
verifying that new developments and construction meet life safety standards.
So for that reason we recommended that employees be required to disclose
potential conflicts of interest prior to receiving any projects to help ensure
that plan reviews and inspections are completed appropriately. Based on their
management response the division is currently working to help to develop and
formalize building inspector the building inspector progression plan and
other necessary standard operating procedures including one that addresses
conflicts of interest. So in summary we issued a total of 11 recommendations all
of which the department concurred. Based on the response we believe the
identified risks will be appropriately addressed and we plan to conduct a
follow-up review in 6 to 18 months. That is the end of my presentation. Great
thank you questions for staff. Councilmember Beck. Madison this is why I love your
department above all others in some regards because you really go right to
the heart of a lot of things that the council has to address. In particular I
guess my question is too one do we have an ETA on when when changes will be
implemented? At the end of the report they have some tentative timelines for
when those would be implemented. I think the longest one was maybe September of
2022 maybe I don't remember off the top of my head but it's all in the report
the kind of those tentative completion timelines. And I guess my other question
I guess not so much for you but for leadership planning is there are a lot
of permitting processes and other processes that are substantially similar
to the building permit process so lessons learned in this process should
be carried forward into other permitting processes. It would be my recommendation
so that when you audit those there's nothing but a plus ratings. Thank you.
Okay. Councilman Byrd. Do we need more inspectors? I think that that
depends on the season and I would defer that question to the building Scott
McDonald. Scott do we need more inspectors? Scott McDonald director of
development services. No I think currently the current environment we're
busy and we have a contract that we're able to augment our workforce through a
third party as necessary so we're managing inspections today and no need
to add additional staff. Did I hear something about software that could
improve the inspections? Do we have that in place or do we need to update or
purchase? Effective yesterday we updated a our version of track it so we have now
streamlined the number of resources that our customers have to use so ultimately
instead of using project docs and track it they'll be using one software
solution. It'll provide all of our staff through the review process an easier
means of marking up plans and providing those comments back to our constituents.
So yes we have a vastly improved software solution. I think people have to
be somewhat patient and staff is ultimately today even sitting in
classrooms learning how to utilize that the best way. What's the cost of a
re-inspection fee or a fee generally and then a re-inspection fee if there is a
re-inspection fee necessary? What's the general cost? The fees are based it's we
did a cost of service delivery so all of our permit fees are based on the work
that's to be performed and then number of inspections. Each of our re-inspection
fees are assessed truly if any if any work fails a re-inspection fee is
assessed and then ultimately the inspector has the ability to waive a
re-inspection fee so for example if I were to go out and look at an inspection
there's an item that would fail normally. I may fail that inspection or I may do a
conditional that I'm going to go back for a subsequent inspection the next day
I'm able to verify that that inspections been approved I'm not making an extra
trip but beyond that then it's really it's it's a it's a $50 fee anytime the
vehicle has to go back to a location so if we can minimize that anytime that we
can we will we don't use that as a penalty as much as it is is truly the
cost of doing business for the city. Okay because I was thinking that that would be
a you know a penalty you know on the lines of penalizing which would really
help the developer or wherever this person may be to get it done right the
first time so but I appreciate it not looking the way that I was thinking that
it was. Yeah we don't want to we don't want to penalize anyone we want to
educate them so certainly we don't want to go back we really can't afford the
time to do re-inspections but ultimately it's going to happen if we're doing our
job we should be failing inspections hopefully you know all of our
contractors would do work the right way the first time but it just were human.
Thank you. Yes ma'am thank you. Thank you Scott. Any other questions for staff?
Councilmember McGuire, councilmember Armitage. Thank you um sorry so who is
responsible for inspector licensure is that something that the individual
inspectors are expected to pursue on their own time using their own funds that
might also be a question? I think I think the the department certainly
encourages certification and licensing and does require some of that I think
how much to what extent that encouragement is is kind of part of our
finding right as we're not really sure and the progression plan is not very
clear and it doesn't necessarily match up to those minimum requirements and the
job descriptions that was part of our finding so I think should it be the
department should it be the individuals I think that's a management decision but
it should be clear who's respond who is responsible. Yeah well yeah could you
speak to maybe like what what type of time commitment are we talking about for
inspectors to get licensed what type of financial commitment it is? So it's it
that's a very complex question because the inspectors most of our inspectors are
combination inspectors state law has some certain requirements for certain types
of inspections that you may you must be licensed in the state of Texas so the
department will pay for those licenses so the state board of plumbing examiners
requires anyone that's inspecting plumbing to be licensed through the
state of Texas so we we train our staff we pay for them to go to Austin test for
the for the certification and then we pay to maintain that. When it is that
Madison speaks to the progression planning so we have the ability to be a
level one two or three we've got some job descriptions that are outdated we've
transformed the succession planning transition plans and we've encouraged
more certifications and the department has had to the past because it goes into
the fire department's ISO rating as well so we have a great deal of
certifications that are available to our staff and then what we what we
encourage them to do is to be proficient in the inspection type and then to test
to support that and then we can document it to our audits findings we feel that
they're valid that we need to do a better job of documenting what
certifications we track that but we ultimately can do a better job of doing
that so if that helps answer your question. That answers my question thank
you. All right thank you Scott. Yeah two questions one about the conflict of
interest issue and the other about the NAA properties all that's what conflict
of interest first so did you find that the potential for conflict of interest
emerge primarily with inspectors or at the just level of reviewing permits
before the inspection or both? I think it is there's a potential at both levels
and the way it is now there's no way to prevent it before somebody's in that
situation basically. Yeah because there's no process that says can you can you
please disclose. Like you all are required to disclose who your business partners
with and things like that. Exactly so I have one of course there are so many
infinite possible hypotheticals right of conflict but I have one question in
particular because I know that the kind of ethics rules for staff are a little
different than the ethics ordinance for for council and committee members there
there they seem to have kind of a higher higher bar in some ways and so I had a
question just as a hypothetical so if somebody because in the city ethics
ordinance as I understand it not all fiduciary relationships are considered a
conflict right so it has to so if you're receiving money from somebody that is a
conflict if it's a certain amount of money and you're voting or you know
deliberating on on them but if you are giving money to them you know if you're
employing them that's not so clear to me I was wondering if so if say somebody
who's an inspector and this is purely hypothetical I don't know anything like
this in this department but an inspector or somebody in the review process is say
you know having a contractor you know work on their private property right and
that same contractor is going to be performing the work that's being
inspected is that is that a conflict I'm gonna ask you not to answer please oh
please I you can you can follow up with afterwards but I'm not hypotheticals I
just are okay but the ethics rules are built on hypotheticals I understand this
is an audit review I'm not gonna put the auditor and in a position the the
director is gonna come back with his recommendations you're happy to me I'm
happy for you to meet with the director and express your concerns I'm not gonna
ask the auditor to speak to your hypothetical on a on an issue that's
unresolved they're gonna come back and have an opportunity to fix it and I want
to give them that opportunity and not have a record against that that fix and
so I'm just gonna ask you to move on to the next question you can you can voice
your your frustration with that that's great but if we can move forward that'd
be great okay so yeah so I'll voice my frustration with that and I look forward
to hearing about that because that's an important question about fiduciary
relationships so about the NAA properties it says that non-accession
agreement property improvements not always permitted through the city do you
happen to know off the top of your head and if you don't maybe someone from the
department can speak to it were most of those properties that didn't get that
were denied permits for improvements ag exempt properties I'm not certain off
the top of my head we have the list of so we basically we used a list from our
the city of non annexation property IDs compared it to a list of from the county
of permits that they had issued we could probably figure that out just by going
and looking they weren't necessarily denied city permits they just were
permitted through the county which is not according to the non-accession
agreement I see yeah I see I mean there might have been some who were denied but
that's not there were 80 who were permitted inappropriately basically
through the county okay okay so whether they were permitted from the county
instead or denied from the city it's still they're still kind of in the same
data set right okay yeah ultimately if they got a permit those 80 got it from
the county if they came to the city first I'm not certain but we we could
also figure that out probably but okay and would Scott I don't know if you feel
comfortable speaking to that the the NAA properties ultimately the Denton County
issues a development permit and that really is dealing with the floodplain
and just protecting their rights with related to that exclusively so they do
know construction building permits they don't have the authority to do that so
up until several months ago we really didn't recognize the gaps that existed
between communication with the county in the city we've we've refined that we've
notified all of the property owners that have NAAs with the city that they're
required to obtain permit and inspection and ultimately we do have some standards
that are different for agricultural properties rather than what would be
traditionally you would consider residential so I think we have that
addressed fully okay and do you find that can more of these complications
emerge around ag exempt residential properties you know family farm type
properties in the ETJ then you know non-residential no I think we have we
have ag exempt properties within the corporate limit so it really isn't the
AG versus the non-ag I think it's more in terms of people didn't fully
understand that they were under an association agreement and they
ultimately just thought we live in the county we don't have to get a building
permit and the county would communicate that you're not required to get a
building permit from the county because the county doesn't issue and does not
have the authority to issue building permits so because they have a
development permit it just I think lends a little bit of confusion and and I
think that we've rectified that both at the city and county level to make sure
for all of our constituents that were clear so the county is now redirecting
them to the city and educating them and what the difference is in the
permitting process okay thank you very much you're very welcome any other
questions seeing none thank you very much okay that concludes item a takes
us to our next item B which is ID 2 1 4 5 5 receive report hold discussion give
staff direction regarding FY 2021 22 departmental budget presentations and
listed today are for electric customers customer service traffic facilities and
airport City Council members Nick Benson assistant director of finance it's my
pleasure to be in front of you today to introduce this topic I was definitely
excited a lot of you look excited so we're definitely excited to talk about
budgets with you so today we have electric customer service traffic
facilities and airport and with that I'll introduce Tony point a the general
manager of electric thank you mayor city council Tony point to the image your
manager appreciate the opportunity here in front of you today
in which one is there here
all right sorry about that so today we're going to go through the DMV
presentation we have a couple folks obviously Tony point the DMV general
manager Chris Lutrik will be coming right after me he's our DMV executive
manager of operations and then Cassie Ogden will walk you through the
financial components this presentation so the first item that we have is just
our organizational chart pretty linear I did want to highlight our assistant
general manager Terry Nolte and then Bill Shepard's our executive manager for
business services Smith days executive manager for risk and compliance and then
Chris Lutrik who you'll see here in a minute is our executive manager for
operations just a couple highlights for you you know DMU established in 1905 we
are the six largest municipal owned electric utility in the state of Texas
obviously we're governed by the City Council we do have a public utility
board that serves as the advisory advisory body to the council and then we
do have a pretty defined service territory I'm gonna show you a map here
in a few seconds we do have some areas on the ETJ and know the tracks of the
city of Corinth that are dual and triple certified so this is our existing
certification map for for electric the green areas and mainly the core of the
city where we're singly certified but out in the fringes we do have some dual
and triple certified areas where we do compete with coaster of electric on core
for new developments and that's done normally through the development process
so we have a lot of customers that ask questions about why am I with this
provider that provided a lot of happens at the beginning of the development with
the developer the sites to come to the city and there's ongoing negotiations
through that process so over the last two years there's been a number of
initiatives that we've undertaken one of those certainly was elimination of 20
FTEs that we did partly through this voluntary separation program but also
don't FTE analysis that we did that came out of savings about two million dollars
a year so over ten million dollars over that five-year period obviously part of
this budget that you'll be seeing today we are recommending that for those
positions back but certainly we're not adding all 20 of those positions I don't
see that in the foreseeable future but I think as we grow there might be some
additional needs the other item that I'll highlight here is that we were
successful through the development process to be able to serve the majority
of the hunter coal ranch developments as once those begin begin to come in
obviously that's a 30-year trap type of development but by 30 years we'll be
serving about 10,000 single-family homes that are in that that would be in that
development about 350 commercial industrial properties at pretty good net
income about a hundred eighty three million dollars over that period of time
so certainly you know we'll grow DME quite a bit and be able to expand some
or be able to share some of those fixed costs across a much broader base of
customers the other item that I'll highlight is we did abandon basically
the Eagle substation for about savings about 18.6 million dollars we have land
bank that property because eventually we will need a substation there and so
obviously the price of property will increase and so it makes sense for us to
to keep that we do plan to beautify it a little bit and make sure that we can
keep it nice and attractive there for for the community and then finally the
last time that I mentioned and something that will do on annual basis is you know
we're gonna be asking you to approve a five-year capital program obviously we
don't issue those five years all at once but we do reevaluate so before we issue
bonds I would like we did this year we did reduce that bond sale for about 20
million dollars that the savings about 1.5 million an annual debt service and
so now that we've just simply postponed some of those projects some of them have
been abandoned but we'll continue to evaluate that even if even after the
council approves it but certainly before we before we go out to sell the bonds
we'll be going through that same process we do that every single year and then
with that I'll go ahead and turn over Chris and Chris will come up and and then
we'll be able to answer any questions you may have thank you Tony so on to
some accomplished accomplishments for DME during the current physical year kind of
to save time I won't go through everything but one thing we are very
proud of is a top bullet point now for the third year in a row we DME was
nationally recognized for the reliable service that we provide our citizens so
something we're very proud proud about and that we work very hard for and
finally there at the bottom one of our major multi-year capital improvement
projects came to completion this year that's the Brinker substation so we're
able to complete that commission so on our plate in the upcoming fiscal year
the top bullet bullet point is probably the one that will have the most impact
to our annual budget and that is as we brought to the council DME has been
called in front of the PUCT for a full rate case filing for our transmission
cost of service so that that deadline is in November of this year we'll file that
rate case and Cassie will detail the implications of the outcome of that rate
filing in her portion of the presentation and at the bottom of this
DME will undertake our major probably our largest construction project we have
left will be the Hickory GIS substation and the transmission line that's the
wooden line that crosses the UNT campus those projects will commence will
commence later this year or during this fiscal year so a graph we are some
metrics that we bring to the council every year during budget season is the
probably what's most important to our ratepayers other reliability is is is
how much is our electricity costs so the graph on the left is the one we
typically show every year so how does DME stack up to comparable size
municipalities across the state of Texas as you know our rates haven't changed in
several years so we're still at an average bill of $124 and 80 cents and as
you'll see there in yellow we're kind of the middle of the pack so we're below
the average for the other municipalities and I will note that there's only one
other municipality that's 100% renewable and that's Georgetown and you will see
them at the top of the list a new metric that we're bringing this year is the
graph on the right so as you know some some residents that live in Denton
actually are served by Encore so if you're an Encore customer you have the
power to choose so what we did is we took those addresses and we compared our
rate which is 100% renewable with some products offered by the retail energy
providers so as you'll see we're kind of the middle of the pack we're a few
dollars above the average but we're very competitive again with with the the
products issued by the that are offered by the the retail energy providers
another metric so the other thing our customers are really concerned about it
is how good are we at keeping the lights on so this is a this is a national
metric it's called the system average interruption direct duration index or
SATE so what this what this metrics tells us is when we are notified or our system
notices an outage how long are the lights out for our customers so as you
will see the national average in 2020 was 139 minutes so a little over two
hours DME's average was a little over 34 minutes so that's that's that's a very
important reliability metric and we're very proud of the effort that our guys
and gals put into to maintaining that value on to employees as you can see on
this graph and kind of summarizing what Tony said prior to the pandemic DME was
fully staffed at about a hundred and eighty nine FT's so via those 20
positions that Tony mentioned in the addition of the two back we dropped down
to a very lean hundred and seventy one staff members and that's how we've been
operating over the current year during this budget request to fill some to
balance some workloads and to address as you saw in Madison's presentation
development services very busy one of our positions are requesting it will
help with our reviews for projects that come into the development services so
two positions one in the EMO that's a senior business intelligence analyst and
in our engineering department a line designer so to cover those two
positions we have three supplemental requests in this year's proposed budget
the first one as I mentioned is the EMO that's an FTE and our engineering that's
also an FTE and the third one is a meteorologist service so what this what
this request is for is for our EMO to go out and contract with some meteor
meteorologist service to provide them some some more detailed data about
upcoming winter storms heat waves in the summer just any data that they can
procure that will help them better forecast our electric needs for the
utility and on even into a daily you know is how much is the wind gonna blow
is the Sun gonna be shining in West Texas so that's our that's our third
request on to our CIP so DME this is a very busy graph but DM DME has CIP needs
for upcoming projects as well as reoccurring expenses so the majority of
the the the upper part of the graph is just our reoccurring expenses pole
equipment or pole replacement equipment that needs to be updated vehicles meters
that sort of stuff that keeps up with our infrastructure as well as our new
growth our two big ticket items that you'll see at the bottom are the
transmission lines and the transmission substation that's the two projects that
I mentioned that's the Hickory GIS and the the transmission line to connect
that so as you will see and as Tony noted I will be using commercial paper
to to fund to better balance our cash flow for these projects that are that
are expensive and they cover multiple years and as you see that that's about
our last major construction needs we have on our system so you will see our
CIP tailing off dramatically over the five years dropping by nearly thirty
million dollars some highlights of those projects the top one of the first one is
our pole replacement that's an audit that we did we actually inspect every
pole we have and didn't this is a reliability reliability task that we
started this year and what we find is this inspection will find poles that are
need to be replaced and we get them replaced so this increases our
reliability of our system one of the things on the consent agenda was was a
contractor to help replace those poles so that that's a that's a short-term
project that we have going on that in our LED upgrade project the last two or
the last three on the on the list are big ticket items with Hickory GIS
substation being our largest project that project should kick off during this
fiscal year right there is an example of how the commercial paper works so will
be our expenditures in the first year will be about fifteen and a half million
dollars out of the roughly thirty two and a half million dollar cost for that
project so in the past without that that that program in place we would have to
issue the whole thirty two and a half million dollars the first year even
though some of that money wouldn't be spent till later years so this this this
is a cost savings for the utility and finally I should note out of the 15
roughly 59 million dollars 24 and a half million of that is transmission
associated costs so those costs will be eligible for the T cost program so with
that I will answer any questions over the operations
Councilman bet
there we go thank you I thought I understood response from staff before the
meeting but now I'm not sure I do the the CIP does not reflect deck
weatherization and potentially a fuel storage solution there am I right no sir
it does not okay because I understood that it wouldn't be reflected in the
operating budget because it's capital but then it's like oh why is it but then
why wouldn't it be reflected in the I believe plan during that response
councilmember Meltzer is we don't exactly know what those costs would be so there
was three or four options that were mentioned in that response so they are
we're going out to get a consultant to come in to give us to let us know what
that cost is and that final note is we still have some revenue bonds from the
original construction of the plant because it came in under budget that
could then be utilized for whatever that weatherization solution that the
contractor or the consultant recommends okay but that helps yeah I think that's
the key part is that you wouldn't necessarily be seeking additional
funding to cover it it was like it was less than 10 million yeah right oh sorry
go ahead yeah I'm also I'm inclined to you know have no problem with the idea
that we're generally a very reliable service but I do have a kind of a
question about the reliability stat just you showed the well first of all does
that exclude this the snowstorm yes sir that's not when you have
extraordinary events that are statewide that those are aren't included in the
data this is our general day-to-day operation of our utility yeah well that
makes sense I'm just curious why you know I shared the metric showing that we
have briefer outages and then electric utilities generally do but what what
would the how would we look on a comparison of overall uptime right
wouldn't that be the so like if you have many brief outages that's not
necessarily better than the fact that somebody else's one two-hour outage that
that is correct councilmember and we have it there's another metrics called
safety so it's those same same terms except for frequency how many outages do
you have so one of the the metrics that that we get and we can provide it to you
is we do it by the minute so think of this outage where a lot of times we'll
have a squirrel so we always have to talk about squirrels a squirrel takes
out a transformer it causes major damage to two customers that are on that
transformer it may take us three hours and there are two customers in district
two exactly so so what we do is we take that down to customer minutes because we
have some major outages where we have a substation issue now we have 2,000
customers out for 10 minutes or two hours so we do have data that we that we
compose at the end of the year it's not required for this metric then we break
it down by the minute and I suspect I mean this isn't the first you know TME
budget I've been through I suspect we look good on that metric yes sir yes sir
we got higher up time is in the high 99 90 high 90% all right it was just sort of
an it seemed like an omission thank you yes okay
for a bit thank you mayor so this is this is more and I guess not not so much
for this unless you can go into it so let me ask my question so for the for
the the expected budget request the hundred forty eight K from meteorological
services yes sir we were I know you're predicting the weather in terms of you
know winter storms and and summer heat waves and and and I I take the general
goal of the services but if staff could get counsel some specific details about
if it's anything more than that because this this it seems to me slightly
excessive and I know I'm niggling you know this this part of your budget is
really nothing compared to the rest of your budget but it seems it seems a lot
and so I'd like a little more detail about exactly what you expect this
contract to provide in terms of day-to-day predictability given given the
amount of resources that are out there for weather prediction so if we could
get some more detail or if you know the detail I'll take it now I have a guess
somebody standing behind me though yeah what what I could tell you is that that
number was predicated on a full-time equivalent position and so what we did
instead is we said we're not gonna fill a position what we're gonna do is we're
gonna put that in as basically outside contract services so we mean I mean
that'll be built on the app based on hours based on the number of times that
we need it so I don't anticipate the full amount will be used but that's how
we arrived at that number so again the option was do we look for an outside
service or do we count or do we go ahead and hire someone and so that that was the
basis for that so so so we anticipate this being more as as needed for
weather modeling predictions or is this going to be an ongoing weather modeling
service it'll be it'll be ongoing but but as needed now much to mr. Nalti's
chagrin he would like to have someone here full-time but again I think at this
point you know we want to go ahead and look for a service evaluate it now if we
determine that we need more hours that eventually becomes you know pretty much
the equivalent of full-time position then we'll have a different conversation
and we'll come back to the council but for the next year we anticipate outside
services on an as-needed basis but we don't anticipate that this is going away
and and and and and to be honest with you many utilities across the state do
hire meteorologist we just again this is new to us we're gonna take baby steps
into it no and I don't I don't I don't disagree with the concept of trying to
predict the weather when you're a power company it's it's obviously hand in
glove it's really important to know I guess I was looking for more details and
and it doesn't have to be now at this meeting but over the course of some
reasonably short time period if staff could get back to me about what they
expect from the model and or from the meteorological prediction services that
would be great I'm happy to thank you okay question
thank you so there was a brief mention in the backups about weatherization I
was wondering if you could speak to the current state of the the weatherization
of DME's equipment and what what will need to be done in the coming year or
two if anything that's as I mentioned that's we were hiring a consultant to
give us those answers so we currently don't have that our plan is winterized
so we do run our plant our protection much like your automobile down to 19
degrees so that's where we set today it's not it won't be an issue till till
come the winter time but but there's multiple options out there so we're
gonna get an expert to give us what the most cost-effective method would be to
provide those weatherization services for the for the deck okay we'll come
back yeah we'll definitely share that information with Council when we get
that okay any other questions for staff seeing none I have one I didn't see on
the CIP list but I'm curious about the and I don't know if it's a transmission
station or substation between Locust and Myrtle that one so there's an older one
there and then there's a new one we'd be built there near the railroad tracks if
you're tracking with me it's so if you came if you took Locust north across
Eagle Drive and kept going back towards you driving north towards I-35 there's
one that sits is that that's our Locust substation yes yeah it's already been
built yes my question is there's a smaller one right next to it is that
gonna be that's the old look right is that gonna be taken down yes sir that's
on that's on our list so there's old Kings Row old Locust old North Lakes it's
not active it's right is that in this budget no sir that actually that's part
of our operation so what we're doing we're not we're not in a hurry we've
actually sold off the transformers through the auction and part of our
substations operation during the year when they have time we're actually doing
that work ourselves so Kings Row is mostly done so we're using that as a
work field for our current staff to tear those stations down got it thank you
yes sir pardon my ignorance on which no problem no problem yeah I should know those
streets better great okay yes sir thank you very much that's all had any other
questions for staff okay then we'll get into the now turn it over to Cassie Ogden
and she'll finish off the presentation perfect you're gonna tell us how you can
get in this an extension on the hearing you get a deferral date I wish I could
Cassie Ogden director of finance here to discuss the electric fund performer
before I get into that just a brief recap of winter storm URI and some
actions that were taken in the direction that we received at the time so you may
remember the net expenses from the storm event for the electric fund I previously
communicated it was a hundred and forty million rounded that up to 150 since we
did pay that outstanding uplift charge of about nine point four million dollars
this year we issued commercial paper for the hundred and forty million of
purchased power expense that we incurred during the storm S&P did ground downgrade
our utility system bond rating also Fitch placed utilities on all the Texas
utilities under a negative credit watch but again we reef we are planning to
refund those commercial paper notes to 30-year long-term bonds to minimize the
rate impact to our to our customers we didn't want to have that rate shock in
one year so we're extending it over 30 years we previously discussed what that
would look like to our customers as far as rate increases we had communicated a
three to five percent rate increase for next year however because of several
outlying uncertainties we are not recommending a rate increase yet we'd
like to wait to come back for that discussion in December so Chris
mentioned already the transmission cost of service and that that rate that full
rate filing that we're undergoing for the Public Utility Commission that's
going to affect the revenue that we received from our transmission assets
and so without that information yet we do have some forecasts and assumptions
built into our performance but we would really like to see get closer to that
actual rate filing date to see what that that revenue is going to look like and
then we have some potential the potential TNPA mine sale that's still
outstanding as well as some potential data center projects that will impact or
could impact our forecast as well as we were undergoing a cost of service study
so we didn't feel like it would be prudent to ask you for a rate increase
now and then come back and make great changes later we would like to do it all
at one time so just to give you an update of some of the assumptions built
into our five-year forecast so our average load growth is a one and a half
percent over the next five years but that transmission cost of service which
I already mentioned we previously were receiving a 28 percent return we've
decreased that to 13 and a half percent and you'll see that in the forecast I'll
point it out it's a substantial decrease in revenue and starting in 2023 as we
discussed during COVID the ROI did increase to six percent from three and
a half percent and that is scheduled to decrease back to three and a half percent
in 2023 additional uncertainties I've already talked about most of them except
for the summer revenue forecast so July hasn't been as great as what we were
potentially what we were expecting but we do think August and September will
will be good for a revenue forecast but we'd like to get closer to that time
before we make rate recommendations and we've previously discussed during the
winter storm URI discussion increasing our reserve levels obviously council has
not adopted those formally yet but we did build them into the forecast so that
you can see what that would look like so with that this is the five-year
performance for the electric fund so to start off just wanted to point out that
non-rate revenue line that you see with 60 million dollars forecasted for next
year that decreases in 2023 because of the the 13 and a half percent decrease
to 45 million dollars in 2023 and then as well as you can see the winter
storm URI that hundred and forty million dollars over 30 years you can see that
built in the six point two roughly six point two million dollars a year for
that debt service payment additionally the supplemental packages that Chris
and Tony just discussed are built in and we do have some revenue funding it's
very very small but the CIP and the is built into the debt service so you can
see that in the non-debt debt service line and then just wanted to point out
again those proposed reserve targets you can see that we are recommending
increasing to 175 to 250 days based on our experience with the winter storm and
our financial advisors recommendations our previous targets were about 60 to
75 days and then next steps just we will be taking the water wastewater solid
waste budgets presentations to you next week as well as the the pub is scheduled
to approve the all of the the budgets next week and then we have that August
2nd budget workshop and then September 14th is our budget and tax rate hearings
as well as 21st is budget adoption so with that I will answer any questions
okay electric budget questions councilmember Davis and Councilmember
Armitage can you help us better understand the the rate filing the the
rate case what that process is and why it could impact our ultimate rates and
why it might be better to wait till that concludes sure I may have to ask Tony or
Terry to assist me on the tough questions but essentially we return we
receive a return on the assets that we have in the in our system that are
utilized by other entities and so that percentage is likely going to be reduced
because because they're looking at how well they're looking at all of our
assets and the level that they're used at and so we have been forecasting this
previously we did last year we forecasted a decrease as well but it
wasn't as significant and so it's just it's not getting as high of a return on
our investment essentially with our assets I can ask Tony to come up if you
need more detail okay okay okay Councilmember Armitage so a question about
rates kind of from the perspective of any members of the public who might be
listening thinking about their own family budgets would it be safe to say
then that since a rate increase isn't even going to be considered until
December at the earliest would it be safer a member of the public to feel
assured that there will be no rate increased in 2021 there's no rate
increase in 2021 it will be fiscal year 22 at the earliest yes okay so that's
important because I think you know not everybody realizes that so thank you
okay any other questions for staff mayor pro tem elston yeah first really my
question may be to you mayor I just when when if at any time during this meeting
would it be appropriate to talk about potential deal structures and budget
impact related to potential data centers it's kind of mentioned you know a little
bit here and then we have an item related to zoning you know associated
with that but it's unclear to me like can we you know dig into that issue or
sure I think that's good then it gives that fair warning for the second one if
it comes back right if we'll have an answer then maybe they can so thanks so
the potential data center issues you know one that is so huge that it would
affect could affect budget in very big ways and also could affect our other
goals in very big ways you know DM so this is gonna be like a long wind up to
the picture you know DME has done such an amazing job over several years to get to
the point of having the hundred percent renewable portfolio to the point where
that's a cornerstone of our economic development plan now you know
sustainable tendon and my question is this is it possible I'm not saying
desirable I'm not saying it support it but is it possible to structure
something that big which is which I know is going to be interruptible but it's
possible to structure so that it could only be powered by our renewable
contracts so that it so that since I know it's interruptible so that it could
not because it's the size of the city of Denton in its usage it could not push us
into going to the grid could it could it could it could a deal conceivably be
structured let's say desirable let's think they want it I think we want it
but is it conceivable to structure a deal that way so that it would only be
fueled by whether the you know the Sun falls somewhere in Texas and the wind
blows somewhere in Texas yes Terry Nolte assistant general manager DME great
question Mary Pro Tem I will just say that the value proposition associated
with data centers or large loads that are moving to Texas has much to do with
the low price of energy associated with the high renewable portfolio that we
have in state so as you know when generated energy is very inexpensive when
it's available solar as well and we're building more and more and more most
commercial operations of this type are very interested in which drives their
pro forma is that low cost of energy so to the extent that you enter into a
long-term power purchase agreement like the ones that we have you're paying
around the clock price a single price around the clock that drives a return on
equity for the developer of the project and for the tax equity investors and
things like that but at the end of the day that would not allow the data
center or another large industrial customer who was willing to take on the
real-time price risk the opportunity to say buy by electricity at negative
prices at night to buy very low priced energy when the wind is over producing
in the market generally so make sure I'm tracking having them lock into a
long-term deal to prevent them correct being able to do opportunistic things
like that correct okay and so the interrupt ability as you point out of
the operations allow them the flexibility to kind of pick and choose
what hours and what prices they want to pay and then shut down at other hours
when it's not cost-effective for them so while I appreciate where you're going
with your question there are several structural problems that would be
probably make us less competitive or non-competitive with other potential
jurisdictions service territories and one of which is the time that it would
take to enter into those contracts secondly the credit requirements that
would be imposed on the city to enter into those 20 15 20 year contracts and
the temporals that the time of those contracts versus that the term of the
contract with the data center so you've got to get all those things lined up
perfectly to meet the customers expectations and so well well I know
where you're going I just don't think that that's a practical approach as we
try to figure out a way to bring this nice economic development prospect into
our community if I can come back a little bit and I'll try to keep it
concise the the attractiveness of the deal structure is so that they can pick
and choose times when the energy is cheap and aren't those generally the
times when the renewables are abundant that is absolutely correct so is there
a way to you know and really I kind of almost don't want you to answer this but
just to go think about it if you have the free brain time you know is there a
way to structure the deal to effectively achieve what I'm looking for which is to
not force us into being less renewable I think the answer is yes but it would
entail us taking on a significant amount of market price risk price risk that we
do not currently have priced into the transaction another part right I didn't
want you to answer right now and just okay gotcha okay well
Councilmember McGuire and then Councilmember Bet. No did you have a question I'm
sorry. No. Councilmember Bet. Thank you Mayor this is Jermaine you you were
answering essentially what you you answered me about a week ago and in the
staff report and the problem I have here is is it's not that this isn't going to
generate profit but that the reason we sought renewables and kind of played
with the recs to extend that to some degree is we had certain sort of goals
in mind for our power consumption and that makes us attractive for energy
consumers but we're ostensibly doubling or even slightly more than doubling the
footprint because this is going to run at 92 percent efficiency all the time
whereas the residences don't so yes we will be purchasing recs as we've
discussed and Council many times to sort of cover this load and you say to the
Mayor Pro Tem that well we can't really if we don't if we don't if we go to for
a longer term thing we can't structure this in a way that the the business will
like but yeah it's a little loose because they're coming here because of a
renewable portfolio I mean they could go I'm gonna make up I don't know what
Lubbock's energy portfolio is but let's say it's significantly fossil fuels
they're going to go somewhere and so the question is if we're all ERCOT and
we're all dumping money of you know into the ERCOT pool or electricity into the
ERCOT pool and we happen to be dumping renewables into the pool they're going
to go somewhere they're going to suck that that non-renewable Lubbock out and
and so we are still substantially contributing to by by the doubling of
our footprint the overall regional use of non renewables even if it's at 60
percent of a you know 0.6 of what it would be if it was in Lubbock or
something like that so I guess in terms of budget the the concern is sort of
like we're constantly telling people to you know conserved we are putting in
LEDs to conserve and now that's small potatoes compared to what we're just
about to add to the portfolio so I guess I'm asking your advice well all of the
DME if there's not a way that we can offset some of these and stick to our I
mean we have the sustainability committee who's who's looking for little
tiny things to ask people to do to make this a more sustainable community and
and so you can we can argue that yes the the portfolio being a hundred percent
renewable or including Rex is is such that you know we are promoting the
renewable market and we will be this is this is my long lead into my question
pro tem and that is okay so if we are simultaneously doing good and harm by
doubling the footprint we're pushing renewables but we're also doubling our
consumption then maybe it would be appropriate and I could steer my way
much more clear to to being on board with this if if two factors were not in
play one the the business model of cryptocurrency mining is is is a is a
little bit of a fly-by-night you know you know favorite prints of the moment
and and so you know we're not saving babies and senators by providing this
power with say genomics research or biomedical research or you know
astrophysics or something else that we would do with these computers we're
buying Bitcoin okay so is that something that dent wants to do you know and where
do we fall on a sustainability policy statement so and then finally the
question is maybe then the appropriate tact to take is to minimize some of the
harm by saying okay based on the equations to some degree this is a pure
profit for Denton because they're just going to you know come in and suck off
our transmission lines and use our renewable credits maybe the response
maybe this is actually more directed simultaneously at you Terry and Tony but
also the council and that is to earmark if we can the a large fraction of these
profits that we expect not to offsetting the budget of DME but to say something
like the greensense program which would impact local sustainability programs and
make them more profitable so yes we might be doubling the footprint of our
of our community but at the same token if we can't do something like mayor pro
tem suggested you know if that's not feasible if they'll leave elsewhere maybe
we can still accept this but we need to do something to offset the
sustainability because otherwise we are not putting our council dollars where
our mouth is when we say we want to clean up we want to be sustainable we
want to be green we want to be better longer term if all of a sudden boom in
the next year we double our footprint so can you can you help me I guess the one
piece for earmarking is the mayor but if you can help me get around how that's
not the case for the for the other piece that's more directed towards you so
first I want to clarify for those looking the DME doesn't have profits
there and and so that's important to know it's important to note DME unlike
some of the other cities does not have a board this is it right there's other
San Antonio has a board that makes millions as a as a collective and so I
just don't want to put that out there the DME is padding pot profits because
it's not a real thing then I did not hear a question anywhere in there that
I'm going to ask Terry to answer and then all of that sounds like a policy
decision that this body will have to make our future body will have to make
on where we fall on that but I just if you could help me with the the question
that relates to the budget that I can ask here Cassie to speak to but other
than that I didn't hear anything that would that he could address sure I'll
phrase that in terms of that conversation so I guess Terry the the the place I'm
going is what what are the expected budget revenues from this contract and
how does that not match you know I'm to the mayor's point I'll try to avoid the
policy how does that not go to the point that I raised in a previous Friday
report of increasing the ostensibly the the the non renewable contracts by about
six percent is at minimum and more than that if you consider the overall
collect pool so and preface if we have a imminent if we have something that's
done then speak to it if we have anything that's done then say it's not
done and thank you Mary yeah yeah so specifically as it relates to the to
the budget which we're here to discuss discuss you know we're getting a little
bit of the cart before the horse here is as Cassie indicated this is an unknown
it certainly has a potential to impact the discussion that we bring to you in
December about rates because revenues from this potential project if we can
get it over the finish line could offset rate pressure that we might have
otherwise have I think that's the budget related question with respect to the
the sustainability I think what's important for the council to understand
is that if this project doesn't come to Denton it goes somewhere else in Texas
and if it goes to somewhere else in Texas that's not a 100% renewable
community then there's no mandate for that power to have a rec associated with
it and again as a 100% renewable community and as a condition of their
locating here they're paying a premium for that price of that rec to ensure
that every megawatt that they process in their facility has an associated
offsetting non carbon emission from it and and that's just the way the
mechanics work it's it going to be an accounting equation that we do but I'll
be glad in depth to bring that back to you to show you the mechanics of how
that all works okay we can cross that bridge later okay any other questions
councilmember Armitage oh yeah I just want to say briefly that you know I
share you know councilmember Beck's concerns about the impact of this on on
our budget and I just wanted to add that there's also the factor of you know the
additional pressure in doubling our footprint and doubling the pressure we
put on our already taxed grid is has consequences you know not just for our
city but but statewide which also have budget impact so I'm not saying this is
going to be the straw that broke the can't you know the camel's back but
that's a factor too that does have budgetary implications I just wanted to
mention that it will be more than prepared to discuss that particular
issue with you when we bring the deal to you that the data center deal to you for
approval any other questions for staff seeing none I do want to make sure that
we do have a kind of a clean record so understanding for those watching along
just that may have missed our other other meetings so the city of Denton generates
electricity to some degree goes up to the to the state grid and then comes
back down there's nothing that Denton sets aside for the city of Denton it all
has to go up to the grid come back down that's correct mayor okay thank you and
then I guess Cassie Cassie have a question regarding the savings on the
long term and the gas contract right so we extended that three years the the
gas line to the deck right so so we have a three-year contract is that savings
kind of factored into to what we're seeing here just kind of programmed out
I believe we have it in the performer but I can double check that for you and
get that answer for you sure yeah just I just be curious to make sure it's it's
reflected there I think that's a great obviously a great deal so I want to make
sure we're giving credit where credit's due okay any other questions for staff
seeing none all right thank you very much that brings us to customer service
mayor's City Council Krista Foster customer service manager I am here to
be able to visit with you guys just pardon me a minute been a hot minute
since we've had to bring stuff up out here there's the mouse there we go and
I am here to just go over the customer service budget and a little bit of the
highlights from our last year and the upcoming things we have so I'll start
with just showing you a overview of our division I have 46 total dedicated
wonderful staff who are here to assist our citizens and help make sure that
they get their bills and are able to make payments and arrangements and the
things that are necessary to keep their electricity and water on so as we go
into our budget overview I am going to trust that you all know how to read so I
will not bore you with reading all of the bullets but on each one I am going
to give you a couple of highlights for our accomplishments two of the things
that we're most proud of over the last year is our assistance referral process
where we have actually put into place a methodology of working with both the
United Way of Denton County and with interfaith ministries so if a citizen
contacts us and lets us know that they are having difficulties taking care of
their bill our representatives will give them that option to say would you like
us to take care of a referral for you we'll input just the basic screener get
the notification to that agency we follow up with an email in English or
Spanish for that resident that outlines all of their responsibilities any
important deadlines and the things that are going to be next steps we give them
a stay on their utility account so that they do not incur any type of fee or
interruption and then we work with that utility assistance organization so that
if it looks like the approval process may take a little longer than expected
they'll contact us so that we can continue to work out those arrangements
to ensure continuity of service for our customers the second thing that we have
implemented is translation services what we discovered was that we have two
universities and a very diverse community and we had no means of
communicating with these customers in their preferred language when they're
contacting us by phone we have implemented a language translation
service we offer somewhere in the realm of about 150 different languages so if
a customer does need assistance and prefers to speak in their native
language they're able to do so this is just a slide I know you guys get to talk
when things don't necessarily turn out the way that we'd want them to but it's
a very small minority of our customers and I wanted to be able to give you the
opportunity to see some of the things that our customers are saying as far as
our goals over the next year customer service is already working towards some
of these and we have some very big goals that are coming up the first of that is
3-1-1 implementation so we are in the discovery process we are in the
procurement of our CRM vendor and securing that contract so over the next
year we will be implementing the 3-1-1 to provide a greater scope of service to
all residents and the other thing that we're working toward is a change of our
payment processor raise your hand if you were someone you know had experienced
some issues with our online bill pay over the last year and that yes that
falls back to some problems that we've had with a payment vendor and we are
looking to procure more stable solutions as well as provide an enhanced web
portal that will allow customers to do things like set up service transfer
service turn off service that's fully automated it will allow them the
opportunity to do things like set up pay agreements which we've been hoping to
get in place for some time those are things that are coming in the next year
in terms of process improvements the process improvement of the last year
that we feel the strongest about is the partnership with DME and implementing a
remote reconnection process so now when a customer has had an interruption in
service they can call as soon as we get that payment we actually can enter the
reconnect order and send the codes to the meter so the average downtime for a
customer is about 30 minutes or less for about 90% of customers it's never going
to stop from that occasional transmission problem or communication
where we might have to send someone on site but it greatly reduces that so that
customers see the absolute minimum reduction in service if a problem is
encountered for next year we are just like I mentioned before going to be
working on actual automation of some of our self-service processes currently you
can do a transfer or a move request but those come into us via email and we're
still having to manually do them part of the solutions we're putting into place
will allow true automation of self-service options for our customers
I have a couple of slides with some metrics the first these are metrics that
we use to gauge how effectively are we utilizing our budget how much of our
overhead costs are actually being spent on trying to ensure that the revenues
that are billed or collected you'll notice that we were at less than two
cents of our overhead cost being actual collection of revenue you'll also see
that we have our collection rates making sure that if we're billing funds that
we're actually receiving them as well as our self-service adoption in our first
contact resolution as anything that helps customers be able to resolve their
own issues enable staff to be able to focus that time on those more
complicated needs that customers have in our metrics there's just a couple of
things that are worth noting here the first is you'll notice that our customer
service base has gone up almost 10% over the last four years it doesn't seem like
a lot but considering that we produce monthly bills just from what we've seen
in the last 10 years of growth which was only from about 55,000 accounts to the
65 66 we have now is a difference of a hundred and seventy thousand bills per
year that we're producing and that's just within the normal bill process none
of those extra manual steps that have to be taken our lobby volume continues to
decrease as we find ways to be able to better serve some of those customers but
our call center volume through the pandemic and even before we were
starting to see a rise in the number of contacts that were being made and then
during the pandemic it went up even more so we're actually seeing a 20% increase
over what we saw four years ago and we're trending to actually reach almost
two hundred and fifty thousand calls this fiscal year so you'll see some
things in my budget as we move forward that are related to some of those
impacts that things that I am very proud of first call resolution are very
satisfied and very dissatisfied customer statistics since I know a lot of the
council is new those are fairly new statistics for us they are customer
reported our customers receive a three question survey at the end of their
contact they are asked two questions related to first call resolution and
their satisfaction level we monitor our very satisfied and very dissatisfied
customers because these are the customers who go out into the community
and share their experiences the most this is what drives our public depiction
and so we focus very strongly on making sure that we are being effective so for
the budget highlights the first screen you're going to see is our allocations
to the internal departments because we are an internal service fund what we do
is we look at our workload and we figure out the percentages and then allocate
that back out appropriately to the different utilities as well as the
general fund I'll give you just one brief moment to review it and then we'll
get into the actual budget and so this is our actual operation budget you'll
notice that unfortunately we are trending to be a little over budget this
year that is actually because some of those pandemic related events have
caused some unbudgeted expenditures $125,000 additional to the plus one fund
for interfaith ministries in the utility assistance fund as well as having to add
some additional staff and some things just related to those sheer volume
increases we may be coming back to counsel toward the end of the year for a
budget amendment we are still working very closely with budget and doing as
much as we can to reduce the amount of what that amendment may need to be if in
fact it happens again our customer service FTE summary we have 46 FTE and
that is after we started out the pandemic at 45 we reduced some through
some different changes and have had to increase staffing back up just to make
sure that we can service the customers that we serve and then for our budget
request there's going to be a little bit of extra in here just because the whole
concept of 311 and CRM may be new to everyone and even if it's not new to you
311 can look very different depending on where you're going or who's 311 you're
looking at so I wanted to be able to give you guys just a brief overview of
what that looks like for Denton and what our vision with that is so this is the
only slide I will read to you verbatim and that is what is 311 or CRM a 311
Center utilizes centralized staff and customer relationship management
software to streamline access to city services increased departmental
efficiencies and provide citizens a single point of contact for all of their
needs you'll see the image below shows what our current state is resident
doesn't necessarily know who is going to take care of their problem so they may
get transferred because sometimes even internally we have trouble determining
exactly where something belongs so this is our current state what we're hoping
to move to is a centralized contact center utilizing a CRM software so what
that means is a resident no longer has to have some kind of an undergraduate
degree in how public sector works in order to know who they need to speak
with the CRM software itself will integrate with the primary work order
systems and tracking systems so that we can chart out call flows and map those
processes representatives can take a call for one of many different divisions and
be able to get to the right solution and get the information where it belongs
this is an overview of how a CRM works it will take that communication from
your customer no matter what channel that comes in and it will go to one
centralized group of representatives so that they have a better idea and can
learn I may not know where that went today but after I've done it today next
time I get that call I'll know where it goes so it goes through the center the
CRM software and then it automatically will be routed out to the appropriate
places either through those divisions it could be internal like another group
utilizing the CRM software and then it consolidates all of that data so that we
have robust reporting that we can use to know what's going on in the
organization and make sound business decisions using that information this is
an overview of our timeline we actually began the investigative process for this
in the summer of 2019 we really started getting the ball rolling like last year
and through now it should be fall of 2020 that we started out with our RFP
and brought on some consultants who are assisting us with the development
process of that we now have are working on awarding the contract for the actual
CRM software and then we are hoping to have a project kickoff toward the end of
the summer so that we'll be able to have things going with that and bringing back
a contract for you for your approval this is our supplemental package for the
311 CRM system and that is going to have just one time cost for just the
supporting equipment to be able to have staff be able to work right they need
computers they need software that type of thing and then our contingency fund
of 25% those are our one-time cost the actual total includes a total of six
positions one in the tech services department that would be over the actual
engineering and working by inner workings of the CRM software we would
also have a 311 coordinator position that helps to make sure that things are
running smoothly with those divisions and that can stay abreast of what's
happening in those divisions so we don't have any miscommunications or
disconnects they'll maintain all of those relationships as well as our
knowledge base internal and external then we will have four we're anticipating
for frontline representatives for some of the increased volume clearly as we
move through the process we'll be evaluating the volumes that are coming
from those divisions if we can reallocate stuff that way that will be
done first but we want to ensure that we have the ability to hire staff if it's
necessary and with that I'll answer any questions questions for staff council
member armature then council member I mean mayor pretend Melton a couple
questions first though I want to say I'm really excited about the new move to
have customer service staff you know taken even more proactive role in
connecting people to the assistance that's available so I'm really excited
about that it is does that does the new this new directive require that every
everyone who answers the phone and customer service must you know do this
for people who are in need of assistance and it because I assume the answer is
yes right what is it might seem like a strange question but you know what
happens if somehow they don't you know what what happens both for as far as for
them but also to the the customer who might end up well getting their power
shut off obviously if the customer has experienced an issue and they're saying
they didn't receive that have them contact back and specifically just ask
right there's no shame in asking right that's what we're here for that's why we
dedicate funds for those assistance funds but in regards to staff expectation
obviously we will work with staff if we run into a problem but it is the
expectation that they're listening for those keywords and if a customer is
explaining that they're having difficulties to at least make that offer
it is up to the customer whether they choose to have us submit that that of
course for them or not right but we're definitely the expectations that it's of
course and thank you and you know the reason why I ask is because as you know
a lot of people still don't know that that assistance is available you know
even after COVID and so because so people often don't know that there's
something that they haven't been asked about yeah you know it would be great if
you know and I don't know what you plan to do you don't have to go into it here
but you know reminders you know physical reminders at everybody's desk and and
you know and maybe some you know form of compensation for you know some kind of I
don't know compensation for for people who don't get asked and maybe some you
know I don't know points off for people who forget of course you want to you
know educate them and talk to them but because this is people's lives are at
stake then they'll make sure I think not to forget if they know that if they
forget you know they might I don't know get points off somehow another question
in that slide where you showed kind of the breakdown of customer
service efforts and if you could put it back up that you want me to bring back
up and which one it's um it's the one where you you you had it laid out you
know the percentage collect of debt collected about the effectiveness of
staff percentages yeah you know I wonder you know kind of if you could speak to
what that might look like if the prevention of shutoffs you know was
included here you know how many shutoffs have been prevented yeah this actually
does include the preventing of shutoffs this is my entire full customer service
budget all positions all parts of how much it's costing in our overhead of
all staff versus the revenues that are being built so this is inclusive of
that okay and so that I completely understand I was just wondering you know
if it was singled out yeah as an actual you know item on this on this list you
know I very difficult to ascertain that yeah I imagine especially if it's not
kind of being tracked in that way but I want to you know request that the next
time this budget comes before us as part of this year's budget cycle you know I
would love to see what the budget would look like if we didn't shut off people's
power you know not only how that would obviously there might be some some cost
but you know what savings would there be also in the end of the amount of time
spent by staff you know running around and you know spending all this time on
it I would really like to see that from a fiscal point of view I realized it
would all be you know conjecture and hypothetical but you know we talk about
power shutoffs by we I don't mean you I mean you know when we talk about
utilities as if they're inevitable you know most cities do that but it doesn't
doesn't mean we have to and since you know Yuri has shown us how terrible it
is you know just to have your family's power go out for 45 minutes on and off
so it's there's really great cause for public health and safety I think it's
definitely worth looking into from a budget point of view and then and
finally credit-based deposits you know is there as you know I hate I hate the
credit-based deposits and there have been improvements over the years to make
them less onerous to people who just happen to have you know bad credit in
in many cases because they either are currently or have been in the past
struggling to with with stagnant wages and increased cost of living are there
planned improvements to the credit-based deposit system to make it less onerous
on customers I'm gonna make a note and so miss city manager if you can make a
note of both of those so but it budget shutoff exclusion that's a that's a
policy discussion credit base how we assess people's deposit that's a policy
discussion it said well it's a so yes you're right it would be a policy
discussion but I'm asking for that is as budget data you know I want to see sure
as and of course you know if it would take more than two hours you know I'd be
happy to make a one-minute pitch for it but I want to see even before the policy
discussion as we look at the budget just what that would look like sure so then
you can do that analysis of it and same for the credit-based deposit question
because it's also a budget question and I know that in past years you know
information about credit-based deposits has been included in the in the
presentation I'm just just curious okay okay
mayor Proctor Meltzer yeah thanks just I wonder if you could just help us
understand what from a user experience point of view what the difference would
be between three one one and engaged end or they kind of the same but one has
elves find the seas so the rest software what you'll find with engaged in is we
have that app and it is on the back side fairly limited what you're looking at as
we move into three one one and implement a CRM a customer relationship
management software that CRM software actually has a fully functional mobile
app it will be integrated with those individual work order systems where
right now with engaged in those things come through as like an email or some
type of a note and we're having to go in and we create those things the one of
the great things with that CRM and the way that it will work on both the
website and on the mobile app is any of those service request types if my
frontline staff are sitting behind their PC and it says oh to report the
streetlight outage we need to know this question this question this question
that same presentation of information happens for the customer so they give
you far more complete information and it can save a lot of time and turn around
and the going back and forth one of the other great benefits of a CRM software
is that it allows us if that customer wants contact back they can tell us do
they want that via email do they want that via text and so we can program that
system so that as that work order changes status it will automatically push
that notification to the customer letting them know that something has
happened and something has changed so they have that increased security of not
questioning well did it ever happen and feeling the need to have to spend more
of their time contacting us for something that we can proactively provide that
information so way more powerful way back end but it's to make probably a
similar customer experience but more probably more intuitive for your
customer experience as well just one other small just curious on the very
impressive measure of very very satisfied is that on a 5-point scale that
is off a 5-point scale so we offer oh no we actually offer a 4-point scale I
don't allow them to take the middle ground you're either satisfied or you're
not I'm sorry so you can be so this is truly the very satisfied not the just
satisfied correct yeah that's correct and it is truly either very satisfied or
very dissatisfied yeah thank you okay any other questions
customer back thank you mayor so I I've said many times before I'm really
looking forward to this and I you know I've worked CRM and ticketing software
before I know this is going to be a major improvement Mike my question to you
is do you need to budget or have you budgeted transition as we go from our
current customer service stance and using engaged Denton that what are what
do we anticipate our needs are for transitioning to the 311 system
especially because we spent the last few years trying to push people to engage
Denton I assume we're gonna reuse that name and things like that um we are not
quite far enough to know if we're gonna keep the name or change the name but we
are working on and if Ryan will like to speak to it he can but we're working on
communication strategies and plans to be able to roll those things out one of the
things that'll be the easiest I think with this is that the same platform
you're gonna see on that mobile app is the platform you're gonna see on the
website would you like to add more I think I'll just add that in rolling this
out it's actually going to be about a 9 to 12 month implementation so we do have
a lot of time to get more information and plan on how we are going to roll it
out and to understand what those costs are we we have council allowed us to
hire consultants who are very experienced in the implementation of
311 systems and they've given us a lot of guidance which is where we have some
position requests that we included and as others come up and we need to adjust
that we will come back to the council but we did include that 25% contingency
there just because every city is different we may have something unique
that we need to that no one really anticipated that we're gonna have to
address during that implementation okay that makes sense thank you yeah okay any
other questions for staff seeing none thank you very much appreciate it thank
you so it is we've been at it about a couple hours so let's let's take a brief
break we'll be back so we'll we'll take a break 358 be back at 410 and we will
pick up with traffic at that point so we'll be on break to 410 thank you
and welcome back to this meeting and didn't City Council it is now for 11
and we're back with item B still which is ID 21455 and we're to the traffic
portion afternoon mayor council Daniel Kramer deputy director of operations
public works I'll be presenting traffic
so our traffic operations organization is made up of right at 12 personnel we
have an operations manager and then we're broken down into our our signals
group and our signs of markings group so some of our accomplishments that we've
had over this this past year we've had a 230,000 feet of pavement markings we've
also replaced 2000 of 2000 of our aging signs out of our total network of close
to 20,000 added three new signalized intersections we brought our TMC which
is our traffic management center online and we use that to actually work on
special events or work with TWU and T or anything on some of that where we can
monitor all the traffic signals around town we've reconstructed for signalized
intersections and there's also four that are currently under construction right
now some of our goals for the next year is we have six more intersections and
these do include ones that we work with tech set on for the highway safety
improvement program that we were working on next year we are continuing to work
with adding new technology and ITS which is an intelligent transportation systems
throughout our cabinets and signals so we can help reduce the delays and
congestion throughout the city we are also working on a new 10-year sign
replacement as we go through a normal sign last anywhere from 10 to 12 years
based on what direction it's facing how much sunlight it gets reflectivity so
we're we've got a plan together we'll be implementing as we go through the
regulatory signs years one through five in different sections of the city and
then go through all of our warning and guide signs years five through ten so
that we can keep our signs at the collect correct reflectivity for safety
purposes some more budget highlights as you can see our traffic we've stayed
pretty consistent over the years sitting at about around 2.4 million dollars for
our budget as we go through that and our current FTE count is down to 12 we've
had some transition of some admin staff around two different departments but
that's mainly what the drop is on those questions comments questions for staff
customer bar thank you um I'm just curious if you could speak to the
process for restriping roads particularly crosswalks after resurfacing
is that something that is is sort of built into your procedures built into
the budget yes so as we work through those our work order system the
information will go in on either our plan work on our street side or if it's
capital project we put that information in then it gets sent over to our traffic
operations and they'll look at the schedule and plan it we do have the
ability to stripe in-house on certain we have a small long line machine that we
use for temporary paint markings and then we also have the ability to do some
crosswalks and stuff we do a we do a lot of those we will do a big influx once a
year well we'll have a contractor come out and do a redo a lot of the
crosswalks and do all that so it's it's mainly a timing as to what time of the
year what's what's the best time is what we throw it in on that a lot of the
issues that we run into is sometimes when the road is restriped it depends on
weather humidity if it's been raining if it's too cold for the paint to stick
and everything else we we don't want to put it down and then it be ripped up in
a few months of driving over so we try to do that so sometimes there are some
gaps in the timing but that is how our plan tries to lay out on that okay any
other questions for staff on traffic seeing them thank you very much thank
you okay that takes us to facilities
good afternoon mayor members of council Scott Gray director of airports and
facilities I have two presentations for you this afternoon so I'll start with
facilities I think I'm sharing no not yet okay let's try this again
there we go sorry mr. set thank you okay again I'm the director for airports and
facilities and I have Marissa Barrett our administration manager for the
department with me this afternoon as well very quickly on our organizational
chart we are broken into two pieces administration and maintenance and we
have several vacancies currently we have five two offers have been sent out for
two of those positions and we're still working on the other ones to try to get
our staff back up up to par from pre-covid and the voluntary separation
program just quickly on some accomplishments and I won't go through
all of these but certainly development services center is completed staff
entered that building earlier this year and that is working very well for a
number of the departments that have moved in there station three and station
eight have been completed as well and then loop 288 which there's been
numerous discussions here at the council about that the construction documents
are done and we'll be moving forward with construction activity here shortly
those projects in progress right now the American Legion Service Center which the
councils heard for quite a while now that one is still in progress and should
be completed here in August and then the PD projects which is the public safety
bond program for the three facilities there is currently in progress now for
our goals we are bringing a project forward to to bid here shortly for the
fleet services expansion so our fleet folks can have a little more room to
address all of the the vehicles for the city the service center renovation
design is just about completed we have a couple of things that we're we're
looking at we'll be bringing forward on some options for that project we
certainly hope to have the police facilities completed during this budget
cycle and then we will be updating and consolidating the city's security
program which will be moving over to tech service once it's completed we'll
certainly talk about our CIP projects at another day and we'll finish those and
then another very important project is the City Hall West the architectural RFP
should be going out here in the next three to four weeks we'll be selecting
architect shortlist if you will that will include the selection for the
historic focus for the City Hall West project projects that are going to begin
here shortly is the loop 288 renovation which again councils very familiar with
that'll be coming forward with a construction manager at risk agreement
and then from the winter storm we learned a number of things there'll be
some discussion in our CIP presentation but one of the one of the things that
was found was the generators for the various buildings that are in place were
somewhere inadequate to run all of the necessary systems in that building so
we're doing a complete evaluation of all of those buildings and the generators
and then bringing forward a solution to ensure that those buildings can be
operate during an emergency event then lastly we're working closely with
finance and developing a 10-year capital improvement program normally we look one
year ahead as we bring the budget forward but we're going to be looking at
generating a 10-year program and a financing solution for that moving
forward I won't spend too much time on on the metrics here other than to point
out that you can see in the light blue as we started to return from Kovac the
the submittals for work requests have gone up and which is expected because
the folks that are working in all our buildings are our eyes and ears in the
buildings since we have only eight staff members to to take care of the
maintenance so we rely on our city departments and employees to report all
those and then on the right hand side you can see the various types of work
orders that we do receive throughout the year we are an internal service fund as
you've probably heard from other presentations I won't spend much time
here other than just to point out a couple of things that that probably
jump out to you as the personnel cost and then the change in maintenance and
operation personnel cost it's just a reflection of a couple of positions that
were not actually included in last year's budget that have been just taken
into the new budget moving forward so that's the increase there and then you
can see that we've reallocated some of the items from maintenance and
operations basically just a better categorize those those beads into the
right categories and the reason why there's some increase there facilities
this year when I started back and they COVID hit us back in March of last year
we were we were taking care of about 60 or so buildings we've increased that to
about 200 rooftops if you will so we've taken over all of the facilities that
were under some of the utilities that previously they were kind of managing so
we've kind of brought them all in-house and we see a little bit of contractual
increase in that number there quickly on our FTE summary you can see we've gone
from 19 down to 17 basically we're in the midst of a reorganization effort our
our project FBU is it is basically being eliminated those folks are being moved
into maintenance under a facilities manager that will head over both of
those types of activities and then questions okay thank you questions
counter back thank you so you you said that you know other staffers are your
eyes and ears for problems and you know that that's certainly true they know
you've got to report things that are broken or light bulbs that are out or
whatever do would you benefit or would it be more expensive if you hadn't and I
assume you do have some sort of frequency of inspection that would help
you hit hit some of these problems as well and so is it is it is it
budgetarily more beneficial to utilize other staff and just do on call
reporting or is it you know or do you is it better to have a inspection regime or
do you do a little bit of both we actually do all of that so we we do do
inspections of the buildings with our internal staff but we've been somewhat
short-staffed and with kovat and a number of the things that were going on
you know we've kind of had to push some of those activities off just to address
the as needed but we will be back into quarterly building inspections we'll
walk around for a matter of fact we we turned in the light bulb that was burned
out right there while we were sitting here into our work order system so
that'll be fixed tomorrow but when we're out and about we do look for things and
put them in ourselves but there's certainly a lot more city staff in the
other buildings that are out there every day that will notice things that we may
not see when we go out and do our quarterly inspections so we do that
internally and then we're also going to be looking at doing a full building
assessment as we move forward and we'll talk about that at the CIP meeting and
the reason I was asking is is more to the the you're actually going down in
staff I mean that some areas were increasing so I guess it was more
germane to the request of do you if you're not if you're not if you're
putting up you're spending all your time putting out fires then you can't be as
proactive as you might like to be and so my question is you know is there room or
do you anticipate a need for increased staff to be more proactive sure I think
what we've we've looked at is what number of staff do we think that is
comfortable to get us through this next fiscal year obviously understanding the
impacts that COVID had to the city so I think with filling the vacancies that we
have as I mentioned we have five we've got four of those jobs posted two
offers out we hope to get the other two having that staff additional staff will
help us get back into that cycle of doing those inspections and I would not
propose at this time to add any additional staff I think once we get our
feet under us this this year I think we'll look at that at the next budget
cycle we'll have our new facilities manager on board then I think there'd be
a better time to take a look at that all right fair enough thank you okay yeah
Catherine Burke real quick question clarification did I hear you say that
the Legion American Legion all would be completed I did I was hoping for a round
of applause yes it was proposed to be completed in the end of October
we we've worked with our contractor we've worked with our internal contracts
for HVAC work and we've now been able to accelerate that we're targeting the end
of August and I'm pushing real hard for the end of August I really would have
rather gave it to you in May but I think some of the supply chain issues and
COVID impacted some of those some of those workers but we have looked like
we've shaved off pretty close to two months great I'll get a chance to pass
that on to my D1 crew now now you're gonna have to hold me to it yes thank
you just man any other questions for staff got it no I'll say the same so I
appreciate that that update obviously that projects really important as they
all are a lot of a lot of work going on so thank you very much for that and and
for I mean again lots of parts and I saw the windows out at City Hall West so I
figured something was going on you're up to something so that's good that's good
to know so thank you very much for protecting the city's infrastructure
investment in that way so thank you all right that takes down you're back on the
hook for the airport got to switch hats yes sir
okay now on to the airport the airport organizational chart there's there's
basically two divisions there as well admin side and operation side most of our
staff is in the field doing some sort of maintenance or operational inspections
on a daily basis we are seven day a week facility just quickly on some of the
accomplishments we completed the design of the rehab for the primary runway
that's the 900 foot section I think council had seen a couple of weeks ago
that projects will start here in September and repair that section of
pavement as is the council may recall that it were here when we did the
regulatory rewrite and access card program all of those cards have been
distributed to all of our tenants so now our facilities are our prox card entry
for all of our vehicle gates to enter the airport area operating area all of
the new permit process is in place and we've now begun now that we've returned
to regular meetings at the Airport Advisory Board having our businesses
come and present what they do at our airport and get their permits ratified
by the Airport Advisory Board we've implemented the new lease management
system to track all of our leases at the airport currently there's approximately
80 or so different leases for either property and or our our own tea hangers
and then we've initiated and completed a multi-year airport pavement maintenance
program we funded a a study that identified all the pavement needs for
all the airside pavement on the on the airfield including our tenants leasehold
pavements which is the apron areas so we can share with them what needs to be
done with their pavement on their on their own leasehold a couple of goals
that we would be finished in here in this next budget cycle is the completion
of the airport tower upgrades has taken us a while to kind of get there there
is a significant delay in getting some of the supplies that are needed to do
the radios for that project so we're hoping they'll be here in the next six
to eight weeks so they can start that project and and get the tower equipment
updated one of the other significant things is to promote airport land
development and businesses we work closely with the economic development
department as you know we have a hundred and fifty acres over on the west side of
the airport that will be extremely valuable to the airport when the freeway
corridor is developed and give us a great access over there and allow us to
generate additional revenues on that side and then obviously we'll continue
with our multi-year pavement maintenance program so the airport metrics and I
think you've heard me say this before and some of this information is is
surprising to many we are one of the top 10 general aviation airports in the state
of Texas we usually fluctuate somewhere between number three and number seven it
just depends on the month and and who's flying where in the top 100 airports in
the country as I mentioned when I moved here from Pittsburgh they were number
100 I believe and we were 99 so I thought that was a pretty good upgrade
so that's pretty significant as well for an airport our size the second FBO is
now open at our at our facility has resulted in increased corporate activity
which is exciting as a result of that our fuel numbers are up nearly 19%
that's generally associated with the increased corporate activity during
COVID we did see a downturn in some of our activity but we only saw 1% decrease
of our our flight operations compared to our sister airports in the Metroplex
were down as much as 11% so that was pretty significant for us the the budget
looks a little bit different might kind of resemble the electric that you just
saw in a portfolio that most don't do we do a five-year working with finance to
project where we're going to be for our revenues and our operating expenses and
it's broken down and I won't spend a lot of time on this slide but be happy to
answer any questions one of the probably the biggest significant changes that
we've seen over the last five or so years is a significant decrease in gas
well royalties which was used to help fund our capital program and then offset
any operating deficiencies if there were any our operating expenditures you can
see they're broken down in the various categories there's not much much change
there either except that you know that we do we do see the necessity for some
increased maintenance and we've moved some things around as well just to
better categorize them one of the significant things that you will see here
is the debt service is now identified which was adopted in the 2021 current
budget and you'll see that about three-quarters of the way down on the list
and the in the current debt service is being paid for out of the airport
enterprise fund as a result you can see that the phone balance is depleted by
the end of the five-year term obviously we're looking at ways to find different
revenue sources that most significant would be the hundred and fifty acres on
the west side but there's very poor access to it right now if we were able
to lease that for the minimum amount that we do now on the east side that's a
approximately one point nine million dollars of lease revenue alone if we
could find a developer to take that plan so that's the goal is to get to that
place to find that revenue to offset the deficiency very quickly is small FTE
staff six down to five the one is me I'm now funded over in the facilities side
there's a couple of budget requests and it's really just to keep up with our our
tower inspection fees a new company we had to hire there's not many of them to
do it that increased slightly from our reoccurring costs it's fairly minimal
10,000 and then our mowing contract also increased so we have those two
supplementals with that I'll be happy to answer any questions okay questions for
staff and therefore mayor pardon me yes several quick questions one about the
mowing contracts and so that's with a outside contractor that's correct it's
managed by the Parks Department a managed by them okay because I was going
to ask you know what about having park staff doing that knowing we do airport
staff does all of the airside mowing so around the runways and taxiways just for
safety purposes and then we we've worked with the Parks Department and they
supplement our landside mowing through their contract okay through their
contract with an external third party okay okay so I guess that would be a
question for for parts okay if you could just explain briefly just about the the
gas well you know where is the gas well physically located and can you explain
you know how that I'm looking at that the the operating expenses sure the the
O&M versus the net revenue currently there there were nine if I recall
correctly there were nine one was capped and closed which is one of our
developable properties we have one down on the southeast corner of the airport
next to our maintenance facility which is one well and then the other wells are
all on the west side of the airport property right on the corners those
those wells have been in place for plus 20 years and so those those contracts
just give us the royalty payments and those go through finance okay for now
but I see that they're they're projected to yeah the projection is showing that
they are decreasing which is expected after 20 plus years five or so years ago
it was 3.5 million dollars of revenue and now it's down to about two hundred
fifty thousand dollars worth of revenue it's a significant amount of decrease
that was really used to help fund a lot of the capital and you know we have a
lot of payment out at the airport so we have you know certainly are going to be
working with tex dot in which we provided our full plan to them for our
20-year plan for pavement maintenance so that helped get on the list for funding
our airport grants are 90% state basically federal state funded and then
10% match so you know I would love to see you know some other form of
you know in the future of revenue that you know it doesn't involve that gas
like you know flying lessons or something like that I don't know if
you're all thinking about I know this is a little bit down the future well we do
we do have one of the largest flight schools in the area at our facility and
that's done by private so our revenue sources are basically lease revenue from
the property and fuel sales so our our main way to make additional money is to
lease more property we can't we can't go get more more dirt if you will or we
increase the traffic flow to they buy more gas yeah so you make more revenue
leasing it to private flight instructors then if the city were to build their own
facility then if you were to okay that makes sense and then finally I want to
ask about the the COVID funds that the airport was kind of awarded if you could
say a little bit about that because so apparently you know only the the impact
was minimal of COVID on the airport only down 1% so but it qualified for COVID
funds can you kind of explain like how that how that worked because that
factors into the budget as well sure there's a couple of items three of which
already have come to the council and been approved for our funds so there was a
hundred and fifty seven thousand dollar grant was the first round which offset
any operating expenses which is different than most of our grants most
of our grants are limited to capital improvement only but the COVID funds
could be used for operational or any any basically any legal expense of an
airport so the 157 was already approved and then just recently there was it was
really one grant but it was split into two because it has two different criteria
to it that was just approved by council for a total of ninety seven thousand
dollars part of that is for their traffic control tower expenses and part
of it again is for airport operations and then we'll be bringing forward
another one the grant management department will be bringing forward a
one hundred and forty eight thousand dollar grant for the same thing and it's
it's basically all part of the COVID relief package the probably the other
piece that's more significant is is over the last two years we also got a hundred
percent grant so normally it's a 90/10 we have to give so for example we had a
million dollar project we'd have to give our we'd have to give our hundred
thousand dollars that it was changed for those two years for a hundred percent
federal funded so we were not required to present our ten percent so we've kept
our ten percent to use for the next non hundred percent we were not sure yet if
the the next round of funding we'll do a hundred percent funding on the next
round of work if it does that'll be significant because we have another
runway project okay thank you and this is a grant that am I right that applies
to just transportation in general right or is it specifically ones we get are
through the Federal Aviation Administration which is handed to text
on aviation that distributes okay got it okay thank you very much that's good to
know okay any other questions for staff Councilman Berg what does FBO hanger
sorry sorry we use a lot of acronyms I apologize it's it's fixed base operator
it's basically the concierge of the airport they meet and greet folks that
fly in they provide them hotel reservations rental cars they fuel the
aircraft they move the airplanes and park them and store them for them while
they're visiting here how many angers are there out there about a hundred and
seven you all have tours anytime you would like we're actually planning a
tour for our airport advisory board we were going to see if council would be
interested in doing do all of them at the same time it's probably going to be in
October when it's just a tad cooler okay any other questions see none thank you
very much thank you yes all right that concludes item B takes us to item C
which is ID 2 1 1 3 7 receive report hold discussion give staff direction
regarding and agreement with the Denton Parks Foundation city of Denton Texas
that's not it that's not it either hang on
uh-oh hang on
don't see it
there we go
I'm trying to get it yeah all right Gary Pack and director of parks and
recreation today we're here to present a draft agreement for City Council as a
well as a presentation kind of summarizing the Park Foundation's
activities over the past year and what the plans are moving forward this is the
fourth year since I've been here that we've gone through an annual one-year
agreement the only changes that are in the proposed agreement are an addition
of some wording to the audit if there are some findings that we want to be
looked at and talking to Madison she could potentially help us if we needed
to or it's a formal audit that the foundation would pay for and provide and
then also the addition of some wording in regards to them helping with the
accountability of a third party that's actually collecting all the money at the
gift shop at the senior center the gift shop is basically items that are made by
the seniors and and they sell those to the to the other attendees at the senior
center 90% goes back to the the individual person and 10% goes to the
senior committee as a fundraiser you know they'd like to use they do that for
small items but then they'd like to use it for a future senior center so hopefully
we got start turning out some more items for a future senior center those are the
only additions the amount is is still seventy six thousand five hundred dollars
that has not changed but those are the only real changes in the agreement other
than some typos and some some adjustments from from last year's
agreement the president Tim Smith is present as well as Brooke Moore who's the
executive director Brooke was going to go through a PowerPoint and provide that
a summary to you as in past years we'll take any feedback on the agreement from
City Council that funding is in the operating budget for the parks
department then we would come back in October after the budgets approved and
provide that as an official agreement to be approved by City Council at that time
so after the PowerPoint available for any questions about the agreement as
well as for the park foundation great thank you
hey everybody good to see you all lower this down drastically here so first
thank you for having us here we've been partners for over 30 years of which I've
only participated in two years but we're forever grateful together we've raised
over a million dollars for parks and people specifically here in the city of
Denton so we hope that we can continue those efforts certainly since we have
some new faces and everybody's always curious kind of what our role is I
figure we start with our mission so our mission as you can see is to engage the
date and community to enhance the mission of Denton Parks and Rec Department to
unite grow and play so our whole purpose is to serve the city of Denton and parks
and rec we have no other mission and everything that we decide and every
decision that we make goes back to our mission does it follow within that our
vision is to unite people of our parks and play through advocacy investment
and volunteerism resulting in accessibility and equality of life for
all residents ideally that's really what we would like to see we believe when a
community unites parks get better it's shown time and time again that when you
get people involved in the process things get better I think our best
example right now is probably 940 disc golf and we'll talk about that in a bit
and so our organizational objectives include investing in resources and do
deep hard to win in our PA and traps gold medals they've already won some
previously but we'd like to see more gold medals and considering its Olympic
year I think it would be ideal to get that going and advocate for a hundred
percent accessibility to equitable deep hard parks and facilities so again
highlighting accessible and equitable both go hand-in-hand and then providing
financial support to all individuals who qualify for recreational scholarships
here's a key point I think a lot of people think we only provide
scholarships for children we don't it's for any age you just have to qualify
based on your income in itself qualifying so it can be a whole family
the child wants to take ballet the parent wants to you know work out get fit
everybody can qualify we actually have given out a number of senior
scholarships so they have access to the senior center and you can go to any
parks and rec facility and apply so share that with your constituents because we
have the money we'd love to get more people into our parks and rec
facilities so how do we do that we do it in three different ways first is through
investments so we invest in parks and people this year we've awarded almost
fourteen thousand dollars in scholarships to 89 recipients and over
twenty seven thousand dollars in parks updates and improvements now that wasn't
our goal but after kovat I'm gonna call that a win at the end of the day
advocacy we encourage residents to be a voice for parks and we do this through
campaigns like every day in May if you participated you were at the park every
single day in May and you showed why it's important to love up on our parks
it shows the importance of that ten minute walk and so we really highlight
that we also highly what is in our community we post different stories
about different parks that people know oh wow I had no idea there was a park
over there I'm really giving them that access to it and then promoting community
input meetings we have lots of meetings available and they're not always well
attended so we try to help promote those meetings and providing insights to local
parks answering any questions that we see online or going out and talking with
folks about our parks and then finally volunteerism we can't do this alone it's
impossible so we foster folks and to volunteer in our Denton parks by
promoting opportunities as well as getting on board with us joining a
committee we actually recently have one person complaining about the lack of
shade at parks and specifically at the dog park and I get it it's hot and there
is no shade and my response was yeah and we're fundraising for that we could
really use you you know your passion on that committee and sure enough she showed
up to our meeting and so she is part of the dog days committee and she's helping
us fundraise for that each year when you include ourselves in our fiscal partners
we engage roughly 150 volunteers each year so how we fundraise we utilize a
multiple approaches when it comes to fundraising and these have efforts help
us fill in the gaps that exists between what our parks needs are and our tax
dollars available so something I like to say to folks is like we don't have the
4b tax right but we've got that champagne taste we've just got a beer
budget and so we try to help fill that gap between those two different budgets
and tastes and we do that through grants events campaigns partnerships just to
name a few some of the grants we write didn't benefit at league every year
co-serve Texas Health we wrote for them so specifically here are some areas of
fundraising one is our friends of the parks it's a membership and we strive to
get people to make a difference through their parks membership and it's a
monthly giving program and our goal is to get a hundred folks to do it in 2021
22 the key benefit right now is that if you all sign up to become a friend of
the parks you get to come to our beer tasting because we have a beer coming
out and we're very excited about it and so if you want to get the first taste
of it join us I highly recommend it and we have signature events that we do each
year not only do we raise money through the ticket sales but even more so
through our sponsorships and donations some of these events include Galentines
it's a lot of fun there's waffles wine it's always a good show we actually
even did it this last year we just went virtual the egg scramble it's an adult
egg hunt we have tried to have it for two years in a row and fingers crossed
2022 bark in the park is actually dog days of debt and we've recently taken
that on and they were going to just dissipate and they reached out and said
hey this seems to align with you all and I said absolutely so we're combining it
with Splish Splash doggy bash and we're bringing it back to Quaker Town Park
which is really exciting it's gonna be on September 11th so I hope you can join
us and then Parktober where we change October into Parktober we've claimed it
and we fundraise throughout that entire month we also do major initiatives so a
lot of people know us from Eureka - but we are currently walk working on the dog
park and we will start rolling out our campaign for the inclusive playground
this year which we're really excited about and then our park partners so
again like I mentioned we cannot do this alone and this year we're actually
kicking off a partnership with Denton County Brewing Company this one I'm
super excited about funds from sales of this brew will actually benefit parks so
for every pint sold we'll get a dollar and we'll be working with other local
breweries to have it on tap at their locations as well and we'll have it
canned and you can go buy it ideally we're gonna have it at dog days and
ideally eventually maybe we can get it into arts and jazz fest fingers crossed
and then additionally we are fiscal sponsors to different organizations that
help us make sure that more activities are happening in our parks so Juneteenth
we're their fiscal sponsor they don't have a 501 c3 to work from so they
utilize ours and we do all their processing of their funds 940 we're a
fiscal sponsor it really is a group of individuals who are like hey we really
want this happening out at North Lakes Park we want a fundraise we can't get
fundraising dollars if you don't have nonprofit status because people want that
tax incentive so we step in and we become their fiscal partners and we
help them by providing the tax incentive as well as processing all the donations
and providing them the marketing materials to help in that process of
getting donations and because of them we've already replaced or added a whole
new disc golf course at North Lakes and then we're working on a second one right
now here's kind of our timeline of what 2021-22 will look like starting with
Parktober with a park crawl in our brew buckets it was a huge hit last year and
everybody just really wanted to see it again COVID here or not we'll continue
to be doing it November we'll kick off our digital annual fundraising campaign
in December is when we are going to get our campaign committee together for the
inclusive playground recognizing it'll take about 12 to 18 months to really
start and build out a campaign and we want to be able to raise roughly 60 to
70 percent of it before we actually go public just according to best practices
so there's a lot of work that will take place in that time February
Galentine State fundraiser March our friends of the park tour where we'll
take everybody around so they can see what they have been investing in April
the adult egg scramble May everyday in May and then June our annual fund mailer
in September dog days of Denton bark in the park in North Texas giving day so
well I think we're really great here's a wonderful quote from Amber Briggle who's
the Denton resident a small business owner and a Denton Parks Foundation
supporter to really show how important the work is that we do and we can't do
it without you and that's why we're here today to get that continued support to
ensure that we can continue helping y'all you know it's a you help me help
you help me right like the Jerry McGuire thing any who thank you all so much I
appreciate it and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have yes me
questions Councilmember McGuire I'm not a question but I want to thank you for
your hard work and and let you know that I just became a friend of the Denton
Parks and I if you're not you should be too probably they are but thank you very
much okay any other questions councilor armature yeah I was wondering what kind
of beer it will be important sure and you know if you know what the name is
going to be if you're having a contest okay so this is I got to taste it and
it's really good and it's similar to Blue Moon and it's called triple play and
it's our baseline beer that things can be added on to so triple play is just
the baseline beer that will be sold throughout the year and it's really a
play on obviously baseball and Parks and Rec but also the three prong partnership
that it's us didn't Park some rack and didn't County Brewing Company because
together we've got triple play that hopefully will be a home run right that
we can raise lots of money to help make parks better so eventually we I might
let me look at my notes real quick okay it's a secret but there are several good
answer there's several other beers I think we have five total that we'll be
doing throughout this year and at the park crawl we hope to have all of them
available that way when you go to different locations you'll be able to
try them all out wonderful wonderful yeah and just a suggestion this is way
outside of my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt you know but
maybe if you know the names for at least one of them educate people about some
aspect and then people might not know about something about the you know 10
minute walk or you have some core I don't know what the graphic is going to
be but if it'll be clear by looking at it that it's this is triple play Denton
absolutely that would be awesome yeah okay maybe 10 minute crawl a little
curious about the fist the fiscal partnerships yes sir so I understood you
know the service that you provide to the other organization that you
partner with what's then the benefit to the parks foundation and ultimately to
parks so you do that gain donors so our donor database we now have more donors
our donor database that we can now reach back out to and develop a
relationship with it goes directly into deep hard so anything that they raise
goes through us and goes right back to the city other than okay so we have
different types right so 940 their fundraising for the disc golf it goes
through us and then it goes to Gary Juneteenth it is their money we use hot
funds and so we apply for the hot funds and we allocate it out to them and the
benefit to us is that we get public recognition and we get people out to the
park and we wouldn't necessarily be a partner if they chose to do it off-site
and not at a park the whole concept is really that we provide access to more
parks thanks yeah okay yes me Councilman Burke I was sat on the parks and Rick
board for about six years and I was the most absolute perfect thing for me I
really appreciated my time there but I wanted to ask a question about the
inclusive yes you said something about inclusive what does that mean so it's a
playground for all bodies okay and so in it actually we learned a lot from our
last parks board meeting was and the majority of inclusive playgrounds are
also going towards sensory issues as well because actually the majority of
people with disabilities it's more on that end than it is a physical
disability and so a lot of people think about the physical disability when it
comes to a playground but this one would be on inclusive including sensory
disabilities as well as physical disability is that a separate plate it's
that a separate park or is it being it'll be zone bark well it would or the
inside of a share so the mindset would be to replace an existing play structure
with an inclusive play structure that well all our playgrounds are accessible
there's a certain percentage of elements that have to be accessible to to to
active users but that doesn't mean every person can get into and use the
playground for example you may not be able to get a wheelchair up into the
playground an inclusive one will allow that integration at all levels of that
there will be slides that can be adjusted for for needs physical needs
that the kids can use that whether it's a rolling bed that a child can get on and
pull themselves back and forth where there's swings where you can actually
embed the wheelchair into the swing so it's it's really expanding that and then
from the the mental side of things there's you know touch and feel where
you can experience different things whether you have a lack of eyesight or
you know whatever that challenge is that kid and that family can experience
together so it's really expanding the boundaries of play for to try to reach
everybody and that would be at every park or is it just certain parks they're
probably in our in our master plan we're looking at maybe one on the north side
and one on the south side they're typically more expensive than an
average play structure the the surfacing is is not necessary wood which ships
it's more of a port-in-place foam so it's going to be a lot more expensive so
we're trying to figure out you know in the master plan how we get to that point
and what size what elements we want in those types of features Grand Prairie
just released one opened one a couple years ago it was eight million dollars
Fort Worth opened one I think two years ago as well so they're becoming more and
more popular so our intent is to go out and research those to try to figure out
the best fit for Denton and if we want to have one in one location we could go
in that direction or we can have two maybe one on the north side one on the
south side when you all do your fundraising is it is it done for a
specific reason or does it all go into a general fund and then where where right
now we're raising from the dog park so that's very specific all funds raised
through dog days and when you go online and you go to the dog park fundraiser
page all those funds go directly to the dog park friends of the parks that's
more general so it's gonna go to one some and say something happens and you're
he's like hey we really need this out at you know North Lakes Park we have those
funds available to be able to do it and we have that flexibility to be able to
utilize it otherwise everything else is allocated specifically to needs any other
questions I'll just say this is I just want to thank the board for all the hard
work that over the years that has got us to this point I do appreciate that I do
have an idea that I want to share with you fundraising wise I mentioned to the
city manager as well and I mentioned to Gary that so if if we can partner with
you on kind of chairs like plastic chairs to rent at events not the folding
chairs because those will run away on us but like the plastic chair I saw it at an
event in farmers branch and so if you had like a kind of running booth at
events and volunteers man it's like three three bucks a chair that is what
they did and then they just run around after it and collect them all you know
and so just whatever however we can partner with you on that maybe if there's
I don't know how the funding works I don't know the rules but if we you know
invest in them and then that allows you access to I don't know how that works I
trust you but that that's my thought and then most importantly I just want to
give credit to your your administrative assistant Hannah I don't think she gets
enough credit and then I did see your post so she I nine sports she got the
team work award or something like that there we go yeah so I appreciate her and
and that's that's a lot of hard work so I'm grateful so thanks what you do in
that capacity as well thank you very much yes thank you
councilmember Archer oh yeah I just want to add I really like that idea about the
chairs at events as a fundraiser that's a real need that's a great idea
seniors in attendance and and you know people knowing that it benefits parks
foundation having it at city events that would be great it's a great idea thank
you very much thank you all very much have a good day all right so that
concludes that we'll take let's we're gonna take another break dinners here so
we'll grab that so let's come back at I don't know if we're gonna need the
closed session but just in case so let's come back at 525 around there we'll play
it by ear see how long the line goes but so we'll take a break at five oh five
target 525 to be back thank you and welcome back to this meeting of the
Denton City Council it is 534 and we're back from break back to our work session
we have a couple more items so I'll call the next item which is ID two one one
three nine seven receive report and hold and hold a discussion and give staff
direction on establishing a new economic development catalyst fund good evening
mayor and council members Jessica Rogers director of economic development I'm
going to start the presentation and this evening and then we'll turn it over to
Cassie Ogden director of finance so a lot of the slides you're gonna see to
start off are going to be just refreshers on the discussion that we had
back I believe June 17th ish but to kind of go back and just talk about where we
are the strategic plan we actually started that process back in 2019 part
of that strategic plan was engaging with stakeholders working through what are
our priorities going forward in economic development and that ended with the
adoption of the strategic plan on February 9th of 2021 soon thereafter
City Council adopted implementation of the strategic plan as one of your
priorities which is why I've gotten to come back in front of you multiple times
kind of talking through how we're going to move through those phases of
implementation and that last bullet point there is a little different and
we'll kind of talk about this as we go along but the policies and programs that
go in alignment with that strategic plan those things we've got to change to get
our operations into alignment are forthcoming so you have seen these
graphics before but just a reminder what are the considerations for building the
catalyst fund itself first and foremost is that the catalyst fund is there to
meet the strategic objectives in the strategic plan so the catalyst one is
going to be tied specifically to policies programs ideas projects things
that are specifically tied to the strategic plan and if you read the
section of the catalyst fund in the strategic plan it talks specifically
about operating in support of those objectives the other things to keep in
mind as we talk about this and that's really important is that we are in a
transition air transition where we're moving from this investment fund concept
and sort of this performance-based concept that we've been using in
economic development to this catalyst fund concept and so one of those
considerations that you'll see is that it's going to take building resources
over time so we're here kind of to take that first step getting a fund developed
start initiating that funding discussion but really our goal is much more
long-term as many things in the strategic plan are so pending council
direction today we would be bringing forward the necessary documents that we
would need to create the catalyst fund and that's why you see those
differences between the investment fund and the catalyst fund that you see on
the screen so speaking to the transition this is a much simplified graphic of
what's happening behind the scenes but we're moving to something a little bit
different than what we do today our current structure is that our tax
abatement and incentive policy document actually is where you would find the
economic development strategy which is kind of strange so we're breaking that
apart right into the foundational elements we're moving to now we've got a
strategic plan now we're looking at this catalyst fund ordinance and then that
additional phase is documenting those policies and programs separately so that
they're not tied up and jumbled in this one document that has some statutory
requirements that has some really specific things that we're going to need
to operate so breaking them apart into their component units gives us that
flexibility gives us the ability to respond gives us ability to bring come
into alignment strategic plan so I wanted everyone to kind of understand
why we're coming in piecemeal it's a process it takes a lot of time and
research to start breaking apart those components we also have it broken down
in the timeline so this is sort of my homework for the next five years right
so we're to the 2021 we've got the strategic plan adopted but as you'll see
both on the red and blue kind of dots going over time there's a lot of steps
and efforts that have to be done review analysis come back have additional
discussions making sure that we're staying in alignment for the strategic
objectives of the City Council over time so while I'm happy I'm here tonight and
have this discussion I promise you this won't be the last time that you'll see
me having this discussion with council in the near future so just to follow up
on the June 7th I say I got their date wrong work session council had asked for
some additional information some additional analysis so I'm gonna turn
it over to Cassie except for one of these I'm gonna just speak to the roll
off analysis so my the economic development team focused on that follow
up item and just to bring to council's attention the next incentive will roll
off and fiscal year 2024 that would only result in about fifty thousand dollars
and estimated because it does it is determined by the value of the project
at that time that would be available in fiscal year 2025 the challenges with the
roll off approach is that over the next ten years depending on how we define and
set up that mechanism of roll off we would have 1.6 to 2.9 million total in
the catalyst fund and you'll see in the presentation later that the proposal for
today really gets us to about that same level in year one and then you'll kind
of note there that if we if we weren't looking at a mechanism where we were
continuing to collect roll off over time if we were just looking at that first
year an incentive would roll off we'd really only be looking at about eight
hundred thousand dollars at year ten which is also substantially less than
the conversation we'll be having today on year one and so with that I'm gonna
turn it over to Cassie to go over the next two follow-up items thanks Jessica
so just a follow-up from our June 7th work session we did go back and look at
bond election because that was one of the items that was requested if that
would be a good funding mechanism while it is an option there are some
challenges with having a bond election for funding the catalyst fund
specifically so currently we do not have any identified projects that the voters
would vote on which can be challenging we also have to have the Attorney General
approval before we have a bond election some other cities have done this but
they have projects specifically identified when they have the bond
election it will require additional legal research but we have met with our
bond council and legal team and had those discussions additionally if the
bond election was approved it would increase the debt tax rate so as well as
the utility fund forecast you saw electric fund earlier today we've
updated the current year the FY 2021 end of year estimates and the utilities are
in a better place than they were a couple of months ago and so that's why
we're bringing this conversation back again because they are above the fund
balance targets so you've seen this slide before these are the all the
different funding options that we've contemplated for funding the catalyst
fund again we are still recommending the one-time utility contribution plus the
increase to the ROI because this gives us and you'll see in a moment the first
year really gives us a lot of money to work with in the fund without impacting
general fund or immediate impact to the ratepayers so while we can dedicate you
know a portion of sales tax or property tax that revenue is currently being
reused in the general fund and would have to be made up somehow by either you
know reducing expenses or a new revenue source so our recommended funding option
right now you can see the additional half a percent increase to ROI as well
as the one-time contribution would give us a starting balance of a little over
two million dollars and this we think can achieve our long-term goal of getting
to that seven million dollar mark in the catalyst fund by 2025 26 so next steps
if council agrees to move forward with the recommendation we would adopt an
ordinance that creates the catalyst fund and replaces the existing investment
fund policy and then the catalyst fund will be adopted as part of the budget
it would be a separate fund in the budget and then Jessica will be back to
talk about the tax abatement and incentive policies and then the
specific program or quite criteria in the fall and with that stand for any
questions okay questions for staff mayor part him out for Jessica you know I'm
sorry if I'm select the only one who doesn't get it but I wonder if you could
just help me understand a little bit just what your attention is about making
this distinction between investment fund and catalyst fund because they sound
similar to me you know and I get it I got the idea that we're in a transition
but I can't tell from what to what investment to me says you put money in
you expect to get more in the future with varying probabilities catalyst says
you introduce an element now that will create a lot of activity later but I
mean they sound kind of the same to me so what's you know what's the difference
to you then the name is not important you could call it you could continue to
call it the economic development investment fund the challenge that we
have is that the investment fund as it exists today is tied up in an adopted
ordinance and policy that outlines specifically what the funds can be used
for and where it comes from so it has to be undone the second piece of that is
that the tax abatement and incentive policy makes specific reference to that
fund and its criteria and how that criteria operates so we also have to
undo that policy to allow us to use it for different purposes so it's the
naming is helping to just transition to something new and different because we're
gonna have to undo and change things in the process and the new and different
that you hope to get to is just is what kind of uses that we wouldn't contemplate
under the current ordinance bound existing so the current investment fund
has specific criteria that has to be met a project has to invest either kind of
two of three fifteen million dollars in capital investment a certain percentage
of high wage or knowledge-based jobs or be a targeted sector and it's limited to
those three things and uses and there's no elements of our existing policy that
connects to our strategic plan so we've got to pull that element out of the
policy now and say we want to make the policy behind the fund in alignment with
the programs and priorities adopted in the strategic plan which were the
general economic development fund the innovation entrepreneurship and access
fund I believe there was a green incentive fund there was a retention fund
there were those specific programs identified the investment fund also
didn't we didn't have an idea of programs it's a it's an incentive fund
the catalyst fund is designed to support incentives and programs that support
economic development so it'll be very different in its function just could you
give me like one example of something that would be a kind of thing you'd want
to do in a catalyst program that the current program wouldn't sure we would
be able to do something like a startup incubator type grant we would be able to
do a small a small business support usually small businesses don't meet the
fifteen million dollar capital investment threshold they sometimes have
a hard time reaching the percentage of the wages of the job because they're
growing and so that can be a challenge and if they're not in one of our
targeted sectors but we could do a more general small business growth program
and that's identified in our strategic plan we also have things like access
supporting historically underutilized businesses that have generally been
haven't had access to economic development incentive so those are the
things that are contemplated in the strategic plan and that once we sort of
know don't fit with the curve we have yeah we have the the the funding mechanism
in place we can start talking about how do we appropriate that money how do we
allocate that accordingly to meet those strategic objectives more flexibility
more flexibility thank you councilmember Armentier councilmember back yes so I'm
not necessarily opposed to a catalyst fund per se but then when I look at the
different funding options I I'm opposed to each of the funding options I just
want to explain why and to offer a suggestion that might not be that I
might not be a satisfactory one but you know what one that I would least be open
to you know so as I've mentioned before I I don't like the idea of using utility
revenue to go towards anything that's not keeping people's you know power on
and rates low so that goes for you know the first two options listed dedicated
proportion a portion of sales tax or property tax I love the idea of using
sales tax or property tax percentages for basic public needs you know we
already do that for for public transit for me personally just as far as
personal priorities I like to see go to something like housing before you know
we talk about this kind of item so that's why I'm opposed to that incentive
roll-off as it mentions here that would take a while and a bond election you
know as it mentions here could require specific program or projects being
identified I think that's definitely what the public would like to see you
know for them to vote on I don't know so much about the legal requirements of the
bond election but it's probably true for that as well one thing that I would be
open to which I don't know is realistic but considering that the kinds of
important programs that you mentioned that are outside of tax incentives you
know like support for underrepresented businesses and you know workshop for
startups or I forget exactly what you call but some of this is it was
something like that you explained it better I mean those are great things and
those are things kind of similar to what the Chamber of Commerce does you know
and we spend a significant amount of money already on Chamber of Commerce so
you know I would be open to spending that take looking at the money that we
spend on Chamber of Commerce and spend it you know from from hot funds and
elsewhere to create a catalyst fund you know that for me is something I approve
of because that's money we're already spending on economic development outside
of just incentives so so anyway I hope that's clear I'm not opposed to a
catalyst fund I just I don't like the funding options that are listed right
now the funding mechanism of utilizing utilities I could get behind but I would
want to see that sort of earmark towards infrastructure renewal so that it not
only benefited the company seeking you know support but then ultimately in the
long run even if that company failed an infrastructure improvement would then
still benefit Denton in the long run if we improve cabling or water or whatever
it was that we were incentivizing so I could see my way clear to utilizing
utilities as an incentive but I mean it feels like we're we're moving funds away
from utilities into just general economic development I believe that's at
least what counselor at least part of what counselor armatores problem is in
general I won't put words in her mouth but and and so I I too have qualms
about the funding source not the presence of the catalytic fund I could
see myself getting behind something like this if if it was dedicated towards more
infrastructure like results rather than a general economic development fund
okay any so Councilmember Davis I think I figured the button out first a
question and then a little bit of comment direction a little response the
question is on the on the slide and in a couple other places we referred to the
impact to ratepayers as minimal can you help us understand how minimal and also
understanding I guess just for those watching and following along that we
have these enormous purchase power agreements with our largest customers
that when we talk about ratepayers we're not just talking about folks paying
their residential bill we're talking about UNT and their enormous power bill
every year and we're talking about TWA you and their enormous power bill every
year so when we say minimal for your average residential rate rate payer how
minimal are we talking sure I'll let Cassie answer kind of more specifically
but I'll say in general the efforts of our office in terms of economic
development contributes to the development of the utilities we are
bringing in those large customers that are helping make sure that the
residential rates can stay lower so we are working to your point as well
Councilmember back up see if I can try and address maybe two at once the work
that economic development is is doing when we are looking at bringing in a
large company and I'm going to use that example specifically because on the
small side we don't really see the impact on the infrastructure and
utilities that we would see when we're looking at a large employer a large
facility we're looking at ways that we can help develop customers for those
utilities that are beneficial for the utility so when a customer such as win
Co is coming in that's going to be a large electric customer we have to make
an investment they also have to they rebuilt a road Western Boulevard of
which the city is participating and incentivizing them for taking on that
improvement and the city said we need that improvement to happen when Co you're
kind of the first in the door and the city's participating in that so it all
sort of works together economic development does encourage the
development of the infrastructure and of the utilities but as it relates
specifically to its impact to ratepayers I will defer to Cassie for the the
technical answer I do not expect a rate increase so that's the bottom line well
I know you haven't seen the water performer yet or the wastewater
performer but there are no rate increases projected next year for any of
our utility customers we do have some possible rate increases in a couple of
out years in wastewater specifically but none projected yet so I do not expect
this to raise this catalyst funding to raise rates for our ratepayers would it
would it be fair to say that this would the small increase in ROI that we're
talking about would this affect our ability to lower rates in the future or
would this substantially affect our ability to subsidize rates with this
returning this ROI instead of pulling it out for this purpose so that is one of
the benefits of using this funding mechanism is that council has the
ability to decide council has the ability to set this rate every year if we for
some reason go into a year where we expect you know lower than projected we
see lower than projected utility rates council can make the decision to not
contribute the ROI to the catalyst fund for that year kind of like we've already
done with our intention to lower the our ROI in a couple of years and our
decision a few years ago to raise the ROI to what it is now and within the
statutory limit so we have control over that from year to year is what you're
saying yes I have to say I like the term catalyst fund and not just because of
semantics but because of what I think it illustrates like Jessica said what these
kind of incentives do so the big one we always talk about is general fund we
always talk about the taxable value of property the improved value of that
property being so much higher that money goes to infrastructure that money goes
into the general fund that can be used for maintaining roads in addition to the
the things that the particular project might bring along that is raising our
tax revenue but more than that it's a catalyst for quality of life
improvements better jobs things that we've built into our economic development
strategy those eventual customers some of the very large customers for our
utility those large customers that can subsidize our residential rates so for
me catalyst fund is exactly the right term for the kind of fund that we're
talking about because it has ripple effects the strategic development excuse
me the economic development strategy that we put in place is designed to do
that to be a catalyst to have those kind of impacts and all kind of law Jessica's
department and her partners in the community for the last couple of
projects that we've seen have been great examples of that things that this
council is very easily gotten behind because they were they met our goals our
policy goals of the city but then also the goals of the strategic the economic
development strategy for me this is almost the perfect funding mechanism
because it has high impact and very very low cost to any of our business units to
any of our ratepayers so I asked the question about how minimal is it
extremely minimal it's it's an increase that we won't it's something that we
won't feel until Cassie tells us that it's time to feel it and time to change
it and not do it anymore but for me it checks every single one of the boxes and
when we when we ask for this fund to be developed we gave Jessica and her staff
and the financial staff a tall order we said go find us a bunch of money that we
need for all these good things we want to do in the community and they did it
they made it happen they they found us the the perfect funding mechanism and I
think it would be a mistake to characterize it as pulling from the
utilities or putting it on the back of the ratepayers it's putting on the back
of the purchase power agreement ratepayers it's putting on the back of
the big old Walmart's and Winco's and the distribution centers and US cold
storage UNT TW the folks who are paying the most into our system it's not
putting it on the back of the mom-and-pop small businesses or the
residential ratepayers okay any other questions for staff I get the first
Thomas okay mayor for Tim Meltzer yeah I have comments another question sure yeah
yes you know it's clear that that this that the idea of funding something from
utilities is a kind of attractive piggy bank and I my sense is that if we if we
were to ask the general public what would be their highest priority for what
to create a reliable source of funding for I actually go back to something
that Councilmember Davis brought up at a retreat one retreat ago which was you
know to find a more reliable funding source for road construction something
people experience every day and their inconvenience massively and they never
feel like you know we're catching up or getting getting ahead so that's that's
just my sense of what I think people would say if I'm trying to represent
them but if as now I see the value of a catalyst fund I think the while there
are hurdles associated with the funding mechanism insurmountable hurdles and as
you mentioned other communities have done have done that and be I think it
builds support for the use of money that way it builds legitimacy it you know if
the community sees the value and votes to do it then cries of corporate welfare
won't be as salient you know that you'll have the buy-in to do it so that that's
the way I lean and and and I'm really interested you know just to put a penny
a pin in and if we get to come back to the retreat and do you want to talk
about you know better source of reliable source of funding for roads you know
this may come up again okay so need to give staff policy direction on whether
how they how we want to proceed and so to that end I have one clear does not
support it in counseling armature and she referenced that the taking the money
from the Chamber of Commerce I have not I need to I guess if there's others that
that do not support staffs recommendation I need to hear from you
clearly because I'm not gleaming that so succinctly because we do have a one
minute pitch we got to get to so we've all had time to comment I just need
succinct either I support staffs recommendation or not so that we can we
can there's I'm not going to ask staff to defend their work they've done the
work they came back and made a suggestion either we adopt that policy or
we don't but I'm not going to ask them to disagree with their own work product
so let's just get to it and rip off the band-aid so counseling back mayor if I
might are we able to choose are you letting us choose from those options no
staff made it yes or no no that's what you're asking for then then my direction
wouldn't be to use the utility if that's our option okay anyone else you support
okay thank you yeah yes sir yeah I can't accept the framing my input is bond
election okay got it counselor McGuire I agree with councilmember Meltzer I would
support a bond election so you do not support I do not support staffs
recommendations all right I do not support staffs recommendation so the
direction is not to move forward and we'll figure out I guess at the retreat
if there's any direction or policy guidance further thank you for that
thank you for your recommendation all right that takes us to our next item oh
yes so quick announcement it's item C in the public hearing so that's Kings way
and that's item let me get there sorry it's BNC okay so C is withdrawn so
that's PD 2 1 0 0 0 1 D and that's regarding the brown track Kings way
that's being moved to a different date altogether so that's not gonna be heard
tonight for those at home and if there's anyone here waiting on that and then
item B is it's it's coming back it's just not being heard today so that's
item B Z 21 0 0 0 7 4 and so those two public hearings will one will come back
of the date certain the other one will come back after the developer has a
meeting with the he's gonna have some additional meetings so just just for
those track alone that takes us to our well there's no comment to that so do
you have a question yes a procedural question regarding that since there are
a lot of people if you can hear the noise in the hallway I assume it's
probably people who are coming for this item see we've gotten so many emails and
calls about about this I think that the public who is here deserves to at least
hear a little bit more about why that is why it's being postponed and to be asked
if you know maybe the pub those who are here could still be allowed the
opportunity maybe to weigh in if they choose to do so I know that's been done
in the past maybe that item could be bumped up to the first item in public
hearings or you know maybe the public who is here would would rather that be
deferred but I'm a little concerned about you know about just dismissing it
like that without hearing more about why got it yeah so the items been removed so
I can't call it to them and once you do call it then those people would not be
able to speak again so I think they'd want to be heard on the most recent
information well you got to let me finish and then well just the short
answer is no I'm not gonna call it no they're not gonna speak tonight yes
staffs out talking to people yes staff is out sending out the message as best
we can to get communicate to people that it's been pulled and no the developers
not here to speak to it and again they couldn't speak to it because item is not
being being pulled we're gonna run against I know but just can you explain
the reason I just want to hear more about no reason staff if we can get
through this last item we would have a break for 20 minutes for you to talk to
staff and get all the answers you need but the longer this goes on we're not
gonna have that opportunity sure I just I just want to make sure the public
hears it I don't want to talk to staff certainly and I don't know that the
public has asked that question I understand your representation and I
appreciate that I'm trying to then that would also give us 20 minutes to talk to
the people who were here and with staff and communicate if we can get there
awesome thank you all right so the last item ID 2 1 7 5 9 receive report hold
discussion and give staff direction on pending City Council request
good evening mayor and council Stewart bird's eye the assistant to the city
manager I'm here with your pending request for information by way of review
for anybody who may be watching for the first time or you participating we will
review up seven requests these are requests for items that will take over
two hours of staff time or a policy change the elected official who made the
request will have one minute to describe and justify their request and then the
remaining of elected officials will have up to one minute to provide feedback and
indicate support staff will respond to any request that has a consensus of
staff support it tonight we have one request it comes from councilmember
Armator it is a work session work session on making boards and committees
more inclusive and accessible for the public her request is there with the two
items specifically that she's requesting and then staff provided some information
with just kind of a brief overview of what it would take if council wanted to
move forward with those with that I will stop sharing the screen and I believe
Kathy are we able to time the one minute up here yes I have it here on the back
perfect I'll set okay okay great there are two points here number one Denton
residency is required to serve on committees and that's a good thing
that's who we represent the people of Denton but it's long overdue that the
voting requirement be removed because it contradicts our stated value of
inclusion in unintended ways to explain if you are not a US citizen then you
can't register to vote so even if you're a Denton resident and contributing
member to your community you can't serve on boards and committees that excludes
from committee service Denton residents who are immigrants and don't either
don't qualify for US citizenship are on a long path to citizenship or for
personal or family reasons need to maintain citizenship from their home
country second we have a number of requirements for boards and committees
and some of them make sense like having a vet on animal services board others
like some of the requirements for the ethics committee are excluded to white
collar professions and and that's not fair for inclusivity these are two low
hanging fruits that we should really change okay comments councilmember
Davis I I can't support the idea of removing the voter requirement
specifically as it's been presented not because we don't think the people ought
to be voters who are included on our boards and commissions but specifically
intended to open it up to membership to non-citizens I think there are ample
opportunities for non-citizens to participate in our public processes we
see that often from this day is that we have non-citizens participate
councilmember Armitage you've been a proponent of non-citizens rights
residents rights they are adequately represented without opening up the
entire process to people who were not qualified voters who are harder to
verify the residency for pub you'd have to change the charter that have to be a
charter election you couldn't just do it carte blanche from an ordinance and then
I take issue with your characterization of lawyers in particular on the ethics
board if you want to kick the lawyers off the ethics ethics board just make
that your work session item don't cloak it in accessibility and access and those
sorts of things if you have issue with the ethics ordinance and how that board
is put together make that the work session request okay any other comments
counselor back I think there I could support a work session where we explored
modifications I have some of the same concerns that counselor Davis does I
think there's certain boards and commissions where we would not want to
make those changes but but I wouldn't I would be amenable to exploring those
places where we have boards and commissions that were merely advisory and
where judicial or quasi quasi-judicial quasi legislative voter requirements
weren't necessary in that specific to nonsense I just you said generally you're
open to discussion I need to get some there would have to be nuance and that
would require work session for nuance well so the Duke two bullet points that
are expressed are pretty succinct do you support those the the bullet points are
to have a work session so I'm to have a work session with whether we make any
changes or not that's a different issue correct but the specific ask is for
non-citizens to serve and I need to make sure you you we would resolve that at the
time I'm trying not to take up too much debate time right now well I yeah you
all leave me with a lot of calculations in a lot of middle of the road but it's
okay I'll get it mayor protein I think these are worthy points to discuss so
not opposed to work session but the urgency I question given the pressing
multi work session items on our priority so I would say I'm supportive but I would
give it a lower priority than comprehensive plan affordable housing
strategy solid waste comprehensive plan non-discrimination ordinance so you know
some point in the future I think they're worthy points to discuss
Johnson require thank you I support councilmember Armitage suggestions to
the extent that we can address them within a work session without
necessarily holding a charter amendment election because it sounds like the
charter amendment election would be a significant time requires very
significant staff time whereas a work session to address the suggestions that
would not require a charter amendment would be more manageable I do agree with
councilmember Meltzer that it is a lower priority than than the priorities that
he mentioned okay well Stuart that's there's support and I'm not gonna get
into the ranking of it because that's that's for a later date we'll talk
about that at the retreat because if yeah yes sir you got it thanks all right
that'll conclude our work session at 614 and we'll be back in 15 minutes 630 to
start a regular meeting thank you
good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council we're gonna
get started with our agenda we have a couple of proclamations and we have a
couple we obviously we're gonna start with the pledges but I wanted to ask
everyone that's they have an announcement first regarding the public
hearing tonight obviously there's a significant amount of people that want
to speak to that so I want to address those concerns so the public hearings
scheduled tonight are item B and C have been pulled item B if you have an agenda
let me get there so item B on the public hearings is item Z 21 007 D and and
that's been pulled that's Jim Crystal Road and dealing with Jim Crystal Road
that's been pulled and we'll be back but then I specifically I want to
speak to item C which is PD 21001 D that's Kings Way the brown tract as some
may know it and that's gonna be that was pulled to give the developer time to
meet again with the residents and so what we're gonna do from a city
standpoint to facilitate that is staffs going to reach out to everyone that's if
you've already filled out an electric white card then we have that but if
you've not filled one out or if you're not sure you filled one out please these
are near the door there fill this out before you leave make sure you give us
your email address and what the city is going to do is host the next or one
version of the the the residents meeting and we will notice it so that the City
Council members can sit in the back we won't speak or address it but we'll be
able to hear firsthand concerns that sort of thing and that selfishly will
make life easier when it comes back and to make sure we have we're all on the
same page and have a clear understanding and that way we can kind of disseminate
the information and one fatal swoop so everyone has the same information and
can make a decision going forward so if you could please if you haven't already
filled out the white card please fill that out either virtually or here in
person there by the door and we'll make sure we let you know when that meeting
scheduled it'll be a public notice just like any other meeting so you'll have
that additional as an additional backup and then that'll give you time to kind
of meet with the developer again and my only ask that I express an email to a
few folks is make sure that you clearly communicate what how do we get to yes
right how do we get to yes or if there's no chance to get to yes communicate
that just clearly communicate what your desires are so that the council here is
so that the developer can hear you and those sort of things and then we can
work with with anything in between those things just kind of got to know what what
are the deal breakers and and for you and and what's most important to you so
that we can we can work from there so that's really critical for us to make a
decision to make sure it's in the best interest of our city going forward so
again white card please fill it out include your email address the physical
forms are there look for the meeting notice and if you have any questions by
all means contact us any your council representatives and they'll give you
updates on when when that's going to be scheduled if we know if we don't know
just to make sure you hadn't missed it we want to make sure we stay in good
communication with you I appreciate the developer and and their their kind of
consideration for the neighborhood and making sure they give that proper
attention we all respect that the need to do so so thank you very much I'll
give y'all a chance to make your way to those forms fill those out and then so
we'll give it a couple of minutes and we'll do our pledges and then we have
proclamations after that we have the we have the pet mayor in town so that's
good in the building that's good so thank you very much give us just a minute
we'll let them let whoever needs to make the way to to fill out the forms do that
and we'll start with the pledge and at 638 and and for those that want to stay
and watch the the meeting you're more than welcome I'm not saying you cannot
but I just want to make sure I make that that clear as well so you're welcome to
stay just those items won't be called so I want to be clear there and with that
we will start with our pledges to the US and Texas flag please stand if you're
able
and then that will bring us to our proclamations we have a couple make
sure I'm right yes all right so I'll come down for those
okay so we have a couple of proclamations if I could you can come on
down first so we'll ask the Elvis to come down and anybody that's with Elvis
this is my second time meeting Elvis oh such a sweetie hello I need a vest like
that okay well thank you so we are Ernie and Angie stripling we reside in a
historic district on Bell Avenue here in Denton and Elvis is six years old he is
a certified therapy dog he is with therapy dogs international so he has
gone through a lot of training but he is thrilled to be the first pet mayor of
Denton and he would like to encourage everyone to visit the magnet animal
shelter if you have not adopted a pet you need to go there and look for a pet
to adopt and he is all about treats and he also loves to chase squirrels not
real squirrels but we have we have stuffed animals and ducks okay well
thank you very much and and so I'll read this proclamation proclamation by the
mayor of the city of Denton Texas to all whom these presence shall come greetings
whereas pets have broad positive impacts on our world well-being and are a vital
part of the lives of city of the city of Denton residents and whereas the city of
Denton encourages the care and celebration of all pets as they
provide companionship emotional support service for those with disabilities and
continue to contribute to the fabric of our community and whereas Elvis
stripling and AKC poodle has earned the support of the Denton community as
determined by a majority of residents through the Denton pet mayor contest that
sounds familiar for me to be the first city of Denton pet mayor and whereas
Elvis has been involved in numerous community events and provided comfort to
the lives of community members as a trained therapy dog and member of a
therapy dogs international which is TDI and whereas Elvis visits local schools
and businesses to model kindness and champions championship to our community
companionship pardon me to our community memberships and where here here as or
whereas Elvis shell sir will serve as the first city of Denton pet mayor for a
term of one year beginning Tuesday July 20th 21 where he plans to continue
contributing to the Denton community and trained therapy dog bringing joy to
others and representing the values and character of the city now therefore I
Gerard Hutzpeth mayor of the city of Denton Texas do hereby recognize and
declare Elvis stripling city of Denton pet mayor and extend to him our support
and wish him the best in all his future endeavors
Oh
[ Inaudible ]
>> And next up, we have Parks and Recreation Month.
Everyone that's associated with Parks and Recreation or wants
to come down by all means, please do.
>> Mayor, I just want to say Elvis has left the building.
>> Yes. That is great.
Yeah. Wow, come on in.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Okay. All right.
So who's speaking for the -- who's speaking for the group?
Okay.
>> July is officially the Parks and Rec Month, so departments
across the city are celebrating Parks and Recreation
for the month of July.
Obviously, the summertime is a very busy season for us.
And thank you to our staff for everything you do.
We have part-time seasonal and full-time staff here
at all levels.
And staff sacrifice their summers
to provide recreational opportunities
for our residents and visitors.
So it's -- Parks and Recreation is more important than ever,
especially with COVID, with mental and physical wellness.
So, you know, thank you for all you do for the Denton residents
and for our industry as a whole.
And thank you for recognizing Parks and Recreation Month.
>> Sure. Yeah.
No. So give your name.
>> Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm Gary Pack and Director of Parks and Recreation.
We don't have a dog.
I'm sorry.
But if it was up to Drew, our Assistant Director
for Park Maintenance, he'd have a goat here or a donkey.
So --
>> All of y'all stories have been -- become robots.
You know, y'all are way in the AI program.
So if y'all could give your name, please.
That'd be great, right?
If -- whoever wants to.
If you don't want to, no pressure, but if you do.
>> Okay. I'm Carlotta Harvin.
I'm the Customer Service and Guest Services Supervisor
over Aquatics.
>> My name is Dori.
I'm Assistant Lead Cashier for the Water Park.
>> My name's Carson Wheeler.
I'm an Assistant Pool Manager for the Water Park.
>> My name is Peter Alexander, and I'm an Assistant Manager
at the Denton Editorium.
>> My name is Lexi.
I'm a Lead at the Waterworks Park.
>> I'm Kelsey, and I'm the Athletics Coordinator.
>> My name is Ryan Carr, and I'm a Cashier for Aquatics.
>> I'm Blaise Bishop, and I'm a Camp Supervisor.
>> Hi. I'm Wesley Schink, and I'm a Water Park Manager.
>> Hello. My name is Liam Gaum Wakefield,
and I am a Aquatics Cashier.
>> Hello. I'm Isaac Rosales.
I'm an Assistant Pool Manager
at the Civic Center Pool/Lifeguard.
>> Good evening.
Monica Martin, Program Area Manager for Aquatics.
>> Hi. Caroline Seward.
I'm the Business Administration Manager.
>> Megan Thomas, Denton Senior Center Manager
and Program Area Manager for Recreation Centers.
>> Autumn Natale, Program and Events Manager.
>> Nikki Sassenes, Assistant Director.
>> Jason Barrow, Athletics Manager.
>> Thank you all very much.
I appreciate you all being here, and I really learned, you know,
you learn a lot going to the different events,
and you'll see parks always, it's either it's parades or,
you know, it's just so many different connection points,
and I thank all of you that are working
at the different water parks, et cetera, to come on board.
And obviously, we had a hard time, and we're working hard
to get people in place, so I appreciate you all stepping up.
It means a whole lot to a whole lot of people, expressly,
my 4- and 11-year-old, they've been loving it,
so I appreciate you all making that a reality after last year.
I mean, I really thank you all for stepping up.
So here we go, so a proclamation by the Mayor of the City
of Denton, Texas, to all whom these presents shall come.
Greetings.
Whereas parks and recreation programs are integral part
of communities throughout this country,
including the City of Denton, and whereas our parks
and recreation programs and facilities are vitally important
to establishing and maintaining the quality of life
in our communities, ensuring the health of all citizens,
and contributing to the economic and environmental well-being
of our community, and whereas parks
and recreation programs build healthy, active communities
that aid in the prevention of chronic disease,
provide therapeutic recreation services for those
who are mentally or physically disabled,
and improve the mental and emotional health of all citizens,
and whereas parks and recreation programs increase a
community's economic prosperity through increased property
values, expansion of local tax base, increased tourism
and attraction, and retention of businesses,
and crime reduction, and whereas parks
and recreation areas are fundamental to environmental
well-being of our community, ensure the ecological beauty
of our community, and provide a place for children and adults
to connect with nature and recreate outdoors,
and whereas the U.S. House
of Representatives has designated July as Park
and Recreation Month, and whereas the City
of Denton recognizes the benefits derived from parks
and recreation resources.
Now, there I for Gerard Hutsworth, mayor of the City
of Denton, do hereby declare and proclaim the month of July 2021
as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Denton,
and encourage all citizens to acknowledge the importance
of parks and recreation and the benefit it provides
to our community.
Thank you.
Just give them a hand.
[ Applause ]
[ Inaudible Remarks ]
[ Laughter ]
>> Okay. We are-- now we have a video that will play
that will give you the rules of engagement on--
rules on how to engage the city council.
>> The Denton City Council has adopted rules
of procedure including a code of conduct that applies
to citizens as well as council members.
These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process
and to preserve decorum.
Here is a brief review of the rules
that apply to citizen reports.
Citizens will have four minutes
to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes
to give an open mic report.
There will be an electronic bell when time has expired.
If the remarks are not concluded by that time,
the citizen will be asked to stop speaking.
If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made,
the mayor will request to have the citizen removed
from the council chamber.
Citizens are asked not to approach the dais.
If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand
out to the council, please let the city secretary know
in advance.
For scheduled citizen reports,
the council may initiate discussion
or questions following each citizen report.
For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports,
the council may listen to citizen speak.
However, because no notice of the subject
of the open mic report has been provided
to the public in advance,
the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation
or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item
on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy,
or a recitation of existing policy.
Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions
to the council as a whole and not to any individual member.
Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent,
profane, or slanderous remarks.
Anyone who violates this council rule
of procedure may be immediately removed
from the council chamber.
Thank you in advance.
Copies of the rules of procedure are available
from the city secretary.
>> Okay. And I just need to speak following
that on one quick item, and that is just the importance
of citizens' First Amendment rights.
Obviously, we take those very serious.
I take those very serious as the person charged
with chairing these meetings.
And so before we went on break, I mentioned that I would follow
up, and I'm following up to say that just
because someone approaches the dais and says something
that is hard to hear or we may find unacceptable,
that does not mean it violates their First Amendment rights.
And that's what I'm charged to do is make sure everyone kind
of -- we have to be respectful of each other's opinions even
if we don't like what's being said.
And so I, you know, I just think it's important
to make sure I reiterate that's my approach is to make sure one
that we are respectful of each other,
but even if it veers just past that to some degree,
those First Amendment rights are paramount,
and they're very clear and explicit
in what people are, by right, can do.
And as a chair, tasked with chairing these meetings,
I'm going to -- we all take an oath as elected officials
to uphold the United States Constitution,
and I take that oath very seriously.
So just wanted to clarify that for as we get back
to in-person meetings, as we reflect back
on other conversations before the council,
it's just important that we all understand the citizens'
First Amendment rights and the rights to disagree
and have differing opinions.
So with that, that takes us to our first item, and that's Item A,
which is ID 21298 -- oh, no, pardon me, that's been withdrawn.
So that takes me to Item B, which is ID 211509.
Shauna Shapiro, regarding Deerwood, if she's still here.
>> Did they have the videos?
>> Yes, I saw them looking at it back.
So if they'll -- I think staff will pull them
up here in a bit.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you.
Oh, and then the pictures -- I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
>> Here we go.
[ Music ]
>> -- the buses, they have to squeeze through this area here,
oops, between the cars.
They have to squeeze through there.
And as you can see, that one's coming pretty quick.
But if there's someone waiting over here at Deerwood,
then it could pose a problem,
because sometimes those people are turning,
because we're stuck over here.
As you can see, we're leaving space and everything
so that these cars can -- there's another bus.
And they have to squeeze between these cars right here.
Okay, so it's 2/57, 2/58 on -- what's today, Tuesday, May 17th?
No, May 18th, 2021.
And as you can see, already the thing is all --
well, it's hard to see here, but it's -- let's see here.
It's not all the way to the loop, but it's basically
where they would have that other brown track coming out.
And see, as you can tell, these cars are already lined up,
and it's 2/58.
So that's the church.
It goes around -- so this is Deerfield, and then down there
where those cars turn around the church, that becomes Gratt.
But it's 2/59 right now.
And as you can see, I'm on this one.
I'm the second or third car from Kingsway -- or King --
wait, Kingsrow, to turn onto Deerwood, which --
Deerwood.
And the backup over here is probably down to about there
where -- would be where the new track would be coming
in where that open field is.
And they could make a -- they could widen King's Row all this
way over here because it's all open land.
If the city wanted to develop, they could --
all this King's Row and everything, all the way to the end.
Now it's 3/06, as you can see, on May 18th.
And it's -- the cars are starting to move.
But as you can see, they're in the same formation
of where they were.
That car is in the same spot where it was earlier on Deerwood.
And it's still -- it's 3/06, and the cars are starting
to just now move.
>> Okay. And so you have one minute remaining.
>> Okay. I have one picture that I'd like to show.
>> Certainly.
>> Oh, right here?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
There we go.
>> I don't know if you can see, but there's right here, that car --
the buses were coming down this way, and that car ended
up on the sidewalk on King's Row.
And there's the Hodge Elementary School, and on that corner
of Loop 288 and King's Row is where they want to put a track.
But with the current conditions of King's Row,
we need to widen King's Row before any development
for future development plans or anything,
because that whole area gets backlogged
with cars onto the loop.
Cars cannot turn on right -- left onto King's Row.
It makes a very, very dangerous situation.
And had a child been walking there,
I don't know what might have happened.
And so my thing is to you guys to please look at the future
of what may be going up, stores, businesses, or homes, and look
and see as to what we need to do for King's Row as a whole before
it becomes a major problem for the city.
>> Okay. Thank you very much.
I appreciate your time.
We have one -- one question.
Councilmember Armitage.
>> Thank you so much.
I agree.
I was wondering if you could speak
about the lack of sidewalks.
>> Yes. Like there's a sidewalk
that goes a little bit behind those.
I'm thinking behind those houses a little bit.
And then it stops where basically the fence line ends
and the open field is.
And basically, if kids were to be walking down there
or just people during these times of school morning
and school letoff time, because we're not --
we're not supposed to be lining up, but there's nowhere
for us to go as parents.
And we're sitting there with the buses going and stuff.
So if kids were to be walking down that, it makes it very,
very difficult for cautious, because as you see,
even the buses don't slow down.
They're going and like one even goes like that.
And what if one loses control?
There's kids on the bus.
They don't have seat belts.
You know, how many people would be injured or something worse?
>> Okay. Thank you.
And --
>> Sorry.
[ Inaudible ]
>> No, not at this point.
I have not.
>> Okay.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Sorry. I hope you come back when this item comes back
and present this again to the public and remind council
of the traffic situation.
>> Yes, I will, because I think it's a very,
very dangerous situation.
>> It absolutely is.
Thank you.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Seeing none.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
>> Thank you so much, council.
That takes us to our next item, which is item C,
which is ID211505.
And this is Ms. Crystal Mueller regarding Denton Basic
Services.
And so if you could give us your name and address
and then you'll have four minutes.
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> My name is Crystal Mueller.
I live at 2005 Stockbridge Road in Denton.
I'm a board member for Denton Basic Services Center.
And the video I'm about to show is from a group in Washington
who we want to pattern our village afterwards, after.
If you could play the video, please.
>> Okay.
>> And we'll make up this downtime on the backside,
so we'll get you, make sure.
>> Hi. What's your name?
>> My name is Shay.
>> Yeah. And how long have you been on the street?
>> About two years.
>> Steve, if you could stop that.
>> What do you think of the Tiny House Village content?
>> Which, I think, which video is it?
>> It's a video.
It starts out with a guy introducing himself as Doug.
And he's in front of a sign with a fence.
>> Give us just a minute.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you.
>> I think originally we had, we were in a different order
as far as we were presenting.
>> Okay.
>> And that got switched up when the agenda came out.
And so maybe the videos were in that order.
And our names got switched, but the videos didn't,
if that makes sense.
>> Certainly.
[ Pause ]
>> Okay.
[ Pause ]
>> I definitely submitted it.
I got a confirmation email too.
>> Did you send it by email?
>> I did.
>> So it should be.
>> I have a confirmation email.
>> What's the best email address to send it to?
[ Pause ]
>> Well, and to?
[ Pause ]
>> Yeah, I have, Zelena Parker, Zelena Parker.
>> Oh, Zelena Parker.
>> That's who I sent the video to.
>> Okay.
>> The city secretary.
>> Yes. Okay.
>> I was told that it was provided to the DTV staff.
>> Got it.
[ Pause ]
[ Pause ]
>> This is it.
>> Okay, great.
>> Hey, this is Doug from Homes Now Not Later.
I'm down here at Unity Village in Bellingham, Washington.
Homes Now manages two tiny home communities
in Bellingham, Washington.
This video is being done for the Denton Basic Service Center.
They are a nonprofit out of Denton, Texas.
They asked me to do a virtual tour of our villages.
They believe in the same thing as we do
with the resident managed approach, self-sufficiency.
And so without further ado, I'll just get into it.
So as we can see, we have the front gate here.
When a person first enters the village,
we have them sign in and sign out.
Typically, we have somebody who sits at the front desk to help
when people come in with donations of food or supplies
or anything like that.
We have our shower truck, which we built ourselves.
And we set it up to be like a normal shower on the inside.
Go down the hallway here.
As you can see, it looks just like a normal shower.
Then we have our common area where people can eat
and socialize.
These tiny homes we built ourselves.
It was our own design.
They are 8 by 10 on the inside, but with a porch.
For new residents, we try to get them a basic bedspread,
some basic furnishings so that they can have a nice start
when they get in.
Our villages are resident managed, meaning the people
that live at the village run the village.
So at Homes Now, nobody has -- or we have no paid staff.
Nobody gets paid a dime with Homes Now.
Handwashing stations, garbages.
We have lights up above because it gets dark at night.
So it kind of provides a festive atmosphere at night to have almost
like Christmas lights.
Unity Village has been here for around two years.
It is on city-owned land.
Homes Now also does not take government money.
So we're on government land, but we don't take government money.
When the city has donated building supplies or anything
like that, we use those supplies and build.
So many people come to the front gate and donate.
They're so generous here that we end up with a lot of donations.
And so any extra donations we have goes to outreach
or other people that need it on the streets.
We have shared areas over here for cooking, like the grills.
And we have a kitchen area that is the same thing as one of these tents.
We have multiple fridges.
Hey, what's up, guys?
And yeah, that's about it.
It's pretty simple.
And we're proud of what we've built here.
And we hope that the city of Denton will allow the Denton Basic Service Center
to use our model, expand on it, and help more people get off the streets.
>> Okay. You have about one minute.
>> Okay. That's all I have to say on this.
Thank you for your time.
>> Very good.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Any questions?
Oh, sorry.
>> Mayor Milton-Milter.
>> Yeah. I'm not sure if you're, you know, able to fill this in.
But I'm just naturally curious about how does Unity Village deal
with extreme temperatures, you know, hot and cold?
>> So this is in Washington.
Yeah. So it would be a little bit different.
Their extreme temperatures would be needing heat in the winter,
versus we're going to need a lot more AC.
But we have learned, we have ideas on how to cool.
We can make ACs out of coolers for very inexpensive.
And we will have an electrician that will help us, you know, to configure everything.
I think that the extreme temperature as far as the winter goes,
I'm not sure that we have addressed that yet.
So one of the other ladies may be able to better address that.
>> Do you have any idea what's their, you know, sort of model for how long people stay
and, you know, whether there's a process for moving through or do you have
in mind something different than what they happen to have done?
>> So our idea is to give them the time that they need
because there's not one individual that is unhoused that is like the next individual
that is unhoused just like the housed individuals.
We all have a different timeline of healing and getting a job
and moving into permanent housing.
And so that is going to be a case-by-case basis based on whatever their needs are.
So there will not be a strict you have to be out of here in a certain amount of time
or you have to have this done by a certain amount of time.
It will be case-by-case basis.
>> Thanks.
>> How large was this village?
>> It's small.
It takes up a parking lot.
I'm not sure of the--
>> About a half an acre?
>> Dimensions.
>> So you all know?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Okay.
>> When she comes up, she won't answer, is that right?
>> Ask her that because I'm not sure of the dimensions.
I just know it is a very small plot of land.
It was on a parking lot so I'm not sure of the exact dimensions.
I'm sorry.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Councilmember Armitage?
>> Yes. I noticed that they mentioned that it's city land.
But they don't use actual-- use city money, they use donations
of supplies from the city and from people within the city.
Is that the same model that you plan to follow?
>> Correct.
>> And I believe there's a certain--
one or more plots of city land that you all are interested in.
I'm not sure if one of you has planned on talking about that later.
So I don't want to-- okay, I don't want to steal your thunder.
You don't have to answer that if she's going to talk to it.
But I'd be eager to hear.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Okay. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you for your time.
>> So next is item D, ID 211506,
Deborah Wright regarding Denton Basic Service Center.
>> Hi. Good evening.
>> If you could give us your name and address
and then you have four minutes.
>> I'm Deborah Wright.
I live at 2512 Crestwood Place in Denton and-- I'm sorry.
>> Yes, by all means.
>> Okay. My mind just clicked off of me.
When we speak to our unhoused neighbors about the village,
they're excited about the possibilities it will offer them.
You see, they are rarely asked
to bring their own ideas to the table.
This village gives them that option.
It gives them an opportunity
to bring their input to your table.
We hope that this following video helps to dispel any myths
or stereotypes you may have about our unhoused neighbors,
your neighbors.
Play the video.
>> Hi. What's your name?
>> My name is Shea.
>> Yeah. And how long have you been on the street?
>> About two years.
>> And what do you think of the tiny house village concept?
>> I think the concept is great.
I hope that it works out.
I really wish that you could make this into fruition,
you know, like not just be a concept.
And it sounds like a great thing to me.
>> Hi. What's your name?
>> Jacob Norris.
>> And how long have you been on the street?
>> Nine months.
>> Oh, wow. And what do you think of a tiny house village?
>> This is what we want.
We want to be able to build something for the community,
do something for the homeless people, and able to be there
and have stuff for the community.
>> Great. Thank you.
>> My name is Joseph Reed.
I'm 65 years old.
I've been homeless approximately 10 years.
Jan approached me today with the idea of the tiny village,
and I became immediately impressed with it.
I have multiple skills that I told her that I'd like to use
to help in the construction and operation of it.
I think it's a very good idea, and I would like to see the city
and whoever else get on board
with helping making this project for real.
Is that good enough?
>> Hi. What's your name?
>> I'm Tony Parker.
Tony Parker.
>> Okay. And how long have you been on the street?
>> I've been on the streets almost two months now.
>> Okay. What do you think of the tiny house village concept?
>> I think that's a great idea, and I think it'll really work
with you because we're the ones that's out here in the streets,
and we're kind of -- our tents and stuff are structured kind
of like how you're planning to do the tiny home village.
And I think that that's a great idea, and it would work
because we've become more like a community, you know,
banding together to help each other achieve our goals.
>> Hi. What's your name?
>> My name is Greg Isworth.
>> Yes. And how long have you been on the streets?
>> One and a half years.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, unfortunately.
>> Yeah. And what do you think of the tiny house village?
>> Well, I've been speaking to her,
and I believe it's a great idea.
I believe it's a fresh start for the community.
I believe it's going to do some good,
and I believe it's a starting point for the people
that are in need, that people understand
that homeless people, community have had a bad --
something happened to them in their life, and they need
to progress, and this is a great start, is what I believe.
And my name is Greg Isworth.
>> Okay. You have 30 seconds.
>> Basically, we're just wanting to bring our unhatched neighbors
together as a community and give them a chance
to heal and a chance for them to get off the streets.
Thank you.
>> Okay. Any questions?
Seeing none, thank you very much.
Okay. That takes us to item E, ID211512, Ms. Pam Gutierrez,
regarding tiny house village.
>> Hi. I'm Pam Gutierrez.
>> You can adjust it, Javi.
>> Thank you.
>> Yes, please.
>> Thank you so much.
I'm Pam Gutierrez, and I live at 10786 FM 2153
in Sanger, Texas, 76266.
And I just wanted to talk a little bit about the tiny village
and tell you my thoughts on the tiny village.
So the unhoused band together to achieve goals,
to become a community and be responsible individuals
in our community, this would give us -- give them
and us the opportunity to see what they can do.
You see people living out in open areas.
You see them on the square, and people complain about
that to you all all the time,
because they don't have anywhere to go.
They don't have a house like us.
At any point in time, that could be me.
That could be any of you all at any point in time.
And if you didn't have a home, what would you do?
You wouldn't be able to bathe.
You wouldn't have a job.
So, you know, I think this would give these folks
the opportunity.
They want to work.
They want to have a home.
They want to have a place to be.
And they need your support.
They need my support.
The tiny village is something
that the unhoused desperately want,
and they desperately need.
In Bellingham, Washington,
two tiny house villages have been successful,
one for two years and another for one year.
The village in Washington is assisted
in providing additional information to Denton
to prepare for operating a village here in our city.
The goal is to start with 25 tiny homes
on the first piece of property, and then continue
with additional 115 tiny homes
on the additional nine acres with your support.
And we would rent that property back from you.
The land is a catalyst to achieve the village,
and I believe that the Denton community will rally
behind the initiative and assist our homeless
in becoming this community
that the homeless desperately need.
This will give our homeless community hope.
They will recover.
They will have the respect and the safety that they need.
They're unsafe out in our community.
And if you were unsafe, you would feel horrible.
You would have no dignity.
You would have no respect.
Please know that these people are just like you and me.
If you fell on hard times, you would hope that our city
and others would provide support to create this tiny village.
People have their own privacy here.
They can be clean.
They can take care of their own items.
They can have dignity, and they can have pride,
just like we have every day.
By creating the tiny village, the city council, all of you,
and mayor, you would be providing an opportunity
for the homeless community to relearn skills
that many have lost along the way
or didn't have mentors to teach to them.
Being part of the community provides ownership
and pride in the village.
I believe in this concept.
I will be there to help them.
I'll be on the advisory committee.
I'll do everything I can.
Anyone that knows me in this community,
I've worked at MHMR for 35 years.
My heart is there.
My heart will be here for these people.
And I'll do everything I can
to give them a second chance to regain their lives.
I hope that this village is an initiative that the council
and mayor will be behind, and will embrace
and provide funding to this tiny village.
Thank you very much for allowing me this opportunity to speak.
>> Okay. Thank you.
Any questions?
Councilmember Amater?
>> Yeah. So I know you're speaking for yourself
as an individual resident and, you know, not representing MHMR.
But you have a background of being
in the mental health profession.
And I know that you're looking at this from all angles,
and not just through that lens.
But I was wondering if you could just speak briefly, you know,
to how the mental health needs and other health needs
of people experiencing homelessness, you know,
could be better served in a tiny village scenario
like this versus a, you know, camping behind,
sleeping behind a Walmart, or, you know, or in your car.
If you could speak to that.
>> So, you know, we partner with the police, the police chief,
to go out into the tent cities to help our community
with the people that we serve.
Because the majority of them are homeless.
And so this will enable us to provide services
to these individuals, and to come into the village,
and to offer our services, and not have to go into tents
where many times it's unsafe.
We can't go into these tent cities without the police.
I can't send my staff without armed police officers
because we don't know what we're going to find.
It's not a safe environment.
This is something, again, that people will have dignity
and respect, and we, you know, I have to make sure
that my staff are safe, too.
I can go, I can send them into this village
because people will now be safe,
and they'll be in an environment that's not something
that they're out in the woods, and they're, unfortunately,
with other individuals that will harm them and us.
So by creating this environment, I have provided a secure,
safe environment for not only the individuals
that need it the most, but for my staff, too.
And then they're going to want services more
because they're happy, they're healthy, and they're secure.
And they have self-esteem again.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Councilman Betts.
>> Thank you.
So based on that, you're saying
that we might experience significant cost savings
with regards to police calls if we had this
in a more contained and organized fashion.
>> Exactly, exactly.
I could see costs exponentially going down
because your crime rate's going to go down.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay.
>> Yes, sir.
>> Any other questions?
All right.
Thank you very much.
>> Thank you so much for allowing me to speak.
>> Okay. We have item F, which is ID 211390,
joining Piper Lunt regarding Denton Base Service Center,
Tiny House Village.
If you'll give your name and address, four minutes to speak.
>> Hi. I'm Jane Piper Lunt.
I am-- I live at 1205 North Austin,
and I'm executive director of Denton Base Service Center.
And for those of you that may not know,
she is the executive director of MHMR.
To make this quick, I'm going to take this in increments.
Let's talk about the films.
I hope the interviews tore apart any preconceived ideas
and stereotypes you have.
When I talk to the young house, so many tell me
that they want to talk to you, you know.
So please go out there and meet them.
I've had-- I had people asked to be interviewed for this.
When I tell them about the village,
every single one of them want it.
They get very excited about it.
They want to use their skills and talents
to create a community that will help each other.
They want this.
If you rewatch that film, you will see Shay holding back
his emotions, because he desperately wants this.
He is excited about it, but they fear to hope, you know.
And, you know, I could see him holding that back.
Homes Now Not Later, Doug has been invaluable to us,
preparing us to make this happen.
One of his villages was built with COVID money, the other,
and has no operating fees.
The other is run for $12,000 a year.
Forty-eight homes for $12,000 a year.
Denton Basic Silver Center has sought to legitimize ourselves
over the last three years.
We have an informative Facebook page.
During the ice storm, we were two days ahead of everyone else.
We collected food, water, coats, tents, blankets,
over a hundred towels.
We gave rides, heaters, winter clothes, hand and foot warmers.
Every single board member either worked at the water warehouse
and/or the notatorium.
We provided a COVID clinic for our own house.
We donate to Monsignor King, our daily bread.
We furnished apartments for giving hope.
And obviously, we have the support of MHMR.
I just gave 500 gallons worth of Gatorade powder
to our daily bread yesterday.
We've helped individuals with food, med, transportation,
shopping, and got a couple
of bus batteries for somebody yesterday.
We fill the tiny pantries and we're working
to get a community fridge.
All of this has been done with private donations.
We advocate for policies that don't harm our own house.
We do ask a budget allocation.
She was not aware of that.
We've been to you over four years, a four-year period,
and it's time to do it now.
The price of wood has skyrocketed.
This budget allocation will get us up and running quickly.
You're willing to pay $150,000 for a park-up park
and $11.5 for a shelter.
So what we're asking is a drop in the bucket
to what you guys usually spend.
Lastly, city fees are killing nonprofits trying
to build affordable housing.
Grace Light Grain has hundreds of thousands
of dollars worth of fees.
Another nonprofit told me that fees have priced them out
so that they can't build.
Nonprofits should not have to pay fees
to build low-income housing.
Questions?
>> Okay. Keltner and Byrd, you had a question earlier.
I forget what it was, but--
>> Yeah. By the way, it's great to come to a friendly council.
>> Yes. Well, I almost forgot what my question was.
But you all have identified an area here in town
that you'd like to put your tiny home.
Where is that located for the people?
>> It is at the end of Riddell by the old service center.
There's two pieces of property.
One had a house on it, and that's where we would like
to start with pilot program with 35 homes.
And then once that's up and going,
we've crossed the street.
You have about nine acres across the street, and we would
like to build up to 150 homes.
>> I'm thinking about the utilities and, you know,
the water and, you know, that's needed.
Is that going to be something that will need to be supported
by the city in any kind of way or is that--
>> If you want to, we'll let you know.
But, you know, we're willing to pay bills.
The small plot has-- it had a house on it.
So there's plumbing and sewer and lines and things
like that there, and then we may have to replace them.
Joseph that you saw is an electrician.
He sat down and told me how we can totally plan this out.
Greg is a contractor.
You know, these people want to do this work.
They want to make this happen and, yeah, we'll make it work.
>> Okay.
>> What types of homes are you all looking at to put on there?
Something like what we saw on the video?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you.
>> Any other questions?
Councilmember Armitage.
>> Yeah. So thanks for all that you all have done.
In, you know, full disclosure, you know, before I was
on council, I was, you know, working with you, you know,
with this vision and at that time, this was just an idea
and I know it is still not realized
and that's extremely frustrating.
But as you've shown, you all are doing so much so I think,
you know, one of the objections at the time I remember
from council was that, you know, who are these people?
What have they done?
Well, you have a track record now of doing real work
so I want to applaud you for that work.
I was just wondering, kind of remembering the objections back
in the, you know, from back in the day and anticipating that,
you know, they might come up again.
What your responses are to some of them?
You don't have to list them all but, you know,
just to get us thinking for instance and I'll, you know,
name a couple, you know, the objection.
Well, I don't want people living in little shacks, you know,
with a chain link fence around it.
I want people in homes that are, you know, more home type homes
and or, you know, the objection.
Well, for instance, we have the following shelters, right?
We already have this, you know, has, you know,
have the answers to that changed?
You know, what's your response to that?
Well, first off, rent's ridiculous in this town.
Price of housing is ridiculous.
There are people I've known that have waited three years
to get a voucher and they have to be somewhere, you know.
The-- what were the other things?
>> Yeah, if you could-- I mean, and that's the thing,
if you could ask succinct questions that she could answer,
that'd be great and we're gonna--
>> Yeah, no, it was just a broad question and you answered it.
I was just wondering, you know, I was just wondering what has changed.
>> I think you used to call it a waiting room, you know.
It's a waiting room until-- and it's-- but it's more than that.
It is-- and it-- we want to help them get
out of survival mode, OK?
There's a certain type of thinking that you get
when you're on the street and, you know, you have no goals,
you don't think beyond, you know, where's the dinner tonight?
And that transition is very difficult to do
when you just take somebody off the street and put them in an apartment
on their own with no support system and there's time limits
and expectations and that kind of pressure is not fair to put
on somebody who's been through what a lot of these people have been through.
So, they need a place that's their own, where they can relax, where they can recover,
where they can rebuild and be treated like adults because that's one of the big problems.
We don't treat them like adults and we trust them to be able to run this village, you know?
We trust them to make decisions, you know.
>> OK. Council Member Beck.
>> Yes, sir.
>> Thank you, Mayor.
Ms. Piperlant, I'll ask you the same question that I asked Ms. Gutierrez and that is sort
of humanitarian considerations aside, what do we think the cost savings to dealing
with completely unhoused individuals in the woods are versus having them,
even just 35 people in a pilot program?
Do you have an estimate of what those cost savings might be to the city?
>> Well, I mean, we seem to have an increase of criminal trespasses lately and so they get fined,
they can't pay that, they can't-- they don't go to court because they can't get there
so they wind up getting arrested and, you know, so you've got the court costs,
you've got the-- all of that, you've got the jail time.
In another video of square one villages, they amortized their price
and it cost $5 a night for them to house these people.
And, I mean, if you're looking at vouchers, I mean, you can't rent a place or give a voucher
to somebody for $5 a night and these guys, they pay one of those dollars
and the residents pay one of those dollars so it's really only $4 to the organization.
But, you know, things like Pete, I mean, he had-- he got sick and got criminally trespassed
because he sat down in the shade of the civic center and wound up extremely sick and, you know,
also he got hit recently on his bicycle so he had to get that taken care of.
So, you know, you have medical costs that they can't afford to pay, you know,
and that comes back to the taxpayers and what else?
>> Thank you.
Okay, any other-- Councilman Rometter.
>> Just real quick, I just want-- I don't know if you know this but just wanted to quick shout
out to Chief Dickson who had found out about that criminal trespass and looked into it
and got it removed 'cause he agreed it was unworked.
I just wanted to mention, I don't know if you heard that.
>> Okay. I just don't want to put-- Mayor Pro Temelter.
>> Hey, Jane.
You alluded to-- you used the figure of $11 million with them.
When all is said and done, that might not be-- that you alluded to the shelter
and you used the figure of $11 million and when all is said and done,
I don't know that that's far off but can you help the public
and us understand who this concept serves that's different than the people who would be going
into the shelter that's gonna be constructed between fall of 2021 and fall of 2022
where it's Monsignor King, former Monsignor King plus our daily bread kind of together
with the day shelter with, you know, mental health practitioners.
And let me just say a little more before I let you answer.
You know, I became aware, more acutely aware during the snowstorm
when we had off-duty cops going around offering rides to people who were freezing
to take them to shelter where there are shelter beds that were going unfilled
and they were largely told, "No thanks, I'm good."
So, you know, I think it might not be obvious to people that there are a segment
of the unhoused that are just not gonna go to shelter.
So, but maybe you can help us understand what's this--
who's gonna be served by one versus the other?
>> Well, okay, if you consider that Monsignor King has 58 beds right now because of COVID
and they just hit capacity for the first time last month, you know,
there are a lot of people who do not like shelters.
I mean, I heard a woman say, "I don't wanna take shelter with 35 people," you know.
I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna have to leave at 8 o'clock
in the morning, you know, carry my stuff and it's still survival mode, you know,
because they're not-- they don't have a place, okay, that's their own.
I think the vast majority of the homeless would be thrilled to death to live
in a tiny house village because they have privacy, they have community if they want it.
We do hope to put a section in for MHMR that will get those people help but, you know,
there's-- I mean, we invited all kinds of homeless people to this and they wanted to come
and they're outside because they're intimidated by these kinds of situations.
And yet, they'll talk to us, they'll hang with us and they probably would hang
with each of you individually but they've been so separated from society for so long
that it's going to take some work to get them back in there.
And-- but I think the vast majority of them would love to live in a tiny house village.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Seeing none, thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay. Before we go to the-- so the staff will pull up the caller.
We're still in the comment section, the first section of our agenda.
And so we have one more caller to conclude that section.
Before we do, I do want to note that the city manager's office has coordinated a trip
down to Austin for-- to visit community first and tour that facility.
And that is a-- for those that don't know, it's a non-profit there in Austin
that serves the unhoused community down there.
And so it'll be a good opportunity to learn that since September.
So did want to give credit where credit's due with that.
And in addition, kind of as touched on, the Luke 28 facility is being completed as quickly
as possible to-- which serves both the evening and day shelter
and has four phases planned there as well.
So we have the caller, so Mr. Hammond?
>> Yes.
>> Okay, great.
If you could give your name and address and you'll have four minutes
to address the city council.
So just name and address and then you can go ahead and start.
>> Okay. My name is Dan Hammond, Jr., 2002 West Hickory Street.
A hazard to the health and safety of the public.
That is the ruling of the state of Texas for what occurred in Denton on December 2020.
Three houses on West Hickory were demolished in violation of state
and federal rules relating to hazardous materials.
A hazard to the health and safety of the public.
The property owner and demolition contractor were fined for violations by the state of Texas.
A major violation, failure to conduct an asbestos inspection or survey.
The city allowed three houses, probably chock full of asbestos,
to be demolished without an asbestos inspection.
A high probability exists that deadly fibers were released into our air and onto our properties.
City of Denton failed to ensure the health and safety of the public.
We sought answers from the city, the answers were all the same.
No asbestos survey was necessary.
Our readings of asbestos regulations told us otherwise.
So we pursued answers from the state and the EPA.
The city not only gave us incorrect information, but the city of Denton gave bad information
to the inspector who investigated this case for the state of Texas.
In September 2019, a site plan for an apartment complex
on this property was on record with the city.
On March 20, 21, 18 months later, the state inspector wrote that the city of Denton stated,
"No application has been submitted to build anything on the land."
The inspector, however, found that not to be the case, stating in her report,
it shows on file that the intention is to build an apartment complex on this land.
Denton's director of development services contacted the Texas DSHS administrator
of asbestos requirements to discuss this matter.
Yet, we were still told by the city that no asbestos survey was necessary.
That administrator is Terry Collins, asbestos group manager for our region.
The same Terry Collins who signed off on the state inspector's reports,
which found that an asbestos survey was necessary and which led
to Texas finding the property owner for a major violation.
The city needs to change how it handles all demolitions, and in particular, residential.
The city should not shield developers from state and federal rules as they did in this case,
particularly a developer and contractor who misled the state inspector.
Both said that new houses were going to replace the demolished houses.
That was not true.
Finally, we expect city officials and staff to take our concerns seriously.
Don't assume you know the answer.
Find out, in this instance, city staff members and officials gave us the wrong answer.
It took six months for my wife and I to get the truth.
But now the investigation results are documented and on the record before you,
an asbestos survey was indeed necessary.
I'll take any questions.
>> Okay, questions for the caller, councilman Armitage?
[ Inaudible ]
>> You have to turn your mic on.
>> Sorry, we have new microphones.
We have to press them a little harder.
Thank you, Dan, for your vigilance and activism on this issue.
As you know, you know, I followed along with you from the very beginning,
and you made a really convincing case to me.
Have you heard any updated response from staff in response
to the input you've gotten from EPA and from the state?
And have you received any indication that the city will be changing its, you know,
interpretation of asbestos law accordingly or demolition regarding asbestos law accordingly?
>> We've had an initial discussion with the director of development services
with the city last week, and, you know, we hope that dialogue can continue.
We also had a call today to follow up on some issues with the state DSHS.
So we're continuing on in this, and I think the city --
I think what they are thinking is they would have done it differently
if they had another chance to do it again.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
>> So just a follow-up question, would you like me to put forward a pitch to council
on an update to our asbestos policy?
I know I keep asking you this not to put you on the spot.
You can say you don't know, if you don't know yet, but I would certainly be happy to do that.
I would like to see something done, because there is confusion, and the people we've spoken
with at the State Department of Health Services, they, you know,
they also know that there is an issue here with interpretation,
and obviously the interpretation was wrong here, and we couldn't do anything about it.
They were demolished before we had a chance to do anything.
We just heard the sounds and looked over the fence, and three houses were gone.
So, yeah, please, we need to have an effort by the city to know exactly when,
when an asbestos survey is necessary, and usually it's a, it is necessary.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Seeing none.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Hammond.
>> All right.
Thank you.
>> Okay. That concludes that portion of agendas, takes us to our consent agenda.
I'll take a motion noting that items DEH and AE have been pulled for individual votes.
Is there a motion?
And I think, I don't know if we can motion here.
We'll see.
Council Member Davis.
>> I'll move approval of the consent agenda, accepting items H, DE, and AE.
>> Okay. Is there a second?
Mayor Pro Tem Melter.
>> I'll second.
>> Okay. So we have a motion by Council Member Davis,
second by Mayor Pro Tem Melter, and any discussion?
And that's, that's a, that's a, noting the ones, the items that are pulled, right?
Okay. Great.
And I think the, I don't know if the board's working or not.
Billy will tell us, or we'll try it next time.
But we have a motion by Council Member Davis, second by Mayor Pro Tem,
for the consent agenda item, but for the items pulled.
Any discussion?
Seeing none.
>> Council Member Davis, I'll say you.
>> Aye.
>> All right.
Mayor Pro Tem.
>> Aye.
>> Okay. And, and Council Member Byrd.
>> Aye.
>> Okay. Council Member Beck.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member McGuire.
>> Aye.
>> And Council Member Armitage.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. That passes 7-0.
Takes us to our first item on, it's item D, ID 211394.
And that's considered option of ordinance of the City of Denton approving
and authorizing an interim city manager or her designee to execute an internal,
internal, interlocal, goodness, cooperation agreement between the City of Denton
and Denton County for fire protection services and declaring an effective date.
There's no presentation, so I'll take a motion.
Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer.
>> I move approval.
>> Okay.
Okay. Is there a second?
Council Member Beck.
>> I'll second.
>> Okay. So we have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, second by Council Member Beck.
Discussion?
Seeing none.
And let the record reflect that Council Member Davis has recused himself for this item.
So Mayor Pro Tem, how say you?
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Beck, how say you?
>> Aye.
>> Council Member McGuire.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Armitage.
>> Yes.
>> Council Member Byrd.
>> Aye.
>> And Mayor Hutz with his ayes.
Well, that passes 6-0.
>> There's no voting system.
>> Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. And then that takes us to item E. And so let's the same,
let the record reflect that Council Member Davis has recused.
And I'll take a motion.
Council Member Beck.
>> I move approval.
>> Okay. Is there a second?
Council Member McGuire.
>> I second.
>> Thank you.
Motion by Council Member Beck, second by Council Member McGuire.
Discussion?
Seeing none.
Council Member Beck, how say you?
>> Aye.
>> Council Member McGuire.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Armitage.
>> Yes.
>> Council Member Byrd.
>> Aye.
>> Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer.
>> Aye.
>> And Mayor Hutz with his ayes.
Well, that passes 6-0.
Thank you.
Takes us to item H. H's ID 211387, consider adoption
of an ordinance of the City of Denton,
a Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the
approval of a second amendment to a professional services
agreement between the City of Denton and Lloyd Goslink,
Rochelle, and Townsend PC.
Okay. And so, let me get there.
>> Mayor, the staff is coming from the work session room.
They're walking over.
>> Okay. Was there a -- I don't think there's a presentation.
>> No, this is going to be for questions.
>> Okay, got it.
Okay. Well, so let's -- so staff will be prepared for questions
if we have them.
Is there a motion?
Council Member Davis.
>> I move approval of item H.
>> Okay. Is there a second?
Council Member Byrd.
>> I second.
>> Okay. There's a motion by Council Member Davis,
second by Council Member Byrd.
Discussion?
Council Member Armitter.
>> A question for staff.
>> Evening.
>> Okay. Council Member Armitter.
>> Hi.
>> I'm sorry.
I'm Eugene McKinney, Deputy Director of Solid Waste
and Recycling.
>> Hi. Thank you.
Yeah, I was just wondering if you could just kind of, you know,
give some explanation as to, you know,
why these services are still needed.
>> Okay. Well, originally this was approved in January.
We're in the process now.
We're -- we actually finally received our permit.
>> Can you, Eugene?
>> These services --
>> I'm sorry.
Can you adjust the mic?
There we go.
Thank you.
>> These services are continually needed
to coordinate our responses to TECQ, to public meetings
and hearings, to handle contested cases, hearings,
in regards to our permit.
Why it was delayed and its extension is needed?
Well, it has delays due to COVID, of course.
We are in our -- we are in a period where motion
to return is still -- motion to overturn is still available.
Services are needed until the permit becomes final
and to facilitate implementation of settlement terms.
So what that means is the settlement terms,
the subject matter experts in this case, the law firm,
will negotiate with the state to make sure anything
that was settled during this agreement is administratively
correct and everything is signed
into the proper place where it should be.
That's why this extension.
Some things will be on our control
and there's a regulatory state requirement
that these things be shored up for a period of time.
>> Okay.
>> And just a follow-up question to that, although --
>> Yes.
>> And this might be more of a question for legal than for --
for solid waste, but, you know, is this --
so this is work that -- that we couldn't do in-house.
I'm thinking, you know, considering that the --
the permit -- permit has been signed.
Like you said, there's still this --
the process where people, you know, can still object to it.
I'm just wondering, you know, given the price tag.
>> Okay. Catherine, if you want to speak to that.
>> Just -- just for clarification,
this is an extension just of time.
It's not any increase of cost and it's because of a number
of delays, as Mr. McKinney mentioned, COVID specifically.
It is a very specialized area of work in dealing with the TCEQ
and that's why there was originally the agreement
with Lloyd Gosling to do this work.
Does that answer your question?
>> Okay. Yes, but a follow-up --
a follow-up question to that.
So how does extending the time not extend the cost?
>> The cost -- when the contract was originally done,
the agreement was originally done, I believe, in 2017.
It was for $715,000.
I can't -- that predates me.
I can't speak to how that number was arrived at,
but that number has never increased.
That's still the amount of the contract.
But there was -- it was time bound.
And so it's just an extension of the time for the services
under that agreement.
It doesn't change the original estimated cost
that was approved.
>> So it doesn't -- sorry, one just nitpicky follow-up question
to that, so, you know, the original contract was it
for up -- that up to $715,000?
Yes. So even though this is not changing, you know,
that ceiling, does it change the --
I mean, wouldn't it increase the amount of money
that we're paying inside that -- under that ceiling?
>> The actual spend, potentially,
but it would still be under the $715,000.
It's pretty -- it's pretty close to concluded that what's left
to do, I would guess, would be done within the next two months.
So I don't think the -- I don't think it would be significant.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> We're projecting that it would -- again, it was written
up to, but we're projecting that it will come in, you know,
not as much.
All the legwork has been done.
Then we're in the administrative period now doing the true-up
to make sure that, you know, all the legal aspects are done.
So everything -- all the hard work
and the legwork is already done.
So we're just in that phase-down period.
In fact, we actually received our permit,
e-mailed our permit today.
So that's when that period starts.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Mayor Pro Temelzer?
>> To be frank, I have issues with the underlying matter,
but, you know, it's already where it is.
My question is, what would the impact be?
So that, you know, makes me -- inclines me to vote against,
but I want to understand what the impact
of a denial would be.
>> You know, it's more of -- sure.
>> I mean, it's the same.
>> Very succinct.
>> Yes.
>> And David Gaines is the city manager.
And Eugene made a couple of these points, but I'll try
to make it as succinct as possible.
The possibility that someone appeals the permit
to have their services to help us through that process
and ensuring we have compliance with the settlement agreements
that we had going up to the permit to make sure we hit all
of the requirements we need
in those settlement agreements, their expertise just gives us
that extra power -- staff power to ensure
that we're hitting all of the requirements we need to hit.
So it gives us that coverage to ensure
that we do everything we need to do.
>> Okay. Any other questions?
Seeing none.
So we have a motion by Council Member Davis,
second by Council Member Byrd.
Any other discussion?
Okay. Council Member Davis, I'll say you.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Byrd.
>> Aye.
>> Mayor Pritzker-Melzer.
>> Yeah. I don't want to be sort of adverse
to the city's interests now that it's already there.
So aye. I vote aye.
>> Council Member Armitage.
>> No.
>> Council Member McGuire.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Beck.
>> Aye.
>> Okay. And Mayor Hutsworth, there's an aye.
That passes 6-1.
Thank you, Gene.
Appreciate you.
>> Thank you.
Have a good night.
>> All right.
That takes us to the last consent agenda item, A-E.
Let me get there.
[ Pause ]
>> Okay. And that's A-E is ID 211176, Consider Adoption
of Ordinance of the City of Denton,
Authorizing the Interim City Manager or her designee
to execute an interlocal agreement in the form
of a memorandum of understanding
with the Denton Independent School District
for reimbursement of the city in the estimated amount
of $763,601 and let the record reflect
that Council Member Davis has recused himself.
There is no presentation.
I'll take a motion.
Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer.
>> I move approval.
>> Okay. Is there-- Council Member Beck.
>> I second.
>> Okay. There's a motion by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer,
second by Council Member Beck.
Any discussion?
Seeing none, Mayor Pro Tem Halseyu.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Beck.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member McGuire.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Armitter.
>> Yes.
>> And Council Member Byrd.
>> Aye.
>> And Mayor Hutsmith has an aye as well.
That passes 6-0.
That concludes the consent agenda.
It takes us to our items of individual consideration.
So there's item A and it is ID 2165-- well, pardon me, ID 21.
1165.
Consider appointing a nomination committee recommended appointees
to serve on the Economic Development Partnership Board.
>> All right.
Good evening, Mayor and Council Members.
Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development.
>> Good evening.
>> All right.
So tonight, we just need to appoint our Economic
Development Partnership Board nominating committee.
Just as a reminder and particularly
for our new council members,
this board functions a little bit differently than some
of our other board and committee appointments.
So I'll kind of walk you through.
Ordinance 2017-203 requires the City Council appoint three people
to serve as a nominating committee.
That nominating committee then will solicit nominations,
contact nominees, confirm eligibility,
confirm willingness to serve, and then will present a slate
of appointees for City Council consideration according
to the requirements set forth in the ordinance for the positions
that are eligible to be appointed.
The ordinance states that the nominating committee is made
up of two City Council members and one member
of the Denton Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber has nominated Marty Rivers to serve
as their appointee to the nominating committee.
And then the nominating committee members themselves
are qualified for appointment
to the Economic Development Partnership Board.
So tonight we will need to appoint two City Council members
and then one member of the Denton Chamber, again,
nominee Marty Rivers to serve
as the 2021 nominating committee.
And that's that.
>> Okay. Are there any -- and just to make sure,
are there any prerequisites or kind of --
>> No, sir.
Just two council members and one member of the Chamber Board
of Directors for the nominating committee.
The actual appointments will have specific prerequisites
that need to be made.
>> Okay. And so what are those --
do those affect who's nominated?
Like the prerequisites for the actual appointments?
Just to make sure --
>> The nominating committee will -- let me --
will be responsible for making recommendations
for the Economic Development Partnership Board seats
that are highlighted in yellow here.
And so these seats are up for appointment.
We have -- we'll have one new nominee that will need
to be made because we do have a current board member
that's not eligible for reappointment.
The remaining five seats are eligible for reappointment,
but certainly it's up to the nominating committee to vet
and make recommendations to this board
as to who they wish to nominate.
>> Okay.
>> So tonight it will not be these nominees.
It's simply the nominating committee.
>> Right.
>> Yes.
>> But -- so just important to note, right,
so Council Member Davis is one seat and that's -- remains.
>> Yes. He's not eligible -- his term is a two-year term
and he was appointed last year.
>> Right.
>> But he is eligible to serve on the nominating committee.
>> Right.
>> But -- so we need one appointee if I'm tracking --
>> No, sir.
You need two appointees to the nominating committee,
but all seven council members, regardless of whether you serve
on the board or not, are eligible to be appointed
to the nominating committee.
>> Got it.
Okay. Well, and I'm just trying
to make sure I understand looking forward, right?
Because if you nominate --
if the nominating committee nominates someone that's already
appointed, then that's moot.
>> Yes.
>> Am I wrong?
>> Yes and no, but I would --
I promise you I'd head that one off at the beginning.
>> Got it.
Okay. I'm going to -- got it.
Okay. So Council Member Davis.
>> I move that the council appoint Mayor Hudsbeth
and Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer to the nominating committee.
>> Okay. Let me get there, sorry.
>> I've had the pleasure before, so I wouldn't mind seeing
if anybody else is interested before I pitch in.
>> Well, then you would just simply --
>> Well, I just said that, but in a longer way.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. So do you want
to amend your nomination, Council Member Davis?
>> I can't.
Sounds like it's dying on its own, so for want of a second.
So I'll let somebody else make another one.
>> Okay. Council Member Armitage.
>> I nominate, if she'll accept the nomination.
Vicki Byrd to be one of the members.
This was not planned in advance, so not to put you on the spot.
>> Okay. Got it.
And so just the one -- okay.
So will -- any other nominations?
Council Member Davis.
>> This time I would move that the council appoints Mayor
Hudsbeth and Council Member Vicki Byrd to be our --
to the nominating committee.
>> Okay. Is there a second?
Council Member Beck.
>> Yeah. I'm looking at Council -- Council Member Byrd's eyes.
I just want to confirm that she's willing to do this.
>> This is simply the nominating committee.
I mean -- yeah.
So it's not to serve.
It's just to nominate.
>> Right. I understand this is merely the nominating committee
for the larger committee.
>> Yeah.
>> But I still would like to confirm
that Council Member Byrd would like to serve.
>> That's fair.
>> Then I will second that.
>> Okay. Got it.
Got a motion by Council Member Davis.
>> We do get to spend some time together.
>> Motion by Council Member Davis,
second by Council Member Beck.
The nominees are myself and Council Member Byrd to serve
on the nominating committee and not the committee itself.
>> Yes. And to clarify, the nomination also needs
to include Mr. Rivers.
>> Yes.
>> The Chamber of Commerce.
>> Yeah. And is that acceptable to the movement?
>> I'll amend my motion to appoint
as the nominating committee
for the Economic Development Partnership Board Marty Rivers
from the Chamber, Mayor Hutsbeth,
and Council Member Byrd from the Council.
>> Thank you.
>> And I continue the second.
>> Thank you.
All right.
So we'll take a vote.
Council Member Davis, I'll say you.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Beck.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member McGuire.
>> Aye.
>> Council Member Armitage.
>> Yes.
>> Thank you.
Council Member Byrd.
>> Aye.
>> And Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer.
>> Aye.
>> And Mayor Hutsbeth has an aye.
Did I miss anyone?
I went out of order.
Messes me up.
Passes 7-0.
Yeah. Okay.
Thank you.
That takes us to Item B, which -- and I don't think we had a --
and Stuart, remind me if we have callers.
He's helping me because we have a few that will call in.
So this is --
>> Yes, sir.
We have two callers for this item whenever --
>> For this one.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
>> It's like a Stuart/Alexa type thing.
Stuart, add cucumbers to my shopping list.
>> As fanatic.
>> Sorry.
>> I will.
I will.
>> Yeah. Got it.
Okay. So this is Item 5B, ID211439.
Consider approval of a resolution by the City
of Denton, outlining concerns and proposed revisions
to Denton County Transportation Authority proposed service
delivery model to include on-demand zone service
and potential removal of existing fixed route bus services.
And I want to note before you get started that I did check just
on my own, just to make sure I was clear.
And so for the record, UNT does have -- they pay --
they have a contract with DCTA around the dollar figure
of 3 million or so dollars around there.
I didn't get the -- I didn't give them --
I didn't ask the question early enough to get the documentation,
but I want to have a clear record just
to make sure that's out there.
But before we get started for the council,
but I'll turn it over to you.
>> Perfect.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
I'm Rachel Wood, Deputy Director of Capital Projects.
I have a very brief presentation that I'm going
to go through this evening,
essentially outlining the proposed resolution
that was drafted by the Mobility Committee.
So this resolution came to be --
it was first discussed
at the Mobility Committee meeting on June 16th.
And the recommendation was to draft a resolution outlining
specific concerns and to document the City Council's
stance on proposed service delivery model revisions
for DCTA.
Then on June 29th, the Mobility Committee held a special called
meeting where they actually drafted the resolution during
the meeting.
And that draft resolution is what is attached
to your agenda item this evening.
The intent of drafting the resolution -- I'm sorry.
Yes. Sorry, I'm rusty on this.
Okay. Yep. I apologize.
I could see it on my screen and you couldn't see it up here.
So just really quickly, the Mobility Committee requested
to have this resolution drafted at their June 16th meeting.
Then on June 29th, they held a special called meeting
where the Mobility Committee during the meeting drafted the
resolution that is attached to the agenda this evening.
And the intent behind that resolution, as I mentioned,
was to provide an outline of the City of Denton's stance
on the proposed revisions to DCTA's service delivery model.
And the reason for the timing
on this is DCTA's Board of Directors is currently scheduled
to adopt proposed revisions
to their service delivery model later this week on July 22nd.
So just a quick overview
of the specific items included in the resolution.
One of the items outlined is to provide on-demand service
and service for all existing fixed routes concurrently
for six months from the implementation
of on-demand service to allow DCTA time
to gather additional data and ensure they are optimizing
the delivery model based
on ridership patterns during that concurrent period.
The second item in the resolution is
to evaluate the feasibility of eliminating fares,
taking into account the cost savings associated
with eliminating fare collection and the potential impact
on ridership with the elimination of fares.
Another item included in the resolution is
to identify an option to maintain union representation,
pay and benefits for current drivers.
And the final item included in the resolution is
to consider the use of smaller vehicles
to improve the efficiency of fixed routes.
So next steps, of course, the City Council will discuss
and consider approval of the proposed resolution
this evening.
And then if approved, staff will send the signed resolution
to DCTA Board of Directors and staff prior
to their July 22nd vote
of proposed service delivery revisions.
- Okay.
And then we'll take the callers.
- Yes, sir.
And while we are bringing them in,
we had one person fill out the virtual white card online.
That person was in favor of this item.
And whenever you hear the beep,
our first caller will be in the meeting.
- And Rachel, could you pull down the presentation
just in case?
Are you there?
- I am.
- Okay, great.
If you could give your name and address,
please, you'll have four minutes to speak.
- Thank you.
My name is Joshua Hatton.
My address is 1414 Auburn Drive in Denton.
Before I make my statement,
I'd like to thank the workers for the City of Denton
who have helped to facilitate my statement.
That's Corey and Stuart and Rachel.
Thank you for your help.
I'm calling to, as an organizer
of the No Bus Cuts Denton campaign,
I'm calling to ask the City Council members
to vote for the resolution regarding changes
asking DCTA to make changes to its GoZone plan.
Of course, for our campaign,
we would prefer a much simpler, more direct resolution,
which would simply ask the representative of City Council,
Denton City Council, Chris Watts,
to vote no on the proposal.
One of our main concerns, of course, of this proposal
is that it's cruel to current bus riders,
many of whom we've met riding the buses
as part of our campaign.
And very few of them have we met
who have said they knew anything about this GoZone proposal.
So the program, the proposal is not only inhumane
in terms of its effects of the people it will leave out
from public transportation, but also undemocratic.
Mayor Hutzwith especially, the talks I've heard
on City Council meetings talks much about Southeast Denton.
Well, if one looks at the list in the DCTA board packet
for Thursday's meeting about organizations
that have been contacted about the GoZone proposal,
there are a lot of Rotary clubs on there,
but nowhere is there a meeting
at Martin Luther King Junior Center in Southeast Denton.
So we ask City Council members to yes,
please vote for this resolution,
asking DCTA to make changes.
But we do hope for in the future for working to make,
be a more democratic public transportation system.
- Okay, thank you.
And then we will take the next caller.
- Yes, sir, we are bringing him into the meeting now.
- I'm sorry.
- Oh, he's upset.
- The GoZone plan that y'all are wanting to do
isn't okay and all that,
but I highly recommend that y'all keep these buttons running
because let me do the GoZone plan might be okay and all that,
but I highly recommend that y'all keep these buttons running
or else it's gonna be a lot of angry people, you know.
Well, they all have to play.
I mean, I highly recommend that y'all keep these buttons running.
Thank you.
- Okay, and just to summarize,
you were thinking that not having the buses
would make people angry
and you highly recommend keeping the buses running.
Did I get that close?
- Well, but, but.
- Okay.
- I mean, I've been here for many years
and I rode the bus every day and I didn't even, I mean,
you know, best we didn't get to the bottom of it,
things like that.
And, you know, I mean, the GoZone plan might be okay,
but, you know, the buttons are what everybody is depending on.
- Okay, so, and make sure I got that right.
So ride the bus every day
and one of the stops is to your doctor's appointment.
GoZone may be okay,
but the buses are what people are basically dependent on.
- Right.
- Okay, great.
Any other, any other statements?
- No, not yet.
- Okay.
Thank you.
And that's a, that's a great dog you have.
Okay, thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
- Okay.
- Bye bye.
- Bye.
- Okay.
And so it's college, we have a presentation.
Questions for staff?
Seeing none.
Ours, well, I just want to, I just want to ask this.
I see the resolution.
Am I, was there any data or is there a list of issues
that the committee took with the data?
So DT, is there anything DCTA did left unanswered?
Let's start there.
Is it, we sent a number of requests asking DCTA for answers.
Is there anything they did not provide that we asked?
- I wouldn't want to speak
on behalf of the Mobility Committee
because this resolution was generated at their request.
This came after data was presented
by Nicole Rucker and the DCTA team.
So DCTA made multiple presentations
to the Mobility Committee.
They also made presentations to city council
following the June 16th presentation
and discussion that was held.
There was the request to draft the resolution
regarding the city's stance
on the proposed service delivery model revisions
that DCTA is gonna be voting on this Thursday.
- Okay.
And so I'll ask the city manager just generally,
is there any, as you're tracking requests
from this body to DCTA, is there anything
kind of from your notes that did not get answered?
- As far as I know, no.
I know that DCTA came to Mobility Commission, I believe.
- They have a standing item.
- Yeah, a standing item,
but they also answered a lot of questions.
And then we had at least one one-on-one
with a council member that was with Brandy Byrd
to sort of help clarify some things,
but not to my knowledge.
I can't speak that there is or isn't.
- Okay.
And then I guess my follow-up question to that would be,
is there, I didn't see it,
and forgive me, I could absolutely miss it.
Is there specific data points
that the mobility took issue with?
For example, assuming DCTA answered all questions,
provided all data they have,
then that would then allow, in my mind,
the Mobility Committee to identify specifically
what they take issue with or the incorrect data, right?
So if there's something that's wrong,
it would be pointed out and saying,
"Hey, this data point is incorrect."
Does that exist?
- So as the draft resolution was being prepared,
there were some items that individual members
of the Mobility Committee took issue with
from presentations previously made
by Nicole Rucker and DCTA staff.
DCTA staff was available on the call,
and I will note that they are available on the call
this evening to answer questions as well,
and answered questions as they were posed
and provided further clarification,
even at the meeting on the 29th,
whenever the resolution was being drafted.
- Okay, so is Nicole available?
Right, can we, Chris, can you, I mean, pardon me,
Chris, Stuart, can you?
Nicole, are you there?
- I believe she just needs to unmute herself.
- I'm sorry.
- Good evening, thank you for having me.
I'm happy to answer any questions for Council this evening.
- Good evening.
Just wanna, my question is pretty to the point.
Just, is there anything that was requested of you
by the Mobility Committee that went unanswered,
from your perspective?
- Not at this time.
We have been tracking all requests,
and we have fulfilled all requests
that either came from the City Council,
the Mobility Committee, or staff.
- Okay, and are there specific data points
that were pointed out to you that were incorrect, right?
So specific data points that you provided
that then were refuted?
- There have not been specific requests
about specific data points.
I think that the concerns that we have heard
thus far from the Mobility Committee
have been more generalized about specific portions
of the program.
So much like we're just mentioned earlier,
concerns about the time period
in which the services would run concurrently
with one another, as well as the potential implication
of a free fare, and then the third major point
that would be data-driven would just be concerns
with keeping any operators impacted whole
with their pay benefits and union representation.
- Okay, and then if I could understand that correctly,
the union negotiated the bus contract
that's in place currently.
- That is correct, NPMC negotiated that contract.
- Okay, so in everything DCTA is or is not performing
per that agreed contract between the entity,
the drivers and the county, is that correct?
- We maintain agreement with the contract
in order to be compliant, but any grievance
that might occur between the operator
and the actual contract that's in place,
the collective bargaining agreement,
would be handled directly with NPMC management.
- Okay, got it, okay.
And then just lastly for me to kind of understand,
when you talk about your understanding
of environmental effects, is a bus,
does that cause more wear and tear on the road than a van,
and what is it, from an exhaust standpoint,
does a bus generate more exhaust than a van?
- Certainly, so I mean a large bus
is going to create more exhaust than a van.
I think if you're looking at carrying
maybe the maximum load of 55 people on a bus,
therefore you could compare that to 55 people
using their individual vehicles on the road,
and then the comparison would show you
that the bus actually has lower emissions
than those 55 individual vehicles.
But if you're looking at a large bus on the road,
and we're looking at low ridership,
so less than 10 individuals boarding per hour,
when you look at the emissions from a large bus
compared to 10 or fewer vehicles,
then in certain cases, the bus actually has
higher emission rates than the individual vehicles.
And as part of BIA's proposal for the GoZone service,
part of their selling point from a green perspective
is that if you're carrying a maximum load
of six people on a smaller vehicle,
and you're only operating the vehicles
that you need based on demand,
that there's actually a positive impact on the emissions
than if you're running a large bus
but you're carrying a handful of people.
- Great, and that's great analysis,
but my question would be then,
how many riders are we experiencing,
just facts on the ground, you've done the analysis,
so how many riders are we experiencing traditionally
on each route?
- Route three and seven,
route seven we're seeing at least 10 passengers per hour.
I don't have all of the ridership data in front of me,
but that's definitely something
that I can send to the council.
But typically we're seeing the highest ridership
on route seven because it provides that connectivity
between downtown Denton, the DVPC,
as well as Razor Ranch and the university.
And then route three performs just under that benchmark
of 10 boardings per hour.
And the reason that we see high ridership on that route,
and one of the reasons the DCTA board
is considering maintaining that route
is because of the general connectivity
to the social service agencies within Denton.
I will note that route four does provide
some additional connectivity,
and it has ridership currently
that we've seen post-COVID increase,
but it's still not carrying that 10 boardings per hour
like we're seeing with route seven.
And there's also some duplicative service out there
with route seven where we can still provide
the connectivity that route four does.
- Got it.
And so on average, across the entire system,
'cause that's what we're looking at,
it would be less than 10 around the six riders per hour
across the entire network, if you had to guess.
If I had to guess, that seems reasonable.
- Okay.
And then do we have a route
that covers the new Texas Workforce Commission office
so that'd be near the outlet?
And then do we have a route
that covers the neighborhood, South Ridge neighborhood?
- I believe that the South Ridge neighborhood,
currently we do not have a route that covers that area
that the proposed GoZone service would.
- Right.
- And then I believe that when we received
the inbound requests about the workforce solutions,
that based on the move, that there was a stop
that was not very far from that location,
but that the GoZone service
would actually provide them better connectivity.
- Right.
And then lastly-
- But I can certainly-
- No, no, no, that's my understanding as well.
And then I guess the last point I'll make is,
how many shelters do we have?
So bus stop shelters do we have in the city of Denton?
Do you know by chance?
Or even a percentage?
- Yeah, it's right about 350.
- Okay, and what percentage is that?
- A combination of shelters and bus stop leads.
It's around 350.
- And how many, so how does that compare
to how many stations or stops we have?
- So that would be all of the stops.
So every single stop has a bus,
a pole and a blade.
So we have 300, it's roughly about 350,
give or take, five or 10, in the city of Denton.
And then probably about a third of those stops
actually have shelters.
So they would have maybe like a concrete pad,
a shelter and a trashcan built as like infrastructure on site.
- Right, so there's two thirds of those current bus riders
that would just stand in the elements
until that bus came around.
- That is correct.
Okay, thank you.
Any other questions for staff?
Okay, then I'll take a motion.
Council Member Davis.
- I move approval of the resolution with three amendments.
First in section two I, a time period of 90 days
as opposed to six months.
Second, deletion of section two, triple I.
And third, renumbering of section two IV as two, triple I.
- So I didn't catch that, but give that to me again.
- Sure, and I can speak to these in discussion as well.
The three amendments would be in section two, little I,
a time period of 90 days as opposed to six months.
Second, the deletion of section two, triple I,
that's the union representation section.
And third, the renumbering of section two IV
to two, triple I to replace the one that would be deleted.
Okay, got it.
Okay, let's do this.
Okay, I have a motion by Council Member Davis.
Is there a second?
Looking for a second.
Mayor Hutsbuth will second.
The motion by Council Member Davis,
second by Mayor Hutsbuth discussion.
Council Member Davis.
- So I wanna thank first the Mobility Committee
for spending the time they did on this resolution.
I honestly expected it to be more polemic.
I expected it to be more divisive than it was.
I expected it to have a lot more things to throw at DCTA
and some of the things I've heard in this chamber before.
I'm very glad I didn't make it into the resolution.
I think it raises legitimate points,
legitimate concerns that DCTA ought to bear in mind
when they make this decision.
Knowing that we can't make it for them,
I think it's only appropriate that we send them
some statement of our sentiments as a council,
what we think our residents are concerned about.
The changes that I've,
the amendments that I've proposed in my motion
are first from six months to 90 days.
Running both of these programs side by side
is prohibitively expensive.
The intention of on demand is to, at least in part,
replace some fixed routes.
Running both at the same time,
I don't think DCTA's board is gonna find amenable.
I don't think it's a suggestion that we could expect
to have any legs when it gets there.
I think we can expect that concern and suggestion
to be almost immediately voted down.
So I would propose a shorter time period,
something their budget might be able to handle.
That's why I mentioned the 90 days
or why I proposed the 90 days.
Second, the deletion of the section
on union representation, pay, and benefits.
Union representation does not cease
with their elimination of some fixed routes.
Union representation is not on the table
with what DCTA is doing.
There's going to be some reduction in staff
if they eliminate some fixed routes,
but no one is talking about eliminating
union representation.
You just heard from Nicole,
and this has been reiterated a number of times,
there's a collective bargaining agreement in place
that must be abided by or amended
or addressed by the parties.
That exists.
This council and frankly the DCTA board
is not going to have any immediate say
over that collective bargaining agreement
based on their vote, the vote we take tonight,
or the vote that they're going to undertake
when they look at eliminating fixed routes.
Secondly, secondary to that,
DCTA does not exist to provide jobs.
For that matter, the city of Denton,
an excellent employer that provides many excellent jobs,
does not exist to provide jobs.
We exist to provide services.
DCTA exists to provide services.
If DCTA can provide those services
in the best possible way,
and they can do it with fewer people,
then that's what a good fiduciary steward demands.
If they can spend less and do a better job,
we want them to do that.
So I'm not going to get in the business of,
I don't want to be in the business of telling them
how many people they ought to employ,
how they ought to employ them, how they ought to be paid.
That is not what this council decides.
That's governed by DCTA's board
and their collective bargaining agreement.
I think that that concern is secondary
to the major concern, which is providing adequate
and quality service.
And then third, the renumbering just made sense.
- Okay, any other discussion?
Council Member McGuire and then Council Member Armitage.
- Thank you.
A point of clarification.
Nicole, could you,
so can you confirm or deny this?
My understanding is that
drivers are currently employed by NTMC
and have a collective bargaining agreement through the ATU,
and that with the elimination of fixed routes,
those positions would be eliminated,
and drivers for VIA would be hired by VIA,
not through NTMC, is that correct?
- That is correct.
- So the proposal as it stands does involve necessarily
drivers losing their union representation
because they would no longer be employed by NTMC.
- They would have the choice to retain union representation
based on any future position that they might take.
Because VIA's drivers are 1099 employees,
they do not have union representation.
- Thank you.
- Okay, Council Member Armitage.
- There we go, sorry about that.
So I just want to respectfully rebut
the points made by Council Member Davis,
except the last one about changing the Roman numeral.
And in doing so to explain why I'm going to be voting no
to this amended resolution
and why I plan to vote yes to the resolution as it is,
I'm open to other amendments, but not the two mentioned.
I just want to explain why.
Number one, the point about going to 90 days
instead of a full six months.
I do understand the point of affordability.
It costs more if you're going to roll out the full VIA plan.
I would hope, and I don't need this answered now,
we can discuss this when we, or if we end up discussing
the resolution as it stands, or with other amendments,
that this resolution does not necessarily specify
that the introduction of GO Zones
in addition to maintaining the fixed bus routes
would require the full GO Zone program
exactly as it was planned.
Maybe that's what was intended, but I am guessing
and would like to know more at a later point
if the Mobility Committee might be open to,
or just intentionally left it open to scaling down
the GO Zone test pilot for affordability.
In other words, to an extent to which DCTA could afford
to keep all of the existing bus routes
while introducing GO Zone and VIA in some form or another.
So second, as far as the time goes,
I think that six months would show the full school year
so we would be, or sorry, the full school semester
and we would enlarge the test period
so that more data would be collected.
I know the mayor was kind of asking questions about data.
Was there any data that DCTA didn't provide,
questions they didn't answer?
And DCTA staff was wonderful
with answering questions, but the data
that's being called for here in this resolution
is data that nobody on earth can answer right now
because it's data about how the test will go.
What will actually be learned from the test
of putting VIA and GO Zones on the ground?
And so just like if you're considering dumping
your current car for a new car,
you're going to take the new,
you're not only gonna do your research
on the kind of new car you're gonna buy,
you're gonna take it out for a test run, a test drive,
ideally more than just around the block.
So you're not going to sell your car
or get rid of your current car and then do the test drive.
So I think it's a more economically responsible,
more risk-averse, responsible way to go about it
as long as we just are open to scaling down somewhat
the VIA and GO Zones just to make it affordable
to do these two at the same time.
The second, finally, as for union representation,
it's, as Council Member McGuire pointed out,
these new jobs with VIA are not union-represented jobs.
So although DCTA wouldn't be taking away
anybody's union representation,
they'd be taking away union jobs,
and for those who lose their jobs,
it would be making that union representation moot
because we're looking at jobs
that are not union-represented
and related to that pay people a lot less.
I have heard the term scab labor used to refer to
the way that unionized drivers,
some unionized drivers, see these new VIA jobs,
and I completely understand and sympathize with that.
It really feels like it's replacing really good union jobs
by which people support their families
and also drive city workers to where they need to go.
It's really a system, and again,
I understand that the point of DCTA
is not to provide jobs to people.
It is a service that just happens to provide jobs to people
'cause you need people to do that service,
but one of the things that I really love about DCTA,
with all the improvements that we need,
I believe we need more routes.
We need more, as Mayor Husspeth pointed out,
we don't have enough sheltered bus stops.
We need more of that.
That can and should come with fixed bus routes.
It's not exclusive to go zones,
but DCTA is a service that is run by workers
and it is predominantly for workers.
People take the bus to and from their jobs,
so buses are really about workers at all levels,
and that's why union representation is really important,
not just for the bus drivers, but for the bus riders.
And finally, I just wanna say one more thing
about that point.
The data that DCTA has collected on ridership per hour
is not as useful to me as the data
that they haven't been collecting,
and of course you can't go back in time
and collect that data, at least it's hard to do it
if you haven't been collecting it from the get-go,
but in looking at specific times,
especially the time in which people go to work
in the beginning of the day and come back from work,
they're gonna be dead periods,
and if you average it out by hour,
you're gonna lose that data point
of how many people you're serving
to get to work and to get from work.
Anyway, thank you for letting me say that,
but that's what I'm gonna do.
- All right, any other?
Mayor Perttu Maitre.
- Yeah, I'll say a couple points.
If you're a fan of database decision-making,
you should be for this, because the data is,
Council Member Armerich pointed out,
this data doesn't exist yet.
It's no fault of DCTA not having provided it,
just as you said.
If you're rooting for a go zone,
because you feel it may well be more convenient for people
to go on the routes they prefer,
to go at the time they prefer,
you should be for this as it's written.
It's gonna take time for people
to become aware of the service,
to consider it, to actually try it,
to repeat, to establish new patterns,
and that's why, if you think go zone
might be an awesome addition,
you should be for the longer test period.
As far as what scale of test DCTA can support,
I don't know the answer to that,
and I trust that the board and staff
would be able to identify that scale,
but the objective should be to prove it out,
to prove out the value,
and give people the opportunity to discover
and make it part of their lives.
And on the representation,
I absolutely agree that the purpose of the city
or DCTA is to provide services.
You don't run the buses to serve the bus drivers,
you run it to serve the passengers.
That being said, with whatever scale of service
you end up providing, we are still, through them, employers,
and it's incumbent upon us to be good employers.
And in the case of these particular employees,
I'll just remind council that these are the people
who had our backs and took the personal risk
to be on the front line during COVID,
at the risk to their own lives,
and I think we should have their backs.
- All right, Councilor McVeigh.
- Thank you, Mayor.
I wanna completely double down,
if not triple down on what Mayor Pro Tem just said.
I will say that you simply can't collect the data
in the time period that in the modified amended vote
that we had before us,
whereas you could potentially do that
in the six month time frame.
And so, we need more time to collect the data.
And the other thing is, looking at the resolution
as it was presented to us, not Councilor Davis's,
but the one that says presented to us,
it doesn't talk about specific modalities,
specific routes, specific anything.
It says optimize delivery over the next six months.
So, it provides DCTA with the flexibility
over the next six months as they have data roll in
to optimize those routes and show the public
that indeed, this should be a short bus.
Indeed, this should be a six passenger van.
And then, come back and say, okay, look at,
the data says that these routes, a bus is full,
and therefore, this is the more environmentally friendly
option, assuming it's a diesel-powered bus
rather than electric that we might move to,
rather than electric shuttle that we might move to,
in which case, those would be a little moot points.
But that gives us the opportunity
to not only have these routes in place,
but practice some, at least, cursory optimization.
And then, the issue about representation,
it doesn't say particularly how we employ,
who we employ, or the numbers.
It says seek and maintain representation,
pay and benefits.
It doesn't specify any numbers.
That also would be a flexible item under DCA's control
while it could go through these optimizations.
So, I really can't support those amendments,
and I hope that regardless of what
final resolution comes out of council,
I would hope that the City of Denton's representation
to DCTA would take very strongly
the, whatever consensus comes out of council,
and not necessarily make their own decision
in absence of that decision.
- All right, any other questions, comments?
Councilmember Davis.
- I would like the sentiments of this council
to be fully considered when DCTA makes this decision.
I would like not just our representative,
but I would like the entire DCTA board
to sit up and listen.
When Denton, the, I dare say the lead partner
in this coalition has things to say.
The resolution as written does not,
it's practically a dead letter.
It's asking them to make budgetary decisions
that they are not prepared to make.
They're going to the go zones because the bus,
the fixed route buses are not working
from a budgetary standpoint.
They are not moving people in a efficient way
that makes sense with their budget,
asking them to run two services for six months,
concurrently, and they cannot change on a dime.
You get in a contract with VIA,
you can't change that every six weeks
to optimize with whatever your,
change with things on the ground
or whatever the point was there.
And if we want them to collect data,
we don't want them making big changes
in the middle of the data collection period.
The purpose of data collection would be
run both programs simultaneously,
maybe even run one of them for free
with no collecting, no fares,
and let people make the choice.
Asking them to represent this idea
as they would optimize on the go,
that's not the same thing as a data collection period.
And then finally, to the point about
having some flexibility with the workers,
the way this is written is to identify
an option to maintain union representation,
pay and benefits for current drivers.
That means don't fire anyone,
don't have layoffs, don't let any drivers go.
That is an unreasonable request to DCTA.
They will not take that request seriously
because that's asking them to maintain
every current driver that they have.
That's how that's written.
This is a dead letter.
If we amend it a little bit,
if we compromise a little bit,
if we make plain our concerns
in a way that they may accept
and maybe even jump on board with,
that could get something done.
- Okay, let's vote.
So we have a motion by Councilmember Davis,
second by Mayor Hutsmith.
The changes are one, two i, little i to go to 90 days,
two, triple i to be deleted,
and two iv to be rewritten to fill the space
of true triple i, which would have been removed.
So Mayor Davis, I mean, pardon me, Mayor.
Councilmember Davis, how say you?
- No, thank you.
Yes, aye.
- Come on in, the water's great.
Mayor Hutsmith is an aye as well.
Councilmember Beck?
- Nay.
- Councilmember McGuire?
- Nay.
- Okay, Councilmember Armitage?
- No.
- Councilmember Byrd?
- No.
- Okay, Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer?
- Nay.
- Okay, and so that fails five, two.
I'll take a motion.
Councilmember Beck?
- I motion to approve the resolution as written.
- Second, Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer?
- Yeah, I'll second and also comment
that I'd be open to hearing nuanced
amendments that address the intent
and that might be better crafted.
- Well, okay.
- But I second the motion.
- Yeah, we already, we're by that.
And let me see here.
Okay, discussion.
Councilmember McGuire?
- For the sake of clarification,
because I've heard some, I think,
misunderstandings of item, section two, item I,
we could perhaps say provide on-demand service
and service for all existing fixed routes
concurrently for six months from the implementation
of on-demand service to allow DCTI time
to gather data and, comma, after the six-month period,
comma, optimize the delivery model
based on ridership patterns.
- No, no, no, if we, to wordsmith to that degree,
it needs to go back to the draw and board meeting.
- Or it could be a friendly amendment.
- Can it be a friendly, can I pose a friendly amendment?
- No, we're not gonna draft it, redraft,
because the understanding was going into this.
The Mobility Committee that you don't,
the Mobility Committee would have a agreed-upon resolution
that would come to the City Council to then move forward.
And let me put a word of caution,
'cause this is in my notes.
We already had this conversation behind closed doors
about how this draft came to be,
and that's an embarrassment on this body.
And so I'd ask us not to recreate that negative experience
and learn from our past experiences
and not draft something from the dais
and that's just, I'm not gonna do it.
And so if someone wants to vote to do that to be,
then I don't know how that works,
but you're gonna have to do it 'cause I'm not doing it
'cause it's disrespectful.
And it's out of order with what the understanding was.
The understanding for all those watching, understand this.
The Mobility Committee agreed that they would have
to have uniform agreement on a document
and it'd have to come forward for this body to then adopt.
That was the understanding going in.
And so now the wordsmith it on the fly is not an option
because it goes against what was agreed upon
to even get it to this point.
- Can I make a point of procedure?
- State your procedure.
- So a friendly amendment is possible
under Robert's rules.
- Got it.
My understanding was that to get this to this point,
it had to be agreed upon by all three mobility members.
And so this document was agreed and brought forward.
Any substantive changes to that would need,
if you're talking about a date, that's one thing,
but if you're talking about wordsmithing and commas
and that sort of thing, then I don't think that's in line.
- Mayor Huss, but you yourself just seconded a motion
to a changed version from the dais of this resolution.
- And that is possible.
Any form of amending or wordsmithing
or whatever you wanna call it is possible.
I understand that you don't like it.
- That's not what I said.
Don't put that in my mouth.
I did not say that.
- So I understand that you don't think it should happen,
but it can happen.
So I just wanna make sure, just to clarify.
- Okay, Council Member McGuire.
- I would also like to clarify
that my friendly amendment was not a substantive change
to the resolution.
It was an addition of three or four words
that provided a little bit of clarification.
I believe even without my friendly amendment,
that the core of what that section says remains the same.
- Great, then we'll move forward with that.
So Council Member Davis.
- I just, while I respect the intention that,
I guess the offer to consider other language,
to look at some ways to clarify some things,
I offered the amendments that I think
would make a difference to me
in how I'll vote on the resolution.
I think it expresses very well
what the Immobility Committee intended it to express.
- Mayor Proctor-Melter.
- Yeah, and if there are no additional,
kind of refinements to find greater common ground,
that's fine with me.
I would disagree in the strongest possible terms
with the characterization of the process,
which I think was outstanding.
I think it was one of the most productive meetings
I've been in in the time I've been on council.
Secondly, I think your, Mayor, with respect,
I think your understanding of the legislative process
is simply incorrect.
It's exact, what you call works, I think, is legislating.
It's exactly our purview to offer amendments
in the language of ordinances that come before us.
If there are none, there are not enough,
Councilmember McGuire cares to press her point or not,
it's fine with me if she does.
I've said my piece.
- Okay, thank you.
And yeah, I'll pick up that conversation offline
'cause I disagree, but it's not for here.
And so with that, Councilmember McGuire herself said,
on its face, it stands just as well
without the modifications,
and so I'm gonna take her at her word.
- Point of order, point of order.
- State your point of order.
- Councilmember McGuire had a friendly amendment
on the floor.
- She did not.
- She did.
- No, she recommended a verbal change.
Councilmember Armitage said you can have a right to a second,
you can have a right to a friendly amendment.
So it's two different people.
I watch very closely, I try to get it right best I can.
So your point of order is incorrect.
There's no way to play the tape back,
but I have the notes, I'm pretty accurate.
I'm pretty sure I'm right.
- I dispute that, Mayor.
- Okay, well, we will look at the tape
and I'll stand corrected next week when we meet
and we look at the minutes.
But given that, my thought is this.
And this is not for those that voted no
because they're gonna vote yes to this.
For those watching the track alone.
We give staff direction every week.
And so it begs the question, why do we need a resolution
to give our elected representative,
our nominated representative on this body?
And I would tell you it's to kind of put on a production,
if you will.
I'll represent to you that I talked to our representative
on the DCTA board and not one of these council members
has contacted him to express their thoughts,
to meet with him, to go over their details,
to voice their concerns about the data, not one.
But yet they'll ask for a resolution to send as a,
to put on a show.
That's fair.
That's their decision.
And so I just point that out for those tracking along.
I'll point out also that if you look it up,
the city of Denton had city employees
that it took to the state Supreme Court and we won.
But yet this body would then try to dig in on a body
that does not fall under the city of Denton.
I feel like if we're going to hold our city employees,
which we do have a fiduciary duty to our citizens
and our employees, then we should hold everyone
to that same standard and we should scrutinize
at the same level.
So there's a bifurcation here that I can't support.
Then I also say, I'll ask you to take note of this.
There's a request for a test,
but there's no specificity to that test,
which sets up the argument that this test period
didn't meet whatever arbitrary goal
because we all know a test has to be measurable,
has to be specific.
Smart that acronym, there's no specificity provided
for our representative or that board to act upon
and that sets them up for failure.
And then I'll also go to this.
The test will be tainted because even if they execute on it,
which I agree with Council Member Davis,
but even if they execute on it,
someone will use the go zone opportunity, someone will.
And so the bus ridership will go down
because someone's gonna opt for door to door,
curb to curb service, and it's gonna serve
our disability community better.
And so now you're asking for a test,
you're asking to run side by side,
you're asking to look at the numbers,
well, the bus numbers are gonna go down.
I can guarantee that.
To some degree, they just are by the nature of the beast.
If you have an option, one or the other.
So again, the no specificity, the test with no direction,
and no data point that they disagree with.
The committee, there's no data that's given
that says we disagree, we find this in flaw,
we find this in error, and that's a problem for me.
And then I'll just say this.
When the message is sent to the city rep to say,
hey, is this resolution to ask?
And I hope that our rep heeds that.
For those that hadn't watched, I would ask you,
why would a city rep that the bulk of this body's
been trying to get rid of for the last three months,
would that person then respond well
to someone that's guaranteed,
as soon as we can get rid of you, we will, right?
That's just, when you talk about good faith negotiation,
you talk about good faith and treating our partners well,
how would you feel if this body said,
hey, as soon as we can get rid of you, we are,
but do us a solid, you know?
And so I don't know how that rep is gonna vote,
but the message has been sent three months ago
and continues to be sent, so I don't really adopt that.
And I'll just conclude with, I'll just say generally,
staff, thank you for your work in the Mobility Committee,
that in my, and I am, if I stand alone,
I stand alone, that was done less than great,
and you have my sincere apologies,
and we will try to be better about as a,
kind of a directors and policy makers
of being more respectful of the people
that actually do the work and cognizant of that,
your professionalism, and heed that at every turn,
I would hope we mature to that level.
So that's it, we'll vote.
We have a motion by Councilman Beck,
second by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer.
Councilman Beck, how say you?
- Aye, and I wish the mayor would refrain
from gaslighting on these subject matters.
- Mayor Pro Tem.
- In order that we can speak as a body,
not as just seven different voices, I vote aye,
so that there will be a resolution
to direct our representative,
and I'll tell you now, if our representative reflects
the will of Council, I would support that representative.
- Councilmember Davis.
- Nay.
- Councilmember Burt.
- Aye.
- Councilmember McGuire.
- Aye.
- Councilmember Armitage.
- Sorry, I'm sorry, but I've got a procedural question
before proceeding, I'm trying to figure out
why we're not incorporating a friendly amendment.
There might be a good reason if someone could just explain,
because it's an important amendment.
I also have another friendly amendment I wanted to make.
I feel like we've skipped something in the process,
but maybe I'm misunderstanding.
- Okay, well, we have a motion, and we have a second.
- Can I just get an answer to that question,
like what about the friendly amendment?
- There was not a friendly amendment made.
- Okay, so--
- I disputed that, Mr. Mayor.
- Yeah, and I dispute that too, but also it can be made,
okay, it can be made, and so I--
- Ms. City Attorney, we're in the process of voting.
- I did not hear a friendly amendment made.
I heard reference to one, and I'm certain I'm clear on that,
and we're in the process of voting.
We have a motion, we have a second,
we have all but one vote.
Take it from there.
- Procedurally, there was a point of order raised,
and the mayor ruled on the point of order.
And the mayor ruled on the point of order.
There was an opportunity at that point
to appeal the decision of the chair,
which did not happen, and it moved on to the vote.
So now the vote has been called.
So the opportunity to do that, to address that, has passed.
- Councilmember Arnter, I'll say you.
- Yes, and I'm gonna add to that, 'cause,
of what's happened, I hope that the DCTA board
is watching and sees that there is flexibility there,
both in the extent to which the go zones can get rolled out,
and also, by that I don't mean the time period,
I mean, it doesn't have to be 100% of the go zones,
it doesn't say that there, and the people who wrote it,
I wasn't one of the writers of this,
but have said that that flexibility is intentional.
So I just want to make sure that they understand
this can be scaled for affordability.
So the way that our representative to DCTA
and others on DCTA discuss and consider this resolution
will be really telling, will be able to tell
if they've listened and seen that that flexibility is there,
or if they see it as differently.
It's very unfortunate that we are not being allowed
to accept friendly amendments that would clarify
the language to respond to precisely the--
- Point of order, point of order, mayor.
This is out of order.
- Yes, I vote yes, I vote yes, sir.
- Okay, and Mayor Hatsbeth has a no.
So that passes five to two.
Takes us to our one public hearing.
It's A, it's PD 21003B, hold a public hearing
and consider adoption of ordinance
of the city of Denton, Texas,
regarding a change in the zoning district
and use classifications from residential 3R3 district
to plan development, PD.
- Good evening, mayor and members of council.
My name is Sean Jacobson, Associate Planner.
I'll be presenting this item and I'm just going
to open the PowerPoint and we'll get going.
Okay.
Okay.
All right, thank you.
So the item before us tonight is a request
to rezone from the R3 district to a PD district
with an R7 base zoning, 17 acres.
It's on the west side of North Bonnie Bray Street,
south side of westward.
The applicant is proposing a new use
not previously developed in Denton,
similar to multifamily, five units or more on one lot.
Also has some similarities to single family
because there would be no more than two units
in any one building.
Because this didn't match any definition in the DDC,
we looked at how other cities were doing it
and they went in the direction of a PD
and we believe that's a good approach.
It's allowed us to work with the applicant
to tailor the standards for this development
in terms of landscape, architecture, et cetera.
So the applicant is proposing a new use attached
to multifamily dwelling.
That would apply only to this property,
but it provides that definition that's specific
to their use.
So limiting the number of units,
limiting the number of units within one building,
limiting the height, et cetera.
As you can see here, the development plan that's provided,
including that green box, the public walking green
that the developer's offering to provide
to the neighborhood as part of this development.
You know, we have our general criteria of approval
as well as our specific criteria of approval
for plan developments.
We'll touch on the high notes of that.
So we always have to look at our future land use map.
The future land use here is moderate density residential,
calls for four to 12 dwelling units per acre.
This project proposes 11.55 dwelling units per acre,
falls within that.
It also meets a number of other comprehensive plan goals
in the realm of providing infill housing
along major corridors in a way that's more compatible
with the surrounding neighborhood
versus what you'd have with multifamily,
provides diverse housing styles
to meet our diverse needs within the city.
And it's providing a place to live that's within walking
distance of retail and parks.
We also wanna look at how this impacts the area
and how it minimizes any adverse impacts.
So I mentioned that the neighbors had concerns
about the impact on folks living along westward,
what they would be looking at,
whether they'd have anywhere to walk their dogs.
And so the developer proposed to provide
a community walking grain outside of their fence
to provide an eight foot tall fence,
as well as limit the height of buildings
along that westward drive within 65 feet to one story
to address that concern,
as well as an expanded buffer along the western boundary
with the adjacent single family neighbors.
And again, a limitation on height to one story
within 100 feet of that boundary.
Just overall, there's a design that is more compatible
with this because it is single family duplex style
with the surrounding neighborhood.
It does comply with all standards of the DDC,
except where the PD set specific development standards,
and actually it seeds both landscape and tree canopy.
Meets nearly all single family building,
so architectural standards and actually increases
the number of architectural features required
in the front facade versus what would be required
for single family development.
Site landscaping, it's noted 19% higher landscape percentage
than the base zoning district, 22% higher tree canopy.
284 large canopy trees, it's actually more
than we could require if it developed
as a normal neighborhood by quite a bit.
Providing an additional buffer along Bonnie Bray,
and providing amenity areas, including a walking trail
around the pond, butterfly gardens,
and additional 27 canopy trees within those amenity areas.
Providing amenitized courtyards, minimum of 450 square feet
and five designs, and for each one of those houses,
providing a backyard with the same minimum
20% landscape area as we require
for single family neighborhoods.
And I just note here that community walking green
being provided at 22,916 square feet.
Some of that is from right away dedication,
but over 9,000 square feet is coming out
of developable area being provided for the use
of those residents and being landscaped.
And this does actually lead into an ability
to walk from westward through the development
to Bonnie Bray, so there's a pedestrian walking easement,
a public access easement, that provides that connectivity
and in a way that encourages mobility.
So you can see here another image of that,
just making that walk more enjoyable
with the street trees along it with benches provided.
In terms of providing public facilities,
the TIA concluded that with the recommended mitigations
for this, including the developer paying
for a hooded left turn, that there would not be
a significant negative impact on traffic in the area.
This is adjacent to a park,
and with the upcoming Bonnie Bray widening
and this development, there would be a safe
less than 10 minute walk to that adjacent park.
School generation, emergency response,
and the fiscal impact analysis all came back
with a positive report.
We'd be looking at positive fiscal impact
over 10 years from stabilization.
We did do public outreach and received one response
in favor from the property owner.
Two neighborhood meetings for which you had the backup.
So overall, based on these criteria,
the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval,
six to zero with staff conditions.
Staff does recommend approval subject to conditions
related to requiring that the developer
and the developer's support of this to pay for the cost
of designing and installing the hooded left turn
prior to final planning of this property.
So with that, I will stand for any questions.
- Thank you, and I'll open the public hearing
just so I don't forget to do that,
and we do have the two cards in support
from the applicant, Rob Baldwin and Elizabeth Good,
so I'll have those, and Council Member Davis.
- Thank you, Mayor.
Sean, did I understand you say
that there were no responses in opposition?
- That is correct.
- Okay, it was a pretty involved neighborhood, though.
I mean, I've certainly spoken to folks about it.
There was a neighborhood meeting, and in our backup,
we've got some responses from the neighborhood meeting,
but as it stands in front of us now,
recommended by PNZ and no responses in opposition, correct?
- That is correct.
- Thank you.
- Other questions for staff?
Council Member Bet.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Sean, I just wanna confirm that we're,
unlike some of our other developments,
we have a pretty, already involved a relationship
with TxDOT on these left-turn lanes,
and this is sort of already in progress.
It's not nebulous, it's not vaporware.
It's sort of already in process
to get the entrances and exits that would be required.
- So in this case, it would require TxDOT approval
in this place, but if it was part of the widening.
However, if it was not approved,
it would still be something that could be installed later.
So it would involve TxDOT if it was done
as part of the widening project,
but it would be done regardless.
- Okay, so we have flexibility in our options
in any way it goes.
Okay, that helps, thank you.
- Other questions for staff?
Council Member Armitter.
- So this is a question kind of more about PDs in general
than this specific one, but it applies to this specific one.
So I know that, and this is future-looking,
that when there's a PD, or at least it's my understanding,
please correct me if I'm wrong,
that somebody in the future,
the distant future could come in by this property,
and they would also get the PD, right?
They wouldn't have to, they would inherit that.
They wouldn't have to go through the process again, correct?
- Yes, this PD would be the zoning
that is in place on this property.
- Okay, and so the thing that I'm shaking on
that you can probably help me with is,
because there have been, as Council Member Davis said,
in a very outspoken neighborhood,
there have been no objections, that's a big thing.
And so this looks pretty good to me,
so I'm thinking about what could be
the potential future harm of somebody coming in
and wanting to do something very different within this PD?
I'm trying to figure out what flexibility they would have
under this PD, would they,
do they have to stick to these specifics
of the hooded left-turn lane from north,
or no, I'm sorry, that's the recommendation.
The specific requirements of this PD,
are they able to add, would they be able to add their own
to expand it, if you could just flesh that out,
and apologies, because it's future thinking also,
but also because PDs might not be new,
but Council has recently refined the PD process,
and we're still learning about this process,
so thanks for-- - Yeah, certainly.
So this has been a very, it's been designed
with a lot of detail that's gone into setting
minimum requirements, the landscape plan that I noted,
they would need to follow that exactly as it's provided.
There's some very minimal flexibility written in
in terms of the ability to alternate between species,
but it would require, it would have to be still
within things that were drought tolerant,
that were on our list, so where there's flexibility
that's built in, it's at a minimal level,
any significant changes, that would have to come back
to City Council to address.
- Okay, any other questions for staff?
Okay, Council Member Burke.
- It just means when you're, when you move over
into a left lane and there's a section of cement
in front of that, it's kind of separated to the side,
so that you can be in a left turning lane
without blocking the passing, folks passing to your right.
- Okay, we have a caller, so my question to the applicants,
do you want to speak in advance of that?
Do you want to hear that point and then speak?
Okay, great.
Stuart, if you will bring up the caller.
- Yes, sir, and while we are bringing the caller in,
I will also mention that we had one person
fill out a virtual white card.
That person was against this item.
This comment form was emailed to the entire City Council
and the City Secretary to be recorded.
- Thank you.
Are you there?
- Good evening.
- Good evening, if you could give me your name and address,
then you can begin to make your comments.
You have four minutes.
- Thank you, Mayor and Council.
This is Drew Christ.
My address is 2208 Carriage Hill.
For reference, I'm about three streets due west
of the discussed PD this evening.
I'm calling with a recommendation
that council approve this PD as written and presented.
I, as a homeowner neighboring this property,
came to council years ago on a similar property
directly south of this one with a request of council
to really consider any developer and any development
in this census block group
and any design to improve walkability
and multiple modes of transportation.
This specific block group has two main issues
that I think are important for council to recognize.
First being that it is not very walkable.
Different developers have developed unique shape parcels
over the years and have really maximized lots
without considering future connectivity.
This PD is the last opportunity for any developer
to provide any sort of hike and bike trail
or even vehicular connectivity
from the center of this census block group
to the extremities without having to navigate
on the highway access road, a 40 mile an hour road,
which is Bonnie Bray or a 40 mile an hour road,
which is Windsor.
The developer has gone above and beyond
to provide a public hike and bike walking trail
through the parcel for the residents,
not only of the perch itself,
but also for everyone else in the block group to use.
I think that's incredible.
That's a real amenity for a non-paying customer,
which is, it's admirable.
In addition, as staff mentioned earlier,
the developer has gone above and beyond
to provide additional trees, native landscaping.
This census block group, according to a nonprofit
that uses LIDAR data to measure tree canopy coverage
has identified this census block group
as the 67th worst tree canopy covered area
in the city of Denton out of 70 block groups.
So the fact that this developer and this PD called out
for a very large amount of tree canopy
and native tree canopy to be implemented
in the heart of the neighborhood, it's really encouraging.
So I thank you so much for your time, for your evening.
I would have had my kid give his support as well,
but I sent him into bed about 20 minutes ago.
So unfortunately, you just stuck with me.
- Well, thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Any questions?
Council Member Davis has a question.
- Hey, Drew, how's it going?
- It's going well.
- I appreciate your advocacy on this.
Keep pressing forward, there's more development
to come kind of in that area,
especially to the south of you there.
And can you please email me that metric
you were just talking about
that ranks the census block, census blocks by canopy?
- Yes, sir.
- Thank you. - Yes, sir.
I would be more than happy to.
- Okay, any other questions?
Council Member Beck has a question.
- I just wanted to, could you send it to staff
or all of council?
So, I mean, I'm interested too.
It's just a small land on.
- Of course.
- Thank you.
Okay, all right.
Thank you very much for the call.
Okay.
- Y'all have a good evening.
- Likewise.
Do you have a preference which, okay.
Thank you.
So, Elizabeth, good.
So the applicant has, I do believe 10 minutes, is that?
- I'll keep it very short.
- Okay, go right ahead.
- Sure, and thank you, Sean, very much
for your thorough presentation.
My name's Elizabeth Good,
and my address is 1515 West 6th Street in Austin, Texas.
Thank you all for having us tonight.
So, I'll just expand a little bit more
without giving you the slideshow
on our neighborhood engagement.
So, as Sean said, we did have two formal public meetings
that were held over Zoom.
We had pretty good turnout there,
probably eight to 10 folks from the neighborhood,
sometimes different each time.
We also had separate meetings,
the first time with the head of the HOA,
just to introduce ourselves, show the plan,
get her initial feedback before talking to the larger group,
and then also with the Immaculate Conception Church
and school heads of both of those departments
to our north separately.
They were in support of the project
and sent us an email that probably didn't get formally filed,
but they are in support of the project
and excited about it.
So, yeah, we're happy that we're providing connection
through the neighborhood,
and we're exceeding the open space requirements,
the tree canopy requirements,
and the landscape buffer requirements,
while also providing lower height
than would actually be allowed under the current zoning,
even though we have a little bit more density on the block.
So, I'm happy to answer any other questions
you guys might have.
- Questions for the applicant?
Council Member Davis.
- Thank you, Mayor.
Can you tell us a little bit more
about the route of the sidewalk,
just because I frankly missed it
until it was pointed out to me?
- Sure.
- So, if you could just explain where that goes.
I was all ready to fight you about a sidewalk,
and then I won already.
- Yeah, let me, if I can use Sean's presentation,
if you have one of the pages with the site plan,
and I'll show it there.
Yeah, there we go.
So, I don't know if you're able to see the mouse at all.
Yeah, here we go.
So, if you live in the neighborhood,
say over here off of Westward and Crest Meadow,
like Drew, and wanted to come through,
so you'd walk along the new community green
that we're gonna be developing,
and maintaining, or ride your bike,
and then as you turn here on Northway,
which is just behind the church's property,
there's gonna be a pedestrian access
right here into the property,
and then our easement, public access easement,
will kind of follow our sidewalks we have,
we'll do a little crosswalk hatching,
and it'll come out through a pedestrian gate
up at the front onto Bonnie Bray.
- Sure.
- Okay, any other questions?
Councilman Bet?
- And I can't quite tell,
but is there access to Aurora to the south,
and not that community to the south?
- There's not.
I think the plot that was recently done
for the single family development there
was already plotted before we came in,
and it's all homes that back up to us there,
so there was no way for us to be able
to pull that street through or anything.
- All right, thank you.
- Any other questions?
Seeing none, thank you very much, appreciate it.
And then I'll call up Mr. Rob Baldwin,
if he gives his name, address,
you as well, we'll have 10 minutes.
- Good evening, Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen.
My name's Rob Baldwin,
office at 3904 Elm Street, Suite B in Dallas.
I don't have anything to add except for,
Mr. Jacobson has just been spectacular to work with.
He's been very helpful in taking a project
that was great to begin with
and make it very innovative and thoughtful,
and so I just wanna let you know,
the planners don't always get pats on the back.
This gentleman deserves one,
but I'm here to answer any questions you may have as well,
so thank you very much for your time.
- Great, thank you, thank you for the kind words.
Any questions?
Seeing none, okay, thank you very much.
All right, I'll take a motion.
Well, I'll close the public hearing
and then I'll take a motion, Council Member Davis.
- Move approval with conditions as presented.
- Thank you, Council Member Beck.
- I second.
- Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Davis,
seconded by Council Member Beck.
Any other discussion?
Seeing none, Council Member Davis, I'll say you.
- Aye.
- Council Member Beck.
- Aye.
- Council Member Guire.
- I'd just like to say that we've had so much talk about
walkability and density and missing middle housing,
and this is exactly the kind of development
that I think we've been talking about,
so thank you for keeping those priorities in mind.
I vote aye.
- Okay, Council Member Armitage.
- Yes.
- Mayor Proctor Meltzer.
- Well said, Council Member McGuire.
- Aye.
- Council Member Byrd.
- Aye.
- And Mayor Husspeth as well.
Good luck on your project, thank you very much.
Appreciate y'all being here.
- Thank you very much.
- All right, that concludes, as mentioned earlier,
the other two items will come back to us.
That brings us to concluding items.
Anyone have concluding items?
One more time.
I'll just say this, that I want to thank Tim Powers
for him stepping up and helping UNT in the Jazz Fest stage
and helping that move forward, so I thank you, Mr. Powers,
for your generosity in that regard,
and I have a family friend, Justin Hawk,
whose birthday is coming up,
so I want to wish him happy birthday.
And then, let's see, I think that is everything I have,
so with that, we will adjourn at 9.31 p.m., thank you.