Aug 18, 2015 City Council on 2015-08-18 1:00 PM

meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday at 1 o'clock. So we'll move on through our agenda. Our first agenda item is citizens comment on consent agenda items. Do we have any cards for citizen comments? Okay thank you Mr. City Manager. Second is request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for August 18th 2015. I understand Mr. City Manager you've got a couple. Yeah go ahead. There are four items that I'd like to mention. Three that we would like to ask the council remove from the agenda and not act on tonight. That's items for I and J which are both related to the fire department meet and confer agreement. The reason for that is the fire department hasn't been able to finish their voting on the contracts, the agreements. So we're doing that and we'll put it back on the agenda. Item R is an item related to some utility adjustments on the Interstate 35E project and we'd ask that you pull that off because it's not quite ready. And then item S on the consent agenda has to do with the gas well fees. We've had several requests through emails under our new rules of procedure that the council consider that as an item for individual consideration and then we'll also have some discussion of that item in the closed session. But we'd like to pull all four of those items from the agenda or from the consent agenda if that's okay with the council. Well I think did you want to talk about the cards later? I want to answer questions and I want to talk about procedures. Yes. [inaudible] Was that was that the only one? He mentioned some others so I'm good. Okay. Councilmember Wasney? Is there a way to take consent agenda S and just take it off today completely and have a staff presentation on it not just for us but for our citizens at a later date? Is that possible? Actually we've got a closed session discussion on that item as well as the action item and I'll let the city attorney address that but I think we may want to consider pulling that item from consideration altogether tonight but it's a direction we need to get from you in closed session. That is correct I'm prepared to give that closed session presentation on item S today. Thank you. So together items C, D, and E relate to the tree mitigation fund and those uses and the partnership with KDB and all that. My request for clarification is simply at one point we had detail on the percentages of the total funds that could be spent on each category like the actual purchase of trees, education, am I remembering that correctly? I'm pretty sure we had in the original ordinance I believe it is so a certain amount of the money could be spent on I mean you couldn't go spend a hundred percent of the funds in the tree mitigation fund on education you had to spend a certain percent on trees and a certain percent on those other categories am I remembering that right or was that just discussion? So my question I thought somewhere we had either in the previous ordinance or maybe it was just discussion on based on the amount of funds in the tree mitigation fund there were certain uses that were allowed and I thought we had there were percentages tied to it. Yes that was a part of the the criteria for the usage of the tree fund it wasn't actually a part of the ordinance itself. So we haven't lost that as a part of these changes? No no. Okay okay so I'm good then on that and then my other one mayor yes is item Q and I don't really have a question but I thought it might be beneficial to to pull that one just because I think this is one where we could certainly highlight where this is a result of a citizen who had got engaged and had a concern and brought that to our attention I think staff acted incredibly fast to make something happen and we tend to always focus on what's broken I think this is one where I mean I think it's only been a couple of weeks since that was brought to our attention. This is a different one? Trying to give you a compliment John. It's in the same area I think but it's a different zone. Oh same elementary school different zone. I think that's correct. Why wasn't the other one done already? We've just now switched it. I'm good then. Well I still think they're doing a good job with those cool zones. But you don't want to pull it necessarily this time? No I don't need to pull it. To add to that would-be compliment that one is a result of a citizen as well and it came about and it's quick it came about late last spring and it was a couple moms we sat in here with John Fortune Howard Martin Chief Howe and a bunch of staff members there's some problems with sidewalks lack of signage there's there's a lot of neighborhoods there along Pock ridge page trying to get their kids to concrete clearly in walking distance but they couldn't walk they wouldn't let their kids walk because there's a lot of cars going by there was no crossing guards nothing so these folks got it together got a bunch of folks at the table and they're gonna have crossing guards have got new cross walks they've got signs and what we're approving tonight is a school zone so in the same spirit I want to thank the staff for all their hard work and putting that together. Fantastic so let me make sure I understand at least from the agenda items for the consent agenda what we're looking at so it's my understanding we're going to pull off all together agenda items for I J and R S may be optional with pulling it off all together we'll see what that direction is from the council to staff and then we're pulling for individual consideration agenda item O if that's correct and as far as I understand that's all of the action on the consent agenda item is that I'm not hearing that correctly okay great all right go ahead just a couple of other comments about some clarification as you all know the council adopted new rules of procedure and we're trying to implement those and ask that you bear with us some as we try to implement some of the new rules of procedure I just wanted to come in on a couple of things there are essentially three or four places in your normal agenda where citizens make appearances one is at the beginning of your agenda for citizen appearances one is at the end of the agenda for citizen appearances on anything they want to talk to council about but doesn't engage the council in discussion you changed the time limits on those speakers so in both of those places on the agenda the time limits are now extended to four minutes each for persons either speaking who have pre registered at the beginning of the meeting or who are at the open mic which is a new element of your agenda is an open mic where folks can come up up to four people being recognized by the mayor to speak it if they choose to and then at the end of the agenda there is no open mic but people can still pre-register and on tonight's agenda you have about eight people registered to speak this evening but there and then in addition to that citizens can still sign a blue card and we 've we've modified that blue card slightly and I'll explain that but they can still sign a blue card to speak on items for individual consideration or at public hearings it's not required to speak at a public hearing but these are the same cards that we've always used with some modification to them we've also tried to make things flow a little bit more smoothly and designed a white card so we can distinguish between them with these are cards that people will fill out who are not who are choosing to register opposition or support to for instance a zoning case but who don't wish to speak we all we had those listed on the same blue cards in the past and the only real difference in this is that this does not provide a place as we intend to use it and hoping that it works to everybody's benefit for them to write comments which in the past the mayor's tried to summarize in some way comments on non speaker cards but we 're going to try to encourage folks who want comments entered into the record to actually sign a blue card and speak and enter those comments themselves because it's very difficult and we really don't record them anyway so if so that's a difference there will be white cards for non-speakers who are encouraged to sign a blue card if they want their actual comments now what we will do with the white cards and for non-speakers is continue as we have in the past to identify in the minutes who signed a white card and was a non-speaker and whether they indicated support or opposition to a case that will continue to be recorded but comments won't be recorded and they're not being recorded now in the minute so it's just trying to hopefully allow folks to be aware that if they actually have a comment or a an opinion that they want entered into the minutes that they need to sign a blue card and make those comments themselves because we it's just very difficult for us to do that and then the third card that we're going to have and won't be used very often I expect but is a card that will distinguish somebody who's representing a group and you all made some changes in the rules of procedures with regard to how many people needed to be in a group if they were going to have represented so that speaker will have longer to speak but may have to identify that the group they represent is present in the council chambers at the time they do that so this is the colors are trying to help us distinguish between all of those but I want you all to be aware what those changes were going to be and tonight you don't have any zoning cases so it's not going to be give us a little bit of time to get used to the new rules that you've adopted so that matter so thank you mayor when I saw that additional citizen reports I didn't realize that it meant open mic that's what it is and I thought that it might have been put there in case we had wanted to move those several folks that were at the end of the agenda into that spot so I would suggest for for that item see that that we look at some for future agendas some additional language to explain what that's about that it does not require pre-registration and that that by council rules there would be a limit to four people or whatever that the number is so that so that that's clearer to folks as to as to what that item is because it wasn't clear to me and I was actually here when we agreed to it well we can we can play with the language and make a little bit more clear the intent to being that if somebody comes up to speak in that section and it would be that they're speaking on an item that's not listed somewhere else on the agenda for which they've signed up on a blue card for instance again you all made several changes to the rules of procedure and we're trying to implement those efficiently as we can so if you have any other questions I 'd be happy to. In the four minutes can be reduced to three at council's discretion if we have a full auditorium just in terms of keeping things moving. Yeah my impression is this council always has the ability to modify those rules with consensus of the council that the mayor's direction including moving some folks up to the front of the agenda as we've done in the past if they're on the same topic and you think it'd be efficient for your considerations and your deliberations. Thank you. Thank you mayor so if I understand this correctly George you said on those additional citizens reports those would be if they're speaking on a topic that is not on the agenda. Right that's the intent. So that's the intent so will that be made clear at the introduction of that category? The mayor and I have talked about that and I think if the mayor can somewhat make a comment at the beginning of the meeting that that item is for is intended to be for folks who want to speak on items that are not on the regular agenda where they had an opportunity to sign up in some other way and I didn't point out that under your new rules up to three people can pre-reg ister which we've got on your agenda for tonight although one of them I understand is not going to be here but you have a limit of three who can pre-register there but there's a limit of four on the open mic so you could have seven people speaking at the beginning of a meeting for roughly essentially 28 minutes if they all took their time and there were that many so but the intent is on items not otherwise listed. The rules of procedure don't specifically say that. So if they're off topic are you going to be the one to tell them they're off topic? Okay. Thank you mayor. Just also as a clarification for clarification on the agenda it's it's been in the rules for a while and I don't know if it's been it certainly hasn't been strictly enforced but during items of individual consideration it's my understanding when people are required to fill out blue cards the rules state that those blue cards need to be in prior to the item being considered and I think we've actually I didn't even wasn't even aware of that truthfully so that's something we need to start thinking about because you know sometimes once you get into a discussion then people might come up to rebut others so for items of individual consideration the rules are that the cards be in prior to consideration so just want to share that and if there's an issue with that you know we just need to find a place to talk about it I don't know if this is and I'm not going to make that effective today obviously give it a grace but one make sure everybody understands it that's sort of what we're moving to is to adhere to that that particular rule so yes councilmember Rodin. Along the line of clarification of tonight's agenda is I noticed there's a number of folks signing up to speak on one topic and in the past what we've done is allow those folks to consolidate their their discussion to one point in time in the meeting instead of separated out we've done that in the past and we don't need to do that I know that's that's been a request that they've made so it would involve a significant number of speakers prior to the meeting but I'm putting forward that request for councils consideration to see if that's a rule we'd be willing to suspend for tonight's citizen comments. And would we we can have discussion now on that but I think the actual action to suspend would need to be done in the formal meeting of that way. And I don't know if those eight people that are listed at the end of the agenda if we chose to do that we need to contact them I don 't know whether they've been advised they're at the end of the agenda and might not even be here. They've asked they've asked if they can be pushed to the front. Okay all right okay I mean without taking a vote I mean I don't have an issue with that so you know if we don't have an issue with that then that's one of the first things we'll do when we move up there is it we get into the citizens report agenda if somebody wouldn't mind just you know making a motion as such council member Rodin if you wouldn't mind doing that. Yes. The other thing that I failed to mention was on the public hearings and again you don't have for instance zoning cases tonight but the procedure that you've adopted is to change the public hearing process slightly so that when the staff may that the mayor will open the public hearing before the staff makes the initial presentation so that that's formally part of the public hearing process and then we will ask the applicant to speak and present their own case if they choose to do that hopefully before council gets into too many questions of staff that maybe the applicant could more appropriately answer and we've talked about maybe doing that in the past so that procedure is going to change just slightly but I think we can all get the hang of it pretty quickly. Okay any other clar ifications of agenda items? Seeing none we'll move on to work session item 3a. Receive a report hold a discussion give staff direction regarding a potential economic development chapter 380 agreement for the Victor expansion project. Thank You Mayor. I'm going to ask Amy Bissett who if I can remember to call her by her correct title is now our new director of development services and Amy's going to present this work session item. Thank you. Thank you mayor and City Council members. The incentive that you're considering today is for Victor Equipment Company. This is a local company that is existing in Denton today. The aerial up on the screen here shows their general location. They're just to the west of the convergence of I-35E and W and they have come in and they've requested an incentive. Today you'll hear a work session on the incentive which is what we're going to go through right now and then we do have a closed session item posted it's simply for questions if you have want to go into any more details about the incentive analysis and then we'll have the item on consideration for individual consideration this evening and representatives from Victor will be here at that point in time. As you know we are authorized to provide incentives for companies that are locating in Denton or expanding in Dent on under chapter 380 of the Texas Local Government Code. Chapter 380 says that municipalities can expend public funds to accomplish a public purpose and economic development is considered a public purpose when it diversifies or expands our tax base, adds employment opportunities in Denton or otherwise benefits the economy in Denton. So real quick real quickly Victor Equipment Company is a global manufacturer and they basically make equipment they make welding equipment is what it boils down to and they were founded in 1913 they have been in Denton since the 1960s and they were acquired last year by Colfax Corporation and they have been they've been considering a consolidation and expansion of their facilities that are currently located across the United States and Denton was one of the locations that they considered and they are looking at closing and consolidating facilities and we're fortunate that they're consolidating those here in Denton as opposed to closing the facility here in Denton. They are looking to like I said consolidate and this would become their national headquarters and they would be creating a hundred new jobs with this expansion. Just a rundown of their current facility and the their expansion plans they're in a little over 200,000 square feet today they have 414 full-time employees they need to just almost double that space by adding another hundred and eighty five thousand square feet and to update the facility and the equipment and they're looking at relocating a hundred employees from a nearby facility that they'll be closing and adding a hundred newly created jobs. They're also looking at adding a 30,000 square foot research and development operation which is a consolidation from another state and it's a total 30 million dollar capital investment. I'm just a feel-good one of the things that we look for in companies that we're considering incentives are community involvement and this is a picture of some students at the the Denton ISD Advanced Technology Complex they they participated in a welding competition and Victor sponsored the awards of that competition which was four thousand dollars in cash and equipment. They've been involved at the Advanced Technology Complex for a number of years there's an active welding program out there and they've been active in the community in a variety of ways. Real briefly and the Economic Development Partnership Board did consider their incentive application and they have made a recommendation to you for an incentive of 65% property tax rebate for seven years and that would equate to about seventy thousand dollars a year depending on their increased valuation for a total incentive over the life of this incentive period of about five hundred thousand dollars. I do want to point out that your AIS has a mistake in it and it had that says five hundred and seventy something thousand dollars. There was an error in the Excel spreadsheet that calculated an extra year but when you our actual estimate is closer to five hundred thousand. There's one part of the incentive analysis that I don't understand and that's the second bullet which has to do with retain 85% of employees with commens urate salaries. I'm sure that that doesn't mean that we could give them this incentive and they could reduce their employees by 15%. No that's recur that is referring specifically to the hundred new jobs that they'll will verify with them every year that they've maintained their current employment and at least 85% of the hundred new jobs that they're committed to adding and that we typically give wiggle room in the incentive for both capital investment as well as jobs because we know that the economy fluctuates and as long as they've continued to add new jobs to the community that meet their wage commitments which I'll go through here in just a second then that's we typically afford a little bit of flexibility in there. And then on the next bullet 65% for seven years that's 65% of the increased value. Yes that is correct. Okay. Question Amy when there's a couple of slides where you've got a hundred new jobs and that's what you referred to the 85% but that they 're also relocating a hundred jobs so are we distinguishing between I mean to me the two and we have net 200 new jobs so is the sick is the 85% why is it applied to the hundred and not the 200? Now that you asked that question I think it may apply to all 200 is that correct Christina? Okay that's my mistake. Okay well I was just trying to figure because it whether the relocating to me that's a new job. Fantastic thank you. I will tell you that they are committed per their incentive agreement which you have an updated version in front of you with some slightly different numbers in there and it's basically just a minor change to the committed hourly wage average hourly wage of their new employees. When they submitted their original numbers to us it was a straight average and they 've since adjusted that slightly for a weighted average based on the number of each job so that it's more accurate. Their commitment is $28.81 average per job that's an hourly wage which equates to almost $60,000 a year that's well above our average household income in Denton. We did when we when we considered this incentive analysis the Economic Development Partnership Board always considers their what they're eligible for based on their capital investment and then they take a look at additional factors as well and so they received additional consideration in terms of number of years and percentage of rebate based on the fact that they're adding high-skilled high-paying jobs and that they're filling a percentage of those jobs at least 25% with Denton residents that they are knowledge-based jobs and that they're involved in the community and support community activities. Now we also took a look at our new policy we we updated our incentive policy a year and a half ago to allow for some additional considerations and two of those in this case are the attraction of a major investment and the expansion of primary employment in Denton and so it was it was those factors that ultimately resulted in the recommendation from the Economic Development Partnership Board for a 65% rebate for seven years. And I don't have any more information for you but I'm happy to take questions. So as far as the and it may be I looked at the back of it on the the so they've broken out the jobs and the at the wages by different categories if I remember seeing that correctly this is sort of this level or this job description engineers, tax, executives and then when it comes all down to it and they average it that's the figure that you get. That's correct and if you look at your updated copy of the incentive agreement it should be the very last page on there it's exhibit B and it details the wages it looks like this right here. Exhibit D as in dog, B as in boy. Any questions? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. And I can get that information for you before the open session and include it in that presentation I'll just pull their current value and what they're paying in taxes today. All right any other questions? All right thank you. Thank you. And and just as a note on that Councilmember Wasley and I did attend the groundbreaking and it's pretty exciting what's going on out there and they are bringing more jobs in than what was projected so I really appreciate that. Yes . I just have one more question. Did you say that 60,000 a year is above average for the household income indented? Yes that's correct. And if you wouldn't mind just in an just an email because I know that there's several different types of measurements for income per the census data. Some of them are household, some of them is family median income, and those can be significantly different. So if you wouldn't mind just sending out with because I think as far as if it was the family median income we're about right at it or maybe even I can't remember I thought it was like 59 or 69 or something. So just sort of a clarification of because those things get batted around and sometimes they're used differently and it's just good to know which one is being is being referenced. I can do that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on this agenda item? All right. Thank you. Thank you Amy. All right next agenda item is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2015-16 proposed budget capital improvement program and five-year financial forecast. We've got a couple of parts of this presentation is follow-up discussion on the budget and several a couple of you have asked me some questions on the budget of specifically about staffing and the FTE issues and part of that a big part of it's in the planning and I think Amy were you gonna make some Amy has some information particularly as it relates to the staffing recommendations that have made in the budget presentation on the planning department and if you could do that first I think it might help us speed things along just a little bit and then mr. Springer is going to follow that with some additional presentation and stand for questions. Okay thank you. The city manager did share with me some questions that have come up since the last budget discussion and I went ahead and prepared a little bit of information for you all to try to to answer those questions and I won't go into a whole lot of detail unless you you ask ask me to and then I'm prepared to do that as well. The first thing that I'd like to share with you is the FTE or staffing requests that are related specifically to facilitating development in an efficient and effective manner. This spreads across three departments and five divisions in the city and the planning division has asked for two planning technicians and one GIS technician. The GIS technician is not currently in the recommended budget. The two planning technicians the purpose of those is to alleviate the planners from a function that we call planner of the day which is essentially where they're pulled away from their development review cases to facilitate solutions for walk-in customers and what we've found that that does is it pulls them away total about a day and a half a week from their ability to process cases and so we felt like the most efficient way to address that was to take that responsibility and create a new position that is not as technically advanced but that can handle most of the lock-in requests for information. It's a lower dollar amount per employee than it would be to add planners and we feel like it's an efficient way to address that specific issue with having planners pulled off of their cases. Building inspections we have asked for one building inspector, one health inspector, one commercial plans examiner, and one administrative assistant. I've got a notation here as well just to remind you that we've added two building inspectors mid-year that's a that's a process that's already been approved and we're in in the recruitment phase for those today. Fire safety has asked for three additional fire inspectors. Development review engineering has asked for an additional engineer and economic development which is now a part of development services has asked for an administrative assistant. Can you explain how the fire inspectors are part of this enhancement of our planning services? Absolutely. Let me get to the right page. Oh you were I was prepared for follow-up questions. Never mind. That's all right. I don't want to cover a bunch of stuff that you guys don't want me to cover. Okay and the way that our inspections work you've got a couple of different types of inspections that take place. There are those that are related to development in other words they need to be inspected for fire safety, code compliance, health safety, and building safety before they can get a certificate of occupancy. So our ability to be responsive to requests for inspections for businesses that are trying to get open is important in terms of that delivery of services. Our fire inspectors today perform two functions. They've performed the function of inspecting before we can give a CO but then they're also on the hook to do annual inspections, biannual inspections of every business and so as we've grown our our inspections operation to be responsive to development and be able to get businesses open and operating the fire inspectors are a key component of that and in fact they their their demand isn't just one CO it's one CO plus two annual inspections for every new business that opens in Denton and so there's a there's an exponential increase in number of inspections for each CO that's issued in Denton. Any other questions? I mean I've got a couple that you may have or if you have any more your presentation. I tried to thanks for answering this because I rather than ask the staff to redo the entire presentation on y'all's Thursday that I was gone I just went in had my own so you're welcome . Thank you. The but I was curious about the fire inspectors and some of the others and I was trying to add it all up now what I did not include in my numbers was the engineers and the economic development assistant but the number that I came to for these that are actually that made it into the budget is about $98 2,510. That's that's about accurate yes. Well that's good calculator work and then if you add those other positions plus the positions that we hired mid-year last year that's well over a million dollars. Are these basically all these positions are what percentage of those salaries are being covered in the fees that we're charging the developers for the services that we're providing? Most everything here would be commensurate with development fees , permit fees, inspection fees with the exception of the administrative assistant and economic development and potentially the planning technicians I don 't think that they would be completely covered by the fees that we collect. And I know from time to time we stop and do an analysis of our fees that we 're charging since we are bound by law that our fees have to be we can't be overcharging we can't be charging them for services that we're not providing but we don't want to be under charging either. So do you know does anybody know when the last time we had a review of our fees for development services so that so that we know that we're covering our costs? We did review those within the last year or two and fees were increased at that point in time and since then we 've seen an increase in development a significant increase in development and so it would it would be logical that we would increase staffing now that we're collecting additional fees associated with increased development and a higher fee. I will just real briefly share with you that we've seen a 60% increases in new planning cases over the last two years and in building inspections and we're we've we're trying to set a goal of having under 15 inspections per inspector per day and currently we we have a policy that if you call and request an inspection before 7 a.m. on a given day then we will inspect it that same day regardless of the total volume of inspections that we receive. A result of that the increase in inspections that we've had requested over the last 12 months we had 253 let me get to the right slide 253 inspection days so days that we were open and operating of those 159 of those days each of our inspectors did more than 15 inspections per day. As a result we did an analysis to determine what would it take to get that number back down to a reasonable level so that we can do thorough complete safe inspections that don't require don't end up in a situation where we come back for a second inspection and find something that we missed the first time because we were in a hurry frankly to finish all the inspections in a day and it in our analysis with this with the number of inspections remaining the same over the next 12 months it would take us 11 inspectors to get to a place that we had zero days exceed ing 18 inspections a day and we'd still have 5% exceeding 15 inspections per day and so that's the target that we're looking at right now is to get up to 11 and with the two mid-year additions we're at 10. So if my assessment is accurate the reason that we're doing this adding these staff members is to address the ongoing concerns that we've heard about the time delays and responding to new development and processing those things through and to also accommodate the growth that we're seeing in in the city. Is that correct? Yes that's correct. Thanks. A couple things. One Amy correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you tell us that the OSHA recommended number of inspections per day for safety was 10? 10 that's correct. So is this the goal is let's get to 15 we know we're probably not gonna get 10 but ultimately I mean then the reason I say that is because we do have a lot of complaints from people that you do an inspection I fix the things you told me then you find something else when you come back you know the data the data tells the story right in other words all the emotion you set all the emotion aside look at the data well you I think we have unrealistic expectations of the people which is probably why we haven't been able to keep them. So my question is is I just want to make sure that everybody understands I don't think our goal should be 15 a day our goal because if OSHA says 10 is safe and 10 is the way to do it right then I don't want because what I think is it's been neglected for a long time and nobody's really taking the time to put the metrics to it to say this is what's really required for us to do the job right so while I think it may look like oh my gosh we're hurting all these people it reminds me a lot of our streets right I mean so now we have people complaining that oh my gosh all these streets are torn up well when you ignore them for 20 years that's what happens so I just want to make sure that that gets highlighted that I don't think I mean you guys may determine that 15 is very doable and we're not missing things and we're not having retention problems and the OSHA standard is just a little you know more like the some other government jobs but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that we're trying to get to a place that's still 50% above what OSHA says is absolutely you're correct and my intent would be to get us to the place where we're getting down below 15 a day and make an assessment before the next budget year about the effectiveness of that workload and one of the things that we're implementing is we'll do random sampling of the contractors who've received inspections on a given day and get feedback from them just as a way to gauge how our individual inspectors are doing but also to gauge and how we're doing in terms of completeness and actually catching everything the first time around it with in the in the instance of a building inspector or a fire or health inspector their goal is life and safety and so if they miss something the first time around it was a mistake and they shouldn't have missed it but they can't just ignore it the second time around and they have an obligation to point it out and so a lot of that comes with training and with coaching them to take the time regardless of the workload to really do a thorough job but we've got to get them to a place where they can accommodate all of those inspections in a given day and here's why I bring it up because this is the one department where I think you can you can draw a direct correlation to the faster we get them done get them done right obviously but get get them done because understanding the value of time so because this isn't we always use the term development but this is just a tenant that's moving into an existing space they have to get a CEO and that has to be inspected and so a lot of that is just making sure that the plugs are where there's you know that it's a safe place for people to work but the longer it takes for us to get those people moved in and open the longer it takes for them to start generating income which pays a sales tax and property tax and those things so I think there's a direct payback to these and this department is one that you know that we should be able to draw the parallel to the faster we get people through the process the faster the money starts flowing in as a result of them being open here absolutely and two things that I'll add one I do want to point out that Laura's here if she if you have additional questions about fire inspectors she's much more equipped to handle that those questions than I am but secondly our inspectors are unique in that we require them to be certified in every inspections discipline they do plumbing inspections electrical inspections building inspections energy inspections they do them all and we do that to be more responsive and so you don't have 15 different inspectors coming out and to your property that you have to coordinate and be there on site for we have a building inspector who's multidisciplinary who can handle the majority of those inspections what that means though is that they're going to be on each one of those inspections longer because it's going to be a more thorough and in a multi-disciplined inspection a couple questions on that so you said that you're trying to get to 11 the two hires in mid-year got us to 10 so this one gets us to 11 yes sir all right and it's my understanding that so if if our costs are supposed to represent if our fees are supposed to represent the cost to perform these services our inspectors part of that calculation yes all right it would be good for me be helpful for me if you could break down in this year's budget just sort of I mean I could probably put it together you know looking at all the different line items but if you could just do a balance sheet a profit and loss if you will for this department I mean because I think that will certainly give us a clear picture on are we achieving this goal because if that is what is supposed to be happening here if we're going to be hiring people to get the inspections down well then we need to make sure that those fees are are priced accordingly if that if that's really what the policy is number two do we keep statistics on inspections that are reinspected and things that are missed and are do we keep statistics on are they missed because it's a different inspector or if the same in other words if we're trying to get as fast and efficient as possible then there are a lot of those data points those touch points that I think will help us do it do we keep those kind of statistics on we do have some statistics your your question about are we missing things because it's a different inspector I'm part of the approach with the the staffing requests is to provide some consistency for a project from application to CEO and we've already implemented that in our building inspections department each building inspector is assigned a an area of the city and that is their responsibility and they stay with a project from their very first inspection to their last inspection and the intent of that is so that they develop a relationship with the contractors they know the project so if they've had a conversation about hey I really need you to get this done by next time then they remember that going in the next time they're there but it also cuts down on those those issues where a different inspector will find something different now having said that there are some instances still where that may occur for example if you've got a building inspector that looks at a hood system a ventilation system in a kitchen that may be under the building code the fire inspector is going to take a look at that as well and there it's not unheard of for them to have different conclusions occasionally that that's different I think what we're primarily referring to is if that building inspector missed something that was normally under their purview so this isn't a commentary on I'm just it'd be nice to have that data to see exactly how that's flushing out because I know that I mean we look at the FTES I'm talking about budget-wide I'm not talking about singling out any department when you look at the FTES last year the FTES this year it's over a hundred new staff members and we've always said that the budget is 70% personnel and and I'll go ahead and mention this now because I've got it on several comments or requests or proposals on the budget but you know I've been thinking about the whole first of all the planning technicians the planner of the day I guess my potential concern with that kind of paradigm I mean I understand you're trying to give people chance and yes you pull yourself out of a job I mean you got it takes a little bit mentally to get back into it in the next half day is that I just want to make sure that when people are up there asking questions that they're able to answer them that they're not having to go ask someone else who's a regular planner so I just want to ensure that you know if that needs to be modified to have one and a half FTES who are actually planners who that's so I'm understanding that's all they're going to be doing is planning of the day that's correct okay and I will speak to that just a little bit one of the things we're doing right now is a concentration map of then the types of walk-ins and the types of phone calls that are received at the front desk for both building inspections and planning so that we can look at the trends associated with that we know for a fact that many of the walk-ins are related to can I do can I put this type of use in this zoning district and can you verify for me that this is the zoning that I think that it is and it's those are things that a planning technician can certainly handle we've got a similar model in place in building inspections where we have permit technicians that we have four of those that handle the majority of the walk-ins for building inspections so we're looking at a similar model for planning and I have no doubt that we would still have somebody on call a planner on call but we would hope that it would reduce the number of times that they would be pulled off of a project that's similar to how DRC engineering handles it right now they have an engineer who's available and in the building and on call if a walk-in comes in and needs some engineering assistance so the the planning technicians will handle the walk-up conversation but you'll still have a planner that rotates that if those questions can't be answered at the planning tech level that they will be called upon and is that the same is the expectation to have the same response time in other words absolutely okay all right you know one thing and I'll just bring this up that is just an observation that I know I think that you guys are looking at but I think it goes without saying we are under utilizing the planning software that we have under utilizing it is a very nice way to say that I'm not so sure it's what we need or if it is it working for us and given that based upon all the things that I've heard based upon the experiences that I've had based upon the experiences not with the people not with the people at all but it's with that that process is that you know I just don't want us to be putting in people to fill in those gaps of inefficiency with our software so I really want as Councilmember Johnson said I'm going to issue a challenge I 'm gonna issue a challenge to really make sure that we've got the right software because I think we may be losing one to two or two and a half FTEs and the inefficiency to some degree of our of our software in planning and I think as we get that more honed it will reduce the need to fill in those gaps with people so that is really one of the things I want to focus on this year especially if we're looking at now we've got so many people we've outgrown that space and so now we're gonna have to go lease some more space which is gonna cost additional money and we paid a lot of money for that software I remember when it was here and I remember having to take a big gulp when we did it it's like half a million dollars initially plus the update I don't know what the update fees are so I really encourage you as you're doing already I'm sure too I mean if and even if we have to scrap something and start over I would much rather do that than to keep limping along trying to fill in gaps with things that because I know when I've called I've asked people are you getting very many calls about just my inability to do this we get calls all the time but that 's taking up staff time so I really just want to encourage that because I really the more I look at it and the more I listen to people talk about it it is it's it 's tough and I and I think in that toughness we are probably having to have more people so that we can provide that excellent customer service so we can provide that quick turnaround time I will say that we are absolutely doing a thorough technology assessment right now and identifying where the gaps and the issues are we have the vendor for project docs on site this week and next week customizing some solutions for us that we hear regular complaints on and we're also looking at and a light version of track it that the inspectors can access from their iPads in the field and be able to have some real-time information as well as real-time input of inspections when they're complete so that there's not the inefficiency of getting back to the office and putting everything in or you know I need to look up a set of plans I need to run back to the office to do that something like that so we're there technology can facilitate efficiency but when it's not working right yeah you're absolutely right it can get in the way of it and that's a part of the comprehensive look we're doing it all of our processes so when you say that you're putting in a fix or you're having them on staff to do customized patch ing or whatever is that because there are problems in their software that they're having to correct are those customizations to their software which which we 're not including that we're actually paying for we're paying for customizations that our customers want to see to make it easier for them that's correct and and I appreciate that I guess I also want to look at that because if the saw it depending on what those I'd like to have sort of a summary of what some of those are because some of the ones I've heard I would have thought would have been included in the original software package so that's just really I appreciate your report on that because I just don't want to keep fixing something or having to pay to customize something that if it's not meeting our needs originally and if we're not utilizing it to its maximum capacity we're wasting money I mean it's just it's just that simple so thank you for you know your diligence in that in your report that you guys are doing it so you think within a year six months you guys will have completed the technology assessment to be able to make okay six months yes fantastic fantastic yes Councilmember Rhoad along the technology line of things as you were kind of describing the types of frequently asked questions you get folks who kind of drop in it seems that that also has technological solutions the idea of just being able for anyone to be able to say here's a building and list out all its optional all the uses that can be used in this building is a simple simple fix so I and I think I really believe the more we move forward you're going to have more of the contractors and folks who are kind of prof icient with technology they'd much rather sit in their office or their home or out on site and plug in online rather than walking in to City Hall so I think again to take that same approach the mayor said but even think about FAQ consolidation that can kind of help with some of those immediate questions we are addressing that to some extent right now as well and we have our planning team looking at the layout of information on the website and making additions and changes to that and the tool that I sent out to you all last week where you can now look up any current development project and learn about it is one of those solutions and open counter is one of those solutions that we just launched to help a lot because a lot of the walk-ins are those small business owners who are interested in starting something new and they don't have necessarily 10 12 years of experience with developing and Denton and they just have some basic questions and so open counters intended to be a solution and to help address that as well and frankly the GIS technician position is a position that's currently an intern that is a an excellent staff member today that we'd like to be able to keep on staff she and our GIS analyst were largely responsible for that new tool that we've just launched online and we wanted we want to build custom solutions like that as much as we can. Yes. I have a question back to the inspectors you said that they are certified in like plumbing and electricity and we're hiring them do you require them to already be certified in all of those things or is it something where if they are certified in a few we we help with them on those extra certifications if they have you know good references and we absolutely help them get those certifications we have milestones where they have to meet certain certifications within certain amounts of time of hiring and that's important because somebody who's already got all those cert ifications is going to be heavily recruited by other communities and it's difficult to be competitive with salaries on that so we do often hire somebody in who's not fully certified and and pay for those certifications and get them there. It's hard to find someone that's certified in all of those things. Absolutely. That's good. Thank you. I do have some other topics that are not staffing related that I believe are questions that I can provide some answers for. There's been some question about the the request for a supplemental package for the clarion scope of work and outsourcing some planning projects and so I want to address that very briefly here. Before I do I want to point out that several of our key goals in our strategic plan for the upcoming year are are tied to these requests. In KFA 3 which is economic development we've identified that there are several things that we want to accomplish in this this upcoming fiscal year and one of those is create a master plan for the redevelopment of the I-35 corridor. The continued implementation of the comp plan assess and begin rewriting the debt and development code to be more business friendly and be consistent with the comprehensive plan and be more efficient and understandable and to complete an assessment of the development plan review process and begin implementation of improvements. I share these with you because I want you to know that when I made budget requests initially they were directly tied to the strategic goals of the City Council. On that one and I'll just go with these I've got some questions and comments that was going to be the one of ones that I was going to see if we can reduce that simply because I think that we we the I-35 redevelopment we've got a 2030 plan that was just done that we paid I think $600,000 for that. I-35 scheduled to be finished in two years. All of those remainders of properties and things such as that it's all private property so my my concern is just this these consultation fees these consulting fees so that was going to be the one that I want to look at and so I appreciate the the the analysis of that but I'm not quite sure that I'm not so sure that that's something that I necessarily want to spend that kind of money on right now especially because the I-35 corridor is still changing. I mean we still have things outstanding that may change as far as its alignment and sometimes we spend this money sometimes way out in front of when we're actually going to need it but those that I just mentioned that now and so we haven't mentioned later. I'll go into a little more detail on the intent behind that request and that number is an estimate and so there's certainly some room there to make adjustments. Is that from whom? Who's that? Is that just your is that just that's my estimate. Okay okay so it's not like we receive some kind of ballpark figure from a consultant. So the original scope of work with Clar ion and the project started at the end of 2012 the general goal was to make some updates to the Denton Development Code. The specific objectives at that time were to address structural issues the way the Development Code is laid out and create a basis for the adoption of the comp plan. So basically have the foundational structure of the DDC updated before we update before we've completed the update of the comp plan. There were several components of all involved in the original scope of work which was a hundred and fifty thousand dollar consultant agreement. It included an assessment report which is to take a look at the code as a whole and make general assessments about areas of deficiency, areas for improvement, suggestions for improvement, suggestions for ways that we can be more progressive and smart as a city and that report was complete in the middle of 2013. It also their original scope included an overall reorganization of the DDC so that it would be more user friendly just in terms of being able to find the information in it non-subst antive in nature so not changing the code itself but changing the order of the code and that was really an attempt to be prepared for when we had the comp plan adopted we would be able to integrate the comp plan objectives into the DDC so they were consistent. The third scope was to make amendments to the DDC specifically related to development review process and procedures so that we would be more efficient in our development review. That piece has not been completed by Clarion yet and then lastly was to address infill and redevelopment standards in other words the form-based code that would help facilitate the redevelopment of our urban core. The proposal in my supplemental request was that we update the existing scope with Clarion to include the full update of the Ditten development code so that it is consistent with the Ditten plan 2030 since that has now been adopted we have a future land use plan that indicates the types of zoning changes that we'd like to see in the city to be able to facilitate the development that we'd like and the original scope did not include that and so to date the initial scope was $150,000 we've spent about 95 of that on the work that you see listed on the screen today. However outside of that scope we have identified several things in the Ditten development code that we don't believe can wait on Clarion. We think they need to be addressed internally through project management today and you've already started to see some of these come through. The craft alcohol production ordinance passed within the last couple of weeks. We're looking at defining new uses. You'll be seeing a proposed ordinance related to municipal utilities within a couple of weeks. We're looking at lot coverage issues. We have a work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission coming up on that and you received an informal staff report at the end of last week on our phasing plan for updating the tree code. So we're already have the ball rolling on these to begin to make some immediate changes that we feel like are necessary prior to anything that any work that Clarion would complete. On June 30th when we met at City Hall West part of my proposal to you all was that we look at outsourcing some projects specifically as a way to address what do we want our staff working on that's more urgent and more immediate demand versus what do we know we need to get done but it would be more efficient and cost-effective if we had it outsourced and specifically at that time I proposed the I-35 corridor redevelopment plan and to address your concerns Mayor about the timing and we're actually behind many other cities in this in this regard today. Most cities that are as impacted as we are by the widening of I-35 already have master plans for redevelopment in place and the reason that it's important today is because as Textodot is coming through and taking right-of-way negotiating voluntary right-of-way acquisition or taking involuntary right-of-way acquisition they're leaving non-conforming uses with vacant buildings or not enough parking to be able to conform to the existing zoning. There are a lot of things that will result in empty dilapidated buildings if we don't figure out a way how how to address those upfront and be proactive in them. Help me understand how the okay there are there are remainders being left no question about it there may be some legal non-conforming use we did that when we rezoned the entire city we left some legal non-conforming uses out there so but from a city perspective I mean unless we're planning on going in and rezoning property unilaterally or correcting things how are you just saying you want to get a picture of what's out there or when you say a master plan for redevelopment means that somehow I think of the universities you know they they have charge over the land within their purview so they'll create a master plan of their properties to figure out this is where we're going because they have the right to condemn to increase to grow so when you say master plan for you what do you I mean help me understand what it is that really means I don't know what that really means. It could include a variety of things it could include some zoning changes that were staff initiated that we made the decision that we wanted to see certain regulations and uses within certain areas along I-35 it could incorporate an overlay district with increased design standards so that when somebody does come in to redevelop they could they would be subject to some design criteria that we would want our main thoroughfare through Denton to have so that we would give a certain impression as for people coming into Denton so it can involve a number of things it could involve some recommendations for incentives for redevelopment if somebody comes in and buys one of a vacant property that's been blighted and has been vacant for a couple of years we might provide some specific incentives for redevelopment it could involve a variety of things but as it stands right now it's going to and redevelop just in somewhat of a vacuum in terms of our intent of how we might want to see it rede veloped. Yes. This is helpful to hear what you're talking about because I did not understand the I-35 corridor redevelopment plan at all given the fact that it's an enormous front door for the city and that a lot of people get their impressions from the city simply as they're looking out the window traveling from Dallas to Oklahoma or Oklahoma to Dallas or Fort Worth this makes sense to me even without this I the other items that you mentioned on the previous slide I think we're compelling enough I think what I'm concerned about is we we are as a council have been making a lot of demands of our city manager about planning department and and becoming more customer oriented and customer friendly and I think what we're seeing is in this budget is their plan for how they want to accomplish that and and I for sure don't want to be making demands of you and then saying but you can't have any tools. That's called an unfunded mandate. That's right I've been the subject of plenty of those in my career and I don't want to be guilty of putting that on you so so. Is that what you think so you're saying that this is another tool to see I don't necessarily I don't have a problem with these concepts what I have a problem is it it seems like the money for consultants just sort of flows and I will tell you so what I heard you say was that the city is looking at when you said an overlay district I'm trying to think of in my history when we as a city outside of the whole rezoning with the DDC back in I forgot when it was when we rezoned the whole city that they tried to get it as closely matched to what the current use was as possible but when you start talking about overlay and I just want to make sure that if because if if we're agreeing to fund this and one of the things is we're going to try to create an overlay unilaterally by city sort of policy over private property that will then determine exactly what they can and cannot do there then that's a concern I mean because when I hear overlay that's that's what I hear so if I'm correct and boy I certainly would be saying I'm hearing it just the opposite what I'm hearing is is what they're wanting to do is be proactive and get a head start so that we don't have situations to occur and sit out there forever like we did with the Albertsons grocery store on the corner of Teasley excuse me Lillian Miller and I 35 that's been hard to develop and that's been sitting empty for way too long but that's not been because that's not been because of I 35 that's been because of some of our codes that don't allow it to be that's been around for 20 or 30 years and I think what I think what I'm hearing you say is that you're looking at where our codes are going to make it very difficult for the owners of the property to redevelop those properties after the 35 corridor comes in I think we're trying to help them out absolutely you're correct and in fact I'm sorry I'm over this sorry I'm sorry I've been approached by a number of business owners all along I 35 who are in a pickle because they are being approached by text out for right-of-way acquisition it's voluntary so they have a choice whether they they do that right now or not and text odd is suggesting to them what future uses might be allowed for that property based on the right-of-way taking and and what that impact would have on their their existing use their existing configuration and they're coming to us saying well would the city allow this would the city want this and and we're a silent partner right now we're not giving them any information about what we would allow or want along 35 after text dot has taken right-of-way I want to just go down the line here is that okay that okay with you go ahead so I would just like to throw it out there maybe a little bit differently on here's what I thought this meant because I will not be a champion of an overlay because current tried that we have one building built and then nobody ever built anything what I read this as is we need to see what we have meaning I just saw this as research to be able to come back to us and provide us the data that says as a result of the I 35 widen ing here's how all these parcels are impacted here's the buildings that text that has to tear down it's going to leave a remnant lot here's a piece where they've taken all of it so now they have no parking here's a remnant building that has no parking here's so basically I remember our conversation from I think it was the retreat we're talking about a year ago we're gonna have to figure out what are we gonna have left once this is completed text that's not going to come provide us the information and they're in various stages with the property owners anyway and that thing has been the thing is shifted was not shifting anymore obviously so what I would like to see is and if we don't have the resources I mean I'm not a fan of consultants but and if we if we can't partner with somebody who likes to do this kind of research so be it what I'd like to see is something that comes back and says here's how they are 35 widening has impacted the properties on both sides within your city limits and here are the parcels that are here's a remnant lot here's a rem nant building that now has no parking here's I mean it's not going to be that many parcels right right because then we can only then can we make a decision of do we want to get involved in this or not because the uses on I- 35 are going to be the right kind of uses because the value of the property is going to dictate what ends up being there we don't have to worry about somebody putting it you know a cheap cheesy metal building that does you know now I'm trying to insult him I but my point is the value of those properties you know the people that are in the real estate business today know all those properties and the ones that are having to get the building storm down you call those property owners and they've established a value in their mind based on what text dot paid him for the right-of-way so the uses are going to be good because they have to be to be able to afford that dirt but I think to me it's only only once we have data can we decide if we want to get involved in that at all or to say hey the free market will take care of itself and you know because I don't believe text dot can take and somebody correct me if I'm wrong take a portion of a property that impacts a structure and take off part of a structure and leave a percentage of a structure they've got to take the whole building down so either the building content continue to be used or they have to take it all the way down so we're not going to have vacant you know buildings with the windows busted out because corner of its gone what we might have is if a tenant moves out and now there's no parking because the the parking got taken away and the landowner the property owner got compens ated but the tenant did not those are the kind of things I think we're gonna have to deal with but I think we have to know how many they are how many there are where they are so I would be in favor of a research project I would not be in favor of anything more than them saying here's the information I don't think we need to have them come back and say we would recommend this type of overlay or that sort of thing does that make sense mayor yes absolutely sure thanks that's my road I think the problem is compounded by the fact that text dot has announced that as they're buying right away it's well beyond this current phase they're buying right away right now for the phase two which means they are a approaching property owners saying we think we might want to take up to this part of your property in some cases property owners are selling and then they do have the problem because now is there what do you do with this extra property as someone comes to look at it there's a lack of certainty and folks are saying well that's gonna happen but it could be ten years from now to happen so we could really with some of these purchases by text dot because they're buying out so far in advance in some cases a decade in advance we could have vacant property sitting there so that information and certainty for anyone interesting in redeveloping this area it's crucial Lewisville I know got ahead of this had some big properties that they were able to kind of help negotiate and figure out so I think getting what some of these other cities have done would be a good example for us to look at the a couple other things we have to do something in coordination with UNT if you look at their master plan and how much they are extending into the I-35 corridor or have plans to coordinating with them as part of this project in my mind is a must to understand their timeline and their goals is important but there's also a neighborhood component if I'm living in Deena or Southridge and looking at the ultimate coming on and wanting to know what does that mean for me or our properties or even mobility options moving forward that the city will have to probably come to terms with in the ultimate plan connection to those neighborhoods so to me there's a lot of comprehensive things that need to be looked at and addressed and and I do hear it from other cities that they're getting on top of this I'm not exactly sure the tools that they're looking at but I think that would be helpful for me to see I can pull some examples absolutely come around the horn yeah that was my request too I'd really like to study another city's corridor redevelopment plan and see what it is that we're talking about I'd also like to be really practical here that no part of I-35 is pretty and so for a city to think you know we're we're gonna shuffle the cards a little bit to try to make I-35 really pretty I don't care where you go on I-35 anywhere in this state and I've been on almost all of it it's it's freeway and it 's not it's not pretty I don't think government can solve the problem of every parcel and I think it's pompous for a government to step in and say that we're going to dictate to free enterprise and dictate to property owners who own that property what they can and can't do with it it's what planning and zoning is for we have some tools in place for people who want to develop a parcel of ground to come in and say what can I do with this but for us to think that we can set a whole plan and UNT is going to do whatever UNT wants to do so the city may want us step up and say we'd like you to do XYZ UNT has their own agenda their own plan and they have the right to do what they want to do so I am NOT in favor of an overlay and I come back to the tools that we already have and I think it's premature because I-35E in Denton is under plan right now and that plan is changing and so back to you know spending a whole lot of time on consultant fees I think it's premature and I 'm not a I'm just not a fan and yes other cities may have spent a lot of money on these well other cities may have more money than we do because we have so much property that is non-taxable. Oh I just wanted a clarification this is this the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars line item is it for this ones the two hundred and fifty thousand is for the additional clarion scope which the I-35 corridor plan would not be a part of the clarion scope okay so but the clarion scope today gets us gets our DDC ready for the comp plan update but doesn't actually integrate the new comp plan into our development code and so my first proposal is that we expand the clarion scope so that we do complete our work on the DDC and have a new product that is consistent with the comp plan and that would be included in the 250 is a lump amount that would be for any outsourcing projects that you all directed us to do and those would come back forward to you individually. Ms. Wozniak I agreed that this plan ought not to be something that we're imposing on private property owners that we shouldn't be telling them what to do I don't think it is is is is this what the goal is is for us to come in and create an overlay district to tell these private property owners along 35 what they are going to do with their property. My statement earlier was that it could include a recommendation for an overlay but that it's it is not in the creation of an overlay the corridor plan is not the creation of an overlay district it is a this is what the community wants to see for redevelopment and here are some tools that we can put into place that help encourage the type of redevelopment that we'd like to see. So this would be this would be the city working with the property owners to see what problems they're in encountering because of the expansion of I-35 and what we could do to facilitate. Absolutely. Okay so that's a that's a different kind of way I think that it's interesting for I think us as council members we 've set goals and higher goals for staff we set higher performance standards all the time we look at response times for how our staff responds to developers or to citizens who are you know wanting a police officer to come or a fire truck to come we're growing city and that creates demands and yet the first two things we're talking about is and we should with a fine-tooth comb look at every proposal that staff has but but what they're saying is in order to accomplish I think what they're saying is in order to accomplish your goals in order to meet your higher standards that you're demanding of us in terms of serving our citizens we're gonna need more staff in order to you know and Mr. Johnson pointed it out well in order for our inspectors to do the job well they can't be doing as many inspections that they've been doing and that means one of two things either we need more staff or we need to hire a full-time staff or we need to hire part-time staff and that's what a consultant is it's just part-time staff it's it's and they're easy to it's easy to you know land- based consulting and consulting budget but either the work gets done by the staff inside and if they don't have time to do it then we either hire some outside person to do it or it doesn't get done so I think we just have to keep in mind that that if we're gonna set the goals for them we need to make sure that we give them the tools to achieve those goals. I can appreciate that and and I hope that I don't disagree with anything you said I think it's a matter of just also making sure I mean we are the policymaking body for the city and I can tell you you've been around a long time I've been around a long time and just like I mentioned with the software I mean for me to think that there's not other ways we can find efficiencies and save money that's not any slam on staff it 's not any slam on management it's just the process and it's incumbent upon I believe us to make sure that we that we look at that and so I think what I'm hearing is first of all and I think with this budget is what I've really tried to do is make sure I understand the requests and really make sure that they're substantiated I know y'all have done it in your presentations with the city manager but and in this regard I think what I've heard is yes to know exactly what we have out there because I bought property off I-35 there was a remainder of one of these things and people know what they're getting and as far as a a this phase two knowing what we've got in phase two because they're buying right away right now in phase two first of all that right away has already been bought which means it's on record and we don't know when that's going to happen and then the property owners there it's up to them also to do so I don't have an issue with providing the tools I just want to make sure that consultants are easy but consultants also charge 150 to 200 dollars an hour and you know that's a lot of money and so I'm just simply trying to also challenge us to hey are there other partnerships we can also be looking at and I know I've said sometimes the universities because I think sometimes universities do great jobs in partnering in doing research projects that's really all I'm trying to say I'm not trying to criticize a budget a request or criticize you know this budget presentation it's just simply saying hey I want to understand what we're saying I mean just like you said this is just an estimate and it's an aggregate of all these different things that we could do it 's like well okay if we need the DDC update for the comp plan fine what do you think that is and and so that's that that's it for me is just to make sure that we're we're really because if if we are gonna have to really watch our money we need to make sure it's been as efficiently as possible so that's that's really my my motivation in bringing this up yes and I support the staff additions because the only way to make this department work is to have the boots on the ground in that department to make it work my my hang up is the consultant fee repeated over and over and over with this city and I just have a problem with that but in terms of boots on the ground if you're gonna fix it whether you are a citizen here trying to get a fence permitted or you just brought a hundred million dollar addition or new business to the city of Denton you deserve efficiency and time is money whether it's your fence or whether it's your business so the boots on the ground I support that a hundred percent I'm sorry oh I'm sorry guess well just a thought as I'm thinking about the growth that we've seen in the in the projected growth that will continue and one thing to just think about is kind of like your your planner technician role your planning technician role that's not a role that we've had in the past you know I prefer to do everything in-house that I can because those people are in my office and they report to me and I can go see if they're really working on what they're supposed to be working on or as a consultant you pay an amount of money and you you're getting a product but you don't really know how much effort is going into the product so just a thought is you know do we want to look at that aggregate amount of money that we might be spending on a consultant and say okay if this is research this is research that basically the text dot map is already available you plot that's plotted on top or you can go look at every parcel and somebody doing all that research to come back and say here's what we have do one way to think about it so instead of spending this money on a consultant can we spend this money on a part-time employee that might be in the training round you know you get to see how they work they get to see how you work they learn how you operate and that might be your future full-time employee as the department grows I don't know if that's something we've done in the past I look at what we spend on and you know Brian and George are sick of me talking about it we had a meeting about it on console what do we spend on consultants by department and all that stuff and I say that I say that only because there might be some room for a little bit different type of thinking which is look at a part-time role or a half an employee that could do a half of something else where you're training your future planner or your future engineer to work your way by having them do this research project versus an outside consultant because it's a lot of money in my mind just I did $250,000 is a lot of money I don't I don't think that the majority of that would go towards the I-35 corridor plan honestly I think that the majority of that would go towards getting the DDC where we want it to be and I I hear I hear your point and I think that that the research associated with the corridor plan would be a great project for somebody with some GIS skills and an MPA student who's looking for a project for a semester yeah that's all rewriting the DDC I think is more of an expert level skill set right so I pulled that as an example but only I'm sorry Keely I'm just finishing my thought but if you're talking about $ 250,000 that is a full-time planner for a few years or something like that so the question is do you take that same money and put it in an FTE that's going to get you to rewrite your own DDC and does it take them two years or whatever it is so I know the thinking hasn't been you don't want to add a person because if the economy goes south you might have to cut them but that's real world just a thought that's my breaks I'm right I'm right there with you on that I do have the amount for 2013 2014 we spent on consultants was three million six hundred and sixty five thousand four hundred and sixty one dollars so on on all of those departments that you were you were talking about so I mean that's pretty significant and just one one last comment on the universities too I was talking to a citizen that said you know our our universities at the graduate level are hungry for projects they're hungry and I'd really like us to work harder at reaching out to them you know it's semester changes when they're launching into and we're looking at you know gosh what are what would we like somebody to spend and they they can have a team you know do something like like that for us and so because I'm new on this council don't know what our history is in terms of reaching out to them but I think department my department gosh I sure love to see us you know use the brain trust that we have in this city yes I do have some history with that and and what I came to discover was in most cases when we when we go to departments where the professors have the expertise and then they're supervising the graduate students to make sure that they're not making mistakes that end up costing us you know in these research studies they actually charge us the universities are charging us because universities are looking for always funding issues also and so what happened is for example before we did the most recent study citizen survey the one before that was done by the university and we had to pay him and the difference in cost between paying the private consultant and the university was almost nothing it was about the same so in a lot of cases when we reach out to the universities and they and they're great resources but but sometimes it's a good deal and sometimes it's the same deal as as when we're going to a private consultant to get that done catch 22 so it is indeed that's my brother I just want to suggest we put this in perspective I mean is a four point eight billion dollar roadway project highway project going through our city major corridor over the course of a decade if that's not right for some planning I don't I don't know what planning does so it seems in in contrast to the the total impact this has on our community I don't know what the breakdown is for what this is in that 250,000 but hundred thousand seems reasonable for that sort of plan to just get some eyes on this so I just think to put it in perspective I think it's worth worth the investment and I will comment that I think that a report that you get from a consultant is as good as you make it and it's whether or not you implement the work that they've done or it sits on a shelf and I would not recommend that we outsource these things if I didn't think that they were critical components of the future of our community and that we will not get them done in-house I just there's some I think there's some work on the corridor plan that we could get done in-house but I think that we've been talking about rewrite of the DDC for many years and it 's time to just get it done and I don't think we'll get it done in-house not within a reasonable amount of time. So it sounds like you feel you might have some flexibility in that number but also I mean as you said put it in perspective and I certainly certainly can appreciate that I think it's also the perspective of our community and just we're in some ways based on some of the comments I don't really see this as adversarial as it sounds like on some of the comments quite honestly and and it's sort of it's it's interesting that when we bring this up when I brought this up about what that it seemed like it just was interesting that it's not I think we're all saying the same thing and I think we all have the same goals it's just a matter of how can we fine-tune this to make sure because I will tell you out you're absolutely right a plan is as only good as you implement it and I think it and I don't mean this in any bad way but we've gotten many a plan that we've really struggled with implementing and I think that's really what I'm trying to ensure is that what we get we're willing to do it and that we're getting the best cost and truthfully when you have an industry that caters to municipalities who aren't responsible to shareholders per se who don't necessarily have to produce a bottom line or a P&L it's probably easy to make sure your cost stay inflated a little bit because there's competition among the munit among the municipalities but in essence so that's that's all I'm simply saying is that we really make sure our pencil is sharp not to not to de-pri oritize it but in that comment of let's put it in perspective that doesn't mean that we somehow should not be as concerned about the financial the financial end of it so yeah I think we're all sort of saying the same thing we're just trying to make sure that we we've got the sharpened pencil yes we may have similar goals but I'm always going to ask how much does it cost right that's right okay yes one more topic and that is some questions that have arisen since the our discussion of potentially leasing space and in as a short-term solution for the space constraints we have at City Hall West I just want to clarify a few things for you and I am in communication with an individual owner of the property that has it in contract today and it is set to close between now and the 1st of October and we all know who which buildings we're looking at now and that the current tenant of those buildings is looking at leasing that back through June so this is an opportunity that would arise next summer and I will work with real estate and legal regarding a potential lease agreement I'm also working with Kirk Patrick architects to have them do a preliminary space layout so we can determine how many employees we could get in there what kinds of efficiencies we could get in there and how we would look at workflow and efficiency for improving the delivery of services and proving our processes improving the experience of walk-ins that sort of thing and these are this preliminary information gathering time and I'll bring back some a look at what what what we would get out of the space from the layout standpoint as well as potential lease agreement for future but I know there's been some questions since the last time we discussed this I thought I'd try to clarify where I am today on it and what I believe was the direction from you all to proceed I do have a question and I'll try to keep it as general as possible I don't even know if we have a we don't have a closed session posted on this do we I don't believe we do okay I can't remember if we talked about anyway there's been some general discussion of pricing which I'm not going to mention any pricing I can't remember if that was an open session closed session I don't remember where I think it was just yeah but it's mine it's my goal my preference is whatever that is because when you move into a new space in general it doesn't matter who it is okay we're talking general here there may be some finish out costs there may be some like this right here working with Patrick architections preliminaries that's obviously costing some money all right and so some people tend to build all of that into the lease rate so there's no upfront cost sort of like what we did I believe eventually with something else that we were renting on the square so that's sort of what's been talked about and I'm hoping that that's still part of the discussion as far as that this is an all-inclusive thing instead of you know because I'd hate to see a price come back and then all sudden it's just higher I just want to be very cost- conscious that's part of why I'm working with an architect already because the the determinations that we make early on will will dictate tenant finish out costs and I want to have a realistic number a couple of realistic numbers and different options available when I do come back before you all with with options yes well yes thank you and on those I was not available for that last meeting so I would just need some assurances about regarding cost that whatever the proposal is in terms of rental per square foot is extremely competitive and and and that if we are having to put in any kind of additional is that what you said yeah I've just I'd liked your word extremely okay extremely competitive I like that and that if we're having to and that if we are having to lay out any cost to do any kind of modifications ourselves that that's reflected in a lower cost rental cost absolutely and I will bring all that back to you once I have some firm numbers and I want to go ahead yes forgot I'm sorry guess member eggs so the closing by October 1st is that the sale of the property yes to the to the person that we would lease from that is correct and that is the person that I'm dealing with today okay okay and I think to reiterate what mayor pro tem said about you've asked you know we've wanted as a goal to help planning and development to get projects you know continue to get projects on a timely manner increase customer service satisfaction that so I mean this is one of those I mean this is part of that which so when you take the aggregate of of this the new FTEs and this potential budget item which is not included in the budget right now correct I think it shows very much a commitment because you're well over 1.2 to 1.3 million dollars just for that particular area so I just I wanted to go ahead and express that absolutely and mayor pro tem I'll be glad to sit down with you and go through the presentation that I did in closed session that is all I have unless you have any additional questions from budget related questions for me any saying none thank you thank you Amy you're welcome and oh no I think Chuck Springer is ready to present the easy part oh no I say the best for last I'm just kidding I do want before we get started based on the citizens coming of the agenda tonight we had sent out some information on the requests from the community market but I've got additional copies of those those were sent out a few weeks ago so I want to hand those out and open it up for questions we had a lot of questions and answers but also let you know that the funding of this request plus the reconstruction of that parking lot is not currently included in the budget so I'll hand these out I'll pay for that one I'm sure but beyond that we did send out information a memorandum that was attached and I'll be available to answer questions on that I don't have a formal presentation but I've got slides available from prior presentations as well as I have one folder in here that will open up at some point where we may be able to start discussions this may be wishful thinking but let me open this up where we can start talking about the hard numbers in terms of we had presented the council with council priority funding of about nine hundred and fifty nine thousand and I know there's been discussions of how do we want to use that there's been discussions of additional one-time supplemental tax rate reductions and at some point if we start having discussions I wanted to have this available either this meeting or the next meeting so we can start putting some of the hard numbers together as we will need to bring a firm budget back to the council on the 15th sure in other words you're telling us get with it well I'm just saying it 's available all the last thing it's available so we can start dropping in some numbers so we don't have to do hand calculations okay all right so you're open to questions now is that correct that's correct all right council member Rodin I just to follow up to and I do appreciate the backup information that you gave us to a lot of our previous questions and one of them relating to the fireworks whether or not that can be dealt with with hot funds and then you gave us some background information on that I couldn't help but wondering as I was looking at their two Texas two-step test that arguably a large number of what we fund in hot funds don't meet that so in my opinion so if that alone is the reason why we wouldn't consider the fireworks it seems like we have significant more cleaning up to do and how we kind of allocate money out of that fund so I just kind of throw that to the hot funds committee because in my opinion that is as much as in better than most of the other things we fund in terms of drawing attraction and marketing a city that would qualify for that so I love everything we fund through hot funds but if we're gonna be strict constructionists as it relates to this set of rules thank you justice Kaleigh I guess I just want to give freedom to our hot funds committee that I'm comfortable considering that so well I really that was one of my lists and I know that councilmember Johnson you're on the hot funds I believe in and and I concur with you in fact when I read the explanation of why it shouldn't it really was just more of an opinion and I'm certainly sure the same sentiment that it stands at the top if with at the top or with many others that really promote the city and I think that that would be a good use of those funds to be able to do that so I guess the question I have is I know that the hot funds made a recommended a recommendation for the budget have we done that formally we is that just because it's in the budget presentation are we still able if we decided if the committee decided to make that modification effective this year but I guess because they don't have an application and all that so I maybe we need to just have that go ahead mayor I don't I don't think that we finalized did we we talked about some of these other things like this one that were kind of outstanding and I don't think we ever put an amount to it I don't believe in our last meeting we've got in the proposed budget and I 'll get the page what the kind of the recommendation coming out of the committee now it's the council's budget so it was a recommendation from the committee if they want to go back my assistant said forced retirement some of us are looking forward to that so but on page 89 is is kind of what came out of the the committee there but that can be changed by recommendations of the committee or council as you like and in terms of the determination of that I'll leave that up to to legal staff and not make a recommendation I guess from the standpoint of process because I know and this is probably a legal question or maybe the council can do it outside of that process but I know you know we receive applications and requests and then we make those so if we're able to still satisfy the process or if we can you know have a different process I just want to make sure we do it procedurally correct correctly but I personally it's that would customer Johnson would you sentiment be to do something like that or yeah well the question I was gonna ask is if we if we wanted to make a modification would now be the time as part of this discussion or yes I mean the answer is if the council decides that they want to allocate the funds differently than this in the budget discussions we can do that and bring back in a budget when you adopted in September it would have those changes well so just council member and I appreciate you bringing it up because that was one I think we all got the letter you know that as well I think most people think that that's a city sponsored event anyway you know the Kiwanis Club puts that on UNT lets us use the stadium and I mean the cost of the pyrotechnics alone is is fifty something thousand dollars or whatever it is but what a great I would like to see us continue at the same level that we did last year because the difference it made it was you know thirty-something thousand dollars went to the clinic to take care of kids who can't afford health care if there's ever a worthy cause in my mind that would be it and the I think the city gets a lot of bang for the buck there that's something you would have done and I missed the opportunity no pun intended so I'd like to see us continue at the same level as last year which I think was 40 thousand can I make a recommendation then on that particular item that because that may recreate some other adjustments in the hot fund allocation that we ask the Hot Fund Committee to to read me and and work on that yep that'll work yes I'm need to clarify yeah no I wouldn't be I wouldn't be for I'm for moving it to hot fun okay and so while we're on that topic another topic a similar topic we discussed this South by Southwest marketing campaign with UNT with CBB and all that stuff and I think in the discussion of that I think Mary you pointed out let's look at including that in hot funds in the out years as well given that that's clearly marketing it might be worth looking at that this year and I did have questions as I'm looking at this hot fun list on some significant bump ups mm-hmm and I'm sure you guys looked at all these and but one would be the North Texas State Fair Association went up about fifty thousand dollars from previous years does anyone know why there was that significant of an increase well go ahead okay yeah when we met but in essence when we looked at the revenues versus expenses one of our goals was to make sure that we're not dipping into the fund balance all right and instead of taking an across-the-board approach just 3% or 4% there was some discussion on taking a closer look at each individual request and funding and some of them didn't even request any additional and some of them requested less so the the additional monies I think that if I remember correctly that were allocated to the North Texas State Fair and also to I believe it was CBB what was the other one was another big bump and the Denton County included the moving of that house yes yes Quaker townhouse there was a request made in fact it was in the budget document I believe I thought I saw it somewhere where the North Texas State Fair it asked for some additional money for security and and that was sort of the thought there was that instead of giving an across-the- board just increase just sort of indiscriminately that let's look at what the requests are about and sort of see is there some criteria that would allow us to maybe move some and so the security at the fair I think was was one of those and I believe the it was either the CBB I guess was the other sort of big one and it was due to the visitor center due to the potential increased demand that may happen because of if the convention center is eventually built and just some other different things of marketing Denton so if I can add to it where the conversation went Kevin was we're talking about hot funds and really at the end of the day it's a lot of it should be about putting heads in beds and what's the return on the investment sure and when we started talking about the state fair you know part of it is well do we do we do they want to increase security which would be predominantly city police so then is that an in kind or is it do you well hot funds is restricted funds and so better to do that and allow them to hire their security but also just given the times we're living in and the amount of our citizens that are in one aggregate place that doesn't have a lot of fencing and a lot of security we thought it was a good use of the money for that additional security to be there we kind of thought as we discussed it if I remember correctly that we have a responsibility to make sure our citizens are safe and when you have that many people gathered together in one place where it's relatively dark probably a good idea no it's not and I'm probably agree with you and as I look at if we're going to be making changes I'm looking at some of those huge jump ups another one is these the Civic Center operations jumped up $20,000 from previous I'm sure I'm sure there's a good reason for it I can't recall why I do you remember why we Kevin you said you didn't like Cowboys and I understand that that was off the record but I never said that we had some discussion with a committee about some of the general fund activities that we have also we have costs in the general fund for Civic Center operations we have some water work parks and the water works park operations in the general fund and we looked at trying to have some of those functions that are related to hot funds that are eligible uses to try to fund more of those out of hot funds and reduce the impact in on our tax rate and on the general fund so that's kind of part of that discussion that we had on those is to try to pay for as much of those costs as we could out of hot funds so as we're looking at possibly looking at some room to put a couple of these items in here am I right in saying that it 's the the budget is so tight that some of these would have to change in order to accommodate for that or is there some slush somewhere that what well I slush is not the right word yeah contingency thank you yes that's yes I think your your first one did we allocate all the revenues that were estimated yes and part of the policy was we didn't want to you know go into the reserve funds for existing allocations and requests I can only speak for myself on that committee and then as on this council as well that with with these two items which is totally about sixty two thousand dollars I certainly wouldn't have an issue of saying hey this year we can if we need to diminish that and we may even not have to draw it down because our revenues may be more than that and then next year we can look at how that factors into the allocation so I don't I don't have a problem doing that we that's a good recommendation though is we can get together and maybe talk with the chair I believe Joey's the chair and get a special call meeting to try to make those determinations before we have to give a hard budget recommendation so yeah I think that's good all right thank you councilman was me she's got her glasses off in her spreadsheet in front of her with the body cameras for our police department hundred and seventy one thousand is an additional request where will that get us because I know that we have some body cameras and where will this get us if we opt to spend that money because I am a believer in body cameras we have body cameras currently for all the patrol officers this will really add beyond that to kind of the non-patrol the supervisors detectives those type of things that are non-patrol and I'm making sure I'm getting a nod and stating it correctly so in terms of just and if we could if we could get a professional from the department thank you she just got you back so our original body camera purchase was for 80 body cameras and they get replaced two different times during the term of the contract that gives us enough to put out all of our patrol officers during one shift and then the other uniform the traffic officers some special enforcement officers who make a lot of citizen contacts and then have another set of cameras in reserve for the next group coming on what we don't have right now and in that deployment are officers who work off duty we things like the North Texas State Fair arts and jazz those things we put a lot of officers out who have a lot of public contact we don't have cameras to equip those officers with right now which kind of puts us in a bind in terms of people expect the the community now expects that everything we do is recorded and so not having those cameras there puts us in the position if we were to have an incident we we wouldn 't have necessarily have body camera footage from some of those to make that up we've number of officers have purchased body cameras themselves it's kind of where we started but that that getting too technical that puts us in some bonds in terms of court case preparation and evidence management those kind of things we'd prefer to be out of that that realm if possible. Oh yes. Wasn't legislation approved on grants for body cameras have we applied for any of any of that for the state for funding? To my knowledge this they haven't released that information yet in terms of the grants the the proposed legislation and I haven't seen the exact final last-minute piece that came through there are some some requirements in there and some some terms there that may or may not be problematic in terms of what they require us to do there's some some things that some it was a release of information in the when we can release body camera image stuff that was more restrictive at the state level than what we really prefer to do making us hold on to footage before we listen to the public and some things there so we're still kind of evaluating that piece but there's certainly no guarantee I don't know how much money they allocated but I can't imagine anybody wouldn't apply for those funds. There's no no more piece there. Deputy Chief how many cameras does that purchase? We have 80 now this request would purchase the the final 83 which would be our our sworn contingency right now the idea was I probably wouldn't wear one myself with most of what I do every day other than record my office a lot but we want to have enough there so because inevitably something's going to go down or or you know there'll be technical issues with cameras and have enough to be able to to not ever really want to put somebody out on the street that doesn't have a camera. So you said right now we have 80 that is that's enough to cover a shift it I think a patrol shift . You cover it will cover one patrol shift and have enough in reserve for the next because you have to you take them off you've got to put them on a charger and they download and and it's a little different than if I plug my phone in you know to the they charge in order and they download in order by when you put events when you put a bunch of them in it may take several hours for they all download. Okay so those 80 is you've got 40 that's out on patrol or disp atched deployed and then the others are there so when the second shift comes in they're charged up radio so you just keep rotating them. Yes. Okay all right. Yes Councilman. But they would also be for the special events that we have here he talked about the fair talked about our arts and jazz that we don't have enough cameras to equip those officers who were out there to include our detectives who were out there so that whole group right now is to my understanding uncovered when it comes to body cams. I guess and it brings up a question because you mentioned the different special events that many officers get employed I get so that's really the thrust of my question is let's let's take arts and jazz I'm not arts and jazz North Texas rodeo because that's what we've talked about so they're they're providing they're wanting to provide security so they go out and they say contract with are they contracting with the Denton PD are they contracting with the individual officer we do special it depends if it's a sit like North Texas State Fair contracts with individual officers okay and then those officers we give them permission to work off-duty if they have if they've been here long enough they don't have disciplinary issues those kind of things we we extend that permission to work those for things like arts and jazz that's city sponsored we put those officers out there on their own city over time on these other events there's a we have kind of a baseline cost of what we expect an officer would get paid if there are city equipment involved like vehicles then we have a separate agreement where they pay for for they pay the city for the vehicle usage and this is gonna sound like a real lawyerly question but part of the thrust of my question is liability in other words when I'm hearing you say as a general rule city sponsored event events that occur that have city sponsorship I guess our logo appears on the material we have that those are our officers who are working on the clock as a city of Denton police officer whereas the other ones are sort of independent contractors who I presume are able to wear their uniform and and things such as that so that question doesn't have to be answered now I just and you probably don't you'd say I can't answer I'm not a lawyer so that just be an interesting question to know on the difference and if there's no difference that's fine but that's just sort of a nuance I will offer that generally it's not an issue until there becomes some sort of criminal activity and at that point there are you know if I'm out there I take enforcement action under the authority through the city okay and so generally at that point you know we're gonna do it all the differences is I'm already there instead of waiting for a phone call to be made and an officer to get sent out in a squad car sure and so in that case it it really benefits the community and that I'm already there we're not pulling officers off the street to handle an issue that's going on oh no absolutely so yeah and that's another nuance to that that whole thing that whole question councilmember Briggs did you have a question okay yes councilmember Johnson well I think we saw a great example of how you know somebody with a cell phone can take a clip of something and tell a story that wasn't at all the story and could have given our city a real black eye on a national level and our and our officers and our leadership took action quickly to make sure that the true story got out there and obviously the body camera made a big difference so to me whether an officer is in a patrol car working on patrol or whether he's working security at the fair any action taken by that officer wearing that uniform has an impact on our city positively or negatively so to me whatever we need to do to make sure that those cameras are available for any time an officer is wearing our uniform is money well spent in my opinion and my question wasn't implying that okay yeah I just want to make sure yeah okay any other did you have a question councilmember not of him okay well all right thank you thank you deputy chief the professional consider yes the professional the police department thank you mayor I have a question questions in need of no professional so my non-professional question it relates to the community market and trying to get a sense of the distinction between these funds and you know I think there's a sense out there that what is being requested of is some sort of kind of creating a space where we essentially turn the keys over to the community market and becomes kind of their property and so I just want to dig through this a little bit the four hundred and three thousand for the exposition parking lot reconstruction while kind of contained in the community market request is reconstruction that we otherwise would hope to have happened to that pretty dilapidated parking lot that gets used quite often with DCTA overflow training am I correct in that yes and we in terms of your supplemental packages we've kind of separated out their request of two hundred and sixty eight thousand from that four hundred and three that four hundred and three is really separate I think the connection there is if we're moving forward with the community market we want to coordinate that to make sure it matches with the layout and that type of thing in terms of the parking lot matches with the layout of what we would do for the community market versus us just going and redoing a parking lot on our own and not having that plan and of the two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars in added amenities that obviously are beyond a parking lot amenity those then wouldn't be of the exclusive use of the community market correct I mean I guess hypothetically any entity looking for another spot for an outdoor festival or a city event or something like that could take part in reserving that space just like any other city-owned space that gets reserved from time to time that's how I would anticipate it would work my guess is the community market would want to enter into some type of agreement where they would have exclusive use during certain periods of time Saturday mornings or something like that but other than that it would be still city-owned property that would be available for le asing to other organizations city events that type of thing and as we think about just all the positives I think of this particular project you think about how many how much interest there is and now downtown based festivals and the potential problems that tends to cause with existing businesses and shutting down streets and whatnot it's it occurred to me as I was looking at that this week that we we will have created another space for folks doing downtown events that can used to be a little bit off the beaten path from downtown having no impact on on the businesses the parking all those things we hear about when we have an Okta or 35 Denton or some of these things so I just point that out to the council is I think there's a number of things that get solved with this particular investment and that's just an added one I thought of this week yes well I really appreciate that all of the background information that we've gotten the spreadsheet I really appreciate getting a hard copy of the spreadsheet because I was looking at it on my iPad and I couldn't make heads or tails of it so having this has really been helpful the I think what what I'm hearing our staff say is they really want us to to give them some answers maybe today on this 959,000 because we don't have long before we've got to finalize this budget am I reading well at least at least begin the discussion on it I think September 1st really at the September 1st meeting the staff will have to prepare the documents that come back to the council on the 15th there's no meeting in between so I just wanted to begin the discussion I don't think has to be finalized today but I'm just kind of encouraging that discussion to move forward with that mayor did did was there a consensus of the council in previous meetings about whether we're gonna do option a B or C no hadn't really been discussed really oh yeah is is now the time to do that or it's your pleasure well it's not my pleasure I mean yeah well I've got some things that are gonna address that I would be pleased to discuss it now but yeah sure I mean could you could you if you don't mind up those slides in from the presentation to kind of remind us what options a B and C are on budget it's a hearing and you know just to summarize and and as I mentioned before the council may choose a combination of these options but I really looked you know option a was to use for reoccurring expenditures recurring expenditures such as street maintenance or some of the other supplemental additional supplemental packages such as personnel expenses that are can get a continue year by year option B was to use them for one-time expenditures in 1516 and example here that you just spoke of would have been the community market in the parking lot it's kind of a one- time capital expense but it doesn't recur the next year and then option C was to use the funds to lower the tax rate from the proposed rate point six nine six three eight now I've got you know three slides that kind of highlight that I can go into the individual slides or just leave it at that summary page well the question I have for example I mean I understand some interest in option C I've certainly gotten some emails from folks that are interested in option C so a couple of the questions that occur to me is what's the impact on the budget if we went with option C and if we lowered the the tax rate by a penny and this is really option C at least using the full amount of the council priority funding the 959,000 it lowers the tax rate to point six eight five from the proposed tax rate so I think it's a it's a little bit over a penny and it basically reduces revenue in the current year but then reduces those revenues going forward so in that regard in reducing the revenues in the year going forward and I've always loved the fact that when we do the budget here at the city that we do we look not only at what it is this year but the projections out five years because what we do now has an effect how does how does option C lowering the tax rate by either a penny or by that full nine hundred and almost a million dollars how does that affect things like the all of the supplemental packages that the manager is recommending in in this year's budget we're gonna still have money plenty of money to pay for those based on all the other projections or does that affect to those in some way yes we let me go to this slide and then come back you know the the proposal has been the last couple of years and this has been pushed back that would we would need a tax rate one cent tax rate increase on the O&M side the general fund side so we've kind of built that in there's also the impact of the 2014 bond election the proposed rate this year is really the same rate for the general fund but there's an increase for the first year of the bond election that was authorized by the voters it was authorized by the voters and the second year was proposed to be about eight tenths of a cent so in total about one and a half cents to fully implement that bond package over the six-year program so when I looked at these three options I made the assumption that the O&M rate would increase by one cent next year and we'd have eight tenths of a cent for the second year of the 2014 bond impact so on the recurring you can see if we left the tax rate the same and went to year two with that increase of about a cent and a half the total tax rate would be seventy one point four three eight and option B when those funds were used for one-time expenses we projected that that money would carry forward and eliminate the need for that one cent O&M tax rate increase we would still have the debt service tax rate increase and then under the rate reduction we start from a lower rate but we add that 1.8 cents in the next year okay let me ask a question again then if we did option C and you change slides on me I 'm sorry if we did option C how does that impact all of the new staffing that we've done this year does that does that have any are we gonna have to go back and revise those and take some of those out next year because of of the long -term implications I think mr. Campbell well let me let Brian we had some discussion about that yesterday Brian can probably my concern Dalton is if we reduce that tax rate and particularly if we looked at not implementing the one cent tax increase we need to take a serious look at these recommended recommended supplemental programs this year because I think it would impact the fund excuse but Brian why don't you I think that's a good way to say it for this slide on option C what we're showing is for 1617 we have to have a tax rate increase of 1.8 cents so one cent would be for O&M general fund and the point eight cents would be for the debt service fund so if the direction of council is is that we want to reduce the rate this year and then increase it next year the answer your question would be there would be no impact on those programs if however the council says we're really not comfortable with increasing the general fund tax rate in 1617 that's information we need to know because the financial plan assumes that that money is going to be there we're making decisions today which impact those that financial ability in the future so in other words we wouldn't have the resources to pay for these packages long term and we would have a funding issue because most of these supplemental packages are recurring expenses that's what I go back to miss the meeting because so there was discussion about lowering the tax rate this year and then raising it back again next year no there wasn't any discussion about there was it hasn't been any discussion about the options oh yeah all right can I'm mayor if I could can I make yes one more point so this is the O&M tax rate increase that Chuck was mentioning this eight hundred seventy six thousand you can see kind of what that impact is going forward if that was to be removed from the program in other words if the council said we're not comfortable with it a tax rate increase going forward and we still did all the packages that Councilmember Gregory was referring to these numbers would change so this would be a negative a million dollars this would be negative 1.7 million dollars those kinds of things so but that's based on a 4% that's a 4% assumption it's a 4% assumption that's a 4% assumption that yes sir but we're making decisions now that we know we're going to be adding those packages so that's that's the dynamic that I want to make sure we're making the same point okay go ahead so I'm sorry yeah I mean that so again that's working off of a assumption of a 4% growth year to year which is that that's what we always use yet we you know we 're 8 11 8 and a half I mean what obviously none of us can predict the future but you can your business or anywhere else either so to me we're we're we're in a trend a growth trend that is exceeding 4% so I think we have to factor as we're making decisions I don't think it's smart to make a decision now saying man we can't do this now because next year we're gonna have to increase it because you know next year we know it's going to be 4% it might be 13 so just saying I think it's important to highlight that there there are no absolutes in 16 17 none of us can predict what's going to happen but based on the current trend that number that increased valuation based on the same rate that number is going to be much higher than what we've projected based on the trend that we 've seen for the last 24 months 36 months so so I'm so I'm just saying I think I don't think it makes I think it's risky to make the assumption that we can 't do this because we're going to have a shortfall next year because if you're if our valuation goes up eight and a half percent next year we don 't we certainly don't have a problem well I don't think if I could yes okay I hear what you're saying completely and but I think it's risky also to to you know not consider all of the options and maybe what it to me it's really conservative the conservative approach is to estimate your revenues conservatively which is what we're doing at 4% but if we're if you're maybe maybe we ought to direct the staff to do something different are you saying that we ought to project a revenue rate to the higher rate what I'm not saying is to not consider all the options sure what I am saying is don't say we're gonna have a problem next year if we have a tax decree a rate decrease this year because next year we're gonna have a shortfall well you're working off an assumption of 4 % yeah so so consider all the options is accurate and don't work from a standpoint of because we can't predict the future don't work from a standpoint of well we can't do this now because we're gonna have a shortfall next year we don't know we're gonna have a shortfall next year so considering the decrease this year I mean I think we're all getting the same emails from people and and so I think it's important to consider and I don't think it I don't think we should consider it in light of that 1617 is going to be that that's why I'm getting that good discussion I mean to me I think if you're looking at a five-year ten-year projection we've got to come up with some assumptions you know we've seen the paper other governmental agencies that depend on tax revenue have higher kind of anticipated projections and then they have to say oh we got to make some cuts because we we anticipated too high for revenue I never want to get in that situation as a governmental body and frankly as I look at page 35 and you look at the trend line so to speak of the ten-year history of property value growth I don't know what trends mean in in in growth of property value based on that I mean you've got 13 to 11 down to 3 down to point five eight down and it obviously is the recession right but I'm sure in 2006 they were probably thinking hey why are we estimating so conservatively and then all of a sudden everything drops out so I think it behooves us to be very conservative in a very unpredictable economy and this I'm no economist but this gives me no certainty to start upping my estimations beyond 4% that I would say for planning purposes which means you just have to say yes it's not for sure if we take a tax cut now therefore we're probably gonna have to do a tax increase next year but we've got a plan out these scenarios based on certain assumptions so we have to at least put that into the equation along the line and understand that that might be a reality so let me address that because I'm sort of the one that brought this up originally and I'll try to keep my comments brief because I really think we should give something I mean you know we had a recession when you look at those numbers yes in three years we had a recession drop down to zero we had one negative year but if you also look at the five or six or eight years preceding the recession you will see increases of I don't know when the last time the city of Denton cut its tax rate I think we can find enough items in the budget and I've got a couple here that I'd like to go over eventually that will help offset some of that with some of these one-time expenses but this was been my concern or my observation it's not a concern it's observation I'm in total agreement we've got to have a planning tool absolutely and 4% but and I asked Brian to bring up the forecast that we had last year this is my only thought when you well let's go to the five-year forecast on this one on the current budget and so mr. city manager you can tell me if I 'm viewing this correctly or not so on the five-year forecast we're forecasting 4% in revenues and 4% in expenses or so much in expenses and if you look at new expenses in year two 1.75 million I'm assuming those are the supplementals for that year well folks I'm sure that probably wasn't that much different than last year I mean but our supplementals this year and and correct me if I'm wrong that that new expenses of 1.75 million would equate when we're in this process next year and if we had a supplemental package of 3.2 million dollars that that's now what that number is instead of 1.75 so my point is and I've got to tell you the more I think about this the more hard I'm going to stand on this line if we're given a projection of 4% increase the budget with 1.75% new expenses I think our initial budget that we consider whether it's at the same time frame or the time frame before that be based upon that projection and that you can create a whole another set of additional supplementals that if it comes in at six to eight or nine percent that we're going to go through this process because we're being asked to make decisions on forecasts in the future but when we get the actual data for that year it's considerably different I mean and I don't mean that in that 's nothing against staff I'm just simply saying last year we had a forecast of 4% well the budget was presented based upon a 6% and I'm sure that probably the new expenses forecasted for this same time last year was maybe one you know 1.7 to 2 million dollars well the supplemental is 3.2 million so it's already out of whack and I'm just simply saying for the purpose of a budget original initial budget that it match as closely as it can the forecast for that next preceding year because if we're saying if we're going to be making decisions on whether we're going to have a tax rate increase or not or decrease or not on this well then I would hope to think that the next year budget that we receive really reflects that because then if it's changed a lot well now would we have made different decisions the year before so I'm just wanting to make sure that what I'm making a decision on today based upon and I'm not even talking about the fifth year I'm not even talking about the fourth year I'm talking about the next year if we want to if we want a budget of 4% increase in revenue and a 1.75% increase in expenses will by golly the next budget that comes in at this time next year should be 4% increase with one point and if it comes in at 8% well then you'll have your supplemental package that goes over the 1. 75 and we can start conversation there because I really believe and so these are some of the things I thought we could help that could help with with this potential tax decrease because I'm really not in favor of the projected tax increase for the next year quite honestly because we don't know I mean if we 're gonna be presented a budget that's gonna reflect what is the projected for next year okay then we're fitting that revenue fine well if we went back to last year's forecast and did this same analysis we would find we're much different right now than we were when we were making decisions last year for the initial for the real budget based upon these forecasted numbers so you know we've not I think for the one time for some of the one-time expenses I'm in favor of looking at do we just take some of those out of the fund balance all right simply because they're one-time expenses we've had fund balances that have increased over the years and I'll go into another analysis of the fund balance that we talked about today so I'd like to consider that an option whether it be some of the community market whether it be the fire the ambulance that is in the current budget today the the 276 thousand dollar ambulance I believe the the medic the medic seven the when I look at some of these numbers that I mean and I'll start out with some that I've advocate for the homeless the homeless of 50,000 I don't have an issue with that but if we can partner with some other agencies which I think we can do by getting some contribution from United Way and from the school district and maybe some others I think we can create a position in another nonprofit that will help us with the homeless coordination I've really looked at this space study of two hundred thousand dollars and the presentation that we had was a city hall that was seven years out all right as far as going to the voters if we were to do that put that on a projection be seven years out I just assumed do some legwork on that initially to figure out what our needs are where do we think we actually want to put it and I just I don't mind spending that but I think it's premature now I think it will help us in our budget the two hundred fifty thousand dollar clarion thing we've had that discussion I won't go over that there is a there was a fifty eight thousand dollar FTE and some ancillary positions for a park position don't necessarily want to you know eliminate that but I think we've got in our supplemental package a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for our new right of way m owing that we we said hey we want to do this we want to give you direction on this Lee I think is it leap or lead the leap the leap program where they identified some so I certainly want to keep that I'm wondering if there's a way that we can include that fifty eight thousand in that 175 because these are estimates only and I'd like to see how that program works out in that regard two hundred fifty thousand dollars for and Brian you might there's probably some because I had some other questions when you when we quit when we left our meeting about that two hundred fifty thousand dollar reserve replacement for police cars I believe it's for police cars in other words we're trying to cash fund police cars which I think you said we need to spend how much per year right oh Chuck how much do we need to spend each year our replacement this budget this year is about two point nine million plus that two hundred and fifty so a little over three million dollars so the two fifty is for what then it's for a portion of the police vehicles we spend about seven hundred and fifty thousand each year just replacing police vehicles and then we have other general fund equipment a lot of the fire equipment and the other is replacement so the two the two fifty is to cash fund a portion of the police vehicle right purpose which is not all of it right right certainly not the rest of the fleet and and I get that and I think that's a good I think that's a good policy I think when you have rates the way they are right now I mean and this may be too much of a business perspective on a municipal function so I certainly can admit that and and we'll certainly admit that but I believe our tax our interest rate for five-year bonds is how much probably percent and a half right now to two percent one and a half to two percent I think we can see that even if we didn't even if we wanted to use a portion of that somewhere else we're borrowing money at 1.5 percent interest rate which you know enough said on that I think that that might be a better use of our funds I mean so I know this is and eventually we'll get up to three years and we 'll be able to buy a set of police vehicles that are cash-funded correct and then we've got to start that accumulation all over again for just that set is that is that is that my understanding of that what we would do what's what's proposed in the budget is 250,000 for 1516 of the 750,000 for the total that we need so it's still be 500,000 would be debt funded right year two would be 500,000 would be cash-funded year three would be 750 so that's built into the budget and what that would allow us to do is to not issue debt for those vehicles to cash funded and it does save interest rates and I will agree the interest rates are very low currently but in the future they won't always be that I agree the other the other thing that we've looked at is from a bond program capacity standpoint is by not having so much short-term debt for the same payment that we have going out of our debt service fund to pay for that debt we would have a lot larger capacity for long-term debt in our bond program so and it could be depending on how much we we were able to cash fund it could be tens of millions of dollars that we would have potentially going forward so those are that's kind of one of the reasons that we're looking at that so we're wanting to cash funds we're wanting to cash fund these take them out of debt service so that we'll have a larger capacity to issue debt or capacity for capital programs and not not related to what we consider is is an operating type of expense for for vehicles on an annual basis that we know we're gonna have I guess my point is I mean I think we can find a way to do this that's not going to have as harmful perceived harmful impact on the budget going forward especially if and look I mean I'm not trying to say we've got a slash and burn that's not my point my point is can we find some creative ways to do we need things that we're budgeting for immediately are there some ways that we can provide some tax relief to our citizens because we may be the only ones if we don't that doesn't and that's not my motivation for doing it my motivation is last year I would have liked to have done it because we had 11 and a half percent increase now we had added most of that back to streets so that's my purpose is I'm real open to the numbers but I'm also real open to saying hey if we have some one-time expenses that are keeping us from doing that we should look at the fund balance because we are a little bit higher but I will say in sort of counter argument to that position if you look at this projected budget and I think I just realized this when when Brian had sent out the the I think it was in the memo actually Chuck you'd send it out to the history of the fund balance over the last three or four years if we have revenue and expenses that are the same in other words we have a balanced budget all right actual we're not talking about presumed we're talking about actual but as expenses continue to increase year after year which they happen that happens the fund balance requirement because the the expenses are the some mathematicians help me what's the bottom number number in a division equation denominator is that right okay all right so it is down okay that thank you I appreciate that it's been a long time so as the as the denominator grows if the numerator stays the same your percentage automatically goes down so we will all so we have to have more revenue whether it's budgeted or actual in savings and and things like that to keep track with that policy in the fund balance so we could have a balanced budget every year our revenues do not our expenses do not exceed our revenues but we would be in trouble from the fund balance so I only say that because I think as a tool the forecast is great but my concern is if I'm making decisions on this now today based upon what the impact may be then I truly expect that that next budget coming next year that said this will be the impact on this budget that that first budget would reflect the assumed forecast for that next preceding year so I would like to get a tax even if it's just to assume or to to absorb the bond increase that we're having that the voters did approve but the voters approved that because they knew exactly what they're getting and those were those were needs that were being supported so that that's my that's my take on that I'm not just asking for this just to be asking for it I wanted to do this for a little bit but it just hasn't been had the opportunity I think now we have the opportunity to get some creative decision making that doesn't have as much of a del eterious impact yes so on that let's get creative Chuck I asked you last week what was the dollar amount between the 1.7 percent rate of inflation versus the 3 percent pay increase that is part of this budget and while you're looking for that here's something to think about because a 3 percent pay increase for somebody who's making fifty six thousand a year is really important a 3 percent pay increase for somebody who's making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in my book I think that can be scaled back and again I say how much is enough now I know we need competitive salaries but we've had three percent three percent now we're looking at another three percent that's ten percent over the last three years I don't know anybody in Denton who's had a ten percent pay pay increase so let's get creative and if we're looking for money here I want to look at that because I don't think the city of Dent on has been creative in in doing some kind of a step program in terms of you know let's just use $100,000 as a point of reference to start with and let 's say everybody who makes less than a hundred thousand look at a three percent and everybody who makes over a hundred thousand look at the rate of inflation which is 1.7 what would that save us we have the time here in the next two to three weeks to crunch those numbers if you look at question 19 on the responses I estimated in here that reducing it from 3 percent to 1 percent for non-civil service recognizing the general fund over half of it is for civil service would impact us by a reduction of 208,000 during 15-16 and because raises are based on everybody's anniversary date they're kind of scattered throughout the year so it averages through the year so the annual impact would be about 416,000 rolling into next the next fiscal year 16 to 17 that's going from 3 percent to 1.7 and in terms of our human resources directors here if you want to talk about the compensation plan and how that's managed in terms of you were talking about steps and where people are managed on their range of salaries compared to the market and she's available to answer those kinds of questions I'm not the expert just to finish I just think we spend a lot of money on on on staff costs and I know people are important I'm a representative of the people and everything I hear is that you know we spend a lot of money up here and so we're looking at cutting some really positive community programs I want to get creative with this budget and and find find some other monies and I still think that's all almost half a million dollars I'm just saying I think we can get creative on where to find some of this I follow a question on that because I think your question assumed and I'm not sure if that's a correct assumption or not that when we say 3% that everybody gets a 3% raise is that what happens no we talked about that last last time that it's based on merit okay yeah so it's the average merit increase the 3% is based on an average merit increase anywhere from 0 to 5% okay thank you if I could add to that and correct me if I'm wrong but in addition to that that it's based on merit the way this the merit adjustments are scheduled those who are in the lower end of their pay range perhaps with less tenure or below the market rate of midpoint are eligible for more increase than those who are at the higher or at the higher end of their pay range but all of what we're looking at in that is trying to also avoid some severe depression compression of those positions in range and the position classifications of one to another that force us at some point to start making equity adjustments because people are falling below the market by artificially withholding those at higher salaries down it's it's a complicated merit system but we try to do exactly what you were saying Kathleen and recognize those that are already closer to the higher end or above the market in their position in range this is a good conversation because it happens at all levels of government and as to what you do with these sorts of things we at least are like the federal government in which we have just this crazy amount of debt that there's no possible way of paying for we can't balance the budget I mean we're in a much healthier situation but I want to raise for a bit the philosophical question as to the virtue of a tax cut for a city I mean we know that we had a 50 person committee come together who recommended close to a hundred million dollars in projects in light of those projects they said we're completely comfortable with tax increases in order to pay for this in fact that went to the voters and the voters overwhelmingly said yes we're comfortable with that as well so I go back to this concept that abstractly speaking sure everyone wants a tax cut but when put in the context of needed infrastructure projects projects that people want in the community it takes on a different form so I'd like to have that sort of conversation to get a sense on why we'd head in one direction versus the other because things are good it pains me to get to the point of needing the penny pinch just to give this tax cut that I'm not sure who's asking for I get a lot of people asking me for a lot of product the sidewalk needs done the street needs done I need this at the park I want this well those things cost money I don't get a ton of people coming to me saying cut my taxes cut my taxes it tends to be in the reverse so I'm curious to open up that conversation on a bit more philosophic basis to see why this would be a good thing in light of what we're what we have to do you know along those lines I recall when that 50 member committee on the bond committee came to us the council had recommended a package only at a certain level so that it was only going to be like a one cent or maybe a one and a half cent increase and the bond committee came back and said no we're going to recommend a much bigger package that would that would take up to three cents not necessarily take three cents but it could take up to three cents and there was a lot of reluctance on the part of council to send that to the voters but we did and we listened to those 50 people and they were right the voters were all willing because they realized that the public works is important to this community and that that those public works projects don't come cheap I you know by the way I love this conversation as opposed to the conversation we had the first year I was on council and after you've been on council a couple of years it was 2009 that was not a fun budget year in 2010 was even worse so this is a great conversation to be having but but I but I think about all the things that people do ask and and the last couple of election cycles one of the things that people have talked about an awful lot is debt and gee you 're borrowing money for for routine kinds of things like cars and a lot of us were saying yeah well we're wanting to move away from that we're wanting to move to cash purchases for those things but that requires you know it's like we can't have we can't give everyone everything that they're asking for we can't provide less debt and and then and then and then not have it impact the general fund we can't we can't provide you know more you know an additional ambulance unit at fire station 7 without paying for it and everybody understands that all of that stuff costs money and so so it's just a matter of understanding and helping other folks understand and I think that most of our public does understand that if we're gonna if we're gonna want these services if we're gonna want better roads that they don't come without a price and I think we have to trust the public on that that because they they've demonstrated that they understand that that they get it yes well I was one of those 50 people and so maybe I can give a little color to it what we got presented was a lot of information that showed that our sewer lines our water lines and our streets were in desperate state of disrepair because they've been ignored for a really long time and you know the life of this line is supposed to be 40 years it's been there for 71 years the life of this sewer the average life of this is but and everything was oh my gosh these things are gonna crater in the midst of all this growth so somebody has to step up and say maybe for years past we've ignored these things and now we're gonna pay for the sins of our fathers but we have to go do this which is why we came to you and said if it takes three cents we have to do it because the OCI ratings and the drainage has to be done first so we can't replace the street and all that conversation so that 's very different from you know I'm trying to think about it in terms of how do I manage my own business or my own household funds so if we have to replace the driveway we have to replace the driveway but that doesn't mean we have to eat out every week right so I try to think about in terms of budgeting well who's asking for a tax decrease probably the people that pay the most taxes frankly and the I think what what people are seeing is man it's rocking I mean we're our valuations are continue to climb like crazy and you know thankfully they can go and protest them and maybe get them back down to 11 from 22 so what we have to balance I think is yes we absolutely need to increase taxes if we had to do it to pay for streets and drainage and sewer lines and water lines and those things which is very different from you know a I know and you know or something that a lot of people might consider to be a fluff item it's not really necessary streets sewer lines water lines are necessary some of these other things a lot of people would think aren't necessary so the question really becomes I don't in other words I respectfully I don't think we can talk about somebody's willingness to increase taxes and to to replace streets versus looking at O&M I think they're very different so it's a philosophical conversation you're exactly right and I think part of it is sometimes it is what is the message that you're sending because they do see you know the people that if you look at the bulk of the where the tax revenue comes from and you look at what those rate increases were or those valuation increases were you know there's some people writing some pretty hefty checks that may not be coming back to them in terms of rent and so on so I understand that philosophically why many might think man when when when you 're rocking the way we are it's a good show of being a good steward of the money to give a little something back when you're hitting you know eight and ten percent increases when your projection was four totally get it philosoph ically I'm not sure where I stand on what we do but I don't think we can say you know we had to do it for streets and therefore we should continue to keep increasing because you know when it comes to O&M I think those are two very different situations philosophically I mean good heavens you can we could go down any type of road philosophically large government small government I mean what is government's role we could have but I don't think that's really going to get us there on the on the bond program let's let's make sure we understand a little bit of history because I don't think I was on council at that time so I was able to attended more meetings because I community means originally and finance can correct me if I'm wrong on this originally the bond committee was set was told you you've got so much that you can use based upon a four percent assumption in growth all right that's what the charge was for the bond committee originally was just like they had forecasted four percent growth in revenue this is what you need to base your project amount on and what's your recommendation all right well then as time went by and this valuation percentage became a little bit more solid that's when it began to really go from I think about a 50 million dollar or 60 million dollar bond program with no it's about 40 million with no tax increase one tax increase one cent tax increase was about you know maybe 60 or something but oh we 're expecting this much more growth so we can get a hundred million dollars worth of projects in that all right so again here's another example of this whole forecast reality kind of disconnect all right so just because someone voted to fix the streets and all those kind of things for a tax increase I don't think we can presume that they would automatically say spent because if that's the case we should raise taxes we should we should forget the 1% we'll go to we'll go to a 2% and so philosophically I think it's a matter of showing also good stewardship and because if in this hundred million dollar budget you can't find eight hundred thousand dollars either through one-time expense because on the car fund and I was here when this happened and we did it because of the recession we used to cash fund our vehicles we had an account that had three and a half four million dollars in it I believe that that did this kind of thing not just police cars we did and what happened was that that fund was dissolved and that money was assumed into the general fund into the fund balance so I'll tell you what the first recommendation I would have is okay well if that's where it went where it was many years ago then maybe the first couple of years we can take that two hundred and fifty thousand out of that fund balance is where it went into and so right there so it's not a matter of trying to say hey staff's doing a bad job on the budget it's not a matter of saying you know advocate for this program or this program is saying we've had some pretty big increases and now we do have a bond program that's adding three cents wouldn't it be great if we manage the O&M and the other parts of the city finances where we say you know what we really don't need that we really don't need that point six eight or whatever we can we can absorb that because of we're really trying to be good stewards and and I'm really I mean I have to say as I 've looked more at this forecasting model I mean I like the model but my biggest concern is when I get when I get a budget that is very different and I don't mean in a bad way but if the forecast is 4% and it's it and I hate to go back to that but if you look at the supplemental packages the new expenses 1.75 we 're at 3.2 which is almost double all right so and it's that's nothing against the budget the staff or the budget presentation I'm simply just saying if we are making a decision today based upon that then I would feel much more comfortable than by golly the next budget we see is well this is what we said and you guys get to decide what we do with this extra two million dollars so philosophically Kevin we could debate this and we'd have the same result as we do around the country and that is some people would say I raise them some food say I'll lower them some people say keep them the same and I think we have enough revenue to meet our needs and I think if we were creative with some of the financing that we can do that and probably meet all the needs that are on the table and that way it gives us an opportunity to have a decrease gives us an opportunity look to see if we need a decrease next year we have such an increase next year we may not need an increase so that doesn't answer your let's have a philosophical discussion but that sort of would get us in weeds that I mean I'm not sure how it's gonna I mean if it can translate into us making definitive concrete decisions let me let me go with her because she yes go ahead just on the the whole the budget and we've through today we've talked about three percent increase in raises for across the board and then we've also talked about incentives for corporations which would reduce property taxes and and you know an item on the consent agenda for reducing fees for certain industries but for me all that falls back on the taxpayers back I mean we 're they're the ones that actually drive the city and we're looking at a lot of incentives and raises and I just want to to take a look at that a little bit more I mean when we're talking about increasing the tax rate I'm with I'm with you on taking a harder look at that just to point out in that bond package it's much more than just infrastructure I mean we had a lot of things we could call kind of softer amenities I mean a million dollars in quiet zones to make sure people don't have to hear the train that's a lot of park projects a lot of things like that firing ranges for the police so I think people saw a comprehensive package there that just wasn't dire infrastructure needs that are we're gonna crumble crumble as a result but do you know what would be if we did a cent tax decrease first of all no one is arguing for a tax increase and I know you thought it philosophically why wouldn't I wasn't playing that no no no no one is making that yes what is the impact to your average property tax payer have we broken that down 18 bucks or something like that or yes I had that in a month a year no it might be a month is it month $20 a month no no I think it was something like $17 a year per year what $17.90 is it per year or year would be a one cent tax so that's I mean we're talking about symbolism really at that point I mean no one's getting relief in any real sense and again I think perhaps it's my stage of life and the age of my kids or something like that but I mean I would gladly cut the city and actually just me I'm not advocating this as a policy an extra 50 bucks a month if it meant certain sidewalk improvements could get done so my kids could walk safer to school or safer to the park or something like that I think there's a bunch of folks in that position so that's that's the end of my philosophical conversation but I think I think folks want a great city a magnificent city and they know that that costs money and to to start having to kind of make cuts or make changes to give an $18 relief a year I mean that's that's pure symbolism which is why I asked the philosophical question because what is gained in that other than yeah other than that symbolic thing to be able to say we cut taxes for you well which we know resonates politically but I'm not sure what it does in terms of real economic benefits or community I well your comments sort of assumes that symbolism if that's what it is and I will disagree with that is is unimportant and I would disagree with that because it's not the one cent tax decreases $18 the taxes have gone up 20% between last year and this year valuations have increased 20% that's also the tax increase so people are paying for the things that they want because last year was eleven and a half percent this year it's eight and a half percent and for some people most likely it's going to be higher because they couldn't necessarily get the relief at the at the appraisal district that they might have they might have sought so whenever we break these discussions down into the per dollar household I think that's really you know I understand that that I'm not gonna say tactic but that sort of approach because you could do that with utilities we do it with utilities all the time gosh this rate increase is only 50 cents or two dollars or three dollars a month or some may see it as penny-pinching for me it's it's it's it's not just an economic but it is symbolism hey you know what we have gone up this much instead of us spending everything we can get why not try to say hey we recognize that there's a large tax burden on you and this might not mean a whole lot but it means that the staff and your policymakers are really trying to do the best they can to be as efficient as we can with our money so that's I mean I understand what you're saying yes well we can't forget that homeowners aren't the only ones paying tax it's our business owners and so you know you have property taxes for a for a business owner and so you know when you're looking at their their property taxes you know went up last year as well and so you know the city while we talk about we want to attract business you go out there and talk to the business community and they'll tell you right off city taxes are high I heard that yesterday twice from business owners so you know it's not just the homeowner it is the business owner and they employ people so it's the big picture and just because the money's there doesn't mean you have to spend it okay so we need to decide we didn't need to get specific we've had enough philosophical discussion and so I don't know if if you guys want to start tossing things out or if staff wants to have an opportunity to sort of hear the comments weigh them come back with some alternative proposals or do you just want counsel to now cherry-pick and sort of decide this yeah yeah wait yes could I suggest it's been three hours oh yeah sorry take a break yeah we take a break sure all right and then maybe we could come back and look at options a and B and T let's come back at 410 you bet thank you very pro 10 okay we're gonna reconvene now open session at 412 and we're still on a work session agenda item 3b which is the budget discussion so I will now throw it open for however the council wants to proceed at this point Wow could I can I summarize mayor or to show this I tried starting off with this table a little bit but as I mentioned the council the the growth rates from 6% to 8.54% we would we had set aside as council we just called the council priority funding I've kind of heard already that you think that the fireworks should be paid out of the hot funds instead of the general funds so I put that 40,000 which really increased what was available for council discretion I'd also heard that you wanted to do the one- time purchase of police body cameras so I put that in there I've also put in here the cost if we want the tax rate to the adopted tax rate to be the same as last year's versus the proposed six nine six two three would be about five hundred and fifty eight thousand so that would simply subtract away from the council priority funding with still about 270,000 remaining I just want to make it clear there was a lot of discussion about areas to cut but it doesn't really take cuts from the current supplemental packages in order to bring the tax rate down so I wanted to kind of point where we were at and I'm not sure if I know there's still discussion on this and I don't want to set that but I just wanted to kind of show the numbers a little bit where we're at and I know there's other topics the council wants to discuss but I just wanted to give an example of how that would work so let me sort of set the table here based upon this and what a what a finessed way to really keep intact everything else I mean very good I mean I don't mean that facetiously I'm being honest it was professionally done it was very professionally done so so so let me make sure I understand where we are okay notwithstanding this slide that means all the things that were recommended in the in the budget are still intact based upon this and that correct so the clarion the space study all these things that sort of been brought up so I guess my question to council and of course we do have this this tax decrease which there's some that are you know more concerned about that than others but based upon the discussion what other items and let's just consider the council priority funding and not just this balance of 269 I'm not saying we're limited to that obviously but so what other things would you be wanting to add in that council priority funding I'm gonna say like one example might be the community market all right so we can sort of get an idea of if we're over given these assumptions are there then we go back and look at some of those other things so is that a good place to start council mayor pro tem and and regarding that what I would think would be I'm much more inclined to think in terms of one time only items so that especially I'm real reluctant to do a tax decrease now and then have to face a tax increase next year so I don't want to do anything else that commits to spending that that if I do a tax increase I would rather not see another one come back next year I agree yeah I mean I would I would lean towards doing something where it's all just one-time expenditures so that we don't have to have a tax increase next year don't want to do that but but of these I would of the one-time expenditures I would like to give as much money as we could toward where was my list the the community market the facilities the the parking lot the things like that and if it had to do something if we end up taking something else out maybe use some of that money the you know and I'm curious about committing some money for the mentor program and for the and the homeless coordinator that's two different things I think is the mentor program already in the budget is yes yeah nevermind almost is the homeless coordinator not in the it's not in the budget that would be an additional one okay all right okay that's that's it for me thank you can I yeah you go ahead kept he sort of sorry about that yeah my suggestion was going to be the community market as well and and and the homeless coordinator position and my suggestion with that is I think it sounds like I've not been involved in the process but it sounds like there's a desire to coordinate with other entities in a similar way that the mentor dentin coordinator position came about which I think is a healthy way to do it the city's in a unique position to be able to maybe take that first step forward so I think even not knowing the partnerships on the front end I think for the city to commit to a certain amount whatever we think might be half or quarter or something to kind of get us something that we can leverage for a partnership now that would be an ongoing expense to make it right I think otherwise sure no it wouldn't work but so you're talking 30 40,000 yes 40,000 probably is a good one to commit we might not cost us that much but at least we have it earmarked when y'all talk about the I'm sorry were you finished councilmember Briggs talking about one-time expenses the bus stop shelters on here just because the community has shown an interest and I think it might be something what is the amount that's listed there 50,000 one-time expense mayor I'm sorry yes I think what we talked about is we're gonna have a joint meeting with mobility with DCTA okay and see it's a given the amount of money that we give to DCTA okay I think the conversation was we don't think that we should be taking on that expense that that money should be spent by them from the money we already give them okay yeah well you're here for that conversation when we talked about the amount of money that the city didn 't contribute to DC it's like ten million dollars a year so we I think that was the genesis of this conversation is try to get them to help with that okay yes the ambulance for the ponder fire station is critical and it's on that supplemental request list is that for the ponder for the that's station seven oh station seven okay yes station seven is the ponder station so supplemental request and so I just want to make sure you know that that is covered is that included it's included in the budget so yeah yeah we're covered on that just so anybody who's watching you know that ambulance is coming sure if I could ask mayor pro tem and councilman road when you're talking about the community market what what kind of let's say of a one-time expense what what kind of funding level are you talking about because we've been presented with 268 400 I mean what what are you what are you talking about in that regard well I think I think it's both of those those items oh there it is right there okay and ones the expenses for the community market that they've identified as this slimmed down stuff that they would need basics like water electricity lights some shelter things like that that's as I mean if you recall they came initially with a very large package and in working with staff over a period of time went it down to these are the bare minimums to make us comfortable with making that sort of move you had a question I believe I was just gonna say also the parking lot is not just for them as well it's for residents yeah does that include the $300,000 restrooms no okay I was trying to make this which no but go ahead I'm sorry on that point I think it's important you know the history of our conversation with community markets been long and you might recall they came here we were looking at some park options for them based on parks recommendation and discussion with council we decided that wasn't the best option go back and look at some other options all under the foundation of or upon the foundation of we want to find a way to partner then it was we gave them a few sites to look at one was across the street and one was at exposition they came back and said we reject the exposition we like to want to cross the street we all had a really good conversation about it saying let's find a way to partner move this forward this is a great thing for Denton but that site is not something we're willing to invest in because of other potential opportunities we have would you consider go looking at exposition so I think what's important about this conversation is our willingness or interest in partnering with them is is we're signaling to them if we don't commit to something that city 's not your place to partner you're gonna go have to find something else whether it's a county or a private entity or something like that but I think they're in light of that long history of a conversation and I think we signaled at the last conversation with them that we wanted the partner let's look at some more options here's our funding opportunity to do so but the the qualification I'll put on this point because I think it's just in full disclosure they look at this in terms of a multi-year path of things that they ultimately desire to have moving towards in a long-term scheme of things a permanent indoor outdoor type of facility might be a big capital project of private public funds come together whatever but the point would be I think us committing to that we've got to realize that they'll probably be additional requests in the out years including things like how do we solve this problem of the lack of bathroom facilities and things like that so I don't want folks to think if we agree to this that's it and it's simply a one-time expense I think in all the conversations with them it's how can we partner for a long term this is getting everyone's foot in the door getting people comfortable with the move but just to put that out there so I want to weigh in on a couple things and that's one of them so philosophically so I love going to the community market my kids love it philosophically I do have a bit of a challenge and that is as a city so the question is really what is the purpose of the community market if the purpose is an event a fun community event I'm totally on board if the purpose is to create a place for commerce to occur meaning if I make jewelry then I can go to that place and sell my jewelry to other people in the city philosophically I have a problem with it because we are creating a competitive advantage for somebody that makes jewelry to compete with somebody one block over who has leased a space in a building and is paying sales tax and property tax and sells jewelry so that's a philosophical so I think part of it for us to to come to grips with or come to consensus is is what is the community market because Kevin had a conversation about is it really do we look at as a as a business incubator if we look at it as a business incubator we're doing the same thing for technology we should absolutely offer the same opportunity for other types of businesses I think we have to be careful about walking a line where it's the same philosophical problem I have with food trucks let them park on a public street right in front of a restaurant selling the same goods we're giving them a competitive advantage over somebody that's invested in our city so that's my philosophical waxing about community market is I think we have to decide because I kind of look at it as in my opinion if we're gonna go spend two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars in addition to by the way there's no stinking way it costs four hundred thousand to repay that parking lot I'm sorry we're gonna get we got to get more aggressive with our vendors but if we're gonna go spend this kind of money because one could argue we wouldn't spend four hundred thousand on exposition parking lot if the community market wasn't happening so call it six hundred and sixty thousand dollars we need to decide whether we're willing to make an ongoing financial commitment to the community more in other words is going to be well next year we need to buy this and next year we need to buy that or my challenge is I prefer I would prefer to see the community market become self-sustaining meaning maybe you you know your rates that you charge instead of one philosophical point is well people say they can only afford $25 okay well then maybe you shouldn't be selling in here in other words here's what it to really do this thing right the community market once we make this initial upfront investment in my mind they should break even we shouldn't have to if we're gonna provide the space and provide the infrastructure there shouldn't be ongoing financial commitment unless we're looking at it as a fun community event and not a place for commerce to occur so there's my struggle with it right it's just what is it is it a business incubator is it a fun community event what's what's our stance on it because I'm going to be a little uncomfortable if there if our position is we're gonna spend six hundred and seventy thousand and then next year we're gonna figure out what else we have to spend that's a challenge but I do really appreciate what you brought up earlier Kevin which is if we do all this then this location could be a good location for the main stage of the 35 Denton and you know some of these other events where we're closing streets right now and causing hardship for merchants so I went on there but I guess what I'm getting at is I don't know where everybody stands on what they think the community market is I think it's a lot of fun and I have fun walking around there with my kids is it's six hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of fun I don't know but if it's an incubator that's a different conversation I have a question on when I'm looking at the backup that was given to us I'm seeing where the two at the total of two hundred sixty eight thousand dollars but I'm not finding where the 403 is I see the 206 for the installation of new concrete paving for the parking of 80 spots when then it says the DCM believes that the current parking lot pavement is adequate for DCM needs additional green spaces priority so where are we coming up with the 403 maybe I'm just missing it that's really the estimate to tear out the whole existing area redo the parking lot configured in a certain way and then to do the the community market improvements are separate so the 403 is to tear out the existing parking lot to redo that in a configuration and we had that as a separate item it's not included in theirs what says not needed by DCM and stage one it says installation of new concrete pavement for parking of 80 spots two hundred and six thousand dollars well I'm just wanting to know what that that's that 's that's the estimated cost to do the paving and then you've got to tear it all out so the estimated cost to tear it out and redo it was the four hundred and three square feet is it do you know Chuck how big is that parking lot mr. Nelson is here who I think another professional opinion yeah it's just it's just over an acre it's right at forty four thousand forty five thousand square feet so we're thinking it's gonna be about ten bucks about eight to ten bucks of square foot to take care of all that is what that works up to I guess yeah appreciate that thank you yeah any yes you have a question for mark no okay sorry mark thanks so I'm a real believer in public private partnerships and that money doesn't always have to come from the government to make something happen so my question is because quite frankly I don't want to spend six hundred thousand dollars on the community market so I'm not gonna go on the record and promise them that in terms of well we're gonna give you a quarter of a million dollars this year and then amp it up to six hundred thousand that's just not in my conversation but I believe in the community market so does the city have the option to say well we'll contribute a hundred thousand dollars and everything else go find go find some corporate funding find some corporate sponsorships so that you have a business that sponsors a gazebo and you have a business that sponsors the bathrooms and you have a business that sponsors this and sponsors that that's how you get where you want to go rather than go to the taxpayers and say well come Annie up for six hundred thousand dollars so I would be comfortable with a partial contribution I am NOT comfortable with a quarter of a million dollars and so I guess that's and that 's I understand I guess that's my question when we have expansion of the parking lot or it's supposed to be a space exposition position parking lot yes I mean in their own literature it was that it's not necessarily needed at this particular moment so are we saying we're going to do that just because we're going to use it for other things or what what's that because I I don't mind I think we can actually I think with some adjustments we could find enough to maybe even fund the whole thing depending on what we want to look at the other budget but I struggle with six hundred thousand dollars not because I'm it's it's a it's a statement about the community market but we have a lot of festivals and a lot of things in this community that we fund at a lot less and I mean you know gosh I mean I think our hot funds allocation to Jazz Fest is maybe 90,000 a year and of course the report is that brings in 200,000 people you know on you know the weekends so I just want to also make sure that the message we're sending to the other partners that we have in our community on because sometimes let's face it monetary contribution some people can interpret as it equates to the priority or the value that you place on that I mean that's what we talk about priorities in the budget so I don't have an issue with the contribution of you know the 268 or some variation of that but the 600 almost it's really almost seven hundred thousand dollars is is I really I struggle with that well I was just gonna ask if John maybe you can answer this question but to make sure we distinguish what we have the exposition parking lot the community market on the list of supplemental programs as two separate items but is the exposition parking lot being driven by a need other than the community market and what is that need and what we use what would we use it for if it was constructed yes sir that's correct maybe I can help out here good we were in desperate need of redoing that parking lot exposition because we needed for our training facility our public safety training facility which you've been out there we're getting more and more classes out there we also needed for overflow parking for all of these the staff that we have at City Hall East and we're also needing that now for more and more overflow parking for DCTA riders which that had always been the plan from the beginning was using the exposition for overflow when that parking lot gets full the problem that we have with that parking lot is part of it is a parking lot part of it is is not really it's just the slab concrete slab that was left over when we tore down buildings that were on that on that place so there are some trip hazards that are concerns to us that we're going to have people out there kids and whatnot running around there are some trip hazards for having a community market type of event out there as well as leaving the parking lot the condition is so regardless of whether the community market locates there or not we still need to at some point make some significant improvements to that parking lot and it's not just a parking lot understand we also have some pedestrian connectivity issues as well as ingress egress from the parking lot that need to be taken care of so that's why in all fairness we decided that four hundred sixty thousand amount is what we're looking at he need to do anyway as a city and we didn 't give that as part of the package for the community market because that is something that we would need to do anyway the only reason it's being discussed right now as you mentioned is because we're talking about that as a potential site for the use of the community market councilmember mayor pro tem brevery thank you so your discussion of the expanded pressures of that parking lot for all of those other kinds of things makes me want to just stop and say well well that create problems for the community market when they meet on Saturdays are they going to be competing for parking with other with the training program or with the train station we've had discussions with the police department and my understanding is there's very few times when they actually have any kind of training going on on the Saturday most of them is Monday through Friday or evening hours we've also talked to DCTA and they don't see that as a concern as far as needing to have because obviously on a Saturday City Hall East is not open so all that parking that is used by employees and customers going to customer service there along the tracks will be available as well so we're not so concerned that with the community market having their activities there Saturday mornings that that's going to displace either what's going on at the public training facility or DCTA then one of the question along those lines my understanding is is that our property city-owned property goes as far east as the pavement or that fence there's some green space between the fence and pecan Creek and that that's not owned by the city yes that's correct it is not owned by the city up to the fence line is what's owned by us between the fence line and where the pecan Creek is not owned by us but we are actually talking to the property owner to see if there's some sort of arrangement we can come to with them because at the request of the community market that would like to have that additional green space okay so it's really 268 for the community market it triggers the exposition parking lot but the exposition parking lots going to need to be done sometime anyway sometime anyway that is correct again just a reminder while it's the community market that's caused this conversation about a potential kind of rethinking of that space we're just creating a public space upon which the community market will have some sort of lease for a period of time once a week and arguably what it will soon be in a year one of the hottest most interesting parts of town across the tracks there's talks of breweries we know the rail yards going in there we know new high-end apartments are going there I sat down with the market on a few occasions with someone who bought the storage units right across the street and there's already been some very creative conversations the potential private public community market how can we work together on this because private those private folks want the market there because it raises the value in the interest in that particular area so we have a area full of way underutilized old industrial space that we're trying to spark into something else connected to some of our lowest socioeconomic neighborhoods that the potential here as a catalyst site for two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars upon which anyone in the community can use not just the community market plus you have this business incubator concept where somebody with twelve bucks a week can start a business that 's that's a great thing for a city to invest in in terms of entrepreneurship and building in that spirit so I think there's a lot more to this so I'm not sure are you in favor of it or I do have some properties that I would like to see increase in value so if you guys will come spend 700,000 right next to mine so I can get my rents up that'd be awesome thank you I'm just I'm just kidding I think we already have not true not true so so here's what I would like to suggest on this I've talked to the folks from community market I would love to see a bit more of a business plan in terms of how they're self-sustaining and if we're gonna go I'm not opposed to making the $670,000 investment if that if we need to redo the parking lot anyway then we need to redo the parking lot so call it the 270 I'm not opposed to making that investment what I would like to see though is a bit more of a meaning it seems to me like this is going from a community fun event which is kind of how it started to a hey man this is gonna be a real business that's going to be an incubator that's going to draw people down to this new hot area of town that's great Kevin I love it you should be in sales instead of education but the the the if we're gonna do that what I'm getting at is I would love to see something from the community market that has a bit more teeth in my opinion which is how how this is a business incubator and how it's self-sustaining in terms of what the funding that they are going to receive from their participants in order to make themselves to self-sustaining because we haven't established what the rent has to be yet by the way if we're gonna make this investment they need to pay rent because maybe the return on investment is right there in the rent if you spread that 270 out over a 20 year period and who knows right but I'm guessing what the assumption is is the city's gonna spend the 270 and there really isn't going to be any substantial rent but what I would also like to see is who are there we 've seen one in the newspaper showing that this was an incubator I love the whole business incubator idea but I'd like to see well what are the sales taxes that are being paid by vendors that are selling their products in the community market because if you're selling something in there to people you should be paying sales tax charging sales tax and paying sales tax and so if it's going to be a real business incubator and something that's going to be more than just a fun weekend event then I'd like to see a bit more of a tighter business plan especially if we are going to if we're thinking we're gonna have to commit more funds down the road so my thought would be to say let's reserve let's take the 268 and let's put this in there but but not agree that we 're gonna go spend it yet until we get a little bit more tight information from the community market as to what the future plan is what future expected just like we do our budget we got a five-year projection I'd like to see a five-year projection from them on any future dollars they're going to expect us to spend and then also what's their model how does it pay for itself how many vendors does it have you know this green space how open is it going to are they going to pack it full of as many tents as they can or are they going to limit it some of that sort of stuff would get me a little bit more comfortable with knowing what we're going to spend now and knowing what we're going to spend down the road and what the return is on that investment whether it just be return on investment being fun for our citizens or is it a business incubator or is the return on investment coming in sales tax and rent I don't want to go do it if the goal is let's go spend this money so that we can then move them across the street into a private property where they can become a quality tenant so I think that's that's a big bad reason for the city's spent money so I'm in favor of it but I don't say we commit to spend it we hold it as a placeholder until we get more information but we've got it in the budget yes I'm just curious because I wasn't here when you when you talked about the the rail yard I guess you made an investment in that or the taxing what what was that investment and did is that didn't we do that somebody mentioned that is that I'm just curious I think your question is what are there any incentives that are are able to be discussed for the rail yard or what kind of money or investment slash does the city have in that project already yes already miss miss it can address that keel in and we do not have an incentive agreement in place with for the rail yard program yet however we do have one that's in consideration right now and has been recommended by the economic development partnership board for a property tax abatement they're taking an existing property that is currently vacant and making about a 15 million dollar investment in updating the building and then adding loft apartments to it as well and so this is a so would be a property tax abatement on that additional 15 million dollars in investment it'll be equivalent to about seventy five thousand dollars a year for five years I guess I thought that the city invested or gave money to a project because I heard rail yard or tech scene or the rail yard project so the city has two roles there the first one is that incentive that I just described and the second one is that and we are launching a co-working space for technology companies and where we are leasing space within the rail yard building in order to provide that program okay so we'd be a different we will be a tenant in the space that's correct okay it's different from what I thought and we'll actually be discussing that in the coming weeks well I think that's good to point that out because it's a different type of incubator from the rail yard space but it is an incubator it's it's talking about the creative economy both of them are except one of them not only can be an incubator but it can be fun to go to at the same time I've never had fun watching people program in their computers I'm not even have fun talking to them about it but so what I think I'm hearing is there's three vote three people that are really supportive of it one that's that's what needs some more information so where are you mayor so we know what we can move forward no problem I can tell you right now we've got a deficit of four hundred forty one thousand dollars so when nobody's really addressed that even though we're trying to say that the 403 is a parking lot by itself and that the city would do it anyway and let's face it we wouldn't be spending that money this year right but for that and I don't and that's okay as far as comparing it to the rail yard quite frankly there's really no comparison only because the rail yard number one they're gonna be paying some property taxes they're bringing in sales tax I don't know what we're making in sales tax out there so and salaries are a lot this reminds me of when you have friends or family that you know maybe want to borrow money from you and you say I've just realized it's never alone it's always a gift because you so when we're saying 268,000 is what's up here on the screen I mean we're saying that this is for other communities other space but this figure is based upon primarily the site plan for the community market in other words this is being designed primarily for that space and that's okay I understand that I really struggle with the full 268 only because of I too like people to have a little skin in the game even if it's a little bit but some because I think that's important I think you know because it's going to be difficult if this is another community space for the most part this space is gone every Saturday for a certain time frame which Saturday s are the times when you have most of your festivals most of your events so this is in essence being earmarked the Saturday what's the season for them anyway I can't remember I read it do we know what the season is for the community market from what time to what time is it something to November or something like that or about 35 Saturdays from the 1st of April through the end of November okay so prom sort of festival group gathering so I'm not opposed I mean if we need to do the four hundred three thousand for the parking lot I just want to ensure I mean I know we say there's not a conflict with the police training facility with DC I understand that but we certainly in whatever legal document we have need to address that so there's there's no uncertainty or there's no doubt as to what because we're gonna have to decide as a policymaking body eventually what that document looks like as far as rent liability and all the legal issues when I look at the list that they're asking for okay there's two on there that are I think particularly designed I mean that they're pretty specifically towards the community market and that is one is signage of 5,000 all right that I'm assuming it's a signage that this is where the community market is going to be and the other one is a media campaign of $10,000 so I think for me and it's not a whole lot of money again maybe it's the symbol maybe it's the principle of okay that's not a lot of money but if this is going to be specifically for them those are I mean lights water green space additional porta potties which is another reoccurring expense we can say those are for other opportunities other festivals but signage and media that's specifically related to the community market so I think that I would like to see that subtracted from the $268,000 which would be $15,000 and then if there's some things in here that if they really need that and they don't have the money to do that if there's some other items in here that they could say well we can get these done next year or we can diminish it we can get better bids I mean it shocks me that it's this this kind of this kind of value so there's way we can handle so 253 I still struggle with that but if I can get a tax rate and if we can do with that 426,000 by by absorbing that somehow in the in the general fund in the current budget or take it out of fund balance then then I will live with that and my suggestion would be that 250,000 of that either come from the fund balance or we move the financing of the cars with the 250 from the fund balance because that's where it came from but that's just sort of you say potato I say potato so I'm okay with that level of funding but I really want to make sure I think like councilmember Johnson that as long as I'm on council I mean we've spent a lot of money to give them a head start and I think any requests in the near future for any sizeable amount of money it's going to be difficult for me because when if we spent $270,000 on getting something off the ground that you know I'm hoping this thing builds and grows the way we think it will so I think if we want to handle the rest of that that balance we can either I mean the space study which whether we do a space study for the convention for the for the New Town Hall next year I don't know I don't know if that's necessarily a necessity well if you do that if you take that out well now you're only down to 226,727 and but that's just I'm not going to sit here and try to micromanage the funding aspect of it but those are my thoughts on it yes councilmember Johnson. So in an effort to get there what are we borrowing money at now is it one and a half percent ish? Chuck you can answer that. You're smart. You're talking about five year or twenty year. Five year. One and a half to two. So I mean that that is such cheap money that in my mind those things that we're talking about cash funding to me if you can buy if you can buy cars on a five-year note at one and a half percent interest you use the one and a half percent money I understand the whole freeing up for long-term debt but we're not talking about a ton of money and if we're trying to get balanced and so to me I think we should look at a couple of these one time with like the exposition parking lot that we could fund that out of the fund balance if we wanted to right and the because to me if you go we're gonna fund the the parking lot out of the fund balance we're gonna finance the two hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of cars at one and a half percent and we're gonna fund the community market at two hundred and fifty three thousand we're already we're money to the good we can we can buy something else. I was fixing to say your idea. But I'm saying I mean to me if one and a half percent money why wouldn't you use that debt on a short term knowing you could have it fixed for five years unless Brian there's another implication that I 'll understand. Yeah let me just make a point I think if if counsels good with this plan we can make this work and take the four hundred and twenty six thousand or so out of fund balance we can do that if you're comfortable with this. Well you just said one leg of this. The idea that we're trying to build up on the car and I realize the two fifty is very small the first year but we 're trying to get to seven fifty a year so over a five year window you're talking about three and a half million dollars or so that we wouldn't be financing that's that's the kind of the piece that we're trying to get to where after five years you don't have to fund the car. You don't have to finance that. And so that's that's that's the bigger picture that we're looking at as well as kind of what's there for the long term bond program. But if we look whatever direction the council has on that but that's kind of the I appreciate what you're saying but let's not stanch the victory out of the jaws of defeat. I still have the floor. So. According to who. Well I'm still running the meeting here. I'm still on. Answer my question. My life was still on. So turn it off. So I have so much confidence in our purchasing department our engineering department that there 's no way it's going to cost us four thousand dollars anyway to pay one acre because the contractor who pays. I just got a quote of two hundred thousand for a one acre brand new brand new parking lot ground up with not just a recap. So surely there's I'm sure there's safety here because we don't have all the engineering and all that stuff. So we're dealing with a four thousand dollar number here but we probably can do better and save a little bit of money there anyway. Well that goes for the other expenses as well. The lighting the sewer the water. I mean in other words these are these are estimates. Right. These are yes. I think as we're talking about I like what you're saying about sit down with the community market and say let's let 's really if we're going to enter into a partnership then we need to get comfortable with where this is heading in the long term. I think as a part of that we talk about kind of attaching strings to this relationship. You know as you look at the real your project which is a completely different completely different animal altogether . It's a great one. But attached to that is not just space and all this rede velopment stuff but there's there's even a program and we've got funding in kind of a programmatic sense of how are we really getting after this business incubation concept and how are we training and how are we bringing people through there. And what's the pathway of starting out here but getting your own space elsewhere. That needs to be part of this conversation and it makes me think one of those strings attached is saying we need a full fledged small business development plan education scope. We want you tied into the neighborhoods around there and really actively marketing them to be part of this as vendors. I think we can develop something that's actually pretty special in that innovation district. So no matter if you've got 12 bucks an hour or whatever you are in that entrepreneurial scale there's a place for you here. So I think we can get smart about this and tie it into economic development but put the back put the onus on them to develop that and operate that. But to kind of make that a part of our economic development package as it relates to here's how we're dealing with small businesses in the city of Denton. There's a lot of symbolism to that to be able to just geographically go to a space and point that out to folks in Denton and mentorship. I guess the question I have is I'm going to sound like a broken record but I think depending on what that business plan winds up being again. Well I'm not going to make the comment I was going to make. Suffice it to say I think we need to really begin to have some conversations about the TIF. I think we need to have a joint meeting with the TIF board to really begin to talk about it's starting to have some fun balance is starting to have some. You know I looked at the charts and I'll ask for that new business but I looked at the charts of when it was first approved. We're pretty much on schedule but I think whether it's catalyst project or other projects or just a general increase in values those are really skewed from what the projections were. The total is about the same but the components the different categories of what make up that total valuation are considerably different than what I think was. So I really think we need to have a conversation about this because this is I believe is this not part of the DTIP area . Is this part of the TIF area this area down here which is something that seems so not to say that we need to provide some funding from this to that but that's always an opportunity. But we need to have that conversation because we're you know as you had said Kevin the downtown has pretty much arrived and has you know it's left the station. I mean and that's been really no help from necessarily financial component of the TIF. It's been because that's the market. I mean the market has been I mean the values in downtown went up over 10 percent which is almost it went up almost 2 percent more than overall around the city from what I understand. But yeah so these numbers could shrink I mean depending on bids and things such as that so that's encouraging. But I mean I think this really shows a commitment by this council to that to that group and to that event and to that community event. And I think with reciprocity we need to make sure that based upon these meetings in this plan that that commitment is reciprocated in what they're willing to offer for a two hundred fifty thousand dollar seed investment so to speak. So have we decided where we're going to come up with the difference. Oh I'm sorry. Well so one thing we've talked about I think Mayor you've talked about many times is we need to get started on an economic development reserve. Yes yes. So we've got eighty thousand dollars in here and given Brian's confidence that if this is the direction we can definitely get this four hundred thousand and fund it out of elsewhere. He's going to take it out savings. Yeah. So so given that there's if we take the 426 out of savings and we go finance the cars there's another two fifty. I would like to propose that we figure out a way to get this economic development reserve fund started. It's just a start. We're going to do much with eighty thousand bucks but I think I think it makes a statement. But you know again we keep we always talk about how we don 't have a four a four b. Well we got to get started. So if we start it I would just like to say whatever after financing the cars and whatever you know we think we can take out of reserve if that's eighty thousand or if it's a hundred thousand or whatever it is we should figure out a way to include that economic development if we can. And we have had I believe we had a economic development. We had a strategy meeting these teams that specifically address that and I think there's going to be some recommendations coming back on how to do that as well with some of the incentives that we already have. So yeah we were certainly looking at that. But yeah so you're saying you want to find out how much are you saying. Well I'm just saying we've got there's eighty thousand here . It sounds like there should be eighty thousand based on the stuff that we were talking to Brian saying is possible. But if there's something else coming back which is as these I think you're talking about as the incentives expire not rolling all that money into the general fund. Right. Then if that's the case then this doesn't have to happen. Yeah. That's what you're saying. Well this certainly could help start it. I mean it's really the council's it's at the council's pleasure in that regard. I would just like to see us get try to get something. Never get it started if we never put something in there it 's not going to exist so whatever it is sixty thousand eighty thousand whatever's. What do we have in there. Yeah. Brian just you got to get magical. I don't say that's a negative. In there right now. Yeah. Well and I think too you know we address the hundred thousand dollars for the downtown reinvestment grant and I wasn't proposing that that be part of this economic development fund. I was simply saying why don't we at least allow that fund to be opened up to other applicants in the city who maybe have some similar type of activities that would normally be applied for for that grant such as either awnings or whatever. That not just be limited to the downtown area doesn't mean downtown people can't apply but it means that other people in the community have an opportunity to at least take advantage of that because we don't have anything for those type of. Individuals and again we've spent a lot of money and energy into really revitalizing downtown over the years and I think we've seen it tremendously pay off. I mean I think it's probably gone beyond what many of us might even have expected so I just would like to see that the applicant pool expanded in that particular economic development. I'm not not to combine it with this other fund which and I said this in the in the meeting about this economic development fund for me I can only speak for myself but for me the purpose of that fund is to be something where we're going to go above and beyond what we normally do. I mean this is for those projects that we really really want. It wouldn't be just money that we're going to sort of have people apply for like we do the hundred thousand dollars and just try to do that. This would be for those extra special projects that without that we would not be able to do it. So that's what I just like to see the expansion of the hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. OK. We're almost running out of time. Yeah. OK. Well we got to have this discussion. So any other questions. OK. Any other. I'm getting the sign of cut it short. I'm getting the sign. Let's move on. So yeah. So yes I just want to make sure we're going to have another chance to come back to the supplemental request and everything. What I'd suggest is that we take this list and there are some other things that you all have suggested that we could tweak numbers on. Let's refine this and send something out to you that will kind of show you what that remaining amount would be or what the bottom line would be. Putting this together and some other things mayor particularly that the vehicle replacement stuff and try to find these little bit and then we can continue this discussion on September the first. You bet. OK. Can I mention one other item to make sure the council is clear on that and that's in the capital budget that's included this year. You know we've based the capital budget the tax supported based on the eight tenths of a cent increase. And what we what we sell this upcoming year will impact the following year's tax rate. Do you want to see any analysis of spreading that program out any longer to lower that tax rate impact or are you comfortable with that eight tenths of a cent for the following year. Let's see what it looks like under different scenarios to extend it out. Maybe here. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be good. All right. Any other questions. Well I know you all are tired of talking about it but I will tell you right now this has been a great discussion. And in my six or seven years of my seven years on council this is it's not an easy discussion. And I know staff you know winces and squirms and but I really do appreciate staff's patience and their diligent work in presenting this budget. I know they'll come up with some creative solutions to help us resolve. All right. We will now convene in closed session at five oh three p.m. We will consider the following items consultation with attorney under Texas government code section five five one point oh seven one deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas government code section five five one point oh eight seven deliberations regarding real property under Texas government code section five five one point oh seven two and certain public power utility competitive matters under Texas government code section five five one point oh eight six. , eight. I want to welcome you to this August the 18th 2015. A meeting of the Dent City Council. We do have a quorum. It is six forty five and certainly appreciate your patience and us getting out a little late in our close session. So we'll start with the agenda item which is the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. and the Texas flag. I pledge 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. I honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the League of Texas one state under God one indivisible. Got a proclamation that I'll come down now and read. OK, this is this is going to be a fun proclamation for me and we've got several here. So what I'm going to ask is for the students who participated in the Mayor's summer youth program to come down and sort of stand here beside me if you would don't be shy. Come on down. You know you're going to get to everybody's going to see on TV and don't get to tell us who you are and all those good kind of things. Fantastic. All right. I want to tell you a little bit about what we're celebrating here this evening. We we had a program this summer called the Mayor's summer youth job program, which Mayor was just a term because I really didn't have much to do with it. In fact, I was really tardy in getting it out to the staff to get it organized. So I appreciate the Herculean effort by city staff, by United Way, by did not independent school district and employers that hired these great youth over the summer. And it's an opportunity to provide some some mentoring, some additional funds, some camaraderie and friendship and just learning some new skills. So it's I think it's this time of the council meeting is really special because we get to recognize people in our community because it's the community that really makes this town what it is. And what a great gift that the people in the community gave to these these young people. And I certainly want to also give appreciation recognition to the parents and all those that help these young people get to their jobs because I'm sure some of them probably wanted to sleep in a little late alarm clocks probably went off and hit snooze bar. But but they're here. And so we've got a proclamation for you. But I'm going to read the proclamation and we'll hand them out to you. So I want to just give you guys a hand right now. Proclamation by the mayor of the city of Texas. Greetings. Whereas in the summer of 2015, the city of Dent on, United Way of Denton County, Denton Chamber of Commerce and Denton I.S.D. joined together to create the mayor summer youth job program and whereas working a summer job as a young adult is a rite of passage that provides valuable experience to prepare young people for their future careers. And whereas providing summer jobs to youth in the community is important in establishing professional and personal character for young people in developing the leaders of tomorrow. And whereas 13 students were placed in jobs in the city of Denton organization and throughout the community. And whereas these students committed up to 10 weeks of their time to performing jobs, learning about various career fields and developing professional skills that will serve them as they enter adulthood. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton , Texas, do hereby proclaim August the 18th, 2015 as the mayor summer youth jobs program day in the city of Denton and ask all residents to honor the 2015 participants of the mayor summer youth jobs program for all their accomplishments and an admirable representation of Denton. Thank you all very much. Let's give them another hand. OK, I'd hand them out. Yeah. All right. This is this is what we're going to do here. I know you aren't in school yet, but what I want you to do is just tell us your name and where you worked over the summer. If you don't mind, we'll just go down the line. I'm Rebecca Cheek and I worked at the animal shelter. I'm Isaac Barrett and I worked at Brian and Sons Locksmiths . I'm Devon, and I work there at Waterworks. I'm Dalyne Young and I worked at Waterworks. I'm Isaac Montoya and I worked at Quick Car of Denton. I'm Anthony Stewart and I worked at North Branch Library. I'm Cleana Robertson and I worked at Denton Municipal Electric. Thank you all very much. And what a representation of the community and also downstairs. I forgot to mention the Denton Chamber of Commerce. Obviously, the Denton Chamber of Commerce was a partner in this endeavor, as well as evidenced by the members of this group who worked in various companies here in Denton. So thank you all again. And we certainly hope that you will join us next year for this opportunity. But thank you for the inaugural participation of this program. So let's give them one more hand. Good to see you. I know Brian and Sons. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct which applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens' reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a report. There will be an electronic beep when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers. Citizens are asked to not approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council. The attorney general has ruled that council members may listen to citizens speak and may ask questions of citizens for clarification of the issue. Council members will not engage citizens in discussion of a topic because to do so could potentially be a violation of the Open Meetings Act. When speaking to the council, citizens are to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this rule will immediately be removed from the council chambers. Citizens' adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. Make a suggestion and a motion to suspend the rules as it relates to the ordering of the citizen comments. I know that traditionally we'd allow a certain number of people behind the agenda and some people in front, that's the way it's on the agenda. But I know in the past when we've had a number of people speak on a single topic that we've allowed them to kind of move towards the front. Perhaps in this case, after the other non-community market topics get to speak, I know they've also suggested a particular ordering that I think you have. Yes, sir. So I'd like to just make that motion that we do that. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. I would second the suspension of the rules. We have a motion and a second for suspension of the rules. Do we need to vote on the board, Jennifer? Can we just do a raising of hands? Okay. All in favor suspension of the rules as proclaimed, let's raise your right hand. All opposed by like sign, passage unanimously. And I guess before we get started, I'd like to ask city attorney, because I know that some individuals here are for a consent agenda item 4S. And it's my understanding and I only say this for convenience, so if I'm out of line or out of protocol, please let me know that there's most likely that that's going to get pulled. And so there may not be public discussion on it tonight. So I just wanted to make that announcement in case people didn't want to necessarily sit through the eight or nine speakers. But I know we're not taking a vote on it, but I just wanted to make that clear. So if I've been out of order, then we have a mayor. All right. Thank you. Okay, then we'll move on to agenda item three, which is presentation from members of the public. We'll start with number one. I'm not sure that this individual is here, but I'll still call the agenda item. Is Monica Jones regarding a complaint on animal control and code enforcement? Is Ms. Jones present? Okay, we'll move on then to item number two. Mr. Willie Hutzpeth regarding City Hall. Is Mr. Hutzpeth present? Okay, don't see him. All right, now we'll go on to agenda item three, which is several speakers to speak regarding the effect of the Dent Community Market. And I do have an order that has been handed to me, so I will proceed in that order if that's still the desire of the group. Okay, great. First speaker will be Vicki Oppenheim. And state your name and address for the record, please. >> Good evening, I'm Vicki Oppenheim, 600 Winfield Street here in Dent. Mayor and members of the City Council, I am very pleased to talk tonight about the Dent Community Market. And our approximate 300,000 budget request for a new facility at 121 exposition. For months, we have been in coordination with staff about possible improvements to the near two acre site, so that we may move there and successfully operate. This request is based upon input from our vendors as well as our board of directors. We had received positive feedback from the council at a work session to proceed to investigate the site further in partnership with the city. The council had suggested that we hold a community event or better block type event at the site. We did hold an ice cream social instead for our vendors and we conducted a survey of needs at the site. These needs include a green space location, water, electricity, shade, cover, trees, signage, performance platform, and other elements. All these are included in the list that we provided to the city. The market is a snapshot of, as I will call it, emerging dent. Our model, as you will see with the next speakers, provides the opportunity to experiment with what is new in Dent. Our vendors and weekly events promote experimentation and innovation with business ideas and locally produced products, promotion of entrepreneurship, and a showcase of the arts and live music. Even kids activities promote the new organizations and community activities such as Explorium Denton and a proposed kids museum. We fit perfectly into the proposed innovation district near the train station. This vision was at first a hard sell, even to our board of directors. As an urban planner, I could not sell the idea that the area could be very different with time. But none of us were convinced that we should move there, but something has changed. Now the time is of the essence. There is a new momentum to creating a vibrant and innovative district in an industrial dead zone. Rather than vast tracks of underutilized property from a by gone era, we can now catalyze a new vision of innovators living and working in the downtown and attracting the best creatives that Denton has to offer. So I ask you, as you work on the rail yard project and this high tech hub with apartments, that you consider our request because we are emerging Denton. We are the perfect addition and centerpiece of such a district. And as Access Realty has said in the letter that was addressed to the council, they see great potential in us moving there. As you will hear, we have accomplished a great deal in six years. Growing from approximately 15 vendors in the first year to now over 150 vendors. We have about 70 to 100 per week. We are ready to move to the next level of having a permanent and growing location that can serve the community in many ways year round. It can be a great city parking lot, but also a multi- purpose site with green space and dense space. Please help us by approving our request to make the market even better and make the city of Denton even more attractive and livable for the most creative and brightest. You will hear a series of speakers that will make our case that this is the time to fund us. For we will provide a great return on investment, and I know that's been a question in the past, to the community as we promote new synergies between our successful model for innovation and what is happening there. I also did hear the work session earlier today, and we would be very interested in partnering with the city in creating outreach to businesses in the community, to fostering small business. This is what we do already. So we are already experts at this in small business incub ation. We'd be very interested in that. Thank you. >> Thank you. The next speaker will be Katie Tries. >> Hello, Mayor and Council. My name is Katie Tries, 2118 Preston Place. I'm the founder and the vendor manager of the Denton Community Market. Of the 150 members in the market this season alone, 70% of those are artists and handmade craftsmen and women. The community market as an arts organization creates space for a wide variety of artists to make their art and have an audience. Our stage is another example of how we encourage performing arts. Music, song, story, and dance have all utilized the community market as a platform for expression in the arts in our community. All of these 150 members in the market are also startup businesses, many of which are owned by women and people of color. And the market is a springboard for anyone to have a great idea and transform it into a business. This is the American dream as I see it. To do what you love and to make a living doing that thing. The people of the market are producers of their products and they have a passion and purpose and intensity for what they do. It's these kinds of people that make a place come alive with ideas and create a real sense of place. That's the kind of place that I want to live in. Encouraging these entrepreneurs embodies the market's mission to strengthen the Denton community by providing economic opportunities to artists, businesses, food vendors, and food producers to contribute to the vitality and livability of Denton. And one of our six guiding principles is to reduce barriers to entry for new entrepreneurs and small businesses. We are a small business incubator. The market's success at fulfilling these goals that guide our organization is illustrated by the many success stories from small businesses that have launched and grown their business at the market and because of the market. You'll hear from some of them tonight. The success stories include the Pickled Carrot, Johnson's Backyard Garden Denton, the Dime Store, Soma Massage, and many more that have started small in a vendor booth at the market and developed their ideas and business to grow into a brick and mortar location. I want to encourage you as leaders of our community to support the market in this year's budget so that we may as an organization facilitate more growth for Denton's smallest businesses and may continue to facilitate and support the arts. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Emily White. State your name and address, please. >> I'm Emily White. I live at 1205 North Austin Street. To say that I'm Denton Community Market's most avid volunteer would be an understatement. 2015 is my third year to leap out of bed at 8 AM on a Saturday morning to serve my community at the corner of Sycamore and Carroll. I will continue to do so until Vicki or Katie tell me to stop. In the three years I have been a volunteer for the market, I have observed this. Denton Community Market adds to the existing festival ethos of Denton with its lively atmosphere. In a community that celebrates coffin races, antique autos, arts and jazz, red bread trees, 35 Denton, and a myriad of occasions that reflect the vibrant and joyful community, the Denton Community Market has earned its rank as one of the foremost family oriented events in our city. What we celebrate at the market is the opportunity to live a healthy life. When we visit the market, we are celebrating the opportunity to access locally grown produce, the opportunity to learn about local art, and the opportunity to be engaged with our community in a social capacity. In a community as celebratory as Denton, I can't think of a more important element than celebrating access to healthy food and local artistry. The Denton Community Market is a primary vehicle for this kind of celebration. Not only does the Denton Community Market promote local food, but the market also promotes the work of Denton's finest musicians. From Warren Jackson Hearn to The Holler Time to Daniel Mark ham to Kim Nall, Richard Gilbert, the Denton Community Market provides quality entertainment free of charge to all family members. These musicians are committed to supporting our mission. The Denton Community Market is a vital element to our community. The market fosters healthy living and a cheerful meeting place for residents of all ages. Please continue to support the Denton Community Market. Thank you for being my city council members and thank you for volunteering for this job. >> Thank you. >> The next speaker will be Jason Schreiber. State your name and address and come on down. >> My name is Jason Schreiber and I'm at 628 Woodland Street. Good evening. I am co-owner of Lion Bear Naked Soap Company. I'm reporting to you as a Denton citizen, Denton business owner, and industry innovator. On August 3rd, 2013, the Denton Community Market granted us entry. We sold our first bottle to our first client. In the last two years, we have generated $10,000 at this market, sold 2,600 units, and reached 200 plus new clients per day. We have been provided a fast track platform that is rivaled by no other means for a small business startup. From my experience attending other markets, there is no other producer-only community-based market that fosters new innovations in multiple industries. September 2013, one month into our endeavor, a writer for an online publication, Culture Map in Dallas, approached us at our booth. Diana Oates was impressed and published an article featuring our soap company and a mention of the Denton Community Market. The article opens with, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." In November 2013, a writer for the Dallas Child magazine purchased our products and wrote an article about us. The readers in the DFW Metroplex traveled to the Denton Community Market for their new favorite soaps and cleaners. Just a few weeks ago, August 8th, the Denton Record Chron icle printed an article on the front page of the business section about Lion Bear Naked Soap Company. Cited in the article is the Denton Community Market. On the first day this article was posted, we received 270 likes and 90 shares from the citizens of Denton. Here are a few of the comments. "Found them at the farmers market in Denton over July 4th. Loved the shampoo. I have been buying from them for two years. I love supporting local businesses. We love seeing our community market friends in the news." The exponential growth built at the Denton Market has opened up a sustainable revenue stream to start selling online. Since January of this year, we have been able to ship our products to 35 states, a U.S. military base located in Japan, and also have interest in Canada. Our five-year goals have been met and surpassed, three years ahead of schedule. This would have not been possible without the dedicated support from the citizens of Denton and the Denton Community Market. Our business has paid over 1,300 in taxes over the last two years. To get an accurate representation of the total potential income for the city, a multiplier of 100 is needed to account for all the vendors that attend the Denton Community Market yearly. This is expected to increase year after year as local businesses at the Denton Market expand clientele. The economic impact does not stop at the edges of all of our tents. A financial domino effect is created when 100 small businesses attract new clients from outside Denton. Those people will spend money throughout Denton at hotels, gas stations, restaurants, city-sponsored events, and may even need to pay a parking ticket or two. The impact of the Denton Community Market is global. Together, we can start a new chapter of the Denton Community Market with Denton's most innovative business owners and the Denton City Council. Thank you. Thank you. This speaker is Matthew, is it Salak? Sorry if I didn't pronounce that correctly. I've heard worse. Okay. Hi, my name is Matthew Salak and I live at 1425 Bolivar. I'm sorry, 1425 what? Bolivar Street. Not too far. I'm sorry. Howdy, my name is Matthew Salak and I own a business called Otter Illustration. I sell prints, postcards, greeting cards, stickers, buttons , magnets, and plush toys with my artwork on them. I'm a vendor at the Denton Community Market as well as a member of the Board of Directors for the Denton Community Market. As a member of the Board of Directors for the Community Market, I bring to the table direct feedback from the vendor perspective. And talking today, I would briefly like to emphasize the role the market has had in growing my business personally as well as the broader scope of the positive effects it has on the Denton community. Denton has a strong movement right now of innovative entrepreneurship, creative and industrious people are flo cking to Denton as new opportunities arise. The citizens here are receptive and supportive of independent business. This has led to the success of the Denton Community Market, which in return has led to the success of startup companies like mine. It's a harmonious relationship that's going on here right now. The local commerce has really been boosted by the overwhelming pride people have in Denton. Earlier this year, I quit my job and started working my business full time. If it weren't for the market, I more than likely would not have done so. Setting up each Saturday morning at the market is basically my work shift for the week. And if I miss the market, it's like missing a week of work. I would estimate that the sales of any given day at the DCM , the Denton Community Market, that is, make up about 60 to 70 percent of my overall income for my business. Not to mention that I get many individual custom commissions, real work as a freelance artist designer as a result of the DCM. In fact, I'm currently working on two jobs for clients who I met with at the DCM. In this sense, the market acts as a hub and exchange of ideas and referrals for business. I now have a huge network now of fellow vendors who I can utilize for me personally or for my business. And if it weren't for the DCM, I might not even know these businesses exist. I appreciate on any given Saturday being able to get face to face with the Denton Community and any visitors to our fair town. It's a chance to gather new fans, build the brand of my business, and of course, make sales with the DCM. A small business can show proof of concept. I can display my products, people buy them, and this enables me to keep growing the scale of my business. In this sense, the DCM acts as an incubator for young businesses. It's a low cost entry point to start selling to the general public right away. You can use the market as a place to get effective and efficient face to face marketing. The DCM has many applications and invaluable uses for small independent businesses that you simply can't get anywhere else. Lastly, the DCM is a tourist destination. I am blown away when I see my products pop up all over the Metroplex. There are several markets around the Metroplex, but we undoubtedly have one of the best ones here in Denton. Many businesses are making the choice to set up shop at the DCM rather than Dallas or Fort Worth or wherever else because it has become so viable. So not only does the market draw people into our city as its attendees, but also more and more business owners are making Denton part of the business regimen. I love meeting people who are visiting from out of town and acting as an ambassador for the place I call home. The Denton community market acts as a cornerstone to a thriving environment of small business here in Denton. I consider the DCM as a place where the people can directly connect to the city and the city can connect with its people. It's a place where you don't just go to buy fresh produce, a handmade bag, or a really funny greeting card. It's a place where we can all get together and share a love for Denton and all the unique things it has to offer. Shop local, shop small. If that is a mantra that we believe in, we must continue to support the Denton community market. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. The next speaker is Kimberly Bynes. Bien. Bien. Boy, I was way off. No, you go in. Oh, okay. My name is Kimberly Bynes and I live at 5524 Woodland Hills Drive in Denton. And I'm the owner, artisan, of Salted Sanctuary. Good evening, by the way. I'm a little nervous, so bear with me. I create luxury bath products, including soap, body scrubs, bath salts, lotions, and more, which are made in my home studio and sold primarily at the Denton community market. How I came to be there is I used to have a pretty nice career in retail. But I found that I couldn't use a lot of the products that are out there. I managed mainly beauty product companies. And so I started making products at home that I could use. And my family used them. And then pretty soon I was giving them out gifts. And then I was selling them on demand. And I just did that for a long time, about 10 years. And then my twins were at college here at UNT. And they said, hey, mom, you should sell your products, your natural products at this natural market. And my business began very organically, just like that. In 2012, I joined as a vendor. My first year sales were $900. The next year, we're $2,900, a 31% increase. The following year, 2014, I had a 60% increase of $4,800. And this is just at the market. The following-- or this year, I'm trending up 96% with a modest projection of doing $9,400 in sales just at the community market. Did something happen on the screen? Might have-- I'm sorry. Go ahead. And we'll make sure that you have your time. No, it's OK. Yes. I just want to make sure. No, I'm fine. I will-- I talk fast. No, you're good. No, take your time. So this is just at the community market. I have a website. If you look at it, I will be embarrassed. There's no product on it. Just due to the demand at the Denton community market, I cannot-- I didn't pull up your-- No, I don't need it. You sure? Yes. Thank you. Just due to the demand, I couldn't-- and being myself-- and I do have one part-time employee now that's not a volunteer like my husband. I can't keep a website stocked at this time due to the demand, the face-to-face demand at the Denton community market. In addition to selling and growing my business, relationships within the DCM have been a catalyst for additional sales through products being placed-- my products being placed in brick and mortar stores in Dent on, which generates more sales tax. And we love that. DCM also provides visibility of products for other venues benefiting the city and the community through fundraising and sales tax revenue, such as 35 Denton, our blues and jazz festivals, and the local high school craft shows. In 2015, I also became a DCM board member because of what the market stands for and to be able to utilize my time and experience to help facilitate its growth, to help benefit the community as well. I'm there every Saturday as well, whether I'm working or not. I was off last Saturday due to another commitment, but I was there by the end of the day. I just couldn't stay away. There are other philanthropy benefits to the community that are often generated at the DCM. I'm doing an upcoming project with the Wheeler House later this week, which is-- they approached me at the market. And I just like it how we're all connected. I see everybody from work. I have another full-time job. I see everybody from church. I see someone that I met at the grocery store. I saw somebody that I met at Harvest House there. I love that, how we're all connected. And I'm really asking for you to consider it not just for us as a vendor, but for the whole community. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Hagatha Pien. Did I say that right? Same spelling, so I'm not sure. I think it was the person who gave me the list. My name is Hagatha Bines. Oh, sorry. And I live at 1901 Panhandle Street. So when in early 2011, I was faced with the possibility of moving to Denton from the East Coast, I did what I think many of us do when we're about to embark on a new relationship. I Googled it. So what did I Google when I was thinking about moving to Denton? What kind of community did I want to become a part of? So I have to admit, the first thing I did was I'd like to see what kind of bicycle groups and organizations were in town. What kind of bicycling community was in Denton. But the second search that I did was to see what kind of farmers or community market this city hosted. That was something that was really important to me and was symbolic of the kind of community that I wanted to be a part of. So the fact that the community market even existed in Dent on was something that made the city more desirable for me. And I think of it as something that can not just support people who already live here, but can attract people to come to our city for various reasons. I am also a teacher. And when I meet new students and tell them about Denton as a city, the community market is always something that I include in my list of things that make the city a great place to live. So my first Saturday in Denton, this is in the middle of summer in late July, I went to the market and wandering around, I remember going to the Earthwise Produce booth and confronting these baskets of like tiny, lumpy, misshapen peaches, not like the peaches you see in the northeast that are like, you know, big as watermelons. But, you know, in the spirit of trying new things and embracing a new community, I bought my first basket of peaches. And they redefined what a peach was for me eating them. And I think that that is also something that's really important and that people have mentioned that when we are able to buy local produce, we get a higher quality of food, we get food that's more nutritious, and we get food that is beautiful and amazing and makes us happy to be alive. So that is something that the market gave to me in my very first weeks here in Denton. And I kept coming back, right? I mean, it wasn't just the peaches, but that helped. And it made the market a place that I have kept coming back to in the past four years. Something else that's important to me and that I feel the market symbolizes is a commitment to nurturing and supporting local businesses, which is something that people have already mentioned. So I won't spend much time on it. But I know that you know that when money is spent locally on local goods and on local independent businesses, it's more likely to recirculate in that community. So an investment now in the market and giving them a more permanent space that accommodates their needs, I think, will provide a foundation for a longer term economic vibrancy in the city. And then the market is important to me not just as a place where I can purchase things, but it's also a really important space of community for me. So my Saturday morning routine is I go to Tai Chi in the morning at TWU. And then there's coffee and tacos at Fuzzy's afterward. And I often will stop in the market in between Tai Chi and Fuzzy's. And I always tell everybody, I'm just going to swing by the market. I'm just going to get some things really quickly. And inevitably, 45 minutes later, I show up at Fuzzy's. And everybody wonders, where have I been? Because at the market, I always run into people I know. And I always meet new people that I'm happy to have encountered. And I think that the market provides this really important space where people come together who can reinforce their sense of community and belonging with each other, but also meet people you might not meet in other spaces. And so the market is a space where I feel connected to the people of Denton and to Denton as a place. It's part of what makes Denton feel very much like a place I want to call home. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Ryan Crocker. Hello, everybody. I'm Ryan Crocker. And I'm really grateful to be here tonight. Ryan, what's your address? My address is 728 North Elm Street. And I'm real grateful to be here tonight on behalf of the Denton community market. And I'm grateful to Katie and Vicki for inviting me, because it gives me a chance to give a little something back to the market that has given me so much in my business. And we started in 2011 when the market was about a year old . And I remember the peaches that Agatha was talking about, because that's what I do. I went and started off at the market just picking from local farms. We'd pick tomatoes and peaches and watermelons and then sell them at the market. And I had had a background in market gardening and farming in New Mexico when I came to Denton, but we had no land. I lived on Austin Street in a little triplex. And Vicki was nice enough to offer a lot next to her house, a quarter acre vacant lot. And that's how we started growing in Denton. And from there, it's grown to-- it was an acre for a couple of years. And then this year, we expanded to 11 acres in partnership with Singing Oaks Church on the east side of town. And we have one of the largest certified organic urban farms in the country. And we are partnered with the largest certified organic mixed vegetable farm in the state, which is a great thing for Denton to have, I think, in the city. It's right in line with y'all's vision for the 2030 vision plan, one of the things that y'all-- many things that y'all have envisioned for the city. But in the spirit of that vision, I'm really excited to see what happens with this new development in the rail yard, because it brings me back to my time in New Mexico selling at a farmer's market that was part of a rail yard district. I don't know what it is, what the magic is with trains and farmer's markets. But that was a really magical place for me to start at the Santa Fe farmer's market. And so I'm excited to see what kind of market can grow here in Denton. At the rail yard. But to me, I think getting back to my roots in the market, I think what I love the most about what Katie and Vicki have created is it's so supportive of people with an idea. And it's so accessible. And so it was a real springboard for us to just meeting the community and trying to figure out what we could do that they enjoyed. And we did a lot of sales. We did, you know, two years ago we were doing about a thousand a week at the market. And, you know, it's kind of dropped off since then because some rule changes and stuff affected our business. But we're excited to be back this fall with more produce than ever from our Denton farm. And expecting really good things in the future. So I think it would be a great thing for you all to support . Thank you. >> Thank you. Next speaker is Jeffrey. Is it Rouse? Rouse? Jeffrey? I'm sorry. >> That's exactly right. >> All right. Thank you. >> I had the same English teacher for two years in high school. And she couldn't get it right after two years. So, well, good evening. I come here today not only as a Denton community market-- oh, by the way, I live at 12938 Epshield Road in Farmers Branch, Texas. I come here today not only as a Denton community market board member but also as an economics professor at UNT. One of the courses I teach is Urban Economics. And one of the lectures I give is on the evaluation of local public expenditure just like this. Cities often commission consultants to provide an economic evaluation of certain projects. I'm sure you guys have seen those. And in every one of the studies I've looked at in preparing my course, the methodology used was wrong. In fact, the day in my course where I have the students critique and outline the flaws in Jerry Jones' study asking Arlington for $300 million is one of the more entertaining days of my class. Now, economic consultants tend to focus on sales tax revenue and a whole host of other factors that are really irrelevant to the question that they've been asked to analyze. Well, why is that? Well, conceptually, the right methodology is ridiculously simple. Will an expenditure on a project cause the overall value of property in the city to rise? Empirically, however, doing that analysis is almost impossible. Teasing out how much property value changes can be tied to one project or another is very hard to do, probably not possible. So, but in that sort of spirit, let's take a look at the community market proposal. So, will this investment in the market cause property values in Denton and will it cause the value of Denton to rise? So, let's assume as sort of a thought experiment that the market infrastructure that we're going to put in with this $300,000 will last for six years and then will depreciate to zero and just disappear, which won't happen, but we've got to keep it simple. Now, we say that $300,000 or let's assume that $300,000 is raised by either, let's say raising taxes in the city by 50 cents a person or maybe $3 per property owner. I don't know how many property owners there are that pay property tax in Denton, but let's say they each have to pony up $3 per year for this six-year window. If on average people in Denton think that this investment, this tradeoff between having a market and this small tax is worth it, then that means the value of Denton will rise. Now, if we look at some of the players in this, we can see, well, how is it that the value of Denton might rise? We have over 100 vendors and 50,000 visitors per year to the market. Most of these people are from Denton. Now, to the extent as to what, well, whether people are buyers or sellers at the market, vendors or people who participate by coming to the market, they think the market is improving their quality of life in Denton. To the extent it does that, it attracts people to want to be in Denton, live in Denton, work in Denton. That increases property values. Many of the visitors to the market come from elsewhere, right? They're spending money here, and because the market tends to complement other purchases, they contribute spending elsewhere in the local economy because people come to the market and then they stop off at other places. In fact, they had one person the first week of the market tell me that they had never, ever considered living in Denton until that day, that the market had that much of an effect on their perception of the city. That's going to increase property values. Some vendors develop their businesses and move into more permanent locations in Denton. That increases property values. The rail yard developers have already given us a strong indication that they think that the market is really essential to the value of their property. So that increases property values in Denton. So I think overall it's pretty clear that this investment is not only good for the market, but it's also good for Denton. Thank you very much. >> Well, thank you. Thank you very much. >> All right, that ends it. That group of speakers, Mr. Hutspeth's here, so wanted to give you an opportunity. And I don't think we need to, Mr. Hutspeth, you need us to replay the rules of procedure for not to call us names and things that I think you've heard that, you probably say that in your sleep. >> But I would like clarification on those rules, please, somebody. When I'm not supposed to mention names, but if it's the, for example, the city manager who I'm mostly talking about, am I allowed to mention that department or that person or any of his employees? Is that part of that don't mention the name deal? >> I'm going to defer to legal counsel on that in that regard. And then once that question gets answered, if you'll state your name and address, then you're telling me again. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> No, it's the actual person's name. I mean, I know that we can deduce who he might be speaking about, but I think at the safer course, it would probably be talking about the actual department itself. >> Well, the city manager. Can I mention the position? >> Maybe city management? >> City manager. >> Okay. >> It's okay. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> All right. >> All right. >> Thanks, sir. Name and address, please. >> William Hutspeth? >> Yes. >> I live at 623 Newton, Mayor and other council members. Good evening. I hear talking about what has happened to me here lately, again, what has happened to me. And that is in my small business and what the city manager and his people are telling me to do. I know you are city council. You're not to micromanage what's happening in the administration in this city. But I am so frustrated. I don't know who to go to. The city manager and his people aren't talking. They remind me so much of what my father went through as I was in the living room, hiding behind the door, and the city official was talking to him and making him feel real bad and just talking to him like he had no rights at all. You're not going to get very far with me by bullying me. Bully? Here's the statement. It's the law. I have interpreted it to be this way and you can either do it or you'll get the consequences of it. Now you need to listen to the tape that I talked to one of the code enforcement people today. Listen to it and hear what was said. That's how my take on it. You just, something's gotta be done. So it looks like it's going to take me five months or more to come down and make my case. All you give me is four minutes. But I'm going to. You're not going to bully me. You're just not going to bully me. I'm not going to go through what my dad went through and the embarrassment he went through and the way that people treated him, you're not going to do it to me. I'm going to go to court if I have to go to court. Let me just give you an example of what I'm talking about with this code enforcement. You can't, now hear the rules. You cannot have trash out front. I agree with that. Well, in my location, especially when schools start, the kids bring over their trash and dump it on my property. Here are the suggested solutions that the code enforcement person told me. And all of them cost me money. Larger container. More trips out there to take care of the trash. And beyond that, it's your responsibility. You take care of the trash and if you don't, then we will cite you. Now here's the issue. I've got stuff out there right now that someone dumped a great big couch and it's every day someone dumps a couch on my property. And I have to take it away, do something with it. I said, so he's coming back out to inspect it to see if I 've gotten the trash removed. But he can come back every Thursday and he'll see the trash is gone. But by Friday, it's back out there. So I said to him, well, what if your inspection day, someone dumped it the morning before I got there, what are you going to do? If it's there on the day that I inspected, he told me, my goodness, what am I going to do with that situation? You're going to be cited. So my solution to that is, okay, cite me, we'll just go to court. Now that's ridiculous. That's one. The other is, I can't park my vehicle on a not improved service, as he told me. That means it can't be on the grass. Well, I've got to go around my building to get to where I'm supposed to dump it, to take my stuff off. How in the world can I justify, with a small business, behaving or putting limestone down, or whatever stone he said I have to do, how can I justify putting that just to make a circle around the building? And on and on and on. And then he told me, you just do what you need to do. I've got the blessings of the city manager to do that. And that's what I'm talking about. I'll see you Tuesday. >> Thank you, Mr. Hesbitt. All right, that concludes our agenda item three, which is presentation from members of the public. We'll now move to the consent agenda. Let me flip my screen so I can see who's. Yes, I'm sorry. What was that? >> 3C. >> I'm sorry. Yeah, that's correct. Sorry, I missed it. This is a new feature for city council meetings, which is agenda item 3C, which is additional citizen reports, which these are reports that if you have some comments about something going on in the city that are unrelated to an agenda item this evening that you're not speaking on, then you're certainly welcome to come down and talk for, I believe it's four minutes for items that are not on this particular agenda. So is there anybody here wishing to speak under agenda item 3C? Seeing none, all right. Thank you very much, Madam City Secretary, for reminding me . It was sort of covered over with my writing. So now we'll move on to consent agenda item four. Council Member Johnson. >> Thank you, Mayor. I would move approval of item, did anybody, I was going to move approval of item four, approval of consent agenda with the removal of items I, J, R, and S. >> Okay, that's right. Did we have any other request to pull any other items for individual consideration on that? Okay, all right. So we've had a motion by Council Member Johnson, Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. >> Second. >> All right, and just for clarification, those items that you mentioned are pulled, those are pulled from the agenda totally. In other words, there's no staff presentation. >> Eliminated from the agenda. >> Yes, all right. We have a motion, let's vote on the board, please. Oh, I'm sorry. Well. All right, motion carries six zero. We'll now move on to agenda item five, which is items for individual consideration. Which is agenda item five A, considered option of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas approving economic development agreement between the city of Denton and Victory Equipment Company. >> Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to ask Amy Bissett, our Director of Development Services, if she would present this item for your consideration. >> Thank you, Mayor and City Council Members. Let me get our presentation up here real quick. Under consideration tonight is an incentive for Victor Equ ipment. They are a local company in Denton. And you can see on the screen above you an approximate location of where they are today. They're just to the west of the merge of I-35E and I-35W, in this area right here. We are considering an incentive and we are given the authority under Chapter 380 of the Texas Local Government Code to provide economic development incentives that accomplish a public purpose. And economic development is considered a public purpose when it increases and diversifies the tax base, when it adds jobs and otherwise benefits the economy for the citizens of Denton. And so what you're considering tonight is an incentive grant that is authorized under Chapter 380. I'll start with an overview of Victor. They are a global manufacturer. They essentially make specialty welding tools. And they were founded in 1913 in San Francisco and they've been in the Denton area since the 1960s. Last year they were acquired by Colfax Corporation. They have an existing facility in Denton located at 2800 Airport Road. They are looking at an expansion of this facility and it would become their corporate headquarters and would create 100 new jobs in Denton. We'll compare their current facility with their expansion project. They're in a little over 200,000 square feet today. They have a need to update their facility. And they have 414 full time employees. Their expansion project will almost double their footprint, adding an additional 185,000 square feet. It will provide an opportunity to update the facility and improve the site. They will be utilizing this facility to consolidate some other operations. So they'll be bringing 100 employees from another facility. They'll be adding a 30,000 square foot research and development operation, which is also a consolidation. And they will be creating 100 new jobs in Denton. Their capital investment is going to be approximately $30 million. One of the things that we look for when we consider granting an incentive in Denton is we'd like to see them involved in the local community. We want to see that they're good corporate citizens. Victor Equipment has been involved with the Denton ISD Advanced Technology Complex for a number of years. Pictured here is a group of students who won a national contest in 2014 for a welding competition. And Victor was the sponsor of that competition and awarded $4,000 in cash and equipment. They are a good corporate citizen and they're involved in Denton and support our Advanced Technology Complex, which has a very popular welding program. The Economic Development Partnership Board considered their incentive application. And this is the type of application that we would consider to be almost ideal when we're looking for specific activity in Denton. We want to first and foremost support our existing businesses and help them be successful. And when we have an opportunity to incentivize an expansion project, which is further investment in Denton, creation of jobs, consolidation, and creating a corporate headquarters, that's an important aspect of economic development for us. And we're very glad that Victor is choosing to make that investment in Denton. The Economic Development Partnership Board has considered their request. They are recommending to you a 65% property tax rebate for seven years. This would be on the increment only. So the base value of their facility today would not be included in that incentive. It would be their new valuation over and above the taxes that they're paying today. The EDP board also recommended that we require at least a $ 6.5 million investment. And that gives them some flexibility and some room. And they also put a requirement to maintain a certain number of the new jobs that they've committed to at a certain wage level. And they would like to see that Victor at least retain 85% of the 200 jobs that they're bringing to Denton. And their average wage that they've committed to is $28.81, which is an hour, which is equivalent of about $60,000 a year. The benefits to the city is that we expect the valuation of this project to increase by $16 million, which will generate for the city during the life of the incentive an additional $37,000 a year, approximately, in tax revenue. And after the incentive is expired, we generate another $ 110,000 for the city. We would be the beneficiary of a new headquarters and a new research and development facility. And the beneficiary of improvements to Airport Road as a result of this. And net new jobs of 200. And with that, I will answer any questions. I will acknowledge that we have representatives from Victor Equipment in the audience if you have any questions specifically for them. Amy, I've just got one question. I apologize. It skipped me in the work session. First of all, I really appreciate your hard work on this and Victor making that decision. We were there, Council Member Wasey and I were there at the groundbreaking and what a great, great opportunity for Dent on. On that, I think it was a, did you say that was the salary requirement part of the incentive or is that was just something, I mean, was that like a condition? It is a condition of the incentive. It is stated in their incentive that they have to show every year that the average salary of the new jobs is equivalent to that average amount. If they come in below that, we have a pro rated incentive schedule. So they wouldn't, it wouldn't disqualify them from an incentive entirely, but it would be pro rated. And that's only for the life of that incentive, which is six years, I think that's that particular. OK, seven years and that's correct. Seven years. I'm sorry. Yes, I'm sorry. OK, Council Member Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item five A. Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval of agenda item five A. Let's vote on the board, please. Wait a minute. Yeah, yeah, that's there's six of us here. So if we could revote, please, it somehow didn't didn't take. No, it was Council Member Rodin. He's. We have a motion to second. Let's vote, please, on agenda item five A. Do what I'm told to do. Motion carries six zero agenda item five B. Consider nomination slash appointments to the city boards and commissions. They're listed there in the agenda. I have one that I need to add, but would entertain if there 's any any others that are needing to be added at this time that are not on the list. As provided in the backup, I would like to submit the tenant Hilda Brands name for my nominee for the animal shelter advisory committee. And then I know I've got a couple that are outstanding, so I will certainly have those for sure by the next council meeting. My apologies to the city secretary and my colleagues. Council member, member Tim Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we approve the board and commission nominations as amended by your addition this evening. Council member was knee. I second the motion. All right, we have a motion and a second for agenda item five B. Let's vote, please. Motion carries six zero agenda item five C. Consider appointing a nominating committee to recommend appointees to serve on the economic development partnership board. I don't believe we've had any discussion on that with council, but maybe we're going to address that. The economic development partnership board is a board that is a combination partnership between the city of Denton and the Chamber of Commerce. And there are currently nine members serving on that board. The nomination process for the board is different than the other boards and commissions that you appoint members to because this is a partnership board. There are currently nine members. They serve staggering two-year terms. And the way that appointments are made is the city council appoints a nominating committee first. And that nominating committee is made up of two council members and one representative from the Chamber of Commerce board. That nominating committee would then meet and would take a look at nominations. In this particular case, we've had a change to the way nominations are made due to a change in the EDP ordinance earlier this spring. We've added two additional members for a total of 11 members. These two members would be those that would be nominated by the Black Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. And so the nominating committee would solicit nominations from those boards as well as from the normal appointments that are assigned by the EDP ordinance. So tonight what we are asking you to do is to go ahead and appoint the nominating committee who would then come back and make recommendations for appointments at a future meeting. I will tell you that the Chamber of Commerce has asked that their representative be Virgil Strange, who is currently on the EDP board but is rolling off this year. So he would be one of the three nominating committee members. And then the council would select the other two and make and appoint all three members to the nominating committee. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Any questions? I guess we need to choose. I mean, my colleagues here and I, we need to see who wants to serve as those two council members. So any thoughts? Council Member Johnson. So Mayor, you and I are the council appointees on the Economic Development Board. Correct. Currently. We are the one serving on the board. So I guess the question for my colleagues here is, would you guys like for us to do it? Do we want to? What I'm thinking about here is given that we're in those meetings and in the mix on a regular basis, should we do that or would you like to have someone other than us? They could consult with us. Well, you know, I can only speak for myself, but I would, for me personally, I would like for someone else to do that in my stead just because since I am in the meetings and I've got some ideas about my position on that board of whether I want to maybe have another council member as well serve on that board in my stead since I've served. So I think it'd be best for me if someone else was part of that nominating committee. For me, if we had these, if it was the two people that were on that board. So would you, would you like? Well, Amy, for clarification, we're who this nominating committee. Amy, let me ask you a clarification. This nominating committee, will it nominate all members or is this simply nominating the members that represent the council? It's nominating all members. Correct. That's what I thought. So I guess the main thing is whoever is on, I don't care, but whoever is on it should have a good working knowledge of those people in the business community, top 10 taxpayers, all those different roles that sit on the ADP board. And I'll provide some resources and information to that committee as well to help inform those decisions. So in that case, council member, I think council member. Council member Rodin is up. Oh. Yeah. Okay. To speak. I'll stop. Yeah. I just pressed the button at a time when it looked like you were looking for volunteers to help with something. I'm happy to help. Should that be of need? Okay. All right. Council, Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. I'd be happy to do it also. Have five years on the board. So pretty much understand. Okay. So I understand the council member Rodin and Mayor Pro Tem Gregory, y'all are volunteering to be the two council representatives on that. Do we hear any objections to that, to those two appointments to that committee? Seeing none, then do we need to do this by motion or? Okay. This needs to be a motion. All right. This is an action item. Okay. Council. Oh, sorry. And it also needs to include the appointment of the chamber representative. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Council member Johnson. So I would move to nominate to the economic development partnership board nominating committee, I guess to a point to the nominating committee. Mr. Virgil Strange, council member Rodin and Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. Chair, would entertain a second for that motion? I can't make a second. Council member Rodin. I'll strangely second that. Okay. All right. Nothing like a self-promoter. No, I'm just kidding. Council member Rodin. I'm just teasing you, obviously. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. We now come to our public hearing portion of the agenda. Agenda item 6. 6A is hold a public hearing on a proposal to adopt a tax rate of 0.696380 per 100 valuation. Mr. City Manager, and I believe we've got a, we're trying to implement a new procedure where before the staff presentation, I go ahead and open the public hearing. Is that correct? Correct. All right. Come on down, Mr. Springer. Chair, Springer will present the item. And so I will now open the public hearing for staff presentation. Any public comments? Thank you, Mayor. This item is required by state law anytime the city prop oses a tax rate above the lower of the effective rate or rollback rate, we 're required to hold two public hearings on the tax rate. This year's proposed maximum tax rate, 0.69638 cents. Our effective rate is 0.656271. Our rollback rate, 0.721554. The proposed maximum rate exceeds the effective rate. So therefore, we're holding this public hearing to get input on the proposed tax rate. I'm sorry. Could you repeat what the effective rate is? What was that rate? 0.656271. And could you very briefly just describe or define what that effective rate is? The effective rate is a calculation set by state law to try to determine what rate would bring in the same amount of property taxes as the prior year on like property. So you look at property in the new year, exclude new development, and try to come up with a rate that would bring in the exact same amount of tax dollars as the prior year. Okay. All right. Any – okay. Does that conclude the presentation? Yes. Do we have any questions for staff before we entertain any public comments at this time? I guess I only – I just want to make sure I understand for clarification, for the public's clarification. So basically, this 0.696380 is prescribed by law to say this is the maximum the rate can be, but it doesn't mean that we as a council couldn't choose to adopt a rate that's lower than that. Correct. All right. Any questions? Seeing none for staff, thank you. And this is a public hearing. So anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on the proposed adopted tax rate as prescribed by law? Seeing none. I guess since there's two public hearings, we close the public hearing. You close this public hearing and the next – the second public hearing would be on September 1st. All right. Seeing no speakers, we will close the public hearing on agenda item 6A, which, my understanding, requires no action at this time. Correct. We'll go on to agenda item 6B, public hearing, which is hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance amending section 35137A7E I. Holy cow. Good heavens. Of the development code pertaining to permit uses of the tree fund. Thank you, Mayor. I'm asking me to present this item. Yes, come on down. And I guess we – And explain that section number, please. Yes. And I guess this is a public hearing, so we will – I will now open the public hearing. Mayor Pro Tem Gregory, did you have a comment? I thought that that – I didn't think that the citation was correct. I thought it was 35.13.7.A.7.E.I.E.I.O. Oh, okay. We still have a closed session to get through after this. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor and City Councilmembers. What you're considering tonight is an amendment to the D inton Development Code that would pertain to the permitted uses of the tree fund. The tree fund accumulates, as you know, when a developer or a builder needs to remove trees in order to put up a building. When they do that, they pay into a tree mitigation fund, which is set aside to be used to purchase, plant, and maintain trees on public property, to preserve wooded property, and to perform and maintain a citywide tree inventory. We do have tree fund expenditure criteria, and part of that criteria lays out for the staff and for the City Council the desired types of projects that would be utilized or would be funded by the tree fund. And that criteria calls for 75% of the tree fund to be used for tree planting and maintenance, which is the majority of what we're going to be talking about today. 15% for the purchase of wooded property, 5% for citywide tree inventories, and 5% for public education. The purpose of the amendment that you're considering tonight is to expand the types of expenditures that would be permitted in order to allow the use of tree funds for existing and new tree planting programs that are facil itated by Keep Denton Beautiful. I'm personally excited to be the one up here presenting this to you all tonight. As you know, or many of you know, I was an employee of Keep Denton Beautiful for about seven years before I moved into economic development. And so it's fun for me to see this opportunity come to fruition for KDB. The proposed changes would allow for the purchase of trees for planting on private properties in the city, which is the substance of the change that we're proposing, and the funding of a tree rebate program, which would essentially allow citizens to go purchase and plant a tree and receive a commensurate rebate for having done so with certain guidelines. This is mirroring an existing program that the city already has, called Green Sense, where citizens can make energy efficiency upgrades to their home and receive rebates in that regard. This would essentially allow KDB to continue their existing tree programs, including the tree giveaway, the Redbud Festival, which includes giving away trees there, Neighbor Woods programs, and KDB has a long history of successful tree planting programs in the community, and allowing this change in the Denton Development Code would give us an opportunity to fund additional tree planting activities using the existing community-based model that KDB has implemented for years. The objective here is to really get down the cost associated with tree planting so that we can leverage the funds to the greatest benefit. As you know, for the Parks Department to plant a public tree and maintain it costs about $900 per tree. There's irrigation associated with that, labor associated with that, and maintenance. With this particular program, we anticipate that the per tree cost would be about $69, because we would be utilizing the KDB network, the KDB volunteers, and our private citizens who would choose to plant and care for the tree on their own. This would also be utilized for KDB to create new programs and initiatives to be able to increase the number of trees that they're getting out into the community. The DDC amendment that you're considering tonight is amending that Section 35 to allow the use of the Tree Fund for specific programs proposed by KDB and approved by the City Council. They would include neighborhood hosted giveaways, business tree giveaways, redbud trees being given away at that festival, citizen forester training, children's arbor day on-campus planting. We already give a redbud seedling to every third grader in Denton ISD, but this would facilitate planting trees on the campuses at the same time, and then the tree rebate program , which would allow for a large number of trees to be planted with a small effort on our part. As I mentioned previously, the average planting cost per tree would be significantly lowered, and the Tree Fund dollars would be leveraged to get a greater number of trees. KDB's proposal includes the addition of 12,000 trees over three years, which is a significant number. The request does conform to the Denton Plan 2030, which calls for the promotion and the formation of a cohesive broad green infrastructure network for Denton. It calls for the insurance, to ensure the expansion and protection of Denton's tree canopy as an essential element, and assists in upholding regional air quality goals through increasing the existing tree canopy. We did notify the public to comply with the public hearing notice requirements, and a notice was published on June 21st in the Denton Record Chronicle. The Planning and Zoning Commission heard this request and recommended approval 4-0. Staff also recommends approval, and I would like to ask Lauren Barker, the program manager of Keep Denton Beautiful, to come up and give a brief overview of her vision for these programs and how they'd be implemented, and then we will both be available to answer questions. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. We are very excited at Keep Denton Beautiful to be able to have the opportunity to bring this proposal forth to you, and really what I'd like to do is just go over some basics of the programs that we're proposing so that you have a big picture view of what it is that we're asking of you with this DDC amendment . So essentially what we are proposing is a series of programs, this is a big initiative basically , that would include public education components. The first two of those would be the Citizen Forester Training Program, which Amy mentioned, and also an in-school Arbor Day component, which would actually take the kids out, show them how trees are planted. Some kids that we give seedlings to don't have the opportunity to plant those at home, and so we want to make sure that they get that in-school education component. So those are the two education-based issues that we're looking at. The rebate program is the other component that we're looking at doing, and that would be a $50 rebate per tree, up to five rebates per household, and we've been working to get all the specifics of that developed. We have an application that's been drafted up and approved tree species that are all native and adapted trees, and we've started reaching out to nurseries to ensure that whatever we're recommending could potentially be stocked. So a lot of partnerships being leveraged, a lot of businesses and other organizations that we've been working with to put all of this together. We have a business targeted program that we've nicknamed T rees Mean Business, and we're having a lot of fun with that one because basically any business or nonprofit organization could request between two and five larger size trees that would go on their business property, and so we've been developing that program and trying to figure out what that would look like exactly, and I think it has a lot of potential to put trees in public view and to put large trees in public view, and as part of that program it would include planting and delivery of the trees. So really all the businesses would have to do is agree to a maintenance plan and take a class with us to make sure that they know how to care for the trees and that they have that background education. So education a big component of everything that we've tried to do, and then finally neighborhood and small-scale giveaways would be the last type of program that we're proposing. That would consist of the Redbud Tree giveaways at the Redbud Festival, and then also the neighborhood hosted giveaways where a neighborhood group or a neighborhood organization could come and apply to host their own giveaway event. That one has criteria that we're still developing and we're proposing rolling that out in 2016 just so that we have enough time to develop that criteria, because basically what that would entail is them committing to host their own event, so we want to make sure that we're providing them with all the resources that they need to be able to do that well. With all of these programs there are inherent tracking capabilities for the trees that we want to put out into the community. So 12,000 trees is a lot of trees over three years. I won't mince words about that, that's a lot of trees. We tried to be ambitious, but we also are trying to be very reasonable with what we're proposing to make sure that we can track the survival rates of these trees over time and check back in with people to ensure that they're thriving and actually increasing our tree canopy. So thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Signe, thank you very much. Appreciate that. 12,000 trees, that's a lot of trees. This is a public hearing, so anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. This is a public hearing, let's not all rush the podium. All right, seeing none, we will now close the public hearing. Council Member Rogan. Thank you Mayor. What an exciting program. Thank you guys for all your hard work and creativity. We had some brainstorming a few months ago and you guys took the ball and just ran with it doing what you guys do best. So you know the tree giveaway that KDB already does every year is one of those community events that give so much goodwill to the city because people connect. My city gives away free trees and that's the kind of thing you want your citizens to think about their city and it's just one of those great elements that makes our city so special. So thank you guys for all the hard work and the vision and the ambition on this project. So on that I gladly move approval of this item. Mayor Pro Tem Gregory, before we have a second, you want to add the second. Council Member Johnson. I would gladly second the motion. Mayor Pro Tem. Well I love the proposal that's been developed. I love the educational components, that there's tracking components. I'm very appreciative. I think as much as anyone on this dais, Council Member Johnson helped to get us off dead center on this and I appreciate that. Thanks. Yeah and I will say what a you know this this is a culmination of a lot of vision and again some tenacity which Council Member Johnson's not known for. He's not known for tenacity. But I appreciate your vision in this and just really to say hey it's we've got these funds. Let's plant some trees and I really like the creativity of the the private giveaway because when you look at it we're planting about 10 or 12 to 1 from what it costs the city to plant a tree which is $900 which I still swallow hard on that one but but this is great and people will take care of them. They'll keep them watered and they'll grow and and what a what a great opportunity for the city to to really maximize the dollars that are paid in for when people have to remove trees. So Council Member Johnson. Well I may have had the tenacity to plant the trees but I must give Council Member Rodin the credit for for the inspiration. Late one night my phone goes off and he's like KDB we can do this with KDB so he gets the credit for the link up there with KDB and I just want to say that you guys certainly took the the idea and made it something great. I mean because all the I mean the trees mean business that's brilliant. So I like it. Fantastic. Well we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6B. Let's vote on the board. Agenda item 6B carries 6-0. That ends at least this portion we have I think do we have yes we have concluding items and what is that seven I don't know which one seven I think it's seven uh which is new business for our agenda eight I'm sorry eight uh any new business I've got a couple but uh anybody have any new business go ahead and chime in Mayor Pro Tem. Well two items one when the people were speaking on the community market and the young lady was talking about uh discovering Texas peaches that weren't exactly as pretty as some that she'd found in the grocery store on the east coast I was reminded of a poem that I stumbled across recently about Texas peaches. I could not find it in time to share it when she was talking but here it is Texas peaches one bite just one and the world is lost your eyes roll back in your head and summertime explodes on your tongue sweet trips to the coast long rides in the hill country Texas imbibed in one bite one juicy moment where you and the peach and Texas become one Texas peaches now the other item hang on how do you adopt that I want to talk trash a little bit uh council member uh former council member and Mayor Pro Tem Engelrich used to do this we started a program last fall called 10 on Tuesday where we were encouraged to go and pick up 10 pieces of trash on Tuesday the first time I did it and I wore my my bright neon whatever color that is green chartreuse shirt I thought there's no way walking through my neighborhood I'm going to get 10 pieces of trash and I generally walk for about an hour well I had 10 pieces of trash within the first block I did it again today it was a particularly good day this is all within a half mile of Woodrow Wilson just to give you an idea of what shows up on the street we'd get a close-up of this please from the television producers especially the Marlboro cigarettes some of them were partially full and I had to pour them out before I put them in the bag but come on didn't pick up your garbage and uh and if you're walking in the neighborhood get a bag and and and help your neighborhood out all of this stuff otherwise ends up the next time it rains and we think it may rain in the next 24 or 48 hours going to go down into the creek and it's going to be in the creeks and clog up the waterways and it's just going to be a mess and some of those several of those are recyclable so keep on doing it I would have worn my t-shirt tonight but it's it was damp after I did all the walking around picking this stuff up councilmember Briggs so I have a couple a few things um um one I would like for staff to explore or schedule a round table discussion I believe that several of us got an email from citizens a round table between city officials police and fire to come up with an evacuation plan for the home schools and businesses that are around gas wells so I just want to start moving on that and also I'd like to recognize a non-profit that helps alumni here in need Denton High cares their mission is to provide financial assistance for Denton High alumni faculty and staff and they have an event coming up and on October 10th and it was the first I heard about it when someone reached out to me and I think it's a great way to help our community so I just wanted to give them a shout out thank you thank you councilmember Johnson thank you mayor so as the as the father of a six-year-old playing baseball for the first time I got to take my son to his first baseball practice at Evers Park yesterday and what an impressive facility we have for our for our youth there I 've never had a reason to be there before because I've got four girls ahead of this one but man I just want to compliment our our park's staff it's a first-class baseball facility with I mean the bat ting cages the grounds were phenomenal the boys were practicing out in the grassy area between the fields and and though that area was just as good as the fields were so I just want to give a shout out to our park staff because we're in the middle of we had a lot of rain before but it's certainly pretty dry and man that place looks fantastic and I've been to a lot of baseball fields growing up in different parts of Texas and I don't recall being in a facility that nice for youth baseball so I want to give a shout out to our parks department for doing a good job there great I've got a couple anybody else have any one Mr. City Manager I think it was a few months ago I can't remember how long ago it was we we authorized the creation of a new crew for wastewater and water line installation to help with to to expedite street repair or reconstruction I mean I believe I forgot when it was but what I'd like to get is just sort of an update on you know what how many linear feet of sewer line and water were we installing up to that point and how many are we doing now with the addition of that new crew just to sort of see the the impact of that and what streets have have been expedited for that reason with that new just I mean it's pretty large expenditures you just want to you know keep tabs on that that's really doing as we we had hoped and you know Mayor Pro Tem sort of rattled my cage on this recycling I tell you when you start recycling I went to one of my dumpsters commercial dumpsters and around this time of the year they just people dump everything in there couches chairs and so there was trash all around it so I had to go get my truck and and haul it off and it was funny there were so many boxes cardboard boxes moving boxes and what did I do I loaded them up took them home to my home recycling van and because it just it's just hard sometimes to throw those things away once you know that especially there was a home depot box which is the very product that is created by I believe Pratt Industries with some of that that cardboard that we recycle so really appreciate the the the work that staff has done in recycling education and just getting us used to to thinking in those terms so hats off and I too Mayor Pro Tem I mean you're right you can only walk maybe 100 yards and probably pick up 10 pieces of trash so I certainly want to encourage people to not litter. Do we have any other items for new business because what we'll do is we will be moving into closed session if not then we we will stand adjourned and reconvene in closed session do I have that do I need to call the caption again or do we do it in there we do it in there okay all right that's That's where we'll convene the closed session. We'll take a five minute break. It's about eight.