Aug 10, 2021 City Council on 2021-08-10 2:00 PM

Good afternoon. It is 3 48. We have finished our closed session items. So I'll bring us back on the record. We do have a quorum brings back on the record. And we're working through our work session now. So the first item is item a ID 211321. Yes. So let me say that again ID 211321. Receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding a COVID-19 update and potential options and considerations for the City of Denton. Good afternoon Mayor City Council, Sara Keuchler, Chief of Staff. One second while I share my presentation. So this work session will be broken up into two parts. The first part will be our standing update to City Council with some updates on the city's response to COVID-19. And then in the second half, we're going to present some options and seek council direction on if you would like to start some programs to increase and support vaccination efforts in the community using American rescue plan of funds. So I'll go ahead and jump right into the presentation. I'm going to cover these first two areas with a situational update of COVID-19 and then as well as reviewing the state orders and some actions that we've taken as a city. This is meant to be an informational update. And then once I'm done with that, I'll take down the presentation for questions before we go into the second half of the presentation. So the first part is a situational update on COVID-19. And we did ask a representative from Denton County Public Health to join, but unfortunately they were unable to send a representative today. Dr. Richardson is out of town and then they have their county budget hearings this afternoon. But what I will do is try to share a few charts and statistics with you, but I also encourage you to watch Denton County Public Health's presentation to the commissioner's court this morning. Staff has also been trying to put weekly summaries in your Friday report so that you have the latest information as well. So let me go ahead and go to the other screen. So again, just going to share a few highlights that we heard this morning. So this is the overall cases of COVID-19 in Denton County. You'll see here for active cases, just over 4,600 active cases. That is the highest number that we've seen since April of this year. And kind of moving into this next chart, this is reported weekly cases by age. So you are seeing those numbers increase week to week. These charts are always somewhat delayed when it is reported, not by symptom onset. And so there are different charts. And so I'll show you that symptom onset chart in a few slides. But I do want to note, if you are reading the Denton County Public Health press releases, yesterday there was a total daily case amount of 780. That is a little high and for a number of different reasons. But one of them being is that they've actually hired more staff that came on board late last week. And so they're having staff following up on those cases. And so you're seeing them kind of catching up with a backlog. So that's where that significant jump you've seen yesterday, one of the reasons why it occurred. Moving into COVID-19 hospitalizations. So you'll see, again, that uptick in hospitalizations in Denton County. As of today, I think or yesterday it was 126 patients were in Denton County hospitals related to COVID-19. I also share one really important fact that Denton County has shared over the last couple weeks. They believe that approximately 90% of those patients that are in the hospitals related to COVID-19 are unvaccinated. So it is very important that individuals in our community get vaccinated. Vaccinations are still an effective tool towards preventing serious illness, hospitalization or death. And then going to move on through. This is the other chart I mentioned just showing symptom onset weekly cases. And this also does include by age range. So you'll see those different colors and subsets again, as we move through the weeks and we see this recent increase. You are seeing more cases in this age 30 to 39, 20 to 29. There are lower vaccination rates in those age groups. And then also in the 20 to 19 where still lower vaccination rates for those 12 to 19 year olds are eligible for the vaccine. And then under 12, which are currently not eligible yet for the vaccine per CDC and FDA approval. This chart is from the CDC showing the different variants. Going forward through the weeks, you'll see that really fast progression of this dark orange, which is the Delta variant. So, and Dr. Richardson has said this before, almost all of the COVID-19 that exists in the community now is the Delta variant. And so they are continuing to monitoring these charts and research from the CDC in regards to variants. I'll talk about vaccines more throughout the presentation, but Denton County Public Health is continuing their vaccination efforts. And so last week they had a total of 162 vaccines that they gave out. One positive piece of news is that they are seeing more coming in to get their first dose. So that might be due to some of the increase of illness out in the community. Some may be coming in to change their mind to get their vaccine. So they saw that as positive. Also positive is that more of the 12 age group, 12 to 15, are coming in to get their first dose. And then lastly, this chart here shows the COVID-19 related deaths. And so you'll see the date of death in the red bar line, very high, you know, last winter. And that has continued to decrease and has remained relatively low at this time. Some of that is that some of the most vulnerable individuals to COVID-19 have received their vaccines. Some of those older age groups, the most vulnerable, have higher vaccination rates. So I'm going to stop sharing this presentation and slides from Denton County. And again, encourage you to visit the presentation from this morning for any further information. And go back into my presentation in regards to some information and kind of review of some actions taken by the state and then some actions that we've taken here from a city organizational perspective in regards to our workforce. So first I'll start out with Executive Order GA38. So the Governor Abbott took this action on July 29. And this was really just an action to combine a series of prior orders to get them all into one order for uniformity. These are items that we've gone over previously that have not changed, but just want to hit on again in regards to vaccinations and then masks. So for vaccinations, in summary, no government entity can force an individual to get a COVID-19 vaccine under the emergency authorization use nor can a government entity force an individual to provide documentation of their vaccination status in order to receive a service or enter a place. And then in regards to masks, his order also states that no governmental entity can mandate masks. And it does impose a fine for government officials or entities that do not comply. It's a fine of up to $1,000. That's not real clear what the parameters and how that fine would be applied if it's just per official or if it would be per day. So that's unclear. A couple of other things I do want to mention and kind of pause at this slide is that private businesses still have the ability to require their employees to wear masks or for anyone entering into their business to wear masks. So that does remain a tool available to private businesses and private property owners. And also, as you've seen, probably through the last few days in the news, there are some government entities that are trying to challenge the governor's orders. We don't know where that will end up. So we're kind of monitoring that very closely. Just to mention two school districts, Austin and Dallas ISD have taken actions to mandate masks on their school properties. So that would be for any students or staff on their own school properties. Again, we'll see what may come after they've done that action to kind of defy the governor's order. The other one that has shown up in the news is the Dallas County Judge Jenkins. So there's actually a lawsuit right now between the county judge who was mandating masks be worn in county court and a county commissioner who refused to wear that mask and said he didn't have to underneath the governor's order. And so that was a lawsuit that was filed. Judge Jenkins has tried to take another action in court to make a district judge weigh in and decide if the governor's orders are actually enforceable or not. So we don't know what that judge, if they'll rule on that, how they'd rule, it's still to be determined. But again, that's coming off of that narrow lawsuit that was filed. It was just an added action onto that. So just wanted to provide some of those updates as I know we've received some questions and it has been in the news as well. So moving on to another state action just to inform you of and we've put this in the Friday report before. But when the pandemic first started, the governor Abbott suspended certain open meeting statues to allow governing bodies to meet fully virtually during the pandemic. Those suspensions will be lifted as of September 1st. So that means the Texas Open Meetings Act will be in full force and effect again. So what does that mean for Denton? After September 1st, a quorum has to be physically present in person in order to have that governing body meets. As long as there's a quorum in person, the remaining members could participate virtually and that's allowed under our council rules of procedure. We amended council, amended those in May to allow that option in certain circumstances and one of those circumstances is when there's a local disaster declaration in place. So our current local disaster declaration is in effect through September 30th and will also be brought back to council in September to see if you wish to extend that disaster declaration further. But in short, after September 1st, quorum needs to be in person and then the remaining members could participate virtually. And then lastly, we've also provided this to city council last week but wanted to provide some information of actions that we've taken as we've continued to monitor the conditions in the community as well as in our own workforce to try to limit any potential exposures or transmission of this Delta variant. So just to kind of quickly go through those, we have taken action to go back to more remote work where possible through the end of August and that's really to try to have less people in our facilities, less opportunity for that transmission. However, all of our city facilities will remain open. We do have minimal staffing to make sure that we're still providing that service to the community. We're also highly encouraging face coverings per the CDC recommendations in indoor public spaces. We're wanting our employees to adopt that as much as possible. We're encouraging it as a leadership team. We are trying to set those examples, voluntarily get our staff to do so when they're indoor in public spaces. In addition, we're moving back to more virtual meetings. So we have teams meetings, other things, trying to limit the amount of in-person meetings that we're having. We've also revisited the public meeting schedule for August. So if there were some boards and commission meetings and that really weren't necessary, didn't have any urgent items, we've now moved those to September or October. And then lastly, I just want to really acknowledge our Human Resources Department, which continues to do almost 24/7 contact tracing. So they're trying, as soon as they hear of a potential exposure, they're getting those notifications out as soon as they can so that if a person has to quarantine per the CDC recommendations, they're doing that as quickly as possible. They're doing a tremendous job and really just want to acknowledge everything that they're doing, working very long hours and weekends. I touched on this before in regards to city facilities. So they are remaining open with minimum staffing. And then we also have updated all of our signage at our city facilities to share with any visitors what the latest CDC recommendations are. We also benefit a number of actions that we took throughout the course of the pandemic to kind of modify our facilities to make sure there's more distance, more barriers, less touch points, better air filtration systems. And then we'll continue to monitor the situation as we go forward. So that's the first half of the presentation. I'll take it down for any questions before we move into vaccination efforts and then seeking some direction from counsel. And so thank you, but I did miss a step. So I want to go back and so that if there's staff waiting, we can clearly communicate for them. And if they're not, they don't have to wait, they can. So with respect to the consent agenda items, so before we do questions for staff on this topic, just, is there anyone that needed to pull anything from the consent agenda or had questions regarding consent agenda? Let's address that. Councilmember McGuire? Thank you, Mayor. I need to pull a consent agenda item C for recusal. Okay. Anything else on the consent agenda? Councilmember Amater? I need to recuse from item C. Okay. All right. Anything else? Great. So, okay. So we're, sorry, just needed to clear that up so that staff knew. So, okay. So now we're back on 3A and questions for staff regarding this, the first portion of the COVID-19 update. Seeing none. Well, okay. Well, Councilmember Amater, then Councilmember Beck, please. Sorry. Sorry. I had a request to speak on, somehow it went away. I don't know how that happened. Oh, well, I didn't, because we're all, thank you. I toggle. Thank you. Sorry about that. Thank you. So yeah, question. So the governor's executive order, it doesn't prohibit requiring a negative test. Is that correct? It only requires compelling vaccinations and compelling masks. It doesn't prohibit requiring a negative test. Is that correct? I'm going to ask our legal counsel if she knows the answer to that or if we need to just research that and get you an answer back. We'll follow up on it, but I believe that is correct, that it doesn't speak to the test, only to the vaccine. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. To me, that's a, hopefully he's not listening. You know, a significant area where, you know, obviously there are some, you know, kind of potential difficulties, but I've kind of seen situations where people line up in a socially distanced way or even in cars or in a parking lot for a rapid test with a 15 minute wait. That can, it can be done. So I'd be very curious to hear that. Okay. Council Member Beck, and then we'll be back to the button. Sorry, I just didn't load out of practice. Thank you, Mayor. A couple questions. So one of the things that I think we've split a difference on, and it's not clear that anything was in G838, was city employees are still employees. So to what extent, and again, this is probably a legal question, to what extent can city staff be mandated to take certain precautions the way any employer would? What's the status of that? I'll say it's a little unclear in the order. It does specifically state that government entities cannot force persons. So it's not very clear if that also includes our employees or not. I think the governor probably meant it to include our employees. We've seen one municipality take an action to directly challenge that and require it for their employees. Not sure if there's going to be any response from the governor, seeing that as defying his order. But we do very much care about our workforce and our employees. And as you've seen, we've taken a number of actions voluntarily to try to reduce what might be potential transmission. And the reason I ask this, for the same reason that you're seeing the school districts push back, you're seeing lots of places push back where the governor is intruding into the bailiwick of these other entities. And so I personally think our governor is extremely mistaken and being acting foolhardy and without expertise in this knowledge and not listening to people with expertise. And so, you know, I personally would be pro implementing masking policy the way any other employer would. In fact, I personally would be pro, you know, limiting public facilities in ways that the governor specifically precluded. So I'm just kind of drawing a line in the sand that I think that we need to take steps when this kind of thing is going on. Related to those judicial actions, do we have any -- I know law moves at the speed of law. But do we have any idea about when some of these challenges will be heard? I'm going to ask Catherine to weigh in on that. There are two cases, one out of San Antonio and, of course, the one in Dallas, that have requests for TRO pending. The one in Dallas, I believe that case actually, the TRO started being heard today at 2.30. I would expect the one in San Antonio to be heard fairly rapidly too. We don't always have notice in advance. I'm not sure where the one is currently in Dallas in terms of where they are in the hearing, if that has concluded. But that's something that I would expect that we would be able to report back to you on this week. This week, okay. And my last question sort of in this area is do we have any safety requirements that we make staff undertake, not just in other categories that are not specifically COVID-related? For example, hard hats, do we require vaccinations? Are there other safety precautions that we're requiring our city employees to undertake? Councilmember Beck, yes. And particularly, of course, our fire department certainly has certain requirements. From a safety perspective, yes. Steel-toed boots, hard hats in those working environments. Sometimes hepatitis B shots, depending on your work environment and where you're doing your work. There are some, yes. So we have in place safety precautions, including vaccinations for some of our roles, where that's still in our power. Okay. That's very interesting. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions here? Mayor Putnam-Melter? Yeah. Thank you. A couple, I'm kind of looking up and down the spectrum. It's kind of really sad that, in my view, I do feel the governor's just being political when lives are at stake and we need to kind of respond to professional guidance. Now, one of the things we were able to do when we were on an up curve previously was require posting of signs to businesses. At that time, we actually required the signs to require masking. And on the kind of weak end of the spectrum, it's clear that we're being told we can't require that. But I think to a certain extent, a lot of the people we're not heavily positioned around this. We're just looking for kind of what is the accepted practice? What's the guideline here in this community? What's acceptable? And my question is, would we be within our powers to require businesses to post signs that say City of Denton strongly encourages following the CDC guidelines, which as of this date, are for wear a mask indoors? And I know some may say, it's not like nobody has heard this, but it's different if it's posted. And the point of my question is, I do believe people will take cues from what's kind of present everywhere. So that's my question. Would that be within our powers? And I guess I'm asking legal. I'm not sure if we can immediately answer that unless Katherine can. I can speak to some of the practical difficulties of doing that, but I'm not sure if we can be answered immediately. And actually, let me just add parenthetically before you respond. We were never able to enforce it. So if the idea that we wouldn't be able to enforce it, we've been through that before. And I understand that creates some tense situations. On the one side of the ledger, on the other side, save lives. But go ahead. I don't believe that there is any specific prohibition on requiring signage such as you've suggested. Thank you. And then sort of on the other end of the spectrum, I sort of can't believe I'm going to be asking this, but we have such disrespect for life, you know, coming from the state government. How can we get to greater clarity on what the fines would be if we do act to protect the health and safety of den residents by making a requirement? You know, there's this thousand dollar thing. I mean, I would be happy to contribute my, you know, council pay to cover, you know, the elected officials who would support that. You know, if it's the way it looks in the law, but we hear that it's not that clear. So how do we get to clarity on that? In large part, we get to clarity by these things being tested, which that specific provision is new enough that it has not been yet to my knowledge. And are there other consequences besides the fine? Potentially. Potentially, there are other actions that the attorney general could take to enforce the provisions of GA 38. We have not seen that happen yet. In this particular case, we've seen it in other circumstances. No further questions. Okay, Councilmember Armitage. Yes, following that, I concur with what Councilmember Beck said. I would like for the city to be part of that test instead of waiting for other cities to test it out. The reason why being that as we see our COVID numbers rise, time is of the essence. And those entities that get to be part of this test to see, you know, what exactly the fines and penalties are, you know, they are getting the benefit of further mitigation at this crucial moment against COVID of COVID spread, you know, versus us waiting without it. And just for a point of comparison, in the winter storm, you know, a decision was made where we really didn't know on a day to day, even moment to moment basis, you know, what the price of gas would be to keep us connected to the grid. But, you know, but a decision was made and a good decision to stay hooked up to the grid and to pay what it costs because of the value of human life. So even though in that case, we were being charged by, you know, private companies and not by as a penalty, you know, by a state government, it's still if we're just looking at, you know, money paid, you know, we ended up spending a lot of money to keep people's power on to save lives. And I haven't heard anybody argue that that was not worthwhile. So I think that, you know, we should be open to and I will say I'm strongly in favor of, you know, doing what it takes going day to day moment by moment to do that, to save lives. I think this is an excellent opportunity for our citizens of the city to be forthright on what they think and they need to tell us they need to guide us on what we need to do here. I know what I want to do, I know what I want to say, but I know that I probably won't say in the most fashionable, appropriate way when I think about certain people in their care taking of us, but I want right now for anybody, any citizen that's listening or watching and get up out of the chair, get out of your armchair quarterbacking on the Facebook website, whatever, whatever you're thinking, you need to let us know that so we can make this decision for you how far we're going to go with this charge. I personally, you know, as a citizen, I like to make sure that I'm doing my part to take care of my fellow citizens and if I were sitting, standing on the other side, I would definitely make sure that I told my council member that I want them to take care of my counterparts, my neighbors, my children's friends, their parents, I want everybody to be safe. So this is our time. This is our time and regardless of what happens, we know that we will have an opportunity to do the right thing at the right time in this moment. Let's find out what happens. My city council will pay for the month. I am more than happy to tack it on if that's what the cost may be. I don't have a problem with that. I just have a problem with just the audacity to say that you care about us and you want to take care of us but you're not taking care of us. So I'll just leave it right there. Thank you very much. >> Okay. Councilman Bay. >> I'm actually precluded from getting council pay and I'd happily still contribute the equivalent of that fine out of personal funds. So because for all the reasons that the other councilor said, I said at the beginning, I would be interested in moving ahead on actions to increase our masking regardless of the governor's orders and increase our requirements for testing awareness and vaccination strategies regardless of the governor's orders. I would be on board with challenging the governor on this one. >> Okay. >> I would just like to express support for what councilmember Beck just said. I'm also on board with challenging governor's orders where it makes sense. You know, certainly not challenging just to challenge but to identify those measures that we could take that would be impactful that are perhaps precluded by the governor's order. You know, for example, requiring city employees to wear masks I think is a pretty simple step that we could take and I would be comfortable with also, you know, putting my council pay toward paying any fines that I might incur because of that or, you know, personal funds as well. >> Okay. Any other questions? Seeing none. Catherine, I do want to hear from you legally with respect to the city charter which prevents the city council from getting involved in personnel issues. Can you help me clear that up? >> Yes, you're correct. The personnel other than your appointees are governed by the city manager. And there are policy issues associated with that though that are given to the city council to make determinations about as to the broad policy allowing that. And that's in 228 of the code of ordinances. So there would need to be some action to authorize that. >> Okay. All right. So then I'll leave staff to kind of I have notes but every time I read them it becomes a point of contention. So just I'll have staff note the conversation today. There's no action today. So just research those things mentioned and bring those back. And we will or at least do the analysis and that can come out in a legal status report. I think that's the next process. But correct me where I'm wrong. So all right. And then Councilmember Armitage? >> Just wanted to mention just another possibility might be to have an emergency called meeting to take a vote on this or have a work session on precisely this issue. Again, time being of the essence. And my hearing that just now that there appeared to be a majority of council members who are very interested in having the conversation about having a challenge to the governor by to some extent requiring masks. >> Certainly. And during the break today obviously it's not going to happen today. So during the break today you can get with staff and understand that process. And if there's whatever individuals on this body that want to require staff to do the extra work, bring them back. Then by all means then you would be able to execute that. I don't know what that process is. You'll have to get with staff. But obviously it won't be today. So there will be time intermittently today or after today's meeting for you to research that and look at those mechanisms. >> Thank you, mayor. Quick note of caution for my colleagues if we're having those conversations. We can all count to four. Let's make sure we're staying careful with those conversations that we don't then have a walking quorum vis-a-vis the city secretary or somebody else about calling those meetings and what number of people is required to call those meetings is different between ordinance and the charter. So keep an eye on that. I'll also say this. I'm not eager -- I wore my mask here into the building today. I'm sitting here in my plexiglass box. I'm not eager to take steps that are dangerous for our folks or that aren't doing our utmost to keep our people safe. I think we should have the power to at least have our own employees wear masks where it's necessary or in situations where they're not able to get the vaccine. Unfortunately we're not given that power. And I feel like at this moment we're different than the ISDs. We're in a different situation. Our people by and large are able to get the vaccine. We're having a different conversation here today than the ISDs are because they're dealing with a population that by and large, a number of them can't be vaccinated. I'm very interested in the next part of the presentation which is how we can help get people vaccinated. A mask mandate from the city in violation of the governor's order is almost entirely performative. We will take our slap on the wrist fine. Some of us are more than willing to pay those. And we will move forward with the people who don't want to wear masks still feeling like the governor told them they don't have to wear a mask. And the people who feel like we have the authority to tell them in defiance of that order they have to wear a mask. They were the folks wearing masks to begin with. This is a spinning our wheels exercise. Let's get down to the only thing close to a silver bullet we have and that is the vaccine and how we can help that happen. >> Okay. Sarah? >> Okay. I'll move into the second portion of the presentation. Second, I'll pull back up the presentation. So the first part here, I'm just going to share some information very quickly about some of the vaccine resources that do exist at the varying levels of government. And Fire Chief Kenneth Hedges will be joining me as well throughout this part of the presentation. So just want to start off for some context what percentage of Denton County is vaccinated. So all this information is available on the Texas website of health and human services. So fully vaccinated in Denton County for those eligible which is ages 12 and over is almost at 58% as you see there on the screen. And then at least with one dose is about just over 65%. So we're slightly ahead of the Texas website of health and human services, so that's about a percentage of population vaccinated here in Denton County. For vaccine resources that currently exist, I'll go through the next few slides just at the federal level, state, county, and then as well as sharing what we as a city have done to significantly support vaccination efforts here locally. So for the federal government, there is a website dedicated solely to vaccines. That's great to help get your questions answered, help finding a vaccine, see some of the resources that might exist, including a free ride or childcare assistance. So a lot of good information and as well as there's a phone number for those that may not be able to access the internet or use that. In addition to the vaccines.gov, I'd also encourage any individual that wants to learn more about the vaccines to visit the CDC's website. There is a ton of information out there, but there's one page that is very helpful. And that's the myths and facts about the COVID-19 vaccine page. The CDC has really tried to make those very Q&A, some quick answers and responses so that if there is any hesitancy about the vaccines that we're helping to put out, what are the facts about the vaccines and try to take back some of the conversations that you might see floating around on the internet and some of the myths that might be spread about the COVID-19 vaccine. So we'll try to spread those as well through our communication channels. For the state of Texas, they also have these websites available. And they also have, you can easily search via a map where you can go to get vaccinated, including all of the retail locations where you may be able to go. So not only to a public health entity or your doctor's office, but a number of different pharmacies, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and we actually have a staff member look up today. We believe if you do not have insurance, most of those pharmacies, retail chain pharmacies, will provide the vaccine for free. Encourage anyone to call, verify that before they go in, but do believe that is an additional resource. Also this morning, Denton County did say that they have asked the state of Texas to see if they can remobilize some free testing sites in this area. So we'll wait to hear back if that request will be granted or not. And there'll be some additional resources in regards to at least testing in the community. And sorry, I switched from vaccines to testing there a little bit, so don't want to be confused. Also in regards to vaccines, the state has a mobile team that will come out to any location that has five individuals willing to get vaccinated. So this is a really good resource for any businesses, civic organizations, churches, special events. That resource exists. It's very easy to call the state to schedule it. We did do that for our 4th of July event through the city of Denton. Unfortunately, we only had two individuals take the opportunity to get vaccinated, but we didn't heavily promote it and we did not require registration. So we did trying to do some additional efforts to get vaccines where we can. And that's still a resource that exists. I'd encourage any businesses or organizations to check that out. Denton County Public Health, you're all familiar with the various efforts that they have undertaken and significant efforts. I just want to point out some two kind of new initiatives they're taking. They are making the vaccines available at their Denton County Public Health offices in Denton and Lewisville to kind of have more stability in the locations of where you can go. You're still using the health scheduler through their website to sign up to get that vaccine if you want to do it through Denton County Public Health. And then they also have a homebound program. So if you're unable to leave the house to go get a COVID-19 vaccine, they will come to you. So very good resources available through the county. And then at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Fire Chief Hedges to give you some information on what the city of Denton has done to support vaccinations and some significant efforts that have taken place. It has taken many partners, many municipalities in order to accomplish what Denton County Public Health has done over the last few months. Afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. Kenneth Hedges, Fire Chief. I'm just going to really highlight this one slide here. So efforts on the Denton Fire Department beginning in March of last year, we've already had a pre-established relationship with Denton County Health. We just saw early into this pandemic with the unknowns on the horizon. It's just really kind of create a very robust conversation with them that really assist on the communication. That was really what was missing the early part of this pandemic is nobody knew what was going to go on. We had heard that there was going to be eventually a vaccine. So part of that partnership was we really had discussions that we as a city did not want to become a vaccine provider due to the logistical challenges there. So we partnered with them and they offered to actually provide the vaccine as it went out through the tiers, specifically tier one being EMS personnel. If you look at the second bullet point in late spring, early summer from the Governor's office, they call an action to request all fire departments in the state of Texas to assist on long-term care residents testing. So within the city of Denton and even a few surrounding cities, I can say our fire department tested over 800 residents and staff in one week. So very impressive with the ability to really mobilize and get that testing done with support from the state level. Third bullet point, starting December when the vaccine started rolling out, the Denton Fire Department along with other jurisdictions was part of the first group to actually receive the first dose of vaccine. From the very day one, we were actually there supporting on the medical aspect, having an Amazon stand by for any type of adverse reactions. Our police department was not including that tier one as far as healthcare providers, so we were able to work with committee partners and get our Denton Police Department personnel vaccinated on a basis probably quicker than some other police departments across the nation as well. And moving down, conducted several after hours vaccination clinics. And this is, even though it's just some wording, this is a huge thing. So any Speedway event they had, it takes a member of Speedway where the Denton County Health had spare doses that were going to be wasted due to once they defrosted you have a certain amount of time period, you must administer that. We were able to actually allocate some of those and we held these clinics in Central Fire Station after hours using on-duty personnel in which we were able to over a period of time, I think we calculated, anywhere from eight to 10 nights through several months, we were able to get every city Denton employee and most family members willing to have the vaccine actually vaccinated. And then lastly is just between the Denton Fire and Denton Police Department, we have participated in over 50 vaccination clinics since last December of 2020. And with that you see that overnight almost 20,000 doses were administered here within the city. And I will turn it back over to Sarah at this point. Okay. So moving into some potential options and programs that staff is seeking direction on. So this portion started with a one minute pitch to see if some additional efforts could be undertaken to increase vaccination efforts in the community. I'm happy to report and share that a lot of those that were suggested were already in progress. And across many different partners, many different efforts, we have tried to increase access to vaccines in the community. So I'll go over that first information point of kind of what's been done. And then we'll move into three options that staff has put together in regards to American Rescue Plan fund dollars. And they'll be kind of high level. We're just seeking counsel direction at this point. If you would like us to move forward in developing those programs further, I will have a slide at the end that will kind of summarize that and seek counsel's direction. So this is that informational slide. Some of the suggestions, all great and all things that have mostly been done and have already been done. So I'm not going to go through all of these, but just to highlight a couple in regards to vaccinations for city employees, you just heard Chief Hedges touch on that and what we did early on to try to really increase vaccines available to our city employees and our city employee health clinic vaccines are available. As far as onsite clinics at Denton's largest workplaces, I touched on earlier that the state has that mobile vaccine team that can come out to those large workplaces willing to have them there. And that's for churches as well. Denton County Public Health has also worked closely with some of our service providers to try to increase vaccinations in individuals experiencing homelessness, working closely with Our Daily Bride at their locations in addition to the alternative shelter location at the hotel that Our Daily Bride is helping to coordinate. And then the Salvation Army in Denton and Louisville. And then lastly, just want to kind of touch upon the only two that we have not done is a door-to-door campaign to encourage vaccinations. And we do have that option that we'll go over, but is not recommended at this time. So before moving into the options, just wanted to set some context to some of the current realities, some of the considerations maybe to keep in mind as we're seeking this policy direction. So currently there is a wide availability of vaccines at no cost. But one of the crucial challenges we face here and all across the nation is vaccine hesitancy. So there is that wide availability of vaccine. Some of the unknowns, there might be some additional actions taken by federal state government. I'm not sure what that could be. Data in regards to if there are some low vaccination areas within Denton. Some of that data may exist at the state or county level, but we would need to inquire further to see if we have access to that, if one it exists and what access we have and to what level or if it's by the higher levels of zip code. Then lastly, the largest unknown is potential future changes to vaccine requirements and eligibility. So two things here that the CDC and FDA are currently looking at. The first is the age groups. So right now only 12 and older is authorized. They are looking at expanding that category. We have heard the next age group may be ages 5 to 11. We've heard that may come in the fall, may come in the winter. Unknown at this point of when that age group or what the age group parameters will be and when they'll receive that emergency authorization use for that next age group level. The second major unknown at this point too is if right now the CDC and FDA do not recommend anything past the first full vaccination. However, there could be the need or recommendation for a third booster shot that may come fall, winter at a later date, or there could be a new formula of vaccine at some point to adjust to some of the variants you're seeing where they actually change the makeup of the vaccine itself, very similar to the annual flu shot. So we're just not sure for those groups that are even fully vaccinated right now in the coming months, what may be a recommendation and the approval of the CDC and FDA. So there could be some substantial efforts that may need to be taken again to get everyone up to that latest recommendation of public health guidance. Just not sure when those will take place. So with that, I'll move into the options that we have now currently that we're seeking direction on. So the first option is in regards to communications. So the city trying to help spread the message that vaccines are free and that vaccines are safe using the information available from the CDC, and we would want to use that as the verified source. But we think we can take some additional efforts to kind of help boost that message and see if we can make some very targeted communications. We have not developed what a full detailed communication plan would be for that, but asking for a budget of $50,000 and then could report back on some specific actions of what that might be from either direct mail to digital marketing, to maybe some more creative ideas of how do we work with our businesses to put up window decals or signs, like some time to just kind of think that through of how can we get creative to maybe get more of the message out there about vaccines or to have some pride in vaccinations. So that's one option that we're looking at as far as trying to just do some more communication efforts. The second and third options, I'm going to turn it over to Chief Hedges to take you through an overview of those. So looking at second option, we considered actually the Denton Fire Department go ahead and applying with the Department of State Health Human Services to become a provider of the vaccinations. As I mentioned earlier, we did not choose that route March or April last year. We're thinking this may be a good time to go ahead and move forward. It is at no cost to just apply. If we want to become a mobile team, in other words, if we want the ability to receive vaccination and administer it, there is some one-time cost and we do have to kind of leave out there at the bottom of certain operating costs once you actually implement this. So as we kind of discussed this internally, we know there's going to be low utilization on the vaccine, but we might be preparing for the booster shot coming out fall, winter of next year, this year, whatever of that nature. So we'd be in a position to actually administer that booster in-house to city employees and/or the public as well. So as we go through this proposal as well, obviously staff recommends this. This is a good move, a very minimal cost as far as a one-time. We can get to that one-time cost and we can just pause and really wait for progress from the FDA, CDC. Is there any questions on this before I move to the next option? Any questions for Chief on this item? No. Okay, go ahead. Thank you. So next option is a door-to-door communication canvassing. So really what we're talking about here is sending more likely contracted labor. We discussed this also as we don't really feel like we have capacity to send city employees door-to-door and we did do some research. Fort Worth had tried this before. Very hard to get good metrics because you don't know how successful it is to just go out and hang door hangers about vaccination and then that person actually shows up to receive a vaccination. So it's very hard to determine the quality on this program as well. So they used Dallas and Fort Worth, both used volunteers and temporary staff. Resistance, there was some of the information we got back, some were very resistant to have any type of government showing up on their door as well. It was recommended more door hangers if you interact with somebody, you just pass along communication as well. You cannot pass on no medical advice. This is just an informative action, taking a prepackaged door hanger, here you go, and then you move on. The considerations there, it is going to require hiring additional employees, whether it's contract labor or internal, and how are you going to manage as far as internal staff managing the routes, the time required to get this program up and going as well. That other bullet point, concerns for safety and risk. I mean, that's a huge liability here for the city as well. They cannot provide medical advice, I just mentioned that. Not able to answer many questions. It was pretty much drop a door hanger and move on. Difficult to measure the effectiveness, and then increases the possibility of scammers posing as employees, which is a concern. So to really get this up and going, there'd be one-time cost of $63,000 and then ongoing cost of $10,000 to $20,000 a month as well. So at this point, internally, we do not recommend this option, but we did want to bring it forward and present it to council. I move on to the next option, let's ... Yep. Okay. Thank you. So this is really a last-minute item we just added. So as we've seen the Delta variant spike, we've also seen vaccinations, they're improving. We're missing the basic COVID testing. So we have determined there are still pharmacies in the city. CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, they are still doing COVID-19 testing. So that is a valuable resource to our committee members. Be sure and contact them to verify if there are any costs associated with that. But internally, the department's looking at possibly of purchasing a testing machine in which we could actually test city and employees. And I'm not going to go into the details because I'm not the subject of my expert, but you've all heard the terms molecular test versus a antigen test. Antigen test are all around. They get a lot of false negatives. You cannot really confirm 100% whereas a molecular test you can. So what we'd be looking at is actually purchasing a molecular testing machine and the test kits. And also what we determine, this is kind of like buying printers. The printer is the cheap part. The test kits are the expensive part. So just like on the eek. So we're just researching it right now. We will come back to council when we get some more information, but we are actually looking at possibly bringing that as a recommendation as well. And with that, I will turn it back over to Sarah if you have any questions for me. So this last slide is just a summary of the options with the one-time costs and then the ongoing costs, just estimating at six months to use just a budget figure. And then what would be that total costs for each of those programs as stated. Staff recommends the communication efforts as well as becoming a mobile provider. We do not recommend the door-to-door canvassing at this time. We do think with some of the unknowns there may be some other potential options and programs that we can bring back to council in the coming weeks with one of those being purchasing a testing machine. So very early on, as chief said in exploring that, but did want to mention that's something we're proactively looking at at this time. And then lastly, as we all know, the COVID-19 situation and response continues to evolve as it has been throughout the pandemic. We may come back at another point with more options and considerations if some of those factors become more known as we discussed, but this is some of the options and considerations at this time. And turn it over to you, Mayor, for direction on potential options one and two, if you'd like for staff to move ahead with developing those programs and doing those purchasing. Okay. Yeah. So we'll just -- everyone's aware of staff's asks. Be clear and concise in your communication, and staff will note those things if it's ambiguous and you -- you know, that's going to be a challenge for staff to kind of read through those. And so if we could just, again, get to concerns, questions succinctly, transition, that'd be great. Councilmember Bec. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, I'll lead then on the -- I strongly support one and two. And I -- you didn't call it four, but testing. Please, like, honestly prioritize -- almost put that first because we're already doing parts of one and two and some other things in other regards. I will ask on option three, where staff didn't recommend -- I will simply make the analogy that every one of us here hung door hangers, every single one of us, all right, for elections. And it -- I'm a little surprised at the numbers of 60,000. Now, I admit only the at-large candidates probably covered all of Denton. But regardless, it didn't cost us $60,000 to do door hangers. So I -- I'm a little -- not suspicious, but I don't understand that number. I think I can have Brad verify as I'm looking through it. But I think what we included in those costs was materials that would be necessary as well as a vehicle that may be necessary to have contracted staff to go around to these different locations where they'd actually be doing routes. So that's part of that one-time cost. And then the ongoing costs are more of the labor that would be needed. Yeah, I guess I can understand that sort of option. It feels like really this option three is more of an extension of option one, the public awareness campaign. But I also will say to bolster that. So I guess what I'm saying in terms of direction is I think whatever you can do to bolster public awareness on both testing and vaccination would be great. I mean, if Chief Layhart wants to tell me about the costs on what went into that number, I would welcome it. But I will say as a sort of final -- unless -- depending on how he wants to say, I know that our vaccination rate data is abysmal because we're not collecting it for a number of reasons. But our case rate numbers are less abysmal. They're still not very fine-grained. But at the same token, you said it yourself at the beginning and so has Dr. Richardson, 90% of folks who are getting into the hospital and needing advanced care and lots of public resources are unvaccinated. So you can make the near 0.9 to 1 correspondence that if we can fine-grain some of the data and have to pinpoint areas of Denton that are receiving high case rates, those are the same areas of Denton that are going to have low vaccination rates. So I think there are some opportunities to be smarter about how we do our public outreach. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. I think we can request to see if we have that data in terms of when we do those targeted communication efforts, if we're doing mailing or whatever it might be to see if we can better direct resources to some of those areas as well as, you know, only so much staff time to go around. But we could try to have myself or Ryan or the fire department attend some of the neighborhood meetings if that's available. However, we might be able to just kind of be that communication channel between some questions and answers of things that we can answer based upon what we know from the CDC and FDA and the health department. I will say that as far as sort of option one and option four, I'm going to call four the testing machine. It should be an option. We should be definitely voting yes. Because the largest sort of growing need is to some degree we have siloed into the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. There's a little gray area of ignorance in there that we could probably tackle. But there's a lot of siloing going on too. But we lots of people will want to get tested. And to the extent that we can couple and advertise and say, hey, this testing, maybe we can extend this as resources are available with our ARP funds and then lure people in for some vaccinations as well. That would be awesome. Because I'm getting a lot of comments as previously vaccinated people are now trying to get tested in my district where they're saying, hey, I can't afford this. It's $200 for a PCR test. It's $50 for a rapid antigen test. And some of our lower income folks, they're just not going to get tested and they're going to spread even though they've been vaccinated for free. They're now because of these high transmissibility going to be spreading it around the community because they're asymptomatic. And so testing now isn't really an option. It has to be done in concert with the vaccination program. I really strongly believe that. Thank you. >> Councilmember Guara. >> Thank you. I have several questions before I provide directions. First of all, I want to thank staff and I want to thank Chief Hedges and the Denton Fire Department for all your work on this. I know y'all were really on the front lines and continue to be putting yourselves at risk in order to protect our community and I want to thank you for that. So I have a question. Who is qualified to administer a COVID vaccine? Does someone have to be an RN or an EMT in order to do that? Or is it something where anybody could get trained to do it? >> I think the last thing I heard, is it paramedics and above, correct, Brad? So any type of nursing staff and then the state has dropped that down to active paramedics. So everybody in the fire department is capable of giving a vaccination shot. >> Okay. So paramedics are allowed to, obviously nurses are allowed to administer vaccines. So that's not something that like a lay person who does not have any kind of certification in a medical field could like get trained to administer vaccines. >> I would prefer, Brad, you would know? Yeah, so we operate underneath the medical director that the fire department does, same thing as nurses as well within the hospitals. So you have to operate underneath the medical director as far as direction to get that authority to do it. So I believe that at this point that no, there's not no outside training unless it goes to a higher medical grade as a nurse, paramedic, something of that nature that they've identified really bottom of the line who can give vaccinations. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. My next question is also for you, Chief Hedges. So in, you know, with your department working together with DCPH, do you feel like your people are already maxed out as far as the assistance that they're providing to Denton County Public Health with their vaccine efforts? >> I think since they have discontinued the larger mass vaccination clinics at the speedway, we probably have more capacity now. That is a -- no, that is a concern internally. So we can get all these programs up and going, but you've got to consider all this work done, with the exception of a few administration staff, is our operations personnel on their days off doing this work. So they'd work the normal shift, 24 hours, that we're asking them to work overtime on the days off. We've had a good participation. Yes, long term is a burnout. Yes, most definitely. Can we commit to this long term? No. But I just look at it as an opportunity that we can offer another resource to the city, even if it's a scalable, where we start small, if we need to bring in other resources, we can talk about it in the future as well. >> Okay. Okay. That is helpful. Thank you. What is the current procedure like? So I've seen, like, at the Denton County Public Health building, there's, like, a big old bus outside that has the DCPH, you know, it's got the courthouse logo on it. Is that a bus that goes out to locations to administer vaccines? Yes, that is where they actually carry the stock. They have to defrost the vaccine, and it carries all the equipment and supplies as well. Okay. If you actually saw the speedway, they'd only had that, but they had a little portable building set up. That's where they had nurses from Denton County Public Health, second nurses, and then paramedics from across the county from fire departments, supported every vaccine clinic, sitting there from starting sometimes 4 o'clock in the morning drawing up vaccines. I can attest, Brad would go out there almost every morning and every evening as well. So he was a lot of kudos goes to him for getting those surplus vaccines for all our city employees as well. If we didn't have them there, they would have been going to other cities. So the routine is to defrost it, draw it up, and they would send it out to the line for administration. Okay. I thank y'all so much for your work on that. Can I ask, what is the procedure like? Have you ever gone out on one of these mobile vaccination visits with that bus? What does that procedure look like as far as does the bus just kind of park somewhere and wait for people to come to it? Or how do people find out that that bus is going to be in their area? I'm all that Brad. He's actually has firsthand. He's been in it. He sees how they logistically run that, the events as well. So this is EMS Battalion Chief Brad Layhard. Basically yes to all those questions. In addition to Dent County Health, we were also partnering with Texas Department of Emergency Management. I worked with them, what, like 10 weeks or so. And I covered all of North Texas all the way to Arkansas basically. So we had teams assigned to us to go do clinics. We did anywhere from homebound missions, which a team of two would do anywhere between five to 10 shots a day, not very efficient, to clinics with 300 to 500 people a day. And we also partnered with Texas Military Forces to do all those clinics mainly in East Texas, but some here. A few businesses have utilized the call Texas number, the 800 number, but not very many in the city of Dunn. A lot of them were already vaccinated. But the process basically 99 percent of the time they pre-register and then the bus comes to them because they know how many doses basically, if it's 100, 200 doses, minister them, do all the paperwork. And then they come back either three or four weeks later if it's a Pfizer or Moderna shot. And that's strictly what Dent County has been doing. Dent County, I think maybe we've gotten one delivery of Johnson Johnson, but they haven't had any more deliveries of Johnson Johnson since then. So it's all been two shots. OK, thank you. That that answers my question. OK, so a couple of notes. So regarding Denton ISD, you know, I know that so obviously I was the person who made the one minute pitch, right? So these are sort of my suggestions that are included in this slide that I'm looking at. So I know that Denton County Public Health has held some clinics at on D on campus at the ISD schools. My understanding is that those have all been on Saturdays and that's only if we know, right, that's out of our purview. But. I'm not sure I could not verify that right now. But yes, they have held locations at the Denton ISD School District. OK, OK. I guess I should clarify the reason that I put it in the terms that I did. And you quoted me verbatim on this slide offering vaccines to students, parents and employees at their home campus on school days was my recommendation or my suggestion, I guess, because the fundamental kind of driving idea behind why I brought this forward is because I want us to begin meeting people where they are. We have more or less maxed out the people who are willing to go out of their way to get vaccinated. Now we need to go to them. And so that's why I suggested doing it, you know, not just on a school campus on a Saturday when no one's there, but doing it during school or perhaps more to the point during pick up and drop off when parents are there to give their consent. So that's I just want to clarify that, you know, when you sort of put a checkmark there next to that, but we have that has not been done. Yeah, I was just speaking to has the public health department partnered with the school district? Yes, they have between what partnership parameters are that's between the public health department and the school district. I don't know, you know, at what rates they were still getting students or parents or others. And I don't know what the school district was willing to offer as well. So that's really between those two entities. Okay, excellent. Thank you. All right. Regarding the options that you present, option one, I think is perfectly fine. It's particularly looking at things like direct mail and utility billing inserts. It's inexpensive. It's not likely to have a very big impact, but it's not going to hurt either. So, you know, might as well. As far as number two, I guess I should clarify that when I made these suggestions during the one minute pitch that I was envisioning number two and number three as being one thing, one initiative, what I would love to see is if we are as a city going to develop a mobile vaccination program, we can use that or perhaps we can partner with Denton County Public Health and utilize their bus. But what I had in mind was the vehicle goes to a location, goes to a neighborhood, volunteers and contract staff then fan out across the neighborhood, knock doors and let people know that they can get a vaccine right then and there. Can you clarify for me? So the primary reasons why staff is not recommending any type of door to door campaign. Is that essentially because it may not be well received and because it's difficult to measure the efficacy? Yes, I think those are some of the primary reasons. We don't know how effective it's going to be. We did speak to Dallas and Fort Worth and to really understand their experiences in doing those types of programs. They don't know how effective it was and they also were met with some resistance. This is very, as you know, it is difficult to go up to someone's door on private property and try to ask them to persuade them to do something that they might not be willing to hear and you could be putting potentially staff in an unsafe position and at this point with the wide availability of vaccines and we just felt some of the efforts and resources, whether that be staff time or funds could maybe be better utilized in other ways to try to reach folks or to try to just increase our ability for vaccines or testing. So we just didn't see it as one of the most effective options because it really would be still even if you hire contract staff, you're going to need someone to administer and oversee those staff and then decide routes and help to troubleshoot things as they're going on. It can be very time intensive and so it's just kind of as we're looking at some of the things that might be coming in the coming weeks and months too, we just didn't feel like it was a good recommendation at this point. Yeah, I hear you on that. I will say, I was going to say we have all but maybe we haven't all, maybe I'm just speaking for myself here. I knocked about 1,500 doors in a space of two months in preparation for the election. I got yelled at a whole bunch. I got doors slammed in my face. I had people threaten to call the police on me. I kept going anyway because it was important and I don't think that that's some hurt feelings over a slammed door frankly are a very good reason to not do something that could potentially save lives. I can say as an organizer, not just on my campaign but on other campaigns as well, face to face conversations are significantly more valuable and significantly more effective than any other type of communication. Hanging a door hanger is all well and good. I consider that a failed contact when I have to leave a door hanger on somebody's door. Okay. That's not making contact. So my direction is I would like to see all four, I'm going to say number four, the testing machine. I would like to see all four of these efforts happen. And as far as door to door canvassing, I think that we should intend to lean very heavily on volunteers and I'll tell you right now, I will volunteer at least 10 or 20 hours a week because I think it's that important. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yes. So I concur with Councilmember McGuire and Beck in recommending all four or I should say especially Councilmember McGuire with this really strong recommendation of number three as well. The fourth one of course being that purchasing a testing machine, I think it's essential for us to have one. You did a good job of explaining the advantages. I want to also underscore and agree with what Councilmember Beck said about seeing vaccines and testing as two different sides of the same coin or things that two different efforts to mitigate COVID that go together and have to be rolled out together in order to really mitigate COVID. I've had the same experience that he did and have people reach me, you know, how do I get tested for free? It's not only an issue of finding a place that will do it for free, but also finding a place that will do it in time. Because, you know, some people can't get an appointment for a number of days. You know, I'm very lucky that my employer does it. And so, you know, when employers do it, it just makes a huge difference. But anyway, I think that communication efforts, mobile provider and door-to-door canvassing I think should ideally involve both, you know, vaccination and testing. Councilmember McGuire had kind of asked about, you know, can lay people be trained? I know that the county, when they were doing vaccines and the first vaccine rollout over at the Texas Motor Speedway, they were getting lay people to volunteer to be trained. Obviously, you know, it's trained by, you know, not just anyone, but trained by qualified people. But they were, they did have lay people be trained. So that is something, you know, unless something has changed. Yeah, Chief, can you clear that up? Because we don't want to put that out there. Yeah, I think that was just volunteers to help in the registration process, getting everything up to the line before the actual administration. So the administration was performed by a medical person, medical personnel. Oh, okay, okay. So they were seeking volunteers all through the entire process from the time you pulled in, pre-registered, went up and actually got into the final 10 when you actually got the administration of the vaccine. That was medical personnel. Okay, thank you so much. I was misguided about that the whole time then. Thank you. I thought that lay people were getting trained. So thank you for clarifying. So I want to add to these four, not a fifth item for consideration, but something, a factor that we really haven't talked about that I think is really important that other cities and states have done. And that is incentivizing vaccination, right? We can't require it of people. But if you have people who, you know, given the opportunity to get a free vaccine, are not going to go out of their way to do it. As Council Member McGuire said, meeting people where they are is one way to overcome some of the barriers. But there are people, as you mentioned, even if you come to their door, they'll say, "I still don't want a vaccine. Now leave me alone." So incentivizing by, and just to name just a few examples of efforts that other cities and states have made, and I sent an article about it to staff, $100 in West Virginia, they're rolling out a $100 savings bond for, and they're targeting a specific age range, you know, because they're trying to get a certain age range that is disproportionately under vaccinated to get vaccinated, right? So giving them savings bond. Elsewhere, they are giving $100 to state employees. You know, we could do that. That's something else to incentivize city employees to get vaccinated, you know, $100. I mean, we're already talking about, you know, how much we value our staff and talking about giving, you know, 3% merit raises, you know, $100 for staff to get vaccinated. I'm continuing. Is not in defiance of the governor's order by any means. We can also do that to incentivize people to, and there's another state, now I forget the state, but it's in that same article I sent you, that incentivizes people with, in that case, $50 to if you bring a neighbor or someone in your community to get vaccinated, if you help them schedule an appointment and bring them, obviously with their consent, to get vaccinated, you know, you can get $50. It's not unprecedented in the city of Denton to offer incentives to people to do ordinary things. We have the, as an example, the library summer reading program which actually gives, sorry, I'm wrapping it up now, but if we want to get our numbers up, incentivizing is the way to go, and I would like to hear my fellow council members weigh in on that. So, I can, if you'd like for me to comment on that. Just very briefly, we did look at that as an option. Again, no data on how effective those programs may have been. I'd say a lot of them did roll out in May or in the spring as you really saw the vaccination rates start to decline off. A lot of those programs have not continued, which may be one factor of how successful they are. I just think you're, those that are vaccine hesitant now, a minimal token may not overcome some of the resistance, and it is a big staff time and effort in order to administer those programs. On top of it, being a little bit complicated in the state of Texas, where you can't give over $25 in public funds to a person, so Dallas actually had to go through a foundation who then administered it, and I just, again, when we're talking about our limited staff time and resources, where staff recommends time being spent, we're just not sure that there's a huge payback for that type of incentive program. It's creative in concept. I just, right now, it is not a recommendation for, you know, given some of the other things that we're trying to look at in terms of becoming a mobile provider, looking at the testing machines, enhancing our communication efforts, we feel like those are the priorities. Thank you. And just to respond to that, so those examples I listed are just examples of what other cities and states have done. I don't see any reason why we couldn't use whatever incentives we give out, obviously within Texas law, right, to track who is, you know, if we only give incentives to people who are, you know, getting a vaccine, or once they get a vaccine, now you get your, whatever, you know, then, you know, we can... To go even further, just to show how complicated it is, we don't even know if you can require that proof of vaccination, and then, you know, those proof of vaccinations could easily be duplicated. It's just very complicated. So, I mean, like, in a mobile door-to-door, when you vaccinate someone, you know they've been vaccinated because you vaccinated them. You know, I'm not talking about... So, that's different than having people go and show a proof of vaccination. I'm talking about, actually, at the site of vaccination, you can give the incentive. Got it. Like, when you go to the dentist, you get, you know, a lollipop or whatever. It is, you know, it's given out when they're there. So, and... Okay. Just one more point. Finally, I agree that the recommendations from staff are essential. Exploring incentives goes hand-in-hand with that. It's not a fifth, you know, something to throw into it. It is, you know, is this going to be something that people just look at in their mail and they say, "I've already decided, you know, so I'm not going to do this," or are they going to see, "Oh, I can get, you know, $25 off of my utility bill." Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Davis. I want to thank staff for going through this exhaustive list of suggestions. We might be seven fairly bright people, but certainly we're not going to come up with all the best ideas in the world. So, I really appreciate that you're comparing us to other places and reaching out to other places to see what's working, what's not working, where we don't have good metrics. I've read a lot of studies and heard a lot of media reporting on vaccine hesitancy and what's getting through to folks. The thing that I see repeated over and over and over again, especially in a place like Denton County where we have, what were the numbers we saw a little while ago, 65% of folks over age 12 have been vaccinated. Almost 90% of people over 65 have had at least their first dose. And that is in a place that has its fair share of vaccine hesitancy. And that's a vaccine that's only been available for those 12-year-olds since May. That's an amazing adoption rate. Like Councilmember McGuire said, we're talking about the last mile folks, those last few folks, whether they haven't had the opportunity, which is tough to fathom, or whether they have the hesitancy. The only thing that seems like it's really getting through to folks is personal conversations with trusted individuals, with your own family doctor, with your aunt who was hesitant but she went and got it and didn't grow a third arm. Those personal stories are the only thing that are really getting through to very hesitant folks. I think it's a little improprietous that we brought up the political example, but you're right, Councilmember McGuire, that is an example we all have experience with, is in various political campaigns knocking on doors. Those are campaigns in which we had a very tightly defined set of data. To your point, you knocked on 1,500 doors, either yourself or volunteers. I didn't catch all of that. I thought that's what you said, 1,500. If we're going down this road, your opponent knocked on many, many more through paid staff. And what was the result of those contacts? Those contacts with your opponent's paid staff were obviously much less effective than those 1,500 that you did yourself. When was the last time you bought a magazine subscription from somebody coming to the door? When was the last time you bought a Vivint home security system or a new Spectrum contract? People are not going to sign up for a vaccine because a stranger paid by the City of Denton knocks on their door and reminds them that such a thing exists and is a good idea. They know this information. I think the options one and two, start with option one, the communication efforts, just a thought towards communication. I think a campaign that urges vaccinated people, not just get the vaccine, we all know it's a good idea, we're encouraging you to do it, but encouraging vaccinated people to reach out to their non-vaccinated family members. They are the last mile. That's how this thing is going to get overcome. Not necessarily that Denton's knocking on all these doors trying to convince people to get a shot. On the mobile provider, I'm hesitant on that one. I think if Chief Hedges and his department think that now is the time to do that, to use some ARP funding to make that available, that I'm okay with that. I just want to point out that the number of green check marks we had on that slide a little while before, we have widely available vaccine. The vaccine is maybe more available in Denton County than almost any other place you can think of, other than, I guess, lining up outside the factory. We have it widely available. But if our staff is saying that we think we're going to see benefit for our folks from doing that little bit to becoming a mobile provider, then I'm fine with that. We kind of varied or kind of wandered off into the testing realm. I don't think anybody was suggesting until it came up on the dais that the City of Denton would be providing public testing with this machine. I understand it was for City of Denton personnel to use this machine. We heard the analogy of the printer and the ink. We do not have funds to be testing just the general public with this. If we end up finding out that it's economically feasible to buy the machine, I don't think the conversation today is a public testing regime based through the city. So I'm very comfortable with number one. I think a targeted communication effort could be very useful. I'm okay with number two because the chief tells me it's okay, and they're the ones that have to staff this and spin it up. I don't think number three, because we can't. In the political campaigns that we used as an example, we had a very narrow subset. The campaigns that just run through apartment buildings, knocking on doors and putting door hangers on doors, those are doomed to failure. Those are huge ways of effort. The campaigns that have their voter lists and know exactly what door they're knocking on, they have their target, they do well. They do very, very well. But we don't have such a universe of data. We don't have that information. We're shooting totally blind there. The folks like Vivint, who want to sell you something, they target neighborhoods where they know that product is going to be receptive, where there are high crime rates or something. The spectrum guys who just knock on every single door, they sell like nothing. I'm sure Councilmember Meltzer will have an opinion on that since I hit communications there. So that's my direction. Number one, that's great. Number two, I would take whatever recommendation staff has on that. Number three, I think we're absolutely shooting blind there and wasting our money. And I think we have to really keep our expectations in check here. We heavily advertise a vaccination event at a very well attended public event. July 4th, two people showed up. I pushed it in my newsletter. Citi pushed it on social media. Two people came to be vaccinated. So we really have to manage our expectations for all of these efforts. Okay, anyone else? Before I close out, Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Thank you. I think the points about, well, first of all, I support the majority of what I've heard, but the points about targeting and campaigns are well taken. It's incredibly labor intensive to just kind of randomly hit the street with the most kind of high cost in terms of effort tactic, and you just can't get that part. So I think the way to think about it is more like a qualification process. There are actually agencies who can probably help us figure this out, where maybe your first wave is, I don't know who we can call and who we have the right to call. Maybe your first contacts are by phone and it's exploratory. And I would, at the early stages, have a lot of different things, a lot of different arrows in the quiver. If we came to your house, if we offered you an incentive, I would say it's important enough that we should do some learning. And I would say do on a pilot basis, the ability to reason through what a pretty, what we think might be a target rich list, which various demographic factors can help us figure out what a target rich list would be. And then on a trial scale, and it might involve engaging some professionals, do the calling to see what would work for you. And mostly there will be no contacts and hang ups, but that's part of how you learn. But you do it pretty quickly and in enough volumes so that you see numbers and then you figure out what to scale up. So I know that's sort of a lot to say and doesn't tell you exactly what one thing to do. I guess I would say engage an agency to create a campaign at a trial level to identify effective tactics. A short comment, it's kind of a long conversation. All right. Great. So I'll close out with this. Anyone else? Because I'm going to wrap it up. Well, you got to hit the button. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember, no, do you have you? Councilmember, let's go there first. I've not heard from you. And staff, if you can let me know why the buttons aren't working. Sure, I'd like to weigh in on it. I've heard everything that I needed to hear. And a lot of what I would have said anyway. But I was thinking along the lines of Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer is that if we do number one and agree on number one, it's just got to be some strategic cut out of who we're targeting. Because I know I get things in the mail and I just kind of like, oh, let me get to the bill, you know, and kind of chunk this other stuff over to the side. You know, that's the reality of it. But and if we're talking about any just looking at the number of I mean, the type of people that we're trying to get to, which ones are not the ones I'm here with my cohort here, Mr. Davis, Councilmember Davis as to, you know, getting close neighbors and friends to encourage folks to I have an example of that somebody is very dear and close to me, that I want them to get vaccinated. And they're waiting. They're waiting on the CDC, you know, and bypass the FDA and Vicki Byrd and, you know, and all of these people, there's a still waiting on something. But I definitely would want us to put our efforts for sure into number one. And then we just got to back it up, you know, with number two, I'll leave it there. I don't want to go too far with that. Thank you. Okay, Councilmember armature. Concisely, please. Concisely, I agree with what Mayor pro tem mentioned. That's a really good idea to engage some entity that can really do this and, you know, approach it to quickly and strategically figure out what we're going to test pilot, you know, based on some kind of polling. This is you know, we're talking about saving, saving lives here. And, and so I think that that is well worth it. I want to also underscore and agree with what Councilmember Byrd said, and Mayor pro tem Meltzer as well, about how important it is to have targeted, you know, and specific efforts, you know, are we going to target the you know, age, you know, 12 through 35 group? Are we going to target Spanish speaking populations? You know, and we have data, you know, from the county about where we're lagging. So but if if staff time is an issue, then I say we hire somebody who can somebody who can do it, somebody else who can do it because it will be well worth the money. And I don't want to see, you know, mailers go out that just said here, reminding you to, you know, get vaccinated. And then nobody new gets vaccinated, we need to be aggressive, okay, strategic and targeted. There are people we can hire who will do this for us. Got it. Anyone else? Thank you. So staff have a few questions. So let's see. Do we have has staff received any emails from any any council members saying I have three, four or five people that need to be vaccinated that don't know where to go don't have access to it, couldn't figure out how to register if we received staff received any of those emails saying someone has a barrier to vaccination that we need to satisfy. Not in the recent few weeks, I can't speak prior to a few weeks back. But we have received a question in regards to testing, which I think we addressed today some options. Yeah. So I guess just for tracking purposes, because I think everyone is kind of touched on it. But I think if that happens, right, if you get an email from anyone that says there's a barrier that I found out about, forward it to everyone, right to all the council members so that we can know that exists. I don't know that it exists. I think that I think those that want access have it. But I think before we put city staff in harm's way or hired hired personnel in harm's way, we need to have proof of and that issue, right, I think and I think I saw a few hands. And so I I'll ask it this way. Is there anything that prevents me as an elected official from going door to door in my neighborhood with my city issued iPad and my city issued cell phone and registering people are making it available for people at their doors? Is there anything that precludes me from going to someone's home on independent of staff asking me to and helping someone register to get a shot or arranging a shot? I mean, I think the number is five, but I'm certain that if I arranged it and coordinated, Denton County would accommodate. They've been more than accommodating. Is there anything that prevents me from using my city owned, my city issued materials to accomplish that? No, I don't believe so. OK, got it. So if that happens, send that out to everyone so that we can know those successes. I mean, I think that would be great if we lead by example before we send again people into harm's way. Let's let's as a body lead by example. And then the another question, I guess this is for legal and it could come out in a Friday report, but Catherine, if you could, I think there's been a lot of talk about targeting, right? But I think we're limited in the data we can access, right? So you have a neighborhood and there's been a lot of examples used about who to go, who's home to go to. But my point is I don't think we can get into people's records enough to understand who or who has not been vaccinated. So our target audience is one hundred and forty thousand citizens in the city of Denton is best we can tell because and so if you can just put that in the Friday report or the legal report that understand outlines the rules of what entities are allowed to share with us, best your understanding, that'd be great. And I'll just read that then. And then also an illegal status report, an addendum to that would be the soliciting rules for the city. Right. So it's it's one there's a there's an exception for candidacies, but I don't know and I don't know what that that is. But I'd be curious to see what the rules are from from your from legal's perspective on approaching someone's private property for a something like a vaccine that's not a city function per se and or could be challenged. And I just want to understand that. I don't know the answer. Just want to if you could help me understand that private property soliciting rules for the city. And then I think, Chief, could you speak to this because you touched on it, but I want to spotlight it and make sure I understand it. So when you're talking about the process to administer shots, they're they're they're in a deep freeze. Then you thaw them out to some degree. Then you draw them. Then you administer them. So once you thaw them, are you able to put them back in a deep freeze? No. Right. So if we thaw out a bunch and that doesn't manifest, then we've just wasted that many doses. I think I can respond to that on the July 4th vaccine clinic that was held here. We brought in the military and TDM. So we had two people actually get vaccinations and they had brought 100 100 vaccinations to that event and they only use two. Yeah. So I cannot comment on what they did with the spirit, but there's 98 doses left over. Right. Yeah. Thank you very much. And that's a concern for me. I think we need to be targeted and really purposeful on that. So thank you for that information. And so I think that's all the questions, all the follow up information I need. For me, I take Councilmember Davis's point of a communication that encourages friends to talk to neighbors of some sort. I take Councilmember Byrd's suggestion and I made the same suggestion on planning and zoning, that it be a postcard, right, that we use some sort of where you look at it and you have no choice but to see it. You don't get the envelope pre-warning. And so that to me, you know, from my direction, I'm against hiring a consultant to then review because there's no data to pull from. Right. We can't get the medical data of who's already had the shot. I take Councilmember Davis's points on the so we could be 65% wrong depending on who we target, right, from that data perspective because we just don't know who we're targeting. So that to me is an impediment to hiring a consultant to then, you know, try to pare it down because they don't have the data to do that. But from a just general hey, reach out to a community, and it could be, I think we could pair it with something else, pair it with solid waste notice for this or something, you know, budget information, something. So we pair it together and do it that way and kind of pool resources. I can get there. On the mobile component, I take Chief's direction. I'm with Councilmember Davis. You know, normally I wouldn't, but if I take his point about the benefit of having it in place and if the boosters roll around, I take that point and I think that's a good idea. And then yes, from the testing for staff, that's great. And I thank you for that clarification, Councilmember Davis. That's important to have. So that's where I fall and make sure I have all my questions. Mayor, may I say something? Yes. Yes. City Leader. Mayor and Council, while the staff are very eager to follow your direction, I find it necessary to share with you that there are concerns here. That's why staff provided the recommendation they did. For staff to do this, and I think you heard loud and clear, it would be very taxing for us. We are limited in our ability, even now, to go out and do these kinds of things, to take away from our firefighters or others and their current job. To do a process, I mean, to get a consultant, which is certainly an alternative that is certainly more amenable from that, taking away from staff, it does mean a procurement process, which means it could be anywhere from three to six months to go out and find a company that would do this, because there's not just one company that probably would do that. So you're talking about a length of time for procurement process. My question would be, where is the county on this? The county is the leader of the health -- they have the health department in this county. They serve the city of Denton. They serve the city of Louisville and others. And they are the ones that we go to and turn to when it comes to issues such as this. And we have a great relationship with them. We're constantly talking to them with Dr. Richardson. The other part of it is, though, we aren't privy to the information of people who've been vaccinated, names or things. We're only privy to areas of the city where the concentration is. People here that shows the color of the map. So for me, it's the staffing, the volunteers, the script we'd have to prepare to give to people, the mobile provider, the shot givers and all those things that we would have to do, but then on the other hand, taking that much time to find a competent company to do the same thing. My concern is that, and the cost of trying to do this and the success rate, and knowing whether or not we have adequate -- the ability to do the vaccines, which is great, except that if we pull those vaccines and they sit there and no one shows to the chief's point, then we have a process there where we may have wasted some vaccines. So we're happy to do whatever the pleasure of this council is as a body, but it's important that we share our frustrations that where this may lead is time that's not well spent. And we believe in saving lives. We want to do everything we can, but I worry that this may be not enough, and not looking at our partner in the county and saying maybe they can help us with some other suggestions. >> Okay. Thank you very much. And so that's everything. You have the notes. I'll follow up with my thoughts via email, and we will take a brief break for dinners here. We've been at this for two hours. So let's take -- it's 540 round numbers. Let's come back at 6 and we'll get to item B. Thank you very much. >> And good afternoon. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dinton City Council. It is 6.09, and we're back from break. We're at item B, our next item in the work session. I'll call that, which is ID -- let's see here, get it further away. ID 21458, receiver, report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding a general fund preliminary FY 2021-22 proposed budget. >> Here is a follow-up from the August 2nd budget workshop meeting. And so today, just some of the items that we wanted to follow up with you on, the homestead exemption, we'll go into the tax rate discussion general fund forecast and then get your direction on our supplemental requests. So as a follow-up from last week's meeting, council asked for additional information on the homestead exemption. Currently our homestead exemption is set at half a percent of value or $5,000, whichever is greater. You can see there over 20,000 homes qualify for the exemption, so about 64% of single-family homes qualify for the exemption. And just a reminder, this does only apply to homes where the individual is living in that home, so it doesn't -- so commercial properties and those that don't own the home or leasing the property are not eligible. Per the Texas tax code, the exemption percentage may not exceed 20%. Council can increase the exemption percentage up to 20%. If council would like to increase the exemption percentage, that must be adopted by ordinance by July 1st to go into effect for the next fiscal year of FY2023. So we've missed the deadline for the FY2022 budget, but could make that update if council directs for the following budget year. So just some options for council, and we can bring this back if council directs in February before the next budget cycle. But again, just some options to consider. So you can see the median home value with the exemption amount increasing as that percentage increases, and then what that does to the tax bill as it decreases. And then the second table on the slide, you can see what that would mean for general fund revenue, so the loss associated with the increasing homestead exemption percentage, and then the equivalent tax rate that would be needed to make that up. And so if we were to go all the way up to the 20%, we're currently calculating about a 5 cent tax increase would be needed. And so just to give you some other cities that surround us, some examples from other cities of what their current homestead exemption is, you can see we are the lowest percentage compared to some other cities that have a homestead exemption. Obviously, not all the cities have homestead exemptions, but of those that do, we are the lowest percentage wise. And so just a quick update from the proposed budget, we have made some changes. So you may remember the proposed budget included a tax rate that was equal to last year's, so the 59 cent tax rate. We were proposing that tax rate because we had not received our certified calculations yet from the county for our tax rates, so we wanted to make sure that we had flexibility built in in case those tax rates came back different than what we were calculating ourselves. We also were trying to spread the impact to general fund before the electric ROI returns to 3.5% in FY 2023. So we did receive the certified calculations from the county this week as of Friday. So you can see the voter approval rate is a little over 64 cents, the no new revenue rate is 56.5 cents, and then that M&O no new revenue rate is 57.6 cents. And so we have a revised proposed budget for you. It includes a decrease in the M&O rate from 37.5 cents to 37 cents with a total proposed tax rate of 58.5 cents. And so just a brief tax history, you can see we have been steadily decreasing our overall tax rate over the last several years. With this year we are increasing that debt rate, and we'll talk about that again in a minute, but that really is tied to that 2019 bond program. We expected that rate to increase as we bring on more debt. And so as a follow-up from last week, we were asked to bring back the median residential value. So you can see that on the slide. Unfortunately, we do not have the FY 2021 value. The CAD changed softwares last year and lost some data, so we're able to provide that information to you, but we do have the other, a couple other years for your reference. So the revised, so I've added the revised proposed budget line. You can see that 2022 revised. This is our revised proposed budget. So it is lower than our proposed budget by about a half a cent. And then we are increasing that debt rate from the current year. So 21 cent debt rate going up to 21.5 cent. And so to get into the tax rate discussion, so you can see last week we were asked to bring back what the different voter approval rate, the M&O new revenue rate, and the total no new revenue rate would look like to General Fund and the supplementals. And so this is our attempt at giving you this information, as well as Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer asked for the wage inflation rate. And so that 3.1% is the June 2021 employment cost index for total compensation in the DFW area. And so I'll just quickly walk you through these. So the voter approval rate is the max tax rate that we can adopt without going to the voters for approval. So you can see that 64 cents there on the far left-hand side of the chart. The proposed rate, which we discussed in our budget workshop last week, is the 59 cents. So that is leaving an additional room, like I mentioned previously, that would leave us a total of $700,000 net income in the General Fund. We were allowing for flexibility with not only not having the tax rate calculations yet, but also the ROI decreasing for DME. But since we have those tax rate calculations and we got your feedback last week, we have revised that proposal to 58.5 cents. So you can see that we're right at a balanced budget with a little over $80,000 remaining on the bottom line. And then to go into the M&O no new revenue rate. So this calculates, basically it removes the debt portion of the tax rate calculation for calculating the same amount of tax collection from existing properties in 2020. And so with that, it would be 57 cents, a little over 57 cents. And that would leave us a deficit in the General Fund of $974,000. If we were to go to the total no new revenue rate, so just the same amount of tax collection as last year, it would be 56.5 cents with a deficit in the General Fund of $2.3 million. And then you can see on the far right-hand side that 3.1% wage inflation rate. It's kind of right in the middle between the M&O no new revenue rate and the total no new revenue rate with 57, a little over 57 cents for the tax rate and then a net deficit of $1.4 million in the General Fund. And so these are, this is the direction I'm trying to seek today from you on the tax rate. So we can include this in our adopted budget. But then want to also to get your direction on your tax rate and then what this looks like for the supplemental requests. So you may recall we had several supplemental requests proposed in the General Fund. And again, I'm going to tie this back to those previous four options that I showed you. So if we were to go with the proposed budget, we would be able to fund all of the supplemental requests plus have a net income of $700,000 in the General Fund. Our revised proposed budget proposes funding all of the supplemental requests and getting to a balanced budget with about $80,000 net income in the General Fund. If we move to the M&O no new revenue rate, we would not be able to fund all the supplementals. And I've put the line of the items where we would be able to fund. And we have ranked these just to show you kind of our city or our staff recommended ranking for the supplemental requests. So if we went to the total or the excuse me the M&O no new revenue rate, we would be able to fund supplemental requests one through seven with eight through 18 going unfunded next year. If we were to go to the total no new revenue rate, we would not be able to fund any of the supplemental requests. We would carry the budget forward basically with the baseline adjustment and COVID reinstatements that are already in the FY22 proposed budget, but no supplemental requests in the General Fund would be funded. If we were to go with the 3.1 wage inflation, you can see the line we would be able to fund, General Fund would be able to fund supplemental requests one through five with six through 18 going unfunded next year. And then I did want to point out we have added one position that you didn't see last time. So we've added a homeless programs coordinator for community development. They have two other position requests, and this would be their third in FY22. So just wanted to point that out. I did footnote it in this slide. And then as you may recall, we have a couple of these positions, 50% are funded from the ARP. We've had that discussion in previous weeks. So those street outreach positions as well as the emergency management position for FHIR. The revised proposed budget does not include the council initiated request, but those also could be funded on top of given whichever tax rate council chooses to adopt. And then I did want to bring up we talked about this briefly last time. What are some other levers we can pull in the General Fund? So you may recall we talked about this briefly, but in FY22 we're currently at the 6% of electric ROI. So that's the return on investment that General Fund receives from the electric fund. And that was increased in 2020 due to COVID. However, it is set to revert back to 3.5% in FY 2023. And that is something that council could consider in next year's budget is either letting that revert back or keeping it at the 6%. And you can see what that decreases from 22 to 23. It's over $5 million that would be lost to the General Fund, which is about 4.5 cents on the tax rate. And then just to make you aware, you have an item on the agenda later on tonight for individual consideration for the max tax rate. The city is required to publish a proposed tax rate that we cannot exceed the tax rate through the budget adoption. And so we are required to post these and publish these. In previous years, it's been our practice to publish a rate that exceeds the proposed budget rate in case council decides to fund any additional supplemental requests. And so we are proposing that the proposed published max tax rate is 60 cents. And you can see that on the chart. However, our revised proposed budget tax rate is less than that at the 58.5 cents. And you'll have that item later on tonight. Just wanted to make you aware that that is coming and that is what that is for. And so today I'm seeking direction one on the homestead exemption. I'm proposing to bring it back for discussion in February so you can discuss it before the FY 2023 budget. I'm also seeking your direction on the tax rate for the adopted budget. We will have that the budget hearing in September and budget adoption in September. So need to get council direction on which tax rate you would like to see in your adopted budget as well as your direction on supplemental requests. So obviously it's depending on the tax rate which supplemental requests we can fund but would like to get council direction on that as well as the electric ROI. So again, it's not until 2023 that that changes. But we can start preparing that for council's discussion ahead of the 2023 budget process. And so just a reminder of next steps. We've seen this slide several times. But again, we're going to have the max tax rate discussion later on tonight for publication of the public hearing. And then next week we will bring back the street fund and franchise fee follow up work session. And then the budget and tax rate public hearing are scheduled for September 14th with budget adoption on September 21st. And with that, I'll take any questions. >> Well, and just so I can frame the discussion, just did I hear you right on the ROI and homestead because that seems it seems I just want to make sure stat because that could pivot right after next year and that priority could pivot. So I don't know, I don't want you to have to do double work. But I want to make sure I get you the answer you need. So you prefer the answer to the homestead and ROI. >> Just if council wants us to bring that back at a later date before the FY 2023 budget discussion. >> Got it. So just if we want it back, we'll get the details at that point. Perfect. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Beck. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So one of the things I think it's slide four, but I don't know that you really need to slide back to it. Uh-huh. Unintended. But I think that's being framed wrong. You're looking at the same 20,729 that I saw in the DCAD tax stream in terms of homestead eligible and potentially up to 30,000. You know, we might get higher adoptions. But I did a little rough math on just on the 2.5, which would be 2.5% math. And thank you for the medians. That was very, very helpful. It helped me do a lot of this math I'm about to talk about. But when I looked at the rates, basically it was $1,427 at the 2.5. And at the 59 cent, it's 1,460. So, you know, you're roughly saving $33 a year on that median household income for those homestead-exempted properties. So what -- I think we're framing this wrong not as like what is the penalty to the budget, but what is the savings to the homeowners is the better framing for that. Because in this case, it's actually not a savings. It's a less increase. And I just want to be clear that it's not an increase. It's just a smaller increase. But it's a smaller increase by $33 a year on that 200 and -- what was it? $247 or $274,000 median household income. So -- and when you look at that rate, and you compare that to the rate that was proposed to compensate for it, you know, that -- those rates are only $4 different a year between the city's proposed rate and the compensatory rate. And so, you know, if we had high adoption at the homestead exemption because we were now, you know, reducing the increase, if we had high adoption, let's say we even doubled it. Well, that's about $200,000. We could raise it up to $400,000 or even $600,000 to the budget. But if you then increase -- if you have that higher rate across all the properties, then you've compensated for it. In fact, I sort of ran the numbers for the maximum tax rate versus -- my question is coming, sir. No, no, but I don't know that we have a -- the only question is, do you want it to come back? We're not going to -- this doesn't affect this year's budget, and that's why I was clarifying. It's just to say -- because you don't know what the value is going to be next year. It's just to say, do you want it to come back? Yes or no? My understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong. Yes, we -- if council directs this conversation to come back before the FY 2023 budget, we can definitely go more in-depth with this. This was a quick summary of what I thought I heard last time from the budget workshop follow-up. So we can definitely take this more in-depth before we get to the FY 2023 budget. Fair enough. Then I think the fact that we could raise revenue and yet save homesteaders money on their tax rate more than justifies bringing this back. And in terms of the other direction, I am for staff's recommended proposal and all the items. Okay. Councilmember Davis? Somebody was helping me out back there and we were playing tag. Thank you, mayor. So a couple of questions before we kind of get back around to direction a little bit. Slide 12. The FY 2022 proposed, does that include any of the conversation that we've been having about another energy-consuming partner here in the city or is that just based on current ratepayers, current book of business? That is based on current rates. That does not include any additional projects coming online. And just kind of historically, we know that sales tax last year exceeded expectations. That's partially because we had expectations set so very low. We didn't know what in the world we had in store. Some years it exceeds expectations, some years drastically fall short. Historically, have we been conservative in our estimation of sales tax revenue or have we been more than optimistic? I think historically the city has definitely been conservative in our sales tax estimates. Same question for ROI. We do have a little bit more data there to base it on. We know who our customers are. We know generally what their consumption patterns are. Has our ROI estimate been generally pretty spot on or have we generally exceeded it in actual revenue? I would have to go back and double check the numbers, but I think we're pretty consistent in what we estimate versus what we actually bring in. Thank you. And I'll have some direction a little bit later. Okay. Councilmember Reboir. Thank you, Mayor Hatsbeth. Two questions. The rates that you calculated, like especially on slide nine here, and you used them to project potential revenue, are you -- did you take into account homestead exemptions in projecting revenue based on those different rates? Yes, correct. Okay. Thank you. And then would the .58545 per $100 valuation rate, if that rate were adopted, would that fully fund the supplemental requests? Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all. Councilmember Armitage. Yes. Sorry for the repetition, but I was going to ask a similar question. I just want to make sure I understand. So which of the options for tax rate would fund all of the supplementals? So the options that would fund all of the supplementals are obviously the voter approval rate. We would have a surplus. The proposed budget would also fund all of the supplementals and give us $700,000 net income. The revised proposed budget would also fund all of the supplementals. Everything past the revised budget, so the M&O no new revenue rate and the total no new revenue rate along with the 3.1 wage inflation would not fund all of the supplementals. Okay. But both the revised proposed and the previous proposed would. Okay. Thank you. So about the homestead exemption, definitely want to bring it back, obviously, well before at least a month before the deadline comes up, it's a really important discussion to have, and I do agree with Councilmember Beck that when that happens, it's helpful to see it from many different perspectives, including how much it would save homeowners, but also looking at it as, you know, imagining if we have this many, you know, this percentage of eligible homeowners who apply for it, then, you know, comparing what the what that would look like for the city, you know, versus what it would be without the homestead exemption. So anyway, I think that that's important. So the revised proposed rate seems fine to me, although with the supplemental request, and I know that that was largely that was based partly on the supplemental request. You know, I need to know more about the really the positions that I had asked about recently, the two civilian positions. I know that for the police, two of them are so of the and I'm trying to address them how they're broken up here in this list of supplementals. So there are five altogether right to a street outreach I understand that, you know, one sworn officer I understand that and there's these two civilian positions that I need to know more about and I understand that that's coming in this upcoming Friday report is that correct? Yes, that is correct. And that that will include the two civilian on the top and then also the three civilian positions listed on number seven, on line seven, as well as the two FTEs for the street outreach. So wait, so are we talking about five or eight altogether? So it's the three FTEs, the six FTEs were originally requested as part of the proposed budget in the police department presentation in their operating budget presentation. I broke them out just to be able to fund additional supplementals with the tax rate. But then also we added those two FTEs for the street outreach program as part of the ARP discussion. Okay, got it. Okay. Yeah, so I just I need to know more about those positions. And you know, because just like looking at all of these supplemental requests, you know, including the council requests, those police requests take up a significant percentage of the, you know, limited funds available. So I need to know more about those positions and specifically the need for them. And also I want to see, you know, we've got that wonderful budget simulator tool, and I know that staff is collecting data on that. I mean, I want to know what the people have to say about it. You know, I've done some playing around on it. And I think I'm going to do more because as I understand it, that has been altered to kind of parse out, you know, the differences between a couple positions. And I'm guessing though, I haven't seen yet maybe to reflect some of these, you know, changes in new ways of looking at supplemental requests. So I really need to see that before I make my decision. But for now, like if I was pressed to say, you know, do I approve of this list of priorities of supplemental requests, I would have to if it was between yes or no, I would have to say no for now. Because I don't have that, you know, community input and the information about, you know, those some of those positions that are taking up the majority. Let's see. And have I addressed all of that? Oh, and then there's the electric ROI. I would, I think I'll kind of hold off on weighing in on that because I need to hear more about what fellow council members have to say. I'm still trying to parse that out. And so I will just, I will just hold off on that. But I have given my direction, I believe on three out of the four. Councilmember, pardon me, Councilmember Burke. I guess we'll bring back the homestead exemption. And my choice for the tax rate discussion, I appreciate the voter approval rate. And this is why I think that between now saying something now and getting to the point where we're using what we need, there may be some contingency that will come before that because we're a rapidly growing city. And we just pretty much, you know, we could say what we want. We can see go over here, let me go over here to slide number 10. You know, right now, this is all we need in slide number 11. I just want to be ready to act on something when we need it, rather than delaying it. I am very, very proud that we have our community development. I like to, if I could, I would like to even see number nine moved up. Maybe not above police and fire, but I think that we need to go ahead and start making some moves on this homeless programs and these housing and these neighborhoods. And those are the things that I appreciate. Secondly, other than fire and police emergency management. So, yes, I'm not sure that's not going to be, that's not popular, but I think just, I just feel better knowing that I have additional funds if we need those for contingency purposes. Thank you. >> Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, before I go back around. >> Thank you. Budgets are famously balancing acts. It's not our money. And, you know, not increasing taxes is a benefit. Things you spend on are benefits. We made a very good effort over the last several years to really try to not increase the average tax bill. I know you can't do that forever. Cost rise and needs rise. And to me, what strikes the right balance is the wage inflation rate. Just the fact that people's houses have gone up in value, it's no indication at all of whether they have more ability to pay. The fact that there are many good things to fund is no indication of whether people have the ability to pay for all that. So I can't really get behind what looks like a 9% increase in the average tax bill. I think I can justify increasing at the rate that people's wages have increased. And I think staff's rank ordering is persuasive. The fact that it's got police, you know, public safety, police on fire, not just sworn, also civilian, also street outreach, also community development, also emergency management. I think it's a pretty good balanced, pretty well balanced short list. And I would say that in my experience, we have been conservative, which is good, on estimating sales tax receipts. And I would say that as that trend develops, if we see that we're trending better than forecast, which tends to be the case and knock on wood will continue to be, you know, I'd be open to going deeper into the list. But in terms of a planning exercise, it's a wage inflation rate. Now, that having been said, I think Councilmember Armitage makes a very compelling point that we have a lot of public input on their prioritizations coming out of the, you know, the exercise that's been put before them. And I would be curious to know if, you know, if the public is endorsing the rank ordering or if they are saying you would totally want to spend more on taxes in order to fund more supplemental requests. I mean, you know, I would be very interested in knowing what that guidance is. But in the absence of that, you know, instead of what I think, I'm willing to take a look at the homestead issue again when it comes up. I can't say I find it super compelling now in terms of the hit you take versus the benefit that you provide. I don't think it's a super compelling deal. And I think it's a good discussion next year to talk about whether the ROI is a great benefit of us owning our own utilities that it funds, you know, part of our general fund, you know, to the extent that it has this year and will next year. An alternative view that, you know, is worth discussing is not to do that and just have it be reflected in lower rates. So I think, you know, that's worth talking about. We don't have to decide that today. So I think that covers what direction you've asked for. Okay. So we're going back around second time. It just... I'm providing... Yeah, I know. Yeah, no, that's just, just want to remind everyone, clear, concise. We've, you know, shared thoughts. And then if we can give direction succinctly. Councilmember McGuire. Regarding the homestead exemption, I think it's clear that having a flat tax rate or having, you know, very small homestead exemptions are putting an undue burden on middle and working class residents. So I'm very interested in revisiting the homestead exemption. I'd love to have a work session on that in February. But if possible, prior to February, maybe in December or January, if we could get either a staff report or a work session, just making sure that we understand sort of all the details involved in setting property tax rates and in homestead exemptions. I would very much appreciate that. In regard to the proposed tax rate, I'm very much trying to balance part of me agrees with Councilmember Byrd that we're a growing city. We have significant financial needs. We need to raise revenue. But on the other hand, I, particularly the voter approval rate would be pretty, that's a pretty onerous burden to place on our community. I would say that the revised proposed tax rate of 0.58545 strikes a good balance of meeting the financial needs of the city while recognizing that people are still struggling financially from the effects of COVID. And we need to try not to overburden residents to the extent that we can. To that point, number three, I would love to see all the supplementals funded, which is a big part of why I'm giving direction to go with the 0.58545 tax rate. I need more information on ROI. Can you kind of walk me through the pros and cons of keeping the ROI at 6% versus dropping it down to 3.5%? Sure. I'm happy to provide that now or I can provide an informal staff report in the Friday report. That would be better. Yeah, a staff report would be fine. Thank you. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. First, I want to thank staff for the quick pivot on this. It looks like a quick pivot from the outside to this new proposed rate but that's because all the work was done on the front end, having all this all set up to make these kind of adjustments, taking out that extra 700 grand and what was a surplus at one time, a kind of contingency you had built in, backing that out, getting us down to this new proposed rate. I also really appreciate the way staff has laid out the supplemental requests. I think that ranking is spot on. I think you did a good job reading the temperature of the council and the community. I'm going to make a case quickly for my colleagues for the no new revenue rate, the 5.56. Anything above a no new revenue rate is a tax increase and it is easy. I can tell from the conversation about homestead exemptions that our priority is on those homeowners because it's easy to look at that tax rate and say, well, that burden is going to fall to those increases, are going to fall to larger property owners, they're going to fall to people with large commercial properties. When taxes go up, landlords don't pay that increase. Tenants pay that increase. A property tax increase is fundamentally regressive. If we're going to talk about small business grants out of our federal money, if we're going to talk about affordable housing strategies, and Denton, in the year when we have an additional $23 million of federal funding coming into some of our pet projects and our favorite initiatives, this is not the year to increase taxes on anyone. The sales tax is up, better than we thought it was going to be. I already mentioned the money we have coming from the feds. I don't see a tax increase as in line with council priorities. The thing that gives me even more pause is we're talking about if we go to that no new revenue rate, and I'm talking about the total no new revenue rate, .565. If we go to that rate, our concern is that we won't be able to fund our supplementals, which come to the tune of about 2.34 million. In a moment, we're going to have another conversation on the next agenda item about how to spend an additional 5.8 to 7.4 million of general fund revenue that we anticipate may come from a new energy partner. So I don't think it's a very good look for us to on the one hand say, well, you know, we've got to increase taxes for everybody across the board, including tenants, including small businesses. We have to increase those taxes to cover our supplementals, which are all good and worthy. There's a reason why they all made the cut, and then turn around and dream up ways to spend somewhere between five and seven and a half million dollars. And that's of that five to seven and a half million dollars, something like four to four and a half million of that is just franchise fees. That's not even ROI. That's just the additional revenue already due to the city under the structure of DME. I don't think it's a good look for us to go back to our citizens and say, well, we had all this additional money come into the general fund, such that we had to have a whole policy conversation on how to spend it. But that was also the same year that we raised your taxes. You know, we had $23 million come from the feds. I mean, we had to kind of stop and think about how to even spend that much money on all these different COVID related things. But that was the same year that we increased your taxes. I don't see a justification for it. And that is not a knock at all on staff's thought process. Or preparation going to this conversation. I don't think this is the year for a tax rate increase. I can't vote for something that's above the total no new revenue rate. I think we can fund those supplementals. I think we can do exactly what we talked about doing. And I think we can do it at a tax rate that does not increase taxes for most of our residents. Okay. Councillor Member Bet. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I don't think staff is generally in the habit of proposing wild excess. So the fact that they revised their number down is clear that they're trying to be responsible. And I don't mean to suggest that Councillor Davis is suggesting otherwise. I do think that it is, to Mayor Pro Tem's point last meeting, this rate is used. It's flat when we want to say we're not taxing any new levels. And it's a tax increase when we want to argue otherwise. I think we have to fairly compare apples to apples. It has always been a tax increase because of increasing property values there. It has always been and always will be a tax increase because of increasing property values. Now, whether we can provide some rate relief to make that less of a burden, I think is a real critical thing. I don't think staff has been excessive on their supplemental request. In fact, most of these were replacement or equipment degradation requests. So I think that they're being fair. In terms of the one thing I hadn't commented on was the ROI, I think if we're talking about what's regressive versus not regressive, sales taxes are regressive, ROI is regressive. Of these three sources of funding, property taxes are the least regressive and the most based on wealth. So I think that's, again, a little bit of a not comparing the right fruit to the right fruit. I personally, even though it's a fairly substantial amount of reduction in our revenue, because of its regressive nature, I would be more in favor of dropping it back to the 3.5, but partly because of the very points that Councillor Davis said, dropping it back to 3.5 when we have a new project potentially that we might vote for that has revenue that would replace that 3%. So I think, you know, we can do a juggling act and pay for the things that staff has rightfully decided that would benefit our citizenry. So I would be for the proposed staff rate and the revised proposed staff rate and for the 3.5 ROI. So thank you. So just adding to my previous comments, additional comments based on hearing my colleagues, I too am okay with the drop to the 3.5 ROI if you need direction from us now. If that can wait, I mean, I know you mentioned that more information could be provided in a Friday report. I would love that. I would love to know a lot more about that. But if I had to decide now, it would be 3.5%. But I do have a number of questions, but for the sake of time, if that has to wait, that can wait. So I wanted to add, because I was thinking hearing Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer's case for the wage inflation rate and Council Member Davis's case for the no new revenue rate. I would be open to either of those, especially the wage inflation rate, if we could do more digging deeper than just the supplementals into the, you know, doing what I know some people see as micromanaging the budget. But what I see is just kind of a fiscally responsible way to represent the people who elected us to serve by looking not just at the supplementals, but looking at other aspects of the budget and having the opportunity to ask questions about it. I prefer something that's closer to a zero-based approach than an incremental approach and I see the focus on supplementals as just a kind of incremental approach. It definitely saves time, but it doesn't necessarily save money. But, you know, right now kind of the way the conversation has been framed. I feel like we're focused on the supplementals. But anyway, so I just wanted to mention that I'm not against, you know, considering a wage inflation rate. I think it's a really good idea. Even, you know, no new revenue rate. But when I look at a number of those supplementals, there are a number of them that I would like to see higher ranked. I concur with Councilmember Byrd, the Homeless Programs Coordinator. That's extremely important for me. That's farther up. Although I differ in, you know, for me that is more important than the additional, you know, supplemental from police. Again, we're still funding police, you know, what is the base budget, 35 point something million. So you know, there's a significant budget there. And if you take these police positions off the table, the police supplemental positions, then you've got a lot more supplementals that could be funded, you know, under a wage inflation rate or no new revenue rate. So anyway, that is where I stand. Okay. Councilmember Byrd. I want to look at that, R.O.I. I do remember that we still need to have that conversation about this new energy partner. And I understand that, you know, one of the reasons why we were tackling connecting with the new energy partner is to help us out with our energy debt. We still have this $140 million debt out there that we need to find some kind of way to pay for that. So debt right there is over off the table for me. I am good with the 3.5. I don't have a problem with the 6.0. I think that is something that we need to kind of just stay stagnant with that for now so we can make sure that we can get that funding behind us. We've got to eventually pay for that. So that's got to come from somewhere. Somebody is going to correct me, I'm sure. The other thing for me is and the reason, again, why I went to the voter approval rate and I'm sure it is just not popular, I'm just thinking about some of these other, again, some of these other things that could pop up on us and we'll need those funds. 80, you know, revised proposed and it's going to leave us with $81,000. That's a salary. What can you purchase with $81,000? What can you do with $81,000 in a city, growing city like ours? That's one emergency vehicle. That's not even a -- you know, it's just things like that that's in my head. I'm just a lay person here in this mindset. But I would also if I would do anything and I'll just put it right here and I'll just be quiet and if I have to change and go with the -- you know, I could go with the revised proposed, okay? I'd much rather have some money on, you know, some additional funding under my belt. I think that's just good financial sense. But, you know, here we are. And thank you. >> So if I may, just to follow up on the $81,000 net income for general fund is after funding all of the supplemental requests. So that -- and it still keeps us above our reserve targets in FY '22 as well as in future years. >> I understand that. It just doesn't seem enough for me. >> Okay. Any other questions for staff? I'll wrap up. Okay. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. >> I don't have a question for staff but I do have another comment. >> Certainly. >> Yeah, I think mostly, you know, people have expressed where they are and they kind of are where they are. But a couple of things I'd like to just respond to. Councilmember Beck said it's always a tax increase whenever -- you know, the rate is always a tax increase. I think that's a risk. But there's a reason they call it one of the rates, the no new taxes rate. It's the rate at which existing property would now result in a tax increase. And we actually programmed to the no new taxes rate last year. So it's not by any means a fait accompli that there must be a tax increase. We've been kind of hard at it for a few years to try to avoid that. So whether you want to do that or not, separate topic, the main topic for tonight but just in terms of, you know, the history. And then I would also say I very much appreciate councilmember Armitage's comments and her desire to sort of dig in deeper to find efficiencies in essence in the core budget in order to achieve a different tax rate. But I would just say that I don't think it's actually true that even though, yes, we are now at this point looking at the supplementals, which suggests like, oh, well, this is, you know, not zero base. It's just last year plus supplementals. I don't think that's accurate either if you just think back to what staff went through when we thought the bottom was falling out at the beginning of the shutdown. And all those people who took the incentives to leave early and all the people who found themselves with, you know, bigger jobs covering more bases, you know. So I think that there was a lot of kind of re-engineering that already took place. So when we're talking about supplementals now, I respect the fact that we're looking at building back from a, you know, a very crunched down efficient base. So, you know, I just want to give respect to all the hard organizational re-engineering that has already taken place. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So I think it's a very healthy discussion, very compelling across all spectrums. So Cassie, I think I have a couple of questions, one note, a couple of notes though. I think there's support for Homestead and ROI discussion down in the future. I'll leave it to you the timing. I'll tell you my personal input on that is I think it should come back after May. I think the new council will be set and it saves you a lot of reworking. You know, you start in February, you work up to a point and then, you know, if something changes, then you have to pivot accordingly. So I would, you know, but that's just I'm outside looking in, never done it before, just giving my personal input. My question about the tax rate, can it only be set once a year? So once we set it, we're done? Yes. Okay, great. And then the council supplementals, I mentioned a few different positions. I didn't see that captured in your presentation. Did you take a look at that by chance? Just and where I'm specifically targeting is the Spanish translation. I just don't think that's justified. And I think my opinion has been bolstered by, we heard reports from both the municipal judge and the auditor that said they needed various languages that they're having to find a way to meet. And I think the closed caption achieves that without the additional $74,000. And so I just would like to see something back to where we can bring on another staffer. I'm happy to go back and watch the video and note those if that's helpful. I can do that. Okay. Yes, absolutely. I'll add that for a follow-up for next week. Okay, great. I'd like to see those so that I could make a recommendation on that. Then I think both Councilmember Davis and Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer are really compelling. And I think it causes me to reflect back on kind of what my commitment to from probably two years ago going forward. It's to drive commercial tax rates and dollars and investments and economic incentives, et cetera. Drive up the taxes and revenue from commercial entities to lower the pressure on homes. And I think they both kind of captured that same sentiment and I think they're spot on. It's really painful when you analyze bit for bit what Councilmember Davis points out. Amongst all the crazy stuff that's happened this year, we're 5% over on our sales tax. I mean, it's just been a windfall, right? And so since I've been here in 2017, 2018 we've hit the no new tax rate. And this year I thought it was going to be iffy, but I think we have an opportunity to hit that again. And that's sobering and it's a credit to staffs work, city manager achieving that. So I think that's where our land is somewhere between us two. But to that point, if you look at your slide, you on the supplementals, so this is the Supplemental Request General Fund, you showed the wage inflation level above the no new rate, but the... Above the M&O no new rate. Okay. So which... The total no new revenue rate would not include any supplemental funding. Perfect. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. Sure. Okay. And so yeah, so I think that's not where I think we can do it. We can leverage one against the other and that then... So we lower the... Because I looked at it and I thank you for the slide on the home numbers, but I do know that we are one of the few that's in the 0.5 plus, right? And so we need to get back with our peers, peer cities or other cities and continue that hard work to drive that rate down because that benefits every house, every taxpayer. So that's kind of my observation. And then I have a question budget wise. So on the legal fees that are ongoing with the Grim Maynard case, that's captured out of DME's budget? I'd have to verify that. I believe it is. Okay. And then I want to ask, are we accounting for the judgment? Is that accounted for in this budget? I believe we accounted for it last year in the budget, but I'll double check. So it's set aside somewhere on hold. I believe so, but I can double check on that for you. Okay. Great. Just want to make sure I'm understanding that right in the processing of that information accounting for that. So that's everything I have. Councilmember Armitage, this is your third go at it. I just really ask that you be, if it's a direct statement, let's get a direct statement and let's move forward. Yeah. No, I just want to address, since it's the second time that you had mentioned it, it seems that you see a redundancy between the closed captioning and the translation. Okay. Can you email that to me? No, I want to say it now because I want to say it to my peers and the public. The thing about translation services and the difference between closed captioning and the kind of translation that you can get of written text on a website. On the website or in translating a document, you can press a button and have it translated into any language, but live translation services during a meeting, being able to in real time translate, that enables live participation and that's something that you can't do after the fact. So I just wanted to make that clear, that distinction. Sure, you can go and get a closed captioning and translate it into any language once you have a written transcript, but that does not allow you to participate in the meeting. And the reason why Spanish is because Spanish is an extremely common language other than English in this city. And we have a big and growing Spanish speaking population. So that is the reason why Spanish and that's why it's not redundant. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to be really clear. I think it was clear when I said earlier, but just in case someone didn't hear it, my recommendation or direction to go to the total no new revenue rate would include funding the supplemental. I'm not saying that I propose to ditch the supplemental and just throw those aside. What I would like to see this council do is to approve the conversation that we're about to have next and account for that additional franchise fee, the additional tax revenue from that deal, the additional injection into the general fund in addition to the conversation we're about to have from that new revenue, from that new energy partner. We've been budgeting to the no new revenue rate for a little while now. We know how to do it. It's a pinch, but we can make it happen. Okay. All right. Anything? David made his way down. David Yanes, assistant city manager. I appreciate those comments. Councilmember Davis. And kind of to my point that I don't want to just kind of wrap it up as far as next steps forward because we don't have too many council meetings left before budget adoption. Labor Day messes with our schedule a little bit this year. We'll certainly come back at the next meeting and I'm sure the following meeting. Obviously there wasn't consensus on a tax rate today amongst council, but we can bring back those options, make it clear with each of the options how many supplementals are funded, and obviously we'll incorporate whatever feedback comes from the next agenda item into that discussion as well. We did want to make sure we had those separate discussions for this council meeting. So just to wrap it up saying as there was no consensus on a tax rate right now, we'll certainly bring that back and have this discussion at the next council meeting as well. But just to make sure I understand you, the supplementals can be addressed mid-year, let's say, right, or in November, December. Those supplementals can be addressed at any point in the year if once a fund is available, but the tax rate has to be set on a prescribed date. Correct. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Got it. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Cassie. That completes item B. Takes us to item C, which is ID2118, pardon me, ID211686. Receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the funding and use options for the development of a sustainability fund. So good evening again. Cassie Ogden, Director of Finance, here to discuss the possibility of creating sustainability fund. So as you recall, last week you had an item that you discussed about a proposed project to build a data center at the Denton Energy Center. The project is anticipated to provide rate stabilization to not only the electric fund, but also the general fund and some other funds that I'll show you in just a moment. Based on last week's discussion, I'm here seeking your direction for establishing a sustainability fund in conjunction with the data mining project. So just a quick recap and I'll give more information in an informal staff report this week, but franchise fee currently is 5% of revenues paid from utilities to the general fund and it is for the use of public right of way. And the city has the ability to set those franchise fee for our own municipally owned utilities. The private utility companies, those fees are set by state law for each industry and they do vary. Our return on investment is capped by city charter at 6% of utility net investment. So currently we just discussed electric is currently at 6% of revenues until FY 2023 when it's scheduled to go back to 3.5%. Water is 3.5% of revenue as well as wastewater. And so why this is important, so I've put together just some potential revenue impacts for everything except for the electric fund. You've reviewed that extensively up to this point. So this is those revenue impacts for potentially the general fund, streets fund, and as we discuss it, the sustainability fund if council directs to set it up. So using the projections that you saw last week, I've put together based on our current revenue allocations, so that 20, 80% split between general fund and street funds for franchise fees and then also currently ROI, all of the ROI that's collected from the utilities goes to the general fund. Again, that can be changed by council directive, but based on the tentative, the revenue impact, you can see general fund would receive a total of a little over $21 million in the five-year window and then streets fund would be $16.5 million. Again, this is based on current revenue allocations, so council can make some changes to those revenue allocations if this project is passed. And so you talked about these last week, the potential projects that could be funded through the sustainability fund. Not to get into too much detail, but if you have specific project questions, we do have the sustainability folks on the line to answer those questions because I will not be able to answer them for you. But you talked about these, some of these projects in detail last week, but again, just these are scalable, so depending on the size of the fund, we could do as much or as little as we have funding for in these projects. But what we're proposing if council directs to establish a sustainability fund is that we would spend the first year developing a work plan and establishing those projects that we could potentially fund out of the sustainability fund. And so we're here to get direction on establishing the fund. Of course, it is contingent on the project, and that will be included on next week's agenda for your consideration, as well as the sustainability fund is currently scheduled for next week's agenda for your consideration. But what I'm proposing is if the sustainability fund is established to use the first year because we'll be collecting those revenues as the project comes online. And again, these are still just estimates. We don't know what the actuals will look like yet. But use year one to determine the funding and then consider those long-term funding options and then work through the work plan. So have it go through the committee on environment, all the associated committees, council can approve the work plan. And then year two, start the implementation of that work plan. So just a quick recap, the timeline next week, it's you're scheduled to consider approval of the project with budget adoption coming in September. And again, just like I discussed a minute ago, year one would really be considering the work plan while we build up the funding in the sustainability fund. And year two, so in FY 2023, would be the implementation of that work plan. And so with that, I'll stand for any questions. >> Again, this is -- people are passionate about this. I just need -- I need some direction from you on a direction you want from us. The question for us today is, should we open the sustainability fund or not, irrespective of what we're going to do with it? Did I get that right? >> Yes. So we're proposing that the sustainability fund would be in conjunction with the proposed project next week. So we can have it on the agenda for next week, or we can push it out depending on the direction that council gives today. But yes, it is currently scheduled for next week's agenda. >> Okay. I'm going to ask the city manager a quick question. Yeah. So I just need -- this conversation will spiral out of control in a hurry. And so if I'm going to get you the direction you need succinctly, I need to understand what we're talking about. What do we have today? Not -- right? What do you need to know today? Daily bread. >> Sure. On next week's agenda, on the 17th agenda, would you like us to create the fund and the creation of the fund, dedicate a revenue source for at least the first year? Those are the two questions that we're asking. >> Create the fund and dedicate a revenue source. >> Right. As we look at the current allocations of ROI and franchise fee, do you want to divert any of that to the fund in the first year? >> From DME's budget? >> From the -- >> Or from the general fund? >> From the funds that would go to the general fund. >> So general -- do we want to dedicate general fund dollars -- >> General fund or streets fund dollars, yes. >> To the fund. >> Correct. >> And if so, what increment? >> Yes. >> Okay. Got it. Okay. So the question before us is, do we create the fund? And if we do, if your answer is yes, then what percentage of the general fund goes -- should be dedicated for this fund, this sustainability fund, irrespective of projects? So it's coming out of the general fund, want to try to not get derailed on projects and potentials in future because that would -- we got to get down to the essence of what staff needs. Councilmember Armitage. >> Okay. So I'm kind of a little confused by the direction we're being asked for and I'll explain why. So we're being asked, do you approve of a sustainability fund? My answer for that would be yes. That's not the part that I'm confused about. But I just need a little bit more explanation as to -- so this is linked to the funding mechanism that's being proposed, whatever percentages we decide on, is being linked to this Bitcoin mining operation that has not yet come before us. Is that -- am I understanding that right? And so -- but then I'm hearing that we're not supposed to kind of weigh in on that, so I don't know how to answer -- >> So the reason this item is before you is we discussed the Tenaska deal at the last council meeting and there was consensus, direction from council as a whole to explore this option with revenues from the Tenaska deal that would go to the general fund. So we're bringing this back to ask, as you're considering all those other items on the 17th, do you want to create this fund, understanding revenues that would go from -- be generated from the deal to the general fund would be devoted to this. We want to have this discussion with council prior to actually considering it on the 17th so that we could do the leg work to have it ready for you to consider on the 17th, but they're certainly tied together. >> Okay, thank you. That explains it more. So when we had the discussion about whether to start an economic development fund, right, the idea of the economic development fund came to us and we were being asked for input on the funding mechanism. Now with the sustainability fund, it's tied to one funding mechanism and the only question is, you know, what percentages will go to this and what percentages will go elsewhere. So I support a sustainability fund, but I do not know enough yet about, you know, I will have to wait until next week to hear more about this Tenaska deal. I'm obviously very kind of skeptical about it and inclined against it, but of course, you know, there's more information that will come out next week, so I really can't weigh in on the second part and I wish that, you know, there were more options for a funding mechanism. I mean, we've got a whole sustainability department now and we've got a sizable budget. So anyway, I just find it unfortunate that it's linked to this one funding mechanism in this discussion, but it is what it is. So that's my direction if that's clear. Council Member Beck. Thank you Mr. Mayor. So I'm going to start off saying absolutely yes, sustainability fund, otherwise we can't get some of these conservation projects and I think it really does help us establish for large energy use, large projects, 21st century development, what our vision is for how we think that those companies should interact with us in the future. I think the fact that we establish a sustainability fund does not necessarily preclude us getting other funding sources into that fund in the future. This is just happens to be the funding mechanism of the moment and it's particularly apropos in Germain because it's about energy and conservation and we can use this to potentially, you know, kick start and jump start a lot of the projects that we've been envisioning for decades. So I am for the sustainability fund and I am very favorably inclined to offsetting some of the potential for conservation issues by taking the Tanaska Project and funding components of the sustainability fund to offset some of those, so I'm for both those. Councilmember Davis. Thank you Mayor. I'm going to agree with both Councilmember Armenter and Councilmember Beck on this. I'm 100% for a sustainability fund. My concerns are along the same lines as Councilmember Armenter's. I think that it's the same conversation we had when we had the ED conversation, the tying the ROI and ED together. If fundamentally we're not okay with that kind of structural revenue stream, this to Councilmember Beck's point, this is the year we happen to have this conversation because this is the year that we happen to have what we think is going to be a large injection of money into the general fund. I'd be very wary though of a percentage structure that assumes that this deal is going to be here forever. You know, if there's, you know, for instance, I think if my math is right, it's not always right, but the 6.3 general fund injection that you're projecting on the slide four is something like what, 4.6 of the current general fund budget. So if we were to turn around and say we want a sustainability fund that's always 4% of the general fund, well some years when we have a tenaska on the books, that's great. In other years we're like we can't afford anything because we've locked ourselves into funding a thing that maybe we don't spend every year. We've by ordinance locked ourselves into that. So I'm very wary of single stream, single energy customer kind of funding for this. I'm also wary of the idea that it makes sense in some ways that it's a carrot for approving the tenaska deal, but in other ways it's we can't have the expectation that every dollar, every extra dollar we get from the tenaska deal is going to go into sustainability. I mean, $6.38 million of sustainability projects in year one, when we really need to spend year one ginning up a work plan and figuring out how best to use the money and make it go the furthest, that doesn't make sense either. So that's a long way of saying yes, I'm in favor of sustainability fund. Yes, I think this is the year we can happen to fund it well because we have this partner potentially coming on board, but I don't think it's the whole fund. I think our priorities are rate stabilization, debt relief, tax relief, all the good things that we want that ROI to go to in the first instance and then we happen to have from this injection enough to also fund a healthy sustainability fund. So I hope that makes sense and that's the other half of my plug for a no new revenue rate. Thank you, Mayor. I am definitely in favor of implementing a sustainability fund. I agree with my colleagues that I don't want to see that funding limited to just the revenue from the tenaska deal, but to begin, I would like to see 20% of the franchise fees from tenaska going into the sustainability fund. I would like to see the ROI revenue from tenaska going into that fund and I would like to see the ad valorem taxes that the increased ad valorem tax revenue that we see as a result of the tenaska deal if it moves forward going into that fund as well. I think that when we talk about rates, electric rates, if this tenaska deal moves forward, it is projected to prevent rate increases and cover those debt payments. So I'm not too concerned about that. I just want to be frank that I'm not interested in moving forward with the tenaska deal unless we're going to get very, very significant amounts of funding for sustainability initiatives out of it. But yes, my direction is to move forward. Thank you. >> Councilmember Byrd? >> Yes, I am in favor of the sustainability fund. I do think that it needs to take care of our debts, our overwhelming energy debt that we had not budgeted for nor planned on it being around, hovering over us for a number of years. So I think that if this tenaska deal goes through, I would definitely want us to be very aggressive about using those funds to help us move forward and beyond this particular debt. And I think in the long term, once we get that behind us, we did understand that this particular business is probably not going to be a long-term business. I think we need to take advantage of that opportunity while they're here and they're paying and helping us to move forward and beyond that. So that's where I am. I'll leave it right there. Thank you. >> Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. >> Thank you. Definitely in favor of the sustainability fund. I'm in favor of seizing the opportunity to link it to the tenaska arrangement and to kind of create a template, as Councilmember Beck indicated, for future data center projects to come that is very much kind of an emerging future for debt. Data centers, distribution centers that are supported by renewables and that in turn support our sustainability. Now, I wish I could think of, maybe you can help, Steph, a different mechanism other than pick up percentage now. I mean, the ideal process for me would be something like have the sustainability committee like, you know, we agree, yes, we're going to create this fund. It can't exceed the revenues of the tenaska deal unless there's some other deal following. So, you know, there's an upper limit. But, you know, we have the sustainability committee tee up candidate projects that would have measurable impacts on debt and sustainability. Those are sized. We look at what the total add up looks like. You know, maybe every good idea we have that's practical, you know, and executable, maybe it adds up to 2 million. I'm totally making up that number. There may be room in that revenue to cover rate stabilization, property tax rate stabilization and the identifiable sustainability needs. We don't really know until we can do a little bit more, you know, create a structure that lets us put more diligence into what real projects are. And I would just suggest that today or, you know, in this present time frame, you know, that we just kind of put requirements on what it can be spent on that they must generally contribute to sustainability in some measurable way. And, you know, and not put a lower limit on it. >> All right. Councilmember bet. >> Thank you, mayor. So I concur with a lot of what the other Councillors have said. I think we -- the thing that we want to point out here is that this is an opportunity to establish how we're going to treat many businesses. So perhaps Tenasca is 80% -- you know, whatever. I don't know that we -- I agree with Councillor or mayor pro tem that we don't necessarily need to set a targeted goal. Maybe we remove the targeted goal, the 80% street fund. I'm not particularly sure that makes sense for this project. While these things -- I don't want to get into the weeds of what we spend it on. But I think, you know, maybe that cap is an easy one to remove because we want to focus on sustainability. I agree with Councillor McGuire that it needs to be very aggressive in order to, you know, sort of set up the framework and priorities. But I think, you know, if you just want to -- I think it's very apropos that mayor pro tem said something about roughly $2 million. He threw that out because if you look at the size of the green sense program, it's about $500,000. That's about -- doubling that is about the ballpark 1 million. If we did some of these other things, those are equally about $500,000 to a million kind of size. So, you know, if we cobble together things that came from advice from the sustainability committee, then, you know, that sort of number still leaves room for everything Councillor Davis says, this opportunity to build and grow. And it also gives us an opportunity to say, hey, you know, you don't even have to be an energy company. In the future, some fraction of revenue stream for high energy use companies, the next wind code, the next cold storage. Maybe it's not 80% like we're talking about with Tanaska here, but, you know, maybe it's 10% of a business like that. But that's into the sustainability fund, too. Along with solid effects. The idea is that we can establish, oh, this is the way Denton does business. We did that several years ago. We said we're going to do 100% renewable portfolio. This is the next logical step where we say businesses that come to Denton, we love you, we need you to contribute to conservation and sustainability efforts in our community. And we can adjust those priorities going forward. Thank you. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, mayor. I think in general principle I agree with that, but, again, I'm very wary of making it project specific or industry specific or what it seems like to me and staff correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like what we're talking about is a fund that would be housed in the general fund, not in DME, that it would be funded in some mechanism or formula or structure. It would be funded from the different streams that DME has into the general fund. So my thinking would be is you set it up as kind of like we do the franchise fee percentage into the streets fund, which has a nexus. It makes sense because the streets get torn up doing utility work and so franchise fees go to help maintain the streets get torn up from utility work. If we just treat it as a formula or a percentage or a structure of that funding, that way it is not just the tenascas and it's not just the WNCOs, it's every utility customer. It's every utility dollar that we make has a portion of it that ends up, whether it's a penny or whether it's $100,000, has a portion that ends up in the sustainability fund that's housed in the general fund. To me, that makes the most sense, that fundamentally the money is coming into the general fund. From there, we budget it like we budget anything else. Some things we budget according to a set percentage, like that streets money coming in from franchise fees. Some things we budget every single year. Every department, we've got to look at their budget and adjust it up and down and we don't have those bumpers that we put on ourselves. But I think we lose a lot of flexibility for the future and a lot of opportunity for the future if we just really nail it down to just a single project or a single industry or something like that. I think if we treat it as DME money first with the rate relief over there, the debt relief over there, and then the portion of it that comes to the general fund is general fund money that we have earmarked for this particular purpose, but we do that as general fund, almost like funding a supplemental, but it's a general fund item and not necessarily a strange formula that may be good today. It might not be good for the next project. It may, if these projects stop coming, it may not be good in the future at all and then we're not replenishing our sustainability fund. Got it. Looks like there's support for the sustainability fund and then the other portion is a bit more hard to read, so I'll leave that to staff. My input, I'd rather maintain maximum flexibility and have the general fund be the general fund. I think I'll just pick up on what Councilmember Davis said. There could be a supplemental line item every year that just becomes a habit that we attribute. At this point, if there's a really big opportunity to take advantage of a sustainability project that was of size, then you look at the fund and there's not enough money in the fund, then you can't do it versus there's always enough money in the general fund, all things being equal, and you're able to achieve those things, but then also it allows us to affect everyone in the city and have the most flexibility. That's what I'm looking for and that's just to have the general fund and have a spending associated with it and for consistency. From an economic development standpoint, that's what drives this. That drives commercial, that drives commercial growth, which then takes pressure off rooftops and we rejected a proposal to start an economic fund, so I think for me it's a little bit of chicken and egg. The economic fund drives these opportunities and if we're not going to fund that, then it's almost doomed to run out of money because we need those efforts on the front end. That's my look at it. I look at maximum flexibility and I think just the general fund with an emphasis on the fact that this body, our community, places a high priority on sustainability is the way to go. I think that's no different than we didn't have a fund for 100% renewable. It was a goal. We set it. We achieved it without these kind of parameters or guardrails. I'll harken to the past and say I trust the process when it comes to sustainability in our community and getting things done with the maximum flexibility that the general fund offers. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. That completes item. What's that? I'd add a comment if I could. Sure. Thanks. I don't think this will please everyone, but it's just my sense of kind of where I think the sentiment is clearly for a sustainability fund. But I think the sentiment is centered around some linkage and some specificity or else it's tough for some people to get behind this one deal. So what I would suggest is trying to be pretty flexible but kind of linked and pretty big. We suggest that we do link it to this deal to start it. That we link it to intensive energy users and I would trust staff to kind of draw the line for those where that starts. And to say in year one that this fund would be not less than two million dollars and kind of formula later TBD. I just think there's sort of a weight of weight of consensus there. If you want to keep talking about it, you can find out if people agree or not. No, I'm trying to I was closing it out until they pointed it out. So Councilman Beck, if you could, I mean I tried to make sure everyone said everything before I move forward and I thought I was there. Go ahead. Just to the Mayor Pro Tem's point, yeah, no, I'm exactly what he said. He nailed it. I think without aggressive sort of conservation efforts, then I will flip on the Tanaska deal. I think this is an opportunity we can't waste. Okay. Well, we're not going to get into okay. Item D. ID 211268. Receive report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the scope and connectivity options for Westgate Roadway Improvement Project. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Rachel Wood, Deputy Director of Capital Projects and let me just really quickly get the presentation pulled up here. Okay. So quick overview of what we're going to cover this evening. First, we're going to talk about the why. Why are we having tonight's presentation? I promise I'm not having an existential crisis. This is really just to explain that we need some scope decisions from the City Council and why specifically we need that scope information in order to move forward with this project. Then we're going to discuss what's transpired to date, starting with the May 20th virtual community meeting that we had, the June 8th work session where our City Engineer Becky Devaney provided an overview, talk about what we did with the feedback we received and everything that's led up to today's work session. Then Chandra Muruganindam, our Senior Traffic Engineer, is going to provide traffic study results from the traffic study that was conducted after the June 8th work session. Then I'm going to provide a brief overview of the resident compromise proposal that was provided to us from Denton Residence following the June 8th work session. After that, I'm going to go through a staff recommendation. So that's really what's different from this work session and what you saw at June 8th is that we have a formal recommendation tonight based on some of the information we received from residents, the feedback received at the June 8th work session, as well as some of the additional research that our team did. From there, I'm going to go through and I'm sorry, I'm going to take my mask off just because I'm having a little bit of a hard time breathing. From there, we're going to go into a matrix that talks about the June 8th work session options that were discussed, talks about the resident compromise proposal that we received, and then also goes through the city staff recommendations. At the conclusion of today's work session, we really are wanting feedback from the City Council on what the scope of this project should entail. So why specifically do we need the scope direction? Just to give everyone a quick kind of orientation of the site, I know it's been several weeks since that June 8th work session presentation. The primary portion of Westgate that we're going to be discussing is this north-south portion of Westgate. There is an east-west portion of Westgate over to the left that runs adjacent to that Stonehill Center. And then we're also going to be talking about Bronco Way. So Bronco Way will run perpendicular to that north-south portion of Westgate and in the mobility plan is listed as a secondary arterial, of which we covered on June 8th. DISD is building the southern half of Bronco Way, and then we've actually got a private developer to the north building the northern portion of Bronco Way. So the primary reason that we're bringing forward this scope discussion is that the 2014 bond program did include street reconstruction, drainage and utility upgrades for the southern three segments of Westgate, from Flagler to Windsor. So at a minimum, the scope of the project needs to include what the voters approved with the 2014 bond. Additionally, the approved 2015 mobility plan, as well as the draft 2020 mobility plan, classifies that north-south portion of Westgate as a residential collector connecting to Bronco Way. And then I would be remiss every time Becky DeVine or I give a presentation, we use the word holistic, and that is because that truly is the approach that we're taking to capital planning, as well as to capital project delivery. So taking that more holistic approach, we truly are assessing the entire area of a project and not just looking at those projects in isolation. So that's why we brought forward the options that were discussed on June 8th, and that's ultimately why today we're wanting that scope direction from you on what should this Westgate reconstruction project entail. So at the June 8th work session, well, I'm sorry, let me back up. As I mentioned earlier, City Council hosted a virtual community meeting on May 20th, where 34 residents participated and we answered over 50 individual questions. Following that virtual community meeting, we then hosted the City Council work session on June 8th, where a very similar presentation to the virtual community meeting was provided. And at that June 8th work session, City Council provided direction to have staff conduct a traffic study, of which Chandra's going to provide an overview of in just a moment, and then to further refine option C4 with the addition of a gate. So option C4 is the full reconstruction of Westgate, the north-south portion of Westgate, with an eight-foot sidewalk on the east side, and then permanent connectivity of Westgate to east-west Westgate and Bronco Way, again with the addition of a gate. So this next slide I know is a little bit hard to see. I'll note that exhibit four in Legistar has a blown-up version of this visual, but this is just a visual that our engineering team helped prepare that provides an overview of the direction that we received at the June 8th City Council work session. So you can see kind of in the teal, that's the permanent connectivity of Bronco Way to east-west Westgate. Then you can see the gate at the northern extent, that's the little red line. And then you can also see the purple section to the south, which is that 2014 bond section, the full reconstruction of Westgate, the eight-foot sidewalk to the east. So following the June 8th work session, we had the traffic study conducted. We entered into a professional services agreement with Kimley-Horn and Associates and then reviewed the results of that study. We received the resident proposal that was signed by 11 different residents of the streets of Darby, Flagler, Barrow, and the northern segments of Westgate on June 14th. And then staff conducted additional assessments of improvement options. Prior to tonight's work session, staff actually provided an update to residents letting them know that tonight's work session was happening. And I've also been in regular communication with several residents of the neighborhood, keeping them updated, talking about the options we're considering, and also walking through that proposal that we received from residents. So with that, I'm going to turn it over briefly to Chandra to walk through the traffic study results. Thank you, Rachel. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Chandra Muruganandam, Senior Traffic Engineer, Engineering Group. Based on the June 8th work session and the direction provided by the Council, we hired Kimley-Horn Associates to do high-level traffic study in this area, bounded by the roadways 35 to the west, Loop 288 to the north, Bonnebrae to the east, and Windsor to the south as the perimeter boundary to look at all the developments that can potentially go in existing and the future based on land use assumptions, and a growth rate of 3 percent in the area to have -- to model these traffic and see the need for east-west west gate and the north-south west gate roadway in the future. Based on the study results, Kimley-Horn provided a graphic interpretation of volume over capacity drawings, as you see on the map. For 2026 scenario, on the right-hand side, you can see this is without broncoway or west gate extension, or north-south west gate connection to the broncoway. You can see the level of service or volume over capacity deteriorating from green, which is the acceptable ones, and the tolerable is the yellow lines, and the green one and the red one is the failing. You can see it's failing on the broncoway section in front of the schools once the school opens with 2,500 students on day one. On the left-hand side, you see is the -- with the connection of west gate east-west and the north-south west gate, the level of service restores back to acceptable levels with the green lines. I'm going to go to the next slide, which is the 2040 scenario, which is literally 20 years from now, which is called the Horizon scenario, where most of the roadways in Denton technically would be built. In this scenario as well, it reinforces the need for west gate east-west section and the west gate north-south connection in some form or fashion. The level of service from red and yellows are restored with the construction on the left side with the east-west connections. Based on the study results, there are conclusions where we get more favorable results with constructing the east-west connection and the north-south west gate connection, as shown in the 2015 mobility plan as well as the draft 2020 mobility plan. Also as you can see from this map, the roadway arterial spacings are a mile apart from 35 to Barney Brace, or from Windsor to Loop 288, the east-west connections also are kind of a little more than a mile. With the existing connections of, or proposed connection of west gate north-south or the east-west broncovay connection, the arterial spacing would be at an ideal of half a mile or less, which is needed to have a more optimal connectivity that saves in environmental emissions as well as fewer triplets where neighborhoods and all other traffic can have a shorter triplets. And the west gate connectivity provides more multimodal opportunities for pedestrian and bikeways with the proposed eight feet and then in front of the school we have a 10 feet sidewalks. Also the connections of east-west and the north gate, north-south west gate sections would alleviate demands in a scenario where I-35, Barney Brace and potentially Windsor all going in construction at the same time. So this will be a proactive step from the city to have traffic mitigations we can do to alleviate some of the conditions we experience in the different parts of the town around schools where there is only one roadway connecting to the school, similar to without the connection we have only one broncovay from the main school to have connection to Barney Brace. And finally the reconstruction of residential west gate section of north-south could be done to a residential standard instead of a collector with residential street rather than a collector standard to achieve the same results. And staff has provided an exhibit which we'll go over in the next couple of slides which outlines that can be achieved with some traffic calming measures that could also have some similar effects with the construction of north-south and east-west west gate. With that I'll transfer back to Rachel and I'll take questions at the end. Thank you. Thank you so much Chandra. So as I mentioned earlier we did receive a resident compromise proposal on June 14th so just want to provide you with a brief overview of that proposal. We did receive it from 11 residents who do live in the neighborhood that we be most immediately affected by any potential construction of west gate. The residents requested full reconstruction of west gate to residential street standards, an eight-foot hike and bike trail on the east side of west gate with signage, and then temporary access to bronco way with gravel road and clear signage indicating that west gate is not a through street. So what we heard from those 11 residents is that they did not want the permanent connectivity of north-south west gate to east-west west gate and bronco way that they just wanted that temporary gravel road as the necessary connection point while the road is closed for construction. But they did have support of the eight-foot hike and bike trail and then they did fully support also, not listed on this slide, the reconstruction of east-west west gate connecting to bronco way. So after receiving that request from residents, staff reviewed it and here's just a quick overview of our assessment. We do view the reconstruction of west gate as consistent with the mobility plan. However, the residents did recommend residential street standards and so currently the 2015 mobility plan and draft 2020 mobility plan list west gate as a residential collector. Additionally, an eight-foot sidewalk is part of the standard cross-section for a residential collector street, not a residential street. And in order to meet fire department standards, gravel would actually be more expensive than a temporary asphalt connection point and we'll go through that in just a moment. As I mentioned, we do have a staff recommendation and we're going to go through a compare/contrast in just a moment that goes through each of these options and outlines the costs. But staff's recommendation is for the permanent connectivity of bronco way to east-west west gate, which is consistent with the mobility plan. Temporary connectivity of west gate to bronco way with an asphalt construction and then full reconstruction of west gate to residential street standards with permanent connectivity to bronco way and an eight-foot sidewalk on the east side. Our primary reason for wanting to go with that residential street standard versus a residential collector is that it would require no additional right-of-way acquisition and we did notice that there are some gas lines as well as utility lines that would likely need to be relocated, so it does help minimize costs. As Chandra mentioned, if we do proceed with the staff recommended option, Chandra has worked with our engineering team to develop and again, this is very much a preliminary schematic, but to develop a schematic where there would be a left out only option for northbound traffic heading off of west gate onto east-west west gate/bronco way so that they could only turn left and so that would help preclude some of the school traffic from using west gate. So that's one of the measures that we think would help alleviate some of the concerns of residents if this option was ultimately selected. So just to quickly go through at a little bit greater level of detail the staff recommendation, connectivity of bronco way to east-west west gate as I've mentioned is consistent with the mobility plan, that's this teal line to the north. Temporary connectivity to bronco way built with asphalt to reduce costs and again in a future slide we'll go through the cost assessment. Fully reconstructing north-south west gate to residential street standards with an eight foot sidewalk on the east side and permanent connection to bronco way. So the reason for this recommendation as I've already mentioned is it does reduce costs for right of way acquisition and potential DME and franchise utility relocations and I will note we're still in the initiation phase of this project so the project is being scoped that's the direction that we're receiving today. The project has not yet been designed after we design it then we'll select a construction contractor and go to construction. So we're really talking right now about some very preliminary schematic plans but based on those preliminary schematic plans that is how staff has developed this recommendation. It also addresses connectivity recommendations from the traffic study that Chandra just went through and will provide additional traffic flow during the construction of the I-35 north project which we know is happening in a few years that is a tech stop project. Additionally this recommendation was truly a cross-departmental effort so we work with development services, we work with the fire department, we work with finance, the city manager's office and in talking to the fire department this recommendation is also consistent with the fire marshals recommendation as well as the 2012 international fire code that requires two separate and approved fire apparatus access routes for residential neighborhoods with 30 or greater homes. Now most of these homes the homes and the neighborhood was built prior to the 2012 international fire code so it is grandfathered in but there are emergency access concerns with there only being one way in and one way out of that neighborhood currently which is Westgate. So here is the compare/contrast so of the considerations at the June 8th City Council Work Session we received a recommendation to proceed with the reconstruction of the southern three segments of Westgate that's consistent across the board with the City Council recommendation on June 8th, the resident proposal we received on June 14th as well as the staff recommendation that you're hearing tonight. At the June 8th City Council Work Session we heard to have a full reconstruction of Westgate to residential collector standards with eight foot sidewalks on the east side and then permanent connectivity of Bronco Way to east west Westgate. The only additional item that we heard requested on June 8th was that emergency access gate that would have a cost of about $30,000. So the June 8th City Council recommendation comes to a total cost estimate of about $7.75 million and again this is all based on very preliminary schematics the project does not have a complete scope yet and it has not yet been designed. So then going briefly through that resident proposal the resident proposal did include the permanent connectivity of Bronco Way to east west Westgate. It included temporary connectivity to Bronco Way for just construction traffic only using gravel and that's where I'll note that the gravel in order to meet fire department standards is actually $77,000 versus the $63,000 for the asphalt. The residents also requested full reconstruction of Westgate to residential street standards and then requested a variance of that typical cross section to have eight foot sidewalks instead of five foot sidewalks. So the resident recommendation is right at $6.9 million based on our current estimates with those preliminary schematics that we have. The staff recommendation also includes that permanent connectivity of Bronco Way to east west Westgate. It includes the temporary construction connectivity using asphalt and then it includes the full reconstruction of Westgate to residential street standards and then also recommends waiving that typical cross section and including that eight foot sidewalk on the east side. So the staff recommendation comes in at $6.92 million where that resident cost estimate is $6.93 million the primary difference being the cost difference between the asphalt versus the gravel temporary construction connectivity. So next steps as I've mentioned this evening we really need that scope direction from the city council on what you want the scope of the Westgate reconstruction project to entail. Do you want the permanent connectivity to Bronco Way? Do you want an eight foot sidewalk, a five foot sidewalk on the east side? Once we get tonight's scope direction we'll then work through selecting a design firm and finalizing the design. As Becky mentioned at that June 8th work session a temporary or permanent repeal of that 1993 ordinance will be required even if we just allow temporary access onto Bronco Way there will at a minimum need to be that temporary repeal of the ordinance and that will need to be reviewed by the mobility committee, traffic safety commission as well as the city council. Once we've gone through the necessary kind of paperwork have the project designed all the way through the construction and completion of this project we're going to coordinate with residents, coordinate with our regional partners TxDOT, coordinate with Denton Independent School District as well as those franchise utilities just to make sure that this construction is as seamless as possible knowing that this is a high growth and high development area. So specifically with TxDOT we'll be coordinating on the I-35 north widening project and then with DISD on Denton High School as well as the construction that they're conducting on Bronco Way. And then from there we'll select a construction contractor and begin construction. So with that we are hopeful to get some scope direction from the city council this evening and then myself Chandra we've got several staff from the fire department and development services on the line as well to answer any specific questions that you may have. Okay Council Member Arbiter. So thank you and I want to strongly advocate for the resident compromise proposal and to thank those 11 residents for coming up with it and I want to explain why going over the devil's advocate points brought out here by the staff assessment. So number one so we've got the full reconstruction of Westgate to residential street standards this is the resident compromise proposal to 8 foot hike and bike trail on the east side of Westgate with signage and a temporary access to Bronco Way with the gravel road and clear signage indicating that Westgate is not a through street. Now before this compromise the overwhelming consensus from residents was no through street whatsoever and don't repeal the ordinance and I advocated for that I didn't like the idea of even though it ended up being a majority council consensus I was in a minority in not liking the idea of the gate because I shared residents concerns about it. The brilliant thing about to me about the gravel road that the residents came up with is it does the job of allowing construction vehicles to come through while showing even without the signage although I agree that the signage is necessary but people will look at it and see this is a pedestrian through way and not a through way for cars so it will send clear visual and textural signals and will provide a through way not only for construction vehicles but also for kids walking to school and it will be a safe way to walk to school through a residential neighborhood. I want to also say that because a gravel road with temporary access to Bronco away is just temporary it doesn't preclude the possibility of say residents in 2040 we saw those projections of traffic in 2040 change their minds and say we want to you have a different set of residents who knows it's a long time from now 20 years we want to make this permanent it could happen. You have already paved the way for that access and then you could just asphalt over the gravel road or it could be a beloved gravel pedestrian road with this hike and bike trail. It's flexible for the future and satisfies the residential needs of the present. For the staff assessment it's inconsistent with the 2015 mobility plan and draft 2020 mobility plan. Plans are forward looking and sometimes kind of like with zoning plan you end up mischaracterizing a neighborhood. This is a residential or I should say I see this neighborhood and I think the people who live there do as a residential neighborhood that has a semi-rural feel to it so I see this I'm not bothered by that conflict because I see oh this is one of those areas where the 2015 mobility plan got it wrong the 2020 mobility plan which is it says here still in draft form so that's you know that hasn't been decided yet but you know it makes sense that we would change the the way we see this street in response to the way that the community sees it and the way it functions. The point about the eight foot sidewalk is not part of the standard cross section for residential collectors street sorry it's part of the of the standard cross section for residential collector street not a residential street that doesn't bother me either. Number one it's this is conceived as a hike and bike trail not as a sidewalk and and so although you know the difference might just be purely you know semantic from an engineering point of view I'm not sure but those are two very different kind of things as far as you know functionality and I think hike and bike trail really characterizes the semi-rural feel of the neighborhood and they're also saying we want people to come through here and enjoy our neighborhood this is not they don't want to build a wall around the neighborhood and shut the school and everybody else out you know they just don't want car traffic going through their neighborhood. Finally the the final point about in order to meet fire department standards gravel would be more expensive I'm totally okay with that fire department standards are a necessity right and the cost which is still less than the cost of what council had proposed of which is what a majority of council not not me you know had proposed last time about a gate it's still less than that so we need to meet fire department standards and gravel we just make such a difference in precluding cars from just you know whizzing in and out of that neighborhood and it would make it safer. So that is my my case for the resident compromise proposal I hope colleagues will consider it as well. Councilmember McGuire. Thank you. First I want to commend staff for doing a great job of balancing lots of conflicting needs. I think it's clear that y'all are taking seriously the concerns of the residents of the area who don't want increased car traffic and that you are also trying to serve the needs of the greater community in terms of mobility so thank you for for being creative in your your solutions and your problem solving to that. I have two questions before I provide my direction. Can you clarify what the differences between a residential street and a residential collector street? Sure so really the primary difference is just going to be the actual width so I'm gonna pull it up just so I don't misquote so a residential collector cross section and we're not recommending a typical cross section regardless because we're just looking at that sidewalk or hike and bike trail on the east side but a residential collector cross section typically has a 65 foot right of way and then the residential street cross section is typically 55 feet. So the primary differences are that residential cross section is really what you're going to see primarily currently in residential neighborhoods typically has a smaller sidewalk and then the residential collector cross section typically does have that eight foot sidewalk a little bit wider parkway the space between the sidewalk and the road. Okay thank you. My other question is I see on the the conceptual plan on slide 11 that the plan is for an eight foot sidewalk on the west side of west gate of north southwest gate to connect to then a 10 foot path on the south side of bronco way does that that 10 foot path is that going to extend all the way to bonnie bray? Correct and that's being built to the south by denton independent school district as a part of the denton high project. Okay great is there a plan for a sidewalk on the north side of bronco way? We've got Julie Wyatt on the call she's the planner for the kings ridge project. Julie can you confirm if there's a 10 foot sidewalk going to the north on bronco way? Or any size of sidewalk. Julie Wyatt are you on the call? She may not be on the call so I might need to just get with her and get confirmation back to you on that. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi I'm so sorry there is a sidewalk plan for the north side let me pull up those plans so I can verify the width but there will be that a private developer who's developing that kings ridge neighborhood is responsible for installing that sidewalk so I'm going to look up the width and I'll I'll get that back to you. Okay well follow-up question while you're still on the line what about the east west portion of west gate are there any plans for sidewalks there? So I can answer that portion that would be the city's responsibility so if we come back and we do have that project to connect east west west gate to bronco way that would be something that would be on incumbent on us to include as a part of our capital project. Okay thank you all right so my direction is I essentially to follow the staff recommendation I want to see a full reconstruction of north south west gate to residential street standards I'm glad that you made that clarification with the addition of the eight foot sidewalk on the east side I would like to see permanent connectivity of bronco way to the east west portion of west gate and temporary I'm fine with asphalt I mean if that's going to be less expensive and meet the needs temporary asphalt connectivity between north south west gate and bronco way and I just want to you know add a little plug in there that when when y'all do that that connection between bronco way and the east west portion of west gate I would love to see continuous sidewalk connectivity there as well thank you. Okay Councilmember Davis. Thank you Mayor great work by staff getting with the neighborhood and really interdepartmental work getting this worked out this is exciting to see a good compromise come forward I especially like the right in left out configuration I think it's going to alleviate a lot of concerns I like the staff recommendation I agree with the asphalt it's very difficult to stabilize gravel in an inexpensive way make it safe for the trucks and that gravel it just goes everywhere residents will be spreading it all over if they're trying to go in and out of the neighborhood that way so asphalt's a good a good choice there the only thing I would ask about the only kind of nagging concern I think that's still out there from residents who who live on west gate can we also consider a no parking ordinance for west gate during school hours I'm not talking about fourth of July parties and stuff but a no parking during school hours ordinance we have we have similar and other places in the city but if that could be considered I think it would make it a much more attractive connection for folks okay Councilor back thank you mr. mayor I also gonna applaud the fact that I I honestly let me clarify there's there's no difference between the staff recommendation and the residents recommendation other than the gravel asphalt is that no there's one important clarification so I appreciate you asking that question the resident recommendation is not to have nor south west gate be a through street so they want to have a gap of a few hundred feet from the current northern extent of nor south west gate to the east west portion of west gate that would potentially connect over to bronco way so that's an important clarification point that that temporary asphalt is really intended to only be temporary dissuade people from getting used to using that that's the the rationale that the residents used but the residents are not recommending and I've clarified that with the individual who actually sent us the proposal they are not recommending nor south west gate being a through street connecting to bronco way and and and I I take their concerns and and and I you know the fact that you know the staff is consistent with the the residential size other than the residents collector that that we're we're looking at the hike and bike trail eight foot size rather than the five foot size all those all those things like sounds like you know really nice you know everybody in the community sort of rowing in the same direction on those I I understand the residents concerns about flow it is flow versus safety it is a concern all over dentin we are we are prioritizing flow and we are deprioritizing safety but one of those safety elements that I think the staff plan fixes is the the one entrance in and out I mean you know that's just that's not that's not wise in my opinion I I would wonder and in the same way that councillor Davis asked if there could be sort of no parking restrictions could I know that there are other traffic calming mechanisms and in fact I think Chandra led with some of that so we could have bump outs and other traffic calming that would just really make that road unattractive as a as a through street but yet still let it be a through street I think I that would maybe not get all the way to the residents concerned but I think the biggest concern is that it's they don't want flow through there and and so to the extent that we could add mechanisms to reduce flow and keep that to the residential speed limits because we know people don't obey the residential speed so if I may I'll pull back up slide number 11 and I'm certain that Chandra can do a more effective job kind of going through the details of the reasoning for that left out right turn only into the portion of north southwest gate so let me get that pulled up just so that we're all kind of speaking to the same same slide and then we'll have Chandra come up and go through that. Thank you Rachel. Council Member Bick for your question of using more traffic calming certainly we can do that with bulb outs on the east side of Bronco Way it's two lanes going eastbound and two lanes going westbound so with the concept of bulb outs we can narrow it so we can make it impossible for any of the school traffic to make a turn here so we can use bulb outs we can use bulb outs here so we can reduce the speeds and also people don't have the need to make the right turn so they are in fact that only the residents as if they want to go back to 35 they'll be able to make the turn and go towards 35 on the left side and when they want to come to their neighborhood they can make the right turn and then one through lane goes towards the school we can drop a lane when they approach this intersection so there are several ways we can achieve this and I guess and I don't want to tell traffic how to do traffic calming because you guys know that way better than me I meant more on north-south it's so weird north-south west gate too many directions northeast southwest tux estate kind of thing so on north-south west gate I think was more inhibiting the flow I think sort of it sounds like if I'm understanding staff and residential that people have come to sort of an agreement on connecting Bronco Way to east-west west gate and that that's sort of a need but to have to try to inhibit the flow through their neighborhood you don't want people cutting through I think that's a major concern and they don't want they don't want traffic so to the extent that we could take extra extraordinary not extraordinary measures but extra measures to to make that flow as unattractive as possible I would hope that we do that since we are redesigning the north-south for full construction we can do a lot of traffic calming measures that's in the toolbox we can employ those along with the parking restriction during school hours we can do that thank you councilman Byrd I agree with staff recommendations I think that it's pretty much the way to go since councilman Beck added the request for the traffic calming devices I started thinking about the biking portion of that the street is going to be the street is going to have the residential street standards and those standards are going to be eight feet wide sidewalks and then we're talking about bump outs is there room for bikeability you know as part of that am I seeing some biking lanes in there as well so we'll be working with our senior planner bicycle pedestrian and ada coordinator he is going to be an active part of the project team so this is where we're still in the scoping phase and not to the design phase but absolutely looking at pedestrian connectivity bicycle connectivity and then also vehicular flow are going to be things that we're looking at kind of using becky and my favorite word that holistic approach really is looking at multimodal needs in the area not just at the vehicular needs I am still not clear on what what an emergency access gate would look like and I'm going back to of slide number 11 if it's not requested by the neighborhood nor the staff but I know that we had mentioned something about that what would that have looked like if we if we were to go that route so there are a couple of options really the easiest way to kind of think about it is when you're going into and out of an apartment complex a lot of those are motorized there are some that are manual as well but it would be something along those lines whenever you're going and you have to call into the gate at a gated neighborhood or an apartment complex something similar to that and we would that have if we were to go that route where would that have been located here I just can't imagine it being somewhere here yes ma'am so if you look at I believe it's exhibit four and Legistar we actually have it's kind of a rudimentary image but there's a red line at the far northern extent of north southwest gate that shows where that emergency access gate would be and that would be really something that only the public safety departments or during construction or significant emergency events that it would be opened okay well other than that those are my only questions I think that you know staff recommendation is pretty much hitting it on the head and I would definitely support the staff recommendation okay Mayor Pro Tem Maltzer yeah thank you I certainly echo everybody's recognition that this is a tricky thing for staff to work out the community I support for what it's worth at this point the the neighbors recommendation at the community meeting that I went to something like the staff recommendation was advocated very strongly and was pretty roundly rejected so you know I actually share a lot of kind of perceptual considerations that Councilmember Harmon to erase and as far as the cost difference it's two-tenths of a percent difference I highly question whether this is not a knock but whether anybody's estimates on a project of this size are accurate to within two-tenths of a percent I say support the neighborhood okay I have a different thought and I'm gonna borrow your word holistic right so if I turn if you're if you could just envision or if you look on I looked on Google Maps and so if you you look there on East West Westgate there's a opportunity to u-turn before the entrance to the antique mall then there's a large gap to u-turn at that entrance to the to the antique mall you have to address those because all you have to do is spend some time on Dallas Drive at the racetrack and you'll see people navigate that does the impediments text out put put in front of that that turn to go to I-35 they go past that and then they make a u-turn and block traffic going to the other way so you're you when you force someone to turn left if they need to go to Denton High they're gonna speed up they're gonna make a u-turn if it's a high school kid he's gonna try to drift it and then go straight in the didn't hide other way so for me it's it's not complete if you don't address that and so as long as that's part of the configuration and I understand there's a cost associated with that it's just not gonna function as intended without addressing those concerns and if you're completing the street anyway that's important and so no one's brought it up but I'm telling you I can tell you right I can see it they're gonna circumvent your left turn only in a split second and it's not gonna be good and and then the question was asked again per Google Maps it may be gone by now but there is a sidewalk on the northwest side of East West West Gate but so we just need to complete that and so that would be important to me so the u-turn component would would need to be addressed in my mind at the same time and the sidewalk would be to be we need to complete that other half and not delay we should that should be part of the project and then have have the utility has the utility path been decided I know that was an issue when we were talking for Luke 28 etc there there is a utility line that was going to kind of cross this area it's that ringing a bell I can have Becky answer that more specifically but we have been working with utilities as we're looking at these schematics for the north-south portion of West Gate as well as the Bronco Way east-west portion of West Gates connection so the water and wastewater utilities are looking at some of these corridors for their future utility relocation and with the 35 widening project there's also DME like we mentioned at the last meeting and I'm sure that's what you're referring to they're still looking at their exact routing in these locations as future development is happening in that area but we are coordinating with the municipal electric for sure so we feel comfortable that the recommendation misses that or will that ultimate decision do those have to be synced up or are you looking if we give direction today we're going to go but do we know how that affects and you're right the utility poles because again Mayor Pro Tem mentioned if you recall at the time concerned about how close it gets to the houses that sort of thing sure and so DME is looking at how they're going to relocate their utility poles on the north and west side of 35 and how that comes across the roadway to the eastern and north side of the area I will also tell you we're not only coordinating with this on West Gate but we're also coordinating on Windsor and we've had several conversations specifically in that area so definitely working with DME there are existing utility poles as Rachel mentioned along the east side of existing North Southwest Gate but at this time we don't feel like there's a negative impact to the project that DME is currently working on for those relocations yeah no I think my focus is on the west side of the neighborhood that open field area you know if we're going to be coordinating streets and we don't know exactly where utility lines are going to go but yeah I'll just trust that's my concern so sure do you the staff want to speak to the their thoughts on the turnaround and the u-turn sure sure absolutely I'll have Tondra come up here more specifically but it does sound like we are getting at least some consensus from council that the connection of East West West Gate to Bronco Way needs to be scoped in as part of the project so traffic calming will absolutely be part of what we're looking at there we'll also be working with TxDOT on the adjacent I-35 north widening project they're going to be working on the frontage roads along there as well so there'll be some opportunity to make improvements in conjunction with that project Becky mentioned to the south there's the West Gate project so that's going to be where we're going to be ultimately widening West Gate to a four lane divided all the way to the frontage road where it currently necks down and so there will be coordination that we're looking at there from a traffic calming perspective as well as construction coordination perspective just to give you a little bit more of that holistic landscape of what we're looking at but Tondra if you want to speak more specifically to options to preclude u-turns and high school student drifting we can definitely work on providing signage no right turns from north-south to the future Bronco Way and also the u-turns currently there are two u-turns from 35 is because the road ends at that location so we can make provisions with the construction that it can be removed and then or we can provide a turn lane for the outlet mall so that through traffic on east-west West Gate continues to the towards the Bronco Way and the high school yeah no that I think that's really the key is if you're going to it so then someone really has to be committed if they're going to make a u-turn they have to go all the way to the service road turn the wrong way on the service road and then come back and so it's really easy to write tickets it's discouraging it's too far away you know those sort of things so it's just really and so from the outlet mall if I look at the painting again Google Maps may have changed it's right turn only out of there and so I and I don't think that that West Gate needs to be a turn in from that perspective I mean you're one block away you know to turn in the main entrance is mine so I think you just I don't I don't know if that's an option right I may be messing up all the rules but I'll just say that just as long as we prevent that u-turn that early I think it's effective but I think anything mid-block they're gonna you know take advantage of it and it needs to for me it's something raised it's a curb it's something that that you know there are signs signs don't really do it at that age we can do several raised intersections that will deter and slow down traffic so we can consider several options okay great all right thank you appreciate it and Mr. Mayor if I may we did get an answer from Julie on the northern sidewalk width and so the developer of the Kings Ridge development will be installing a five foot sidewalk to the north okay all right well thank you very much appreciate it thank you everyone mayor can I ask us one very very fast question yes sir after we connect East West West Gate East West West Gate and Bronco Way we're gonna rebadge East West West Gate right it's gonna be Bronco Way Bonnie Bray all the way to the highway there yes and just to expand on that yes that is the plan to have it all be Bronco Way we're also in preliminary conversations with the school district they're looking at a location off of Riney Road for an elementary school because Bronco Way connects to Riney Road on the other side of Bonnie Bray that would potentially all be renamed to Bronco Way all the way through mm-hmm thanks okay thank you that concludes that item takes us to our last item on the work session item E which is ID 211089 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction on pending City Council requests for a complete comprehensive environmental environmentally sensitive area inventory good evening mayor and council Stewart Birdseye the assistant to the city manager I am here for our pending council requests work session let me pull it up really quickly by way of review any requests it's going to take over two staff hours or is a request for a work session or a an extensive report comes through this work session the requesting council member will have one minute to present their request and then the remaining council members will have one minute to indicate support or just give their thoughts any requests that gains a consensus of council staff will move forward with tonight we have one request it can't it comes from council member Beck it's a comprehensive environmentally sensitive area inventory council member Beck's request is there just to pull out a little bit of staff information it's estimated to for the things that he's asked for to take about 120 staff hours I will mention that the bandwidth at our staff's home is a lot different than the bandwidth here at work and so if they were if we were to move forward with this we would just kind of need to think about that as far as timing and so it may necessitate just a few week delay to be able to do that so with that I will pass it over to council member Beck let me know when to begin mr. mayor okay whenever you're ready all right so I'm pretty much just going to read this so that in the this is basically almost pro forma this is something that staff requested that I request so you know I'm following up on staff's wishes that basically in Friday reports they said look you know we need if this is going to take us more than two hours we would we want to do an inventory this is something that we're willing to do but we just want direction from council we agree that we need to have the ESA inventories and be able to characterize it the way I've requested there in the proposal I don't think there's really any argument about you know we need to know what assets we have that's clearly across the board with the various city resources and so we're going to need this kind of data to make decisions in various committees and boards and chairs so I asked that we do the inventory commit the staff time to it and if staff feels like adding any other additional characteristics beyond what I've requested that's I believe that to the freedom of staff and I think again this is just an issue where staff needed us to to push so with that I'll stop okay councilmember Amateur yes I strongly support this going forward and I hope that there could be a some sort of kind of moratorium on taking ESA's off of the declassifying ESA's until we've got this inventory and you know more information we can have about these ESA's including the size you know a map etc will be wonderful all right councilmember Davis thank you mayor I support this as well I think it's got utility in a lot of ways I can can I can count a number of projects recently where ESA's have needed some pretty serious field verification I can also count some that were always ephemeral streams and maybe shouldn't have been included as ESA's in the first place so just some better field verification of what we're talking about and all our aerials are better now anyway so starting with new GIS and updating what we've got I think it'd be beneficial and not just from an environmental standpoint but also from a planning standpoint developers looking at sites need to have accurate information about what the ask is actually going to be when they start working on their project and I think it's ultimately going to be good for everybody councilmember McGuire thank you I also support moving forward with this to speak to the the staff information portion of this slide here I'm okay with staff you know doing this work over a period of time you know I think we need the information but I don't know that it's urgent enough to warrant outsourcing the work okay so that satisfies that satisfies requirement to move it forward but okay so there you go yes sir thank you okay that concludes item E takes us to our next item so we'll take a break briefly and then we have to go to our closed session stations let's do this can I take it can I take things out of order and get the consent agenda out of the way is that alright while we're here okay so let's do the consent agenda item and then that way we we get that out of the way we come back we'll go away come back or let me see no we got to come back and do that last item anyway so we'll go we'll have a closed session so it's 840 so let's take 15 minutes to get situated so we will be adjourned in closed session at 839 we'll be back in closed session at 855 it is 934 we're back in regular session we do have a quorum again so I'll call the meeting back to order in the open session we are now arriving at the consent agenda item C was pulled for recusals so I'll give time but before that I'll take a motion on the other consent agenda items and let's see okay Councilmember Davis I move approval of the consent agenda accepting item C okay and Councilmember Beck second got it a motion by Councilmember Beck I mean pardon me a motion by Councilmember Davis second by Councilmember Beck any other discussion seeing none Councilmember Davis I'll say you aye Councilmember Beck aye Councilmember McGuire aye Councilmember Armitage yes Councilmember Byrd aye Mayor Pro Tem okay okay and Mayor Hutz with his eyes well that passes seven to zero then that takes us to item C which for the let the record reflect that Councilmember Armitage and Councilmember McGuire recuse themselves I'll call that item it's ID 211287 consider adoption of ordinance of the Sea of Denton authorizing the city manager to execute and deliver to the University of North Texas an electric easement containing approximately 1344 square feet so I'll take a motion Councilmember Davis I move approval Councilmember approval of item C thank you Councilmember Beck I second thank you have a motion by Councilmember Davis second by Councilmember back any discussion seeing none Councilmember Davis I'll say you aye Councilmember Beck I Councilmember Byrd aye Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer aye Mayor Hutz with is I as well that passes five to zero so they can return that completes the consent agenda takes us to items for consideration first item is and only as item a ID 211698 consider approval of a resolution of the City City Council of the City of Denton Texas placing the 2021 tax rate and that will exceed the that will exceed the lower of the no new revenue tax rate or the voter approval rate good evening Mayor City Council Casey Ogden director of finance here again to talk about the max tax rate with you just a brief presentation so just a reminder of the assessed values and some of our tax rate assumptions so our total certified appraised value for this upcoming years 14.4 billion that is a 7.8 percent increase compared to last year with the total value last year of 13.6 billion and then total frozen properties is 1.7 billion with a total new value of 461 million. And so we're here tonight to discuss the max tax rate which is part of the requirements of the truth in taxation that is required by state law so our no new revenue rate is a little over fifty six cents but our approval rate a little over sixty four cents our revised proposed budget is 58 and a half cents with our published max tax rate at sixty and a half cents to allow for flexibility just in case council would like to make any changes or any add additional funding in the FY 22 budget. And so this item is to be able to hold public hearing on this on September 14th a public hearing is required before budget adoption and so a public hearing is required if we exceed the no new revenue rate or the voter approval rate and the proposed tax rate that we're proposing in the budget currently does exceed the no new revenue rates. But through the public hearing process obviously citizens will have the opportunity to provide input as well as through our other budget input tools including balancing act in our feedback tool online. And just a reminder that budget and tax rate hearings are scheduled for September 14th with budget adoption on September 21st. And with that I'll take any questions questions for staff. Any and none I'll take a motion Councilmember Davis. I move approval of the resolution allowing us to further discuss the tax rate and hold public hearings on the same. Okay Councilmember Begwire I second okay. So in discussion do you want to just highlight that that this is just setting the max level that we will have discussions and look forward to staff's feedback from the online sources as well as citizens comments during the during the public hearing. So any other comments? Mayor Pro Tem? I was contemplating voting no on this I'll support the idea of having the discussion. I do think based on our prior discussion that it may well be possible to have both a very powerful sustainability fund and cover supplementals without without having a tax increase. Okay then so Councilmember Davis I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember McGuire? To clarify just for anybody watching at home I'm not saying that I support a tax rate of sixty and a half cents but I support publishing that as the absolute maximum. Yes Councilmember Beg? Aye. Councilmember Byrd? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. And Mayor Hutspeth is an aye as well that passes seven zero thank you. That concludes our all our items concluding items I do believe yes. Any concluding items? Seeing none I'll just mention. Oh got it sorry I got it so I got in there anyway Councilmember McGuire? Thank you Mayor I just want to wish all the students out there a happy school year I know that Denton ISD is starting this Thursday I urge you know students and families do what you can to to keep yourselves and and your classmates and your neighbors and families safe mask up get vaccinated if you can and have a great school year. Councilmember Bet? Thank you I just two points one just just a point of fact that a judge ruled on on Governor Abbott's GA 38 so I encourage people to check out that ruling I won't make any other statements other than that and I know I said I wouldn't but happy birthday Councilor Armitage. So that's all I wanted to say okay Councilmember Davis? Thank you Mayor stepping outside my district just a little bit but if you're kind of a train geek like I am or a rail fan of any kind on Friday at about five o'clock down in East Sycamore Union Pacific Crossing you can see the big boy that is big boy the one of the biggest the biggest locomotive ever made only 25 of them made it didn't used to make regular runs through Denton it was for trains like cross the Rockies and stuff like that but steam transportation still a big part of our history that's big boy 4014 that's coming through the Union Pacific runs fully restored if you want to see one kind of more up close it's not fully restored but out in Frisco they've got one that's the 4018 so you can go look at it if you're a donor you probably climb around on or something to the Museum of the American Railroad to check that out. You have the inside track on that museum. Rains at my house are a big deal. Okay Councilmember Burke? I just want to say that I had an opportunity to visit with the United Way of Denton facility the other day that was my first time actually literally visiting the facility however I've have had conversations with them before so I was just very pleased with what I saw I got a chance to meet absolutely everyone and I appreciate their the direction that they're going and I look forward to working with them and anyone out there that needs help if you have a crisis situation please keep the United Way of Denton in mind please get help in every kind of way and I think that the city is doing a great job in being mindful of everyone's well-being and you all have a good night. Thank you and just to echo a couple of things well first let me go out Kings Road neighborhood meeting is on Monday the 16th so staff if you'll confirm that that's been noticed just in case we have more than four there and then I echo Councilmember Greger wishing all the kids that start school on Thursday a happy school year and I do encourage them do the same stay safe and all the parents enjoy the break if you have kids that are leaving the house so and then I do want to echo that so Councilmember Rommertra I do hope you have a great birthday appreciate you spending it with us. With that it is 9 44 p.m. and we will conclude tonight's meeting and we'll do it all again next week. Thanks.