Jun 23, 2015 City Council on 2015-06-23 2:00 PM

Good afternoon. Want to welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council work session. It is, what's the date today? June 23rd, 2015. We're starting at 2.03 p.m. We're going to go through our work session reports, work session 1A. We do have a quorum, but you know, come to think of it, nobody can leave this room unless we're on a break. Because then we won't have a quorum. Okay. All right. See y'all later. Okay. Work session 1A is receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the outcome of the 84th Texas legislative session and future legislative issues and strategies. Thank you, Mayor. And obviously, as the council knows, this is, we just concluded a very business, a very busy legislative session of the Texas legislator. And our consultants are here today to kind of do a wrap-up and presentation for the City Council on the activities of the Texas legislature. Kurt Seidlitz, Brandon Agamemian, Snapper Carr are all here with focused advocacy. And with that, Kurt, I appreciate your presentation. Or Brandon. Or Snapper. Brandon to start. We're going to step up. Okay. No, please do sit up here. Okay. Mayor, members of council, I'm Brandon Agamemian with focused advocacy. Appreciate the opportunity to deliver our end of session report to you. Kurt and Snapper delivered the Dinton Municipal Electric report yesterday to the board. And I flew up this morning to join us. I'd be remiss, Mr. Manager, if I didn't express our sincere gratitude for the continuing opportunity to work for the city. Snapper and I have now represented the city for 10 years. And very thankful for the opportunity and compliments to the staff and the council for their involvement and successful involvement in the legislative session. First and foremost, let's just take a look at the overall volume. You see down at the bottom highlighted in red the statistics for the 84th session that we just completed. 6,400 plus bills filed. A little over 1,300 of those bills actually were sent to the governor's desk. We'll talk later about the 40 plus vetoes that the governor had. So just under 1,300 new laws on the books for those of you wanting some light reading at home. About 1,900, close to 2,000 of those bills affect municipalities. You've heard us express this before. There is no other entity that is more affected by the legislature than cities. There's not even a close second, in other words, nobody else has a number like 1,900 plus bills that affect their organization. And about 220 of those city-related bills became law. And on that note, I'll remind everybody that this upcoming Monday, TML is having their end of session wrap up in Austin. So for any of you that really want to get a full briefing of everything that passed city-related, you're welcome to register and attend to that . Seven constitutional amendments. We'd be remiss if we also didn't acknowledge that your local legislative delegation that, of course, handles all of that volume that I just articulated to you, Representatives Crown over Fallon and Parker. As you can see, Myra and Tan are both service chairs of committees. And then, of course, in the Senate, Senator Estes and Senator Jane Nelson, who, of course, chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Let's talk about the big picture. Going back to the outset of session, you have brand new statewide elected officials across the board. Obviously, a very red state here in Texas with GOP major ities in both chambers. The very important number on that second bullet point being 20 Senate Republicans. Of that GOP majority, there was a lot of turnover, a lot of freshmen members, and particularly in the Senate, eight new senators, which was really a unique and sort of a sea change in the Senate, which became decidedly more conservative this session. Strauss re-elected speaker the fourth time. I highlighted that 20 Republicans because of that next to last bullet point where the first thing that the Senate did when they convened was replace what was called the two-thirds rule, which required 21 senators to bring a bill to the floor. That's been the history and the tradition of the Senate for as long as anyone can remember. Dan Patrick specifically campaigned on eliminating that two -thirds rule and bringing what became the three-fifths rule, meaning 19 members, 19 being less than 20, and you see the picture. Republicans really had their way in the Senate. Then, of course, the comp troll announces that we've got plenty of cash on hand with a very healthy economy here in Texas, and that's what started it off. Abbott says he wants to address border security, pre-K, higher ed transportation, and ethics. He says many similar items, adding protecting life and education reform. We'll see how those fared here in a second, and Strauss echoes some of the same, emphasizing uniquely contracting reform, the state agency contracting reform. The first thing they've got to always do, and really the only thing they have to do in the legislature is pass a budget. They succeeded a $209 billion budget, about a 3.6% increase from the previous biennium's budget came under the spending limit significantly. Some would say that's money left on the table. Of that 209 billion, 42.3 billion goes to our public education system, and very significantly back to the agenda items that I highlighted in the slide before, 800 million goes to border security, so they certainly addressed that issue in a very noteworthy way. As HB1 impacts cities in particular, we've listed, and probably backing up a step to note that traditionally cities don't get money from the legislature. It's not been the relationship, and that continues to be the case. Cities don't sit in front of the legislative, the appropri ations committee, and ask for direct aid, but we do have some grants and revenue streams that are significantly highlighted there for you, in particular the TCQ solid waste grant was something that your staff cares a lot about in addition to some of these other items as well. >> Real quick, a couple of questions on that last slide. >> Please. And Mayor, on that note, please interrupt and ask questions . >> Yeah, I don't want to be labored, but on the library resources sharing, it looks like -- what was the other one I saw? Local parks grants, some of these percentage-wise are fairly substantial. The dollar amount is not that substantial. >> In terms of an increase. >> And is that due to -- >> Flush budget. >> Cities lobbying, or is this due -- I mean, how do you get that large of an increase? >> It's both. You know, rewind the clock always. There's context answers like that, and that's a good question. In 2011, the legislature had to slash a lot of funding. >> Okay. >> You know, we're at the other end of a budget extreme in 2011. >> Yes. >> A lot of these were the kinds of programs that they really cut. >> So they're restoring. >> So they're restoring and even trying to make up a little bit for those very lean years. >> That makes sense. >> Let me mention one difference in the crowd. You'll see the mixed beverage piece is the largest by far. To Brandon's point, and on all's behalf, and others who were very involved in this in 2011, they zeroed out that. We got zero dollars in the mixed beverage portion. They took our piece to balance the state budget. As part of them doing that, which we couldn't unwind, we added a statutory change into the process that guaranteed that that would never happen to us again, and that served as a floor that we should have received. So this is somewhat formulaic in that the increase for us is because of some statutory revisions that we achieved 40 years ago that led to that $ 101 million being added to the local portion. >> Okay. So all in all, you can see -- >> Hang on a second. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. >> Two things. One of these microphones over. >> Oh, yeah. That's good. >> That's right. >> And Billy's running to do that right now. And a couple of other questions. >> Yes, sir. >> Defense community grants, I'm sure that's for places that have the big -- >> This is for the communities that have military -- >> Is that a pass through from federal funding? >> No, sir. That's the first time ever for the legislature to appropriate that money. >> On the slide before, the money for school districts, how much of an increase is that for $42.3 billion? >> It's about a 13% increase from the previous state budget . >> Does that get them back to the 2012 level yet? >> That's a good question, too. That's definitely an attempt. And they did this last session, too. They threw a lot of money at public education and they threw a lot of it again as well. And briefs are due to the court next month. And the court will definitely take this into consideration as to whether or not we're back into -- >> The House left $1.8 billion on the table. >> I'm going to try to come up to the microphone. >> $1.8 billion that they wanted for education and funding. The Senate didn't go along with that. I think everybody's thinking is they're going to wait until the court decision comes out. They've got money in reserve. I think there's about between rainy day fund and unspent money, about $15 billion. So they'll put the extra money in there rather than spend it not knowing what the court was going to do. >> But just back to the real specifics. It doesn't get you past where the -- when you account for enrollment growth. They covered enrollment growth, which was something that was very important to the education groups. But it hasn't -- >> But they haven't restored it to what it was in previous -- >> If you look into enrollment growth, no. >> Can you repeat what you said about the rainy day fund? I think the last time we were in Austin, the comptroller was saying that we had a pretty good sized rainy day fund and that they were talking or maybe they had done it about stopping franchise fee money going into that, or I'm not remembering that correctly. >> They diverted -- last session they diverted some money that would have otherwise gone into the rainy day fund for transportation. And the voters approved that in a constitutional amendment. So they did sort of divert one of the revenue streams that would have otherwise caused the rainy day fund to grow even more. >> Okay. >> And they put that into transportation. What it's projected right now is somewhere between 15 to 18 billion by the time we start the next legislative session will be in the rainy day fund. So it's a substantial amount of money. And it was not touched, this session. There was no rainy day fund spending. There's really no discussion of spending. And to Kurt's point, some of that I think is being held sort of in abeyance to -- in anticipation of what might happen with the public education lawsuit. >> Okay. >> Moving on to transportation funding and speaking of transportation funding, on November 3rd, voters will once again be asked to approve or not approve a new revenue stream for transportation. This time coming from -- directly from our sales tax and our motor vehicle sales tax. They basically created a ceiling, if you will, for both of those revenue streams and said some portion of any revenues above these new ceilings, 28 billion for the sales tax, which is of course the sales tax being the state's biggest revenue stream by far. And the motor vehicle tax at 5 billion, some portion of that will go over to transportation funding. I'll quote Joe Strauss in his assessment of this after session. He said this was really the last of the easy fixes for transportation. And after this, it really gets tough in terms of how we're going to address transportation. That's enough money to basically get TechStop sort of back to even, if you will, in terms of just maintenance. So we still don't have a solution in the state for new construction, but with these revenue streams, it's estimated that we're in the ballpark of being able to cover maintenance. Tax relief was -- is highlighted on our earlier slide, a very common theme amongst the statewide leaders. And they certainly accomplished some level of tax relief in the form of Senator Nelson's SB1 and SJR1, which will, if approved by the voters, this too is one of the seven constitutional amendments, would raise the school homestead exemption from its current level of 15,000 up to 25,000. You'll note in terms of a municipal impact, this legislation does lock in all cities, counties, and school districts existing homestead exemption. If you offer one, you cannot offset or lower it for the next five years if this passes, if the voters approve this. House Bill 32 by Bonin cuts the franchise tax rate from 1% to 0.75%. So those were the two big tax reliefs split between property and business. And then in a somewhat procedural element that certainly the lieutenant governor highlighted as a tremendous accomplishment from his perspective, the passed Senate Bill 1760, which now requires local governing bodies like cities and counties to have a 60% majority vote if you're going to adopt a property tax rate that exceeds the effective tax rate. This affects, obviously, because of that math there, cities with the councils of seven, nine, or 11-plus voting members . Doesn't really affect county commissioners' courts because those are all at five. So 1760 was sort of the last piece of the tax package. So sort of our running down the big ticket headline items. They passed a budget. They passed tax relief and transportation, border security. We sort of give them a mixed review. They did pass some pre-K funding legislation, but didn't address school finance. They passed one pro-life bill, so a check minus there, open carry, campus carry, passed tuition revenue bonds, which was very noteworthy. They didn't pass a comprehensive ethics bill and what legislation they did pass regarding state legislative ethics. The governor actually vetoed because he said it wasn't good enough and had some problems. They did pass a contracting reform bill. You will see, however, going back to ethics, they did pass some ethics bills regarding local governments . We're going to highlight a couple of those later. Didn't address Medicaid healthcare funding. It was sort of the forgotten issue of session. It's going to be a major, major item in 2017 because of the cost curve and did not address school choice. On sort of the next level of bills that did not pass, we just highlight for you some issues that the legislature did not pass. You can expect to see almost all of these, if not every single one of them, back next session. I'm going to turn it over to Snapper to pick up on the municipal issues, and then in a moment, Kurtz can talk to you about some DME issues. We've been representing cities now for over 20 years, and we pulled this from the TML summary, and I would, Brandon, mention this, but they're in the session wrap up. If you're having some trouble sleeping and want to read several hundred bills that they summarize, it is a very valuable document as well. This was in some of the forward of their summary. This was the toughest session from the standpoint of representing local governments and kind of having a group of, for the most part, some of the newly elected members with some of the other officeholders following suit that look to preempting certain city authority. As TML said, we've always had that. We've had that fight, if you all think about it, in land use issues between the development community and the come to Austin and advocate for certain things in cities, fight. So we're not unaccustomed to having to advocate very strenu ously and fight on certain matters. This one, though, was wrapped more under the banner that we were a threat to liberty, that we were somehow causing a very often used term, especially early in session, a patchwork quilt of regulations that threaten the Texas miracle and dreams of private property rights and so forth. And so that was the backdrop that we started with. And we ultimately, I'd like to say, after some bruising, we 're very successful. And I would say just throughout the rest of my talk on the municipal side of things, we are confident when we've seen this about a decade ago when you had all new statewide leaders that we have to educate about the partnership between state and local government and that we're all rowing in the same direction for the betterment of our economy, the economic development, workforce development, quality of life issues, and that we'll have much better results when we can have that partnership. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you, Mayor. I'm trying to not derail this conversation, but I was just very interested in why, you know, this whole idea of trying to take some controls away from the city is just such a popular and kind of powerful, especially in this last session. I'm just curious, where do state leaders tend to -- I thought they were kind of farmed from the city level and they kind of kept going. Is that not true? Is that not the case? There certainly are, and some of the ones, obviously, that have a better understanding, we have some former mayors. Senator Kevin Elthoff, former mayor of Tyler and president of TML, was a champion on local government issues this time around. We have some local elected officials that move to the state and sometimes forget the lessons, I think, that they might have learned on the council dais, unfortunately. But to give the legislature some -- I do want to give them some credit. There was a great deal of talk, and there were a lot of really terrible bad bills that were filed that would have done -- you know, there were some bills that would have basically said, you don't get to have home rule cities anymore. There were bills that would have taken away all kinds of different authorities across the board, and those ultimately, for the vast, vast majority of them, did not pass. [inaudible] Members elected to the legislature with no background whatsoever in public office. First public office they've ever held will be -- Texas Senate seat. A Senate seat or a seat in the House. So, you know, it's challenging when that happens. To that end of some of the successes, as you all know, we spend a great deal of time working with other cities and the municipal league to oppose certain things that violate policy positions that you've taken in your adopted agenda here at the city. Not all of these affect you all, and some of them you all have resolved in other ways, but for the most part, these were some of the high-profile issues that were prohibited or that were attempted to prohibit city authority. There were -- first one there that's near and dear to our heart is the ability for cities to hire advocates such -- or consultants such as ourselves. That actually was also -- would have prevented you all from contacting the legislature with opinions on bills unless they asked you for that opinion. We think there were some serious constitutional amendment -- first amendment issues with that bill, but fortunately they were pretty roundly -- soundly defeated in committee and never made it out. Municipal bills have passed. We're not going to go through all these. Brannon's mentioned a couple of them. We will be working with your relevant departments to make sure that we can help with implementation, and some of these will require some rulemakings at various state agencies. Before, we did move the -- I will note the May election date for the uniform election date moved to the third -- first Saturday. >> You got a slide on it. >> Yeah, that's the next one. I'm sorry. Got ahead of myself here. This was the list of a few more. There was a voluntary program for body cameras that had some state funding attached to it. I wanted to point that one out that we will be following -- there will be some state agency rules before they make those grants available that will be put in place as well. House Bill 40, you all have obviously heard a great deal about at this council and in your community. We were very involved, and I will kind of back up a little bit beyond talking about -- I know you all are very familiar with the aspects of HB 40 from a legal and statutory provision, but to talk more about the process of it, it became very clear, and candidly, this is something that I had a few of my -- our friends in the legislative process that indicated they were surprised we didn't have this discussion a decade ago. When the Barnett shell first started coming into its own, particularly at that time, some companies like Chesapeake and others had some thoughts about wanting uniform local ordinances. We saw bills that were drafted over a decade ago that were similar to what we saw filed as the original version of HB 40. Those bills did not get filed at that time through a host of different reasons. But the issue itself still kind of percolated, particularly here in North Texas. Beginning in October of -- before session was the first stakeholder meeting that we participated in at the request of the oil and gas industry with the Texas Municipal League . Start talking about parameters. They indicated to us basically at that point that we're coming with a bill. We would like to have a dialogue, but whether y'all are interested in having a dialogue or not, we're moving forward. And so that really began the process in earnest. I can't thank you all enough at the council level, the city attorney, city manager, mayor in particular, for the numerous, numerous hours that y'all spent down in Austin. I know it wasn't fun. Denton certainly was in the news probably more than y'all wanted to in the capital. But you played a very valuable role at being that sounding board and rolling up your sleeves on some very tough policies that we faced some long odds on. And it became very clear, I think, to anyone that was there that the industry itself had the wherewithal to get a bill passed in some nature. And so it became incumbent, I think, on local governments to make a decision at that point. Do we go down and basically see a bill passed similar to what was unanimously voted out of the Senate committee, which would have taken away all of our authorities, period. We as I think we testified to on behalf of a number of clients, we could quit talking about local oil and gas ordinances because we would have no space anymore. Or did we try to get something that preserved some limit? There was no appetite, unfortunately, despite advocacy efforts. There was no appetite to preserve a authority for cities or to spell out in statute the ability to conduct an outright ban. And that, of course, flew in the face of what this community had with regards to their election. You all are obviously well aware of that. But that was obvious to anyone. I think it was obvious to a number of your community leaders that were involved in that process that participated, I think, very professionally, by the way, and respectfully in the process in Austin. And so we ended up with what we have, with HB 40 coming back at some level to preserve some certain areas, particularly with regards to some of the more traditional items there in A, which I do think from if you look to some of the good of making lemonade out of lemons at times, this is the first time that we have statutory authority that cannot be questioned on preemption basis with regards to certain core elements of ordinances that are around the state that have been on the books for a number of years, similar to y'all's mayor. >> You mentioned that we have statutory authority that cannot be challenged on the basis of preemption authority. But in this legislative session, let me put it as a question. But we don't have anything that preserves this that can't be challenged on vested rights doctrine. In other words, we could have a bill that fits all of this criteria, but that doesn't mean that the vested rights claim is now, therefore, nullified or preempted by this legislature. >> You're exactly right. There's two areas that are still on the table. And I've said and I gave a speech last week at the Texas City Attorney's Conference and said the final chapters of H B 40 have not been written. I think we all testified some version of that during the course of session that we don't ultimately there will be case law on this. There will be a look to the Railroad Commission on how they interpret their authority under this new system and any rule makings that they have. And on that note, I think it was I don't know if we have it in this presentation, but it's a good spot to mention it. There was an effort to the Railroad Commission is going to go under sunset review over the course of the next two years. The commission will review and the staff will review their operations that was scheduled to happen. It's going to happen. There was a very last minute surprise change that would have pushed that off eight years. And I will give Chairman Jim Keffer really led the charge at the final hours to get that changed to where we do get to review it. I think that was extremely important for communities like Denton, Fort Worth and others that have an interest in how this is implemented and how it plays out into the future. I think that was a critical review that needed to take place because it makes sure that this stays front and center on how state actions interact with our local regulations as well. And so that's going to be very important. Be something we 'll stay very closely attuned to. And I suspect that you all will want to participate in as it as it moves forward. Oh, I'm sorry. We have a question. Thank you. Kind of the timeline of HB 40, how it originally was drafted. If you go back one slide, sir, it did it. The thing that resembled like that a number there. I mean, it was just very that tell me what it looked like a little bit in the very beginning. The the filed version of HB 40. And you're exactly right. With the exception of referencing commercially reasonable, it did not include these and saying that we were preempted. And it did not include these others. So it basically said any activity as an oil and gas operation, which was about a half page definition of everything you could think of under the sun that could potentially touch oil and gas operations , included traffic flow. Cities would have been prohibited and preempted by state law if that operator held a state permit. Period end of discussion. And there were some pretty significant, it appeared penalties for violating that as well not fines per se, but it was clear that we were pre empted in about four very express ways. The TML immediately put out a press release calling that the nuclear option. And we're very strident. The chairman of the committee, Dar by chairman drew Darby, who was a former city councilman in San Angelo, Texas and actually voted for the ordinance that they had on their books that had been unchanged was unaware , or at least didn't fully appreciate the significance of how the bill was drafted because it would have wiped out the ordinance that he had voted on, for example, when he was a council member there. And so we went through hours and hours of city mayor, city attorney manager everyone did a great job at that that's really where that's really where the breaking point for the negotiations began. Industry candidly for lack of better words we're wanting to see if they could run over us in my opinion at that point. I think they were ultimately surprised and it didn't happen until well into that hearing that I think some light bulbs went off for a few members that said, we have to go back and revisit this. We were told their intent was not to do some of the things that the city officials across the state were saying this bill would do the city legal representatives. At that point they realized they had to make changes there were meetings subsequent cities asked for much more. This is not the bill that we would have written on if we would have been put in a room and asked to write the bill as municipal attorneys. It is not, you know, and we would have probably preferred to see no bill passed, of course, but that was very clear. It was clear to us that this was a priority for the governor to have resolved as well, and that we would likely seen a special session had we not. If something ultimately in some form or fashion hadn't hadn 't moved to his desk. Well to that I just, it's, I find it interesting we're all up here and then we're trying to figure out what's going on down in Austin, and maybe why somebody voted. We are to sometimes why somebody is voting for something. If maybe it's a different version of what it originally started as and they were helping with the amendment of it. And then they have they're kind of trying to work this right not on the hook for voting for it. But if you're a part of that amendment and making it a better fit for the city. You know why it was still such an overwhelming vote. And just why it was an overwhelming vote for final passage. Yes. I think what I, what was clear to us in the city world down at the you know the advocates in Austin. And we've looked at a lot of issues like this and I'll go back to what I started with, it was clear a bill was going to pass. This was a priority for leadership, it was a priority for the governor. And the oil and gas industry is a iconic, very powerful interest in Austin. A lot of legislators were it was a free vote. They don't have oil and gas drilling in their city. And, you know, it 's, it's, they're not being penalized back home for voting for it. And so it was an easy vote to cast for a whole lot of folks . We, and we get a sense, we, the role we have, again, the local government representatives there, of kind of doing a vote count if you will or filling members out for where they're going to land on an issue, because that informs the way we negotiate both from the municipal league standpoint and for individual clients. It was clear that they had well in excess of the number of votes to, to push something forward and for it to pass. And then the many complex issue and this is a complex legal and regulatory issue. There's a much smaller group of opinion leaders in the capital that drove the overall debate so the House Energy Resources Committee and Chairman Darby and Keffer and Phil King, that were much more involved in driving the issue. Some of the other members that don't serve on those committees, they kind of follow the lead of these other folks that are that are given the oversight of those. And that's what led ultimately to what we would got. I think we would have been, had we not been at the table as local governments, I think the outcome would have been something very similar to what was filed. I think we would have addressed something but from a standpoint I'd say this clearly, we were better off being at the table having those discussions, then we were shutting ourselves out of the process, in my opinion. Well, and to, I mean, the first hearing that we had in the House Subcommittee. Of course, the industry was one of the first to speak. Yes, and some of the questions from the panel, at least the committee members. Or they even said in their testimony, well, we're not int ending it for not to do this or to do this or to do this. And in some sense, it really gave the opening for myself and other mayors and other witnesses to say, well, if it's not your intent, your intent is to do this. Let's put it in there. And I really think that if they had not said that, if we would have had to have fought on in that regard on different sides of the position, it would have been very interesting, different conversation, I think . Agreed. I agree. That was the turning point in at least preserving some core issues that we did preserve. Do you have a question? Oh, I thought you said, I'm sorry. Like I said, we've covered, I think, the process of what the bill does. Ultimately, we will have somewhere, probably in other places beyond Denton, where there will be case law that's established on this. That whether that is city initiated or industry initiated, we don't know. But at some point, there will be additional discussion and how this will be implemented. And I think the legislature will, especially given the Rail road Commission process, we will have it revisited in the legislature as well, at least as an oversight matter. Snapper, would it be safe to say that the, I mean, any statewide elected office, obviously, we should take and do our due diligence and research. But would you say that this increases the importance, at least on the surface of the Railroad Commission? In other words, this seems to add much more duties or responsibilities, at least potentially to the Railroad Commission and those three elected officials than what may have been perceived before. Would that be a good assessment? I think it is a fair assessment to say it puts a much brighter spotlight on the operations of that agency and the decisions they make. And really, too, that dovetailed during the course of session, that dealing with HB 40 and kind of the general regulation and injection wells and potential earthquake issues. Those two really came together. Brandon was very involved in dealing with that and the study that was included in the state budget on earthquake matters. Those two really came together during the course of session and I think they realized that they're going to have a much higher profile role in that and scrutiny. So given that, I'm wondering if, number one, we have seen any indication from the Railroad Commission that they are reviewing any of their operating rules in light of the number of wells that are in an urban setting. And if they have not shown any indication of movement in that direction, if this would be an appropriate place for cities or coalition of cities to begin making some appearances on a regular basis. Proposing our own sets of rules to take down there and encourage them to put into place, recognizing that with drilling having moved into an urban environment, some different regulations from our rural environment are most appropriate. So the question is, should we be pushing them for some regulations and do you have any recommendations for how we would go about doing that? The short answer, and I'll answer it kind of in two parts, the Railroad Commission has indicated that they are looking at a host of issues. Not just the HB40, like I said, there's the injection well issues which are kind of part and parcel but a little bit different. And then with regards to what their role is going to be, they were waiting to see what this was going to look like and how it was going to shake out. But they've indicated that they're going to undertake that review. That's why I said that was such an important thing to happen because that is a separate professional commission that is designed to review the operations, duties, and roles of a state agency. And so that their staff is going to do that review and that is a very public process where they welcome our input. So that our first recommendation is going to be we need to be a part of the sunset process. When do they go before sunset? That will start over the, there will be a schedule that comes out, they'll produce that late this fall, and then that'll take all basically of next year. But they're due to be to be reviewed under the sunset for the next legislative session? Yes, and there was an amendment that would have pushed that out for eight years. That's what I was getting at before so that we would have not had the review. It would have been eight years from now. And we fought along with some others to change that back. So I think we're already seeing maybe what our next job for you is going to be. The Sunset Commission process for the, not only for the oil and gas operations, that's also of course who sets your natural gas rates in those communities that have a provider . So that's the other way we interface with them a great deal . But I do think that we ought to, and we planned on, we've had a great deal of communications. One of our associates is the former staff person at the Railroad Commission, so we work with that agency a lot. I think we will have to kind of look at what rule makings they open and then absolutely we would say y'all would want to monitor and participate in those. But the sunset process is going to give us a very public, invisible process to do that. And they'll make specific recommendations coming out of that too. I know we've covered this, certainly wanted to spend a lot of time and ability to answer some of the process questions as it relates to this. The next one was also a very high profile bill that I'm going to hand over for Kurtz to talk about some DME and TMP A issues if you want to step up here. On a brighter note, we'll talk about Senate Bill 776. I will mention before we get off the Railroad Commission and Dalton to your question, I mean, look at the Railroad Commission. Involvement has to take place at the Railroad Commission and at the Sunset Commission. If y'all hadn't have been there and he hadn't have testified and he hadn't testified at that HB 40 deal, it would have been a completely different deal. Because that was an industry written bill by very fine lawyers who I know personally, Shannon Radcliffe and Tom Phillips. And they were written for a client for a particular purpose and the legislature would have passed it. They would have passed that bill. So we'll go on to my part. I want to talk to you a little bit about electricity and utilities and how it affects DME and public power in general across the state. I'll play off what Snapper and Brandon have both said. Local control didn't stop at the city council level. It moved on into operations under a city council and that included municipally owned electric utilities. Whereas in the past, a lot of issues are driven by industry , either the investor owns or municipal or the cooperatives or customers mainly. This session, it was driven more by two things. One, the Public Utility Commission that gave legislative recommendations this year. And one of the things, going back 10 years, 10 years ago and going forward was how municipal utilities build transmission outside of their traditional service territory . And how that affects voters who obtain service but might not have a vote for a city council that oversees the municipal electric utility. And that's kind of been festering down there. It started in the Hill Country. It's come forward for 10 years and ended up at the center of where we spend our lives these days, Austin and Austin Energy. So the genesis of a lot of what happened in the municipal electric utility business this time was the result of issues surrounding Austin Energy, general fund transfer, outside rate payers and big, big customers. So those issues drove. Our bill this time that we were very, very interested in was the bill that was proposed by the Texas Municipal Power Agency. Chris had a lot to do with it. Of course, Phil was there every step of the way with it. And this is the bill that we needed to pass to give the cities and the board, the TMPA, the authorities going forward to figure out what to do when the power services contract expires in 2018. And we had a trigger date in 2016, so we had to have this legislation come forward. It's really a governance issue. However, we got caught up in a lot of other electric issues because this became the bill. Our bill was originally filed in the House and the Senate, 745 and 1926. You won't see those bills at the end that the governor signed. He did sign 776, which was a bill by Senator Frazier, which was one of those public utility commission bills to address building of transmission outside the certificate area. So as in the words that he expressed to Senator Estes, that bill was hijacked, was put into this bill 776 and that's what's passed. 776 essentially says that three or four things, one, that it sets forth the parameters by which a municipally owned electric utility must obtain a certificate of convenience in this sense going forward. This is a change in what Phil, 100 years of the way we've done things. But at the end of the day, it's probably a thing that was going to occur sooner or later. So why not have the ability to help write it this time? And in DME's case, we hadn't had any complaints about DME, but we kind of got caught up in the other stuff. Lubbock was in kind of the same situation. Brownsville was in the same situation. So we put several exceptions into the bill. And the best news is there's like a six year transition going forward on how to move towards this. On the TMPA bill, that was the bill of ours that was put into this bill and it passed. And I'm happy to report because of Anita's work and a lot of other outside attorneys that worked on that bill, there was only one change made and that bill passed four times, two times in the House and two times in the Senate. Unbelievable. They only changed to the corpus of that bill was one sub section change that ledge counsel made a mistake in. So my hats are off to the preparation that took place over eight months to get that bill ready so it worked. So a lot of good success there. Where is it? Backwards. I want to mention just briefly these DME issues. This was kind of our issues going forward. Talked about the TMPA 2018 plan. These, I've been in the business watching electric utility issues in the legislature for about 28 years now. And the more they change, the more they stay the same. And we'll continue to see this press on municipally electric owned utilities. The deregulation, the opt out issues, bigger customers are all going to be an issue coming forward. In fact, this past weekend on the co-op side of things, Per th and Alice Electric co-op, they elected a new board, largest co-op in the country. Two of the new board members were elected on the basis of opening up to competition. When you get the largest, and Austin is what, the second largest behind CPS, there's going to be a big move on it next time. So I think that's what we've got to be very vigilant about. And my hats off to Phil. Phil was chairman of TPPA this time. That's a difficult job. Especially when some of your colleagues are against you on issues like LCRA on one of our bills. He did a great job and will continue to work during the interim. But I think there'll be a lot of activity on the electric side going forward. Snapper. We have included, like I said, in our slides, there are several that are kind of for your information and for your departments to look at. I did want to mention, I told you we have moved the uniform election date from the second Saturday to the first Saturday in May. That was signed by the governor. There is a requirement, as you will see, for candidate eligibility purposes that you live and be registered to vote in the area that you're going to run for at least six months prior to the regular filing deadline. That was signed into law as well. Brandon mentioned that this was a session where we talked a lot about ethics and contracting procurement. There was some pretty high profile scandals at the Health and Human Services Commission over some contracting issues that really led to this. As is often the case, there was more done, I think, at the local level than at the state level. On this particular item, these will, for contracts over a million dollars, you will have greater disclosure that you have to do. There will be some filings with regards to filing those at the Ethics Commission or details on them. So what you mean, there was hanky-panky at the state level, and so they passed rules to keep local folks from doing what they're doing? That's one way of saying it. And to be fair, there were definitely bills that passed dealing with state contracting issues. The state ethics bill, as Brandon mentioned, due to an amendment, was vetoed by the governor. Yeah, I heard somebody describe this legislative session as the Goldilocks session, where their attitude was, strong federal government? Too bad. Strong local government? Too bad. Strong state government? Just right. Have you all heard that? I have. I have. Has anybody down in Austin agreed that that's... There were certainly some members that pointed out what they saw as inconsistency between complaints of federal government overreach and proposals that were put forward, which I think led to the question earlier about a lot of those bills that not passing. I think there were enough members, particularly in the House, and I would say, you know, Speaker Joe Strauss and his leadership team was a backstop on a lot of bills being defeated that I think would have had a pretty bad effect. I mean, I've often been frustrated by the direction that some of our local advocates for open government, and I agree that we ought to have open government, being so irritated with the school district or the city, yet it seems like they would be doing more good for us. They would be doing more good for us all if they were pointing their efforts on trying to get the state to follow the rules that they put in place for us to follow. We can't disagree with you on some of those. Well, I'm glad. We're paying you, so don't. We, as we mentioned, there'll be some more to read but there was a HP 23 was a high profile bill dealing with potential conflicts interest interest in the procurement process sets out builds upon some of the existing requirements to declare a particular interest or gifts that might be received from a vendor. There's some additional financial reporting that's going to be made available and has to be made available on the city 's website or local governments website. Some of this we do already in different reports but it's a kind of an aggregation of those. Like I said, we're going to have to show our credit ratings . If we from the different agencies must be shown on the particular website. And that last bullet point is one that has been around for a number of sessions and ultimately made it into this bill that a city can't issue certificates of obligation if the voters have voted down a broad proposition on the same matter within the proceeding three years. So, we go back to the proceedings line. The state doing all of that themselves. The state has certainly has a large number I can't tell you with certainty whether they hit all of those items. My bet is that if I spend a number of hours on the controllers website I could find all of that on the state to, as it is easy. And as aggregated, I can't, can't say that. So, these reports like I said there's a big move to make as much stuff available online as possible in fact one of the bills we highlight is passing as a good allow cities to respond to certain open records request by providing a link to where that is available on your city website instead of having to provide a stack of paper. A number of open meetings, public information type laws that were passed. Like I said there, this requires that all regularly scheduled meetings now have to be make a video and audio archive, not special meetings or emergency meetings, and you have to make available of those within seven days if you maintain a web presence as well or like I said it's kind of a more stuff available online as it relates this is House Bill 685 is the bill I was referring to that allows you to respond to certain open records request with links to where that information can be found. So here's the heading of what's next. Governor Abbott veto ed 42 bills this past Saturday. That was a relatively large larger than expected amount of bills to be candid. There were two bills to find that many. There were two bills that we wanted to highlight because this comes up a great deal with some of our clients about the potential to increase preference for local vendors in the scoring. There were two bills that passed that would have done that and they were both vetoed. And the veto statement said that we should not just to summarize it should not look to local preferences. We should just look to to pure cost analysis of it. No special session is immediately on the horizon the governor said he would prefer not to have one. We would note that as that last bullet point states that there are several items that are working their way through the court system particularly school finance being the primary one that's before the state Supreme Court, same sex marriage issues, voter ID requirements and redistricting which is still in federal court, all of those have a very substantial chance of driving something that could cause the need, particularly again on school finance and redistricting the need for a special session to be called and that's whatever those rulings are. We of course will have a constitutional amendment election, which we will be receiving in our update that outlines what those seven ballot propositions are in detail, SJR five being the one that I think you will hear about most at the local level with regards to transportation funding presidential election in addition to our primary that will be in March of 2016. We have a great deal of Texas connections to that. And as you all know the turnout typically is much higher in a presidential election year which has an impact on state house and Senate races. We have a number of members that have already announced are not returning. Senator Elta former Mayor Tyler we mentioned Senator Fra zier, who chaired Senate natural resources for a number of years, not coming back Senator, or Chairman Jim Keffer, who we've mentioned and of course the city worked with a great deal this session is also chose not to seek reelection. I want to note that long time member Sylvester Turner is running for mayor of Houston announced here recently. Looking ahead to the issues, as Kurt said some things stay the same the legislature. You look back deals with a lot of the same policy issues over and over. Some of that, that we will see from our standpoint we know that our goal will be to again talk about that partnership between the state and local governments with regards to pre emption issues. As we move forward, school finance and tax reform will almost certainly be at the top of the list next session. And with that I know we covered a lot. Again, it's an honor to get to work with y'all and the time and effort that y' all put in. We view ourselves as extensions of your city staff in Austin, and there to work on y'all's behalf and at your direction. Any questions. I do have one and this is I guess more for our city manager . And it's regarding the, the, the slides slide 2829 on financial reporting under House Bill 1378. I suspect that our city is already complying with most of this. And in fact there were a couple of other slides for example about recording and making available open our meetings, the recordings of our meetings. I think it would be interesting for staff to just look at these and let us know, maybe even give us an easy little report card and you know, of the 20 or so things how many are we already doing or we're doing. Maybe even give ourselves even more detailed that we're going above and beyond what the requirements are, I suspect that we're doing quite well. We'd be happy to do that or some things that we've initiated in the last couple of years that I think would, but I haven't looked at the entire list so we'll put something together. Thanks, Mr. Manager on that point I will just say anecdot ally, as we reviewed these bills during the course of session and as TML did. Many of the requirements were benign, because I think most of the cities were already achieving the vast majority there may be some finer details that will need to be make sure we get check the box but for the most part we were handling these items. On the note of benign into the last slide of what you know what's going to happen next session I think there's going to be a continuation of this transparency conversation into the next session and requirements for local governments to do this or do that under the banner of transparency. I think we'll get to talk about this topic for some time to come. Or at least somebody will get to talk I don't know if it'll be we, but someone. Any other questions. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go ahead and take a 10 minute break. Yeah, let's take a 10 minute break since there's only four of us here so we're back in session from our break, we'll go on to agenda item one B, which is receiving board hold discussion give staff direction about possible ways that the city can support or system potential residential development near Ryan road and T. Lane. Thank you, Barry. I'm last game you visit our planning and development if she would present this item for your consideration and discussion. Thank you. Thank you mayor and city council members. I'm going to pull this up and grab my notes real quick. As you all know this is a proposed residential development by Bob Shelton enterprises. Mr Shelton is in the room today as well as his engineer from Kim Lee horn Thomas Fletcher. They're here to answer any specific questions that you may have today related to this proposed development to give you a little bit of history about why we're here today. My first meeting with the Shelton's was on October 8 of last year. At that point in time they came to me as the economic development director and explained that they had a piece of property in contract that is a beautiful piece of property that's heavily trade that they were interested in developing for higher end higher value homes and in doing so they would also bring that property into the city limits. It's currently in the E.T.J. So we've been working on ways to make this project economically viable for several months now. And there are a lot of constraints to the property itself as a as a developer when you buy a piece of property for residential development in the end it has to equate to a certain dollar amount per lot in order to be able to develop it and actually get the homes on the lots that you would like. And so this particular property has a variety of constraints that make that a challenge and there's an existing gas well on the site which is not necessarily the focus of the conversation today but it's one of many things about the site that makes it challenging. There's a floodplain and ESA area that runs basically bifur cates the tract into two pieces. And it is right along Ryan Road which is by the city's mobility plan a secondary arterial which requires significant road improvements that are very costly and there's no wastewater to the property today. So we began brainstorming last fall about ways that we could potentially make the project work because they are looking at higher end housing which has been it has been an expressed goal of the council today. So just a quick summary and it is Shelton Enterprises as I said before it is near Ryan Road and Teasley next to Good Samaritan and Lake Forest Park I'll show you a visual of that momentarily it's currently in the E.T.J. and we've been working with them since last fall. Real quick question. Why do I eat peanuts. Can I play the fifth. So it's not in the city right now. That there is a non annexation agreement on file. There is there is a non annexation agreement in place that they executed earlier this spring. That is a one year agreement. However they have agreed to voluntarily annex under certain conditions with with the city if we were to work together so that the property would come on to the tax rolls. Well if if when the non annexation the non annexation agreement expires in a year. What is that something that gets automatically renewed or is there I know in some of our old and some of our previous non annexation non annex ation agreements when they would expire. Then it means that it's going to be annexed but is this a different construct on that I'm just trying to get the facts on this. Sorry. This this would take additional council action to extend the non annexation agreement so this would come before Council for the council to consider it. If the council desires to the law allows have it in front of me 3035 years of non annexation agreements. So it could be extended but that will be at the discretion of council. Well I guess my question is more the thrust of it was if the council takes no action and this one year agreement expires. What's the status at that time. Well then then the property would be subject to annexation. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. The component of that and correct me if I'm wrong Anita is that the non annexation agreement if development were to occur would it would automatically trigger annexation. This is an aerial view of the property. I along the the top line up here is Ryan Road. This piece on the side is Good Samaritan and the product the tract that's actually in contract today includes more than just the red line. It's almost a square that comes all the way out past that gas well and down here to this existing residential development and then up around the corner here. And the property and read with a red outline is the property in question as it relates to potentially becoming park property or utilizing tree funds to preserve the trees . We've talked about the constraints on the property and the intended development includes 57 to 70 residential lots ranging in a home value from 350,000 to $500,000. I just did a real quick calculation on this the average number of lots would be 63 if you took the high and low end and the average home value would be 425,000 if you took the average . That would be about a 27 million dollar residential development at full build out and it would equate to about $185,000 annually and add valorem revenue for the city. This is the little bit zoomed out aerial for you to see and basically what I want you to see is that this is the tract up here on the top left that is the track that we will have a conversation about today. The square includes all the property that they are currently having contract today. The piece on the far left is the intended residential development and the piece on the far right and there's potential for future assisted living development there. And the piece in the middle which makes up about 28 acres is largely in the flood plain. I believe about 11 acres of it is in the flood plain and about 17 acres is in an ESA. As it stands today in the ETJ there's no requirement for the property owner to preserve any of those trees. If they came in and did this entirely under private development they would be obviously required to preserve the trees in the flood plain and they'd be required to preserve the trees in half of the ESA which would equate to about 5 acres of additional trees that would be preserved. And the reason that there's a couple reasons that we're having this conversation in addition to the fact that we're trying to make a determination whether it's an economically viable project. The piece that comes right through the middle of the tract is very heavily treated with upland habitat. They're beautiful existing oak trees that would be the kinds of things that we would want to preserve inside the city. And our urban forester has been out there and he's indicated that it's very nice in terms of tree property. If it was already in the city of Denton we would have a guarantee that the majority of that would already be preserved by our development regulations. Because it's not, there is the potential there that the property owner, if this specific developer goes away, the property owner could say I'll never develop this property with all these trees on it so I'm going to cut them down before I get them out of the ETJ. Who's the owner? The owner is a family that's been in the Denton area for multiple generations. They're very interested in developing this property in a way that leaves a legacy for their family. And they don't live on the property but they have a long term interest in doing something that is good for the city in the long run. Well, nobody's threatened to cut those trees. I mean, I guess I'm just really struggling with, there's a big push of, we got to preserve these, we got to do this deal for these trees to be preserved and my hunch is, I mean, if somebody wants to go out there and cut all those trees down, I don't think that the people who want to leave a legacy would want to do that. Sure. And I'm not saying that they would do that. I'm just trying to contrast our ability to preserve them today versus various options where we would be able to. I'll tell you what, I would not want to mess with the ghost of Melba Jean Ryan and anybody who goes in that family, anybody in that family who goes and cuts those trees down, Melba Jean's going to be after them. Okay. So that future assisted living chunk right there, that is part of this discussion that we're talking about, right? That is a part of the property that's in contract today, that's correct. It's in contract. Yes. And that's, is it possibly going to get Samaritan? Is that, or? I can't speak to that. Okay. Well, I thought it was owned by them already. I didn't know it just because of the color, just because of just the way it's outlined, but now I appreciate you clarifying that. Okay. Another reason that we're having this conversation is, if you'll notice, this proposed future park area here, provides some connectivity from Ryan Road down into Lake Forest Park. And that, there's some potential benefit to that, and that would be the primary benefit if the Parks Department were to one day own this property. That would be the benefit to them. Obviously it comes with some burdens and some costs associated with it as well. I'm sorry, go ahead, Dalton, I'm sorry. So when, would you go back to that slide? If and when that property develops, it automatically, or does it automatically become part of the city? If the entire tract is developed, if it's developed as one tract, it becomes a part of the city automatically. That is correct. Okay. And then if it becomes a part of the city, doesn't the parks dedication policy? It does, yes. And so where is the land that they are donating or the, how much money would they be required to donate for the development that they're talking about doing? I don't know that they've gotten so far as to point out where that would be. My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Emerson, is that that would be the equivalent of 0.6 acres would be the park dedication amount for this specific property. So we're talking about, the piece in question is 28 acres, and they would be required to donate or dedicate 0.6 acres. And does any of that land in the floodplain so it couldn't be developed anyway? That's correct. About 11 acres is in the floodplain. Just to follow, and the ESA portion you said is another, how much, eight or nine acres? The ESA has 17 acres, but 10 of those acres are treed today . So they would be required to preserve half of those trees, so about five acres of trees. Well, I'm talking about as far as on an ESA. Are you able to develop in an ESA? That 11 acres you could still build homes in that ESA? I'm not exactly sure exactly how the boundary on that works . I know that they can cut down some of those trees and do some level of development, but I don't know exactly what has to be done. So for all intents and purposes, of the 28 acres or 29 acres, half or 30, 40% floodplain for sure, nothing's happening. For an ESA, questionable how much of that's able to somebody put new construction on. So close to half or almost 60 to 70% of it, it's questionable whether anything can be done with it anyway. That's correct. Okay. I'm sorry, Dalton, I interrupted you. No, that's fine. I think Madam City Attorney had something. So let me tweak one of Amy's comments just a touch. The non-annexation agreements have been crafted such that if development ensues in the area subject to the non-annex ation agreement, the property is subject to annexation. It's not automatically annexed. It is subject to or eligible for annexation at that point in time. As in involuntary annexation. Correct. Precisely. Thank you. The non-annexation agreements were written and intended. If you develop it during the period that it's exempt, if it development occurs, you lose that automatic exemption and it becomes eligible and you won't, it will be an involunt ary annexation. And the reason for that is the procedures for an involunt ary or voluntary are different. You'll have to go through the involuntary annexation processes and procedures in order to bring that property into the city. So the point being, it's just not automatic. It requires action by the council to bring it into the city . So let me make sure I understand. I thought I heard something different. We gave them a one-year non-annexation agreement. And I thought in the past, so maybe I misunderstood something. I thought in the past on our non-annexation agreements, if development occurred, they were there for, I thought, either subjecting themselves or agreeing to voluntary annex ation. But you're saying no. If they develop it in breach of the non-annexation agreement, it's an involuntary situation where we have to go in and still follow all those procedures. Is that correct? If they violate the terms of the non-annexation agreement by initiating development, then at that point in time, they are eligible or subject to annexation. It would be an involuntary annexation and not a voluntary one because they have violated the terms of that non-annex ation agreement. I'm concerned now, too, that I'm mixing the terms that they 've agreed it will be. They can't contest the annexation or it really would be treated as a voluntary annexation. If the one-year non-annexation, if we've given them a one- year non-annexation agreement and no development ensues during that one-year term and the term ends, then we've got some options. The council could move forward with an annexation or the council could determine to give an additional term. And that is because we have written the non-annexation agreements in that fashion. But development during that term, in this case the one-year term, would violate the terms of the agreement and therefore subject them to annexation, involuntary annex ation. I won't belabor this, but if you could maybe have staff just, if we could get a copy of that agreement. I just want to see that with, yeah, thank you. Okay, so. Dalton, I interrupted you. Okay, I'm sorry. The reason that we're here today is that Mr. Shelton has had this property in contract for several months now and has reached a point where he has to make the decision whether to keep it in contract or let it go and needs some guidance from the city council about your interest in pursuing the park property, the trade property, or any interest in assisting with infrastructure which could come in a variety of formats. We've done a variety of things in the past in terms of infrastructure. Between Ryan Road, the costs associated with Ryan Road, and extending sewer to the property, there's some constraints as far as that goes. And so we brought this to you on a pretty short timeline just so we could get some initial feedback from you about your thoughts about this particular development and interest in working with them on some of these options. As we see it, the primary value to the parks department would be the adjacency to Lake Forest Park. And the primary value from a tree preservation standpoint would be preserving a significant stand of upland habitat with the consideration that the majority of that is in floodplain and ESA today. And the primary economic benefit would be an opportunity to get some higher valued homes on the ground. And so what I'm looking for today is any interest in your desire for pursuing part of this for parkland and/or use of tree fund for acquisition and any interest in assisting the developer with options for public infrastructure. Yes, Joey. Well, on that first one, I've not walked the property, but it sounds like it meets all the criteria that to spend money on a good wooded area with big trees. I think where I'm trying to understand is how does it benefit the developer if we own that? Just kind of bottom line. They're going to have to take all the property as one tract and buy it from the seller. And at that point in time, they're into it for a certain dollar amount per foot. That dollar amount as it stands today plus all the infrastructure costs price the lot value out of development . It's too costly to put a home on those lots at that point in time. And so would we buy the park area from Shelton or would we buy it? We would buy the prop area. We would say that if we were to pursue that, we would say we're interested in purchasing a park area from you after you've acquired the property. And we would go from there. And so it would be a separate transaction that would happen with the Shelton's, I believe . Okay. Go ahead. I feel constrained to give staff direction because I would need an executive session, closed session to discuss real estate issues, including this $40,000 an acre going price for land in the flood plain or land that's subject to preservation anyway. So, so I have some, I'm not sure that I could give direction without an executive session. Without further discussion. I understand we could, we could buy our rules. We could go into executive session at some point right now because this is an item we can get. We have that reservation in our policies. Is that correct? I think we've reserved the right to go into closed session to receive legal advice not to talk about real estate matters which would be consistent with state law but let me look at your posting real quick. But, but my guess is we don't have anyone from a real estate group here to give us any advice. So, but we do have Emerson here from parks that can, I mean whether it's an open or closed it'd be a determinant. But, so, does that help you or what? We have, we have kind of a generic posting here but my advice to you on this would be to specifically post the item regarding the real estate issue and go into closed session on attorney items only. So, my suggestion would be that we bring this back to you next week if you would like to discuss it in closed session . I hope we're not going to be here next week. I believe you are. I'm sorry to break that news. Oh, she had a question. Council Member Briggs had a question. I'm kind of on the same page as Dalton. I just wanted to go ahead and say that right now. Well, I, you know, and I talked with Mr. Shelton when he came in and just shared with him as I looked at this, I can give direction on this from my perspective. And I hate the way those questions are worded. When you, I mean, that's very good. So, I'm going to take the second question first. I'm not going to, my answer doesn't go to that question. Does the City Council have an interest in assisting the developer with options for public infrastructure? I think my concern is that to use the tree fund, well, first of all, the price on the floodplain land is $40,000 an acre. Nobody's going to go in and cut those trees down. I mean, if they do, because it's not in the city, well, then that would deplete our tree fund, basically in essence , amongst all of it. I think that in some ways, by doing that and by providing the infrastructure, we're sort of making a project that's not economically viable based upon the market conditions at this time. We're saying we want to make it viable because if we want higher end homes, well, if we're going to subsidize every builder who's going to come in for higher end homes, we just need to figure out a way to do that ourselves. I mean, so we're looking at almost a $2 million and that's, first of all, let me also point out, you got an email from Councilmember Johnson expressing his thoughts on this. I wanted to make sure I pointed that out because he'd asked for us to make sure that you guys saw that. We also have a memo from Emerson or from someone, the city manager, I guess, or John Cabrales, I'm sorry. Well, no, it's from Emerson to John Cabrales. Yeah, make sure I get it right. Regarding just some bullet points on this particular situation. And this isn't anything about the developers. Obviously, it's nothing about the project. But I think when we look, in essence, the land is so expensive that there's no way that they can land bank 28 acres based upon the purchase price. And so they need this sort of supplement, this subsidy, if you will, of us buying this as parkland in order for this project to work. And I just, I can't, I can't in good conscience do that with that kind of money, especially with it being flood plain land that is going to have to be preserved anyway if it's in the city. ESA is going to have to be either all of it preserved or half of it preserved. And those two figures you have, it's a unique situation which has its challenges. But I think given that it's trying to be sold all at once and the purchase price has to absorb those 28 acres that are virtually useless to a developer. So they're just trying to get their, so it's, and I looked at this every which way I could. But the principle of it to spend $2 million to achieve a goal that we have for only 50 to 60 homes with $185,000 per year tax valuation, it would take us more than ten years to make that up for residential development. And we're buying parkland for that that we cannot use other than a trail. I mean, we've paid, I guess, $20,000 or $30,000 for park land before, but that's because we're putting ball fields, possibly rec centers, things such as that. So it's a beautiful piece of land. I go fishing out there adjacent to it. So no, it's a beautiful, beautiful, absolutely beautiful piece of land. But I think for $1 million or $2 million could we achieve that goal? Could we find a way to maximize that goal of furthering higher end development? Because this is really based upon the constraints of the property. They're selling the whole thing. You see what I'm saying? I mean, you've got to use that money to sell off. I mean, I didn't know that square up there was there, so they'll probably have to, you know, that's going to be some type of commercial piece of property. And maybe once we have, if the council decides on road impact fees, because that's the challenge with Ryan Road, is this patchwork quilt of development. So as much as I want that type of development, I'm not sure that based upon what's being asked for, I mean, I really don't have too many questions about legal questions or park price. So we can certainly go into closed session. But I think given the amount of money, we're just, in essence, subsidizing a project. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but the project is not economically viable without the sale of that additional land. And that additional land is useless except to anyone but the city as a part because it can't be developed. Unless you scale down the lots, get more lots and smaller houses, which I know we want bigger houses. I just, I'm not ready to spend $2 million to get that for $ 185,000 worth of tax revenue. Yes. Thank you for explaining that. I understand now and I'm with you. Thank you. Well, and after your conversation, it reminded me, I heard recently an expert in real estate development talk about, you know, a deal where if the price, the selling price, the buying price is so high that the developer can't really afford to develop it, then the selling price is probably too high. And it may be more of the responsibility to go back and re negotiate that price than for us to come in and try to buy land that may be subject to parks donation or preservation anyway, in order to make the project go. So, I see where you're coming from. And I want to throw this out there for my colleagues, just in the spirit of fairness, and that is we have half of our panel that's gone. And so, I mean, I'm pretty clear on my direction. But if you guys want to, if it's that important of an issue to you and a decision, if you wanted to wait and bring this before the next meeting we have, and we might be under a time constraint, that's the only problem. Is there a hard date on a time constraint? We are under a time constraint, which is why we scheduled it for today. But when we scheduled it for today, we did not have a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday. Would next Tuesday be enough time to get you some additional information? Okay, because I know we're going to have one council member , at least I know of, that will be absent next Tuesday. And I say that just because I know that Councilmember Johnson, you know, has a difference of opinion. And we certainly want to be able to give him an opportunity to express that. And since we do have time, I think I would want to give that to the project to where we have a more complete panel for discussion. Is that something that will work for the applicant, do you think? I just bought another 30 days yesterday. Okay. All right. Okay. Is that, but I asked my colleagues that. I'm not going to make that unilateral decision. Is that something that, is that okay with you guys? Yes, I'm fine with that. Councilmember Briggs, are you okay with that? Okay. And then we can maybe post some closed session items along with that, that we need. I would just like to request if Mr. Sheldon could buy me another 30 days. Yes. Okay. Is that any other parts of the presentation or we had a question? Yes, go ahead. I have a question. Sure. I don't, it's not about this, but there's a gas fill on the property and I did read in the backup that you guys were planning on buying that or doing something with that. And it's. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like, yes, absolutely. Come on up if you won't mind. Don't mind and answer that. I drove out there today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sheldon. Bob Sheldon, 2308 Ranch House Drive, Denton, Texas. Kind of a little background on what we were doing out there . We did enter into a contract. Yes, the land is expensive. It's a beautiful piece of land. And the constraints that Amy was talking about, not only the floodplain, but the processing or building of Ryan Road with all the drainage that comes through it. On and on and on. We just keep layering it and layering it and layering it with cost. So, and we got into the discussion with Amy about is there any way maybe the city could participate. And with the development out there, because our right now our plan calls for 20,000 square foot lots, 20, 30,000 square foot lots, huge lots. And excuse me, we felt like this was a project that maybe the city could get interested in and we try to do a bigger project. You know, we would love to go forth with it. But you're right. The land is too expensive. We recognize that as we plan and plan and plan and try to do this, that and the other. And the more we got into it, we just run into land is too expensive. So we have to have some help. We had a question about the gas well. I'm sorry. I meant to address that. Yes, ma'am. There is a vertical well on the property. It's not a horizontal. It's been there by virtue of the lease. They can't do any more drilling. One well, one place. But we had to anticipate trying to buy that well. The operators endeavor out of Midland. We approached them initially. I don't know. It's been a while back. They didn't have an interest in selling it. But we felt like we'd take another run at them. We'd like to have the well off of there. Certainly from a steady value of what we're trying to do for one. Right. And we've had about enough dealings right now with the old well business. So we'd kind of like to get it off. But at any rate, that's our plan. I don't know whether we can get it off or not. Honestly, no. The guy has several wells here in town and never, I think. And sometimes they're pretty easy to work with, sometimes they're not. But I couldn't tell you that we could get it off of there. I was out there today. I drove through. OK. Now, they can't drill anymore. They can't do anything other than what they're doing. But, you know, and that's another thing that we're a little concerned about with, too. And that's coming in and what's the new gas well ordinance going to look like with an offset. And what's that offset distance going to be the time the gas well ordinance gets cleared up? We don't know whether we're going to be at 300 from well head, 250 from site, 400 from here. So that's still kind of up there in the air, is what happens. That's one reason we want to try to get rid of the well and take care of any unknown factors there. Yeah, I like that idea. Thank you. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Sheldon, is there any infrastructure that you're going to be putting in with this development that would benefit any neighboring development or is there? Yes. And that's one reason the engineers here. The drainage that we've got to intercept from the north side of Ryan Road definitely affects that north side area totally. And, you know, that water's coming down there and there's I don't know what the drainage area is to the north up there, but we're having to pick that up and accommodate all that, which is very, very expensive right through that area. And the reason I. Go ahead. I'm sorry. The reason I'm asking if it's such a hefty price tag on that parkland, if they're kind of helping out with some other infrastructure costs, it would possibly be on the city. Just trying to weigh that out. Sure. And that is certainly something that I think for the meeting next week, if you want to send out some information to the council, as far as some of those those items, because, you know, I want this to be in a discussion that has as much information out on the table as possible. And we got off site sewer run for there's about 600,000 sewer. Oh, I got you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for staff on this presentation. See none. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shelton. Thank you very much. You bet. And we'll see you next week. You bet. Okay, that ends our open portion of our council meeting work session. Oh wait, we got C C's new business. Is that it. Yep. See, agenda item see any any new business. Yes, Councilmember Hopkins, I guess not new business but I just wanted to applaud everybody that helped organize that air show. If you were out there, it was amazing. Those, the jets I think it was f 16 and f 18 out there and if you've not seen a fly by about f 16 or f 18 you have not lived yet it was awesome so just applaud everybody at the airport. Thank you. Great. Yes. Fantastic. Yes. I would like to. I haven't had a chance to look at a tree ordinance, or I know that it was requested, like there'd be a study group or something on it and I just kind of want to update on where that is and amendments to that if we have any. Yeah, okay. Great. And I've got a, I've got one, which may seem a lot but that 's not odd actually I don't even want to said that. I want to say that we said several of us attended, Mayor pro tem and Councilmember Griggs attended a prayer vigil last night at St. James AME Church here in Denton. And one gentleman brought up a suggestion that I would like to explore. And that is he, he certainly observed that there are a lot of different festivals in our city which are great that sort of highlight the different communities that we have. And, you know, his thought was, what if we had some festival that really tried to incorporate the diversity in our community. And I think that's worth exploring, I mean it's something that would take a while to you know engage the, and we could, you know, initiate the two universities, because they certainly have a great interest in diversity and just, I think that's worth exploring, whether something comes out of that or not I don 't know but it certainly would start some conversations that I think would be beneficial in the community in general and so I really appreciated, I appreciated his creativity in that I certainly appreciated the service and it was moving and definitely needed so I wanted to bring that up. Any other new business. Seeing none, we will now convene in the closed session at 354. We will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code section 551.072. And Mr city manager I will call the first one, which is