Aug 17, 2021 City Council on 2021-08-17 3:00 PM

Welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is three o'clock and we do have a quorum. I'll call the meeting to order. Today's date is August the 17th. And that takes us to our first item, citizen comments on the consent agenda. I don't believe we have any, but do we have any? No, sir. Not for this one. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. That takes us to the next thing, which is request for clarification on the agenda. And so questions for staff regarding questions about the consent agenda. Councilmember Arbiter. I don't have a question for staff, but I wanted to pull item H for a separate vote. Okay. Do you need a presentation? No, but I did want a discussion. Okay. Councilmember Bett. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have questions on B, C, I, and J. Let's take them one at a time. What was the first one? What was the first question? Oh, B? Oh, sorry. Modified procedure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for reminding me. So for both B and C, it's sort of together. It seems like these are sort of executive sort of flexibility issues, you know, personal vacations, you know, confusion over scheduling. Is there a mechanism that we can have where a staff in other departments have flexibility to kind of do moderate changing that we are likely to approve? Is there a mechanism that we can employ for things like that where it's just more procedural than anything else for these kinds of excuses? Well, I think as staff mentioned the last time this came up with respect to the removals that they're working on a process, but right now that's not in place. So they have to follow the rules. They're in place. So yes, that's in the works. No, it's not done yet. And so that's why it's here. Alright. And for I, this is on the crime scene scanner. My question is, did we, I don't in principle have any real problem with the Pharaoh technology, but did staff explore other technologies? They mentioned Leica, but didn't talk about it. And I guess my question really is, what led them to continue with the Pharaoh technology and what led them to not consider other technologies? We should have staff on the line, either Tiffany Way or Michael Kessler. This is Michael Kessler. So the RFP did go out and Leica was sent in the RFP. Unfortunately, they did not respond to the RFP. So Pharaoh was the only respondent to that RFP. That is somewhat of an easy answer then. Okay. Thank you so much. And then, and then my last question was on Jay where the RFPs were unsatisfactory. And so the benefit of following staff recommendation is an extreme savings in money, which is large and notable. What are the cons of not contracting it out? Is that speed and time? Is it going to be slowed down if staff replaces the hydrants themselves? And is that a safety issue or that's fine? We have Stephen Gay or Casey Bowles on the line to answer that question from Water Wastewater. Yes, Councilor Beck, this is Stephen Gay, Director of Water Utilities. There won't be any slowdown in work or any safety concerns. We're just taking advantage of an opportunity to leverage some existing staff to perform those services in house. And the contract amount, as you can see, when we went out to bid was quite cost prohibitive for us. So no, that clarifies that then. If staff doesn't think there's any safety or time concerns, then that answers my question. Thank you so much, everyone. Okay, any other questions? Okay, great. That concludes that section. So we'll only pull H and no presentation. That takes us to our work session. The first item is item A, which is ID 211361, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction regarding an incentive application for Safran Electrical Components USA, Inc. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development. And I have a number of representatives from the company online as well. And so I will recognize them after we complete the staff presentation. All right, to start off, I'll provide a little background on the company. Safran is an international high tech and tier one supplier of systems and equipment in the aerospace and aviation and defense markets. They have five operational divisions, more than 11,000 employees spread across 51 sites in various countries throughout the world. They're located in eight, sorry, they have eight sites within the United States with just over 1000 employees here nationally. The company's products are used widely on a large array of civil aircraft, regional aircraft and business jets, as well as military aircraft and helicopters. Safran Electrical Components is a French registered company with many subsidiary component companies. They themselves are a subsidiary of Safran Electrical and Power, a global leader in the design and production of aeronautical electrical systems. They currently have nine facilities in the United States, including an existing facility in Denton. Safran Electric Components is a supplier of back shells, conduits, sleeves, accessories and cable protection and routing to both aircraft manufacturers and their suppliers. Their products are used in Airbus commercial aircraft in the Boeing 737 and 787. The reason Safran submitted an application is they are proposing to relocate an existing facility from Santa Rosa, California to the existing Safran Electrical Power facility in Denton. So on your screen right now, you'll see the existing facility in Denton, right here on the right. The project will relocate the Santa Rosa, California Safran Electrical Components facility to Denton. Safran will invest in their current facility an additional 1.7 million. The current value of that facility is about 15 million, resulting in a total value of about 16.7 million. With that, 157 jobs will be relocated from the California facility to Denton. As you can tell, this is a strong job-based application, so we'll be talking about this application in terms of a job-based grant. So we received an incentive application from Safran to support the relocation of their subsidiary from California to the Denton facility and consolidate operations. This is a policy targeted sector of aviation and aerospace and does meet our strategic growth area of business retention and expansion. It has a projected capital investment of 1.7 million and 157 jobs relocated. I'll go over the jobs in more detail over the next few slides. So on your screen right now, you'll see the job and wage distribution table for the total 157 jobs. The total estimated payroll at buildout would be 9 million for just those 157 jobs, so that's not counting any of the jobs currently in Denton. The weighted average wage of those positions is $57,505. Of that, 33% of those jobs are above the Denton County average and about 64 are above the Denton County median. And then in terms of classifying high-wage positions, we look at the amounts of $65,000 and $75,000 as you see. 29% of those jobs are higher than $65,000 a year and 14% are higher than $75,000 a year. We also look at strategic plan alignment for these projects. This is a unique one that we've seen recently because this is a business retention and expansion grant. This company does have an existing facility in Denton. So we are looking at a business and retention grant, which is, again, a little bit different than what we've done in the past. But as you'll see there, under sections 1.3 and 2A.1 of our strategic plan, we talked about how important it is to support our existing businesses. Just as normal, we go through our incentive policy provisions and priority considerations to make sure that this project is eligible. So under our general policy provisions, it meets three of the six criteria. It is a target industry sector. And then we look at our priority considerations and we see that it meets six of the ten priority considerations. Because this is a job-based grant, we also need to look at our Chapter 380 policy and our investment fund policy. It does meet five of the seven Chapter 380 loan considerations and then it must meet two of the three of the economic investment fund criteria to be eligible for funding. And it does, as it is considered, higher wage and knowledge-based job creation as well as recruitment of an industry sector target. So for your consideration and discussion today is a Chapter 380 performance-based job grant, including an expansion grant to offset the cost of furniture, fixtures, equipment, permitting fees, or site upgrades that are necessary for the relocation, a stratified job-based incentive with additional consideration for employees living in Denton. It will require a Chapter 380 agreement with the economic development investment fund as the source of funds. And we are proposing to nominate this applicant to the Texas Enterprise Zone program. So as you see on your screen right now is the project incentive revenue generation. So this is a pretty simple cost-benefit analysis that we do strictly related to property tax from the project. So the Chapter 380 grant, we're proposing a total incentive value of $175,125. We anticipate that it'll all be paid in year one because this is a relocation so they will sort of move all of the jobs and hire those pretty quickly as opposed to some of our ramp-up grants that we see over years. And then we do estimate that the new investments will generate about $100,000 in new improvements in business personal property as well as that we get about $61,000 per year from existing taxable value, so about $612,000 over 10 years, or an estimated city revenue of about $712,000 from this project. This was something that Councilmember McGuire had asked for at the last incentive presentation, so we wanted to make sure Council had this at your disposal. And that is an analysis of the investment fund and where we are in terms of revenues going into that fund and expenditures going out. So we've created a forecast that we use internally to track funds from that. And so just to kind of follow along, here's the estimated balance of that fund moving forward. Contributions to that fund are made through the mixed beverage taxes that come into the general fund and then transferred over to the economic development investment fund. And then we forecast out all of the approved agreements under that fund. And so you can follow along down here where we have an estimated balance per year and we're holding pretty steady right in that $750,000 to $900,000 range over time. So the benefits for this project in terms of qualitative benefits, of course, this is a retention and expansion project with one of our key employers here in town, so that's very important. But also that quality jobs are created and it's an investment in human capital and a reduction in brain drain in our community. And then lastly, this does help diversify our tax base. In terms of quantitative benefits, this does have a 10-year net benefit estimated at $195,000. That's net of the incentive. And that is through our economic impact analysis, we've determined that this incentive at the $175,000 level has a rate of return of about 21.2% and a payback period of about 4.8 years. And again, one thing to keep in mind when we're looking at that payback period is we want that payback period to be less than the term of the grant. So a five-year grant is what we're proposing in there under that threshold. So just to summarize how we got to our recommendation, five-year performance-based incentive not to exceed total of $175,125, an expansion grant of $50,000, it will be a reimbursement of actual demonstrated costs, a stratified job-based grant of $101,500. Residency bonus, we've adjusted our bonus based on council's feedback at our last grant to be $700 for existing residents and $300 for new residents with a not to exceed amount of $23,625. This would be a Chapter 380 agreement, pretty standard for these types of agreements that we've brought forward. We would include nomination to the Texas Enterprise Zone. And with that, the Economic Development Partnership Board recommended the incentive as presented 8-0. And with that, I will pause for questions. All right. Questions for staff? Let's get there. So Councilmember Armitage? Yes, I was wondering if there's a representative from Saffron on the line? Yes, ma'am. We have quite a few representatives from Saffron on the line. So we have Jorge Uribe, Sophie Ann Hannard, Ashley Bagley, John Carroll, and Derek Templeton all on the line. So I will let them choose. Good. They all sound good. I wouldn't know. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So of course, this is a question I could have asked you, but I have a feeling that coming from the Saffron people. So hello. Just wanted to confirm with you all. So that's 157 jobs that are relocations, transfers from your other facilities. Are there any new jobs being created? I will answer. I'll go ahead and answer that. Okay, sure. You can answer that. No, it's 157 positions that are being transferred. Now, they're not necessarily all employees currently of the facility being relocated. And that was a question at the Economic Development Partnership Board meeting. But it's 157 jobs with some positions being the person being employed will relocate. So these are transfers from maybe not all from the Santa Rosa, but from various other places. Are there any new jobs being created for Denton residents? So I'll let the company address that question. Okay. Okay, great. Yes. Can you hear me? This is Jorge Uribe. Yes. Hi, Jorge. We can hear you. Okay. Yeah, I hope it's not too noisy because I'm in a park speaking, so I apologize for that one. So yes, so the question is, how many new jobs will come from this relocation? That's the question, correct? Yes. How many new jobs for Denton residents? Okay. So right now, we don't have a specific, let's say, number, but what we have been offering is a relocation to some key employees based on our know-how and skills, okay, mainly on the production area. We have given them the offer to relocate. As of today, we don't have yet a specific amount of people that we've relocated, but we believe that it's going to be around 20 to 25 people tops, okay? So that means that the rest of the jobs will come, let's say, in local hiring from the DFW metroplex area, no, hopefully from Denton, but it's around probably 120 or 125 people that we will have to hire. Okay, thank you. I don't know if, yeah, sorry. And does that fit with your understanding of... Yes. Okay, thanks. And my next question was, I was wondering if you could speak to your company's approach to COVID safety for the workers who do the most kind of hands-on work. Yeah, I don't know if Ashley is on the line. Probably Ashley can answer this question better. I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. So I work currently in our Denton facility and have been here for 15 years, and we immediately responded to COVID safety protocols in March of 2020. We actually started to mask at our facility in June of 2020 prior to any kind of mandate at the government level for the state. And we had already implemented utilization heavily of our second shift to further distance our employees, especially in a manufacturing environment. We had changed some of our protocols back in June as CDC guidelines were updated. But at our group level, we actually monitor our country where we operate internationally and then specifically our states in the US at a certain threshold that the group determines based on metric levels around COVID. And the group determined Texas under our standards went back red two weeks ago. So we are mandatory mask again in our facility, regardless of vaccination status, and then continuing to implement all the other protocols around sanitation, distancing of workers. We utilize remote meetings wherever possible and send remote work as well. Thank you. And can I ask, what's your policy if somebody gets sick with COVID? Does it go into their sick leave? Do you have a separate policy? Sure. Give me just one moment. Give me just one moment. Ms. City Attorney, are we within range of a 380 discussion to go into the first overall questions overview of COVID? The second is now a leave policy. I do believe I just want to make sure we're not we're on posting. I believe that we're still within posting. I'm sorry. I believe that we're still within posting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the indulgent question. You can you can proceed. Sure. So, we're a unionized facility here in Denton. And so any kind of special allowances under TUMoff, of course, to negotiate with the union. So when COVID happened last year, we approached the union proactively and proposed to give them the additional pay TUMoff specific to COVID purposes. And we don't qualify for any of the federal grants around the tax benefits available. So we just wanted to do something to work with our employees to help them through the time frame. And so we have extended that to our employees. And we continue that for well over a year until employees could better manage with their existing pay TUMoff benefits that we have available. And so we're continuing to work still to allow for absences and they're popping. Now it's transitioned over to the regular SICCOM, community absences are necessary. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Councilman Byrd? My question is on what is personal property? I see that funds will be invested or leveraged for personal property, $300,000. Can someone explain what that's all about for me? Yes, ma'am. So when investments are made by companies, we look at their taxable value. Property taxes apply in two areas. The first is real property. So that's the building. And then business personal property are sort of the things inside the building. It could be equipment, it could be machinery, but it's taxable property that the business owns that's not necessarily the structure. And when it says what the question is what funds will be invested or leveraged for the project, is that the granite funds or is that the funds from their own pockets? It's the dollars that the company is investing in that facility. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Councilmember McGuire? Thank you, Mayor. First of all, thank you for bringing this to us. I think that y'all have been an excellent corporate citizen of our community for a very long time. I'm going to ask y'all the same question that I've asked every company requesting a 380 agreement so far. I appreciate having the kind of specific breakdown of different positions that will be potentially created by this project and what the approximate hourly wage of those positions is. I'm very pleased to see that the lowest number was $16.83 an hour. My question is, for those positions that are earning the lowest wages, assembler, extrusion operator, shipping and receiving clerk, those types of positions, what are the requirements for those positions? Is there any type of education, certification, experience required as you hire for those positions? I'm going to defer to one of the members of SAFRAN if Ashley is still with us, maybe. Hello. Can you hear me? This is Jorge Uribe. I'll defer to Jorge. Okay. So then Ashley, you can complement if I'm missing something, okay? So basically, the processes of this operation, the one that we are planning to move to Denton, it requires some specific skills, okay, that are not, let's say, currently available in the Denton operation, okay? So as you mentioned, we have different processes, complex, extrusion, welding, machine chop operation, tube bending. So we have several different processes that require specific training and specific certifications in some cases, okay? So for instance, we have to have a NAPCAP certification in order to be able to operate in that facility. So I think to answer your question, it's a combination of two. There are some specific positions that will require specific training or a specific experience in some cases, okay, to hire people with experience in those areas. And in some other cases, with our internal training that we have set up and developed, we can prepare some employees also to be part of the assembly or manufacturing process. In addition to that, the plan is to relocate also a full design engineering activity, which today in the current Denton operation we don't have, okay? So we're going to have, we're going to include an 11-people team of design engineers, mainly mechanical engineers, and also an R&T department that, again, those type of activities will be new to the, at least for Safran, it will be new on the Denton area. So I don't know if I'm answering your question or Ashley, if I'm missing something. Yeah, and just to clarify kind of the intent of my question, and I ask this every time we see a 380 agreement, it's that obviously it says in our economic development plan, a strategic plan, that we really want high-skill, high-wage jobs and preventing brain drain. And I think that that is an excellent goal. But personally, I also really like to see living wage jobs for folks who maybe don't have a college education or don't have experience. And it sounds like there will be some of that involved here. That is correct. There are several positions which are, let's say, the pay per hour is higher than just regular manufacturing, let's say operations, operations, sorry, or assemblers. So I think the answer to that is that you're correct. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Any other questions? So just want to hear from those. I guess you just need direction right at this point. So is there anyone that would like to move forward? I guess I need to see an indication there. Otherwise, staff will have their direction. So anyone not wanting to move forward? Seeing none. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, that takes us to item B, which is ID 211271, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding City of Denton policies related to development districts, including but not limited to tax increment, reinvestment zones, public investment districts, municipal management districts, municipal development districts, and municipal utility districts. All right, Mayor and Council members, it's still me. So I'll be with you for a while today as we go through a number of these. I will go through this relatively quickly, hitting the high points, but if at any point you want me to pause or you have a question, I'll have a couple stopping points so we can stop and talk about districts or we can hold to the end and just make sure that I come back to one of your questions. Okay, so as the caption indicated, what I'd like to do with council today is really give you an overview and a background of common economic development tools and special districts that are used for development financing purposes. Sort of the big five that get talked about a lot are there on the screen. Those are public improvement districts, tax increment reinvestment zones, municipal management districts, development districts, and utility districts, and there are a lot of very similar words, but they do very different things, and so we'll go through each of those individually. Then I'll take you through current city districts and zones, policies and requirements, and then I'd like to begin the conversation with council today about those future policies for those various districts. And I do have a number of helpers either on the line or here with me, so if I'm not the expert, I will assure you I will turn it over to the person who is. So just to start with an overview of what are special purpose districts. So these are subdivisions that are created for judicial, political, electoral, or administrative purposes. Various sections of the Texas constitution authorize those districts, and state statutes set out creation, governance, powers, or they might even directly legislate the creation, governments, and powers of those districts. These districts are typically used for infrastructure, service provision, or providing the ability to levy an additional tax or assessment for a pretty limited purpose. They're governed by either an authorizing political subdivision like a city or a county, or they might be governed by a separate board that can either be elected or appointed by the authorizing governing body or the population they serve. They can be created both at the state level and the local level depending on the type of district. Believe it or not, there are thousands of these special purpose districts within the state of Texas. They exist for a wide variety of purposes. If you'd like to read up on them, I encourage you. It's very interesting. They exist for anything from water districts, mosquito control districts, hospital districts, library districts, just to give you a sampling of the type of districts that could exist, each of which have their own sort of individual rules and regulations. Depending on their purpose, they might be supported by a property tax, a sales tax, a user fee, and they may issue debt. Development districts is sort of a smaller subset within the special purpose district. That's a common term we use in economic development for those districts such as public improvement districts or tax increment reinvestment zones that are usually specifically associated with economic or community development. So this is general information. So this may or may not apply to each individual district, but just to give you a sense of what they do and how they operate. They are tools that can be used to incentivize and facilitate development according to local goals. So keep in mind that with some of these districts, cities, counties, and their political subdivisions have a lot of discretion in how and when to implement these tools. When they're used correctly, these districts can help relieve the economic and financial stress of a new development or redevelopment, ensure higher quality development and adequate infrastructure is in place, and they might give cities more control in the development process. Another thing that's key about these tools is that some of them can be layered on top of each other and can be used in concert with each other. And others can be used in exchange for certain other districts to maybe incentivize a particular type of development. So I'm going to jump in and give you the 50,000 foot level of each of these districts. There's about 50 pages of code for each of these, so keep in mind I'm going to keep it very high level. So in Chapter 372 of the local government code, we have public improvement districts. These are the development tools used to fund public improvements or infrastructure within a defined area by assessing fees based on benefits received. We do have a local policy resolution 181039, which is our PID guidelines, and we'll go over those in more detail later on. Some key elements to keep in mind with public improvement districts is that of all of the districts, the city really has the most control because public improvement districts are not separate political subdivisions. They are functions of the city council. You have the discretion to create and levy assessments. You have to authorize the service and assessment plans. And so you can adopt your own criteria for how you will create and how you will operate PIDs. Another key element is that tourism PIDs or T PIDs are also authorized under that same section, but they do differ a little bit in their operation and authority. Tax increment reinvestment zones are an economic development tool used by dedicating future revenues or portions thereof to improvements specific to that zone. They're authorized under Chapter 311 of the Texas tax code. We don't currently have an existing local policy, but we do have two existing local tax increment reinvestment zones. We have one downtown, which is a really general purpose pay as you go TERS. And then we have the West Park TERS, which is really an industrial development TERS that's associated with specific infrastructure projects. TERSs can be initiated either by petition of property owners or directly by the local government itself. TERSs can actually capture both sales tax and property tax increment. And then they will often have their own governing body, or as we have in the city of Denton, when we created our TERS, we authorized the TERS boards to only undertake certain activities. So they have pretty limited authority, and that's one of those discretionary elements that you can have with a TERS board. And then again, a city can adopt its own criteria for terms of a TERS. You could limit the amount of time. You could have a policy that stated the amount of percent of increment you were going to dedicate, but a lot of discretion in that tool. Municipal management districts are created to promote, develop, encourage, function, employment, commerce, economic development, transportation, housing, tourism, recreation, and so many other things. They're authorized under chapter 375 of the local government code, as well as special legislation that's codified into the special district local laws code. Again, there are hundreds of these across the state, many of them with their own legislation. So it's really hard to give a broad overview of their purpose because many of them have very specific elements inside of the special district local law code that applies to them, including the city of Dutton's municipal management districts. So they are a separate political subdivision and government agency that can collect property taxes or assessments from property owners. A key thing to keep in mind with municipal management districts is they are designed to supplement but not supplant the role of the city government. Typically, they're used for water, wastewater, drainage, roads, and recreational facilities. And cities typically retain some sort of control through what's called a consent ordinance requirement, and that a legislator might require the local government to adopt a consent ordinance prior to moving legislation forward. Municipal development districts are something that we haven't talked a lot about here in the city of Dutton, but they are authorized under chapter 377 of the local government code. They're actually a specific sales tax that can be issued and created for the purpose of constructing development projects and primary funding of those projects that results from that imposition of the sales tax. Some key elements is that they have to be approved by an election. So the city would have to call an election for that sales tax. You cannot exceed the 2% cap. So here in the city of Dutton, within our municipal boundaries, we couldn't adopt a municipal development district because we're at that 2% cap. However, municipal development districts can allow a city or a county to issue a sales tax within a extraterritorial jurisdiction. So they're different from some other sales taxes in that the city could actually designate part of its ETJ or its entire ETJ as part of a municipal development district. It does have a separate board that's appointed by the district creating city council. So it does have a separate layer of authorization that it must go through. Its uses are very similar. If you're familiar with type B economic development sales tax, municipal development districts function very similar to a type B corporation with a few extra things that are added on in chapter 377 in that the municipal development districts can also be used for convention centers, civic centers, hotels, and associated parking facilities. Municipal utility districts are those districts that are created for constructing and maintaining water, wastewater, and drainage facilities within its boundaries. They're authorized under chapter 54 of the water code and the TCEQ administrative code as well as chapter 42 of the local government code and special legislation codified into the Texas special district local laws code. So there's a lot of regulations associated with municipal utility districts. We do have a local policy in resolution 20-920 that was adopted. That's our interim mud policy that outlines the city's consideration of those. Some key things to keep in mind is these are the ones that the city probably has the least amount of discretion in because muds can levy and collect taxes, issue bonds, charge for services, condemn property, enforce restricted covenants, and make regulations to accomplish its purpose. It has a lot of flexibility under the law to function like a government entity. And so just to give you a brief little matrix, this isn't an all-inclusive list of things, but we wanted to kind of try and summarize the uses and can they levy an additional tax or fee and what's the city's role for you. So as you see there, those are the five major districts. There's advantages and disadvantages for each district. But again, keep in mind that the city has a lot of discretion. And so when there may be a disadvantage associated with a particular type of district, the role of the city policy would be to mitigate that disadvantage. And we can come back to that or reference it on your screen as needed because it's a helpful little tool. But with that, I'm going to jump into the next section, which is on local use, and we're going to talk more specifically about the city of Denton policies. So I wanted to provide context because one of the questions we get asked is how frequently are these tools used and where are they used? So we looked around the Metroplex. I actually came here previously, I worked in the Houston area where these were much more common, but they are becoming very common here in the DFW Metroplex. So we pulled just some of our neighboring cities. What do they use? As you can see, it's common to see a PID and a TERS in communities. Those are because those are the most traditional economic development related tools. They allow a lot of investment in development projects. And then you see a pretty limited use of the management districts. You see some of those mud districts. Usually those are communities that are like Denton. They're kind of on the outskirts and you're going to see those muds occurring either along their kind of exterior of their city or along their ETJ. And then the municipal development districts, the reason it's so limited is not surprising. You can't exceed that 2% local sales tax. So if a community has already hit that, they're not going to employ that tool. So cities can adopt policies and guidelines for the consideration and use of certain districts. Usually that requires the governing body's consent and approval of those districts. The city has two, so we do have PID guidelines. We also have, excuse me, that says ordinance. It should say resolution, municipal utility, district guidelines. With these policies, cities can provide guidance to developers in what we would call basic terms and conditions. Here's sort of the rules that we're going to play by here in the city of Denton. We can also determine when and how to incentivize projects using those various tools. For example, our current policy says the city of Denton may offer a PID in exchange for a mud. The reason being is that the city has a lot more control over the development process when a PID is used versus when a mud is used. Also keep in mind that policies drive staff workload evaluation and recommendations. So without those clear policies, staff are sort of left spending time trying to figure out if a development or a request for one of these development deals makes sense for what we're seeing here in the city of Denton. We wanted to quantify that. Just for some of you that were here, the Hartley Field PID requests alone took more than 100 hours of staff time just to get to that preliminary review of that application. So it is a big investment on staff time without those clear policies. And then lastly, keep in mind that each tool can be used effectively. We can enhance residential, commercial, industrial development, but we'd like clear policies that are set. We want clear standards for evaluation and we want a process that makes sense for our community and is in alignment with our mission, vision, and values for our community. So we took some time internally, economic development, development services, legal, finance, utilities. We sort of all got together and said what's not working currently? And so we identified some areas that we definitely see as challenges as we continue to get these requests for development districts. So in terms of the PID policies, staff's evaluation is that the policy really lacks clear guidance for the application process. It doesn't clearly indicate what documents need to be submitted. What's the process for evaluation and consideration? Is there a particular scoring criteria or evaluation matrix that we need to use to bring a project forward? And it also doesn't include fees, development requirements, that evaluation criteria, minimum acceptable terms, and definitions of certain criteria. I remember back to the conversation of what constitutes economic development for the purpose of a PID. That was a conversation that we've had before, so we certainly agree with that and we want to work with council to get that better defined. In terms of a TURS policy, we don't have an adapted policy. We take those on a case-by-case basis. It is very common for cities to adopt a TURS policy to make it clear to developers under what conditions you will consider a petition for a TURS. You can also adopt policies that set when the city will do a city-initiated TURS as well and what criteria you feel are worthwhile of that reinvestment of tax dollars in a specific area of the community. And then lastly, the MUD policy. We did adopt an interim MUD policy, so staff is still currently working through that and trying to identify if there are some improvements that we need to be made. And so we are kind of saying, "Pause on that one. Let us get through a few more requests." But we are certainly in that evaluation phase. So for today, staff is seeking direction and whether to pursue updates on the PID policy only, pursue updates to the PID policy, the MUD policy, and draft a policy for tax increment reinvestment zones. And if council wants to move forward, we kind of tried to put together a little timeline to let you know we're going to be back. I know you guys like hearing me talk, so I'll be back in front of you over the fall, really workshopping these policies with our related boards, getting their feedback, getting their ideas, and then hopefully coming back to council before the end of the year with some draft policies to get your direction on. And so with that, I'm going to stop here. I did have one more slide that has the PID criteria if we got into that, but I'll kind of pause here and get council feedback. Okay. Do we have questions? Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate just having this all in one place. Just to get to kind of further kind of high level understanding, would you agree that PIDs, MMDs, and MUDs are more like each other than TERSs and MDDs? And let me say a little more about that. TERSs and an MDD both have the attribute of identifying the revenue already coming from a geographic area, whether it's the property taxes being corralled or the sales tax that's being corralled. Whereas I think PIDs, MMDs, and MUDs all have the characteristic of seeking to make an additional levy on people in an area to pay for something, infrastructure or features or- Yes, with one exception. Only a TERS is not an additional levy. An MDD is an additional levy. Is an additional sales tax. Sales tax, yes. Okay. Yes. But when we're talking about developers looking for something from council, which is kind of I think where this whole inquiry really came up, I think it was more less the TERS and the MDD. I think the MDD is what Tulsa used, right, to develop their arts district. But it was less from that area and more from the PID, MMD, MUD world that we are getting requests from. Is that accurate? No. From a strict developer standpoint, since I have served in this role for two and a half years, I would say that MDD is the only request that I have not seen. I have had requests for additional TERSs and MMDs and MUDs. Yes, sir. Okay. I don't recall seeing the TERSs get as far as us. All right. Do you want if I keep plowing ahead a little, Mayor? Yes. Okay. No, that's fine. Go right ahead. All right. Thanks. I noticed that communities in the area, thanks for the really useful survey, seem to have, except for Dallas, either an approach toward MMDs or MUDs, but not both. Why do you think that is? I don't think I could speculate on why a community would prefer a certain tool over another. It could be related to the developer. It could be related to the community and the conditions on the ground. But it would be pure speculation as why they preferred one over another. Okay. Which is sort of an interesting thing. It's a really interlocking thing. Or you can almost sort the list. These guys, these guys. So, okay. I think I'll probably wait for other questions. But I think the last thing I'll say is I think the impulse to look at this is that we don't really know what counts as a special condition that would justify granting them. I think that was my sense is that was initial impetus. So that's where I think a policy could help. And I think that there's a question in my own mind about in the residential world versus the commercial world, whether we think they're really fully understood by the end buyer. I think that's a concern that people see a lower price and get socked with an extra levy. It might be disclosed technically, but not everybody is super astute on noticing those things. So anyway, I want to hear what others have to say. Thanks for helping me poke my way through this. - Council Member Wormter. - Yes. So first of all, thanks for bringing this before us. I'll go kind of backwards starting with the direction I want to give and then asking questions, making some comments. I think it's important that we pursue updates to the PID and MUD policy. And I would love to see drafted policy for TURS, although I don't know if the best way to do that is for that to come from staff first, like a drafted policy first, or to have a separate council discussion about TURS. But I definitely think that we need more for all of those. I'm wondering why you didn't include MMDs. I say you, but I'm wondering why MMDs aren't included, because it seems to me that having some sort of MMD policy would be useful too. Maybe I'm wrong, as well as PID and MUD. - It's possible that it could be. MMDs are not used as regularly as the other tools, usually because of the amount of effort it takes to enact one. And the city has the ability through the consent authorization process. And just like we did with Hunter Ranch and Cole Ranch to really get into negotiation of what we need in a particular area through a developer agreement and an operating agreement with that MMD. So there are some other tools already in place that the city would have a seat at the table on those. But staff is looking at MMDs as well. We're just right now not comfortable with saying we absolutely need a policy for this today. - Because there's just not the quantity of those coming forward. - Yes. - Yeah, yeah. But it seems like from what you're saying that they are approached on an individual basis. So if there were a lot of them, then that might change. So okay, so that makes sense. The one thing I would love to see in both a PID and a MUD policy and MMD is some sort of required economic impact study done by an independent party, but funded with some sort of fee from the applicant. I don't want them to go out and pick somebody because then it has the appearance of being rigged, even if it's not. And by economic impact study, I mean, among other things, looking at the economic impacts on the city over time, projected economic impacts to the city over time. So looking at what it'll cost, because a lot of times there's very little cost to the city upfront and then the cost is over time and getting more and more. So I would love to have that included. I was wondering if it's one kind of check and balance we could include in there would be to require that take a super majority on council to approve a PID or a MUD. We would have to look into the legality of that. And so I certainly can add that to my list of discussion points that I can speak to Mack about following up. Okay. Wonderful. Now, just because they have such major lasting impact, that would seem like a good check and balance. I'd be happy to kind of give my comments about TURS now or just shut up and wait if others want to weigh in on the others. You can go ahead and finish. That way we can. So for the TURS, what I would love to see, and I'm curious for a TURS policy, what my colleagues would think of this is to focus on underserved communities, that is, you know, communities that are parts of the city that are left behind by the growth, and, you know, that are kind of facing possible gentrification. And I would love to have TURS, both kind of TURS policy and also individual TURSs, TURSs? You get used to saying it. TURS proposals. Be community led rather than council led. I mean, we would be doing the, by that I mean, obviously, you know, we would be doing the voting and deciding, but I want to know, instead of kind of saying here are our ideas, what does the community think, I want it to go the other way. What does the community think, here are the community's ideas, and then see what we can do from there. So it seems like, you know, it would be just a great opportunity to get community input. Of course, if we ask people, you know, what's your input on the TURS, people will say what's a TURS, right? But kind of explaining what it is. And, of course, having, you know, clear metrics for, or as clear as possible for, you know, when is the work done? You know, when can we say the work is done and time to move on? I have kind of similar feelings about MDD, but it sounds like, you know, since we don't get a lot of those, it, you know, might not really be worth spending time discussing now. But anyway, those are my initial comments for now. Any questions? Okay. Councilmember Byrd? I am looking here, and I'm thinking about the Code Development Review Plan, and I understand that there are different sectors, you know, here in the city that's designed to plan for, you know, certain things, like our industrial area. And then we have areas that are called small area plans. And so, how does something like this work for, like that's been identified as a small area plan, and also talk about, you know, when you're talking about that, also add in something that has something to do with, like, what does mixed use development mean in terms of all of this that we have here? This, you know, you understand where I'm going? Okay. So, one of the key requirements that we would want in any policy is when a proposal comes forward that it's consistent with the city's adopted plans. So, that would mean the comprehensive plan, the small area plans, the mobility plan, the economic development strategic plan. So, one way to look at that is something that has happened in the City of Denton. Our West Park tax increment reinvestment zone was an industrial development TERS in an area designated by the city under its comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance to be an area of industrial development. We knew there would need to be an investment in infrastructure to allow that area to develop as industrial businesses. So, we worked with a developer to create this tax increment reinvestment zone. The county also participates in that tax increment reinvestment zone. And we take a portion of the tax revenue from that area and it goes back into road and infrastructure projects in that, and utility projects in that area. So, when you… That's the TERS. That's the TERS. Yes. So, what… Oh, yes. Yes, ma'am. All right. Thank you. Yeah. So, that's… But a TERS is one example where you can put a tool in place to accomplish something that's in either a small area plan or the comprehensive plan. You could do the same… A PID could function very similarly. For industrial development, a TERS tends to work better because you're going to get a big influx of capital investment coming in and probably a limited amount of infrastructure needed to serve those relative to the size of the facilities because there's only two or three roads that we have included in that industrial area that are city roads that we need to invest in. PIDs are typically used for mixed use development. Those are going to be areas of development that include maybe retail, commercial, multifamily, maybe even some single family as part of an overall kind of singular comprehensive development. PIDs are typically used for those types of developments and for residential types of developments. It doesn't mean that it can't work in a commercial area. It can. But it's typically used more in the mixed use and residential side. And then, did I answer all of the questions? You did because I was really… I'm thinking about a particular part of the city that I'm particularly interested in. And so, I know that it is designated as a small area plan. And in my head, I need to have in my own head where does all of this play into being under that umbrella of small area plan. I know we have to do the TERS. I think TERS is going to be a part of that. I'm thinking that the other factor is going to be a part. So thank you, Indian. I think it's also going to incorporate the term "mixed use." So I'm just trying to pull all that together so whenever I get ready to make my statement on feeding off of armatures, connecting with her on this area, I'll just need to have all of that. And I think that anybody that's watching will want to know that if we're talking about a small area, what can we do with that small area? That's where I'm going. Councilmember Byrd, I might suggest that you allow Jessica to sit down with you if you're willing to walk through the different mechanisms because there are certain ones that might be better fitted for what you're looking at. You know, the tax and current reinvestment zone usually looks at an area where they can generate the revenue back to pay for that effort, but there are other opportunities that you may want to look at. So I might suggest that. I would definitely do that. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Bet. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So as I recall, and you sort of led with it, some of the impetus for having this discussion was we were concerned, and I think Mayor Pro Tem sort of addressed this a little bit too, when are we doing normal things and when are we doing extra add on things? And then there are various vehicles for, you know, particularly how we want to do the extra add on things. And I think that was, I shared that concern. I won't put words in anyone else's mouth. I will say that I shared what I perceived as the concern was that we were doing sort of in prior development items that we saw, that we were doing sort of normal things that we were normally asking a developer to do, any developer around town, improve the roads, improve the infrastructure, do the normal things that would be required to do the development, for example, you know, either develop a road or a street or a piece of infrastructure or pay the impact fees that would then fund that for us to do it. But it seemed like some of the items we were seeing were not extra. They were ordinary and people were asking us to engage in these financial vehicles. And whether that was ultimately on a home buyer or ultimately on a future taxpayer, we were being asked to address that. So I guess the reason I'm sort of dancing around precisely is because I think the concern is it's not clear, it's not well delineated when someone who's coming in wants to do sort of normal development behavior and when we need these extra financial vehicles to really cement and augment and leverage so that we can ensure that behavior goes in certain ways. So I guess my question, so that's sort of in the direction of half of my direction is I think we need to be really clear when we're setting up any of these categories, PIDs, MMDs, MDDs or MUDs, what the taxpayer benefit is that is in excess and why should we take these financial steps. So that's something that I didn't really see much of and maybe you're asking for that sort of direction from us is to set some of those standards. And so yeah, I concur with that. I think we do need to decide what's extra and what's not. So especially I think the PIDs and it comes from the issue of, well it does have so much flexibility but that flexibility is inherently makes it a little chaotic sometimes for us to set the standards on what we want. So my question really is on all the categories, I guess my first question is how do we not supplant normal developmental activities but not also tie our hands and reduce our flexibility. If we specify all the guidelines, then you know, it's just sort of set and we can't do anything and it pretty much goes on consent agenda at that point. So do you have recommendations, do you have advice for things that we can consider that thread that needle of flexibility, maintaining some of our flexibility versus codifying what we think an extra add-on amenity is? I think absolutely and I think you're right. I didn't give you probably as much information as normally I would in a staff presentation because I wanted to have the conversation to just understand first and foremost, are these tools that council wants to consider using in the future? And then two, if you do sort of let's talk about sort of the value proposition of those things. You're right. It's hard to get very specific in the policies sometimes because someone may come to us with a project that is exceptional and we don't want to eliminate that from the start. And there's a lot of times I have seen these come forward and everyone has a different pitch and everyone has a different financing structure and those things. But starting to put the parameters around as we as the city of Denton value certain things and we want to encourage growth in a particular way, this is an added tool to be able to do that. So when we identify things, whether it's in the comprehensive plan, the mobility plan, an economic development plan, a small area plan, these are the mechanisms that we can then use to work with developers to have a seat at the table to enact and bring about those things that we want. So we've got to start drawing the lines around here's what's important to us, here's what we want to see in the future of Denton and maybe that is keeping the policies flexible. But maybe there are certain things we want to make sure and that's you have to develop to a certain standard above other things or you have to commit to certain things above other things. And staff is perfectly happy to take that feedback, come up with ideas and then come back and maybe have a more specific discussion in over the next few months. So I think that's spot on. That's exactly where I was going to go with the next, it's a perfect lead in and that is I think, and you actually do this when you do the 380 plans and stuff, you're like here's where we are now, this is the expected results, here's the add on, here's the leverage. I would love to see if we do nothing, so I guess that telegraphs some of my direction is yes, we clearly need to discuss, I'm on board with discussing all of these. So in terms of that direction, I definitely think we do. But I think really intrinsically important is a thing that you're doing in other efforts, which is to say if we do nothing, these are the results, that becomes our baseline, that's our control, that's our new normal. So here's if we have a PID, then it's this and they've actually asked for this alternative and we're going to do a little horse trading here, and then the advantages of that on the, I don't know, MDD roll or the MMD roll, whatever they're asking for, is okay, that's different, we'd rather see a PID because it's these benefits, they're asking for this, here's the horse trade and that allows council to look at numbers and say okay, this is what the benefit to the taxpayer is if we take this roll, these are the extras, this is the baseline and so I think if you don't do the controls, then we're just a little bit hand wavy. So I'm absolutely for that and I would like to see some controls and so extending off that, I had a question about TERS and this is an example where our TERS have sort of organically grown a little bit, I mean there's been some policies, we've had some economic strategies but we're sort of like okay, we're going to do industrial TERS, we're going to do downtown TERS and it's more complex than I realize, I'm being a little glib, but we have two TERS and they're successful, they're doing pretty well, especially our West Park TERS. So I guess if we want to set policies and say okay, well the organizational structure is worth a little hand tying, worth a little bit of lack of flexibility, then what is it about our, I think that's an issue of setting standards and controls as well and saying what did we do right on these TERS? So if you want us to have a set policy which I think actually that's very reasonable, but if you want us to have a set policy then what are the things that are in common that we did really great on these two TERS and maybe that's our baseline for future TERS and then everything else above that is flexible elements that council should decide and or at least, or maybe we have a middle layer where we recommend certain activities and then a flexible layer. So that would be my direction is yes, we actually do, but I think if we don't know what our baseline is, then we don't know what we're expanding into at whichever financial vehicle we're running. And I understand, I'm on board with you council member, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Thank you, this is helpful to have a chance to think through this and I'm kind of remembering now what I have thought through the many presentations of these types of projects that have come up and I'm particularly focusing on the paid MMD mud kind of world. The question always strikes me that we're being asked to do a kind of extraordinary thing that'll make that I'll let this developer set themselves apart from the others that have to charge full price and so on. And if it's just for ordinary, if it's just for housing, housing is good, we need housing, but there are lots of people lining up to do housing here. So why would you do something extraordinary like this? And two things come to mind for me, this is kind of moving in the direction of giving direction. If they were going to include some kind of extraordinary amenity that would be available to the city as a whole, you know, that, that, that's kind of compelling. And I would include in that amenity an extraordinary degree of conservation. And I know it has come up where, you know, there's watersheds we want to protect, the old growth canopy, but it goes way beyond anything that's currently required. And I can recall a conversation with a previous city manager, you know, who said, well, this developer would like Africa, which it was, PID, MUD, one of those. And I said, you know, heck no, there's no reason that would ever be justified. Well, I can think of a reason. If they were going to do something really extraordinary, that's totally out of the bounds of what's required, that would be a benefit to the city as a whole. That's beyond just the housing. I think that that sort of goes toward, you know, what a guideline might be. So it's either an amenity or an extraordinary degree of conservation. That's at least the starting point for me. We'll add that in. Council Member Davis. Thank you, Mayor. My very brief direction, the first part is yes. I'd like to see policies on these things. I'd like to see policies in the areas where we haven't had policies, where we're kind of one off shooting. It's not exactly shoot in the dark because staff wouldn't let us shoot in the dark, but it's definitely case by case. To some extent that flexibility is good, but Council Member Beck made good points about that flexibility and when we need it, when we don't. I want to kind of speak up for the former policy though because I don't think this is a good opportunity to just throw out everything that we've had before. Some things I like about the existing, your slide 18 kind of lays out some of the existing things. You know, I like the phrase demonstrable public benefit. I like that there are multiple ways to check that box that, you know, for this project we might need this extraordinary thing. For this project, this area of town, we might need this thing more than we need something else. Some of them aren't especially charismatic or exciting, you know, oversizing a big old water pipe. Maybe that's what we need. We've been needing to get better water service to that part of town for years and years and years and they're willing to oversize a big piece of utility infrastructure. That could be exactly what we need there. I like the conservation idea. I think maybe we can update those multiple ways to check the box of demonstrable public benefit. But for me it kind of seems like it's less, the flexibility comes into it as a question of emphasis. You know, what is the thing, this might be a project like we've seen before, but it puts a big emphasis on this thing that we need as a city. And I think it's very fair to developers to put our expectations right out there, that this is what the city is looking for in one of these areas and if your project happens to bring that, we may be willing to talk about, you know, the value add that we know is there for them and their bottom line. We need to know what our value add is. We kind of know what theirs already is. I would also like to see an emphasis on mixed use. If there's, it doesn't have to be the only possible box to check, but it certainly can be up there on the list of things that we expect more mixed use as the city grows out and we do have a central, we have a few kind of central business districts. But as we grow, we will need additional mixed use, kind of on the fringes especially. Also kind of finally, I understand why MMDs are not included in staff's initial list of things we need policy for. It may be worthwhile though, kind of like we did with the MUDs, we have an interim policy. You know, very basic, rough guidelines for these need not apply. It may be useful to do something similar for MMDs. It may be a question of scale. You know, listen, if you have a development that is five acres, do not come to us talking about an MMD. It just has no, the benefit I saw in the last MMD conversation was a high degree of city control and a high degree of city planning ability on a wide sector of town. If we don't have some of those things, if whatever it is that might get us interested in MMDs at a high level doesn't exist, don't waste staff's time. Don't even think about calling a council member about these particular things. And again, kind of setting those expectations for development community. I have had the calls from developers where they want to talk about, can't I get you excited about a PID? You know, in Houston they just love to, in Harris County or somewhere down in Montgomery County, they would love to see something just like what I am proposing. And if they had those expectations right up front, they wouldn't waste their time. - Okay, Council Member McGuire. - Thank you Mayor. So question, I obviously am new to council and so I wasn't privy to some of the conversations that were happening around the Hartley Road PID vote. You know, I did watch the council meeting where that was rejected. And while I do agree with the vote and probably would have voted the same way had I been on council, I am disappointed that, you know, so much staff time was wasted through that. Could you just sort of walk us through like the general process that that PID request went through that led to staff spending a lot of time on it and then it getting rejected? - I can, if I can remember that far back. I've had a few projects since then. But generally the developer had submitted an application for a comp plan amendment as well as a zoning, a PD for a zoning change. When they submitted that initial application that engaged our development services staff. As part of that application, they requested a public improvement district. So that brought in my team and as well as our finance team to evaluate that request. We at the time, we have our PID policy, but it's not necessarily as clear to council member Davis's point. We did a good idea of talking in generalities, but not so great at articulating the criteria and definitions. We also had some challenges in that we didn't have an application process. We didn't have a clear set of steps that we would ask a developer to take to demonstrate performance with and compliance with our criteria. And so staff was left to negotiate with the developer our interpretation of definitions as opposed to having something clear that we could rely on. And so I know many of us on the city team were in many meetings with that developer, sometimes having conversations around what does this mean and how can we demonstrate compliance with it if we don't understand what the intent was, as well as their just significant fiscal impact and legal processes that have to be followed with any of these districts. And so staff time was really spent helping guide the developer through a process that didn't exist and evaluating on criteria that weren't clearly defined. And so at that point, prior to, I appreciate council member Davis making their request, but I think I had already told both the city manager and the assistant city manager, we've got to fix this at that point. So I'm glad sometimes when council member agrees with me. Okay. Thank you for that clarity. So basically the first time that PID came before council was at that meeting in April or whenever it was, when council voted down this particular PID, correct? Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So to provide my direction, I definitely agree that the PID policy needs a lot more specificity. I wish that I could give you a little bit more specific direction, but I would just say, as you work on revising this policy and making it more specific, that we sort of keep in mind, you know, the comp plan and future land use map. And, you know, if you can try to design the policy in a way that encourages denser development at the core of the city and very little development or very low density development, you know, at the outskirts of the city and, you know, doesn't incentivize too much greenfield development. I think that would be in line with the values of council. And of course, you know, has been brought up several times before transparency for home buyers, potential home buyers in these areas. If there's some way to design the policy that would just make the make the taxes more transparent and make sure that people buying homes in these areas understand what they're getting into. Absolutely. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. Just a real quick point following up on what Councilmember McGuire said. I love that idea of having the future land use map, you know, somehow be a part of the application process. You know, the tracks of land that are in the at least in our most in our current future land use map that are, you know, supposed to be lower density are the ones that are most attractive to developers because there's so open, there's so much open space. So, you know, something that always showing them upfront. Look, you know, these are where our priorities are as far as future land use. How do you fit into that rather than having them, you know, make their make their proposal and then try to, you know, fit the square peg of their proposal into the round hole of our future land use map. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions? Thanks for staff. All right. Just to close out and I'll try to be succinct kind of more direct so that it can be easily noted. So the mud, I understand that you're evaluating currently, so I'll leave that. Then the MDD, you said we're currently not eligible from track and write. It would only be in our in our ETJ. Right. We're certainly not encouraging that as a as a direction to move forward right now. Perfect. So and in MMD, you mentioned not needed today. Right. So so I'll parse it down to the PID and the TERS. I think there's some some crossover. Generally, the percentage of commercial, I'd like to kind of get stash direction on that. And I think just you leveraging kind of your experience in the ED department, that sort of thing, then an explicit kind of example of the public use thing and kind of how that benefits us. Hey, we need a park in this area. Here's where we're going to get that sort of thing. Because I think there's some liberties taken there. It's like, hey, we're going to give you a bunch of land that's in the ESA that, you know, and I think that's a separate evaluation in my mind, a evaluation of the land. Hey, this is developable land. Good to go. Hey, this is under a rock and they have to give it to us anyway. You know, those sort of things, you know, because then it helps evaluate. I'll just tell you, I am adverse to any words like extraordinary, all those things, because it means nothing tangibly. Right. And this and the community changes every year. Right. So I think it needs to be based on physical needs. It could be building standards. Right. We no longer have building kind of guidelines. So then if they're adding, they're committing to brick or, you know, just some of those things that are tangible and will stand the test of time and easy for whatever body is here to evaluate. Because I just think that's important to have real things for people to kind of weigh and have normal, you can normalize it and evaluate it. I think there should be some kind of calculation for speed. I think that's important. Right. If we have a park that we have targeted in the area and we can get the park four years faster, if we partner with this developer, I think that's a benefit and it's tangible and it's predictable and we can base that on our spending in the past and costs. And so I think those things are important. And then that's a timing component. Then let's see. I think that's the just of an overview. I really do think the commercial component, the things we need in our community, I really like what Councilmember Davis said. There are things that are going to be maybe not as apparent, but if it's oversized and piping in an area, you know, those type needs, that won't be seen, but it's critical, you know, still. All right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Great presentation. Thank you. All right. That concludes item B. We will take a quick 10 minute break. Come back for the last two work session items. It's 423. We'll be back at 433 to finish up our work session. And welcome back to this meeting of Denton City Council. It is 436. We're back on the record. We have two more work session items. So I'll call the next. It's item C, which is ID 21459. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the General Fund Preliminary FY 2021-2022 proposed budget. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Cassie Ogden, Director of Finance. Here is a follow up from last week's budget discussion. As a follow up from last week, we're going to discuss franchise fees. I provided the Balancing Act feedback that we have received so far, give you a few budget updates as well as tax rate options, and then discuss the supplementals again. So we did provide an ISR in last week's Friday report that gave, provided more detail on franchise fees as well as ROI. But just as a reminder, so the General Fund does collect franchise fees from both city owned utilities and private utilities. There are differences in the fees between municipally owned utilities and private utilities. And General Fund transfers a portion of those fees directly to the streets funds. And that's, it's a dedicated revenue source to help us pay for our street maintenance activities. And you can see that chart on the right side of the screen shows the amount of fees transferred to the streets funds by each of our different utilities over the last five years, with 2021 being an estimate. And so for our own municipally owned utilities, our franchise fee is set at 5% of revenues, and this is set administratively by the city. Work water, wastewater, and solid waste pay franchise fees, but only certain revenue categories. So it's not all revenues that are subject to franchise fee, but it is certain revenues. And the fee can be changed annually. For private utilities, these are really set by state law for each industry. The reason we do charge fees is because a city cannot allow a private entity use of city property for free. We have to charge something for that use. And so cable and video services are at 5%. Gas providers are at 5% per the Utility Regulatory Act. Electric fees are authorized by the Texas utility code. And so co-serve is currently set at 5%, and it's based on kilowatt factor, and then encore is 4%. And as we discussed last week, council requested the feedback that we've received so far from our balancing act, our budget simulation tool. This is a new tool that we just started using this year. We have received 587 page views as of Friday, 148 submissions. So 23% of those were submitted from the 76209 zip code. 46% of the 148 submissions were submitted through the city's Facebook page. 94% indicated that they are City of Denton residents. However, we have had a couple of non-City of Denton residents submit feedback as far away as Dublin, Ireland. So pretty interesting. And then the top three approved supplemental requests that we've received submissions on are the fire hose program, the $30,000 for reoccurring fire hose replacements, our emergency manager position that's partially funded through ARP funding, and then the animal services position that was requested. And so again, just to give you a little bit more feedback, we did provide all 90 response or comments that we received in your backup today. But just to give you an idea of I already mentioned the top three submissions and part of the tool, you don't have to submit on every single enhancement. So that's why we did receive overall 148 submissions, but that's not every submission or every enhancement received a submission. So that's why you're seeing the difference in the numbers there. But obviously most requested again, animal services position, fire position, and then the fire program. So to give you a budget update, as of last Thursday, August 12th, we did receive our June 2021 sales tax revenue numbers. And so we took that opportunity to update the budget. And because that revenue was substantially higher than what we were originally anticipating, we went ahead and increased the end of the year estimate through the rest of this year, so July through September. And so you can see we've provided the revised estimate for the current fiscal year, it did increase a little over a million dollars. And then because we're estimating 5% increase from the current fiscal year to the next fiscal year, that's why you're seeing that FY 22 revised proposed. So that also increased about $1.2 million for next year. So definitely good news for the general fund, but wanted to make you aware of the sales tax estimate changes. So again, you can see those quarterly sales tax numbers for the last couple of years with quarter four in 2021 being an estimate. We had originally estimated a 5% increase for quarter four from year to date actual for last year, I'm sorry, for 19-20 to this year. We did increase it now to 7%. So still staying conservative in our estimate, but we did feel like based on this last year or the year to date actuals that we've received, we felt comfortable increasing it to 7%. And you can see that quarter three year to date number substantially higher than the last three years. So definitely good news for general fund. So with the sales tax revenue changes, wanted to give you an update on our tax rate discussion that we had last week. So last week's recommended rate, the 58 and a half cents with the updated sales tax revenue, that actually increased our net to 1.2 million. And so we feel comfortable now going with the M&O no new revenue rate. So it results in the same amount of tax collection for existing properties as 2020, but still taking into account that increase in the debt service side. So that debt service tax rate, we were anticipating that increasing because of the 2019 bond program coming online. And then the wage inflation rate that was requested, the 3.1% increase, it represents a total compensation increase in the DFW area as of June that results in a net loss of $474,000 for the general fund. And then the total no new revenue rate is the overall rate that results in the same amount of tax collection for existing properties as of 2020. So you can see that net income results in $1.3 million loss for the general fund. So with all of these four options, some of them we are able to fund all of the supplementals and some of them do not fund all of the supplemental requests. So I wanted to show you what it does now to the supplemental requests. So an update, we did remove the citizen survey from this list. It's no longer listed. That was $30,000. We feel like we can fund that out of the current year budget because it is a one-time expense and not reoccurring. We're planning on funding in FY 2021. But you can see where the supplementals, the total no new revenue rate, we can fund supplemental 1 through 5. And then the wage inflation rate, we can fund 1 through 15 in the supplemental list. And I did leave the same ranking as last time just to be consistent with what you've already seen. And then the M&O no new revenue rate allows us to fund all 17 supplemental requests. And so I wanted to provide you just a little bit more information about the parks and rec supplemental requests. And Gary is here to answer any additional questions. But I wanted to give you just an idea of those requests. So it's two separate requests, but they really are tied together. The operations and maintenance request is really to help them maintain not only existing properties, but also new properties and facilities that are coming online for our park system. So you can see some of the properties and parks that are listed there, as well as the new amenities in the South Lakes, tennis courts, the Quaker Town, and Carl Young restrooms. And then the parks maintenance staffing. So these are the positions needed to help with that maintenance and operations request. So these four positions were lost or were these are a reinstatement from pre COVID. And so it's three field service workers and one heavy equipment operator. And they help support help maintain our current service levels. So without these supplemental requests, we would not be able to maintain our current service levels and meet the expedited responses and the elevated maintenance that's currently required as well as grow our system or maintenance of our system. And I did misspeak last time. So please let me apologize. These supplemental requests that are council initiated requests are currently funded in the budget. We have we have included their funding. So last time Mayor you asked me about a different option for the live Spanish translation. I did go back and research we do have a translation services contract currently that does include in person video remote and written services. We could expand that contract. It's currently $300,000 not to exceed amount through 2024 or April 2024. So one option could be we could increase the amount of the scope of that contract or utilize that for the first year if council directs could you repeat that I'm trying to track with you. Sure. So we have a contract for translation services. So it's not just specific to the live Spanish translation. It does include multiple languages. And so it already includes telephone and in person translation services. So we could expand the scope of that contract if you wanted to utilize that next year for our in person Spanish translation or video remote written services however council decides. But it does provide for multiple languages, not just the Spanish translation. And so to give you a reminder of our tax rate history, you can see from 2013 to the proposed M&O no new revenue rate of 56.6 cents. We have decreased a total of 11 cents in 10 years. And you can see that debt rate increasing over the last few years that is directly as a result of the 2019 bond program. And that will continue to increase as we issue debt to keep up with that 2019 bond program. And so today I'm seeking your direction regarding the tax rate and the supplementals. I've given you a couple of options different from last time but the M&O no new revenue rate, the wage inflation rate and the total no new revenue rate. And just wanted to again remind you of the supplementals that can be funded with each of these different options. And then finally last week is our final budget work session before our public hearings on the tax rate and the budget. And then September 14th has our public hearings scheduled. And then September 21st the budget adoption is scheduled. And with that I will take any questions. Okay. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Thank you. A couple of questions and comments. I apologize for the fact that I haven't actually personally done the balancing act tool. I feel like we do the balancing act here. So I don't know the answer to this but did the public also get to turn the dial of would they be willing to pay X dollars more in order to fund more? Is sort of the tax implication? Yes. So we do have the property tax piece available for them to tell us if they want to increase it by a cent or decrease it by a cent. And I can provide that feedback. Not everyone submits whether they want to do that or not. Most it's a no. But we have received some yes they would be willing to increase. I take that as feedback whether people are inclined to accept the tax increase or not. My comment is first of all thank you again and again. This is so massive and you guys are recalculating everything almost daily. That's good news about the sales tax. There's another piece which can be looked at with this. You brought up the franchise fee. And I know we'll have this Tanaska situation coming up which we don't know if council is going to want to do it or not. But I need to kind of reference it in order to give direction here. If that does occur, I would suggest that the franchise fee that has been recommended that on regular business 80% of which should go to streets, that's kind of extraordinary business. And I would suggest that we look at that in terms of how much is needed to fill the gap. Not just it's always 80%. Because you're budgeting based on the ordinary business. So if there's a gap and then some portion of that franchise fee from that extraordinary deal, you know, covers that gap, fine. But there may be enough left just within the franchise fee portion after funding a sustainability fund, also not yet passed. We don't know if it will. But if it did, there could be room to cover a little bit of the supplemental list that could give us guidance on maybe not needing to do a tax increase or maybe only being able to do the wage inflation rate and still cover the supplementals list, the full, even the last item or two. So I guess to make that into a question, won't we know the outcome of that opportunity before we have to settle the tax rate? So we have to settle the tax rate by September 21st. Right. We don't have any meetings after August 24th until the 14th. So if we wait until the Tabasco project is considered and voted on, you will be seeing the budget at the same time as we hold the public hearing and for the budget and tax rate. So that's the only caveat with that is because we don't have two meetings in between the 24th and the 14th. I will bring the budget back on the 14th at the same time as the public hearing. So we could have it in the work session and then have the public hearing later that evening. Well, I have an inclination at this moment toward the wage inflation rate because it's, for the reason I proposed, we look at it, that it's responsive to whether people can afford to pay more. But I'm very persuaded by comments from Councilmember Davis in the previous session that, you know, it is true that this is a year when we've had great news on sales tax, unbelievably, and lots of federal money coming in. So, you know, it's sort of not the time that I would want to be going to the public and saying this is why we need a tax increase. So I'm leaning to the wage inflation rate, but I think we might be able to kind of land more firmly once we know that last piece, which could be very significant, you know, as far as whether we did the Tenasca deal, whether we have the sustainability fund. That's my input. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Davis. Am I next? I thought there was somebody else. Sorry, I didn't see it. Councilmember Armitage. Yes, in case of Councilmember Armitage. So can you explain, so how did the Council supplemental requests? They are included in that overall expense line. We've already funded those as part of the budget. Last week, I told you it was not funded and I misspoke, so I do apologize for that. But those are funded already. Okay, so when you say it's funded already, you mean for the coming fiscal year. For the upcoming fiscal year, yes. Got it. In 2022, we've already included those in their budget. Got it, got it, got it. Okay, good. So just to follow up on what Mayor Pro Tem was saying, I too really like the wage inflation rate. I've been leaning more and more strongly towards it since the last meeting and kind of doing some research into it. I really like the idea and I think it sends a good message to people, even though of course to the person it does not mean that people's got that increase in their wages. For a number of people, their wages remain stagnant and some people lost their jobs. But at least it's based on some kind of metric for what people are taking in. I still can't put my stamp of approval on the priorities list for the reason that, for instance, when I look at the things that are covered by wage inflation, wage inflation rate, that doesn't include parks, O&M for new existing parks, and for FDEs for parks. I know that parks really needs this. It's really important to me. I want that in there with the wage inflation rate. Of course, that means something has to go, right? So I would be happy to, in fact, I have played around with this both on the budget tool and beyond it, but I think that when I look at the amount of money that these police positions take from these supplementals, we could include so much more from parks and for libraries and for neighborhoods, or actually, no, sorry, neighborhood services is already in there, if we whittled that down. To me, that's kind of the big outlier because that is most of the funds and I don't see how it would impact public safety in a negative way to carve some out of that. I'll also just add that, just repeat again, I don't like the incremental approach to budgeting that we're taking this year, focusing on these supplementals. I'm dying to get in there in the general fund budget before the supplementals to look at what's in there, where we can make some room, where we can maybe move things around, fund better some underfunded departments, maybe some departments have some room, but just basing it on what people asked for and got the year before, I feel sets a fiscally irresponsible precedent for the way we do budgeting. But this is the way we're doing it this year, and so I need to play the game that everybody else is playing, so within that game, that is my recommendation. >> David, if I could just respond to that a little bit, I think it's important to keep it in contact that we had three months of each department coming to present their line item budget prior to the supplemental list, so there was that conversation with council of each of those line items within the departments. This is a way that we're trying to get down to those final decisions, but certainly went through that process as well. >> Oh, yeah, and let me just add in case that sounded like I was saying that it's been hidden from us or something. No, it hasn't. There's transparency in that. I just feel like as far as the focus on time has been on these supplementals as we reach this stage, and even when the individual departments presented, the focus was on supplementals, but it was -- for what it was, it was well done, so I'm not saying bad job. I just don't -- I don't like the general approach. >> Okay. Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, Mayor. First, a question. Is there any particular reason, do we know historically a reason why the Encore franchise fee is at 4% and the co-serve is at 5%? I realize Encore is a very small portion of the city, but we do have a substantial overlap. I mean, we could maybe eventually have further Encore services. >> That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. I've tried to research that, but don't have any historical context, but I can continue to find out and report back. If we could find out, and then if we could also find out the budget impact, if that 4% went to 5%, it just seems like not only do we have the co-serve 5%, but we've administratively set 5% internally. That 5% seems to be a choice we made pretty hard and pretty firmly, and then Encore is at 4%. >> We don't collect as much franchise fees from Encore just in general, so it would not be a substantial impact to the pipeline. It is far less than co-serve even at the 4%. >> Sure, I understand. I just want to know what we're leaving on the table and why we're doing it. And then that's my question, a little bit of direction. I really appreciate what staff has done to present on these different rates, the rates that we've requested information on, whether that's no new revenue, M&O no new revenue, wage inflation, in part because of what Councilmember Meltzer said, that we have missing pieces, things that we can't responsibly include in our estimates yet, but could have a substantial impact on city revenue. I'm still kind of watching and waiting. I'm going to keep holding a torch, carrying that torch for a no new revenue rate all the way to the very end, and that's not because of some fixation on magic words of no new revenue rate. It's that I feel strongly, especially in a year like this, where we have additional revenue streams, especially in a year where we're considering even more substantial additional revenue streams, that we owe it to our citizens to drive hard for the lowest possible tax burden that gets the job done. I want to see the job done. I want to see each and every one of these supplementals funded. I think that there is a path to a no new revenue rate, and I'd like to see us drive hard for that, not because there's something magic and special about it, but because we owe our citizens the lowest possible rate that also gets the job done, because we all pay this tax. Whether we rent or own or shop here, we all end up paying this tax in one form or another. Okay, Council Member Bet. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I've got a couple of questions. Can you help the, well, probably me as well, can you help the public and myself understand why some things that I noticed in the comments from the tool, there were comments across the board to different elements, and it didn't really matter whether it was a fire hose or a park or a library or whatever it is that they liked or didn't like. There was a general comment about why isn't this in the regular budget? So, essentially what they're asking is why are some things that I think should be M&O in a supplemental? So, can you help the public understand that element? Why are some things in supplementals versus M&O? That's a great point and something that we noticed, and I think next year we definitely want to do more education before we get to opening the tool about what's currently included in the budget, and to Council Member Armentor's earlier point about our budget process, that is something that we look at if the department has the capacity to fund it in their current budget. We do look at what percent of their budget gets expensed every year, and that is actually reported in our Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. So, that is something, that is part of the budgeting process, but for these supplementals that are requested, especially the M&O, they are above and beyond their current budget capacity. So, they do not have the capacity in their current budget to fund these requests. As well as just part of our budget process, anything that's greater than $5,000 increase, it has to go through the supplemental request process because that is part of the transparency of the budget process is that we don't want the department sticking in things that weren't approved by Council and that weren't reviewed for the budget process. So even if it was something expected, planned for, because of the vagaries of the market it gets over a certain level, we end up having to shift it out of a regular budget item, an M&O kind of item, and stick it in supplemental, even though it's sort of like arguably not really supplemental. So, okay, I'm glad you clarified that. The other sort of, I will make a sort of, I'll try to do it as best I can as a question, but I really like the M&O no new revenue rate in the sense that we're saying these are the things that we think it takes to run the city, we're not making it up, we're not being extravagant, these are the things we think it takes to run the city, these are the things you've asked us to do. I understand the argument that, you know, we've got to make some hard choices sometimes, but what we've seen is staff keeps making the choice to try to keep that number as thin as possible and stick with the items that they say this is what you've asked us to do as a city. So, I'm pretty comfortable with the M&O no new revenue rate, and honestly I'd be a little comfortable with higher, and I know that some people object to that, but the idea that we have in that it's often made for substantial growth in our city is, wow, this is a tide that floats all boats, everybody's going to make money if we grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And one of those every people is the city to do more programming. Oh, you'd like a music program or a parks program or whatever? Well, we need to grow so we have the tax base to get that revenue, and yet when we grow and we get that tax base where we're like, no, bam, we've got to keep it here so that we have no spare capacity to do any of these new programs except through the supplement funds. And so the staff says, okay, you've asked us to do a thing, here's the supplement funds, I think it's really important that we stick to what citizenry and council have asked staff to do, and I'm comfortable with even a little bit more because we've set some priorities, and that's still under last year's rate. Now, I still believe in Mayor Pro Tem's flim flam argument, I think that's spot on. I will say then in terms of direction about the various line items, I don't think that we can ask both parks and our police department and our law enforcement to do more. You know, we're asking parks to expand and cover and mow more and treat more and do more maintenance, and we don't want to give them the FTEs to do that. I'm not comfortable with that, so I absolutely want to give parks that and the same exact identical argument for the police. If we're going to ask them to do more community policing, more civil engagement, more civilian ride with ride alongs, we're asking for something we're not doing now. And so that new service has to, we have to pay for that. And it's going to result in a better dent in my opinion. So I'm not comfortable with cutting the police numbers. We were asking them to do more, we shouldn't be cutting them. So my direction is to keep all those line numbers and do the MNO new rate. Okay, Councilmember Burke. Councilmember Beck, you said exactly what I was thinking. I appreciate your thinking on everything. I started to take my name off the list to speak, but what I do want to say is that I am for the MNO new. I am saying that because the things that are here are the things that's the most basic stuff that we need to help with the growth. I would definitely have a significant issue if we don't take care of our law enforcement area. I was just reading the other day, it's like they go to three and four hundred calls a day. They're putting, they just need that support there. So we know that we have a homeless issue in this community. We've got to be mindful of how we're developing our community along those lines. There is some conversation that we literally have to start having about our homeless population that's growing along with the city. We know that. Our libraries are important. So everything, animal services, come on, we got more animals. I used to live in a neighborhood. I never heard of a puppy dog at all. Now there's just barking all over the place. So everything that I see right here is very, very important to everyone. I just can't see how we could be so conservative. I would hope that the people that are watching, I wouldn't be happy to see my taxes go up in any kind of way, but if we want to stay as comfortable as we are, we have a lot of people that have a lot of concerns. I'm not using the word complaining, but we have a lot of people that have a lot of concerns and they want everything, but it just seems like they don't want to pay for it. And I don't either. But I feel like I need to have the best parks. I feel like I need to have the most responsive police department and I want a fire department that's going to be there for me and I want to have a library that's going to have everything that I could possibly need in it. I want to have my animal service group to come and respond to me when I need. I don't want to wait for that kind of stuff, which is kind of what happens. So I just don't lean on the level of conservatism when it comes to finances sometimes because it just doesn't work in the long run. We always have to come back and catch up. So with the growth coming and all of the issues that occur with our growth, we're going to have to keep up with that. The community development part. The police department part. The emergency management part. If we were to shuffle anything around and you ask me, I would definitely say those things should be funded first. But of course, again, we need it all. So I will put all of my efforts in my direction into the MNO, ENNR. That's where I am with that. Thank you. >> Okay. We're going to go -- we have another item after this. We have a 630 hard stop, and we're going to get through these things. So we're on round two -- pardon me. What's that? Yeah, I know. Councilmember Armitage is back here again, so we'll do that. Then we'll go -- if anyone else in the room will exhaust those, then there -- I'm just giving a time stamp that it's -- we'll eat as fast as we have to. Councilmember Armitage. >> I had just a simple question based on something else you said, but I'm happy to cede my spot to Councilmember McGuire. >> I'm not coming back around, so if it's important for you to say it in this form, then you would need to do it now. >> Sure. Okay. So my question is, so you mentioned that -- and tell me if I misheard, so that departments -- if they're proposing something beyond -- that's $5,000 or more beyond the current budget, then that's put in supplementals, you know, the idea being that not only does it cost more, but it's something that is new to council that council had not yet approved, right, whereas the other things that are already in there are things that council -- maybe not this council, right, but in the past has approved. So my question was, our department has also asked is there anything in -- you know, previously approved budget items that you would be willing or even eager to remove to make room for those -- for those supplementals? >> So part of the budget process, we do zero out certain lines, because we have a large budget and we do have a lot of object codes in each budget. Zero-based budgeting is maybe not as possible as we would like it to be, but we do go through every year and specify certain line items that are zeroed out, and each department must justify their request, so it can be either at the same level as the previous year, or it can be less or more, again, under that $5,000 cap, but that is part of our regular budget process, so every -- I think it's every three to five years, we hit every single line item in the budget that's zeroed out and requires more justification. >> And that's interesting, because -- and by zeroed out, you mean as far as funds? >> Correct. >> So I'm thinking kind of more just based on need, you know, imagining that there's something that is -- where maybe there's a lot of money left, you know, but you needed it last year, and now the needs are different, and so you don't -- is there an opportunity for a need-based request like that? >> So, Councilmember Orange, I would say to you, first and foremost, we go through exercises of what are you doing currently that you should be doing, what are you doing currently that you shouldn't be doing, and what are you doing that maybe you should partner with? I know we've done that in several departments, so I have to tell you, and I've worked in a lot of cities, but we have -- we really do hone in on just the work of the city and the focuses on that. We have the COVID process that we had the VSP program, we cut over 90 positions, and that's because we weren't doing certain things. It's exactly sort of -- we had certain things we weren't doing, so we went ahead to do that to help not lay off individuals, so we made those kinds of cuts, but I can honestly tell you, you could take every one of those budgets and tear it apart, and you will find very little fluff, and we even went to a point just recently to look at how we're allocating money for city activities, like retirements and stuff, and really set a policy to go straight across so that we weren't spending money, taxpayers' money, frivolously or without being consistent across the city. So I think we've done -- I mean, I would welcome someone to come in and completely look at our budget process and how we go about it, and I have to say, I think we do probably a much better job than most cities I've seen to really give the taxpayers, our community members, the best work we can for the least amount of cost. >> Thank you, Mayor. So I'm ready to provide my direction. I think that, you know, we've been going back and forth. Cassie's brought us something, and then we've given our input, and then she goes back to the drawing board and brings us back something new, and I think that through that process, staff has done an outstanding job of kind of whittling down that property tax rate to be as small as it can while keeping our city running. And I think that some other council members have made excellent points about the fact that we're growing really rapidly, and we have to provide services. And in a city that's growing very rapidly and where in, you know, perhaps a recent, let's say, decade or two, we maybe haven't done that great of a job of keeping up with the population growth and continuing to provide infrastructure and services at the level that's necessary. So we do have a little bit of catching up to do, I think. And I, you know, to the city manager's point, I think that although I have obviously, as Cassie said, it's a very large budget and I haven't gone line by line, the impression that I get is that it's a pretty tight budget and staff is really only bringing to us those things that they need to keep the city running. So I'm inclined to suggest the M&O, no new revenue rates of $0.57699 per $100 of valuation because it's the lowest rate that allows us to provide the services to the city that we need to. I had direction on one other thing because I forgot to provide, I didn't forget, I didn't provide direction on this last week, but thank you for including more information about ROI in the backups this week and I feel confident in giving direction to, you know, when the ROI rate drops to 3.5% to keep it there. Oh, and regarding the translation service, I don't expect you to have an answer for this right now, but if you could maybe provide in a staff report how much the cost would be to expand the, expand the contract with our existing translation service and if you could maybe find a little bit more information about what it would look like for that translation service to provide live in person translation services at council meetings, like would, you know, we have to specify before each meeting or would somebody just be on hand all the time? What would that look like if we were to go that route instead? I'd like a little bit more information about that. Thanks. Okay. And so I think to close out, for me, the, I was trying to track along with you on the translation service, but I guess really what I need is I can follow up with you after we'll have a conversation, but also in that, just full disclosure, I want to understand the data, right, the usage, right, that's really what matters. We, this body, you know, makes decisions, I think, and it's important to understand the usage and kind of, when was it, so looking at the last two years or how long it's been in place, how often have we had to tap into that high, low, average it out, you know, and then understand what we're paying for and is there a true emergency need, kind of immediate need, kind of get a feel there because as it's been pointed out, I want to make sure our staffing gets back up and if we have an opportunity to use that towards staffing and maintain the usage, collect more data and ramp up gradually versus having an allocation for every meeting unnecessarily so or if the usage doesn't meet that requirement, then I think that's important to know. I think it's just a, it's a database decision. And then also, I'd like to ask the chief of FHIR, if he could come back with a cost for a blocker truck or if that's something he would recommend. Obviously, we see the video of our FHIR engine getting hit when they're working and I'm seeing other municipalities move towards purchasing blocker trucks and so I just want to understand that cost evaluation. Again, it could be another use, right, and so while we're tracking data for the translation services, if we could take $40,000, $50,000 and put it towards saving lives and equipment, then that to me seems the more pragmatic approach to making sure we spread across all departments as best we can versus have this surplus sitting there unused. And then, I cannot agree with Councilmember Davis enough. We need to bring it down to the lowest rate, the no new tax rate because this is the one year we can have our cake and eat it too and I'll put out a lot of information and just those watching, I think it's important to note, we can't talk about a surplus and a sustainability plan and then talk about how narrow things are, right? It's the worst kept secret ever. We have an opportunity, we get a once in a year opportunity to lower the tax rate once and this is that time. And then we use, and this is what I've talked about since I've been on Council since 2017, taking commercial tax rates, dollars and using it to lower residential rates. That is a perfect design plan and we have that opportunity this year in conjunction with a few other things. So this is a perfect year to apply that in my estimation. So we get commercial taxes and economics that then, I guess it'd be commercial developments, that then lower the residential tax rates. That to me is ideal and we should seize that opportunity and unfortunately we only get one time a year to set the tax rate. And I'll just say thank you for the slide and for the citizens that would want to look at the backup. I think it's the most compelling slide in there amongst those. Vibrant commercial, cities with vibrant commercial tax bases have lower tax rates. And I think there's only four or five in the 50s where we are and everyone else is in the 40s as far as their tax rate. And we can get there by continuing to work hard and then the great thing about this year is we don't lose any supplementals. They're just funded after we have the commercial activity kicks in, then we're able to fund everything on the list. So I think it's the perfect scenario. The residential rates are as low as humanly possible and we get everything funded. That to me is a really great opportunity. So I look forward to having a conversation, but that's where I am. The no new tax rate is what we've achieved since 2018 and there's no reason that I see based on the data, based upon the opportunities to change that trend this year and we don't miss anything and put more money to the bottom line evidenced by a conversation about a surplus for the sustainability plan. So obviously I think we're all on the same page as far as the surplus, it's a matter of how to apply it. So thank you very much. Great presentation. Thank you for the feedback and I'll circle back with you on the translation thing. Thank you. Okay, that concludes item C, takes us to item D, which is ID 211090, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction on Pending City Council Requests. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Okay. I'm Rachel Bothritt Mendoza. I'll take you through our Pending Request for Information today. Just by way of a little reminder for those that may be joining us for the first time, we will have up to seven requests per meeting to review and I'll go through each one. We do just have one today and Council Member Beck that made the request and he'll have up to one minute to discuss. Oh, am I on? Because I'm not sharing. Let me go back and share so that the World Wide Web can see. And I won't start over because they heard me. I'll just keep going. And then after Council Member Beck gets done, all of the rest of you will be able to give your feedback and indicate your support for up to one minute for our use of staff time. And then, of course, we'll respond to all requests where consensus was established. So for today, we're going to discuss the adoption of an action plan for bicycle-friendly communities from Council Member Beck. We did provide some backup information for you along with his full request and the supplemental exhibit that you also provided, Council Member Beck was included, and some staff information there for you. And so I will stop sharing now so that we can begin. All right. Council Member Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this pitch is to do what we have already promised to do in previous councils, and that is adopt a bike-friendly action plan. We've already... This is as pro forma as it was last week, where we've already agreed to do a thing. And so I'm asking us to do the thing that we've already agreed to do, which is that, given how important mobility and comprehensive planning is, environmental issues where we're trying to figure out our network, particularly with our new Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee, that we need to do what we specified we would do in the Denton 2030 plan, which is adopt these various bike regimes. And one of those that we said we would do is try to obtain bike-friendly community status from the League of Cyclists. And so I've provided all that backup material. I'm not going to read it here. I don't have time in my one minute. But the idea is, I think that there's some... This is striking while the iron's hot, because we've replaced... Okay, anyway. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Yeah, thank you. Council Member Beck makes an important point that we've already agreed to do it. That said, we also have a new bike-ped ADA coordinator. So I'm very interested in having him come before us and lay out the plan for how and when. And I'm mostly interested not in getting the designation, but in what benefits we'll put in place to get there. That's it. Council Member Davis. Thank you, Mayor. In favor of having the work session, I'm a little bit wary of the plan, just because it's not really a plan. It's a series of goals, if you look at the backup. They're all worthy goals. They all might be goals worth adopting. But I also take staff's point that we need to talk this through a little bit, because it's not something we can do overnight. It's something that we have to implement as a local plan. Like actually, how are we going to get to each of these goals? For that reason, I'd be very okay with having this conversation, this work session that we're talking about today, in the context of the bike-ped aspect of our mobility plan. Because we're going to have to have, that's going to be top priority as the year goes on anyway, is getting this mobility plan fleshed out. And so having that conversation in conjunction, having this as the framework of that conversation, I'm very much on board with. Not sure if I'm ready to go forward with adopting the plan, but I am absolutely ready to talk about adopting the plan. - Council Member Armitage. - I look forward to having the work session. I strongly support it. - Council Member McGuire. - Thank you. I also support moving forward. I like Council Member Davis's suggestion that we just sort of roll this into the mobility plan and just consider bicycle infrastructure and bicycle mobility to be just part of mobility in general. Yes, thank you. - Okay, anyone else? Seeing none? Okay, thank you. - Thank you. - All right, that concludes our work session. And so at 529, we'll adjourn this work session and we'll be, actually, I'll take that back. We do have a closed session item. So let me do that. Let me, because we won't be back till 630 in here. So I'll take us into closed session. We'll have a break and then go into closed session, wrap up there, and we'll be back in council chambers at 630. So at 530, well, let me get to that. I will convene the closed session at 530. We will consider the following items, deliberations regarding certain public power, utilities, competitive matters, under the Texas Government Code, Section 551.086, and consult with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071. So we'll be in closed session now. Thanks. - Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 630 on August the 17th, 2021. We do have a quorum. Call the meeting in order. The first thing on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance to the US and Texas flag. Please stand if you're able and join us in those. - Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one indivisible. - Okay. And we do not have any proclamations this evening. It takes us to the presentations for members of the public. We have one registered speaker, I do believe, so I'll call that name first. It's ID211774, Mr. Edward Sanders, regarding masks in schools and defiance of the governor. And so we have the, is Mr. Sanders in the chambers? - No, sir. He's on the phone. If you'll allow, let me patch him through. - Okay. Thank you. - Sure. - Mr. Sanders? - Yes. Hi, Mr. Mayor Hudspeth. Good evening. - Good evening. So you're on with myself and the council members. And so if you could give your name and address, please, then you'll have four minutes. - Yes, sir. Edward Sanders, 5412 Wharfside Place, in Texas, 76208. - Thank you. Go right ahead. - Yes, sir. Good evening, city council members. I appreciate your leadership. Denton is the best place I've lived in my life. We love it. My family loves it. Thank you to you, Mayor Hudspeth, who is leading well in a difficult situation. I appreciate you. On Mr. Meltzer's Facebook post, dated August 12th, he writes, "Council voted to essentially mirror the Dallas County mask ordinance, ostensibly in defiance of the governor's order. Mr. Meltzer, when you lead defiance against Governor Abbott, you are going down a slippery slope. First, I feel, is you're inviting people who prefer chaos over order into the community. Second, when we post things like this, students in our wonderful schools hear, 'Well, our leaders defy, so will we.' What's not to stop students and parents throughout the county, the city, to tell their principals and teachers, 'Well, I ostensibly defy my teacher and administrators. I'll make my own rules.'" To the council members who voted that way, Denton County residents choose Denton County rather than Dallas County. And just from listening to other parents, here's a brief list of issues relating to the vote on going against the governor and the mask mandate. First, kids can't and don't wear masks correctly in elementary school, by and large. Some do. Many do not. They sit next to each other each day and get in each other's faces at lunch, and they're just close to each other, and it makes them all but pointless. Second, for parents and businesses that don't feel comfortable without masks, there is online education, there's online delivery. You know, the city's adapted well to that shift, and they can choose those. Third, reading facial expressions is a crucial part of emotional intelligence and cognitive development, but masks really inhibit that. Telling kids, "Don't get close to one another," it's just a bad idea for kids. Kids need social interaction. And fourth, I really struggle to see how, in a free society, leaders telling people to wear masks like this. I don't see how that's okay in a free society in a great city like ours. And just back to the question, I just – I'm having trouble understanding why it's a good idea to threaten our great school district's funding and resourcing by defying the governor. So, Mr. Meltzer and councilmembers, here's my question. How should we respond to adolescents and teenagers who hear this type of leadership and – well, the city defies the governor, so we'll defy our school and our administrators. As a parent and a concerned citizen, I struggle with this. Thank you for your time. Okay. And Mr. Sanders, let me see if we have any questions. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Yeah, not a question, but I'd like to reply in part. And first of all, I want to thank Mr. Sanders for calling. We acted in an emergency session, which it didn't really allow for the amount of community discussion we ordinarily have on most things. But first, I'll thank the speaker for correctly quoting me, saying ostensibly in defiance. And why I said ostensibly, I went on to say in that post, there are two factors that weighed on me. And I take very seriously the rule of law. I mean, we're here as embodiments of the law. And there was a live debate, including among jurists, about whether the governor actually had the authority to act beyond mitigating the disaster, mitigating the problem. So that's why I said ostensibly in defiance. He's not a king. I mean, neither are we. He has specific powers to respond to emergencies. And so there's a real discussion about whether that includes things like preventing other levels of government from responding to emergencies. And the other factor was that we were in an emergency meeting. Why was it an emergency? Rising cases and vanishing ICU beds. At that time, there were eight ICU beds available in Denton County. As of this morning, there were five. So in a situation where, in the estimation of some of our members, delaying would be a threat to life and safety, that changes the calculus of what you do when you're in an emergency where there's a threat to life and safety. So I would happily discuss that with school kids or anybody involved. And lastly, I just want to extend my personal wishes for the health of the governor and with what he's facing. I hope he has no symptoms. Thank you. Okay. No other questions. Thank you, Mr. Sanders. Thank you, sir. Yep. Have a great evening. Okay. So then we have two speakers that have filled out a blue card reminder because this was not posted on the agenda. We are limited in our response. And so- Mayor, I wanted to speak regarding the most recent caller. Oh, okay. Well, go right ahead. Thank you so much, Mayor. So I appreciate Mr. Sanders calling in. I appreciate him bringing up some concerns about our mask mandate. I believe that the speaker's report requires a more detailed review, and I would like to give staff direction regarding the ordinance that was passed at the emergency meeting last week. I would like to, moving forward, include a standing agenda item at each meeting until the mask ordinance is repealed for council to review updated COVID data and recommend changes to or the repeal of the mask ordinance. This is a rapidly changing situation, and I think it needs regular review at every council meeting. I would like to make a suggestion to Parks and Rec staff, given that we've run into some issues with the mask mandate in group exercise classes that are offered through Parks and Rec. I would like Parks and Rec staff to evaluate which exercise programs could be held outside, and if a program cannot be held outside and participants cannot wear a mask because, of course, strenuous exercise while wearing a mask is not advised. I would ask that Parks and Rec staff cancel those programs and give refunds to the residents who have signed up for them. I would like to also give direction to staff when we hopefully at our next meeting revisit our mask mandate. I would like to see the addition of a section regarding health and safety policy for public institutions of higher education, and I would also like staff to amend the commercial entities section to remove the $1,000 fine. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm not sure the city manager has had time to process all of that and the process, so city manager, if you could follow up with an email understanding how that would get your analysis of that in an email, that'd be great. I think, Mayor, though, I will do that. I'll be happy to, but I'd need more than one council member. That is correct, and so that would be, you know, there's a lot of moving parts there, so we'll take that up. Council Member Well? I just wanted to say I concur with all of Council Member McGuire's recommendations. I was listening carefully. Thank you. Okay, so in the request to speak, there's Sean and McFarland. Did I have that right? Yes, sir. If you could please come to the mic there in the center, and again, limited in response, but you will have four minutes if you can give your name and address. Good to see you. I hope your kids are doing well. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. They're doing great. My name is Sean McFarland. I live at 2816 Terry Court here in Denton. I'm in District 1. I'd like to begin by thanking each of you for the work that you're doing. Indeed, there's a significant weight on your shoulders. During the best of times, managing a city the size of ours is a big task, let alone during a pandemic. I don't envy any of you. You're in a position where you cannot make everyone happy, clearly, as you see me here. So why am I here? I'm here because of how disappointing and disturbing it was to learn that only two, only two of the elected representatives in my city had the fortitude to err on the side of liberty and individual responsibility. Let's put that aside for a moment. Is it lost on anyone here the irony of imposing on businesses and schools that they comply with your mandate while simultaneously disregarding Executive Order GA38 from our state's chief elected official? Why? Why was this done? This was done because you know better. You know better. You see, it's up to you to step in and control the lives of the citizenry. Because the citizenry just cannot be trusted to take care of themselves. No, we need the government to come in and take care of everyone. Many of us who have been first responders practice a concept known as first do no harm. It's a simple concept, but an essential concept to grasp. I'm going to assume that everyone here is familiar with the concept of unintended consequences. These mandates where you're compelling children and others to wear masks is not free. It's not well, other things being equal. Let's make them wear a mask. Let's compel them under penalty of fine and ultimately even forced to comply. We've yet to begin to understand or realize the consequences of how this will affect our children or the lives of our fellow citizens as a severe impact this will have on our local businesses comes to fruition. Arguments that anyone that takes exception to your overreach and compelling citizens to wear masks as not caring about lives of children or about families or our community is outright repugnant and ostentatly dramatic. I urge the council to correct this. This is my commentary for whatever it's worth. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak. I will pray for each of you to have the blessing of strength to overcome all obstacles you encounter and some peace of mind in the face of stress you're undoubtedly experiencing. Thank you. Thank you very much. And so, and I do, I was remiss in saying this. Thank you for your service. I appreciate you. Thank you for speaking this evening. And so that brings our next speaker, Tim Hawkins. Yes, sir. If you can step to the microphone there, if you can give us your name and address and you have four minutes. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Timothy Hawkins 2329 lookout lane. So, I'm here surprise surprise to discuss the mask mandate. You know, I had the opportunity to reach out to many of you. And I think I spent quite a bit of time with with a lot of you and I won't ever break that line of trust and call anyone out but I will call Councilman Beck out. Because I was pretty fired up when I woke up Friday morning and saw what had happened. And that man, we talked and he kind of showed me the light and it really changed my demeanor and my approach against this issue. Right? So you have to ask yourselves, is the agenda outlay the outcome? So I spent the last two days and I plan to spend many more polling many citizens within Denton people that are wearing masks. Now I don't have an exact number, probably somewhere around 300 people. So I've had an opportunity to meet with and I found a common reoccurring theme and that nobody knew really about the mask mandate. So I made a point to only talk to people with masks on. And nobody was uncomfortable. I don't wear a mask now, partly because I don't want to be made to wear one. But it makes me feel just kind of claustrophobic. And so I just prefer not to wear one. But nobody was uncomfortable around me. Everyone engaged me, everyone talked to me. And there were a lot of people that were surprised to find out that we did, in fact, have a mask mandate. So that told me a couple of things. It told me that our community outreach is not really what it should be. Right? We issued a mandate, what I think predicated on a knee-jerk reaction with good intentions to try to keep the spread and all of that. But when I talked to all of you last week and what I asked for was tell me the science. And I think the one thing we can all agree on, those of you that remember talking to me, is we didn't agree on much. But the one thing we did agree on was that we needed to come together about this. And I requested a town hall meeting so that we could have an open dialogue. And that the citizens of this community can come and talk and try to understand. So what do we do? It goes back to what I said about is the agenda more valuable than the outcome. So the one thing I learned from talking with citizens the last couple days is people are going to wear a mask that want to and those that don't are not. So this mask mandate is weightless. It's not enforceable. There's no penalties. So I asked for a third time, is the agenda more important than the outcome? So if the idea behind the mask mandate is to try to get citizens to protect themselves and make them more aware of the spread of COVID-19 and the Delta variant, then don't we think that our energies, our efforts and our time, you guys threw together an emergency meeting and three hours later or four hours later, you met, you talked about it. Let's take that same energy. And I motioned to this council that we immediately remove the mask mandate and replace it with a community outreach program. One that's predicated on the data, the science and the reasoning behind the masks to try to educate the citizens of this community. It's your job as leaders in this community to educate us. I learned more in the one hour I spent with that man on the phone than I had heard from anywhere. And it opened my eyes and it made me dig more. Some stats that I couldn't get last week when I talked to y'all. Right now we have as of this morning, 1,090 active COVID cases in Denton and Denton, not Denton County. Now that number has gone up. I'm sure I haven't seen the latest, but we have 147,000 people. That's 0.007 infection rate. Now there's no question that it's climbing and growing. It's obvious. We see that. And I see that my time is running out. So I just ask, let's get rid of this weightless mask mandate and let's put our energy and our efforts into educating the people of this community to try to teach them so they're knowledgeable and they're not feeling like they're being forced or bullied into something. It's not going to work. Thank you. I appreciate y'all. And we'll be talking soon. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Yes, sir. Okay. So I have no other cards, but if anyone else is here and wants to speak, then you're able to, you'll just have to fill out a card after the fact. So anyone else that wanted to speak? Seeing none. Okay. Thank you. That takes us to our consent agenda. Mr. Mayor. Yes. Excuse me. I do have one caller. Perfect. Thank you. You'll hold while I get him on. All right. Okay. Are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Yes. So if you could turn down the volume on whatever you're listening on, cause that'll be, there's a little bit of a delay. And then if you can give your name and address, you'll have four minutes. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. My name is Stephen Dillenberg. Um, I'm 1004 Abbott Wayne in Denton here. Um, I graduated from university in North Texas with a degree in biology. And so, um, and my undergrad research was in kind of doing a survey of the electronic literature regarding trends in, um, academia at the time. So, um, I have a little bit of a background in science that's relevant here. Um, for the CDC, masking is for source control. Um, and so what that essentially means is, is by masking, we're being somewhat forced to identify as a sick person, even if we're not entering into a building. And so I haven't seen any cost benefit analysis of, of a masking mandate where, um, the benefit outweighs the potential risk of infection. And in fact, in contaminated environments, I've seen studies where, um, people actually had a higher incidence of infection due to, um, we all know the term respiratory droplets, due to those droplets being trapped closer to someone's face. And so, um, that in and of itself is a concern plus carbon dioxide, rebreathing is a concern. And if we're in a respiratory pandemic, um, we probably shouldn't be doing things that cause acute respiratory distress. And, and there's a very significant danger that that could be something that's happening. Um, my personal experience with COVID, I think is, is much like everyone else's that we kind of, we've been led in a lot of different directions, um, by, um, the science and a constantly evolving understanding of what this virus is and, and what it's doing. Um, but I do know from personal experience that, um, my mom had the first injection of, um, the Pfizer vaccine and less than one week later, she was in the hospital with the TIA, which is a mini stroke. Um, and the doctors and nurses wouldn't put anything in her chart or report to Bayer's that she had been that close proximity, um, with the vaccination and, um, her hospitalization. And, and that from what I'm seeing, um, is a pretty common side effect. So it's not only really dangerous. I mean, her, her blood pressure was like 240 over 160 when we went in there. And then when they let her go the next day, it dropped down to 75 over 50. We couldn't even find a pulse in her arm or when your pulse is that low, you have zero radial pulse. And so you can, we couldn't get it to read on the blood pressure detectors. So we had a pretty serious scare where she nearly died there. Um, and these are recommendations that are being made without a real, like the gentleman before said, without consulting the public, I was also surprised to know that we had this mask mandate that had come in. Um, and another thing that's extremely concerning, um, and that should tell us something about the hospital capacities is COVID patients are being housed with non-COVID patients and hospitals and that's happening. And so there's something that is a myth here. If they're not treating this as severely as we're being forced to behave, um, in public, they, they, they are sharing common ventilation in the same wings of hospitals. And when my mom was in, um, Presbyterian, her two doors down was a COVID room. And so, um, that was extremely concerning. And for that reason, we got out of there as quickly as we could. I mean, they ended up keeping her nearly three days, but, um, it was a pretty significant deal. And so ultimately I would be in favor of, of having a town hall where we could all come in on this and, and decide why it is that the city of Denton is requiring this. When the county says that it's in contravention to what the governor has said, the governor says it's unlawful. Apparently he sued, um, DISD and one other and, and the Texas Supreme court has enforced his ban on a mass mandate at this time. So, um, there's a lot of questions and, and I would hope that there'd be a little bit better notice requirement on you guys than, you know, something in the, on drc.com the day before and then have this emergency meeting where nobody gets a chance to have any interest in it. That's your time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for the call. Thank you guys. Yes. Seth, any other callers? I do have one mayor. If you allow me just a couple of seconds to get him in. Okay. Uh, and while we're, well, I didn't anticipate that answer. Give me just one minute. Okay. Go ahead. Yes, go ahead. We'll get it. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. You know, it's, uh, the mayor pointed out we're limited in the ways we can respond and open mic, but one thing we can do is, uh, make statements of fact. So I'll just, uh, limit myself to just adding one fact into the discussion, uh, from the center for disease control that in a series of cross-sectional surveys in the United States, it was suggested that the data suggested that a 10% increase in self-reported mask wearing tripled the likelihood of stopping community transmission. We'll comment. I'll just share that fact. Okay. Is, is the caller there? Okay. Are you there? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. If you could give your name an address, you'll have four minutes. Yes. My name is Nick Stevens and my address is four one seven Amarillo street. Um, good evening council. Um, some of you may remember me. I saw y'all last week in person in regards to the mask mandate that you were voting on. And really, I just wanted to give you a public vote of confidence, uh, thanking you for doing that. It means a lot for me and my family. It means a lot for my neighborhood and it means a lot for the places that I go to every single day. I know that we've only been doing this since Thursday. Um, but I know that you're actually going to be making a difference with it. You know, one of the concerns I think that councilman brought up this last week was that maybe it was unenforceable or maybe it was somewhat arrogant to assume that council could make any type of difference. And I would just like to encourage you, uh, by recognizing that it really is making a difference. I don't know what small businesses you've been at this past week, but a majority of the ones that I visit have gone from no mask requirements to a mask requirement, uh, from maybe 5% of the population that is frequenting those places wearing masks to now 95% of them wearing masks. I had to run into so, um, Kroger this morning and pick up cilantro. I noticed that Kroger, I guess maybe as of yesterday decided to put a new mask requirement sign on their door. And it was the same thing, a significant majority of the people there were wearing masks. And I'm really glad that Denton has been such a good representation for the rest of Texas that it doesn't really have to be a political thing. I know in such an educated town, we have such a diverse amount of opinions, but council has such a great opportunity all of the time to set a standard for what we can expect of one another as neighbors and as a community. And they listen to you. Um, and I'm excited to see over the next few weeks how, uh, that changes and how, as more people learn about it, you'll see more compliance. I also want to give a shout out to the North Lakes Rec Center who's been enforcing that, um, mandate and it's made me as someone who wants to exercise, feel 50 times safer because there has been no argument from customers and there's been full compliance. And so at this point, I know I'm reiterating, but I just, uh, really want to thank you for what you've done. And I hope that you can continue to be pushing this. I think that, uh, council woman Armenter brought up a great point last week as well in regards to testing and how we can expand testing and ensure that those that are coming into our small businesses are safe. So, yeah, I just, as a small business owner myself, want to thank you for what you've done. And, um, really means a lot. So thank you. All right. Thank you. Uh, staff, any other callers? No, sir. Excellent. Okay. Takes us to the consent agenda. I'll take a motion. Um, the only item H was been pulled. So, uh, council member Davis, I move approval of the consent agenda, accepting item H, uh, council member Beck. I second. Okay. A motion by council member Davis, seconded by council member Beck. Discussion? Seeing none. Council member Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Council member Beck. Aye. Council member Armitter. Yes. Uh, council member Burke. Aye. Council member, um, McGuire. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Aye. Mayor Hutsmith is an aye as well. That passes seven zero. We'll take up item H. There's no, um, there's no presentation. So, uh, so first I'll just, um, take a motion. Council member Davis. I move approval of item H. Is there a second? Council member Beck. Second. Thank you. So we have motion and second discussion. Council member Armitter. Yes. Uh, thank you for pulling this item. I asked for it to be pulled, uh, because I wanted to vote no, uh, to it. And just to explain briefly why I'm voting no to give, uh, other council members if they wanted to opportunity to, uh, to speak on it, but I don't need a presentation of any kind. Um, so, uh, last year, uh, it was very public about, um, my concerns about the, uh, conditions at the, uh, Packard Peterbilt plant under COVID, um, signs of, uh, uh, low mask wearing, uh, social distancing, not being enforced. Um, uh, and, uh, COVID spread in the, the, uh, plant. Um, from what I've heard, uh, that is, uh, still the situation today, uh, with, with the Delta variant, uh, I, I have heard, heard reports of, uh, unsafe, uh, conditions under COVID at that plant. Uh, and so for that reason, uh, I can't vote yes on an economic development partnership board nomination, uh, for, uh, for Packard. Okay. Mayor Pritz and Meltzer. Yeah, I'd like to move postponement of this item to the next regular meeting, uh, so we can get a, uh, report on the, uh, I mean, uh, comments that have been made just to get a, you know, kind of accurate, uh, staff assessment of it. Um, okay. Motion from Mayor Pro Tem to postpone till when? Next regular meeting. The 24th. That's a special call. And, uh, in doing so, I want to, uh, do you want to check in? Is there a time sensitivity to the, to the item? Cause I, the, uh, Mayor Pro Tem, the applicant, um, Packard intends to submit their application on the September 1st deadline for the Texas enterprise zone program. So our intent was to have this considered and taken up by city council so that they would be able to make that application. So, so on the 24th then. Okay. Is there a second? Council Member Armitter. Sure. I'll second that. Um, discussion. I'll say this. Uh, this is, it's, it's credo, incredibly unfortunate. This has gone through the economic development board. It's been discussed. It's been vetted. And, uh, I just, I'm passionate about what, uh, Packard and Peterbilt means to our, um, community. They've won several awards and to listen to the discussion, uh, during the economic development meeting, you would hear those very same sentiments. This is, this is unfortunate. I'm hoping that it does not pass and we can, they can get a straight up or down vote. Members are free to vote no. Uh, but I think it's just important to, to move this, move this along. So, uh, we'll see how that goes. Any other discussion? Mayor Proctor Melton. Yeah. Mayor, I, I, uh, share your views and, uh, I just don't want to go forward with this sort of hanging in the air. So I'd like to get it resolved. I guess in response to that, uh, has staff been provided with any documentation to, to substantiate any accusations listed today? Any, any complaints, any emails, any, before we're having this conversation, I want to share this information. Have you received anything in writing, documenting, documenting anything other than a wild accusation made right here three minutes before we vote? No, sir. I, I don't believe so, but our communications with Packard related to this application have, have been specific to this application and not to any COVID. No, no, from this body. Has this body said, hey, this is, this, this agenda came out Friday. Hey, this agenda was on the Economic Development Board. Hey, I have concerns. I, I've raised, I want to raise this issue. I want to have this vetted, this explored. Has there any documentation that would substantiate any allegations? No, sir. Okay. Just making sure. Okay. Any other discussion? Seeing none. Uh, so this is on the vote. This is the vote. First vote is on the motion to postpone until the 24th. Uh, Mayor Poulten-Meltzer, how say you? Aye. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. Councilmember McGuire? Yes. I'm sorry? Yes. Councilmember Betz? Yes. Councilmember Byrd? Yes. Councilmember Davis? Nay. Mayor Hutsworth has a nay as well. That passes. So it's postponed until the 24th. Um, all right. That concludes item H. That concludes our consent agenda item. Takes us to, uh, 5A, which is individual consideration and no presentation needed for this. I think, yeah. So it's item A, ID 21781, consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, re-appointing Tyler Atkinson as the presiding judge with a two-year term commencing on July 24th, 24th, 2021 and ending on July 24th, 2023. Tiffany Thompson is online. If you have questions, otherwise, uh, it's good to go. Okay. I'll take a motion. Councilmember Armitage? I move approval. Councilmember Byrd? I second. Okay. I have motion and second discussion. Seeing none. Councilmember Armitage, I'll say you. Yes. Councilmember Byrd? Yes. Councilmember Betz? Aye. Uh, Councilmember McGuire? Thank you to Judge Atkinson for your excellent work. I vote yes. Mayor Fulton Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember Davis? Aye. Mayor Hutzpah, that passes 7-0. Takes us to our next item, which is, uh, 5B. Let me get there. Uh, item B, which is ID 211783, consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, approving a salary increase, uh, for the City Auditor Madison Rochon, uh, under the performance review provision of her employment agreement with the city. Uh, and that is extending the term of the City Auditor's Employment Agreement until August 7th, 2025. I'll take a motion. I move approval. Thank you, Councilmember Davis. And is there, Councilmember Armitage? Second. Motion by Councilmember Davis, second by Councilmember Armitage. Discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. Councilmember Betz? Aye. Councilmember McGuire? Excellent work to Ms. Rorschach as well. I vote yes. Councilmember, uh, Bird? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? Aye. Mayor Hutsworth as well. That passes 7-0. Takes item C has been pulled, so that'll come back if needed. Uh, that takes us to item D, ID 211328, consider adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, authorizing the City Manager to execute a renewal letter to extend an agreement between the City of Denton and the Denton Chamber of Commerce regarding an economic development program for fiscal year 21-2021-2022. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development. I am going to get the presentation started and then I am going to turn it over to some special guests we have this evening. All right. So our goal tonight is to present an update on the Denton Economic Development Partnership and not seek a recommendation from the ADPB because we actually have that already, but to get direction and have consideration with the City Council regarding the partnership agreement with the Denton Chamber of Commerce. Just to provide a little bit of background and context before I turn it over. The FY 2021 partnership agreement was a little bit different and many of you may remember that we really focused our efforts this past year on aligning the city and chamber efforts with the goals and objectives established in the strategic plan. So over the past year and through this development of the existing agreement, we worked together with the chamber to reset expectations, develop a functional partnership, and really focus on those strategic plan goals and objectives. We have really focused in on improving communication and collaboration between our two agencies and fostering a sense of trust, transparency, and openness. And with that it is, we will make a final recommendation later after we have shared all of this, but it is certainly staff's recommendation to move forward with the partnership as we have reestablished it over the past year. The terms of the FY 21 agreement and the extension would be again continued clear definition of the focus areas. The adopted work plan that is attached, it would be a one-year extension of that FY 2021 agreement. The city contribution would remain 125,000 with the chamber goal of 125,000 and we would continue our regular meeting and reporting as outlined in the agreement. And so with that I'm going to turn it over to our first special guest. I believe we have Erin Carter who is the chamber president who many of you may not have had the opportunity to meet in person just yet, but we're happy that Erin has joined the chamber and she'll be taking over from here. All right, okey dokey. That is the story of my life. I'm always slightly too short for every microphone I've ever met. Good evening mayor, council, and city manager. My name is Erin Carter and I'm the president of the Denton Chamber of Commerce. We're located at 401 North Elm Street and it is my first time seeing some of you in person, but I've seen you on a screen and I have to tell you you look much better tonight in person. I also am very excited to get to work with each and every one of you individually. So since it is my first time seeing you like I said in person, I look forward to meeting you each individually whether it is in person or on zoom so you'll be hearing from me shortly. This is my seventh week on the job, but I'm no stranger to the chamber of commerce industry. I've been in this industry for 10 years and I will tell you something special. It is not officially your first time at council if you don't spend your birthday doing the following things, being at a city council meeting, being at a board meeting, or being at a chamber of commerce finance committee meeting. So I'm spending my birthday tonight with you so I'm so thrilled to be here tonight. So I'm excited to tell you a couple of slides and I'm going to turn it over to my partner in commerce, Corey Lacey, who is our vice president of economic development. So we have a great partnership with Jessica Rogers who has been a great teacher so far for me. So our partnership with the city, the primary function is incentive negotiation, policy and administration, fiscal and economic impact analyst, labor and data analytics, development districts, business engagement, and city initiatives. On the chamber side, our primary role is relationship building with developers, brokers, and local industry, business recruitment and attraction, business to business networking, private investor relations, and small business development center, the SBDC. The joint things that we do are the city leads in business retention and expansion, technical and advisory support, and on the chamber side we do the marketing and the business training and education. And where we collaborate, which we are the strongest at together, is our strategic plan implementation, workforce and talent development, community engagement, small business and entrepreneurship, and regional coordination and partnership, and what we do best we do together. The interim annual report, which right now we're in the third quarter and when the fiscal year ends you'll be able to see all four quarters, the summary of that contract performance is on the next slide. And like I just said, you'll be able to see all of that at the end of the year. And I believe now I'm going to turn it back over to Cory and you'll see me in a few minutes. Thank you for your time. Good evening Mayor and Council. Thank you for having us this evening. Just to talk a little bit about our contract performance. One of the things I'm really proud of is we've been able to promote several sites here in Denton over the past year with advice from you as far as developing future industrial sites west of I-35. Some of those sites include Denton Crossing, I-35 Convergence, Harris Ranch, which is at 35 and 288, and the Baker Family Trust site. I'm proud to say that because of our promotional efforts and working with the brokerage community, all of those sites are either under contract or have been sold. And just to give you a little bit of perspective on what that means going forward or what it could mean going forward, Harris Ranch is about 250 acres that could be set up for the city to develop about four million square feet of industrial product on that site. Baker Family Trust is about three to four million potential square feet and Denton Commerce Center is about 1.5 million square feet. You combine that with the projects that we currently have that are either under construction or about to be under construction which equal about 2.3 million square feet and there's a huge potential there for additional revenue and additional partnerships with new businesses that will come into the community. So I think the city will be set up for the future going forward and we look forward to working with each one of you as we get individual projects on these sites. Regarding marketing, you know, we do several different things from a marketing standpoint. One of the things we do, and I kind of touched on it earlier, is develop the relationships with the brokerage community. We work with Team Texas. Team Texas is the marketing arm of the state economic development organization that we were able to get in front of site selectors and other important decision makers with national companies as a result of that relationship. We have several similar relationships. We also work with the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors. Again, that's just developing the broker relationships there. Just to give you a little bit of an idea of where we're at right now, as of the end of July, we have 66 active projects. We've had 136 year to date. That's an incredible amount. It just goes to show how important Denton is, what a good location it is, and what a bright future that we have here in Denton. We've had 10 site visits, including one yesterday, and we closed one several projects. Everybody's familiar with Lowe's, which was closed in the first quarter of this fiscal year, last quarter of 2020. We also closed EMLS, which is a Peterbilt supplier. They moved into a new 400,000 square foot building. We brought Ranchland Foods in from Arizona to relocate their corporate headquarters here, as well as a couple other projects. We've had a lot of success so far. We anticipate some more projects, hopefully, that will close by the end of the year. That, again, will be a great benefit to Denton. One of the things also I wanted to touch on, as far as all our local businesses, economic development's not just about bringing new jobs and new investment to the community. It's also about working with the local businesses that we already have to make sure that they can prosper and they have the ability to expand. One of the ways that we're trying to do that is we are working to develop a manufacturer's alliance. The theory behind that is you get to have all the manufacturing businesses here in the community the opportunity to come together to share best practices and to hopefully improve the level of all the manufacturing community here in Denton. A similar thing with the logistics alliance and the developers alliance. As far as ED investors go, everybody always wants to know about economic development, and with all the activity that we've had here in Denton, every time we go out and talk to businesses that aren't necessarily an investor but are part of the business community, we've gotten nothing but a positive response, positive response about the program, economic development program overall, as well as the goals and direction of the organization currently. We made a commitment to raise $125,000 on the private side, which you matched with your public contribution last year and we're asking you to do again this year. Just wanted to let you know that since October we've increased private investor contributions 29%. As of the end of July, our balance on the private fund side is $160,920. So we're definitely above that threshold that we committed to and we appreciate your continued consideration of our investment. And I think I'm going to turn this back over to Erin. Thank you very much. All right. So back to the budget. The Chamber submitted the EDP budget as part of the request for the renewal agreement. You have a copy of it, which is very small on the screen that you can see, but I know you have a copy of it in your budget. The proposed budget includes no increase for the city support. We are requesting $125,000. The Chamber also will bring in $125,000. The changes made within the line items are adjustments to our needs, but there are no adjustments to the request. Other key updates. Full implementation of our project management system, which is our CMR database. We call it HubSpot, which better helps us track joint efforts and increased reporting. Completion and adoption of the economic development strategic plan and the development of strategic plan implementation report. Formation of an economic development work group and meeting monthly. We're continuing to work on that and ensuring the efficient implementation of those meetings. I know you are all aware of this, but it's new to me, the relocation to the joint offices in the Development Services Center. That collaborative approach continues to help us meet on a regular basis and work together to achieve goals. Creation of new joint quarterly operational report. Improve tracking and reporting of metrics for both economic development activities and economic indicators. Improve coordinations and communication. One team. It's hard to read that without some enthusiasm. New monthly Team Denton meetings, which includes Denton Main Street Association, Stoke, and the Chamber. Everyone working together to promote Denton as the best place to do business, grow your business, and continue to expand your business. These are our performance metrics for Q1 through three totaling year to date. Additional updates and details are available in your economic development quarterly reports. You will have this available for your total FY 2020-21 at the end of the year. But so far I'm going to clue you on a few key statistics and let you decipher through the rest of them because everyone has something that they key in as their primary interest. For the year, our requests for information received are 136. We've responded to 65 of them. There's been 10 site visits. We've been shortlisted for nine and we've won six. I know the team have done eight, 17 excuse me, business retention expansion visits. So as you look at numbers like this and networking events 17 and business assistance 153, Denton is an attractive place to continue to grow your business for businesses to reach out to to consider expansion. And then of course from a city council perspective, people are interested in the recruitment and expansion and attraction of Denton and between the Chamber of Commerce, the Denton economic development team and people like Jessica, it is an honor to continue to support your strategic plan, the Chamber strategic plan and together come together to make sure everyone knows across the state of Texas and then across the country that Denton is the place to do business. So I believe I turn it over now to Jessica, but please know from the Chamber of Commerce perspective at the end of the presentation, we are happy to answer any questions you will have. And as I said, it's my first time here tonight. My door is always open. I will make sure you have my contact information. We're happy to answer any questions you ever should have. So thank you for your time this evening. I promised Erin that I wouldn't have her a quiz until week seven, but I did promise her she'd have to present on her birthday. So she was accommodating of my request. When I got this slide right, and that is staff does recommend the city council authorize the city manager to execute a one-year extension of the existing agreement. And we did present this to the economic development partnership board last week and they recommended approval eight zero. And with that, we will stand for questions. Okay. Mayor Fertin-Mountse. Yes. Thank you. Not questions. Mostly first, welcome to President Carter and the whole team. And I want to acknowledge that you might think this might be a tough council to do a lot of economic development with, but we've praised Jessica for bringing a series of really appealing projects to us that honor the strategic focus on sustainable, creative, connected and successful Denton that have had pretty much, I think, actually universal support from this council. And I know that that's been possible because of the close collaboration with the chamber. So I'm just very excited about the continuing relationship. And incidentally, that includes the continuing relationships with great community partners like PACCAR, who I fully expect to be supporting, you know, the item next week, a leader in many areas with the community, including non-discrimination. Thank you. Councilman Beck. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, no, I want to concur. I want to say that it's, you know, Jessica's has brought a bunch of really great projects and it's been nice to be able to support a lot of those. And to the extent that, you know, the chambers has backed her up, that's been fabulous. I like that. Well, I'll just give you a comment that I work on HubSpot, too. So I feel your benefit and your pain. And so, you know, that's not fair. Poor HubSpot is not here to defend itself. But you'll have fun on that. And I like your focus on metrics. That's, you know, that's one of my personal interests and pet peeves sometimes. And so, I guess I actually do have a slight question. And that is, we have these strategic plans. And, you know, clearly, you know, we can see that all three of you are, you know, working hard to bring in items that are for those. To, you know, I guess I'll ask and/or encourage to make sure that, you know, when we get these metrics that we're making sure that, you know, other things that may align with our strategic plans but may not necessarily be codified as such, you know, like, you know, IP development, redevelopment in places where it's not greenfield and, you know, tech transfer, you know, some of the support of startups, all that still aligns with our strategic plan. So, I mean, are those included in the metrics that we're going to put together for potential projects? To the extent that we can, some of that data isn't something that we would be able to capture unless it's directly communicated to us or through one of our information systems. So, certainly, there's a lot of IP development that occurs outside of our roles and knowledge that we would have. And so, to the extent that we can and that information is shared with us and available to us and businesses are okay, one thing we do capture in our BRE visits is that's where we capture a lot of data where we couldn't have received it any other way but having a conversation with a business. So, I don't believe Council's had the pleasure of meeting Kaye Patrick, who's our business development administrator. She's been here with the year. So, her first year as business development administrator was a lot of remote visits but she's been doing the best that she can to connect with businesses and learn those that are growing, those that are doing things in our community that don't usually get captured in our metrics. So, we'll actually do an annual report based on the analysis and information we've gathered in those visits at the end of our visit cycle. So, that's another report that's forthcoming. You know, I know people sometimes hate those but, I mean, that's where you get your data and how to figure out how to move forward. And, you know, and I guess I'll just say that it's sort of closing there that, you know, we have three colleges in town and there is like ridiculous amount of IP in those colleges and the potential for redevelopment and that still aligns with every one of our strategic goals. And so, I know it gets easy sometimes to, you know, to to broker land and do big logistics projects or whatever but but don't don't don't skip out on opportunities that could really help us that already leverage existing strengths. Thanks. Councilman Byrd. Hello everyone. I believe I've had an opportunity to meet you and it was a certainly a pleasure. You must have just started about the time when we got a chance to say hello. So, it's good to see you again. I'm very excited about the center and I'm very excited about the opportunities, you know, just to let it happen. I just feel kind of giddy right now about what's going on. Thank you so much. My question is, do you all have any, what's your connection with the Black Chamber of Commerce? Is there, talk to me about that and see so we can see where we are with them. You know, I'm gonna, you know, this one day Jessica will not move it for herself or I'll get like some calf raises in. Council member Byrd, that's a good question. So, right now, I'll be truthful. My first interaction with the Denton Black Chamber was at the elected officials reception that we hosted when I was not yet on staff. I had been hired but I hadn't started. And so, my initial interactions have been through the EDP. And so, we know that they have a crucial role in our community. This is one of the first times that there has been a strong Black Chamber in the three communities that I've worked for plus Lewisville. So, we know that they have an important role and there is a concept in America right now where chambers of commerce will take over minority chambers. That is not our plan whatsoever. So, I want to make that very clear. We have no plans to do that. So, right now, I just need to get a better footing right now of our chamber of commerce before I try to learn about another chamber of commerce in our community. But that is my plan right now. So, but we work very closely. I'm sorry, I keep putting you off. Our staff work closely with them but our current interaction most is through the EDP. But we do have plans to change that. I don't like to tease too many things too much but stay tuned for the August 24th City Council agenda because there might be an MOU with the Denton Black Chamber of Commerce for your consideration. Okay, any other questions? Seeing none, Council Member Davis. Move approval. Okay and Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Second. Okay, have a motion by Council Member Davis, second by Mayor Proctor Meltzer discussion. I'll just echo what everyone else, thank you all for the work you've done. Thank you for being more, I would just say it more visible, right? I think it started before and it continues to be as new members roll out. There's notifications on Facebook. It's just kind of a more visual presence that continuing that trend. So, thank you very much and just appreciate what you're doing for our community. So, with that, Council Member Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Aye. Council Member Beck. Aye. Council Member Armitage. Yes. Council Member Burt. Aye. Council Member McGuire. Aye. Mayor Hutzpah, it's an aye as well. That passes 7-0. Thank you. Thank you. Happy birthday. Yeah. Okay, that D that takes us to E, which is ID 211334. Consider nominations appointments to the City Economic Development Partnership Board. I believe this is my last presentation with you this evening, so I'm going to make it a good one. All right. Is it okay if I'm jealous? No, just kidding. I love it. Oh, let's see if we can get that. All right. So, tonight for your consideration, our nominations and appointments to the Economic Development Partnership Board. As background, the Economic Development Partnership Board is appointed by City Council and serves as the advisory body on economic development related matters. They get the honor of spending a lot of time with me as well. Members have to fall into specific categories, two each from City Council, the Chamber Board of Directors, and the top 20 taxpayers in the City of Denton. One representative from UNT, one from TWU, one from the Denton Black Chamber of Commerce, one from the Denton Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, one individual representing the aviation industry, and one at large. The terms are two years and members can serve up to three terms. As a reminder, this board has a little bit of a unique nominating process. Council actually goes through the motions of appointing a nominating committee. That nominating committee made up of two council members and one chamber member will present a slate of nominees for council vote. We, council established the nominating committee on July 20th of this year that included Mayor Hetspeth, Council Member Byrd, and Chamber Member Marty Rivers. We've met a few times and on behalf of the nominating committee, I'm going to present the slate of nominees. So the nominees are Mayor Gerard Hetspeth for the City Council seat. This would be a reappointment. Denton Chamber of Commerce Board Member Jill Jester, it would be Ms. Jester's third term and a reappointment. Ms. Tina Albert, who is the plant manager at the Denton-Packard plant, it would be a reappointment. Ms. Susan Holmes, who is the UNT President's designee, this is a new appointment from UNT. They are changing out their representative, but we are very excited to have Susan on board. Mr. Kerry Goree with the Denton Black Chamber of Commerce, this will also be a new appointment. As Mr. John Baines has reached the end of his three terms, and he's been with us for for six years on the board, so we really appreciate Mr. Baines's service and are excited to welcome Mr. Goree. And then Mr. Bob Eames, who is the aviation representative, and it would be a reappointment to Mr. Eames's third term. And so with that, I believe that's all I have. So those are the nominees. I'll leave them up for just a second for Council to review and then I will take them down and stand for any questions. Questions for staff? Seeing none, Council Member Davis. I'm pleased to serve with a number of these folks. Happy to serve with the new folks coming on. I think I know everybody on this list and I'm very excited to work with them going forward. So I move approval of the slate. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. I will second. Okay, any discussion? Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Davis, second by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Discussion again, just in case. No. Great. Council Member Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer. Aye. Council Member Beck. Aye. Council Member Armitter. No. Okay. Council Member Burt. Aye. Council Member McGuire. Aye. Mayor Hutzpeth is an aye. That passes 6-1. Thank you. Thank you. Takes us to the next item, item F ID 211691. Consider adoption of the ordinance of the City of Denton. A Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing City Manager to execute a construction manager at risk contract with Belfort Beatty Construction LLC for the renovation of Luke 288, of the Luke 288 project. Evening, Mayor, Council, Danny Shaw, Community Services. Good evening. All right. Today we're here to take you through approval of the contract manager at risk for Luke 288 facility. We're going to go through a quick timeline review with you as well as a budget review and then offer up the recommendation to approve the CMAR contract as presented. Just a quick recap just to keep everyone up to where we are. On February 23rd of 2021, we did provide a presentation on the background of the project, some information on the collaboration that we were working on with the junction, which is now our daily bread, and then we went through some of the key terms of the management services agreement. On April 5th, we went through a project review, introduced the scope, a rough budget, and an estimated timeline for the project, and then Council gave notice to proceed with our next steps. On June 22nd, we did bring the management services agreement that brings our partner to the table, our daily bread, as the operations and management of the facility once it's complete. Just a quick reminder where we are on the timeline. We are in the right at the end of phase three. We're finalizing the construction documents, and then if approved tonight, would get our construction manager on board to finalize the rest of the process to get us to construction. Just a quick overview of our next steps as we anticipate them. We are tonight looking at the pre-construction services for Balfour Beatty as the construction manager at risk. On September 7th, we project that we will be taking the 100% construction documents out for bid to help Balfour Beatty work with our architect and our team to develop the final costs and final timeline, which means on November 9th, we expect to be bringing an amendment to Council for the final guaranteed maximum price on the contract as well as other fees. And then we would start phase five of construction. We anticipate that to be November 11th of this year. Just a quick slide of where we are again. Today would be the contract CMAR pre-construction services, and then that moves us into working with the design firm to get to 100% construction documents. Then they'll work through the solicitation of the bids with our subcontractors, and that will get us to the pricing and the final timeline. Just a quick overview of the building renovations and the budget as we looked at it. The CMAR is estimated at 90% right now, and we're looking at no changes in the final cost at this point. And then with the 11/9 amendment, you will be looking at the guaranteed maximum price as well as the additional construction fees of the contractor. Our consultant threw in a little bit of information that I thought would be interesting to share with you, and I liked his phrasing, "A good facility made better" when he offered up this information. But we're looking at the current total of all uses. The contingency that's left now is pretty marginal. This is a pretty high-risk project since it is a significant renovation, so we're probably making a recommendation to add additional funding to this project to help offset some potential risk in the contract and in the construction, which would provide an additional buffer for any of those unforeseen items as we get into the construction phase. If those do not occur, then we would have those additional funds available for some additional things that needed happening with the project that are on our kind of wish list, our alternatives list, like a repair to the outside of the facility where there's been a lot of drainage and damage to the building from just lack of maintenance on it in the past. And possibly things like a generator. We do have a generator in the budget, but only for a portion of the building. A larger generator might help us with unforeseen incidents like snow vid, those kinds of things. So with that, we are recommending approval and I'll take any questions. All right, questions for staff? Seeing none, I'll take a motion. Councilmember Davis? I'll move approval. Councilmember Armitage? I second. Okay, motion by Councilmember Davis, second by Councilmember Armitage. Discussion? Councilmember Davis? Thank you, Mayor. Danny, thank you for presenting this and thank you to staff and to our consultant for moving us forward at the CMAR process. I know that's still new for a lot of folks out in the community. If you all have questions about the bidding process, but that construction manager at risk putting that risk of volatility in the construction market right now into the contract. So they're building in their price protections and we've got our price protections in place. It really gives us the kind of planning that we need to have to pull off something like this, especially with our different funding streams. So thank you all for moving us forward with this process. Thank you. Okay, any other discussion? Seeing none, Councilmember Davis, I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. Councilmember Beck? Aye. Councilmember Byrd? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer? Aye. Councilmember McGuire? Aye. And Mayor Hutsbuth, an aye as well. That passes 7-0. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, that takes us to item G, which is ID 211689, consider adoption of the ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, establishing a sustainability framework fund. Good evening, Cassie Ogden, Director of Finance. Here to present on the sustainability fund. So just a quick recap. Last week, Council gave direction to establish the sustainability fund. So tonight we have an ordinance creating the fund for your consideration. It's intended to be established in conjunction with the data mining project that you're going to consider next week on the 24th. The ordinance does leave the funding source broad to allow for future consideration for funding for the fund. And it is contingent on annual budget approval, just like our other special revenue funds. And we did contemplate - oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I forgot to share. And as we discussed last week, year one is really about collecting the revenues while we work on an annual work plan that begins implementation in year two. And then just to give you an idea of our current revenue allocations. Again, this is subject to Council approval. Council can change these allocations at any time, just like we discussed earlier in the budget item. But these revenue projections are updated as of this week, based on DME's forecast. So we have 20 percent of the franchise fees going to General Fund, with 80 percent going to streets. Obviously, that can change at Council direction, as well as the ROI. So really, the first year, not quite as much as the subsequent years, because it is slated to take place beginning in April. So that's why you have a partial year there. And this does exclude the potential property tax and sales tax revenue to General Fund. So really, just looking at that franchise fee and ROI component. And with that, I'll take any questions. Okay, thank you. So first, Councilman Bett. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I really support this. I think that having the sustainability fund with essentially to provide a line item, a source of interaction with funding revenue and sources puts real muscle behind these efforts that our community clearly thinks is important, that we've put forward as a community to start this committee, that we've organized it. And to have this item, this fund able to identify other funding sources that are beyond just this one is a real step forward, because it says not only does Denton take this seriously in setting up a committee, but we're funding it. It says that we fully intend to put our money literally where our mouth was. So I really support this. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Yes, thank you. This is an area where if communities invest in it, they continue to be desirable places to live. And if they don't, they can lose their habitability. But more specifically, am I correct that based on recent updates to Council, we would only be looking with the deal that we're looking at linking this to at potentially as little as six months of the year in this coming cycle? So what I'd like to... Well, okay. I guess there has to be a motion for me to suggest an amendment. But let me just put the idea out that we would suggest that we say that this would be funded in the first year at a minimum of $1 million when revenues to the general fund are there from incremental energy intensive users. And that in subsequent years, it would be at a minimum of $2 million when revenues to the general fund are available from incremental energy intensive users, incremental from this point forward. And I would also suggest that we include in the ordinance that the expenditures would be guided by an annual work plan itself to be guided by advice from the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee and approved by Council with uses that would be demonstrably in support of debt and sustainability. I guess that's sort of obvious. But those are the two main points, the funding linkage and the annual work plan referencing Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee and approval by Council of the work plan. - Councilor Armitage. - Yeah, a couple of questions. How many other special revenue funds do we have as a city? - I do not have that answer in front of me, but I can definitely get back to you. We do have several. - Okay. And what are the qualifications for special revenue fund? Is it really... And the reason I'm asking is because the ordinance is so minimalistic. I like that because it leaves it open. So I like that. But I'm just wondering, are there any requirements to the special revenue fund as a category other than that it come from revenue and not from the general fund? Or can it be supplemented by the general fund or rather comes from revenue that's come to the general fund? - Yeah, it's similar to how the streets fund is set up. That's how we've modeled this ordinance. There are under government accounting rules, there are definitions of a special revenue fund, but it's really just revenue that's restricted for a specific purpose. - Okay. So it would not have to come from utilities unless something like the clause that Mayor Pro Tem suggested was inserted there. - Right. The easiest way to set it up would be it go to general fund first, and then general fund make the transfer to the sustainability fund. - Okay. And then finally, can you explain why this is coming to us first and not after the vote on what is going to be proposed to be a revenue source for this fund? - Sure. So we heard council's direction last week to be they wanted, you wanted the fund established. And so in order to bring it forward, we felt like we could make the language broad enough that you could still establish the fund. And then we could implement the funding source at a later time. But obviously that's up to council's direction tonight, whether or not you want to approve this tonight or wait. Well, that was my guess as to why. And so I'm very eager to hear the discussion about Mayor Pro Tem's suggestion. I'm keeping my mind open to it, but I do, I really like the openness of this, the way it's worded. - Okay. Council Member Bet. - Thank you Mr. Mayor. The thing that I am curious about is there's nothing about, as I understand, so help me if I'm wrong, because Cassie, you're much better at this than I am. Whether we adopt the language in the ordinance or whether we adopt your interpretation as best you can of Mayor Pro Tem's suggestion, we're not precluded from a particular funding source by either of those languages. Does it sound like that to you? - No. The language that's drafted right now is very broad. It's establishing the fund. So we currently don't have a funding source, but that is up to council direction. But if we go with the proposed language from Mayor Pro Tem, then it would be more dedicated. I will say we would have to define what a high intensity energy user is, since that's not currently defined in any other ordinance as part of the budget. But yes, it's allowing it to be very broad at this point. - I like where I believe, and I'm sure Mayor Pro Tem will speak on this in a second, I like where I believe he's coming from, because it's a direct corollary. It says that, okay, this sustainability fund is as directly related to particular impactful uses. And I think his language was sufficiently broad that it's not necessarily just the energy sector, but impactful uses such that it would merit the Sustainable Framework Advisory Committee helping us mitigate that. So I sort of like that approach. It would be my interest to make sure that it was more in the direction of impact rather than particular industry, because we know that different industries have similar, if variable, impact. But I think it's obvious for this one project that we need to make sure that we offset impacts. So I think that's really clear and it's really obvious. But I will stop putting words in Mayor Pro Tem's mouth and maybe be quiet for a second. - Mayor Pro Tem Melzer. - Thanks. Well, I'll tell you what I had in mind when I said energy intensive users was the type of commercial customer that would today qualify for the energy rider. But I didn't wanna express it in those terms, because who knows if we'll always have the energy rider. So I would say whatever the definition is that qualifies for that now, I would be inclined to sort of substitute that. I don't know how to express exactly what that benchmark is, but that's the concept. - Council Member Davis. - Thank you, Mayor. So I understand staff's reasoning in presenting this item tonight, and I don't necessarily disagree with that. I also understand and appreciate the reasoning behind making it broad, establish the fund, we'll work out the funding mechanism when numbers are more clear, when projections are more predictable and more clear. But I wonder, is there, especially because we have new and it sounds like well-supported language suggested, is there any harm to postpone this item to next week to do kind of hand-in-hand with the thing we're all talking about? Is there a particular reason why this would need to be, the fund would need to be established tonight or a particular burden that's taken off of staff to establish it tonight, as opposed to tightening up some language, getting some definitions out there, filling our back up with a new ordinance that has those things built into it? - No, there's no harm in waiting for next week. We can absolutely do that. - Council Member Buer. - Thank you. This might not be a good question for Cassie, but can someone on staff clarify, Mayor Pro Tem brought up an electric rider. And my understanding is that the Tenasca project, which, you know, if it passes, would become the primary revenue source for this new fund, does not involve a rider. Is that correct? - I don't know, oh, Terry's on the line. - Mayor, Council Member Terri Nolte, DME. Yes, the proposed power purchase agreement does not include the economic development rider. And for Mayor Pro Tem's suggestion, we'd like the opportunity to define that large energy user or intensive energy user more specifically so that it would be a limited scope unless the intent of council is to cast a wide debt for virtually any type of large industry that would come in and subject them to funding of this particular fund. - Okay, any other questions for staff? Santa, I do have, well, let me, we need, yeah, let me just do this. My question is this. I want to make sure I'm understanding the sequencing. So we had an opportunity, so there was an opportunity to fund an economic development fund through the utilities. That was rejected. This is an economic development project that we're talking about that is putting money into the utilities and then by proxy would put money into the general fund, right? Am I tracking so far? And then we're talking about earmarking that money for a sustainability fund tonight, which ultimately, here's my question, it's general fund, it's a general fund surplus is what we're talking about. So the general fund would have a surplus of money and we are talking about sequestering it in a sustainability fund versus leaving it in the general fund. Is that right? Okay, so then my question is, what's the difference between council priority spending and a specific fund? So if council said our priority is to spend on sustainability and council set up a sustainability fund, is there any real difference from a staff perspective? I don't think so. I agree. And then I'll just say this. The city auditor should be consulted in this because I've heard the term sufficiently broad, broad enough, and all that to me means is a nightmare when the city auditor shows up to audit and there's a conflict between the management that understood this and we that understood that. That all makes me nervous. I like clear, concise, restricted. I like council direction and council priorities that then allow us to adjust accordingly. So that's my, but thank you for answering my questions. Council member Beck, and then I'm looking for a motion. We're going to move on. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Weirdly enough, Mr. Mayor, we agree on it, sort of. And that is, I don't think this is, or at least my intention, I can't say to any other councillor, but my intention is that this is not a way of dealing with a surplus. This is a direct response to, as Mayor Pro Tem said, energy intensive, or as I said, impactful industries and activities such that you are now offsetting and compensating for hidden costs that are costs that we have to deal with as a city, that we have to pay out of our general fund, but that we should not be discounting. So it's not really a surplus. It is simply a way of paying for things that are impactful and yet not on the line items, or that may be challenging or difficult to put into the spreadsheet. And I think that is more, at least my intention, I don't know about the rest of council. So I think that the fact that the Mayor and I agree that this is a direct piece of information that we need in order to deal with costs. So that cost is a point of agreement between us. I won't put any other words in the Mayor's mouth, but I think it's important that we say this isn't just a source of revenue. This is not just like property taxes or anything else. This is a way of dealing with the hidden costs of the impacts of certain uses and activities in our center, in our city. So this is where I think something, at least more in the direction of what Mayor Pro Tem is trying to get to, the offsetting the hidden and unamortized costs and then having recommendations for how to do that from a committee is really, you know, my intent anyway. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage? This is, if we can, go ahead. Go ahead. So I have been open about my skepticism about the upcoming item that we're going to be discussing at the next meeting about the cryptocurrency mining farm and their requests. I really appreciate that this sustainability fund is being presented to us separately. We have, in response to the Mayor's recent comment, we have a tree fund that I suppose one could say the same thing about the tree fund, you know, that money that developers pay could just go to the general fund and then if council decides to prioritize trees, they could prioritize trees. But as we know, the tree fund, earmarks funds for... Are we okay talking about the tree fund? If it's an example leading to a question, I think you're still within posting. Okay. Well, just let me know if it gets there. Okay. Sorry. Go right ahead. Thank you. Yeah. So anyway, so that was my analogy, the tree fund, right? It earmarks the funds for a special purpose. So anyway, I approve of this and I hope that, you know, nobody watching takes this meaning that I approve of the Bitcoin mining operation. I'm still very skeptical about that. I'd be very interested in that discussion when it happens, but I am happy to move approval of the sustainability fund. Okay. Is there a second? Oh, Councilman Berg. Just had to say something before it was just too late and I'll always kind of squeeze in at the very last second, but I'm understanding that this particular sustainability fund is going to be used to offset, you know, some... What's the word I'm trying to use? You know, when we have emergencies, we might have something that may... A contingency. But see if I can remember us talking about using this particular fund or some of this fund for our streets. You know, we're still... We have our 2019 bond election. We're using that money. By the way, people were... You're seeing a lot of construction on the roads because now we got the money to get these roads fixed. So that's what all the road construction is all about. Sorry, Mayor, for getting off. But was it like a 20/80 percentage that we said that we were going to dedicate to helping with our streets? We want to get... Go ahead and get those projects done for the city. Am I understanding that correctly? So the revenues associated with the potential data mining project are what we're considering using to establish this fund. And so this fund would be separate from what you're talking about. The franchise fees and the ROI would come to the general fund. And then similar to how we do the street improvement fund, so the 20/80 split, what you're talking about, general fund keeps 20%, 80% gets shipped to a street improvement fund. That's what we're discussing. Or at council direction, we can use some of that funding for the sustainability fund for whatever projects council desires for sustainability projects in conjunction with the committee's direction and the work plan. Okay. Councilman Beck. I'm going to go ahead and second because it's suitably broad that we can craft how we fund this later. Okay. So we have a motion and a second as written on here. Discussion. Quick, succinct discussion. Mayor Proctor Melter. Yeah. Well, okay. So people don't seem to want to pin down the minimum funding. My purpose was to assure those who are concerned about the linkage that this will be substantial. But, you know, I trust the kind of will of council to kind of get to that. But I would like it to not be completely broad and just on this one point. I move an amendment that just adds a term that says that expenditures from the fund are to be guided by a work plan advised by the sustainability framework advisory committee and approved by council. Is there a second? Yes. I'll second. So this vote on the amendment only. So what he just said, I'm not going to try to repeat it. It's recorded. Staff can go back and use it as a source. Any discussion on the amendment? Seeing none. Mayor Proctor Melter, how say you? In the process of saying aye, I'll just add that it's to counter some of the bad memory of tree fund not ever being used for trees for a long time, right? And I trust the sustainability advisory committee. So aye. Thank you. Councilman Beck. For the same reason, aye. Good night. Let's go back. Discussion. Right? That's where that goes. Thank you. We have a motion. We have an aye vote by Mayor Proctor, Councilman Beck, Councilmember Armitage. So I think this is an excellent addition for the reason stated. I also noticed that Councilmember McGuire has her hand raised. Okay. Well, then let's, we'll start over. Councilmember McGuire. Thanks. I'd just like to ask for some clarification. So the amendment that's currently on the floor does not include any type of minimum initial revenue or balance, correct? If I may, Mayor, as the mover of the amendment. Sure. That's correct. It only speaks to that the expenditures are guided by a work plan that's advised by the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee and approved by council. Okay. And yes, I support this amendment. I just wanted to clarify because I do not support anything that establishes like a minimum dollar amount because we haven't yet voted on the thing that is likely to provide revenue to this fund. And we don't know if that thing is going to pass or not. Okay. So we have a motion for the amended language. We have that motion by Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, second by Councilmember Bet. Discussion. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, I'll say you. Aye. Councilmember Bet. Aye. Councilmember Armitter. Yes. Councilmember Byrd. Aye. Councilmember Davis. Aye. Councilmember McGuire. Aye. Mayor Hutzpeth, aye. The amendment passes 7-0, is adopted, takes us back to our original motion with the amended language. Discussion. We have a motion by Councilmember, let me get there. I don't know. Okay. So motion by Councilmember Armitter. And who seconded? Thank you. Motion by Councilmember Armitter, second by Councilmember Bet. So this is the ordinance with the amended language that we have not seen that staff will draft up and define discussion. Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mayor. I intend to vote for the motion as presented, the ordinance as presented. I agree with Councilmember McGuire that it's difficult to set minimums when you don't have a funding source. I would note, though, that I'm also perfectly fine if the conversation we're having in our budget conversations is how much do we have to tax to be able to afford what the city manager tells us is necessary to run the city. And our next conversation is turning down money or funding something that's basically a new supplemental from the general fund because we've turned down new funding sources, which is why I talked about earlier taking this up next week. This is perfectly fine. It's unfolding in a very productive way. We're moving forward and having good conversations. But you can't, just like you can't unlink the Sustainability Framework Fund and the Tenasca conversation, you cannot unlink the Tenasca conversation and the city budget and the ROI and the franchise fees and the impacts to the city budget. So I hope the Council remembers next week when we take this up again, when we continue talking about tax rate, it is all of a piece. The money goes different places, but it all seems to flow from this Tenasca deal. And if we want to fully fund the city, we want to fully fund our Sustainability Framework Fund, then we know what we need to be thinking about. Okay, Council Member Beth. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Part of discussion, the amendment was just that the workflow and the direction was coming from the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee. The amendment didn't include anything about a dollar amount. Now, it should be substantial for the reasons Mayor Pro Tem and I have both indicated, but we did not in that amendment talk about a dollar amount. So, you know, my inclination, my leaning is substantial for the reasons and I'm not going to belabor them again that we're trying to deal with impacts. So thank you. Okay, any other discussion? Seeing none, Council Member Armitage, I'll say you. Yes. Council Member Beck. Aye. Council Member Melter. Aye. Council Member Byrd. Aye. Council Member McGuire. Aye. Council Member Davis. Aye. Mayor Hutzpeths, aye. That's 7-0. So that moves forward. Thank you. Item, so that takes us to our public hearings. Item A has been postponed. As you see, that takes us to Item B, which is Z210009A, hold public hearing and consider adoption of the ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a change of zoning district and use classification from residential rural RR district to residential 1R1 district on approximately 2,990 acres. Okay, good evening, Mayor and City Council members. Cameron Robertson, Historic Preservation Officer. Okay, so the request is for a rezoning of 2.990 acres from residential rural district to a residential 1 district. The subject property is currently vacant and based off historic aerials has not been previously developed. It is generally located on the east side of South Bonneberry Street, approximately 830 feet north of Allred Road. It is surrounded by RR, R2, the ETJ, and our city-owned public facilities districts. So this is just kind of a breakdown of the zoning map. So pre-2019 it was zoned RD-5X district, and then our current zoning map shows it as RR and proposed zoning map at R1. So we have our general approval criteria for all applications. I'm going to be focusing on points three and eight. And then in our zoning criteria for approval, I'm going to be focusing on points one, six, and seven. So the Denton Plan 2030, the site is designated as rural area. It is intended for development of one unit per five acres with farms and ranches as predominant use along with rural residential and commercial development. The R1 is consistent with this future land use as it permits very low density housing types at a scaling character typically found in the area. Point A of Denton Plan 2030 states that development may include single-family homes on large lots as well as farms and ranches. So the R1 is consistent with the surrounding zoning and development pattern. The existing land use pattern along South Bounty Bray includes residential farming and ranching uses, and this development pattern is expected and encouraged on the city's periphery. The proposed rezoning would allow for the development of single-family detached dwelling, and they would be required to maintain that primarily rural scenic character through the development of a low-prime residence. There is no direct vehicular connection to the neighborhood to the east except along South Bounty Bray, and the development would require conformance with current site design standards including screening and landscaping. So in terms of our public facilities and services available, it would include one driveway connection to South Bounty Bray. The school is within the attendance zone of Argyle ISD. It is not located within the parks department's goal of 10-minute walk to a park. However, just west of the subject property, the property is owned by the city of Denton and is intended to be developed as a future regional park. In terms of water and wastewater, it does have water service available on the site. As you can see on the map, there is a 24-inch water line just west of South Bounty Bray. In terms of wastewater service, wastewater service is not available, and they would have to do septic. In terms of the nearest fire station, it is approximately 1.4 miles within that eight-minute or less response time. So this was not an error in the assignment of the current zoning district. It transitioned from the placeholder designation of RD-5X assigned to this property and many others in the area during their annexation into the city in 2010. That RD-5X designation required the same five-acre minimum lot size as the current RR district. However, to meet our current standards of the development code, the property must be rezoned to a district with a smaller minimum lot size to allow the property to be platted for a single-family detached dwelling to be constructed in the future. Therefore, our existing RR district is no longer appropriate. So we did our public outreach. We had our newspaper ad on July 31st. Our property was posted on July 28th. We mailed notices for within the 200-foot public notices and then five within the 500 courtesy notices. We did have a one-property owner in opposition which is located at 4681 South Bonnie Bray and none in favor and none neutral. So the Planning and Zoning Commission recommends approval 6-0 and staff does recommend approval of the requested rezoning. Any questions? Questions for staff? Councillor McGuire? Thank you. So I know that the, you know, the backups say that the intention is to build a single one single-family home on this lot. But under R1 zoning, the lot could be subdivided into four lots, each of which could have a single-family home. Is that correct? So that is correct based off the zoning itself. However, because they would likely, they would have to do a septic that does require at least one acre. And if they were not to attach to the waterline on the west side of South Bonnie Bray, that also require an acre for that well. So that would be a total of two acres. So it would only be able to be one lot. It would not be able to be subdivided. However, but if they were to connect that waterline, they would still require that septic and that would be one acre. So the most, the maximum amount of lots they could subdivide into is two lots. Okay. All right. That, yeah, that answers my question. Thank you. Councillor Armitter? So whenever these kind of hearings come up, the first thing that I read in preparation is always the notification responses, right? So I'm looking at the notification response. There was just the one, as you mentioned, in opposition. And this person says my property is adjacent to this lot and 33% larger. There are many questions that need to be answered about easements and rules. Has staff heard from this property owner? Yes. So staff did talk with the property owner. He was primarily concerned about a concrete pad that had been constructed. However, we did do a site visit. This concrete pad was not constructed on the applicant's property. It was actually on a neighboring property. Currently, as you can see on the AIS, it currently states that there is just a gravel drive and a gravel padding for parking on the property. Okay. And so has staff heard from the property owner and been able to answer his questions for him? Regarding the easement? Yes. So there is no issues right now. The only thing that staff has seen is that there is a driveway culvert out there, but that permit is required more at the residential portion of the permitting process. But we do not see any significant, we're looking, engineering's looking that over right now and they're going to see if there's any significant drainage issues. But currently we don't see any issues on the property that was mentioned by the opposition. Okay, thanks. Okay, any other questions for staff? Seeing none. And I'll just confirm, so this is just a straight zoning case at this point. Those things would come up later in the process. Correct. That's how it works. You look at the zoning, what can go there, any of these use cases. Next phase, staff looks into those details, make sure it meets all those exceptions. Correct. Perfect, got it. Any other questions for staff? Move approval. Is there a second? Council Member Byrd? I second. Oh, and is there, so I forgot to open this public hearing. I'll do that. I take your second. Is there anyone wanting to speak on this item? No, I think we're gonna, we're gonna, we'll vote. I think we're good here. I think, I think. If, if, of course. Never mind, we'll come back in motion. Come on down, it's coming. Council Member Armitter, you can stand right there. So, yeah, I do really appreciate to have the opportunity to ask questions of the property owner, so thank you. Thank you for coming. Just wondering, since the person who, who opposed is going to be your new neighbor, I guess, you know, have you had a chance to, to talk to them, or? Yes, not a very friendly guy. I'm not trying to speak bad about anyone, but we were not aware of his issues prior to purchasing the property. And the property was for sale for over 300 days, so if he didn't want to develop, he had the opportunity to buy it and move on. We didn't build a new lot or create a new lot. It's an existing track, and we're just trying to comply with the new zoning requirements for the city. Okay. And can you, how would you explain, you know, in, in your own words, what, what the, what the advantages of, for you, of going from residential rural to R1? Well, let me, let me, let me, staff indicated he has to, that he can't build otherwise. Yeah, yeah, I just, I just want to hear. Okay, go ahead. I would love if you guys just grandfather me in, that'd be great, but I can't. I have to change from RR to R1 to comply with the new zoning before I can move forward with anything else, getting an address, getting water, any type of permit needed for the property. I cannot do that until I'm changed to R1. I can't even file a plat with the city until we have the zoning change. Yeah, and so, and that's my understanding too. I was just wondering, you know, so you have no intention of doing anything to change the rural character of the area, right? I imagine that that's what it tracks into the area. And we are deed restricted as well, so you can only build two properties out there. Right now our plan is for just one, but who knows in the future, but right now we just plan to build one house. And we did file a plat originally with the city, showing it to be just one lot, not subdivided. We had to pull that back until zoning had been changed. Okay. Thank you. Mayor Pro Temelter. Good luck. Sorry, it's such a hassle. Oh, thank you. All right. So we have a motion by Mayor Hutzpeth, second by Councilman Byrd. Thank you. I'm going to close a public hearing. Any other discussion? Seeing none, Mayor Hutzpeth, aye. Councilman Byrd? Aye. Councilman Beck? Aye. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. Mayor Pro Temelter? Aye. Councilmember McGuire? Aye. Councilmember Davis? Aye. Thank you. Passes 7-0. Good luck with the project. That takes us to our final item, which is item C, which is Z210007E, hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from public facilities, PF district to light industrial LI district on approximately 30.43 acres of land, generally located on the south side of Jim Crystal Road. Good evening. Carina Maldonado, Associate Planner. The case before you today is Z210007E, Jim Crystal Road rezoning. The request tonight is to rezone approximately 30.43 acres from public facilities to light industrial district. That can be seen in the highlighted yellow area shown on the screen. This includes two portions of city-owned property surrounding the Denton Energy Center. This property was acquired in 2016. Due to the 2019 Denton Development Code, all property owned by public entities is automatically zoned, or not automatically, but at the transition of the 2019 DDC. It was a zoned, the PF district, and I apologize, my glasses keep fogging tonight, these masks, but I will wear one. They are intended to provide public community services, that's things like your fire station, schools, libraries, civic buildings, government-owned property and government uses. So this development is intended to support DME's proposed ground lease that we've heard a lot about recently for a private company as part of the modular data center warehouse development. Prior to any development on this site, the property must be rezoned to a district that permits warehouse use. And for background, within the public facilities district, warehouse use is not permitted. So that's why the zoning case is coming today. So just to show you kind of how the zoning has changed over the years, prior to 2019 with the 2002 zoning map, the area was previously zoned ICG, that was an industrial zoning. When our zoning transitioned to the 2019, because it was city-owned, it was given that PF designation. However, if it was not city-owned, it would have transitioned to the heavy industrial district. So prior to the initial zoning did initially request to rezone to HI, which would have been the previous zoning had it transitioned to a non-city-owned property. However, the applicant, which is DME and Tunasca have now proposed a lighter or a less intensive use of light industrial. So I won't go through all the general approval criteria. I did highlight the ones that I would speak to today, as well as the zoning criteria that are required for this. I did also highlight those. So first, I will speak to general criterion three and zoning criterion one as it relates to the Denton plan 2030. So the site is designated as industrial commerce in the future land use map. This designation is predominantly for light and heavy industrial. So the LA district is consistent with this designation. It is also less intensive than the heavy industrial zoning district that would also be appropriate here. The primary uses for the industrial commerce designation are manufacturing, assembly, fabrication, and wholesaling and distribution. The proposed warehouse use is consistent with the intended uses in this designation. So the general criterion eight and zoning criterion five regarding minimizing adverse impacts on surrounding property. Since there are two tracks as part of this, I will refer to the northern part of the northern portion and the southern part of the southern portion just to make it kind of easier on the presentation. So the northern portion is located approximately a thousand feet east and approximately one thousand feet south from the nearest residential zoning. So I have these areas arrows indicating where that residential is. And the closest adjacent uses to this northern portion are the electric substation to the north. I believe that's owned by Encore as well as active gas wells and floodplain. So the floodplain on the northeast to the west, all these red dots here you see are active gas wells. The southern portion is located directly adjacent to the property zoned rural residential. So I don't have the zoning, I can go back to it later, but this property here is zoned RR. So that property was annexed in 2010, was assigned the RD5X placeholder, and then transitioned to the RR zoning in 2019. It is currently vacant with the exception of active gas wells and the Denton Energy Center to the north. General criterion 11, 12, and zoning criterion 6, public facilities and services available to serve the property. There is existing water and sewer available to both the northern and southern tracks. Capacity and extension of utilities would be assessed when this property is plotted and when the site develops. And that would be subsequent to this entitlement step. These subject sites do both have access from Jim Crystal Road and both are served by Fire Station 3 that's located at 1401 Underwood. So we did do some public outreach for this project. Notification was sent to properties within 200, 200 feet and 500 feet. As you can see that is since the property is mostly owned by the city, really what's within 200 and 500 feet is city-owned property. There are some exceptions. However, we did also have a virtual community meeting to ensure that those residents within I believe a thousand feet were also notified of the project. We had that virtual community meeting on June 17th. There were about five in attendance. The main questions included noise mitigation, what the adjacent zoning would look like, how it would transition, and how would the impact for the supply of electricity for residents would be. And at that virtual public meeting it was a combined effort with the folks with Tanaska, DME, and then planning staff. Overall though there was a positive response from those in attendance and most questions were answered by DME. So the Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval and staff does recommend approval of this request as it complies with the criteria for approval in the Denton Development Code. And with that I can answer any questions. Thank you. Questions for staff. Councilmember Beck. So thank you Mr. Mayor. So Karina, it was made clear to the residents that came to the virtual meeting that the deck would be louder than any proposed uses for this property. Is that correct? At the virtual community meeting there was some concern from the adjacent property owner regarding noise. However, the noise of this proposed use was already at least, and I won't, I don't want to speak for DME because they answered the question and we do have Terry on the line to answer the question. But I believe they did reference that any noise mitigation was handled with the deck development and that this specific use wouldn't create an additional noise, additional noise with it. Yeah that that concurs with my understanding that that essentially the the proposed use, even though we're talking about zoning, the proposed uses are quieter than the existing uses. So if there's noise it's already there. Yes. You know and so we're not going to really be contributing to it. So I will say that I'm, I think in terms of you know zoning impacts and some of our concerns in the community, LI, I mean LI is obviously, zoning change is a necessary step to moving ahead with the data center and that LI is a less impactful as you said use than HI. So you know even if everything were to go cattywampus and sideways LI is a is a less impactful use. And then correct me if I'm wrong Karina, but like this is our property so if we want to zone it back then DME just asks to zone it back. Yes that's correct. There's really no barrier if again if everything went you know skew ways and cattywampus and everything fell through we would just zone it back. Is that correct? Yes that's correct. It is city-owned property so if the requests today were to be denied, again anything that would go there would be a community use. If there were a request, if the request was approved and the the third party project associated this fell through, it was my understanding that it would still need to be a use that is allowed with an LI and any associate agreements to use city-owned property would still need to come through council. Okay and I appreciate that. One thing I do like is that we're leveraging existing property with a lease so that we know we're sort of getting to double dip on that. So I'll leave it with that. Thank you. Any other questions for staff? I'll take a motion. Council Member Beck? I motion approval. Council Member Davis? Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Council Member Beck. Sorry, that's funny. Look out there. So motion by Council Member Beck, second by Council Member Davis. Discussion? Okay seeing none. Council Member Beck, I'll say you. Aye. Council Member Davis? Aye. Council Member Armitage? No. Council Member Byrd? Aye. Council Member Maguire? I hope I don't regret this but aye. Mayor Pro Tem Melzer? Aye. Mayor Hutsbeth has an aye as well that passes 6-1 and that takes us to concluding items. Any concluding items? Seeing none, I'll just remind everyone council does have a retreat coming up this weekend so I think that's posted meeting right that that's Saturday morning. So then there's also the North Texas Fair that starts Friday and then the parade is Saturday. So be outside, be distanced, be safe, but get lots of candy and other stuff. It'll be really good to be out. Hopefully it'll be the weather a hold. And then Council Member Byrd? Yes, I want to mention two things. I am going to go live on Facebook on Thursday morning at 10 a.m. I will put that information out there on my own Vicki Byrd for Denton Facebook page. My goal is to work my educator angle. I'm a retired teacher. I feel like people just need to have more information and so I want to do that. I want to be that person that gives you the information that you're looking for from an educator's perspective. So I'm going to do that and I'm just going to help us get through all of this. Clarify some things maybe. And then the other thing is that I had an opportunity to speak with United Way Child Care, the group that that has the interest in the child care opportunities. I was very concerned about the fact that we have a child care desert and I know we have food deserts in town but we also have a child care desert in town. So I just want to let you all know that I'm going to be working with those that group. I'm very very concerned about the fact that our zero through three year olds, they have to be educated too. And so we need some more child care workers. We need some people to help us get back to where we're trying to be. These parents can't get to work because they have babies at home that they need to take care of. So I want to be very helpful and make that my angle with the United Way. This is my first time working with them and I want to do it in a very significant way. So I'll be working with them and I'm very excited about that. I just wanted to pass that information on. If you all know anyone that is interested in having a little bitty child care center in their home helping our babies three through zero through three before they go to pre-k, then this is this is the angle I think that we need to take. I do know that we have only one night care child care center in the whole county. One place where our service people, you know, our nighttime workers, they don't have anywhere else in their kids sometimes. So let's do this. Let's do it all together and so you'll hear be hearing more about that from me. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Councillor McGuire. Thank you Mayor. I just want to acknowledge that UNT and TWU are both starting classes this Monday. I want to wish all the faculty, staff, students a happy and productive school year and I want to very strongly encourage everybody to follow all the necessary protocols to make sure that this school year can be in person and a positive experience. Okay and I did miss miss one thing. So Stoke, the tech incubator here in town, has a ribbon cutting. They've remodeled more offices due to more demand so business is going well there. That ribbon cutting is Friday the 20th at 4 pm and then just want to yeah so I think that's everything we have locally. So at 8 39 pm we will adjourn tonight's meeting and hope everyone has a great evening. Thanks.