Jun 07, 2016 City Council on 2016-06-07 1:00 PM

to this Tuesday, June 7th, 2016 meeting of the Denton City Council. We do have a quorum and we also are joined in a joint session with the Public Utility Board. And I wanted to introduce Randy Robinson, the chair of that board, to call the meeting to order. Randy? Thank you, Mayor. It also says we have a quorum here as well, and this is supposed to be a call. Call the June 7th, 2016 Public Utility Board Commission meeting to order as well. If I can, I'd like to introduce the members of the commission. Yes, please. We have Phil Galban, Brendan Carroll, Barbara Russell, and Susan Park. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. You bet. All right, we'll move on to our agenda item one, which is citizen comment on consent agenda items. We don't have any there. Agenda item number two, request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for June 7th, 2016. Clarifications. Yes, Mr. City Manager. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to just call to the council's attention that we have a written request on public hearing item 7C to open and then continue that public hearing to June the 21st. I do not know whether there will be citizens there to speak or not. My suggestion would be that with council's agreement that you open that public hearing, and if there are speakers who wish to speak because they're here to allow that. And then to continue the public hearing to June the 21st. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, George. Any other clarification? Yes. Councilmember Gregory on consent agenda item J. Just wanted to make sure my glasses are right that we're approving an agreement between the city and Dallas MTA and Verizon for some wireless service at the rail yard and it's not going to cost the city anything. I think that's correct. But let me ask Melissa craft is our IT director to verify that. Mr. Mayor pro tem. Thank you. No, no, not me. I am so sorry . I'm not. Good afternoon. Hi. Yes, sir. That is correct. So as part of that, there goes to provide more coverage in that area, because what we anticipate is a higher density population with that within that area. So it can boost their Verizon signals. Now, how did we do that at no charge? Is it George Campbell's charm and wit? I think that part of the collaborative workspace, they want to be a strategic partners part of the incubator workspace and bringing technology to town. So that was part of their contribution for that. Excellent. Well, thank you very much. Yes. Just while you're up there. These small cells, they're used for high speed Internet to right or just phone service for primarily your cellular service. Okay. So for your 4G connectivity. Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes. Mayor pro tem. Not on this issue on another one. This is actually on the items for individual consideration. See. Okay. And it's a question of policy procedure or perhaps practice as it relates to zoning board of adjustment and alternates. And it seems like I recall when I first got on council, we had we had the practice of when alternates were on it. Because it was hard to attract people to just stay in an alternate position without ever having the opportunity to move up that we would bump them up to the next available spot when there was an open spot. And I remember having a conversation about that. But I don 't know if that's a matter of practice at that time or if that was a matter of policy or if that's written in. And if we can get some clarification ahead of tonight's discussion on that. Because I know there's a particular member who's been sitting in the wings at the alternate position who's been interested but overlooked each time. Right, Mr. Mayor pro tem. The we have as a matter of practice, I believe, attempted to move those alternates up into a primary position. However, the appointments. These as all of the other appointments of the council are subject to a nomination by an individual member and an approval by the entire council. So this remains firmly within the discretion of an individual council member and the council at large in the final appointment. So it's not mandatory, but it has in fact been a practice which we've tried to, I think, follow in the interest of creating some continuity and building some knowledge. Thank you. Anyone else? I've just got one. Consent agenda item E is in Edward. It's the extension of the or an expansion of the authority to not to exceed 150, 000 to the law firm of coal. Is that shots? Not to exceed $399,000 and this is for the TMPA joint operating agreement, I believe. So, I know we've received a draft of that the TMPA board has, and that's scheduled to be coming to the TMPA board and probably the next board meeting or sooner. I'm just trying to understand how much have we incurred so far from this law firm in this particular transaction and why do we anticipate another $150,000. Mayor in response to how much we've incurred thus far that number and this has been a project that's been in process since November of 2013. So, through the bills that we have paid thus far 2016 it's $215,743.94. There is an outstanding bill which has not yet been paid. I don't have that exact number, but it's in the $35,000 range . And so this amount that approximately $35,000 would come out of that and then working through the finishing touches of this. That's what is anticipated at this point in time. And this may, if someone can't answer this, a report would be fine. I guess, is that all for the joint operating agreement? Because, I mean, I've been on the board for a while and I didn't know that we've been talking about it that heavily for three years. So. No sir, it's not just with the joint operating agreement. It would be joint operating agreement and consideration of items pertaining to the RFP that went out and working on the agreement. So it would be necessary to execute that in the future also. I might also add that there was some work associated with this agreement, but it had to do with the legislative process. So there were some legal pieces that had to be put in play in a statute before we could move forward on this underlying agreement. Okay, good. Thank you. Thanks. Yes, Council Member Geary. Does the Full Shots Agreement include the bond council? Is that separate? No, this is not inclusive of bond council. This group does not do bond work. Our bond council is a separate firm. Thank you. Anyone else for items of clarification? All right, no. We'll move on then to agenda item 3A, which is receive a report and hold a discussion to give staff direction regarding the study and analysis by Baratel Group , Inc. of the Renewable Denton Plan and activities related to the future power supply of Denton. Thank you, Mayor. As we begin this discussion this afternoon of the Renewable Denton Plan and the study that was conducted by the Baratel Group, I'd just like to make note that we have also posted some discussion in your closed session. Should there be items that need to be, that are confidential in nature and need to be discussed in closed session, clearly for the Baratel Group to do the intensive work that they did on the whole program, they have to address some of those issues. In the event that there are questions that you have at the end of the discussion, my suggestion again, Mr. Mayor, would be that we move into the closed session while they are here and then come back to the open session for the second work session item, but that's at your discretion, clearly. Mr. Sidney, just one real quick question. This might be for legal as well. So who's going to determine, like if there's questions during the open session on the executive report that was presented to us and I think was in our agenda, if there's something that someone feels is necessary for closed session, then somebody's going to... Well, and that's the reason I've asked Mr. Williams to be sure and be here this afternoon and the city attorney so that we can kind of raise a flag and caution you that we might need to move into closed session with an item like that. Okay, all right. And Mr. Chevelle is very much aware of what those confidential items are as he's making and as he's prepared his presentation. So I think that will be good. First as background, the City Council over a period of time has directed the staff and DME to design an energy plan that would increase our renewables over time and yet maintain competitive rates and financial and physical reliability in our plan. In response to that, Denton Municipal Electric proposed the renewable Denton plan in October of 2015. So that's been about eight months and council's been engaged in a lot of discussions about the plan since that time. In addition to public presentations to the City Council and to the Public Utility Board, DME has held two, at least two open public house meetings, question and answer sessions and a public hearing on the renewable Denton plan. Then on March 22, 2016, again after consideration and discussion by the council, the council approved a contract with the Brattle Group and I will not go into all of their credentials, we had done that back in March. But essentially to perform the scope of work that you see there on the screen that I'll only enumerate briefly to review the renewable Denton plan as it had been presented to the council, to review other options and that might have been considered by DME to serve the load and with an increasing renewable portfolio, which was a major component of what the council has been asking for. To determine whether or not and what alternatives we should consider that would meet the council's direction regarding renewables, rates and reliability, and then to report their findings back to the City Council. So that is what the Brattle Group undertook to do. During the course of that the City received a number of questions from the public, from council members, and I recall that a number of council members took the opportunity to meet with Mr. Chevelle and others in the Brattle Group as they were just beginning their work and beginning to collect data so that you could impart some thoughts and ideas to them personally. But those questions, any questions that we received were forwarded then to the consultant for their review and study . So Mr. Mayor, at this point and as of today, the Brattle Group has provided us with a draft version of their report, an executive summary which has been provided to the council , and the final report will be made available to the public, hopefully later this week. There are items in that very comprehensive report that must remain confidential and certainly wouldn't change the outcome of the recommendations of the report at all. So with that, I'm going to introduce the representatives of the Brattle Group to make their presentation to you today. There are three of those individuals here, Mr. Ira Chevelle , Mr. Bruce Toshida, and Mike Klein, who are all here and all played a significant role in doing the research and data collection and analysis that went into this report. Following that, with your concurrence, Mr. Mayor, I might like to, after the discussion and the presentation, rejoin you here at the podium so we can try to determine what our next steps are following the presentation and questions and discussion that you may have today. One procedural question on that. I guess what you're saying is you're going to want to see if there's direction available from the council after this. I would think that wouldn't that come more appropriate after the closed session? Probably. Okay, so we can come back and then talk about that after the closed session. And/or we can talk about the options of what we can do within the coming week or two and then make some definite decisions on that after you come out of closed session. So let's play that by ear. The report obviously is very comprehensive, so I don't know how many questions you might have. So with that, I'd like to introduce Ira Chevelle. And Ira, if you would, again, I'd appreciate, I'd also like to compliment the consultants for being very diligent and working with us in a short time, as you know, Council wanted this done pretty quickly. So, Ira. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here. Mr. Mayor, Council, I have this opportunity to present to you and discuss our findings that we've come to over the course of about two months, I believe, maybe a bit less. We have, we were engaged to review the plan that DME put together, the renewable dent in plan, and to look at the feasibility and the cost and the alternatives to go from the current level of 40% renewables to 70% renewables by 2019. And to keep that percentage of renewables in place in the future as the city's load grows at about 2% a year. We performed an independent analysis. We reviewed the analysis done by DME staff and then performed our own independent analysis from whole cloth as well as verifying and validating what they did. And we found the plan to be carefully thought out. It achie ves a realistic but still high level of renewable energy penetration. 70% is quite high. We know that there are a few cities around the country that have more or intending to have more, but 70% is really quite high and commendable. You find yourself at a fortuitous point in time with the end of, a point in time where you have a decision to make about the Gibbons Creek coal plant, whether to extend the power sales agreement, whether to keep that part of your portfolio or whether to exit that agreement. And it's also a very fortuitous time in terms of the cost of wind and solar PPAs. As you probably all know, the cost of wind power has been going down, just the cost of building wind. The technology's been getting better. The cost of the turbines has been going down. And the output has been going up and it's becoming more cost effective. Solar has been rather startling in the cost of, cost decline of solar installations due to technology. And the two factors together combined plus federal tax credits, which were just extended for another three or four years, are making the PPAs being offered by vendors very attractive. And we've reviewed the PPAs and they are truly rather remarkable in their cost effectiveness. Being in Texas and having access to both some of the best wind regimes in the country, in West Texas primarily in the panhandle, and solar everywhere in the state, but better as you go west and somewhat south, is also a great advantage. It puts you, it puts Texas in a unique position, puts Dent on in a unique position. So the timing is important because the tax credits start to expire. As they expire, it's likely that cost of PPAs, especially for wind, will go up if you wait another year or two, or perhaps even less. Okay, the renewable Denton plan has two components. It's purchase power agreements for solar and wind, and it's a gas peaking plant. We call it the Denton Energy Center throughout the report, and here it really consists of both a plant near the airport, which is called the Denton Energy Center, and the plant that's north of the city called the Green Valley Energy Center. Same size, each, the staff at DME thought, and it makes sense to divide it into two plants to provide redundancy and greater reliability. It calls for going from currently 40% renewables to 70% renewals by 2019. And the thing that has to be recognized is that renewables are not controllable. Unlike the Gibbons Creek coal plant, unlike the proposed Denton Energy Center, unlike all the gas plants in the state, unlike even the nuclear plants, the output of these plants, when the sun shines, you get solar. When the wind blows hard, you get, or less hard, you get more or less wind, and that can change rapidly. So as you add more and more renewables, the effective load, which is usually called the net load that you have to serve , that Denton Municipal has to serve, varies. The net load is the load, say it's 400 megawatts, that's too high. Say it's 300 megawatts in an hour. If you had 100 megawatts of wind, your net load is 200 meg awatts. You subtract it. That's the amount you have to serve with something else. The market, the Denton Energy Center, with something else, but it has to be served to keep the lights on. All of that happens automatically with the ERCOT market, the ERCOT system and the controls. But you're responsible financially for serving that load and meeting that demand. So the rice units, reciprocating engine units that would be at the Denton Energy Center, are small units. They're modern, new design, they move very quickly, they all can operate independently, and they can match any deviations that occur in that net load. So as an example, this is projected from data provided to us by DME from May 21st, 2019. It's 24 hours across the bottom. It's hourly, sub hourly, the deviations would be greater. And the blue line that I'm tracing is the projected load for the city. It is lowest around 5 AM and it rises into the evening to about 200 megawatts. At the same time, the red line is the projected production of the wind PPAs that are being considered and the solar PPAs. And you can see it rises sharply at around 4 PM. That's wind. It's projection that the wind in that hour would rise, it's based on projected weather data. When that happens, the green line at the bottom shows what 's called a net load. It drops. It's the actual load, which is fairly smooth, less the projected wind and solar. This green line is what makes life difficult when you have renewables. That's where you have to fill in with the market or something else. If you knew your load was this and you could follow that fairly closely with resources, you could keep your costs, your market exposure down. But if your market exposure is this line, it makes it much more difficult. Okay. So that variability has an economic cost. Oh, sorry, yes. Ira, can you go back one slide there and just explain to me a little bit why those two lines seem to mirror each other? Ah, okay. So just mathematically, the blue line is the load. Take that as the load. In this particular hour, in any hour, the production, we are subtracting the production. This is the way it's done to create the net. We subtract the red line from the blue line. It gives you the green line. Okay. So you can see the green line is fairly smooth in this period of time when the production is fairly smooth and it varies greatly. And when the production, when the renewable production goes down over here, the net load goes up. And then suddenly the wind, and there were two wind farms, I believe, in this. I was looking at this earlier with Bruce. The wind farms, production goes up, the net load goes way down. Then the wind production drops off and it goes way up. And that's called a ramp for sort of obvious reasons. And that's what makes for the need to have some means of reducing exposure to what could happen in the market when that happens. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Riggs. So I found it interesting that you used net load. Isn't it usually used in market wide analysis and not for a single load serving entity? It's both. Okay. The reason it's important is that Denton, as a, we'll get to it, as a qualified scheduling entity under the ERCOT rules, has to reasonably match supply and demand. And also because what would result here is if the projected , when this were, if this were to happen right here, or actually if, yes, if this were to happen and the net load would arise sharply into this area, say, as the renewables fall off, the city, the Denton Municipal would have to rely on the real time market. When these kinds of ramps occur and the wind falls off, typically it's correlated across most, it's correlated with the rest of the wind in the state. The wind farms are not independent. They're not, they're not totally independent, they're not totally dependent on one another in the sense of everything moves together, but they tend to move together. When this happens, the price of power tends to spike. I heard today, I was told today that it spiked yesterday during just such an incident. If the city, if the, if you guys, if Denton Municipal doesn 't have power, something to use at that time or some way to get power quickly, you have to pay the real time price. That can go to $9,000. I believe it went to $1,000 yesterday. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Dr. Chevelle, thank you very much for your presentation and thank you to your colleagues for their work. >> Here we go, thanks. I said thanks, Dr. Chevelle. Can you talk a little bit about the qualified scheduling entity and what that means and particularly what Denton has in terms of an EMO or an energy management organization? >> Sure. Qualified scheduling entity has, comes with certain requirements. I believe a year ago, perhaps a little bit longer, Denton became its own qualified scheduling entity prior to that. DME was relying on NRG under contract to perform that function. Under the ERCOT market rules, customers and generators don 't interact, don't direct directly. They have to interact through an intermediary and that's a QSE. The QSE, even if there's a bilateral contract, it still has to go through a QSE. That function then requires also that the QSE, in this case the EMO for Denton, has to also provide the required ancillary services, which we can get into if you want. >> Please. >> Okay, okay, so ancillary services are, there's energy, which is just mean load, power that comes out of the power plants. Ancillary services are required by the ERCOT market so that in times when the load changes rapidly or a generator trips , in other words, generator falls, generator goes offline or sometimes a transmission line might go down. They have reserves, usually called generally reserves, an cillary service type reserves. So they can move the system either up or down to match supply and demand. >> Can I jump in? >> Sure. >> So because of our status as a qualified scheduling entity, we have ancillary services that are required by ERCOT regulations, is that correct? >> You have, actually because, just because you serve low, because DME serves low, you have that requirement. And the QSE function has to provide those ancillary services. >> Are there any other requirements of the QSE? >> There are probably, the gentleman from DME can better address them, but there are other requirements, other standards that have to be met, the potential costs. If, for example, if the day ahead, if the projected wind and solar don't materialize, aside from having to make that up in the market, there are certain penalties that can be exacted by ERCOT. >> Thank you. >> So I got a bit ahead, but covered some of this already now. Generators and customers don't interact directly, they do through a QSE and DME through the EMO now has that function . And they've saved about $13.5 million by doing it themselves rather than having to pay NRG to do it. It also allows them to- >> Dr. Zell, quick question on that and if it goes beyond the scope. >> Okay, you said that by having our own QSE, we saved $13 million. Does that mean that that's what we paid under contract to NRG to perform those functions? That's outside of the EMO and the costs and all that, or is that a gross number, is that a net number, is that what we actually paid? And I'm sure Phil probably can- >> I'm afraid, Mr. Mayor, I'd have to defer to. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yes, Mayor, that's a net number. So that's net of the investment we made in forming the EMO operation savings over and above that. >> Okay, so that- >> That savings compared to, according to the structure of the NRG contract, what we would have paid under that contract. >> Okay. >> I'm sorry, for what you would have paid for the energy? >> What we would have paid for the energy and services- >> And the service. >> And the service that was all bundled together on the NRG contract. >> Okay, so then that means the gross was about maybe 17 million, minus the EMO, 4 million, gives us a net savings of 13 million, is that- >> Yeah, the EMO operation didn't cost quite that much, but yeah. >> Okay, so then, now that was based upon contract with NRG . Do you anticipate that moving forward, how are we going to gauge those savings, if any? We had a contract in hand that is a hard number. We don't have one now. How will we benchmark that moving forward? >> So we would look for benchmark of operations of how the EMO has operated so far, and take those past operations and forecast those forward. And then, it's kind of like forecasting your investment portfolio. How do you determine that you've made a good investment against a market average, and against ERCOT market, and against what your performance has been in the past? >> All right. >> Okay. >> Council Member Begay. >> Well, I have you here, Mr. Williams. With respect to the QSE requirements under the ERCOT regulations, can you speak a little bit about any additional requirements that DME has by virtue of now having our own energy management organization, which is our QSE? >> So there are two different entities that provide protocols and regulations. One is ERCOT, Electric Liability Council of Texas. They have protocols that we have to be responsive to as far as matching our generation resources and our load on a minute-by-minute format. We also have North American Electric Liability Council, NER C, NERC requirements that we have to adhere to. And both of those have requirements as far as your protocols, how you operate your center. But what is pertinent to this conversation is that they have requirements of how do you, on a every 15-minute basis , meet your load requirements? And you're doing it through contract, third-party contracts , or you can do it with your own generation, is the usual avenue that people do that. >> So if I can clarify it a little bit further, if, put it this way, without the energy management organization, would we have similar requirements in terms of the electricity that we have to generate? >> We have had, and had even under the NRG contract, we had those requirements, but we met those requirements through NRG. NRG was a qualified scheduling entity yesterday, and we used them. You have to, if you're low, you have to engage with some qualified scheduling entity to deal with ERCOT. >> And NRG purchased their megawatts on the open market with ERCOT? >> NRG had their own generation and/or purchased off the market to meet those load requirements. >> Okay, thank you. >> Okay, and one more point that I don't think was covered is the, points over here, there are two markets operated by ERCOT, well, two energy markets, one is day ahead, where a lot of power is transacted, especially by load serving entities, cities, municipalities, and anyone that is actually serving a load and has to meet a demand. And then there's the real time market, which occurs every five minutes. The real time market tends to be more volatile. Prices go up and they go down, sometimes they go negative. In the day ahead market, they're more stable. But they tend to be lower on average in the real time market. The ability to interact more frequently with the real time market is an advantage. And one of the things the Denton Energy Center does is provide a hedge. If DME, the MO, were in a position where they were in the real time market, they needed to buy in the real time market, and prices suddenly spiked, the Denton Energy Center provides a hedge. It would operate. It's a peaker, but it's a relatively low cost peaker, and the actual price per megawatt hour is not very high. >> Mayor Portam-Rodin. >> Call me Kevin. I think connected to Councilwoman Baguerre's statement or questions relating to the EMO and just what you're talking about there, when we were talking about entering into becoming our own EMO, creating that office, a lot of the discussion was on just that. How do you kind of hedge against market spikes, market volatility? If we were at the controls ourselves, we're going to have the better chance to be able to do that and not rely on someone else. We can predict things in a different way based on our own particular needs. So why is it that with that in place, why can't the EMO itself, if that's what that was meant to do initially, get us out of needing to create our own peaker generation for these times? What is it that that is lacking in terms of that firming capability? >> Well, okay, at least in terms of, that's an excellent question. I think I heard two questions. One is about firming, which is in my mind more about the variability caused by variable generation from renewables. And the other is just the market. Having the EMO and the QSE function allows Denton to participate in the real time market. Not rely on it, certainly not for most of its energy. But the engines themselves then become a second hedge. I think it's, we'd call it additive, but they sum in some sense to a package. >> Okay, thank you. I'll probably have a follow up later. Thanks. >> Oh, I'm sorry. We're going to go to Councilmember Gregory and then Council member Riggs. >> So the second to the last point on your slide there says that we've confirmed that Denton Municipal Electric, that lacking firming capability from the deck or an equivalent third party power supply would put DME's QSE, which is our actual EMO, in status in jeopardy. I think what that means is that our energy management organization that we have that has saved our rate payers $ 12 million is in jeopardy. And that if that goes away, that it puts our rate payers at risk of paying more money regardless of the financial pro formas that we've seen for the Denton Energy Center. Is that correct? >> Yeah, I believe that's correct, that just losing the, or giving up, or for some reason losing the EMO would be costly, yes. >> And that's a cost above and beyond all of our proformas that you presented to us in our long package on the deck operating. >> That's right. >> Okay, thank you. >> Councilmember Riggs. >> So I guess I just wanted to confirm that we already keep track of our load and production and we, the QSE, EMO, maintained system reliability. This is already done, right, currently? >> That's right. >> And so, okay, I just wanted to- >> Okay. >> We're already doing this. >> Right, it's just that it's going to become more of a challenge with our renewables. >> If we don't have our own control of generation, is that- >> With the addition of the renewables, because of that large ramp and change, it becomes more difficult and more of a challenge. Also, probably worth mentioning at this point that the Gib bons Creek plant helps with, provides 100 megawatts. It provides a certain amount of ramping capability to move, ability to move ancillary services. So it's part of a hedge too. And losing that would be problematic without having something physical to replace it. Even without the renewables, sorry. >> Mayor Pro Temp. >> And just to clarify on that point, because I think that 's an important question for everyone to get, to make sure I get. The 40% we have now, the agreement with NextEra? >> Yes. >> That agreement includes affirming, right? It includes backup as part of that contract? >> It does. >> Right, so the PPAs that we're considering entering into to scale to 70% don't include the firm. >> That's right. >> So it requires that additional thing in order to ramp up renewables. >> That's right. So the NextEra is, it's a constant amount of megawatts, even though about 45% of it is the estimate from DME. It's about right for when. It actually comes from wind, the rest of it, and it doesn't vary, it's constant every hour. The rest of it comes from some other resources, market or something else. Probably, almost certainly fossil fuels for a great deal of it. >> I've got a question. Because I think Mayor Pro Temp. had a good question. I'm not sure I heard an answer for it because you broke it into two parts. Firming and then whatever your second part was. >> See, I already forgot. It's horrible. So I just want to go back to some fundamentals. Because as Councilmember Briggs brought up, it seems like that we're already performing these things without having these plants involved. Was sort of, I think, the thrust of her question. And you sort of dissected that to say, well, you do have some firming capability in the NextEra contract. So therefore, but really, the QSC's job is only to match load with demand. It doesn't matter whether it's firming, renewables, or anything. What you're talking about are the challenges facing a QSC with what tools do they have to do that. So it's really not about, firming has no impact on QSC except in the fact of how does it meet that criteria? How does it perform that function? So how does one lose their QSC status? How does that officially occur in the ERCOP market? Is there a set of things that have to occur and they say, you're out? Or what happens in that regard? >> Okay, well, fully, I can answer that question partially. I believe, I know that the EML, the QSC has QSC for status. You are providing your own ancillary services. The ancillary services, this is the ability to get generation online quickly. It's the ability to move generation around at different speeds, 10 minutes, and sometimes in the several minute and several second range. All that's now being performed by the QSC with the assistance of the coal plant. If there are other levels of QSCs that don't perform that function that are weaker in some sense in the ERCOP market. If you can't provide ancillary services, you lose QSC for status. Beyond that, I'm not sure on someone from- >> Okay, so there is a distinction. Council Member Gregory, I'm just here. >> Thank you, Mayor. You know, in the four months that we have been digging into this earlier this year, in fact, last year, I don't recall having very much discussion at all on ancill ary services. But I've seen several references in the large document. I saw particularly, I wrote notes in a couple of places, but it was on page 26, where I saw a chart in table five about ancillary services. And it had a whole alphabet soup of acronyms. And I looked around and I could not figure out what any of them meant. So if we're going to keep talking about ancillary services, which is, I believe, a different charge from just our charges for power, I've got to know what those are. RRS, NSRS, RUS, and RDS. >> Okay. So shortest term response is RUS. It's regulation up service. It's regulation. It's following a signal from ERCOT's control room to increase generation over, almost immediately, over a several second time frame, up to a few minutes. >> Regulation of service. >> Regulation up. So it's- >> Regulation. >> Supposed load increases suddenly, or wind drops on the ERCOT system overall. In Austin, they have to be able to move total generation upward as the wind drops off, or as load goes up. In the very short term, that's called regulation. It's regulating the system. If the opposite happens, wind goes up or load drops, then there's too much generation and they have to reduce generation. At any given time, load, the amount generated and the amount consumed have to be almost exact if they don't, bad things happen. The frequency changes and the whole system can collapse. So they're balancing supply and demand almost instant aneously. So beyond regulation, there's the RRS, which is responsive reserves. That's a ten minute, called a product. And that's within ten minutes, that's matching supply and demand again. That's moving things around. So some generators, coal unit, probably move ramps, I'm taking a guess, at about one megawatt a minute. So maybe there's ten megawatts that you can move the Gib bons Creek coal unit. And what happens is on the entire system, all the coal units, all the gas units, all those of them are offering this service and ERCOT can move the power up and down as needed to match load. And then that's three of them and then the fourth one is non-spinning reserve. It's units that aren't actually online. They have 30 minutes to get their act together and get online. And that's kind of a lower quality service. So that wouldn't be a coal unit, that might be a newer combined cycle unit that in 30 minutes can come online. These RIS units can provide all of those services because they can be online within a few minutes and they move very quickly. They're like automobile engines and each one's independent. And in regard to that, in reading the report, you also talked about somehow once you get all of those engines up, the six different RIS units all operating, I can't remember the term, that they were synchronized, that they were- Yes. What does that mean? Synchronized means that electrically they're spinning and that the- That they're spinning and they're generating at three, probably I think 30, Bruce can answer this better, 3600 RPM, revolutions per minute, that's 60 cycles per second. And that when they get a signal from the control room or from ERCOT, they respond virtually immediately. And for regulation and for RRS, that's a requirement. For non-spinning reserves, they have 30 minutes to get to that status, to get up and operating and connected. And the quick start unit, if they're sitting completely idle and you flip the switch or rub the- Whatever you do to make it start, pull this cord, I don't know. I don't know how you make those things start. But once they start, I was thinking of an Aladdin's lamp and it has nothing to do with anything. But once you have them started, they're pretty much at that RPM within moments. That's right. I think a minute or two or three, better answered by someone from DME. But they need to get the three and a half megawatts, that's their minimum load, three and a half out of 18.8 or so. And at that point, it takes a minute or two, I think. Okay, thank you. Yes, Member Wasley. My question is on the 20 year PPA, the purchase power agreement that we have. We're basing our financial forecasts on the 20 year contracts. Why should we be confident that the 20 year contracts are going to hold up when you do hear about wind and solar companies declaring bankruptcy? So if you have any contracts, I just know in business, it's hard to find any contract that stretches out 20 years. So if you could explore that and make me confident in a 20 year contract. Well, I'm not sure I can do that, Ms. Wansi, make you confident. But 20 year contracts are fairly common. I think you might be thinking in terms of solar about the failures of companies that manufacture solar panels. Rather than companies that are installing and selling PPA, offering PPAs to the market. Manufacturers certainly have gone out of business left and right, some of them fairly famously. One of them, I, Cillindra, I think was fairly famous for that. So there's no guarantee, I mean, the contracts need to be written in such a way that they're solid with high credit worthy counterparties. But I don't think one can make any guarantee that the companies won't go under. Sort of as a footnote to that, I think, as I recall reading that there have been some major companies that have declared bankruptcy. In the solar area, other than manufacturers. I can't remember if it was Solar City or Sun. One of those that got into a regulatory issue in Nevada because of some things that had happened. Because of just, you know, rooftop solar installations and regulatory effects that basically shut out their whole market. But when it comes to wind, it's pretty straightforward in the sense they know what the turbines cost. They've got the tax credit. They built it in. They execute these 20 year purchase power agreements and all of those financial models are sort of built in to the contract. I think, as I remember, those were the solar companies I remember that. Yeah, and for solar, though, they're still certainly around and healthy in many states. It's very much state by state depending on regulation. Or even city by city, perhaps. Probably very active in Austin and San Antonio where there 's net metering. So if I can, so from a wind contract perspective, you're saying that it's commonplace for wind producers to execute into 20 year PPAs with the current facilities they have. How much, how long was our wind farm contract with next, is it next era? Yeah. I don't remember the term, the first term of it. We've extended to 2024 now. So the latest contract extension. But signing on to what I was saying earlier, as far as different vendors and trying to assure financial status for those, that's one of the criteria we put in the PPAs is that they have to show a certain level of credit rating. And some people haven't done that. So speaking of one city that has had an issue with contract with an agency to build a solar unit, and that company didn 't make it. Usually if they get to the point where they have the contract and they get them built, then they're going to sustain and be through and go through. But just get to the point where they have enough financial work with all to get them built in the first place. Thanks Phil. Okay. So, the DMA's plan calls for, as we've said, for the rice units to be the source of the physical farming. They've selected 12 engines at two sites. The diagram, the slide, let me see if I can go back to it without going the wrong way. The net ramp you see here, the net ramp is about 120 meg awatts. Now let me say that this is 2019. It's projected load. It's projected hourly wind and solar output. The Denton Energy Center is not a short term asset. It's a 20, 30 year, probably life at least plant. And it's designed for the long term. It's not something that's intended to be expanded. This has about 300 megawatts of wind and solar in this diagram. When you get to 20, 35, the plan to keep up with load growth is for about 500 megawatts. So if I can get back there. Okay. So that ramp, if you think about mentally scaling it up or if we had done this for the future, which we didn't really have the capability of doing, we didn't have data for all future facilities, the ramp would probably be larger than 120 megawatts. But sticking with the 120 megawatts, each of the units has about 15 megawatts of bandwidth of movement. It has to be on at its minimum 3.5 megawatts and then it can go up and down approximately 15. So nine units from that perspective, also allowing for some ancillary services provision, is the minimum that would make sense relative to that ramp, that 2019 ramp. The other things that are not considered in this analysis is that over shorter time frame, even though we see there a ramp that's 120 megawatts, in a shorter time frame it could have been more. It could have been inter hourly, it could have been more than that. The other thing is that's very important is, forecasts of wind and solar are imperfect. A lot of work's been done, ERCOT's done a lot of work, a lot of work's been done elsewhere in the country to try to project especially wind output. And it's fairly inaccurate. You can't really say you can project tomorrow's wind output for 4 PM and 5 PM and 6 PM to today. When it comes 4 or 5 or 6 PM, it's going to be wrong. How wrong? It could be small, any material or it could be very large. That's the forecast error. And that forecast error can be very important. So this analysis doesn't include that either. So from that perspective and from the perspective that each of these units needs to be maintained every year, and they also fail occasionally. They fail in the sense that something goes wrong and they have to be serviced, they're out for, could be a day or two . You do need some backup and redundancy in the facilities themselves. And that leads us to the conclusion that 12 is an appropriate number from the physical aspects. Real quick question, then I'll go to Councilman. Sure. You'd mentioned earlier that these sort of act independently. Yes. They run independently. So if you've got one or two that are down for some type of service, you still have whatever your toll is, minus two to be able to meet that. That's right. Typically, you're not going to bring them all down at once unless you have some kind of scheduled, regularly scheduled maintenance, so to speak, on an engine. And that's what I didn't understand before. So they can be operated independently. That's right. Okay. The only time where they could all be reasonably could all be down at one of the two facilities would be there's a substation problem or substation maintenance gas line problem. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. So this is an important point for our consideration. Because one of the questions that is before us is do we use the renewable dentin plan that includes 13% of our energy coming from these rice units? Then the second part of the question is do we need, if we do that, how many do we really need? And this is a political body, and there are people within our community who feel very, very much opposed to any of these units going in. So there could very likely be an attempt among those of us who are amateur politicians to try to find some room for compromise by saying, well, okay, we won't do 12. We'll do less. What I'm reading on this page is nine units will achieve the minimum requirement. So if I wanted to try to offer some compromise, some middle ground, I am militantly moderate. I want to do that if I can. What's the downside of only having nine units? Why is it that you seem to be saying that 12 units is going to be a better fit for our needs? Okay. So let me just do the next slide, and then we can talk about both aspects. Okay. When you build a plant, think of any kind of manufacturing facility. If you increase its size, say by 25%, 30%, you're not increasing, typically increasing the cost by that much. You have land, you have the buildings. In this case, there's two parts to one of these plants. It's the units themselves, and they each have a cost. And then there's the transmission to the plant. There's the pipeline to the plant. There's the substation, there's the buildings. And based on data that was provided by the DME, going down from 12 to 9 units would save about $30 million out of $220 million. So it's a savings, but it's not a proportional savings. On the other hand, our analysis indicates that the three units themselves from the market would earn $70 to $95 million. Now, this isn't per year. This is over 20 years. So we're not saying every year is $70 million. That would imply, just keep building them. But first of all, you're not, as a city, in the business of selling energy or in the business of serving loads. And secondly, that's, as I said, a 20 year proposition. So we feel that 12 is a good balance. Growth is going to happen. And as I indicated earlier, that ramp is based on 300 meg awatts of wind and solar. In the future, that's going to grow considerably to 5. And the ramp's going to be larger. So based on the economics from both angles, it seems like a good balance. And then to follow up, because you mentioned growth, and if growth happens faster, are we sure that 12 units is enough? It's certainly conceivable that more might make sense. Certainly possible. It's a difficult decision to- But my guess is, given the kind of economics of scale, it wouldn't make as much financial sense to buy more units later. Because if we discovered we needed them later, they would be, we would just be buying one or two. And that would cost an awful lot more for a unit than what we're getting right now. That might. Okay, thanks. We're purchasing the rice units denominated in euros, correct? That's right. So, and you're an economist, are we moving towards parity with dollar and euro? Do tell. It's about 10% difference now. A euro is a dollar ten. I think it's about that. So- It's very favorable, it's much more favorable than it's been in the past. Many years, not as favorable as it was many years ago. I couldn't predict that. Certainly it's favorable now. My next question was, these assumptions about capital costs reduction, is that assuming two sites or one site? Two sites. Okay. If there were one site, would there be an increased cost reduction? I couldn't tell you. We'd have to go back, we'd have to go back and work with DM E on that. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to follow up on that point. Because one of the reasons that we have this configuration is because we're in a non-attainment area, and that there are some restrictions on emissions from these, we're going to just go with the two sites because that's what's proposed, two sites. So from an expansion perspective, it's my understanding that we wouldn't have a whole lot of room to expand because we were almost at our emission ceiling to stay under a minor source kind of rule. So it seems that we still have some challenges moving forward in growth with that. Whereas if you had nine, let's just say hypothetically, you could work this whole kind of philosophy in reverse in the sense that if you're going to add three more somewhere, that you're not, it's not going to be a 30 or 33% increase because you've already got the, you call it the balance of the plant. It's all the infrastructure is already there. You're basically just the cost of the unit plus some installation and some tweaking of some of those if that's how you build it. So as far as that's my only thought on the expansion aspect of it is we're at a ceiling, at least from the permit that we have obtained. And if that's not correct, then that's sort of what I see. But if that's. I thought it was we were approved for 12 at one and I think nine at the other. Is that right? Seven at the other. Seven. So we originally said 12 units at one side to the airport site. It's permitted for 12 there. We can operate there with 12. What we found was some years there could be a limitation. Even 12 units at that one side is still considered a minor source. So there could be a limitation at that one site some years if we ran maximum way beyond what we expect to run these units. But that might happen only one or two years out of 20. Well, now let me so let me make understand what you just said, because that I want to make sure it's consistent with what I'm thinking. Because I know that originally we were looking at 12 at the one site. Correct. But the amount that we could operate them, the percentage that they could be operated, I mean, we could put we could put 20 there. But the amount of time that you could operate them is governed by your permit and the emissions that they that they. And it could limit it some years, but for most years you'd be able to operate 12 units there. The number of hours we're talking about operating just fine . It only be in like a 2011 heat wave summer that you might run up against that that limit. OK, so you're saying you could put 12 on one site and run it for the most part. It would work in your plan. You wouldn't be constrained by regulatory action as far as emissions, except maybe on some really crazy kind of things where you got one hundred and ten and if 2000 megawatts of energy goes offline and you're just you're really it's crazy during those years. You would really need it. And so you would really need to have. The other thing we looked at was to have our whole our eggs in one basket at one site. Then this plant could be cripp led by one tornado taking out the transmission infrastructure that serves that plant that gets electricity out of that plant. And so that's why we started looking at multiple sites for let's put those sites 10 miles apart. That helps with EPA T CEQ regulation also, but also spreads the risk of a natural disaster happening that would affect both units. So that takes out the transmission line and also they're served by multiple gas lines to feed them. And from from Mayor Pro 10's observation that we've got you 've got it permitted for how many at the airport site? Twelve. And we've got it how many? Seven. Seven. So if we did let's say six and six, you're saying that we still have expansion capability at least for the physical units of five additional ones out at the airport, but we could run into some potential emissions caps. Based upon how far how often we run them. Okay, alternatives to ways to firm things that have certainly been suggested and talked about. One could do things one could contract various one could firm some of the PPA's and have them be very much like the current next era flat. It's not variable output. It's flat. You get 50 megawatts around the clock. Some portion of the portfolio could be like that. That would limit the variability. It's expensive based on the next era contract and other data we've seen. It's not a cheap thing to do to buy that. So that's one possibility, but it appears to be expensive. To do that kind of thing for the entire portfolio and have an entity providing you certainty that if you project a day ahead wind to be at a certain level throughout the day, they would guarantee that you could probably find parties who would do that in the market. We expect that to be very expensive. And what firms it is fossil fuel. It's going to be mostly natural gas. It's not going to be renewable. It could be coal at times if gas prices were low enough. Another way to do it is with batteries. Storage in general. We talk about batteries for a minute. There are a lot of batteries coming online around the country. Not a huge amount, but there are batteries coming online. Batteries are very specific to their use. Many of them are for, it's good we had the ancillary services discussion, for ancillary services. There are batteries and flywheels. You've probably heard of flywheels. And flywheels, they're exactly what you think they are. They spin and they provide power very quickly, but for about 15 minutes. They're used for the short services to follow load. They're very effective. They're cost effective. And they're being deployed around the country in small scale, but still are a viable technology. Batteries come in all flavors. There's lead acid batteries. You may have heard of, I think it's called No Trees, N-O-T- R-E-E-S. It's Next Era's project. It was originally built in 2012, partially with DOE funding. And it was used lead acid batteries. They're now replacing the lead acid cells with lithium ion. So it's been in place for four years and it's been, probably with this better technology, I don't know whether there's been a problem with the plant. But the trouble with the battery cells is the more you discharge them, depending on how you discharge them, you have to eventually replace the cells. But currently there's a database that DOE has that's noted in the report with a reference. There are 65 megawatts of batteries in the US that have a storage time of two hours or more. And there's four hours or more, there are only 40 megawatts . So it's a fairly new technology. And the largest one of the 40 hours or more is 8 megawatts. So Denton would have to be on the cutting edge of lots and lots of battery storage. And I understand from DME staff that discussions are ongoing with various entities, manufacturers, with universities and government agencies about using some of the facilities if they were to be built at the Denton Energy Center, one of the two facilities or both, to start to look at small scale batteries, pilot projects, if you will. >> And to put this in context, I think I'm reading this right. You're saying that right now, your first bullet point, there's only 65 megawatts of utility scale batteries with two hour storage today, you mean in the United States? >> Yes, in the US. >> Well, how many megawatts of utility scale battery storage would we need in Denton to serve in place of the gas plants? >> You'd need a few times that. >> What? >> You'd need a few hundred megawatts. You'd probably need maybe three times that or four times that amount. >> We would need three times more than is currently available in the United States? >> That's right. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> Council Member Briggs. I'm sorry, were you finished? >> Yes. >> Council Member Briggs. >> So I'm not saying that batteries are our answer by any means, of course, not right now, anyway. >> Yes. >> In your report, I looked at a source for the battery and it was a 2013 storage handbook. And I was wondering if there was any reason you didn't use a 2015 source. And also, according to Lazar, it's the price per kilowatt of storage is much less than stated in your report. So I'm just curious if you can kind of. >> That is, as far as I know, that's the last major study that was done. I look for something more recent. And I agree, it's not the most recent. Is the Lazar, okay, so battery storage, sometimes it's quoted as per kilowatt, sometimes it's quoted as per kilow att hour. And one can be converted to the other, you have to be careful. I know there are projections that the price has come down a lot. Elon Musk projects very aggressive pricing for future batteries. These are only projections. There's technological risk with batteries. I don't think anyone would tell you they know what a lithium ion facility is going to do if it were installed today ten years from now. So yes, that report is very comprehensive, but it's not new . Did look for more recent things that would be of similar kind of comprehensive status, but I don't know that there is anything. >> May I approach you? On the point of batteries, when you put them on a grid and they're serving as, they're not generation. I mean, something's got to generate to store it in there and they're just kind of whipping it back out after it's been, they're pushing it back out after it's been stored. So is there any guarantee that what gets stored in a battery on a grid is renewable? Or is it just, what's pumping into it to get it to store it ? If we're concerned about going 100%, we look at batteries as that key to getting us 100%. Do we have guarantee that those can be powered by renewable energy? >> No. Excellent point, thank you. The losses from storing to taking it out of a battery, it's 20 to 25%, I think it's in that range. If it's purchased from the grid, it would probably be a natural gas plant and you're basically using natural gas. And even if it's a very efficient combined cycle, once you tack on 20 or 25% of that round trip of loss, your heat rate's probably going to be in the range or above the rice engines. So it could be cold. >> You're using more gas or more coal than you would if you 're just using. >> And these days with low gas prices, coal is what's called on the margin very often. The next unit to be run on the air cut system, the unit that's swinging with load, is a coal unit. So it could be a coal unit during low price periods. So you're correct. Now, where batteries could be very useful is if there were lots and lots of renewables, very high penetrations. And it couldn't all be utilized and it was being soaked up by the batteries and then time shifted to more peak times. But that's kind of the holy grail. >> Chancellor Wasney. >> I have a broad policy question and I had asked you this when we met and I didn't see it in the report. And again, it's a broad policy question. And it's about the city of Denton going it alone with the power plants. And I bring that up because when we formed TMPA, it was with four cities. It was for the intent and purpose to share the risk, to share the financial risk, share those costs. So Brattle works all over the country, all over the world. In terms of cities our size, do you see cities going it alone that are Denton size? Do you see more cities partner up with other cities in order to share that financial risk? What's your take on that? >> Okay, thank you. That's a good question. Very good question, thank you. I can't, from experience, I really don't have an answer to what others are doing. The TMPA arrangement, TMPA is 470 some odd megawatts. It's too large a facility for any one of the cities. So it is sharing the risk. It also was reducing the cost because building a 100 megaw att coal unit when it was built was not a very sensible or economic thing to do. So you're right, but when a scrubber or some other addition was made to the facility to TMPA, the cities I assume shared equally in the cost. So it was a way of having a large facility. My view is it was a way of having a large facility that was shared by many. And that's fairly common around the country, is to have a large facility. It could be a combined cycle, but you call unit that's shared. But if you were to share in the, I assume you're referring to Ms. Wansley, the rice, the energy center itself, then someone else would have some share of it, some coal on it, and that wouldn't provide the megawatts that was needed . Now if it was scaled up larger, maybe economies of scale overall and someone else had 50 or 60 or 70 megawatts, that might produce a savings. But the fact that these, it can be scaled to 18.8 megawatts each, you can scale it to whatever size you need, means you can have a facility that matches Denton's needs. Which is I think why very often the kinds of organizations that are building these plants are smaller. I believe LCRA, is it L? Okay, I can't remember who has them, Stec, right? Stec has a facility. Portland General has a 200 megawatt plant that came online, they're a moderate size utility. >> Yeah, the other utilities that are built in Texas would be South Texas Electric Co-op, Golden Spread Co-op in West Texas. They've looked at that. Greenville has also put these in and has put in these units , which is a much smaller utility. And so the other utilities in TMPA already all have gas generation. And so they would need additional gas generation at this time. Greenville did it one time a few years ago when they put these type units in, I believe four years ago? Something like that, four or five years ago. >> Phil, why are you still here? >> Sure, you bet. >> Because this is a good policy question to ask. We've been in TMPA for how many years? >> Quick answer, we're too long, no, for 30 years. >> About 30. And of those 30 years, how many of those years have we been engaged in lawsuits with our partners? >> 11 to 12. >> Okay, there's my policy answer to that question. >> One other addition would be we are presently the largest misknown utility in Texas that does not have its own generation. >> Okay, on to the numbers. >> Yes, Council Member Griggs. >> Sure. >> So I kind of have a question about the report in the study and what I feel is missing. There was only like one sentence about demand side management in this report. And in your study that you did for the clean, the Texas Clean Energy Coalition, it was pretty important in this study and there's at least nine or ten pages regarding it versus one sentence in ours. So can you explain why that is a little bit light in our report? >> Okay, sure. Demand side management, conservation is not going to help with the variability issue, but the demand response. Control of appliances could be air conditioners, water heat ers, it could be industrial motors, various types of applications have been deployed and successfully deployed. That certainly could be part of a strategy. Again, like batteries, it's the amount. How much can you actually control effectively to provide the services you need? Could you match that net ramp, that movement that's shown earlier in one of the slides? Could you match that with control of air conditioners or during the summer, that's May, so I'm not sure what would have been running during May, maybe air conditioners. Could you have matched it with control of water heating applications, electric water heating? Somewhat, a little bit, but it won't do it all. You're going to have to have some fairly significant DR programs in place to take a piece out of the need. So that's a very good question, a very fair question. >> Okay, yeah, it says 10%, and 10% of ours is like 35 meg awatts. So that's pretty significant. But energy efficiency isn't mentioned at all. And so I'm just kind of curious how you chose what alternatives to study and what not, because I have a whole thing here, a renewable dentin, several pages of alternatives that they gave us that I thought maybe were going to be looked at and weren't in the back. Conservation and efficiency was one of them. So I'm just curious how you chose what to study and what not to study in regards to alternatives. >> Okay, I mean, certainly as a part of a portfolio, demand response, conservation would have limited effect, it would reduce load overall. You don't control conservation. But demand response certainly could have some effect. It might be expensive. I know you do have some DR programs now. The controls would have to be fairly active and quick acting. It would require, for example, and I believe the report you 're referring to, the Texas Clean Energy Coalition Report number three. Some of that was real time pricing. That's effective up to a point, but it doesn't get you anything that the utility itself could control. And the control room would have to be able to do that. Now, as you may know, the ERCOT system operator uses demand response for about half of this RRS service, this responsive reserve service. They have it under their control. Bruce tells me that a lot of that is actually control of electric motors that can be operated quickly. And it's very effective for them, but it's something that's under their control. So there likely is some of that in your service territory. I don't know how much there is, but it's the magnitude. It doesn't fit the magnitude of the need. Could it chip away at it? Probably, or possibly. Sure, go ahead. Well, yeah, that with some other things. I wasn't just thinking because on the other we looked at renewable debt and with a debt. And then there was the four options here, existing portfolio, 100% renewable. And that was only mentioned in a footnote and said it wasn 't done. And then the 70% renewable with backup. And so is that what that first bullet is right here? Is that what the 70% with backup? I'm just trying to figure out if the scope, if the actual report actually did include all of these options. Well, we consider them. I have a slide on the 100% and we can talk about that. Okay. But as far as how we consider the other options like storage, which we thought about a lot. But again, storage really isn't ready to go. And if you decided storage was the way to go and you weren 't worried about charging it with something that's probably gas. But you didn't want the engines, but you thought storage was the way to go. Then to be prudent, you'd have to put the decision off. If you put the decision off, there's a pretty good chance that the economics of PPAs will decline. Because the production tax credit is $23 a megawatt hour. That's a lot. That will be gone in three years, is it? It's getting complete, gone in five years. Five years. It starts to ramp down. The developers are certainly keeping some of that, but they 're sharing that in the PPA. And as that starts to go down, the price is still likely to go up. As the capital cost of wind isn't improving. So you lose that front end ability if you wait for storage, for example. So I'm glad you brought up the PPA because I did read something where that was the largest contributor to making this RDP deck the most cost effective. Yes, absolutely. So if we didn't have the PPAs, would the deck unit stand alone on their own without the renewable? No, I think then it would be a marginal investment to put $ 220 million into Rice units and not have the other portion of the portfolio. Okay. To just dig a little bit deeper into demand side management or demand and sponsor, are those interchangeable terms? Yes, generally. Okay. If I understand this, remember I'm the guy who thinks that you start all this with a pull chain. Seems like maybe 15, 20 years ago, we had the opportunity at my house to participate in that. We let DME put something on our air conditioning compressor outside. And so I suppose when the demand got high for energy and instead of them just buying more online from somewhere else , they flipped some switches and my compressor unit would go off for up to 15 minutes. And if it was at 630 when we were cooking dinner, the whole family was unhappy. Especially whoever was cooking at the time. So is that the way it works? I mean, so is that what you're using to firm? If demand goes up and there's not enough dispatchable renew ables to cover that cost, then we're simply flipping these switches and shutting off electricity on certain users of electricity or certain machines in people's homes or in people's businesses in order to cover that gap. Is that what it does? That's one particular measure. It's cycling of air conditioners, I guess what it's usually called. So you and some of your neighbors would be off for that 15 minute slice, then you're on. Some other group of air conditioners is off and it effectively lowers the load by the sum of all your air conditioners. That's one measure. It's done with water heating. Water heater is probably less noticeable. But still I imagine if someone's taking a shower and it goes off, it might not be a good thing. Generally, those are the types of things, controls on motors, yes. And do we have any examples of utilities that have used this as a way to firm up their renewables? Not that I know of. Bruce, do you know of any? It's my colleague, Bruce Tushida. So not in the context of the US utilities that are connected to the main grid. There are some isolated utilities such as in rural Alaska or on islands where they have to use everything they have. So they're using the local fish refrigerator to go up and down and provide regulation. But that is regulation. It does not really deal with the ramp that Ira showed. Over, where is it? I'm sorry. Over here. So what you do in demand response is as it goes up, you would flatten this peak portion sideways. You do not actually allow your whole system to go up and down at this rapid speed. It's more of flattening the peak by shutting down someone's air conditioning. Shutting down someone's air conditioning does not produce additional power. It just reduces the blue line a little bit. It reduces the gap. Yes. But it does not allow the system operator, DME, to go up and down as the green line is shown here. So it's only a partial solution that helps with the problem but does not necessarily provide a practical option to resolve the problem. And my guess is in order to even put something like that into practice, you're going to have to get someone to agree to put that switch on their air conditioning unit. Or you're going to have to get a business to agree to power down. I can imagine how Target Refrigeration Distribution Center would feel about that. Yes. So Refrigeration Distribution Center, individual refriger ators and whatnot, there's multiple types of contracts. A lot of the contracts that exist today are voluntary. So it means that, yes, I may shut it down, but I'm not going to guarantee that I'm going to shut it down. And so from the utility operations perspective, it's a very , very vague commitment. They don't know if they can rely on it. And yet, even in times when they cannot rely on it because it's 120 degrees outside and no one wants to shut down their air conditioner, the utility still has to provide some kind of backup or some measure to deal with that situation at that time because the utility cannot disrupt the delivery of power at any given time, regardless of the reason. That's where the reliability issue comes in. And that's why DME is proposing to have a physical insurance against all these conditions. Then it just might be because Councilmember Riggs brings up a good point. I was expecting a little bit more information fleshing out those other options also. This is a preliminary draft that we have in our hands that possibly when we get the final draft, you might address that in more detail. And in fact, I think the slide that you have addressed the battery alternative in a little bit more detail than what I read in the report. So it might be good in the final draft to flesh those out in a little bit more detail. Certainly. Thank you. Mayor Boehme. Perhaps the more important policy question is, are we hearing from the citizens that they want to either be forci bly or throughout some other large scale voluntary practice in the city have their ACs turned off at 6 o'clock at night or whatever that is. I haven't heard that from folks. That they're so jazzed about renewables, so opposed to any sort of fossil fuel generation to back that up, that they want us turning their air conditioners off in order to achieve that. I'm not hearing that. If you're hearing that in the community, please let me know . But I don't know that we need to ask them to spend a whole lot more time thinking about that option, because I'm not sure there's a demand from our citizenry to pursue that as a viable option. If someone else is hearing something else, please let me know. I'm not asking that they charge us a lot more money to add a whole lot more to this. I think that the information that was just shared with us, you know, I think what I'm hearing is you didn't go into great detail because it's just not a real feasible alternative to firm up our renewable portfolio. We'll add that. Gary. Dr. Chevelle, you stated that it would be a marginal investment to have 220 megawatts without the other parts of our portfolio. If you could elaborate on that for a bit. Regarding our 100 megawatts that we have that's firm from Gibbons Creek, if that were a part of our portfolio, would this or some version of this still be a marginal investment or could it be an actual viable plan? So I think your question is if you didn't exit the power, the arrangement with TMPA, would it then make sense also to add the rice units independent of having the RDP and the other needs? Correct, or some quantity of rice units. I don't think it would change it. I mean, if you were to invest in the rice units just as an investment, for example, and that's what we were really, that's what I was referring to, as a standalone investment, no renewables, no increased variability of your net load, no need for more ancillary services, the existence or non-existence of TMPA would probably have very little effect on that. And I think what I was referring to was that the two components are the rice units to firm up the renewables in combination with the renewables. So potentially the Givens Creek 100 megawatts firms up the renewables as well, correct? Not very much because it has very limited ramping capability. Which is one megawatt per minute. I'm not sure of the exact number, but it's fairly small, yeah. Thank you. Okay. Okay, so we analyzed three cases. So this goes to the comparison of status quo, of which we have two versions in the analysis. The first is that Givens Creek remains part of your portfolio long term. And no new renewables. And we looked at the cost of serving customer load on the system. The second was we assumed that you exited the TMP arrangement by 2019, so you're without TMPA. And the third was the RDP strategy with the Denton Energy Center, the 12 units. And we started with two natural gas price views. And this came from the most recent, what's going to be used in the most recent, up forthcoming ERCOT long term supply assessment. One price trend, one natural gas price trend is the upper line, which is going to $8 per million BTU for those of you that follow gas by 2035. And the lower line rises only slowly, basically at inflation. These are future year dollars. So the bottom line is that natural gas prices stay where they are today. It's a, from a producer's point of view, somewhat pessim istic view. It's certainly possible. It's not necessarily going to be that low. There may very well be spikes, but it could be if new technology improves. And more resources are discovered, the price could be that low. And then we developed two price forecasts going forward, electricity price forecasts. And those are shown in the line on the right. Since natural gas is on the margin very often in the ERCOT market, the higher the natural gas price, typically the higher within reason, the higher the electricity price. So you see that higher price for electricity on the right. That's the two ERCOT market price projections. And what we found was that comparing the RDP, which is the lower line, let's see if the color works fairly well, the RDP with a deck, so this is the plan, the proposed plan . The cost of serving load, and that goes up over time. And then it actually, you see a drop. And the drop is when the debt service ends. So this includes the debt service on 12 rice units. It is hard to see, apologize. It starts at 19. >> Page 28 in our book. >> Okay. >> And then the two lines on top in blue, the upper line is the cost. Without TMPA, without the coal unit, the one below it is with the coal unit. And the reason for the difference is when natural gas prices are higher, the coal unit has more value. If the coal unit's price and variable cost doesn't increase with gas. So if gas prices rise, the coal unit saves you money. And so there's a difference. On the right hand panel, it's the same, exactly the same three lines, except now this is based on the lower gas price. The gas price that does not increase over time in real terms, it increases in nominal terms. In other words, only with inflation. And again, you see there's a difference between the RDP, which is less expensive, and what we call status quo. The reason that the two blue lines essentially are on top of one another is the coal plant's value is just much lower . It doesn't operate that much in a world where the natural gas price is low, because gas competes with coal more effectively. >> So I think that in one way or another, maybe this gets to the question that Council Member Begarri was asking a minute ago comparing using the rice units in place of the TMPA coal unit. And what I think I'm reading there is that on the low gas scenario, probably won't be that scenario because we all anticipate that we're at a low point in our cost of natural gas. >> Could be. >> That our savings over 20 years is $410 million. But at the base scenario where we anticipate some rise in the natural gas price, our savings is compared to the TMP scenario is $750 million . >> Right, that's correct. >> Which seems like a pretty good argument for not holding on to the Givens Creek plant. >> Now, with the high gas scenario, the Givens Creek plant is saving you money. The difference between the Givens Creek going forward status quo, the world as it is, no new renewables brought in, the difference between that and the RDP is $750 million. Without it, the cost goes up. It's this line. But with low gas prices, there's virtually no difference. >> Dr. Chabot, can you go back one slide? I believe you were at number 10. Yes. So just a moment about the price forecasting. Obviously, in 2004 and '08, I believe we had some peak natural gas prices in your first graph. Is that right? Am I reading those dates right? >> That's right. >> Okay. And so when you're talking about the value of coal generation, it's during those peak, I'll call it an OPEC, Hissy-Fit times that it's to our benefit to have a coal hedge. >> That's right. >> Okay. So we understand when we see these base scenario and low gas scenarios, you're averaging those peaks and troughs and gas prices to come up with those projections, correct? >> It's not averaging, but it's assuming that that volatility is not there. I mean, it's a projection going forward. >> Are you taking a median then rather than an average? >> No, it's actually the upper line is from the Department of Energy or actually the EIA, Energy Information Administration, it's from their projections of future prices based on the fundamentals of natural gas supply and demand. >> Okay. Which do not take into consideration any type of market volatility. >> That's absolutely right. >> All right. Would market volatility then affect your price outcomes and our savings outcomes in slide 11? >> Yes, certainly if gas prices were moving around around those lines going up and down, yes it would. >> Thank you. >> But the PPAs are also a hedge. They also, and in fact, back here in the time frame of about 2000, in this time frame, a lot of the development of wind started full throttle. If you look at the increase in wind resources around the country, especially up through the Midwest starting in Texas, up through Kansas and Oklahoma, high natural gas prices made wind very economic even though the cost of wind was higher then. We were seeing those being, and there was also a lot of coal plants being proposed then. >> Along those lines talking about, Council Member Gregory had been talking about, we don't hear people clamoring for volunteering to turn off their air conditioners. Doesn't electricity price have effects on the market? Just like you're describing, fuel prices affect behavior in a way that can spur conservation. So exactly what you're talking about, we had very high natural gas prices and that ended up in some way bringing a lot of renewables online, is that right? >> That's right, exactly. >> Thank you. >> Yes, Council Member Watkins. But while the graph shows that coal saves us some money, it still doesn't address the problem that the coal can't generate quickly. And so because we're jumping from the 40 to the 70, that basically takes the coal out of the conversation now because of the lack of the quick start. So you can look down a tunnel and only look at the chart and the numbers, but it doesn't address the partner problem of being able to have. So it's because we're going from 40 to 70 that even though the coal, long term, may look attractive financially, it doesn't solve the problem. And the problem is being able to back up that jump from 40 to 70 and being able to have that backup power. >> That's right, that's exactly right, Ms. Wansine. An excellent observation. It's inflexible. It doesn't handle that, yes. >> Question on the savings. In each of those scenarios, is the payment of the debt service for the rice, you know, the deck, that's all calculated? In other words, these are net numbers. We're not then paying on top of that in debt services. Debt service is baked in to these cost savings at least projected. >> That's correct. >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Along those same lines is potential revenue coming from selling some of our energy to the market a part of this as well? >> It is, yes. >> So in a high gas prices scenario, while we have to pay that extra price, so does anyone else who's tapping into our generation have to do that as well, correct? >> That's right. >> Does that generally kind of balance itself out then? >> As far as the economics of the rice units. >> Right. >> The economics of the rice units should get better with higher gas prices because the spread in prices gets higher and there's more revenue. >> Thank you. >> So on that same point, if we didn't sell energy from these plants, would they still be saving us money? Like if we just, we used it for our load and didn't sell back, would it still be worthy for us to do these? >> You've got somebody waiting in the wings over here. >> Well, let me first say that I don't think so, but secondly, I don't think you can under the P.U.'s Public Utility Commission rules, but please. In the report, we potentially show two scenarios. One is what would happen if the market rules go on as today and the wind and solar come in at the expected level, and therefore you sell back that excess power you get from the PPAs and also the excess power that you produce from your rice units back to the market. That is what's shown in the gray line here. There is another chart in the report that shows what happens in the worst case where your renewables output is substantially lower than what you anticipated, and therefore you have to buy back all that power that you produce from the rice units, and therefore you don't have that benefit of selling back to the market. We do have another chart showing that, and in that chart, the gray line becomes a little bit above what we have right now, but still the economics shows that the gray line, which is the RDP/DEC strategy, has an overall cost that is lower than the other two status quo strategy alternatives. Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, I just, yeah, for now, thank you. Thank you. Okay. So what are the other benefits? There are, because the RDP, the heat rate, the efficiency of the RDPs without getting to heat rates, I'm sorry, of the rice units is better than many of the gas units on the system, not better than the best units, but better than other peak ers, and also better than some of the, all of the old oil and gas steam units, and also better than some of the probably oldest combined cycle units. When they run, which means when they're called on by ERCOT and their economic, they would be displacing another unit, and for purposes of this calculation that below we've assumed, it's the emission rate that would be, the emissions that would be reduced is the average of the ERCOT system. So when they run, they would be reducing emissions from units somewhere else, because their emission rates are very, very low, except for carbon, which is simply based on the amount of fuel they use. Their NOx emissions, their CO, and their emissions of VOCs are very low. So we estimated about 325 tons a year of SO2, there's a bit of SO2 in sulfur and gas, 180 tons of NOx, actually, I'm sorry, I apologize, that's from the system, 3 25 tons, and 40,000 tons of CO2. These are the rice units as we estimate they'd operate. This is not the renewables, this is not what the PPAs would do. The plan calls for additional renewables. In some instances, some companies very often will buy renewable credits. They'll say they're 100% renewable, or they're 50% renewable by buying credits from existing facilities. The plan calls for new farms, new wind farms, new solar facilities. When those are built, they display something. And they'll display a lot more and have a lot more of a reduction than we see here, which is estimated just for the rice units. >> Councilmember Reed and Councilmember Hawkins, yes. >> So are the emissions you're putting on there, is that for the 12 engines? Is that for operating at what percentage, or is that together or separate? >> It's for the fleet together, it's about 13. >> These numbers are for all 12 units, assume that they're going to be running at about 20% of the time, which is about 33,000 megawatt hours per unit per year, if that makes any numerical sense. But assume that it's running at 20% of the time. >> Councilmember Hawkins? >> Yeah, just trying to get some clarity when ERCOT asks us to turn on our units, it is just price based, that's the only factor. >> That's right. >> Okay. >> For the ancillary services, it might be, need you to regulate, need you to bring your unit up. >> Faster. >> Right. And to go along with that, I've started reading the 2015 State of the Market Report for ERCOT Ocell Electric Markets . It's a page turner. And on page, I haven't gotten very far, XVI. Glad I could inject some humor for you folks. But one of the things it says is that the ERCOT market does not include a centralized unit commitment process. The decision to start up or shut down a generator is made by the market participant. I think that means us, if we are operating a rice unit, that we decide to do that. But if we, it goes on to say some other things such as if we're agreeing to sell so much electricity, so many megawat ts tomorrow, and we decided not to turn it on, we're still responsible for buying that amount of electricity and supplying it to whoever we're selling it to. But from what I'm reading from this, ERCOT does not control the startup switch on our plant, we do. Is that correct? >> Okay. I think what they're referring to there is the day ahead market. So the market that they are operating or have by now for tomorrow, which gives a signal to market participants, especially units that have a long startup time, that they're needed and gives them a financially binding commitment that they can sell their power. So, TMPA, if it were not operating today, and it might be bid into tomorrow's day ahead market. If it's selected, it has a commitment to commit beyond. For a unit that has a short startup time, like a rice unit, they can be, and ERCOT confirmed this, they can be put into, offered in real time. In other words, they can be offered now for the next five minutes. And if they're called upon, if they start quickly, they'll be operating. But there's no central commitment as there are in other regions of the country, where units have to bid and they're forced day ahead to be told, yes, you're going to be on or off. Here it's voluntary. I think that's what they're referring to. >> Thanks. >> So, speaking of that report, I have something in my hand and I wanted to read it to you and ask what you thought. Since the current projection of reserve margins combined with relatively infrequent shortage pricing, may raise doubts regarding the likelihood of all announced generation actually coming online as currently planned. Given the projections of continued low prices, investors in some of the new generation included in the report, capacity, demand, and reserves in the ERCOT region may choose to delay or even cancel their project. So I'm wondering if you had this, which came out yesterday, the same day we got our report, would your presentation be different? >> Well, I think the main point here is that the engines, the energy center, the deck is an integral part of the plan . It's not, as I was trying to say before, but maybe very un artfully, it's not a standalone investment. I would certainly not recommend that the city of Denton go out and build reciprocating engines because it's a great thing to do in the market. It's very risky. It's an investment that may or may not pay off as a standalone investment. The fact is, as part of the plan, it facilitates the plan and it or something like it is needed. But as an investment in the ERCOT market, say for a merchant, probably not quite today, no. There is excess capacity in the market. Okay, so the question has come up, what about 100% renew ables? And what that exactly means is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Does that mean that at any hour of the day, always have enough renewables under contract to meet load? Or does it mean on average to be able to meet the entire load of the city or any other entity, have enough energy coming from PPAs to meet the expected load of the city, but at certain times having to buy from the market? It's a question of how much capacity you buy. So Georgetown, Texas, I'm sure some of you know they have a plan. They haven't done it yet, but they have a plan to be 100% renewable. It calls for approximately 50% wind, 50% solar, and about one, almost twice their peak load will be under contract from renewables. So they have about 150 megawatt peak load and they're going to have nearly 300 megawatts of renewables. And the question is, well, why so many, so much? It's because the capacity factor of renewables is not that high. And solar is perhaps 25%, 26%, depends on where it's located. Meaning that if you have 100 megawatts of solar, you have an average of 25 megawatts. And the average system load might be more like 50 or 60% of the peak. So you need to have more renewables than your load. We have a question. Mayor Burton. So to help me understand that and anyone else who's interested, because I think I get it. I just want to look back at your graph on like your second slide where you charted out May 21st, I think was the date you looked at in terms of where the peaks were. So that, yeah, there you go. So in order to, so if we look at kind of the lowest point of renewable production, looks like it's at hour three and at hour 19, it dips down again. So the idea would be if this is a typical day in May, you'd have to buy enough renewable to get you well up above that line, even when you don't need it for 22 hours of the day. That's right. Simply to make sure for those two hours of the day when you do take these great dips, you're hopefully going to have enough at that point. That's one view. That's the have it for every hour. So you can always have enough renewables so that you're never buying fossil fuel from the market or from the market . That's one view. Yes. So there's a cost factor with that for two reasons. I guess you're just having to purchase much more. Your PPAs are much larger, twice the size perhaps. What do you do with the excess? You presumably are trying to sell it back, but in some cases I guess you could sell it back at a loss, correct? Does that happen at times? That's right. Yeah. Well, I don't know how many organizations have done this, but let's suppose the PPA price is $30. You're paying $30, if the price is $10, you're taking a loss of $20. Yeah. Okay. The other more realistic view, and it's not clear what Georgetown is doing, at least not clear to me. Maybe it's knowable from their website or talking to them, is you could just contract so that you're not always above this line, this blue line. So you can't meet 100%. You have enough renewables in every hour, but on average you do. But then you still have to sell a lot back to the market, which is a great point. You're still more in the market, and you're taking that market risk that your PPAs, which may on average look great in many hours, are going to be underwater relative to the market. So it's certainly a strategy you could pursue. It would imply more firming, more rice engines or firming contracts, certainly something that could be done but would be more expensive. And I know in a recent paper, Mark Jacobson, who some of you know, he's at Stanford, he and his group have been doing some analytics that are a little more detailed than some of his earlier work that I've seen. And they've estimated that to go, in the case that they analyzed, to go from 80% to 100% renewables would double the cost in the system they analyzed. I think they analyzed California and the US, I have to check back. So it's expensive. As you go up more and more, it just gets more and more expensive. >> Question. Council Member Riggs. >> On the, forming the renewables, there was some stuff in- >> Can you move your mic a little bit closer? Yeah. >> There was a part in our full report, and I was trying to figure out why it was in here. But it talks about the renewables and firming them up, and it gives a price. That price is still cheaper than the investment in the gas plants. Is that just for the firming, or is that for the renewables with the firming? >> That was for the firming portion based on the Next Era contract. >> Is there a reason we just were looking at Next Era? I mean, is there- >> It's the data point that we have. >> So the Next Era contract, among other market observations that we looked at, was the only real number that we can quote, because the others had a range or indicative numbers. The Next Era contract is right there to compare. Now, the number that you're seeing in the report, which I think I'm not supposed to say out loud, is a per megawatt hour number. So you have to multiply that number by the total amount of energy you're getting from the renewables to get the total sum of the number, or the total sum of the cost that you need to realize a 70% renewable. And when you do that multiplication, you actually see that the total cost is going to be very, very close to what you will be paying for the rice units. >> Okay. >> Okay. Okay. Hopefully. >> Is this a listen? >> His escape. >> It's his escape. >> Yeah. >> There's a keyboard. >> Of course there's a keyboard. Okay. So in conclusion, the RDP is comprehensive plan with two components, again, inseparable, thought about together. It should lower customer costs long term, reduce fossil fuel consumption, which obviously the renewables will do because as I said, there are additional renewables to the aircott system. They're not renewables that would have been built otherwise in all likelihood. The engines themselves, we expect them to reduce emissions, but those numbers really aren't very great, but they are better than the alternative when they're running. 12 units appears to be in our assessment a very good size from the point of view of the physical and economic needs. 70% without appropriate firming or with other alternatives appears to be more, would be more expensive, costly, and perhaps unreliable. And finally, we do recommend the plan as proposed and the timing is right. Waiting a year or two puts the PTC will expire, the ITC will start to expire, and the cost of PPAs would likely go up over time. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Could you please go to slide seven? Sorry. As soon as I stop hitting the keep escape open. >> Yes. So we have a ramping need of about 120 megawatts, is that correct? >> Based on that, yes, based on that 2019 period, yes. >> Okay, and then each of the reciprocating units produces 18.75 megawatts, is that correct? >> Full capacity produces 15 in that range over which it operates once it's synchronized, connected to the grid. Three and a half megawatts is its minimum, so it's about 15 megawatts. >> Okay, just clarifying the numbers. >> Yeah. So nine units according to this 15 megawatt number is what we need for a minimum, is what you're saying? >> And then ancillary services is about 25 megawatt need. >> Ancillary services being what is required by virtue of being a QSC. >> Correct, for the load, yeah. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> So your last point was that time was important. >> Right. >> And you make the same statement on page 18 of the full report. You say that the timing of the RDP decision cannot be delayed. Would you go into a little more depth on your rationale for that statement? >> It's mostly about, things have come together rather nicely. The exchange rate, the Euro dollar exchange rate is favorable. That affects the cost of the rice unit they're made in Europe. Or Cilla's a Finnish company. Hard to predict how that's going to go. But we do know that the PTC and the ITC are going to phase out. And when that happens, in all likelihood, no guarantees, in all likelihood the cost of PPAs is going to go up. You're not going to get this, probably could not get the same deal two years from now as you can today. So that's why it seems to be, timing seems to be just right . >> And help me if I'm calculating incorrectly. But when I look at your charts, you're showing, comparing the renewable dent in plan with DEC as compared to 70% backed up by the market or 70% backed up by TNPA and other things. That there's significant savings to that. >> Right, or not having, or business as usual, basically. >> Or business as usual. >> Yes, correct. >> So, and when I see these big numbers, like 750 million over ten years to 950 million over ten years. I took those big numbers and divided by 20 years at 7,300 days. And that looks like savings of anywhere from $102,000 a day to the rate payers to a savings of $133,000 per day. So am I wrong or am I right in saying that when we delay putting this into place and we continue with business as usual, that these are cost savings that we are not gaining for our rate payers? >> The analysis shows that if you back to the charts, take either one of them, especially the one on the left. The savings grow in part because the PPAs are cost effective from the beginning. The whole package is cost effective. But it grows over time. So I think adding it all up and dividing is overstating the short term delay benefits. But certainly delaying it, not moving forward misses some of the beginning benefits. >> So there's savings at the start, it's better at the end. But so there's savings to the rate payers just in terms of the cost of operation. There's also the savings in terms of getting in while the P PAs are still there. Are we good on those PPAs? Are they going to be around? Have any of those opportunities for signing contracts for wind power or solar power gone away because somebody else bought them up? >> I don't think so, but I think Phil can better answer that. >> One of the wind power PPAs has sold out to two other entities. So one of the ones that were proposed to us in January has now moved on and sold to another entity. They may have a replacement project, but we'd have to go back and see. >> Do you know if that will affect the price of the ones that are still available? Will the prices be up or will they, will still have those kind of same prices that we were offered before? >> I'll let our comment more on this, but my view would be that as we get closer to the time those PPAs start to go away and they're gauged based on when you started the wind power project, there's only so many wind power projects out there . So as you get closer to that time frame, it becomes impossible for other projects to get started to qualify for production tax credits. >> So the window could shut? >> So the window could shut. And so as that shuts, supply of those number of projects will go down. I expect the price would go up. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yes, Councilmember Briggs. >> Is there a certain amount of money that these have to make for the gas plants to be beneficial to us? Like do we have to sell a certain amount of energy? I may have already asked this, but I'm, and this might be a closed session. I don't know if a specific number, is there a specific number that we have to hit? Do we know that? >> Is there a specific level of sales to make those economics work? >> Right, so we're not, yeah, and like how often would these be operating in the black possibly? >> Yeah, okay, we'd have to- >> Talk about that later? >> Okay. >> And look at more details and numbers. >> Okay, thanks. >> Any other questions at least for now? Was that your final slide or was that- >> That other one was the final slide, yes. >> The only question I have Mayor is we've had our public utility board sitting there, and I wonder if any of them have any questions that they want to ask in open session that would be appropriate for open session. I would hate for that- >> No, I agree, I agree, yes. Any questions? You don't need to come up to the mic, Phil. No, no, but this is for the telecast. >> I was curious- >> No, Phil, you gotta come up to the mic. >> Whether or not we can give the audience here the price of gas that where coal becomes more beneficial to us. If there is a number in today's current market, what would the price of gas have to get to to make coal a better option? I just thought it would be helpful. >> Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Yeah, I mean, it'd be a range, but I would say four to five. Is that about $4, Lance? About four? So it had to get $4 for RMB to you of gas. And right now the current market is $2.40. So it's down that low. >> Any other questions from the PB? All right, any other questions from council in this open session, representative? And I think what we're gonna do is we're first of all gonna take a break and then we'll go into, I'll go ahead and read our closed session. And we'll go into closed session to talk about the specific question that was put on the table. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes. >> I guess from a, since a lot of people are paying attention to this, we now have the consultant's report done . For those interested in what is our path forward in terms of making decisions on this, is there anything prescribed at this point in terms of future discussions or future vote that we can give some, or do we need to have some discussion on that so that we can decide as a body what we 're gonna do and that would be appropriate in a public session? >> Of course. I mean, my plan was to have the closed session and then come back to this agenda item in an open session, then to have this discussion you're talking about. Because yeah, we need to have that in open. But we want to get a chance to have the questions answered in closed and then come back in open to give the direction so that we can have a comprehensive discussion. All right, so we're gonna go into, we will convene the closed session at 320. We will consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 and this one. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> I'm sorry, scratch that, from the third one. Deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas Government Code section 551 .086. And that's the only one of these. >> For this one. >> For this one, yes, okay, so we'll go into closed session based upon Texas Government Code section 551.086. We'll adjourn for about five minutes, about 325. I want to reconvene this open session of Denton City Council meeting Tuesday, June 7th, 2016 at 430 PM. We are reconvening also on our work session item 3A. We just adjourned our closed session on item 1A regarding this issue. So I want to open it up for discussion. The posting says give staff direction regarding the study and analysis by the Brattle Group of the renewable plan and activities related to the future power supply for Denton. So I want to open that up for discussion. Yes, I'm sorry, go ahead. >> Yes, we'll also reconvene the open session of the public utility board meeting on June 7th, 2016 at 430 PM. >> Mayor. >> Yes. >> We had a PUB member that had a question about emissions. >> Microphone. >> Barbara, if you'll step up to the microphone, thank you. >> I would like to know your discussion on the cleanliness of the air, how this will affect our air quality. >> So we did not analyze what happens within this specific region because air quality goes all over the place and we have no ways of knowing how much of the particles will stay in this region or elsewhere. But what we did was when we compared the rice units generating and compared that to what the average emission would be if you were to buy power from the market. And in this case, rice units were generating roughly at about 20% of their capability over the full year. Then you would be saving or the reduction of emission by using these rice units compared to buying from the market would be about what's listed here, 325 tons of SO2, 180 tons of NOx, 120 tons of VOC, and over 440,000 tons of CO2. So the more you use the rice units compared to buying from the market, on average, you're reducing the emission for the whole ERCOT-wide generation portfolio. Does that answer your question? >> Cancel my breaks. >> Did you get your numbers from the engines themselves or from DME or from the air permit? >> So what we did was we modeled these engines with different emission rates based on at what level they operate. Because the higher level you operate, the more efficient these engines are, just like your car is the most efficient when you're running at, I don't know, 60 miles an hour compared to 15 miles an hour and stopping and going inside the city. And the emissions that we got for this engine was a result of our simulation that we ran. And the ERCOT average was something that DME gave us saying , here's what the ERCOT average was for the past four or five years. >> And this is a Wartzilla engine? Or just any engine? Just the gas turbine engine? Just -- >> The ERCOT market or -- >> The one that we've done right here, the air emissions. >> This is based on the rice units that we modeled. >> The rice units. Okay. >> There's talk of it possibly running 30% to 37%, so those would be increased from the 20%. >> Yes, but this is -- >> And does that still less? >> If you run more, that means the avoided emission would increase because these units emit less than the average unit in ERCOT. >> Okay. Any other questions or council discussion? Mayor Proctor? >> Well, I think as it relates to some other questions, moving forward, we talked about discussing what the path forward is from here on out. >> Yes. >> And so is there a plan for that up to this point into when we have future council discussions on this and when we ultimately put this to a vote? In the coming future? Does anyone have any recommendations along those lines? >> Let me just make a comment about that, Kevin. Obviously the report is complete. We'll have a public version of that as quickly as possible. What I tentatively have on the agenda is an additional work session discussion if the council thinks you need it for next week, which is the 14th, and a closed session if we need it. We'll post them as placeholders in case we need them with the -- I guess my suggestion and recommendation is that we could come back on the 21st with either a recommendation or a consideration by the council of notice of intent. Again, if the council's conclusions are there that you want to move forward with this, with the RDP, to either come back with a notice of intent to issue COs to do that or a parameters ordinance to issue revenue bonds to fund the process so that we can continue to make progress toward acquiring land, financing the project, ordering the engines and those kinds of things that it would take to move the project forward in a timely manner, if that's the conclusion that the council has. So bottom line is, hopefully by the 21st we might at least be able to have a decision on the -- item on the agenda for the council to make some decisions on the methods to finance and authorize us to proceed with that. >> Yes. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> I would like to request more time. We just -- I got the full report yesterday after five, so that's less than like nine waking hours of reading it and looking over it. And I appreciate your presentation and answering all the questions, but I still don't feel like I'm ready to move forward without -- so another discussion would be great for me. >> You mean like the work session he just mentioned next week? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, sure. Councilmember Hawkins. >> I would be fine with voting on the 21st or giving direction. I think I still want some clarity on the timeline and all the steps that are needed to make this all happen, maybe informal staff report or something like that. >> And we're prepared to provide that information to you with what time frame would take if the council were to take action on the 21st. My suggestion was that we not take any action unless council just wants that we have the work sessions on the 14 th. >> Sure. >> And then assume that we might take action on the 21st, but not earlier than that. >> One of the last things the report said was the timing was right, so I know everybody in this room knows that. >> Well, and I've provided information to council in the past about what the cost is. Obviously, for each day this gets delayed, and the sooner we can make the decision on the mechanism for financing, the sooner we can get the process started. >> Thanks, George. >> Any other discussion? Yes. >> Well, I would be comfortable with the 21st or I would be comfortable with us having a work session scheduled next week and then also scheduled to vote for next week. But if that's too much and we needed to wait until the 21st , we could. But I keep thinking about the fact that the delays are costing rate payers. >> Councilmember McGarry. >> Mr. Campbell mentioned revenue bonds and in the context of having a work session discussion about any type of financing without having come to a decision yet, I would appreciate a presentation from Mr. Langley regarding the various types of financing. I know during our own discussions we discuss revenue bonds at length, and so I think there are, I'd like a comparison. >> And I think we have provided some information to council today in writing in a memorandum that was sent out to council, but you may not have had a chance to see that. Doing that comparison, but we could include it in the work session discussion. >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> So to just clarify so we know what decisions will be asked to make, whether it's on the 14th or the 21st, and one is, are we comfortable with renewable debt and plan as presented and moving forward with that? And we can gesture with that in a number of ways, perhaps resolution or if we're just actually authorizing funding to move forward with it. So it's whether or not we agree to move forward with it as presented. And then the secondary question is what funding mechanism, and it's really those two questions we need to be pondering over the course of the next week or two, correct? >> Correct. And if you'll recall back in I guess January and prior to the contract with the Rattle Group in March, council asked for a draft of a resolution. So the possibility is a resolution that addresses the issue , do we want to move forward? And it included I think comments that you had asked for as to what our objectives might be for 100% renewable by 2030. So the resolution to give direction on the plan itself is one issue, the method by which we finance it could be the second issue, both of which could be on the agenda for the 21st. >> Right. And so my suggestion is I think given that it sounds like we probably need a more robust discussion on the various funding mechanisms to be able to make that decision. And perhaps having those separated by a week would be helpful for us to get that in order so that if we have that discussion on the 14th, then the 21st I think will be well situated in order to address that via action. >> Trustee Wasner. >> Yeah, I agree with the timing. So funding discussion on the 14th and maybe have that agenda item. So if there are any other questions that we want to ask, because this goes to the public in two days and they may generate some questions. So let's just have a discussion on the plan and on the funding on the 14th and then vote on the 21st. >> Okay, any other, oh, yes. >> And I would suggest that maybe on the next week when we have our discussion, our work session, if you could also provide us with an updated draft of what the resolution would look like. So that we could maybe incorporate that into our discussion too in case we wanted to make any modifications. >> We can do that. >> Yes, that's more to Gary. >> Mr. Mayor Pro Tem mentioned that there were two questions that we were going to ask, one regarding financing and one regarding whether or not we were going to move forward with the RDP plan as presented. I would add a third to that if we were going to modify the RDP plan into any other format. And to the extent that we're doing that, I would like to see financial numbers regarding a scaled down version of the RDP. >> Okay. >> Does staff understand that last request about just the different scenarios? If it were, whether it's 12 or 9 or 6 or whatever. >> Yes, that was what I was going to ask. >> Clarify direction, do you have more definite as far as how we'd like to see it scaled down? >> Yes, so in particular, the way that I read the Brattle report was that at this time we need nine units. And so I'd like to know how much that would cost, whether it's six and three and two different sites or whether it's just nine units at one site. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> I think along those lines, and this is something that came up in an earlier discussion, was the different amount that would be allowed to be generated at each site or if they were all put in one site. And that if they're all 12 or in one site, there's a certain cap because of the permit there. And the cap seemed to be somewhere in the 37% range, I think. And as we've been talking about, we predict this will take about 20% of usage over the course of a year, I think was what the discussion was. So I want to explore that possibility a little, I want to understand beyond the discussion of natural disasters and other sorts of issues. What are the other potential downfalls in just consolid ating this into one site? Because there might be a potential benefit for those who are concerned with this being used by air cot well beyond what we need. That puts a limitation factor on it that we have no control over that might be of benefit to our community. But I don't know what the financial ramifications are there in terms of what gets sold off to the market as well. So a little bit more information as we discuss that next week would be helpful. >> Yes, oh, let me go with Council. >> If we're going to get data on nine units as opposed to 12, then I think part of that, the cost implications for us would be the fact that if you're only using nine units, those units are going to have more hours per year that they 're run. That means there's going to be more wear and tear on those. And that means that there's going to be more cost for maintenance. And I think that's going to have to be figured in when we hear the report next week from staff. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Well, I mentioned this earlier. We had talked about last time this discussion was up going 100% renewable by 2030 or 2035. And I think it was even in the first resolution that we looked at a while back ago. And so since Brattle was here, I was going to ask them if they could kind of speak to that. If we did decide to do that as a community in 2030, 2035, how would having these plants affect that decision? Because you mentioned that these would be in service well beyond 20 years. >> Okay. >> They would certainly facilitate that decision. They'd be needed. They'd be more needed, more utilized. You'd probably need to get to that level of renewables, more capacity might be storage by then over time. The technology improves over time. The reciprocating engine technology improves, as you've heard today. The emissions have gotten better. The heat rates, the efficiency goes up. So another phase or additional units or another site might be needed. So it would certainly fit in as part of a long term plan to go to a higher level of renewables. >> I mean 100% renewable without the dependency on fossil fuels. That's my definition of 100% renewable. So that's what I was referring to. >> That's going to be costly. >> In that case, you're, so I think we started to get into it before. There's two ways to think about that. One is back to the graph. And then of course I screw up on the, okay there we go. Let's get back to the slideshow. Okay, so if the goal is, this is a load for one day, but it would vary quite a bit. But if the goal is to always have enough renewables to be at or above this blue line, that would be require two or three times the peak load, buying two or three times the peak load. NPPAs, having enough capacity because it would be virtually impossible at any one point in time to have most of this capacity available. The wind's variable, the solar's variable. If this were, in the evening, you'd find that the solar ramps down. And if it's still hot, you'd have to be meeting all your load with wind. So you'd have to have a lot of PPAs. That said, another way to do it is to have enough energy from PPAs to meet the expected total energy demand, but not necessarily enough to meet it in every hour. So that means in some hours you'd be meeting your demand with your own renewables. In other hours you'd be buying from the market. But at the same time when you had excess, you'd be selling back into the market. So on balance you'd be really 100% renewables. That would be less expensive. But how you do that operationally is a different question. And so the decision that we make regarding these plants would have really not that much of an impact in 2030 when we decide, if we do decide, and if technologies are there to do it. That's right. Okay. Yes, Council Member, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, I think if we're adding something like that to some potential resolution, I think the definitions are going to have to be pretty clear about what we mean. I mean, are we meaning something like she's suggesting, which is no backup and complete renewables versus a scenario in which we're understanding ourselves now as it relates to ramping up renewables, which is understanding there's always a backup component to it. Or even if we're trying to tie ourselves to that, or if we 're saying as a matter of policy, this body is saying move forward. So I don't know that we've ever had a policy discussion on that. I think it was thrown out at one point as an attachment to this, perhaps as a compromise. To me, I'm a little bit worried as a Council Member in 2016 , putting something too specific on Council Members in 2030 as to what they must do based on what I think is my futuristic, optimistic opinion now. So I think that needs to be vetted before we do that. The wording that we had seen on the resolution that we got close to simply said that our goal was, it's not a commitment, it's not a contract, it's a goal of reaching 100% renewable by 2030 with the guarantees of reliability and affordability. So we're not really, we're putting a target out there for future councils, but we're also communicating that we realize that affordability and reliability have to be a part of the factor. >> I've, you know, when we did it back before, it didn't come to a vote, but I'm very hesitant to put that kind of policy decision tied to this decision we're making. If we want to have a different discussion on that policy, I'm real okay with that. But we've seen how this discussion has gone with going from 40% to 70%, including a fossil fuel backup. So I don't have a problem with the discussion, Council member Briggs, I just don't know if I want it tied to this discussion and somehow memorialized in a resolution that's sort of in concert with this. If we want to have that, I think it needs to be a separate discussion because it's almost a whole different discussion on how do we achieve that goal because just like you had intimated, you wouldn't want there to be any component of fossil fuel in that regard. And that's a whole different track. So I want to have that discussion. I don't know if I necessarily want it tied to this particular decision, but that's just me. >> Well, I was also referring to the past when I was talking about the resolution. So I wasn't talking about it coming up with it right now. I was just wanting to use their knowledge while they were here. But on that, I also wanted to ask because in the summary, it says that we are at 10%, but we've renewables. But we've been told we're at 41% renewables. So I'm just curious that discrepancy. Can you fill that? Can you explain that to me? Because that's kind of confusing for myself and for some others. >> Right. The existing contracts which are the next era contract and there is the landfill gas. And the existing contracts get you to 10% physical renew ables. And the rest currently are buying renewable energy credits. So that's using credits rather than having actual physical PPAs under contract for the energy and the credits bundled. >> I think I need to learn more about the energy credits. Okay, so we're just actually, so we're in essence going from 10% to 70%. >> Physical, that's correct. >> Physical. >> That's right. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I think that's just to the side, that's one of the things that makes you not going from a total net load variability with 10% renewables. With 40% renewables, you're going from 10% to 70%. >> So it wouldn't be as difficult if we were already at that physical 40%. >> That's right. >> Okay, in my mind, that's where we already were. So when I saw 10%, I was just, I guess, I didn't know fully or I didn't fully understand. So thank you. >> I just wanted to confirm that I heard Mr. Toshida say that the higher level of function that the engines have, the more efficient they become. Was that correct? >> Yes. >> Yes, so if you take one engine, just like your car, if you're running it as a start and stop mode at 15 miles per hour inside the city, your fuel efficiency goes down compared to you running at 60 miles on the highway. The engines are like that too. So if you're running at full capacity- >> 18.25. >> 18.25, it becomes a little bit more efficient than running at minimum generation of 3.75. >> Okay. Thank you. Thanks. >> Any other questions for this agenda item? It's flopping around on the floor. Questions from the BUB? Any questions? All right. Thank you. Well, then we will end this portion of that particular agenda item in the work session, 3A. So we will now go to 3B. Yes? Thank you all very much for coming. Thank you for your questions and your attendance. All right. We're going to go ahead and call agenda item 3B, which is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the amendment of Chapter 18, Section 18-38 of the Code of Ordinances, use of wireless communication devices while driving. >> Yes. >> Thank you, Mayor. We ask our police chief, Mr. Lee Howell, to present this work session on our renewable wire communication -- wireless communications devices while driving. Thank you, Chief. >> Thank you, Mayor and members of the council. In your -- well, this item today is going to start a discussion about a proposal to amend the existing ordinance regarding texting while driving and potentially add that to prohibit all wireless communication devices used by a driver of any motor vehicle in the city in any location. In your backup, in addition to the AIS, we've provided a note -- the notes from the Traffic Safety Commission of May the 2nd, and then there's some slides that cover the presentation here that I'm going to show you that illustrate the impact of wireless device driving and crashes in our community. So just to give some background quickly about how we got to where we are back in 2014, we started some discussions about creating an ordinance to prohibit wireless device use by drivers. The state of Texas had at that point introduced legislation in the state twice, and it had gone all the way to being passed at one point, but then vetoed by the governor at one stage, and then it died in committee two sessions after that as well. So the discussion started to create our own ordinance, and on May the 6th, we passed the texting ban ordinance that's in effect today. In pursuant to council direction, we began to explore an amendment to that, to a complete ban. So on March the 7th and May the 2nd, myself and Mark Nelson primarily presented information to the Traffic Safety Commission, and on May the 2nd, they approved a formal recommendation back to the council, which passed five to zero to recommend forwarding this proposal that we have before you today. So to explain real quickly about crash factors on accidents , when a police officer goes out and investigates crash. There is a state form that's filled out the crash report, probably seen one of those perhaps if you've ever been involved in one. On that form now, there are over 120 different ways to document factors that may have contributed to that crash in the opinion of the investigating officer. It's not a real high burden of proof, but it is based on the evidence that the officer sees and discerns from the investigation. So amongst those factors, back in before 2014, we could only document cell phone or mobile phone use, wireless device use, and it was not broken down into the types of wireless device use. But starting in '15, we were able to document those and separate them out and track them independently. So on this table, you see that the progression of that, so we have one full year of documenting all the different types of cell or mobile device use that, in the officer's opinion, contributed to crashes. And then we have the line, you see the line down there about distraction in vehicles, second from the bottom. That covers other distractions that were either identified as non-cell phone use or unidentified specifically. And you see the total on the bottom indicates all distracted driving crashes. So again, to understand, when you hear statistics especially about distracted driving, that's including a number of different things, not just wireless device use. But we can break it down as of last year and then briefly this year for wireless device use crash factors in our city . This pie chart indicates all of those factors together in distracted driving crash factors from 2014 to 2016 up to almost to date. It does not include anything that happened in the past six days. But you'll see that a plurality of those are in fact, now that we can document, a plurality of those factors are cell phone use or wireless device use. >> Chief, before you move on from that, but that's that total. You've got it into three different categories, but that's the aggregate of those three categories, is that correct? >> That's correct. >> Okay. >> That's correct. >> Specifically, crashes with a likely cell phone factor. We can break down for the calendar years of '13, '14, '15. And you'll see that that count has gone up dramatically each year. A prediction of 2016 would place that somewhere a little bit less than 40 perhaps at the current pace with the current ordinance in effect. But you'll see that it's a growing problem in the city. >> Chief, one other. And I guess for me as I was looking at these slides, because we have an ordinance against texting. But so if you go to that last slide, the one you just had, like in 2015, because I think that's when we put our ban in , what, mid-year of that year? When did we put the texting ban in? >> We actually adopted in '14 and we didn't start to enforce it until very late in '14. >> So do we know how many of those in 2015, let's say for example, were texting related compared to actual, I guess when you say talking, if somebody's actually talking on the phone. >> Yeah, I can go back to that first slide. So 14 of those were texting. >> Okay, all right. Oh, I'm sorry. >> Do they also get a ticket of the accident if they're proven to be texting or is this fatalities? >> No, that's any crashes. Now, we're going to issue tickets on it in connection with those crashes if we have a burden of proof that would be supportable in the municipal court. Which is more than the burden of proof that would indicate the officer's opinion on a crash report. So we may not have a ticket for every crash where an officer feels like a wireless device was in use or a factor . But we will write those tickets on crashes that we can prove that in court, where we feel like we can prove in court. >> Councilmember Wasley. Would you comment on the difficulty for the Denton Police Department trying to identify when somebody is on a phone versus texting? >> Yes, it's a difficult ordinance to enforce in its current form. The burden of proof in municipal court has to rely strictly on, in most cases, strictly on the officer's observations. So if the vehicle's in motion, the officer's in motion, it 's going to be difficult to say if somebody's holding a device in their hand what they were doing with it. Even if they're manipulating the keys or talking on it, you can kind of draw some conclusions. But we have to rely on the officer being able to observe it , being able to stop the person, and then we'll interview them in some cases, at least in non-crash cases. We will be interviewing that person from an enforcement basis. Sometimes they admit to texting or searching for a cell phone number or surfing the Internet on their GPS or something of that effect. But those last two indicators would be exceptions to the law that we have in place now. So it just prohibits the act of texting. And so we have to rely on some admission from that person oftentimes in order to issue those citations. >> So to be clear, the way the law states now, where it's text ban only, we allow someone to look at their phone and select a phone number, talk on the phone. They can take or they can send a photograph. They can scroll through a playlist to find a song they want to hear. They can video chat with somebody on an app like FaceTime. They can play a game. They could read or send an email. They could enter GPS coordinates. Is that correct? >> That's correct. Those are all exceptions to the current ordinance, including one you didn't mention, and that's dial a number one or reporting an emergency. >> Now, are we also talking about a hands-free ordinance where you can either use the technology that's built into your car or you can buy a small tech gadget that allows you to keep both eyes on the road, two hands on the wheel, and still do some of these things without taking your eyes off the road? >> That's correct. The proposed ordinance would allow that. Hands-free devices. >> So, Chief, I mean, I struggle with this one, to be honest with you, based upon the facts and the statistics. And so I guess what I'm hearing is this ordinance would say -- what you're saying is from an enforcement perspective that we need an ordinance that if someone has a phone in their hand, they could not be doing anything with it. All right. They could just -- I mean, whatever. I mean, that sounds silly, but that's still a possibility. If they have it in their hand, then that would be presumpt ively a violation of this ordinance because we sort of have the same situation where you pull them over, you're going to have to ask them what were you doing with your phone. Well, you're having to rely upon them either being honest because are you able to search that phone? Are you able to take that phone out of their hands and go, hey, no, I see that you texted 20 seconds ago? I mean, I guess I'm struggling with this only from an enforcement perspective. But when I look at the facts, when I look at the -- and also look at -- there's a lot of things that people do in a car. I mean, good heavens, I've probably come close to having more accidents with something other than a cell phone. You spill something on you that you're eating or drinking. So that's where I really struggle with this, Kathleen, is when I look at the numbers. And we could say, well, if it saves one accident. But then I look at all these other things that are on there as well. So help me understand, other than an enforcement perspective, that it's difficult for them to see what they 're doing on their phone. How is this different than these other pie shapes that we see in here? Well, I think it's different in that it is a specific thing that's been tested and proven to be dangerous. And it's something that could be cut out of all of that other pie and prohibited. It's going to be difficult to prohibit things like adjusting your car stereo manually or worrying about the kids in the back seat or worried about the groceries falling into the floor off the seat. I mean, those are things that would be very difficult, I think, to regulate by law. This is a more specific thing that we know does contribute to a degree to crashes. And in terms, you're exactly right, in terms of enforcement , the ordinance that we propose would be, to a degree, easier to enforce than the other. However, in the scenario you gave, I mean, I would hope that we don't start wholesaling issuing tickets just because somebody's holding something. Now, if you see somebody holding something, manipulating the keys, talking on it under the proposed ordinance, you know, scrolling. I mean, those are the kind of activities would be much easier to prove as a violation under the proposed ordinance than the texting ban currently in effect. Did I see a hand over here? Yes. I've been on the fence on this one, too. You know, one moment I'll definitely think, you know, just, you know, put your phone away, get there safe, you got kids in your car, all that. And then I do look at the other pieces of pie there, too, and, you know, where do we stop? You can't have a soda in your car anymore, and that sort of thing. And feel free to punch holes in this, but has there been any other city that has ever, like what we do for school zones, where there's a lot of pedestrians or younger kids, like if there was an area around the square where you weren 't allowed to be on your phone or something like that. I thought it, you know, all the way through, but do you know of any other cities that are doing anything like that where it at least keeps the pedestrian safe or there's a high density area? I have not found in our research anything specifically like you're speaking of. It certainly would be possible. Within those cities that have already enacted complete handheld wireless bands, you get a wide variation of effect from that in terms of enforcement or in prohibition of crashes. I think those laws that really haven't been in effect long enough for us to truly see their ultimate result, if they reduce anything. But certainly in the scenario that you're proposing in the downtown with proper signage and things like that, it could potentially reduce the possibility of pedestrian accidents. I don't know if it's just missing the whole point, too. Well, you know, and to further illustrate the enforce ability of a complete handheld band, you mentioned the school zones. State law, of course, has a school zone prohibition for all handheld wireless devices. We write about probably about two times as many tickets for that state law in those school zones as opposed to being able to enforce the texting band citywide. So it is much easier to detect those in those specified areas. So really, you know, what you're talking about would be entirely feasible in another defined area that would be more easily enforced. Enforcement, though, has mixed -- excuse me. No, no, I just didn't know if there was any -- sorry, go ahead, Chief. Well, I was just going to add that enforcement has some mixed results, though, so far. Even in states where they have completely prohibited wireless device usage statewide, it's difficult to say what effect that's going to be. The only thing I could find so far has been that in states where they have had those complete bands in effect for a period of years, the fatality crashes have gone down. But there could be a number of factors contributing to that also. Okay. Councilmember Briggs, and then we're going to go around the horn. Is that okay? Is it possible to have something where if your car is moving, you need to have your hands free? Like, if the tires are rolling, because there is a lot of people when they stop to adjust the radio, like if you're at a complete stop, adjusting the GPS or changing your Pandora radio station, or if you're hands free, you're going to have to touch something to make a call still. I mean, as far as I know, you have to still use your phone or do something. So it's not like you're not going to be distracted at all if you have hands free and you need to make a call. So is there any kind of ordinances or anything like that? That's a good question. I'm not familiar with anything in the United States similar to that, but along that thought, in other countries, you are required to have devices that cancel the ability for you to use a wireless device through Bluetooth if the vehicle is in motion. So that kind of technology is out there. It's not readily available or incorporated into American made cars right now, but it is possible. But I mean, as a person just controlling your behavior, like it would be easier to say, well, I'm not going to use my phone while my vehicle is moving. But if I stop and I'm at a stop and you see me using my phone, is that still -- that would be in violation of a hands free ordinance. But it would not be as much of a hazard to somebody if my vehicle was stopped. Yes, that's true. That's true. I mean, it would -- you know -- I'm looking for middle ground. I'm just trying to figure out -- Well, you know, in the proposal here, we've talked about allowing it if you're sitting in the vehicle, technically still an operator, but you're off the main travel portion of the roadway, that would be legal to operate the phone. There's other variations of that that could be done. Some cities require people to get completely off the road. Others just require them to stop. You know, I would suggest if we're going to do it that we don't allow people just to try to get that phone call in while they're at the red light, because that's probably not going to be a real good situation. But pulling over -- But pulling over off the main travel portion of the roadway is a good compromise to that. No. I'm fairly certain that my smartphone is smarter than me, because every once in a while there's a lady that starts talking to me, and I haven't done anything to make that happen that I know of, but it's in my pocket and there's this voice coming out and I'm, whoa, freaked out by it. But I understand that maybe I could plug something into here and put earphones in, and I could have it set down and I could tell that lady to call home, and it would do it. If I'm not touching the phone, I just have my earphones in and I'm doing that, because my car is not fancy enough to have Bluetooth and that sort of thing. Is that considered hands-free? Yes, it would be considered hands-free if you don't have to manipulate the phone with your hands or hold it in your hands to operate it. What it is now, if I need to talk on the phone while I'm operating my motor vehicle, I pull over to the curb, I put my car in park, if it's hot, I'll leave the air conditioner running, so I make it a short call, and then I make a phone call. Would that be legal or illegal? Yes, that would be if I followed you there. I pull over to the curb, I put it in park, the engine's still running because it's hot outside. The way we had the ordinance written, as long as you're off the main travel portion of the roadway, that would be legal . I'm not on the fence on this. I think that if you have signs around town saying don't use your cell phone while you're driving, it's against the law that it will remind more people to use their common sense because too many people don't. On the horn. I mean, if you don't have a question. I do. Okay. So on the backup materials, it said that out of 6,947 motor vehicle crashes from 2014 to 2016, there were 3% of the crashes listed as distraction in vehicle, and there was some type of cell phone or mobile device as a contributing factor. And then analysis of those crash reports showed that .92% were involved in cell phone, while 1.8% involved distraction other than cell phones. And the gross numbers for that were 64 for cell phones and 127 for some other distraction. My question for you is, is that multiple factors or is it a single factor? That's a good question. Yeah, and actually I was going to talk about that in relation to this slide, but there could be multiple factors on every crash. So almost every one of them, the officer is going to factor an existing traffic law violation. So ran red light, ran a stop sign, speeding over limit, all of those things. If those play into the causation of that crash, they're going to factor that. There may be speeding over limit or unsafe speed for conditions and a cell phone usage also. So there can be multiple factors in each crash. So in that .92%, it could be two or more factors, including cell phones. Yes, it could be. Okay. And then the other thing I just wanted, I was just thinking here, looking at these fatality factors, traffic violation, drugs, and alcohol use in the car are already illegal. So the people that are managing to get into accidents, if they're causing it, due to these illegal factors, have decided to engage in illegal activity. And those things have been illegal for a long time, and yet we still have fatalities based on these really repreh ensible decisions. So just pointing that out. That's very true. Mayor Pro Tem. Is it just me or I'm not finding the proposed ordinance in our backup? I see the 2014 ordinance there, but is there anywhere where I can find the actual ordinance? It has been drafted. I did look at it earlier this week, but it is not in your backup. We will bring that forward, assuming that you want to go in this direction. But we do have a draft on it. I'd be glad to get it to you. Yeah, it'd be helpful because I don't know what direction to give without understanding the parameters. I mean, I kind of get a sense based on what you're saying, but I do want to circle back though, Council Member Wasney. Maybe I didn't understand you. You went through this list, and I think you were character izing those as approved under the current ordinance. And I'm reading the current ordinance. That was surprising because I did not approve that. I mean, I was part of the discussion when we approved that, and you're saying we can send pictures, and that's not in the ordinance. So is that just a separate enforcement decision in terms of how you guys enforce it? But the text of the ordinance specifically prohibits things like taking and sending pictures, reading emails. It wasn't just relating to texting. It had a whole line. We were thinking Facebook. We were thinking of all these other sorts of games and stuff like that, which it specifically prohibits. And its section on what's an affirmative defense to prosecution doesn't list any of those. So I just want to -- I don't want the community to misunderstand what the current ordinance is trying to do. So is this just a difference in enforcement? I might have misunderstood the Councilman's question, but so differentiating that from a phone call or searching for a cell phone number or something like that is going to be very difficult under the current ordinance to enforce. Okay, so I get that. But technically, if somebody was proven to be searching for a picture, scrolling down through emails while they're driving, sending a Facebook message or something like that, that would be violation of the ordinance as it currently stands, correct? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that so we were all on the same page. We took a lot of time to think through new technologies and understand that this wasn't just a texting issue at this point. Yes. Oh, I think Councilmember Wadden, you had a question. I thank you, George. Does she have something to comment regarding Kevin's? My comment on Mayor Pro Tem Roden's observation is just that in your backup, it's Section 18-38 and the operative prohibition is in subsection E, and it relates to the use of a wireless communication device to send, read, write a text message, view pictures or written text, whether by electronic or internet means, engaging, gaming, etc., etc. So that's the operative prohibition in this particular ordinance. And my point to the list was how difficult it is for the Denton Police Department to try to divide out what you're doing on your phone. So let's talk about the children that have been killed on roads in the last couple of years in Denton. So while it's easy to look at statistics and say, well, you know, it's only .xx or it's only 40, you talk to the families of the children who are dead. They're not maimed. We're not even talking about people who've been critically injured in car accidents. We're talking about the children. There is a five-year-old on 35W by the Ponder exit. The driver that hit that car was doing FaceTime. We had a fatality on 377. We have two dead mothers and two dead children. We have four dead people because somebody was on a cell. Fatality on 380, I believe, was cell phone. So if our job as public servants is to make the tough calls , make the tough decisions, cities all over the country either are going to this or they're already there. We almost got it passed in the state of Texas. It passed our state legislature. It was vetoed by the governor. It's our job for public safety. When you talk to first responders who are the first in the field, our fire department, our police department, and you talk about the horrific nature of a fatality accident, and then you find out that it is cell phone driven. And as a city council member, and I know it is our responsibility to pass an ordinance to protect people. I remember when we had no seat belts, we had no airbags. There was a real hue and cry about intrusion on the personal individual. But it's out of control right now, people on their cell phones. You see it every time you're in your car and people are distracted. They're not, and it is split second timing, the difference between an accident and not split second. And if we as a governing body can make that decision, and it's a tough decision. It's a tough decision to say no, no, put it down. Get the tech that is so available out there so that you have that split second timing to save a life. So you think about those children. You think about innocent people on the highway, on the city streets, who are hit by a driver with a cell phone and they 're distracted. We haven't talked about the people who are injured severely and who carry those injuries with them all of their lives. So it's a tough decision. I give you that. I think it's a necessary decision for this city to move to hands free. George. More a comment, I guess, along the lines of what Ms. Wasney was just saying, an observation when the chief said that the research he'd done shows that there had been total ban for a period of a couple years, fatality accidents went down. I just think it's important to keep in mind that our objective is not to adopt an ordinance, at least from my perspective, that's easy to enforce. Enforcement is one issue. But to reduce the number of accidents is our primary objective, either fatality accidents or radii. And just like a speed limit of 40 miles an hour, if the ordinance is adopted, 85% of the people will comply with it because it's the law. And the same thing from my perspective would be true here. If we adopt an ordinance that prohibits or is a total ban, most people will comply with it because it's the law and it won't require enforcement. But it's just what's our objective. It's to reduce the number of accidents, not to create an ordinance that's easy to enforce. But to go along with that, and I completely agree with the city manager's comments, but the other aspect is that human nature is such that I'm more likely to comply with a rule if I know that I can get caught. What have we seen with red light cameras when those go into place at an intersection, the number of offenses goes down because people are getting caught at those intersections. People become more careful. Enforcement is a factor. When when when rules are put into place and then they're enforced, because they can be enforced, then you're, you're increasing even more the likelihood that people will obey the rules. And these are rules that are good for all of us. And most especially for those innocent folks that that can get injured by it. So the ordinance, the current ordinance as it stands pretty much takes care of everything to do except for talking on the phone. And the hands free ordinance would, it would do the same thing. Right? I mean, so it's just, I think there's a lack of knowledge right now about the current ordinance and what all it incorporates because I didn't know. I just thought it was texting. I didn't realize it was being on the phone or having the phone. So really what it's saying right now is that all you can do is make a phone call basically. So it's and it's not a complete ban as I understand it because it's hands free so you can still use your phone. So is it just rewording the ordinance? Is that we don't have an ordinance in front of us. Well, no, I mean that because you said there is. Well, I think part of the issue with what Councilmember Briggs is bringing up is that we were limited in the signage that we could use. And the signage that we could use had to be acceptable by text dot. And so the signs that you see up around town are signs that were approved by them. So they don't communicate the entire ban. They can't. And so if you have a ban that says that no cell phone use or something that's more complete, I think that you're going to the ambiguity. The nuances of what you can and cannot do are going to be clearer to the motorist that's just driving down the street and seeing the sign and that doesn't take the time like 99. 9% of us have ever reading the ordinance. Right. But we need we need people to know about it. Like we need to make sure the high school students know. I mean, there's big signs billboards, you know, like it. It's not going to make a difference unless people really know. I put a survey out and a lot of people didn't even know there was a texting ban. So, well, that's true. I mean, you can put signs up on on ICM all over town. We spent a lot of money putting those signs up just a few. No, the texting signs we have. You're 50 or 60 there. They're at all the major entrances to the city basically. If I might just say I play off that just for saying that we did do a kind of a public information campaign or education campaign when the ordinance went into effect. And but that amounted basically to posting it on the city website, our Facebook page and Twitter page, putting out. We put bumper stickers on all the all of our vehicles around and we distributed those out to businesses to pass out also. You're right. It's only as good as how many people know about it as far as prohibition goes. Okay. Okay. So, it's tragic. There are certainly way too many people doing this and it's dumb and you see it every day. And it's becoming more and more addictive for folks. And it 's not just in your car. Everyone sitting in line. Everyone in meetings. Everyone at the dinner table. That's it's a larger societal problem that's causing people to say I'm bored. Let's pull out of home and start somebody being to me on social media. So from my point of view, I think that that becomes important. And so you mentioned some studies you looked into. I'd like to see this ahead of the next discussion we have, because I want to know if we're adopting this, that it's changing that behavior. And it's not just simply a declaring of our opinion about what's good and bad. Does it actually work? These bans put in places in cities. I get and I've seen some of the same studies you looked at where things that have been in place since say 2007, one study I looked at, had an impact because they were curbing it well before a lot of these applications were coming online. So people have gotten used to dangerly not doing that. What is that like in post 2016? I don't know. And there might be some data to help us understand that. Because I think the rub that people have with this issue is everyone agrees texting and driving is dumb, I think. Everyone agrees playing Facebook or games or getting picture while driving is dumb. We also have a population, I got my first cell phone in 1996, in which we've been talking on the phone and driving for 20 years. And I don't think there's broad consensus in our community that data is unsafe. And it's unclear that the data bears that particular aspect of that. So I think people's feelings are, which is why we compromised last time, was ban texting but allow use of the phone. Because the community was saying, we feel like that 's okay, why do you take away that from us just so that you can enforce on that 22 year old who's playing on Facebook. That's the concern I think I have as a concern I hear. But at the end of the day, the data shows this moves us down the road in the right direction on saving lives and reducing traffic accidents and fatalities. I'm going to be moved in that direction. So it's a freedom worth curbing to do that. So more data is going to help me get comfortable with this. Go ahead. Do we do we have a anything for city employees or in city vehicles. Do they have a hands free policy, while in our vehicles or driving. I'm sorry, I believe we do and Brian might be addressing but it seems like we recently, perhaps an answer. Okay, he 's not gonna say something you know, an ordinance or resolution where not aware of anything that's city wide. However, there are some, there's some federal and state regulations regarding certain vehicles like if they're over a certain gross vehicle weight that you're, you're prohibited from using them. School buses are prohibited, you know school bus drivers are using them so all of our big trucks, it would be illegal for them to do that under another regulation outside the ordinance. And if I could address this to something on the on the fat alities. The councilman was he mentioned the three fatalities which we know for sure since 2014. We can definitively say that for at least three fatalities were had as a causation factor of wireless device usage. One of those was on the interstate, where a driver was Face Time and ran into the back of another vehicle and five year old child was killed. Actually that would have not been prohibited under our current ordinance because the because of the interstate exemption. Then on the other two, the one where that occurred on 380 and Mayhill, that person we believe was talking on his cell phone and could have been just dialing the phone as he was speed, he was also speeding as he approached other vehicles stopped at the red light, and ran into the back one of those. The one that where it would have been should have been and was completely illegal was the head on collision on 377. And all total in those three crashes there were six people that died and there's also three of the three of those are for those were children. There's also one child that's been probably permanently parallelized from the neck down and one of those crashes as well and another that severely injured so just just to give you the details on that. What's the interstate exemption. Test. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's under the current texting ordinance, the inter state was exempted from that prohibition. So during that discussion. Another person suggested that was that if you're a traveler going on an interstate, the difficulty of trying to understand which municipality am I in and which what's the particular law of this I'm going from current the dentin to crumb. You know I guess for me the data is important. I have to be truthful. I get really skittish. When we talk about fat alities and things like that and show I don't want that to happen to anybody, but also know someone who was reaching back to get something was looking, and they hurt their suburban and hurt their three children so there 's all kinds of things that do that. So to me it's going to be the data, is it something that is making an impact making a difference. If there's data out there that shows that banning talking on the phone, and I'll be honest my concern is to there's there's people who rely upon that in their business, who can't afford the kind of technology or the vehicles that have hands free devices. And I don't really use Bluetooth, but what I'm understanding is, if you've got a Bluetooth headset that can connect. You still have to dial. If you don't have Bluetooth in your car where your car will automatically put in numbers, you still have to hit something on your phone to dial the number now you can still talk and all this, and if you disconnect, most of the time it will disconnect you automatically. So to me it's going to be the data, and it's going to be what does the ordinance actually look like, how is it derived because all I'm hearing is, and this is probably in an incorrect is that if you have a phone on in your car, and you're doing anything with it. You're breaking the law. There's got to be some nuances to that that I think will help avoid some of the things that you're bringing up but I just I just need to see the data because Lord knows I don't want to see anybody there. I don't want to see anybody have a fatal accident because they're trying to cross the street somewhere where they shouldn't, where somebody's got a horn et in their car or they've dropped a couple hot coffee on there's, there's all kinds of reasons and, and I know you 're sort of smiling we're thinking what are you talking about but the point is, those things are going to happen so where does government. What's our role in preventing those. What is our role in preventing those and it's easy to sort of say well, this is what happened. First of all you said one of the guys was speeding in fact the guy on 38 if I remember correctly people reported him weaving in and out of traffic. So, there's multiple causes so I just want to make sure if I'm going to make a decision like that that's really going to that it's going to be a decision that we can show has the result that we want it to have instead of it just being something that a lot of other cities are doing, because there's a lot of things that can hurt people that are totally legal. And I just, I want to make sure that I make a decision based upon that data. And not just because I'll tell you, I remember and I won't go into too many specifics when there was a policy issue trying to be discussed in the city about certain types of services provided, and that if we didn't increase certain services provided that the next person that died in one of those situations would be on our head. It's tough. So I'd have to balance that with what is the data say? What is the data say? Because Lord knows I don't want anybody to die whether it's in a car accident, whether it's crossing the street, whether it's being in a grocery store and somebody pulls out a gun and just happens to shoot somebody in there and they're an innocent bystander. So that's the struggle I have and maybe that's not, maybe it's not a struggle. Maybe it's because in the presentation I didn't see some of the effects of some of the other ordin ances that you're talking about that they put complete bans in. And also I don't have any idea what does that really mean? What does a complete ban mean on any type of communication in a vehicle and who does that impact the most? So I'm certainly open to continuing the discussion. I just want to make sure that the data is something that I can feel comfortable with and not just doing it for some reasons that I just want to be careful about that. >> So let's make sure we're clear about the data that we want the chief to come forward with next time. Different cities or states and the reduction in fatalities. >> I don't know that we, I mean, I would welcome any information from Chief Howell, but the National Institute of Health actually did put out a study on distracted driving. It's on the Internet. I read about half of it while we were talking and I can do two things at once. No, I don't read National Institute of Health reports while I'm driving. But it does have data about the effect of text bans on teenagers. They are ineffective. It has data about increased or decreased use of, increased or decreased risk of accidents based on hand, handless devices or hand, not handless, handheld devices versus hands-free devices. So all of that is in there and I think we can, it would be hoove us to all read it as opposed to having Chief Howell use his time. >> I mean, of course, if there's more data than this, I want to see it. But this seems to be the major study. >> I've read that and you're right. And it's going to be difficult to find a definitive thing because there's so many different structures of the ordinances that prohibit different actions. They've been implemented at different times. I think Councilmember Rodin hit part of it on the head in that the places that got ahead of this before it became such a habit are probably going to show a better effectiveness than ones that come in afterwards. There's, but you can find pretty much isolated data of studies that take either side. In fact, there's even one that I attached to an earlier AIS when we discussed this a couple of years ago that shows that hands-free devices are not necessarily any better than anything else because it takes your mind away from driving as you're interacting with that device. And that's kind of like that's about equivalent to dayd reaming while you're driving and it's probably just as dangerous. So I will certainly do some more research on it, see what all we can come up and if there's anything at all that I can find that would help answer some of those questions, I will. Well, and as we're analyzing the data, you look at the screen and there's over 20 fatality factor, 20 fatalities that were connected with traffic violations. So does that mean, does the data say that then we don't need to have traffic laws? Because there are a lot of people that violate traffic laws and their deaths because of it. I mean, I'm curious, I get, I take pause when we say, well, we're going to drive every single decision based on data because the data would suggest there that maybe the conclusion is our traffic laws don't work. Therefore, they 're an intrusion. We ought not to be doing those. I just, I'm having trouble with the logic there. Well, we 're talking about data. We're talking about impact on that. You're pulling out fatalities. This is a slide about fat ality. That's one that was up there. Right. So, I mean, I think that's a stretch to say that that's either the position I'm taking or when we're asking for the data to apply that kind of logic to it. I think that's a stretch. So I sort of, I don't agree with that because number one, traffic violations, I'm sure there's plenty of studies that show the effect of speed limits and let's face it, these are all voluntary anyway. I mean, so people who are going to want to obey them, obey them. If I'm not talking on the phone, it's not because there's an ordinance, because I don't want to jeopardize myself or someone else. So I think we have to, I'm trying to keep it in the middle and if that's not what you thought I was doing, that's fine . But that's sort of way out there. I mean, I've got to be honest. Yes. There's another group that has really done a good job collecting information and it's the insurance industry on distracted driving. So, you know, we can also do some research on the, because they're just, you know, they'll tell you straight out that distracted driving is a huge issue and it's growing. And so I think they are going to have some good statistics as well. So we can all do our homework. Yeah. Any other questions, comments? And so do you feel like you have direction as far as what to come back with? Yes. Okay. And I apologize for the, when we separated the action item from today's work session, we took the proposed ordinance off. But I can help define that for you if you need me to. It's, I mean, for the handheld device, basically, we're allowed, the proposed ordinance as we had it was to allow the use of a wireless device as long as you were not holding it in your hand. That's in a nutshell, that's it. So through a Bluetooth device incorporated in the car or a separate mounted system that you go by from the auto parts store, as long as you don't have to hold that phone or that device in your hand and dial a number, search for a number or activate the phone to dial a number or find something on it and you could use it. Okay. All right. Good. Appreciate that. And so there is a draft ordinance. It was on the action item and then it was. Yes, sir. Okay. So then we can get a copy of that. Okay. Great. Great. I'll put it in Friday's status. Fantastic. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, then we will have completed our work session 3B. I guess dinner is dinner out there. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and call the item for closed session. We will now convene a closed session at 546. We will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding real property under Texas government. Good evening. I wanted to welcome everyone to this Denton City Council meeting on June the 7th, 2016. It is 6 53. If you'll stand with me and join in pledging the US and Texas flag. Thank you. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and 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, one indivisible. We've got a couple of proclamations and presentations that we'll present at this time. The first one will be agenda item to a which is presentation to retiring police department officer, Virginia Nichols from Children's Advocacy Center. So if Daniel come down and tell us a little bit about your presentation, introduce your people. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor, members of council and city staff. My name is Dan Lee Allen. I'm privileged to be the executive director of the Children's Advocacy Center for Denton County nonprofit organization that serves severely abused children from Denton and throughout Denton County. I'm here today to make a special presentation, I believe is extremely recognition worthy about an officer who has given her life to service and recently retired from the Denton Police Department. And specifically over the last 12 years, Detective Virginia Nichols has worked crimes against children in a specialized child abuse investigative unit through the Denton Police Department. She is actually the longest tenured police detective in Denton County working consecutive years on child abuse cases with a recent retirement. She worked over 12 years on these cases, helping hundreds of children find safety, justice and also working as part of the advocacy center team. Here also to recognize Detective Nichols is Chief Lee Howe, as well as her chain of command and her coworkers. Lieutenant Chris Summit is here from the Denton Police Department, as well as Sergeant Matt Kane and the detect ives that worked with her in her unit Scott Salazar and David Bearden, and then also her husband Bill Nichols who has supported Virginia through this job. The plaque that I have for Virginia says, 100 years from now it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much I had in my bank account, nor what my clothes looked like, but the world may be a little bit of a better place because I was important in the life of a child. And this is awarded to Detective Virginia Nichols and says thank you for your passion and dedication in the ongoing fight against child abuse Detective Children's Advocacy Center 2004 to 2016. Thank you so much for your service to our community. Thank you. The next presentation will be honoring Colonel Wesley C. Reed with the proclamation. Colonel, if you'll come down please. Thank you so much for your service to our country. Colonel, thank you so much. Got a proclamation I want to read honoring your service. Greetings, whereas Colonel Wesley C. Reed is the Senior Director for FEMA Region 6, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, for the Air Force's Northern National Security Emergency Preparedness Directorate First Air Force , Tyndall Air Force Base Florida. And here's an abbreviation AFNSEP plans, programs and facilities military support to civil authorities for natural and manmade emergencies and disasters. Whereas after graduating from Denton High School in 1982, Colonel Reed received his commission through Air Force ROTC at Texas Christian University and entered active duty in 1986. He graduated from undergraduate pilot training at Reese Air Force Base in Texas. Colonel Reed served on active duty as a KC-135 pilot, aircraft commander, instructor, and evaluator pilot at Cad ena Air Force Base Okinawa, Japan and McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, where he flew the KC-135 aircraft as an instructor pilot and chief of standardization and evaluation. Colonel Reed flew combat and combat support missions in support of Joint Task Force Southwest Asia, Operation Southern Watch, and Provide Comfort. And whereas Colonel Reed transferred to the Admissions Lia ison Officer Program in 1999, recruiting for the Air Force Academy/ROTC Officer Ascension Programs, Colonel Reed served as the Liaison Officer Director and Chair of the Air Force's Academy Admissions Advisory Panel. In 2010, he was assigned to AFNSEP as Emergency Prepared ness Liaison Officer to Texas. In 2014, he began his assignment as Senior Director of Region 6 until his official retirement date of June 1, 2016 . Now therefore, I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim June 8, 2016 as Colonel Wesley C. Reed Day in the City of Denton and urge all citizens to thank Colonel Reed for his tire less devotion to the Air Force and to the protection of the citizens of the United States of America. Thank you so much, Colonel. It's an honor. [applause] You want to introduce your wife? Yeah. Okay, don't give me the mic. Holy cow. You'll never get it back. Now, thank you so much. This is my wife, Debbie Reed, by the way, and my sister's mother-in-law, Barbara Gayley, who I owe a lot of thanks to make this happen. Let me get this out of the way. There we go. Yeah. One more time. I had the microphone in my face. Sorry about that. There we go. Now, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I grew up in Denton, Texas. If you'd have said in 1982 when I graduated Denton High School, I'd be here 34 years later receiving this honor. I would have said no way. So thank you so much. I'm very honored. I appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] The next proclamation will be Youth Peace Day International . Come on down. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself, just tell us a little bit about Youth Peace Day International. Sure. Hi, my name is Grace Hairston. I'm a youth advocate. I started giving hope back in 2011, and I've been doing Youth Peace Day rallies since then. We actually requested 72 proclamations this year for Youth Peace Day as a movement to show Governor Abbott that we need his support statewide. And it looks like at this point he's going to be supportive . So I'm really excited because on that day what we want to do is we want to restore family morals and values back into the home where it's missing these days. You know, kids are in gangs. They're getting involved in bullying. And a lot of kids, even here at the college, are committing suicide. And you don't hear about it because it's not something they want to tell. But they have no hope. And so that's what giving them hope is for, is to restore hope back to our youth. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Well, let me read this pro clamation in honor of that. Greetings, whereas the give them hope mission is to educate , enlighten, and inspire America's youth to encourage their peers to say no to substance abuse, alcohol, bullying, teen pregnancy, and youth suicide. And whereas our vision is to inspire life and unconditional love to restore hope and confidence within the family, educational institutions, and impoverished communities. And whereas to promote an awareness of youth suicide, abst inence, and the importance of life and family values. And whereas our motto is to prepare me is to empower me. The youth are our future and our hope is that they are encouraged to share their voice and allow their opinions to be expressed in a nonviolent way. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton , Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim July the 30th, 2016 as Youth Peace Day International and encourage all students to learn more about the Youth Peace Day International in association with give them hope mission and friendship church. So thank you very much for bringing this our attention. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Eric, may I ask you while you walk up here? Yes. My daughter, Rosie, who was two years old when I came on council, turns eight years old. She loved nothing better than for council member Gregory to leave us all and say he has to leave. Microphones. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Rosie. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Rosie. You bet. Thank you, Councilmember or Mayor Pro Tem. Excuse me. It'll take me a little bit to get used to that. Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Before we move on with our agenda, just wanted to announce that agenda item 7C, which is a public hearing, has the applicant has asked that it be rescheduled. Is that correct ? Continued. Continued. Yes. Continued until the 21st. So the process will be we will go ahead and open the public hearing. We won't have a staff presentation at this time, but if there's anyone here for that public hearing that wishes to give public testimony, we're certain we will encourage you and invite you down to do so. I just wanted to give everybody a heads up regarding that agenda change. So our next item will be the consent agenda. No. Oh, I'm sorry. We've got the yes, we've got the we've got the citizens reports. I'm sorry. My agenda is sort of on two separate two separate pages. Okay. So agenda item number three presentations from member of the public. It's my understanding that agenda item three one Ed Sofe is requesting to do his at a later time. Agenda item three two is Larry Beck presenting citizens letters, opposing the proposed gas plants. So, if you would like to come up and are we going to do the we're going to run the introduction for the citizens reports. We didn't do that. We can. The council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct, which applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizens reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a report. There will be an electronic beep when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chambers. Citizens are asked to not approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know and she will have a staff member distribute the materials to the council. The attorney general has ruled that council members may listen to citizens speak and may ask questions of citizens for clarification of the issue. Council members will not engage citizens in discussion of a topic because to do so could potentially be a violation of the Open Meetings Act. When speaking to the council, citizens are to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this rule will immediately be removed from the council chambers. Citizens' adherence to these rules will help make an effective presentation and will preserve the order and decorum of our proceedings. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. Mr. Beck, I apologize for that. Come on down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Before I do start, I do want to point out that I am speaking as a private citizen, not as a member of the PNC committee. I'm Larry Beck. I live at 915 East Sherman Drive and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. Regarding the Brattle Group report that was addressed in today's work session, I am, for one, disappointed to say that it falls way short of what many of us expected and wanted. There's no mention at all of cleaner alternatives like those that incorporate demand-side management, energy storage, or purchase of on-peak coastal wind. Had these elements been studied, there would likely have been wiggle room for this council to consider moving Denton 's energy future forward without the need for two gas- powered plants. Brattle's executive summary appears to be a little more than a recheck of DME's math. Comparing the RDP to our older TNPA arrangement and another status quo strategy where neither increase renewables above 40 percent is like comparing the latest model hybrid automobile to a 1978 Oldsmobile Bonneville and maybe a 2006 Toyota Camry. The hybrid model will definitely outshine the older, more conventional model in fuel economy. But if I pull up my all-electric Nissan Leaf, I drive off with a mic drop. I came here not to represent myself in opposition to those gas-powered plants, but to be a messenger for about 600 other people who oppose the construction. What I've got here are letters from Denton citizens who seldom grace these chambers who don't call you or don't write letters or emails to air their concerns about important issues like this one. These letters are from concerned citizens who represent only a fraction of Denton residents who are encouraged to come forward and speak to this issue. They are encouraged by volunteers like myself who canvassed multiple neighborhoods informing homeowners of their renewable Denton plan with a focus on the construction of the two gas plants. Highlighted was the fact that these plants would burn frack natural gas for decades. The gist of their concerns appears to be the heavy cost to build these plants that will be placed on ratepayers' shoulders. Money that could be better spent finding cleaner alternatives that will not add to our existing F-rated air quality. The report appears to make assumptions without the true analysis on how the RDP will cover expenses to keep costs low. For instance, if part of their cost of recovery is based on sales of energy and ancillary services, what does that revenue number look like and how long can those sales be counted on? The report does note that the gas energy produced by these plants as opposed to buying natural gas from the grid will result in lower toxic emissions. But I think there are times when less is really not beneficial, especially for a lot of our citizens who have serious respiratory problems and their children. These residents of Denton are asking the council to look deeper and more broadly at the decision to build something that poses a health risk for them and their families and that will saddle them with a debt for many years to come. I would also encourage council members to take into account the fact that the Austin Energy has just recently put a hold on their plans to construct a massive new natural gas plant. It appears they did so primarily out of concern that the estimated $500 billion investment in their new plant would likely be a bad bet because of how low gas prices have dropped in the two years since they conducted their initial financial analysis of the project. Finally, let me conclude with this. I agree with Brattle's Irish Chevelle's assessment this afternoon of the RDP being a sound and carefully thought out plan, and I'm sure it has the best intentions in mind for its citizens. I personally have never doubted this. The people that deem it good, hardworking people in the opposition to that part of the RDP that promotes the gas plant is not an attack on them or their efforts. But many of us remain skeptical that the RDP, as is currently written, is the only viable option we have at our disposal. We believe there are equally better ways we can move into the future with a plan that distances itself almost entirely from fossil fuels. There will be risks to repairs regardless of which plan we move forward with. Neither is perfect. But the one that works hard towards 100% renewables will only add local air pollution and tie Denton to 30 plus years of bright gas for electricity. Good timing. Thank you. And if there's no questions for me. I see none. Thank you. Okay. I'm sorry. I think I saw it. So what is in that box? These are letters from individuals that again were informed about this decision to build these plants here and to give their views on if they were opposed to it. They would write the letters and volunteers would go back out and pick them up. And some of the letters are still in the envelopes haven't been open to their address. Most of these are addressed to you, Claire Watts, and about 40 are for Joey Hawkins. But that doesn't mean you can't share it with the rest of the members. Sure. Are you going to leave them here so we can just look at those? We'll get them distributed. Is that okay? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Still trying to figure out how close I should be to this mic. Agenda item number 3A3, which is Max Fulmer regarding traffic conditions in the city and customer service billing procedures. Good evening. If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin. Okay. My name is Max Fulmer and I live at 1412 Fox Hollow. I sure didn't. Okay. I'm not even good at this, so you have to bear with me. Okay, the first topic is the city of Denton Utilities. Okay. I'm here to protest the practices of the city of Dent on Utilities. I've lived here under this organization for over 19 years and have seen these practices clearly as a benefit for the utility company, not the citizens of Denton. First, last year, the rates changed and the rate charges to citizens of Denton raised 5%. Yes, after an open meeting to discuss such action, that is fair practice. But no notice ever came to my attention. I do not take the Denton paper nor am I connected to the Internet. I won't go into the reason why each of those, but anyway, I suggest that why not take the notice rate change and distribute it in the monthly bills, that way everybody have a chance to see what's going on. Okay, the 5% hike would seem proper in usual times, but these are not usual times. The federal government has said that there was no inflation in the last year, so no increase was given to Social Security recipients for 2016. That zero inflation number is debatable and I will not discuss it, but the fact that Social Security recipients, as a result, are paying 5% more without receiving any increase in Social Security benefits means a 5% less money to be able to spend for themselves. This increase is particularly disturbing since the cost of fuel dropped by 12.5% last year. Also, this year I have had my due date for the utility bill to be paid moved back just enough that I have to pay two utility bills in one month. The utility company has moved that billing date several times over the years. And always backward. In the past, the utility companies I have used never changed the due date in the billing cycle. Such a change means that in the year 2016, my utility bill increased by an additional 8%. That is a total of 13% for the year. Not bad for a year in which no increase in Social Security payments was taken place. This kind of practice is very detrimental to anyone at his own fixed income. Particularly as the Appraisal District continues to attempt to increase taxes on homes as they increase in value at 10- 15% per year. The utility company seems not to want to do anything about this problem. I propose that a separate category be created in the list of utility users, retirees and disabled on fixed income. That this group will have their due dates fixed and frozen. Since the Social Security payment go out at different times of the month, each billing cycle must be dealt with separately. Also, the rate of each customer in such a category should be tied to the rate in which Social Security benefits change. Or may be frozen. Although freezing in the long run might be detrimental to the utility companies and the citizens. A good example of such good intentions is rent control practices on the East and West Coast. Okay, these changes need to be made soon. The rate of inflation is going to change as this Federal Administration leaves office. Changes in probably inflation rates will change to more normal times. With a 16 trillion dollar official debt hanging over everyone's head. It has been said that a society is judged by how it treats its elderly. Keep that in mind. And last, as of last question, years ago the state legislature passed a bill to require utility companies to compete for customers in open market. It seems to work rather well. Where other cities that had utilities that were producing energy were given seven years grace period to prepare to do this. Okay, that has not happened. Mr. Forlmire, the bell was your time. I'm sorry? The bell was your time. Okay. Maybe just could wrap it up with just a couple of sentences . And then if those are written comments, would you mind providing those? I'd like to get a copy of those if possible. Okay, well, okay, I'll be happy to send these to you, but I 'll need to go through and correct some bad spelling. Okay. I cannot spell. Okay. But anyway, the city still seems to have a monopoly. It's been over 20 years since that law was passed. And long since seven years since the cities were given the chance to get right or do that. So what's happening? I appreciate that. Are there any questions? Any questions? Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. Thank you, sir. Thank you. You bet. Next month we'll go through that. Yes, sir. Thank you. And maybe I can do better. No, you did fine. Thank you, sir. Where our agenda item 3C, which is additional citizens report. We have a card from Mr. Ken Gold. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council, my name is Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Nichols Trace here in town. I attended the work session and listened to the Brattle presentation today and I learned a lot. But it motivated me to come down here tonight and make a second appeal that we put this complicated, big issue of public policy on our public utility to a public vote. To trust the public to make the right decision on an issue of this magnitude on the RDP. Possibly it will confirm, support, validate, endorse, rat ify the plan. The other possibility is perhaps it will save us $250 million we can invest in another way with more focus on renewables. I don't know what the outcome will be. I just think this is a big enough issue. I think it's the right way to decide an issue of this magnitude is to just trust the voters to make the right decision. We created DMA and we'll do the right thing by it. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions, Mr. Gold? Seeing none. Thank you. Those are all the cards we have on item 3C of the presentation from members of the public. So we'll move on to agenda item number four, which is the consent agenda. Do we have any questions on the consent agenda or Chair would entertain a motion. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of the consent agenda items A through J. Mayor Pro Tem. I second that. All right. We have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda items. Let's vote on the board, please. Item carries 6-0. Moving on to agenda item five, which is items for individual consideration. Consideration of the use of eminent domain to condemn real property interests. There's nothing there. Agenda item number six, items for individual consideration. Agenda item six A is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas on a second reading to involunt arily annex approximately 2.1021 acres of land contained in one of the 15 annexation areas. Thank you, Mayor. And I'm going to ask our Director of Development Services, Amy Bissett, if she would present this public hearing. Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. I'm sorry. This is not a public hearing, Mr. White. And we do have a card for public comment that we will take testimony after the staff presentation. What you're considering tonight is adoption of an ordinance on the second reading to involuntarily annex a piece of property. And to give you a little bit of background and for the benefit of the public, this is a remnant of the 2010 annex ation program that we undertook several years ago at the conclusion of our comp plan. The determination was made that we would enter into an annexation program. At the time, in 2010, the City Council offered non-annex ation agreements to property owners who qualified for one. Those non-annexation agreements were for a five-year term that would expire in the spring of 2015. At that time, the City Council offered a one-year extension to the properties that were still eligible. And this is the remnants of those one-year extensions that came up for expiration in spring of 2016. And as you all recall, in spring of this year, you extended non-annexation agreement offers to almost every property owner within all of the proposed annexation areas that were up for expiration. There was one exception to that, and that is within DH 14, which is the property that you're contemplating now. It is a 2.102-acre tract of land that, like I said, is located in DH 14, the proposed annexation area. At the time, you gave us the direction to continue to pursue the annexation of that property because it was an isolated tract that was entirely surrounded by city property. Tonight, I'm going to read the ordinance into the record. This is the second reading, and then I will take questions if you have any. An ordinance annexing an area of land to the City of Denton , Texas, generally identified as area DH 14 of approximately 2.1021 acres, located on the south side of Robinson Road, east of Thor oughbred Trail, west of Marbella's Court, and more specifically identified in Exhibit A attached here to, which area is adjacent to and abuts the existing city limits of the City of Denton, Texas, extending the city limits so as to include the property within the city limits , granting to all the inhabitants of the property all the rights and privileges of other citizens, and binding the inhabitants to all of the ordinances, resolutions, acts, and regulations of the city, providing inclusion of a service plan, providing for instructions for filing this ordinance and correction of the official city map, providing severability and conflict clauses, and providing an effective date. Any questions for staff before we take public testimony? Thank you. We do have a card, Mr. Willie Husbit, if you'll come down and state your name, you want to go ahead and wave that? Okay, thank you, sir. All right, any questions for staff? We saw none. Council Member Pro Tem Roden. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of Agenda Item 6A. Council Member Gregory. Second. We have a motion and approval for Agenda Item 6A. Let's vote on the board, please. Item Carried 6-0. Agenda Item 6B. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas on second reading to involuntarily annex approximately 712 acres of land contained in one of the 15 annexation areas specifically located within PAA4. Thank you, Mayor. And I'm also going to ask Ms. Bissett to address this item. Thank you. This is, again, one of the properties that is a remnant of the 2010 annexation program. In this particular case, we did offer a non-annexation agreement to this property owner, and they did not execute it. So they have had the opportunity to have that non-annex ation agreement extended and did not take that action. I will read the ordinance into the record in this case as well. An ordinance annexing an area of land to the City of Denton , Texas generally identified as Area PAA4 of approximately 853.6143 acres located on the south side of Milam Road north of Loop 288, east of I-35, and more specifically identified in Exhibit A attached here too, which area is adjacent to and abuts the existing city limits of the City of Denton, Texas, extending the city limits so as to include the property within the city limits, granting to all the inhabitants of the property all the rights and privileges of other citizens, and binding the inhabitants to all of the ordinances, resolutions, acts, and regulations of the city, providing inclusion of a service plan, providing for instructions for filing this ordinance and correction of the official city map, providing severability and conflict clauses, and providing an effective date. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. Could you explain in a little bit more detail the efforts to contact the owner of the property and if there was actually any kind of exchange of information between staff and the owner? Yes. We delivered a certified letter to the property owner with an offer of a non-annexation agreement extension. It was signed. We received the signature back and there was no further action from the course of the property owner. And in fact, I believe that property owner has seven parc els within that area and they received seven notifications. Councilmember Begheri. Thank you. Does the city reasonably expect to extend services within two and a half years to that parcel? It would be within the provision of the service plan, and so some of those services have a certain amount of time that by which they would need to be extended. Some would be required only within the provision of RCIP program, for example, water or other extensions of infrastructure service were required to provide within the confines of RCIP program. What services are provided there already? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. Thank you. All right. We do have a card to speak. Mr. Willie Hussbett, do you care to speak? Thank you, sir. Any more questions for staff? Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item 6B. Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 6B. Let's vote on the board, please. Item carries 5 to 1. Agenda item 6C. Consider nominations appointments to the city boards and commissions. Thank you, Madam. I ask our city secretary, Jennifer Walters, if she would address this item. Thank you, Mayor and members of the council. We have three boards that are needing some nominations at this meeting. The first is the Parks, Recreation and Beautification Board is a nomination for Councilmember Gregory. All right. I have no one at this time. Sorry. Thank you. The next is the Public Art Committee. We have three vacancies on the Public Art Committee. The first nomination would be from Councilmember Baguieri. I'll nominate. I have a nomination. Can I go ahead and nominate? Ed Steele, please. I'm sorry. Ed Steele. Ed Steele. That was my nomination. Sorry. All right. And Mayor Pro Tem Roden. I don't have a nomination at this time. Okay. And Councilmember Briggs, looks like your nomination has been stolen from you. It has been, yes. So I will get back to you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Then on the Zoning Board of Adjustment, we have one vacancy . It is a nomination for Councilmember Wasney. She has nominated David Higgins. There's also a vacancy in the alternate position from a member moving out of state. That alternate position is a nomination for any Council member, and I would point out that there is a member, Mr. Serrat, who currently serves on an alternate position, and he has requested numerous times to be considered as a regular member. All right. Before we take a motion or second for those nominations, Mr . Hussman, you've filled out a card. Would you like to come down and speak? State your name and address, and your time will begin. Mayor and Council, my name is Willie Hutz. I live at 623 Newton. I've spoken before about these appointments, and I hope that some of what I've said is heard, not heard, is acted on. The Parks Board is the one that really interests me, because there are no African Americans as leaders in that area. And you need diversity. Why? Because the city is diverse. You've got to pass it around and bring in people who have different visions and thoughts and experiences. Too often in your position, you put people in an office that has no other vision other than your own, and that won 't work. It doesn't work. It tends to alienate people. A perfect example of what I want to show you is how the city, your code enforcement needs to be diverse. It needs something. Here's a perfect example. In my neighborhood, this right here, it's not my neighborhood, but how I'm treated right here, shows debris in the back. Here. Shows debris. Now, here's what the people that you put on boards and show or do, how they seem to not look at themselves properly. This is the city's responsibility. It's a recycling location. It's in my neighborhood. Next week, next time that we meet, I'm going to show you what this looks like when they clean up the major parts of the debris. It's still not clean. But yet code enforcement, because you don't diversify who you put on the boards, penalize me quite a bit. And mine looks nothing like it. It's every week, every week it looks like this. This is not different weeks. This is one week. Your own city staff is in charge of this. Every week it's like this. I want to emphasize that. This is not a one-time thing. Look at that. This is in my neighborhood. Every week, diversify these appointments so that somebody can hear what I'm seeing and see how important it is. There are recycling locations all through the city. At Duncan and that's Fort Worth Drive is the worst and it's in my neighborhood. You need to diversify these areas and I mean Parks Department is one of the worst. It needs to be diversified. Thank you. Thank you. And for the nominations, Madam City Secretary, applications have either been filed or will be forthcoming? Right. You can vote on the nominations depending on completion of the confirmation process. All right. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Roden, any other questions? Sorry, any questions before we take comments? I'm just going to move approval of the nominations as stated. Council Member Wasney? I second the motion. Can I make a clarification? Yes. David Higgins will be on the Zoning Board of Adjustment. Correct. Correct. Okay. All right. All right. We have a motion and a second. I believe it's Ed Steele for the Public Art Committee and David Higgins for the Zoning Board of Adjustments. All right. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to Agenda Item 7, which is public hearings. Agenda Item 7A is hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance granting approval in accordance with Chapter 26 of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code. And prior to -- oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead and open it. Yeah, prior to that presentation, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to ask Mr. Jim Mays if he would present this public hearing. Thank you, Jim. Good evening, Mr. Campbell, members of council. I'll just open it up. North Lakes. All right. We have two of these hearings tonight, the first of which is North Lakes Park. What we want to do is we want to make sure that anytime that a public park, any portion of a public park is used for a non-park use, we have a Texas Parks and Wildlife Chapter 26 hearing in order that we can make sure that, one, there's no other reasonable alternative to doing the project as presented, or two, that we minimize harm to the affected property. The objective tonight's hearing is to increase an electoral easement along Bonnie Road for an upgrade in transmission infrastructure. DMU has requested an easement on North Lakes Park in order to upgrade its power lines. Presently, the area that is affected is a 3.67-acre tract along Bonnie Road. And the reason that we need to have this is as we move forward with the upgrade of the poles that are currently wooden poles with a 39-kb line in order to that of a 138-kb line, we want to make certain that the blowout of the line, the sway of the line as it comes off the newer poles maintains within an easement. Again, this is done to meet regulatory compliance and to maintain the highest levels of reliability electric service . On May the 2nd of this year, the Parks and Recreation Board met and approved this motion with a vote of 5-0. In a moment, we'll have an opportunity for DME to comment and an opportunity for the public to comment. But the direction we ask is that we approve it tonight an easement. Parks and DME are seeking the approval of a widening of an easement along Bonnie Road in order to let for the electrical easement in North Lakes Park to serve the electrical needs of the citizens of Denton, for which DME will transfer the sum of $35,000, $106 for the upgrade of park facilities. At this moment, I'd like to allow anyone to speak on behalf of us. Any questions for staff? If we take public comment. Councilmember Briggs. So you said two things. This is the hearing is to make sure that you minimize harm to the property. Yes. And that there's no other options. Yes. Right. And so both of those. Both of those have met. Yes. Have been met. Yes. And this is part of an overall electrical infrastructure upgrade that is in order to get connectivity from the North Lakes substation to the area around North Lakes Park. And how is the $35,000 figure? How did that how did you come up with that amount? Our internal real estate department. They arrived at that figure in order to currently to overlay with existing easement and they did the add value calculations as they would normally do in any real estate transaction for the city. And that is it was their finding. Again, the compensation for that to the parks department is is somewhat anecdotal where this is in order to facilitate a project that that is that was the value of the property that it was it was determined by our real estate department . Okay. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. So just to clarify there's already an existing transmission line going on the same. Absolutely. It's just because they're upgrading it to a higher voltage. It requires a longer distance of easement. So there's completely insignificant impact to the park from the park's perspective. Essentially, it's just a very minor widening existing piece of property that already has an existing transmission water transmission line. Sixty nine KB electrical transmission line. This is just in order to facilitate the regular requirements that necess itated about the larger hundred thirty eight KB line. And this is just more of a long, long, longer term question as relates to transmission lines as I understand it, especially with you, technically the city owning that property. If you wanted to, we're allowed to even improve underneath those transmission lights say with a trail if we wanted to. Absolutely. So it's not like it's not like taking off line. No, it's not taking offline the existing frisbee golf disc golf course. It's here will not be affected. It's it's going to be pretty much standard protocol as usual. It's just the the easement is going to have to widen in order to necessitate the sway of that taller line necess itating a longer. Thanks. Thank you. Any other question for staff before we take public comment? Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. We do have a card. Will the husband wishing to speak on. Oh , I'm sorry. You had. I apologize. There are two public hearings, one from North. I'm so sorry. Oh, yeah, we're going to do them individually . Jimmy only called one of them. Let's do that. Yes. Are we supposed to call them both? OK, yes. Mr. Hesbeth, come on up, state your name and address and your time will begin. My name is Willie Hesbeth, Marion Council members. I live in 623 Newton. I want to say to you, Jim, I appreciate again what you're doing in my part of the city. I appreciate that for a part. Thank you. Now, let me get a little more clear as to where this line is going to be. You had mentioned the something is going in at the park near St. Richard Street. Did you know is there a transfer? One of the possibilities is going to cost us more money. But I think this has been talked about before. In that diagram that you're looking at right now, and the red line is to the right. I would feel more comfortable if you move that line to the left, which would be more to the west as opposed to being over where the individuals are going to be playing and doing things. The activities on the right. There's very little on the left that would be impacted by the Latin realm. I know it's going to cost a lot of money. I feel like because that's what you do as a council, and you should. You're just going to err on the side of which is going to cost us the least amount of money. But as a citizen and who has an opportunity to say one way or the other, I'd prefer that that line be on the other side of Bonnebree on the west side. That's just my preference. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hussman. That's all cards I have at least on cards, but this is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item, please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak on agenda item 7A public hearing? We have a speaker. This is Bill Williams, general manager of Diffin municipal electric. Just want to clarify a question brought up by our citizen here. Mr. Hussman, the process for identifying the route followed normal process we did of bringing up for council, having public meetings with the public, open houses, and then to public hearing a public hearing public utility board and a public hearing with the city council. That determined the selection of a route at that time. At this point, we're at of negotiating with the landowners for the additional easement. In this case, the city is the landowner they were dealing with. Just wanted to make that clarification. Thank you. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak? Please come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. One more call. Seeing none, we will close the public hearing on agenda item 7A. Mayor Pro Tem Roden. I'm prepared to make a motion. I'll just point out that if we were to move that line to the west, you can see one house right there on this map that's showing that would be likely taken out due to that easement. There's churches. There's a church on that side, a lot of private property that would be taken off certain percentage off the tax rolls and impacted those private houses. So in my opinion, using public land where there's an existing transmission lines, the best route to go. So I'm going to make a motion to approve agenda item 7A. All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Council member Gary. I second the motion. All right. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Agenda item 7B public hearing. Hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance granting approval in accordance with Chapter 26 of the Texas Park and Wildlife Code of the non-park use of a part of North Point Park for the purpose of installing and maintaining electric transmission distribution and communication line for the City of Denton utility infrastructure upgrade project. And I will now open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor. And this is the second public hearing that Mr. Mays was talking about. And Jim, if you would present this item. Absolutely. Again, under the same pretense as this is another electrical infrastructure utility upgrade that DME has petitioned the Parks and Recreation Department for. This particular location is at North Point Park. It's off of Hercules Drive, the northern portion of North Point Park Hercules by Sixth Park. It's between Nicosia and Stewart Road. Basically, this location is a .792 acre track north of Her cules Road. It is in order to provide electrical infrastructure connectivity with present and future utility. Again, this is in order to meet regulatory compliance. It's following the same protocol as the previous Texas Parks and Wildlife Chapter 26 hearing under the same reasons. Again, on May the 2nd, the Parks and Recreation Board voted 500 to 0 to approve this location. We see here as Nicosia, Hercules. We have North Point Park in this location. The northern portion is where a large electrical transmission service is presently at. This .792 acre easement is in order to facilitate connectivity with future and present electrical infrastructure within the area. Again, we'll have an opportunity for DME to comment, an opportunity for the public to comment. What we're asking direction of council is that they approve or deny the easement. Parks and DME are seeking approval of the North Point Park electrical easement in order to serve the electrical needs of the citizen of Denton, for which DME will transfer a sum of $11,864 for the future upgrade of park facilities. Councilmember Gregory. And according to the backup, Jim, this has gone before Parks and Rec Department. Absolutely. Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Yes, on May the 2nd. And they approved it? They approved it 500. And again, does this change in the park, the change in the transmission line, do anything to impact in a negative way the programming that's done on the park? Well, presently, this portion of North Point Park is unutil ized. It's undeveloped. It's just raw land with a very large electrical infrastructure tower that bisects it. This is just in order to provide connectivity for future. Do you have any anticipation that it in any way could impact programming at the park? It's the notice for any citizen or any person would be completely negligible. It's adjacent to a very tall electrical transmission tower. And, you know, I got thinking on the last item how if we had moved the line across the street, we would have been in negotiations with those property owners and they probably would have in some cases forced us to DME to condemn the property. Can we force DME to condemn that property and make them pay off the nose for this? No. Never mind. Don't answer that question. Thank you. Okay. Any more questions for staff before we entertain public comment? Seeing none. Thank you, Jim. We have a card. Mr. Will Husbeth, if you'd like to come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Mayor and council, my name is Willie Hatsvith. I live at 623 Newton. Two comments on my thoughts on the last proposal. Last I checked, regardless if you've had meetings with the public on an issue and there was no disagreement. I was at those meetings, by the way, and there was some disagreement. I don't know why it didn't get mentioned here. I was here when people came and talked about that transmission line being on the other side. As I spoke about the transmission line, and I'm speaking about this one, all I'm doing is saying what I think. As far as the comments of we're going to have to renegoti ate and take the land, let me just say it again. Say it again. It's my thought. The comments about that the line would be over where the church is. Nobody's playing frisbee where the parking lots are. If lightning's going to strike or one of those transmission lines is sabotaged somehow, if they just fall to the ground for whatever reason, and they're manmade so they could actually happen, the likelihood of people being hurt would be more. If it's where it's located now, it's supposed to be located , then it would be on the parking lot on the other side. I think I heard the comments, we own the land with a little smirk with the comment. It would make more sense to then take the land from what we already -- or add this transmission line to what we already own. The public comment is for the public, which I think I'm a member of, to say what they prefer, what they think about the process. Don't insinuate that I don't go to the meetings and listen at what's being presented because that would be incorrect. I do go to the meetings. And my comment is, and DME, if you want to come down and say what you said before, do that, is the transmission line for the other one should be on the other side of the street . That's what I think. This one, I noticed we never got an answer. Do you think that there is any possibility that this would be used for any other purpose? Well, I thought that wouldn't happen with the property I own, which is right up there. So you can't predict if that property won't be used for some other purpose. And this line going through there would cause a problem with that idea, and they wouldn't do it. Thank you. Thank you. I have no more cards, but this is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak, please come down and state your name and address, and your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak during this public hearing? Seeing no movement, seeing none coming down. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing on agenda item 7B. Councilmember Wasney. I make a motion to approve item 7B. Councilmember Briggs. I will second. We have a motion and a second on agenda item 7B. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 6-0. We're now at agenda item 7C, which was announced at the beginning of the meeting that this will be a continued public hearing to the, is it June the 21st? But I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing. It's my understanding there will be no staff presentation. But anybody wishing to comment or speak during the public hearing on this agenda item, please come down and state your name and address. I will now open the public hearing for agenda item 7C. Is there anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item and provide public comment? Please come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. Mr. Udsbeth, I believe you have a card on 7, okay. Wishing not to speak at this time. Anybody wishing to speak? Madam City Attorney, do we, yes, never mind. Councilmember Gregory. Mayor, thank you. I move that we continue the public hearing until June 21. All right. We have a motion. Councilmember Wasney. I second. We have a motion and a second to continue this public hearing to June the 21st. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. We're down to agenda item 8, presentation from members of the public. I don't believe we need to run the review of the procedures again. 8-1. William Jones, regarding trespass code by code enforcement and environmental services personnel. If you'll come down, state your name and address, and your time will begin. My name is William Jones. I live at 2520 Fort McGrath. 27. Trailer 7 on me. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. We can step up to the mic, please. That's the trailer I used to live in. You see it right there? The beige one? That's the trailer I used to live in. That's the one I got tore down. You know what? This one. Right there. That's the one I got. That's it. That's the trailer right there. I think it belongs to code enforcement. You want to read this? I'm sorry? You want to read that? This is your time to make public comments. My name was... His name was... He got his card. I can see him. Yeah, if you'll just hand it to the city secretary, we'll take a look at it. Okay. He didn't show up. What was the address, sir? 2500. The address of the trailer. Do you remember that? 27. 27. 27. Okay. I'll tell you about that. I think that's... We have a question from Councilmember Briggs. Councilmember? Yeah. Hello, Mr. Jones. How are you doing? I'm doing all right. Okay. So last time you were here, you were talking about your trailer getting torn down, and you were basically homeless. Yeah. And I've talked to you on the phone, and you were in a hotel. Yeah. Are you still in a hotel, or have you found a... Yeah. I'm still at the hotel. So you have not found another home yet? No. No. And so when you come here and you show us that, what exactly... Because I wonder what it is. Do you want us to know why? Do you want to know why your trailer was torn down, or do you know... I think the... What can we help? I think Danny Glassman has something to do with it. He's the one that told me to do it. Okay. I'm sorry? I'm just wondering what it is you...how we can help you. I'm staying with a friend of mine for right now. Okay. Do you just want us to know that your trailer was gone? Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's all I got. And for us to invest...for us to find out about that? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Great. That's it. Any other questions? I believe...I can't tell if there's any time left. Okay. So you still have about a minute if you have any other comments you'd like to make. We certainly would like to hear them. No, I so don't. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to get that. All right. Thank you. The next speaker will be agenda item 8B2, which will be Mr. Willie Hutzbitt's regarding the lack of hiring black firefighters, the ethics ordinance , and the hiring of a city auditor. State your name and address. Time will begin. Willie Hutzbitt, 623 Newton. I feel sorry for that young man. I really do. Okay. I'm going to...first I'm still protesting quietly and order ly that you put people at the end of the meeting because they speak regularly. That's backwards. That's not the way it should be. Why penalize someone who's wanting to be involved in the city and what's happening here? That's backwards, I think. But as long as you have that in your ordinance, then I will be here at the end protesting that. I have a question for you. First I'm just going to state, and I'll come back with more facts for the...about the ethics ordinance and the city manager. I'm going to deal with that next time. This one I want to deal with just to make comments about the hiring or the non-hiring of African Americans in the fire department. If you're not going to hire African Americans in the fire department, you only have two. In the history of Denton, and I need to find out how many years that is, two African American firemen. With the increase in the requirements that the chief explained to me that the city council has done, which is you must already have a certification to be a fireman and EMT before you even consider it. Do you realize how low you have now made the possibilities for someone to have both of those paid for themselves to ever get to be a fireman in the city of Denton? Before the two were hired, the requirement was that they had one fireman certificate or whatever they called it to be a firefighter. Now you have to have both. Look, figure out what the percentages is for us to, for me being an African American and have to pay taxes for those firemen to be a fireman, to pay for all that goes on to be a fireman. Tell me what that is, then give me that money back. You mean to tell me I have to pay for segregation? There is no way they will ever get hired in this city with two requirements being required to actually get to have an interview. You can't even have an interview without those two certificates. It's not certificate, it's qualifications or certification, that's what I'm looking for. The city council came up with these rules. I understand from the chief that the union negotiates the contracts that you operate from, and they successfully negotiated this. That's why I don't think the forum is something that they should be involved in, the firemen. If they are doing these kinds of things, why would they have a forum and then decide who's going to, well I know why they would do that. They would, they protect their own segregated situation and I'm having to pay for it. I want my money back. I'll come up with my own fire department for me and my house, which would be a water hose and a lot of prayer. That's it. But I'll be darned if I want to pay for something that my race has been segregated from and will never in this city, doesn't seem like ever be a part of this fire department. That's shameful. We have a question. Councilmember Briggs? I'm going to ask a question about you speaking at the end because you mentioned it several times. When you call to get on the agenda, do you ask to be put on the end or is that just where it happens to? I ask, do you still have the ordinance first that if you've spoken a few times, I don't remember how many, is the rule that you must go to the end? That's the first thing I ask. Then I'm told yes, that is the rule. So then I say, put me at the end then. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hesbitt. Okay. All right, we'll move on to our agenda nine, which is concluding items. Councilmember Gregory? Thank you, Mayor. A couple of things for our city manager. Could you please supply us with an informal staff report regarding the hiring requirements for the fire department? And when those rule changes went into effect, that's number one. Number two, it seems to me, according to my failing memory, that three, four months ago, there was a work session of the city council where we had talked about adjusting our procedures for our meetings, where we were going to end the presentation from members of the public at the end of the meeting, that we were also going to modify our open mic segment. And what are we waiting on to do that? Or do we, now that we have a different configuration on council, need to have another work session before we do something? If I could comment, Mayor, I think we have that schedule, the rules of procedure schedule, I think for June the 28th, which is where that will be addressed. That's on your matrix that you're provided. And it's coming up. It's been on the agenda and has been moved a couple of times. Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. There was an email that went out requesting the city council to appear on the greater Denton arts council all-star karaoke evening. If any of you went last year, this year it's going to be June 18th at 8 p.m. I believe it's at Dan Silverleaf again. Last year you might have seen Mayor Chris Watts singing P iano Man. A few of us sang some other stuff, but it was a fun evening . Anyways, we can't really get into a large discussion on this, but some of you guys chained in your interest level on that. A couple of you guys we still need to hear from. If Joey was here, he'd try and get us to pick a song. So we'll figure out a good way to do that. But if you don't have that on your calendar yet for us, if you're willing to join in, 8 p.m., June 18th, and then of course anyone in the community can come out. All the proceeds go to the greater Denton arts council. Thanks. Councilmember Riggs. Okay. So when we do that work session on the what Councilman Gregory mentioned, can we make sure and get clarification on that rule or ordinance that Mr. Hutz has spoke of about if you speak a certain amount of times at the -- yeah , just make sure that's in there so I can kind of see that. And then also for the economic development, is there any way that the department could give us a report or information on incentives that we may give to local small businesses like we do for other bigger companies? Yeah. All right. Councilmember Waschny. Compensation schedule. And I asked the city manager when was a compensation summary going to come forward? And we had a staff report that said August. I think that's too late because we're heading into budget discussions. And my request would be could we have it in 30 days? Could you contact the consultant and see if we can kind of move that up? Sure. I, in fact, met with a consultant this week. We are scheduled -- we're trying to complete the study or they are trying to complete the study. We have planned a presentation just as you have with other departments by the human resources department. I think on August the 1st and that's when we were going to also present the compensation study prior to the time the budget is presented to the city council. If it's possible to move that up, we can see if that's possible. But obviously your meeting times are limited in July. And we have to get the study finished. Well, there's a difference between August 1st and the end of August. So if we know it's August 1st. I think the date is August 1st. So we can include that in the budget talks. Sure. Absolutely. The next thing I would like to put the ethics ordinance back on the council agenda. And the third item, I'd like this council to consider a property tax freeze for seniors age 65 and over, homestead property. In 2003, the Texas Constitution was amended and it allowed government entities like city councils, counties, junior college taxing districts to freeze property taxes for seniors in their homestead property. The taxes are already frozen for school taxes. This would be freezing the property tax from the city for the seniors. There are two ways to get this done. One, a body like this can vote on it and pass it. Or two, citizens can gather signatures on a petition and put it on a ballot. And I'd like us to have a work session discussing this. Thanks. Councilmember Gregory. Regarding karaoke, I think we ought to have a tune that's from the last century, maybe mid-century modern. It doesn't have to go all the way back to Cab Calloway. 1960s. 60s would be fine. James Brown. I have a couple. I'm not sure that anybody informed our freshman colleague here that on karaoke they are automatically the lead in any musical. So, yes, anyway. I hear crickets. If I could ask staff, maybe customer service with DME, to contact one of the speakers, Mr. Max Folmar, regarding the due date on his bill just to ensure that everything is okay because he mentioned that the due date had changed. And I think he had a good question that I'd like to maybe see a report on is if due dates get changed, what is the procedure for doing that and notifying people and also to let me look at to see what type of opportunities there are for people who are on fixed incomes or the like to make sure that there aren't surprises like that. So that would be a great, I think, some information that I 'd like to see and I think would be helpful for my colleagues. Let's see if I've got anything else. Oh, I think -- well, anyway, the song "Grease Summer Nights " came into my head when I first saw this because that would involve a lot of people. And it would be a great lead for Councilmember Carey. Anyway, any other comments or concluding items? Seeing none, we will adjourn our meeting. Thank you.