Sep 15, 2015 City Council on 2015-09-15 2:00 PM

Boy, I don't know how to start this meeting on. Well good afternoon. It is September the 15th, 2015. I wanted to welcome everyone to a work session meeting of the Denton City Council. We do have a quorum here. We'll move through our agenda items, citizen comments on a consent agenda item. Is agenda item one, do we have any citizens comments? No, we do not. No comments. Okay. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for today, September 15, 2015. I've got a couple, but go ahead. Let me get Greg in the line. Go ahead. I just need to pull two from consideration. Go ahead. I just need to ask the council if you would consider pulling item W on the consent agenda and item 6A, which is an eminent domain case. We'll bring them back on a future agenda. Those two need to be pulled entirely, and I don't know whether those have anything to do with it. One has to do with a civic center roof and the other an em inent domain case. Okay. Council member Johnson. Why don't you go ahead, Mayor. Oh, okay. Well, I've just got a couple. I wanted to pull for individual consideration consent agenda item A, which is the contract for the restroom construction, just to get some more information on that and sort of have some discussion about that. And the other one is maybe just I don't even know if I need it. I got a pretty detailed email on it, so if the other council members want to hear it as well, that's fine. But agenda item W, which no, it's a W. Which one is the one ? X on the health on the physicals for the fire department. I'm not going to worry. Is this a three-year agreement? What is it? Is this a? Okay. Well, let's go ahead and three. Let's go ahead and pull that in. Let's pull it for individual consideration. I just would like to see what we would need to do as a, I mean, we've got our clinic, and I understand those are a little bit more involved, but I'd just like to see, have some kind of idea or analysis of for us to maybe perform those. What would it take? What additional costs would it take? Because I think it's about $100,000 something a year for those, I think the contract was $375. And so I really do appreciate the fire marshal sending that email that really describes that as far as the in-depth analysis that they go to and also just examine. But we want to see what we can do to maybe bring some of that in-house to see if there is a cost savings. I don't recall us ever really doing that, and if we did, I don't remember it, so I just would like to revisit that. Did you want to talk about those here in the work session, Mr. Mayor, or tonight? Anyone pull them from the consent? Yeah, my only concern is that if we do a three-year contract, well, then basically we're three years out from making that analysis. And so that was my only concern there. I think somebody raised her. Elton, did you? No. No, okay. All right. Well, we can present those as separate items tonight and talk to them tonight if you want. That's fine. Unless staff wants to make the presentation tonight so they don't have to stay. We can do it now. I mean, if you want to talk about those two items now, we can certainly do that. Emerson's shaking his head, yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You want to do those now? You want to get through the clarifications first? Let's get through the clarifications. Okay. All right. Any other requests for clarification? Yes. I hope this doesn't take a long time, but an example is V. I just wanted to bring this up. I'm not trying to make anybody squirm over there. What is the difference when it says V, Victor, and when we authorize the city manager to buy something a department recommends or they need an additional piece of equipment, but then when we're going through the budget process, they'll request some supplemental package that has a piece of equipment in that. I just wanted to know, just the light bulb kind of went off , what's the difference between that? If a department requested something during this budget process and they didn't receive it later throughout the year, can they possibly just get it in consent agenda again with the approval of the city manager? Do you understand what I'm asking? Chuck's standing up like he wants to address this issue. There are a lot of items that are approved in the budget that still come before the council for approval when the purchase is actually made. A lot of these are replacement equipment. In terms of budgeting for replacement equipment, what occurs is in the utilities, they put funds away for replacement equipment. Remember we talked about the cash funding of police vehicles? They put cash away for the replacement. I believe this one is a replacement piece of equipment for drainage doing the street sweeping. In the budget, the replacement is part of the budget. If you remember, we do about $3 million a year for replacement that we issue debt. That's really where replacements are approved in the budget . In the utilities, they have a separate replacement fund where they put money away so it's built up and when it's time to replace it, they do it in cash. Ultimately, letter V here, that is already in the budget from last year. As a replacement. As a replacement. Cool. Yes. You put it delicately, but it sounds like the question is, is using the consent agenda like this a way to get around something that didn't make it in the budget? That's not the case at all. Absolutely not. No. Did these come to us if they are over a certain amount and they're not under the authorization of the manager to do on his own? Is that correct? Generally any item that is included in the budget in the adopted budget, it still may once bids are taking on it and the actual purchase comes back to city council for approval of the actual purchase. Now there are contracts that can be approved that are in the budget that can be approved by the city manager if they're under a certain amount without coming back to council. Well, and don't get me wrong, I wasn't implying that that's a way to get around. No, that's what Dalton said. That's what I said. Dalton was the principal and I wasn't. I'm sure he did that to a lot of students. But if we ever had a situation like that, it would be that it wasn't in the budget, it would come along with the budget amendment or something, wouldn't it? How would that look different? That's correct. If it was an amount, particularly if it's an amount that requires council approval and it's not included in the budget, then there might come forward a budget amendment to make sure that the amount is approved and the specific item is approved by the council. Thank you. That's a great question. Okay. You know, that is a great question. I think what would, you know, I think what would be helpful if it's not too much trouble is on items such as this, just in a little parenthetical of wastewater replacement budget item or something that says this is where, not a specific account, sometimes y'all do give specific accounts on, not that, but just hey, this is, this is where it's coming from. From this budget, replacement vehicle budget of wastewater or whatever. Last discussion, they called that fiscal notes. Yes. I think that'd be a good. Yeah, I think that'd be good. Council Member Brees. I just wanted to clarify that the items I sent to you to be pulled were going to be pulled. Yes, I thought if it's okay with you and the council that we would, I've asked Chuck to summarize all of those rates for electric water and wastewater. Okay. I think we had a discussion here in the work session and then if the council wants to pull those from the consent agenda tonight, you certainly can do that, but we were going to give an explanation of those here in the work session today . Okay. I also had another question. Yes. S, about the LIDAR data. I've discovered that this data is, can be measured, can measure tree canopies and I was wondering if our urban forester was going to use this. Which item, I'm sorry? S. S. As in Sam. No. I told them it would be later. S. To revise our tree canopy estimate. Does anybody know what this will? I'm sorry, Melissa. So that wasn't included as part of the scope. Melissa Kraft is our IT director, I'm sorry. Hi, that wasn't included as part of the scope, but it can be if you want it to include trees as part of that service. Okay. So it would just be another piece of the service we would have to pay for. Okay. So it's something you would like for us to look into if we can. Thank you. Sounds like you do. Yes. Okay. Yes, I'm sorry. Oh, she's up here. Yes. I had a note for, I guess it was both R and S. Yes. And my question was, I thought that we already had some contracts with UNT for some GIS work. Is this to replace that or is this in addition to that or is this just our part of, especially on R, our part of paying for a regional effort? Our part of paying for a regional effort with North Central Texas Council of Governments. So we're part of that. So we pay a piece of that. And usually with the contour data, we do that about every 10 years. And usually with the aerials, we do that every two years. Thank you. Okay. Any other requests for clarification before we discuss those two items that I brought up earlier? Any other requests? Yes. Council Member Waschneid. I just want to come back to confirm what our city manager said. We're pulling W and 6A. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. We're pulling those not for discussion but for total. Okay seeing none, you want to move on to the. Sure. I'd like to call on Mr. Vorall, Emerson Vorall, our Director of Parks and Recreation, and he could give us a discussion and answer questions on item consent agenda 5A. All right, so I'm going to start by asking council a question. Is there an outdoor restroom in Quaker Town Park? Yes. You ever been in it? Ever used it? Yes. Anybody else? No. Okay. What I've just done is made the point that outdoor rest rooms are kind of like not seeing the forest for the trees. Unless you have a job like I do where you're responsible for them, you don't notice them, and you're not really fully aware of what it takes to build one or to operate one. Needless to say, they're kind of a difficult piece of property to maintain. I want to share a couple of stories to illustrate what we go through with the restrooms in our parks. Probably not aware that around the 4th of July every year we try to close most of them. That's because kids have this nasty habit of putting fireworks in the commodes and blowing them up. Probably also not aware that the homeless, when we ask them to move politely from underneath some of the shelters where they take up residence, have a habit of going in and tearing the sinks off the walls in our outdoor restrooms. The last frame-built stick, if you will, restroom that we had was in McKenna Park. It burned to the ground in an arson fire. I was fortunate enough to be park supervisor in Fort Worth on May 5th of 1995 when the hailstorm rolled through Trinity Park. 109 people were injured trying to get out of that park because there was not enough shelter in that park. And finally, the story that I think is very enlightening as to what goes on in our restrooms. I don't know if you know that our purchasing manager, Elton Brock, spent a number of years working for the state penal system. He was a warden. When we went back to Elton with our restroom cleaning contract - did I exaggerate Elton or am I pretty close? Okay. Well, we went back to complain about our cleaning contract because the cleaners weren't taking the feces off the walls in our restrooms, our outdoor rest rooms. With his experience, he was appalled. He said, "Geez, in all my time working in the penal system, I'd never experienced that." In the park system, we call that Wednesday. Okay? That's how frequently it occurs. That's what outdoor restrooms look like to us. Okay? Now, visual aids. The restrooms that we're talking about purchasing - give me one second to get this started up. These are 100% concrete structures. They come in sections. They look just like this. Okay? This is the floor. This is the exterior wall, the end wall, if you will. They come in 26-foot long sections. And when we build a restroom, we build it larger. It's a concession or a storage area. We add some multiple sections. So for a minimum - pardon me - we have this. The interior sections show up looking like this. Mind you, this is 100% monolithic poor concrete. So we keep doing this. And if we want them to be bigger, if we need more, if it's a concession, we add more. This is what the structure looks like. 100% concrete. Pre-built, in the factory, delivered on a truck, by a crane . The site is prepared. The contractor does that. And the plumbing is stubbed up through the floor, and they set it down on top of that piece by piece and attach them, and we have a new restroom. Okay. This is the restroom. What you see here - and I forgot to grab my pointer. I apologize for that. This is the restroom and storage area. Excuse me. There are three facilities that are part of this bid. This is the one for North Lakes 5 and 6. It will replace an existing structure out there. There is a women's restroom. There is a men's restroom. There is a heated chaseway for all the plumbing. It's important that we say that that's heated. Right now, all of our restrooms get shut off for the winter . They get shut off from roughly Thanksgiving until the middle of March. We do this. It allows us to keep these facilities open and serve our public a little bit better. This room is a storage room - storage and umpires room during the games, during the tournaments that we have out there. You've asked us to try to do tournaments, to do more tournaments, to put heads in beds, bring people into town. This is one of the amenities that was requested. In addition to that, there's power and sewer rigged up to the outside of this building so that we could pull up our travel trailer if we need it to provide air conditioned space for the umpires as well. And then the other room is storage room for the leagues that operate out there and/or for our staff to store facilities or to store equipment that they need out at this park. Let's see if I can get this right. Alright, so there's the information on North Lakes 5 and 6. I'll go into some square footages and costs in just a minute. This is Mack Park. So this is Mack Park on the north side of McKinney Street. There's an existing concession stand there. It's operated by Denton Boys Baseball Incorporated during the season when they're having their games and they have use of those fields. Again, women's restroom, men's restroom, heated chase room. This is a storage room. This is actually a concession area so that they can operate their concession. Included in this bid are the items that are required by our health department. Three bay sink, a mop sink, a hand washing sink, serving counter with an air curtain that blows air down, prevents the bugs from coming in. All of the outlets that we need, a cooking surface and a fire suppression system in addition to the storage and the restroom facilities that we talked about. And finally, the third one at Roberts, women's restroom, chase room, men's restroom and a storage facility. There are actually two storage facilities, a wall down the middle right here. The Mack restroom, the bid cost on this is $303,000, $791. That's a 936 square foot building for a cost of $324 per square foot. Roberts restroom is 194, 935. It's 676 square feet for a cost of $288 per square foot. The North Lakes restroom concession, I'm sorry, restroom is $258,345. It's also 936 square feet for a cost of $276 per square foot. In addition, there's the Roberts information, why prefabric ated? If we did a site built facility, it would cost more than we have budgeted for these projects right now. Local contractors have told us when we went back and started this process about 16, 18 months ago, we went to the contractor who had the city contract for construction, asked him if he could do these three restrooms for the funds available and he said absolutely not. Exterior restrooms, park restrooms consistently average $ 300,000 to over $500,000 depending exactly what's in them. This number's been consistent. I'll have some more numbers on that in just a minute. These restrooms, as I pointed out to you, have additional rooms. They're not just restrooms. These particular ones, as I pointed out, are 100% concrete. The ceiling, the walls, the floors, there's very little maintenance that takes place on these facilities no matter what gets done to them. They approach bulletproof. The company that we went with and got these bids, these facilities have already been competitively bid through TexMos and an organization called LJPA Byboard. If you want more information on that, I'm going to hand that off to Elton. The other thing I want you all to remember is we don't get a deposit on these buildings. We don't have somebody that we can hold responsible for what happens in these buildings. They're open 24/7, pretty much all year long, 24 hours a day. We don't get to go back to somebody and collect when they 're damaged or they return to us. These are what the sections look like. Now, when you talk purely about the aesthetics, you're probably 20 or 30 feet away from that building. I'm looking at the roof. It looks like a shaker, a shingled roof to me. Again, it's all part of the cast concrete in this facility. What looks like a board and batten side on this is all concrete. The stonework is stamped concrete, stamped and dyed. Here's a little bit closer view of it. It comes pre-plumbed. It comes off the truck with all of that in it. During the process of working through the design for the V ela Athletic Complex, the engineers estimate a probable cost for the restroom con cession at the Vela Complex, $500,000. We just accepted bids. Matter of fact, you'll have the opportunity to improve them tonight for the Civic Center Pool renovations. As part of that renovation, we had an add-alt that was part of the bid package. It was for a 200 square foot, a 10 by 20 storage building with a stick built with a brick veneer, no water, no electric. The bid came back at $60,000. We rejected that bid. 200 square feet, 10 by 20, 60 grand. So then we went back and did a little bit of historical work. We pulled up the last, one of the very last restroom con cessions that we built was the upper restroom concession at Evers Park. That would be the one closest to Windsor. It was built in 1999, 16 years ago. We paid $155,000 for that structure, not inclusive of the design fees, the site work, and the utility fees. These structures are all part of the 2005 bond that we're trying to get built and in the ground. So if we start over now, we're going to add by Elton's numbers, 7 to 13% design fee given $700,000. That means we're going to put $52,000 to $91,000 into just the design portion of these facilities. We'll have to go with an RFP or an RFQ, select an architect . Once the design's done, then we'll have to go out and have these structures bid. And I'm personally just not convinced that we're going to come back with any better prices than what you're seeing on these now. I know it seems like an exorbitant price. I've stood at this podium and told you several times that $ 250,000 for a park restroom is what we in the industry, we in the park side of things across the country will tell you that's what they cost. I know there's a lot of talk about, wow, that's a lot of money. I know what I could build for that. These are the numbers that we see to build this type of facility, folks. I don't like them any more than you do, but this is what we see. One other advantage of these particular facilities, should we decide to make changes to these facilities, we can pick these up and move them. We can separate them back out on the parts, put them back on a truck, and haul them away and move them someplace else. Glad to take your questions. Yes. Thank you. So Emerson, on these concrete construction, so when we're having the local contractors bid them, it's the same, they're bidding the same thing? We said square footage, build us a masonry restroom. So block, concrete block construction, mortar? Yes, sir. Okay. Yes. What do you, what kind of material separates the stalls, the restroom stalls? These have the partially masonry wall, and then the rest of it is the plastic material that we typically use in the restroom stalls. Well I ask for this to come forward because I am one of those people that is just, I mean, you and I have had a conversation about this. Yes, sir. And it's nothing against you or the industry or the company , but it just, it seems to me, and I can understand given this type of build, if it's pref abricated concrete walls and one thing, I can understand that. I guess my point in it was, I'm not so sure that, I mean, when you say masonry, that it was bid out to others as a masonry, you're talking about either solid concrete that a mason would put in mortar, put them together, or hollow hay dack block that has concrete poured in it. Yes, sir. And as far as the roof structure though, what, if it's not these, if they were, I mean, what kind of roof structure are you talking about? Standing seam metal. I'm sorry? Standing seam metal roof. Okay, just like somebody might put on a commercial building or something like that. Yes, sir. Okay. So I just, I mean, I guess not having seen somebody bid that, that design, and see those costs associated with that, because, I mean, I know what I built residential for, so I know what slabs cost, I know what masoners charge, and when I calculate this all out, it just seems unbelievable that we're paying that, not that we're paying that, I'm just saying this seems very, I understand we're trying to make it bulletproof, we're trying to make it other kind of proof. I just would like to have a little, I guess I would like to have a little bit more information on the alternative construction methods that would be acceptable to the Parks Department, not saying, well, let's put something up that you guys can 't deal with. That's not my point at all. That's really my thought about this, because I know we, when we approved the splash park, and not we didn't, but the bond, the voters approved the splash park, that now we're talking about a restroom there, which is an additional, I mean, we looked for $85,000 from the Community Development Block Grants, but what I'm hearing is, well, you put a restroom out there, it's going to be $250,000. Well, I think that one will be a little bit less, because it's going to be a very small facility. Well, but even if it's $150,000 or $100,000, that's money that we didn't include in that. So it's just, I'm just stunned, quite honestly, at just the cost of these facilities for their size and just what's, but now you said they're open 24/7, but my understanding is that those are either the ones that are being designed, the intent was to make them where they're not open in the deep night, per se. That is correct. I mean, after a certain time, they're locked up by various different methods. Yes, sir. They'll have the magnetic locks in them. The new ones will be built and designed with the magnetic locks in them. The parks legally close at 10 o'clock, open at 6 in the morning. These will close as well. I'll answer the question. There'll be an emergency button on the inside, just like this building, if you're inside and the doors get locked. To get out, you hit the button and you can open the door for a short period of time. Sure. Yes, Councilmember Wasney. Yeah, I agree with the Mayor. If we could just pull this for today and ask for some more information on alternative construction bids or designs, the positives for me, though, are the durability and the longevity. I think you bite the bill at one time and it sounds like these are going to really last. Yes, ma'am. And by last 50 years, concrete is hard to destroy. I like the concept of the modular style that if you want to take it apart at some point in time and move it, you can repurpose that facility because things do change. Parks grow and it's almost like undoing the Legos and going someplace and building something new out of the same design. And do we know what the wind load is for this roof structure? Yes. I think I - boom, there it is. These are actually basic wind speed, 150 miles an hour for a three-second gust. These actually wind up being a tornado shelter. That was my point, that so many times you're out and about and the sky's turned dark and you're out with your kids or your grandkids and your only alternative is to get in an automobile which is not a safe, secure location. So something to consider for our people as well. So question for the mayor, are you comfortable pulling this for right now to look for? No, no. When I said pull it, I meant pull it for individual consideration. So we could vote on it tonight. I mean, I've still got to decide how I want to vote just from a principle - I mean, I'm not - it's not my intent to hold this up. Yeah, I - I just want to really emphasize the need to maybe continue to look at are there some alternatives? And if there's not, so be it. I mean, I get that. Well, we'll be glad to explore further options. So anyway, that was my intent. And again, one of the questions in terms of cost benefits is do you bite the bullet now, build it right, not worry about it for 50 years, or do we come back just like this structure at Windsor, which was built in '99, and having to readdress it every 20 years? So yeah, the concept is fascinating to me. Yes, Councilman. One more question. So Emerson, we - so I understand what it is that we're talking about here. We've got a concrete floor. We've got concrete walls and a roof. Yes, sir. And then inside that you've got sinks, toilets, and part itions. Yes, sir. Hand dryer. With the exception of the one at Mack, which has some kitchen equipment. So you're - yeah, that's what drives that one up. Yes, sir. Per foot, right? So - but outside of any kitchen equipment you're talking about, concrete floor, walls, roof. Yes, sir. And your bathroom fixtures, right? Yep. To me - I mean, I know it's frustrating for you, right, questioning the - this is what they cost, but I would like to see us at least look at, okay, we've got these drawings, provide these drawings to some local contractors and say, give me some alternative construction recommendations to get the cost down on these. Concrete block, metal roof structure, you know, your fi xtures are going to be what they're going to be, but it's not that much money. Yeah. You've got a metal door. I would like to see us at least go through and get, you know, two or three - because you do this in the private sector a lot. You've got your drawing, get your initial estimates back, and you go, man, I can't afford that. You can take those same drawings, go back to your contractors and say, come back to me with alternative construction recommendations on how I can get the cost down on these. It just seemed - I mean, $300 a foot is just - or $280, $2 90 a foot is just crazy when you think about what you spend on a really, really nice home with a lot of craftsmanship and amenities that go into it and you don't spend nearly that much per foot. So, you know, I don't want to - I'm not questioning you, but I think it would behoove us to at least go back out again and say, give us another recommendation. Is there something about these drawings, the detail in these that's causing this price to be so high, and what are your alternative recommendations? We'd be glad to do that. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Can - oh, okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. And instead of the concrete block, because with our soil, concrete block walls crack, and then it's the long-term, you know, maintenance of that cracked wall and having it look nice and keeping bugs and snakes and everything out of there. So I know there is construction that is poured concrete walls, so - because that essentially is what these block - these modules are made out of. Yes, ma'am. And then if we do go for a contractor bid, Councilman Gregg , that we - Councilman Gregg, that we can get the poured concrete walls and not the - because I'm not crazy about the concrete block, because that's just a maintenance headache. Any other - yeah, I'm sorry, Kevin. So just to clarify the intent, is this being pooled with the intent to have discussion and a vote tonight? Well, that was my original intent, but it sounds like there 's also a desire to have some additional looks at it, which means that then it wouldn't be voted on tonight. So my original intent was just to pull it for an item for individual consideration. Number one, to get some explanation, not knowing what the conversation would be here. And then whatever happens in the conversation out in the Council chambers. So then I guess in order for me to be able to chime in one way or the other on that, I want to get some clarity on the timing going forward. I don't know what - it sounds like you're hoping to get this stuff in by a certain time. And how does this affect your timeline? The restrooms are in place now. They won't consider to be functioning units. If Council's desire for us to go out and explore some different construction techniques and some different bids, we could just keep rocking on. We'll come back and see you. And is this in your mind, based on kind of how you're looking at the need to replace different structures or add new structures as we move forward, you probably have in mind a whole list of planned restroom construction projects in the next 10 years or something. Is that right? I have one very definite one in mind in the next 10 years, but yes. But the goal would be ultimately to replace aging ones, I guess. So I mean, another approach here is to say, let's let this particular project move on. The concerns are noted and our great questions have been raised. And to give clear direction that as we pursue future restroom projects, that we look at the criteria that you're suggesting just in order to move this one along, knowing that we have a lot more restrooms to build in the future. And I would add that we are in design right now with the V ela Complex with another restroom concession building there. We could certainly use that as the facility to explore different options if Council elected to move forward with this one. Okay. I guess my suggestion would be is that perhaps we can pull it, we can have discussion, and if there's a motion to do something else that someone can make that motion, if there's a motion to push this thing forward, we can do that. But all of our options would be in front of us tonight. Yeah, that was my intent. I mean, there would be direction given at the desk as an item for individual consideration, whichever way you go. Is there one right now, Emerson, that's critical from a timing standpoint that we need to get this one done? No, sir. So, I mean, if this was a 60-day delay, does that really hurt us in any way in terms of having a facility at a particular park that... No. And I don't think that's going to adjust our numbers. I believe the vendor will hold the number for that period of time. I was just thinking about rather than being in a position where if one or more of us is uncomfortable with the amount per foot, because it sounds like this is a prefab. We haven't seen bids from local contractors with alternative construction ideas. I was just going to suggest rather than be in a situation where people have to vote against it because they're uncomfortable with the number, that we say let's delay this for 60 days. We should go meet with some local contractors, get recommendations, get them to give us preliminary bids and come back. Just a thought. Yes. Dillon, did you have... I thought I saw you up at the... I think that Mr. Chonson's idea is great. Okay. Yeah, I agree. I agree, Councilman Gregg. I agree as well. Also, it's timing. We're almost at the end of September and so we're not in April looking at getting things up and ready for summer. It's going to be cold soon and our park attendance is not as high as during the summer. I think we have some time to crunch our numbers and do this right. If we can't find an alternative, well then this looks like an excellent plan. If there is an alternative out there, then I think we'd be foolish not to explore that. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Mayor, perhaps our purchasing folks can comment as to whether or not this price is good for the next 60 days under the proposed purchase order. Will that stay on the table? Mayor and Council, that price could be good for another 90 days. We'll have to confirm that up with a letter to the company, explain our concerns and it would be up to your option whether it was good or not. There is a time limit on that pricing that they submitted. I don't know what it is off the top of my head. So all bids usually are 90 days. Okay. All right. So it sounds like we still could be within that timeframe if we get some turnaround on the other bids. Okay. Any other? Yes, Council Member. This is just a follow-up on it. I guess a related topic. You mentioned it in the course of your conversation. You mentioned that we would have the opportunity to approve tonight a bid for the Quaker Town Park renovation or pool renovation. Civic Center Pool. Yes. I didn't - maybe I missed that. And I may have misspoken. Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize if I did. If you don't see it on there. I don't see it on there. Okay. Okay. Just double-checking that. Thanks. Any other questions? So is Council expecting a presentation this evening or have we just pulled this now? No. No. It sounds like it's been pulled to give you an opportunity to - Thank you. - give you an opportunity. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And then I guess the other one was agenda item X. No, item X. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And really, my only intent there is obviously not to - well , if it's a three-year - it's just to see - Chief, you can come on up. Is - and it's not so much - I don't think - I don't know if it would be the Fire Department's charge but maybe our - I don't know. What do we call the Department on our health insurance, our risk management? Risk management. To see, you know, what the additional costs would be to - because I know we've talked about tests, heavy tests, heavy metals and blood work and it just seems like if we've got a health clinic and we've got this all set in place, what additionally would it be to get the same quality of service or testing that is offered now? And you know what? If the numbers show that it's the same or more, well, then okay. It's just me trying to understand that. So Chief, if you've got something you want to add to that, that's fine. Mayor and Council, the Farm Archive Line drafted a response to you that I believe was shared with the entire council. We certainly think that you've raised some good points about collaboration with risk management and with our medical team and we look forward to doing that more in the future and have piloted that in the past with particular regard to the blood draw component of this entire process. The point that we wanted to make in our feedback to you was that often we use lay language when we're talking about a medical physical that we all might get when we went to the doctor as being more the medical related - the blood draw. What we do for our hazardous materials team and all members who are involved in exposures based on federal law and what we do on all team members based on our meet and confer agreement is a comprehensive process that's both a medical physical and also a comprehensive physical assessment. So we're doing vision, we're doing hearing, we're doing pul monary process, we're also doing cardio stress testing and x-rays. We're doing a complete blood and urine analysis and we have a doctor on site that's doing an analysis and forwarding four x-rays that are on site. Hugley provides this service for fire and police organizations throughout the entire region throughout Texas and what they do for us uniquely is they come on site and we're able to reduce our out of service time with units because we've got a rapid turnaround of the blood and urine test that's read then as we go through the physical assessment process. We had a - while we piloted just the component of the blood draw with our risk management process, they're staffed currently for a regular type of a sequential process where we're - folks are scheduling time and have appointments as opposed to the rapid turnaround of all of our personnel at one time. So that's part of this contract. They provide the doctor on site, they bring all the equipment including the treadmill for the cardio stress test. So it's a very comprehensive and different process than just a medical physical alone. Sure, I understand that, yeah. I appreciate that. Yes, Councilmember - or Mayor Pro Tem. The question I have, and this may not be for you Chief, is why is it only the fire department - why do the police not do the same type of test? Is that having to do with the meet and confer contracts for both of them that they're somewhat different? I believe Mr. Fortune can reply to some of the things that are in the police meet and confer agreement this year. They are - there are different requirements specifically targeted to the fire department that we were trying to accomplish through this program. Police department has more of an incentive-based fitness program and their physicals are tied to assessing their fit for duty - the fit for duty component of their contract. So they are kind of different but similar at the same time. We've combined with both elements as Chief described use of the city's health clinic for blood draw and participation in the city's healthy incentive program for both, but there are some different goals for the different agencies. Is the meet and confer contract so specific that it does not give us the option of using our own clinic and that we really have to use Hugely or - No I believe the contract is where we could eventually get to using our clinic if we could develop those - provide that within our own clinic - the services within our own clinic but I would need to go back and specifically look at the agreement to see what the language is. But I believe we did accommodate that. Thank you. The language references a joint labor management wellness committee that would make us a selection or review potential vendors. Okay any other questions? Thank you. Is this a renewal or is this a brand new - This is a renewal. We've contracted with them and this is a renewal. The contract has expired and it's also an expansion of the services in an annual repeating process now for all personnel. What does that mean? Help me understand what you just said. It's an expansion of services. Under our previous agreement, by law all of our hazardous materials responders go through this evaluation every year. The balance of our personnel were split in two groups with a biannual medical and physical evaluation. So every two years for everybody but hazardous materials? Yes. As a part of this new meet and confer agreement, all personnel will receive the physical and medical assessment on an annual basis. So what was the cost previous to this? Do we know what the cost was previous to - because apparently the - $90,000. Per year? Yes. And what is it now? $375,000 for the three years? So it's $125,000 so it's gone up? Well again, certainly I'm not saying I want to diminish the opportunity for our public safety personnel to be physically fit, to be tested according to federal state law and just to make sure that everybody's in good shape and has some goals. Is there a way if we are able to provide those kind of services more cost effectively? And I don't know if I'm just saying it's limited to just people going to the clinic. I can see how that's problematic. You can't have everybody racing down there. The convenience of this contract is that they come out to the site. So it's my understanding you're saying they bring the x-ray machine out to the site together with a - and I'm assuming it's just a regular - I don't know what they call that - x-ray machine. It's not a CAT scan or an MRI. It's just sort of the old type of x-ray. They bring all of the assessment equipment including the treadmills. There is a significant amount of paramedical professional staff and the physician also. And so how many do they test at one time? We go through a process that includes about three people being assessed at each time and those take about an hour to two hours apiece since we do it over a period of two to three weeks. And we have also assessed a number of other vendors and we 've looked at partnerships with some of our local universities. So all of those options continue to be explored. So they're taking all of the equipment, for example, to Fire Station number four while that crew is on duty and the tests are being done at that time? No, we're doing it at a single central location and bringing units in one at a time. Okay. Okay. Well then that - so if there were that kind of equipment somewhere in the city that there was contracting with - you're saying the people are coming to the equipment. They're not going out to each individual fire station? No, they are not. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Any other questions on this? Thank you, Chief. I appreciate it. Thank you for that information. Thank you. Any other clarification? Yes. Councilmember Rhoade. I have a question on item JJ, and I'm sorry for not providing this in advance. Perhaps we have the information on this, perhaps we don't. There's reference in the contract - this is the contract between us and the Denton Chamber for the Economic Development Partnership. And it references that the Chamber solicits $63,875 in private sector funding to enhance the marketing. And in the ordinance, it calls that out, but it's unclear whether or not that's like - they're required to match with that amount or where that amount comes from in order for us to release our amount. In other words, is this conceived of as some sort of a matching, even though ours is significantly higher than the Chamber's contribution, is it conceived of as a matching agreement that - just to understand the contract that we're approving? Let me ask Amy Bissett if she can respond to your question. Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. Originally, when the partnership was set up, that was how the agreement was intended in order for it to be a match of private dollars versus public dollars. At this point in the partnership, it's not - there's not a mechanism in place to really verify that or to see that it's a match for match. Typically what we have done for the last several years that I'm aware of is when we approve the contract, that contract is used as the backup to issue the PO and cut a check to the Chamber. And then they are providing us quarterly financial reports of the spending of both that money and the private investment money through the Economic Development Partnership Board. Does the private investment, by virtue of the fact that it 's entering into a private-public partnership, become itself public? I mean, do we know who the private investment - where it comes from? We do, yes. The Chamber keeps a record of all their donors into the program. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Mr. City Manager, I've just got a follow-up question for the Fire Chief that I forgot to ask. Just how many personnel - I could look it up as far as get tested - I mean, how many fire personnel, public safety personnel are they that get tested? Just a ballpark figure, not an exact number. Approximately 170 personnel. Okay. All right. Thank you. And I guess to follow up on Councilmember Rodin's question on the contract, so is that - is that 63,000 pretty much already raised and that's what 's in the contract? Or what happens if it's - if it doesn't get to that level? What happens? Or if it goes over that level, what happens? 63,000 is what they've got in committed partnerships for the upcoming fiscal year. So they could go out and get new partners from private investment, but that is their amount that they know they have committed from private entities today. So those are pledges? I mean - Essentially, yes. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you. Gosh, was that just the items for clarification? Good heavens. I'm sorry. That's probably partly my fault or all my fault. Okay. Any other questions for clarification? Yes. So we are not voting on consent agenda items A and W and em inent domain 6A tonight. Is that correct? I think it - which - That was my understanding that we would actually remove A and W on the consent from consideration. Okay. And 6A, which is not for individual consideration. Thank you. Okay. And then X is individual consideration? No, we can - I mean, I'm not going to vote against that. I just - I really want to encourage us to - if we got three years, I mean, let's see if there's a - let's at least explore it and see. Sure. And we can do that. Yeah. We've got two health clinics here. We've got a health clinic for the city. So just for clarification, unless somebody pulls that from consideration on consent, it would - Yeah, it's going to be under consent. Yes, that's correct. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you, Mayor Coat-Dame, for that clarification. Okay. We are going to go on to our regular work session on agenda three. We do have a consultant here for agenda item C, which I've had a request to sort of take that out of order because I believe they have a plane to catch. So if it's okay with my colleagues, if we go ahead and call agenda item C of the work session, we'll go ahead and do that. Thank you, Mayor. And I'm going to ask Mr. Ron Mangita, who is our long-range planning administrator, if he would present this item and initiate the discussion with our - Let me go ahead and read the caption as well. No, you're good. It's agenda item three C, receive a report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the implementation of a wayfinding signage project. Thank you, Mayor, members of council, members of staff. Today, as stated in the introduction, there's a presentation regarding wayfinding signage project. I'm excited to have this forward to you today. It's been a long time coming. Before we begin, I'd like to just briefly go over a quick agenda. I know we've got not a lot of time, but we'll try to get through this as quickly as possible. Really, real quick, we will go over a quick overview of the project history, discuss the scope of work, and then I will have Mr. Glenn Swantock with design present some of the items, the design development plans that is brought forward to you for your consideration. I will then come back and discuss the recommendation by staff and hopefully answer questions that you all have regarding this project. So with that, real quick, the wayfinding signage project really began with the acceptance of the downtown implementation plan. For those of you that were here, this was a while back, roughly August of 2010. As soon as the DTIP was accepted, we started working on the recommendations that was outlined in the DTIP. One of those recommendations was to provide wayfinding to the parking lots, the public parking lots within downtown. It was the understanding that the city downtown did not have enough parking. The consultants did not concur on that 100%. They understood that there was parking. It's just that it wasn't visibly noticeable with the lack of wayfinding signage. So we started, the staff started putting together some themes for the parking lot signage, which kind of grew into larger signs as well that encompasses the directional signage into the city as well as periphery signage outside, again, along the periphery of the city, bringing in folks along the highway. So what you see in front of you are three themes. Theme A, the courthouse, B, the transit, and C, the flag theme. That was then presented to various boards and commissions, which are listed here. They include the Main Street Association Board, Planning and Zoning, a developers committee, as well as the Parks and Recreation and Beautification Board. We took their input and put together what we refer to as the modified theme and also enlisted assistance from the general public and put all of this in a online survey where we receive input from approximately 375 participants. This is the modified theme. Again, takes into account the pedestrian signage all the way up to the primary entry signage. Again, ones that you would probably see along I-35E as well as W. We then took this modified theme to city council during a work session. At that work session, the council directed staff to move forward with refining the plan or the modified theme to be a little bit more refined in the sense that we would hire a consultant, which we did. We followed that direction and requested for qualifications . We hired Marjay Design. Soon after, city council approved a professional agreement contract. Marjay Design started to work on the project through a number of meetings, joint meetings with PNZ and city council. The direction was to postpone the wayfinding until the comprehensive plan, the DEN Plan 2030 was complete. Again, to make sure that we have a comprehensive overview of what we would like to see. The DEN Plan 2030 was approved earlier this year, so now we are moving forward with the wayfinding signs project. The scope includes the following. You've got an illustration in front of you that illustrates where we've been and hopefully where we're going. We've again started to work with staff in designing or coming up with a concept with the themes. We hired Marjay to follow that up with a development plan for the signage itself. We're currently in phase two. In some of phase three where we've enlisted Lee Engineering as well, who is looking at the structural, electrical and other engineering facets of this project alongside with Marjay. Today, with the help of Glenn, he's going to go over what has been prepared and put together and go over the design development package, some of the discussion regarding the message schedule as well as the sign location plan. Hopefully if we are successful moving forward, we can start the preparation of bid documents as well. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Glenn. Thank you Mayor and Council. My name is Glenn Swantak. I'm with Marj. You can say Marjay, it's like Tarjay or something. It's got like a European flair to it. I'm from Philadelphia so it's not European believe me. We are an environmental graphic design firm. We specialize in urban wayfinding programs. We've done numerous ones across the country. We have a lot in Texas. We just wrapped up Fredericksburg, Texas. That was installed last year. Garland is going in this month. They're directing to their downtown. We worked on McKinney and also downtown Dallas and Austin. Austin should go in sometime this year as well. The project team is Marj. We are the strategists, the designers in handling the coordination. Lee Engineering is our local coordination team. They're also experts in traffic planning and working with TextDOT. When we look at a signage program, we look at it hol istically. Yes, the signage is the thing that goes into the ground and it directs people from point A to point B. We're also looking at home technology, GPS. How are people getting to Denton? How are they being told to get here? Is there communication through brochures or websites? What's the environment in the space and the landscape and are there cues and landmarks? When we did our first phase of the project, we did an analysis. Some of the things that came out of the analysis are we want to definitely help visitors navigate to the destinations as easily as possible, increase the functionality of wayfinding in and around the downtown area, develop wayfinding solutions that assist in identifying and direct to public parking, and create a wayfinding scheme that expands on the existing concepts that you've already developed. You've already done a lot of work in that area. Some more goals are we want to make that connection between the train station and the downtown. We've already done that by improving your streetscape and the parking there, but we want to help people and direct them to the downtown and then back to the train station as a pedestrian. We're looking at potential gateway scenarios coming into the city, around the edges, working with the new I-35 corridor projects. We want to build consensus. We've had a lot of ... We had stakeholder input meetings. We met with a lot of people about the project and gathered all of that information. We want to plan for the entire city. Downtown is the priority, but we're definitely ... Part of our work and part of this plan is to plan for the entire city, and then hopefully the wayf inding can get implemented in different phases. The principles of wayfinding, this is intended for the first time visitor and residents alike. You might be a resident. You've never come downtown. So we look at it through the lens of the first time visitor . First impression and perception will play an active role in determining the best route of travel. You might have a shortcut. You might want to go down a certain way to get to a place, but we want to make it the most attractive route into the downtown and also into Dent on. Best route may not be the shortest or quickest. Terminology has to be kept short and easily understood by the visitor. When we looked at the three scenarios that you had developed, that was one of the things that we had to do. We had to take that design concept, but we also had to make it easily understood by the visitor from a vehicular standpoint, and it had to follow text dot regulations about message height and copy and font size and things like that. This is a wayfinding program. It gets people from point A to point B, but it's also a marketing project. We want to promote economic development and the assets of Denton and make connections between destinations. You have to look at it like 50% getting people from point A to point B, 50% making people feel comfortable, at ease, and also as a marketing project. Our recommendations on the project are we're going to plan for the entire city. These all came out of our focus groups and out of our wayf inding assessment. The downtown and the parking will be the primary and initial focus of the program. The landmark historic square is the primary and most recognizable symbol of Denton. A connection between the train station and downtown will be established and coordinated. The naming of facilities and destinations, I think, is going to be important in how they're shown on signs. You've got three city hall names, so we want to look at that and see if there's anything that we can help with the wayfinding. Pedestrian intersection and paths should be evaluated and enhanced, potentially with pavement markings and maybe embossed street names. Districts need to be reinforced with subheader text on street signs, banners, or enhancement markers. We definitely want to remove any sign clutter in downtown and around the city. The DCTA signage should be incorporated in the wayfinding. Our system is going to replace what's out there. We're not adding to it, so the signage that's out there that might be crooked, maybe not mounted in the right spot, those all are going to come down , and this new system would go in its place. We evaluated the kiosk structures in the downtown, and we think we can reuse those. They're eclectic. They fit the character of the downtown. I think maybe the display of some of the information can be reevaluated, but you've got workable, four-sided kiosk structures. Gives you some money there. Gateways to be evaluated with construction projects, and they will include local artist participation and maybe solar power to power these for lighting as well. You'll see some of the designs that we developed for that. One thing we noticed, it would be great if you could create a downtown visitor center. A lot of downtowns have a touch point at some point where, again, we're not just thinking about signs. We're thinking about everything that a first-time visitor will experience when they come to the city. We've started the process to do that. So part of that assessment that we did, we looked at all of the arrival points in the gateways, primary and secondary arrival routes. We looked at pedestrian and parking as well, and where are all the destinations that are within, say, the downtown? One thing that we have considerable experience with is Text DOT, and they're very strict and rigid when it comes to vehicular signage systems. So we understand the process with TextDOT. You have a lot of TextDOT right of way going right through your downtown, so we know how to work with them. When we looked at the identity and started to look at the materials and the colors, we started to see some similarities between using brickwork and the identity of the courthouse. We also evaluated the street furniture and then looked at the kiosks to see and evaluated those. Part of the analysis was looking at the potential gateway locations and having a menu of signs up here of different sizes and scales. Not every situation will get a large monument, you know, so some areas might have a post and panel sign. So we evaluated where those would be located and what the appropriate sign would be. So in the median here, you could have a large, you know, working with TextDOT, you could have a large monument-type sign there. Over here you might have a smaller, well you already have one there, but you know, you can upgrade that to fit the design of the system. So the gateway signage, we developed, we expanded upon the concept that you had in that option and just put it across all of the different sign types. So you've got your brick base, you've got your precast concrete structures with using the, in this case, the top that is similar to, you know, the courthouse architecture. Consistent font-style treatment. This element here, we can work with local artists. That's a placeholder right now. You know, we're just thinking about maybe that we can, you know, represent different aspects of art or community there. That's good because I never did understand why we had Teddy Roosevelt. But I'm guessing that we would go to the Public Art Committee on that or, because we do not want to do that here at the council level. I don't want to do that here at the council level. Put Teddy Roosevelt up or go to Public Art Committee? Go to Public Art. They won't put Teddy up there, but I would hope that we would go to Public Art for that part of it. Yeah, I think, you know, that's still to be designed, that portion of it. But we're showing a range of different types here. So you know, it's your precast concrete with metal letters and showing examples of potentially what that could look like. The smaller totem using the star and a precast in the base here. And then a monument sign. We also wanted to identify when you arrived into the downtown as a district. So creating a downtown totem that says downtown has the icon of the courthouse. Also a post and panel sign that if we needed to put something within text dots right away that has their breakaway designed to it. Another opportunity when we were doing our assessment was you have a couple of overpasses that maybe we can spruce up. We see those as great opportunities. And I can show you here, like, you know, you have great opportunity to do something up there and they're natural gateways into the city. It can be as simple as paint, you know, with a color scheme or something like that. So as we expanded the design, starting with the we have a historic district sign that's an upgrade to what's out there now. Downtown. Parking is a significant part of this. And we decided to instead of how you have the signs now where parking is part of the destination listings, having a separate trailblazer system that has a symbol that is easily recognizable and identifies where the parking is. When we looked at it, I think the perception is that you can't park in downtown. There's plenty of parking in downtown. Some of the lots, like the lot across the street here, you can use if the city hall lot is filled up. It just doesn't have clear identification. You're nervous about parking there. Can I, will I get a ticket or whatever? So we wanted to create that as a separate layer. And then the pedestrian signage, having a kiosk, reusing the totems and then also pedestrian signage. So these are some close ups of those signs. This is what you have out there now. And then you can, you know, just seeing what it would look like in replacement. You could add the street name signs on the top or you can have it as a separate sign in another location. So we have some options here. The downtown has the courthouse logo. It has downtown and we reinforce it by saying shop, dine, arts. So having that message there that says there's activity within the downtown. So an example of potentially where a photo rendering of placement could be. The parking system, saying that it's free public parking, identifying what you're parking there, that it's the name of the lot and then also maybe a destination that it serves. I realize this has been redone but when we did this it was about a year and a half ago. But it looks so good now. You know, I can almost picture these in the landscape now where they are. So a trailblazer system that pops out, directs people in, coordinated, it matches the entry into the parking lot. And then the pedestrian signage. It's at a pedestrian level scale, reinforces that you're within the downtown, directs to destinations and then also directs to parking and also transit on a separate layer. We think we can reformat one or two sides of the kiosks to fit a map and also maybe even pedestrian information in there. That information will not necessarily change but the other two sides or three sides can still have that directory of retail establishment business in there. We can maybe make it bigger or keep it the same size depending on what you want to do with that. So it's really important to trailblaze people from transit all the way to the downtown by adding these signs. You can start to see the finial is reminiscent of the kiosk finial. It's sort of a replication of it, historic base, historic looking base with the pedestrian signs. Let's see how it starts to fit within the landscape. And then the kiosks. And then the vehicular signage which has a couple of different sizes. We're limited to really three messages per panel. And when we evaluated the designs that were developed before, this was one of the things we had to look at. How can we keep the design aesthetic but follow DOT's criteria for how they want it done? So we had to use their arrow. We used Clearview font which is one we use in all of our urban wayfinding programs. We're using their and when it's in their right of way, we use their breakaway system. And we're also looking at opportunities on the backs of the signs as well. So these are what would be a sign type that's within the downtown. It's a four-inch high copy up to three messages. So that panel could be up to three messages. And the back of the sign. When you're outside of the downtown, that header would switch. >> A question. >> Yeah, sure. >> Would you go to that one on the back of the sign? Is that what you're talking about when you're talking about opportunity? You said we were looking at some opportunities on the back of the sign. >> Yes, yes, this is one of the options for the back. This could be an image for within the downtown area. So when you're within the downtown, you get the courthouse image on the back. When you're outside of the downtown, it could be the stars along the side. I think we're really looking for input on this. And I think this is something that has recently been developed. But we want to look at the back of the sign as well. >> Would that also be an opportunity to maybe talk to the public art in case we had artists, local artists, or we were doing a theme and they could produce a piece of art that could be reproduced in an appropriate weather? >> Sure, yeah, the materials that are appropriate so it won 't- >> Weather. >> Yeah, if we wanted to have a local artist develop an image or a graphic along the back, it can be eclectic, it can be consistent. You can have five or six different ones, or you can have one that's consistent throughout. But we have done that before where you try and do that as well. >> And would the same thing that you're doing in the downtown be something that could be added at a later time for another area such as unicorn-like area? >> You mean the system itself or the backs? >> That kind of system. >> Yes, the programming of the locations of the sign, we want to direct to downtown. And then we're going to put signage around the downtown, and then we're going to expand out from there. So if you're on a roadway that's going to, directing to the downtown, you can then direct off to say a university or something like that if it's appropriate, if it's nearby, if it's, you know. So we can add that immediately to part of phase one, but then initial phases would then pick up that system afterwards. That's exactly what we're doing in Garland right now. Their first phase is to get people to downtown. They want to build their downtown. They don't have quite as much retail as you do, but they realize that that's an opportunity for them to do that. So they want to promote that, direct people to downtown, and then put in a pedestrian system and also the vehicular system within there. So that's their first phase. And that's exactly the program that we're doing there. But I think this first option A on the back view, those are two separate sign panels. So you could potentially put the signs up and then go in and put in another sign panel on the back if you wanted to add art to it. The other option, it's already integrated into the front of that sign panel. So you don't have as much flexibility to do something there . So this is what you have out there now. Again, we want to take public parking off of here and make that its own separate trail blazing system. We don't want to use symbols like this that are hard to read that you don't understand. But this is a two post sign that is in the right of way here, the pedestrian right of way. So we can then make it a one single post sign so that we're clearing that out. This sign is located too close to the intersection for a vehicle to make a decision, even though they're all pointing straight ahead. But it's sort of hard to see. It's close to a traffic control device. We'd want to move that back. That identity that you're within the downtown, because it's kind of hard to understand where the downtown is here, but you're still within the boundaries of downtown. And then having that system consistent all the way throughout to your destination. There will be some larger signs just because of speed. You know, 35 mile an hour or over, you're required to have five to six inch high copy on those signs. This is a six inch high copy sign. And then the backs can also carry through that whatever treatment we would want to have on the backs. So when we -- I'm wrapping up here now. When you go to TextDOT, this is what -- I'm showing you this is the next deliverable that we would be giving you. When you go to TextDOT, they want you to see where the sign 's located, what are the adjacent traffic control devices, how far away are they. And this would be the next submission that you would get where we would look at those locations. We'd put a photo rendering over here or a message of exactly what the sign would say. And then if we had to replace or remove, we would also have that there. So this was our Fredericksburg, Texas project. And then we would give you the bid document that has all of the materials, all of the sizes, all of the colors, so that you can get competitive b ids for the signage. And then all of the TextDOT required foundation details and breakaway and all of that. Councilmember Rodin. >> I think this was back on our plate back in 2011. I think I was just elected. But at that time, I suggested that perhaps -- I mean, I've often thought Denton needs to go through a rebranding. As I look at our Denton, I think that's Times New Roman, you could probably tell me, as a designer, which I don't know how hip that is. But that's going to be what's screamed across all of these signs. At Times New Roman, that's the feel of Denton, which seems to me to be not up to par with the creative culture that is our city. So I strolled out for -- not that I want to delay this. I know this has been on the table for years and years. But it seems if you're about to plaster the name of Denton throughout town using signs, and if we are right for rebranding of our image as a city and perhaps a new logo, that this is the time to do it. That you don't want to invest all this money in it. So both a city question and a question for you. The question for you is, do you agree? Are we right for rebranding from a design perspective? And the question from the city perspective is, I know this has been talked about. Where are we at in those discussions? I know the communication department had some discussion at some point. I know it came to the council committee on citizen engagement at some point of talk about rebranding ourselves, which involves funding and time to do that. But I'd hate to go down this path, spend a ton of money if what we really need to do is do that first before we put our logo all around town. So I just throw that out there for discussion. I mean, I think rebranding a city is a huge undertaking. You've got to update not only the signage, but everything. I mean, it's a huge undertaking. So that has to be taken into consideration. I think it could be refreshed. Your brand could be refreshed. But again, our scope of work, we don't necessarily, we look at what the logo or identity is, but we don't necessarily want to put a logo on every sign, if that makes sense. Because logos do change, administrations change, a new mayor could come in or somebody could come in and say, I hate that logo, we're getting a brand new logo, and we're going to take down all the signs. I don't know. But we have to take that all into consideration. So it's funny in Boston, how many signs have mayor Tom Men uno all across and the amount of money they're spending having to replace all that. We did Jersey City and the mayor said, I want my name on every sign. And we kind of talked him off the ledge on that one. Well, I mean, I will tell you, I well, Mayor Pro Tem, is that something humorous about me saying, well, I'll tell you, I'm not sure about that. But I sort of concur with you on the exploration of the reb randing. I mean, you know, sometimes I've looked at as I've traveled around to other cities and gotten some, you know, even just other mayor's cards. I think we have some opportunity to whether it's a total rebranding or refreshing as it was put to take a look at it because I mean, we've got quite a unique city here. And I think it's really come into its own over the last few years that could really come up with some interesting concepts. So I certainly understand that and would agree with that sentiment. I think, Ron, you had- If I can add just to the discussion, one of the things that, you know, as Glenn mentioned, if we start to rebrand and we put the signs up, I mean, the intent is for these signs to be on there for some time. And if we rebrand and then say years later, we rebrand, we don't want to go back and change a sign. So we want to find something that's going to be as neutral and as, you know, lasting as possible. So if it's simply the font, then we can be, you know, am iable to any font type. But if in the future we want to change it, we don't want to do that. I mean, we want to keep it as consistent as possible. Joey? If we do consider rebranding or a new font, is there a way to just, you know, pull the public parking aspect of this apart from that and get going on that a little bit earlier? Because that seems to create a lot of confusion. Yeah, the next phase we're putting together a phasing plan. We've gone out and done a 50% programming of the entire city already. So we have locations already in place where we can now, the parking can act as a separate layer. We do that purposefully. So like what you have out there now, it's tied in with your signage. As a separate layer, that can go in at once as one layer. And this probably has a font of its own automatically. Well we do have the, one of the themes that ties everything together is that header. Let me go back to parking here. So you do have this down here. You could design it in a way that if you were doing a new branding situation where you could leave that blank and then come in and just add that later. So depending on what we're talking about here. But that, this down here really does tie everything together as a system. So you want to take that into consideration. Thank you. But I think what Ron said is right. You can look at the font. Maybe it's the way that this is rendered. But I think that that's up for, we can still sort of look at that and try and take that into consideration. That's Mayor Johnson. Thank you. So you and the folks at Merger, could you, have you, we've got the methodology here and I assume there's a timeline that goes along with this for each phase. Can you share with us what you think we're looking at in terms of time to, at which point we're manufacturing signs? You know, I think there's a timeline along the bottom of that chart there. So if you look at, I don't have it in front of me. Oh here we are. We're at design development now. So we would, we'd have to do design development, then programming, complete our programming, bid documents, and then going out to bid, depending on how long your bid process is, and then also, you know, through procurement and fabrication could take three to six months, depending on how many signs you're talking about and what the phase would be. I mean, you could be looking at the spring. Yeah, so what I was going to suggest is, I can remember sitting in this room five years ago or longer talking about wayfinding signage, so I don't want a font change to stall us right now, please. Because this, I think this is awesome, and I think this is going to make a big difference, as you said, specifically in the downtown and people finding parking. So I'm wide open for a refreshing of the brand for sure, because I think it does look a little dated, but I think that would really be talking about just that bottom piece, which, so I would say I think we need to continue to push forward with the timeline that we're on and don't slow down at all. But then whoever are the right parties at the city to look at a refreshed font, because really we don't have our whole city, our city of Denton logo like you see on the podium anywhere, but on the interstate signage, if I remember right, the bigger flag signage, right? Or does that not even make it on there? On the university, but I think there's a city of Denton logo on one of the bridges, the Texas Bridge. The water tower. Yeah. So there was one of the versions, but I'm thinking when you went to the update, that's right, so we didn't have that on anything. This was the design direction, yeah, so it's more... Kevin will tell us next Tuesday what the new font's going to be. I say don't slow down, let's just keep going. You know, I mean, if that's something that's... I'm sorry, Councilor. If that's something that is...we can design this in a way that it is also more of an enhancement marker on the top, where this could be a separate panel that could be removed and then, you know, that it could be modular if you wanted to go that direction. So you don't have to replace the entire panel, you would just replace the header panel. Council Member Wozniak. And fonts need to be hugely practical when they're on a sign, because it's a directional. You're in a car, you're moving, and you've got a split second to look over and look at that sign and bring your eyes back to the road. So font in terms of if we look at our branding logo is one thing, but signage on the signs needs to be...we need to rely on your expertise because you 're putting up signs all over the country. So we need practical, we need signs that are easy to read, clear, as well as attractive. Then I also really want to encourage us to work on putting these signs as we move out around the city, because we have a lot of merchants and restaurants and parks and different, you know, things around our entire city that we can direct people to, not just downtown. So I know this is a start, but I really want to emphasize that that's where I would like to see this program with some follow through, too. Yeah, the...talking about the font, this is a Clearview font, which is a highway font. So those...the vehicular signage will be up to all the standards for highway legibility. The...we...and our scope, we're planning for the whole city . So you will have a document that shows a direction to all of the...not just to the downtown, but also to the whole city. How you phase it and implement it, that's how it can be broken up. Yeah. Okay. Just...I've got a quick couple slides and then it should be completed here. Councilman Rhoad, and just a clarification, are we talking about this branding versus the sign font for the actual wayfinding signage? Are we talking about the branding of the logos and as shown here? Are we talking about all of it in general? I don't know. I mean, if we came up with a new logo, we might decide we like it. I mean, if you go to...I hate to use this as an example because it's in certain quarters of Denton, I could get crucified for it. But if you go to Frisco, for instance, they have a clear logo, very sharp, and it's on every street sign, every major intersection, there are various districts and stuff like that. Just to identify, you're in this city now. It's red. It stands out. I'm not making any comment on that particular logo or not. So my thought is, is if we had a new updated logo, we may decide we want to throw it on everything because it just makes sense. But when you get to the signs, when you look at your more kind of entry signs, all of those and all of the examples, again, these are just concepts. I understood. I understand. We're all using the Times New Roman Denton font, which I'm just...I'm no graphic designer. I have a few friends. I mean, I just...I guess I hang out with some on occasion. But my sense is Times New Roman is unbecoming of the city of Denton when we're trying to make a splash for what we are as a city. It just seems to be the case in these design circles. So perhaps the answer with that is, as you suggested, maybe we look at different fonts just for that. We don't even have to think of it from a logo perspective. But again, if we're going to head in this direction in the next year or something, which we may want to, I would say in conjunction with thinking about a new web design, it's probably a good time to think about branding too, which we 're embarking on next year. On that point, the city of Chattanooga, they created their own font. They're citizens. They created a Chattanooga font and got so much national play in so many magazines and online journals and things like that just because it was really sharp what they did and it was creative. The point being, if we're heading in this direction, it's worth...I don't think creating a new logo or coming up with a new font takes a ton of time . It doesn't have to. So we probably just need to think about the pacing of it. That's it. Right. And I just...for clarification, I just wanted that so that we can focus on what we need to focus on. And it sounds like it's this general area here while this font type could work or could not work. But I think your brain... I'm here about that. Exactly. I wish she's right when it gets to the point where you're going that she thinks she's doing something. This part needs to be done. That's exactly it. Okay. That was my reason for clarification. Okay. I just wanted to make a point that I did not see better signage for the back-end parking on Hickory Street. Is that an option? For the back-end parking? Oh, the back-end? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because that wasn't part of our initial research. But if that needs better signage, we can look at that. That's fine. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. We'll just Google Joey's video. Any other... Ron, you said you had a couple of thoughts. Just to really finish up here and, again, just hopefully getting some direction from counsel. We heard some input from you all. Wanted to know if we can move forward with furthering this effort and hopefully talk to our PIO and confirm the new logo, if that's something, or new branding, if that's something that we can or should be incorporating into our design. We also heard about maybe moving forward potentially with the parking component of it. Definitely something that we need right away. Looking for direction from counsel before we move forward. Okay. Counsel, direction. Yes, Counsel. I have a question. Based on the discussion, the only thing with the logo and the signs, it seemed to me that the signs that you were showing downtown, that top panel that we were talking about, was to designate this is downtown. Right. And that if we have another set of signs for Razor Ranch, that's probably going to have something different up there. Still in Denton. So we may want something else maybe on the bottom or somewhere that says Denton, the Denton logo, the Denton brand. Same for if we have unicorn like so that those different areas can be identified. But still children. But Councilman Rodin, were you talking about changing the top part so that it's not about downtown Denton as a place, but it's about the city? I don't know. I'm just saying, again, if we're not going to do any reb randing, then who cares just because we're going to have that? I'm saying if we are, and that's coming up in the next year , two years, as we're thinking about coinciding it, if we're just stepping back to say, would we rather just have that in place on all of you downtown everywhere just because we like it, and it connects and sit together, it just gives us that opportunity. So if we're not going to do that, plow forward. So that's just my thought. Is this TIF funding? No, we'll have to look at it. Has there been a contract? We do have funding. Oh, okay. We did through a bond back in 2005, so we've got funding for this. So if we're ready to move forward in the timeframe that Glenn discussed, we won't have any issues as far as getting this to bid and hopefully award it to a contractor. Thank you. Okay, so it sounds like one proposal progression, plow forward, but if we can do these things and not delay it, another is, hey, we're planning on looking at a new logo and some branding, in the near future, let's make sure that we have the capability in some of this. And I think we can go ahead and get the bids while we're working on graphic artists and some logo looks, because the actual construction of the signs, as long as you stay within the color limitations that we give the sign people, because that's going to determine cost. It always does. And so also a caution on putting different things around town. It's going to raise the cost substantially, because now you 're just doing a few signs for a certain part of town. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's like anything else. Once you make that sign run and you're doing the bids, then you've got to be pretty consistent about what that sign is going to look like. So that's just a cautionary note in terms of cost increases that could really hit this project hard. But I think we could move forward with the bids while we're working on logo ideas, because that's not going to impact the, as long as we tell the logo people, here are the color ideas that we want to, parameters that we want to stay inside. Mayor, I said plow forward, because we've really got seven and a half months before we go to bid. So I mean, plenty of time. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. I've been disappointed to know that all the letters that I write in Times New Roman now are very outdated and uncool and not very creative. So thank you. Councilmember Rowden for that. Addification. I tell you what, let's go ahead and take a quick five or ten minute break, and then we'll come back and okay. We are now, we've returned from break. We'll move on to our additional work session items. Agenda item 3A, which is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the 2015-16 proposed budget capital improvement. Thank you, Mayor. And I'm going to ask Mr. Chuck Springer, our Director of Finance, if he would come and, if it's all right with Council and Councilmember Bridge, I 'd ask Chuck to specifically address the issues of the electric, water, and wastewater utility rates that you raised a question about and at least summarize those at this point and then see where you want to go from there. So with that, Mr. Springer, thank you. Thank you, George. I'll start off with here, and this is just a slide from the presentation, but kind of summarize this, this is for the average residential customer, what the rate ordinances will be that are on this evening's agenda. In terms of electric, if you remember, they had a base rate increase, but a decrease in their ECA rate, and this is kind of the net of the two together, about four tenths of one percent increase for the average electric residential customer, and you can see the usage there, and then water, six and a half percent, the average increase is five, but it hits different customer classes a little bit differently . Wastewater, about two point six percent, I think their average is about two percent, and the solid waste on that one, we just took a standard cart, which is the majority of the carts for residential customers, the two point two, when you add all of those together, the net increase for a residential customer is about two point one percent. Dr. John. Chuck, how would that differ for a commercial customer? Rate increases for, I mean, I know that there's some really large users that are, I think, I don't know if they have negotiated rates or whatever based on their business type, but in general for a dumpster user, office user, standard commercial customer, what would the change be? I'm kind of looking over to Howard. I know we did some presentations for the PUB in terms of that, in terms of an electric customer. I'm looking over to Phil to see if he has any idea how it's going to, I know there's some of them that have specific contracts, but overall kind of a standard. I'm asking the question because we seem to always use the average residential customer as an example on these things and just want to make sure that we have an understanding of the impact to commercial customers as well. Right, and so for all customers, each year we do, periodically we do a cost of service study and each year we review what the cost of service is to serve each rate class. And so while in electric, our base rate increase, we're talking about 4.5% increase overall, that can range anywhere from 2% for some customers to 5% for different classes of customers. Each class depends on what their cost of service is. That's the objective is to price each customer a percentage of what there is. So I'd have to look and see what electric customers, what their percentage is for commercial customers. I think I have that. I'm going to minimize here for a minute. So now let me go through it again. So these are all the classes of customers we have. And so this is the base rate increase for those customers. This is the overall rate impact to each of those customers. So a general service medium, they're going to be net, they 're not going to see any increase at all. A general service small sees less than 1%. So these are different size customers. General service large would be like a Peterbilt. It's going to see a decrease. We just look at each class of customers and see what the percentage increase is to all of them. That's very helpful. That's very helpful. Thank you, Phil. OK. I'm sorry. >> I think for water and wastewater, Howard's got some information. >> I've got some comparison, but in general, on the commercial, regular commercial that you're talking about actually went down in cost. The volume charge went down from 490 to 475. And then for a standard meter, 3/4 inch, it didn't change. But for a 1-inch meter as an example, it went down from -- the facility charge went down from 3520 to 3205. So there was a small decrease in water as it relates to commercial. On the other hand, on the wastewater side, there was a small increase in commercial. If I -- yeah, there was a small increase in wastewater. And essentially, we went from 2570 on the facility charge to 2620. And then on the volume charge, we went from $5 to 505. Now, I could show you -- >> I'm good, Howard. That gives me what I need. >> Well, and we did on this. Here's a 2-inch meter to give you some idea. On 50,000 gallons, the bill wouldn't be -- the current is 25010. We went up to 25935. And then for 200,000 gallons, we went from 872 to 896. And I have similar stuff for wastewater. But the change in wastewater is relatively small. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Can you put the slide up you had initially that listed them all at once? Yeah, that one. And so I guess what's helpful for me -- and maybe you have this on this presentation as well -- is, well, first of all, I pulled up -- your website 's great when it relates to budget. You can go back over all the previous budget presentations. And if something kind of was helpful for me, I could always go back to it. So thanks for that. But comparing what was here at the original June 15th, I guess, discussion on the slides to what I'm seeing here. So for instance, you had each fund, and then you kind of explained what some of the costs were coming up that I guess accounted for the need for a rate change. And in the last line, you kind of list out what the base rate increase was for each one. Electric utility from the June presentation said increase 4 .5 percent. >> In the base rate? >> Oh, in the base rate compared to -- >> Well, this one, the base rate went up about that 4.5 percent. But by lowering the ECA rate, the net total bill. So you get those two parts of it. >> And that's what this is trying to describe. >> And this is the total bill. >> Okay, that's the discrepancy. So all that to say is I think is we're exploring these changes. In the abstract, I think people can get confused that we're just trying to raise money for some, I guess, whatever the city does to profit off of more money from our citizens. Which it seems like these slides were attempting to make the case that due to needed infrastructure cost coming up in some cases with water. There's discussion of the continued cost of zebra mussels in conjunction with different infrastructure costs. That but for these rate increases, we would struggle in those funds to be able to pay for those sorts of things. That's the general concept. >> Yeah, in terms of what the rates are set to do really in those funds, it's really set for the funds this year. I can go through the details of their five year plans, but for this year is basically to break even in those funds. Just matching their rates to their costs. And if you remember when they talked about water rates, we had an outside firm come in and make some recommendations on our rates for water this year. The outside firm recommended a larger increase for that to build the reserve as well as because we're experiencing lower average water usage. So we're really at a point where we've got these fixed costs and due to conservation that per capita water usage is going down. So I think that the rate study recommended about a 7 to 8% rate increase. They adopted a lower rate increase than that. But that's really the challenges in water. But a lot of the challenges are just infrastructure. With the wastewater system, there's required infrastructure to meet the order with EPA. >> Councilman Greaves? >> I just wanted to confirm what I heard for commercial. So for commercial in electric, it either stays the same or the rate decreases in some cases. And in water, it also is going to decrease slightly or stay the same or. >> Well, I think for electric, they were all, when you looked at them, they were all within about 1%, it seemed like. There were a few that were about flat or barely, but they were all within that 1%. I think the average is about two tenths or three tenths of a percent net. But they were all within that narrow band. For water and wastewater, I think what Howard was saying is they're generally within the same band. I think on the water side, the commercial may be a little bit less than it is for this residential customer. It's still an increase, but it was less than what it was on this residential side. >> But on some of the electric, it had negative on it, like negative. So I was just curious how that works, how that works for the homeowner. >> So we, as stated earlier, we are increasing the base rate, decreasing our ECA rate. Those different rate structures are built to capture our cost of service for each rate class. And so as the rate studies, what they've seen is the cost to serve residential customers compared to the cost to serve commercial customers compared to the cost of industrial customers. And come up with a recommendation for adjustments to the rates for each one of those. As Chuck stated, the rates, overall rate impact, adjusting those out is plus or minus 1%. Some customers, it's negative. Some customers, it's up to 1, but it's plus or minus 1% on all rate classes. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yes, Council Member Hawkins. >> This might be for Howard, just about water. So on electric, the base rate is going to go up, but the E CA rate will go down. Does the water portion of the utility bill break down into two parts like that too? >> It does. We have a facility charge on water and wastewater both and then a volume charge. >> Okay, and is that meant to kind of have a middle ground between residential and commercial too or? >> No, as a function of the rate study that Chuck was talking about, the residential went up slightly, the commercial went down slightly. So you're going to see that both in the facility charge and the volume charge. So what we're attempting to do across water is capture more of our rate through a fixed charge, the facility charge. We're trying to increase that from, in water, I believe it was 23% to 25% of the revenues are collected through the fixed charge. >> Okay, and maybe I can put you on the spot from our conversation we had a little bit earlier. >> Okay. >> I've just gotten some emails lately about increased water bills and that sort of thing. People were possibly concerned it was their meter or something like that. And maybe if you could just enlighten us with what you- >> Actually I can. I went back and looked at both electric and water to see on a system basis what we were pushing through the system. And I can tell you from looking at the last 60 days, you're going to see our peak water flow up in the 30 million gallon a day plus. Which our peak flow to date I believe is 35. So we're pushing the top of the demand that we've seen in the past. Electric, they had I believe a 347 and I believe their peak is like 350 or something like that. So anyway, both utilities are on the high end of the demand component. So what that means to me and for us is that the consumers are consuming a fair amount of water and electricity across the system. >> And why did you think we were possibly using more water after all that water we got in the spring? >> Well, there's several theories but what I would tell you is that I think that the early rainfall that we had encouraged the vegetative growth that we're experiencing across the city. And then when we got into the dryer period of time, what we 're seeing is a little more irrigation to try to keep that extra vegetation alive. That's what I would tell you. And then on the electric side, I think people are continuing to run their AC certainly over the last 60 days. But two, it has to do with humidity, the level of humidity that people experience and the perceived temperature. I think they're continuing to utilize electric through their HVAC. >> Thank you. >> Okay. I want to dig into a little bit more to the questions that Council Member Briggs was raising. because it sounds like the heart of your question is, the perception is that as we're kind of raising base rates, we're putting that onto the backs of our homeowners or folks living in residential areas. And seemingly giving a break to commercial users of this. Now, as I heard you explain this and talk about cost of service to a particular category versus cost of service to another one. And the idea is to even it all out. I don't think that's what's happening. But the perception is, and I just want to dig into this so that we can kind of ferret it out because I imagine other people are hearing this and maybe are confused as well. >> Sure. >> So if the accusation was the city is so friendly to these big cats that are big commercial users and businesses. In order to be friendly to them, we're going to put the bulk of the burden on the back of your average homeowner. What's our response to that in as layman's terms as we can give? >> Sure. In developing your revenue requirements, you try to match your revenue requirements to your cost of service. Obviously, the best cost of service would be an individual rate per customer. You can't do that. You divide them up into categories and you look at that cost of service based on those categories. And what we were seeing as part of the rate study that we just completed was that we were under collecting on the residential side and over collecting on the commercial side. Some of the, I guess, points that the public utility board really emphasizes to us is that we don't want one customer class subsidizing another customer class. So what we're attempting to do is to match that cost of service to that revenue requirement. And the rate study on the water and wastewater showed that we were very, very close but that we needed to transition that cost of service expense in the water side from the residential, to the residential from the commercial and then vice versa on the wastewater side. And so it's an attempt to match cost of service to the, or the customer class to the cost of service. >> So taking each category in the aggregate, you're able to kind of analyze, is the amount we're drawing in from revenue from the rates that we're charging, is it equal to the amount we're spending in being able to provide that energy? And the conclusion was, if I'm hearing you right, that in the past or recent past, it seemed like actually the commercial side was subsidizing the residential side. Residentials as an aggregate wasn't pulling their weight. >> That's correct. >> So now what we're experiencing is an attempt to make sure no class is helping out the other class. >> Everyone's pulling their own weight. >> Everybody's pulling their own weight. Now, what I would tell you is that we made a conscious decision not to go to full cost of service this year. We looked at phasing that in over a two to three year period. One of the things that Chuck mentioned was that the rate study was suggesting that we needed a 7% on the water side and we chose to go with a 5. And that was primarily two things. One, we were phasing that adjustment in cost of service over a couple years. And then the other was the reserve issue that Chuck had brought up and what is the appropriate level of reserve. >> Okay, Council Member Freese. >> Is that rate study that you're talking about publicly available? >> Sure, absolutely. That's kind of large. It's a couple hundred pages, but it is available. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions for Howard? Is everybody up there? Thank you. >> I don't have a formal presentation in terms of on the budget. I do want to go over what's been provided in the work session information and then go over what items are for tonight and answer any questions you have. If you want me to go into some other information before then, I can. >> Before we move on, on the consent agenda item, were they double D, E, and F? >> Double D, double E, and double F are the issues that Ke ely, you had asked, be discussed publicly. >> Do you want to still pull those for individual votes or do you want to leave them on the consent agenda to be voted for on the overall consent agenda? >> I would like for them to be discussed at the regular meeting. >> Okay. >> Because I have discovered that not everybody watches the work session. >> Sure, okay. >> And then we can just decide at that time whether we vote . Because when we pull them typically, it's item for individual consideration, which means they're voted on individually. And that's the clarification I would just seek. So we'll just decide when we get out there. We'll go ahead and pull them. I guess to have a presentation on them, we need to pull them for individual consideration. >> We've got separate budget for, I guess, four different budget items. One is to adopt the budget, which would be items for individual consideration. And if it would work, we could ask Chuck when he's making the presentation on that individual item for individual consideration on the adoption of the budget to go over this summary of the rates on all four of those rates, just like he did here. >> Yeah, the only thing is that presentation is after the consent agenda vote. So, oh, is it before? Okay, well, my bad. Fantastic. Okay. So we'll do that and then you can decide then how you want to do that. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Sorry about that, Chuck. I just wanted to get that procedural clarity moving forward . >> Okay. In terms of what's in your packet on the AIS for the informal, we've kind of tried to summarize the changes from the initial proposed budget. And the revised general fund revenues and expenditures. And then we've also got increases or decreases to other funds explained in there. So I'll kind of open that up for questions and make sure we 've categorized everything correctly based on the council direction from prior meetings. All right. Anybody just chime in? Okay, I'm looking at exhibit, I guess, is it one, which is the? >> Yeah, exhibit one is the summary of revenue and expenses . So this is really also included in the budget item as an exhibit for the adoption of the budget. We adopted it at the fund level. So that would be the adoption of the operating grant and capital program. And those are the numbers that are stated in the budget ordinance in your regular agenda. >> So if I remember correctly, at the end of our session last time, there was an amount, I think it was about 150, 000 that just rolled down to the general fund balance. >> Yeah, and if you look, the general fund revenues are 108 .75 million, expenditures 108.59. So that difference between revenues and expenditures was that 155,000. >> All right, good deal. Any questions for Chuck on the present time of the budget, at least the workshop before our, yes, Council Member Was ney. >> Is this when we can kind of make a summary of comments about the budget? >> You can do it here, you can do it out there, I mean, or both. >> Are you wanting to make some changes to the proposed budget or just make comments on the budget itself? >> Make comments on the budget itself? >> It's your call, whichever one or both. I mean, as I think Council Member Briggs pointed out, sometimes there's a very different audience at this time as compared to when we go out at the 630 meeting. >> I'll save it for tonight because it's already 415. >> Okay, all right. Just to mention, I have four items tonight. The first item is the adoption of the tax rate. Just to highlight again that it requires a 60% vote because it's above the effective rate, which takes five members to adopt the tax rate. And just to let you know, and I'll hand it out tonight, there's specific language under state law that's required to adopt a tax rate any time it's above the effective tax rate, so I'll read that to you, but I'll hand it out tonight. It's just, I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate, which is proposed at 6.68975 , which is effectively a 5.1% increase in the tax rate. That language just takes what's the effective rate, what's the proposed rate, and it's set by state law, so I'll have that to hand out tonight. But that one is the only one that's a little bit unique, and then we adopt the roles, we adopt the budget, and then again, state law requires us to do a ratification of the budget any time it's above the effective tax rate. So those are the four items for your regular agenda tonight . >> Okay. Any other questions, comments? All right. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Chair. >> You bet. >> Okay. We'll move on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item 3B, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the Denton County Veterans Coalition request to co-sponsor the Stand Down event to be held in the Civic Center in Qu aker Town Park, located at 321 East McKinney Street, October the 22nd. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to ask Mr. Emerson Vohel if he would come and present this item and give him a second chance this afternoon. This one will probably be, do we have any props or visual aids? >> No, but they've asked to change the font. >> I think we should sing this presentation. >> You don't pay me enough. All right. The Denton County Veterans Coalition is requesting assistance with this event. This is a stand down event that they want to hold on October 22nd at the Civic Center in Quaker Town Park. They're asking for some relief from the fees for the rental of Quaker Town Park and the Civic Center. This event, what it does is it's an outreach event to homeless vets and to very, very low income veterans. It's an opportunity to get them connected with some of the agencies that will provide help to them, provide things like food, medical care, dental care, some counseling, even some things as easy, as simple, I guess you would say, as haircuts. These folks are asking, of course, we have to take it to council to get permission to waive these fees. All are part of these fees, which is what we're doing here today. This is on, let's say, a consent item on your agenda as well for later today. >> Let me send a question for you then. >> Go ahead. >> It sounds like a very worthy activity. But the impact is that that's a rental fee that generally goes, does that go to the general budget or does it go to the parks general fund? So it's not going to be, it's a hit taken by the organization as a whole and not by your department in particular. >> That is correct. And they've asked for relief on part of the fee. The part that they're proposing to pay would cover the direct costs. Our staff members that would be in the building involved with setup or cleanup. There's also some in there for PD. Should there be a need for an officer as we get further into this, there would be some funding there for an officer to work this event if need be. Thank you. >> Okay, any other questions? And this is an action item tonight? >> Yes, sir. >> On the consent agenda, correct? >> Yes, sir. >> Yes. >> Aye. >> Yes. >> All right. Thank you. That was fast. Thank you, Emerson. Okay. I think that concludes our public work session for this city council meeting. We will now convene the closed session at 422. We will consider the following items, deliberation regarding real property under Texas government code 551.072 , consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071, deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas government code section 551.087, and certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas government code section 551 .086. Thank you. >> Good evening. I wanted to welcome everyone to this Denton City Council meeting on September 15, 2015, with 636. Got our first agenda item is Pledge of Allegiance. And we have a Drake Kiefer who is a Boy Scout working on his citizenship badge. And he's agreed to lead us in the American flag pledge and in the Pledge of Allegiance and the Pledge of the Texas flag. So Drake, if you'll come down and lead us in the pledge, appreciate that. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> 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. >> Texas flag. >> Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state under God, one nation indivisible. >> Thank you very much. All right, we've got some proclamations and such, so I'll come down. [BLANK_AUDIO] Our first proclamation is Denton Hispanic Heritage Month. So who's coming up here for this proclamation is going to say a few words. Come on down. Anybody willing to want to come down and join? Dr. Rodriguez, come on down. Give us a little information on this and tell us what we have to look forward to. Surely you got some, okay, now there's, come on down. Okay. >> Okay, did you want me to speak on the mic here? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Okay, okay, okay, all right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and City Manager Campbell and the rest of the, and the members of the City Council. Thank you very much for the opportunity, Chris. I really think that this is, it's a big moment for our city and for our county to have this opportunity to bring to our community and our region information about the contributions, the history, and the rich culture of our Hispanic Americans . These are people, these are folks that take special pride in me of American heritage. They equally feel proud about their Hispanic, Latino, ancestral connections. So in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, and by the way, this is all aligned with the National Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. So we have communities throughout the United States, you know, that are celebrating this month-long celebration. So this is our first, you know, for our city and our region . Actually, we've had something similar or comparable, but it was a one-day activity. So this is a more expansive or more comprehensive plan that we've put together. And so thanks to my LULAC brothers and sisters who have worked with me, and by the way, we appreciate the opportunity at the same time to collaborate with our friends, with our brothers and sisters who are here from Mooskies. Actually, they're detonates now and have contributed in so many, many different ways, you know, to our communities. I think we'll be recognizing that group as well. But anyway, we invite you to all these different activities that we have scheduled beginning. Actually, we started today this morning with the opening event over the county courthouse. The county courthouse has been extremely cooperative with us and supportive of our effort, just as you guys have been here with the city. And so through all this collaboration and partnership, you know, we have put together what we think is a program that 's going to make us all proud, all proud. You know, we're going to have a good mix of fun activities, you know, that's scheduled for October the 1st at the West Lawn, the courthouse of the square. And we're going to have some children that are going to be performing for the schools of the Denton Independent School District. And, you know, some pinatas for the kids and information tables, you know, materials for moms and dads, you know, that are going to be joining with us. So that and, you know, we have a panel of some local residents, you know, that are going to be sharing their experiences, providing testimonials, reflections about their lives here in Denton. Again, these are all very proud folks, you know, that feel good about, you know, their experiences here in Denton. So that will be an opportunity for the for our community to learn more about, you know, our community here. We're an integral part of this community, you know, that integral part of Denton have contributed in every facet of American life and American society. And we're especially proud of the service that our Hispanic Americans and their loyalty and their patriotism, which are virtues, by the way, of our of our community, the Hispanic American community, you know, and have served in every war. See, a lot of people don't know this, but our Hispanic Americans or Americans of Hispanic heritage or people who can claim an ancestry to the Latino Hispanic have served in every war. Did you know that? In every war since the founding of our country, you know, the revolution all the way through, you know, World War I, World War II. And we even had the Hanos, you know, with deep roots in our state, you know, that were defenders of the Alamo and were founders of our republic back in 1836. So these are this is information that we're going to be sharing, you know, with the people from our community, you know, throughout the course of our one month event, which will culminate with Mercedes Oliveira. You have read her column, I'm sure, in the Dallas Morning News, and she will speak to us about la vida Latina and will provide some perspectives. I think that will be of great interest, you know, to our community. So here's a series of activities every month, every week, you know. So the first is going to be the 24th of September. That's our panel discussion that I mentioned earlier. October the 1st is the Family Fun Night where we're going to feature the children, you know, from the public schools here in Denton. October the 8th is the, I got you from my brother's sister from Lulac helped me out. We have the art contest right on October the 8th. And then the Machatines, I have problems with Spanish as well. Machatines will be performing right after the art contest at the courthouse of the square. And Chavez will provide us with a leadership in that. And you need to come and see for yourself to find out what that's all about. And let's see, that's about, oh yeah. And then we'll have, you know, you want to be sure and come to the museum because we have some exhibits, you know, where we feature, you know, some of the leaders of our community that have contributed in so many different ways over the many, many years and have helped our community to make the great city and our county the great county that it is today. So those figures, you know, are notable personalities, you know, we have a display for you to see. Some of the early families, you know, a lot of folks don't know this, but we have some early Latinos, Hispanics, you know, that were part of our community back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Menchaca family, the Ramirez family, the Villanueva family. So there is some information about those three families at that museum. So thanks so much for the opportunity and for this pro clamation and urge everyone, you know, to please take part in these activities. You guys raise your hands, all of you that have contributed one way or another from LULAC, from, you know, the Proyecto de Es, you know, they've all given their time and energy and a lot of work to make this possible for our city and our county. So we urge everyone to please take advantage of these opportunities to not only enjoy what we have to offer, but also to learn from this just outstanding cultural experience. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you very much. You bet. You bet. Thank you. No, Rudy. Rudy. Rudy. Come on. Yeah. No, no, you're good. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, whereas the United States draws its strength from the extraordinary diversity of its people. And whereas throughout our history, Hispanic Americans have shown devotion to our country and their military service by having served in every war since our founding and have taken their rightful place as heroes in our nation's history. And whereas Hispanic Americans have contributed significantly to the spirit of America and enriched our city and county. And whereas the Hispanic Heritage Month Planning Committee, composed of Denton LULAC Council number 4366 members and staff of the Denton County Office of History and Culture, has taken the leadership role in organizing cultural activities and events as a means to showcase the history, cultural and contribution of Hispanics. And whereas this year's theme for Hispanic Month is celebrating the Hispanic legacy in Denton County, September the 15th, 2015 through October the 15th, 2015. And whereas today Hispanics are the largest minority ethnic group in the United States and in the city of Denton and Denton County. And whereas the city of Denton remains committed to ensure that all Hispanic Americans and their families enjoy the benefits, opportunities, and rewards offered by this country to all Americans, now therefore I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, in recognition of the cooperative spirit displayed in strengthening the value and appreciation of the critical role Hispanic Americans and American society do hereby declare and proclaim September the 15th, 2015 through October the 15th, 2015 as Denton Hispanic Heritage Month in the city of Denton and urge all citizens to join in the celebration of our diversity and the rich cultures that make our nation so extraordinary. So thank you and look forward to the events. Thank you. [Applause] [Background Chatter] [Background Chatter] [Background Chatter] Okay, now we have, oh yes, the Project 10 group. Y'all come on, I think you've got a special presentation for us. Come on up and whoever, come up and if you'll just say a few quick words and then introduce everyone and tell us what we have here and look forward to it. [Background Chatter] Yeah, y'all just want to take a moment to... [Background Chatter] Okay, are you the spokeswoman? I am. Okay. [Background Chatter] Good evening everyone. We are Proyecto 10. We are an organization that is just a year old and we decided to become a group so that we could become Sister Cities with Denton. We didn't become Sister Cities but we became friend cities and thanks to Mrs. Cunningham who was a big part of this, Mr. Cabrales and Mayor Watts and all the other people that helped to make all this happen and all these people that you see here that made this event happen. We had our mayor from our city come on the Cinco de Mayo. He was part of the parade and then we signed a proclamation of an agreement of the friendship cities and some gifts were exchanged and our gift didn't get here on time. So today we want to present you with a settle from Mosquiz from Mayor Santos and he wrote you a letter that I would like to read to you and I will say this in Spanish later so everyone can understand if that's okay. Okay it says, "Honorable Mayor, with an affectionate greeting, I take this opportunity to first thank you for all your hospitality that your office had this past May when we visited the city of Denton, Texas. On our behalf, we send our affection and friendship from our people sending you a Musqueña settle, particularly used and fabricated in our regional area with the following special features. The shaft is shortened with cover stirrups which serve to protect boots against the thorny branches of Huizaches, Mes quite and other shrubs which can tear into the leather foot wear as one steps through the range lens. At the same time, we reiterate our invitation to you and the City Council to visit our city at this time, at the time of your choice. It would be an honor to have your presence in our city. Our plan for this October is the unveiling of a mural at the entrance of our city depicting the names of Mosquiz-D enton friendly cities. We wish you the best in re-iterating to you our utmost respect and greetings from the people of Mosquiz. Thank you, thank you. So if I may, can I just say a little bit in Spanish and read the letter in Spanish. (Speaking Spanish) (Speaking Spanish) (Speaking Spanish) (Speaking Spanish) (Speaking Spanish) (Applause) Well first of all, thank you very much and I just want to say I was looking at your letter and the letterhead and the logo. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. We were talking about branding and logos. Basically, Friendship Cities partnerships serve to strengthen and enrich the creative learning and work environment in both cities by exploring and encouraging opportunities for cultural, educational, community, business, municipal and tourism information, programs between the cities, organizations of both cities. And I believe when Mayor Flores was here, wasn't there a contingent from I think it was the Kiwanis or the Rotary or they came later or something like that? Okay, all right. Well we did have an opportunity to entertain this past May Mayor Flores and members of the Musque City Council that traveled to Denton to participate in the Denton Cinco de Mayo celebration. Denton Hispanic community leaders joined me and city staff and hosting the delegation to lunch here in City Hall where Mayor Flores and I mutually signed a Friendship City Declaration Red to participants of the Cinco de Mayo celebration. It is my pleasure and honor to receive this gift to Denton from the Mayor and citizens of Musque for display at City Hall. We look forward to the productive collaborations and friendship between the cities of our two cities. But I will tell you, we're going to find a real creative place for this. It's either going to be the place over here in the corner when one of my colleagues gets out of order, they're going to go sit there or we're going to put it right here behind the dais so that when people come down and give citizen reports, they'll be able to saddle up and strap into those stirrups. So thank you very much for this wonderful, beautiful and generous gift from the Mayor. So please pass that along as well. Thank you all very much. What a wonderful, what a beautiful, beautiful gift. Thank you all for that. Now we have Constitutional Week. Good evening. Hello, if you'll just tell us your name and tell us about Constitutional Week. My name is Linda Scott and Constitution Week is meant to honor the US Constitution, and I represent the Daughters of the American Revolution, which is mandated to plan activities and other ways to honor the Constitution displays and educational activities. And so I would like to at this time invite any of you here, or any people you know , the whole public is invited to the Commissioner's courtroom at the courthouse on the square, where we read the entire Constitution on Constitution Day, which is the day after tomorrow, September 17. It's the anniversary, 228th anniversary of the signing of our US Constitution. And we feel that that document is is so valuable to our national well being that we feel that it's important for everyone to be familiar with it. And so everyone can come and hear the Constitution read and we will ring bells at 3pm at the end of the reading. And so , just like to know for everyone to know that this is a public event. Right. Thank you. Let me read this proclamation celebrating that. Proclamation by the mayor of the city of Texas whereas our founding fathers in order to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their prosperity did ordain and establish a Constitution for the United States of America. And whereas it is of the greatest importance that all citizens fully understand the provisions and principles contained in the Constitution, and order to effectively support, preserve and defend against all enemies and defend it excuse me against all enemies. And whereas the 228th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution provides an historic opportunity for all Americans to remember the achievements of the framers of the Constitution is the rights privileges and responsibilities they afford us in this unique document, and where it is the privilege and duty of all Americans to commemorate the 228th anniversary of the ratification and the convention of the Constitution of the United States of America, with appropriate ceremonies and activities. Now therefore I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare the week of September the 17th through September the 23rd as Constitution Week, and urge all citizens to study the Constitution and reflect on the privilege of being an American with all the rights and responsibilities, which that privilege involves and further to vigilantly protect the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guardian of our liberties so thank you very much for that. All right, we have one for DFW solar tour day. I gave them one is it Jim. Jim Duncan Jim come down and just give us an explanation a brief explanation of DFW solar tour day. Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Watts, I'm Jim Duncan I'm chairman of the North Texas renewable energy group a nonprofit. North Texas chapter of the American solar energy society, whose. This is the 61st year for as as in case you didn't know that. For the past 20 some odd years, asus has sponsored the national solar tour. It's happened is taking place in all 50 states and Puerto Rico and Mexico, and in Canada. The tour here in North Texas is going to be on October the third. We encourage you to go to their website, it's DFW solar tour.org. There's homes, all over, all over the place we're having to cut off at about 50. This year, we just had so many people interested in displaying their homes you can go you can talk to folks who have solar who have energy efficient improvements to their homes or businesses. You find a lot of cities that have solar installations, you have a lead rated football stadium out here on the south side of town. It's wind powered, but this is open to the public. 10am till 4pm and you can go talk with these folks and ask them what you know talk with real solar homeowners and find out what they think of it. What's the pluses and the minus es, they'll tell you all about it. And it's in particular it's a honor to be getting this this presentation from the city of Denton who's one of the leading cities in the US, when it comes to renewable energy in case you didn't know it your 40% of your electricity comes from wind power and they're about to boost that up significantly with a new solar installation that they'll be buying all the power from so you have a lot to be proud of here and I hope that y'all will be there. And I hope that y'all will be able to get out there on Saturday the 4th of October. Take advantage of the DFW solar tour, and we'll be looking forward to seeing a lot of y'all. Thank you. What a great opportunity to get some information. If you're ever thinking about doing some kind of installation like that to really talk to people who've actually had that experience. I'm in exclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton whereas the National Texas renewable energy group in cooperation with the Texas Solar Energy Society and the American Solar Energy Society national solar tour has organized its sixth annual DFW solar tour on Saturday, October 15. And whereas the tour enables residents to tour innovative green homes and buildings around the DFW Metro plex and learn how homeowners and businesses can use solar energy, wind energy, energy efficiency, and other sustainable technologies. And whereas homeowners and National Texas renewable energy group volunteers will be available at each tour site to provide information and education about renewable energy installations technologies and experiences. And whereas information about this tour including visiting hours maps directions and brief property descriptions and photos can be found at DFW solar tour.org and that's DFW solar tour.org. Therefore I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton Texas do hereby proclaim Saturday October the third 2015 as DFW solar tour day in the city of Denton and encourage all residents to join the tour and further give full recognition to the dedicated company sponsors and volunteers who have contributed so much time and effort and making this project a success. So thank you very much. I have a question. Do you know if there are any homes in Denton that are on that tour. Would they have that on the on the website, if there were okay. Okay. Homes listed every week, every day so okay we'll keep an eye out for that then. Thank you. 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. >> [INAUDIBLE] presentation from members of the public. First one is Monica Jones regarding an issue with animal services. Ms. Jones here? Okay, Ms. Jones is not here. Mr. Bob Clifton regarding public service. Is Mr. Clifton here? Don Murky regarding Uber, electronic vehicle charging stations and electric vehicles for the city. If you'll just state your name and address and your time will begin. >> Name's Don Murky, 2005 Holly Hill, New Enton, Texas. Resident since 1969. I'm an electric vehicle or EV driver. Thanks for listening. When the city worked to get the current level two charge systems that we have in town, it showed their commitment to the future and I commend that. Okay, the needs of EV drivers are different from what these chargers afford. There are currently three levels of EV charging available to EV drivers. Level one, the 120 plug that you have in your house, not very effective. It's good for emergencies basically. It charges at about four and a half miles per hour. That's how much electricity goes into the battery. Level two, what we have at the parks and the library, a lot of the places around town, the Spencer Generating Station, that's a 240. It charges about 30 amps. You can put in 12 to 26 miles an hour. That's equivalent to going to a gas station and waiting an hour and getting about a gallon of gas. It's not very effective for someone that's on the go. It works real well for charging overnight. Some people it works just fine. The third option is level three or DC charging, which they convert the AC electricity into DC current that goes straight to the battery at 300 to 400 volts and it will charge at about 40 miles in 10 minutes. This works. It's great for people on the go. The downside is they're expensive. We have a city that has over 100,000 people and we don't have one. The closest one is in Providence Village. How many people live in Providence and they have one? It's something that we need. I have been in contact with car manufacturers, the charge manufacturers, and several businesses, and I think we can work something together with everybody involved to try to get at least one of them in town. It requires a lot of electricity. It doesn't cost much to actually charge them, but you have to have a lot of electricity available. It's three-phase. It's powerful stuff. It needs dedication, and most businesses can't afford to put that in. So I suggest that we go for that. The other thing is EV cars, our fleet. We have some Priuses that we use, internal combustion engines, hybrids. Nothing can compare to how efficient and cost per mile EV vehicles can be. If you get them right, and I have four of them, if you get them inexpensive enough, it costs you 2 cents a mile to drive them, 19 cents a mile to acquire them, I could give you a car and you can't drive it that cheap. And they are not slow. In fact, I have four. Anybody here, you want to borrow one for two days, I'll let you use it. It'll change your world. That's about it on that. Now, the Uber, I drove for Uber for 30 days to see what it was like. That's a great idea, but they're not following the rules that Denton has in order. I have tried to follow the rules in a business that I'm trying to start by paying my fees, going to the police department and all that. And all I'm suggesting is we get on the same page. If we're going to enforce the rules for some people, enforce them for all the people. And if you're not going to do it, then don't make me pay the fees, make me jump through the hurdles and all that. It needs to be even. I don't believe that they are a good service for Denton. I don't see us getting any revenue from anything that they do. There's very little supervision that we are enforcing upon them. Most of the people don't even live in Denton that are driving. Several of them come from Sanger and other areas. And I thank you for your time. We have several who have requested to speak or ask questions. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for that, Don. That third charging station that you were talking about, do you have a ballpark figure of how much that is? $60,000 total cost is the max. Now, and here's my deal. My deal with Nissan is that if I lease 10 of these cars from them, they will give me the charger to put in. That's the kind of support I'm getting. I've also got another company that will work with me and give me one. I've got to have the place and I've got to pay for the install. And for a community thing like the Wells Fargo parking lot, lots of transformers in that area, lots of parking, great area, the library would not be a bad area. The Emily Fowler, that would not be a bad spot. More centrally located, the people that use it, I'm sure that the city would benefit from having one at the Spencer station. But they're pretty -- they're pricey and they have two different standards that are coming out. And I'm sorry, is this okay that I keep talking like this? Or what? Yeah, there's several others. Basically, yeah, he had asked a question I think you'd answer. We also have others. No, no, you're good. I get long-winded. No, no, you're on. You're going to tell me to shut up. Councilmember Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, can get long-winded. Don, we'll get along just fine. So I was going to ask that question as well, but also, so the places where they have these available for the public, how do you pay -- how does a consumer pay to use the charger? Is it just -- does it set up like a regular gas station is? You put your credit card in and -- It's a subscription-type deal. You get a card. I do it in Dallas. You get a card like that. You swipe it. You charge. You get a credit card account, too. Right now, Nissan has a program that's two years free, but that's how you do it. You can pay for it like that. Okay. There's no cash involved. Nobody's going to break into the machine to do anything like that. Yeah, nobody just cashes in anymore. It's not an ATM machine-type deal. The second question I have is, because obviously you're very knowledgeable about this, do you know how many EV cars there are in Denton Ballpark? I've personally referred 22 people just to buy these little Leafs that I have, and I don't get a penny out of them. But it's -- I work on cars for a living, and I drive electric cars. It's the future. As far as how many are here, I couldn't begin to tell you, but as soon as somebody drives one, they want to go get one . So it just needs to get the word out. It's growing. It's the future. And you said the power requirement is simply three-phase, three-phase power? Oh, yeah, yeah, because it's -- I mean, you're converting the AC electricity into 300 to 400 volts DC. It takes -- it takes beaucoups. I mean, you're not going to get it at -- even my shop is not -- wouldn't have -- I have three-phase, and it's not big enough to do it. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Rodin. Back when Uber had its free week, I was downtown and thought I'll call up an Uber to get a ride home. And it tells you what kind of car is picking you up. And it was a Tesla Model S, which isn't your typical Uber vehicle. This gentleman came and picked me up and took me home. That was my first exposure to Uber. And Denton was you as my driver. I don't know if you remember that. But talk to me a bit about your experience just to follow up on your discussion about the taxi services here in town. In your experience, both being an Uber driver and now kind of starting your own company, is the market increasing? In terms of the demand of individuals seeking taxi services ? Well, the way Uber is doing it right now, there's work to be made. I mean, there's money to be made in personal transportation . But the way that Uber has it right now, I mean, I can go on for a long time. Uber -- I guess my question is, are you seeing more demand from the citizens for taxi services in town now that we have these options available? Just from your experience. No. I'm not seeing the demand right now, but I'm not pushing it right now. Because it's not cost effective for me to go out and push it with Uber and me having to pay what I have to do. I can't compete with the on-demand stuff. I can compete with scheduled, because Uber does not schedule. But as far as on-demand stuff, I can't compete with those prices. Nobody can. Thank you. They're operating at a loss. Councilmember Briggs. Hello. Councilmember Johnson, I also drive a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle. So I'm one of those in the city. I have seen a lot more in the city lately. Did you say that Nissan would give a $60,000 charger? The $60,000 is the total cost. Okay. Okay. The chargers, you can actually purchase a charger for probably about $25,000. Okay. The install, because you're going to have concrete cutting, boring, wiring, all this. That's where the install can be more than the charger itself. But Nissan has told me that they will give me a charger itself. I have to install it. I have to find a place that somebody, a business or something that wants to embrace it and put it in their place. And likewise, NRG, that's the other company, they have the same position. They want to put it someplace where it's viable and recognizable. They like where my spot is on 288 because of the high traffic. And I've had some preliminary discussions with them on that , but I can't do it by myself. Well, no. It's off the charts. Okay. All right. Thank you. I see no more requests for other questions. So thank you very much. All right. Brad Isaacs, if you'll come up and state your name and address and just sort of a procedural notation here. Mr. Isaacs had filled out a blue card to request to speak on support of I think our last speaker. But really we're going to put you under the sort of open mic because typically you can't speak on another citizen's request, but you can under the open mic. So not so much for you, but for the general public out there, that's sort of procedural. But state your name and address and your time will begin. Okay. My name is Brad Isaacs. I live at 1403 Oakwood Drive here in Denton, Texas. Long-term Denton resident, skateboarder and father of a skateboarder who is over there. I'm here to kind of talk about what Sam O'Donnell talked about last week and just advocate for the building of a new skate park somewhere here in Denton, Texas. Let's see. One of the concerns about the current skate park is that it was built around the time that the most recent skate park boom began. And at that time there were a lot of companies in it who were construction companies, but they weren't skate park specific construction companies. And so they came in with ramps and put them in, which was a great thing to have, but they didn't do it in a way that facilitates skateboarding. And so you put ramps in the way of other ramps. You put ramps in places where you can't get across the skate park. This is the equivalent of sticking boulders in the middle of a football field or building a soccer field and putting the goals on the side instead of at either end. It doesn't make sense to create a flow of skating in the park that keeps people from, one, hurting themselves and, two, be able to skate in the way that, you know, skateboard ing works. It's often thought of as a kind of a no rules free flowing thing. And of course it is, but you still have to be able to approach objects in specific ways to make sure you can hit them properly and things like that. Also, it wasn't really built with young skaters in mind. And that wasn't as big of a problem at the time because skateboarders weren't so young then. But now as skateboarding is becoming more popular, is likely going to be in the Olympics in 2020. Skateboarders are getting younger and younger and younger and they're starting earlier. And you're sticking them in a park that isn't developed in a way that allows them to move freely without getting injured by much larger skateboarders who are shooting from one side to the other and things like that. And so there is a need for a new park. Sam talked about it being a concrete park that is prefer able for a lot of reasons. One, that's less maintenance for the city. It's going to be a bigger investment to begin with, but over time there are going to be less repairs, little to no repairs actually. And it's going to be able to be more plastic in the ways that it can be built to. Okay, I can't think right now. But it's going to allow more flexibility in the building than wooden and metal ramps do. And it's going to help recreate all of these obstacles that are pulling the kids onto the streets and drainage ditches and plazas and everything else. That's what skate park design is about now. It's recreating urban and suburban landscapes that are bringing kids out into the streets, out into dangerous ditches, up in front of banks and everything else, and giving them a place where they can do all that stuff that they want to do in a way that's going to be much safer for them than all of the other people, pedestrians, people in cars, so on and so forth. And I guess I'm not -- I could keep going, but I'm almost out of time anyway, and so I don't want to start on something now. We do have some -- we have a question. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem? Gregory? According to our jeopardy rules here on council, we have to ask these things in the form of questions. Okay. So at our last meeting when we had several speakers to speak on that, then they left. So they may not be aware, but I'm asking you, are you aware -- this is the form of the question -- are you aware that after the last meeting, at the end of the meeting when we asked for -- council members asked for comments, that we asked the staff to prepare a report, to look at our current inventory of park sites, and to look for possible locations for a skate park? Are you aware that we also asked for them to give us some information about design and cost? No, but I can -- And we also asked them to set up a meeting with potential users or stakeholders to discuss the idea of a skate park in more detail. Are you aware that we asked for that at the last meeting? I was not aware of that, no. Are you aware of it now? I am aware of it currently, yes. And I might be able to answer questions if you have any. Well, that would be -- if you want to give your name to staff, because when they set up that meeting, then you can be there for that. Thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. That was one of our speakers for the additional citizen reports for Agenda Item C, so just wanted to see if there's any additional people that -- individuals that would like to speak in the additional citizens report for Agenda Item. Well, no, no, it's the Agenda Item C, yeah. State your name and address, please. My name is Jim Duncan, 486 W.N. Woody Road in Azel, Texas. I just wanted to elaborate on what Mr. Murkey said. This very week happens to be National Drive Electric Week. This Saturday, the North Central Texas Council of Govern ments has been sponsoring this event this week, and they'll be sponsoring Drive Electric Day at the Grapevine Mills Mall. Right now, well, owners who want to bring their EVs out are requested to register on the NCTCOG website. It's optional, but so far there's over 100 electric vehicles, hybrids, home-built cars registered to be out there, so if any of you all are interested in seeing what firsthand up close talking to EV owners, they'll be at the Grapevine Mills Mall this very Saturday. I forget the hours, but they won't be hard to find. There will be a number of displays and tents and vendors. There will be companies that install, manufacturing install the chargers. If you wanted more answers about the cost and so on for chargers, this will be your chance to meet them face-to- face. So thanks for that opportunity. Thank you. You bet. You bet. Anyone else? All right, seeing none. Colleagues, we've got a couple of speakers that were at the end of agenda 9, item 9, presentation from members of the public. Mr. Willie Hutsbuth was scheduled to be here regarding City Hall, but he had a family matter he had to take to, so we certainly wish him the best on that. And then we had only one more, which was Patrick Kelly, regarding a new skate park, so I would say why don't we just move him on up and take care of him instead of him having to sit here until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. Yes. Is Mr. Kelly here? If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. How's it going, everybody? Hello. I actually had a presentation prepared on here. All right. How's it going, everyone? My name is Patrick Kelly. I'm a resident here in Denton. I live at 1300 Angel ina Bend. I came to Denton to go to school at UNT. I graduated in 2011. I still live here, work in the city, ride for the local skate shop, and today I'm here to talk about the development of a new skate park. So the benefits of a public skate park, skateboarding is definitely becoming more and more popular. As he said, you know, it's becoming more and more popular. The age group is getting a lot younger. We are seeing a lot more kids. And skate parks are providing a safer environment for sk aters to not only develop their skills, but to interact with different people from, you know, all ages, ethnicities, cultures. Everyone kind of comes together at these skate parks, interacts and participates. And a new park would be a very attractive feature for a growing city like Denton. With that being said, Denton is definitely growing. This is apparent with the amount of construction that's going on to widen the highways and with the large companies that are investing their money and putting locations here. So alongside with that, as I'd mentioned, a skate park would be a very attractive feature to the city. Some of our neighboring cities and larger cities have already recognized the need for these facilities and have already started to put them in. Within the last 10 years, cities like Allen have put in this facility here. The skate park in Roanoke was built about two years ago, as well as the skate park in McKinney was just recently added. Now, as he had said earlier, Denton does currently have a skate park. There are some factors of it. Well, to say first, I'm very grateful for the skate park that we have here, because I grew up in Richardson and there was no skate park out there. The closest park was about 20 miles away and it costed about $15 to skate for two hours, so it wasn't very feasible. There are some factors about the current park that could be improved to increase the overall usage and participation. If you look at the map on the left, you'll see that little pin right there. The park now is currently pretty out of the way for people that don't have vehicles, so it's pretty inaccessible for people that aren't driving where it's at with the current Lowater Park. And as he had mentioned, the wooden and metal ramps, they 're very susceptible to nature and the elements. They require yearly maintenance and repairs as well. So as I said, we are proposing the building of a new concrete skate park. I think a good idea would be to have this park be part of an overall activity center, so it's not just an area where skateboarders can use it, but for other residents of Denton to come and use it as well. It would include tennis courts, basketball courts, volleyball pits and whatnot, just so everyone can come and use it. And that's pretty much the end of my presentation. If anyone's interested in skateboarding, come check out the new shop location right off the square. All right, we've got a question. Councilmember Hawkins. It's a good plug. I was going to say, that sounds like something Council member Hawkins would do. That's right. In fact, it's at 301 North Locust Street. And your hours are -- no, I'm just kidding. Can you go back a couple slides, like if you can show the skate park in McKinney or Roanoke? Yeah, this is actually the layout for the McKinney skate park. This is the one here. So are the ramps concrete? Because they don't look like they are. Yeah, they're all concrete. They're just polished. Okay. And the one in Roanoke as well. And the one in Allen is actually about -- I'd be pushing 10 years old now. Okay. And it's still working great. I don't think they have to do too much as far as maintenance and repairs go on it because it's a completely concrete structure. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Mayor Poe team. So on those parks, about how much space did they take up? An acre? Half an acre? It just really depends on, you know, I guess the budget and the development. Average park cost is about $40 per square foot, and they can range anywhere from 3,000 square feet to 30,000 square feet. Up in spring, Texas, down by Houston, they just put in one of the largest skate parks in America, and it's definitely over an acre large. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. I'm just curious. How many people are here regarding the skate park just as support? Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you all. Appreciate that. Thank you very much, Patrick. Thank you. Okay. We'll move on to our next agenda item, which will be agenda item four, budget items for individual consideration. We've got agenda item four A, which is considered an adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, leveling the ad valorem property tax of the city of Denton, Texas for the year 2015 on all taxable property within the corporate city limits of the city of Denton City. On January 1st, 2015, adopting a tax rate of 0.689750 per hundred. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to ask Mr. Chuck Springer if he would come up and open this item for discussion with the city council, and you do have one card. Yeah, and we do have one card. We'll after the staff presentation and questions or we'll probably just have the speaker come up after the staff presentation. Thank you, Mayor. This first item is one of four for adoption of the city budget for this year. We are proposing a tax rate currently of 0.68975. That is the same tax rate as last year. There's specific language that's required under state law for this motion. I'll hand that out as well as this year. Some new legislation was passed that requires a 60% majority of the city council for passage of the tax rate. This was a decrease from the initially proposed tax rate of 0.69638 to the tax rate that's proposed now of 0.68975, which is the same tax rate as last year. With that brief summary, I'll answer any questions and then I'll hand out this motion. Okay. Any questions before you have our speaker come up? If you want to go ahead and start handing out that motion. We have one speaker, David Zolder, if you'll come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. You can wait until Chuck gets through passing those out. Thank you, Chuck. I am actually closer to 4C. I think I put 4A on that card so I can either sit down for a minute or two or you can -- Yeah, that's fine. You want to just speak on 4C? Actually, it's 4C is closer than it is. Okay, you bet. Yes, sir. That's no problem. I don't like that correction. Okay. We have any questions for staff? Councilmember Rodin. Thank you, Mayor. I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.68975, which is effectively a 5.10% increase in the tax rate. Councilmember Briggs. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second on the board for agenda item 4A. Let's vote, please. Motion carries unanimously. All right. We'll go on to agenda item 4B, considered adoption of an ordinance approving the expenditures of funds for the -- Is that the right one? Yes. Is it? Okay. It is? No. No, I'm on the wrong one. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I turned too many pages. Hold on just a second. 4B. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas approving the July 2015 tax roll and providing an effective date. Do we have a staff presentation? Just a brief summary, Mayor. This is just a formality that's required in order for the city to levy property taxes in the current year. We need to approve the tax roll. This is forwarded to Denton County who does the collections for the City of Property Taxes. Okay. Any questions for staff? Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. Move approval of 4B. Councilmember Rodin. I second that. All right. We have a motion to second for agenda item 4B. Let's vote, please. Motion carries unanimously. I found the right page now. Agenda item 4C. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas adopting the fiscal year 2015-2016 annual program of services budget and the capital improvement program of the City of Denton, Texas for the fiscal year beginning on October 1, 2015 and ending on September 30, 2015. And declaring an effective date. Thank you, Mayor. This is the actual adoption of the city budget. It covers not only the general fund, which a lot of us think about in the budget, but all the operating funds, including the utility funds. The total proposed budget of the operating funds is $557,18 4,500. The grant funds are proposed at $5,381,486. And the capital improvement program, $405,609,000. For total proposed budget of $968,174,986. Staff recommends adoption of the budget. Okay. Any questions before we have the speaker? Seeing none. Mr. Zoltner, you'll come on down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Is this on? Okay. Yes, thank you. My name is David Zoltner. I live at 2501 Timber Trail in Denton. I'm here for two reasons tonight. First of all, a couple of thank yous. I would like to thank, first of all, Councilmember Wasney for during her first term on council, rolling up her sleeves and diving into a budget like no councilmember I can ever recall as long as I live in Denton. Now, there were some things in this budget that she readily acknowledged were justified and worthy and worthy of funding. So that's good. And she was also ready to call it kind of the way it is. There were some things that folks kind of feel we could do without. So I just wish that there might have been a little more support from councilmembers for the job that she was trying to do on behalf of the taxpayers. So Councilmember Wasney, I thank you very much for your service. And also I'd like to say thank you to Mayor Watts who let it be known early on that that '68 and change tax rate was not going any higher in the year when we had a notable revenue windfall due to excess appraisal. So thank you very much, Mayor Watts. But getting more to the point, I'd like to talk for a second about the proposed staff raises and our city salary structure in general. I'm here to ask that you reconsider the 3% salary increase proposed for city employees. They've received an average 3% pay raise every year over the past four years. And some staffers have received as much as 5%. City Council may already be aware of this information from earlier workshops, but for the benefit of the audience, this chart compares the rate of inflation with staff raises over the four-year previous period shown. During this period, the City Council has allocated millions for additional salary increases and health benefits for city employees. In the last two years alone, the city contribution to health benefits has been roughly $3 million. As a result, I would ask our City Council to direct city manager to bring back a budget next year with salary guidelines that match the rate of inflation as a ceiling. For years, I've heard staff proposals about compensation studies and being competitive with other cities, as if being competitive held some value for the average debt and taxpayer or resident. The next time we study your willingness to pay even higher salaries, I suggest let's also study our ability to fund and pay for these raises at the same time. Given the amount of tax-exempt property in our city, our an emic family income, current debt load, and the near-maxed- out tax rate, I think you'll find that no other city in North Texas asks as much or takes as much from taxpayers to support city staff as we do here in Denton. Here's a little summary that was buried on page 9 of an August Record Chronicle while many of us were still on vacation, maybe not paying full attention. Please note the amount of the base pay for our top 10 city earners, which, by the way, do not include benefits, which typically add another 30% give or take. And then consider another 3 to 5% on top of this for the years '15 and '16. The thing that I find most disturbing about this summary is the thought that roughly 1,000 of our 1,500 employees earn individual salaries higher than the total family income in this city. I want you to just think about that for a minute. Two-thirds of this city's staff have individual base pay higher than the average total family income in this town. Mr. Zoltan, that was the bell for the time, but if you could wrap up, that'd be great. I'm going to finally right here, okay? Okay, you bet. You bet. Yes, sir. Thank you. Finally, a word I hear often around City Hall is sustainability. To the mayor and council members, I would respectfully suggest that our city, that our salary structure is currently unsustainable and probably irresponsible as well. Whether you realize it or not, you're creating a pension bubble somewhere in the out years that other people or other councils will have to deal with somehow. And this is not my imagination getting the best of me. This is already occurring in other cities not that far from here. Everything has a cycle, and as we all know or should know, this tax base can't grow forever and will flatten out at some time in the future, what then? But the good news is that you still have time to take action this year and limit the damage, even as late as tonight in this budget cycle. Please don't squander this opportunity to get our city's salary structure back in line with our ability to sustain it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Council Member Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. I would move approval of item 4C. Council Member Rhoads. Second that. Council Member Wasney. The City of Denton has received substantial revenue increases from 2011 to 2015. But none of this revenue has been used to reduce the property tax rate. City employees have had their pay raises for the last three years, and this will be the fourth year. I've always supported pay raises for those employees making $50,000 or less. Last year, the budget gave pay raises to 389 city employees making $50,000 or less. I support those pay raises, and I will continue to do that in the future. But last year, we also gave pay raises to 47 city employees who make over $100,000 a year. 47. So I can't support this budget. There are some good things in it, but I'm philosophically opposed to the foundation of higher salaries, higher spending, and higher taxation. I would hope that next year we can get started on the budget earlier and that we can address some of these foundational issues with our city budget. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. I would like to say a few things. There are some investments in this budget that are good. We are correcting issues at our animal shelter, starting to invest modest resources in our increasing homeless population. We are making investments in economic development that will likely stimulate our local economy. We are also making modest efforts to address a crumbling interior infrastructure that benefits our existing citizens . But it feels like there is a lot of inefficiency in this budget as well. And I can't say in good conscience that as an elective representative of my district that we have been giving the time and resources necessary for discussion and an intimate review of department by department budgets, key performance measures, priorities, efficiency initiatives, and budget justifications. Certainly not to the extent that I can look my constituents , neighbors, and fellow citizens in the eye and justify this billion-dollar budget. Okay. Anyone else wishing to speak? I've got a couple comments I want to say. Well, I appreciate staff's hard work on this. And I think we've talked about in our council meetings over the last few weeks or a month that we do desire next year's budget cycle that we try to develop a process whereby there's more time and maybe a different paradigm in approaching that. So we'll certainly be having those discussions in upcoming, I think, work sessions coming down the road. I, too, don't necessarily -- did not get everything in this budget that I would like. I would have liked a little bit deeper tax cut, but I also know that there are some things in this budget that are good for the city. I understand the salary, your perspective on the salaries. I know that I think there was a question that was answered about if we had gone to the 1.5 or 1.7 percent, what would be the savings? I think there was a question. In fact, is Brian here? Oh, Chuck, are you here? Yeah. If you could -- because I think, Council Member, didn 't you submit a question about if we had a 1.7, then what would be the savings be across the whole public safety and employees and then just employees non-public safety? It was either 1.5 or 1.7, and the answer was 282,000. Okay. That was not including the public safety personnel. Correct. Okay. Police and fire are not part of this. Okay. All right. So -- and I think that's something that -- the good thing is I'm hoping that we can get enough time next time to really go into these issues in depth and to really look at these. So I appreciate everybody's input on this budget. I think being on Council for six years, seven years now, this is probably one of the most comprehensive discussions on the budget that I've been involved in. We moved some things around. We made some cuts. We found some money that we could redirect that would help save in some other areas. So I really do appreciate everybody's effort, notwith standing how the vote turns out. I do appreciate everybody's effort and input on this process. And moving forward, we certainly -- I look forward to the discussion on how we move forward with next year's budget to really have as lively, if not more lively discussion next year. So Council Member Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I didn't think I wanted to ask a question, but if you wanted the last word there, I'll -- sorry about that. I am the Chair. I do not recognize you. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead. Chuck, would you mind taking the mic again? And just for people at home who are maybe just watching this for the first time or just think, you know, these raises are just automatic or they automatically get a certain percent, can you just explain, you know, how the compensation does work, please? For all non-public safety employees, it's a merit-based compensation system, so it's based on their merit review. So there's a range of increases that we estimate will average at 3% from the merit review process. And for public safety employees, for police and fire, it's based on the agreements they have. It's based on a survey of a selected number of cities and their salaries are set to match that survey. Okay. Thank you, Chuck. You're welcome. Council Member Johnson. Thanks, Mayor. Well, I made the motion and then this conversation ensued afterwards, so I thought I would just offer maybe a little different perspective because Council Member Wasney, I totally get where you're coming from. I think there are many citizens, because we've certainly gotten emails from some, that believe, you know, that a government employee, that every year they just get this set, you know, increase, increase, increase. The merit-based system, pay for performance, whatever you want to call it, I think a different perspective might be, because if we want to talk about how we measure people's performance and holding people accountable for their performance, I think is a great conversation to have. I think the message that we would send to our best and brightest who are working hard and trying to, you know, climb the ladder, apply for the next job, continue their education so that they can get a better job within the city, I think the message would be a very poor one to say we don 't think that you merit anything more than a flat zero or a one and a half percent. I can tell you this, I would never work somewhere where the most I could do from year to year would be a one and a half percent improvement. So I guess what I would say is maybe a different school of thought. I think we absolutely have to have a budget, a chunk of money for pay raises and, you know, a conversation about how we measure performance, how we hold people accountable for their performance, what allows you to get sent home, what allows you to have an opportunity to maybe get a 10 percent pay raise because of your performance. Those, to me, are the conversations worth having. I think the message that we would send by saying we're not going to have any raises or, you know, you're going to have a cost of living increase which essentially says you're going to be flat the rest of your career here, you're going to go with the cost of living which means your life doesn't get any better, I think would really be the wrong message to send. So, you know, my motion stands, but I would just like as we go into this, I think I'd like our citizens who are giving us feedback to at least hear my point of view which is, you know, I want to pay people for their performance and I want to encourage people to come and work in Denton if you're the best and brightest and that you do have upward mobility and you can work hard and you can achieve better than status quo. Thank you, Mayor. My motion stands. Councilmember Wasney. And my point of view is that we work for the taxpayers. That's who we're accountable for and to. We work for the people who vote for us and it's about being a good steward of our money. This is a fourth year in a row of pay raises. So I stand on that. We are here for the taxpayers. We are here for the voters. I do have some information I guess I found out today that I wasn't aware of. Is there anybody here that could speak to the terms of the meeting confer? I just have a real quick question on that. John Fortune is our assistant city manager who can probably address your question. I certainly try. Well, and I didn't know this so I just spoke out here just as an observation. But it was my understanding that because I think the meeting confer has different salary structure, different kind of compensation structures where it's actually agreed upon, there's a little bit more specificity to it. So correct me if I'm wrong. It may not be correct. But is there something in there that limits them to an amount that is the same as the other city employees or is that just more of a discretionary item or is that -- talk just a few minutes about that if you would. Because I know that there's been some question about public safety and how do they fit into this. And there may be some either exclusion or maybe it doesn't apply. But I wasn't aware that maybe in the contract itself it had some language sort of addressing that maybe difference between sort of non -- what's it called? Non-secret service. Civil service. Yeah. Yeah, I'll be happy to address that, Mayor. The meet confer agreements have language, as Chuck explained just a few minutes ago, that has 12 comparator cities and establishes a goal in those agreements that we will take a survey of those 12 comparator cities and take their average and strive to achieve a market structure for our police and firefighters. It's 5% above that average amount. So we'll do that survey each year. And we'll take that survey average plus 5%. And whatever increase is needed to get us to that point is the increase that's recommended for police and fire. However, each of those agreements also has a provision that allows the city manager to recommend a different increase tied to the same level of increase as the rest of the non- civil service employees. So those employees not in the police and fire department, if their average was, say, 1.5%, the city manager could recommend a budget that would also limit the police and fire increases to that level, irrespective of what that market survey data would indicate otherwise. And we accomplished that through the meet confer agreement. And there's a process in place for which we provide the city council. And you may recall back in August when you received your budget, you received a memo from the city manager that established, here's what the market average plus 5% would be, and here's what it would be if we went with a straight equal percentage that's tied to the rest of the non-civil service employees. And so that gives the council a chance to weigh in as to whether or not they want to go with the market average plus 5% or they'd like to stay with something that's more tied to the average for the rest of the city employees. And that's language that's included in both meet confer agreements. And it's really designed to provide you some flexibility because we would not want to be in a situation where, for some dire or unforeseen difficult economic times when we were not allowed or able to give any employees any increases, you wouldn't want to be locked into doing that for police and fire through their meet confer agreements. So those are the terms that I believe you're referring to. Okay. It's still discretionary. It's still discretionary. It's still discretionary. That's what I was trying to flush out. Councilmember Wasney. And to be clear, this discussion has never been about police and fire. Not during the work session, not here tonight. They are separate agreements, and I will support those two organizations completely. And this discussion on employee salaries has never been about police and fire. No, I wasn't implying that. I just wanted to make sure that -- because I wasn't aware that there was some discretion upon the city manager and the council, that those raises were not necessarily contractual. So no way have you raised that issue. Absolutely. So if you thought I implied that, calm down. Get the shackles down. Get the shackles down. Okay. All right. We have -- anybody else wishing to comment? Okay. We have a motion on the board and a second on agenda item 4 C. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5 to 2. All right. Moving on to agenda item 4D. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, ratifying the adoption of the fiscal year 2015-16 annual program and services budget. Thank you, Mayor. This item is another item required by state law where anytime we adopt a budget that brings in more property tax revenue than the prior year, in other words, that's above the effective rate, we have to do a ratification of that. So this item will do that. There's also some information we have to put on our website and within our budget document under state law, and that's covered in this item also. Okay. Any questions? Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item 4D. Councilmember Rodin. Second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5 to 1. 6-1. 6-1. I'm sorry. All right. We'll move on to agenda item 5, which is consent agenda. Mayor, I did not know if you wanted me to go over information on the utility rates and move those items up or not. Yes. Yes. We do. I'm sorry. Absolutely. Yes, please. Basically, to set the table, we had Councilmember Briggs had asked for which consent agenda items, double D, E, and double F, to have a discussion prior to the vote on the consent agenda item to determine if we want to -- if you would like to pull those for individual consideration. Is that correct? Well, I wanted just a public presentation for the public to know about their rates and what's happening. Okay. Fantastic. Yes. Thank you, Chuck, for that reminder. I appreciate that. Any other items, Mayor, the electric rates, the water rates , and the wastewater rates? Up on the screen, Mayor, is a summary. This is by average residential customer of the proposed changes. I'll go over commercial in a minute to summarize that. But you can see from the electric rates, there's a base rate increase, but a decrease in the energy charge rate, the ECA rate, water, wastewater, and solid waste, different percentages. The net impact to the average residential customer will be a $5.17 increase, 2.1%. There are a little bit of variances for commercial customers. For electric, pretty well all of the customers are within about a 1% range. For water, commercial customers will be a little bit less, a little bit more for wastewater, and for solid waste about the same percentage. For the water and wastewater electric customers, we look at classes of customers in terms of residential and then classes of commercial. We try to make sure that each customer class pays fairly based on the demand of service that they require from that system like the water and wastewater. So there are a little bit of differences, but overall these are the general increases based on these four utilities. I'm available to answer any additional questions you may have. Okay, any questions? Any questions? Seeing none, okay, thank you, Chuck. Thank you. All right, we'll go on to the consent agenda item five. Council Member Hawkins. All right, I move approval of consent agenda items A through KK, but we are pulling A and W. That's correct. Okay, thank you. Is it A and W? Is that correct? Okay, pulling A and W. All right. And those are being pulled off altogether. They will not be considered individually. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. All right, Mayor Partem Gregory. Second. We have a motion and a second on the consent agenda item. For the consent agenda items, say for A and X. Let's vote on the board, please. A and W. A and W, I'm sorry. That's root beer. Okay. Motion carries unanimously. We'll go on to, let me get over here, agenda item six, which is items for individual consideration. Consideration of the use of intimate domain to condemn real property interests. That's my understanding item A has been pulled. Will not be considered tonight? Correct. Then item B is considered option of an ordinance finding that a public use and necessity exists to acquire fee simple title to the 1.509 acre tract generally located in the Morrie Forest Survey. Thank you, Mayor. Lou Ann Odom with our property management department will present this item. Thank you, sir. Just a moment and I'll pull up our identifying location map. The general location of the property in question tonight is at the southeast intersection of Mayhill and East McKinney. Mayor, city council members, before you tonight's ordinance making findings of public use and necessity and also instructing staff to acquire the necessary land rights via eminent domain regarding a parcel of land affected by the Mayhill Road widening project. Upon favorable motion, I'll proceed to display the affected tracks of land on the overhead screens. Upon favorable motion, I'll go ahead and show you the location. Yes, go. So we're going to be. So we're looking at the items. Oh, I thought. Oh, okay. We got to do the motion and then look at the legal description. Okay, I'm sorry. Council member Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I move that the city of Denton, Texas, authorize the use of power of eminent domain to acquire I fee simple to a 1.509 acre tract for the public use of expanding and improving Mayhill Road and municipal street and roadway generally located at the southeast corner of East McKinney Street and South Mayhill Road affected track located in the Morro Forest Survey abstract number 478. Act number 417 city of Denton, Denton County, Texas, as more particularly described on exhibit a to the ordinance now under consideration on the overhead screen being now displayed to the audience for the public use of expanding and improving Mayhill Road, a municipal street and roadway in the city of Denton, Texas. Thank you. Council member road. Oh, is he second at first or does she put the legal up before we second it. I think you took a motion and second. Oh, well, in any event you do have a motion and a second on the floor. Did you have a second. Okay, you second it now. Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Get right back to it there. Displaying on the screen now. It's a legal description of the 1.509 acre feature, followed by the survey drawing depicting the chat. That's the entirety of the property interest. Okay. We ready to vote. All right, we have a motion and a second for agenda item six, be oh I'm sorry Councilmember Briggs. That's okay. You sure. Okay. All right. Let's vote on the board please. This is for the item six be Motion carries seven zero. We'll move on to item seven agenda item seven items for individual consideration seven a consider nomination appointment to the economic development partnership board. Thank you. I'm going to ask Caroline Booth who is our assistant director for economic development, who may be her first presentation in that role. Not sure to present this item for your consideration. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members established in 2003 the economic development partnership board serves as a recommending body to the City Council on economic development matters. Currently the board's voting members include two City Council members to Denton Chamber of Commerce board members to representatives of Denton's top 20 taxpayers. The UNT president one member with knowledge of general aviation and one at large member with skills and abilities to assist in the functions of the board on March 24th 2015 the council passed an ordinance adding two new seats to the board with the intent to include more segments of Denton's business community and ensure diverse representation of Denton citizens. The ordinance states in part that one representative will be nominated by the board of directors of the Denton black Chamber of Commerce and one representative will be nominated by the board of directors of the Denton Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. These additions bring the board membership to 11 total voting members on August 18th. The council appointed a nominating committee for the economic development partnership board its members are mayor pro tem Dalton Gregory council member Kevin Roden and Denton Chamber of Commerce member Virgil strange the committee met on September 8th and presents the following slate of nominees. Greg Johnson City Council. Larry Parker Denton Chamber of Commerce board member. Jim Fikes of Peterbilt Motors company top 20 taxpayer. Cleve breed love general aviation and John Baines Denton black Chamber of Commerce at the time of the nominating committees meeting there was no nomination from the Denton Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. However the nominating committee may reconvene at the council's direction to select a nominee to fill the seat. Be glad to answer any questions that you'll have. Guess my road. Well as part of that nominating committee I want to fill fill that quite issue out a little bit. We discussed it and there was a bit of an ambiguity as we were looking at the ordinance as to what we were supposed to do in the absence of an actual Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. So we discussed it at the time of the meeting decided to push that question up to the council for consideration just as a policy and legal question. Since then there's some discussion between myself the city attorney. I spent some significant amount of time reviewing our council discussion when that ordinance change was made. I've come to the conclusion that there was very clear intent both on behalf of the ordinance and the council to fill that seat even in the absence of an Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. As such the committee reconvened electronically via phone and otherwise to be able to get our nomination forward and there was some community suggestions of Diana Costa to be put forward for that seat. The committee is very comfortable with that nomination and we put that forward for council consideration tonight to fill that second new seat intended to be a placeholder for the Denton Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. So I give that to my council for consideration. Mayor pro tem. I think Councilmember Rodin did a good job of summarizing it on all of the other positions that we have that we are bringing to the council. We've done a phone check a personal phone check to make sure that those folks are interested in continuing service. And so my question is, did anybody check with this nominee, Mrs. Costa. Yes, she was actually here tonight as part of an earlier presentation and I did touch base. She's good with it. She is good. All right. Okay. Seeing no other request to speak, Councilmember Briggs. I make a motion to approve. With the addition of Diana Costa. Okay. All right. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. All right. We have a motion to second to for the nominees, including the addition of Diana Costa. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries seven zero. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Caroline. Agenda item seven be considered nomination appointments and city boards and commissions parks recreation and beaut ification board. That will be forthcoming. Sorry, I've got a couple that I'm looking at. So I'm very tardy on that. So refresh my memory. Is it the the person continues to serve until a replacement is found? Is that correct? Okay. I'll expect an interesting email here soon, probably. Okay. I apologize. Yes. Do you need to get on the saddle now? Is that what that is? Yes. That's probably I probably should have been on there a lot earlier, actually. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Joey. Appreciate that. Okay. We'll move on to agenda item seven C, which is consider approval of resolution by the city of Denton, Texas, authorizing the city manager to submit an application and all other necessary documents to obtain a grant under the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. Amy Young barrier removal program. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to introduce Barbara Ross, who is our community development division manager who will present this item for your consideration. Thank you, Ms. Ross. Mayor and members of the council acceptance of this resolution will allow the community development staff to basically set up what will be an account with the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. It's this grant is called a reserve program. So as we have families, households, and individuals come and apply for assistance with accessibility and safety features in their homes, we will be able to set up a program or excuse me a project for a maximum of 20,000 with 2,000 also available for administration of the program. So we have previously in the last two years used $131,937 on six projects. 11,994 of that was used for administration of that program. So it's been very successful and our only concern is that this may be the last year that the state allows municipalities to participate. So I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Seeing none. Council Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of seven that see Council member Johnson. Second. We have a motion and second. Let's vote on the board, please. Genitally carries unanimously. We'll move on to agenda item 7D consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, approving an economic development agreement for an incentive grant between the city of Denton and rail yard partners. Thank you, Mayor. Amy Bissett is our director of development services and will present this. Thank you, Mayor and City Council members. It is a true pleasure for me to be standing here tonight to bring this project forward for you. It has been a labor of love personally for me, and I'm very excited that that we have the opportunity to take action on this item tonight. This project is important for a number of reasons. First of all, this is a project or this is an action that will support a catalyst project in an area of our town that really needs redevelopment. This is a transit oriented mixed use high end development that will be immediately adjacent to the downtown transit center in an area of town that is lower income. And it will certainly spark redevelopment of the area around it. Additionally, it is an opportunity for the city to lease space to implement a new economic development program by which we can encourage entrepreneurship, the creation of new businesses, the creation of jobs, and recruitment of technology based companies to Denton. Thirdly, as if those two things weren't enough, we also have the privilege of partnering with a local developer who has time and again invested in economic development projects in this community. Today they have around $88 million worth of construction projects in Denton, Texas. And that's the Martino Group and Lynx Construction, together known as Orson Holdings. What you're considering tonight is a commercial lease agreement and an incentive agreement. The commercial lease agreement is a five year lease that will commence March 1st and will be the lease between the city and the rail yard partners, which is the group that is constructing this project. And that lease will be for the use of that facility, about 9,000 square feet, to implement a new economic development program. Additionally, you're considering a grant agreement that is a $76,000 a year grant for five years out of the downtown tax increment reinvestment zone fund. That is intended to support the catalyst development of the project and also to utilize some restricted funds to help make the project viable and help make the lease agreement viable. And with that, I'll answer any questions that you have. Councilmember Wasney. Thank you for working so hard on this. It's creative. It's innovative. It's a leap into the future, and I'm excited to see this really come to fruition. So congratulations and congratulations to the city of Dent on for, again, looking forward and being innovative in making this happen. So I'm excited to be a part of this and congratulations. Thank you. Councilmember Rodin. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to make a motion here in a second, but Amy, I remember you might have just gotten into your new economic development director job, and we had a packed council work session room of folks trying to brainstorm what can the city do to partner with us to figure out how to bring debt in its first co-working space. That's great. You know, the tech scene was starting to emerge. There was a lot of startup interest, a lot of maker interest, all these folks. And to see you really kind of put your nose to the grind on this issue over the last few years has been remarkable, and I think what we have is something that fits a lot of goals, just like you said. Economic development, a geographical center of our tech scene, hope in a place that doesn't see a lot of hope near those neighborhoods. I mean, for folks growing up in Southeast Denton, somebody, one of my good friends who lives there says, you grow up, you see two jails, you see a police station, you see an alternative school, and you see a bunch of industrial wast eland. Now we're putting economic development right there, a place that folks can tie into. Combined with what we're doing with the market, I think this is a remarkable move. So thank you for your work. Thank you for investing in an area of town that hasn't seen investment. This is a bright spot for Denton. So with that, I move approval of this item. Councilmember Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to second, but I did want to say, similar to Bill and what Kevin said, I remember I said, you know, I'm going to go to the next item. And I remember, Amy, when you said, come on, I need you to drive to McKinney with me and go look at this place. I don't have time for this. And you said, come on, we're going tomorrow and grab a cup of coffee. And you really exposed a few of us to what an incubator, co -working space looked like and really kind of got the conversation going. And so while I wish it could have happened faster, I think we all do, but the it ended up in the right spot. I mean, it's really, really awesome that while we were all trying to figure out where could this happen and how could it happen to be able to have it be in such a high quality catalyst project by the rail station. I mean, all the things that have happened here, I think, are just really wonderful. So kudos to you and your team for staying after us and forcing us to get in the car and go look at these things and continue to brainstorm. So I am very proud to second the motion. Motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Passes 7-0. Congratulations. All right. We'll move on to the public hearing portion of our agenda, which will be 8-A. Hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, approving a change in zoning classification from neighborhood residential NR4 to neighborhood residential NR2. And if I remember correctly, I opened the public hearing before staff presentation. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So I guess I do that now. I will now open the public hearing. And I'm going to ask Amy Bissett if she would present this public hearing for your consideration. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight you are considering a rezoning as well as a specific use permit for Ranch Hand Rescue, which is an equ estrian facility. To give you a little bit of background about this facility, it is a program that is an equine animal assisted counseling program as a primary use and then a sanctuary for rescued animals as a secondary use. This public hearing is to consider a rezoning from neighborhood residential 4 to neighborhood residential 2 and to consider a specific use permit for the equestrian facility, which would be required in this area. This is about a one acre tract. It is off of Fort Worth Drive near Country Club Road. It's just a few feet south of Johnson Lane. Here are a couple of photos of the property today. It is an existing zoning designation of NR4 and the applicant is proposing a change to NR2. As you can see on the surrounding land uses, NR2 is immediately adjacent as well as ETJ area. Our comprehensive plan calls for this area to remain rural and to remain low residential and rezoning to a lower density would be consistent with that comp plan. Here is a proposed site plan. This is a long narrow tract that would mostly remain open and for use by the agricultural use essentially. The considerations that staff took a look at were that in order to support the zoning change, it would need to conform with the future land use element of the Denton plan , which it does, and that it would need to facilitate the adequate provision of transportation utilities, which it does. Furthermore, to approve a specific use permit, we would need to find that the use is compatible with and not inj urious to the use and enjoyment of other property around it. We do find that it is compatible of rural designation like this one would promote farm and agricultural uses as well as low density residential. Another consideration is that the establishment of the specific use does not impede normal and orderly development and improvement of the surrounding vacant property. Upon staff analysis, the staff's recommendation was that the specific use permit be approved, but that it expire in five years and they would need to come back in and reapply for a specific use permit. The purpose for this recommendation was that if the nature of the area changes in five years, farm or agricultural use might no longer be compatible. The attempt here is to preserve and protect the neighbors. We also have to consider the architectural compatibility with the impact area. The applicant is proposing a thousand square foot log structure and a hay barn, and we do find those to be compatible with the rural and ranch style architecture of the area. Staff has also placed an additional recommendation that only a monument sign be permitted that's made of stone posts and a stone base, and that the maximum effective area be 50 square feet and a maximum height of six square feet with no illumination. This would further protect the residential character and the rural character of the area. The development of the adjacent properties as envisioned in the Denton plan were also considered, and we found that the proposed use of the equestrian facility is compatible with the future land use designation of this area remaining rural. We sent public notifications on July 30th of 2015. Nine were sent in a 200 foot required radius, and courtesy notices were sent to an additional eight property owners. We received one response to date in favor of the zoning change and the specific use permit. The Planning and Zoning Commission has considered this application as well, and they recommend approval of both the rezoning and the SUP without the conditions that staff had recommended. You have both of those options available to you, obviously. I am going to introduce the applicant. This is Bob Williams with Ranch Hand Rescue and give him an opportunity to speak as well. Okay, Joey, did you have a question before that or you have a question for staff? Probably for Amy. Okay. Amy, if we were to go with the staff's recommendation of doing the SUP every five years, what kind of costs would that be? You know, I honestly don't really answer that. I don't know how expensive it is. I will go ahead and share with you though that that's not the applicant's preference to have to come back in. Sure. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Mayor, City Council, and thank you very much. I certainly appreciate being here today, and any time I get a chance to talk about Ranch Hand Rescue and share our mission, it's a great thing. I started Ranch Hand Rescue in 2008. We got our POEG Char ity status in 2009 with the intent of saving animals and helping people. We have been very successful on the animal front. We have a sanctuary in Argyle that we've done some pretty great things with. We've put the first ever horse in the world in a prosthetic leg without amputation. We've done the first ever stem cell transplant in a horse to heal a tendon without scar tissue. We've done the first ever double fusion in a horse to straighten a leg on a horse that was beaten with a baseball bat out of San Antonio. 80% of the cases that we get are criminal cases that come from law enforcement, and the majority of them we're told we can't save. I established a sanctuary for abused and neglected animals because I wanted to help them. I wanted to be their voice. I call them the throwaways, the ones that nobody wants, usually the ones that will be euthanized on the spot. And our success rate has been pretty successful because I don't really know what I don't know. I figure that if God brings me these animals, we have to try everything that we can in order to give them a full life. So, and on the people side, it was about how do we then take those animals and use them with people. So if you're not familiar with Ranch and Rescue, I'm going to share a little bit with you about me. All right, I am a survivor of rape. When I was in my late teens, I was working as a photographer. And I went back to my hotel room one night. I took kids' pictures. I, like any typical kid, didn't chain the door. And back in those days, we had keys. We didn't have key cards. I woke up in the middle of the night with a knife to my throat. I was brutally raped, and I was beaten. My father was a military man. And when he picked me up from the hospital, he said, "You're just going to man up, and we're never going to talk about this again." And that's exactly what I did. And I turned to drugs and alcohol. And by the time I was 20, I was homeless. By the time I did get clean and sober, I realized that I could have a full and productive life. But until you get to the root of the trauma, it was a different time back then. They didn't know how to deal with us, with the boys. And later on, my father said to me, "I loved you so much, I didn't know how to help you." He was a World War II veteran who was awarded the Bronze Star. He was a man's man. And so my passion is for kids. So the best way to think about Ranch and Rescue and what we do is I couldn't process what happened to me at 19. I can't imagine a child at 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 years old having to go through this type of horrific abuse. So we use animals to get to the root of trauma. And our partners are the Children's Advocacy Centers, CASA, Child Protective Services. We have contracts with Denton County. We have a First Def ender program. We do all the therapy for kids that are incarcerated. We have a juvenile program for kids who are on probation. The best way to think about what we do is, God forbid you never need our services, but there is about 5% of the kids that can't be reached. So CACDC, CASA, whoever it is, they're amazing. But they're progressive organizations, and they always put the best interest of the child first. And so if they're stuck or if they're having an issue, they come to us. And they come from all over the Metroplex. Ranch and Rescue is good for Denton County. We have a tremendously high success rate using this progressive type of therapy. We can help these kids. We know that collaboratively, if our counselors working with their counselors, if we can get to the root of the trauma, then we can develop a long term emotional healing plan. Certainly that had to happen for me. I've been clean and sober now over half my life. And I think that at the end of the day, this work is important work. I'm humbly going to ask you today to approve us without restrictions. We're a 501(c)(3) public charity. Our work that we do is always free for kids. They're innocent victims and they're families. We also do work for friends of the family and other organizations in Denton that are free. We provide free services for veterans and their families. We are specialists in PTSD as well as trauma. Kathy Champ, who I'm sure many of you know, was the director at the Children's Advocacy Center, is our clinical director. We have five additional therapists. And Dr. Jay Haynes, who's the head of JPS, is our medical advisor. So this is important work. I don't need to spend $10,000 on a monument sign. I can help six kids for six months with $10,000. I just need them to find me. Excuse me, I don't need restrictions on building. I have somebody, you know, a month ago that wanted to donate 1,000 bales of hay to us. We don't have any place to put it. If we had a structure that we could put hay in, it's a great thing for us. Next door to us is a mobile home park. There's 15 mobile homes there. Ranch and Rescue is going to be improving the neighborhood. My office will be there. It'll be a very nice building. And at any given time, there's only going to be one or two clients and a therapist and myself. You know, HIPAA prevents me from sharing the stories with you. But I will tell you that our success rate is very high in being able to reach these kids. We know firsthand that some children will tell an animal something before they will tell an adult in a traditional office environment. And if we can get to the root of that trauma, we can help them. There's a bond that happens. You know, there's been so much damage done that these animals, they get it with people. And there's a bond that happens. And when that bond happens, that's when the healing starts. And Kathy Champ was asked a couple of weeks ago, you know, how do you explain it? And she said, it's kind of like magic. It's just a place of healing. You know, we don't know what's going to come out. You know, veterans with severe PTSD, wounded warriors, they 're not particularly fond of the term counseling. And so we usually say we're just going to have a conversation. And it's amazing the results that we get from people working in the pasture with a horse. So I appreciate, I know the city planner has a job to do, and I know that you guys have a job to do. But at the end of the day, this is meant to be a place where healing occurs, and a place of peace, and a way to really help people. Whether you talk to, you know, Dan at CACDC, you know, our sheriff, our district attorney, you know, everybody's involved in this county in Ranchan Rescue because it's important work we do. We can't save everybody, but we can try to save everybody. And so I'm happy to answer any questions for you or anything that I can do. And I just appreciate the time to be here. Councilmember Wasley, you've made a motion, but we have three requests to speak, including yourself. Do you want to wait to make your motion until the speakers or do you want to go ahead and make your motion? Oh, I'm sorry. That's right. The hearing's not closed. I'm sorry. That's right. So we'll go down the list of questions. I apologize. That's my bad. Councilmember Briggs. You have really been through it all. I want to stand here and thank you for sharing your story and doing what you do. It really touched me to hear what's going on. I guess my question is, do you need volunteers? Oh, always, yeah. Matter of fact, I got some brochures for our big fall event coming up, but we always need volunteers. One of the, you know, we have to run background checks, of course, on everybody because, you know, we deal with kids and we have to keep them safe. Our facilities are videotaped. So the minute anybody comes in, we capture their license plate and, of course, their facial recognition. But so we have to be careful how our volunteers integrate around our kids. We also have a community service program with Denton County . So that is where kids who are on probation come with officers to our facility and they do work. And our goal is always to inspire them. Laura Prowitz has said it's one of the single most important programs they have because we put God in everything we do. I know we're not supposed to say that, but we teach kids that you can choose to live in the light or you can choose to live in the darkness. And the light's a lot better place to be. So if we can teach them how you handle a horse, how you pick up a horse's hoof, it does a lot for self-esteem, you know, those sorts of things. And it's amazing, you know, these juvenile probation officers, you know, talk about angels. They work side by side with these kids. And it is so wonderful to watch the interaction and how much they care about them, you know, trying to teach them something. And so that's another important part. It's really the best work I've ever done. I mean, this is I think where God put me now at this point in my life. And I had a stroke ten years ago. And I worked for Motorola my whole life and I decided that I was going to retire and do something I love. And my stroke was a result of the abuse that I did to my body. And I just thought, well, I'm going to do something I'm passionate about because I don't know how much time I have left, but I'm going to give back. Thank you. Councilmember Wasney. You asked about the restrictions and wanting to have them removed. Could I have planning outline the restrictions that we're talking about? And can I add one comment if I could before they do that? I don't want to get in trouble here. But, you know, one of the people from planning and zoning brought up a really good point, which is, you know, we're in a ranch area. And this area of 377, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I mean, there's nothing there. There's a beautiful ranch who's owned by two veterans, colonels next door to us, who are extremely supportive of our work. And we're being held to these contingencies like we're in the downtown proper areas. We're in the farming area. I mean, this was annexed by Denton and it used to be Argyle . So it's a pretty rural area anyways. And so that's kind of our position in terms of wanting to not have the restrictions. Plus the fact that we've spent $8,000 in fees already to get to this point. And then we have to apply for a special use permit. Every $1,000 I spend, I can help a child for six months. So I'm very cognizant of what things cost. Okay. Amy? Any restrictions, please? Before I forget, I do have the answer to your question about reapplying for an SUP. Today's dollars, that's about $1,500. The restrictions or the recommendations that staff made specifically, if I can find them, is that the SUP expire after five years and the applicant come back in to reapply to make sure that the surrounding area is still compatible with that use. And the second one is limiting the size and materials that the sign is constructed out of to be stone posts and a stone base with wood or stone display with a maximum six feet height and 50 foot area. The Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of both the rezoning and the SUP without either one of those conditions though. Council Member Hawkins. My question is for you and Robert. Robert, Thursday is North Texas Giving Day. Yes. And do you have a way for people to donate or can you just -- It's a big day for us. Good. We'll be tweeting and Facebooking all day and the Commun ities Foundation is a huge supporter of ours. So as well as Debt and Benefit League and, you know, Pap A Foundation here and CoServe has put in the septic system for us. They put up part of the fencing. They've put in the electric and the water. So they've also been a huge supporter. And so the answer is yes and we'll be Facebooking that and tweeting it all day. But it's under Ranch Hand's rescue on the Giving Day page. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for telling your story too. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. Thanks. First of all, I love the color of your shirt. Thank you. One of the great things about being on council is getting to hear about programs like yours that we probably wouldn't -- I wouldn't necessarily know about otherwise and it's really quite inspiring because sometimes we engage in some other activities that are not quite as inspiring. So thanks for your story and for the work that you're doing . Regarding the restrictions that were suggested, I hear your comment about not wanting to have to deal with the -- reapplying for an SUP in five years. Do you have concerns about the suggested restriction about the monument sign? Yes. So a couple things. You know, one -- and I appreciate your comment very much. One of the things is that we need people to be able to find us. It's a cost issue with the sign. You know, if you look at most ranches, there's an overhead or there's some sort of a sign. And we want to conform with city limits. We don't want to go to the expense. We don't sell milk. You know, we're not a place where people are going to be coming for tours. They're coming for counseling. And so I just need them to find us. I don't need a big, huge ranch and rescue, you know, sign that says what we do. So it's more of a cost issue. So we can fit within the city parameters of, you know, coming up with a sign that isn't brick and mortar and that we have to run electrical to. And I mean, there's a lot of costs there. And so it's not that we wouldn't love to have it, but unless a donor would pay for it, we don't need it. And that's our issue with the sign. So you're saying that you don't want that restriction because you don't want to spend that much money for a sign or you want to make a bigger sign? No, we don't want to spend that much money for a sign. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, because I see you talking about lighting, but it says no illumination of the sign shall be permitted. So I don't think they're asked. So it's really you just don't want to have it. It sounds like the material that they're asking you to make the sign out of. Because it's saying it, gosh, I guess it's saying it's the maximum is 50 square feet. So it could be even smaller. I mean, it's not saying it has to be 50 square feet. Okay. All right. Councilmember Wasney. So correct me if I'm wrong, but Amy just said that planning and zoning recommended approval without the restrictions, without the restrictions. And I want to thank you for all you do. I watched the inception in 2008, 2009, and I would bring my granddaughter over to the Argyle facility and get little food out of the quarter machine to feed the geese and the little animals and knowing that those were all rescues. And I have a rescue at home and I've got a soft spot in my heart for rescue. So thanks for all you do and now you're going to rescue people and that is a remarkable thing. So thank you. Thank you very much for that. You know, I always tell people that it's important to remember with Ranchana Rescue that we're another resource. And when traditional therapy is not working, that's when people come to us. And as I said, it's a really good place to be. So I don't want to take away from the wonderful work that the organizations do. I just want to say that, you know, we offer a wonderful alternative and together, you know, we can really make a difference in the lives of kids and adults. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you. All right. I see no other questions. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak on this agenda item, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak one more time? We will now close the public hearing. Now, Councilmember Wasning. Sorry about that before. I'd like to make a motion to approve item 7A and it's both the zoning change and the SUP and to approve it without restrictions. Councilmember Hawkins. I gladly second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 7B. I mean A. Yes. Yeah. Let's vote on the board, please. 8A. Yeah, I'm sorry. It was 8A. My apologies. Motion carries unanimously. Moving on to agenda item 8B, hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance granting approval in accordance with Chapter 26 of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code of the non-park use of a part of North Lakes Park for the purpose of installing and maintaining a sanitary sewer line. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Jim Mazes, the Parks and Recreation Department, and we 'll present this public hearing. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Let me have just a moment to queue up this presentation. I'll be just a second. As we're all very aware, anytime any part of a recreational property is taken out of service, albeit for a short time or the licensing of an easement, Texas Chapter State law, Texas Parks and Wildlife law, Chapter 26 requires that we hold a public hearing in order to make sure that there's no other prudent or alternative method for doing so. Also, if you remember back in April this year, we had a similar Chapter 26 hearing regarding a sewer line for the sewer and water line easement for the Vista de la Rora community that was just next door to us. If you remember, we provided an easement and it successfully passed both the Park Board and for the Council at that time. In the engineering phase of this 20-foot line, however, we encountered a bit of a problem. Again, the location is there at North Lakes Park at the intersection of Ronnie Road and Highway 77. At the intersection of this culvert right here, this 20- foot easement, we've been the structural portions of this culvert. They do not allow us to physically proceed with the sewer line and adequate and proper positive drainage in that location. So what is necessary in order for that to happen is that -- let me expand this just a bit. Our engineers have decided that what we will need to do is to grant this extra eight-foot easement in order to bypass the structural members of this culvert. That will allow us to proceed with the previous decision in order to design a sewer line that will serve both the Vista de la Rora property and that of Bella Park. If there's any questions, I'd like to have an intertap at this time or defer to anyone speaking on or against them. Any questions for staff before I open the public hearing? Which I should have done before you started speaking, but that's okay. Sorry about that. No, that's fine. Any other questions? Seeing none, we will now open the public hearing. Is there anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item? This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item, come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak? Seeing none, we will now close the public hearing. Mayor Pro Tem Gregory. I move approval of item 8B. Councilmember Johnson. Second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries unanimously. We will now move on to 8C, which is hold the public hearing , considered option of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, regarding amendments to a concept plan, detailed plan of plan development. Thank you, Mayor. Director of Development Services, Amy Bissett, will also present this item. Councilmember Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be recusing myself from this item. Okay. All right. And he has filed the appropriate paperwork and after David with the City Secretary's Office. All right. Thank you. We'll now open the public hearing prior to staff presentation. So you may begin at any time. Thank you, Mayor and council members. What you're considering this evening is hold on. I've got to get it right in the presentation. I apologize. A lot of stars there. We've already been through the majority of them. I promise. You're considering an amendment to a plan development for to allow for a daycare use. This is a public hearing and an amendment to an approved concept plan and an approved detailed plan of plan development 176. This would be an amendment to depict a child daycare facility within tract one. This is the plan development that facilitated the development of Wheeler Ridge. The subject property is located on the northwest corner here of Teasley and Robinson. PD 176 was created under the 1991 DDC. Any new development within the PD boundary is subject to those procedures. And in order to amend the PD, it requires an amended concept plan and an amended detailed plan. That ordinance that established PD 176 established the Whe eler Ridge plan development district and established standards for residential development and commercial development on tract one. As this project has come in over phases, they have submitted amendments to the concept plan and the detailed plan as necessary in order to accommodate specifically the commercial development. The site data, the proposed child daycare is located on the south side of Robinson Road, about 220 feet east of Teasley Lane. You can see the orientation on the screen above you. The future land use map calls for community mixed use, which is a mixture of commercial uses and service uses are complementary to residential areas and a child daycare fits within this vision. The applicant's concept plan revises lot lines and combines two prior lots into one lot, which would now be lot six. And we would require a final plat after the approval of this concept plan and detailed plan in order to dedicate lot six. The detailed plan that is being considered is about an 8, 200 square foot daycare facility with a 10,000 square foot outdoor space with parking and parent check in. I will note that on the western boundary you can see some curbing that was added, that recommendation was added by the planning and zoning commission in order to provide a barrier to prevent children from wandering into the street essentially. Here's some elevations and renderings. Public notification date was August 16th, 15 required public notices were sent out by certified mail and additional 61 were sent out by courtesy notices and we have received no responses to date. The planning and zoning commission recommends approval of PD 15-0003 with the following conditions, that all of the original conditions of approval and subsequent modifications associated with PD 176 remain valid, that the concept plan and detailed plan as submitted and shown in an exhibit six and seven shall guide the development of the site. That the elevation drawings submitted and shown in exhibit eight shall guide the development of the 80-200 square foot building and that they amend the detailed plan to include parking wheel stops or concrete raised curb at the western most parking spaces to protect daycare patrons from adjacent vehicular circulation. The detailed plan has been revised to reflect that. Staff recommends approval with the same conditions minus the new one that PNZ added. And the applicant is here. If you have any questions. Mayor Pro Tem. It seems that this, the property at this corner, the southeast corner of this intersection has come to us several times. Was, has this been this particular set of lots, has it come to us before to be rezoned for some other use and is this a change in what they planned on using it for or is this the first time that we've seen anything on these lots. I don't know the answer to that but somebody on staff may know. Ross Culberson our senior planner is going to come down and help me. Mr. Gregory. Previous slide here indicates, as you said, it's our previous ordinances that have approved previous uses on there so we did show a slide here that you can see 7-Eleven there on the corner O'Reilly's cleaning green car wash and advantage store and so each time a use comes in we are able to assess the use in consideration of the comprehensive plan and part of this PD EA. So that's when it's come before and probably that storage also. Correct. Each one of those, there's only one, maybe two pad sites left, one over here which will be a leftover lot and then one down here will be a leftover lot. Well and then when the, thank you, and when the applicant comes up I'll be curious to hear the applicant's response to the conditions. Right, any other questions for staff. Right, this is a public hearing. If the applicant would like to come forward and state your name and address and your time will begin. Good evening Mayor and Council members my name is Steve Hol meyer with Holmeyer Engineering. We're the civil engineers on this particular project. Ms. Bissett has done a thorough job in describing the conditions and so forth and the development procedures that we followed. As the applicant we're satisfied with those conditions and here to answer any questions that you might have. Council Member Hawkins. I know I should know this is my district but there are lights at that intersection of Teasley and Robinson right? Yes. Thank you. Question I have is, so I may be a little confused but, so P &Z added a condition, I mean staff's recommendation includes the conditions that you said you're okay with. Right. But staff then left off the P&Z condition, is that, which one did you say, some new condition or which one? You could have answered this too Steve, sorry. The condition is the addition of the curbing to help add. Okay so that's the one that staff is recommending to exclude. No we're not recommending to exclude that, P&Z just added it. Added it. And the applicant has already accommodated that request. Okay so you're okay with all the conditions that have been proffered whether staff or P&Z? That is correct. Okay, alright. Any other questions for the applicant? Council Member Gregory. Oh. Oh I haven't closed the public hearing, I'm sorry. Sorry, thank you. Thank you. This process has got me all befuddled tonight for some reason. This is a public hearing, anybody else wishing to speak? Come down please state your name and address. Anybody else wishing to speak? Last call. Alright we will now close the public hearing. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor. I move approval of item 8C with all conditions as presented . Alright, Council Member Hawkins. I second. Alright we have a motion and a second, let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 6-0. If someone would please let Council Member Johnson know that he can come back in now. Do we have to have him come back? He's probably gone actually. I think I heard the big door slam. Alright we are now to our agenda item for concluding items. Anybody have concluding items? I've got a couple. Council Member Hawkins. I just wanted to say happy birthday to my wife. Maybe a great present is that I gave her some time by herself so, but anyway, I did want to just tell her happy birthday so that's it. Fantastic. Yep. Council Member Johnson. Thank you Mayor. I need some clarification George, maybe you can help me and agenda committee. We have talked about and I think it's on the plan for a future work session specifically about the bond election for streets and prioritization of those funds. What I don't recall is if we included drainage on that or not. If we did not, I'd like to have drainage as a part of the conversation on prioritization of the use of bond funds so that Council can weigh in on where that money gets spent and in what order. If it doesn't make sense to do all that in one work session , we can split them, but I think sooner rather than later as we now begin to issue those bonds. I don't recall the date we have that tentatively scheduled, but we can include that. Thank you. And go mean green. Yes. Cast member Briggs. Well, as, as you know, there's been a lot of a lot of emails to myself about McKinney and the dangers of McKinney Street and keeping our kids safe. And so I just want to use this time right now to ask or have a call for action to fast track the expansion of McKin ney Street FM 426 and for a renewed partnership with text dot so we can work together efficiently and openly to get the jobs done that we need. And I also want to thank John Fortune for for helping on this. Okay, thank you. Council member was knee. I have two issues and I think they'll both go to legal. First, before they come before council. I received a letter from the freedom of information foundation of Texas, and this is on closed meetings and information that you can, you know, leave that meeting and talk about and they cited a city of Denton ordinance to dash 30 improper disclosure of confidential information. I'd like to have a work session and discuss this in terms of doesn't need to be does this ordinance need to be repe aled. So that's item one. Item two. Not far off the same topic. It has to do with general policies and procedures directive that's dated out of 2002. It's reference 504 point zero to, and it'll be a work session and I'll make copies of this and get it to legal so she kind of knows what I'm talking about. And discuss the legality of closed sessions and whether they comply to state law with his specific policy that we have on the books. So just trying to start to crack open this whole discussion of open versus closed, and think it's important to our citizens in Denton and I know it's certainly important to me. So thank you. Councilmember when you said 504 point oh two is that something within. Is that something within a city. Is that the, is that the chart. City of Denton policy administrative procedure administrative directive. Okay, thank you. Councilmember road. I just want to remark, you know, seeing the council chambers filled two weeks in a row from folks who are coming to pitch a positive idea for the city is just heart warming to see, and I know we've made some changes in the way that citizens can more easily report things to us. But even thinking back, you know, we recently before them had the community market come and pitch their concept of relocation. The idea of payday lending regulations got its start with folks lining up here for citizen reports, the towing ordinance revisions got its start by folks pitching that idea to the council so to anyone watching out there who has a great idea of how to make Denton better. We have a pretty good track record of folks signing up and pitching their great idea in front of the council and letting us kind of look into that a bit so I just appreciate the folks who are coming out many of them for the first time ever to a city council meeting and getting a chance to be proactive and working with their government. So, I just, I'd like to see more of that. I've got a couple of councilmember was knee. You and I are good friends and I just, I got a little playful with you at the end of our of that so if I hope there was no offense taken at that so no offense. I let the friendship sort of get it okay. I get passionate about things. Okay, no, no, no, we're good. I just didn't want to I just didn't want to do anything that was outlined. So, I respect you and so wouldn't want you to take that any other way. Also wanted to bring up I had a conversation with the owner of Queenies, and I think I'd like to get on a work session some discussion about valet parking, and you know if there 's a if it's public spaces, how can we trade off so that there's just more predictability regarding that issue because I think as we continue to develop the downtown. Hopefully we continue to get restaurants of the caliber who may you know want to do some ballet parking and I just assume approach that now then later when we might have a proliferation of that so would like to begin to talk about that some. Also, the the North Texas Day of Giving is coming up so I just want to really encourage everyone to pick out your favorite charity and if you haven't given to to give liber ally and generously because I tell you, based upon the citizens that come before says the rescue group did it's just it's amazing. The community that we have and the care and the compassion that we have not only for our animals before our people. And I think that says a lot for us and I really am proud of our city and our community for for being that caring about all living things in our city so Councilmember Briggs. I just have a question back to the skate park on the petition what is what is usually the next step for for Council after petition with over 500 signatures is turned in. I mean I know that we Dalton has requested a staff study is there anything else that we do after petition is turned in or filed. Madam City Attorney, like what the next step would like I'm going to have to look at it and bring you some information about that also would be glad to do that. Okay. Councilmember was. And also I've scheduled a community meeting Tuesday September 29 two weeks from tonight 630 it will actually be right here in council chambers and planning will be here, a developer will be here and I certainly want our citizens to be here. There is some possible development being talked about in the UNT area of Fry Street, Oak and Hickory and nothing has gone to planning right now, but in line with my theory that citizens should be involved right at the beginning and not at the end when there is a change that might impact a neighborhood that they either live in or a neighborhood that they love that they need to be involved in. They need to come and learn. They need to come and ask questions and they need to come and be a part of the decision making process. So it's two weeks from tonight, right here, 630. And I know a lot of people listen into these recordings so also help me spread the word, because UNT is just such a heart of our town. And I did have one. Thank you very much for that. That's and I saw that email and I think that I think you're right on. We've got it's good to get the front end of that instead of in the middle of it. So I appreciate your leadership on that. I would like it and this could be just an informal staff report. We heard a lot about utility rates today and water rates and sewer rates. I know periodically we've done surveys of the communities surrounding us what they may be paying for different sewers and water rates and electric rates. So would maybe like to get that in and up in sort of an informal staff report just so that we can keep sort of tracking up to date on what some of the surrounding cities and municipalities. I could comment there. Generally, we we project that very in a lot of detail to the P.U.B., but we try to come back after budgets are adopted and show where we are in relationship after other cities have also adopted rates. OK, fantastic. You bet. All right. Any others? OK, thank you. We are now adjourned.