Dec 01, 2015 City Council on 2015-12-01 12:00 PM

And apologize we will be eating lunch as we're going through this so some of us are some of us are gonna wait. We will go on to our first agenda item which is agenda item one citizens comments on consent agenda items do we have any? All right no. A request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for December the 1st 2015. Any requests for clarification? No request for clarification. Oh yes. I'm sorry. Mayor Pro Tem. On item A I noticed that in the backup that it had a recommendation of a 9-0 vote from the Economic Development Partnership Board but I was wondering if this had gone before the Council Airport Committee and if not was is that just not part of their pur view? I mean let Amy my understanding is it did not go before the Airport Committee. The EDP Board was the appropriate board for this issue to go before but Amy if that's incorrect. No that is correct it went to EDP because it's an incentive it's a contemplated incentive program and we did not take it before the airport. Okay then I understand. Thank you very much. Any other items for request for clarification of agenda items on listed on this current agenda? All right seeing none we'll move on . Agenda item 3, 3A which is receive an update hold a discussion and give staff direction on the road impact fee implementation. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I will ask PS Aurora if he would come and again this is trying to round out some previous pretty detailed discussions we've had about the impact fee potentially the impact fee program so Mr. Aurora if you would and certainly can introduce others who are here that could answer questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Mayor and Council Members. PS you drove them all out. That's usually what I do. If I'm the first one on the work session. Okay you know it's been a little while you know since we had a presentation to you on the impact fees the last time I had a presentation was on Ryan Road and we had gone and done the mobility plan back in March and want to update you on the mobility plan I had a public hearing a presentation to the Planning and Zoning Commission last month and the PNG recommended 6-0 approval on the mobility plan so I'll bring that to the council for a public hearing in January we are targeting January 5 as the date for the public hearing and I'll try and actually do a short presentation to our new members city council members who have not seen the mobility plan prior to that or if you want to meet with me prior to that I'll be happy to sit down with you and go over the mobility plan prior to the public hearing. After our presentation here in July I had gone in and done a presentation to the Mobility Committee in towards end of September and I will present to you the recommendations that came from the Mobility Committee. One of the requests in the July meeting that came from Council Member Johnson was to go to the Den County Developers Alliance DCDA and I was able to get on their agenda in October 27th if I recall the date and we had a very good presentation they actually bought into all of the recommendations that the Mobility Committee had and I'll show you the details on it in a little bit. Just to refresh our memories you know this is the service area that we are looking at the city is divided into five service areas where all the projects will be identified during the impact fee process in each service area. We had come out with an impact fee calculation and these are what is calculated impact fee for different cities and this is the level at which they are collecting the impact fees. We were at ten thousand at fourteen thousand is Fort Worth close to ten thousand is McKinney and we are at ten thousand and this is something we are going to look at what the recommendation is from the Mob ility Committee that TBD that you see right there. This is the bracket we had used in the last presentation we had shown you this data. These are the different cities in the Metroplex and as you can see the street spot is generally in this area right here and that's what you know we had brought to you earlier . I brought all these things back to the Mobility Committee in towards end of September. We went and we had shown a little more information on what the other cities are collecting how it is impacting development etc. So the recommendation from the Mobility Committee is to go with $3,000 road impact fee for a single family. Three members Councilmember Roden, Johnson and Councilmember Gregory they are in the Mobility Committee so that was the recommendation coming out of that presentation and give a discount on the $3,000 which is a 25% discount so for a commercial use there'll be a 25% reduction and that will be blanket reduction in the entire city. I'm sorry. Real quick question because yeah this is I'm trying to refresh my memory on this. So if you have an infill lot that's a single-family lot that is already platted and everything and you want to put a house on it which doesn't require any off-site public improvements. Impact fee for water and sewer. Is that what this applies to? Does this apply to subdivisions or is it I mean because I know we don't really have this now so help me understand it. That's one thing or that if you all stay with me I will bring that up. Fantastic. Yes sir. Yes thank you. Thank you for that. Yes. PS would you explain about that 25% reduction that's not 25 % off the $3,000 is it? No it's not. There's a higher calculation for non-resident ial use. There's a separate calculation for all non-residential users and it depends on the type of use and it all depends on how much traffic they're going to generate. So a different traffic will be generated by by a office compared to a fast-food place. Fast-food place or a gas station is going to generate more traffic compared to a destination office. So for an office the impact fee is obviously lower. What we looked at is the per-vehicle mile calculation. So that per-vehicle mile is tied to the traffic generated from each use. Based on that the impact fee is over 10,000 for single family, single family use. And we had shown you for different uses for office, for a box, large box type development. We had brought that data to you. I'd be happy to if you like to see it I think I have this in my presentation. It's not in yours but I can bring that out to you. Councilmember Johnson. P.S. for clarification because it's been a while. We've got good comparisons for what other cities do in terms of what they could charge versus what they do. Is the 25% reduction for non-residential uses is that pretty common? Is that what we're seeing from the comparable cities? Generally yes. Fort Worth actually has exactly 25% reduction. That's their blanket reduction in all the service areas. Cities do... I mean this is... you will have... you can have additional incentives if you want to but that can come through the economic development agreements that the city will have with larger users that will come in. Those will be beyond what we will do as a 25%. Yeah I'm just talking about you know so I think there's a very good comparison in there to other cities similar in size to us kind of in that bracket what we're using. I don't know if you heard that in the packet today but if the council would like to see it I have on my backup slides I can show that information. That the kind of discounts that those cities provide for commercial uses? Yes. That's what you can provide? Yes. Okay thank you. I'm sorry Councilmember. I think back to the mayor's question because I think there might be some equivocation on the use of the term infill. You will be talking about infill from the point of view of there's been discussions we've been talking about this is do we incentiv ize a certain compact portion of the city where we'd want to encourage infill development where it's maybe more expensive to do so and I think that there's there's a recommendation by the Mobility Committee on how to maybe deal with that looking forward. I think your question though specifically was outside of any particular zone in the city if there's a specific lot that perhaps historically had a home on it doesn't now someone wants to build a home I think his question is that I don't know the answer to so it's probably good to get that answer because I don't think whether or not that an impact fee for roads applies to that sort of project. If there was already a huge established there was a house and they're tearing it down and then we build another house on it there no impact. What we do in the water waste water is we go back 10 years to establish a 10-year window that within 10 years if there was a water meter within that window then they get full credit for that. Well and and and well I really appreciate that clarification I guess for me it's a pretty basic question of because we've had wastewater and water impact fees for quite some time this road impact fee for a single-family home I'm trying to think do we have anything that currently we're charging that would be synonymous to this and I don't think we are in other words this may be an additional fee for pulling a permit for a single-family home except in if it's a vacant lot what I'm hearing you say is if there's been nothing on it this would apply whereas today I don't think you would have a similar charge and the only reason I say that is because you know we're really trying to make sure that we can provide I mean it's getting very expensive to build homes anywhere because of codes and things such as that so I just want to be mindful of the more fees we put on home building the the more it impacts our ability to provide affordable housing is sort of a catch-all term but houses that are are affordable to you know to mainstream America and to the working class so I'm just wanting to have the answer is this a new fee that is a going to apply to single-family homes which we currently now do not have a corresponding fee that would be synonymous to this the corresponding fee would be you know if there's a construction usually in downtown area most times it is a commercial construction if there's a single-family they still have to do right away dedication for the road that's a child you know that's a cost they had to build the sidewalks in front of it so that's a cost now when we have impact free impact free will cover that right over dedication will cover the sidewalk construction all that will be covered in the impact okay and that's a great question that's a great and I appreciate that so this fee is I'm paying this fee to the city all right in lieu of having to dedicate right of way and in lieu of having to pay for a sidewalk yes sir is that my understanding of that yes okay and yes and the idea is that it's a more predictable yes type of feet so that as we're going through as the developer is meeting with folks it doesn't become a burden that that makes it impossible to do the development but there's enough money to help work on on roads not only maybe right in front of that but maybe roads within the vicinity that would be serving that that particular spot that's awesome hands over here yeah and to if I remember correctly that will kind of help curb the piece meeling together and also I don't think it happened a lot but there was expiration dates on some of the money that had put in and right now that is and go very true and that's very correctly there'll be no piece meaning because we have this defined service area and the money's we collect we can use that within that service area and not only that we have now have a mobility plan and an actual traffic data so that will show what roads the level of service is on what road which road needs the most money because of the traffic conditions right so that way we can pick the highest and best use of that money in a service area so if in this instance if those these are implemented we've paid our fee the city needs to come widen the road in front of one of these homes that these feet they have to then go out and buy the right of way since the right of way is not being dedicated this is in lieu of that so they still didn't have to go in and and buy it at whatever fair market price and actually during the time of flat you know they could dedicate the right away but then they could then get the value for the right of it okay that fair enough I appreciate that that's helpful okay okay thank you all thank you all for that input and then the other direction from the mobility committee was that within one year of the date of implementation of the impact fees the staff bring back what was the experience during that time and then if there were anything that we want to add or subtract from the ordinance that we do it off of the one year time I had a presentation to then County develops Alliance as you had you know asked us to do they were very kind to accommodate me at a second meeting in October their first meeting was in October 15 which slot was already taken and they gave me the 29 slot and they may had a special meeting that day about maybe 20 25 people showed up so it was a good presentation I had a more than an hour-long presentation we had a lot of back-and-forth discussion the I did present to them what is the current did you see requirement how that is collected and how road impact fears will change that and what are the benefits of doing and they agreed with that I also showed them the mobility committee recommendation of $3,000 and a 25% discount and they didn't have any issues with that they did bring up only one direction they gave us was to look at the incentives in the infill area which is what we are bringing up in a mayor that's question you brought up so I want to show you currently and as it is defined in the ordinance this is the infill area which is in Winster Road on the north side Bonnie break on the west goes down to 35 and comes back of Woodrow and mockingbird go north this is the infill area currently yeah a few years back I would say maybe three years back there was a lot of effort going on in better defining the infill area it went on for some time but then it did not come to a conclusion it'd be worthwhile to you know to have planning department spend a little more time I had some discussion with them today and then yesterday to come back and flesh out the infill area requirements and awareness as to what type of properties would actually qualify as an infill development rather than doing a whole blanket area but define what is actually infill development have a better definition of that so if we can do that and we can get there then that with the time to look at the impact fees and say okay do we want to give more incentive to have infill area development and give more incentive on the impact free side either by reducing it or not charging it wherever the council wants to go with that but I mentioned to as I mentioned to you that there is some requirement still in DDC which is the right away and the sidewalk there's still a cost so that we should be cogn izant of that cost that they still have under the current requirement so when we go road impact fees we should be aware of that what we are giving you know when we do make changes to this so our recommendation right now is to which is the staff recommendation which is essentially the recommendation from the mobility committee which is $3,000 road impact fee for single family a 25% blanket reduction for all non-residential users bring their own impact free ordinance for review by the council after one year of implementation and also review the infill impact implementation issues during that one year window when the planning department has time to spend more time on it and we can work with them you know as to what would have been assessed for road impact fee and kind of come out with a number during that time window. Yes, Councilmember Johnson. Yes so you know as with anything there will be a there will be some unintended consequence that we didn't foresee right? Yes. So and what I'm thinking about is what the mayor said so let's say there's a older neighborhood you know it's been it's been there for 25 years there just happens to be a lot that never sold or somebody bought the lot so that someday when they saved up enough money they could build their retirement home so it's a it's a one-off lot and a 250 lot neighborhood that's never had a house on it. Yeah. So the way this is written since there's never been a house on it they go to build that house they'll have to pay the impact fee right? Right. So I think that would be one of those things to talk about the neighborhoods been developed already everything's done you know that almost puts them at a real disadvantage versus other you know values and because the developer when they did the development they paid something right for all the lots in it so the reason I'm asking that question is as we you know is there any flexibility built because I've been told in the past we can't the city can't waive or reduce impact fees. Impact fees are what they are and we can't we can't waive them. You can't have a development agreement and through the development agreement process we can provide incentive for development to do things which. I guess what I'm getting at is what kind of flexibility there might be so that if you know if staff recognizes in a few months some unintended consequence of you know an outlier or one-off kind of thing that's really this is making it a hardship for some couple that's trying to build a house or something is there any flexibility that we would have or what would be the process if if everybody agreed staff and everybody said yeah we really shouldn't charge that to this person and there's a valid reason for it. Is there any flexibility built in or do we just have to live with it for a year until we change the ordinance? I would need some help from our city attorney. She's ready to help. Council man we would we would craft the ordinance to have equal application to each residential and or commercial property so we would we would not craft it with an exception written in. Let us have a little bit of time to kind of think about your question and and see if there is a little bit of room in there I don't know let me think about that a little bit if you want. It may never come up I'm just think about I was really thinking about what the mayor said and I'm thinking you know like I live in an old neighborhood and there's a lot that this family bought and they're now finally building the house on it because they wanted to pay off the lot before they built their house. Well the whole development was done and at some point whoever did the whole development paid whatever fees were required at that time so it almost you know I just think about again a situation where if you know if staff was all like yeah this we really shouldn't do this here it'd be nice if there was some mechanism that the staff had to make a good decision there without having to come back to us for an ordinance change or something that's why I bring it up. Just a brief comment I agree with Anita if we could have a little time to think about a way to address that I think just speaking theoretically and PS you can correct me if I'm wrong the fee itself is intended to cover the cost of capital improvements for future growth for new residents coming into the city that put a burden on our infrastructure that isn't necessarily infrastructure in that neighborhood or in that development it's the infrastructure that's needed for the future growth that is included in a capital improvements plan for impact fees so we're trying to recover the cost of those projects that we've determined are in the impact fee capital improvements program so that lot that's never been built on theoretically is a new resident coming in adding new burden to those facilities we've included in that plan so to accept them would be a little bit of a challenge and I think we can commiserate on that and see if we can determine a way to do it but it's probably being limited circumstances. It may not make sense I'm bringing it up because it just you know it seems like if there's a possibility but again only it would only be a situation where you go yeah it really shouldn't apply here not me but you know the staff or whatever. Thanks. We have some time because by the time we bring this back to you for public hearings it was sometime in February I had still have to go to the capital improvement advisory committee which I won't start doing in January which is the planning and joining commission but they will meet at a CIAC prior to the regular PNG meeting and we will take the land use plan and CIP and then of course the impact fee so there will be two meetings minimum and maybe more for to get the recommendation before I come to the council for public hearing on this. The only thing I would suggest is that I mean I like the time plan that we have an end in mind because it seems like you've been talking to us about this since I was in knee pants and it's time to move on knee pants that shorts but no okay kids kids having to having to work with kids I don't know so I would just say that that if we can't if you're not able to work out all of the details of the infill impact implementation issues between now and February when we were scheduled I would be okay with moving forward with what we do have and and looking at coming back and amending it at a time you know before the end of that year of the first implementation if it's necessary because I think it's time to move on with this because of the benefits it provides for the city to get that income in a more flexible way to help with the roads and it also benefits the developer by having a more predictable fee. I think sooner the better Deton is behind with this we're behind other cities and our roads need money our future roads need money we're growing quickly so for me sooner the better and let's get it done and if we need to come back and address it the other issue is even after we pass it the way it's written right now it does not go into effect for one year is that correct? Yeah the way it works is that if there's a property is final plotted prior to the date of implementation of impact fees that one year after that date if they come and pull a building permit then they don't have to pay impact fees. Which is fair to the people who are already in process but my point is every month that we delay is one more month that I just feel we're desperately behind other cities with this our system is archaic and we need to get with the times to get this done. Just so I can refresh my memory on the 25% reduction for all non-resident ial uses so just as an example you got a restaurant and that restaurant will it will generate according to some table so many trips yeah you got it yeah okay so three thousand square foot restaurant so the impact fee is based on this is calculated the max this is the maximum calculator so they will be paying we are you know ten thousand nine thirty seven but we are at three thousand right right so that's a 70% reduction here uh-huh so they will be at seventy seven and a half percent reduction here out of the one hundred and fourteen thousand so on the apartments you're saying you take 25% of that figure apartments are considered residential so there is no reduction on the apartments the reduction start from here on and goes this way these will be check apartments are already at about sixty two percent of the residential so you know if it is three thousand for single-family we have about eighteen hundred dollars roughly for the apartment unit okay but it's not the sixty seven eighty five per unit these are per unit that's a per unit and that's the maximum calculated per unit yes okay okay yes a little question and that was brought up by this conversation about the interim period and so the way you stated it was somebody who comes in and has their application in prior to the time we change this they would be subject to the to the old system or what but the way you phrase that you said they would not have to pay the the impact fees according to this new system they have a choice do they have a choice in the matter in other words if they were to go and look at it side by side like you've done several times looking at projects and in some cases it benefits them in some cases it benefits the city depending on the conditions of the projects under exactions versus impact fees is there an option for folks in that interim period or are they forced to use the old system for that period of time during the interim period then what is the current DDC will continue to apply so so any exactions yeah any it is right away dedication anything we have to do we will continue to have the DDC still in place so that was that will continue to be there for folks whose applications predate the path the passing of this ordinance but if I understand Kevin's question is if in fact you did the calculation for those folks who already had a application in process and the impact fee was more beneficial to them could they opt to pay the impact fee and or so could it be whichever one is less during that one year period could they have the option no that we were not you know I don't think we can work that way it's either either impact fee or the DDC because if they're final planning right now so so the DDC is currently applying on them anyway right so whatever exactions come out of that on road improvement or right away dedication etc or payment for signals that will be applied and they will have to pay that or do the construction as per the requirement so the final plaque when it's already final platted and they come back and pull the building permit we won't be collecting the impact fee from them at that time okay and that makes sense I guess my question then is we'll kind of have to for a period of time of almost ten years we'll have two existing fund mechanisms for paying for new and widening street projects because you'll still have folks who up to this point will have paid into the old exaction process which has a fund that that can only be dedicated to certain types of projects and that's going to exist for ten years after that project paid its fees but then we'll also have a new fund now that has more flexibility of paying within but a lot of times you know what happens is people follow plaque and then nothing happens for some time so if they did the final plan and they come after the one-year window of the implementation date of this road impact for your illness then they will be under the road impact fee plus they will have to pay a road impact fee I get that point I guess that way there won't be a parallel right you know use of D DC and road impact fees right and I get the trigger and how it's related to whatever the DDC rules are at the time in which they're coming in but I guess my question is is for a period of time we're gonna have two funding mechanisms that exist because we already have a pot of money that's been collected for the last several years through this exaction process with certain types of limitations on to where that can be spent how that can be spent as a ten-year lifecycle before it has to be refunded then we're gonna also be starting within a few months a new pot of money that's coming in from so in terms of I guess the logistics of how we fund in that strange ten-year interim period of time in which we have two funding mechanisms for new road projects what's ruling I guess I guess anytime you have a project that can qualify for funds and the exact ion fee the policy would be use that money first prior to dipping into this yeah we discussed that it from a policy perspective no actually you know we maintain a spreadsheet and that spreadsheet has all the data that all the monies we collected at each address how much money was collected and for what purpose it was collected so we have that data is about two and a half million dollars roughly so we when we do a project in that area and it covers that address we will take that money from that two and a half million dollar part and apply it towards the road construction using the impact fee money and that money together and we'll do the project but I guess for my question is there's a policy first ask you to deplete money in the old exaction fee pot prior to dipping into the road impact fee which has a lot more flexibility no but you know what's going to happen as you notice we are charging only 30% right so you need the money for the money is there no matter what right okay yeah but I think I think you're you tripped onto something there you didn't trip you're on to something there which is the the unintended consequence could be so let me ask is there a legal reason that we couldn't allow people like once this ordinance is passed so we pass it let's pass it like tomorrow please we've been talking about this forever I agree with Dalton but so it's passed and somebody then comes in with their with their project application for a building permit they go through the DRC the day after we pass the ordinance what you're saying is for one year after we pass the ordinance they're under the exaction program no if they come after the date of passing and they start plotting after that date they are under the impact fee not plotting okay they apply for a building permit their lots already plotted okay it's they 're bought they buy an existing platted lot yeah and the day after the ordinance is passed they apply for a billing permit what I thought you said was for one year after the ordinance passes they're under the exaction program yeah there'll be no road impact features they will be right is there a legal reason we couldn't allow them to choose it's the state law in a state law that one year grace period is built into the state law grace period but I don't know maybe Anita wants to address here let me tell you why I'm asking the question because it may help to form the opinion what I don't want what I don't want to have happen is somebody comes in with a project and it's a major project that's going to pay us a lot of sales tax and a lot of Avalorum tax and they run their calculations and they go if I wait until four months from now to apply for my building permit I'm going to be under the new program and based on my calculations that's going to save me 180,000 bucks or whatever they may choose to delay their project to save the money in which case we just lose out on the Avalorman sales tax for another six months or whatever it is so I'm gonna Jeff the just the law it's the law I'm just asking okay I'll try to address this simply so there's two time periods are important impact fees once the plat date the final plat date so that's where a lot of the exactions are determined that's when impact fees determined so right now the reason they can't there's a year grace period is because if they're coming in if they're pulling a pulling a building permit the day after the impact fees adopted that means they did all their final platting six months ago so that means they did all their decisions on the old program so that's the reason it's hard to go back and forth the year grace period is to allow those who already pay the exactions to pull their building permits in time does that make sense but but but but we don't just because somebody's final platting a lot if they're final platting but they don't have a use for that property yet do they pay all the exactions when they plat or do they would have made all the or do they pay them when they get a building permit system works is when the final plat the only way it gets recorded is when they pay the bring the bonds the insurance and pay the three and a half percent inspection fee to a public works department for inspection of the project that's the only time the project gets the final plan gets recorded with the county if it's not recorded it 's not a valid final plot until that time I got to go layman on you here right now so they final plot the lot right and they don't know what's going to be on it yet and then and now they're coming in they're going to put a restaurant yeah what it is they could do restaurant but there are public improvements that have to be done say say they had to build interior roads in the property or they had to do a perimeter road construction 25 foot so for them to record the plot with the county city currently requires that they get the bonds for that part of the construction to get the birds from the contractor based on the bed come out of the bonds and insurance and then take it to public works construction department pay the three and a half percent inspection fee based on the value of that contract once that is done that's the only time the plot gets recorded see so if they don't record the plot then it is not a valid part until that time you're saying they've essentially committed to the funds or spent the funds so to come back and then choose to do an impact fee they'd be paying for it twice if they did if they've already planted the property and it's recorded then there's a one-year grace period when they can do the project without paying impact because they've already accommodated those costs for the public improvements you know that are necessary to accommodate the project I just need to ask you a yes or no question PS okay I'm sorry because that stuff is all makes a lot of sense to you but I get lost in the whole three and a half and this and that when somebody plots a lot when they plot the lot at that time do they pay all the exactions that this is going to replace they're required to okay that's the only way the plan will get recorded and get legal gotcha so the one year doesn't matter now because there wouldn't be a pl atted lot now they're going to come in and they're going to final if they already final plotted they paid exactions yes so now if the use is a restaurant but the contemplated use was an office building before it's already been paid so it's already plotted so they don't have to pay an impact fee now yeah something depending on there is a clause in the in the DDC where if you are increasing the intensity by 25 more than 25 percent then they may be charged a little additional but if it is not there is no additional charge to them so if they've done the public improvement and it is sufficient for even a restaurant they're done okay thank you how's that triggered though is that through a zoning change or how do you know that I mean there's not a zoning change because if it's a commercial use it could have been and if it is in the definition of me if you know if it's seen the different zoning users there's a lot of users that are built in there and if is a belt use already is already there and that's what they're going to do there there is no zoning change right but there is intensity change and a lot of times you know we would look at what is the traffic generated and then come out with a exaction based on that but if the intensity is much higher then there may be a little additional cost at that time but usually don't really happen any other questions is that is that your presentation or okay all right fantastic well thank you thank mobility committee for their recommendations and then this will be coming back to us I guess sooner than later February the latest okay okay thank you for presentation PS I remember that okay we're gonna go on to agenda item 3b receive a report and hold discussion give staff direction on the Denton renewable plan activities and possible financing financial options excuse me related to the future power supply plans to meet the city of Denton's growth and needs mr. mayor thank you Phil Williams our general manager for DME is going to open this discussion and I think there are several other resources to respond to questions thank you so to pick up on our discussion that we had a couple of session couple of council sessions ago at the end of that session we run out of time somewhat and so we kind of wrap up that discussion we had an open session then just a quick reminder the summary of where we 're going with the renewable didn't plan is to continue to the council direction of continuing renewable renewables rates and reliability 70% renewable rates decreasing in 75% portfolio emissions reduction major part of this plan is obtaining a substantial amount 70% renewable energy and we 're doing it in various layers of wind different types of wind panhandle wind West Texas wind coastal wind as well as solar projects that would be in different locations also to say before this this plan gives us emissions reductions it provides cost savings over the 20-year period one of the concerns has been the being certain about the cost of the plan going forward so we have a request for proposal for the engines we have requests for qualifications on the design bill portion that we have received back and have under consideration so we can in future date bring back to council the numbers certain on those projects we have site control over a couple of sites we're in missed also negotiations as far as what the cost of those sites would be the air permits for both sites have been obtained from TCEQ the other thing to consider in this plan is the exchange rates part of the one of the options for the engines in this would be from overseas and exchange right now are favorable production tax credits as discussed with you by the legislative consultant from Washington the environment there is that those will be extended and so those are create a favorable time and of course interest rates at this time are very favorable all these things line up we think to make this a good time to look at this proposal and give it serious consideration discussion items for this afternoon we'll talk about environmental questions that have come up since we first presented financing which would related to the financing would give us options for voting which I think was a mention in the last council meeting is something that want to be considered an outside energy consulting firm and then talk about public hearing process those will be the things we'll talk about this afternoon so at first talk about the environmental issues looking for dr. Banks here we go and I think dr. Banks can answer some preliminary questions and then answering any follow-up questions you have as far as environmental concerns about the project good afternoon council I don't have a formal presentation what I would like to do is just simply ask for any questions and I will hope to either be able to address those here today or get the information for you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you as you might guess we've been getting lots and lots of emails expressing lots of concerns and so I'll ask a few you know step back and let somebody else ask a few and then check check off my list so lots of concerns regarding locating generation plants here in the Denton area that produce electricity through the use of natural gas so questions about air quality talk to me a little bit about the permitting process that we go through is it through EPA or TCEQ how does that work right essentially to address your question the permitting process would go through the TCEQ there's a number of elements associated with this particular permit and some of the elements are falling underneath a rule that 's known as permit by rule which basically allows for a minimal amount of review and approval based on equipment factors alone those are going to be the ancillary equipment associated with the plant the backup generator the heating and cooling system issues like that that are relatively minor the the other review would be a what's referred to as a new source review and that new source review is because of the amount of emissions that come from the the plants themselves these plants as proposed fall below what is known as the prevention of significant deterioration standards and therefore they're not considered to be a major source so at the end of the day this new source review is going to be for a what's referred to as a minor source and would be done by the TCEQ or has been done by the TCEQ so far you haven't given me any kind of assurances because you're mainly talking about TCEQ and sometimes it appears that the state is is actually in conflict with the federal government in terms of air quality standards right so how does when we look at what the EPA goals are for air quality in the North Texas area which is a non-att ainment area right we have we have bad air quality in this area how do how do these plants impact the goals how do they compare with with with what we're trying to achieve in improving air quality in the North Texas area okay I need to clarify on the TCEQ review process the TCEQ still has to abide by the federal air quality standards okay and so the new source review thresholds that I spoke of the prevention of significant deterioration threshold that I spoke of are in federal code not state code there is also a series of standards that are in place for the DFW non-attainment area specific to nitrogen oxide sulfur oxides in particulate matter so those would be applied in this in this situation as well so there is both a recognition of this being located in a non-attainment area and there is also a recognition of this needing to abide by or being required to be in compliance with federal code so how did the emissions of these plants how do they stack up do they against I well as compared to the EPA goals well they they are in compliance with all of the EPA and state standards including the new source review or they simply would not have been granted the permit would not have been granted right you know we've had estimates and I think the estimates are based on what the permit is requesting in terms of the total number of units that we might build that that this could the amount of emissions could be similar to adding thousands or hundreds of thousands of new cars to the North Texas area how does does that ring true you have you looked at those calculations have you done your own calculations regarding I have and I do have some some information on that you bear with me just a second as I wade through this this information that 's your slide presentation there yeah yeah that's that's it the I think it's it's important realize a couple of things about the about what is being proposed there are two permits that are in place right now one of them is for a 12 engine single unit our single plant and the other one is for a seven engine single plant the the concept there and DME can speak in more detail if you need this was to have the flexibility to have either a single 12 engine plant or two six engine plants and the calculations that are done that I've done are based on the expected maximum run of the plant scenarios as they've been proposed that is is going to give you a different value than if you combined both of those permits together and use all 19 plants to do the calculation so there's two ways to to look at this one is how much electricity is generated out of the renewable dentin plan including the plant used for backup purposes to meet DME's need only and the scenario of the plant as proposed being a supplier of electricity to the ERCOT market in addition to the meeting the DME backup supply needs if you look at it straight from the standpoint of meeting our own supply needs you are basically taking the equivalent on a carbon co2 equivalency basis of 82,865 cars off of the road using the EPA emission calculator the philosophical question that needs to be addressed is how do we deal with the ERCOT sales or the sales to the ERCOT market if we consider that we own the emissions associated with the sales to the ERCOT market even though those emissions would be generated somewhere else if we weren't supplying the the power and very likely would be would be provided by a plant that doesn't have the efficiency of the rice plant if we take in the co2 equivalents associated with that sale of ERCOT power then effectively that puts 62,000 approximately cars back into this calculation so at the end of the day you're looking at a 19 ,000 or so cars off of the road but I think it's important to keep in mind that our business as usual is 1615,802 megawatt hours on an annual basis this calculation here that puts the 62,000 effectively back is including renewable dentin with sales to ERCOT which is quite a larger amount of electrical generation in totality so that would be 2,298,748 megawatt hours per year. And then just one follow-up and I'll turn it over to other folks. So the notion and this may not be this may be for you or it may be for Phil you said it was a philosophical question about about generating more electricity and selling it to ERCOT to the ERCOT market is that just a philosophical decision does that play into our financial modeling does it and does it are there requirements from ERCOT that that we have to sell them so much electricity? Right I'll address the philosophical statement and then turn it over to Phil. I didn't know you had a degree in philosophy too. The philosophical issue that I'm talking about is do we consider that to be our emissions or do we consider that to be the markets emissions? Okay okay. Okay so if we consider it to be our emissions then we've got to take the 62,000 back out. If we consider it to be the market emissions and then effectively we're taking through just the renewable dentin plan taking out the market emission component we're taking 82,000 equivalent 82,000 cars off of the road. Okay I understand the philosophy now. Okay so to your question of if you have generation in the ERCOT market you are required to participate in ERC OT market and by participating in ERCOT market there's an independent market monitor for ERCOT that reviews that participation and generators must bid in what their costs are to the market compared to other generators and participate in that market. You cannot withhold generation from the market and participate in it. Thanks. So my question is the emission reduction is that based on the coal plant closing? I mean when you say take all these cars off what what does that mean? What are you comparing that to? That is basically the emission factors associated with generating our electricity with the renewable dentin plant. It has nothing to do with leaving the coal plant? It does contemplate leaving the coal plant in the sense that the coal plant is no longer in the energy mix. At all or just for the city? For the city. But it could still be operating? Yes I would imagine so. I don't know the specifics of that. I'm just curious what our emission reductions were based off of. If it was based off of the plant completely closing? Right. Or just us not? The way the calculation? I'm just curious. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay thank you. Basically the the emissions are looking at what we refer to as the business as usual model which includes the component that we have now of the Gibbons Creek power plant. It's basically our current mix and all the emissions associated with that particular mix as compared to the renewable dentin plant as proposed with the solar component , the additional wind component, and the generation from the what's been referred to as the rice plants. I have a follow-up about the the monitor at the Denton Airport. Right. It reads really high. It's one of the highest around. That's correct. Have you studied the impact of the air pollution on that monitor and and was that analysis done with the new 70 PPB ozone level or is it done with the old? Right. The 70 PPB ozone standard currently not in place. It's proposed. I did not do an analysis on either of the scenarios because the ability to do that modeling is pretty extensive. I can talk a little bit about impacts and I can tell you some additional information that I've found out about that. I think it's real important when we talk about ozone formation to understand a little bit about how how it's formed. There can be two sources of volatile organic carbon and nitrogen oxides which are the main ozone precursors in the air. Those are natural sources and anthropogenic those that are created by humans. Anthropogenic sources can be a wide variety of different types. Point sources which are things like the power plant that's being talked about and other power plants in the Metroplex. Area sources which are diffuse sources but still significant emitters. You know concentrated animal feeding operations are considered to be an area source so cattle operations. On-road which is cars and trucks and off-road which is airplanes, construction equipment, lawn mowers, etc. Very quickly the combination of nitrogen ox ides and volatile organic carbons in the presence of sunlight energy is what actually causes the formation of ozone and I've just put up the carbon monoxide pathway here. There's many other pathways that exist but effectively you need all three of these these elements in place to be able to to form ground level ozone. One of the key considerations and I think it's very important to realize this is that the the relationship between nitrogen oxide concentration and ozone production is not a linear concentration. This graph shows a constant concentration of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide concentrations increasing. What you find is that low levels of nitrogen oxide concentrations you'll see an increase in ozone formation. The volatile organic compounds though at some point will switch over to what's referred to as a nitrogen oxide limiting situation and in that particular case you'll actually see ozone concentrations go down even though nitrogen oxide concentrations go up. That ratio tipping point is about 8 to 1 volatile organic compound to nitrogen oxide. So if you're down here at the at the low side at 4 to 1 or so volatile organic compounds are going to be your limiting factor and it's best to control that limiting factor at this section of the of the curve. You get up to that break point and after that point when you get about 15 to 1 volatile organic compounds to nitrogen oxides nitrogen oxides actually become the limiting factor and it's best to control the nitrogen oxides. So it isn't a simple linear relationship between the two. The local Denton monitor is influenced by a lot of different factors. One is the prevailing wind direction and that prev ailing wind direction I've tried to depict here. This particular graph shows the overall tons per year in ozone formation. Dr. Banks, I think if you could we had a technician coming if you could hit full screen on something. Oh yes I 'm sorry. Yeah let me let me do that. I'm sorry to interrupt you I just wanted to make sure people are viewing by television. No I appreciate you telling me that. That may help a little bit. Yeah yeah sorry about that. Generally you're gonna see sout herly direction wind and a lot of cases you'll see that wind direction kind of start here from the southeast and go to the northwest and then hook back around. So it really depends on the on the time of year that this occurs but this is the general flow that you're going to see across the state and because we have a tendency to catch a lot of what's south of us we'll have a tendency to see higher ozone concentrations in that particular station. So this is a an analysis that was presented to the Council of Governments on November the 6th by Chris Kite at the it was the air quality technical committee meeting that they had there. Chris Kite is the air modeler for the for the TCEQ and I think this kind of gives a relative sense of what's driving our ozone and that particular monitoring station. This is what's known as an ozone source apportionment test and our model and basically what you're seeing here in the green bars you're looking at all days that exist within their their example model that they ran that exceeded the national ambient air quality standards. In the top ten that is basically reflective of the top ten highest score scoring days in terms of ozone concentration for that same monitoring period. A couple of things to point out on this non Texas sources make up a pretty significant portion of what affects our monitor about 18.6%. DFW on road and and to a lesser extent non road are a fairly significant amount too. The largest single component is what's referred to as boundary condition it's basically the ozone that's coming from sources that are atmospheric stratosphere down to the trop osphere and that so we're getting high level ozone that that is being transported all around the planet dropping down into our area along with other sources as a boundary condition. They've subset that out from what they call non Texas human or anthropogenic sources that one's also a very high amount about 18%. I think it's real interesting to take a look at the change between the top ten days and all ten days. What you'll see is that when we get into those really high days you're going to see the DFW on road component actually increase and add to that ozone. The DFW non road component add to it and basically you're going to see decreases and some of those boundary conditions and non Texas sources that doesn't mean they go away it means they're making up less of a percent of the ozone that's actually there. It does have electric utilities as DFW point sources here they're about 0.6 percent or I'm sorry about 0.6 PPB out of 77.85 and they don't change in the analysis because they're relatively steady sources. So getting back getting back to your question I know it was a convoluted. Why you have that up there? I have two more questions and one of them kind of speaks to because I see drilling oil and gas drilling and production on there twice and then oil gas and other and those are right point source their emissions as well right so part of my question in the emissions are do we have we included any of that in our our emissions when we're talking about these plants? Considering you have to frack to get the natural gas? The answer to that in terms of the emission factors off of the that have been portrayed here they're looking at straight-out consumption of the fuel. Okay so so not any any other production just the consumption of it? They are they are fuel into the plant that fuel being used for generating electricity and that fuel leaving as emissions. So it might be something else we need to look into if we're thinking about local emissions? I suppose that could be argued I would argue that if you're going to look at full cycle it needs to look at you need to look at full cycle for all options. Well yeah I would like to look at it. Not just natural gas. Right and my other my other question is kind of about ozone because if we're running these for peak for me it would seem that on the most hot summer days these generation it would be they would be running. How would how would that affect our ozone? Like if we have you know could we even go outside? I mean you know children with asthma just kind of curious. Right right so again getting back to the the chemistry component of it. I mean could you say yes or no? I mean is it gonna be? Well no but I think it's important to understand some of the implications there. The reaction time between these compounds and sunlight energy is usually going to be on the order of at least a day or a few days. So they're moving from their original sources reacting in in the air and then basically coming up here at the time they form ozone. The plan as proposed is going to be at the northernmost area of where you typically see that coming at least from from our standpoint of our monitoring station. All right so to to think about that in terms of what a local emission source would would actually do you've got to think about what's being emitted and then you've got to think about the time that that material has to react with the sunlight energy in order to actually form ozone. So I'm not an air quality modeler and I don't have access to the models or the computers needed to run those those models to tell you exactly what the effect would be. I did speak with someone who is an air quality expert. I shared the permit information with that air quality expert and the expected generation capacity and asked some of the same questions that you have asked today and that individual told me that his expectation having not run the models which would have taken a large you know amount of time a large cost his expectation was that the impact on the local monitoring station would be negligible. Those were his words. Can you share this in individuals name? Yes his name is Dr. Kura V igula John at UNT. I feel the need to ask you the impact on West Nile virus. Please do. So the comparison of missions for business as usual is a comparison of what we're investing in in terms of our energy portfolio right compared to what we would be investing in the new plant. So there might be coal plants over the state but those don't factor into it because that's not what we're investing in to power our cities. Is that is that the logic behind why we wouldn't include existing emissions under a coal plant that we're no longer invested in under renewable dentin? That's correct. The best I think that I can do to try to address that is simply look at what the plant would would produce versus what the emissions would look like if that material was or that energy was produced on the air cop market and that's about the best comparison because I have I have you know the the air cop market is going to be responsive to growth in the state and and the overall mix of generation capacity within that market is going to be influenced by that growth and many other market factors and so I I don't know how to address that. That growth seems key to some degree that there's going to be existing needs if the population stays the same the commercial mix in the state stays the same but we're an incredibly fast growth state so your electrical needs are increasing so your generation will increase. The question becomes what are cities like ourselves or other municipal energy providers or for that matter corporate energy providers doing in order to move the needle forward in terms of increased investment in clean energy resources? So I think the question that some people have is while from the perspective of simply looking at emissions from our own portfolio which it's clear there's a reduction is that can we understand that is there a way to understand that that we're actually whether or not I guess I'll pose it this way whether or not we're moving the needle in the right direction forward for kind of the region in general by us doing this or are we just simply I think what some people are saying is yes we're divesting from a coal plant but that's going to continue to generate pollute the air while we are adding two new additional polluters via these gas plants so actually what we're doing is net increase in terms of air pollution for the entire region versus actually reducing emissions so from the total perspective not just the city's energy portfolio how can we understand that? I think one way to respond to that is that that scenario contemplates zero growth from now and into the future and I don't think that that's a realistic scenario. The next step would be to analyze what would likely be the replacement or replacement and new capacity that would be required to meet the expected growth which is approximately 1.7 percent per year with the ERCOTS analysis so I can I can somewhat address that with some information that I have here. I do I do think that there's a lot of variables there but essentially what was done make sure yeah there we go so in June of 2014 EPA released the clean power plan and this caused reduction in carbon intensity of the electricity generating sector for Texas they set some goals 853 pounds for CO2 of CO2 per megawatt hour to be met on average from 2020 to 2029 and a final goal of 791 pounds per megawatt hour to be met from 2030 onwards. The EPA set this by using assumptions that they had about coal plant efficiency, energy efficiency improvements, increased production from natural gas, especially combined cycle units, growth and renewable generation, preservation of existing nuclear and growth in well I've already said in energy efficiency. ERC OT produced a study in November of 2014 to look at the impacts of this clean power plan on the state of Texas. Just for a quick comparison the EPA interim goal is 853 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour for 2029, 791 pounds for CO 2 per megawatt hour from 2030 onwards. Our current is 879, our proposed is 370 or 342 rather so quite a large reduction even underneath the EPA 2030 goal. This ERCOT study is is fairly complicated and I'll try to try to boil it down as best I can. The baseline scenario basically said the ERCOT system under current market trends and it's just assuming that the clean power plan doesn't happen so just what's what's the baseline going to look like. The CO2 limit is basically a scenario that's run to say what is going to happen in the market if they use the most cost-effective ways to comply with these limits without putting any kind of a price on CO2 emissions just let it let the market take care of it. The NEXT contemplated a $20 per ton CO2 effectively a carbon tax charge and the NEXT scenario looked at $25 a ton of for CO2. So the CO2 limit was able to actually meet the goals at $20 a ton they they did not meet either the interim or the final $25 a ton they fell a little bit below the interim goal but they approximately met the the final. If you take a look at the amount of or at the analysis that went into this there was an assumption of natural gas price increases that were based on on current market and anticipated market. There was a recognition of a fairly significant decline in solar capital costs through the the planning period and basically this table shows you what the generation mix is going to look like in 2029 under these scenarios. So under the the baseline you've got about 45% of your energy provided by natural gas about 29% by coal 11% by wind 6% by solar 9% nuclear and a variety of other sources. The the solar you'll recognize is quite a bit higher than it currently is our current solar generation is less than 1% of the overall energy mix in the state of Texas but this keep in mind this is contemplating 2029 so they're looking at a fairly significant market saturation for solar. So you impose the CO2 limit you impose the CO2 carbon tax of $20 a ton and $25 a ton and effectively you see a couple of things happening within this study. You see an immediate reduction in significant reduction in the amount of coal fire generation and that continues on and gets even more pronounced at the $25 a ton level. If you look at natural gas, natural gas is making up the fairly significant component of that overall energy mix that's been reduced from coal. If you look at the the wind component you see it jump up and record or in response to those market conditions you see solar increase about 2% and the others remain the same. So through this through this analysis essentially you're going to see a transition from coal to natural gas and renewable energy sources. And just just for clarification the reason for the reduction of coal is because of the the price per ton of CO2? Yes and just by the imposition of the CO2 limit itself and letting the market take care of it. One other addition I mean the other reason for the reduction in coal in Texas is a lot of those units were built about the time I began my career so they're aged out. So to the question of and this I think it's the Councilwoman Briggs question about kind of studying all the impacts of natural gas production on a plan. Do we have something that compares the natural gas the percentage of our mix that's currently powered by natural gas assuming whatever that is in the market versus the renewable dent in plan dependency on natural gas from a percentage of the total portfolio perspective? Yes I believe I have that in here and I'll have to scroll through sorry. This is your way of being coming without prepared presentation. Yes. This guy's unbelievable in a good way in a good way. Yes this is the renewable dent in DME backup only no sales to market emission factors . This is the business as usual emission factors for CO2 equivalents nitrogen oxide sulfur oxides volatile organic carbons in particulate matter. I guess I guess my question though is specific to the percentage of our current portfolio that's coming from natural gas. Right. To the percentage of renewable dentin that's coming from natural gas. I guess to her point if we were to go back in and add in all those additional analysis of the emissions through the drilling and production phase and putting in the pipelines and compress ors and all that sort of stuff. Right. You'd have to do that at both ends of the you'd have to compare that to business as usual to renewable dentin. In which case if if you're looking at it and there's more natural gas being used under business as usual than is the renewable dentin plan then that's the analysis. I mean it's gonna equal itself out and be a zero-sum equation. Right yes and I don't have that particular information. I have a comparison between the rice plan and market generated but market generated is going to have a lot of different sources in it not just the natural gas component. I think if there's if there's a way to get some sense on that percentage between businesses just particular natural gas because that seems to be a question as people to the point that some people are now emailing me suggesting it's better to stay invested in coal for a period of time than natural gas because I think natural gas is off the charts in terms of emissions which is astonishing to me especially where that those opinions are coming from. So I think it becomes important I think to address that question so that we can kind of understand. Right and we can get those analyses and if I may I think I can I can talk a little bit to the to the issue that you raised. A lot of the concern about natural gas for from the standpoint of global warming is related to the emission releases that occur throughout the process before the fuel gets used in a in a generating capacity or or for whatever the end use is and because methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 is particularly in the short term the release of those materials to the atmosphere could offset the carbon benefits associated with the use of natural gas over coal and that's where the argument is at right now. There are researchers that are out there Dr. Howarth at Cornell is a good example that have estimations of the amount of leakage that occurs throughout the process that are on the on the high side that is a of what's out there. That is a study that is based on estimations that are done predominantly at field level and extrapolated upwards. There are atmospheric scientists that like Dr. Brandt at Stanford's a good example that have looked at methane portion meant from atmosphere downward and both both estimation problems have are both estimation approaches have their their issues. It's difficult to scale up from this from the small -scale field studies to the entire industry and not introduce some errors and it 's difficult to to scale down from the atmospheric level in methane partition to get to individual sources of methane. This is a very much a an ongoing debate right now. The Howarth's number in terms of the breakeven point is somewhere around 3% leakage. Brandt's would suggest that the from the atmospheric basis Brandt's statements are that natural gas is a better alternative than coal. Howarth's estimations would indicate that on the short term natural gas from a global warming perspective only is a worse scenario than coal in a 25 year period and about the same in a hundred year period. Still a lot of uncertainty still a lot of debate about that issue. If I had to summarize it up I think I could say that that a few things and this is this is just my opinion based on on researching this issue. Leaks are a problem. The EPA estimates of leaks currently appear to be too low from both scientists perspective. The EPA has recognized that the leak issue needs to be resolved. There are regulations in place that are being put in place right now. They're out for public comment currently that are aimed at being the first phase of tightening down on the leakage issue on all phases from production to end use. That issue right now has been exclusively voluntary and after 2016 when these regulations are going to be put in place it will be a regulatory requirement. So I think the leaks are important to address but I think that there are also some recognition regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of looking at a Brant study or Howard study or the other ones that are out there. There's enough recognition to say that that's an issue that needs to be looked at and regulations put in place and the EPA has responded to that and those regulations right now are slotted to be out on in 2016. The first leg of them. And this last and then I'll let and I totally agree with that and I think that's a problem and I think we were trying to figure out how we could address that locally with our own gas well development through inspections and trying to think how do we get at air quality addressing some of these issues. Unfortunately the state's preventing us from doing a lot of that. I guess my point is this if the current plan that we have business as usual right we're investing in natural gas through the market. Correct. So any analysis that we do of the existing it's not like the renewable dent and plants that introduces natural gas for the first time into the portfolio of dentin. So any analysis that would include this down-the-line emissions analysis from the drilling and production transmission phase would have to be included in both the business as usual plant which arguably is probably using more natural gas than the current plan. I don't know that's what I'm asking to look at but even if it's the same amount of natural gas being used that additional analysis cancels each other out because you'd have to look at it from both. So to say that our 70% reduction in emissions doesn't account for those sorts of things well it 's not accounting for it in business as usual either so I think that's just an important point to make. To keep it simple and to go straight to the point dentin already has poor air quality. Will adding these two new power plants in dentin add to the air pollution in the city of dentin? If you're talking about ozone? I'm talking about the quality of our air adding two new power plants that we don't have right now. Will two new power plants add to the air pollution in the city of dentin? The short answer to that is yes. The longer answer to that is that you've got to also take into account the electric generation that would be done in the absence of the plan and the fact that that we inherit that pollution through the wind patterns that exist within this state. So is it is it adding more pollution in the sense of emissions directly within the the city of dentin? The answer to that is yes but it also is a very small component of the actual air quality problems that we have in here because most of the air quality issues that we have are inherited from south of us and move into this area from prevailing wind directions. So and and the DFW on-road air pollution is also a very significant component of our local air quality problems. So I from the standpoint of addressing the magnitude of that those emission additions all I can default to is the statement that I made earlier in talking with someone who's a real air quality expert that the impact on the local monitoring station with regards to ozone he considered to be negligible looking at what he had seen from the permits and the expected emission. This question I feel like it's about emissions so typically when the quick start aspect of this plan is going that's when most of the emissions are going to be going off obviously and is the city of Denton solely in charge of when we turn that on or is there ever a scenario where the ERCOT market has us turn it on? Right with regards to the the startup emissions the rice plants are going to be the lowest startup emissions that you're going to have of any type of plant that we can construct. In terms of the ERCOT I'm going to have to default to bill. So we would submit information about our cost to run these units. ERCOT decides when to dispatch to generating units in ERCOT. We would be participating in that. They would give us direction of when to turn these units on. So we can have some control on that in the cost we submit of what the units cost us to run and have some control of that way but two situations that ERCOT dispatch these units one would be in an emergency situation which we would have to comply with or be fined or second would be to cooperate with the market that we're agreeing to participate in that we participate in today to buy power these units could not be withheld without fine or penalty from the independent market monitor. That's a complicated thing to understand for me you know I feel like Denton's growing so we need to anticipate that growth too but if we have an outside interest or a company telling us when we should turn that part on too that's difficult for me to take into consideration and understand that. So the ERCOT market we participate on both sides. We 're a buyer of wholesale power and we participate in ERCOT market as a buyer of power supply from the market and then in this situation today we're also a supplier net through 100 megawatts of the coal generating plant that we have. In this scenario we'd be a supplier with these gas-based units and so there's different rules that apply to each side of that equation we'd be on both sides of that equation and the ERCOT would assess the rules for how you participate in that market. Okay thanks Phil. We got a couple questions. Dr. Banks the question was asked do the plants contribute to the pollution in the city? Ron your short answer was yes. Is it safe to assume that if we have 10,000 new people that move into this community with cars and things such as that I mean doesn't growth just in and of itself without I mean doesn't those things contribute to the pollution of the air quality of the city as well? I mean new factories, new cars. Yes and the I guess the follow-up to that question too I don't think it can be overstated how much of that pollution originates somewhere else and comes here. And that was going to be my next question because and I think I read this somewhere if you could go back to the slide that showed your breakdown right of the because I want to understand that a little bit more because I we've gotten some reports from and some good articles that we've read about different air quality issues and things such as that so I want to make sure I understand what I'm looking at and if it's all the same yeah it was that right yeah yeah and just if I might real quickly this gives you a very it's a very limited but perhaps helpful comparison. This is the 2018 summer weekday on-road nitrogen oxide estimated amounts using a previous June 14th episode day. In the in the summertime around Denton area you're looking at about 10 tons per day of nitrogen oxides from just your on-road sources that exist within Denton County alone. The plants less than 1% of that amount so that gives you a relative sense of at least from a nitrogen oxide standpoint. Sure now this slide here because that bottom part that says 77.85 right that is 77. 85 what? Parts per billion of ozone at the Denton South Airport monitor. Okay I thought I read somewhere that you know there's some talk about with you know some of the new rules that out in East Texas there's going to be they're anticipating several coal plants that may eventually shut down or they've done some analysis that if a certain amount of coal plants shut down and I don't even know what the megawatt usage is or the megawatt capacity so if you know that that'd be great but five of them which I'm assuming that's probably gonna be a close to a thousand or you know 1,500 megawatt. 5,000 5,000 megawatt hours. That there's been some calculation that if that occurs and those get shut down that that may have an impact on the Denton Airport monitor. Did I just read that somewhere in error is that is there something like that that's? No I think you're actually referring to the the study that Dr. Kura V ila John provided to the Council of Governments not not too long ago I think it was actually in that same November meeting. I've got some excerpts of it essentially he did look at a scenario for the Denton South monitor with regards to basically putting into the model that the coal fired electric generating units would have an immediate 90% reduction in nitrogen oxides. Sc enario B was a 100% nitrogen reduction. Scenario C was a 90% NOx reduction for the midlothian cement kilns. There was a 50% reduction for Barnett Shell Point sources and and all of the other scenarios there. Basically these are the plants that he was looking at so I don't know if they coincide to the ones that that you're referring to but they're the ones that have a tendency to have some impact on the Denton South monitor. If you look at the results basically the the concept of an immediate 90% reduction from all of those coal fire power plants and nitrogen oxides would have a one part per billion influence on the Denton monitor in terms of its design value basically the design values the three- year average of the fourth highest monitoring day there's a lot of terms like that. Let me make sure I just understand that in my own simple mind. So that's 77.85 which was at the bottom of that slide right you're saying if that scenario played out and that's all that changed that's the only thing that changed everything else stayed the same it would go to 76.85. That's correct. Okay right and I would point out that that's the largest change in terms of both the change to the design value at the station and also they looked at basically what he referred to as a maximum impact he's looking at the lowest ozone in that 67 day period in the highest ozone and the relative difference between those two. So the largest single impact of all the scenarios that that we just looked at was actually reducing nitrogen oxides by 90% at those cement kiln or I'm sorry at those electric generating utilities. In fact it reduced it had more of an impact on ozone than actually taking it down a hundred percent which shows you some of those relative comparison issues between nitrogen oxides but these are the scenarios that he looked at so I guess you know one one way to think about this is that in terms of our local air quality for the scenarios that he looked at which would include the 90% reduction from the coal-f ired electric generating utilities the best thing that we could do from an impact to ozone would be to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from those plants. Okay and just a couple and I don't know if these are questions for you I think it's just more of an understanding on the permitting process because I know that the current plan has anticipated and you said there was a permit for a 7 engine and a 12 engine I mean that's I'm not sure how that impacts what I'm gonna ask but because my understanding is just for the sake of discussion it was to be if we had two sites you might have six on one site and six on the other and my understanding has been that for different reasons there's a certain amount of capacity that those are allowed to run based upon the permit. Now I had interpreted that as if it's a 220 megawatt that you 're allowed whatever that percentage is but and correct me if I'm wrong Phil when we had this discussion at lunch but so if we had a less we had less meg awatt generation we still have the ability to generate the same amount of megaw att hours it just means they would be running because it's not about how much you get per plant it's how much you get per your permit whether it's a hundred meg awatts whether it's 300 megawatts whether it's 400 megawatts is that am I right on that or am I not is that incorrect? I believe you're right the permitting was done to allow us flexibility that we might need as far as purchasing the site if one site didn't materialize we could always come back and put all 12 units at one site which is why the first site was permitted for 12 units this plan contemplates putting six at one site and six at another site well and I and I permitted them as 12 at one and seven is another to leave us flexibility if we have any issues on the land permit. Well I guess Mike it comes to let's say for instance we do the 12 six and six and we got I don't even know 70% we can produce 70% and that's I forgot how many megawatt hours that is 1.4 or 5 or whatever and we're only gonna let's say just for discussion we're only going to need 700,000 or 800 ,000 of those megawatt hours for our purposes backup peak so forth but if we had a smaller megawatt configuration that 70% isn't necessarily tied to now that lower it's it's based upon more of what you can do in totality as an aggregate not based upon a specific system configuration it's based on the permit so with 110 or 150 megawatts you still might could get the 800,000 megaw att generation that you're anticipating. I'm gonna call the staff here is that so we could run we could run 40 we can run 40% yeah and whoever wants to answer that yeah if we just come to the mic. I'm just gonna confirm my answer okay . 40% at one and 36% if we if we use one site is that correct or Jim you or Mary you won't take this yeah go ahead so this is Mary Hunter Davis she's a consultant from Burns McDonald's been working with us on air permitting issues. Okay so the permit is set up that basically there's a tons per year limit so there'll be a up to 50 tons per year of NOx for each site so if there's 12 engines all of those 12 engines can only emit up to 50 tons per year it's slightly lower than that it's about 48 tons to be below the 50 ton per year threshold so it would remain a minor source regardless of whether there's six or twelve engines at a site so both sites are limited to 50 tons per year of NOx and 50 tons per year of VOC so that's really what the limiting factor is okay it's not necessarily the number of engines so if you have six engines technically they could operate more hours before they would meet the 50 tons per year okay so yeah that I think that I think that answered my question that I was correct in that kind of thinking okay well thank you very much okay let me sort of make sure I got the lay of the land I know you have questions Mayor Pro Tem and you had some more questions I believe Councilmember Graig so we're gonna go ahead and go to you Mayor Pro Tem and then yes well to follow up on what we just heard what I'm curious about is when we're talking about the permit allowing only so many times then if ERCOT wants us to continue to operate that plant and we are about to max out or have maxed out we can't really comply with their request can we? I'd have to confirm I believe ERCOT in an emergency situation EPA has rules to allow in other words if you're preventing a blackout you have a waiver thank you so it would be an emergency situation not just in every day hey we need this right ERCOT you know once you reach your limit we would not be able to bid in all right so I want to go back and look at some of the other issues that have been raised by folks in the area and these are mostly environmental issues one of the issues raised and this was by a presentation by mr. Smith with public citizen his estimation is that the the two plants that we have that we're proposing would require 58 mature wells would be needed to produce enough gas to fuel these engines and that raises several questions and it's raised several questions among citizens does that mean that there are 58 new wells that are needed in the city of Denton in order to produce the gas to operate these wells those are really important questions that people you know need to consider do you have you done any reverse engineering on on his calculation of 58 mature wells and do you think that that's an accurate number based on what you know about the the the fact that we're only talking about two plants each with six turbines right the calculations that he used I believe were related to a couple of things they're related to what was referred to as the average yield per day of a well in the Barnett shale that's highly variable but there is an average out there that that's the value that was used which is 0.73 million cubic feet per day the study that he did basically assumed a range for natural gas plant consumption of 0.8 to 1.76 million cubic feet per hour and they use the high estimate of that that range and basically a 24-hour day 365 a day 365 day a year run scenario and is that what we're planning to do with those plants no 24 hours no it isn't this this calculation here is how they came up with 57.8 58 wells okay the plant will not run all the time and so what I did was I actually got the estimated annual gas consumption of the of the plant directly from the DME at the proposed runtime that was in millions of BTUs that has to be converted back to cubic millions of cubic feet to make it comparable I use the same factors that that he used public citizen used with regards to the amount of production on a per well basis so you do the math on that and essentially it comes up with being 28 wells and the difference being the the amount of runtime that I think it's the amount of runtime and the expectation that all 19 units will be running versus the 12 s proposed which which brings up a couple of more questions just regarding that I don't know which one you want to take first but one of them is would these be required to be new dentin wells would they even be dentin wells would they be new wells and have we figured out if we did business as usual and looking at a portfolio or even a portfolio of 70% renewables and buying the other 30% completely off the market what it means in terms of the number of wells number of wells total or okay I have not done that that calculation for the business as usual with the total number of wells well I bet you could do that in the next 30 seconds sure the the concept of the local well discussion is really needs to be thought about in terms of how well gases is processed the it would not be a situation where you're going to have a direct feed into into this plant I put up the the process itself basically the gas comes up out of the well it's got a separator on site that separates it out from the the larger component of the impurities water and other additives are going to be routed to the production tanks on on site and the gas is metered as it goes into the pipeline network it goes into a gathering pipeline gathers gas from multiple sides transports it to a facility for additional processing once it's processed it's typically transported by what are referred to as transmission lines to another location it could be stored it could be compressed and then the gas is distributed to the end users through distribution pipelines that are operated by natural gas utility the Denton plant needs a large volume of natural gas and as a result of that there's only a couple of suppliers in the area that are going to be able to supply that one of those two suppliers has processing facilities that are in south and west Texas so it's very unlikely that the gas molecules that come from that particular source are going to actually originate from wells that exist within the city of Denton the other has processing plants that are located in Bridgeport and a few others that are located west of Fort Worth those are collecting from the Barnett shale and so it is possible that natural gas from the city would enter into that system along with all the other producers that exist within the Barnett shale and basically would be supplied back to the city of Denton after after process how much of a relative percentage that is I have no idea I know that that the city of Denton is relatively small with regards to the overall cubic feet of natural gas that are produced when compared to the entire Barnett shale but because it's taking natural gas from the Barnett shale it is possible that local wells could supply that gas okay and then there have been several mentions of the fact that we should consider as an alternative to the quick start rice plants a combined cycle plant right so have we now that we're just talking in terms of environmental impact could you talk about the comparison of an environmental impact between the quick start plants and a rice and a combined cycle plant right I 'll attempt to address that but I see Phil about to spring up over there so I'll say my part of it and then for guy is who is at the end of his useful aging out or whatever he said he does spring up well doesn't he yes and and just as a matter for housekeeping well gonna want to take a break here in about five minutes just because we've been going two hours doesn't mean we're stopping the presentation so wherever if we get to a natural break it feel if you answer this question because I know councilmember rigs has some questions but one to make sure we got a break in because it's been a couple hours this this graph right here is looking at combined cycle plants versus rice plants versus the market mix from ERCOT and it's expressed in pounds per megawatt hour the combined cycle produces less overall co2 equivalent emissions than a rice plant at the run time when it's up and running and and is is producing at its designed amount the same is generally true with regards to nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides I put on here the market mix so you can see the the comparison you can really see the impact of some of the sulfur oxides coming out of the coal component of the the market mix there's the blue is nitrogen oxides and want to point out the first the relative difference of either of these options compared to the market mix much much lower you can't even make out the sulfur oxides on the graph itself but I put the numbers up here so comparing rice to a combined cycle it is slightly better with regards to the sulfur ox ides and it does produce lower overall nitrogen oxide emissions however again relatively speaking compared to the market mix a relatively small difference between the two and I think it's crucial to understand what's being proposed with regards to this plant versus the combined cycle a combined cycle plant is going to lose any efficiency advantages that it has over a rice plant if it's operated as the rice plant is being proposed in other words if you're proposing to have a system that has the ability to start up and deliver power on demand and shut down very quickly with minimal efficiency losses you're not going to get that out of a combined cycle plant I'm sure Phil can go into more detail on that but essentially the combined cycle plants are going to take longer to to ramp up and they are going to take longer to shut down and the quicker you try to make them respond the more polluting they're going to be per given megawatt hour do you want to take a break you might say question just a minute the Kings already spoken I think to the main point that is to combine cycle units has about a 20 to 30 thousand dollar startup cost and so once you invest that kind of cost is starting the unit up you're gonna let you don't want to run if you're seeing today where the loads going up and down or the need for the units going up and down the quick start units can have have zero startup costs so they can start up go off start up go off and do up multiple times during the day where the combined cycle will run more on a primary one -hour basis yes they use a little bit less gas yes they have a little bit less emissions but the key is is that they have to run more and so if they run more they're going to consume more gas therefore have more emissions customer Briggs can we you want to go ahead and ask it now you sure go ahead you bet no sure because I use the two air permits that were filed and I did group the emissions together because they will be at some point in our city if we max them out they so what I did and I used the same EPA emissions calculator and plug them in right and I got that it would take 16 million trees in our city to plant to capture the the emissions from both of these plants in one year does that sound right to you if you're talking about all 19 plants no that's yeah that's the issue there is that you have if I understand how you did the calculations you've taken the maximum emission factors off of the permits and you've combined both of those permits so you're essentially looking at 19 run units I the calculations that I did looked at 12 run units with the anticipated energy consumption of those 12 units so there will be a substantial difference between the number that you get and the number on my calculations because you're effectively including seven more plants or seven more engines within the plant than I am so I can run that calculation I just did the cars component that same calculator puts trees and there are some other metrics in it as well so I can certainly run those those calculations I think it's also important though that that you you are sure to take out the component that is going to be provided by renewable that has increased from that that calculation well I'm talking about local air local air quality and pollution like if we were to do this how would we help you know what could we do to offset some of this and I put this in thinking well maybe you know we could do this but I don't know that we could plant 16 million trees so right I just wanted to share that with you and that's all I have all right well and if I may just one quick comment on that that that's based on a co2 equivalency factor and so the entire purpose of providing the renewable portion of the renewable dentin plant is to reduce that co2 equivalency factor so I think what you've effectively the analysis that you've done is looked at the addition of these these plants and all they're going to to emit and has not taken into account the amount of emissions that we will reduce by not using electricity or not using emitting electricity for the purposes of the solar and additional wind so that's what the difference is and I'd be happy to work through the the calculations with you if you'd like thank you sure okay let 's take a five minute break come back about I want to welcome everybody back to this December 1st 2015 work session the density council we are still in our discussion of agenda item 3B and so yes councilmember Johnson dr. B I feel so terrible every time I ask you a question I just prepare to feel stupid can you go back to your chart from the air quality monitoring expert dude that broke it all down into where it's coming from that's one cuz that so in general terms is it safe to say that what we're breathing was created by someone else south of us in the world a large portion of it was that's correct not all of it yeah because I'm trying to figure I'm looking at and I go okay oil and gas drilling and production is 0.47 electric utilities is 0.58 whatever that is right right I don't know what oil and gas other is it's basically all point sources from oil and gas and anything that's not included in these point sources so that's what I 'm getting at is so oil and gas drilling in production and electric utilities combined is one out of 77.85 that that's correct right so I mean that this is didn't south because I get it we only have one air monitoring station in the city right right that's it right and so that's what we that's what we point to I mean didn't isn't just a non-attainment area it's all of the metroplex right that's correct so any area so because a lot of the emails we've been getting are if we build these two plants what it's going to do to our air quality in Denton which is already bad and I guess what I'm looking at here is okay if what you said earlier if I understood it right which is by the time the the contaminants are emitted they combine with sunlight to form ozone is about a three-day generally speaking right it depends on a lot of factors but it isn't an instantaneous conversion so because obviously because we have no industry in Denton to speak of there's nothing there's no manufacturing here to speak of that generates pollution it's cars and you know we have some manufacturing but it's pretty clean manufacturing yeah we in terms of the the on-road versus the point sources your on-roads going to dominate we have some point sources in Denton County for sure and a couple in the city of Denton well so here's where I'm going with it I just want to make sure that I'm tracking because obviously you're an expert and you have all kinds of data up there I try to boil it down into if I was talking to a citizen about it and trying to explain it what it appears to me based on the data is there's not a whole lot we can do in Denton Texas other than tell people they can't drive cars which we don't have the right to do so one of the things we have control over as a city government we can build these plants or not we can choose to eliminate the coal plant from our we can't control what other people do but if we eliminate the coal plant about three hours south of us you could argue that if that coal plant goes away our air quality could get better right because it's traveling this way right the pollution it just seems to me like the argument of building these plants is going to degrade the air quality for the citizens and the citizens of Denton as far as things we can control it seems minuscule the impact seems minuscule right I mean if it's one out of 78 today and we take coal out of the mix and some portion of that's blowing this way I mean in other words we 're growing at a clip of 10,000 people a year right they all had a car or that I mean I just don't want us to mischaracterize the impact on the Denton environment I don't think we should only worry about our own environment by the way I mean I think we should worry about all of it right so the net effect of this and eliminating the coal your data suggests that it's a significant improvement to the environment first it's air emissions it's not my data it's data that's derived from a couple of air quality experts the the impact on the Dent on monitor is a discussion of ozone only which deals with the nitrogen ox ides and the carbon monoxide component and other VOCs that are coming out of the out of the plant with regards to the amount of emissions from this plant compared to other sources an example is this one with the nitrogen oxides where we're looking at about 1% of your of your typical model summertime on road so it's I mean it the emissions are being produced here there's as proposed there 's no question about that if they were produced elsewhere particularly south of us would they have an impact on our local air quality and the answer to that is yes so it is in terms of the overall emissions out of this plant compared to other sources for the parameters that we're looking at it's relatively small compared to those other sources and that is why it fell under that minor source review and why it goes that particular regulatory pathway with with EPA that's you know I I feel like I'm kind of stepping around that issue over your question but but I'm having a little trouble with the term miniscule I guess what I'm getting at is I think it's because it's risky to take one data set and say I draw my conclusion from this data set right so if we're going to talk about emissions we should talk about all the emissions that we generate whether it's within our city limits or not right right right so we 're making a debt drastic improvement on that that that's correct if you look at our if you look at our entire emissions associated with generating electricity this clearly reduces those emissions by a large amount even if you as I had stated earlier factor in the anticipated sales to ERCOT it still reduces our footprint plus generating much more electricity than we're currently generating and then my last question was because you and I'm glad you mentioned it so you didn't put all this stuff together yourself so you mentioned that one graph that's got all the bars on it on the sources for our that came from the T CEQ right that's creative air monitoring or whatever that's correct Chris kite does the air air monitoring for TCEQ that information is presented in a wide variety of forums I typically see it at the Council of Governments would you classify him as an expert I would now there there can be discrepancies or differences of opinions among experts and that's why I've tried to include more than one expert in this in this field but yes I would characterize Chris as an expert and I would also characterize dr. Curvalli as an expert as well okay thanks sorry I do because I have this chart here and it says 93.33 at the Denton Airport and I'm just curious how come that's so much different that is a let's see here it's the the dr. John's study I mean we can talk about it later I just want to thousand and my how am I design value okay you actually go to the mic yeah okay the 93.3 is the value they use as their design factor which was what was this what the monitor looked like in 2006 they run the model and produce it you'll see in the column to the right of that a factor called an R RF that's called the relative response factor that's what the model is is saying that value will look like in the design year which is 2018 in this particular situation you multiply that relative response factor times the 2006 design value and you'll get the value of 75.8 which is the value that I used here basically there's one part per billion difference between 75.8 the projection and scenario a 74.8 and will the putting one of these generating stations next to this monitor affect that monitor I'm not saying that it won't I asked somebody who I feel is qualified to make that statement okay that's correct I just wanted to clarify thank you mayor Perkins thanks well first an observation I was talking to a group of folks that were on a city bicycle ride it was bicycle to recycle we rode out to the recycling plant and back and then I got to speak to them for a minute and and I had a time to reflect when I was riding out there because I was riding all by myself they'd gone off and left me I got there late but I was just thinking what a great place to be living and what a great discussion that we're having right now because we're not we're not having a discussion about should we reduce emissions we're not having a discussion about should we or should we not add more renewables we're not having a discussion about should we or should we not reduce our dependence on fossil fuels that's a foregone conclusion I mean that's already a basic assumption all we're discussing right now is the best way to accomplish what I think everybody hopes is the end result which is getting to a hundred percent renewable and as timely a fashion as possible and as responsible a fashion as possible both economically and environmentally so I'm just proud to be a part of the discussion I think this is great now let's talk about what councilmember Briggs was just asking it's an interesting name dr. Kura via John yeah I think it's actually pronounced Kura Villa John correct is that all one name no two names oh so dr. John really yes okay so dr. John that's a lot easier dr. John's name came up when mr. Smith from public citizen came and talked to us individually and I don't know if it came up when you talk to the whole group and you said that he was one of the experts also that that can do the modeling I'm not I'm not wild about consultants I think that we only need consultants when it's something that the staff doesn't have the time or the expertise to do themselves but it sounds like in this case he probably has the time and the expertise and maybe the equipment that we don't have so if he were to do some modeling on on the impact of these plants where the impact is how much would it cost how much time would it take I don 't know if I can accurately address the cost standpoint other than to base on what has been done in the in the past for other other clients in terms of time they are having some he had mentioned that they were having some difficulties with their main frame and they are hoping to get those resolved this was in a conversation that that occurred at the I guess it was he went out of town so it would have been the week before the week of Thanksgiving and assuming that they can get those issues ironed out you're probably looking at a week or maybe a little bit more of runtime per scenario and in terms of cost I hate to even throw it out because I'm not I'm not positive but I my guess would be somewhere in the 20 to 25 thousand dollar range would you if you don't mind and if it's okay with council for for you to do a little bit more research on that so that maybe we could consider that as as an option to give us more information it seems like looking at some of those maps that what happens here is going to affect Oklahoma maybe Norman a little more than than here and as much as I love Oklahoma you know I think we again we have to be responsible even if it 's not affecting us we need to be thinking about our neighbors I'm here asked a couple of questions that were getting to the size of the the plants that we're talking about doing the number of plants the number of hours the number of of megawatts generated and I'm kind of curious a little bit more about that how did we decide on the particular size plants that we're talking about how did we determine what the particular amount of runtime was do we do we do we need six units at each location could we get by with five and and and still address you know peak loads or backup necessary talk to us a little bit about that so the size of the units are the number of megawatts we need to back up the renewable energy that we're trying to procure of solar and wind we arrived at that amount megawatts as far as what was each of those renewable sources has a low profile panhandle win West Texas win coastal win a solar farm as we get proposals from each of those renewable sources they have a profile of knowing how much they will produce but when they'll usually produce and so matching end up and overlapping that with our low profiles of what our load usually is and didn't then it creates the gaps that we have that we need to fill in and so these number of the amount of megawatt hours we're talking about or the amount of megawatt load we're talking about we determined from looking at what would be best fit for filling in those gaps of how much we would need and this was the amount that we saw most economical it also in getting indicative pricing on the units we saw that there was a price break as far as if you went to a 220 megawatts say instead of 100 megawatts okay and so that's what was the best fit from a low profile standpoint and also a best fit is from a cost standpoint but as you're operating these according to the amount of power you need you might flip on the switch for three of them or four of them or you might flip them on for all six of them based on what the demand is yes and I guess that's one of the attributes these units have over a combined cycle unit we looked at many different configurations of types of units including different confined cycle configurations and combined cycle you build is maybe three to three units that size and so you're going to turn off and on the whole combined cycle unit to get that kind of efficiency from them these are much more modular as you've stated you could turn on half of them or turn on a third of them or turn them all on depending on what the requirements are to back up to renewable energy now I went through a tutorial with you yesterday on some numbers and I know that we're going to discuss more of these later but I'm still in a learning curve on this and I think we all are much more than you guys are you're the experts on on this you were telling me yesterday that that between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. the price of per megawatt hour in the ercot market fluctuated significantly can you talk a little bit about that yes yesterday morning usually cold morning coming up and about 2300 megawatts of wind power didn't show up in the ercot market that was predicted and because that wind laid down it didn't show up the market price has spiked and so market prices went from I'm gonna look at Lance for verification I think market prices were say around 25 $30 a megawatt hour and for the hour they shot up to 206 dollars during the peak hour yesterday morning at seven between seven and eight or six and seven and then you know just as quickly an hour after that they dropped down to $50 now is that a factor of the fact is it because wind power is cheaper or is it is it more a factor of how much generation is even available is it more of a supply demand issue both I mean the the ercot is responsible for making sure that there's enough generation on to serve load at all times and so they look to see if they're spending reserve available and then when one of these non dispatchable forms of energy such as solar or wind when it doesn't show up as planned then they have to look and dispatch other forms they just go down a dispatch curve which who has to unit that's cheapest to run next and when load increases that quickly the years available on a quick start basis we get jumped in and would would run there's an article that I've been handed that says because of the amount of wind power that is now available and the other that's coming online that that with the it's going to reduce the overall cost for energy in Texas what's a relationship I mean does does the amount of renewable power drive down how much people can charge for natural gas power does the cost of natural gas drive drive up what they charge for wind power how does the market work and and those kinds of fluctuations I mean are they playing against each other or does one help the other does one hurt the other they compete against each other uh-huh and predominantly in the urk hop market natural gas prices are greatest influence on the urk hop market because that's usually the swing fuel that you use to generate electricity up and down the market based on units like coal and nuclear nuclear especially run wind runs as it's available solar runs as is available and so usually the price is set by the natural gas prices and what the natural gas forward market looks like as far as what we expect the gas price to be it's one of the reasons why buying a large amount of renewable energy at this time is favorable because gas prices are pretty much of an all-time low and those renewable sources based on what the market will bear they sell their energy into the market just like everyone else does based on what the market competition is priced at and most of it's usually priced at the price of gas there are some hours of the day where the price in the urkot wholesale market will push down even further because those wind generators are receiving a production tax credit and so they only received our production tax credit when they run and so at times they will market their costs below gas if there's even been a few hours that they'll even price in a negative price and you'll see a wholesale market price at two or three o'clock in the morning at a negative five dollars it's unusual but it has happened to explain how that works a negative five dollars you money to take a power and if you were yes and how does it how do they how do they stay in business doing that because they're receiving approximately $20 let's say per megawatt hour production tax credits and they can give back five dollars and still make 15 and so that's how they that's how they continue to make money and they want to run and if the winds blowing they want to sell it but if there are other times when when demand is high and they're still generating well it would with with the wind generation if they had extra power above what they were contracted for they would probably price their their cost for seller there they're selling price based on the market and not on necessarily on what it's costing them to make it because they can get more money quicker they can retire their debt quicker they can give more profit to their shareholders so whenever the everyone bids in to the market their generation and what their cost plus or profit margin is whatever the market price is that our constructs that dough everybody gets paid that price so those wind generators that don't have their market have already had their power contracted that you're selling into the ERCOT market that morning when the prices hit two hundred six dollars they got two hundred six dollars mega one hour from their cop market okay people I'm getting notes from folks and having conversation with folks saying that that that if we could even go higher than 70% we would be better off because there's no fuel cost to renewables so why did you settle on 70% as opposed to 75 or 80% as part of this proposal well as we've talked about looking at going 100% to go 100% renewable means buying enough renewable energy megawatt hours to offset 100 % of our megawatt hours but there are certain hours where the wind doesn't blow and the Sun doesn't shine that you still have to buy off the market and so what we looked for was a balance of when we could balance how much renewable energy we could buy and still not have a negative rate impact if we tried to buy enough renewable energy to be 100% renewable it means we'd be locked into a contract price for those renewable energy hours and they would come to us whenever the wind blew whenever the Sun was shining and we'd be oblig ated to buy that energy at those times at those prices we would have to the excess energy that we'd have from those when both were producing we would be selling back into the market at a loss because there's many hours where the price would be less than that contract price when they're both when they're all blowing when all those are producing then the ERCOT market is a lower price and then our contract price and so that would have a negative rate impact on us and that's what we're trying to balance was how much renewable can we go and not have a negative rate impact and in fact maybe have a positive rate impact which is what this plan does and then one more call yeah no that's fine because we just had a couple couple yeah and that has to do with there's you know you provided us in the past a chart comparing the renewable dentin plan with a hundred percent renewable with seventy percent renewable and the rest off the market with business as usual and the renewable dentin plan comes in the lowest there's there's some folks that are not certain about the accuracy of those numbers especially as you go out of ways because of the volatility of the cost of natural gas because factors such as the the movement at the federal level to start allowing the sale of compressed or liquefied natural gas abroad that could that could impact the cost in a negative way for us but you know raise the cost of natural gas so how did you account for the volatility of these cost figures as you projected out down the road what it was going to cost for the cost of natural gas for for generating with natural gas as opposed to the cost for renewables we based the financials we did of the plan based on the forward gas curves which does include the cost of natural gas increasing over time and does I think taking the impact of future gas exports that would increase the cost they increase the market but what we looked at was even if the gas market went higher than that because we're locking in 70% of our purchases in these renewable contracts at a fixed price compared to the rest of the market that may not be as locked in for as much of the price we would look better under a higher higher gas price if there's more room for gas to go up then there is for gas to go further down simply because we're we're shrinking our portfolio of reliance on natural gas yes okay thank you mayor I know Georgetown and Denton are different situations but kind of what you just described if we were trying to go 100% renewable here can you describe how that works in Georgetown just to kind of refresh my memory here Georgetown was in a rather unique situation of having a contract with LCRA and Laura Colorado River Authority they have been a lawsuit with Laura's with LCRA in the past and had as a result of the settlement from that lawsuit had found themselves out of that contract which means they were very unique situation of having a clean slate no power supply commitments no fixed prices compared to being tied to existing generation in the past and so that's a very unique situation for a utility to find themselves in they already had rates that are slightly higher than didn't because of the contract they'd had previously fell short of a and what they found was by going out and securing contracts for renewable energy at this time for renewable energy contracts are low because natural gas is low and that's setting the price for the contracts in the future they found they could lock in their loads around 145 megawatts they signed up for almost 300 megawatts of renewable energy went and sold her price contracts so they signed up for almost twice their load in renewable energy contracts hoping to strike a balance that for the majority of time even though the renewable energy doesn't always produce it's not dispatchable they would usually meet their load okay there'll be many hours where they'll have more than their load available to them and they'll be selling that energy back into the market or whatever the market price is but of course what they'll be paying is a contract price they recognize some exposure to that but their analysis was over 20 year period it would pay out our analysis of looking and doing that for ourselves would be a negative rate impact on us and the citizens for the first few for the first five years if we try to do that okay and I had a couple sure go ahead I had asked you this yesterday morning too why isn't the city looking at investing in its own solar farms or wind farms so as I said part of what gives solar energy and wind energy an advantage right now in the market is a tax credit to get well the city is not an income tax paying entity and so they really can't gain the advantage of those tax credits directly by directly owning those facilities the better way for us to gain some advantage of those tax credits is to do a purchase power agreement with an investor that does pay taxes and they would get production tax credits on the wind energy solar energy has investment tax credits and so that's how they gain a cost of engine we get part of that cost advantage by doing a purchase power group with somebody that owns those facilities okay thanks Phil yes member Hawkins that guy is a great conversation and great questions and great answers I understand the concern with local air emissions given what we were we are in the city I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this plan contemplates a 70% emissions reduction across the board in terms of what we're doing currently and that's huge I mean imagine if just every other city that had a municipal owned electric company copied us on this and what that would mean in terms of moving the needle in the right direction just in the state of Texas alone but I want to talk about it in terms of the connection between you know if we're contemplating coal going offline long term especially if the EPA plan is enacted and enforced the possibility of more and more investment and renewables becomes a real possibility in the current grid and aircott what is the connection between the increase in investment in renewables and the need for something like what we're contemplating investing in which is a quick start generation and I guess the real gist of my question is does investing in this for Denton not only help us scale to 70% which is significant because it's lower carbon footprint because reduced emissions because of all the great things about that does us investing in this also help others that might want to make this move in subsequent years to investing in their own portfolio to more renewables does the fact that there are more quick start generation plants on the grid help a lot more types of entities invest in renewables or not yes one of the I guess ERCOT reports is the need for backup for this renewable energy that's non dispatchable and it's one of the needs ERCOT sites in its future studies as far as voltage support and ancillary services support that these renewable energy sources don't often provide that they need this type of backup additional generation to back that up and so yes this would enable not only us to be 70% but also further assist the rest of the market ERCOT market in supporting renewable energy sources by providing that kind of backup so I guess Mike Mike Mike that's helpful so imagine a scenario ten years down the line say the the EPA's clean power plan is being enforced coal plants are going offline and what's kind of replacing that is more renewable investment is there a point in time where there's too much investment in renewable without some battery backup generous assume that technology has not been perfected yet on a utility scale is there a possibility that not having these sorts of plants can stall the overall investment in renewables if you don't have something like this that's quick start across the state so one place is an industry that we've all looked at as far as how does it work to put the maximum amount of renewable energy into play and one place we've all looked at is Germany because Germany has Germany has built enough solar and wind that when they both run they can meet 100% of Germany's load needs but what they found was they still had and because they won't get away from using natural gas they won 't get away from nuclear plants they won't get away from coal but what they found was they still had to have the fossil generation backup to back up these renewable energy sources even though they had built enough capability to make themselves 100% that they that the technology didn't exist yet to completely dismiss all those fossil fuel generators they had in the past and so that's part of the issues is that they have themselves burdened somewhat with the cost of those fossil fuel units they built the past while still incurring additional cost of renewable energy because they've gone all in for it and so that's the kind of lesson learned the rest of us taking this to take this step we won't take it as boldly as we can go as fast as we can go but balance that against what the impact is on your competitive rates and I had asked you this I think in an email and it was a question that was raised in an editorial that was written in the paper which was essentially the argument was if we build these gas plants in the city of Denton that effectively ties our hand from scaling beyond 70% renewable for the next 50 years I think that was the claim that that Dent on can never get beyond 70% for the next 50 years if we make this move because this gas plant requires us to utilize every inch of that power for our own purposes can you respond to that claim it and my ultimate question along those lines is could Denton scale beyond 70% and even to a hundred percent if conditions were right even within the life cycle of these existing plants if we invest in these today we've taken as our direction from council in the past and certainly be open to further direction in the future that what you direct us to do is to get to obtain as much renewable as possible while maintaining competitive rates and maintain reliability and that's what this does our goal would still be to continue to achieve as much renewable as possible these plants would enable us to still increase our renewables in the future and help support other communities around us to achieve more renewables also in the market and so it doesn't certainly doesn't preclude us for 70% and that's it and that's all we can ever do it opens the door that we continue to move towards that these plants represent a bridge technology for us to get us to the point that 20 years from now the other technologies would be available I was reading an article today calling Elon Musk is one of the co-founders of Tesla and the battery pack and the power walls and in there he had a quote that his goal would be in 20 years in 20 years he would displace 10% of the fossil fuel generation and so there you have the co-founder of the battery technology that we're wanting to look to for the future and I think it is an evolution I think it's battery technology is something that certainly will evolve and certainly could be an answer but even that even you have the co-founder the person who probably knows more about it than most people on the planet is saying his bet is that in 20 years he'll be there for 10% of generation so I have a couple of couple of things the first one I wanted to read from an email I got regarding the hundred percent renewable and how it's more expensive for the first few years this is that their interpretation is that the chart of cost is only energy cost that renewable didn't at 60 million and a hundred percent renewable at 70 million does not take into account the additional 110 million or so in fixed costs for Denton for DME ratepayers so the combined annual cost or about 170 versus 180 which is only five to six percent higher without factoring in all the potential risk in the cost estimate can you address that sorry I'm not sure I understand the question okay so what there what the question is is when you that when we look at a hundred percent renewable that we haven't factored in what if I may I think what I heard and you correct me if I'm wrong okay I thought what I heard you say was that that the concern was that in the 70% and the hundred percent renewable plan that the fixed cost is just the energy cost but that the fixed cost associated let's say with the plant the debt service the the interest principal personnel and all that was not included in these numbers to sort of give this this Delta between 70% with the plants and a hundred percent and my understanding so correct me if I'm wrong at least the charts that I've seen in the charts you presented that the numbers you're presenting on at least the 70% didn 't renewable plan includes the fixed rate cost of yes plant personnel debt service is that it was was that was that the thrust of the question yeah the cost that we presented for renewable debt includes total cost of procuring the gas and the operation maintenance costs and the principal interest for the debt payments it's assuming 20 year debt at rates we've received in finance as far as what the revenue bonds would cost my other question is that when if we do to decide to increase our renewables and there are some days where we are doing just fine on what we have with the contracts and we do not need the gas generation we don't even have to turn it on because we're getting so much energy from renewables and does that do they become financial liability at that point or well the the value of these plants one of the statements I 've made is part of to me the greater values plants is not when they run but when they don't run because when they don't run I have them as a backup and allows us to go buy renewable energy unbacked up and because we can do that and it allows us to buy the renewable energy at its cheapest cost that if you buy the renewable energy and you have to also buy a backup for that that that's more expensive okay okay thank you well the the agenda item says receive a report hold a discussion give staff direction I have a couple of suggestions for directions for for going forward and one of them would be when we're talking about the overall air quality that one of the things that could improve the overall air quality is as we look at our contract with TMPA and our partnership with the member cities that I would like for for Denton to have a conversation with TMPA about the future of the Gibbons Creek plant and include in that conversation I know that there has been some contemplation of if it might be sold but if it also might be not sold but simply replaced repurposed in some way now everybody has to understand that we're one of four partners we don't get to make the call on that ourselves but but I would like for you guys to have that conversation to explore those options because I know all of the other the other three cities are are you know looking at what they're going to do and one of them or you know they may have other designs on that plant I don't think that you have done in your cost calculations moving ahead you haven't figured into that in any way the sale of that plant and and that money coming in to help retire the debt on what we're about to do have you no sir so you've not contemplated any kind of revenue off of that once the contracts up no sir we have we have been in discussions with our partners the other member cities in discussing and exploring what our options would be for the future of TMPA and the future of that plant council has requested at the last council meeting an update on that I plan to provide that update next month that we are having some holding some other discussions with TMPA member cities and with the TMPA staff themselves this month and what you know part of part of as you pointed out part of our issues with TMPA is not only that we're not in complete control that we have to work and negotiate with the other member cities to something we all agree to as far as what the future operation would be and so we'll be glad to provide that information in a January council meeting that will come up and provide that update okay the another direction that I would think it might be good for us to consider giving you guys now is given your comments about now is a great time to lock in those long-term contracts with the renewable to get to that 70% that you move forward with that regardless of what we do with these natural gas plants yes sir we've issued an RFP for 200 meg awatts of wind super the the other is I think that while I'm not ready to say yes to the to the gas plants at this point because we haven't seen all of the numbers I am not ruling it out it's it's it's still part of my thinking about about how we we create the portfolio that we need to create so I'm not ruling that out and I'm hoping that you're moving forward on getting prices for the land as you do that before you bring any kind of a contract to us for us to consider I would like to see and I don't know if it's best in the form of a resolution or in the form of an ordinance but I would like to see an ordinance or a resolution where the City Council makes a public statement about our goal to reach 100% renewable by 2035 and I want us to as we craft that resolution or ordinance to include as part of that 100% renewables that we're still including as part of our goals reliability and competitive rates that we have to have those as part of our goal it has to be a balanced set of goals and then as you're thinking about land purchases for power plants you think about the amount of land that might be required to help accomplish the goal of getting there by 2035 is there enough room is it the right location for battery storage are we do we have enough room at some of our substations for battery storage is there enough room for other kinds of accommodating other kinds of technologies as they become available so those would be my suggestions as far as giving staff directions thank you there could I ask do you do we have any more environmental questions or I can go back to my presentation that addresses some of those issues yeah yeah no I anybody have any more environmental questions yeah no so the answer seems to be no so yes thank you Dr. Banks appreciate it so oh I'm sorry well well dr. bank now he's transitioning I just have to say and I made a compliment before but you know all those law and order type shows CSI they all have that guy that they go to that's just this unbelievable resource of information that you're like that person doesn't exist in the real world the city of Denton has them and dr. banks I mean this every issue we deal with that he gets up it's just incredible so thank you so much yes your expertise so yep I mean I have a couple of comment you know couple suggestion get through the presentation and we'll well so we have a list I had a list of items here that heard from council that wanted to be covered and Councilman Gregory kind of skipped down here to this one of I assume we'd heard from some council members the desire to have a public hearing and I guess to receive further direction council would like to have a public hearing say on we'd put a pencil didn't attend to date of December 15th for council public hearing we would also propose a public utility board public hearing on December 14th is that should I take that direction okay and then one of the things associated with that is do you also want a and I'll take direction from see attorney or see a manager as far as if that's a resolution or ordinance but approval we have all these individual items that will still have to come back and ask for council approval as far as land purchase the engine request proposal design build to purchase power agreements for renewable energy even if we have an overall resolution to approve the plan we would still come back to council with those individually but what I'm understanding couple Gregory is you're desiring to have a overall encompassing to before we begin bringing these back you'd like to have resolution that says we approve the renewable didn't plan and you will but you want to add to it that maintains competitive rates maintains reliability yeah I think I think just just to clean give a clear message as to what the goal is because because of what councilmember rodent said about the assumptions made by some that we're talking about 20 or 25 years at 70% that that's not that that's not what we're about at all so before we make any commitments towards the didn't renewable plan we make it clear that what our goal is what our what our end goal is yeah I think what he is saying and what you're thinking there are two different things yes I think I understand now what you're saying is something along the line of you want to encourage most renewable not said 70% in just an endgame that we you will direct staff to obtain as much renewable energy as possible while maintaining competitive rates and maintain reliability something more along that line yes yeah and on that point I my thought is that could be a concurrent resolution to some other approval of the overall plan I mean so it's it doesn't have to be we do this and then a month later we have to do that and what's interesting is when I was talking with folks at the Department of Energy when we were out in Nashville at the mean municipal what's it called National League of Cities they said oh there's so many cities that have one of those plans those resolutions to be at 100% by some day they said but there's so little cities actually doing anything about it so they said what's remarkable about Denton is you don't have that resolution but you're at 40 you got a plan to head yourself to 70% without one of those and so I think I think what he's recommending is something that kind of gives some real clear policy direction at the same time that we're actually moving towards that policy well I think if we're talking about on December 15th saying that we're going to pass a resolution with 100% kind of but also I don't know if I'll be ready by then so if we certainly have it at that time I'll just have to decide then I think there's a couple of things that I'm not hung up on December 15th okay I think for me because there's a couple of things that I would want to see because outside of the environmental questions and kind of observations and and sort of different approaches from the financial perspective from the business perspective and I won't go into specific numbers because I know that's a competitive matter I'm glad to see that there's an RFP out there for renewables not backed up and you and I talked about it that part for me part of what I'm trying to determine is we know what the costs are going to be if we back it up but I don't know what the I mean gas is at an all-time low right now I mean almost almost at an all -time low and everything I'm reading for the foreseeable future is it's it's probably going to stay that way for a while I mean whatever a while means so I would like to see what the what the scenario looks like if if we didn't have 220 megawatt I mean I was surprised when I realized that it's not so much the generation that we're looking at is directly related to the capacity of our our systems but it's like if we had 120 or 130 megawatt system that we still could based upon at least what the projections are what the generation is going to be needed for the deck to meet Denton's load and to maybe provide some powered ERCOT if they so require it that if we can produce that with a little bit smaller system which is a reduced so I'd like to see I don 't know if it's half you know 110 or 120 hundred just to see how and I know there's a synergy but I can tell you there's not I mean if you're cutting it in half or something it's not going to be you're only getting there's going to be quite a difference I think so I just want to see that kind of scenario on okay well we can still meet our demand based upon at least the forecast with with this and what would the RFP look like if we were to ask for backup because I believe in part of our scenario if we had these plants we would be contracting out with others to provide backup energy to buy and so we're going to be saying well you pay us and we'll be your backup well we're basing that on some kind of mega what cost per megawatt hour so if we had an RFP that says here's what it is cost with back without backup here's what we have with backup right there is pretty clear Delta of what it would cost us to do that and that sure would be helpful for me from a financial perspective of saying we know what we've got if we back it up but what are our costs in the foreseeable future if we have the content have it backed up via a contract or we go to the market because in a sense when we talked about the Emo part of what it was was there to help us save money because we can go out there and buy energy now we can trade we don't have to rely on somebody else who hired these experts to do that and I think it's I think it 's certainly proven its point that it can so in some ways okay well if we get these RFPs that are not backed up and we decide to execute we got what two or three years before all this gets implemented so we can look at if we've got renewables that aren't backed up how do we do that on the market how does that work on the market because when you look at your your your load grid and you have all those different layers of the types of renewable that that slide if you could go to that slide it's if you look at that the quick start is the what is that gray or I don't know yeah so that primarily indicates to me from month five to month nine which is May took basically what is that September September when it's hot when it when it's hot that that's our basic that's the primary need that we have for this and that's that's our risk exposure from a market perspective in other words if we didn't have it and we're having to go out there and buy on the market that's where our greatest risk is is in those months because you just don't know what's gonna happen based upon that well I 'd like to see we've been buying I'm assuming we've been buying market power off the market this last summer and it'd be interesting to see what that was costing us compared to what TNPA was costing us per megawatt hour what renewables were costing us because we're already having to do that so it's just sort of a test for me to go okay well yeah if you're paying an average of $80 a megawatt hour in the summer and this works out to be whatever it works out to be which that's another thing I want to try to be able to calculate is how are we really calculating the cost per megawatt hour to have these both in our quick start generation for our peak and also for our backup so I think that what I totally agree with you Mary Pro Tem what's great is we all sort of have the same goal but it's how do we get there and that's really where some of the differences of opinion are coming from and that's that that can also be very data driven so I fact I've had some emails too about people would rather have the coal-fired plant running instead of these and I and I understand that I guess but it just sort of it seems it just and combined cycle I think one thing you left out of combined cycle that's really important combined cycle takes a tremendous volume of water millions and millions and millions of gallons to run a combined cycle and so I think that's one of the other disadvantages to a combined cycle I mean it does have advantages but you have to almost use it as a peaker or as an all-time and it has to really start kicking out those 300 400 megawatt hours from what everything I've read and heard so those are some of the things I would like to be able to sort of get my hands on as far as some of that analysis to help to help me yes councilmember was so let's come back to public hearing in December 15th out of respect for our citizens I really want to have a public hearing but I think it's way too premature for this council to combine it to a vote up or down on this plan so the logistics of that is something for staff to figure out but we owe it to our citizens to create a public opportunity to come and ask this council and ask staff all the questions that they have and we have a lot of brilliant people who live in Denton and I think they're also going to bring some great ideas forward so you know I 'm all over the December 15th public hearing but I'm not all over pulling the trigger on a vote at this point in time and I don't want to forget going back to energy consultant and voting options and financing because those are three really important items on that list there they're all there for that reason so we won't forget them I just skipped out because we'd already kind of started discussion public hearing but any other any other direction on the public hearing yeah I'm good with public hearing okay yeah I'm good with that and I didn't mean when I was talking about touting Dalton's idea of his resolution concept which is different than this putting that concurrent with our ultimate resolution of approval or not approval of the plan I didn't mean that need to be December 15th I just meant put those two together whenever that decision should be made but I will say with the public hearing you might recall when we were discussing perhaps it was the repeal perhaps it was her update to the gas ordinance and we had a lot of a few long public hearings and one way in which we arranged it on one of the times was to say let's let everyone come up ask their questions speak their piece and let's refrain from trying to go back and forth and try and collate what are the commonalities and those and then get staff to come up and answer the questions as we understood that I think I think there's a way to proceed with a public hearing that would be actually effective and get answers to the best that we can do I'm sure we can think on that as we move towards that date well I know that we've received several questions from different citizens I mean lists of questions which I think that by that time if we could have some kind of analysis or response that would be available at the public hearing for those because I know there's a lot of them and some of them are more detailed and involved than others so just real quick I hope that what I said but came across wasn't suggesting I I've automatically assumed that we're having the public hearing next week on the 15th oh not only next week but on the 15th that's been an assumption of mine I and I have not meant to do an ordinance or a resolution to prec lude that at all or to substitute that or to I think that the resolution ought to come or the ordinance after that's over at a different meeting altogether I found the the most of the dialogue most of the emails and the comments and meetings that I've had with the public to be very very helpful and I've taken those questions like other council members have forwarded them on to DME forwarded them on to different folks and and I think they kind of guided an awful lot of the discussion we've had today yes so what I can tell you what I think would be really important because I think a lot of the emails we're getting are because people have you know a little bit of information and so if all the information you have is what you have you're going to draw your conclusions from that information like what was very helpful to me was to hear Dr . Banks that graph that he put up okay here's our air quality monitor at the airport here's where all that comes from I mean that was shocking to me that the percentage that comes from from the top down the atmospheric stuff you know that's generated somewhere in the world that's floating and then ultimately is landing here you know and so because when you get all the emotion out of it and just get down to the data at the end of the day you know people still gonna be on opposite sides of an issue and sometimes that's just philosophical or ideological and that's okay that happens in here so what I've heard a lot of from from people I think is frustration stemming from not having had the opportunity to get the information that they want to be able to form their own opinion so they're forming one based on some amount of information that they heard from somebody else or whatever so I'll just say you know when it comes time for the public hearing because we in my opinion we hear anybody that's opposed it's one of two things right it's it's the debt is too much or the air quality impact it's going to have on our city so I thought I think we need to make sure when that public hearing happens that we address those things that we address the questions about the air quality and the impact air quality and obviously you know I understand everything dr. bank says but some of you may not so I think we want I think we want to make sure that he gives a presentation in such a way that it's you know like here's what this means like here's this big chart here's what it means because that was very telling for me the stuff that he showed today okay so so kind of going back up here in order do we want to go back here to the financing discussion I'd like to go back to the finance discussion because I'm not going to leave it so all right thanks Phil well unlike dr. banks I do have some prepared remarks and prepared slides I'd like to go through but only three slides so very briefly these are some options that we presented to you back in October believe is October 20th we had a work session with the council and there's really three primary options that we have to finance the quick start facility revenue bonds certificates of obligation or general obligation bonds and so I'll go through each of those very briefly with you and talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each and then see if there's any direction of how you want to proceed on that so revenue bonds are the one that we've modeled the 220 million dollar quick start facility off off of and I'll explain to you how that works that's a pledge of the city utility system revenues and as you may recall some of you who've been on council for a while we have a utility system which consists of the electric utility water and wastewater and in years past we would sell utility system revenue bonds based on those revenues of that system the market changed with municipal bond insurance and so it was no longer cost-effective to issue the bonds in that way didn't make a lot of sense so we switched to issuing certificate certificates of obligation because there was no longer bond insurance so that was available but the revenue bonds are still there as a viable option they do have a higher interest rate than the certificate certificates of obligation or CEOs there's some of the advantages is that you can capitalize interest during construction and one year after that so what that means is during construction it may take 12 to 18 months that you will pay interest you will accrue interest on the project but you won't make any debt service payments for it for the facility until it actually becomes operational so 12 to 18 months of construction and up to 12 months after construction is completed you can capitalize what's known as capitalize that interest in other words you don't make an interest payment or a debt service payment for that period of time 30 months months in that case and that can be fairly substantial and the numbers that we've ran for a 20-year amortization assuming 24 months of capitalists capitalized interest that's about 21 million dollars so 21.2 million dollars so that's interest that's accrued during that period that's paid out over the remaining 18 years essentially there is no notice or election that's required prior to the sale of these bonds and again prior to 2009 and 2010 we issued those on a regular basis each year for a utility system projects we never had an election any type of petition associated with it and there's really no ability per state law to have any type of binding election for the issuance of revenue bonds so that's that's option one option two is CEOs certificates of obligation and this is a pledge of property taxes and utility system revenues and this is what we finance most of our utility system improvements with right now and again we do that for the cost savings that's associated with it it does have a lower interest rate than revenue bonds that's one of the primary advantages of CEO issuance and if you look at a CEO issuance compared to the revenue bonds the interest rate differential that we're looking at over that 20-year period what that it's about point two percent doesn't sound like much but that's about seven and a half million dollars that would be saved by using a CEO versus a revenue bond we've historically over the last few years directed any of those savings into the street improvement fund that's something that certainly could be up for a policy discussion with the council if you wanted to change that but that would be an advantage of issuing a CEO is that you could take the interest savings compared to a revenue bond and you could direct that into the street improvement fund the reason we've modeled as a revenue bond for DME's pro forma is because the cost of DME whether it's a CEO or a revenue bond is the same if we direct all of the interest cost savings from the CEOs into the street improvement fund the cost of them is the same unless we change that policy you also have the flexibility of being able to capitalize interest during construction one year after the date of completion of the project which again is a from a flexibility standpoint of looking at how you're going to model out your portfolio and what kind of flexibility you have in rates that's important because it is a substantial cost there is a publication requirement related to CEOs there's what's known as a notice of intent that has to be published by by law we have to publish have a council vote to publish a notice of intent to issue CEOs describe what the date is that the the actual issuance of the CEOs would be and has to be at least 31 days after that notice is published so that's a process issue that want to talk about it that's something you want to do when would you want to have that notice of intent be approved by the council it does not bind you to issue the bonds but 30 days after that or 31 days after that then you could actually issue the bonds at that time and similar to the revenue bonds there's no ability for the city to call a binding election under state law unless there's a petition so if there's a successful petition on the notice of intent to issue which would be five percent or more registered voters that sign a petition requesting election there could be an election at that time but otherwise there's there's no ability to call an election on a CEO I know this is all as clear as mine okay and then lastly the general obligation bonds these are voter approved general obligation bonds this would be a pledge of property taxes it would not be per the bond indenture it wouldn't be a pledge of utility system revenues but administratively we can make that work with utility paying through the utility system revenues that we get through the electric utility there are as a disadvantage there are restrictions on the capitalized interest in terms of what you can do I don 't want to say you can't get any capitalized interest there's probably a few months of capitalized interest that we would be able to accrue but I certainly wouldn't be able to get the full 24 months that may be six months that we might be able to accrues this process there's some very specific rules we need to kind of work through with our bond council about when the bonds might be approved and the actual construction date that begins of how that works but essentially that 21 million dollars I mentioned to you and capitalized interest that would have to a large portion of that would have to start being paid back much quick much more quickly additionally one of the things that we've looked at from a structure standpoint is having the first year the first year's debt service be interest only on what we're looking at for the facility just to help us manage rates and make sure the facility is fully operational and generating some revenue and providing some benefit to ratepayers before we start to pay that back you have limited ability to do that with a general obligation bond so that's something also we need to take into account if that's a direction you want to proceed of the structure of the debt and what kind of flexibility it offers to us it does have a lower rate than revenue bonds similar to a CEO currently policy-wise what we would do is direct any of those savings to the street improvement fund but again that is something that we could certainly talk about with you and it would require an election on a uniform election day which would be November or May elections so those are the three options in a nutshell can you explain that difference to the street maintenance fund just one more time there what is that sure the revenue bonds have a higher interest cost than either a CEO or a general obligation bond and so what we have done is looked at because the taxpayer is putting a pledge of full faith and credit of the city behind that that debt issuance and so what we have done historically over the last several years is any difference between revenue bonds and a CEO or geo we've directed that that savings into the street improvement fund which is can be millions of dollars depending on the size of the issu ance you accountants sorry does that hope that makes sense it's meant to be a compensation back to the taxpayer for assuming some of that risk yeah so that's where I was going with it so I mean basically revenue bonds are like non rec ourse debt in the private world right you're pledging your revenue from DME is there is the guarantee versus the CEOs and Geos it's a personal guarantee from the taxpayers right right so the trade-off is with revenue bonds no obligation to the taxpayer to the property taxpayers in the city directly yes I mean ultimately at some point you know the question is would you allow DME to ever default on that debt you know would we ever allow anyone to ever default on revenue bonds whether it's a water bond or a wastewater bond but if you just if you decided you were gonna allow that to happen that's true you wouldn't have any kind of impact on a taxpayer okay so then on here's what would be helpful for me I don't need a huge spreadsheet but that being able to spread out that capitalized interest over of what you say an 18 year period major cash flow impact right so because when I hear when you look at CEOs and Geos versus revenue bonds and say the rates lower to the average dude I'm gonna say well lower rate it makes sense to go with a lower rate but then you've got to come up with the cash flow in the early days to cover the debt right versus being able to spread that capitalized interest out over the full term so what would be helpful is just to do a comparison of just you know same amount whatever the amount is 200 million dollars revenue bond versus CEO or Ge o those rates are basically the same they are and then bake that out over like what it looks like for the first 20 years just by year okay but you know because I think it to me the value of being able to spread that capitalized interest out over a long period of time unless I'm misunderstanding something the cash flow impact of that is far would outweigh the interest rate difference yeah the capitalized interest it would be if you had to pay that as a debt service payment the first two to three years this very very large impacts and it's at the time that we'd be retiring TNPA debt the reserves would be low to absorb that we'd have to look at some of the models to do that but it'd be a it'd be a substantial rate increase to try to figure out how to do that yeah in the first few years if you want to write that down real quick I got it okay you got it Wow shorthand so we can learn from what we've done on past projects so I'm curious when we did the Ray water Ray Roberts water treatment plant how did we pay for that would what what kind of bonds did we use are you talking about the latest rehab project about the Ray Roberts plant up there by the dam revenue that was revenue bonds that we issued that was many years ago and that was that's on our water bill yes okay what about the re working the rebuild of the Lake Louisville water treatment plant over their office Spencer Road how did we pay for that CEOs CEOs okay that's more recent and I will say this a large portion of the revenue bonds that have been issued in the past have been refunded under a CEO essentially they're called general obligation refunding bonds but they've essentially been refunded with taxpayer guaranteed debt so what you mean is they were first they were first issued as revenue bonds but we redid them as CEOs because we could get a better interest rate yes sir would that be the same for the the water pipelines that were built to bring the water from the Ray Roberts treatment plant in to Denton I would think and the water towers and we did the water anything in the past since before 2009 it would have been 2000 it would have been revenue bonds yes what about the current big project that we have going upgrading our subst ations and our transmission lines for DME it's all being issued with CEOs CEOs what about we've done in the last couple of years some purchases of land around the landfill so that we can expand that operation when it's necessary what how do what did we CEOs all of those projects are being issued as CEOs then there's land out there on Hartley Field Road at the end of Hartley Field Road where Collins comes in for the second water treatment plant that may predate you it does revenue bonds okay I'm just kind of trying to figure out how we've done these so we've we've not ever used geo bonds for any of these kinds of things no sir okay it doesn't keep us from using it's just I wanted to see and interest rates are at historically low levels right now is there a significant difference in these bonds or are they all low they're all low right now Geos and CEO rates that the way we modeled those is three point six percent for a twenty-year term so you know very attractive rates the revenue bonds are about 20 basis points higher than that and that will change obviously depending on when we actually issue the bonds but under four percent for 20 year money it's pretty good and are we able to lock in those rates not until they issue the debt no not until we issue the debt then you actually lock it in right just like a home loan you can lock in for 20 years you can lock that interest rate in right and the way that the bonds will be issue all of our bonds our standard way we issue them is with what 10-year call so it is different than a mortgage type debt if you're familiar with that is I can't there under certain circumstances I can I can refinance that within 10 years but most likely scenarios are that you have a 10-year call date on the bonds and that's when you can pay them off or refinance them another at another time so 10-year lock will be on the rates with some exceptions we could do an advance it's called an advance refunding or switch it to a different kind of bond you could potentially you could refund it yes yes but there's a there's some years that you'd have to wait before you get to that I'm just curious on the financial models we have seen already for this project have any of our any of these structured in that which one have we chosen to use to structure that we structured it with a revenue bond for 20 years and again the reason for that is because it would be similar to the rates for either geo bonds or CEOs assuming that we take the difference in savings to the Street Improvement Fund make sure that's clear one question I might have missed it on a CEO is there a restriction on capitalized interest no it has a lot of flexibility without okay so the geo is really the only one that has the the Geo's the Geo's are the ones that have their restrictions on capitalized interest and on paying some principal as part of the structure in the first few years so that's one of the reasons revenue bonds and CEOs were chosen for construction related projects revenue related project so I have the question on mayor pro temp Gregory's substrate substation upgrade I was also going to ask about that so that's four hundred and three million I believe in CEOs is that correct that's the plan over the I believe that's the number you're quoting is the five-year plan the CIP plan so that would all be issued with CEOs as we're retiring existing debt as well and will that be in the DME rate payers yeah right that will be structured in yeah and is that accounted for in our chart that we've seen here yes we've looked at those costs yes those costs the revenues from the transmission facilities that we have and this and the generation facility all of those have been modeled as part of that thanks okay let me let me make sure I understand what the question was and what the answer was the chart you showed was the rate that chart which has the difference of the one point that half a billion dollar difference between business as usual in it now when I've seen this the sheet of that it's been primarily unless I've missed miss something it hasn't included it's been primarily the deck and our cot sales I haven't seen it included either transmission revenues or other debt service or anything like that all of the other costs that we have for our capital program though are the foundation of that then we're just trying to look at in the spreadsheet I think so you're saying it's all the same changes yeah okay gotcha all right capital program is already there and I thought I knew that answer but I want to make sure based upon area so yeah okay all right yes yes I'm sorry Kevin I thought you were still on remote so to clarify the difference between revenue bonds and CEOs from a cost perspective to DME unless there's a change in that policy the cost is the same to them that's correct put the difference into the street fund and the estimated difference in that over the life of that loan is what seven point five million dollars at this point over how many years 20 years 20 years right it's so it's very substantial and again that's one of the reasons that we've looked we've looked at doing that from a cost perspective for all the other types of debt that we're issuing for the utilities it helps on a cost perspective there are some advantages from not having to have what's called the bond reserve which is additional year of debt service that you have to issue that's a benefit that accrues to the utilities but then the rate differential is occurring back to the street improvement funds so that's millions of dollars for all those different programs that we have that does require an election but with it for the Geo's yes but for the CEOs that we have that does not require an election there's a petition requirement petition a notice of intent that we have to pass the council has to pass and there's a potential that a petition could be filed to require an election on on the issues of the CEO's okay hope that makes sense there's two different types I mean one of my concerns with calling an election for this I don't know that anyone's advocate advocating for that one way or the other is that this is part of a comprehensive energy strategy that takes us several years into the future the gas plant portion of this that we're still discussing is just one one part of it and so it's not clear to me that the results of that election actually gives any direction to the council in terms of the ultimate question which is the comprehensive energy strategy I mean if for some reason it 's voted up that just means we can purchase gas plants and then we can still have the decision to do what else we want to do if it's voted down it's unclear to me what directions given to us in terms of what we pursue do we maintain status quo do we go 100% renewables do we continue to invest in coal as some people have suggested so given that this is a comprehensive strategy my suggestion is the council's gonna have to make that decision at some point and that's gonna have to include whether or not we move forward with gas plants so that's my perspective on whether or not to take it to the geo now whether or not to do revenue bonds or CEO I don't really have a lot of heartburn either way just a question so we had a session a while back just talking about borrowing power and you know when we can issue more debt obviously we're catching up for 20 years of the streets being ignored and a variety of other you know sewer lines and water lines and obviously we've we've made a big dent in that well we've made a big dent in terms of issuing the bonds the repairs are now getting going but based on the growth projections for the population we're gonna have to make more investments in infrastructure outside of set DME aside for a minute so my question is if we pledge property taxes whether it's CEOs or Geos we pledge property taxes how does that impact our borrowing power versus revenue bonds does it if you're asking on the general government side does it impact it the answer is no and the reason is is because we sell these as what's known as self- supporting bonds so we're gonna sell them as a CEO certificate of obligation but it's self-supporting debt so we have a revenue stream that will pay for the debt service associated with it so does not count it against our general obligation borrowing authority if you will so they look at what is our true general government type debt and segregate that the rating aid agencies and the investment community they segregate that debt from our self supporting debt so this is really even though it's a CEO and it has a property tax pledge associated with it they're looking at it like a revenue type bond the revenues associated with the guarantor is just different right ultimately it is backed by the full faith and credit of the city but we look they look at the revenues that are associated with the system coming in from all those different utilities so then if we're if we 're floating bonds for water and sewer lines or streets the the DME revenue or does that we able to count that in terms of a backstop or a guarantee is that revenue to the city just like right our pretest so water we look at we sell debt for water projects and wastewater projects and electric projects look at all those revenues that are coming in that's the revenues that are going to pay for the debt service on those bonds and that's how we look at it I'm just saying it what I'm trying to understand is whether you know if you're making a because we're gonna have to continue to invest in our infrastructure we're playing catch-up big time now but we also have a big population growth coming I'm just trying to make sure as we think through what type is best here mm-hmm and I'm trying to understand it there is there a an impact on our borrowing power one way or another for any other type of bond whether it's for streets street repairs new street construction whatever right I do not think it does not impact our bond rating if that's that's a question it does not impact our ability to borrow for general government projects as long as we have the revenue support the bonds that we're issuing we're in good shape I think long term one of the things that we're trying to do and one of the things we'll have to grapple with as a policy for the council in the community is how much of DME's capital costs that we want to fund with cash as opposed to debt and I know under Howard's leadership water and wastewater has made a lot of progress to be cash funding a larger and larger portion of their capital projects as opposed to debt funding it and it's taken a number of years to get there and over time we'd like to get there for electric as well so there's more cash funding so you don't always have so much debt being issued for the capital program but that's I don 't think there's any long to answer your question maybe succinctly I don't think there's any long-term impacts of issuing a CEO or revenue bond I don't see a lot of difference for for the city okay so that that's the background for my two questions one I've heard from some citizens saying and some council members I think have some concern over DME's debt there's just way too much debt so and I think I asked you this question on our audit finances you know trying to if you compare Coca-Cola to Joe's soda pop company they both make soft drinks the amount of debt Coca-Cola can carry versus Joe's soda pop very different right there's a healthy debt amount and in fact for some businesses that have no debt their advisors would say you really need to use some debt because it's really cheap right now and you can grow and the return on that investment so I'd like to hear back you know in the private world we look at debt to income ratio right so as a as a as it relates to the total revenue of DME what's the what's the debt to income is that healthy do our advisors believe that it's healthy that we're under where we could be that we're over you know because because if we have too much debt and DME is not healthy we need to know that we need to go on a diet but if that's not the case then we shouldn't spend a bunch of time worrying about how much debt there is if if the experts would say you know your debt to income ratio is right where it should be or whatever so I'd like to hear that certainly we can bring that back and then we can show you some industry average averages of what those ratios are we can also show you kind of what the rating agencies use for their benchmarks we'd certainly can bring that back to show you and I think oh you had oh I'm sorry wait this is on the tail on the tail of to add to that because that's a really good point the debt to income ratio DME because it is a concern of mine with the debt instead of the industry can we look at other city-owned utilities debt to income ratio thank you I'm sorry go ahead and then so so I think I know the answer of this but but I think councilmember Wasney brought up our last meeting one of the maybe we should we should look at selling DME as a should we sell it and get rid of the debt and get rid of the ownership of it and all that stuff and well I'm not advocating for that does the type of debt that we use make a difference meaning if you sell a private business it has debt that debt travels with it CO's, GOS versus if it's revenue pledge from DME it's only from DME if it's CEOs or GOS you've obligated the whole city and the taxpayers and all that stuff so I don't know the way we 're going to get to that discussion but I thought you know following on the heels of she brought up last week is something she wants us to consider or talk about would having revenue bonds versus CEOs and GOS make a difference in the event that there was a sale of the asset what you could do is you would have to issue it based just upon electric utility revenues you could have electric bonds and we've had utility system bonds which have been electric water and wastewater combined all of those would have to be refunded as well as any kind of property tax supported debt that ought to be refunded as an electric system bond and there'd be a much the cost of capital for doing that would be much greater the investor is going to demand a lot more return for that so that's the that's the flip side of that and that's that that's how you would do it but the answer your question if we were going to look at selling it it would have to be a different type of debt yeah okay thank you quickly does each utility have its own credit rating to or is that all sit under the city of Denton when we issue the utility system revenue bonds we received a separate credit rating for the utility system as a whole it's been a few years since we've had a credit rating for that system as a whole but it was doubling negative the delay with minus was is the rating system on S&P scale the general obligation bond rating for the whole city is double a plus just one notch below triple a so that's again that's the difference in the interest rates gotcha but we haven't had that updated in a while but it is not utility it wasn't there's not a separate rating for water and wastewater and electric is the utility system and it's been a few years since we've had that cool one because I and that's a good point because I know that on the debt coverage ratio which I think is sort of what we've been talking about as far as applying to this that we really don't split those out I mean we we can internally but we we presented as one unified so I think it would be interesting to see the debt coverage ratio for each utility system and I think what would be helpful and I'm not a I'm not a financial like accountant or balance sheet person but I mean because these are really businesses and it'd be interesting to see if this were a private business how I know we present the budget and we had those kind of things but how does if someone were to look at this as a private business how would they analyze that with the revenues with the capital with the depreciation and almost put a value on it I mean I'm not saying put a value on it to put an RFP out but just if we've got an asset that has revenues and expenses and and tangible assets what's and that I think helps us with do we have too much debt do we not have enough I mean do we have healthy debt we have that in the CAFR okay the balance sheet has a net assets figure okay net of all debt and related liabilities and so we can we can no no that's skippin you offline and look at that cuz yeah I'm pretty we have those kind of things okay right any other questions on at least this the financing component that's just my three slides that's it that's right that's it you 're out I'm kidding okay any more questions for Brian all right thank you thank you do they need direction on that at this time or that's for later I would imagine pending what we decide on I mean I think so because it's hard to know what you know based upon okay Austin that's sort of my thought is that sort of the council's consensus as well okay so going back to the discussion items we've talked about environmental we talked about the public hearing approval print resolution financing now and then the other issue that was asked about was as far as utilization of a outside independent consultant to review position we're in on this plan but also TMP I think also just related to that just wanted to give a list as far as coming up with this plan the number of people that have worked on this plan and my staff and a number of years of certain years they have an electric business is substantial and not going to go through all these individuals their background as an experience but it is varied and one of the things I find as a strength is having a lot of smart people like Dr. Banks available but also we have our own PhD Dr. Cunningham and others they're similar to have a similar experience the Lance's flexed a PhD in electrical engineering he is he co-designed the zonal or cock commercial market process he's currently a member of the ERCOT technical advisory committee that's a technical advisory committee to the ERCOT board which I serve on and has worked for an integrated utilities CPNL Austin energy worked at Luminant and in here and then some other people on staff Jose and Shane both started off at ERCOT so we have considerable varied experience they have reviewed this plan and as far as looking forward they have different background various backgrounds but that's one of the items that want to be discussed was the energy consulting so I just put that on there as an item for council to discuss yes and that's a great list so thank you Phil and my recommendation to bring in a consultant does not reflect upon DME just like when we bring consultants in to help legal it doesn't reflect on legal if we bring consultants in to help in any department and we do repeatedly and often because sometimes we think we're making the right decision but we want to know we have all of the information to make because this is a big decision this is a 20-year commitment for the city of Denton 20-year commitment I liken it to your spouse is a physician and he says well you need surgery well that's an in-house it doesn't disparage my spouse if he's a physician but if I asked for a second opinion it's just smart so I come back to saying let's take a little more time really work hard because today's discussion emphasizes exactly why we need an outside consultant we've been looking at statistics we have tough questions to answer I'm not sure we all totally understand I know I don't all of the implications all of the information all of the possibilities that might be out there and Chris mayor you brought out you brought out some really good questions but it's only because we've been noodling this for a while now that we're all really I know that we've all been scouring the internet trying to learn trying to get information but this is such a specialty field that when we're all said and done we may be right back with this exact plan and if that happens though we can look our citizens in the eye and we can look ourselves in the mirror and say we did everything we could to gather as much information as possible before we committed our city to this kind of debt and to this plan and the plan I don't think there's any argument over a 70% renewable what our discussion is is incurring the debt choosing the power plants for here in Denton and having that commitment for a 20-year time frame in an environment where technology is moving at light speed billions and billions of dollars are going into research right now well let's see some of those timelines are we making a decision right on the edge of something that may come down or a consultant may say no it's going to take too long but that 's what we need to hear and we need to really step up we hire consultants all the time this is one time we really need an outside consultant an energy consultant where it's a request for qualifications and we the council question the applicants and we the council pick that consultant so that they know they are they answer to us so that we can write that list of here's here's our quandary here's what we want to know and then hand it over to purchasing and say go find some other cities and I know Austin has done this and that's been a big discussion but just because one city has done it there are dozens of cities all over the country we're not the only ones grappling with these questions this is an issue all over the country so I respect DME I really look at that list and say Denton is lucky to have all those people but before we make this all-important decision and like I said we may come back right here and that's okay but I believe this council owes it to themselves and to the city of Denton to our citizens our ratepayers everyone that we make this decision with as much information as we can get our hands on and I feel strongly about this and I would hope the council would agree with me thanks I didn't know Mike Grimm was that old story was too that's what very illuminating list I mean that's really what I walked away from you know we sat here and we had folks come from our own citizens the guy from Austin say do what Austin did hire consultant until the consultant suggested hey you guys should build a quick start generation plan then they said no that that consultants discredited because he's in the pocket of the gas industry and they didn't want us to hire that consultant so it's interesting the different opinions on whether or not we should go with the consultant and what sort of consultant and things like that so what's it what's even the landscape out there in terms of consultants who would have more expertise than what you guys have on staff that wouldn't be the objectionable consultants that everyone is pointing out that are objectionable what's left in terms of the available pool of consultants that's not a 25 year old postgraduate who's a consultant like a lot of consultants are what's what's out there well certainly navigants been used by for Austin energy on several occasions they were also used by the state legislature to review pernales co-op and their operation when they became under question a few years ago so I think certainly in Texas and certainly around Austin they have a lot of credibility and certainly have been utilized by a number of entities there are certainly other firms of like status that would be out there there's some very expensive firms McKinsey Booz Allen they're more on the hiring side but you know there are certainly people available that could use that I guess my point is on that list is I think if you did a request for qualifications and they asked somebody to put together a team it would be challenging to find a consultant that would have that list of credentials of people to work on our project there's certainly something out there to do I'm not saying we have a corner on the market of all the smart people in the world there's certainly some people that out there to do it but I think that to get a consultant in that could be a reasonable price navigate would be first in my list but there's others out there that can do it just don't know what the price of those consultants would be depending on how high level firm you do and how in-depth you want them to go yeah and I just pointed out because the same folks that were suggesting we get a consultant we're pointing to Austin as soon as Austin's consultant came back and suggested that they too invest in a quick start generation those same folks who are calling for a consultant were saying we are discrediting this particular consultant so to me that's somewhat humorous but I agree that you guys have the expertise to advise us you're certainly reading the same stuff that those consultants would be reading your pit you're living this game every day and I don't have this this fear of conflict of interest I wouldn't even know what that means from a DME perspective in terms of how you're advising us which seems to be driving some of the calls for this so I'm comfortable with what we got I just want to yeah comment back to Councilman Roden I came up with a consultant idea before the Austin discussion ever took place so it's interesting to use the mayor's phrase it's interesting the because it can just mean anything so so I'll change my mind on what that means later Peggy the it's interesting in my mind that here's what I think about consultants so I think you hire a consultant when you either don't have the capability in-house or you don't have the man hours available with the staff that you have so if legal h ires a an attorney who specializes in sign ordinances that's just that's a specialty that we don't have in-house because you would make sense to pay an attorney to be on staff to focus on that from engineering standpoint you got a CIP project you don't want to step I argue sometimes because I think we might want to add more FTEs in that regard but you hire an outside engineering firm because you've got a short-term load of work that your guys can't get to your people can't get to here's my gut on this my gut on this is if we hire an outside consultant and the answer is build the quick start gas-fired power plants there's going to be a contingent of our citizens who say just like Austin right we hired the wrong one because the reality is if I'm if I've made a decision in my mind whether I'm for something or not it really doesn't matter what else you do I've already made my decision so if you hire a consultant and the consultant says build one then I'm gonna say not me but people I'm gonna say well I've already decided that I want this right don't want this therefore I'm gonna discredit the consultant or I'm gonna say it's the smartest person ever so while there are times even though councilmember was even when when I was running and when you were running we had a lot of conversations about we spent too damn much money on consultants and I agree with that sometimes I think you need them in this instance I don't think we do only because when I when I went to DME and went through my education part and get and asked all the questions about you know why do we have our Emo who are these people where do we get them why why would you spend the money to hire all these people and then I understood the qualifications in the backgrounds and and what they're doing to mitigate costs ensure reliability all the stuff what you have is you have that breadth of knowledge and capability on things like environmental impact reliability cost you've got that collective experience so when I look at that list of people and I hear what other consultants have said about Phil and his team in terms of their capability and the way they 're looked upon in the industry I go are we really going to go find an independent consultant who knows enough about our needs who knows enough about environmental impact cost all the different issues are we going to find one who can be completely objective isn't leaning one way or another in terms of fossil fuels or not fossil fuels or any of that that's this is true independent that has more capability than we have in house I just don't think so so for me we have the capability in house and they've done their research and they've they've reached their conclusion and that's why I asked Smitty who I really like I mean he's a very kind man we had a great meeting one-on-one I just said look you said Phil's an industry expert 35 years and you talked all about his guys and their capability you've been in at 35 years if we shouldn't do this what should we do and the answer was get together a group of citizens form a committee hire a consultant I said no no no no I mean you 're a consultant you're in that business 35 years what should we do what should we build or buy no solution right and all the data that we saw today suggests these other technologies aren't there yet so I don't know who's going to tell us anything different I don't think it's a bad idea in terms of hey we should always check ourselves before we go spend a bunch of money and and I think you know I'm very comfortable that Phil and his team don't just go out and spend money willy-nilly because they know they have to answer for those decisions and our job is to tell them they should spend it or not I don't know that we 're gonna find a consultant that can help us make that decision any differently and I really don't think there's anybody out there that's going to give us some new amazing idea that Smitty didn't or Phil didn't or his team hasn't thought of or investigated so for that reason I don't think it's like why would you delay like I just don't feel like it makes sense to delay when we've got to make a decision if we're gonna get to our 70% and hit our hit our goal now set that aside I think we still need to talk about whether we build 12 or 6 is there a stepped process that we could take I'd like to ferret that out do we really need to build all 12 or can we just build one with six and see how that goes you know and I want to hear more about the cost and all that stuff but on the consultant part I'm rambling but on the consultant part I just don't see where it gains us anything just my opinion you're yours is good too I'm going to say that I would prefer to have and would like to have a consultant one reason is because we stood up here and Dr. Banks we heard him say we were asking more information about air quality and he said I it just takes a lot of time he didn't have the time to come up with that or the money and I know that some of this is financial but a lot of it is environmental and I don't know I mean if you're really familiar or your team is with the environmental effects or air pollution and I know that we have Dr. Banks but he's just one person so you know there are consultants that we can hire that incorporate all of it together and also efficiency consultants who can tell us if one would work or not so I mean I think that it's to say that we know everything already is it's kind of not right to say so that's my my opinion on that yeah I'm not necessarily opposed to this idea if if I were only getting emails just about the environment or just from a certain group I think that I would feel very confident that in this and I'm very confident in DME I really am but I am getting emails also from people are concerned about their rates going up and how much we're spending what I am concerned about if we do go down that road though is how do we decide who we're gonna hire what do we do with that information and how long is it gonna take I don't want to rush into this either but I do want to know is this another year is it six months down the road those sorts of things but I don't necessarily think that this is a bad idea I want to throw that out there but I just feel so confident in DME and seeing that list up there but there aren't I still I'm struggling with a lot of the issues right now just trying to make sure like it is you know when my kids get my son's what six so it's 20 when he's 26 years old what does the environment look like did we I even asked Phil at the last mayor's breakfast about technology are we are we kind of missing the gap right here and maybe there are new technologies so I don't mean that as any kind of dig to DME at all but I just I don't I don't know if I'm opposed to this idea I want to know how much it costs how we hire it and what do we do with that information how long does it take to get that information because I kind of agree with Greg a little bit on that what if they come back and they say this is a great plan good job I mean I'm wondering if the same people are still gonna have the same concerns so that that's where my concern is but this is a big expensive very important project one of the biggest ones that we're gonna make here in Denton so anyway thank you thanks my first reaction was because most of the people who I've heard calling for a consultant or folks who are opposed to the gas plants in Denton and so my knee-jerk reaction is it 's just an effort to delay or to try to get a second opinion that says no don't do the gas plants especially when they insist that the consultant has to be independent and unbiased which makes me scratch my head and wonder so our DME staff is biased or they're not independent well they're they're paid by us but the consultant would be paid by us too so I'm just not seeing it then I try to stop reacting and just go back to what is it that I use is my measuring stick for when we need a consultant and it's what Council member Johnson said it's when our staff doesn't have the expertise or when our staff doesn't have the time and neither one of those are in play here neither one our staff clearly has the expertise our and and what's been very interesting is as we have received a lot of these questions and well have you considered this have you considered that you know we send them on all of us do to to fill into his staff and and within a very short period of time we get a white paper that shows yeah they've already done a thorough investigation of all of these different options and these are the cost factors and these are the environmental factors and this is where the technology is and it's not ready at utility scale at an affordable rate so you know I'm satisfied that that and I don't mean this to sound flippant but I'm really satisfied that that our DME staff has really thoroughly reviewed this in terms of our questioning today you know we were talking about you know some of the the reports coming out from other folks it was interesting because I was concerned about the 58 new gas wells and apparently Tom Smitty Smith is watching this streaming he's down in Austin he has a he wrote broken ribs so I hope you get feeling better too soon Smitty but he wrote an email back and said oh yeah my bad Dr. Banks is right on his calculations for how many gas wells it is so it's like you know in and we know Smitty's an expert the media has dubbed him as an expert on this issue but we've got experts in house I don't know that they ever get credit for that but but we do so I'm feeling really comfortable about it the the other thing is and I understand for folks that are newer on council this may feel like a rush but when I hear the question what's the rush my question is are we rushing because we've been working on this since 2010 we've been talking about the goals we've been talking about different plans we've been setting different goals now that it's getting close to a decision-making time I know it starts feeling like oh do we have everything that we need and we ought to know we ought to be really comfortable when it when it's time to vote that we have all of the information and I don't think that we ought to rush into a vote before we're ready to and we're comfortable that we have enough information we may not have all of the information I don't I think that's probably impossible but for those of us who've been who have been promoting the notion of a larger renewable portfolio and reduced air emissions and have been working on this for well I've been involved in it you know since 2010 pushing for that but DME has been doing it since before that because they they 're the ones that brought us the 40% win so I don't I don't really feel the same issue about it being rushed though I certainly agreed that we need to make sure that we have all of the information and all of the questions answered but I don't see the need for a consultant because it doesn't meet my criteria of we don't have the expertise in house and our staff in the house in house doesn't have the time I just kind of wanted to address the the issue with the consultant and people attacking the consultant that was chosen when I spoke to a council member in Austin I think the issue there was that Austin Energy chose the consultant and had specific contact with that consultant and council did not at all have any questioning or direction for them there wasn't any communication and I think that's where I'm record we would like for this to be different and so there wouldn't be that I guess that doubt in the citizens if they they trusted the council to do the job that they voted us and to do I'm gonna start down here and come yeah so I'll answer first councilman Gregory even though council may have been talking about this since 2010 DME may have been working on it even longer than that we brought our citizens in just a few weeks ago when did those mailers go out and when did you have your open houses the press conference was October 6th October 6th so it is quick a quick turnaround for our citizens being included in the discussion that's number one then for Councilman Hawkins when you said what happens if we do the consultant and we come back to exactly what we have okay and I said that but you can look yourself in the eye and you can look at this the citizens of the city of Denton and said we did our due diligence we did everything we needed to do to study all the figures all the options to commit this city to a 20- year plan and if we do full circle and come back right here fine then that's that's the decision in terms of the logistics of how long and all of that we ask purchasing because they do the RFPs and the RFQs but that answers quick and that answers what happens if we come up full circle I think this has been a great discussion on many fronts I mean we're talking over three hours now I guess on just this particular point and I think what gives me comfort and expertise is that as we have questions and it I think some people get to miss impression that this is like a council as one body just thinking all of like and what and we are seven different individually elected council members all from our own perspective our own backgrounds talking to probably in some cases different groups of citizens who are advising us getting in our ear talking to us at the grocery store when we're picking up our kids from school or whatever and advising the way we think through these issues that at every point I've asked a question to the DME staff about this from the very time we started contemplating it there's been an answer I may not have liked the answers but all the time but there's been answers to my question I think we've all asked questions today that some of which we've asked you guys to come back and give us some more information but except for the particular point of the air quality effects on our local monitoring station that dr. bank said he didn't have the expertise to do I think councilmember Gregory said was it possible for us to fund someone to look at that question except for that everything you guys have said we can get you the answer or you have answered I fully expect when the public comes on the 15th and gets to pose their questions or express their ideas that we'll be able to have another forum of Q&A with our staff so to me that the test would be if at the end of all this we have all exhausted the questions we have the question citizens have asked us to ask and the questions that the citizens will get a chance to ask directly if at the end of all that the enemy throws up their hand and says I don't know the answer to that or I don't understand that issue or I or whatever I think it at that point I think we could say we need some additional help but if everyone's answers are getting question everyone's questions are getting answered there's no outstanding information my question would simply be what are we looking for the consultant to answer at that point what possible range of questions that haven't been addressed at this point are we paying for them to address so to me there would need to be a clear sense of that so I'd be willing at the end of December 15th if at the end of that time Phil and his team are just like we're overloaded with this we can't answer these anymore we haven't thought about that perspective that someone who's brought up I'd be willing to say the time is now to look for some outside help but if that's not the case then I think we move forward with the internal expertise we have Interesting to merge the two things two things that I heard both you Kathleen and you Keely say I think what I heard you say Keely councilmember Briggs was we the flaw in Austin was that Austin Energy hired their consultant and because the council didn't hire the consultant independently of Austin Energy then they couldn't trust the answer so we we need to bring in somebody that we can trust which leads me to just go well I can tell you I mean I find it odd I guess is what I'm saying because we have a police chief that we hired to keep us safe and we don't ask him you know what are your officers doing or how many cars do you have and what are you doing to make sure that we're safe from this or that you know we hire this guy who hires the police chief and his job is to keep us safe and he goes and does his job we don't talk with the fire chief about what kind of ambulances to buy or what kind of training to get for his people we he's an expert in the field we hire him for that reason and we trust him to go do his job and run it so I don't know why it would be any different here I guess is what I'm getting at I mean I because I would tell you I would completely trust that's what we hire them for I mean they 're not out to build monuments to themselves if they there are they are the best we could find when we hired them and their job is to go figure out how do we make sure we've got maximize renewables reliability to keep rates low so I'm going to assume because we hired them to do that job that they are both capable and doing what they think is in the best interest of the city and the citizens in it so so in Kathleen up because you said we just now brought the citizens in and I think I can tell you as a citizen for me I would say so I hire a company to manage my website and do that because I don't have anybody that can do it I just expect them to do it I don't want to come in and tell me all the research they did and how it all works and all that I pay them a fee and I trust them to do it so I find it interesting like so we're all elected by by the citizens to represent them and make good decisions for them all of them so I don't know why on this we would it feels to me anyway maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying is we just now brought the citizens in and we want we need to get their input and maybe that's why you want to have a public vote but to me this is a very narrow field of expertise and so I think at some point you say to the citizens this is this is what we're doing this is our plan we'd love to have your feedback if you think we should do something different but I don't think that every decision that we make as a city should be a popularity contest or a you know whoever shows up to speak whatever the majority is of those that showed up to speak is what we do because this is hard to understand stuff so I just find it I could just tell you for me I don't think we're going to find a better group of experts than we have on our own staff just based on the research I've done and I don't think we 're going to find a group of citizens who have better ideas or knowledge of me we've had some who just say you got a huge battery storage why would you mess with gas well we all know battery storage isn't there yet I mean the industry experts have said that outside of here so you know I mean I understand we need to have input from citizens but at some point you got to run the city you got to make decisions and that's where I am on this I agree with you miss was knee that the the citizens have not had a long time yet to look at this particular proposal just went out the 1st of October so I understand what you're saying but we're not at a point of making a vote yet and I don't see that we 're going to be making a vote even in January I mean it may be the end of January it may be the start of February before we do the first thing well when we when we look at a land purchase probably what it's going to be is a author izing the the manager to enter into a contract for the option of buying a property because we're still going to have things that we need to do so from the time this was first rolled out in the 1st of October until the likely time for the first vote of any sort of a commitment of any amount it's probably going to be four or five months the public you know has been invited and you know we have we have announcements posting of all of our committee meetings the council committee meetings we publish the minutes of those meetings and the committee on the environment has has had discussions about this in public for literally years it hasn't been you know met with a lot of interest and I think that's where the the original recommendation that was later ratified by council about the goals of more renewables with reliability and prices and the reason that we included prices is because I don't know about the rest of you but but in my time on council I probably get 20 emails regarding utility rates for every one contact saying I want more renewables most folks they're fine with more renewables if everybody likes to breathe clean air but but their big item is reasonable rates and and and so so I you know I think that we're listening we have been listening will continue to listen for the next several months before we have a vote on anything to with the input from the public I expect it I hope that we hear some brand new ideas on the 15th that we haven't heard yet I expect that we'll hear some some ideas that we have heard and we'll hear some facts being offered that are probably based on some inaccurate information but but I think that we need to have that conversation and continue to have that conversation so you know I look forward to the next several months of discussion on this but and and I am interested in getting some cost for what it would do to have dr. John to to do the report I I'm just very leery of whoever we if we were to hire consultant however independent and however unbiased the consultant appeared to be that if the consultant came back with her with a recommendation for a gas-powered plant there are going to be statements that well the consultant really wasn't independent the Colson consultant really wasn't unbiased because you know mr. Smith and said to us do what Austin did do what Austin did and as soon as the Austin consultant gave their report he said the report is flawed and it's biased and he wasn't saying prior to that don't do what Austin did or don't use that consultant that Austin got because they're they're flawed and biased it was only after the report came out to a way that wasn't to his liking that that he made that conclusion about him and I and I fear that that would be the case oh yes just I just have a question of clarification because I've heard a few different things on when this plan or how long this has been to counsel so I've heard 2010 right and then I personally sent an email and said when did the gas plants come into the picture and the answer I got was January of 2015 and so that's not that long ago so from my understanding I thought that this particular plan has only been talked about since January so that it's really not that long so I'm just kind of looking for clarification like when because I really just heard about it a few months ago so I mean just for clarification so in 2009 we had the 40% renewable and the direction after council shortly after that was that's good we won't fuck more more right and so we've been studying how to procure more renewable energy as we go along and we've had some solar RFPs and we've had some other RFPs out to do that certainly one of the things to maximize the amount of renewable energy at a competitive cost would be utilization of a backup plant backup plants to do that and so that has certainly we started looking at different configuration of gas plants that could be used to back up more renewable energy more this year so January right correct okay and have you looked at other I mean I mean I guess what I would say is we need there need to be some other backup as far as looking harder at more configurations of exactly what kind of plants would you utilize to back it up that started in January I mean we before that time we needed to probably need to be at some point at some level renewable energy for that far we need some kind of backup to that all right we're gonna go Councilman Bosney so to just move this thing along and again come back to the point because that's what I like to do I would ask Council's consideration and consensus to delay a decision on an energy consultant energy analyst until after the public hearing on December 15th that'd be fine with me going back to your question which I think is a good question in the meantime you talked about other considerations that had been viewed RFPs for solar close by further away we also had a big movement towards is it is a co-generation plant and a combined and a combined heating power CHP but and a combined cycle those are fairly similar no sir combined cycle was to generate electricity only it uses the waste heat from one generator to help pre-heat the steam for another generator because I remember that that that several council members and several members of the public utility board from Denton did a field trip down to Austin to look at the combined cycle cogeneration plan by any empower there because that that at one time was on the list of considerations that we were exploring what year did we do that 2010 2011 so we were we were looking at that then and and and and every one of those things as we as we started pursuing it we discovered now given the the goals that we have it's not going to work or given the the possible customers we have those aren't going to work so it wasn't until January that we finally that you guys have finally developed a plan that looks like could could attack all of those so we looked at we chased we followed down a lot of rabbit trails before we we found a trail that was that seemed to be productive and answered the questions and and I wouldn't want to be dismissive of a CHP possibility if the right manufacturer came to town that had a large need for steam a CHP plant would still be or chilled water or chilled water it was certainly still be something we bring back to council as a consideration sure but it takes an alignment of that need to make that happen okay okay I'll be real fast just to refresh my memory this plan obviously went through pub before it came to us is that right correct and and we pick all those people to be on that board just kind of saying that so correct one one other clarification if I could ask for it yes as far as the drive for an overall consultant is one thing but as far as doing additional error study rather than wait for full-time consultant on now the total energy plan we may go ahead and pursue additional error studies if council gives that direction yeah I think that's already really been given well let's let's make sure that it's okay that that that dr. John is agreeable to the members of the council because I would not want you guys to do a contract with him and then we decide that we weren't acceptable that that wasn't acceptable or do we do we not have enough information to make that decision he dr. banks we've been at this long enough okay if it's $ 25,000 or something I mean I think it's well worth to have some kind of information and then if we put that into question based upon qualifications well then we'll deal with that at that time if it were two or three hundred thousand I think that'd be an appropriate question here and just to we're gonna take a break five minutes I've not said a word so I'm gonna just say a couple things I appreciate councilman was new saying let's let's let's revisit this discussion after we've had a chance to answer these questions for me to me it boy it's pretty simple to me it's pretty simple I think we can get the environmental questions enough information answered to me what's important is that I understand the business model and the business model being it boils down to do we take a risk on the market with the backup I mean we could go out and execute renewable contracts right now we're sent out RFPs for it we don't have a gas plant so we're figuring depending on when those start we're gonna have to look at backing that up some of the way so that's the option or this plan is the option there's a cost associated and a risk associated with both I've seen the cost associated with the plan I have not seen what the costs are based upon if we decided to do it otherwise and the information that's used to obtain that kind of risk analysis on the market so for me that's the that's the gap from a business financial perspective because it's pretty simple what you're basically saying is we don't want to take the risk of backing this up on the market we want to have the certainty of these type of these type of plants that's a very reasonable I just want to make sure I understand as fully as I can what those costs are that was because we're saying we're saving half a billion dollars over 20 years but I'm not sure what we're saving it from I still haven't figured out what it is we're basing that savings on as far as well this is what it would cost us per megawatt hour to back it up this is how we only get we can only buy energy a day ahead of time in peak markets solar is supposed to help with the peak situation and I know that we've looked at that so that's I mean for me that's where the the lack of information is from a from a business perspective in that regard I think the plan on its face I mean gosh I mean I don't think there's any question everybody that I've talked to that's been in the business at TNPA anywhere that I've talked to and I think the Austin Energy when you have renewables and you're losing generate see we are losing generation we I think we we forget that TNPA has been generation for us but the flip side of that is if you'd have been talking about TNPA 20 years ago everybody be saying absolutely let's do it but over the last six or seven years we've been thinking this thing is around our neck number one because of some financing decisions that were made and number two the market changed dramatically so we I just want to make sure we're consistent and knowing that okay if we 're looking at needing generation we've been in this situation before and we just need to make sure that we have that clarity of yeah 20 years things could change again I mean I've heard board meeting after board meeting at TNPA but why are we doing this we're still spending more money it costing us more to have this plant that is we can buy off the market because we're buying more energy off the market because it's cheaper than doing it there so whether we need a consultant or not at that level in depth I don't know I think the 15th will help answer that but I think there are some subsets of questions like the air like maybe some of the business modeling of the market going out you know how's it going out if you're buying it off the market or if you're contracting with someone because we're we're saying if we have it we're going to be one of those sources of contract for someone who doesn't have any backup well we were having to we've got to be putting a cost per megawatt hour on that and so I would think it would be similar what we could get it for I would think that would be similar and I just don't know what that is so I will tell you though this is a great discussion I know there's a varied levels of opinions and approaches and perspectives but I think that's what helps come up with the maximum decision I'm certainly not in a rush to to do this or to rush it to a vote because this if this is a 20-year plan it's 20-year plan and I know that 's thirty six thousand dollars a day but I mean I want to make sure we get this we get this right as well as right as we can given you know as much information as we have so I appreciate all DME's work on this because I think we 've got to start the conversation the conversation started I appreciate the citizens I will say for me I sort of see a line of there's some who don't want it only because it's natural gas and because of the the vote that we took and then the state legislature came in so I didn't really see that vote as a referendum against natural gas the fracking vote it was just more we don't want this process in our backyard but then you have some who are sending many articles on air quality on storage that we've looked at and I think it's just good to consider those and then in the end some days we're gonna have to make a decision on which way we go and I'm not for stretching it out to delay it sort of as a way to defeat it I want to make sure that we're as comprehensive as we can because this is a big decision I mean it's two hundred something million dollars 30 years but again that's why I want to see the analysis of can we get by with a phased approach which is less debt which may be less emissions but may be able to give us the same capacity and that might buy us a little time but the flip side of that is financing costs are cheap right now and they're fixing to probably go up in about 30 days so any other questions comments on this I think we're through with this presentation we will take a tent is our dent well it's too early for dinner we'll take a 10-minute break and do we have to Tuesday December 1st 2015 work session from Denton City Council we will now move on to our next work session item which is item 3c receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding a policy for Valley Park mayor I'm gonna ask Amy Bissett if she'd present this item it shouldn't take any longer than the last item did thank you mayor and council members and actually I expect this conversation to be pretty quick and and if it's not then it's not my fault we'll just say that the your objective today is to to consider options for creating a valley parking policy and to give staff direction about whether or not you'd like us to proceed with the creation of this policy the the genesis of this conversation is really Queenie steakhouse and we've had some ongoing conversations with them since they opened in 2013 they wanted to provide Valley Parking as a free service to their patrons and they applied for a loading zone permit in order to be able to have reserve those spaces to to operate a valet parking operation and and we determined at that time that we didn't want to utilize a loading zone permit for an alternate use an alternate use and we essentially reached a gentleman's agreement with them if you will to operate their valet parking with some parameters that that we would just operate within and and try to make it work and so we they agreed to use one to two spaces that are right on the corner on Hickory in front of their restaurant and they could put their valet stand on the sidewalk and have cones on the sidewalk kind of denoting that those were valet parking spots but they could not refuse to allow a citizen to park there because it is public parking and they couldn't ask a citizen to move their vehicle and they couldn't put the cones into the public parking spaces and in most instances I think that that that in theory would work just fine and in practice we saw early on that some of the other employees around the square had some issue with that and would intentionally park in those spaces and block them and refuse to move and just try to generally make things difficult for Queenies to operate that valet and they have come back to us on a couple of occasions and said you know we'd really like to be able to operate this valet by right without this these difficulties with having to interact with citizens and other employees and and get in a situation where we don't have any place to put our valet stand so we've done some research to take a look at what valet policies are enacted in other cities in Texas we looked at Dallas Plano Fort Worth and Austin and there were some common common themes between all of them and they were just a required a permit if you were going to be operating your valet in public right of way or if the the valet just maneuvering of vehicles took up some some public right of way space then you then you're required to have a permit and that we would ask that you show where your valet box is going to be located on a map that we know who the valet company is that the city's name does an additional insured that we know what your hours of operation are that we know where you're parking the vehicles after you valet them that you can show that you have a parking arrangement if those if you're planning to park off-site and annual fees associated with that written notices to the owners in the vicinity when you apply in a valet stand that can be moved and put away so we just observed that these are just these are pretty common policies and a lot of cities have them and so we have we've drafted a policy that essentially covers a lot of those things that requires them to have two spaces it's a five hundred dollar a year fee associated with those two spaces they could get additional spaces and for an additional fee that we have parameters on insurance requirements and just a nominal application fee and we're ready to bring that policy forward to you for consideration at your direction but we wanted to receive that direction first I didn't want to yes go ahead I say move forward with it Denton needs a valet parking guideline and we're growing we 're gonna see more valley restaurants come in and on behalf of restaurants who want to come in I think we need to make that accommodation for them I think the reality as it stands with Queenies is any given night you have four spots that are empty because they put cones there your average citizen just doesn't park they don't go there it looks like it's reserved if they pull up unless they know that policy which most citizens don't they're gonna leave so to me the cost ought to be I mean how much does it cost the city to build a single parking space do we know that like in the downtown area I'm certain six to seven thousand dollars so to me the cost should factor in because I think effectively what you have is one or two parking spaces being taken offline that's effectively what you have even though technically a citizen could park there they're not and they won't so to me cost is going to be key to it and five hundred dollars a year doesn't seem appropriate for very valuable close to downtown parking I think it's fine to look at it I just think it should be a pretty expensive thing if someone wants to essentially take offline public parking at some of the most crowded busy times of the day I think that I'm sorry I was just I'm trying to get feedback yeah I agree with you and that's one of the things that we really wrestled with as we looked at this policy and that part of that part of the way we had tried to address that is you know where are you parking these cars because you're essentially taking cars that would otherwise be parking in public spaces and parking them in a private lot and so while you're making a trade for a couple of spaces for a valet if they are if they're essentially pulling people into a private lot that would otherwise be in a public lot then maybe it's a savings of parking in this case the private lot is on site so I've never understood the need for valet there because they could just have a parking attendant to make sure people are only parking there that need to do because there's always spaces in their private spot so to the extent that the private lot is somewhere off-site that it would make sense for the person to otherwise use public parking to go to that space that policy makes sense if it's an on-site parking or just the same distance from public parking that policy doesn't make sense sense me so I'm I'm curious to look at this and I think there's probably a reasonable policy that we can come up with I just have concerns because every Friday Saturday night you have four spots there that are completely empty for a very little need for one business so yeah well I was just going kind of on the same vein I think the the quality of restaurants and entertainment venues that we are now getting are we need to have valet parking as an option because the type of patrons that they're attracting the the barley and boards and 9-4-0s and these things now coming online the types of patrons they're attracting are people aren't going to park through four blocks away a lot of people right so but I do think that part of the requirement should be if you're going to have valet you have to park them on private property and they've got to go get their deal cut with private property owner wherever they are to go and park those cars on private property if that was the deal I would say I don't even care if we charge them for the because if you think about even if they take up four spots you know on the square but they're taking 40 cars out of public parking and put them in private parking you know to me that's a good trade now they need to pay something but I think we look at it holistic if they're allowed to park them in public parking spaces then I'm gonna say we need to charge them a hefty number for those for those spots but I think we need it and the other thing I think we need to consider not for today is the potential for street legal golf cart type shuttles which would be totally private not a city deal nothing like that but now you're now your large public parking lots that aren't necessarily right next to the square now come into play where you can have private entities who would provide it's a taxi service right but it's a quick in and out kind of service and I think we need to explore that some other cities do it and it's pretty effective well mr. Johnson said everything I wanted to say except that I don't have much experience with valet parking because we tried to park our car there once and the valet looked at it said I ain't driving that thing well just having Jupiter house who cheese all around that area I never thought about that though that they actually take cars that would be in a public spot and bring them to a private lot so that does give me a little bit more comfort but it is interesting on a Friday night when there's no parking and my mom can't park for an hour and she keeps driving past Queenies and that there's those four cones they're blocking them off so I want us to look at that I really like that card idea Greg that's cool so I don't know what we charge but you know I think I'm okay with some sort of valet ordinance moving forward and we're just gonna get even at who cheese we want to do that valet park cars so I know that's kind of a ramble there but I don't know what amount to charge but there is a perception issue on Friday night when you can't park anywhere and they just got cones sitting there I don't know how to attack that but I think if we limited them to two spaces through a genuine valet policy because right now they feel like they have to guard all of them because if somebody gets in one of them they've got to move their stand down a little bit I think is the reality of what's going on but I so they're potential there to help that but when we looked at the other policies they their annual fee was between 250 and $500 and it was typically it was for one to six spots so the way that we have the draft written today is $500 for two spots okay anything else yes just a philosophical observation I mean the success of the downtown is largely due to it being a very walkable environment so to the extent that you have more and more opportunities for somebody to just come park their car right in front of one particular place they want to go to and then leaving their car right in front of that sort of place the whole synergy of what makes all these kind of non anchored types of places succeed because they're walking by with their kids and the kids dragging them in the top of candy or dragging them in for an extra dessert cone somewhere or they're gonna go check out the comic book store when they otherwise wouldn't have because they just happen to be walking passes which is why malls tend to have that sort of same focus I just worry again as we think about this philosophically if it's just pot marked with a bunch of LA's we also have to think about how this scales and how many you could have and what that does the landscape so I think there's a number of factors that will still concern me as we look at this but let's look at it I know when I talked with him about it and he shared with me what Fort Worth does and this might be the difference between on-site and off-site is that I mean if they're taking up two spaces there if they've got an on-site spot they could say we have two spaces that are available for public parking I mean you could just do you could just do a trade-off if it comes to worse on an on -site but I'm okay with let's just explore it and see see where it goes yep any other questions well and to add to that mayor he has allowed a couple of my employees to park in that parking lot when there hasn't been parking so okay good all right we'll move on to the next agenda item which is somebody else told me sounded like him yeah 3d receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding a proposed ordinance of the city of Denton Texas setting planning development fees as it concerns gas well drilling and production the city of Denton and its extraterritorial jurisdiction steam city attorney this is going to be a quick one too right yes perhaps perhaps good afternoon council I'm Anita Burgess I'm the city attorney and like to take the opportunity to introduce a consultant to you this afternoon it's a great day in Denton to introduce a consultant so if I could take the liberty of adding one additional reason for hiring a consultant it is that sometimes it's nice for the city attorney to have an expert witness in the event that a matter becomes highly contentious and so in that respect our consultant today could could come in handy in the past we have looked at our gas well fees we have been very careful with regard to how we have assessed those fees and we have asked a consultant to come in and look at those and candid ly we've done that because as we got into the gas well drilling issue there were some that wanted to set the fees in our community some citizens who wanted to set our fees at such a level that it became punitive others in the community perhaps associated with drilling issues are favorable to those issues desire to set the fees at a lower level and as we've studied this and and considered it we believe the right and the appropriate and the accurate way to set these fees is to look at them and have the beat the fees be commens urate with actually the work that's being performed so we hired new gen strategies and solutions and we've been working with Connie Kennedy and we're delighted to have her here with us today to tell you a little bit about her work as she's looked at this Connie has worked with this company and with Jack Stowe for many many years she's a very bright lady she has a master's from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and she's very well schooled she's well written I could give you a lot more about her but I can I can show you how I'm flipping through this to show you her publications and all her credentials so I'll let her speak for herself so Connie if you would come up and talk about our gas well fees Darren was trying to show me which one is it the CC oh that one okay all right great okay all right thank you so much counsel I will be brief oh and I know that you appreciate that especially for the consultant this is we actually did I gotta push it I guess down here there we go I actually participated in developing the fees back in 2013 with the fees are that are currently in effect under the 2013 248 ordinance number and Anita and several Aaron and Darren and I have worked together on this to try and update these fees so that they are reflective of the recent ordinance that you passed the 2015 233 and that my understanding was that was in consideration for several actions that had occurred both at the legislature the moratorium that had been put on for a while and the lifting of that and to try and put together an ordinance that would reflect the types of activities that the city would be doing going forward under under that paradigm so taking that into consideration and looking at the new the new law or the new ordinance and and talking with the relative there the the folks they're actually going to be doing these activities to the extent that there were going to be changes in that some of the activities that we set up in 2013 would not change but then there were some some pretty significant changes otherwise we also wanted to update since we had based the 2013 fees on the budget of 2013 we wanted to go ahead and update that to the most recent employee costs as well as the most recent indirect costs currently in this in this current budget and so what we did was and let me just back up one step and to say that these fees are based on what activities are being done by those people and how much those people are costing the city of Denton through the employee costs and the overhead costs so it is really going through and trying to determine the number of hours that people spend on various activities also to try and anticipate the number of events the number of these individual events that we've set a fee for try to anticipate what the new ordinance will do in terms of and what we think and what we'll talk about here in a minute is that we think that there will be an influx of new filings and so the fees would actually be somewhat less in the first couple of years more events over which to cover the costs possibly after the first couple of years less events and higher costs per event still the same activities but if you have more events to cover the bucket of dollars then you can have lesser feet if you've got 25 site plans versus two in one year that the one year with the 24 or 25 site plans will be a lot less per site plan so that's kind of the theme that we will be talking about going through this we've tried to put together and I think everyone has a copy of this presentation and hopefully has been a had an opportunity maybe look at it but we tried to put together a comparison so you can see the current fees that resulted from the 2013 study and the new proposed fees and in some cases we don't just have the same type of fee we may have a new one and I want to talk a little bit about those in the process in these proposed fees dealing with SUPs first of all we don't anticipate a very big number maybe one maybe less because SUPs was that was one of the areas that was significantly changed in the new ordinance the requirement of having to have an SUP was lessened for gas well operators and so the only real time that you still my understanding is the only real time that that a gas well operator will still have to have an SUP is in the event that they have to have a watershed protection permit as well so we still had to develop a fee with that understanding that there could be one if they come in and have to have a watershed protection permit then they will have to get an SUP so we have and there's another side of this too is that the gas well division will have to have some play and participation in reviewing an SUP that is dealing with a PD or an MPC that comes in it's pretty small but we had to develop a new fee to take that into account it's a new activity that will have to happen planning takes the lead on those but the gas well division will still have some participation and you can see that that's a new fee of $500 per event the second big area is in the the site plan reviews and what we this really refers to these new items that you see up here refers to what I've talked about earlier when we started this conversation and that is we anticipate a number of events occurring upfront in the first two years because of some of the site plan or site pad sites not having site plans at this point may want to come under these new the new ordinance provisions early and try to get those in place and so you can see that we have a calculation of the cost in the first two years based on a larger number of events and then a calculation of a cost with less much less number of events per year the site plan with an SUP amendment again going back to some of the changes in the ordinance because SUPs are not required in as many circumstances as they were in the prior ordinance there is an anticipation that those gas well operators that currently have an SUP will want to come in and have that removed and the only way that that can happen is for the council to vote on it there won't be a lot of effort involved in necessarily going through the process but it will still have to go through the normal process of an SUP with less effort so we still do have a higher cost if an operator wants to come in and get rid of the current SUP that they have and not be obliged to follow the requirements of that SUP to come back in and get just a regular site plan and permit and not have to deal with the SUP provision the other fees as you can see are slightly either either the same or they're slightly elevated and that is due to the increase in the employee costs primarily I mean just taking it from 2013 to 2015-16 okay on this one this is dealing with the the plat reviews and again there's nothing new here it's just it's a major well it's a slight increase in two of the fees because of the employee cost the plat review itself is considered to be less time intensive than it was in the 2013 study and therefore we have a reduced cost to review the plats and that's what that is it and again I don't want to suggest that there's in there's no these are not discounted costs it is real it's just based on time and expense the annual inspections we really wrestled a little bit with this my understanding it in talking with the folks that were helping me out on this particularly with Darren is that there's there is a desire to have the gas well operators try to co-locate as many wells as they can onto well sites and that it just makes more sense if they will continue to have put them on the pad sites at the head rather than developing new ones in other locations around the city and that coupled with some complaints I guess that had been heard by gas well operators suggesting that the fees for the inspections were high way too high there wasn't any real justification for charging these types of fees on a per well it doesn't take that long if we've got five wells here they come it doesn't take equally the same amount of time to do all five wells and so there was a we were trying to take that into consideration and to set up these annual inspections so that that we look at the fixed time that is going to have to occur whether there's if there's just one well there there's going to be preparation time there's going to be travel time there's going to be recording time issuing the report coming back doing all of the the upload of the information all of that we would be considering as fixed time regardless of how many wells are at the pad site and then you have the variable time and that's the additional piece that that you look at that's going to take you once you get on there as an inspector and you're going to each one of the wells and doing the routine of the annual inspections so taking that type of calculation we came up with these recommended fees rather than the current one which is a little over thousand dollars per well per year we came up with a per well based on the number of wells at the well site so as you can see we've got anything from one to two wells is 1125 per well if you've got three to five you're going to pay 900 per well and so forth and so that is a new paradigm from the 2013 study it's also the same thing that we looked at in not as great detail but in the same vein was to look at that on the ETJ and to be able to say this is for single well sites and this is how much it costs because there's not as much authority on the ETJ inspections but they still are done and to have essentially a maximum of $720 regardless of the number of wells so this particular structure is unique in that it's accomplishing a couple goals one is making sure we're covering our costs yes which is what you started off with yes but there's also this interest in up in ours of incentivizing co-location of wells versus scattering them out in multiple pad sites to accomplish a similar task like they can do in one area so to that point so I understand how we would arrive at a price based on the cost of service I don't understand how we arrive at a price that we think is driving the incentive that we're hoping to drive and get the behavior that we're hoping to get from operators so walk me through it was there an analysis with operators in terms of is this the price point that gets you towards this no this is there's no price elasticity study that was done along with this what we did was we looked at the number of sites that had one to two wells and those sites that had multiple wells and tried to spread the total pot of dollars among those and so because we have variable costs we could assume or that only some portion of the variable costs will be for the one to two and and that it would be more you've already paid for the first part up front right so now we're gonna have just the variable cost for the extra wells there but there was no real is this something that you would like to pay well I should that was out there but in looking at this it it is to promote the idea that they won't be if they have eight wells they're not gonna pay a thousand dollars a well well and that I guess that's my question because if that what we're trying to do is promote a certain type of clustering of wells to me then there's a there's a market consideration after I mean somebody if somebody in the gas well operating community would have to inform us that at this point that encourages me in that direction at this point it doesn't matter anyways it's so the price difference to that's a possibility if you're thinking of this as a carrot which this is one of the few opportunities we have to direct behavior outside of kind of forcing it with an ordinance right that that price point consideration becomes important so I I know at some point maybe there was a discussion with with operators that we had along the way relating to the entire ordinance I don't know was there any discussion along those lines of what incentivizes and what doesn't well we have had some discussion from time to time with regard to the impacts of these fees and and I think the adding a little bit to the discussion the reality of the inspections when there are multiple wells on a pad site is such that the operators the inspectors only have have to drive once to the site and then they can inspect all the wells and then go back and take care of their paperwork as opposed to going to let's say five pad sites in different areas of the community and they've got drive time going each way and additional downtime so the numbers that you're seeing Connie analyzing here are based on the on that reality and so there is some efficiency for our inspectors as far as inspecting wells on a multi pad site it has the consequent impact also of potentially incentivizing I think this is a real number but it has the I think favorable impact of potentially incentivizing the co-location of these wells which I think is what we're hunting for I will say also in response to your question the conversations that we've had as far as incentivizing the gas well operators and coming forward and not so much on the inspection piece but in filing these gas well site plans would have to do with the possibility of reducing the fees for some time so reducing the gas well fees my question did council give direction to come up with this plan or was this is this a staff driven plan I don't I don't I think with regard to the recommendation that we go forward with a period of time of fee reduction I think it's probably staff driven I don't think that's council directed but it comes as a result of our analysis and our continuing concern and the real genesis I think of the problems that we've had in the city of those old gas well plats and if we can incentivize the operators to accept the gas well site plans and give up those gas well plats the benefit to the city is huge so there are limited ways to do that this is one but it is discretionary with the council so let's explore benefit to the city correct me if I'm wrong the majority of those large gas pads are in the west side of the city correct wasn't south west and south but many of them are west many of them fall in some of the very large master plan communities correct so some some do that's right some are not but yes that's true but many of them are so if our goal here is co-location which reduces the pad site I'm just having a real problem in cutting the fees in half when I can't see the real benefit to the city I see a benefit to a developer who wants to build homes and there are gas pads with with wells and the pads are large so I'm just having a problem with connecting the the destination on benefit to the city I just I can't connect the dots because I see it as a benefit to developers so they can build I get that but to cut our fees in half to achieve that goal I'm I'm just not there and I have one more question and then I'll give up the mic if we don't change the fees we leave everything like it is or augment some hole that absolutely needs to be filled are we violating any laws if we leave everything just like it is your fee should be equal to comm ensurate with the work being performed by staff that's the legal analysis that's what it needs to be that's what it should be I think predominantly certainly we rework some figures here but I think some of these fees have gone up I assume that we desire to maximum collection of fees but it needs to be consistent with the work being performed hence the study we are under collecting I don't think it's illegal to under collect but certainly we want to look very very closely and try to hit as as nearly as possible the work being actually performed so we don't under collect and I think we are to a certain extent here hence our recommendation we update these fees and then pull it in compliance with the ordinance I think Darren is a step forward I think he wants to address the underlying issue with regard to benefit to the city I hope I can Madam City Attorney mayor city council members I know that's been the crux of a lot of the discussion is what's the benefit to the city hopefully I can at least from my perspective as a gas well administrator provide that some of the numbers in the AIS hopefully pull this out but we've we've had a lot of applications submitted over the course of the gas well development history in the city of Denton not all of those just due to not having a division or due to some of these wells already being drilled and then they were found and told to go submit an application they never got approved or they never followed up on the comments so we have a lot of openings as far as the applications we have some that were approved that are large acres very few of them actually are within the master plan community the majority are outside of a master plan community so what what this incentive would be is actually Connie's numbers are based off of the number of applications that we anticipate coming in because the new ordinance for a gas well operator also provides the protection to add additional wells that currently they may not have so the site plan itself is going to give setback and reverse setback protection so we think the numbers are going to be higher that's based off of the discussion we've had over the last two years of re writing the ordinance a lot of the operators have said those applications once they get the opportunity to to study their geology and get the site plans prepared we're going to see a lot of those come in so her numbers aren't a discounted number they're actually what the studied application numbers would bear out what we had proposed in the in the staff report was for 90 days to hopefully get those cleaned up because we have as you can see at least a hundred sites out there that we don't have any site approval on so not only can they not drill another well but we have nothing to hold them to as far as what the site layout should be what the site layout was approved for so the incentive from my point of view is huge to actually get some site plans in where we can draw boundaries we can set reverse setbacks we can identify set backs and we can also give you an estimate as far as how many wells we anticipate in the future because we'll know how many are approved right now we don't have that data and I know it's been requested of me by the City Council in the past I can't provide that because of the situation that we're working under I think those are some of the benefits that really don't get discussed a lot but again from my perspective this might be staff-driven but I think it's a huge benefit to the city to get these applications in. So I just have a couple of things one I just wanted to clarify Councilman Rodin did you want to check and make sure that it was okay with the operators the price that we're charging did you is that what I heard you say? Well I guess my point was this insofar as we're trying to incentivize certain behavior over other types of behavior that we've deemed are less desirable for assuming we have gas drilling in the city and we're trying to encourage things like coming in and get your plats redone so that we have more certainty as he was just mentioning and we don't get in a situation like in the vintage neighborhood where there was pesky plat notes associated with those things that caused us not be able to enforce our own ordinance so yes to the extent we want to incentivize that to the extent we want to incentivize co -location which I think is in the best interest of the city as we discussed for several months I think whether or not that is incentivizing to an operator to go that direction versus proliferation of gas wells all over our city and just to complete whatever they want to do to me that's important to know whether or not the fee is incentivizing to us up that was the goal of my question if it's effective or not as an incentive I also wanted to say thank you for going and hiring a consultant because this reduction is not as significant as the one that was proposed in August but I'm curious if we do adopt the new fees because some of them do go up do we have to adopt the reduction for two years like what why is the two-year period why not just one year or like six months and wouldn't that incentivize them to come quicker let me make this as simple as I can as far as the way I will get this to me the studied fees we need to we need to stick to the studied fees because it does exactly what it needs to do it ensures it's a fee and it's and it's not an illegal tax so the fees that have been studied I believe to be based on the work being performed based on our budget and I think they're accurate there is however the discretion with the council with regard to whether or not you do want to reduce certain of these fees for a certain period of time therein lies the discretion a do you want to reduce the fees do you feel like it will incentivize some things that are good for this city and then secondarily how much do you want to reduce the fees if you do desire to give an incentive to get the operators in so that they will follow these site plans and so that we can begin dealing with some of these issues so there's a there's a hard science to this and then there's some soft discretion with regard to whether or not you even want to provide any kind of incentive and if so for how long so it could be for three months it could be for six months could be for a year be for two years whatever the council deems appropriate on that discretionary side if you deem it appropriate so there's a some things to consider as far as that second piece of it for the council I have just a follow-up question for you madam attorney's come on the gas plats the new the new site plans will they expire under the plate is there a certain amount of time if they come in and they do this is there a certain amount of time that they have to actually drill before the safe our gas on specter can you address that for and then your site plans do have an expiration if they don't pull a permit they'd expire within three years that's yeah and that's it that was already adopted in August okay and does this affect the the vested rights issue as best we can address the vested rights issue this is our effort to try to consider the problems we've had in the past with these old plats which are really the genesis of the vested rights the coming if you come in and file if an operator comes in and files the site plan then we would take the position then that they have abandoned that old plat so this is our effort to try to do so is I'm sure you remember we got no help from the Texas legislature on the vested rights issue when House bill forwarder came into being so that issue remains on the table and this is our effort please don't take that back yes that's my pro temp thank you just for some clarifications I I couldn't read the there was a blue and white spreadsheet in our backup and I haven't found or it might be in there and I just couldn't see it it seems like when we passed our latest revisions to the gas well drilling ordinance we included third-party inspections using cameras to detect leaks in equipment above ground is there a fee for that in in here it's my understanding that they can get they have some leeway to not have certain inspections if they're able to put together those types of electronic monitoring and you could probably speak to that better than I can there is not a fee in here no there is not a fee for that in this proposal this is really looking at the the well it was called planning and development we're now the development services department that type of fee was proposed through dr. Banks department so this this fee study is just an update of what we've had as planning and development fees so it doesn't take that into consideration we have looked at that do we have a fee on our books right now that we are charging to the gas well develop the gas well drillers for inspection by the third-party do we have that in place right now we do not and I don't have that ordinance in front of me so let me see if I can pull out of my mind what we did with regards to that third-party inspection it is only in the instance that there is a variance from the setback correct and only in the instance that the operator does not have I'm gonna call it skate alike equipment so there are a couple of contingencies before any such fee would be assessed now were we to do it through a contract I think that we have a studied number that we could pro rate out as opposed to what we're looking at right now but in response to your question I don't think there's there is nothing in the current study that addresses that particular issue that concerns me and I would like for us to take a take a spin back on that before this comes back to us again because I was expecting that in this the the second I think Darren you've asked answered some of councilmember was knees questions about the benefits to the city the benefits of co-location to me one of the benefits that we talked about months ago maybe years ago was the benefit not just to the developer but to the to the whole community of having less the more gas well sites we have the less dead zones as far as development opportunities now that that affects the developer for sure but it also develops the city in terms of property that's developed that can be lived in by people that warehouses can be built and taxes can be collected on those also it seems to me one of the one of the issues is that the benefit of co-location is that it would reduce the possibility of the awful situation that we had a couple of years ago out at the Meadows and Hickory Creek where we had gas wells on both sides of a small neighborhood being being reworked or fracked at the exact same time so that folks were surrounded it it reduces the number of locations and it reduces the the impact on neighborhoods if you have all of those wells concentrated in a single site as opposed to multiple sites maybe surrounding a neighborhood I mean that's just my thoughts on it but I think that it would be helpful you know I was asked a while back what is some of the political fallout or the implications of the fracking ban vote and I said well one of them is is that it's it's raised everybody's level of concern about any ordinance that comes before the council and and you know so their concerns right now that that a review of these fees especially a reduction of fees and it looks like that the staff's plan is to reduce the fees by 50% for 90 days not for two years but for 90 days in the hopes that it would incentivize producers to actually apply for these new sites and co-locate but would you help me please connect the dots how does this ordinance create that situation where where gas well operation operators would do that and and then also connect the dots for me that it does not encourage a whole bunch of brand new sites springing up that are not necessarily encouraging co-location but just generating a whole bunch of new sites well I think the second part is a little easier to answer because of the new site setback it would be a much more detailed review if it was a brand new location so so even with the discount I think our previous ordinance would address that so that the fees I don't think would incentiv ize somebody to come in for a new location because of the hurdles that 2015 233 would impose all right but in regards to the first part as whether or not this would be the incentive what we heard during the process a lot of the operators price of gas is pretty low so all things being equal there's really no reason for them to come in and give up a gas well plat that they could argue has certain rights given to them so so one way that we could hopefully get to a point where they would do that either voluntarily or through the fact that this might be a 90-day incentive is to say would you address the new ordinance through the setbacks and the protection of the reverse setbacks so that you don't have to come back when you're getting a new gas well permit and apply setbacks at that time we can do it in one time shot what the 90 days is hopefully we would we would get their attention they would have some time from August to have the plans prepared we can get them submitted and get them reviewed within those 90 days then this is the question that I asked the last time this came before us is there a way to craft this proposal to reduce the the fee amounts by 50% for that set period of time 90 days whatever it might be 40% it might be 60% it might be a hundred days I understand that but is there a way to craft that so that it really aims at what we're trying to do which is to take the current gas well site and and focus on getting those with multiple wells as opposed to making this offer available for brand new sites yeah we actually defined in the last in the gas well ordinance what is called an existing drilling and production site okay so I think if we targeted this discount as an incentive just to existing drilling production sites I think it would achieve what you're okay let's please be sure that we have that stipulation there because we have a targeted purpose it's not a giveaway to the gas company to the gas industry it's it's a targeted purpose to help the neighborhoods to help the communities to help the city not to help the gas industry they get all the help they need from Austin Dalton pretty much said everything that I just wanted to make sure that we were just gonna have this influx of new operators but Dalton nailed it for me so thank you all right thank you I think this is actually the last slide so there's there's a couple of new ones on here probably not nearly as controversial as trying to get to the site plan and what the the sweet spot is for that particular rate but what we did do is streamline the transfer of operations understanding again we had some fixed costs but if they came in with a whole bunch at once it was a lot less for each one so we put a lower fee on that with a maximum fee we also in talking with Darren because of some of the changes in the ordinance as to what would be reviewed in the initial permit and then what would be reviewed in subsequent permits for the same pad site once that site plan was reviewed there would be less effort for each additional well and so you can see there that the $500 for the permit went up in the first instance because of employee costs and those sorts of things in the second instance because it went down due to reduced amount of effort and those are the new fees the other ones again just compared to what we currently have with a slight increase due to employee costs so yes I believe that's it other questions yes ma'am has any other city in the state of Texas reduce their fees by 50% to try to shrink the pad sites are we has that happened in Texas do we have a track record I don't know that I can answer the question I would assume the answer is probably no however I don't think there is another city in the state of Texas that has proceeded with this plat type process as it concerns gas wells I think we are unique in that respect and I think we have a unique problem that we are trying to solve but we have old plats all over the state of Texas in cities all over this state so that was important for me to hear that no one else has done this yes just final question you you 're with the LBJ school of public affairs what campus is that located what university is that associated with the what is it with the University of Texas at Austin fine institution okay any other questions comments yes council member and the concept of co-locations was council directed in terms of I mean we talked for months about this and the only people who were opposed to it were the gas operators who were vehemently opposed to it it was well received by many folks in the community we're talking about this kind of in the lead- up to what ended up being the frac band so it ended up several things change so the concept of it being good for Denton given to what problems we had and trying to solve a problem creatively was unique and I'm proud of our city for kind of thinking creatively in like the crisis we've had so the fees is simply a discussion that we've had as well kind of as just a mechanism to achieve it short of being able to require it be an ordinance so I think we can have more discussion last time but just this isn't staff directed this is an operator directed this was actually the community came together said co-location is actually a creative way to solve a lot of problems now we're just stuck with limited authority looking at the fees as a possible mechanism by which to encourage the behavior that our community said they wanted it is if you if you allow me it's very similar to setting up a let's say a water conservation rate you're still doing the analysis based on cost of service but you're setting up a tiered rate in such a way that people would be encouraged to conserve water now again that's where the fee actually goes up but it's the same concept these these fees that we have here are based on cost of service they are tiered in such a way to provide this this lessening on a per well basis not to be discounted necessarily but hopefully that would give you that result that there would be some incentive that's provided by it any other questions I guess are we supposed to give direction on this have you received direction I'll just receive a porthole discussion give staff direction so the direction is we we assume you want us to bring an ordinance back incorporating the fee study and recognizing the council is going to decide how they want to handle a discounted fee and for what period and assume the staff will make such a recommendation I think Dalton's thing about the wraparound right yes because my wasn't and I think before an ordinance comes forward we need is since gas well administration falls under planning I think we need to have some kind of a public meeting so that people can come see the plan and hear about it before all of a sudden there's an ordinance on an agenda I think they deserve again to come and do Q&A and gather information in an actual setting where they're allowed to answer and ask questions okay all right everybody okay with that I guess my question is with this proposed ordinance be put on the agenda as an item for individual consideration I would assume it would need to be yes I think there'd be some discussion on it I mean are you are you suggesting like a separate public meeting just devoted to the fee schedule or would it be sufficient if during that discussion council discussion of that ordinance that we take citizen comment like we would any other ordinance I think there is a great deal of confusion about lowering the gas fees why what is the purpose where are we headed with this and I think out of respect for our citizens they deserve that before it becomes an item of individual consideration at council meeting so planning conducts meetings all the time I think they need to conduct one on this any other comments yes I was just going to say that I would go ahead with the fee schedule but ask that we have time to talk about the reduction as a council and go over that because I'm there's some I'm just not comfortable with some of it so is there gonna be an opportunity for that for us to discuss it before we end up going to vote on it well I mean my understanding is what typically happens is if the direction is to craft an ordinance then the ordinance comes back if we need to have another work session on it to discuss what you're talking about which I think could I mean I understand what you're saying Councilmember was yeah I guess I don't know where that line is between having public work sessions and meetings where the public can speak and we're gonna so is it just because of this particular issue or is this something that is gonna be needed on every ordinance I'm not no because this is a specific topic okay that is a real hot button in Denton Texas and the fees no anything to do with gas well drilling and when you tell the public that this council is gonna reduce fees by 50% there is just a lot of misinformation confusion with our citizens on a lot of different fronts it's you know and I know we use the word colocation you know there are a lot of people who don't really understand what it is why we're trying to deal with that I just come back to the citizens deserve a seat at the table again with something like this planning can hold a meeting and answer questions I think an ounce of information is worth a pound a cure okay so councilmember Briggs I'm assuming that we would have a work session on your discussion or that discussion could happen in this meeting and then if we don't need to have that in a work session because if we're gonna have a public meeting on it then I don't think we need to have another work session on it I think it just needs to be put after the public meeting put on the agenda and voted because if we're gonna give the public an opportunity to come in that informal setting and ask questions and have some definitive answers that that I'm assuming that would be sufficient okay all right is that is that okay with you or is the council okay with that I think I've heard two things it sounded like her definition of a public meeting was almost like outside of the regular council meetings yes you were seeming to be talking about a public meeting that took place in the context of a council meeting no no I was saying that the public meeting she's talking about a sort of one of an informal nature that they may have with the neighborhood or may have with there's been meetings on some development over there by the university right those kind of things I'm saying that if you we if we had that meeting the issues that were of your concern about the the reduction of the fee unless you just want to have it with the whole council so I don't mind doing that I mean I guess I'm just I understand what you're saying about the the citizens at the seat of the table but I do know that we've talked about this issue for a minute for two or three years about co-location and all that so if we need to have a refresher I get that but I think sometimes we have to also just take into account that hopefully people are watching and if they're going to be coming so I don't mind having the meeting it's just also so I just I just think it's just difficult sometimes to think that the citizenry has no involvement unless there's some meeting held outside of some of the regular meetings to give them some information I'm certainly open to give anybody information they want but we can certainly have that I mean I don't know if the council needs to attend that I wouldn't think only if council members wanted to at that point they need to weigh in so we know how many people are there sure but it's more more than a discussion of co-location it's why this council wants to reduce the gas drilling fees by by half you know I mean to be fair though we I mean we're not taking action on this tonight we got major stuff to talk about I'm not trying to get into a debate but what I do think we have to be cautious of is using phrases like we're cutting the fees in half because people hear that and then they go you're cutting all the fees in half well there's some fees that are going up there's some fees that are half for a very specific reason for a very specific to drive a certain behavior that we want to drive so I mean and I don't know I just I don't care if we have a public meeting doesn't matter we're gonna have a public hearing this is all public information today they can all read it well I don't even know if we've decided that to cut the fees in half well that's I mean I thought I mean my understanding yeah I mean my understanding was we were gonna come back and talk about that that that was part of legal direction was bring back an ordinance with the fees but that is totally council's discretion whether we reduce those or not so that that was sort of my understanding on that so I guess that's why I was confused about the meeting is we haven't even come to a decision talked about it have the council discussion first and then hold a meeting so that we have something concrete to present to the public to actually say this is this is what we've discussed this is what we're thinking about come and learn about this that sure yes I mean because we haven't really decided on the ordinance and the fees within I don't think just so I understand this is for 90 days and this is for existing pad sites this is not we're not inviting new operators in is that right I don't know the answer to that question I don't know that it's new head sites no I mean we're trying to retire our old plats right to kind of figure out what our inventory is here in Denton figure out where everything is and try to encourage co-location am I right on that right and the recommended fee reduction would relate only to that policy issue not the inspection fees or any other fees that have been addressed only the ones that would write to those site plans on the existing pants okay yes two things I think that as we we talk about this one of the things we need to be clear is that this is probably going to have more impact for areas that are not in master plan communities then it does for those areas where they are because those sites were already determined right and planned out and and this is not going to have much impact on those I I got several questions since the agenda came out and the thing that I did was because I figure part of my job as a council member is to help clarify those questions and I referred folks to I asked them to look at the the AIS in the backup because there's a paragraph that explains it pretty clearly what this is about it says the proposal to incentivize respective gas well operators to apply for a gas well development site plan is intended as a solution to the current problem that exists regarding the lack of complete records for what exists today the incentive also encourages fewer long-term sites because the new gas well development site plan will act to group multiple wells together seems like that the explanation is actually already contained in the current backup and that we we just have an obligation in addition to maybe other meetings with with the planning department to help point them in the right direction where the information already exists explaining the purpose for what we're trying to do so then the direction is have a meeting with council to discuss the policy of the reduction and and the fees associated with in an ordinance but before we put the ordinance on the as an action item then we hold a meeting with planning invite the public to come out explain the ordinance and then we put on the agenda is that yes well I guess my my only concern about that is I mean think I think it'd be good to have the ordinance in your hand first and make some decision and give some direction this is an ordinance we're comfortable with I have a little bit of reluctance just sitting here thinking about having the planning department hold a meeting that the council is not there to listen to but would it be better to have a courtesy public hearing on that ordinance once you've seen it and feel comfortable with a fee schedule and give some direction on that to have a where the public's allowed to come and speak to the council rather than to the planning staff I'm just not sure that having the planning department host that kind of a meeting would get the council the information that you want from the public I just something to think about I guess my goal is not to have a public hearing the same night that we're gonna vote so if we could separate that I'd be fine with that and the public hearing would accomplish the same thing to allow people to come and ask their questions the bone bonus is that all the council is there so good thanks okay set good direction all right we've got one other agenda item we've got our dinner so I don't think the agenda items gonna take two or three minutes I don't think anyway but y'all want to grab your dinner first you want to grab dinner first or go through the last okay okay all right receive report hold discussion regarding the recall petition as against Joy Hawkins council member for district for this agenda item 383 e thank you mayor mayor I'm gonna ask Jane Richardson our assistant city secretary since this is a decision on this petition that was made by the city secretary under the city charter to essentially read to you what the conclusions were of the petition by the city secretary's office and then Anita and I and Jane if necessary are here to answer any questions that you might have but I think Jane's presentation will be very brief and you 've probably seen this information before but wanted to get it to you in public so Jane if you would mayor and council members the city secretary received the petition for the recall of district for council member Joey Hawkins on November 12th per the Denton City Charter the city secretary has seven days to review the petition as the petition does not comply with all requirements set forth in the Charter it cannot be certified and is considered insufficient the Charter specifies that no recall petition shall be filed within six months after an elected official takes place office the May 9th election results were canvassed on May 19th when council member Hawkins was sworn into office for a second term the petition was submitted on November 12th as such the city secretary has determined that the petition is insufficient all parties have been notified of the findings as required by law any questions same one all right thank you thank you Jane I will now convene the closed session at 558 we will consider the following items deliberations regarding real property under Texas government code section 551.072 consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071 deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas government code section 551.086 and then deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas government code section 551.087 oh oh good evening welcome to this Denton City Council meeting on December the 1st it is 20 till 7 so 640 our first item on the agenda is pledge of the allegiance people stand with me as we pledge our flags thank you 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 on behalf of the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the city of Texas one state under God one indivisible we have a proclamation that I'll come down and read this is for police appreciation day chief how if you'll come down and have your officers join you here oh great thank you all thank you all very much chief before I read this I just want to introduce you our chief police chief chief Lee how and if you would say a few words and introduce who you have up here joining you today thank you mayor I really appreciate the proclamation and thank you council for taking time to recognize us I'm going to pass the mic down here and just let everybody have a word here if you don't mind for just a second but let me first introduce the citizens police academy alumni association members all this all the folks in the royal blue shirts if y'all want to stand up and be recognized we have one of the strongest and largest alumni associations active right now that we've ever had in 22 years of citizens police academy and they do a tremendous job for us and we really appreciate them all the volunteer hours and things that they put in for us so I wanted to make sure and recognize them so I'm April McDonough Jason Colba Andra Jackson Paul Weatherford Scott Butler J. Siler Shane Couser Hino how do you follow that Brandon Hogan say that one more time so most of them are off duty so the streets are still safe we still great well I've got a little side story before I read the proclamation because my niece was a member of the Denton police academy when she was going to school here Courtney Watson she is now going through the Houston police academy and will be graduating in January 21st as a Houston police officer so a lot of fond memories and she really enjoyed that time and so thank you all very much for what you do for our Denton police officers and thank you absolutely all right it's great honor that I get to read this park proclamation pro clamation by the mayor of the city of Denton Texas whereas the city of Denton's police department has 16 4 dedicated police officers administrators and staff who daily serve our citizens and whereas the upcoming holiday season will call for added efforts on the part of our police department that result in greater safety of our city and whereas the citizens police academy alumni has chosen the date of December the 10th 2015 to honor the police department with a day-long reception of appreciation now therefore I Chris Watts mayor the city of Denton Texas do hereby and declare and proclaim December the 10th 2015 as police appreciation day in the city of Denton and urge my fellow citizens to show their support and appreciation to all the men and women in this community who have dedicated their lives to the field of law enforcement thank you very much chief and officers thank you thank you all very much thank you thank you thank you for your service okay thank you all very much I appreciate that 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 moving on to our next agenda item which is presentation from members of the public we have agenda item 3b1 which is william jones regarding various issues concerning the city of denton uh william jones if you're here just come on down and state your name and address and your time will begin my name is william jones uh marco wouldn't been here she was sick i'm a one is william jones uh they used to live at 2500 foot wood drive i don't live there anymore they tore it down i got the papers when you see the papers work yes sir this is your time you have four minutes just to share with the council whatever you'd like to share yes sir i got uh i got one animal control just took my cats six cats we had they took them cats you know cats i have six of them they took them i got the paper when we said the cats papers i got the paper do you want to see the papers well if you're if you can show the paperwork on that little piece of uh on that little square there in the overhead we'll get it if you want to show that to us okay i think this is it right about yeah yeah right you see him there you go thank you there's the cats right the papers right there and then we went to name it to them i got uh lexus tracy peggie liam danny and lexus and tracy that's it that's all i had okay any anything else you'd like to say you have a little bit of time we have a council member council member hawkins you had a question i believe mr jones is there is there anything that we can help you out with uh yeah i got uh i had my pocket manager just tore my trailer down for legal i used to live in the 2500 foot width drive trailer number seven yeah they tore it down illegally i'm supposed to be staying there i didn't they just tore it up okay mayor pro tem gregory thanks uh when you were done with your presentation if we could mr manager if we could have a staff person to meet with him and and and go through and see if there's anything else that we can do i mean it's sometimes not very comfortable speaking on the podium we will get in touch with him and i'll follow up on his presentation tonight okay thank you very much thank you i appreciate that hey i can't get me and trust my wife she only got the phone that don't she told me to give it a number yeah yeah we'll we'll have somebody meet you right out there and and we'll get that information so we can get get some more information to you and from you thank you very much thank you mr jones next agenda item is 3b2 kim mckibben regarding a proposed building in the fry street overlay district if you'll state your name and address and your time will begin good evening my name is kim mckibben i am the owner of the building located at 1306 west hickory street i own the building and the business that is in there i am here tonight to give voice to local businesses and property owners who are concerned about a proposed development in the center of the west side of the sub area a of the fry street overlay district our concerns include infrastructure parking density and resulting additional traffic in the area as proposed the building that that they're wanting to put up will require extensive variances to existing ordinances put in place in 2010 to protect the businesses and citizens in the area i have provided all of you with a copy of those ordinances for the fry street overlay district we're specifically requesting that no variances be granted for this proposed new construction related to off-street parking for residential and restaurant retail maximum building coverage floor area ratios height of structure or residential dens ities and i do want you to understand that we believe that a property owner has the right to develop their property also believe that they have a responsibility to develop within the existing ordinances that have been put into place to promote appropriate development dent on's worked very hard in the last 20 years and i'm really proud of you guys for what you 've done we're on now a very desirable location developers are here they're coming because we've set ourselves apart and been recognized nationally for what we have to offer the developers should also be willing to work with the city and demonstrate what they are bringing to denton not just ask for multiple variances so they can be profitable okay in 2010 the ordinances were amended to allow for the construction of the sterling street the sterling apartments the results have been a reduction of available street parking increased traffic and overall congestion in the area those amendments were granted for an entire block well with the exception of one small building the proposed building development for the west side of sub area a is in the center of the block as designed it holds the possibility of damage to infrastructure of surrounding buildings also a reduction of currently available parking for businesses housing and a church okay the building that i have was developed was built in 1946 its infrastructure the sewage the water is delicate and once they start shaking things around i'm a little fearful of damage that may keep me from staying in business during the construction phase of this building as proposed and after construction we don 't know how the increased density will impact our buildings and our living environment in the area development can be successful and profitable as and done within the established ordinances once again i 'm asking that no variances be granted for new construction new construction in the fry street overlay district of sub area a we have a couple of questions from council members council member wasney and do you own a business in this neighborhood i do i own the building at 1306 west hickory and the business that is located in that building and what is the name of that business that's big mike's coffee big mike's coffee so everybody knows the location and are some of your concerns traffic related on oak and hickory absolutely there are multiple traffic concerns now on both hickory and oak street not only with moving traffic but also with the parking traffic congestion that is generated from the university this current building as proposed will will add about 300 extra residents within the block and reduce parking by at least 71 parking spaces thank you traffic is an issue for us council member rodin thanks for coming by when i worked at you and to you is there at least twice twice a day i don 't tell tales yes uh and i remember being there before sterling came online and then after it seemed just from my anecdotal evidence being in there that there was an increase of patrons coming in just because of the density right next door to y'all did did you experience that i did not own the business or the building at that time i bought the business two years ago so is there an aspect about thinking about development this is i'm just curious from a business perspective as you as you think about increased density within a walking distance a block away in some cases of of your business is there a positive side to that or is it or is it all from my from the business standpoint for me yes there may be a positive side i can't deny that increased people they drink more coffee the downside of all that is related more to the community as a whole and to the overall environment so those are what my concerns are those are also the concerns of my neighbors in the historic districts that are surrounding this because of the increased density the increased traffic and the reduced availability of parking people who are generally parking that area will be forced further out into the neighborhoods and parking on the street so traffic becomes an issue pedestrians become an issue parking is a major issue thanks for taking the time okay see no further questions thank you very much thank you for coming and sharing with us we're now at our portion of the presentation from members of the public which is agenda item 3c which is additional citizens reports oh no you're good and this is uh the opportunity we have in our agenda that's limited to four people where you can come and just speak on an issue that's important to you to the city council we do have a card here for this this particular one as well deborah armator if you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin hi i'm deborah armator at 2003 misty wood lane and i'm not actually not sure if if this is something that i'm able to talk about so i'll just mention the topic and then you can let me know um i i was wondering if i'm able to say something about item uh 3d that was on the work session i was working during the work session so i wasn't able to be here i don't know sure is that okay okay um so i was just wondering so i i had met with um with dalton greg ory who was very kind uh to meet with me and um discuss that issue and i i'm not certain so this this item i should say is about the new gaswell fees and um the the citizens i think or at least i would um just like some more explanation uh from from council in in addition to the attachments that were in the agenda about how about why uh there's a need to um reduce the fees per per gaswell um the fee and for the for those of you who haven't seen it and correct correct me if i'm wrong and understanding it um but it seemed to me that for each new gaswell there's a reduction in fees before is that is that correct but before it seemed like it was an across the board reduction and and now is that right and now it seemed like a reduction per gaswell um so i may be wrong but i'm curious because i i i missed the work session anyway i was just curious if anyone could clarify council member washington so you as a citizen have questions about the gaswell fee the question as to why council is looking at it what is the reasoning what is the structure where is it going so that the citizens as a whole um have a question on this whole topic yeah yes yeah at least i do and i'm not sure if this is the right place uh or you know time in the agenda and apologies if it's not to ask about that and i know that council agreed to have a public hearing so that we could air this out with our citizens and you could understand what it is before it ever goes to a vote okay okay great okay so that's when we'll be learning more about it okay thank you thank you very much thank you thank you thank you you bet oh council member rod in did you have a question no i was just gonna it's not a question so no we'll talk later sorry sorry devra okay uh this is an opportunity you don't necessarily have to sign a blue card to come down and speak so if anybody'd like to do that on something that's not on the current agenda if you have a an item you want to discuss come on down state your name and address and it's not on the current agenda okay mr mayor council thank you for your time and your service uh a month or two ago we had a name and address oh i apologize i'm already breaking quorum here uh mark moffitt 2708 crater lake lane denton texas i want to thank you all for your participation in the national night out event that we had a month or two ago really appreciate all your support that is a great event uh had a lot of people show up at our particular party uh and we're very grateful for city staff police department fire department all their support so thank you again council for all that you do for us thank you mark thank you very much two more slots anybody else wishing to speak it's a rush down to the front okay well we'll go ahead and close this agenda item then so we'll move on to consent agenda item four but before we do that i'm going to take a little bit of editorial license and just give a shout out to the denton high broncos who advanced to the playoffs unfortunately a couple weeks ago they were eliminated but they played with great heart and courage the guy are wildcats are advancing go guy or you bet uh and last but not least and most important to me are the ryan raiders who my my nephew nick watz plays middle linebacker he's a senior starting and they will be playing saturday at at&t stadium at two o'clock playing alan so shout out to denton independent school district and the great job shown by those students okay now we'll get to our consent agenda council member haw kins thank you mayor i move approval of consent agenda items a through h mayor pro tem gregory second we have a motion and a second for agenda items consent agenda items four let's vote on the board please jane motion carries seven zero move on now to agenda item five which is items for individual consideration agenda item 5a consider approval of a resolution casting votes for membership to the board of directors of the denton central appraisal district and declaring an effective date and we do have a blue card to speak on that um is mr hutzpeth here would you like to go ahead and come down and speak mr hutzpeth for agenda item 5a okay mr husspeth you want to go ahead and speak before staff presentation or after it's it's your this is what what issue is agenda item 5a which is the consider approval of a resolution casting votes for membership to the board of directors of the denton central appraisal district oh yes before okay my name is willy hutzpeth i live at 623 newton i've appeared before that board for the last 10 years not the board but their employees and the person in charge of the the appraisal district i don't know how to say this kindly and in order so let me just say i'm disappointed in the way i've been treated out there and there seems not to be much help from your appointees that you put on that board supposedly they're all there the appointees from the city the the the other departments the school they're supposed to be looking out for the citizens when they're in that in that capacity of your appointees i'm going to be looking forward to seeing who you're going to appoint let me just say i hope it isn't mr johnson but i'm just kidding so but the homeowners do not get represented very well out there with with who you put on these boards look like it's just a a move that you just put somebody on there to say you put someone on there but there it doesn't seem to me as though they are looking out for them the homeowner here 's what i mean what is the fair value what is the consistent method by which you determine what is the fair value and make it consistent across the board it just doesn't happen the the the way that that that process works is the citizens presents what their issues are they close the meeting then the citizens can't speak anymore and within five minutes they determine what the value that property is five minutes now citizens whom i've represented and going out there myself takes several minutes almost hours sometime of presenting what they've discovered to try to show that the value is questionable five minutes they talk among themselves and they say what do you think what do you think what do you think then they assess the value well it seems like the appointee that you send out there should be doing a little bit better with helping citizens get that situation squared away so that it's a fair process for every for the citizens for sure that's my comment we have a question mayor pro tem mr hasbeth just for clarification purposes you've used the term appointees the backup of the information talks about the denton county appraisal district and it says that all of the uh taxing agencies get a certain number of votes there are a total of 5 000 votes assigned out based on basically the property valuations in those various taxing agencies it takes about a thousand votes for a representative to be elected to the board of directors the city of denton gets 196 votes so we don't appoint somebody we just cast votes along with all of the other taxing entities in the county and and those folks that get enough votes get put on there i just wanted to clarify that uh that you understood that we don't end up appointing an individual that's uh to represent us you do not that's correct it's it doesn't make any the vote does make a difference but but our entire vote if we cast all 196 votes for one person they might not get on because it takes a thousand votes so it takes other entities now the dentin independent school district because they have they're a much bigger entity they have a higher property assessment than we do they have something like 649 votes we have about 196 votes i just wanted to clarify that okay i that's fine i understand that but i hope you're not giving me clarification to to diminish my concern oh no and for what i think you should do to make sure that you're apprised of what the citizens are going to do and vote accordingly so is that what you were trying to say that that doesn't it doesn't matter your vote doesn't matter no sir i'm just i was just trying to clarify i can assure you that several of the people sitting up here have been in the same position that you've been and gone before them to talk about a protest of a of evaluation of a property we we have had that experience too okay anybody else thank you okay staff has a presentation for 5a thank you mayor brian langley is our assistant city manager who's going to present the staff's presentation thank you mr campbell mayor members of the council the denton central appraisal district board of directors directors their terms expire at the end of this year december 31st 2015 they serve terms of two years so they began their terms in 2013 the appraisal district has requested nominations from the taxing jurisdictions that represent denton county and so in accordance with that on october 13 th the city council nominated charles stafford and david terry to serve on that board both of them are currently serving on the board of directors now 17 nominations are received in the from all of the jurisdictions countywide and now the appraisal district is requesting that we cast votes for those candidates as we just mentioned a moment ago there are 5 000 votes throughout the district that are available and a thousand votes is the number of of votes the maximum number of votes is necessary to elect a candidate so there could be a candidate who's elected with a lower number of votes but just the majority of the votes that are cast in 2013 the city had 196 votes and allocated all those votes to mr charles stafford this year the city has 192 votes so the purpose of this item is for the council to cast the votes for the candidate or candidates of their choosing and on december 31st the appraisal district will tabulate the votes and submit all the results back to the to the taxing jurisdictions and the votes for the top five candidates that were are voted on they will become board of directors on january 1st so with that i'll try to answer any questions that you may have or explain the process in more detail any questions for staff seeing none mayor pro tem gregory thank you um we haven't had any workshop on this or discussion on this so i'm going to offer a motion so that we can have some discussion um i'm not wed ded to it but since we have nominated our our council has nominated two different people charles stafford who's on the dentin isd board of trustees and david terry who's on the city council for the colony i felt like that it might be appropriate for us to somehow weigh out those those votes and so i i came up with the notion of 60 of the votes or 115 votes going to charles stafford who's a resident of denton and 40 of the votes or 77 going to david terry that's that's my motion but um i'm certainly interested in you know any conversation we have a motion uh do we have a discussion or a second uh council member johnson well i i want to make sure that denton has the best possible representation on it so um don't know what our historical practice was but if we've only got we've got 192 total votes to cast i want to make sure that someone from denton is there so i would just go out there that might we consider spending all 192 of our votes well seeing seeing no second to my motion then i would i would amend my emotion to cast 192 votes for char les stafford and i'll second that motion council member grakery i mean johnson you'll second that all right we have a motion and a second do we have any discussion uh council member briggs i don't recall going to the process and choosing these two names like when it said council chose these two um was there a process or a work session where we go through and do we nominate these people or um i'm just curious yes the council uh we brought this item forward back to the council in october and the council nominated david terry and charles stafford the council by vote oh okay thank you any other questions we did have a we've got a motion and a second on the board any other questions or discussion i would say let's vote but i'm not saying the the movement or the second are on my screen but we'll go ahead and vote on the board uh motion carries seven zero we'll now move on to agenda item five b consider adoption of an ordinance approving an economic development agreement under chapter 380 of the local government code to promote economic development and to stimulate business activity in the city of denton between the city of denton and bucky's limited thank you mayor i'm going to ask amy bissett or director of development services if she'd present this item for your consideration and we do have a number of speaker cards thank you thank you mayor and council members i'd like to start by pointing out that i just handed our city attorney a mostly amended ordinance based on the discussion that we had earlier today and i will start by making a presentation here on this item all right mayor and council members what we're considering tonight is an ordinance adopting a grant agreement for an incentive for an approximately 40 acre retail development that is anchored by a bucky's travel center i'm going to walk through all the details of the project as they stand today i do know that the owner of bucky's is in the audience and would be available to answer questions as well for you but i want to make sure that we cover all the details of the project for for the public to have an opportunity to really understand this project so the the proposed location is just north of unicorn lake it's along i-35 across the road from brinker road and it includes a 53,000 approximately square foot retail store bucky's location that includes fuel sales and a car wash and it also includes additional development on pad sites along i-35e and i want to start by saying that the proposed development is not a truck stop and in fact bucky's specifically posts that semi trucks and 18 wheelers are not allowed on the property it is at a travel center that's intended for families to be able to stop while they're traveling through a town and to be able to have a full service retail experience the current zoning on this site is regional center commercial downtown with some overlay conditions which i'll go into in more detail in a few minutes but for a little bit of background to start off with it was rezoned in 2008 from rcr1 and at that time there were considerable discussions with the surrounding neighborhoods to provide some additional buffering and considerations for the neighborhood and so there is an overlay that we'll walk through in a minute that provides some protections the proposed uses are all permitted including retail sales and service quick vehicle servicing and drive through facility the intent of rccd which is the zoning is to create high density centers of activity including shopping services employment and and and others to serve an entire region when we consider the appropriateness of a project we always look to our future land use plan which is a part of our denton plan 2030 which is the community's long-term vision for our our city and per that plan the future land use land use designation is mixed regional use and i wanted to find that for you that's moderate and high density residential commercial office entertainment and other uses except industrial it is considered to be the highest level of scale and density within the city and it's located along i-35 interchanges and primary arterials that's the only place in our future land use plan that we allow this level of density and intensity the overlay conditions that are that exist today to protect the neighborhood are a 50- foot landscaping buffer which is above and beyond what the denton development code would require you can see that along the the back side of the triangle that abuts the the neighborhoods there will be no building within 100 feet of the residential developments that can exceed 40 feet in height however if it's more than 100 feet away the the height can be up to 100 feet the existing pond shall remain and the developer shall construct an eight-foot wrought iron fence that the intent of this fence was to allow the adjoining neighbors to still have the view of the pond this is a rendering of the proposed site plan today and i i know that's a little difficult to see but i want to walk you through it and the these these lines at the bottom of the triangle are measuring distances between the edge of the buckies building and the edge of the property lines of all the adjoining residential properties when the owner first came into the city and the the the square which is the buckies in the back was about 120 feet from the nearest residential property he has since redesigned this to eliminate at least one pad site for develop for future development so that he can move the the buckies towards i-35 as far as as far as possible in terms of the physical constraints of the site and i'll talk about that a little bit more here in a little bit so there's the existing pond that must remain this will be a dry detention area so it will remain green space that provides further buffering between and the the development and the and the residential neighborhood and then the darker green area is additional green space that's being left that is above and beyond what the code would require the developer to do and this is in consideration of protecting the neighborhood as much as possible i want to walk through these numbers with you lot one which is the lot that's that bucky sits on or would sit on and 11.67 acres or 50 percent of the total acreage would remain green space normally in a project like this in a in a high density commercial center the the entire property would be used but in this particular case the developer is making concessions to the neighborhood to to mitigate as much as possible and get as far away from the property lines as possible the pond is the equivalent of about five acres and the land value the land cost of that pond is almost 1.4 million dollars here are some renderings of what the project would look like this is the the design and its current phase you can see here and the bucky's anchor you can see the landscape buffer behind it and between that and where the neighborhood would be further back further setback here's another angle that shows on along the frontage the pad sites for future development and here's a lot of broader picture that shows the entire project from the top corner up there of the of the bucky's sign down through the entire development to to the southern end i want to start by talking a little bit about what this project has done for access improvements and mobility improvements for for the for text dot and i-35 along several intersections and first of all the the developer is willing to contribute all or a portion of two million dollars up front which is a local match that's required to expedite some some mobility improvements along i-35 and as such text dot has approved an additional 28 million dollars in in in construction for phase one that includes several improvements that i'll walk through for you in a moment and these improvements are scheduled to be completed by the spring of 2018 i want to be clear for everyone that the bucky's project is what precip itated these improvements to happen that they caused these improvements to happen but as of today these improvements will happen regardless of the future development of this site so there's a handful of improvements here that i want to point out to you this is the intersection of loop 288 lillian miller and i-35 this these improvements will include four lanes each direction u-turns on each side and pedestrian improvements brinker road which currently dead ends on the other side of the highway will be extended under i-35 with two lanes each direction a turn lane and u-turns amy real quick just to emphasize the loop 288 intersection currently there's one through lane and one turn lane in each direction that is correct and what i'm hearing you say is that's going to basically double you're going to have two through lanes and two turn lanes each direction basically doubling the capacity of that intersection which that's correct has been a very problematic intersection my understanding is that is the most problematic intersection that we have along i- 35 thank you that's correct and then along mayhill road there it will be improved to include a u-turn on the west side in addition to this project sparring those mobility improvements the project is will incur approximately 5.2 or 5.3 million dollars in additional infrastructure costs including wastewater improvements water storm sewer paving because as you can see in the site plan there's a there's an internal street to facilitate mobility through that development street right of way dedication and other miscellaneous expenses we held a neighborhood meeting on november 11th two of them actually because we anticipated a large turnout and did get a large turnout and i want to share with you the the the method by which we held that neighborhood meeting and what we what we heard while we were there the intent of the neighborhood meeting was to engage the neighbors that are closest to the development early on and to provide to provide an opportunity for them to give feedback to the developer about things that the developer could do to mitigate their concerns we knew that that the project could be built by right under the zoning designation but under your direction as council members you asked us to go have a neighborhood meeting and hear the concerns of those property owners and ask the developer to listen and mitigate those concerns so we did what we would do with a public hearing which is we mailed out an invitation to property owners whose properties were within 500 feet of the subject property we sent 122 invites out and as all pretty much always happens in today's world of social media that those invitations spread very quickly and not only that did all of the neighborhood surrounding know that that meeting was going to take place but a lot of people in the in the town as a whole knew that it was so and we realized quickly that we were going to have a large number of attendees and so we split it into two meetings and in those two meetings we had 79 property owners represented 40 were within that 500 foot boundary 30 were somewhere in wind river estates or south ridge estates and 30 were from the community in general we talked about their concerns related to the hours of operation and buffer requirements traffic visual impacts from the neighborhood lighting and noise tax incentives and crime concerns and i 'm going to walk through a little more detail about what the what the developer has heard and how how we've responded to those concerns or attempted to respond to those concerns so we have in response to that neighborhood and in response to just general conversations in the community made some neighborhood considerations a requirement of the required part of the grant agreement and and i'll walk through what those requirements are first that the developer will be required to design and construct the bucky's anchor in a way that's substantially conforming to the concept site plan the site plan is what you saw earlier where and the the owner had taken the bucky's anchor and moved it as far away from the neighborhood as possible with the physical constraints of the site to almost double the distance from the nearest property line so we're going to ask that the when it's constructed that it conformed to that site plan we're also asking that they perform a photometric design with a photometric engineer that would mitigate light impact and i can tell you that they've already engaged a photometric engineer and the the direction from the developer was get as close to zero foot candles as possible at each property line and right now the vast majority of the property properties that that border there are at zero foot candles by the design there are a couple that are at 0.1 or 0.2 and the ddc standard is 0.5 and so they've gone above and beyond that ddc standard and to try to minimize or completely eliminate the light impact to the to the adjoining properties and the the we're requiring that they retain the existing pond which is already a requirement under the overlay but we're also requiring them to amenitize the pond with walking trails and seating and and things that will allow the community to continue to enjoy that and they the developer has entered has indicated a willingness to stock the pond and allow fishing to continue and so that we're working through exactly how we would accommodate that and accomplish that but it is written into the incentive agreement as a requirement for him to to work with us and to amenitize that pond and the and the lastly that the developer must provide an opportunity for adjacent neighbors specifically those whose property lines border the development and i counted today i believe there are 27 homes that would be impacted by that and those 27 homeowners will be invited to sit down with and engage the developer to provide input looking at site plans regarding landscaping buffer and the masonry wall and the wrought iron walls that are all required as a part of the development so what we're here talking about tonight is an incentive and i want to i want to start by saying that an incentive is your only opportunity to to require any developer to mitigate the concerns of the neighborhood and the this project is is zoned by right and this is an opportunity should you choose to incentivize the project to put these requirements on the developer to to really take as much care and consideration for the neighborhood as possible it is a rebate of a percentage of local sales tax revenue only which means that it's performance based if they don't sell anything they get no rebate and it's new revenue only it is dollars spent in denton that aren't being spent in denton today and the developer has indicated that as of his most recent study 96 percent of the people that set foot in a in a bucky's store are not from the the zip code that the bucky's is in it is a it's a destination and it's a visitor attraction and so what that does it from an economic standpoint is it brings in new dollars to denton and the city would retain at least half of the sales tax revenue and i'll walk through exactly what that agreement looks like in a moment that with a net new revenue to the city of approximately four hundred thousand dollars a year the city would additionally retain all of the property tax revenue which with those two things combined in an average year would be around seven hundred thousand dollars a year that the city would receive in revenue that they're not receiving today which is the equivalent of approximately a one cent property tax increase on the entire city with no impact to the taxpayers and the impot in in addition this project is the impetus for an additional 50 million dollars value of text dot improvements that are now going to be constructed by 2018 where originally they were going to be constructed in phase two which could be in the 10 year to 15 year range from now so that what is the incentive for the incentive would reimburse actual infrastructure costs of about 5.2 million dollars it would reimburse all or part of the text dot local match which would be up to two million dollars and it would incentivize buckies to take these measures to protect the neighborhood including maintaining setbacks minimizing light impact retaining and amenitizing the pond and providing an opportunity for homeowners to give input to um to the developer regarding the landscape buffer and the masonry and broad-iron walls and a summary of the incentive that you're considering today is i want to start by saying that the economic development partnership board has recommended approval of this incentive unanimously it includes a reimbursement grant which it would be a 50 sales tax rebate on all parcels for a three-year time frame to reimburse one million for the text dot local match and based on the conversations that we've had i've prepared two different documents for you one of them is a scenario where we split the two million dollar local match with the developer and then there's a second scenario by which the developer pays the entire two million and in that scenario it would take us five years to reimburse up to two million in addition it would be an infrastructure grant which would be a varying sales tax rebate for a term of 20 years to reimburse 5.2 million for public infrastructure improvements i say varying because it depends on the use how what percentage they would receive they would receive a 50 rebate on the bucky's anchor and on sit down restaurants and retail establishments and 25 on other uses which would include commercial drive-through fast food and service and the incentive if you will is to require neighborhood considerations and it covers partial carrying costs of the infrastructure 5.2 is the value of the infrastructure today but over the life of a loan to put that infrastructure in it will it will exceed 5.2 considerably so in summary and one million for a text dot reimbursement or two million i have both scenarios in front of you 5.2 million for public infrastructure and 1 .9 for neighborhood considerations in interest the green space alone that the developer is leaving that he's not required to leave totals about 2.1 million and the total rebate would be an estimated estimated 8.1 million the total return on investment to the city during that same time frame would be almost 16 million which is about a 200 return and i'd just like to reiterate that it's the only opportunity to we'll have to require the developer to consider the neighborhood and mitigate for that i i do believe he's here i'm at the end of my presentation and i'm happy to answer any questions we do have a couple questions several questions mayor pro tem gregory thanks we almost touched on it or we did a little bit about the minimizing light impact at the property line there's a standard that comes with the property and we're talking about going past that have we talked about a way of quantifying that in our agreement some quant ifiable measure i was looking up candle power and and i was very embarrassed to see that it is considered an obsolete unit expressing luminous intensity so is there a way of quantifying lumin ous intensity as a part of this agreement have you talked with the developer about that what and based on the conversation that we've had today in work session i attempted to draft some language that says that the that a photometric design would be required to minimize the light impact and that it would be twice as restrictive as the dentin development no i take that back is that it would be more restrictive than the dentin development code is the way that it's written today but twice would also be an option twice as twice as restrictive okay so that would that would be more measurable than just more restrictive because more restrictive could be any amount less you're correct yes okay thank you council member hawkins thank you mayor amy can you go back to the slide that shows the distance from buckies to the homes i think that's a good map there is there a way to blow that up or can you you don't have to read every one but just kind of give some of the distances sure so on this corner here which is the shortest distance and it's 218 feet to the nearest property line and across here is more than 600 and the average across all of them is more than 400 does that help that no that helps i got a few questions here if i don't want to hog let me know if somebody else needs to ask one here so that pink area there that's esa and you talk a little bit about that and what how that can be developed or i've had concern from residents if cars were to exit going southbound off of there and there has been talk about a possible wall there to help protect the neighborhood from uh headlights and that sort of thing but what could go at the esa area well um the developer will ultimately have to do one of two things in order to cross that esa area they'll either have to provide for an alternative esa which is similar to an alternative development plan where they mitigate for that in some fashion or they'll have to go up and over it but it will um it will require um a process with the city by which they comply with our requirements and either mitigate for it or avoid it okay and i'll just do one more and then i'll let somebody but do we have any idea where the masonry wall would be or i know that it you said the developer is willing to talk with the neighborhood but so the masonry wall is um a requirement for developments that are considered large-scale developments by our didn't development code it's an eight foot tall wall that has to provide a buffer a screening between the property and the adjoining properties and the location of the wall is yet to be determined but i think that that would be a critical question to engage the neighborhood on because i think that there's some merit to um the wall being close to the bucky side and then the landscape buffer being between the neighborhood and the wall um but i think that that is that would that's going to come in the site plan and design phase and that's where we would ask the neighborhood what they would prefer does the site plan come to city council no it would not come to city council unless well it depends on the circumstances if they end up with an alternative development plan that would go to p and z i don't think would come to city council you could ask that it come to city council as a condition of the of the incentive if you wanted to and then there sorry and there's a ton of trees you know on that property there can you talk a little bit about those yes um there are some very mature trees along the property line here which is borders valencia lane and the developer has already indicated that an intent to preserve all of those in order to provide a visual screening and then the landscape buffer would be utilized to fill in gaps associated with those trees but we would um we would work with the developer to to maintain all of those thank you council member briggs so i have more of a technical question about the gas pumps and this might be something that um someone else would need to answer but i'm just curious about the underground storage units like how many will be stored underground and how much gasoline will be there in that area and how frequently do they get filled things like that if somebody could do you know i can speak to that a little bit but then when the owner comes up he may be better able to answer that question i know that they comply with all tceq regulations and that those underground storage tanks are double lined and precautions are taken that um that where they're in full compliance and there are no um there are no contamination issues or anything like that to be dealt with okay another thing is that we've been told many times it's it's not a truck stop that's what happens if for some reason down the road it's sold um is there any way to guarantee that it continues not to be a truck stop well a truck stop is permitted by right in the zoning district so um there's no way to guarantee that it wouldn't be one in the future or that if buckies didn't come here that one wouldn't come that it they certainly could come now or in the future council member wasney i have several questions how many cars a day do we anticipate visiting this site within a 24-hour period have we done any research on that i don't know the answer to that question but the owner may be able to speak to that and has planning done a tia traffic impact analysis on this project and the impact that it will have on 35e and no no tia has been done and though we've just worked with text dot to get the mobility improvements in place the development code here in denton has planning studied the development code on the books to make sure that this all conforms with our development code um we have we they have not submitted any formal site plan at this point in time so we don't have anything to react to and bring them into compliance with but it is written into their incentive agreement that they must comply to all ddc requirements and all of our codes there are some things here that we'll have to work with them on that we've already started talking to them about but until the site plan is finalized which will require some work with the neighborhoods we don 't know exactly what what we're dealing with but we they will be required to comply with all requirements so another concern the underground storage tanks no business lasts forever and so a concern of mine is the remediation of this site remediation for our listening public is the gas tanks and the removal and making sure the soil is not contaminated it's a very expensive process and has any estimate been done on remediation costs should this business um close remediation would only be required if there was environmental contamination and if they're complying with tcq requirements we wouldn't have any or tceq requirements we wouldn't have any um any foundation to assume that remediation would be necessary or that there would be contamination and last question just so everybody understands and this is just kind of a yes or no that the improvements to 35e the underpasses the overpasses including brinker road are controlled by texdoc texas department of transportation and that they will be built with or without buckies that's correct thank you council member rodin thank you mayor thank you amy for your presentation i want to uh i don't know if i have the most up-to-date ordinance in my hand it sounds like maybe there's but i'll ask you a question about you let me know if this has changed so under two grant conditions uh when you get to d uh grantee agrees to take certain measures to protect the neighborhood including design and construct the buckies travel center and substantially the same location depicted on the preliminary site plan attached here to as exhibit c which is what we're seeing right now correct yes and so what mechanism uh do you in your office and the planning team have to interpret what's a substantial change and what's a non substantial change because that's from a layman's perspective seeing that it seems pretty ambiguous so i are i think that how we would make that determination is have you done everything you can in um in consideration of the ddc requirements and the site constraints to meet the intent of what is here and that um we we've worked with them we've the planning team has gotten them from 120 feet to 218 as the close as the closest distance so far and i think that through that process through that site planning process and approval process that will continue to hold the that standard and that and the only give and take that would happen would be because there was no alternative and so because what we see right here this is what always makes me nervous anytime we're we're looking at concept concept plans which is what this is essentially is it gives a certain impression of this is what you're going to get and we don't have any guarantee that the especially when we're getting as specific as measurements on what we 're showing the public who's coming here to look at this tonight so what what is the fear is it because this hasn't been engineered to such a degree to be able to get that certainty to be able to say we can get to that particular foot distance from the nearest property is that the issue that's the that 's correct um the you know that there will have to be drainage studies and and now a water table analysis to show how big the detention pond needs to be and there will be requirements associated with mitigating the impervious surface and we don't there when that happens there are constraints to the site that you really can't anticipate until you're in into that process a little bit further i think that um through my conversations with the developer um you know we we talked about setting a number on there and the the fear there is just that there will be an unavoid able change that causes a significant issue and that would require an amendment to this essentially okay uh and so another question because somebody raised the issue of these trees and those are beautiful old trees and surely are are valued to the neighborhood was there discussion of tying in tree preservation specific tree preservation uh requirements as part of this grant condition section we didn't go that far but um that certainly could be something that is i guess i could ask the applicant added okay thank you council member hawkins thank you mayor amy can you talk a little bit about traffic um i've had a number of emails from people on the wind river side and the south ridge estate side that are very concerned that there's going to be a traffic kind of leaking off into their neighborhood and it looks like it's very difficult to like if i lived in wind river and i wanted to get to buckies it would actually kind of be difficult can you just sure i mean basically just walk work so the red lines on the on the screen are the traffic and thoroughf ares you've got the internal street which is the one that runs left to right if you will because this is not north this is not face north and and that that goes from the frontage road at i-35 into um a future apartment complex which has been approved but is not under construction or existing today it would go into an internal not public street into that complex we our ddc requires connectivity between commercial properties so that is why that is there and the other ways in and out would be brinker road which would come under the highway and then this exit here that goes out to the access road there's no connectivity between um wind river estates or south ridge estates and this property there's no difference in connectivity than there is today so to answer your question if you lived in wind river estates you would go out to lillian miller and down down the access road okay you'd be cutting through an apartment complex on the south on the on the south side okay that i mean that's good to know i dropped my kid off at sam houston every day and it's already very congested over there and you know we've even turned down projects because of that congestion over there so okay thank you amy the connectivity here is all with the access road okay council member johnson thank you mayor amy do you have a an aerial shot that shows the the off ramp and on ramps southbound and northbound on i-35 i do not i'm sorry so that's okay um for for folks that are familiar with that area so as a part of the i-35 widening your the ramps are getting reversed and what that what that means is and actually they're already in place between loop 288 and mayhill when the unicorn lake development was done um she's gonna i'm getting there so when unicorn lake was done they they paid to reverse the ramps so there's we've got as council member hawkins said we've gotten a lot of emails from people concerned about traffic and you know what what what got me pretty comfortable on the traffic issue was the fact that 96 of the revenue generated at these stores comes from people that don't live where the stores are which means they're travelers so what got me pretty comfortable with the traffic is if you look amy i don't know if you can zoom do you want this area here yeah i want to show the off ramp coming southbound and the on ramp going south bound right there from yeah so the loop you've got the off ramp so yeah so essentially what happens is if you're a southbound traveler you cross over loop 288 on the freeway and then you exit so what would happen if somebody was going southbound based on the site plan is they're on the freeway they get off they turn right into buckies they would come back out get on the service road and get back on 35 before they get to mayhill road so your so any southbound traveler is going to get off pull in the store and get back on the freeway without ever using one of our public streets northbound they've already been reversed as well so you're you're off ramp you cross over mayhill you get off you turn left on the future brink or underpass you'd go back under and then turn left and get on the freeway immediately before you get to loop 288 once again not using a public street so i think to address the traffic concerns because obviously when you think about the volume of people that visit one of these stores and that that area is you know loop 288 is already crowded mayhill is already crowded with you know five percent or four percent or whatever of the of the people using the store being local i think the traffic concern is not shouldn't be one given that 96 percent of the people are going to be coming off by 35 they're logically going to take the exit go in and get back on the freeway and never touch a city street so i just thought that would be important to show on the aerial there does that make sense yes mayor pro tem gregory in our agreement that we're talking about did we stipulate any level of buffer i know we're talking about a 200 foot setback but we have some different categories of buffer in terms of not so much the distance because that's already covered but the number of trees per linear foot that is stipulated as a part of the 50 foot landscape buffer that is correct yes and what level of buffer is that is it's above and beyond anything we have in the ddc okay so it's it goes beyond the the highest category of okay thank you council member rodin council member rodin did you oh okay that's right it was still on there i'm sorry any i guess i have one question on and so maybe i'm thinking about this conceptually incorrectly but i know that on the incentive for the out parcels or for the reimbursement of the contribution whether whatever level it is on the towards the two million dollars is there a is there a trigger date uh on that or my thought was if if we have a set amount of years like let's say year one through five and those out parcels get developed at a very pace so the reimbursement will be different and if we're saying that whatever the the amount is at the end of five years that we will you know sort of like that balloon payment is there some kind of trigger date for that um yes there is i'm going to try to find an agreement for you i was trying to read through but i couldn't grantee may designate the first day of any month to be the program effective date by providing written notice to the city at least 60 days prior to the requested program effective date so and there will be a motive to make sure that there's it's generating some sales tax revenue but on the flip side of that there will be a need to trigger it earlier rather than later because that the the 20-year term doesn't start until the the that match is repaid okay all right thank you any other questions for staff before we uh hear citizen comments okay thank you thank you uh i i guess i didn't see since this is an item for individual consideration typically in a public hearing the quote-un quote applicant gets an opportunity to speak um i'm assuming uh mr alphan that you i didn't see a card but if you once we get through here if you would like to speak if there's some okay all right thank you okay and just for clarification so that if anybody's not aware of this just so you can you can change it the white cards are for people who do not wish to speak and so we have several of these i just want to make sure that if you filled out a white card most of them you know it says i do not wish to speak but if somehow that was an error i just wanted to give you an opportunity to correct that okay the first speaker will be and when you come please come forward and state your name and address and your time will begin and what i will do is i will call out the first speaker and then i'll call out the second speaker who will follow them after their time is up brandon roper if you'll come state your name and address your time will begin oh and the next one up will be sarah cruz will be on deck uh yeah i live at 2505 k patters which is literally adjacent to that property and probably one of the closest properties to the west corner of the building and looking at that overlay that was up there earlier to me it seems a bit misleading and my i guess my my justification for that is i know from the corner of the building to my property i think says it's about 425 feet but i would be interested in knowing what the measurement from the end of the parking lot to my property is because i think that's probably closer in the neighborhood of 120 feet something like that um now if the development does go through i guess my question would be is there is there a way in the incentive to require that perhaps that buffer be built before any of the land development is done like the m ason wall the um you know the the horticultural buffer all of that um again i guess part of my concern i know that the buffer is said to be 50 feet um in width but i know the distance of the land between my back fence and the pond is not 50 feet so it kind of negates some of that and i know that sound carries better over water anyway so i think um i i don't know if there's any special concessions that can be made or not but like i said just wanted to to vocalize some of some of my concerns sure we have a couple questions for you yes uh council member hawkins thank you brian can you are you able to somehow tell me where your house is just so i know exactly it's is it the closest one or amir we able to blow that up full screen uh thank you and brian are there trees back behind your house or there are two or two or three large mature trees yeah i would say probably 25 30 years old okay if you use the mouse here sir you can point back to all right thank you so my property is uh this property right here i've got that's you know the back of my house uh so it's probably one of the closest to the the buckies development um like i said my my concern one of my main concerns is the distance between my back fence and where that parking lot starts i mean it's parking lot looks like it starts immediately on the other side of the pond um again if this development is inevitable uh my my question will be could we at least consider building that buffer the masonry masonry wall and uh the brush or whatever that noise barrier is going to be before any land development is done because i know with that heavy construction equipment i think that's going to be a a substantial uh a substantial amount of noise and light and everything else okay we have a question council member br iggs so are you in support of this project uh no i'm not and and honestly it's for for i guess you'd say selfish reasons uh i think buckies in general is fantastic i just don't want in my backyard you know and i know that there's probably some some um some i guess some positives to uh from a community standpoint uh but personally no i'm not in favor of well the reason i ask is because a lot of a lot of people are saying well this is unknown at least we know what it is so how how does that how do you feel about that um doesn't sound like there's a whole lot that can be done at this point so just trying to make the best of the situation and just trying to work for uh you know with the with the developer to uh at least voice my my concerns and and maybe we can work with them to make the the best of the situation well thanks for coming thank you council member was even have another question this project is not inevitable this council before you has the power to say no to the tax incentives uh i do appreciate that and that's actually uh that that's enlightening and appreciated okay thank you any other questions seeing none thank you very much appreciate it uh so up is uh sarah cruz and then on deck will be patty hayworth sarah is sarah here i will go ahead if she's not here and read her name and address into the record and her position on it yeah i'll go ahead and read it and if she comes in i certainly will allow her to speak sarah cruz 3-1-1-3 wig wig dion lane i'm sure that's probably not correct and she is in opposition so then we have patty hayworth and then on deck will be curtis lovelace miss hayworth please come down and state your name and address for the record your time will begin patty hayworth 1506 highland park road on the council agenda today is the aircraft incentive policy and one of the four listed criteria for incentives consideration is quote a number of net new jobs with wages above denton's median household income end quote isn't that a good criteria for consideration of economic incentives here buckies won't pay much more than minimum wage so why would we grant incentives to a business that pays near minimum wages we've done it in the past but is that any reason to continue the practice no one who works at this bucky store likely will be able to afford to purchase a home in denton or to spend much in the community on their hourly wages so why would we grant incentives to this business buckies is the hot mega convenience store right now but what happens when the next guy comes along with a hotter concept and a cooler logo with a more typical development assorted services in retail regular-sized gas stations located on corners if one fails or even several fail turnover or redevelopment will not affect the entire site risk is spread around and redevelopment can be achieved at a reasonable cost so the property is unlikely to sit vacant for an extended period redevelopment of this site will for all practical purposes be limited to another giant filling station but suppose the next owner says he can't make money unless he also services 18 wheelers and yes i know they're allowed but keep in mind those trucks will be sharing an exit with ambulances headed to regional hospital council may be able to include a use restriction during the term of the incentives that states no semis allowed but what happens to that use restriction after the incentives period is over someday the owner is going to retire and the company will be owned by others who may or may not take as good care of it as he and buckies may fail or may close but if that happens it won't be like a mall closing or the closing of a huge restaurant retail store office building apartment house or corporate campus this site will have special potentially very expensive considerations for redevelopment as federal remediation requirements could come into play and they could be significant on a site that size consider the big wheel truck stop in austin which had a 2,900 gallon release of petroleum some years ago the site sat vacant for five years and tceq remediation requirements went on for seven years buckies will have multiple buried petroleum tanks holding thousands of gallons of petroleum that will flow under many acres of concrete to the 96 pumps we don't know how many tanks there 'll be or their capacity at this time you if you got just a few more could i just have just yeah just wrap it up real quick appreciate that you bet thank you while the tanks are double-walled and better constructed than those of years past the odds remain that someday some will leak despite staff's assurance to the contrary the state ended its remediation fund in 2012 so property owners now are responsible for cleanups from leaks if buckies is redeveloped and a significant leak is found how long could the site sit vacant until a developer is found who will cough up the cost to clean it up or will taxpayers be stuck with the bill in today's work session councilman gregory raised the issue of the future of the brian coal plant and questioned repurposing the facility the same question must be asked here and asked now about buckies i urge council to look past the current cool factor of buckies and consider how the cute brown beaver could morph into an expensive white elephant and not kick the can down the road for future councils and taxpayers to address the location is too valuable miss a worth it at your time i'm sorry we got also a question i'm sorry yes council member wasney i'm required to ask a question so i 'll put this in question form do you see it as a public safety issue that buckies will be across the street from dentin regional hospital where ambulances are coming and going and people are coming and going from a hospital often with somebody an emergency in their car i do because of the location of the exit thank you okay thank you very much appreciate it good to see you next speaker will be curtis lovelace if you'll come down state your name and address and mark moffat will be on deck my name is curtis lovelace 218 north elm my comments on the issues related to buckie are limited to one area and that is the financial incentive that are being proposed i'm 70 years of age i've been in denton that entire time for 35 years i have rented buildings and commercial property to tenants probably over 100 businesses not one of them ever got an economic incentive from the city of denton and a lot of them could have used it i simply say to you here that buckies ask too much if you look at the numbers first of all let's talk about the benefits we're getting from text dot we've heard those are already committed they're not going away whether buckie stays or not then you look at the numbers that they give you on the sales tax and so on buckies is making multi-millions and they're offering us peanuts if if y'all want to approve the development i don't have any that's up to you you'll decide about those issues but i say to you that the money ought not to be given back to them at that level i think that's a terrible mistake and furthermore you hear the argument well the business will go elsewhere this isn't jacksboro texas or semore where if you don't get a business you're not going to have another one you look at this metroplex and you're going to have one after another wanting to come here they're doing it around the entire area so there is no reason that we have to have buckies now maybe they're a good deal that's up to you to decide but we don't have to give them the money that we're going to in this deal and i say to you that's something that if you decide to do that i hope you're prepared to talk to your constituents who have businesses and who are going to start businesses and say this is why we gave buckies this deal with millions but we're not going to give you any and i think that's a hard question and i hope that you'll consider it and if you do the deal that you cut back on what you're offering them thank you have a question council member briggs i just wanted to know if if you were familiar or if you have heard that buckies will not stay or develop if we do not give them this money i've heard that okay thank you thank you and see no more questions thank you mr levels appreciate that thank you very much mark moffett is up and then mr willie hudspeth will be on deck mr mayor council mark moffat 2708 crater lake lane denton texas speak in opposition to the item agenda i like buckies i really do it's a cool deal it really is talk with mr uh mr alpyn great guy i do genuinely believe that he intends to be a good neighbor to the surrounding properties that are there i'm not here to say tonight that we shouldn't have buckies built that i want to make clear that that's not what i'm saying okay or that nothing should be built there i think that is irrational and and it doesn't respect what needs to take place on this property for the future of this town the issue tonight is whether or not buckies should be you know should receive public funds that's the issue at hand here whether or not it needs to receive public funds for a private investment that has no public benefit there is no public benefit for this property and for this development buckies is a good business it's a good business model it's very very successful big store sales all that kind of stuff it shouldn't need public funding to be successful the deal as it stands right now is not a negative rate of return to the investor the developer he wouldn't be considering the deal right now if it was we don't need public funding to enhance the rate of return to the developer it is unprudent unwise public policy we shouldn't be considering that i had a conversation with mr alpyn at one of the meetings very nice man i appreciate his time and respect his uh his right to develop the property as he see fits and that's fine we asked him specifically a question that night why do you need public incentives i am not mincing words i am not paraphrasing this is a direct quote so that i can borrow more money to build a bigger store to increase store sales verbatim that is not good public policy for us to invest and give tax incentives taxpayer money to enhance a developer's rate of return when it's already substantially positive it's not good public policy and if that's the way our economic development code is written and we need to take a look at that i would urge you to reconsider that these are low wage jobs there and it's not compatible with the neighborhood again this is not good public policy the current deal for his investment of two million dollars provides almost a 20 percent annualized rate of return to the developer if you look at it another way that's a loan that we are giving to the developer at loan shark rates that is not sound public policy and i can't support it thank you i have a question mary pro tem gravey thank you thanks for your comments thank you sir um and i will tell you when i went into uh our first discussions on this i was feeling very much the way you did um as i looked at the proposal and i looked at what the restrictions are on the property now um it occurred to me that the incentives or the rebates the tax rebates for the public improvements that they're required to do was the best tool that we had in our tool belt to require a higher level of quality a less intense development what we've gotten in in its place instead of a 50 foot setback is a 200 foot set back and uh instead of just five acres being held out of development uh 11.67 acres and that's just on lot one which is the the lot that's in the the pie shape closest to the the homes when i saw that it made me think this actually may be uh worth the investment in tax dollars to secure a higher level of mitigation than we could otherwise require does that sound um out of line or do you do you see the possible logic in that in that line of thinking sure councilman greg ory i i appreciate your opinion i respect your analysis of the situation uh we're gonna have to disagree on this one just respectfully please um my analysis of the situation uh there's a couple of specific points that need to be addressed here okay number one is the question of whether or not this property is going to be developed with or without incentives that's a question that's either a yes or no question and will it be in the near term future my analysis of this is you know two to three years ago on this particular property and i may be dead wrong you didn't see anybody wanting to do anything on this deal because of the uncertainty about i-35 now that time has progressed we've gotten into a situation where there's a light at the end of the tunnel with text dot and there's a possibility that this property is now valuable and it is what we call ripe for development that timing is now that's why you're seeing this opportunity being presented okay so this is a prime piece of real estate and i i with all due respect to city staff i disagree with their analysis that this is the only opportunity that we have to address these issues with a developer i respectfully disagree with that and i would suggest to you that the city of dent on and the citizens have the upper hand in this argument we shouldn't let go of it okay and with that there's there's no reason why this property will not develop on its own with free market principles within the near term future and i do see that any reputable developer that wants to do a deal on this particular property will consult with the citizens and be a good neighbor i can 't see a reputable developer coming to do this deal and saying i'm not going to work with the citizens so i respectfully i disagree with with with your points there sir councilmember johnson thank you mayor mark thank you for coming out appreciate your your input i do want to ask you for some clarification one of the things you said a minute ago was that why should we make a loan to a developer that gives him a 20 annual return i'm trying to follow that how we're making him alone we're effectively giving him alone okay we're we're i'm sorry i don't have the financial ability i 've got a finance degree i can't do math but but i can tell you this okay what we're doing is we're exchanging okay and when you take a look at the balance sheet it effectively becomes a loan because we are repaying the loan to him okay at a higher interest rate is what's happening so it's almost like shorting a stock where you borrow the stock and then you sell it later and it reverts back to your balance sheet long complicated accounting situation but to answer your question effectively we are borrowing money i had a specific conversation with staff about this issue and i said why are we wanting to use you know why why are we doing this okay and the statement was is that why why should we use the city's money when we can use his money and my point to that was to him well if we're talking about a two million dollar deal here okay where a two million dollar loan or two million dollar expenditure is going to be taking place and eight knots it went from nine and a half down to eight something okay over a period of 20 years the annualized internal rate of return of that is near 20 and that's what is being repaid to the developer yeah i think that the clarification i was looking for because i see because i actually see it the other way right so if he's going to spend 5.2 plus the two million for the bridges at 7.2 million up front and then he's going to get that back out of his own sales tax half of his own sales tax over a 23 25 year period well if you look at the time value of money we're getting the loan right he's like he's giving us an interest-free loan because what he's getting back is half of his own sales tax we get the other half we may have you know the property tax so so so i just want to make sure i was following your logic when you said we're making him a loan because it really seems the other way to me so i just want to make sure i understood that thank you council member wasney oh mr mayor if you don't mind i'd like to respond to the question council member johnson had a question i'd like to respond okay if that's okay so to your point there we may have to differ on public policy in that area of whether or not it's considered a loan or not here's the deal ultimately it's an expenditure okay and there's no way to get around that any type of grant that we give or rebates or anything like that those show up on our income statement as expenditures okay their lost revenue is what they are okay so that is a payment that is being made to someone that we've borrowed money from okay i do disagree with the analysis that the five something million that he's going to spend on the property are public infrastructure okay and if you and i disagree on that that that's fine i i get that but the issue here and you're familiar with commercial development okay several people in the room are familiar with commercial development the issue there is these are costs that a commercial development would ordinarily incur they are not unique to this development you got to put in streets you got to put in sewer you got to put in water electricity all that kind of stuff the majority of those costs are going to be related to the pad sites that are going to be sold off to other investors i preach mr muffett and i appreciate thank you i want no we got several other questions that's why i wanted yeah i just want to make sure we we've got a lot of people here we've got a lot of people here we got to get through council member wasning thank you for coming out tonight thank you ma'am i consider you an expert in real estate and real estate app raisal i deny that i do too there is a concept in planning and real estate called highest and best use as an expert in this field would you consider this use of this property highest and best use highest and best use is a very very complex analysis and it requires a lot of research given the amount of time and the information currently available to me i'm not qualified to make an observation on this i can't speak to that i'm sorry i wish i could i would like to be able to see another retail type development that was there that would maybe not create so much traffic flow i think the neighborhood would like to see that as well nobody disagrees with the pad sites up front nobody disagrees with that it's the impact that the bucky stores specifically is going to have on traffic and i think that another type of retail operator would be more suitable to that type of environment they may have an equivalent highest and best use in the terms that they would both provide the highest rate of return to the investor i can't speak to that i don't have the specific numbers i appreciate your question council member hawkins thank you mayor thanks mark when do you think it's appropriate to use an incentive or is there ever a time for a city absolutely sure absolutely so many of you all have run campaigns here recently many of you all have stated that one of the things that you want to see happen here is higher paying jobs in denton all the higher paying jobs south of lake if you want a high paying job which i would suggest is probably greater than 20 an hour would be calculated as a as a higher or mid paying job you got to go south of the lake in general so if we have an opportunity to incentivize bringing higher paying jobs to this town i could certainly see that okay but the issue here is that you have a a project that has no public benefit it has no public benefit i can see the justification i've had conversations with several of you about this on the convention center you know i i can 't really disagree with that i some of the points i disagree on the convention center but in general i can see a public benefit there to having the convention center here in the town that 's a public benefit you know other types of properties that would have public benefit i could see incentivizing those this doesn't have a public benefit with all due respect it doesn't it's got low wage jobs we're giving away most of the sales tax we'd be better off just spending the money on our own doing the infrastructure improvements there and then giving no incentives that would be a better rate of return and better fiscal policy okay i appreciate your question mayor pro tem you're an appraiser that's your that's your job i'm not germaine to the conversation sorry well i was just curious because i you're so articulate your answers are so long i was guessing that you were a lawyer but but i can relate to the idea of a person that's all it 's an attempted humor i can i can there are attorneys in the room i can understand the idea of a finance major that can add i was an i'm an english major that can't spell so i sympathize many things i can't do mr greger i appreciate your service council member riggs so i want to back up to something you said just a minute ago that the front pad sites are not the issue so you know they're also being incentivized and that's not an issue for you state the question one more time i apologize i i thought i heard you say that there there didn't seem to be an issue at all with the front pad sites in this in this deal okay i think i understand where you're going here okay let me try to answer that so the pad sites when i say there's not any objection to the pad sites okay i i think if you were to take a consensus of the room here even in even from the individuals that oppose that are speaking in opposition to this project i think that you would find that there's not any opposition to uh single tenant retail fast food uh sit down restaurant those types of things on those properties there my objection to the incentives with those types of properties is is we are entering into an agreement to grant incentives to businesses that we've not met yet we don't know who they are they have not been identified we have no site plan for those specific properties and we don't know what we're going to be getting on those and and i would object to any type of public policy that would grant incentives blindly to something that we don't know about thank you thank you a couple comments appreciate you coming down i know you and i've talked about this and and i appreciate your friendship and your you're coming down to talk to us i guess um and i must say like you i respectfully disagree with a lot of your points only simply because we have incentive based upon that logic then we've incentivized razor ranch we've incentivized denton crossing and oftentimes there was no way we knew what was coming there and additionally those wages are about the same if not less than what so there's two different types of incentives and you and i had this conversation sure absolutely about we have incentivized high paying jobs with victor equipment with property tax abatements but the sales tax 380 agreements has a different purpose and that is to create additional retail development that will also create additional retail sales tax so i certainly respect your your position on this i respectfully disagree with it uh and many points i think a lot of it is most people are opposed to the use that it's a buckies and if you're opposed to the use it doesn't matter what we do here what he's going to do that's not going to matter so i guess i just want to make sure that i make clear to the public that we do have incentives in place on other large developments that as you would put it provide no quote unquote benefit that they're going to put those streets in any way but that that's what they're doing is putting in public infrastructure so i appreciate your your your passion for this and your points uh because they're they're well thought out it's just as you said sometimes we just have to agree to disagree on some of these to that point there's a question there i believe yes i respond if you don't mind sure okay and i know other folks want to speak what was the question that i what was what you said you're responding to a question i believe there was a question involved there i believe that's the typical response is that but not the statement no no no i think i was just making a comment so you don't want any response well no i mean i think i think what we've we've probably said what we need to say but i i do need to make a comment i apologize i will make it very brief okay those particular deals that you're talking about okay with razor and with brinker crossing okay those are much grander scale developments than this particular property is okay the the the overall rate of return and the amount of sales tax generated for those types of properties is well beyond what this property will do okay simply because of their size and scope i've heard the argument a lot of people say look at the colony look what nebraska furniture mart's done for that area and i and i get that buckies is not nebraska furniture mart okay and and and given the size and scope of the development there i do not agree that the incentives are necessary i appreciate that i respect all of your time thank you so much thank you so much it's okay if we disagree absolutely yes sir thank you mark we've got willy hutzpeth and then up after mr hutzpeth is is it earl herrington or herrington on santa monica drive would you put up the slide where the pad where the pads can be seen and rendering rendering uh no i need the one where it kind of shows the artwork and what it possibly would look like oh the site plan yeah the the concept plan i think is what it was mayor and council members my name is willy hutzpeth from ever six twenty three newton several points i want to make i agree i i don't i'm not in favor of this plan uh to not buckies but the fact that taxpayer money is being whatever word we're not getting it someone else is getting it and i heck i need an incentive i got a property over there no give me an incentive heck i'm just i'm poor give me give me some money uh i view this the same way i no one gives me any money i have to go out and work for and i work every day so i i don't think we ought to be doing that two of the arguments were well what is the buck is doing for us well if they're going to if the highway is going to be built anyway if it's going to be done anyway i don't see the purpose of us giving incentives for them doing it that's one point uh another issue i'm not even i don't have time to develop that but so another issue is bj's is over there low paying job bomb daddy's is coming it's over there another low paying job and i've already spoke to those not bone deadies deadies but i'll be out there talking to them too but bj's for sure they're no blacks they don't hire blacks i can name the only person i what i've seen af rican americans hired at is the ice cream place over there uh one the what's the incentive of this huge place i just wonder how many african americans will be working there for sure in management probably none uh so that's another issue that the low income hiring no minority representation so that bothers me the other if a council person is going to benefit financially from selling those pads i don't think you ought to take this deal if a council person had to recuse themselves from this discussion and the vote to do to it to do this i think the deal shouldn't be done it's not worth what that's going to look like with selling the future pads if a council person is going to be benefiting from that and or if somehow they're benefiting from that location being chosen it doesn't look good it just need to not be there i can tell you what i'm going to do if this thing goes through i will be watching the sales on that property and make sure that i've already said they shouldn't have they shouldn't participate especially if they're going to get future funds from those pad sites that have not been sold uh any questions thank you mr. husbeth i appreciate that thank you mr herrington and then on deck will be sparky pearson mr mayor thank you for the chance to be here tonight my name is earl herrington i live at 3010 santa monica drive in denton i'm from denton i live here obviously i live in south denton i live in district four very close proximity to this property i'm very familiar with the area obviously i'm very familiar with this property specifically we've talked about a lot of very specific and detailed things relating to this issue and i want to make two comments one to councilman johnson's points of clarification about what we're talking about we are not giving bucky's money we are reimbursing for money that he is providing on behalf of me as a citizen of this town as a citizen of this area of district four he is being reimbursed on his own by his own business for the monies that he's spending that's the one point of clarification i wanted to make from a larger perspective as when it comes to in my opinion economic incentives in whatever form that may happen in the in the form that we 're talking about tonight truly giving out economic incentive dollars in forms of giving them a check whatever that may be i don't know what the legal standard of what that should be for but my opinion is in terms of not just what is it for but who is it to our city the convention and visitor bureau their tagline is denton original and independent i can't think of another concept that is more in line with the notion of original and independent than veever atlant and bucky's so i would encourage you as a constituent of this body that we look at it from the standpoint of not just what's the rate of return is it alone is it not look at it from the standpoint of who do we want to be associated with bucky's is going to be associated with the name denton if we do this deal in perpetuity my thought is what's the use of the dollars use these packages for things that identify denton with things that are great use it for things that are world class use it for things that have obviously long-term economic and lasting benefit but associate our town with things that are great brands that are great people are people that are great and operations that are great and as one that's in operating businesses in this town i don't know a better one than bucky's so i would ask that you support it thank you thank you we have sparky pearson and after sparky oh i'm sorry oh i'm sorry keely i didn't see you we we've got a question council member riggs i'm sorry if you could come back up i didn't see it i apologize i was just curious if you had any financial benefit from this development i do not i'm not an owner i do not okay thank you that's all i'm just curious thank you and after mr pearson will be ken gold hi i'm sparky pearson i live at 30 9 mosswood drive argyle texas and i'm the owner of the land so what i want to talk about real quick is i'm the person who contacted bucky's and i contacted him on behalf of the city of denton in our area because i i respectfully disagree with the whole concept of what is neighborhood compatible the neighbors in current decided they didn't want this i didn't want another datco i hate driving down 35 and seeing the new campus business built here for 75 years by the teachers of this town they're relocating right down there and i was like you got to be kidding me we got a chance to bring a brand to our town that is a world-class operator has things that we can be proud of i've had offers from strange uses you guys don't even understand in a lot of regards what it takes somebody like me to just sit and listen and watch when i rezoned the property and didn't need to give any more than 15 feet in the current zoning but i love this town so much i gave 50 i left the lake so that people could look at it i've had citizens go over there that have trespassed that i have not ever done anything about i've had people going all over me and running over everything we're doing and then wondering what in the world would we do with this property i'm telling you i've searched far and wide my real estate experience and my background says i don 't know where you go find businesses like this that do this kind of excellence that would come here this is the apple store of travel centers this is something that we could be so proud of that everybody in here is you're talking about incentivizing incentives are for winners and people that are going to do phenomenal things you're talking about somebody that everybody is mortified of a success you're not talking about something that's a barely a success you're talking about something that is absolutely going to be fantastic for us and what what i look at and when i see this i'm sitting here going wow what an opportunity for denton how great this is i don't want to miss opportunities for our town i work diligently every day to bring great things to this place it 's it's a life passion now mine and i want to leave things better than when i found them that land belongs to me i'm making the decisions of who i go to contract with and who i don't and i'm deciding what kind of uses inside the code and everything else would be good for our town it's not the only reason you guys are even involved is the incentives and what we've got here is somebody that's above and beyond in their sales tax and their ability to generate a great business model that's why you're getting to even talk about it it's a 380 grand it's it's something to give back what they 're spending and so i highly recommend we do this it's a fantastic user and something that'll be phenomenal for the town council member johnson thank you mayor um mr piercer are you paying me any commission or anything on this sale of this property i am not yeah well i handled it for nine years and couldn't sell it because you turned down how many apartment deals i've turned them down and talked about a lot of different uses i bring that up because i think it's important for people to understand that well i'm gonna ask you a specific question do you have the opportunity to sell all or part of this property today for a apartment development well if if i i could if under a sup but i could also develop myself and take a percentage of mixed use and actually build apartments right now right well i shared i shared with the council today one of the site plans that had one of those potential buyers had gone through drc and correct all that stuff and so i asked you the question because i think it's important for people to understand too that as a the owner of this property there have been several conversations that we had in the past when i was representing you where i was saying i can't believe you're not going to do this deal and you said we can do better we can do better so you know i think i'm asking you this question you know as the big bad property owner that you know the property owners seem to get couched as is of all the things that you could have sold this to and you could have sold it to plenty why buckies why buckies there's several reasons one you have a company that is obviously community minded i still can't believe when i look at the site plan i almost i can't believe somebody doesn't utilize every square foot i would i mean if i'm developing it out you'd see something more similar to what the residence in is on 35 it's the use that needs to be there it's the kind of development the dense development it's what this corridor should be and could be but you're also dealing with someone who is now taking sensitivity to that and used all this in to help a neighborhood so a it's the quality of the human beings that are behind it b it's a brand i want to be associated with as a city i i think it was a colossal mistake what corinth did and i don't want us to make colossal mistakes when we have great operating companies that want to be part of our town and i know what's going on in other developments i spent a long time in dallas and in big development world and i really believe this is a company that they will do what they say they're going to do it and do it in excellence and why in the world do we not want that to be part of something that we incentivize to be here and i also do the last thing i'm gonna say is it's because i believe greg it's a success we want when winning formulas in denton you guys have incentivized things that are on a hope a hope this is good a hope this might happen what's amazing about this one is there's proof everybody's scared to death because it's going to work that's what's funny that's what's interesting but that's my final reason this is something that's worth the the the incentive because it will pay back to the community what you're incentivizing the rest of them are hopeful that they do this one is factual and many can be backed up with a lot of councilmember breaks did i hear you say that you reached out to buckies and recruited them i did i made the first phone call out to them i was under the impression our our economic development board did that i called i called them after i had reached out to see if this was something that they would like to be a part of and i i originally reached out and said would you guys like to be a part of this from economic development because we're going to need it to and to get this kind of a user to town thank you council member rodin thank you mayor thank you sparky for being here sparky beaver buckies all that's great um as a landowner and someone who's been involved in several businesses in the past and i know you've come here before with i can't remember what the project was in the uh unicorn lake area where we were talking about how to how to kind of spark additional interest in development and businesses in that area we also know to the north of here there's been some struggling areas where the old albertson's were and whatnot what if any benefit to those two sides of the buckies does buckies bring to sparking anything additional both in unicorn lake and in that larger shopping area closer to lillian miller well i look at your opinion in my opinion i just feel like this whole what this does the unicorn lake it makes it where you're looking at the additional land use will be absorbed another thing that's not discussed is when the when the bridge is put through the 50 acres it sits right by denton regional goes into play that also goes into development that also can garnish serious tax revenue for our city and and other things that will occur because when large when large retailers or things of this magnitude go into the location just like you're watching a razor ranch you're watching momentum inertia and things happening that create additional development which which will fill fill out the land in unicorn will also jump the highway and help drive the rest of the land that's undeveloped so it opens up a tremendous corridor that has been lying here that we have we are waiting to get tax from and everybody's waiting this this i i had a gentleman approached me for the to help with a school district that was trying to get their bus converted to a food truck to get kids out at atc and what was amazing i said well why don't you come to a meeting about buckies and the ad valorem's alone were more than we could probably raise around town with a bucket and so that is one of the another reason i i feel like this is important to that area it'll it'll kick off tax tax all along that corridor that's that 's not alone as stated it's it's found money and windfall in many regards for our city all right any other questions oh yes i'm sorry councilmember hawkins thank you mayor sparky do you know who owns that there's a chunk it looks like that's almost a tree stand north of that am i looking at that map right do you know who owns that or do you talking about behind the the goodwill yeah yes last time i checked that was owned by virginia mcneil but i'm not sure if she still currently owns it okay thank you all right thank you thank you all very much very much uh ken gold is up and then on deck will be matt bataglia state your name and address your time will begin my name is ken gold i live at 2512 netches trace in south ridge estates on the visual up there i was the neighborhood to the left just a couple of things i while it may be debatable whether this project is good for didn't i have no doubt it's good for the guy that just spoke you know in the presentation by the staff did i hear this right that they wanted to engage the neighbors early on november 11th that's when they had the meeting what's today the first that's less than three weeks this deal was well underway before any one of us ever heard of it uh project cartoon something like that in denton we already have we already provide a good business location with good climate great community tax incentives are not really needed to attract buckies the location alone should do it all by itself while this development may have the needed zoning it's still not appropriate for the specific location because of the obvious negative impact on the adjacent existing neighborhoods i'm talking about the noise and the lights that we're trying to mediate but also the traffic if you're going to go down 35e access right there after this thing is in and try to get to wind river or to get on the freeway from lute 288 you're going to be having to go in front of this thing on a daily basis i live real close if i want to go south if i want to go to dickie's barbecue i'm gonna have to go in front of this place on a daily basis the traffic is a real problem for the existing neighborhoods buckies will add thousands of vehicles every day to an already overwhelmed area even with the i-35 improvements underway and there's really no tia amazing it 's clearly an operation more amenable to the north end but that's not likely to be agreeable to the buckies folks because they are planning a buckies down 35w near the racetrack a north end location would seem to be too close to the racetrack location for their business plan buckies needs this 35e location to complete their market vision for the area and accordingly any need for tax rebates is solely buckies for those who say something worse could go in there i agree by the same standard of pure rhetoric something better could also something worse that's not a very high bar to set and it hardly justifies what's about to happen that argument is a straw man thrown out there to distract with an unending series of what-ifs as archbucky beaver arch beaver aptly stated in a meeting with concerned residents he probably wouldn't want a buckies behind his home either that statement which i predict he may walk away from sums this whole thing up nicely i call on the council and specifically my district representative joey hawkins to vote to deny these tax rebates because it just adds insult to injury i'm not against buck ies i'm against buckies there any questions thank you thank you ken you bet uh matt batag lia and then on deck will be is it brent camp hey council i'm matt bataglia i live at 114 industrial street i'm a lifelong resident of denton born and raised here i want to thank you guys for the service you provide to our city um i just came tonight to show my support for buckies because i assumed there was going to be a lot of opposition um i always looked forward to the day when our city could attract companies that deserve to get incentives um and i think it's going to be great for our city i don't have too much to say on it i think we've pretty much been covered but if you have any questions for me from a younger you know average citizen i could answer them any questions one thing i do want to say is um i've heard a lot of talk about the low income jobs uh well i do understand they're technically low income they're closer to double the minimum wage as they are to the minimum wage i live on ten dollars an hour and i'm able to afford a nice townhome down home or downtown and save some money i got a lot of money saved up um so i'm not sure if i'm a lesser citizen because i make less than the minimum wage people are going to be coming here to moving here to get paid 12 dollars an hour these will be jobs going to citizens of denton who are already getting paid 7.25 an hour probably because they're low skilled um so i don't think that that's uh that we should say that they're so low income they're basically the minimum wage because they 're closer to double the minimum wage than they are to the minimum wage i've got a lot more i could say about it i wrote some notes during this meeting but then i'm going back and rebutting other things you've got time so what would it be um so another thing would be uh the the revenue thing he said uh it's basically us paying a loan um because uh it would be lost revenue but right now we're not losing any sales tax revenue on this property because there is no company there right now so anything we're getting is a windfall uh to me that's that's a very positive thing we could be getting um and it's it's a very reputable highly respected high profile company that does have a public benefit to me because it could line up other people to come here and show that uh that this city is ready to give incentives to companies that deserve them and that's that's my opinion on it um i guess that's all for me all right thank you very much oh i'm sorry sorry council member hawkins sorry one of those weird questions you know matt you're a very well spoken young man i appreciate you thank you so yeah that's my question thank you okay let's see uh bre nt camp and then on deck will be casey rice mayor council um like matt was saying thank you for everything you guys do for the city my name is brent camp i live on 1408 teasley lane i am also in favor of bucky's being here um mainly because i am excited about the brand i i love the world- class company these guys run uh to go off a mat was saying the you know the the starting rate at buck y's is twelve dollars an hour there's there's positions that pay higher than that um so it's insulting to say that it is close to minimum wage and and also to go off of that uh a gentleman earlier was speaking that you know a higher income job something around twenty dollars an hour plus um you know it'd be a high income job here in town and in their manager positions do pay that and that's kind of a you know for those twelve dollar an hour workers that's an incentive you don't have to reloc ate you can work your way up and get a job that is paying a sixty five thousand dollars seventy five thousand dollars salary per year which i think is great for a community um i'm also part of oktopia music festival and i love the idea of all the new tourism that bucky's will bring into town it'll help a small budding festival grow into a larger festival um that's something great for this art community that's something great for a lot of people that's in this room that work year long for such a great event here in town um to be able to grow and be sustainable and with companies like this coming into town it'll help us grow through those tourism dollars and through the advertising that buck y's is going to bring in um so you know i'm just i'm here to say i'm excited i'm really excited about bringing the bucky's into town i think it would be a great benefit for the people that can go out there and leave their minimum wage job and get a twelve dollar an hour job and work towards that 65 75 thousand dollar salary that you can eventually get working at a bucky's retail location um i truly don't know many retail locations where even as a manager you can be making 50 000 plus and to go on the whole you know what could be there what could be there that would be worse than bucky's i agree i think there's a lot of things that can be worse than bucky's i manage midtown apartments um i've been doing student housing apartment complexes for the last five years and i see the strain they put on communities and residential areas i see the strain of mid-rise six- story apartment complexes that look into people's backyards it's unfortunate if you have a large bucky sign you know instead of a moon in your backyard yeah that's it's a little bit unfortunate but it's even more unfortunate when you have four stories of apartment complexes that are looking down into your backyard looking into your family gatherings um so i would much rather have a bucky's there than any sort of high rise or mid-rise you know residential housing i'd much rather have a bucky's than another 7-eleven or a quick trip or a racetrack at least we do know that it is a world-class company coming into this town rather than another you know not so world-class company that's going to pay those minimum wage jobs that's not going to care about the community um and that's all i really have to say today council member rodin thanks brent and uh first let me say thank you for your contribution to denton uh with being one of the architects behind octopia and i think matt as well is heavily involved in that so that's fantastic thanks for what you're doing for our city already so but the two of you speaking has me a bit intrigued because you guys have created something that's uh kind of a hipster mecca for folks all around coming in and in thinking about a i-35 fronting piece of property that a massive gas station development is going into wouldn't seem to connect with the younger folks in town in a way that it looks like it has tonight at least from those showing up in t-shirts and whatnot so connect the dots there for me for someone who's a young person in this town obviously loves the town contributing to it uh wanting to stay and see it thrive uh why something like this important to your generation well to me um personally like i said i just love the brand the first spring break i ruined when i was 17 years old i went down to galveston i stopped at bucky's everybody told me to stop at bucky's i loved it i would love having something close to home like that um and on top of that i just i really think that um again it'll it'll offer those twelve dollar an hour jobs to yeah maybe not necessarily someone that is 35 years old with a family looking for full-time work but college kids that's a great starting position twelve dollars an hour part-time 25 hours a week i wish i could have that opportunity in high school or college um and to go on to that if this was coming into the square if this was coming closer into the art mecca the cultural center of denton i would say no absolutely not but because this is going into a zone that is already that is already or a region that has already zoned for this type of commerce why not um so that's what i would say i like i said i i would not let this come into town into into the square i would oppose it with everybody else on the side but because it's going on the outskirts of town because it's not something that is going to cluster the middle of the town i'm for it thanks any other questions okay uh kc rice is is up we're going to go ahead and take about a five to ten minute break time really flies it's almost nine o'clock that's amazing uh and then up after uh kc rice will be dav id zoltner so when we come back kc rice we are reconvening uh december 1st 2015 denton city council meeting we're on agenda item 5b it is 10 after 9 we're in the portion of our public comment for this item of individual consideration uh kc rice is up if you'll come down state your name and address and david zoltner will follow kc hello my name is kc rice oh i'm sorry there you go thank you my name is kc rice um my address is 1408 teesley lane denton texas i've lived in denton since 2010 i came down here to go to school and i've grown to love denton as a town i think that there 's a lot of beautiful culture that comes along with denton um first coming here i saw you know all the beautiful parks and all these things um that didn't have to offer and i believe you know with my with matt and brend i feel that bucky's coming to town and the money that we would receive from the incentives i feel that that could go into making denton a better town and improving you know our parks and all these different things that you know us the local people would like to see happen you know we have the new eureka playground going in you know other stuff like that popping up in dent on would be beautiful um i also feel that um bucky's would be very great for um tourism i think that you know if we set up some type of like visit denton type kiosk in bucky's you know people will come and they say oh we're gonna stop at bucky's and get some gas and check it out well they walk over there and they say oh look at denton look at how cool the town it is they have an ice cream shop they have this they have a coffee shop they have all these cool interesting things that you know maybe we could go check out and then you know later on down the road they're like well maybe we 'll come back to denton and we'll vacation here or we'll stop here um i just feel that you know like brend and matt both already stated uh that bucky's is a big deal the first time i went to bucky's was on my way to calisthen i'd never been there and everybody's like you have to go to bucky's so i went to bucky's and i was like this is awesome this is so cool you walk in and there 's all this stuff it's like a mini convenience store you need toilet paper you want to go get fajitas you want to go get this it's all there it's everything's there you can get everything right so it's just cool you know as a young person you know mr rodin asked brent what's the connection as a young person it's cool to go in the store and see they sell sell shirts they sell their own beaver nuggets they sell all these really cool interesting things that your 7-eleven doesn't sell your racetrack doesn't sell and to that point i feel that you know instead of putting in another racetrack or another 7-eleven we have a million of those in town why not put in a bucky's which like they said is a brand in itself which would bring more recognition to denton which is already a great city um so you know i just feel that putting bucky's in denton and you know it representing denton i think that it would be beneficial i do understand the concerns of the people in the neighborhood and you know i i get that if that was me i probably would be a little bit upset too but you know that being said you live in a residential neighborhood there's a developing property right there you know that something's going to come in like they said you know why not it be a bucky rather than a 7-eleven or rather than an apartment complex i just think that the benefits of bucky outweigh the cons the pros outweigh the cons for this any questions thank you thank you oh uh mr zoltner and then chuck carpenter is up state your name and address and your time will begin thank you mayor council members my name is david zoltner i live at 2501 timber trail in denton i have just a couple of quick concerns tonight first of all this i'm some understanding this is an action item tonight and so i don't see an ardent an actual ordinance that the citizens can review the 380 agreement is is not here so i'm told that you may be developing that or considering it now but the citizens have no ability to see that so for that reason alone i'm going to request that this particular action item be postponed until we can actually see this agreement and the ordinance that you're going to consider now up until tonight i hadn't really lost a lot of sleep over this bucky's proposal i mean it seemed to me like a fairly good business model like a lot of people my only concern was the incentive and i found the discussion between mayor pro tem regory and mr moffett fascinating because i thought i understood what an incentive was a public incentive to reward the merits of a proposal or a project from a public benefit standpoint but tonight i heard one of the most bizarre twisted convoluted discussions of an incentive i heard staff suggest that this incentive was a means to mitigate the negative impact and i also heard that it was the only opportunity to require a developer to meet neighborhood concerns now i want you to think about that for just a minute that's not an incentive there's another word for that it's called a ransom if you don't if you don't pay me x i'm going to make this property miserable and i want you to think about the long-term consequence of that of the next developer that comes and has a project in mind and they realize that if they don't work it out right they always have the ability to come back later and possibly ask for an incentive so you're in uncharted territory here with this definition of incentive and i'm deeply concerned about that so i i hope that you'll consider this because i'm really offended at what i heard in the discussion of what an incentive is moving forward that's all i have to say thank you very much any questions for mr zollner seen him thank you sir appreciate it chuck carpenter and then up will be jeremy moon mayor honorable council members chuck carpenter 1112 pennsy lvania denton texas first off speaking personally i'm in support and in favor of the initiative as proposed but i thought it was kind of interesting as i put on the other hat to hear all the respectfully disagree stuff that was going on here i'm just going to tell you from the perspective that i come from and the people that pay my salary and the organizations that i represent i hadn't got a single problem with that man making a profit off this that's what we're about because if he makes a profit we're all going to benefit from it if that's offensive i apologize but that's where we come from all of us i had the same question you did ke lly about where did this fall out when when the issue came up about the current part as you know we contract with you to provide external marketing services for economic development we contract with you to try to provide the hospitality industry sport here and when when the proposal started crumbling in quarent our economic development staff as they should where we're sitting on an interstate that is the only non-stop north or south route between mexico and can ada if we're not looking at a company that does something like that shame on us and my trail that i looked up we started made a call to mr applin from our office somewhere around august 11th of 20 2014 so we're all trying to jump in to try to take some claim for it but where it fell with sparky and who else i'm not real clear but yeah we were in fact jumping on this as quickly as we could i don't know the exact chronology that happened after that there's been a lot more people involved and a lot of different sites shown but i wanted to clarify that because that was a that was a good question to bring up then would point out that the economic development partnership board did review this process and the proposal and a similar variation of this on september 22nd yes it was called project cartoon at that time and we're not responsible for how these things get named we just deal with them for for the that sake but i want to point out my organization has two voting representatives on this joint economic development partnership board and one of my representatives made the motion that that was unanimously passed and recommended to you and on top of that my other representative voting representative on that board voted in support of that and he chairs the partnership board then on november 19th our board reviewed this and was brief ed on it based on just adam's presentation and as a result of that you're interested in numbers tonight i understand that so just to give you a quick backup because i'm not going to argue one way or another on what people think and whether we respectfully disagree i'm just going to tell you the numbers that i saw and i wouldn't go to court over this but what i've been copied on electronic messages sent to you there have been 14 people sent support to you as a result of our board meetings seven of which are voting members of our board three or which of my past board chairs rick wick up here and then four folks that just copied me on it so any questions council member briggs can can you name or can you tell the public who the members are on the board that voted or who voted yeah the voted the three did you say let me make sure i've got several board members we're talking about which board you want to know um the economic the economic development partnership board we have two voting represents that that y'all approve them ultimately that we recommend to you it's marty rivers the first state bank and virginal strange at the time was with axiom commercial that's since been replaced with larry parker so those are my two set answer questions yes sir thank you all right any other questions thank you thank you okay j eremy moon and then up on deck will be deborah armador thank you mr mayor i'm jeremy moon 2805 valencia lane like brandon who was up here earlier i back up directly to the property so i do have a you know emotional but no financial i guess i do have a bit of a financial interest in the decisions being made tonight with the property if you look at the display which evidently is not up there right now would you us would you like us to get the display up for you you can put the map back up there uh amy could we get that site okay they'll be able to do it okay there we go very good amy probably knows me as 218 because i am the closest property to the actual building so you know it is something that i'm very interested in i'll admit when the prospect came up first my immediate reaction was no you know i'm i'm one of those unrealistic people that would love to see sparky leave that field empty but i don't suspect he's that crazy to do it and if i owned it i wouldn't either so you know at this point you know the saying the lesser of two evils i know that people have come up here instead there can be better projects and there can be worse i'm looking at the potential that there could be worse and i've talked to beaver mr alpin on a couple of occasions over the phone he's done you know and a remarkable job calling me on several occasions i've had dinner with him and expressed my concerns and he seems very reasonable very willing to work with us property owners that back up to create that buffer zone and i appreciate what amy and her team have done to put that in as part of the requirements you know and i'm not necessarily speaking to the incentive whether that's a good thing or bad i'll leave it up to you i don't have anything necessarily against that process and for the project in general despite the fact that i own the closest property i'm not against the project from proceeding like others have said i think buckies is a good business i've been to buckies on several occasions in other locations they're always clean i think when it comes to being able to choose a neighbor i believe that buckies is a good neighbor to have so i don't personally have any concerns about that i know lighting and traffic and and all that those aren't really concerns for me my concern is when i look at my back windows am i going to see the back of the building and talking to beaver and his willingness to create that buffer zone i trust that that he's going to take our input and that we can create a buffer zone that would that would work to prohibit that that from happening a couple of other things when it talks about the improvements on the highway i think that's a big thing that's going to benefit me personally i mean the texas u-turns which i didn't realize was a term until recently but those are going to help i think even you know ambulances coming off the highway to get to the hospital that texas u-turn is going to be put in at mayhill is going to help me personally coming home from work instead of having to go through the light at mayhill i'd be able to go down to br inker and do the texas u-turn around and go into my neighborhood by the theater so i see benefits to the project would i rather there be an open field there absolutely and if sparky's willing to do that i'm willing to support him on it speaking of which i am one of those people that have tresp assed on his property before so thank you for not turning me in we do have a couple questions all right council member haw kins thank you mayor thanks jeremy i appreciate you coming out and tell me exactly where your house is i think i know which one are you look on the right back corner and if you follow the shortest line i can't really you're on the wind river side yeah we're on valencia i'm on valencia so if you're looking if you look at the cul-de-sac you cross the street and you go i guess two houses over oh i'm sorry right there this one right there that that one is my property right there and so you have some trees that back up to it and that's another thing that i appreciate that beaver's willing to do is leave the trees i mean the trees are very important to me okay i mean except in the fall because they drop all their leaves on my side of the fence and i have to take care of them but you know when it comes to blocking currently the highway and in the future blocking the development i think those are definitely an asset to have back there to me personally even though they're not on my property when you and beaver discussed you know some of the options where did where did you think a good place for the masonry wall to be my recommendation and i think amy addressed that in her opening earlier was that the wall is not up against our property line that there's going to be that buffer zone i don't know if you'd really call it a green belt it's not officially a green belt but to have it in my opinion closer to where that parking lot is i don't know how i guess a lot of this is not necessarily in stone at this point but there are you know some some thoughts that i have about you know potentially seeing if some of the parking can be reallocated a little bit further onto the the left side of the building i guess west side or whatever direction that would be to try and you know even get the parking lot a little bit further away but i don't suspect there's going to be a whole lot of people parking in the back of that building other than employees other than on maybe busy busy weekend so i think he he seems to be accepting of the fact of of having that buffer so that it's not the eight foot wall being placed directly at the back line of my property but you know having my fence which is already existing his fence that he would make and then hopefully additional trees even be planted in that area to create even more of a buffer all right jeremy thanks for coming out and thank you for responding my emails despite what i hear other people say you always respond to my emails appreciate that i appreciate that councilmember councilmember johnson thank you mayor thanks jeremy so i'm going to ask you a question but i first want to thank you because you are the closest house to the development and your a your realistic approach to it is is refreshing never have i ever had a homeowner who had a big beautiful open field behind their house that somebody else owned come in and support what was going to get built behind their house and i get it right i mean when you buy the house you hope that they forget that they own it and they never do anything with it and you have a free view forever that's not reality right so i appreciate your your approach very much um my question for you is in terms of i think the one thing i didn't hear you cover was in terms of this proposed development as it relates to the homes how the homes are affected have you when some of the other apartment projects were proposed or any of that did any of those people ever contact you have you seen any other plans that could have happened yeah there was one i think it's probably a couple of years ago it may have been less or more than that and that one was a multi-story one so i'm thankful that sparky said no or it didn't proceed or whatever and you didn't get your way because yeah i mean a multi-story apartment building is kind of my worst nightmare there i recently refinanced my house and you know that was one of the discussions that i had with the appraiser when he was working on the appraisal is if they put an apartment complex back there put a for sale sign in your yard immediately because that's going to drop your property value now i would i would suspect that yes perhaps there will be a slight drop in my property value am i happy about that no but i don't expect that that would be and maybe that's not being naive but i don't expect it's going to be a long-term drop in property value and i believe that if if beaver works with us on that buffer as he's expressed he will and as i trust that he will then i believe that we can mitigate that if if i'm not looking out my back window and seeing the back of his store i don't see how that long term is going to affect my property value that significantly with the the majority of the business happening on the front side of that building that building is going to help on buffering the sound a little bit which right now i mean if i'm in my backyard i hear the highway i would expect that that 's going to go down during the day will you hear a little bit sound out there possibly at night maybe but you know i'm taking that buffer you know the lesser of two evils is what i'm looking at and right now i know that that beaver is willing to work with us to create that buffer and that being the case i'm putting my faith in him to follow through with that and i believe that some of the things that amy has put into the the grant proposal or whatever the terminology is for that is going to support that i appreciate your approach very much thank you councilmember rodin thank you mayor and thank you jeremy for coming out tonight thank you participating in this i've had a question that i wanted to ask a couple of the residents that have spoken tonight and i guess i'll ask you because it's on my mind there's been discussion of creating amenities around that pond i'm assuming specifically for your neighborhoods the walking path places to sit perhaps stocking the pond whatnot how is it that folks in that neighborhood get over there in their in their fence at this point there is no i mean in in my fence when we did a repair on it at one point we put a little little bit of gain so that if the kids throw something over the fence we can go and recover and bring it back because before not trespassed you get well as long as he didn't call us okay he stated it's okay yeah but yeah when it comes to the pond i mean that's a distance from my house i'm aware it's there gotcha but it's not something that's giving me a lot of benefit and there wouldn't be any way of you know other than crossing his field right now to get to it long term my opinion of that and again my property doesn't back up to that so you know i don't want to step on any toes for the folks in southridge that are southridge states that might you know think otherwise but i would rather it not be a park if it was up to me i would rather it be you know blocked off if you have a park that's additional people coming in and for those folks i would think i don't want to have people right on the back side of my property gotcha and the same thing with that green belt issue that's what i'm calling it the buffer between the fence that he'll be putting in and my back fence i would rather nobody be back there leave it to the bobcats and the coy otes and things like that and you mentioned that the outset i think i'm just trying to clarify did you say that you had the chance to have dinner with beaver at some yes i have yes and he's been good about responding he's giving these numbers and emails and everything i guess just a statement on that i mean we i've been here for four or five years i guess and we've seen some controversial contentious development projects in which it's all we could do to just get the developer to come to one of these sessions or meet with the neighborhood or whatnot so that that's remarkable the access you've had to to the person in charge of this so and it means a lot to me no absolutely absolutely and i just hope everyone understands that that's unique uh in these development projects so thank you so much for coming out thank you mayor pro tem gregory probably a totally inappropriate question but i just i can ask it where did y'all go eat where did we go eat yeah um i'm gonna botch it it's the pizza place the the one right down here across from the old court uh old carol quartz building um yeah no no no okay never mind yeah yeah yeah thank you and and i 'm the one that came up with the place it's got a it's got a weird name like snooty pizza pizza sn ob pizza snob see i'm sorry it's a good name and i can't remember it oh my gosh you stumped me thank you all right any other questions thank you very much i appreciate that uh deborah armator is up and then on deck will be dan hammond jr. oh hi i'm deborah armatar and i still live at 2003 mist y woodley um so i'm going to say um my feelings about buckies but but first before i say that i just want to take a moment uh to thank um councilman johnson who met with me today yesterday and took a lot of of his time to explain to me we ended out talking i think mostly about that buckies um and he um he just explained to me face to face some things that i didn't understand he drew on the white board um a diagram which um and i'll do respect to the staff is your simple drawing made more sense to me than this one with all of the all of the all of the many different lines um that really helped me understand it so i just want to thank you for helping me understand it and on a layman's terms and for taking the time to talk to a citizen so thank you i really appreciate it um so i i had had all kinds of um concerns about about buckies but uh listening listening to um councilman johnson today and listening to all of the citizens today uh speaking about it i i realized that i feel that i'm not really in a position to make a decision on buckies and i thought of a saying that that a friend of mine i used to have a friend uh from jamaica whose mother had a saying i guess it was an old jamaican saying and the saying was if the fish says that the water is deep you believe him uh so in other words the person who lives there you know you you take their word for it um so i would and i got to um meet just briefly some some residents who live uh near near the buckies um and and i would defer to them um i feel that if if they're if the majority of citizens who live within the 500 to a thousand feet of buckies if the majority of them loves the idea then you know who am i to say no you shouldn't have a buckies in your backyard um but if they don't want it there then i feel that it's really not up to me to say uh i heard from lots of experts today people who knew a lot more than i do about real estate and finance and incentives um but the true experts i believe are the people who live uh who live right next door and so so i defer to to what they what they have to say they're the fish and if they say the water is deep i believe them so that's all that i really like that saying uh i like that any questions all right seeing none thank you thank you thanks uh dan hammond jr and then on deck will be chris rosburn hi i'm speaking in opposition dan hammond jr uh 2002 west h ickory street um buckies has never before built one of their massive flagship stores near a residential area um or along a frontage road that is already well developed i have aerial google maps of all their flagship locations um present and future so why is buckies squeezing one inside of denton it's like hammering a square peg and two around hole i'd like to remind everyone of another project that had the full backing of city staff and council fry street and united equ ities but in 2007 the citizens of dentin banded together to point out what a terrible plan it was their plan was also like hammering a square peg into a round hole even so certain city officials called opponents of the plan anti-business and said that we would never find another developer as cooperative as united equities well we weren't anti-business and the city found a better development for fry street thank you mayor watts for casting the deciding vote you're sitting right over there remember that evening very well you and other members of the city council came one by one into our homes and met with our neighborhood group and sometimes as few as five or six of us you heard us and in the end you did what was best for our neighborhood and what was best for denton the citizens of denton have not received this kind of consideration for the buckies plan as late as november 10th on the agenda council still referred to this by the secret code name project cartoon and that's indicative of a more pervasive problem here you hold closed sessions with secret names and then spring your plan on the public and expect this to pass in three weeks time we the people of denton need to be included earlier in these processes you need to trust us closed sessions and secret negotiations do not engender the people's trust in the council i'm concerned about the future of denton i'm concerned about the future of buckies this from a 2012 wall street journal article mr aplen decl ines to share how his megastore is doing or describe his expectations saying quote it's impossible to run the numbers on something like this stuckey's was another major travel center they as buckies is doing now expanded rapidly at one time having 350 stores within a decade they only had 75 left those closed locations became sad looking eyesores but at least they were in the middle of nowhere like all their big flagships are with buckies and not in the middle of denton any questions yes we do council member johnson thanks for coming out i appreciate it i just wanted to make sure and and ask you um and maybe provide some clarification because i too get very concerned when when if citizens think that we're that staff or council is doing things secret ively and so on so just to clarify the difference between this and the united equities project so you know the the neighborhood meetings that happened on this were not a requirement whereas a zoning change is a requirement right so zoning changes the the neighborhood meetings would be required and then you know you have a decision as council whether to to rezone the property or not but it's very common i was on the economic development partnership board for a long time it's very common when the economic development staff is working with an applicant who wants to keep their information to keep it quiet that they're coming to a city because they want to announce when they when they want to announce that they're opening so all economic development incentive projects have a have a code name given by economic development so that the applicant you know it's their right to choose when they want to say they're opening their business or make it public or whatever it is so just want to make sure provide that clarification that the project cartoon that that was because that was economic development working with buckies talking about is does this even make sense does this site work for you what would you want all those things it wasn't it wasn 't that somebody wanted to keep it secret from the citizens and then the neighborhood meeting was a was a courtesy because we wanted to make sure that they got input they can build it there by right so there's no rezoning happening or whatever just want to make sure that i understand that and in fact i had a little um email chain with mayor pro temp gregory but essentially tonight is it's a de facto up or down with the incentive and mr alpin has put it he's thrown down the gauntlet you know he's not going to build it if he doesn't get the incentive package sure i just want to make sure the clarification the comparison of this to united equities i was well involved with united equities and all that so and i was in agreement with you on that one excuse me and i was in agreement with you on that one okay thank you any other questions thank you thank you very much appreciate it mr ross pere and then up next will be is it nasciso tovar and i'm sorry if i mispronounced your name sorry okay good good evening chris ross from 2113 emerson lane here in denton i'm a home owner a citizen a business owner and a commercial realtor here in denton have been for 20 years i don't have anything to do with this development although i am available but i'm i'm excited about bucky's uh coming to that to that site and to denton it's a beautiful development as has been proposed and depicted here on the screen i'll look at it from the vantage point and i know all y'all guys know the property commercial property tax database here in denton is is in need of some help between the properties that are owned by the city of denton the state of texas um north texas university north texas denton isd they're all non-tax revenue this will take 38 acres and transform it from the minimal real estate tax that it now produces into one that will be vastly improved in value and generate a whole lot more real estate taxes as well as create jobs and sales tax income and with the other sites that has been proposed out on i-35 will give a lot of room for for more businesses of a various and sundry nature that hadn't been identified yet but i just think it'll be a great development for the city and i just want to speak in in favor of it and i trust y'all guys to do your job to work with the developer and get a win-win situation any questions seeing none thank you uh mr tovar and then up will be ralph ramsey good evening mr mayor city council i appreciate all the work that you're doing here uh i have something prepared just want to go and name an address oh i'm sorry nasciso tovar 1925 willow crest loop um i am a happy resident of this fine city of denton growing up in san antonio though i have always had a special place in my heart for cities that have nurtured culture as well as community denton is no exception the arts music and business community have been thriving over the last several years something that makes it all the more easier to love little d so when you hear about the roaming's of some individuals that want to stunt the growth of dentin both economically as well as culturally um it's a little unsett ling quite literally 100 of the people in town as well as people outside of denton county that i've spoken with about the idea of buckies coming to denton get excited truly so you couple this firsthand knowledge with what i'm noting below with what i'm about to share i urge you to support the development of bringing buckies to denton for three big reasons number one buckies will be good for denton it will bring 150 to 200 jobs to denton with competitive pay they have publicly listed employee wages which is nearly twice the minimum wage as matt stated earlier the buckies brand is a well-loved brand it is solid and brings in travelers and families and their money not just passing by but people who will intentionally drive out of the way to visit buckies as stated below as stated previously buckies will also bring in money to the city of denton case in point the san marcus location is estimated to generate eight hundred thousand dollars in sales tax revenue for the area over the next decade and this is according to the area's chamber of commerce reason number two i believe that we would be lucky to have a community partner and beaver atlin he has built his reputation by offering great products as well as giving back to the communities where every bucky's location is built in fact he's also been interviewed in such media outlets as texas monthly and abc news to share his story as well as principles and how to build a strong brand this strong brand can only enhance the city of dentons brand as well as increase overall dollars coming into the city reason number three buckies would help ease up that area that the denton record chronicle has noted as one of the most dangerous traffic spots in the city beaver has already agreed to provide the funds to help build a bridge at brinker by the texas roadhouse that will extend brinker over from i-35 south helping to decompress the traffic back up at loop 288 and i -35 east as well as the state road at an i-35 so when you also think about this this will also connect four hotels the southbound side of i-35 thereby freeing up the traffic flow and opening up more opportunities for travelers to stay in denton so as as a citizen i urge you to approve the incentives in order to bring buckies to denton i believe the benefits as amy covered in the presentation outweigh the negatives and as a two college city as well as the growing community as we embrace these new changes in our in our community i believe buckies would be a great addition to denton thank you any questions thank you very much appreciate it thank you sir mr ramsay and then up on deck will be greg price good afternoon ralph ramsey albry texas and the only reason i don't live in denton is because i have so many animals that have i'd be up here for a different reason in front of the council if i lived here i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i've never spoken in front of the council what an awesome freedom with his for us to get up here and speak for or against something and have that freedom and i think we need to be appreciative of that i also have trespassed on that property for many years i used to have a key and i'll let you know that the tank does not need to be stocked it has lots of fish and they're a very large fish so that's a that's a good thing i am on a serious note i i do work for a local bank i'm an executive for that bank and have been for years our bank has over a billion dollars in in real commercial real estate investment in denton county and the dfw metro plex i also head up the commercial real state division of our bank and so i'm familiar with uh tcq and different things that and developers i work with them a lot and so i do speak from a level of experience with commercial developers and land owners i will first speak on i only have a couple points and i'll be done but i will speak on the character of the landowner and i've known him for 30 years and he has been a good partner for this city and if you don't know him and you don't know the projects that he's worked on then you do need to get to know him you do need to investigate the project that he has worked on for the city and it has it has been a great he's been a great partner for the city he grew up in this city he's raised his kids here and he moved his real estate company here when he had other options so he's a man of character and he's protected those property owners many times and i'm i've experienced that to try to get a project there that that's compatible with them while still having property rights and the right to exercise those this city i appreciate you having incentives to compete with other cities because we're in hand-to-hand combat with other cities in this metroplex and i do business in every city in this metroplex for the most part and ones that you would be proud of to call your city and they have incentives that we're competing against so i appreciate that and i appreciate the effort that's going that's going forth there the last point that i want to make is that i've i believe that this developer from what i can tell and from my experience that this developer and the city officials and this landowner are acting in good faith for you citizens by protecting and offering public amenities and access to public amenities the green space the pond walking trails things like that this is very rare for a developer to do that and i want to come up here from a level of experience to say that i've seen developers and i see the economics of that and what that costs them and how that all fits together thank you any questions thank you we've got greg price and on deck will be jennifer lane good evening my name is greg price i live at 2216 great bear lane i'm a resident of wind river and i'm here tonight to talk about how i support buckies actually i support ditton texas i came here in 1993 to attend the university of north texas i'm very proud of that my wife went to every school in ditton when she grew up here she graduated from ditton high on ryan campus both my babies were born at ditton regional hospital they grew up here they're growing up here and they love this the square i love this town and it's a lot different than what it was in 1993 most of the time we had to leave the city in order to enjoy ourselves it's not that way anymore because of folks just like you who sit on this council and you make hard decisions you make decisions that aren't always popular but you're responsible to evaluate the information and make the decisions that's best for this city and you've done a great job and people say really really bad things about you and don't know you and that's unfortunate i've heard grumblings to the crowd tonight accusing you of doing things you've never done and that's inappropriate but you do make hard decisions and those decisions do not need to be emotional decisions i'm an emotional person i like to get excited i do but you're charged to evaluate the information to make the decision that's best for this city and not what you personally like or dislike whether or not you like gas stations whether you like bucky's pork rinds or not it's not about that this property is commercial property it's going to be commercial property regardless of whether or not you approve bucky's or not it's going to be commercial i commend mr be aver on his commitment to observe a larger buffer to protect the citizens who already live there i respect the fact that sparky pearson did not chase the dollar and said no to multiple people who wanted his property before and that i respect the fact that the economic partnership the economic development partnership board has a tough vetted process when it comes to approving the incentive package these are smart people i know these gentlemen and these ladies who serve on this prop on these boards they spend a lot of time investigating researching and making decisions and i would understand i believe in my heart that they wouldn't just do this without doing the proper research in order to to evaluate what's best for the city of denton these are invested people in our community mr beaver is going to spend more money in property taxes than probably the entire room combined as far as you know home properties he's going to be invested in the city of denton and i think you ought to be commended for that so that's my encouragement to you is that i appreciate your service to our city and i encourage you guys to make decisions based upon the numbers and facts and not about how you feel uh we have a question may approach him gragreg now mr price did i understand you correctly that you think that there are people that don't know me that have said bad things about me i'm saying i heard it tonight this is what i'm saying because i can introduce you to some people that know me well that say bad things about me i just think it's unfortunate that people thank you that's just on council any other questions thank you sir appreciate that uh jenn ifer lane and then on deck will be steve watkins good evening my name is jennifer lane and i live in denton at 1526 willow wood road willow wood street and i teach at the university of north texas and also moved here for the great university of north texas as well as the last speaker and i'm one of the fish that lives just upstream of the proposed project and i ask you to please not incentivize this project the either or scenario of a high-rise apartment complex versus a bucky's is a false dichotomy do delay this decision at the very least to get input from those most impacted i just drove home from thanksgiving and passed a bucky's and was stunned at the thought of something this size placed in the center of our city it was well placed along the open road where travelers are seeking a road stop and it would do well north of university drive where i used to live the 35 east you know that's up to that area to do it but we don't have to incentivize it the 35 east improvements will be made with or without the bucky's and this point has already been made we need real jobs here in dent on not the low paying type of jobs that bucky's will provide that point has also been made ultimately this is about city funds and this in my opinion does not merit city funds we can do much much better and so can sparky pearson thanks any questions thank you thank you jennifer we have steve watkins and then our last card wishing to speak will be on deck is to kill i k n v i s o n so i apologize yes go ahead hello steve watkins 12 hidden valley city shores mayor council thank you all amy the presentation that amy showed tonight is is exceptional it it spelled everything out as as concise and and accurately as you'd like to the you know obviously i'm a fan of bucky 's i'm flying the colors i believe in their in the product i believe in the brand i know that that beaver's going to throw down a product that's it's going to blow the town away that's my belief i 've been in i've been a resident of denton been in denton since 1974 so i went to denton high school and there was just one i graduated from north hexford state i didn't get to unt so you know i 've seen i've seen a handful of things come bucky's is world class they are a world class company world class operations you know i can't believe i'm here in you know low paying jobs we you know we operate businesses here downtown and employ hundreds of people and trust me that's not a low paying job it's starting to 12 bucks an hour so um it's a phenomenal phenomenal deal now that i gotta i gotta address a couple things one of them is is value i heard uh council man was and he was asking about and i can't remember who the gentleman was that was up here but i was trying to pin him down on a expert opinion and so i'm a licensed texas real estate broker it is my expert opinion that this is the highest and best use of this property right now i'm not getting paid to say that and i think everybody would be doing themselves a diss ervice to think what has sparky got up his sleeve next this product this this property sells he's probably going to keep some of that money right here in town do something great with it so i venture to say that we all benefit above and beyond bucky's because there's going to be more projects to come and this will help get that done but possibly thank you any questions thank you thank you steve uh and then i apologize for mispronounced yes yes want state your name and address please so thank you guys for having me chel can you send 16209 down alley lane although that's dallas texas so don't have a direct constituency i have been in local business here for the last year and a half and coming to denton texas i never made it out this way uh it was always dallas and south and coming out here denton's pretty cool and i've i've begun to coin the phrases denton's a hurricane and it's just started collecting little itty bits of energy out here off the blip of the map it wasn't it wasn't the destination place for businesses wasn't a destination place for for restaurants much less startup businesses all of a sudden starts collecting mass and starts becoming something and when i hear an opportunity like buck y's a world-class organization and quite frankly i use the bathroom here his bathrooms are cleaner than these bathrooms in this building with all with all with all due respect right and so when i look at that piece of property on 35 right now and it's it's a lot it's a dirt lot so you mean to tell me it's going to get extra green space and it's going to get extra revenue and guess what good businesses will have more traffic i'm in for that right so if you want to have less traffic put a crappy business in there all right and i also a couple things i've you know i've experienced in business is there's athletes like detroit men's of the world or the des brines fill in the blank they tend to get paid a little more because of their potential to perform as well as their track record of performance and doesn't bucky's have a track record of performance don 't the numbers speak for themselves and i would rather take a percent of a whole lot than 100 percent of nothing or potentially this could be there and when i hear the words like the necessary or the the better of the two evils that's an inaccurate statement because there 's no evil in that when you see the lengths and the moves and everything he's gone to go out and reach the community be available and say i'll make it better we'll take denton and make it better i 'll be part of the hurricane we'll start whipping this up and all of a sudden we've got category five wins coming straight line right into your your next stop so i am 100 behind this project i think it's nothing but a win-win and that's really what we're talking about today is is it a deal and i think we've all agreed bucky's is a deal now let's figure out how to make it a win-win for both of us and i think the investment that he's willing to make is well worth the investment we're willing to make back into him councilmember johnson well i have a question for you did you know that if you were my personal trainer i'd be built like you because you got me all fired up now and i was getting sleepy earlier so i appreciate your energy and excitement for somebody that's only been here such a short amount of time i think you made some great points and but i did ask a question at the beginning so thanks for your energy you bet all right any other questions seeing none thank you very much appreciate it okay we've got we've got several cards wishing not to speak i'm just going to go ahead and just i guess read those in the record real quickly um because there's there's go ahead under your new rules you don't have to read all the men but i have counted them you have counted them okay all right but they will be part of they they are part of the record with the comments both for and against yes all right with the names and addresses okay all right on the wishing not to councilmember rodin okay uh let's see of the non-speakers that's gonna be close yeah well i want to make sure of the non-speakers in opposition are four the number four and then in support we've got 28 so those are all the cards that we have we councilmember rodin uh mayor i know he elected not to to sign a card but i did have a couple questions for mr abling if he's being sure sure good evening babor apple and 57 road like jackson texas thanks thanks for coming out tonight i appreciate it um i had a couple questions from some earlier conversations i had with amy as we were kind of going over the the grant conditions and one of them came from one of the persons that lives in that area had asked the question about whether or not the buffer area or some of the the barriers or whatever else that are associated with that could be done prior to construction do you have any thoughts on that one way or the other i don't have a problem with that we'll have to do a little bit of engineering and a little bit of planning if there's any underground utilities that have to run but um of course the building of the buffer the concrete masonry wall is construction right but i have no problem getting started with that right away take a little bit of planning but like you know we've kind of been in this and i've been with staff quite a long time on this i mean i think we made the commitment to work together and plan together and so to build the wall first is easy it just takes a little planning a little organizing and uh and so yeah we can make that happen yeah well i know you're meeting with the the neighborhood as part of looking at some of those uh amenities and so perhaps that can be even a conversation point perhaps some would say don't build it first but um the other question i had was in relation to the tree preservation along there which seems to be important to a number of the folks right along the edge of that property do you have any heartburn from being able to write something into these grant conditions that establish some more specific security for tree preservation of that existing tree stand no i don't have heartburn saving the trees was my idea and so i don't just randomly cut down mature trees for the heck of it and so the very fact that we decided to sit back so far and not utilize the property that commitment in itself saved the trees if i was trying to develop and utilize all of this property we're using i think a little bit less than half of it then the trees may be in question because i would need that property but the the the very concept that we're good we've done this site plan and moved as far as we can the average is about 800 percent or 8x times the minimum requirements by the code we've moved it so far that the trees are not in play anyway and so yes if you want to figure out some way to put it in some document sure that can get complicated it's tree surveys it's a lot of things i'll tell you this there's been a couple subjects that have come up about what if and how do we make sure and all this at the end of the day if we get past having a project and this council votes that they want to have a project then the work just begins with the staff and this somebody said don't give up our whatever hammer or cards whatever i forgot the term but at the end of the day the city has you guys issued the building permit and so we can go do tree surveys it's going to get very bogged down i'm making my commitment that i'm going to substantially do what i've shown you here which is substantially every one of those trees now if one has to go i'll replace three or something whatever but at the end of the day i've got to come to staff with a detailed drawing design set of working documents and get a permit and so the real there there are checks and balances there even if it was not my intention to do what i say i'm going to do and i promise you it is thank you yes councilmember hawkins thank you mayor thank you for coming out tonight and i appreciate what you just said um representing district four and wind river and south ridge estates i mean you have shown nothing but to be a man of your word and character if city council were to have final say on the site plan what would you think about that i'm just get your opinion on that i don't know joey i mean i guess if that's what it takes we'll just make it happen normally the staff does it i'm going to go through the plans when we get there we're going to be so far into this and so far committed that i'm going to look at you guys and say didn't i do what i substantially said i was going to do because here you know there's there's been a few questions about are these distances exact at this stage we only have so much information to see if we have a project if we go on with the project then we start spending enormous sums of money in surveying engineering topographical um watershed detention it gets big and it gets a big set of drawings and so yes if you want that i just want your commitment that if i bring you sure substantially what i've shown you that i don't get that you approve my site plan okay thank you sure councilmember johnson thank you mayor beaver thanks for coming out so easy questions first do you hire african americans absolutely check um so so the can you share with us give me a little bonus wouldn't you say that's a product you said what'd you say you ask i thought you were gonna ask me where i where we ate dinner i mean what we ate for dinner but yes absolutely absolutely that question was asked earlier i thought i would ask it directly with you um so so can you share with us because i know you have a lot of these i don't know how many stores you have but there's been a lot of concern about well if you go out of business and you got underground storage tanks what you know every gas station has underground storage tanks and that's a highly regulated deal but i don't know the technicalities of it what what are the things that happen to ensure that your gas tanks don't leak underground and then who governs that and controls that and checks to make sure you're following the rules and all that well yeah i've heard some some talk about that and i try not to take uh you know what happens if we turn into a stuckey's or if i retire whatever i try not to take that personally but yeah i do hope to retire one day but i don't hope that that means that i don't believe that means that bucky 's board's up we have a wonderful team and we've been in business 33 years and i've never closed a store nor do i intend on closing a store nor have i ever even been close to closing a store um someday i will retire but this business and this model is set up to continue to grow and be a a great uh corporate citizen and provide a service to the customer as far as the fuel goes um there are more laws and regulations than you can imagine on underground fuel and we meet and exceed every single one of them and their epa their federal standards and their state standards and if for whatever reason uh the sky fell like i heard earlier and we left and there was no bucky's then there are strict restrictions that the fuel tanks have to be removed from the ground whenever you quit monitoring and staying compliant with all of the rules the t e c q the epa when all of the underground fuel storage regulations if you don't comply the government makes you remove it and so this isn't the first fueling station to be built and i heard that coming up a lot and i didn't really know where that's going but i've never abandoned this store there are laws and regulations that keep me in compliance all of our equipment is double walled lines double walled tanks continuous around the clock to the nanosecond monitoring they monitor for the most minute leak you can imagine and we just can't install and operate any better fuel system there is no better technology we have the best hope that answers your question it does and then and then the last question is there's been a lot of conversation about you know i wish we didn't use the term incentive because it it sends the message that it's a gift or it's a it's a lure um i when we 're talking about 380 agreements i really prefer that we that we talk about reimbursement grants so can you talk a little bit about why that's necessary for this deal to work and make sense you know i think there was some conversation about people can have their own opinions but this concept this 380 sales tax concept is a concept that was written approved by our texas legislature it's part of a process that communities use all over the state it's not a bad thing it's a positive thing i have done it in every community that i have a travel center in it's done universally in many many places so it somehow is getting this this bad slant to it and and quite frankly i think it's a a wonderful way to bring exceptional businesses or businesses that a community feels like it really fits a need they have to get them to come to the marketplace and so y'all have criteria and if i was coming in building a typical convenience store with 5 000 feet 7 000 feet typical convenience store on one acre i wouldn't be taking your time we wouldn't be here all night there would have been no can i have a 380 sales tax agreement but because this is the project it is it's 40 acres it's 50 000 foot store it's a giant project those economic development dollars over the lifespan of this or what i use to help in in the fellow that talked earlier today he he said like you told me that you take the money and you go borrow money like that was a bad that's exactly what i do so i don't know why that came into a bad thing i take the projected pro forma revenue from sales tax collected with this project and with that i can go to the bank and amortize it over 20 or 25 years and i can borrow more money to go build a bigger facility on this property without that if i was building a small store we wouldn't be talking about this so those economic you know incentive public infrastructure rebates whatever you like calling it that that creation that economic driver has a real purpose and i believe it serves a great purpose i was on the school board in my community for nine years i passed a lot of tax abatements for advil or on property tax because we lived in petrochem where there's dow and basf and shintek and that's what it took and it got the jobs and and i'm very familiar with where you guys are sitting right now but that concept that tool in your belt and i think you said or somebody said that it was it's also quite frankly what we're talking about here all these conversations is trying i feel like you guys are trying to do as much as you can for the community from the development of this project because quite frankly we all know that all of the things that we're sitting here offering and discussing are not required under the code but because we want to do a great project together this economic development is a great tool i will use that to go put in this i think the number was 5. 2 or 5 3 million dollars worth the infrastructure to build this project and with those projected funds i will be able to borrow the money to go do that i took a fence and i appreciate you for whoever said that i'm making a 20 percent annual return to loaning new money i don't know where that came from so i appreciate you kind of mentioning that because that somewhat hurt my feelings but thank you thank you councilman was me i have two questions yes ma'am a buck ease of this size in your business model how many cars a day are generated uh through a buck ease his size this this particular size the bigger ones that i build i'm gonna say on a slow day this will sound funny on a slow day a thousand cars and on a busy day 3,500 cars maybe 4,000 and then second question i know that trucks are not allowed to buck ease but i'm sure trucks come to deliver fuel and deliver all of the the products that go in the store and all the food so the trucks do come in your business model what time of day do they come at night when do the trucks come to deliver or is it a rolling 24-hour you're correct we are not a truck stop but we do have to get deliveries most all deliveries if not by rail car or by or by 18 wheeler and that's how we're going to get our deliveries it's how we're going to get our our dr peppers and it's how we're going to get our free tola and it's how we're going to get our gas so yes we will take deliveries but we're not in the truck stop business and so we will not have which if you think of a pilot flying j you think of the truck stop the fuel pump the slave fuel pump that fills up both sides the showers the video game room all that we are not a truck stop but we will have 18 wheelers delivering products to us now your question about a scheduling for the most part those deliveries come during the eight to five that doesn't mean that there won't be a delivery at six in the morning that doesn't mean that there won't be a delivery at seven in the evening but we try to focus all the deliveries during the eight to five shift for the most part and so i hope i don't know if that answers your question yeah it does thank you thank you councilmember hawkins yeah i promised one of the people that emailed me to ask about the car wash and i would assume that that's open 24 hours a day but they were concerned about what kind of noise the car wash puts off no the car wash actually because of the time change gets away from us sometime it gets so dark early now but but we rarely are open after dark and if it if we were it would be 30 minutes or an hour this time of year when it gets dark so early so a typical car wash hours would be in the summer would be eight to seven in the winter would be nine to six or five so we are not 24 hours in the car wash thank you yes councilmember briggs i would like to ask you or speak to a comment we heard earlier tonight in that you said you would not like to have a buckies in your backyard do you know where that statement came from or did you well say that is that can you i do and it's got a little construed and it seems to come up a lot and so i okay i'm not sure why but if the town hall meeting that question got asked and i what i said was if i had the opportunity to choose and i was going to buy a house i wouldn't build in with the buckies in my backyard or any commercial i mean for me to say anything different you wouldn't believe me standing here so i understand these people and how they feel they have that home they have that beautiful pasture and sounds like they even have a lake that they get to fish in so i get that and i can't fix that all i can do is tell you that if i build here i will do everything i can go above and beyond to try to make the development is palatable and i'm happy to meet with the residents i'm happy to work through these issues so i will do everything i can but it's not my property yet and so i don't have the ability to leave it vacant but and that that's what the most of the incentive is for um give the city to give you to make the neighborhood to please the neighborhood to make it better is that correct i wouldn't think so no oh okay any other question yeah and and i want to address that because that comment was made that there was some concern that an incentive that that we were giving an incentive or reimbursement as sort of a ransom to that was another term that to provide to provide um uh better kind of neighborhood amenities and i i could not more categorically disagree with that uh because that's not really been part of the discussion that part of the discussion has been about that you don't have to do that that you don't have to do that but that you're willing to do that now there's been no discussion as far as i've been involved in that that's been tied to this reimbursement the reimbursement has always been about the public infrastructure and you offered to provide those setbacks you offered to provide those buffers as a good faith gesture that you're not out here to come into denton and just totally use every bit of that land that you want to make it a project that you can be proud of and you want to make it a project that the city of denton can be proud of so i i heard that comment but i i that that is not being what has been tied to this incentive at least from my perspective so nor from anybody's perspective we're trying to do is a great project and do a buffer and the project has i didn't say that the project has nothing to do with this 380 agreement conversation we're having the 380 agreement conversation is about if we can put together a economic package that works for the city and buckies to go borrow this kind of money and do this kind of project and build something like this and this is not tied to uh the buffer the buffer is just i have picked up on this is important my first drawing i don't know if you saw it was moved way back i moved it i've kind of made every effort i can to get away and make the buffer there is no connection councilman rodent thank you mayor and since we're heading probably closer to a vote i just want to clarify your your interests and intentions on one particular point there's been a lot of discussion about the improvements of brinker road as i-35 is being improved and as if that that's just simply a given and would happen regardless of the situation it's important to point out that that what enables that to happen is a two million dollar local match and all part of this conversation it's been considered that you would be the one that would be fronting that two million dollar local match to help facilitate that and then part of the incentive agreement would reimburse you for that instead of the city having to front that money uh originally that's what we looked at what came before us tonight and council was that lowered to a million dollars uh for i think a three-year uh reimburse ment of that million dollars uh i'm interested in the idea of you fronting the entire two million dollars and i think in conversations with amy that uh i think she relayed that you were comfortable with the entire two million dollars uh if that was paid back i think in a five year uh period is that accurate if we were if we were to adjust what's before us tonight that's accurate but let me make clear i'm willing to help participate in speeding up the the brinker project and make it happen immediately instead of in the next 10 years right i bought from the first time i came here to this community i've said that and i'm willing more than willing to participate at any level you want what i heard at the last workshop and i'm starting to hear this that there was some kind of he's up fronting this money therefore we have to do this and so i've offered three things i'll up front and help with the matching of tech stock for the entire two million dollars i 'll split it with you all for one million dollars i won't do any of it because i don't i didn't like that it was almost hanging that that you guys can do brinker right without me now amy was right we kind of got this started and got tech stock going and got all this approved but you guys don 't need buckies to fix brinker y'all can do that it does make if it causes a budget problem so the short answer your question is i've told amy i would do the full funding of two million i will split it with you guys of one million or i'm happy to do none of it thank you thank you mayor pro tem i was just impressed when i heard on the mobility committee your conversations with text dot and things started happening so fast so i was just wondering if you could talk to text dot about east mckinney street i'll see what i can do is that a neighborhood yes a school absolutely yes absolutely any other questions for development any questions all right thank you very much you guys stayed late and thank you for all the consideration time i really appreciate it thank you thank you thank you beaver uh council member johnson thank you mayor well for uh for all these reasons um and and i'm not going to restate them all i can't i can't imagine a better partner for a development like this than than buckies and i've had the opportunity to meet with beaver personally i think we all have and you know when you when you meet with somebody who's first class you know it and uh and he certainly is and his company certainly is um there's just a few things that i want to highlight you know one of them is i think it's it's it's we've been talking about this for a long time we've been doing 380 agreements for a long time but for citizens that aren't real familiar with the process you see the term incentive and it can be misleading and so i mean just to kind of go home and do this math and i wouldn't recommend asking the the guy that was a finance major but you know so if you spend seven million dollars today you go borrow the money you go spend seven million dollars today and if you fund it out of your pocket well that has value or if you borrow it from the bank that has value and just say that you're going to pay the bank four percent interest and they'll fix it for 20 years which they won't that's seven million dollar doesn't cost you seven million dollars it costs you like three times that over that period so when you when you see the term incentive what i mean what this is is a reimbursement grant so he's going to spend if we if we do the two million on on the i-35 projects he's going to spend seven point two million dollars in public infrastructure and people can argue about whether the sewer line benefits this person or that person or whatever but this is what we do on on retail developments we've done them all over the place so it's very normal practice but so he's going to get back out of his own sales tax not taxpayer money but the 96 of the people that go to the store who don't live here are going to spend money we get their money but we don't have to provide them services they're not going to go to our parks use our city streets police fire so they're going to come in and spend money in our city get back on the freeway and we get to keep their money well he gets to keep half of that sales tax to recover his seven point two million dollars there's nothing wrong with that but but if you look at so like at the end of 20 years at four percent interest he still hasn't paid off the whole seven million so when our incentive ends he may have gotten it all back he may not have gotten it all back but that doesn't affect our taxpayers the flawed logic in my opinion is to say well those are our dollars well they're not our dollars if he doesn't build it and sell what he's projected to sell so that's the flaw as you say we're going to have the money anyway no we're not i mean apartments could go there we get zero sales tax a truck stop could go there or an automotive dealership or whatever it is so you know i hear all that but when i see 50 green space developers don't do that i'll keep the lake and you can fish in it they don't do that and that's what i mean by you know first class when you see it so i think it's a knockout development and i'm going to make the motion to approve item 5b with the applicant paying the two million dollars for the local match so that version is what i'm proposing to approve council member rodin you 've indicated a second do you uh you want to go let's go ahead and do it then we'll take the discussion so council member rodin sorry i'm just trying to figure out what thank you mayor it 's late well there's all sorts of reasons to uh to pursue economic development and we're doing some incredible things in the city of denton right now from large-scale manufacturing to uh lower uh scale community market type stuff to entrepreneurship to tech economic development and this is just another uh asset to our community so i gladly second uh this motion council member wasney my question on this project location location location if we were looking at putting buckies on the edge of town i wouldn't have a question but this is the most congested part of 35e in this city we can add lanes we can add underpasses we can add overpass es the traffic issue is there we are growing it is going to get worse so i will not be in support of this vote tonight and i'm going to name traffic concerns is my number one issue and my other issue is neighborhood compatibility when you look at the google map and see all the homes behind this project for me that's just not good planning and so my vote will be no thank you council member brings you guys just bear with me i have some things that i i wrote um i want to read um my feelings regarding the project and uh denton is often recognized as one of the most attractive livable and vibrant communities in the nation we have a growing population we have two fantastic higher learning institutions and thriving business community which includes corporate headquarters and facilities for significant national and global brands denton is not a remote outpost on the fringe of a metropolitan area which is where you typically find a bucky's location this isn't going to be the boom for our community that it would be to a rural location certainly not under the tax abatements we are being asked for to pay for the 20 plus years i hold no ill will against uh buckies and i will gladly welcome buckies to our community if buckies could make it work financially without this incentive it's a tough choice but for me i have to consider the opportunity loss if we are going to incentivize the development here i can't help but think of everything this potential site could be with similar levels of significant incentive and proximity to the hotels shopping restaurants and the interstate and dfw airports i think the city is being asked to over invest here so i will not be in support of an incentive thank you council member hawkins thank you mayor i don't know where to start here so on november 11th when we hosted the neighborhood meeting um probably a week before that i sat down with amy bissett and the owner of bucky's beaver uh aplen and we discussed that it would we thought it would be a good idea to have a neighborhood meeting um it was not a mandatory meeting and the the letter the invitation went out and people received it on a monday and we had scheduled the meeting on a wednesday we i don't even think that we had realized we had scheduled a meeting on veterans day so we still had a full room but there were many complaints in the room that um there were some veterans who weren't able to attend who lived in the neighborhood um a lot of people said they weren't able to go because they weren't able to find babysitting like their neighbor had said please convey that and i don't mean any disrespect to anybody in this room i appreciate we've been here for four hours but i would like to make a friendly amendment to just postpone this uh till the next uh december 15th meeting um i feel like i told many people in that room that if they were willing to meet again that i would be willing to do that and uh to be honest i mean i'm i'm leaning towards this project i think that um mr aplen has gone over and beyond i mean he's had dinner with residents even mr moon came out he's the closest home but uh i'm going to be making a friendly amendment to postpone to the 15th i think that would be a motion a motion that's a superseding motion yes so do i need to restate that then yeah just i'd like to make a motion to postpone till december 15th okay we have a motion on the table uh mayor pro tem gregory well oh we needed we need no i just saw you yeah yeah so we have a motion to postpone yeah i i will second that um for councilman hawkins so he can um do what what he told his constituents that that he would do and fulfill that promise if that's something that he feels he needs to do okay so we have a motion and a a second to postpone councilmember johnson thank you mayor so i appreciate where you're coming from um because if you told somebody you would try to have another meeting then obviously you want to try to do that i guess my thought is so we've had you had you had two neighborhood meetings whatever on the 11th i guess it was then we had a open work session a couple of weeks ago that people could attend then this was posted last week on wednesday right this was so this has been in the public since wed nesday that this session was going to be tonight so now we've had a public hearing where everybody could come and say whatever they wanted to say so i guess from where i stand um i don't know what more information we're going to learn i mean to be honest we at some point we have to make a decision the i can't imagine that there's folks that live in that neighborhood that haven't had the opportunity to contact you or speak with you or tell you what they think or whatever and i'm sensitive to neighborhoods i mean i live in one and i totally get it and but frankly i'm not so sure that there's any new information that's going to be introduced that is going to help us make a decision by having another neighborhood meeting and part of my issue is we can kick the can a couple more weeks but we also have some very big issues that we have to deal with in a couple of weeks so i guess for me i can't support the amendment or the the new motion to postpone because honestly we're gonna i can't imagine that there's any more information and frankly i don't want to do this again for four hours on the 15th because we've heard everything we're going to hear i think um i can't imagine that there's any new information that's going to help us make a decision up here so i i can't support that and i appreciate your position joey i really do mayor pro tem well i would echo most of those comments i really do appreciate you you made a promise to your uh constituents in that neighborhood but um again what i was thinking the same thing greg was in terms of uh this meeting has been posted uh they've had a chance a good notice to come out and express themselves tonight and and again i don't think that we're going to hear anything else so while i appreciate the sentiment and your intent uh i think that that that we've had a very full discussion thanks yeah i want to echo some of those sentiments but i appreciate councilmember hawkins you know you you made a commitment and you're sticking with it um i too think that we've we've heard not only have we heard tonight but i mean over the last three weeks i think we all have received many many emails both for and against this project for a large variety of reasons so your commitment to do what you said would you you would do i honor that i respect that unfortunately i won't be able to support the motion but that's in no way trying to uh derail you or to somehow disrespect you in that regard so i just wanted to make sure and i think at least the council members that have spoken probably share that sentiment as well so i just wanted to make sure and share that with you any other questions or comments because we have a motion on the table to postpone and we have a second so if there's no more discussion that will be the vote that we now take on the board so the the the motion is to postpone so a vote for it is to postpone it a vote against it is to move on to the to the underlying motion uh the motion fails uh five to two so we did have a motion on the table made by council member johnson and i believe a second by council member rodin and i believe the motion was including the two million dollars with the five- year repayment plan as structured uh under the different scenarios uh mayor pro tem gregory thank you mayor uh i'd like to offer a couple of friendly amendments and um we're going to need to explain what we're doing here because need to check with them the motion or in the second but i also want to confirm with the um the applicant because this is this is um we've hammered out a lot of these other agreements in sessions and in back and forth and and so this is a little awkward but the first the first friendly amendment would be in section two on grant conditions and it's paragraph d and it has to do with light restrictions it currently says which shall be made more restrictive than the dentin development code requirement we've talked uh with our with our staff presentation of making it two times as restrictive as the dentin development code so that's uh the first friendly amendment i would offer to see if uh the motion or in the second would agree to that it's section two grant conditions paragraph d changing the word more to two times as restrictive as the dentin development code it just gives more of a quantification to restricting the the light levels at the property line so that is a that is a friendly amendment proposed to the the movement and the second that's right i would just ask has that been discussed with the applicant and the applicant would be in agreement with that is the mic on yeah in this discussion tonight that in the discussion this afternoon we talked about changing the wording to say that the the photometric design would be more restrictive than the ddc so we made that change but since we've come here tonight then now you've indicated that you'd like for it to say twice as restrictive as the the dd c and the way that it's currently designed today it meets that requirement but i have not had the opportunity to speak with mr aplen about that so we we may want to bring him up here and let him to respond to that directly okay sure there's a short answer is yes i'm happy to do that uh i suggest we word it a little better to make it very clear and something that's measurable so 5.5 foot candles is the code so twice would be 0.25 that sounds great and then it's simple and it's in the okay all right yep all right thank you okay yes so that that's that that's okay i'll accept that friendly amendment me as well okay all right then going on in the agreement to section six section six where it says other grantee obligations um okay this is wording that our attorney has written down based on um some comments that were made during the section and i can't read her handwriting i could read the other one because it was my idea to okay that that a paragraph c that that um um to to simply memorialize what uh mr apling has already verbally agreed to that the trees uh along the uh the the boundary would be uh preserved on the on the back of the property on the back property line and that doesn't sound like the right wording i mean it sounds like it should be more i would be more comfortable with something that says to the extent to the extent possible what i'm trying to get at is you know what he said one tree has to come out he would replace it with three and there may be you got you may have a you know utility line or something so if you say you'll preserve every tree and then he has to take one out he'd be in violation of the agreement to the maximum extent possible the trees will be preserved along the back property line something to that effect council member rodin uh i i guess i have a question i'm sure we'll have to discuss with the applicant as well i i do have questions as to whether or not although you mentioned the attorney put it in that section as to why it would go there versus under the grant conditions which is talking about things like site plan and whatnot uh and other sorts of amenities it seems to make more sense and so one way that perhaps we can we can couch it in a way that gives uh the same sort of flexibility as what we're talking about with maintaining the the location as depicted on the preliminary site plan is to tie it add add some language into the the discussion of preliminary site plan and the location that includes uh the existing stand of trees um but also is kind of qualified by that substantially preserved well the the the other suggestion i was going to have for the a paragraph in in that section was that the uh council uh that the final site plan comes back to council for approval and i don't know if we could capture it there or not we'll just offer this up and we're i guess we 're just discussing this yeah is so so it has to substantially match with what's been proposed typically site plans get approved pnz level i think right or staff level actually so you've got a site plan i mean i guess what i'm getting at is do we really need to look at it and say yeah that's what you said you were going to do can't we rely on our staff to do that i'm fine with that i think i just because that could that could put that could delay somebody six weeks and at that time you're really spending a lot of money yeah so i'm okay with with a paragraph saying that that this the site plan will will be substantially uh the same as what was presented in this i think we've got that in there right in there yeah so i think what you're saying though is that just as a part of that you would say including so instead of creating a whole new paragraph back here about trees that's where it says that the site site plan shall substantially concur with blah blah blah including preservation of the trees along the back okay of the property line i think that captures it those are my my friendly amendments and if you guys are good with it then because that way if one has to come out for a specific reason and it's understood staff can deal with that and it's not saying every tree has to stay but oh i didn't see substantially are you amenable to that that sort of change i'm amenable to everything that i've heard you guys say we do have to have a little bit of we have do have to be a little bit reasonable there if you notice in the front of this site plan could we pull the map up anymore there are some trees that are right at the front of the building i mean we so well am i okay with basically what i'm hearing yes at this juncture and where we are and i don't even have a copy of the agreement and you may want to consider if you guys are going to vote tonight and if you vote for this project authorizing staff and your attorney and we will go put together a document that tries to accomplish the things that are concerning you guys and we'll do it correctly i don't know if that's your recommendation because here we 're kind of adding a little here in the paragraph there and right and but everything i've heard so far none of it bothers me are there some others i think that's it that's it and so i just want to make sure that i'm clear on the tree preservation aspect because what i'm hearing is it 's along those property lines like that one stand of trees down on that bottom right hand corner that backs up that's really what we're talking about and any that are along the other side of the property line that kind of screening that's that's what we're referring to is that correct i think the way you could clarify it madam city attorney would be to say preserving the trees along the back property line abutting single-family residential properties because that's really the trees we're talking about okay so the movement and second are okay with the friendly amendments that have been posed yes madam city attorney you have an understanding of what those friendly amendments are i do do we have any more discussion on this issue if not let's vote on the board please motion carries five to two well let's take about a five minute break before we go on to our next agenda item just to give people a chance stretch your legs i apologize for the other public hearing but all right welcome back it is a 10 57 and we're reconven ing our december the first 2015 city council meeting for the city of denton we are now on agenda item 5c which is considered nominations appointments to the city boards and commissions community development advisory committee and traffic safety committee we do have a speaker so i think uh mr husbit if you'd like to speak before we consider this item thank you sir council members my name is willy etchwood delivered 623 newton i remember we uh had this discussion before and it was about an appointment that was made and it turns out that it appears that you if you don't like someone then some of you vote them out and my thought for this for years they've done me like that it people have done me like that but i've and i've coached young athletes and what you have is you wind up with a lot of yes yes people around you but you don 't really come up with a good balance if you keep eliminating people who think a little bit different than you do and have a different idea then you do whenever yes people and you don't get a good balance i don't think for this city so it was very unfortunate that or not unfortunate i didn't agree with the fact that you voted did not accept the nomination that a council person had put up i think that's bad policy i think you should go ahead and allow that person to if they fit the rules and that's the other thing you don't have any rules it's just if they don't get voted in they don't get voted in uh and by the i don't know if you even have a majority rule i guess you do my point is you need some diversity on your boards in commission wonder why i would say diversity so my suggestion is if a council person nominates someone then you ought to let that person serve thank you sorry thank you okay uh for that agenda item who which staff will be mayor i think my understanding is that we may have a nomination or two i 'll ask jane the city secretary if she has the names of individuals or if council members do and jane i'm not sure whether we have nominations for these two advisory boards or not uh community development advisory committee council member briggs has nominated jody vickers nance and council member rodin has nominated hutch ice it's that for so there's two nominations for the community development advisory committee yes is there are there two slots one okay all right okay and do we have do we take these nominations one at a time i'm sorry council member rodin yeah i i spoke with council member uh briggs prior to the meeting and uh i agreed i think she beat me to the punch on recommending her particular person uh and i'm fine with uh her nomination all right great okay uh madam senate attorney we can we take all these nominations and just vote one time correct all right all right so uh we have is there one for the traffic safety commission or no that's that's just telling us that someone has has resigned or moved out of town so we do have a vacancy on the traffic safety oh no that's fine i didn't mean to i just yeah so anyway so we have a nomination for the community development advisory committee by council member briggs and that seems to be all that we're considering tonight so unless we have any other discussion or questions let's vote on the board oh do we yeah somebody got to make a motion council member breaks i make a motion to approve jody vickers nance to the community development advisory committee mayor pro tem second council member rodin uh you know in response to uh mr hud spitz uh good points and i agree we need diversity of all kinds and diversity of opinion this particular person has differences of opinion with us on several key issues and has come and made that very clear uh uh here on several occasions and yet i'm still comfortable with her because i think she has something to contribute and a good perspective of the city and so i i i gladly will be in support of this all right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we are now in the public hearing portion of our agenda agenda item 6a hold a public hearing consider an ordinance regarding a specific use permit to allow multifamily development on an approximately 16.061 acre property generally located on the south side of east mckinney and as our our protocol i will now open the public hearing thank you mayor and i'll ask amy visit our director of development services if she'd present this public hearing this should only take about as long as my last item so what you're considering tonight is a specific use permit to allow multifamily development um it is on about 16 acres and it's located on east mckin ney and near woodrow lane you're looking at the site here and as you can see it's heavily treed and we'll be talking about that in a moment and it is mostly surrounded by undeveloped property although there is a dme substation site bordering one side and then undeveloped single family zoning to the west and the south oh i'm sorry it's mixed use zoning on the west and then there's some existing development to the north it is currently zoned in our mu in in this zoning district and sup is required for multi-family if it is not a part of a mixed use development or a plan development and the site plan today includes 11 apartment buildings 322 units is the limit and it doesn't involve amenities including community centers a business center fitness center swimming pool and after school program and there's several different building types type a is three stories and 30 units each those are highlighted in blue here type b is a different configuration but also three stories and 30 units and type c is the yellow with a smaller number of units d has two stories and 10 units and e1 and e2 are both two stories and 12 units and f is four stories and 116 units you can see that at the bottom and then you can see the the amenities up at the top here are some of the elevations i can tell you that we have worked very diligently with this particular applicant to address a couple of difficult things related to this site and they have worked very hard with us to preserve as many of the trees as possible and have recon figured their site plan to accommodate that they submitted a tree preservation plan as a part of their specific use permit application and they've worked very hard with staff to to accommodate the type of development that we were looking to see here to to be able to recommend a specific use permit here the access points and the mckinney is the primary thorough fare through there but it will not be the the primary access into the property that was one of the the the areas that we worked to to try to mitigate traffic impact with them and the primary access in the future will be a median opening here that once mckinney is widened will be a primary access point i'm sorry secondary access for emergency only is up here on the on the western side and like i said they have worked very hard to preserve as many trees as possible and you can see the landscape plan here and there's all of the existing trees that they have preserved and they have added new trees to buffer to the substation in order to provide some mitigation of that nuisance for their residents and a 10 foot buffer to the residential zoning to the south and this is it looks like the future land use map although it's not labeled that i apologize and it is designated as moderate residential in our future land use plan and the consideration for this specific use permit is that the site plan landscape plan and elevations are all compliant with the ddc and that no nuisance are anticipated a preliminary view of the public infrastructure and services is determined that the site will be adequately served under future conditions and the applicant designed the site to preserve existing trees minimum tree code requirements will be met or exceeded to improve bicycle and pedestrian facilities the applicant has proposed a wider six foot sidewalk along mckinney as well as bike racks and the site is designated as moderate residential on the future land use plan although the proposed density is higher than suggested it's well below the maximum permitted in the current current in our immune zoning district the applicant will be required to construct turn lanes into the primary entrance of the site and the secondary will be emergency access only the denton plan 2030 does cite the shortage of affordable housing options in denton and if approved this development does help address that shortage public notifications were mailed out on october 14th they were sent 200 foot required notices were sent to seven property owners and 500 foot courtesy notices were sent to 21 we have received one one in opposition and it's a unusual case they this one in opposition owns a little over 40 percent of the surrounding property you can see on the on the overhead that the red area is what's owned by this particular property owner and staff recommend does approve does staff does recommend approval of this sup with some conditions that the site substantially conform with the site plan and landscape plan and that the maximum number of units be 322 that the western access shall be emergency access only until mckinney street is widened and that building facades facing mckinney street shall have a minimum of 60 percent masonry 40 is what is required on the development as a whole and we've asked or we've put a condition on the our recommendation that 60 masonry be added on the site along mckinney some of the buildings and didn't have the the varying articulation that we we might that we would require and we felt like this additional masonry addressed that issue the planning and zoning commission recommends approval as well subject to the conditions above i will tell you that because we have a 40 property owner in opposition that approval of this sup would require a super majority the applicant is here as well and may wish to speak okay looks like we have a question mayor pro tem thanks i was looking at the backup and i saw that the the opposition was from a john mccormick in houston texas it says opposed to request but there are no comments have you heard any comments i have not but the senior planner mike bell on this project may have had some comments well and i think i think we have some representatives from the owner that will be speaking tonight as well okay yeah all right fine i'm sorry i've just had a my mind just froze on me okay so this is a public hearing the applicant is here we do have some cards uh blue cards but i wanted to give the applicant an opportunity to speak and that would would that be mr vanzan is it okay all right and i believe the rules are the applicant gets a little more time is that correct am i is that my understanding okay yes okay good evening mayor and council thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight um my name is lance vanzant 512 west hickory and uh mr greger i'm one of those rare lawyers that won't take all my time so i'm going to just speak briefly speak briefly and uh and introduce some of the some of the folks that i brought with me tonight who may be able to answer some detailed questions as well um again i represent the nrp group who in partnership with denton housing authority is requesting your approval of this specific use permit tonight first thing i wanted to do is just to thank miss missett and her staff uh mike bell manal heywood morgan those folks have worked we've worked for a period of months here gone through many iterations of this development plan i think in the end with their review and and criticism has made it a much better product in the end so they've been great to work with and we appreciate all their help and and wanted to acknowledge that um i think one of the specific challenges that miss missett mentioned was the existing tree canopy on that 16 acres and it's one of those sites where there's really not a junk tree out there they're all very good trees and we made it a priority to preserve as many of those as we possibly could and i believe in every respect we met or exceeded your tree code requirements and we have our architect here on my campton who can speak uh details of that if you have any if you have any further questions but i think that challenge is also one of the things that's going to make this a really unique and beautiful site um it's going to be really a showpiece uh complex there for the folks who who who get to live there and um that's probably one of the probably what excites me most about this i represent a lot of developers it's a lot of times you don't get wrapped up personally in a development project but um this one's a little different for me because i know that the 322 families when the when this project is completed and the and the doors are open there are going to be 322 local families who have a tremendous upgrade to their housing opportunity right now they're going to walk into a beautiful home that they can be proud of that they're going to have after school opportunities their children are going to have that they don't have today and we're just looking forward to making that happen and are seeking your support so if i could i'll introduce just um if you have any questions uh deborah garero with the nrp group is here and uh the vela family who are the current owners are here and mike hampton and jonathan hake who are civil engineer and architect and then some folks from the denton housing authority mr rachelle and dr kathryn streem and sherell english and sherry mcdade so we've got the whole team here to to answer any questions you might have we do have a question uh mayor pro tem thank you uh yesterday council member riggs and i were talking and we were we've been talking a lot lately about energy and energy conservation and renewable energy and uh the conversation she brought up the conversation about about uh connecting this with affordable housing and it reminded me um i was so grateful because it reminded me about a tour that i went on november of last year uh when i was at the national league of cities conference held in austin and we had the tour took us to a development by austin affordable housing and it was a series of town homes that were net zero energy homes which means that the homes generate more uh power during the year than they actually use so at times they're not generating as much it's mainly due to solar panels on the roof but uh so they're buying energy but then at times they're actually generating more energy than they 're using and they're selling it back to the city so that over the period of a year it's net zero energy they did some designs to make this possible by making sure that there were no vents coming through the roof all the vents came through the side walls up near the top so that the roof was completely available for solar panels and for solar heating where water was coming up there and going through panels to be heated and then going down then there were some extra efforts made in terms of conservation with insulation and more energy efficient windows and more energy efficient appliances so i guess my first question is is it too late in the design process for this particular project for those kinds of things to be considered or is it better to have that conversation and maybe work with the dent municipal electric and a partnership for the next project that comes along with the dent and housing authority yeah it may be too late to have some major structural changes but i think we've got probably um and uh mr hampton are you able to speak at all to the i know we're subject to the to the current energy building codes which is energy codes which is going to make this a very energy efficient project and i think and as far as the appliances and that sort of thing i think you know i may let deborah speak to that i'll let mr ham pton speak to i'm sorry dubber gorrero with the nrp group i'll let mr hampton speak to um a lot of what we're already doing but uh mayor pro tem yes we do have energy efficient appliances we also have uh windows and and our insulation because we are following all that might come up here and and give the exact codes that we're following but we do incorporate a lot of those lead requirements even though we're not trying to be lead certified um but when you start talking about future developments absolutely you need to start doing that at the beginning uh we will look at and after mike tells you what we're already doing we'll be happy to look at some other um some other opportunities but but as lance mentioned when it comes to major structural it is a bit late in the design process but i'll turn it over to mike mike hampton 4311 o'conn in dallas texas i'm the architect of the project uh at this point in time we're not designing a project to have energy generating devices solar panels wind panels things or wind turbines things like that but we are taking advantage of all of the energy efficiency elements that are afforded by the new codes this building will probably be more energy efficient than any other apartment building that's been built in this city in the last 50 years uh you know if you look at this building for instance we have six inch extra walls that are 19 insulation you know typically in the past we'd have four inch walls r11 insulation we've got r30 insulation the attics our our hbc systems are 14 sear versus 10 or 12 seared in the past we're providing outside air to the the units to provide a more livable environment inside the units we're providing high efficiency windows for the exterior of the building we're providing programmable thermostats for the residents so they they will have all those types of things available to them you know we're going to be doing what's called door door door testing which each unit has to be tested and it tests the the the the confinement of the unit and if there's any leaks that that uh that energy can either leak in or out of the building so the bill the units will all be very tightly designed uh and and i can say these will be more energy efficient than any other units that are currently in the market right now and that's basically because of the codes and energy codes and things like that which is driving all the new energy things we're not going to lead but truth of the matter is so many of the things we're doing are lead compliant type things so this is a step above what you've ever seen in the past that's excellent i would just suggest that that in sometime in the near future uh that we might schedule a work session with the the the leaders of the the housing authority to talk about the possibility of partnerships to talk about the inventory of properties that they have around town that they are considering developing or properties that they are thinking about maybe selling in order to find other developments uh because i think that we have some great opportunities for partnerships that that that would be worthy of exploring because of the benefits to to the city and certainly to the residents council member breaks so i i wanted to thank you for bringing that up um it comes on on the conversation of energy consumption and also help to the homeowner to lower that utility bill which is sometimes really hard hard to make um so it makes me happy to hear all the things that you're doing for efficiency um so thank you well i will say this that if you took the building that i just described earlier uh and you ran an energy model on it these buildings would probably be 18 to 20 percent more efficient so it's it's a substantial difference and thank you any other questions council member rodin so is this a question for the applicant generally speaking yeah yeah we've got three or four or five or six cards left but uh and and mr hampton was one of those but i think as sort of more of a resource so if you have some questions for the applicant yes for sure so i i guess i don't know who to address this too but i did have questions relating to what sort of internet is being provided uh the after school program uh in particular because that was mentioned so i don't know who's who's best on behalf of the applicant to address those sure no absolutely um this is a partnership with the dunton housing authority and we're very proud of this particular partnership because it is about families and honestly it's it's more than just providing a roof it is about those after school those red residents service programs uh the major component of our our resident service program is the homework first program which uh what we do is we have a non-profit that comes in and actually connects families with local non-profits that are already here in the city and in the area it's not about reinventing anything it's about connecting families the after school program uh she'll work cooperatively with dent on isd uh because it's about taking the curriculum that's already in the schools and providing an opportunity for kids to be somewhere safe and have somebody helping them uh tutoring them making sure that they're doing their homework and and honestly homework first and that's where the name comes from and then during the summers we have um opportunities for kids to be there all day long and provide services so so single because a lot of our our families are single moms and single parents and these single parents will have somewhere safe for their kids to be even during the summer and again um the idea is to coordinate it with what already exists here in in in the area with regards to wi-fi about internet service yeah the internet access at the at the complex and the internet's the common area wi-fi and then um there'll be the opportunity to um put in each room but it's common area wi-fi we also will have computers and printers in the business center that again are opportunities for those families that don't have access in their own units to have access somewhere in in the community itself the other thing uh the partnership uh actually resulted in is that we have additional community spaces and the denton housing authority board which which you all have appointed uh were very they were very serious about having enough of these common community spaces for families to gather together to to actually have a community that that lived played and and essentially knew each other and so we do have additional amenity spaces in this community great and and and as we're talking about future partnerships on these sorts of things i mean uh these sorts of projects are great opportunities to help bridge the digital divide uh folks who may not be able to afford the typical type of high-speed broadband into their individual apartment i think the community community space wi-fi is a good step forward uh like we've seen in austin and other places they've taken the opportunity to say let's light these places up so these kids who now have to go to school and a prerequisite for doing homework is having access to the internet uh otherwise couldn't afford it have some of the best internet in town so i think as we're moving forward we're having a number of community-wide conversations on those things but again another kind of floating concept out to uh denton housing authority that's something we we can really tackle and and councilman rodin just to let you know uh also what we're doing in fort worth in one of our newer communities is we're actually purchasing tablets ipads uh and and lending them out to our residents so that that common space wi-fi can be used i mean there's there's something an actual hard i don't know i'm not i don't i'm not young enough and hip enough to know what everything's called but but a tablet i've been using mine all night uh but a tablet where where that common wi-fi can be used by family so that it's more than just the computers that are stationary and so we want to keep expanding those opportunities because you're absolutely right so many families they they just don't have it on their own so thank you councilmember hawkins well just to add to that i love that you're not just providing housing i mean this is an actual opportunity you know so just kudos it's great it's going to turn into a community not just you know housing like i said so well and and the other part of the resident component of the resident service program is to help with um i'm so sorry i'm so tired right now uh to help we also hold fairs connecting with health care opportunities of financial planning uh opportunities to where some may want to buy a single family home that may be built right next door and so helping families get to the point where they have those opportunities because it's all about increasing the opportunities for the families here in denton councilmember wasney i want to thank the whole team that worked on this i studied the the plan and the after school and the community centers those were the two real hot buttons for me um because i've raised kids and i know as a working parent those are the two big holes in your life um in terms of raising kids and so this is more than just brick and mortar you know this is truly a whole leg up so when you move in it's it's it's exciting and again thank you to the team it's well thought through and i'm proud of you thank you yeah we've got a couple a few more cards i see no more questions at least for uh at this time so we'll go through the cards of mr dick kelsey come down state your name and address for the record my name is dick kelsey i live at 206 ridgecrest circle here in denton we have the property of 2225 east mckinney directly across from the center of this property to the north i want to tell you i know i checked both blocks both for and against and i want to tell you why i did that i knew that would confuse you but i figured i'd get chosen first anyway hope to uh my problem is not with the project it's a well-needed project i'm in favor of providing something like this uh we need it and there's no question about that my problem with it is what are we going to do about the traffic on east mckinney it is in a horrible situation i every morning when i go to work if you go to the light there and you turn east to turn north into the property it is all yellow it is double yellow no one is supposed to cross that everybody does all those apartments come out they turn left to go to town all the businesses come out they turn left to go to town i turn left to go into the office it's the only way we can get into our office now this is going to be from we understand from talking to text dot and a city this is going to be a raised median road with no cuts right now people cannot get out of mac drive unless somebody lets them in they can't go east or west because from about 7 30 in the morning to about 8 30 in the morning it is backed up more than a quarter of a mile and you're going to dump with this project 300 more cars that have no way of getting into that traffic pattern because they'll be coming into a stack of cars that are waiting for the six changes of the light to get through so you're going to be adding 300 cars to that problem even as far back as it is from that intersection so what i'm going to say is what is the current problem if you are going to try to put a raised median in here the first curb cut you get is mac drive and you can go there but through mac park you come out of mac park you have to turn right legally everybody nobody does it they come across the double red line they turn left now if you want to get to uh back to town the way this is going to be you have to go nine tenths of a mile down to the old piggly wiggly store to find a public place to turn around it is an absolute disaster for trying to go back to town if either way you you if you can't pass through so what i'm asking you to do in this project is we have these problems number one we have terrible backup at in the mornings secondly that we have to have turn lanes to be able to get out to turn left for for all of us then the turnaround that we have now you say well there's a curb cut at the fountain's apartments there is a there's a double yellow cut line on a turn lane it's a fountain that's private property now they have fussed about it but they could they could simply put up a sign says no trespassing and there are roads that go off but there is no cul-de-sac at the end there is no place to turn around on any of those roads without getting into somebody's driveway it is an absolute disaster and it's going to get worse with this project now the uh what what i would suggest that that we ought to what could be done and i've tried to talk to everybody about this our property now when we bought that property and moved our offices into that property we made a deal with the city they said you're not going to tear that old building down are you said no we will agree we will not tear that building down you're going to preserve those beautiful trees aren't you yes we will preserve the beautiful trees we have done all of that they ask us to leave everything in place we have done it now that zoning that we are in allows for 25 000 square feet of commercial office development that would be another 40 to 50 to 60 cars that need to turn left and no way to do it so it is a real problem now what what could be a possible solution that was your time so if you could just sort of give us your solution yeah that'd be okay yeah thank you i've tried to find a problem now let me jump to the solution number one i understand it is somewhere out in the ether that the city may acquire 426 in some tex dot swamp i don't know if any of you all are aware of that but that's somewhere in the ether so i don't know where it is but if the city could get it then the city could plant it the way they want to so that would be the first thing is pursue that angle to see where it is i don't know where is this deal with tex dot secondly we believe i believe that there's going to be instead of a median cost more money to build a median cost more money to maintain a median if you plant the medium half of them are going to die if you haven't been out anywhere now i've tried to talk to the traffic folks in your department they've been very nice and very pleasant and very uninterested in this problem they said basically it's tex dot's problem not our problem i don't think that's right i think the city can have a direct input and what i'm asking the city to do is to use its influence through your influence on management to look at making instead of a raised median have a center left turn lane now the comment i get from traffic is suicide lane you want a suicide line well that may be what they call it but i'm not aware of any accident anywhere in the city of denton on one of these so-called lanes they're all over the place dallas drive they've been implemented all over town they've been very efficient and effective to allow people to get in and out of the we do have a question and and oh okay then i will i will stop yep we have a question council member brings well you actually brought up something that um i i also when i had a meeting was concerned about the traffic um on mckinney and and my um not just the cars but also the kids the children that will possibly be walking to school again um but i did want to bring up the fact that we are in talks with text dot on getting the the road back and my question i guess would be um do we have or can we change the design of text dot if we do on that road back is that something that maybe we should explore or or think about and i'm on board with with fast tracking it as quick as as we can because it's it's danger situation i think the answer to that is yes but that's my answer you all may know more than i do because i have done what i can with text dot okay and with the city as well but i think if you put a painted left left center lane that opens up everything to everybody and you know and contrary i mean if you drive around town just next time you drive look look on dallas drive look on every place where we have businesses on both sides so i would ask you to and i know timing is everything yeah we if you could wrap it up real quick i we're all tired i know i mean we've all been waiting for this just one one concludes close to sentence that'd be great please direct staff to look at doing painted center left double left turn lane just ask them to please examine that at p and z i would i was asked to do that and i was supposed to get contact i never got any contact all right thank you very much any other questions any other questions happy to answer thank you very much sir thank you long patience thank you uh the next speaker will be uh daniel mccormick oh mr uh mr mayor yeah yeah come on sure that's fine come on down because we can't hear you the people can't over to so uh michael witten if you'll state your name and address and your time will begin i'm michael witten uh uh 218 north elm denton that's my office address i live in 2901 montabella at this point at this point first let me say this i committed to represent these folks uh when there was a corporate name and the owner i didn't know it was roland vala he's a friend of mine he's a he's as good a man as i've ever known but i've got a client and i'm going to say what i think needs to be said and uh but you know if we're just judging this on how good a guy is we you'd grant it uh there are a lot of reasons for denying this uh you need to look carefully at the report that uh the uh generated by your own staff uh there are three main problems density traffic and damage to the neighboring property uh the uh is this work here yes they'll they'll put it up on the screen first i believe the staff was incorrect in saying we owned 40 point something percent i think we own more than 50 percent of the surrounding property property if you look there our property runs from this strip here down here and all the way to the end here and if you look at that i think that's that's going to be a lot more than 50 percent all the colored square all the colored pieces on this map belong to us to my client the actual client is uh ter anto it's t-e-r-r-a-n-t-o properties a lot of this property is listed in the name of staff realty or Toronto realty those entities merged many years ago so we've got about 450 acres here it's his own single family uh i thought there were some telling comments in the buckies uh discussion remember how many of them said well this is a heck of a lot better than a high-rise apartment right next to us well what have we got here we've got a four-story apartment that backs up directly on our on our north uh uh line so so that is something that we're going to have to look at that impacts our use of the land for single family nobody's going to want to buy a lot and build a house in a subdivision where they're going to have a four-story apartment looking into the backyard so to an extent as further we go out uh uh the uh the impacts are going to be great so part of the standard and this is the law this is not you know here's how i view this i think it i think everybody up here wants to do the right thing if it were just this project these fine people that put it together uh we'd approve it but you can't take it in isolation you can't consider that just on that basis because a specific use permit requires certain legal requirements they're set out basically from the uh ordinance in the report of your own staff and you can call this whatever you want it's a zoning change you're permitting multi-family uh uh apartments high density uh in uh a place where you could not build those before now mr watts let me ask you this my class got 450 acres that are impacted they had plenty of time your staff you got to call them down for questions i'd like some forbearance here to let us state our case well and mr w itten i don't necessarily have a problem with that but i need to make sure that we follow our rules of procedure so if the council wants to give you a few more minutes that's fine uh but uh i appreciate it well but i guess we do have a an opportunity is it how many people that if they're representing more than so many people ten four so it has to be four or more okay i'm going to give you a little bit of time but it's going to be a short lease because you got three other two other speakers behind you that can enumerate what you need to issue an sup uh it can be issued only if all the conditions following conditions are met they're not met uh who has the burden of proof here the applicant the applicant needs to prove that it meets those requirements it's an applicant they're the one asking to rezone the property they should have to demonstrate that they've met all the conditions look at your ordinance first is not compatible with the area does not impair values what evidence have they presented that it doesn't impair these values they've got a statement in the report that says it doesn't impair values what's what's the factual basis of that we believe it does we believe it's common sense that if you put a four-story apartment next to some single family property you've you've impaired the value let me and i'm going to go ahead and let you wrap it up i have a question for you okay um is there any plans and are there any plans submitted i mean are there any lots planted currently on that 450 acres no there are not but we have a preliminary plan plan that we had i believe within the last year my client has uh worked on hired a planner to lay it out it's very rough uh we do plan to develop the property one of the problems is we're being told that you need to build something that's about 250 000 dollars worth of house uh and there are no starter homes basically in dentin anymore and of course that i know that the starter homes don't generate enough we have a couple questions and once we get through it this round of questions i'm going to go ahead and call for the next speakers uh council member johnson thank you mayor so uh mike thanks for coming out isn't the the entire property list on on the market for sale right now the 450 roughly 450 460 acres if if the price is right and we'll try i don't know if the client has just put it out there to see what what kind of uh offer he might get i know it's his own single family it's his property and he's going to have to develop it that way uh uh and and the the apartment project in question impacts that uh that so i had two questions so that was my one question it is for sale the the other question is i think i think i think uh yeah corbett can answer that question well i know it's for sale but i have the package i'm just i wanted to i have to ask you a question i can't make a statement the other question i had for you was on that site if i'm looking at the right spot on the aerial so that site down spencer the the part of the land that backs up to this potential multifamily site isn't there quite a bit of topography drop off and some floodplain that runs along the there is i think the planning would have to take all that into account yes because because i it seems to me like with the topography that drops off and what it would cost because you basically have to build a bridge to put some not very many houses back there i'm not sure and i 'm just not sure i'm not a civil engineer but i'm pretty confident it you'd be hard pressed to actually develop that section of it for single family residential just throwing it out there that you know that you've got quite a bit of topography and some floodplain i know what the zoning is that's what i know about it okay thank you yeah mr witten the other thing i'm going to generate in traffic and i'll stop yeah yes calpess he said 300 cars the the your own staff's plan says 600 and so about parking places okay so it's way more than that all right thank you very much i appreciate any other questions seeing none thank you uh next speaker will be rob rainer okay all right mr daniel mccormick please state your name and address and your time will begin okay can i get a google image on here i'm sorry can i get a google image uh sure let's uh amy will come down there and help you do you have the internet on there that doesn't show the elements together okay not what i was looking for but uh daniel mccormick 1303 cambell road and um i'm here on behalf of the ownership and we own the 450 acres around the tract of which you'll see on this on there but uh we have been i have been focused on this property for the last year year and a half with rob rainer and uh have been in touch with uh land planners jack o'brien omni plan carrie gilbert houston and uh we have started uh looking at a master plan i've started contacting developers builders and the uh struggle i'm running into right now with the property is the main entrance of this and where builders want to be and locate on this property as you know on the west on the western portion of our property is woodrow lane you have the jail and the juvenile center there so not really the best entrance for a community of 200 000 to 250 000 homes on 288 you have uh all the starter homes that are a few years old i think they may even be rental properties so we're further away from another main street so mckenney is mcken ney is the last main artery we have for a nice grandiose entrance and so what our concern is is putting apartments here at the main entrance of this flowing into the 160 acres that's north of the creek that would be the single family residential as you notice shady oak goes through the property we have everything there's a few blocks missing that we do own on there and so i did do a little quick map because i didn't find out until yesterday that i was coming up here i did a three mile radius of the property i did the center of it being our property and i did a uh this is from metro study and it's a report on the annual starts annual closings of home sales and you can see that the housing supply for 150 to 200 000 homes is four and a half months vacant developed lots is 7.1 months 200 000 homes is nine months and and then you have seven months behind so you can see that anywhere from the 150 000 to the 300 000 homes is what's in demand right now for this particular area and so putting an apartment complex blocking 160 acres for for 16 acre development is tough for us to sell to a home builder and developer so we're likely for you all to consider that and you know the traffic and rob will talk more on the curb cuts as well but as for the growth of the city of denton inside the loop really one of the last main big tracks we want to make sure it's developed right for you guys and gets the taxable value for you guys in this area so that's all i have to say and i'll pass on to rob any questions thank you appreciate it thank you rob your turn state your name and address please your time will begin may i also have that aerial if i may rob rainer 607 south the area oh this one i'm looking at thank you yes 607 south locust suite 101 um i appreciate you all's time on this uh i think the major issue that we have here it's a wonderful project and we all need it we just think it's in the wrong location and one of the main regions is i went and talked to went and talked to tech stop today and asked them about the median cuts the latest plan has a median cut that will be at mac drive and it will have turn lanes going east or north or south to go on mac and then possibly onto our property the next meeting cut is at the fountain apartments but the only turn lane is going to be the eastbound turn lane heading north into the apartments there will not be a turn lane heading south it just gives us a real problem because our track if you look to the left of of the subject site there's a seven acre track that is between mac park and the subject site and that is our entrance and if mac drive ran right into it i asked the text dot because evidently they are have control of that if that small curb cut which you saw on the project that's on the far west side of the subject property if that's put in place text dot has said that we will not get a curb cut because it violates the spacing with the existing curb cut that mac park has that curb cut as we were told was an emergency curb cut but then the bottom sentence that was not read out loud stated that once mckinney is completed it will become an exit so then it will become the Achilles heel for us having access from mckinney street we did not have a traffic study that i know of that was done on this property mckinney street bless his heart it's like an artery that's 80 percent clog ged and we're asking to drink another quart of a heavy whipped cream and that's what you're asking here when you've got you know we have we'll have more than 300 cars we'll have 600 cars we got 300 we'll have we'll have cars buses trucks that will be transporting as many as possibly 1200 people into this property there are other sites that could be used that not only would help diffuse the concentration of the disbursement of the clients in this property but also help east mckinney but it would also there are properties out there that have a far inferior tree canopy than what you're looking at here and so i would like for you to keep that in mind that this this property with its one gate entry is almost like a dead blind alley you go in you come out you're asking everything to be funneled right out through there to hit what east mckinney that only funnels either east or west if you can get on it and you have to go to woodrow or to the loop before you can start really dispersing all of this traffic the intensity is immense you all did not allow an apartment complex across from gire because of heavy traffic and because of trees and we have a similar formula here okay any any questions seeing that okay thank you you bet uh this is that's all the cards i have but this is this is a public hearing so anyone wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will begin there council members my name is willy hud spith and you forced me to be here late tonight so you need to hear me uh i think this is a good project i'm sorry i was on the school board in 1980 and we tried to purchase that property right there for a school i was also at the council meeting several times and the council people that were are elected at the time tried to purchase that property for something that doesn't really have anything to do with what i'm going to say i just think it's a good project i think we'll do this we'll figure out the traffic situation we're going to get that fixed i think what the concern is people are worried that it's not fixed now but i think you will listen to the concerns and you'll get it fixed we'll get the traffic fixed everyone that i've heard about having an objection to the property and the project are stating that the traffic is a problem now it's going to be a problem later well that's a true fact it's going to be a problem if it stays the same we all know it's going to be a problem later here's a thought i think that spencer road why don't people start using spencer road like i do they're not very many people using that road well how about that how about moving over from mckinney to spencer road is a thought i don't know i just think we'll get it fixed don't let this project fall by the way side because of the traffic problems i think we'll get the traffic problems fixed i think the project's great it's going to improve that neighborhood we need the housing it looks like the project is a beautiful site and i just think it's a good thing to do this is the first and the last time i'm going to agree with don't leave don't leave willy mr espos we got a question don't leave i have a question for you willy don't leave you started it so once again you have confirmed for council member rodent and i that late night willy is a lot more fun than daytime willy okay state your name and address your time will begin blessings come in strange ways don't they let my friends uh raise some interesting points but let's forget others this oh this apartment is planned dr vela could you just state your name and address for the for the record my name is roland vela i live at 729 richcrest circle and i have two intersections that i have to go through to get to my house and usually it's i have to wait a mile of the traffic long is a mile long to get from either one of them both of them cross i-35 one on t-sley and the other one on lillian miller you're familiar with those intersections i'm sure you're not going to find much uh room and dentin where you don't have traffic congestion and we uh we praise that so we're an active prospering city and traffic comes with it let me get back to this lot please uh this lot is not out of the way any more than the uh book see is out of because it backs up into into a single family home and to the single family neighborhood does not make that illegal as a matter of fact he just approved it this backs up into single families and this is a an apartment building which has been very carefully designed very carefully thought over let me tell you a couple of things about the location that has not been have not been said this will be an apartment complex among single family homes this is a can you see my finger here no use the mouse well uh this is an apartment complex right here very large compared to the to the one that we're talking about there is an apartment right here an apartment complex and another one here we're surrounded by large apartment complexes and how do i get rid of this now okay i don't know what i did but i did it this man right here sorry this lot right here is seven acres uh i uh the owner of it a previous owner of it was a very good friend of mine and we used to joke about it said the only thing you can raise there are rattled snakes and i wanted to buy that lot lot from him first time about 15 years ago the last time maybe five or six years ago and i said you can't do anything with that lot what do you what can you do with a last shape like that it has no value as a piece of land would you sell it to me he said no i want that's an investment that i have that who in the world is going to buy a lot like that he said somebody will have to when they decide to build something in this lot and i said well how much are they going to pay you for it this this lot is very light very nice lot wooded yours is not how much will you sell it for he said if you turn the right screws i'm going to get the exactly the same amount of money for my lot that you're going to get for yours and the plan has always been that wait until the right time and you can squeeze money out of that simply because it's in the way if you look at it you can see the shape of it it has little value what can you build there you certainly can build even single bedroom houses we if we talk about the adjoining properties i just got through selling this piece of land i'm sorry this piece of land for the construction of a power uh site the last thing in the world that i wanted was to have a power site there uh that i didn't sell it out of choice they told me you have to well bring eminent domain on you that scares the heck out of me and i agreed to sell it not at a price that i wanted to sell but at the price that the city offered to me that was your time but if you could just have some concluding remarks that'd be great i'm just finished okay i bought that land about 20 years ago as an investment and uh what is what is planned for this lot is exactly the kind of thing that i would like to see that i wanted to see built there it's uh it will be of value to the city it will provide housing for people that can't afford to to live in south ridge where the rest of us live uh and uh it's in the right place it's in in the neighborhood this are playgrounds i'm sorry uh these are playgrounds i did belong to the city you can see and up here where else would you have a a public housing with playgrounds that close it 's ideal for this location it's not out of the way it's ideal the fact that there are single family houses here is not unusual we do have a question i beg your pardon yes i've been sitting here mayor pro tem hi dr valen i heard you say that you sold that lot for to the city for the substation for less than than you wanted to get for it of course well i'll tell you we paid more than we wanted to for it so i think we're both sort of even there that's not the way the game is played well dr val if you've had any more concluding remarks yet your time's up so if you have anything you might have some marks i thank you very much for listening to me i think uh various people thought that i better stay seated down and not get up and talk but i just couldn't thank you myself yes thank you thank you very much for your time and i'm sorry that i sound like this i used to have a golden presentation in the golden voice now i'm 88 years old and i lost all that it sounds good together with my niece and various other things this is a public hearing anyone else wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address anyone else wishing to speak uh uh do y'all want to wait to comment after we close the public hearing or i have a question okay uh councilman i'm mayor pro tem gregory thank you and this is a question for the applicant because uh our um staff uh in our backup we we have some options as to what we can do one of them is to um uh approve the um recommendation with the conditions recommended by staff uh are you familiar with all the recommendations i neglected to mention that we're in that we're asking for you to approve with those conditions we don't we're not asking for anything inconsistent with staff's recommendation thank you very much yes sir council member rodin i can wait to talk to you close the public okay uh this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address anyone else wishing to speak okay we will now close the public hearing council member rodin thank you a couple other observations on this project as we think about the mobility of these folks particularly kids even the walk to that the park it doesn't appear that their sidewalks presently so it just put an exclamation point on our need to solve that mckinney street problem not just for traffic but for those kids walking i i did look quickly and it looks like they're in the rever a school district elementary zone uh so for kids that would want to be able to walk i mean it's it 's walkable i guess they'd have to go all the way to woodrow down woodrow but the other thing we need to be thinking about this is just kind of i'm projecting this for city staff is is how to safely cross woodrow probably at the point of more street would probably be the the area that would make the most sense but um that's just something to think about as we're looking at the the large amount of apartment complexes along there to be able to facilitate there the only other thing i'd say is there's got to be a way that we can create a city in which folks who live in 250 000 dollar houses aren't objectionable to live next to folks who can't afford that that's the way that i think the cities of the future are moving forward so that we have kind of mixed income levels to add to the diversity that benefits everyone who lives there that's how you create a more just city i think so i think as we're thinking about these projects moving forward to be able to think about even how do we reach out to folks who might have single-family housing in the vicinity of these sorts of things to develop some great synergies and partnerships because i think we all benefit when we create a city like that so i i'm disturbed when i hear people say no one will want to move next to that sort of i don't know what that means but i don't like what that means so i think we can build a better city than that so thank you i'm in support of this project council member hawkins but i like that this project is i feel like it's trying to do its best attempt to develop the community too and i think that's really important rather than just provide housing they're really trying to you know provide the wi-fi i love that there's going to be opportunity there so i'll be waiting for this project any other comments i have i have just one i had an opportunity when i was down in san antonio during a conference with the city to visit one of these projects that was still under construction i believe the developers headquartered out of san antonio if i if i'm not mistaken and so was able to tour one of those projects and and being in the real estate business and owning and building some small multifamily obviously not to the size of this but i certainly understand finish out i certainly understand you know quality construction i will say i was impressed with the type of finish out that were that were in these units i was impressed with the size in fact my understanding was i really appreciate the denton housing authority and their board for really sticking with their guns on what they want this to be as far as how they want it to look how big they want those units to be in the floor plan and it was shared with me that the units that i was looking at were going were smaller than the ones that were going to be built up here in denton so i think this is something that's the community needs i certainly echo the sentiments of and not just in this place but in in general the connectivity that we have around the city and and and this is you know we just passed a bond election that has money for sidewalks and things like that and this being text-out it's really difficult when your city your primary thoroughfares are all controlled by text on it just it makes it challenging but that doesn't mean we can't rise to that so i'm in full support of this project and i understand that because of the the uh percentage that it does require a super majority is that is that correct uh in that regard so i appreciate everybody coming out and and sharing their thoughts and we're certainly committed to try and alleviate some of that traffic and provide some of that connectivity but i really appreciate the dent housing authority board and sherry and what y'all have done to try to really bring this developer to denton and really help with the need that we've identified and that is to provide some some higher quality affordable housing that has amenities that really can promote growth and can really help people continue to move forward in their lives and give them a chance that that otherwise they may not have so i really do appreciate that and thank everybody's hard work for that so i will be supporting this project mayor pro tem thank you i punched in to make a motion to approve subject to conditions i almost thought i might need to withdraw it when i realized how much i agreed with mr hudspeth but then i realized that it 's late night mr hudspeth and i like mr hudspeth daytime but i just adore late night mr so i make the motion to approve the subject to the conditions as presented council member breaks there is a really long waiting list of people that are waiting for a roof over their heads that they can afford and coming from a single parent family familiar with this type of situation i will gladly second a chance for these families okay we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we will now move on to i think it's our concluding items is that right concluding items oh oh presentations i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm messed up i apologize i apologize mr husbeth we've got to go to agenda item seven presentation from members of the public mr husbeth regarding city hall i don't think we probably need to play that introductory thank you that was instituted especially for me whether you know it or not thank you mr hudspeth oh you're welcome thank you see you later you can clear a room too mayor watts and council members my name is willy hudspeth i live at 620sb newton i'm here at and protesting citizens being moved to the end of the agenda if you read the reasons why you did that it really is a slap in the face for me to me rather it says so that i don't remember the exact word but it means so that you can take care of the other business you don't say other take care of business and i don't remember the adjectives that was used but so that says to me i'm not if i'm i'm a citizen but i'm at the end because you choose to put me there because you don't want to hear from me well you'll find out that i'm the kind that every meeting same subject until someone hears me and sees that this is not the way you do citizens in fact at the next city election and you come to the NAACP forum we're going to address this question right here how do you see citizens do you have to have large numbers is doesn't have to be a big money item how do you get to be further up the agenda now you use the excuse well we provided a place for you but there'll be a time when you're going to put me at the end so i might as well be there now and talk about it that's one thing the other thing that you you you have a cemetery that you maintain mr johnson has given me the rules for how you get that um deed restriction removed something's wrong with this picture you're saying that as a black man i can't be buried at that city-owned cemetery and that if i'm going to get that change i'd spend my money to get an attorney to get that deed restriction change now what i'm talking about is the deed restriction says you have to if a black person is born is buried there you lose the property rights for that cemetery in essence well you ought to lose the property rights to that cemetery you are maintaining that cemetery with my money tax money you maintain it you cut it you i don't know if you're getting revenues from it but i can't be here's what i want you to do i'm going to die pretty soon i feel like it i want to so put me in that cemetery just put me right over there in it and you lose the right to the cemetery well that's a good thing if they won't let black people be buried i have very few rights as a black man now i can't even be buried in the ground because of some stipulation that that you all have not you someone has put together but some of you agree with it but i'm not gonna call it names i'm just kidding i 'm just kidding i want to get your attention my brother my ex-brother from a different mother and lastly for men agenda blacks at uh blacks oh i'm gonna hold you and mr whatever's name is with buckies because they don't hire blacks they do not hire blacks they have one token in every store and that's it and he's cleaning the floors i promise you if i'm still alive and i'm not buried in i double o f cemetery i'm going to call it to your attention i'm going to go out there and say hey there are no blacks there most certainly won't be any blacks in management and that's it that's late night willy thank you council member johnson i can't believe you're all right i told my wife okay yeah now when they bury me there then you lose the right that's good all right thank you thank you mr hospice all right yes yes thank you all right uh we're down to our concluding items agenda item eight council member hawkins thank you mayor uh yesterday i was at good samaritan lake forest uh speaking with them i 'll go out there you know every few months they need high speed internet so bad and i'm at a loss how to make that happen how can i make that happen they need it badly i'm begging for help if anybody out there knows how to make that happen or anybody and okay and then i have a personal thing so i have a six-year-old son royal and he's in first grade and let's just say he doesn't get a lot of outstanding days but today he came home with an outstanding day it was really cool because it's been kind of a tough a little stretch so good job royal i hope that you are in bed not watching this but good job royal thanks mayor pro tem thank you mayor um i don't know if it rained at charles house this last week but it did at mine uh the total was about nine and a half inches uh but that's what old guys do we go out and empty our rain gauge every day and check it the next day so we got something to talk about when we're having coffee with the uh saggy saggy pants group uh but it made me think in light of the damage to the park at um to the quaker town park this past jazz fest i'm curious to get a report from staff about any changes that are being proposed in our agreement with the denton festival foundation regarding the use of qu aker town park and um the the possibility of if we have that kind of damage again if they get to pay for it rather than uh the repairs coming out of the city coffers all right thank you council member riggs i i would like to ask for a work session on economic development incentive policies just to go over as a refresher just to be more educated about when we do what and for for what with the 380 and just to kind of get it out there um it would be really beneficial for for myself and um and also just a thing i noticed is that on mingo road when you turn off of um 380 going down there is a significant amount of trash like all in the gut ter right right there i mean it is a lot and it might be because of all the rain and it washed down but how besides pulling over and picking it up myself if as a citizen um noticing things like that what would i do or who would i contact to get that taken care of in our city um in situations like that because it's significant to you that's good question uh as far as so you'll be getting to the council just i'll get something back to you about that because i know that we're doing some work on rights of way and how we can get some of that done and done and i'll get back with you keely council member roden i i've mentioned something along these lines before and i continue to be amazed at what average citizens in denton do to kind of create this this marvelous city we had in this past thursday with the first official turkey trot 1600 runners i think in their first year i mean amazing what they did to pull that together and just the community support so in light of that this friday everyone come out it's supposed to be beautiful weather on friday but friday night is the holiday uh lighting festival downtown denton i have no idea where people park to get there but it's an amazing uh event somebody posted online this week and i'll have to send it to you guys because you're gonna kick out of it it was around the 80s somewhere in the mid 80s uh a holiday festival on downtown square and it's like four people are walking around visiting santa claus or something like that and just see the trajectory of that particular event to what has become today so uh everyone come on out all right anything else all right before we adjourn go raiders all right we are adjourned