Feb 23, 2016 City Council on 2016-02-23 1:00 PM

[ Music ] >> Good afternoon. I wanted to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, February 23, 2016. If you would join me in standing with the pledge to pledge the United States of Texas flag if you're able. Thank you. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, and one indivisible. >> Thank you. Okay, we're going to go -- basically in our open session we 're going to consider four agenda items. Two are motions for reconsideration and then two are for the underlying ordinance based upon those requests for consideration. We have three cards here to speak, some of them wishing to speak on only one agenda item and then a couple on all four . So our customary rules are if it's an item of individual consideration and we have blue cards, everyone is allowed to speak who's posted a card for that particular agenda item. I just want to put before council, these are all sort of interrelated. Since we only have three cards, I don't mind going ahead and let everyone speak on the agenda items that they have indicated that they want to speak on. If there were 100 people in here, I might try to say we might need to do something different because that would be 12 minutes per speaker. So if everybody's okay with that, we'll just follow our normal customary rules of procedure. But if anybody has an objection or wants to suspend the rules for any other particular process, you know, I'd like for you to share it now. Okay, good. We'll go to agenda item one, which is one a reconsider the approval on February 16th, 2016 of a resolution of the city of Denton, city of Denton, Texas stating the conditions and circumstances for the sale of 1224 North Bonnie Bray Street in Texas. We have three cards wishing to speak and what we'll do is we'll hear the public comments and then we'll take any council comments and or motions if there are any. Mr. Ken Gold, you've indicated agenda item one a. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council. My name is Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Natchez Trace here in town. I just wanted to point out that this item was originally a simple request to correct a vote. Then the firebrand soapbox orator went to work online. Attempt to twist this into being about Mr. Revis. He knew it was never about Mr. Revis. All of you knew that. It's backfired. Karma. The spotlight is now on the issue of the property itself. The media coverage now highlights the twisted and expensive history of this house. And I hope you do support reconsideration. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Mr. Sam Alexander. Oh, and I forgot to mention the the minutes. Oh, come on up, Sam. The minutes are three minutes for blue cards. I just you might see that sometimes we have four minutes on citizen comments. I just want to make that clarification. Okay. Yes. If you'll put it up there, they should be able to stick that up there. Okay. My name is Sam Alexander, 3219 McCrowns Road, Sair Texas. This first thing I want to show you is the survey that was done prior to the lawsuit when we were just discussing it. Mr. Alexander, and this won't count towards your time, I guess. What I want to make sure is that our comments are leveled at the particular agenda item, which is motion for reconsideration. So if you're going to share the same information on all four agenda items, go ahead. Okay. Well, let's get that clarified. Sure. I only wanted to speak about one thing. Okay. And then but the way it was kind of written on the agenda, people can't figure out exactly when you're supposed to talk about what. Sure. And so that's why I asked Brandon, the policeman here, how we should do that if we just. Fair enough. A, B, C, D, whatever. Sure. And so I just want to speak on one thing. So you can tell me which part you want me to speak on, and I'm fine. Well, I'll tell you what, because what's going to happen is on the items that are reconsideration, in order to reach the underlying ordinance, those are required to be voted upon and to be passed, or we never reach the underlying ordinance. So I'm going to ask counsel, counsel's indulgence, if you have any objections, let me know. Sounds like you want to be able to say one set of, speak about one set of information, and when you're, when you've said it, then you'll be through. So I don't mind hearing that during this particular issue, just to let you, you know, get it said in case something happened and somehow things changed. It's kind of hard to tell where you're supposed to jump in on this. Gotcha. I totally understand. So if we could go ahead and just restart his time, I don't think he really said much at that time. So I apologize for interrupting, but I appreciate the clarification. Well, thanks for clarifying this stuff. Anyway, we had the survey done before we even started the lawsuit, and probably can't read this stuff, but it says on here that the transmission lines, it shows, it shows that there's no easement for the transmission lines period. And that was done by Coleman and Associates, and it was paid for by us, by the attorneys, I should say. All right. First thing I want to show you is the gas station that's next door to the substation that's on Bonny Bray. As you can see right here, it says approximately 900 square feet awning and improvements permitted to exist within the easement. That is the entire canopy and all the gas pumps. The city, we got all these papers from the city during the start of this thing when they wanted to settle the lawsuit. So they've got 900 square feet. They're saying that everything's permitted. Okay. Then you go to Renaissance Medical Park. And in this you have 485 square feet of the medical building which houses Dr. Wilson and Dr. McDonald, the gyne cologist's office there. And then we get to Linda Roth. As you can see here, the city, this is stuff that's supplied to us from the city, says 393 square feet of structure permitted to exist within the easement. Again, 393 square feet. And I just showed you 485 square feet with another building . Another place was 900 square feet. And so as you can see, Mrs. Roth was third in line of how many square feet were going to be permitted in this thing. Then I have another one here, 249 square feet are permitted . 153 square feet are permitted. 108 square feet are permitted. 120 square feet are permitted. And then just a portion of the building, a portion of the building, a portion of the building. And then the rest of them are just regular easements. And so this is stuff that was provided to us. And then at the same time, Mrs. Roth, when all these things are saying that she's permitted, permitted, permitted, then all of a sudden we get a thing that says we're taking your home. And as I said before, they told her that she either sold the house or it would be eminent domain. Now, you can say what you want about it being a voluntary sale. That's fine. Whatever you all want to say, you call it. But if I come to you and I tell you I'm taking your house and if you don't sell it to me, I'm taking it anyway, I don 't exactly think that's a voluntary sale. That's more like the mafia did back in the '20s and '30s. And, you know, I hate to make it sound like the mafia deal, but it's what it sounds like to me. I mean, this whole thing has been wrong. And then the city spent all this money on this house. They could have bought Mr. Reavis a brand new house, built him a brand new house on the ground up. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Our next speaker, Mr. Clifton. I'm sorry. Oh, you have a question. I'm sorry. Mr. Alexander, we got a question. I'm sorry. Councilmember Johnson. Sam, when you just, so I can get clarification, you said we had a survey done and we got this. So what is your relationship to the owner? My relationship in this whole thing was I'm the one that started this whole Bonnie Bray lawsuit. I saw them putting up these polls back in the last of 2009 and 2010. And I knew there was a problem because I can just about smell these things now. And so I started researching this stuff. Me and some other people started researching this thing. And we discovered that lo and behold, there was no easement for the city of Denton for these transmission lines to even be there. And so I went to the people that live there, to each one of the residents and the business owners and stuff. And I talked to each one of them. I went to the courthouse first and we researched all this stuff and found all this stuff out. And so then we, I sat down with all these people and showed them what I'd found. And I said, you know, I'm concerned that you people should be getting money for your easement and something needs to be done about it. And they called some members of the council and they said, you know, how come we're not getting our money for this eas ement? And they were told, well, you're not supposed to get any money. You're not, you know, it's not an easement. And we're not going to pay you anything. And so then I went, those people contacted me again. I talked to these people again. I said, look, you know, I think you are owed money for this and I will see what I can do. And that's when I searched out an attorney to help these people and they met with the attorney and I went through every bit of this stuff with these people. Matter of fact, I even served the lawsuit here to the city of Denton. So you so if I understand it right, you you proactively went to the people that own the houses because that you're saying that you discovered there was no easement in existence for the power lines that were there. Yes, sir. OK, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Bob Clifton. And I guess I would clarify with you the same thing of Mr. Alexander that come on down to the mic if you could, please . I don't want to start my time. Well, no, we're we'll be fair. No, not a problem. Does your rules of procedure tell you that citizens may speak on each individual item for consideration? Yes, sir. Does it not take a vote to rescind that of the council? Because I want my 12 minutes. OK, well, we you certainly get your three here. And if we need to change that as a council, then we will consider that. Absolutely. Time will begin. OK, well, I'm Bob Clifton. Last time I was down here, I think I used my address as refrigerator box under Dallas Drive Railroad. So now I'm going to go live over on Porter's land. I'm going to squat over there so I can get a relocation expense and get a free house. I'm going to suggest to you highly that you reconsider this . If you don't, my guess is council is going to be in jail. That resolution will not cut it. The problem is, well, I have to get. Says the property was purchased by the city for the expansion transmission line, blah, blah, blah. And the city will recover the purchase price for the property under the city's transmission cost of service reimbursement from our cotton. That's fraud. That's just pure and simple fraud. You can't buy property for an easement, turn around, divide it up, sell it back to somebody else or give it to this young man. And then turn around, think our cuts going to give you transmission fees for it. That's fraud. Now, if you had a city attorney, there was worth it. Mr. Clifton, Mr. Clifton, Mr. Clifton, Mr. Clifton, Mr. Cl ifton, our rules of procedure states you will not address specifically people either by name or by title. So, says Mr. Clifton. Yes, sir. If you do it, if you continue to do it, I will ask that you sit down and wait your next time and we'll decide what to do. You wasted my time. Well, please do. Thank you. This harvest construction, Texas Inc., does not exist. There is no such animal. The closest thing was a DBA that expired in 2007. So who got the check over there for all the $175,000 worth of construction? Now, there's a team harvest construction incorporated with a Pat Farr and a Gary Farr listed on Fairfax and Denton. However, they owe taxes and they forfeited their corporation in 2014. Is that not fraud? Somebody's fraudulent there. All your bids, especially that $50,000 bid, $58,000 bid, it 's all Harvest Construction Team Inc. It's on their bid forms. This thing is just, you know, I haven't been down here in two years, guys, and this is just absolutely appalling. This man was looking for a relocation and that's all he wanted. And to cover the electric department's butt, they've conco cted this foolishness up. And he's delayed in getting his housing. I'm saddened about it. I'm absolutely appalled that you would allow this to happen . Thank you, sir. Well, that's pretty good timing. Thank you. All right. Those are all the cards I have speaking on that agenda item . Any council discussion? This is posted as a reconsider the approval. Chair would entertain a motion and if not, then the resolution will or the agenda item will fail. One more call. All right. Thank you. Agenda item 1A fails. Therefore, there will be no reconsideration of agenda item 1B, which means the original vote of 6-1 on the previous agenda item for the council meeting on February 16th, I believe, 2016, will be the recorded vote, which I believe was 6-1. All right. We'll go to agenda item C. Reconsider the approval on February 16th, 2016 of Nordance of the City of Denton, approving the sale of 1224 North Bonnie Bray Street, Denton County, Denton, Texas. Council members, we heard a -- well, I'll tell you what. I'm just going to make the call. You got three minutes, Mr. Clifton. Come on up. Thank you very much. Come on up. I can listen to you for three more minutes. I'm very serious about this. You know, I've had lots of encounters with council over the years and all of you, and I know -- I don't know these new council members, but don't know this is going to make any difference after May. But I'm very serious. This city is getting itself in dire straits. That electric department is totally out of control. There's no accounting, none, either financially, personnel- wise. You have a man that comes down here named -- Hey, Mr. Clifton, easy. Easy. Well -- Easy. We have a man who -- let's put it this way. We have a man over in the electric department that's assigned as being the manager, which I never knew we had managers in a city. And, Mr. Clifton, I want to just -- I just want to take a moment, and we're not going to count it against your time. Oh, okay. But it's okay to talk about your opinions and your feelings . There's going to be no slanderous remarks against people either directly identified or indirectly identified. I've sat through these procedures probably longer than you have. So you understand the rules, sir. So I understand the rules. Thank you. What I'm saying is there's an individual in the electric department who has a job description that he's supposed to fulfill. He's not supposed to be down here as a spokesman for the electric department. There is specific individuals who have been hired to be spokesmen for the city of Denton. This Denton Municipal Electric is another scam. There is no such thing other than just naming it that. It's an electric department within the city. I don't see Parks and Recreation sending a spokesman down here every time somebody needs to speak. This individual needs to be doing his job, not down here being a spokesman for DME. I'm just frightened that you people are in over your heads with this electric. This $400 million transmission lines around town, it's a moneymaker. All this crap shoot that's doing over in the electric department, we're going to be selling electricity. We're getting into the market of buying and selling electricity. It's not for the citizens of Denton. Now, I'll finish and I'll get the whole thing done. Okay. I did a Texas Open Records request with the city of Denton asking for specific information. Naturally, they sent it down for an AG opinion and the AG ruled in my favor due to the incompetence of the city. I won that one. The city had 30 days to appeal it by filing suit in Travis County. They have not done so. That time has expired and I want my information. Now, I've contacted the AG's office and they'll be in contact with the city to supply that information. Is this regarding the item on this that's posted? That has a lot to do with this item. Okay, but it's so-- Transmission lines. Okay, all right. You bet it does. I want that information. If not, the AG's going to be on you and I'm going to be on you and I know how much you all love me. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, sir. I can't see you in about two years. Thank you, Mr. Pittman, absolutely. And all the rest of you, thank you. Thank you. Okay, this is same procedure as before. I do have a few comments that I want to say before we move forward on this item. I just want to first of all see if there's any council members that want to make any comments and/or motions or seconds and then we'll move forward. Council Member Hawkins. Well, probably just a clarification for the public, who is able to make the motion? Just so we can clarify that. I'll defer that to the city manager. I'm not city manager, I'm sorry, city attorney, I'm sorry. The council rules provide that on a reconsideration motion, any of those who voted affirmatively that would be among the six could in fact make the motion for reconsideration. So any of the six could make the motion. The rules further provide that any person, any council member can second the motion. So any of the seven council members could make the second. Thank you. Council Member Redman. I understand that there is a staff presentation prepared and ready to go. Should we, technically should we get to item D? And council member requests it. I think there's been a lot of chatter in the news media, on social media, about this particular situation. A lot of accusations leveled at DME as to the appropriaten ess of how this whole deal went down and how we got to the point that I think are appropriate to discuss. Whether or not we actually reconsider this, just in order to put that into the public record. Would that be appropriate to have that presentation as part of item C on a reconsideration vote? I will defer to the city attorney. I don't know the answer to that question. Well, the city manager and I actually had a discussion about this just prior to the initiation of this meeting. And the question then, it's certainly properly posted. There's no open meetings question as far as whether or not the matter can be discussed. I guess the question becomes, and I do believe that the city manager and I would be in agreement, that part and parcel of whether you want to reconsider this may be some of the things that have occurred. So in that respect, some of the information out there could be relevant to your consideration as to the reconsideration before you get to the underlying issue. So I would say yes, some of that information is appropriately presented. My request would be to receive that staff presentation. That way we can hold a discussion if necessary. Okay, we have a couple. Before I get to you, Mr. City Manager, Councilmember Johnson has indicated a request to speak. Well, yeah, that's a lot of what I was going to ask for because there's been a lot of emotion about this thing. And things tend to get on social media and on the news. And of course we know if it's on social media or on the news, it must be true. But when I got the data that we had been asking, we've been talking about this case for a long time, this case, this house. And it's, you know, the direction has been very clear, go, go, go. And then when all this came up, we had asked some of us, I think had asked for it. I'd like to have the exact facts and timeline on how the city came to own this home. And I think that would help to clear up a lot of the concern or at least some of the comments that I've seen. So I'd like for us to have that data because I think it would play into whether or not it gets reconsidered. But also may play into how people vote. So I'd like to see that before we begin discussing it if we could. Council Member Hawkins. I definitely agree with that. I think that they put a lot of time in this presentation and I'd like to see the presentation. Okay, Madam City Attorney, I want to make sure I understand this, that based upon the request from council members, some council members, that there is a presentation that staff has prepared and that it would be proper under the posting, at least from what you said, make sure I understood this correctly, that to determine whether this body decides whether to move to reconsider this matter, there might be some additional information that some council members would like to have in order to be able to make that decision. Is that my understanding? I think that's an accurate summation and I think that's where this issue matters or stands. At this point in time, we, the City Attorney's Office has worked with the Denton Municipal Electric. There is a presentation that has been prepared so we can present that if you like and stand ready to do so. Okay, well if it's proper under this posting, I'm not sure that I can disallow it. In that instance, we will call upon Mr. Larry Collister, Board Certified Attorney in Real Estate, Deputy City Attorney, and Mr. Collister, if you would speak to this item, please, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I've prepared a PowerPoint presentation. That's not a touch screen. Mr. Mayor? Oh, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Point of order. [inaudible] Okay, and if you're saying that you would, well, then this is what I would request, all right, because I want to give you the same opportunity that I gave Mr. Clifton because that's only fair. I didn't know you were going to have a presentation. Well, my point being that typically we take comments at the beginning, so if you want to come and take three minutes now, you're certainly welcome to do that, but I think it's only fair that we do that at the beginning like we typically do. So it is, so if you want to come down and speak, you're certainly welcome to, but what, I'm sorry, I can't, that's what I'm offering. If you want to come speak, that's fine, but what I'm understanding is you may want to rebut something that's said, and I don't think that's the purpose of these cards, but go right ahead, sir. And the reason I'm saying this is because it's not on the, there's not a presentation on this agenda, and I had no way to prepare for a presentation, you know, to speak on your presentation that you're going to present. So I, you know, I think it's short-sighted of the council to throw something, I mean, that's like coming up with a surprise witness in a trial, and I think this is kind of out of order, you know, because, you know, you're not giving citizens a right to speak on something that's on the agenda. This is not on the agenda, and, you know, they're going to make a big, long PowerPoint presentation, blah, blah, blah. You know, I think we, you know, we, you know, whoever wanted to speak, you know, maybe me or whoever, have the right to know what's going to be on this agenda so we can make our own interpretation of what we want to say or if we want to get up or not get up or whatever, because, you know, I'm sure you're going to, you know, bring this gentleman up, and he's going to tell you all about the timeline, blah, blah, blah. Well, I know just about as much about this timeline thing as this guy does, because I went through the whole lawsuit every inch of the way. And so I'm very familiar with how things worked in this lawsuit. And so this is not fair. If you're going to bring this guy up here to have a presentation, you need to put this on another agenda, not today's agenda. You need to give other people the right to come in and be prepared for this. This is not fair. I mean, you know, I'm just point blank with you people. This is not right. This should be if you want to talk about it, that's fine. I 've got no problem with you coming up and making a presentation and all that. I have absolutely no problem with it. But in fact, I want to be prepared to come up and put my two cents in according to what's going to be in your presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Johnson . Well, I was just going to throw out there. We've got item D next, right? Then Mr. Alexander signed up to speak on D, signed up for all four. Yes, I believe so. So, I mean, in other words, Mayor, you've already kind of yielded, hey, if you want to talk on every item, even if you were going to summarize at the beginning. Well, if Larry gives us the data and there's something in the data that anyone has an issue with, they certainly could speak to it on the next item, correct? Well, that's assuming if it gets to the next item. I mean, that's assuming if it gets to D. So, let me, and I will certainly take the input from the council on this. All right. Councilmember Rodin. Well, I'm trying to think of any other scenario in which we 've opened up citizen participation in these sorts of things , where we allow folks to get up after even another person from the audience comes to speak in order to rebut what they happen to have to say. It's just I don't see any room in our rules of procedure that allow for that sort of thing. So it sounds like Mr. Alexander had his three minutes and any other citizen would have their three minutes and we ought to apply the same rules here. Councilmember Johnson. Well, just for clarification, too, I'm thinking, Mayor, there's a lot of times where during a public hearing or an item for individual consideration, a council member will have a question, ask a staff person to come up and bring up something, some data or drawings or whatever it was that may not have been posted as a part of the agenda on the item. So I don't think that's not something that's completely out of the norm that we would ask staff to come up and provide us some bit of information that may not have been something that was posted on the agenda. Councilmember Hawkins. Well, what I'm struggling with is I want to know if there's new information that's being brought to the table and that 's what's going to help me vote to reconsider or not. So that's where I'm coming from on this. All right. Madam City Attorney, I'm going to tell you what my inclination is. All right. We all, first of all, have had information given to us, I believe, that helped clarify some of the facts. It seems that the question on the table is, is it appropriate to have a full-blown presentation that is the presentation is not on the agenda nor has it been provided on the backup? Okay. And then my question is, well, not question, my comment, I know for certain, Council is not precluded from asking questions and having staff answer questions in order to receive information. So, Madam City Attorney, from the rules and from the Open Meetings Act and the laws of this state as far as if a presentation is not posted on an agenda item with backup, is it lawful to bring that presentation forward or is it more of a question-answer session from the members of the Council to staff, of which most likely most of that information would come out anyway? Mr. Mayor, the test and the sole test is the posting on the agenda. This posting is identical, at least as to B and D, to the posting last week. And so the test is whether or not the city has given appropriate notice to the public with regards to the general topic to be discussed. It's my opinion that the notice is appropriate because I think the posting is appropriate. And so consequently, I believe the Council can consider and the staff can discuss with the Council anything pertinent to that particular posting. So in that respect, I would say I think that the discussion is appropriate at the pleasure of the Council if you choose to go forward with that. I might also add that in the interest of understanding our struggle today, these motions for reconsideration, this reconsideration process is a little bit different. And it moves quickly because the rules provide that the reconsideration must be at the next official meeting of the City Council. So this has been sort of a very quick process, giving little time to Council or to staff as far as putting information together. So but I do believe that the posting is appropriate. I believe the posting is proper. And so discussion can ensue as long as you're within the posted provisions of these items. Mayor. Excuse me. Mayor Pope, Jim Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. You know, it is not at all unusual for us to have agenda items where not all of the backup is ready, where after the item has been posted, we are presenting questions to staff. A lot of those questions are generated by us. A lot of those questions are generated by citizens who are writing e-mails to us, and staff works hard to get that information so that we have that information available to us. This is not an unusual procedure at all. We had a request from a Councilmember for a motion to reconsider two votes. And since that time, we've had hundreds of e-mails. Lots of questions have been raised. I know I have asked staff several questions, and I know that staff has spent hours and hours preparing information so that as we reconsider this, as arguments come up, whether it be arguments about the -- when the polls were installed, what the easements were, what the lawsuit was about, because there have been a lot of reasons offered for why we're doing this. That's why we're doing the reconsideration anyhow. So it seems to me that there are a lot of questions out there. There are a lot of questions that have been posed by citizens, and this is an opportunity to get the answers to those questions. So what I'm understanding you to say, Mayor Pro Tem, is that any information provided by staff at this time will most likely be a response -- well, is a response to questions proffered by members of the Council, at least in some respects. That's what I am anticipating. Okay. All right. So really the only issue to determine is whether it's quote /unquote a presentation or whether it's answering your questions. And I think we have had times where staff has had presentations, so I'm going to allow the staff to come up, and if we want to ask questions, let's ask the questions. If you would, if you want to just put up the slides and just show them, you don't necessarily have to go through the narrative. I want this to be as fair as possible, but I know that we have done things in the past where we hear from staff on questions that were raised. Now, let me make it clear. This is only our second motion for reconsideration since I 've been on Council. And I initiated the first one. Third? Okay. I'm sorry. Third. I apologize. Okay. Mr. Collister? Thank you, Mayor. No, I'm -- Mr. Clifton, I'm sorry. Councilmember -- Mr. Clifton. Okay. Mr. Clifton, hold on just a moment. Councilmember Rodin. I was just going to start the questions. For the Deputy City Attorney. Okay. Go ahead. He's got a question for you. And I will point out that a PowerPoint is just a different means of communication than speaking orally. So I don't understand the distinction that could be made legally between showing a PowerPoint or talking to us. So my request is to you help us walk through the history of the acquisition of this house from start to finish to where we got to the point we are today where we're about to hopefully approve the sale to Mr. Rivas. And this is for the purpose of helping determine whether if any action is taken what your vote would be on that action. That's correct. Okay. All right. So I understand as I'm asking how -- I've been asked how the city acquired 1224 North Bonnebray. Is that correct? What I'm prepared to answer that is a brief discussion roadmap talking about the Bonnebray transmission line, talking about the inverse condemnation suit brought by Mrs. Roth and others, and then Mrs. Roth's settlement individual to her regarding 1224 North Bonnebray in this lawsuit. The Bonnebray transmission line is a 69 KV transmission line that's been in existence at its present location since the early '60s, if not 1960. Several existing homes, including Mrs. Roth's, were built after the transmission line was placed there. And specifically, DCAD in Central Prysler District indicates that her home was built in 1975, which had been about 15 years after the transmission line was built. The rebuild occurred in 2009, and the transmission line itself was rebuilt in place. And wooden poles were replaced with metal poles. They were rebuilt to accommodate future use for a 138 KV transmission line. But at the time of the lawsuit and continuing until today, they remain energized at 69 KV. The city expects -- I'm sorry. Quick question. Do we have an anticipated date when they would be energized to 138? 2018. Okay. Oh, it's on there. Sorry. I tried the next -- sorry about that. I apologize. Looking right at it. And prior to that time, the city was going to acquire expanded easements that would have been required under the National Electric Safety Code for a 138 KV line. And June -- on June 29, 2012, Linda Roth and others sued the city. And a point I want to make, prior to coming to the city, I spent 20 years in private practice, and half of my time was spent in litigation. No prior notice was given to the city by any of these plaintiffs that we've been able to find out about regarding these transmission lines and the poles that were replaced. I do have a question. In all fairness, there's no legal requirement to give notice. Is that correct? Absolutely not. Okay. But typically what happens in a lawsuit is you'll try to talk with whoever you've got a complaint with, try to work it out. Demand letters may be sent after that as a predicate to attorney's fees, which in this case there were not, or not, but you just don't usually fire off a lawsuit. And obviously that was a tactic of the plaintiff's attorney , which Sam Alexander obtained for them, to just go straight to the courthouse. But there's no legal requirement. If somebody chose to do it that way, then that's just the process. Correct. The point I'm wanting to make just from a lawyer's point of view is by doing that, you've immediately polarized the parties. There's been no talk about trying to settle anything. You've automatically put everybody in a defensive position in this in trying to get something worked out. And I appreciate that, I guess, for the purposes of answering the question. I mean, I know that could be a possibility that you polarized the parties, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that always -- I guess I'm just really -- you know, one of the things that we've said is we really want the facts to come out. And so if -- and this is just me, other council members can do what they -- can request what they want. But I'd like to just hear the facts, and then if there's some questions, then we can move forward with those as far as that. I hope we got it. Mr. Johnson. Yes, go ahead, Mr. Johnson. So Larry, let me ask you a question, legal kind of stuff here. One of the comments made was that we just went and took our house. You either sell it to us or we're going to take it by em inent domain. When would that have occurred? Because what you're saying is lawsuit got filed and there were no previous -- I'm trying to understand. I've had some concerns. Citizens contact me via email and say, how could you just take that lady's house? Well, I now, having been sitting in this seat for a couple years, understand how the eminent domain process works, which is you contact the person, want to buy an easement, want to buy the property, negotiations go on. At some point, if you can't work a deal out, then you file an eminent domain filing or proceeding or whatever to begin . What you just said was lawsuit was filed and there were no previous discussions. So at the city, if the person would have contacted us and said, I have concerns about these polls that are going in, I think they're going to devalue my property, I want you to give me some compensation, would we have kept that on record? Would we have kept a record of that communication? I can't speak for the operational staff on that, but I think I can answer part of your question as I continue through the presentation. But I'd like to make a point right now, and you mentioned polls, is that when you look at the lawsuit, their basis was for inverse condemnation, and that is the government somehow through its actions has taken their property and not paid just compensation for it. And the basis of that was a 138 KV transmission line. There was no talk in any of this about these polls. It was about the existence of a 138 KV transmission line, which at the time the lawsuit was fought to continue until this very minute, it's still a 69 KV transmission line. And what the city's response, I would guess, would be to her inquiry, or anyone's inquiry law, and there would be no, you're not entitled to any compensation because we're within our rights as the transmission line is currently energized. Now, in anticipation of 2018 coming down the line and the 138 KV transmission line, or actually the 69 KV transmission line being re-energized to a larger capacity transmission line, additional easements would have needed to be required at that point, but not until then. Councilman Rodin had, I'm sorry, Councilman Rodin had a question. So I think this is an important point because it sounds like this is the crux of what the lawsuit was against the city initially, which was you didn't purchase the necessary easement in order to justify putting in what they were arguing, 138 KV transmission line, as you're saying didn't exist then at the time of the lawsuit and doesn't exist today. The question is, is there any easement requirements as it relates to just putting those polls there? The polls had existed in their present state under the existing right of way since they were there in 1960. So the easement regulation relates to the line, not the poll. Well, what would happen, and I would prefer to let DME discuss the technical requirements of what was needed for the easement, but as I continue, I think some of that will be answered. Gotcha, okay. One thing I wanted to point out in this with the facts is that each of the plaintiffs were represented by lawyers that had each of them 45 years experience. These weren't just somebody you'd find right at a law school. And to put that in context, attorneys with that kind of experience actually tried cases back then. You know, clients allowed them to do that. They had the money. It didn't cost what it does today. These guys knew what they were doing. And so the plaintiffs that brought the lawsuit had company counsel. But the problem that happened is, let me go ahead and continue generally. The plaintiffs all reached individual settlements regarding their property through the city, through their attorney. None of this was done with city staff directly with a land owner. Because the lawsuit was filed, everybody is operating through counsel. So it's not just like Mr. Williamson going out and talking to somebody in anticipation of getting some land rights like you see all the time. That didn't happen. Now we're in a lawsuit and everything funnels to the lawyers. In April of 2015, I'm sorry. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. With the settlement, since we knew at some point we were going to need to expand the easements to accommodate the 13 8 KV, was that taken into consideration as we did the settlements? Correct. And again, that will be answered as I continue. Okay. No, you're fine. We agreed one time that we were not going to ask questions until the very end. And we're just messing up awfully badly. This was just discussing generally there and to understand the context of how these attorneys operated, they were able to settle this on the road. They didn't go to mediation, which saved the clients time and money. They didn't go to trial. There's been no appeal. They were all voluntary settlements between the plaintiffs and the city. The plaintiff's position was one of inverse condemnation. Again, their pleadings on their face state that the city was installing a 138 and energized 138 KV transmission line over an existing 69 KV transmission line, which again is factually incorrect at the time it was filed and remains so today. The 138 KV line would have required a wider easement, a 75- foot easement, which did not exist when they say this new line came into place. It wasn't required. And they're saying the action again. Mr. Kostner, the only thing that I appreciate the facts, I don't want to necessarily relitigate this whole thing as far as talking about what's been said. Just the facts of, because it seems like the major question was, how did we come to take possession of that home? And of course, we all have a different opinion, people sitting out there, people up here, you, everyone else, of what the legal sort of maneuvers and jargons are. What we're trying to do is figure out what the factual basis were for us to help us decide whether we want to reconsider agenda item D. So, like, I mean, where it says the law super is premature, that's one of the things I'm thinking is more of an editorializing and sort of a relitigating, but we just know that where we are to, I don't want to go back and revisit all that because that's done. We're just trying to understand how did we get the house? How did we get the house? >> And Mayor, I appreciate that, and I'm not trying to go against what you're asking, but I think you need to understand the context in which all this occurs, and I think that's been what has been addressed by several members up here with everything. Nothing has really been answered out in the paper, social media, and I'm just trying to fill in the gaps. >> Well, I understand that. I guess what I would like is a minimal editorializing as far as, you know, characterizing one position over the other as right or wrong. That's really all I'm saying. So I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just want to make sure that we get the facts answered, and anybody is available to ask questions. Mr. Johnson. >> So I'm going to ask a clarifying question because here's the one that really is most important to me. I want to make sure that we came to own this house in a proper way without any corners being cut or any, and I am 100% convinced of that, but I think some people aren't. So the question is, a lot of the commentary that I've heard has been that DME went to her and said you can either sell it to us or we're going to take it by eminent domain. What I'm seeing in what's been presented from staff is that we were not acquiring any right of way on Bonnie Bray at that time. >> That's my understanding as well. >> So if we weren't acquiring any right of way at that time , the lawsuit got filed. Did we come to own the house simply as a way of settling the lawsuit? >> We did. And what I've shifted to is straight to the settlement with Linda Roth. Ms. Roth owned the property. The property as we understood at that time was rental property. In November of 2015, Roth and the city through their attorneys reached a settlement. The city was to buy the property from Ms. Roth for $137.5. Ms. Roth receives the money, releases the city, and dismiss es her claims. Ms. Roth actually signed her settlement documents, a purchase agreement, just a contract to sell the property, and a deed on the 13th. The court in which this was pending at the request of Ms. Roth through her attorney dismissed her lawsuit with prejudice, and that means she cannot refile it. And also included in her purchase agreement was a full release of the city against any claims related to this lawsuit and the facts involved in it. >> So I guess I'm looking for a yes or no here, Larry. >> No. >> She sued us for some inverse condemnation claim. We weren't acquiring eminent domain. I mean, we weren't acquiring right away at the time for the future 138 KV easement. In an effort to settle the lawsuit, we purchased the property. She sold us the property. She signed a contract to sell the property. All that was negotiated through her attorney. Is that correct? >> That's correct, and I want to make sure I clarify your position on eminent domain. There was not an existing project at the time this lawsuit was filed to acquire any easements for a 138 KV line at that point. >> Correct. That's what I wanted to make sure of. We weren't out acquiring right away on Bonnie Bray for the 138 KV line. >> The city was not, but as part of the strategy in the lawsuit, the city did file a counterclaim for condemnation. >> Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. >> To continue, on the 3rd of 2015, this body approved the settlement unanimously. On the 10th, the court order entered an order dismissing all parties and plaintiffs from the entire lawsuit. It was over. And again, there was no appeal. It was done. Now, Ms. Roth then approached the city, Mr. Williamson, after the city, the lawsuit was over, and asked that the closing be postponed to allow her tenants to then relocate. >> We have a question. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Of all the homes that were involved in the lawsuit, how many of them did you purchase? >> This is the only one. >> The only one. And how many were in the group lawsuit? >> I don't have that number. I think DME can answer that. But I think there was probably more than 15. >> So out of 15, well, see, okay. What was it about this home that DME wanted to use or to purchase for the settlement instead of paying out a settlement as they did with all the other properties? >> I can let DME answer that. I'm just trying to address the legal question. >> Okay, I thought that's what we were doing. Gotcha. >> We'll be sure to take note of that question so that when DME comes up, they can answer that question. >> Absolutely. >> And the closing was postponed on a key date here in light of what everybody's read. The closing was postponed two months. And until April 6, closing took place. Indeed, it was filed. It was that date that the city took record title to the property. And a point that needs to be made here, there was a lot of talk. And I'm trying to point the facts out just to clear the record, is Ms. Roth escrowed her proceeds for a tax free exchange and within the month bought another property in Cooper Crossing. And that's all I've got. >> Councilmember. >> Thank you. A couple questions here. Let me know if you can't speak to some of these because of whether or not your involvement of it is. But during the last council meeting when we were talking about this, there was claims that Ms. Roth made all these attempts at keeping her home and requested of the city, can I keep my garage, can I do this, I want to maintain this. And those sorts of statements during the last council meeting. During the negotiations, can you give us some insight into those requests that she specifically made to the city? >> I'm not aware of those, but what I understand about the case is that one, all the negotiations took place between the lawyers. They didn't go to mediation. And that the discussion was, was at the end of the day, the House of Soul. I don't know what background talk happened on that, but it 's my understanding talking to staff, and staff can address this also, that there was never a request made of the city to settle this by removing part of her structure. That was never on the table. And never presented to the city by Mrs. Roth. Through her attorney now, what we can't answer is, I can't address what's out there that's speculative. What happened with the council, that's what happened. >> So I guess just a legal question, perhaps. Perhaps it's a legal question. Perhaps it's just the way these sorts of things gets settled. And again, another statement was made that she settled this in a state of duress. If someone is unhappy with a settlement that they sign, I'm imagining there's some sort of legal recourse. Perhaps it's more aimed at their own attorney than it is the opposing attorney, if they're agreeing to something that their attorney negotiated. But can you talk about this concept of signing something under duress and whether or not that was a part of this case? >> I think the best way to answer that is looking at what happened with the parties in the lawsuit. Every plaintiff was represented by an attorney that had 45 years of experience. And from what I understood here today through the testimony that they had assistance with others that were telling them what to do. All I know is that a settlement was reached between the attorneys, their respective clients signed the settlement documents, and it's done. I can't go behind their attorney client privilege. We have no idea what was said. >> Councilmember Wasney. >> We've been told by Denton Electric that the city will be reimbursed for the house purchase price $137,500. Further, we've been told that the Texas electrical grid will provide that reimbursement to the city. What legal proof do we have that the city will be reimb ursed for the house and not just the easement? >> That's not really a question for me to answer from a legal point of view. It has to do with how ERCOT reimburses their members for transmission line improvements and it would be best responded to by DME. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Prior to the $137,500 being reached, was there appraisal done before that and what was that amount? >> The appraisal on the house that we had in the tax value I believe was $97,500. And just as a point of clarification on that to understand that when the city acquired the property, we had to put a new roof on it. So it wasn't -- there were things that needed to be done to it. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Okay. I'm going to ask this again because I didn't catch it in the rest of the PowerPoint. As a result of the settlements that we have made with all of the residents -- excuse me, all of the property owners along that stretch of Bonnie Bray, does the city now have easement that will accommodate the $ 138,000? >> Yes. The city has easements on all the properties as a result of this lawsuit and as a result of the sale of this property to Mr. Rivas and the removal of a significant portion of the garage. We have an easement reserved in that transaction as well. >> For each of those houses? >> For everything, for every property that was involved in the lawsuit. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions for Mr. Collister? All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> No. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. >> And we had a couple of questions on the floor for a DME representative. And if you don't mind, we'll take Councilmember Briggs first and then Councilmember Wasney second. >> Good afternoon. I'm Galen Gillum with municipal electric. I'll probably have to call on some help for some of these questions, but I'll do my best to get started. If they're engineering or hyper technical, I may have to get a little bit of help. So which question first? >> We'll take Councilmember Briggs. Could you repeat your question, please, in case you didn't remember it? >> My question was all the homes in the lawsuit, the amount of homes that were involved, and why her home was the only one that was involved in -- I don't want to say taking because we've already said -- >> The total purchase. >> The total purchase of the home rather than just the eas ement of the property. >> Right. It's my understanding that the amount of the garage that would go into the easement that in the future will be needed for the 138 kV energization made it such that garage would have to be removed. So in order to try to settle that lawsuit, we said, well, one way to settle this is to just buy the house. >> Okay. I think earlier we saw some properties that had -- that were in the easement as well. How was that settled? >> We dealt with the properties this way. I may need to get a little help from Paul Williams in the city of real estate. Go ahead, Paul. Sneak, sneak up. >> Councilmember, what happens when we have a bisection of a property when there's going to be either a present acquisition or we're working something for the future? We don't really have a real good mechanism, especially on a residential structure, to occupy and work on something and do something while, one, there was tenants presently living in the structure. And we don't really have a good way of doing that, especially when, you know, we don't really have a lot of control over that. She owned the property outright. We would need to get some sort of permission to get on the property, and it opens the city up for a huge amount of liability on basically touching anybody's structure. So what we see and we follow what traditionally what TextD OT does is on bisections, if a structure's getting cut, then part of that project is going to be typically a removal of that structure. And so in the settlement, we work them on a case-by-case basis. You look at all the parameters associated with each individual transaction. And in this case, with Mrs. Rothstrack, the legal strategy for the settlement was purchasing the home. And the alternative to that, and it wasn't that we're going to take your house. The alternative to that is that you filed, you know, an inverse combination case has been filed. So the alternative for that would be prove your case. That's the alternative. And so that was where we were in that space and time, is that she had the opportunity to go prove the case that she filed against the city, and she opted to settle the claim. Councilman Wasney. Yes. So my question, the easement price that the city paid was $ 27,000, I believe, to each property owner for the easement. But for this house that we're talking about, and I'll repeat the question, we've been told that Denton Electric, that the city will be reimbursed for the house, purchase price $137,500. And further, that the Texas electrical grid will provide the reimbursement to the city. So my question, what legal proof do we have that the city will get reimbursed for the house and not just the easement ? Thank you. Phil Williams, Chair, Manager, Denton Municipal Electric. I believe the city attorney, I'll remind the city attorney of this, asked for a ruling from our law firm that we use in Austin, Lambeth Townsend, for an opinion on this. Do you recall that opinion? The process here is that the city files these T-close processes filings, and they are analyzed and reviewed, and then a ruling comes down with regard to the amount of the reimbursement. In these kinds of negotiated settlement arrangements, there is what we refer to as, from time to time, damage to the remainder. That is, the remainder of the house becomes something that Mrs. Ross probably, and maybe I shouldn't go into the speculation here, but damage to the remainder is an issue in these negotiations. In all of them, when you cut through a piece of property. And so many times, as Mr. Williamson was saying, the city will go ahead, a condemning authority, if that's the process being used, will go ahead and take the whole piece of property. That's not that unusual. It's acceptable. This, of course, was a negotiated kind of arrangement. This will be filed. We have had success, I think other cities have had success in these T-close filings in recouping the full amount. Now, it's my understanding this has not yet been filed. Mr. Williamson, you're going to have to answer that question. That is correct. We have, you asked for legal proof that this could be done, and we have filed in three previous dockets, similar acquisition costs for obtaining easements and substation property, before in our transmission cost of service filing . And in those three previous dockets, those expenses have been allowed in determining our rates for our transmission cost of service. And within those rates, those rates reimburse us over time for the cost of investments in our transmission infrastructure. Does that answer your question? Councilmember Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. So, point of clarification, I think maybe, I don't know, whoever should answer it. I think Councilmember Briggs' question was, well, why is this the only house we bought? And I think I heard, Philip, you said we've got the eas ement that we need for the 138KV now all the way down there. So, is this the only one that the additional easement would have bisected the structure, I'm guessing? Well, I mean, as far as the residential structures on the northern leg of Bonneberry from Scripture all the way to 3 80, I believe we still got three outstanding residences that were not part of the lawsuit that are now being pursued for the future 138KV easement. So, negotiations have ensued with those three owners that didn't join the lawsuit. And so, that's in the works. This is the only residential structure that was, like Galen had said, had such an intrusion in that clear zone or whatever you want to call it for the power lines that it really made sense in the, at least for the best practices of the city. And really, ultimately, I think for the benefit of Ms. Roth , I think it turned out the way for the best for both parties at that time. The fact that this, it's been repurposed for something later than what was anticipated when we settled that transaction, it's just kind of serendipitous. Because as I'm looking at the aerial shot of it here, the line takes a jog to the east at that corner, whereas the rest of them, it's very much right along the Bonneberry. But since it's the last house, it cuts east, which puts that structure significantly closer than all the rest I'm going. I'm just, I'm asking the question to make sure I understand because it's kind of been lobbed out there as if, well, we singled this one out and took it from this lady, but why didn't we buy the rest of them? And I think what I hear you saying is... It's really the degree of encroachment, I guess you could say. I mean, it's a large percentage of the garage was in what would be the feature 138 K. Which is why we see text out on the 35 widening tearing down all those buildings along 35. Bicesections. Bicections. Yeah, I mean, I can speculate if... Well, let's... I'll get off of that. Yeah, let's not. Council Member Briggs. So I just want to confirm that the home is safe for Mr. R ivas. It was the garage that was the reason that you bought the home, and that is what made it unsafe for her tenants. But now it is safe for him to live in. It's my understanding, the garage, and I know it's the garage that's been chopped back to a distance that allows for the future clearance for the power lines. And so that has occurred. So as far as anything associated with the future energ ization of that power line, it's my understanding everything is clear on that. Council Member Rhoad. Thank you. And I don't know who's best to answer this question. So this has been an interesting discussion. I mean, it sounds like a gentleman from Sanger came along to these folks, convinced them to... Council Member Rhoad, I need to make sure that we abide by the same rules that we have for people coming to speak to us. Yeah. Appreciate that. You bet. Thank you. Folks sued us, and that's what initiated this entire process where we even ended up with an acquisition of this property in order to settle that particular lawsuit. That's done. I'm convinced it was done properly. I'm convinced that it was done legally. Now we're at a point which what the agenda item actually is , is whether or not to continue with what I think has been our promise all along to sell this house now to Mr. Revis. So can we get... And I understand this isn't the first action this council has taken on that item. So is there someone from DME that can help us walk through the council items actions that led to this point tonight? This isn't the first time we're talking about it. It's not even the first time we voted on something related to that. Can you run through a list of dates for us? Sure. I can talk about that to some extent. Yeah. I don't mind you talking about it, but he asked for some dates. I'm not trying... I just want to keep us pretty tight because he asked for what are the dates that we voted on and what did we vote on if you have those. Absolutely. Let me get the present... I've got a PowerPoint list here. It's actually a PDF. If I can figure out how to get out of this one. Here's some of the timeline because this is a place where this settlement interacts with the Hickory substation because the Hickory substation is why we needed to relocate Mr. Rivas. And so a key date to know about that is December 2nd, 2014. After a lot of public discussion and considering of the different options, city council chooses what site the Hick ory substation should be on. That puts us under the federal law to relocate the folks that live on that new substation site. If we do get to the point with any of those, there's a housing of last resort consideration. There's no caps on what you have to spend. And there are some council actions on those improvements. So let me get to those. Councilmember Hawkins, did you have a question before he gets to these or did you want to hold it until after you? No. Mine had to do with the math. So if that happens to work while you're answering this, that's okay. Or if that can wait. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So here's some dates. Somebody -- you asked for dates. Here's the dates. Okay. December, city council approves the Hickory substation site . Three days later, Mr. Rivas, who was monitoring the situation as far as I understand, contacted us and said, hey, what about me? What's going to happen to me? Brian Dascombe, who works in my group, responded to Mr. R ivas to explain the process to them and to tell them it would be a slow process and take some time. We held a meeting with Mr. Rivas in January. And from the period of time -- now, this is harder to pin down date because this is a range of time where a lot of activities took place. But from January till June, we did an exhaustive exploration of different relocation scenarios, including finding an empty lot and moving the home he was in over to that lot, looking for another rental home in the area close to where he lives. We talked to Habitat for Humanity, the Denton Housing Authority, Community Improvement. We talked to a lot of different groups and explored a lot of different options. And our relocation expert and Mr. Rivas looked for a place to relocate him to. We got to a point of frustration with that where we couldn 't find anything. Staff came to me in March and said, Galen, can we show them that house down the street? And I said, no, I don't think that's a good idea. It's too far down there. You need to look closer to where he is. And they said, well, Galen, how about letting Joe decide whether it's too far or not? He's the one impacted by this. And I said, okay, fine. You can take him down there and show him the house, but you 're going to have to wait till we close on it. Now, counsel approved that lawsuit settlement back in February. We haven't closed yet. So once we closed, later in April, okay, let's wait a few days, make sure there's not a paperwork problem. Okay, the closing was good. Go ahead and take Mr. Rivas and show him the house. He liked it. He liked the house. He said, this is amazing. This is awesome. This could meet my needs. In June of 2015, we brought this possibility to city council and said, hey, what do y'all think about this idea? We want to make this house ADA compliant to meet Mr. Rivas' needs. We want to fix in this house whatever needs fixing. And you've already begun to hear some items about that. What do you think about it? Well, counsel said, yes, go ahead. Go forward and do that. So I met with the purchasing department and said, hey, here 's what we need to do. Can you help us? We met with facilities management department of the city. Hey, here's what -- we got some experts involved to help us do this project. We got a project manager who has experience as a project manager and has the assets and resources of Freese Nichols Engineering firm behind him to manage the project for us. So we got the appropriate experts involved to handle this project. We're electricity folks, not home remodelers. Okay. As you move down through the list, yeah, because I see -- You see the other dates. We came to council. We did the research. We got the bids. Purchasing department helped us. This is on 9/23? Well, 9/1. Okay. Council approved a certain amount of money to renovate the house and make those -- Do you remember how much that money was? That was $142,500 on 9/1. In the city's process, if any individual contractor performing part of that work gets over $50,000, then you need to go back and get permission to do that. So we came back on 1/5 and we said this one individual contractor that was doing most of the general remodeling work is going to go over $50,000. We found more work. We found more problems. We found more things that they need to do. So we got an increased amount in January of 2016 and then the two votes on the 16th of February earlier this year. Okay. Councilmember Hawkins, did that help you with your math or do you still have another question? Well, at one of these meetings, I thought there was a slide where it kind of just showed simply how all the math had worked. If we don't have that, that's okay. I have that. I'll say I have it. Here's that document here. If anyone wants to say this is a lot of money, I agree. This is a lot of money. But bear in mind that as we go through the city's -- Can you scroll that down? Yes, sir. You want to see it all at once? Yeah. Shrink it down? Put it all on one page like that? Is that too small to see? Well, I can read it. Plus we can pull it up on the -- Sure. Okay. So this is what you're asking about, Councilman Hawkins? Yes. This is the breakdown of the expenses. Do you have a specific question, Councilmember Hawkins? Yes. Well, my question was there's been a lot of chatter about how much this total project costs, including the acquisition of the house, everything. And I don't know how to form that into a question, but I recalled a slide at one presentation where it broke this down, where it kind of just worked out. I know that the remodel went a little bit above cost, and everybody knows that. That's happened to all of us. Sure. But I was just -- do you have that slide, or do you recall what I'm talking about? No. It's okay. I think you're asking differently than these numbers. Okay. I think Phil Williams maybe has an answer to your question. Okay. Councilor Hoss, I think what you're asking for is the total numbers would be this $175,000 plus the $137,500 that we paid for the house. Okay. And those two added together to be the -- And that's the number. And then that $137,500, that one is being reimbursed or given back? That's filed in T-cost also. Okay. Both of these will be. Okay. This cost will be filed as far as the cost of the Hickory Street -- Hickory substation. $137,000 would be filed as part of the Body Brave transmission line expansion. Gotcha. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Any other questions? Seeing none. Thank you. I guess I have one legal question for clarification from legal. Is it my understanding that in lawsuits such as this -- I don't want to say this particular one, but generally inverse condemnations with counterclaim condemnation -- that if you go to trial, that there's a range of options that could occur at trial other than simply an outright purchase, that a trier of fact, whether it be a judge or jury, could determine that, no, you don't need to do this, especially if the homeowner advocates for that. You don't need to do this. And so that's one of the options. As far as the percentage of prevailing, don't have any idea . But that is one of the options. Is that correct? Just real quick. Yes, sir. Okay. The issue would be the amount of damage to the take property, i.e., the value of the property that's being taken. The damage of the remainder. Really, it's the damage to the property with regard to what we are taking for our needs. That's really the issue. Any other questions, comments? Councilmember Rodin? Just to clarify the effect of what we're doing here, I think a lot of people are paying attention to this particular issue. Sure. So in the event -- it doesn't look like there's a motion on the board to reconsider. There's not. In the event that this fails for lack of a motion, then the original vote taken last week holds 6-1. And the effect of that, just because to put it in plain terms, is that the city agrees to sell this house as previously promised to Mr. Reavis. Is that correct? Just ascertain the effect of no motion on this. That's absolutely right. Thanks. The motion reconsider fails. Our action of the council last week stands. Thanks. Councilmember Johnson? So another legal question. I just want to make sure I have it right from the explanation in the beginning, Madam City Attorney. So it requires the motion to reconsider must be made by a councilmember who voted in favor the last time. Is that correct? Yes, sir, correct. So on the 6-1 vote, there were six who voted affirmatively. So the motion to reconsider would have to come from one of those six. Anyone, however, any of the seven of the councilmembers could second the motion. So if someone voted yes the last time, but intends to vote no, that person could make the motion to reconsider now. Or does it have to be somebody who isn't asking for the reconsideration? The motion would have to come from one of the six who voted in affirmative. Any might have voted affirmative. Correct. Any other comments? I've just got a couple I want to say before we close this agenda item out. Any other comments? I don't see any motion on the board. All right. Before I close this item out, I just want to say a couple of comments. I appreciate everybody coming out today. I appreciate all the emails that we've received. I appreciate the strong advocacy from our speakers. I've looked at this exhaustively as far as the facts, and I personally don't believe that we did anything untoward in acquiring this house. As an attorney and being involved in many lawsuits and settlements, especially if you're represented by an attorney, typically what you agree to is what's been hard fought and negotiated. And for me this isn't a day of anger or resentment, sadness or frustration. This is really a day of celebration as far as I'm concerned . It's to celebrate, and it wasn't mentioned in this particular presentation, but to Ms. Brock, who I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong by simple head nod, but I'll put my glasses on to make sure I can see you. It was reported that you provided pro bono services to Mr. Rebus in representing him in this transaction to ensure that he was well taken care of, that he understood the process, and that he had an advocate that was not associated with the city. And so I appreciate that. That's indicative of your heart and your spirit, and I thank you for that. This is to celebrate the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law. DME was required to do something, and they did it. This is a celebration of all the emails and caring compassion for support for you, Mr. Rebus. And I don't think there's anybody on this council who has -- they all are for you. They all advocate for you. They all are excited that we can do this. And for me, this celebrates the very heart and essence of Denton. We can argue about the technicalities. We can argue about the process. But in the end, I don't think anybody is going to argue about that the law has worked in this case, in this political world, especially at this time, where we have a lot of negativity and we have a lot of chaos. This is one bright, shining moment in this city's history that we've been able to do the right thing. And these are very atypical facts. I had an email from someone who said, well, my daughter is in a wheelchair. Are you guys going to let her have a house or something? It's like, yeah, if this is the same situation, we will work just as hard to meet those needs as we did in this case. And, Mr. Rebus, I know that these have been a few anxious days. And I cannot imagine what it must have felt like despite all that. Look here and then look at all the emails and even up here on this dais and realize how many people have come out to support you and care about you and advocate for you, especially the hundreds of those who have supported you via the emails. So before I close this agenda item out and all the other agenda items relating to this issue, I want to be the first to welcome you to your new home and wish many years of happiness and joy for you. This is a day of celebration for you. Therefore, it is with great pleasure, unless I see anybody requesting to speak, that I don't, that I announce that this motion for reconsideration has failed to the lack of a motion, second or vote. Therefore, agenda item D also has failed. So the original agenda item posted as agenda item D, which was a vote cast 61 on February 16, 2016, will be recorded as the official vote and all other agenda items regarding this posting, at least for this open session, Adams A, B, C and D have therefore been fulfilled. So thank you very much and thank everyone. And we will take, we will be adjourning, are we going into closed session? Okay. All right. I'm going to call the closed session, but we will be taking a 10 minute break before we adjourn in the work session room. It is 2 25. So we will adjourn at 2 35. I will convene the closed session at 2 25. We will consider the following items consultation with attorney. Okay, we are back in open session. We temporarily adjourned in closed session or went into closed session, but have adjourned that. So we're back in an open work session for the public. This is February 23, 2016. It is 2 37. We're at our work session report, which is 1A. Receive report, hold a discussion and provide staff direction regarding ordinance 2014-112 use of wireless communication devices while driving. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to ask our police chief, Mr. Lee Howell, if he would present this item for your consideration and discussion. Thank you, chief. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the council. I'm bringing this item to you today primarily at the request of Councilmember Wasney to revisit the current ordinance regarding the use of wireless communication devices while driving. So I just want to kind of start off with a little background about how we are how we got to where we are today with the current ordinance. You may recall that the Traffic Safety Commission forwarded a recommendation back in 2014 to enact an ordinance that would completely ban the use of electronic communication devices by drivers of automobiles. After a couple of months of council discussion, the council voted to adopt an ordinance on May the 6th of 2014 that prohibited texting while driving. And there's a couple of stipulations in there regarding places that it is allowed and other things that are allowed by the use of cell phones. But primarily, that's what the ordinance covers today is that generally drivers are prohibited from texting. They can use the phone while driving as a telephone. But there is a number of different configurations of these type of ordinances and recently, we've seen a couple of cities adopt complete bands, which kind of brought this back to light for discussion. The, as you may recall, the state of Texas has entertained the idea of texting bands statewide. It's come to legislative sessions about three times and in fact was passed by both the House and Senate three sessions ago and then vetoed by the governor. It's come up as a texting statewide texting ban again since then twice in the last two legislative sessions and it's died in committee. And in that meantime, about 44 or 42 to 44 cities in the state of Texas have adopted some type of ordinance that restricts wireless communication devices beyond what the state has already implemented, which is only in school zones and with young drivers who have provisional drivers licenses. So those ordinances that other cities have enacted vary, again, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but they primarily prohibit texting. There's a small handful about five or six cities that prohibit wireless communication devices by drivers completely. There's a couple of cities that have added bicyclists to that prohibition. Most of those cities allow some sort of hands free device in the vehicle. Some of them allow you to use the phone while you're stopped. And our ordinance requires you to be stopped off completely off the main travel portion of the roadway before you can text legally. So there's a lot of different variations of it and I'll be glad to answer any questions through the course of this, but we've provided some backup material. Okay. It might be in I'm just curious how many tickets since the ordinance was passed have you given for texting while driving. Yeah, so provided a chart in your backup material that shows the citations from 2014 and 15 and 16 and in 2014 we issued about 152 citations and most of those at that time were in school zones. In 2015 we issued 149 that citywide and then in 2016 so far we've issued 22. Thank you. I was on council back in 2014 when we received the recommendation from traffic safety commission. During the council discussion on it when there were several council members that were reluctant to do the whole band, and just go with the texting band. It seems that I recall a recommendation from the police department. Regarding enforcement. My memory is that you said that it was going to be easier to enforce. If it was a complete band is my memory serving me correctly could you talk about that. Yes it is. Yes, it. We have to enforce this ordinance regardless of how it's configured we have to enforce it by observation from the officer. Primarily, we can do it by inspecting a cell phone, but that requires a warrant and so that's an unusual case. But so primarily it's something that we observe similar to what a seat belt violation would be. So, when somebody is holding the phone under the current ordinance it's difficult to really prove just by observation what they're doing if they're touching it, if they're talking on it, you know it's hard to say that somebody's texting or utilizing it in some acceptable manner. You know if you stop somebody they can say well I'm looking up a phone number. And that's not a prohibited use. So strictly from an enforcement standpoint, a complete handheld wireless communication device band would be easier to enforce through observation. Okay, and then another follow up. Is. You were talking about the warrants. Have we issued any warrants, and what would be the circumstance where we might do a warrant to check a cell phone record. We have and those are typically just the most severe crashes that are involved where we may suspect that that was a factor involved in the cause that crash and that may be help to determine the person responsible for the accident. Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. That was pretty much my question. Chief, so these other cities that have had these complete bands on ordinances. Do they address like voice command so some of the newer cars, expensive cars like the mayor drives, you know, has a button where you can push it and say, call home, or whatever, and it's telling your, your handheld device through your Bluetooth. Is that allowed or is it, is it. They have, they have language in there that allows that specific type of use, even though it's using the handheld device with a voice. They almost every ordinance that I've seen allows hands free use. So, most of the definitions of that would would allow something to what you're what you're referring to so you still have to touch something on the dash or the steering wheel to activate that hands free system, but as long as you're most of the ordinances are are written so that as long as you're not holding the device in your hand free from something that's integrated into the vehicle, then it you're okay. Okay, good. Thank you. In this pie chart where you have the percentages of crashes . Where does texting fall in that one. Well, that's another thing is it's difficult to determine, really, because those are taken from the officers opinion based on any evidence or testimony that they collect at the accident scene. That that pie chart actually doesn't indicate anything to do with, with texting or handheld communication devices those are other distractions, but I can tell you that bar crash statistics, texting in 2015 in the in the calendar year of 2015 accounted. We know of 14 accidents. Okay, the city. And I've also provided a little chart in your backup that illustrates some of that we didn't really keep into the product 2015 we didn't really keep good stats on that. But after the enactment of the ordinance we began to keep those. And so we can break them down by known factors or known or suspected factors into several categories. And you'll see in that little chart, it shows that that just talking on the phone accounts for about 10 that we know of texting 14 and so forth out of 111 crashes where we suspect some sort of communication device was was in part of that. Thank you. Chief back to the question of hands free. Contrary to my colleagues assumption. My car may not be as sophisticated as that. That's why I wear my little Bluetooth kind of headphones. And so if you have that hands free capability on, you know, your Bluetooth headphones. Is that means, I mean you said is, if you don't have the phone in your hand, if you're not sitting up here talking like this, let's say you, you hit a button, you're talking to somebody on the phone, you're driving along and you can hang up by there as well. Is the real thrust to prevent that sort of your hand is occupied with something, and you're on the phone talking is that is that it I mean or is it if you just have the phone in your hand and an officer sees it no matter if you're just holding it you're not doing anything is that sort of probable cause for Hey, we'll pull you over because I think you're using the phone in cities that that that have prohibited entirely using it by hand. Okay, and that that would be probably probable cause if they have primary enforcement authority on behind that ordinance to stop somebody for it. All right. Good. Yes, Council. Mayor pro tem. How close or similar are the ordinances. I think little El man Argyle have both recently passed. Handheld use. Are they fairly close in, in how they're written, how they're designed. Relatively there's a there's a couple of small differences. They, but relatively they are they prohibit, or they allow hands free use in any regard through the through the capability of the device and prohibit you holding it in your hand for any reason. So, and now they differ a little bit in whether the vehicles in motion or whether you have to be stopped to use a device and they're similar to what ours is, or some of the aspects of dissimilar to what ours is I believe those ordinances allow you to be stopped, whether you're in a normal lane of traffic or not to use the device, but they there, they are similar in that you can't hold the device in your hand. Yes, Councilman was. So I really like the idea of hands free. And we all know that traffic accidents are split second decisions when lives are on the line, including our families and other families that split second ability to have both eyes on the road, both hands on the wheel. When you took driver's ed, you didn't take it driving with one hand. They taught you. Remember that to hold your, hold your steering wheel to and there's a reason. There's a safety reason that they teach us that. And if you slam on your brakes, and you are trying to keep control of that car. I'm going to tell you right now, you're going to need both hands on that wheel and the split second that it takes you to try to get rid of the phone or make a good decision. It's, it's a, it's a safety decision that we have to look at. It doesn't have to be a split second decision that we have to make on this council, but I'm happy to have planted the seed, so that we can give it some thought. It's something that we could discuss with our citizens and see what they feel about it. But we live in a high tech world, and everybody's on the phone all the time. We see it on the highways, we see it on the city streets. How many times do you see a split second miss? And you're like, they were on the phone. So I really, I really encourage the council to maybe take a look at some of the ordinances that other cities have passed. To read through them and see what's there, so we can make a decision one way or another and kind of move forward slowly . But I would sure like to kind of investigate at this point in moving forward. If we save one life, that family will know, because my brother was killed in a car accident. So I know the heart break that an entire family feels for years after. The residue left from a traffic accident is horrific. So if we as a body can study this and quite possibly enact something, I think it's the wave of the future. You see it in other cities around the country. It's the way that cities and counties are moving. Dalton and I remember when there were no seat belts. Dalton and I remember when there were no airbags. And everything has been. Glad you didn't say me. And George and Anita. I remember when there were buggy whips. So we remember when traffic safety laws were passed and they were passed because they saved lives. And so I really believe that hands free will save lives and I just would like us to investigate. Thank you. Councilman Roden. You know, it's when we heard, when was that that we talked about this last 2012? 2014. It was a very interesting conversation we had because it was around the same topic. And as soon as we even had an engaged debt and pull remember when that was around, I did a poll. I'd like to see those results. If anyone knows where those are, that would be interesting to see. But there it was an interesting controversy in the community. I think what's difficult about it is everyone understands texting is absolutely bad. Playing on Facebook or anything like that while you're driving doesn't make any sense and it's almost absurd that you have to have a law about that. And as we heard the problems of enforcing it without an all out ban. What I heard from the community at that point was we get it . Texting is bad. There wasn't a lot of opposition. Generally speaking to that sort of concept. When we were going to an all out mobile phone ban, use ban in cars, the reaction I kept hearing time after time again is we've been doing this since 2000 or before. Where there's this idea of I can drive in my car safely and talk on the phone. My eye is not distracted. I'm talking. So the feeling in the community was from a large portion of people at the time was you were taking away a liberty of mine that I've had that wasn't a safety issue. Until the issue of texting came about and now phones can be used for so much more. So to me that's complicated because I want to be able to effectively enforce those other things. While not unduly going against something that people feel like they've been able to do safely for the last decade or so. So I appreciate you bringing this up because I think it's something that we have to figure it out. I would be curious to get that poll from before and then also figure out a way that we can get some sort of feedback from the community now in 2015. Since that was a little while ago to better understand the feeling of the people now. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I think it's important for us to get a really clear sense of where the council is on this now. I appreciate Councilmember Wasney bringing it up. I was disappointed in 2014 that we didn't do the complete ban. I thought that was appropriate. The research that I've read that was presented to me by citizens even back then were sending emails with attachments to articles and things like that from the internet. Indicated that the notion of being able to carefully and safely and efficiently multitask while driving is a myth. It's just a myth. And it's not just a myth for new drivers. And it's not just a myth for senior drivers. It's a myth for all drivers. It's just not safe. And that signs around the city saying no hand held phone use would be a good reminder to people to do that. So I would be in favor of moving forward with that. But I do not want to do it unless there's a pretty strong feeling among the members of the council. Because it will take up a significant amount of staff time to prepare this. And it would take up a significant amount of our time to have hearings on it. And it will create a certain amount of controversy. And there's no point in dedicating a lot of that amount of time and energy on our part and the staff's part if there's not a fairly strong feeling that that's a good direction to move. I think it is a good direction to move. But I am not interested in coming up to the brink of a vote . And if we came up to that and everybody did it in good faith and said, well, no, that's not really what we wanted to do, given the new information that's come in, it's not the idea that we thought. I'm not trying to ask for that kind of commitment. You're asking for a vote right now. No, but I'm just saying let's not move forward unless we feel fairly certain that this is a good direction. Councilmember Hawkinson. I appreciate you bringing this up too. I'm kind of like Kevin. At first when we talked about it, it felt like we were taking away somebody's liberty to be in their office. And I'm definitely guilty when I'm in my car. That's when I talk to everybody. It's amazing when you're not allowed to be on your phone in a school zone, but yet I can drive around town with my little kids in my car and be on my phone. And as you become a dad and you start realizing maybe I should get off my phone and keep my kids safe, it's funny how I'm starting to change here. If I'm on council long enough, we'll see. I'll be everybody off their phone. But I'm wondering if it's a better idea to start with Traffic Safety Commission with this. I mean, I appreciate what you said, Dalton. All of a sudden we've been working on this for, I don't know, a year. And then we don't know how to vote on it at the end. But I do appreciate you bringing this up. I mean, I was even a little reluctant about the taxi thing at first. And looking back, I'm like, that was a no-brainer. So anyway, all that being said, I appreciate that. And maybe even if we set a date, a couple of years, we hope to be this way. I don't know. But it is just interesting when you start having kids, you just start noticing things. It does. It changes everything. Anybody else? Yes, Kathleen. Yeah, one last comment is that the technology has gone forward to really allow hands-free. So a few years ago that wasn't even an option, but it is an option now that if, you know, you are on a conversation, you can still have two hands on that wheel and be looking straight out and still if you need to talk to somebody. But that technology is here now. You don't have to go buy a new car to make it happen, you know. You just have kind of one more little gadget that you add to your world among all the gadgets to allow you to be hands-free. And I think that's the key here. Not ban, but hands-free. And that's what makes it work, I think. Councilmember Johnson? Well, I was going to say, I don't disagree with any of the conversation. And Joey, you're just coming so touchy-feely lately. It's awesome to see you just skidding. What I was going to say is we often hear comments about we don't engage, we don't give citizens time enough to engage on a topic and we don't listen to enough citizen input. I'm thinking on this one. If we don't, there are going to be a lot of really upset people who feel like it is their absolute God-given right to talk on their cell phone while they're driving. So we have a Traffic Safety Commission. We have boards and commissions all the time that engage, figure out how to engage citizens and get their feedback and all that stuff. So to me on this one, I don't think I would advocate for us not doing anything else until we go to Traffic Safety and let Traffic Safety figure out how to engage a wide cross-section of citizens and get their input and then bring it back to us with some sort of an idea. Councilmember Griggs? I was going to kind of say the same thing. I would like to engage the citizens, maybe put out a survey , see what a majority feel. I too, I lost a family member in a traffic accident. My cousin, she was 38, had two children or three children at home, actually a newborn, and she was on the phone when she died. So I'm very passionate about this too and I understand the need. But I also understand the need for citizens not to feel like their liberties are taken away and for them to have a choice. So I would like to see how the majority of the population feels. Yeah, I certainly don't have an issue with exploring this matter further, whether it be through Traffic Safety, a survey. I just want to make sure as we move in whatever direction we move that we do get citizen buy-in ahead of time. Because I think part of what affects our vote is when we move forward on an issue, we get to the end. And then when the public hearings come and the council chambers are full with maybe in an opposite view of what we 're considering. So yeah, I think it's just a buy-in. Obviously, this will get some press coverage as well, so that will help beginning to give some exposure. And so to put it in Mayor Pro Tem's terms, I'm okay with moving forward. Whatever process that takes that eventually will get it if it goes through the right channels and the surveys. And it seems like we got buy-in. Comes to the council, we iron out and tweak out the differences and move forward. So yes, Councilmember Waschmeyer. >> And it comes back to something that you've heard me say over and over, bring the people in at the beginning so that they can really weigh in. So this is a perfect classic example of that. And I'm just fine with Public Safety Commission and let them kind of work on it first and bring forward some recommendations. Whether they do the survey, we do the survey. I think the survey's a good idea. And now that the citizens are hearing about it, I would also encourage them to let their council representatives know how they feel about this. Because this is day one of a discussion. So I'm fine with Traffic Safety Commission. >> Okay, good. Yes, Councilmember. >> So Mayor, I think I hear a consensus. Send this to Traffic Safety Commission. And I think that they will appreciate the opportunity to engage the public. >> Sure. Any other discussions on this matter? Thank you, Chief. Appreciate that. We've got a couple more open sessions, but we also have an attorney here for a closed session. We went into open session to accommodate our friends of the press. So if they're not going to, but council's privilege, council's pleasure. I mean, we can go into closed session. We've got someone here who's on the clock, but we also have a couple items that I don't know how fast they're going to go. One, I think we'll certainly have some discussion about the rules and procedures. >> Do the closed session. >> Do the closed session, all right. Okay, we'll try to get the money reduced as much as possible. Sorry, just kidding. All right, so now we will go into closed session at. Okay, we are back in open session at five o'clock or close to it on February 23rd, 2016. This is a meeting of the Denton City Council. And we are going to move to agenda item C on the work session items, which is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the city council rules of procedure. Council Member Wasney. >> I would like to ask council to consider postponing this discussion to a later date and not basing our discussion off the backup that was provided previously. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Well, actually, I mean, I really have some suggestions about some of the drafting of that that I would like to recommend some changes to. So I don't know how we get that information to the staff without having that discussion if we postpone it. I don't know how we do that. I mean, I think I understand what you're trying to do, but like, I mean, I wrote some notes to give to the offer to the city attorney on some things I would like to see not touched at all and some things that I would like to see changed. >> Any other, yes, Council Member Rodin. >> Yeah, I would agree because it sounds like in order for us to get any changes to what was posted in terms of the red line version of this document, we'd have to provide that. So postponing it would mean we're just going to hold off having that conversation for another time in which nothing 's being done to that. So I don't see any harm in engaging in a conversation. I think this is all this was ever meant to be was a work session item to discuss issues that some council members have raised and wanted to be addressed. So it sounds like staff's prepared to do that. Council's prepared to do that. I'd rather just go ahead and have the conversation. >> And I think, Council Member Wasney, I mean, I think most of your thrust was that the backup that was submitted, the red line version of the draft, it may give us some suggestions as far as the topics, but as far as the specific recommendations or the specific red line or changed items, it's almost like we're starting over and it sounds like Mayor Pro Tem and maybe Council Member Rodin and myself or some others may have some suggestions as we move forward that may be incorporated other than what was recommended. So move forward, maybe some discussion on that? Okay, you bet. Okay, yes. >> I was a little surprised with it myself, but I don't mind having the conversation now, but I don't think that this is the end all. I just, but yeah, I had some issues with it too that I wanted to talk about. >> So I guess for the expediency of time, you know, we just spent a pretty exhaustive closed session talking about the legal implications of some of the discussion topics. You certainly have a presentation. I guess what I'm saying is that I would like the presentation to go fairly quickly, but it sounds like Council Members have some suggestions or questions. So I'm sort of on one of those roles, honestly, but move forward. Yes. >> Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, members of the Council, Mayor, Mr. City Manager. Thanks for the opportunity to visit about this a little bit . Perhaps a comment might to proceed our discussion on this. It's really not our intent. We would typically not give a red line draft, and certainly this has obviously caused a little bit of consternation in the community. Certainly that was not our intent. Contrarily, our intent has been to lay some issues on the table simply for discussion at this work session. And in that respect, what the staff has done is as we have observed Council meetings, the City Manager, the City Secretary and I sat down and kind of went through the tick marks on the things that we have seen that could perhaps use some discussion or not. These are the Council rules. They're your rules. They're your meetings. And we're just here to facilitate whatsoever you choose to put in your rules. But we have laid these issues on the table for some discussion so that we can at least look at some things and perhaps they will ease some controversy. That certainly is our intent as we move forward to our meetings in the future. So with that, if I might just lay out a very short presentation, and then I'm delighted to take whatsoever direction from you as far as where you want to go with these rules. And we can bring something back either for further discussion or whatever you want to do. We have heard a handful of complaints from citizens with regard to how long it is taking to get to the underlying agenda items on our agenda. And I think that some of these complaints have been eng endered by some of the changes that we have previously made in our City Council rules of procedure, because we have added some additional time to our citizen comments. And we have also added an open microphone provision to our rules. Specifically, I have heard complaints from those who are waiting to testify in zone cases that it's taking a very long period of time in order to get their zone cases. And so it's created a little bit of discussion in the community as far as the time it takes to work through our meetings. The staff has sort of thought through this and we're simply making some suggestions here and seek your input as far as where you would like to go with these items. But a thought would be to move all prior registration speakers to the beginning of the meeting. And currently what we're doing is we have three speakers at the front of the meeting. They're given four minutes and every six months then they are allowed to be at the opening part of the meeting thereafter. They're at the end of the meeting. Our suggestion on the prior registration piece is that we might consider doing away with this rotation process and just have all of the prior registration speakers perhaps at the front of the meeting. We might consider adding one additional speaker, making it four rather than three, which is what your rules currently provide for. And consider the possibility of since we're adding an additional speaker reduce the amount of time then that they would be allowed to speak. So that's one thought we had. And since these are specific suggestions, what I would want to do is just as you bring them up, if there's someone that has any comments or you know, instead of you getting through all of them and then we all of a sudden start sort of going back and weaving through. So let's just deal with this. Council's comments? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. Does that remind me the amount of speakers that we allow at the end that we would be getting rid of and just adding it to the beginning? Because we don't usually make it that far and there's not very many people at the end to speak. So I'm just wondering how many spots? Right, I looked at that today and we have not limited the number of spots at the end of the meeting. Okay. So but we have limited the spots at the first of the meeting currently is limited to three speakers for four minutes each. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. You know, I was on the council when I got on the council. Every speaker had to wait until the end of the meeting, even if they signed up. And I had suggested when we had a session like this that we offer time at the beginning because I was embarrassed that some of those speakers were having to wait till 12 or 1 in the morning to make their comments. And there was some resistance on the part of the mix of council that was there at the time because they felt like the people had been abusing the time at the start of the meeting. They were enjoying prime time, particularly. And that's why we had changed the rules to allow for time at the beginning, but still kept time at the end. I am very much ready to stop the time at the end and maybe expand a little bit the number of speakers at the beginning so that we could, but with the prior registration, I'm very much for that. We have not had very many speakers at the end anyway, and we have generally offered them the opportunity. If we had room to speak at the beginning. So, it's almost our practice anyway. So I think it's time to move forward on your second bullet point. Councilmember Johnson. So I would throw out that we, the mayor is very kind, and even when the buzzer goes off, you know, to allow them to finish their thought, which sometimes some points that thought can go on for a while. But four minutes is a long time too. So I think what we see a lot of times is people kind of saying the same thing again and reiterating. So I would just toss out, I like the idea of increasing the number at the beginning to four and putting a three minute on it. That's not 12 minutes because you've got inter-exchange time and all that in between. So it doesn't help those citizens concerned at bullet point one, the time getting to the main agenda. But it's a balancing act. So I think if we went four speakers, three minutes, knowing that there's probably going to be some indulgence if they're on a thought track. Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Saul. I think it's getting late. I'd be for having the four speakers at the front. But I'd like us to consider keeping it at four minutes, but just making sure that we're more just strict about when they stop. Why is he looking at me? Well, you're running the meetings. I understand. I totally understand, guys. I think kind of moving that back down to three minutes just , I don't know. I think he put it four minutes, but just be a little bit more strict about you got four minutes and okay, it's for sure. Okay. Councilmember Rhoads. Mayor Pro Tem. And I'll tell you, I'm all right with four minutes also. What I actually did was when I thought we were going to have some votes after the vote to reconsider, I tried to write my comments out. And by the way, they were very good. I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to hear them. But I tried to write them out and do them so that they would be three minutes long. And it was a challenge. It was a good challenge. But yeah, especially for me. Thank you, Kevin. But I would think that with a citizen coming up that is maybe not experienced in speaking, that giving them the full four minutes is good. But we could always maybe change the recording and say just because you have four minutes doesn't mean you have to take it all. Because several times we've had speakers get up and look and say, oh, well, I've got 55 seconds. So here's what I think. Yes, Councilman Wiesniewicz. Something to consider too is to limit the mayor's proclam ations from three to two. So just bump whoever. So because that can really add some time to a council meeting also. I would sometimes that's the only uplifting part of a meeting. I don't care. It's an uplifting part of the meeting. It's a time for us to celebrate what's happening in the community. I would hate to see us in any way limit that. We don't have enough of those, in my opinion. Well, it sounds like what I'm hearing is four speakers at the front, four minutes. There is an encouragement by my colleagues to make sure that people understand when the buzzer goes off, the buzzer goes off. And I will certainly commit to that so that we can get everybody and keep everybody on track. And we'll keep the proclamations where they are with the reserve the right to come back and tweak this a little bit if we need to. So encouragement taken. Yes. Very good. Moving on then. I'm sorry. No speakers at the end, at least for the ones that are signed up. Yeah, no. Yes. No, no signed up speakers at the end. So moving on and I do want to make one more comment about prior registration in tandem with this next bullet point. But we raised the issue of the open microphone comment provisions currently written into our rules. As you all know, the attorney general has issued opinion allowing an open microphone provision whereby you post nothing except for a general session in your rules and then speakers are allowed to come up and make comment. This has been our practice for a short period of time. And so we laid on the table to look at this and for your thoughts with regard to do you like it. Do you not like it. Certainly, even more with the open microphone than on the prior registration, there are strict limitations on the kind of engagement we can have with our citizens. And so we lay this issue on the table for your thoughts and consideration. May I pro tem and then we'll go to Joey and then if I see any hand. Well, I just want to make a statement that's in public and open the record on the record that I'm glad that we tried it. That we said when we tried it that we were going to check and see how it was working and pass some judgments on it. And I will say that I feel that we've had a couple of instances, one very recently where it didn't work well at all. And I feel like that I made a personal mistake by not calling for a point of order where the speaker was singling out a single council member for criticism. I don't think that that's what the rules allow. There may be some disagreements on that, but I don't think that the rules allow that. I think that the open microphone is more about policy than about people, individual people and their behaviors. And then where it got really tricky was once a statement like that is made, where certainly there were several folks that felt that a council member was criticized and maybe even attacked. There were some that felt that they needed to comment either. I agree or I disagree and and I feel like that that was particularly problematic given our open meetings rules about discussions. And I that are not posted and that wasn't posted. So I feel like that because of the way that the open mic has been used, because of the the concerns about not being able to set the record straight, if a comment is made, that it's not working well enough to continue. And that that we would encourage people to simply use the prior registration to to address council. OK, all right. Joy, technical level, what does it mean to be prior registration signed up? I think that's a good thing to just clear up here. OK, the prior registration requirements set forth in your rules are that a speaker would need to come to the city secretary by the Wednesday preceding that Tuesday council meeting and provide to the city secretary the topic that the speaker intends to address at your upcoming council meeting. So those that's what is meant by prior registration. And those are the rules. Now, I might just add that I have seen some skeletal post ings on prior registration. And in that respect, we might lay on the table a little discussion item as it concerns whether you would like to see more specificity with the prior registration items. Or are you satisfied with those postings as you have seen them? Just to follow up on that, if we're going to have four speakers now at four minutes, I would like to just throw this out to the council. If somebody signs up a number of times and they possibly do not show up, but we're only at four spots, just to address that somehow. Well, because there has been times where it's been on the agenda. Somebody's been signed up to speak and then they're not there. And that's a placeholder almost. I guess I'm what are you suggesting? I'm suggesting if that happens once or twice, you might not be able to sign up again because that has happened a few times here in the last couple of months. Well, and because if there's only if you can only speak on the mic, there's only four spots. That's a good point. And I think that's something for us to maybe think about because that's nothing I've really thought about. So I think that's something to think about and come back. And because that's good. But then what do you do with them? You can't say, well, you can't come talk. I mean, but I'm just saying no, no, no, no, that's a good that's a good topic for discussion. I just don't know if I mean, unless we want to resolve it right here today. Just throwing it out. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any thoughts on that? Council member Briggs. Thoughts on that or just what? Just what? No, you've got the mic. How many how many open mic slots do we currently have right now for the speakers? We currently have I believe it's four open mic. Because that's four spots that we're going to be eliminating for somebody to be able to come and speak if we get rid of that. Correct. Because we've already moved the ones from the end to the beginning. So that is less. I am personally OK with open mic and I know that that's not popular here. But I just wanted to go on record that I am OK with that. And I think that if we're going to eliminate the option of four speakers able to speak during a meeting that maybe we need to to find another place. And at the end maybe we do need to keep a couple at the end just in case somebody does use a placeholder and you know it eliminates another person's chance to speak. This is really the only time that they have to come and speak to us all in one place. Because my role in the job. This is a matter of data. I'm sure somebody can go and crunch it. But to that point, I can recall a few times in which there is either no one signed up for the for the prior registration spots or maybe one person and then four people signed up for the open mic spot. So it's not a question of kind of there's not enough room. It's so the question I think of with this. I was in favor of this and I still kind of don't mind the idea in my mind. It's what what problem is being solved that's not being solved by our current prior registration. When we talked about this initially, my thought was there's got to be room for some sort of kind of late late breaking issue that kind of needs to be addressed that even Wednesday prior registration doesn't solve something happened over the weekend. Something there's there's just something that demands the attention of the entire city council. And I don't think anything's been used in that regard. So it's all been stuff that could very easily had been signed up ahead of time. There wasn't any new kind of topic knew anything relating to that. So I think my concern becomes is you end up giving this prime time platform for folks to perhaps just engage in. Hey, I'm running for election and I'm going to use this time to get on TV and make my political case and which isn 't the goal of a city council meeting either for council members or citizens during that time. So I hope this works. I mean, I think if we think about what's happened with that prior registration or just citizen comments in general, pay day lending got addressed. Towing ordinance got addressed. Somebody mentioned skate park. I mean, some real significant things of people just thinking ahead, taking time, preparing presentations. So I love that about our meetings. So I don't know the answer to the open mic thing. I don't know what problem it's solving is, I guess, what my question is. So if it's just a matter of it's taking up additional time, not really solving a problem, I'm not entirely opposed to just saying if there is something urgent you need to address, you can do it. But the front of the meeting is going to be reserved for people who prior register. And if you want to put open mic at the end, people want to stick it out. I don't necessarily have any problem with that. Yeah. So I guess where I stand on it is I don't recall a single issue that somebody has brought up where we go, man. It was so good that they didn't have to register on Wednesday to talk to us about this topic. And I think that that was kind of the thrust of the open mic conversation. If I remember when we talked about it last year. I think it's been a lot more harm than good. And in light of certainly the violator myself last week, I don't think I don't think it's. It's the we're running the city business. It's the weekly business meeting of the city. And so I think there's places for an open mic where you can talk about whatever you want. I don't think that's the place. And I think we've seen that. So to me, whether we have four speakers or eight or whatever it is, I think if you're not willing to say, here 's what I'm going to come talk about, you know, in that meeting, then it's probably not a topic that should be talked about. So, you know, I feel I feel really good about getting back to we said we try it. I think it's failed. And and certainly if somebody finds out something on Saturday that says, hey, man, we got to talk about this at the Tuesday council meeting, they're going to email every one of us. We would have the opportunity to to ask for it to be discussed. We could talk about it and concluding items. We could ask if, you know, somebody could speak. I mean, there's all kinds of opportunities for us as a council to ask for a suspension of the normal rules. If there's some burning issue that somebody, you know, something happens over the weekend and we'd have to follow the proper procedures on that. So I'm not in favor of the open mic at the meetings, whether it be at the front or the back, because I think it just opens us up for too much trouble. I'm going to offer a suggestion and this is maybe several parts to it and there's a lot of ways that it can go wrong. But to address Councilmember Riggs concern. Maybe just to make sure and partially Councilmember Hawkins concern about people that get bumped because of folks that sign up and don't show. Maybe we could move it to five speakers, but only three minutes. Five five max because we're changing what we're doing now. We've only had open mic for a very short while, but somebody is going to play this is going to frame this as we are now limiting citizens. From addressing Council, which is not the intent at all, but if we could do five speakers for three minutes and maybe if we could and now I'm looking at our city secretary . As best I can stand on the microphone. Maybe we start. We allow them to have until Thursday at noon to register, but we don't. We don't put the Council package that we don't put the agenda out until Friday like we used to do. How would and I would like to hear from staff from either the manager of the city secretary as to whether moving moving the registration back would be more accommodating to to the citizens and would be available to them. Yeah, yeah, I like the five speakers three minutes because four times force 16. This is five times three is 15. So we're in the same time slot still allowing. But to your point, they can't come and talk about anything on the agenda. That's what you're that's what you're saying. I'm saying it's where they register. A citizen report, and they can't address but the agenda is not yet. So, but we've always had that. Basically, so yeah, they can address the items on the agenda at the at the individual agenda. Exactly. Yeah. I didn't mean to cut you off on your suggestion on the if somebody doesn't show up. So if you if yes, if you would maybe brainstorm about that because that's that's a tough, you know, and I'm it didn't happen enough to maybe address it. Maybe let's just keep it. No, no. Yeah. If you could maybe come up with some things and maybe staff could send it out an informal staff report, then we can queue it up for another discussion on how we do that because I think that's a good. That's a good observation that sometimes people several the same people will will register, but they don't show up. And you're right. It's kick somebody out. So maybe we can have some kind of we can figure that out. That's just that. But I didn't I didn't want to cut off that discussion. But I think it just it really deserves some some thought that maybe we're not really geared up to right here. But I just wanted to make that comment to you. Yes, I was going to address that. But when you come back, you said some suggestions. I thought suggestions. So we have on the table we've got a couple of things. One is move the remove the open mic altogether, move it to the end and give it some people and or I'm hearing it as an or. So correct me if I'm wrong. Going to five speakers at the beginning for three minutes pre registration with a little bit more specificity on the thing they want to talk about. Yeah. And my thought was with that was that instead of it to go along with eliminating. Yeah. Sure. Also mentioned moving the last year on this, but moving that if we move the agenda to Friday and I think Council's already agreed to do that. And so maybe going to Thursday would not be a particular problem. OK, because Council's already told us you would agree to let us put the agenda on Friday. Thursday news from the side. OK. Thursday noon for the sign . Yeah, I like the idea of increasing the speakers to five and the minutes to three because it does provide more people in almost the same time frame. And it does for allow sometimes my accommodation for people who might need to finish their thoughts in about two or three minutes. So and as far as eliminating the open mic, you know, we've we've tried that. If it's moved at the end and limited to two people for three minutes or something like that, I don't I guess I don 't mind that because number one, it's at the end of the meeting. If somebody really wants to stick it out and have some comments. But and if they but I will tell you that it's not going to be the way it has been. I mean, it's just not going to be we're not going to have the same situation present itself that it did before because I really. Did not do a good job of that and that will not happen again. So I'm just letting that be known to everybody. So I'm indifferent about eliminating it or not. I would maybe err on the side of caution of going, OK, maybe. But if we're adding a slot in the front, because I guess people coming to talk to us, Keely, we didn't have open mic for until three or four months ago. And we've never really had any complaints of any substantial number that somehow the public's access to the council at council meetings is inadequate. So it's just a matter of how do we balance that? And I can certainly err on the side of caution of a measured sort of incremental response. But if the rest of the council, the majority of the council wants to do away with the open mic, I'm not going to I'm not going to be the vote that keeps it around. Let me go here and then I'll go here. Go ahead. I think the issue that bothered me was having speakers who did sign up and had to wait clear to the end of the meeting because that's been me at two o'clock in the morning in the past where you know you've been there eight hours and you 're waiting for those three. Let's accommodate those citizens. Let them speak at the beginning of the meeting and then they're done. And we're done. And our people who are in the audience are finished. So move everybody to the front. And I bet that for me is important rather than having people at the end. So you're are you saying that you're OK with going to five speakers three minutes and eliminating the open mic? Yes. OK. I was going to bring up another point about the open mic. Sometimes there's people that come to a meeting and decide at the time they didn't think they were going to speak but then really get involved and want to say something or make a comment. That's the benefit that I've seen from the open mic. It engages people who don't really some of them. Some people wait for that. But there are some people that feel like, wait, I want to say something about this topic. So that that's kind of what I I hesitate getting rid of it personally. But I mean, if it's consensus, then that's fine. Well, and I think that our open mic policy right now is you cannot speak on something that's on the agenda. I mean, we why really blew that all the way around last time. But at least I caught one. So let me make sure I understand. Let's do this in pieces. Five speakers, three minutes on the front end. And I'm just going to say with no open mic, what is the concern? I'm not asking for a vote. But what's the consensus on that? I see a shaking of the head. I know, Councilmember Briggs, you may not be in favor of that. OK, so that's Thursday, noon. And then we will come back and revisit if people sign up and don't show up. And if we keep a tally and figure out some protocol or rules around that. Sure. OK, it seems like that's the consensus, at least for now. None of this is always etched in stone, but we can always come back. Clarify, I'm seeing a consensus for no open mic, but I'm not sure about registered speakers at the end. No, there's no registered speaker at the end. That's been off the table since we started the discussion. That's five. Yes, five at the end, three minutes. At the beginning, five speakers. Five at the beginning, three minutes. Registered by 12 noon. More specificity in the post. Not speak on an item on the agenda. On the-- oh, yeah, not speak on an item on the agenda, because we have opportunity to speak on items on the agenda . And, you know, they can speak public hearing. They can speak items under individual consideration. So there are, I think, opportunities with the business before the city for people to come down. Because we have public hearings where they haven't filled out a card, but they feel compelled to come down anyway and speak. So addressing those items of business before us, I think there are opportunities for people to come and speak. Okay. That's good. We can go to the next slide. I will tell you in about probably 20 minutes, I'm going to have to leave and Council Member Roden, I think, whenever he decides to leave for our engagement. Why don't we just say that we're just going to have 20 more minutes of discussion? Because I think we ought to be here. Okay, sure. We'll do what we can. Okay. Okay. The next slide relates to our public hearing process. And in this regard, I think we may have created a little bit of an issue when we changed our rules the last time. Anita? Yes? I think this is a pretty lengthy discussion, the one about how do we do the public hearings, and if they're closed, they go to items of individual consideration, then we have the whole public. That's going to take, so. Hold on. Yeah. We're going to have to take a few seconds. Yeah, let's see what else she got that maybe some low-h anging fruit that we can take a look at. Could I make one passing comment and then just a little food for thought on public hearing? As the City Manager and City Secretary and I looked at this , technically you want your public hearing comments contained within the public hearing. In other words, these are legalistic type of procedures and legalistic type hearings, and so you really want to spill your comments into those public hearings. Okay, thank you. With that, I'll move forward. Okay, the next slide relates to a conflict that I'm seeing in our rules that we thought we would lay on the table for your consideration. And kind of let you think about this. Currently, as it concerns the council rules of procedure. I hate to stop you. Yes, sir. Could you just go through the ones we want and let us see, because I think this one's going to be, we're not going to, I mean, it may just be that we're just done. Just go through the slide and see which ones we have still left to talk about, and there may be some that are much quicker discussion. Mayor Dunn is good with the staff, so we're delighted to do that. Well, I want to ask my council, my colleagues, are we okay, because I think we made a major change that was the reason for this discussion in the first place, and that is how do we deal with the citizen comments. And so we can bring these back in the next week or two. Yes, Council Member Briggs. One question that I had asked that I was curious about that I don't see in this presentation, or maybe I missed it, was about citizen comment in a work session, because that always seemed to be. Okay. Confusing. Yeah. And I just wanted clarification on that, so if we're going to bring this back, maybe have that. Sure. Sure. You mean a citizen comment as if, because I know we have citizens can comment on consent agenda items by filling out a blue card. But you're saying citizen, like it'd be like if. If there was a. Yes, if somebody's sitting out here right now and wanted to talk on this item, is that allowed? Yeah. My understanding, and we can have that, my understanding is it's not allowed except at the discretion of the mayor. But that could be something that, but we need to talk about that. Right. So. The mayor's correct on his recollection on the rule. Okay. Yes. I think one of the things that I had sent in a request for clarification on is when we added the open mic thing last year, we also added the citizens could come and address us here in the work session prior to consent agenda items. We've had some instances where we've had like invited speakers by council members to come and speak at that time. Not necessarily on an item that was consent agenda, I don't think. So I just want to make sure, clarification wise, I have two questions. One is those citizen comments on the consent agenda, that space is not reserved for dentin citizens. It's for anybody that wants to come and speak about our consent agenda. Is that correct? That is correct. Great. And then the other question I have is, if a council member wants to have someone speak on a work session item, how does that get vetted? That's what we're going to add that for future discussion. Okay, we're going to add that, we're going to vet that at a future item. Yes. Okay. Yes. Because yes, that happened on two occasions and I did it as an accommodation and then I just decided that it would set a precedent so we just stopped doing that. So those were based upon the mayor's discretion as, yes. So are you trying to wrap things up and just push everything to another day or are we going to talk about this one that's up there? Well, the only thing is I was trying to identify ones that we might could do a final discussion on within the time that I can still be here. I'm just not so sure if that can happen because I'm going to be walking out of here in about 10 or 15 minutes. And I'm not sure we can have this whole discussion within that time. And so that's my only thought. I just recommend we postpone the rest of the discussion to a later date. The only thing I would say is there has been concern expressed amongst council members, there's been concern expressed to the public about part of the red line section having to do with your recommendations on changing our nom inating procedures for boards and commissions. And I just don't think that that's part of our discussion at this time. And I don't anticipate, I haven't heard a lot of council members suggesting anything like that. And so that I would like to see those recommendations go away for a while. Yeah. Well, and I don't know if I ever want to see them again, but I think what we determined at the beginning of the open session was that red line version just sort of vaporized. And whatever was in there is gone, including the striking of the preamble that was like the second or third whereas. So that's not even out there floating in the cosmos. This is what we're using to give direction to draft a different one. And I will just say on that point, I agree, I don't know. It certainly read strangely in red as if there's going to be a small number of council members. But as I got kind of thinking about it, I thought, well, maybe there are some logistical issues. There's no really herder of the cats as it relates to that process. And so oftentimes we'll have board and commission vacancies that go on and on because a particular council member just hasn't taken the time to submit any names. And that's problematic for the business of those commissions. So there may be some legitimate staff concerns that we've not heard that probably caused that. That doesn't mean that the solution that was suggested is the right way to go. But maybe there's some work for us to at least understand what the problem is. So if there is something like that, my recommendation would be, by all means, let us know. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Yes. And the last kind of red flag for me was council members right to attend a board or commission meeting. And of course that's up there because it's allowed by law. And maybe we could consider notifying the city manager if we intended to attend a closed board or commission meeting. So that we avoided a quorum situations of the meeting. So something to think about, something to -- >> Yeah, because we're still going to come back and discuss this. >> Yeah. >> And I think when we have that discussion, one of the things that I'm interested in about that is these are our rules for us. And one of the things I'm concerned about with when I, as a council member, attend a board or commission is I can't sneak in there. And board and commission members may feel intimidated. Those are places where we want them to be giving us advice. And so we may want to have some discussion about if we attend one of those meetings, if we want to limit our involvement to just simply being in the audience. Because I don't want us to do anything but a chilling effect. >> And that's all open for discussion as we bring this back . Absolutely. Any other comments, questions? >> Mayor, we will bring the discussion back at your convenience. Do you want us to bring the one item that we have, I believe, reached consensus on for any kind of action before we have a further discussion or do you want to just wait until we discuss the whole issue? >> Bring it back for action. >> One item. >> One item. >> Okay. >> And now that brings us to our last agenda item which is concluding items. Any concluding items? Yes. >> The Lilliant Miller construction is still a real issue. And the timing of some of the traffic lights and if traffic and engineering could head over there and really do a study on what's going on to include delaying construction until our commuters get out and finishing construction to allow our commuters to get home. And so it's becoming a real public safety issue and I'm really hearing from citizens and if we could take a look at the lights, traffic lights, but also the timing of the construction I think could be fine tuned to accommodate because all these people are commuting. >> Okay. All right. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> I think that if the city could plan a meeting of some kind and have fire and police there, everybody's doing the best they can. I understand that. But there has been some, I think there was an emergency vehicle that got stuck in the traffic with their lights on. There was a picture posted of that and I know that everybody's trying to do the best they can. But there's just a lot of residents who feel just a little nervous, just a little bit anxious about what the timeline actually is. >> So when would you like to have that meeting by? >> I asked for that I think last week. >> I did. >> Okay. >> I don't know. The sooner the better. And even if we could have it in a place where it doesn't have to be so formal, there could be police set up here, fire set up here, and there could be more conversations taking place. >> Sure, like a little round table, like an open house type . >> I think that would be a better way to do it. >> And the library has some space, so it sounds like it. >> It's important too, if we could add, I had a resident have a good idea of maybe putting some detour signs of people trying to encourage them to go down Teasley rather than use Lillian Miller. I guess you'd be coming out of the neighborhoods, kind of going eastbound towards 35, trying to encourage people to go down Teasley. Just a thought, okay, thanks. >> So I met with the contractor who's doing that job, because he happened to be sitting at the table when people were bombarding me about it. And I would just like to hear back, at last Tuesday's meeting I made a couple suggestions of things we could do. I asked him specifically, is there anything that would prec lude your people from working all night? He said, it's just money. Meaning if they work 24/7. So that was one of the things I suggested last week. And so I think if we could just, I understand that sometimes we like to study things in engineering. We have people in fist fights out there in the intersection . So I think this is one where by next Tuesday the 1st, I would like for us to have an answer on A, is it possible to work around the clock? And if so, what would it cost? And how much faster could we, I asked him how long would it take you to do those calculations? He said I could get that answer in 48 to 72 hours. The other suggestion was shut off the entrances to the shopping centers on Lillian Miller. Leave those lights green and force the people that are in those shopping centers to use the access road. Because there's access throughout all those on both sides of the street. Answer by that next Tuesday. Because we either can or we can't. I don't think there's anything that precludes us from doing that because they still have access on both sides of Lill ian Miller. And that's where, from what I'm told by two of those store owners there, I went and talked to the store owners. They said all the fights are happening because people are blocking the intersection or people can't get out. People get mad. They start honking. So that's how it escalates, right? If that wasn't happening from both sides of Lillian Miller, it might help. And then the suggestion also, so I would say next Tuesday we ought to be able to have the answer on a sign down before they enter Lillian Miller and these other two things . >> Okay. >> And Mayor, just to add to that, just some neighbors, so they are resting easy. The neighborhood will be- >> Hold on, you gotta give us some direction. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yes, yes. You got a concluding item? >> Yes, it's, to add to that though, because I threw that- >> But I think, I'm just saying, go ahead and then she might shut you down. >> I don't know, I'm confused right now. I want the neighborhood to be involved with all these moves that we're trying to do with Lillian Miller. So just throw that in. >> Yes. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> So I can ask for a report here? >> Of course. >> Okay. So our neighborhood has had a lot of car break-ins, several , and they come several a night, and then there's a break, and there's several. And these automobiles are non-forced entry. They're using some kind of technological tool or something because the cars are locked, but they're still getting in. So I'm just curious, I don't know about other neighborhoods , but I'd like a report on auto break-ins around the town and the tech tools that people are using and what we can do or if anything. I'm just, and maybe some extra police presence in our neighborhood. There are, there's a lot. >> The only concluding item I have is, Madam City Attorney, I'm going to need you to really be assertive. That if you see a violation and you don't have my attention or if I miss it, you need to help, you need to step in and call a point of order. >> Do we need to do it any more? >> No, yeah, we need to make sure we stay on track. You bet. All right, any other concluding items? Then we are concluded. We stand adjourned.