Jun 21, 2016 City Council on 2016-06-21 1:00 PM

Good afternoon. I wanted to welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council Tuesday, June 21st, 2016 . It is 1 p.m. We're going to do things a little bit out of order on some closed items, but the first item we're going to call, just to sort of give you a preview, the first item we're going to call is Agenda Item 1 and 2 with a request for clarification, citizen comments, and then we're going to move into closed session to cover closed session items B and F and then we'll come back into open session and pick back up at our regular agenda posting . So we'll move on to Agenda Item 1, citizen comments on consent agenda items. Any? We have none? All right. Agenda Item 2, which is request for clarification on agenda items listed on the agenda for tonight. Do we have any requests for Council Member Hawkins? Excuse me. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to highlight D. I think that that's very cool that we're using a local company for that. So just to highlight that using Swash Labs and they'll do a great job. And then on H and I, I know there's no conspiracy or anything, but whenever I see change order, I just kind of want to know, have some clarification on what the change order is on H and I. H and I or H-N-I? H and the letter I. Okay. Sorry. Please. I can't. I'm not hearing that. And it just always, you know, it's not a flag, I guess, but I just want to know when there's multiple change orders that have happened. I know that's the way it is, whether it happens and that sort of thing. But if I could get clarification on that. You were. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If I could, I'd like to ask Brent Heath. Brent, if you could give some explanation on item H. Yes, sir. I'd be happy to. I think the key word on this item H for the change order is the part that says that's going to be a reduction. So it's going to be a savings of about a million dollars. We worked very closely with the contractor, D. Me did, and we found some ways to get the work done and save some money. So we wanted money. So when you save money , you need to do a change order. Yes, sir. That's awesome. Okay. Joey, if I could, we had some discussion about whether or not that required council approval. But the fact is it's a significant amount of work that was D. Me did to save that money and wanted council to approve it and be aware of it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Oh, is that and I? Yeah. And then the letter I, please. Yep . Jim Wilder, Engineering Services. Item I, the change order is the result of the ongoing construction is a sewer line project that's going through the middle of town. And while they were out there working, they discovered that water line was leaking. So in order to be efficient and fix it at the same time, that's what that that line items for. Thank you. Makes sense. Any any other? Yes, Council Mayor Pro Tem wrote. Thank you, Mayor. This has to do with the sorry, I'm looking quickly back at my agenda for the item letter, but it's the public art master plan. And the question really has to do with I know we had some significant conversation leading up to adopting. Well, moving forward and funding a master plan. And then we heard from the consultant we hired as to what our recommendations were, how they were kind of reaching out to the community. I was kind of surprised that this didn't end up as a public presentation on the plan, since it would kind of be a nice parallel to the conversation we had on the front end. So one suggestion is at some point, I was getting to discuss that from a policy perspective, I guess I want to make sure that there's a plan in place and ask the question of how does this now get integrated with how we're funding public art? Because as I understand it, the reason we went towards this was because we have attached to certain bond packages, certain percentage to go towards public art. And the goal of this was to say what would be those big ticket things should we have the money? So let's get a plan in place to do it. How does this work from a mechanically, I guess, as we have money coming forward again? What's the what does the plan do to help us make those decisions? Kevin, if I could, I'm going to ask John Cabrales to come up and give some explanation, but you've given a good summary of what the intent of the master plan was so that as those items were added to bond programs, we would have projects that the city council would be aware of and that were in our goals and objectives in order to add those and include them and how mechanically it works. Let me ask John to address that. This is John Cabrales, our assistant city manager. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Yes, sir. That is correct. The master plan was really to identify what opportunities there were as well as what parameters the public art committee would like to present to the city council for consideration going forward with public art. It really did not address the funding piece of it because that's pretty much already been set in place by policy set by the city council as it relates to how funds become available with future bond packages or how funds are made available with either existing funds. Either existing current and future budget appropriations. So what was lacking was a comprehensive look at what opportunities are out there. What are some of the big ticket items that the public art committee would like to start working towards collaborative ly with the council and the community? And that's what this document really laid out. There was not really supposed to be part of the study addressing the funding piece because that's already been established unless the council wants to have a separate discussion. And yes, to your recommendation, we can certainly come back and at some point in the future have a presentation on the recommendations. There are some recommendations for each year for the next five years that are in that document for what should be funded. But it does not address how it should be funded. >> So in terms of the decision making process of what gets funded when there's funding available, does that start with the public art committee and then move as a recommendation to the council? Does it start with the council if we're looking at big ticket items and move back to the public art committee? In other words, depending on my role or our role as a body in that decision making process, that becomes a good educational tool that I want to kind of have on my radar and thinking about which is why I suggested a conversation would be helpful. But if it's not, and it's just the public art committee is now tasked with that decision making process, that's helpful to know too. So I just didn't know how that works. >> No, certainly. It's not only up to the public art committee, city council, and even the community at large. Greater Denton Arts Council being an organization that obviously would have a keen interest in that. But any organization, neighborhood group, what have you, has access to this document. And they can go ahead and contact the public art committee and certainly they will begin the vetting process. So if there's anything in that document that interests you that you would like to pursue, by all means let us know. We can let the public art committee know and they'll be happy to dialogue and see what they can do as far as trying to fit it into their priority schedule. >> I have a question. Okay. Thanks. Would it, is it going to in any way impede the consultant finishing up her work and getting paid if we put this off, pulled it from the consent agenda, and held it for a future consent agenda after we had just a work session and heard a report? Would that hurt her signing off and getting paid? >> I don't believe it will. I'll go back and we can visit with our purchasing agent. Okay. So that won't have any impact at all. >> Okay. Well, I would like for us to consider doing that because I think that we need to have more of a discussion about it, especially when it comes to what Mayor Pro Tem Roden was talking about in terms of money and the aspects of that. Because I have some questions about it too. For example, on page 17 of the plan where we talk about place making signage. For example, if there is a business district that wants to have, to use some public art as a way of designating this area of town or a neighborhood that wants to use some public art in entrances to a neighborhood that's been established as a way of doing that. Would we be eligible at that point to use some of the public art funds that were set aside for road bonds? You know, we have that rule that says we have to set aside public art money for any CIP program, including roads. And so we're all scratching our heads, but maybe that would be a place it could go. I don't want an answer to that question today, but I would like to have a discussion and explore that at a future time as we go ahead and improve this plan. And I think it would be helpful to do it as we're looking at our hot funds budget coming up and as our budget discussions are coming up. Sure. We can certainly tee that up for a future discussion. So, Mayor, I would ask that we pull it from the consent agenda for today, slate it for another consent agenda at a future meeting at the pleasure of the agenda committee, but also with a work session. Everybody OK with that? Fantastic. Any other items of clarification on the agenda? Seeing none . Thank you. We will now, as I had mentioned, go into a closed session. We will convene at closed session at 1.12 and consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071 and then deliberations. No, no, just OK. Just never mind. Just consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071. Thank you all. Thank you. I want to welcome everybody back to this Tuesday, June the 21st, 2016 meeting of the Denton City Council. We are back in open session at 3.04 p.m. We will now presume resume our scheduled agenda, starting with agenda item three, which is work session reports, work session 3A, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding implementation of roadway impact fees. All right, P.S., I guess you're handling this. Yes, sir. Thank you, P.S. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm trying to get used to my glasses here, so if I read funny, you'll know why. This will be a continuation of the second public hearing that we had in April. So this is a work session I wanted to go through some of the questions that were raised in the last public meeting and apprise you of what work we have done before we actually have the public hearing in the regular session today. April 26, we had the second public hearing for the adoption of the roadway impact fees. The council requested some additional comparison data for roadway impact fees versus the existing DDC required road exactions. And the one comment that we got from the public during that time was a question on how would impact fees affect properties that have approved final and preliminary plots. That was another question that was raised. So we have gone back and done some comparisons. What we did, we took four years worth of fiscal year data and we looked at all of the permits that were issued in those four years. And then we looked at what DDC charged, so we have actual dollars from historical data. And then we compared that to what those dollars would have been had we had impact fees at that time. So I'm going to show you a spreadsheet. It is in your backup also, but I can go through this pretty quickly. As you can see, the data that we used was from 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. And let's look at the, I guess it's 2011-12 fiscal year. And we went through and we pulled all of the building permits that were issued for single family, multi-family, commercial, which includes the hotel, the number of rooms in the hotels, hospital if there was any, industrial based on the square footage of the industrial, restaurants, office and banks based on the square footage, and the stores, what is the retail, etc. And city county buildings, schools, churches, etc. So we took like a single family, 281 single family homes were constructed. We had building permits on those. Using the vehicle mile 4.9 and 612.25. If you multiply this number with the 4.9, it will give you $3,000. So using a $3,000 impact fee for single family and then a 25% discount on that, which is $4.5919 per thousand square feet for the commercial area, we calculated the impact fee for each activity. And that number came in at $3,111,526 for that fiscal year. Let me make sure I understand that. And I'm just going to do the single family duplex townhome. So that's 281 permits. For single family. So then the impact fee for a single family home would be the 612.25? No, it is a multiple, 612.25 is per vehicle mile. And there are 4.9 vehicle miles. In a single family use, okay, gotcha. So that is $3,000. Okay. All right. And then there's something about 25% or? Yeah, so what we have, you know, that is this, if it is a non-residential, and it's a 25% discount we establish. Okay. So if you take 612.25 and multiply that by .75, you'll get $4.5919. Okay. All right. So, and you're going to compare that with what it would be without the impact fees? That's right. Okay. And so we did that for four years. We can go back to the PowerPoint. Well, PS, I guess. Okay, that's the impact fee. So let's say if I'm pulling a permit outside of just what we're doing today, you know. I just pulled single family resident. Yes, sir. Look at the code. Got wastewater impact fees. I've got water impact fees. That's pretty much it on the impact fees. And if I'm just building on a single family lot, there really is no road -- there is no -- I mean, there is no exaction for building on that lot that's already there. Am I missing something? Yeah. You know, for single family, if you are doing a development , more than one home, you know, so you are doing actual subdivision, sir. So there are DDC requirements which require you to dedicate right away, require you to do perimeter street pairing, sidewalks, right away dedication, et cetera. Okay. So then that 281 was -- it's not based upon a single -- you 're saying if you're building a subdivision, you've got 200 lot subdivision. You're going to be paying all these exaction fees for whatever you got to pay, or you're going to be paying $3, 000 per house, which would be -- what is that, $600,000, 200 times $3,000? Yeah. Okay. And so you're going to show us the -- okay, here it is right here. Here's the numbers right here. So if you look at the then development code, that's the DDC , that is the current exactions. So we went back and we pulled the data to actually what we collected each year. So in 2008, 2009, all the way through 2011, '12, a total of $4,172,995. We had a $3,000 impact fee with a 25% discount for commercial, in the same years, then the total would have been $16,969,217. And we did another, you know, for a $2,500, so which is $ 500 less, and another 25% discount for commercial or non- residential. That amounts to $13,949,461. That's about a $3 million difference from a $3,000 impact fee. Quick question. Yes, sir. So when I look at this, what you're saying -- correct me if I'm wrong about what this slide represents, just sort of on its face. That is, under our current code, people who are developing residential subdivisions, based upon this information, paid $4.1 million worth of public improvements, whether they're streets, curb gutter, left-hand turn, all those things. Yes. Whereas under this, second column is $14 million, $17 million, which means they're needing to pay more, quote-un quote, of what we believe is their share of increased road usage. My thought is, though, those costs get directly passed through to the price of the home. Yes. And -- Somebody has to pay for it. Yes. Well, under this -- yeah, somebody's got to pay that additional $10 million or $12 million. So help me understand, when we're doing this, what kind of approach or factor was placed on the continued afford ability of homes in Denton? Because, I mean, that means you're going to add $3,000 to $ 5,000 -- either $2,500 or $3,000 to the price of a home like that. So is that something that was considered in this, or is it like, well, they're going to pay more, because if we keep it the way it is, then taxes are going to go up to pay? I mean, how did we factor in that? I've gone in and looked at affordability issue. What I'm looking at is, as we have seen before, the road exactions are very inconsistent, based on where they are located. So there is not an equal playing ground for all the developers out there under the current DDC. They do not capture and charge the true traffic impact created by the development. The DDC does not do that at this time. And the impact fees, on the other hand, are based on the development type and intensity of development. So they treat all the development equally and fairly. Excuse me, I do want to point out that the $3,000 impact fee is actually close to a 70% reduction from the maximum calculated impact fee. If you look at the $4 million that we collected, that's about 7.5% of the real cost of constructing a road out there that the city has to somehow construct to account for additional traffic. So we are collecting roughly 7.5%. >> So after you say that, how does the previous slide make sense? That's what I'm struggling with. >> This one here? >> Right. >> If they're paying- >> Yeah, as you see, this is based on $3,000 impact fee. >> Right. >> The maximum calculated impact fee is about $10,000, if you remember, close to $10,000 average. So we are looking at discounting that 70% and charge only $ 3,000. So there's a 70% discount already built in. Somebody has to pay that to build those roads in the future to account for the additional traffic that will be generated in the city. >> But if that were the case- >> It doesn't happen on that day, but it builds up over time, and that's where you run into problems. >> Then why are the road exactions per DDC, why aren't those numbers bigger? >> Why these are not bigger? >> Yeah. >> Because the way the DDC is currently structured. And the way, because you may be on a text art road. And if you're on a text art road, you don't have to do anything on that road, so there is no charge to you. But if you are on an unimproved street, then you end up paying a lot more than anybody else out there, because you have to do 25 foot of pavement there, you have to do sidewalk, you have to do right away dedication, you have to do all that on the perimeter street. >> But with the road impact fee, it just goes into the pool for- >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. >> It goes into a pool for each service area. >> We have, Mayor Pro Tem. >> And what was lost, I think, from previous presentations and what we're seeing here, because you're kind of putting it in aggregate together, is that we were looking at some specific, specific projects, saying here's what they did or didn't pay under the exact ion process, here's what they would. There is a lot of examples in which the impact fee situation was actually favorable to the developer. So I think if you look on specific projects across the board, anyways, I think there's a number of ways to compare it. And this looks shocking, even to me, after thinking about this for a long period of time. But when we were early on in the process, we looked at some real specific examples. And it was a tragedy what some folks were being charged and what other folks weren't being charged, yet they're creating impact to the roads, and that just gets paid for by the taxpayers. You're right, somebody's going to pay for it. At the end of the day, the question is, do we get to a point as a city in which we're asking new development to pay its fair share? No, and I don't disagree with that, but I think though, based upon some of the examples we were given last time about some really large disparities in that somebody just found a lot that was really conducive and didn't have to do very much at all, and that some found a lot that they had to do at all. And I mean, some projects died because of that. My struggle is that this is sort of an easier way to do it, I mean, and I'm all for doing things efficiently, but it sort of takes away some of that case-by-case analysis that says, well, because I struggle with the whole notion of impact fees to begin with, because it's, I mean, I understand what concept ually they're supposed to be. I understand what wastewater and all that, but when it comes to road impact fees, when we're talking about capacity of a road, we're not talking about the longevity of the road. We're not talking about how long is this road and its pavement going to last, 40 years, 30 years? We're talking about if you have a four-lane road, how many cars can that hold and still be within whatever the engineering norms are for that kind of road? And so whatever development you have, we're going to calculate this under some methodology to say, your development is putting this many more on this road, so this is what you're paying to increase the capacity on this road. Well, when I think of increasing capacity on a road, I think then that means you get to a point where you have to widen it or you have to do something with it. This just seems a lot more kind of mysterious than the wastewater and water impact fees, because, you know, you're saying, well, you get all these different people in, you got to have more water. You got to build more pipes, you know, maybe even bigger pipes. Yes, go ahead. So I'm not saying I'm opposed to it. I still don't necessarily totally get it. I mean, to be honest with you. No, no, I appreciate that. And I think that's why, well, this has been a long conversation. We're kind of getting it in piecemeal to some degree just because we're having to return and reengage ourselves in it . But recall, we've also looked at the mobility plan in conjunction with this plan. So we could say right now in our 10, 20 year, 30 year projections, which roads need that extra capacity. So which nodes need widening. And they put a price tag on the cost of that looking out into the future, which this was all tied to, to even get to the point of saying what's 100 percent, what's 30 percent, why would we give a discount to some and not others. So I think that's what the consultant group did in conjunction with our group. But the tethering it to the mobility plan was really a requirement of doing this, correct? Yeah, that was the foundation. That helps us arise at this from more of a scientific point of view of what's needed. Okay, Kathleen, then Keely. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's about leveling the playing field that, in my opinion, Denton hasn't had a level playing field. It's been very subjective in terms of development. And we've been talking about this on and off the whole time that I've been on council. One of the powerful slides that I don't see today was the slide that showed the impact fees for cities in North Texas around us. And other cities have fine tuned their impact fee because we're hot as fire in terms of development in North Texas. So you've got to have a development strategy in place so the developers come to the city. Right up front what the costs of development are going to be, here are the impact fees. And ultimately, developments add cars to our roads. We need to have those roads paid for by the people who are coming to drive on the roads. And that's not an unreasonable request. It takes place all over the country. So I don't have a question on do we need a revision of the impact fees. I think we desperately need it. I think we're behind because we don't have it. The question before us is how much per apartment, how much per single family home, and how much for commercial development that impact fee should be. Create a level playing field for the city of Denton as the city moves forward and grows. I just think we're behind and remiss that we haven't updated this portion of our development code. Keely and then Councilmember Frederick. My point is back onto to what you said, Mayor, about affordable housing and how that would translate. Say for instance in Dallas, we just got an email that Hab itat for Humanity is building over 25,000 homes for the middle class because we have a lack of single family affordable housing here. And if something like that were, if they wanted to do that here in Denton or like is that a dying project? Would they be able to do that type of thing? And it's possible that those people living in the homes wouldn't own a vehicle and they would use public transportation. So this is where I'm- Yeah, most times that type of housing is actually going in replacing an existing home, most times. And if you will see in the ordinance, the one page I passed onto you, it has a section where it says that if there is an existing use there, then if you're replacing with a single family home again, there is no impact fee. It will be true to a commercial facility also. If there was a commercial facility and you're replacing that with a commercial facility, then even if you increase the traffic up to 10 times, then what you currently have, there is not going to be impact fee. So it is in ways it helps to the infill development because most times that is where it is going in the infill area. Council Member Gravey. Thank you. This was not the, as Mayor Pro Tem Roden said, this was not the comparison that I was expecting when we were talking about looking at past and looking at the future. It's a fascinating perspective and it certainly suggests that a road impact fee, in addition to one of the basic reasons I was for it, was because it provides some predictability for our developers that they don't currently have. And I think that's something akin to what you were saying, Council Member Wasney. And I think the predictability is very important. But what I was imagining seeing was a comparison. For example, there is a residential development that is now starting from scratch on the east end of Windsor Drive. And I was curious about how much they're paying right now for road impact fees and how much they would be paying that particular development under this new proposal at $2,500 or $3,000. I was curious about maybe some of the particular developments, industrial or warehouse developments that had happened out on Western Boulevard, how much they were paying road impact fee now, how much they would be paying under the new plan. So I could see those kinds of comparisons. One other thing that I'm interested in, in terms of, and I think this gets to your question about affordability. When we saw it, and I'm having trouble putting my fingers on it on this laptop, the comparison of our proposed road impact fee with other cities, we were seeing what their actual cost was and what it was at 25%. You know where I'm going with this. You're finding it for me. No wonder I was having trouble finding it. I actually had tried to put more than what I might need. And I apologize for not giving you a heads up that I was going to bring this up ahead of time. Let's bring this out here. This was an older one. I had presented this to the developers committee last year. And I think this one does have. It had a bar graph. Yes. There we go. There we go. Thank you. Oh, man. You're so good, Mr. Aurora. Yes. So what my thought was, you look at, for example, let's just take Frisco. Their actual cost is $6,131. Their road impact fee is 60% of the total, which is $3,679. But if you think about that $3,679 in terms of the average cost of a home that's being built in Plano, that's significantly less than a $3,000 impact fee on a residential home in Denton, because the cost of a residential home being built in Dent on is significantly less than it is in Frisco or in Plano or in Flower Mound, any of those places. So I guess my one concern is that that $3,000 figure represents a significantly larger percentage of the overall home value in Denton than it does in the other towns. Granted, it may be that it's just costing us more to get our roads up to date. I want to show you this. Okay. This is something, you know, I had gone back and forth with the council for a long time. Yes, you have. When I brought this comparison, is at that time, the council looked at the numbers and said, we really need to move forward. And this is based on a $1,500 single family equivalent and a $2,000 single family equivalent. You're saying it's a $3,000 and $2,500, and those numbers then get much bigger compared to what you see right here. All right. So you've actually done, you've done some calculations with lower numbers. Yes, sir. You can see this is, it is approximately close to what it would be. You know, it is not as refined as I had done with the $3, 000, but it is in the ballpark. So this was done at that time with the $1,500 and a $2,000. I had brought that to the council. The council looked at it. That's when you are authorized to move forward with the mobility plan and the road impact fee . I absolutely support the moving to the road impact fee. And my only concern is the exaction. And I think I would be closer to $2,000 to $2,500 than I am to $3,000. Sure. And that's the council's pleasure as to where we want to go with it. Joey. I agree, Dalton. I want to move forward with this too. It's just kind of figuring out what that number is. And I'd like us to just look at it a year from now. And if we've gone too low, just reassess that rather than starting too high and maybe stop some development or momentum that we have right now. So I was thinking, you know, around that $2,300 to $2,500 mark there. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can't read the tea leaves as to what's going to tip the scales for a developer to do some certain type of housing versus others. I mean, I do remember a conversation this council had a couple years ago in a retreat session where we said we need to incentivize developers to do more single family houses because it's something we're lacking in city. And we're losing a lot of our business execs to other. Now I'm hearing the thrust is we need to make sure we get lower price zones. And I don't know that this impacts that one way or the other. I don't know how it relates to affordability. I don't know how it relates to what's going to cause a developer to say I'm doing this sort of house versus another. What I do know is we've got to figure out how we can pay for as a city, our continued need of road infrastructure moving forward. Citizens have been clear about our need to invest in that. This passes it on to developers. Certainly it gets passed on. Everything gets passed on. Building costs, everything gets passed on to anyone purchasing a home. But we've got to decide as a council what percentage are we willing to spread out to existing taxpayers the cost of new road projects moving forward. Or can we ask the development community as they're coming forward with new projects to put an increase amount of percentage onto that. There's a lot of policy implications to this. I just hate for the sake of we think we're going to get a bunch of new affordable homes by lowering that. I have no idea if that's going to happen. But we do know what will happen in terms of it's helping us defray the cost of infrastructure projects that we know we desperately need in the next 20, 30 years. So I don't want to get us caught in some discussion of theory of what we think is going to happen. Unless we have some data that shows us one way or the other , I get uncomfortable making decisions based on that. Yes. And I'm comfortable at that 2,000 mark. We've talked about 2,223. I'd rather start and be a little conservative and see how that, kind of flush it out, feel it out, see what happens. Nothing precludes his council from coming back in a year or two or three or four or five and saying we need it to increase. I doubt we'll ever come back and say we want it to decrease . But I'd rather err on the side of being conservative. And then if we decide there's a need, then we just make a decision as a body and increase that. And because those other numbers were just a little high, a little shocking. So I agree. I'm real comfortable with that. 2,000 SFV. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. And I'm not suggesting that we do this in an effort to try to somehow use a policy to engineer making it making more affordable housing available or not. I'm not sure. My concern is just that when we're looking at comparisons to other cities. That we that we don't do something. $3,000 road impact fee to a. 250,000 dollar home is significantly more in terms of a percentage than a road impact fee of $3,000 to a $500,000 home. And that's that's my concern is that that seems a little bit off balance. And I would think. Something less than 3000, probably something at 2000 or a little bit more. Because again, as you mentioned, Mr. Roden, either we pay for it this way or we pay for it through other taxes and and and policy wise, one of the things I'm most advocating for always is that new development needs to pay for itself. Yes. So when we're looking at it in terms of. Dollar amounts per single family, what does that shake down to in terms of percentage? Percentage of what's that percentage of what? Well, percentage of what the total cost would be. In other words, we were at when we were looking at the earlier chart, even the chart that you looked at to compare cities. Yeah, you were showing the percentage will be about 20%. Which is at 20%. 2000 is that 20. Our calculated maximum fee is close to 10,000. It's shared less than 10,000. So 2000 is roughly 20% of what the maximum we can charge. And so go back to that comparison chart with the other cities again. And then my other question, I guess, why you're pulling that up is. Let's see here should be in the PowerPoint. Sorry. Okay, here we are. There it is. Okay. And I know you have been working closely with a development group in town sharing these thoughts. Was there any weighing in from that group as to preference on percentages? No, actually, I had done this presentation after I did this presentation for the mobility committee. The mobility committee recommendation was to go with the $3 ,000. 30%. Which was 30%. Right. When I went to the DEN County developer's alliance, DCDA, that was a pretty fair representation. I had probably 25 people there and the city staff and all. So I went through the full presentation. There was a lot of give and take. There was questions asked. I spent over an hour with them over there. They didn't really have an issue with that. Not with the 30%. So that's where the only question after we were done with all that was they wanted to have some sort of a relief on an infill. Right. And if you see the ordinance in the highlighted section where it says 10 times, it really allows infill area development to happen without getting penalized for impact fees. There is no impact fee. It takes that away. The other that came from Lee Ramsey, he is the one who put together that spreadsheet. And the meeting that I had with him was his main concern was industrial type development. And I want to show you what we have put in maybe an alternate ordinance that is the sheet that you already have highlighted there. Let me see if I can pull that. Okay. So what we are saying is that for an industrial facility, if you see these three items right here, should include this one. These three items. General light industrial, general heavy industrial, and industrial park. Instead of the multiplier of 5.82 or 4.08 or 5.1, we will limit that multiplier to 1.92, which will be like a warehouse. So if you want to come in into the city and you're going to bring in jobs with a industry, then this is a way to incentivize from the impact fee side. That gets built into the ordinance as such. And you see that highlighted section there. Is that section -- pardon me, mayor. Is that section G? Yes, sir. Section G. And it limits that to 1.92. It caps that at 1.92. That's helpful. Thank you for doing that. Yes, sir. So then if we sort of use that same kind of paradigm as we move down through these other land use categories, let's say residential, for instance. The residential, the multiplier is 4.9, multifamilies 3.0, and then assisted living senior are in the sort of the low ones. Yes. Does that mean that based upon how those are presented or decided that it favors one particular over another? No. Like on multifamily, you got 3.04. So that means it's less -- so your impact fees -- your road impact fees will be less to build multifamily than it would be to build single family. It is about 62%. It is totally based on the intensity of traffic generated from that particular use. So it is a number that statistical data that we get from the ITE manual. And so we are really not doing anything to that. We are taking that data and we are plugging that in here. And on the multifamily, that's per unit, whatever that road impact fee is. Yes. So you have 100 units and it's whatever we decide. Yes. You multiply that times. That's right. Well, that'll -- So if it is $2,000 -- I'll slow that down a little bit. Yeah. So if it is $2,000, then it is about 62% of that. It gets you about $1,200. So if you have 200 units, that's $240,000. So 1,200 times 200 units. Yeah. Roughly in that way. Yeah. All right. But if you look at the cost of the construction, that's a very small amount to pay as a percentage. As a dollar number, it looks big, but as a percentage of the total cost, it's a very small amount. Sure. Okay. All right. Yes. So I've covered -- Did you have a question, Keely? I'm sorry. This is an action item tonight? Yes, it is. Okay. Yeah, it is in a public hearing. So we had one, and then basically it's a continuation of that on today's date. Okay. So I've covered these items here pretty much. Talk about shortfall. Talk about I got this data from our finance department. Each penny amounts to about $842,000. So a 3,000 SF equivalent could be like 3.8 cents that we are saving for the taxpayers to have to fund that for road construction if we have the $ 3,000 impact fee. But if we go lower, then the saving will be less. I took the total dollars for each year. I averaged it out. It amounts to about 3.8 cents. In terms of the final plans, plenty of plans really do not give any investing based on the impact fee state regulation. But the final plans, which are recorded, they do. And we have 87 -- I had gone to the planning department, and as of May 7, 5 actually, we had 87 final plans. Now, the state law, the impact fee law, states that there's one year grace period. So say if we have an impact fee adopted today, so two weeks from today is the date when the ordinance will go into effect. So anything that came in before the adoption of the ordinance, one year from the date of the adoption of the ordinance, if they pull all the building permits for that final plan, there is no impact fee. But if they went beyond the one year window, then they will pay the impact fees. So if it is a sizeable development, yes, they would go more than one year to pull all the building permits. If it is 30, 40 homes or 50 homes, maybe, they will pull all the building permits and they won't pay an impact fee. Most cities go with one year. Some cities have gone in and done a two year grace period. It is to the, you know, it is the council's policy wherever we want to go with that. So if you want to be a little more liberal in that, and we want to, because they still would be doing the DDC exemptions. It's not that they will be zero, but it will be at about 7% of the collection rate, roughly, that we have right now with DDC, but they will be as part of the DDC exemption. Okay. Any questions for Paul? Yes. Just want to confirm that you met with the development community and they were comfortable with the 30%. Yes. When I did the presentation, I did show them the $3,000 impact fee number that I had got recommendation from the mobility committee. They didn't have any issue with that number at that time. Thank you. So if a project is being done in phases, that is all considered in a final plat and they have to pay that road impact fee for the whole project? No. When the developer comes in and they do the final plat, they don't pay impact fee at that time. Okay. They will start paying impact fee as they start pulling the building permit. So if they pull 10 building permits, say, for single family . So for 10 homes, then they will pay the impact fee at that time. Thank you. So it's really not the developer. It is the builder who buys that, you know, developed property. They are the ones who actually pay the impact fee. Okay. Unless the developer is also the builder. The builder pays the impact fee. Yes, sir. Councilmember Riggs, do you have a question? No. Just mostly whenever -- or the presentation that we received from a developer, it was a range between 15 and 30%. 30% was still approved. It was just at the higher end. So I was just making note of that. Something you received from the developers? A presentation that we got last time. Okay. Yeah. We were seeing other cities, you know, as to what the other cities are charging. And when I had gone to the mobility committee, which is essentially three council members, and done the presentations and showed the comparisons, then the general consensus was that 30% is a good number, which is $3,000. Yeah. Which is what I took to the DEN County Developers Alliance and did the presentation to them. They didn't have an issue at that time. Right. Okay. Now if they do, I don't know, but at that time they did. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Just one more, Mayor. Yeah. Councilmember Garey? Yes. I have a question regarding if we already have a policy in place to provide credits to master plan communities for their fees, various fees that they have to pay, because in the ordinance it says that master plan communities can receive a credit against the roadway impact fee, depending on some type of city rubric. Yeah. The credit is mainly for any projects that we have in the impact fee list of projects to do. So if that project is there and then that development happens to construct that project or part of it, then whatever cost they put in, they get a credit for that in the impact fees. And that's a policy that we have right now? No. That will be in the ordinance for the impact fees. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Just to touch on what Kevin had said earlier, in your personal opinion, if the road impact fee was at 20% or $2,000, do you think that would attract a certain kind of house or what's your personal opinion on that? It would be the council's discretion, but it probably doesn 't hurt to be conservative and start out a little bit on the other side. And then as we see how the funds are coming in and then we also see the need as we go forward with the road projects that have to be done, then these can be adjusted. And it takes time for development community to get used to it. So it's probably not a bad idea to start a little bit on the lower side, be a little conservative about it, and then as we go forward in a year or two or three years, see how much funds we are collecting, what is our need really, and are we running really short on the projects to do, then it can be adjusted. Do you think 20% would be a good starting point or is that? Probably not a bad idea to start with $2,000. That's essentially my presentation. The rest of it, you know, you have already seen these things from the recommendation, the CDA, CISC recommendations. So today's action would be in the public hearing to hold the continuation of the public hearing number two, consider approval. So here this number will change if we go to a lower number, then we can change this in our ordinance on the residential impact fee per vehicle mile because if we go to $2,000, then this number will be lower. And same way, this number will be lower also because it's a 25% reduction from whatever we have here for residential. Quick question. When we talked about this last time, there was some discussion about if we are in a TIF, if that is impacted by the road impact fees as far as public infrastructure development in a TIF. What was the final analysis on that? The legal opinion that I got on that was that impact fee legislation, it allows us to charge impact fees in a TIF area. No, okay. I guess the question was too, was brought up by people who are participating in those, is that something that we want to do or are we going to allow some -- and I think it was brought up out of the West Park TIF, I believe. And if -- Amy, do we have any -- where is everybody's position on that? Has this been communicated to them that no, we're not going to -- we're going to go ahead and charge you and how does that affect how we move forward ? Does it have any impact? Yeah, the way it would be done is that the developer is putting money into constructing the road out there, right? So there is a credit that can be allowed that portion of the road that got done by the developer on the Western Boulevard. So there's a cost there. There's a right of way to education. There's a value in that. There's a value also in the portion of road that they did. Part of that was done by the city. It was not done by the developer. The first part of it. Right. The portion that they are doing, the value of that could be accounted for and then a credit can be applied for it, for whatever impact we've calculated. I guess my question then is, has that been communicated to the parties who raise that concern? And if so, what was their response? No, I've not had direct communication with Phil. No, sir. Okay, so does that mean that there's not been any discussion with them about their concern on this? Not directly, no. Okay. We haven't really had any communication. Does any other staff have any, I mean, is there any other information on that question that... Mayor, I thought that we had had or Amy had had discussion with particularly some of the people in that district and I don't know whether there's, and in fact I may have met with them myself with Amy, but and communicated to them how this would work, but that's been some time back. So I don't know whether the numbers you're talking about here will change or not. John, do you know or does Amy know? George, you're correct. We did meet with them and we did talk about options for how this would or would not impact them directly. And I believe, if I understand correctly, the solution that PS referred to would address that. Now have we followed up with them to discuss the final form of the resolution? I personally have not done that. I don't know if PS has or not. But it's your understanding that at least their concern that was raised based upon the presentation here and maybe some adjusting of some numbers may positively impact them as far as what their concerns were. Yes, sir. Okay. Great. Okay, sir. That concludes my presentation. Yes, Councilmember Pro Tem. And just to clarify, the CIAC is essentially P&Z, correct? Yes, that's right. No additions. It's Capital Improvement Advisory Committee. It was appointed by the Council and we basically gave that role to the P&Z. And they too didn't scoff at the 3,000? No, sir. But then added these additional recommendations which are in field development. That's correct. That's where you see the 10 times, up to 10 times, that recommendation came from the CIAC. Okay, thanks. Councilmember Wasney. So do we need to agree on the 2,000 versus the 3,000 before tonight? Yes, if we're going to pass the rural impact fees, then we have to address how much we're going to charge. So where are we on that? So the resolution can move forward tonight or not move forward tonight? Well, it sounds like at least I've heard two or three of you say that you're more for a more conservative number around the 2,000 range. I believe PSU said that that might be okay with you starting out initially, but that you'd want to revisit that. Is that my understanding of the conversation? Councilmember McGregor? I think what I would prefer is a 2,500 number. And what I was planning to do was during the meeting, amend it to say that, but if there's a sense that that's not going to fly, then let's make it move more fluidly tonight and whatever number works. Okay. Does that answer your question? Okay. All right. I guess you'd mentioned something about the changing of the number two, which was the non-residential impact fee. Have we really talked about modifying that from what your recommendation was? Yeah, actually the 612.25 equates to $3,000. Yes. And so we've talked about that one, but this number two, which is non-residential, I know we talked about it, but was there, I think your recommendation was 459.19, which translates into what? How much? No, it will be then 382.65. And so is everybody okay with that? Okay. All right. I guess you mentioned that you thought we might be changing that. Yes, sir. It doesn't sound like it. It will be $510.20 at $2,500. This number will go down to 510.20. And then this number will go down to 382.65. Okay. All right. Check me on that, Jeff, please. Okay. I did that on my cell phone. And then if there's a motion made and something different and we all get an opportunity to vote what we think it should be. All right. Any other questions for this presentation? Fantastic. Thank you, P.S. Appreciate that. Thank you. Now, you'll be making a presentation in the -- I'll be hearing. -- meeting. Okay. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. It will be essentially the same presentation that I had. Okay. Great. All right. We'll go on to agenda item B, 3B, which is receive, report, and hold discussion, provide staff direction regarding the DME Hickory substation site located at the intersection of West Hickory and South Bonny Bray. Thank you, Mayor Brian Dascombe, who's with DME, will present this work session item. Thank you, Brian. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council, and thank you for your time and attention on this item. While I don't need any vote on this item, I would appreciate your direction as we consider the Hickory substation and what kind of aesthetic treatment and some operational treatment we want to give to that substation. So you've got sort of a menu of options in front of you, and that's really where the biggest question that I have lies, but I'll give you a bit of background here. You'll remember the site for the Hickory substation was approved at the end of 2014, and this site is at the convergence of Oak and Hickory, and there were Bonny Bray meets with those two streets. And so this is sort of a gateway to the city. And with that being the case, there was a lot of concern for how this substation would look as people come into the city. And so the City Council requested that we put together a committee to consider the aesthetics of this substation. We did just that, and that committee met a few times. And so on this kind of menu of options you have, on the right side, you'll see reflected there the recommendation that came out of that committee. We've acquired the properties on this site. And since then, we've learned, really as an organization, we've learned about gas insulated substations, and we've given you some information on that technology. And the new kind of possibilities that it holds out as far as how a substation could look. We've relocated the residents who run that property, and the structures have been removed. And so now we're ready to go forward, but we'd like to get some direction from you on what kind of substation you'd like. So this here on the screen, as well as on your menu there, is what came out of that aesthetics committee. We worked with the architect David Robinson, and he just reflected the preferences of that committee. That's what you see there. One question, one important question, is how much would that substation wall cost? So again, on the right side, you'll see that architectural style wall, and there is a premium cost for it. We're not exactly sure to the dollar what that cost would be. We've heard estimates as high as 3.5 million for that wall. And Freeza Nichols, a consulting firm we work with, put it at about 3 million. Our typical substation wall is 500,000, and so we recognize that's a lot of money, not for a building, but just for the wall that would go around the substation. We, given some of the information we see in the estimate from Freeza Nichols, for instance, the contingency you'll see on here is over 700,000. And so we thought perhaps that's too conservative, and so you see a $2 million premium for that architectural wall on the menu of options you have there. So to help me understand, this slide in reference to this is the one on the top right-hand corner I'm looking at? It's both of those on the right-hand corner. So you can see from the left to the right- Oh, the difference between the one and the other. Exactly. And it's really what's the cost of that wall? Well, we already have a cost. We've built enough substations that we know it costs us about 500,000 for a standard wall, which is that masonry wall, but to move up to that architectural wall- Is an additional $3 million. Well, along those lines, a total of $3 million, perhaps a premium of $2 million to $2.5 million. Okay, gotcha. Yes. So, Brian, when we see the price tags on this that you've passed out to us, that's really, really noting the difference in cost between the different types of substation, irregardless of what walls around it, correct? Well, it's inclusive. So at the top, you have the air-insulated substations, and on the bottom, you have the gas-insulated substations. And the bigger price difference is between air-insulated and gas-insulated. And then- But you're factoring in that $2 to $3 million in this total cost. That's right. So my question is, the reason we even were talking about an architectural committee in the first place was because of the assumption that this was an air-insulated that looks like that. That's right. And so we're like, "What can we do to make this put a gold ring on a pig?" So to speak, for lack of a better analogy. What does a gas-insulated substation look like without the wall? What are we hiding? And do we need to hide? I can't see beyond it other than that big brick building, but what else is there? That's right. Well, if you could see behind the brick building, you'd see there is a structure there that encloses those gas-insulated substation equipment. But then you've also got some equipment that would stay out in the open, some bus work that would be visible that we would need to protect, even if it was with a chain-link fence, which is not what we're asking you to do. But there's still some equipment we would need to protect and keep from people. I'd like to add, this menu of options. We understand this doesn't show the full range of possibilities of what you could do. It shows our standard wall, what came from that committee, and these two different technologies. But I just want to say we recognize there are options not shown there. Oh, sorry. Did you have a question? No. Well, I guess, is the footprint understood to be the same between the two different types of substations in terms of how much space we need? Yes. Yeah, it would help to see a picture of what we're hiding. I mean, obviously there's a height issue that's not at play . So anyways. But it looks like, in a nutshell, that the gas insulated adds 13 million approximately to the project. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Hawkins. Is there an air insulated with underground lines? You can do that. That's an excellent question. You can underground the transmission lines and still do an air insulated substation. So that's one of those options that's not reflected on the menu here. The reason we didn't show that is because it's not obviously the case that you'd want to spend the significant money to underground transmission and yet to have those above ground structures left in an air insulated substation. So in that top right hand corner, those poles that are exist, those would be there even there would be some sort of poles or some we'd see something if the grounds if the lines were underground. That's right. Okay. Yes, Council Member Gregory. My memory is that we've had some open houses with the people in the community and that the original agreement was for the top right hand corner. Is that correct? That's right. Yes, sir. And that all happened before we as an organization were really aware of this gas insulated substation technology. Also, we spoke to the PUB about this, the Public Utilities Board, about this last week and they indicated that that upper right hand corner was the preference of that board. Well, I mean, I'm the one that asked for this discussion because of just the discussion on the Bernard Streets. And let's make clear that which was brought out in one of the discussion. I'll be honest with you, I'm still for the gas insulator. Now, you want to do something with that wall, do something different, that's fine. Because number one, the cost we get one and a half times the capacity of from the air insulated to the gas insulated, you do increase the capacity. That's part of that increased cost from what I remember in that conversation. It allows for the potential to add more capacity. So any of the substations you see here would be approximately 50 MVA. That's the capacity they would have. Now the difference with the gas insulated is that we would have the space and the capacity to increase to 100 MVA. But this shows the ability to do that, but not yet the cost to add that additional equipment to increase to 100 MVA. Okay, well then that's different than the presentation on the Hickory, the Bernard substation was that was, I mean, I remember specifically Council Member Johnson at the time pointing out that the costs that were shown were considerably different, but that you're going to have more capacity with the gas insulator. It's a real advantage to the gas insulated substation and we wouldn't have to acquire new property, we wouldn't have to redo that wall. And certainly in a congested urban environment, that would be a real benefit. I still think where this is, I don't mind paying the extra costs. I mean, good heavens, we were looking at over at Bernard, increasing the cost by 10 or 15 million dollars to save 13 homes and this is going to be in one of the major thoroughfares of our city. And so I think you could probably get that cost down and you do have an additional capacity factor and if we're expecting all this growth to occur. So the additional capacity may help us avoid having to put some other new substation somewhere else in this area if it continues to grow. In other words, you do have additional capacity. I know it's more cost, but look at it. I mean, so anyway, that's just my thought on it. I'm not trying to spend extra money, but I think if you're going to have something in a place where you're fixing to redo the whole Bonnie Bray Street, I believe, widen it and make it something that's a major threat. I'm not. Somebody is, yes. Yeah. Do what? You're fixing to do it? I'm not, but somebody else is, yes. So you may be fixing to get to this point, but the other, the increase in this cost, not just in the substation, but also in the underground and the transmission lines coming into that substation. Right. So it does clean up some, you know, take out some overhead line poles coming into the substation also in addition to clean up the site itself. In what buffer area, what from this side? Are you talking about 100 feet? Are you talking about 200 feet? I'm talking about overhead structures would still be, think about this, the street going out is oak and so going across the street from the subst ation on the north side of oak, you'd have the structures coming up out of the underground there. We would put, we would, coming to the south side, we would put the transmission lines underground, say a block away from the substation. So it kind of gives you a block away from the substation for you to bring up those transmission lines overhead. Okay. All right. Okay, Council Member Riggs. So when we first started talking about gas insulated, I believe resident brought it up to us and did a presentation and you guys were a little bit uncomfortable with it. Are you more comfortable now with the technology? That's a good question. That was on the Eagle substation project and it was, like I say, fairly new to us as an organization. Over time what we've learned is they're kind of analogous to underground lines and that the look is cleaned up because those lines are underground. Outages are less frequent, we anticipate, but when outages occur it takes longer to get the lines back in service. So while there's, there are opinions within our organization, I think generally that's what we've, that's what we found. Wow. Healthy discussion. Okay, Joe. Well, just to add, I totally forgot about the capacity of it, so that does change the conversation for me too. I just was comparing them all as the same one, so. So let's talk about capacity needs for this area. If we went with upper right hand corner, how many years do you feel that substation considering what is built there now, considering that this part of town is hemmed in by 35 and the hospital is there, there's a lot of development already around it. What potential growth would you see and what potential need and how long before you would come back do you anticipate to ask for additional capacity? Yes, ma'am. Well, we originally put forward this project with the air insulated substation in mind and certainly we expect that if we built any of these, any of these options, they would be sufficient for the needs of that area for decades to come. If that's 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, of course it's hard to say with real accuracy knowing how fast UNT is growing and that sort of thing, but this is what we think will meet the needs of Denton for the next few decades. Anybody else? Is that it? Well I didn't know. We'll need to build out of these. No, sir, no, sir. That's it. Okay, well, direction. That's the presentation. I've already stated my preference. You're bottom right. I am, yeah. Yes, Kevin. I like that as well. I think it's a bold statement for us to make in an important area in which that neighborhood has had concerns about decline in that area and what sort of encroachments coming in or coming out and so I think the extra cost is worth it for the area. Well, if we're going to go with the gas insulated, I would definitely go with the bottom right. Just with the aesthetics of it. Anybody else? I'm not sure if that means silence is agreement or silence is not agreement, so. I prefer top right, but I would not balk at bottom right. Okay. Well, I prefer top right. If we could get rid of all of the power lines in, yeah, you 're going to clean it up a little bit, but look at the photo over on the left-hand side. You still have power lines running right down the street. It's not as if you're going to clean up the whole visual landscape. You still are going to have power lines up and down Bonnie Bray. You're still going to have power lines up and down Oak and Hickory. So we're specifically talking about just cleaning up the air over. How high on upper right-hand corner, how high is that wall? Is that a two-story? Is that 20 feet high? Yes, ma'am, 20, 25 feet. 23. So 23 feet high. So you're in your car and you're driving. That's a two and a half story building up in terms of that 's what you're going to see. You're going to see two and a half story tall of that building. When you're on top of it, when you're driving from I-35 down Bonnie Bray, you're going to see that. Yeah, when you're right, who's in the picture? Somebody standing in the middle, who is that? Is that you, Brian? No, sir, those are artist renderings, not real people. So no, I get it and I certainly understand, Kathleen. I think if we're going to own a municipal utility and if we 're going to have substations in neighborhoods and if we're going to have to decide, or we haven't decided if we're just going to be totally cost-conscious or we're going to look at some other set of values that govern our decision and based upon the Hickory, the Bernard Street discussion, we took into consideration another set of values that increase that cost dramatically. And it was a worthy value. In fact, that's really where the gas-insulated discussion came from was that particular one. So I guess, so you're for the upper right. Councilmember Briggs, I mean, I hate to try to take, I'm just trying to get direction. I mean, if somebody starts nodding their head saying the lower right-hand corner is fine, well then we'll move on, but I don't want to leave anybody out. I prefer the aesthetics of the two on the bottom, but I'm also curious because Councilmember Hawkins brought up burying the air-insulated lines, what kind of cost that would be with, so I'm just kind of curious where that would fall in if that's that much of a difference. For about $6 to $7 million with the top right, you could have the same wall air-insulated with underground transmission. So that would be 20, 21, so it would be six or seven less than that, kind of in the middle between these two. So it could almost be the difference between the capacity of the air-insulated and the gas-insulated. That's where some of maybe the specific technology costs come into play. Is there some type of return on investment in terms of the capacity? Simply related to capacity, well, of course, our revenue comes from selling electricity, and so if there's an increased capacity, there's an increased ability, although I'll even take that back because we're certainly going to provide electricity to whoever needs it in the area. Now we do get a return on investment on the funds we spend on transmission projects, and so that's... Oh, that's specifically what you're asking for? Okay. If there's greater capacity, is there a greater return for us in terms of the transmission? The capacity itself, as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the capacity itself doesn't impact the rate of return we receive. The cost certainly does. But in terms of capacity, you've just told us that the air- insulated is going to cover us for the next two decades, correct? Yes, ma'am. For a matter of decades. So I really am fascinated by the underground option, which is halfway between upper right and lower right, so that you would knock out what's up there, put that underground. So then the difference is between air-insulated and gas-ins ulated, but it's a difference between adding 6 mil or 13 million, and I'd rather add the 6 and the 13. Putting it underground, I think, would be a compromise between the two. Aesthetically, it gets us to the same place, and that knocks out the overhead eyesore. The walls are the same. It puts that underground. So if we're coming back to air-insulated versus gas-ins ulated, and you've indicated that for the next 20 years, capacity out of the air-insulated is more than adequate, I don't know that we have to go to the gas-insulated just based solely on capacity. Well, that's not my sole reason. Yeah. Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem. Can I clarify to her question, because I thought you answered this earlier, and I just want to make sure I understand it. You said while you might be able to bury some of the overhead lines, and as I'm seeing in the illustration, a line that's kind of going off the picture, but those poles all still have to exist, because it looks like they're connecting to one another as well. And so part of the air insulation is probably keeping them separate to some degree. So what will we still see there, even if you buried transmission lines? So almost all of the above-ground structures you see on these images would remain, even if the transmission lines were buried. Chuck, do you want to give more precision to that? Mike, please. Somebody said it would look like the lower right. That's what you would get for putting the transmission underground. Those poles in that picture will all go away. There'll be some back behind the existing substation, but the wires and poles that you see standing up there right there will be replaced with structures that are about between 16 and 24 feet high, instead of 70 to 80. Okay. All right. Council Member Offens. So I think having the lines underground is a great idea. Is it overkill, just capacity-wise, just speaking about capacity, to have a gas insulated unit there? Do we not need that capacity there? I mean, would it be good to have that, or do we? I guess to serve the load we see today, no. Now what will be built on where Fouts Field is? What's going to be the rest to build out of Razor Ranch? If something moved in to where Fouts Field is now that was a huge energy consumer, that could change the picture. Huge dorm. A data center. Yes. So a dorm would be a huge data center. Something could move in that would change that. But as far as what we foresee right now, this would provide ... And what's the life expectancy of a gas insulated unit? The same, if not better, than the air insulated. The maintenance, I mean, it's kind of like underground. I mean, the maintenance is less. The only issue is when it has an outage, it's a longer out age. And to that point, because I know we talked about this last time, with the air insulated and there was an outage, you're really good at getting people back online. Gas insulated could be as long as two days, is that correct ? So certainly our staff would receive training on gas ins ulated substations and I mean, we've already sent some people to the seminar on gas insulated substations just to get an idea of what we're getting into. And they would be able to do the basics. But as I talked to the chief operating officer at Austin Energy, who has a gas insulated substation, I asked her what their experience has been. And her experience was my engineers love it because it's a new technology that they enjoy deploying and they think has advantages for longevity and service. Their operations guys don't like it because they don't know how to work it. They're not as familiar with it. They don't feel as confident in themselves being able to repair it and get back online as quickly as they could with the technology they're familiar with. And so most people, and we included this, since we only have one or maybe two of these, we would do an outside contract with someone to be on call. And they're getting more frequent so they're being more available. It would be affirmed it would have people in Texas. But they may be a 24-hour notice before they get on site. So that's a concern for me. That's not a concern for me. No? No, because I think you can-- if these things are getting more prevalent, I think you can find-- plus you're telling me that the outages are much less, that they're much less than that. Right now. I'm OK with the gas insulated. So if you're not, that's OK, and if nobody else is, that's OK, too. So we just need to give direction. I mean, I'm not going to beat this dead horse. So what is the direction for Council? I sort of stated my preference. It sounds like there's an option that popped up with gas insulated-- I mean, underground transmission with air insulated, but with the same facade for about $21 million or something like that. That's right. Estimate, obviously. So you're for that? You're for that? Yeah. Can I ask one question? Yeah. Yeah. OK. As part of our large scale transmission substation build out project, how many more substations do we have to go that we haven't discussed yet as a Council ? We haven't cited them. We haven't talked about anything along these lines. Less than half a dozen. So could you repeat that on the way? He said less than half a dozen less, under six, I guess. My slight concern, although I'm really fine with the bottom right hand corner on this. My slight concern is as we move forward, and every subst ation-- almost every substation siting is a difficult community conversation because you're putting something like this in somebody's backyard. We've made decisions to put the open air, prior to even having the conversation of this new technology. I just think we have to understand that we're putting ourselves into a position of everyone's going to love their neighborhood that they live in, as much as the West Oak folks, and think their thoroughfare is an important city thoroughfare or whatnot. And so I'm not knowing those. I'm still fine with doing that. I think we just have to understand that continued conversation as we're going to have more of these coming online. Sure. All right. We need some more weigh-ins. Bottom right. OK. Top right. Bottom right. Top right. But it's top right with underground. Right. Yeah. I think you're it. You're the direction. All right. Maybe. Well, it would have to be underground if it was the top right. But I'm actually OK with trying with new technology. I think it's good to be forward thinking. And if it's just a few, I mean, if you bury it, I don't have a hard cost to look at to see what the difference is. But I'm OK with going with the bottom right. But again, back to Mayor Pro Tem. I think that we should think about that seriously when we 're looking at other options coming up for the new substations. OK. So at least that's the direction it seems like. Bottom right. Council Member Oden, Mayor Pro Tem. You know, one thing I learned real quick in my first major issue on council, which was the Fry Street, and I was the last one to speak. I made sure on important issues I was never the last one to speak. Anyway, I'm sorry. All right. Do you have sufficient direction? Yes, sir. Thank you. OK. Well, the natives, everybody's getting restless. All right. We're going to go on to agenda item C, which is receive report and hold-- I'm sorry, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding city council committee nominations. Thank you, Mayor. City Secretary Jennifer Walters is going to ask you some questions about this item. Mayor and council, this is your annual review of your city council committees. You were provided a current list of your committees. I did hear from two council members. Council member Gregory indicated that he would like to continue his current assignments and that he would be interested in serving on the Hot Fund Committee if no one else is interested. And council member Wasney indicated that she would like to continue with her current assignments. So at your pleasure, would you like to go through them one by one? It's council's pleasure. I guess for me, if I can remember correctly, I think probably the only one that I wouldn't mind rotating off to give someone else an opportunity is the Economic Development Partnership Board. OK. In your backup, it was indicated that the EDP board, the downtown TIF, and the TERS number two will be considered at a later date. Oh, sorry. I apologize. Well, the EDP has a nominating committee and all that. You're right. That's true. You're right. So those three are off the table for tonight. Gotcha. Fantastic. Fair enough. Yes, committee. So it might be-- oh, go ahead. OK. I'm really happy with the committees that I'm in. But if there is an availability for the mobility committee, I would like to do that. I don't know if we're supposed to do this right now or-- If you're asking my opinion, I think it's easier for you to go committee by committee so we don't get-- OK. Let's do that. --back and forth, back and forth, if that's all right with you all. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Yes. OK. That's just me. Yes. No, no. Go. Yes. OK. So I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. I'm going to go to the other committee. Member committee, Roden Gregory Watts. Ethics, Briggs, Wasney, Roden. Okay. Hockens and Watts with a vacancy that Councilmember Gregory would like if no one else does. Okay. I'll put Gregory. Excuse me, mobility committee Gregory and Roden with a vac ancy from Johnson. Excuse me. Keely, okay, Briggs. Community Justice Councils, Roden. Convention and Visitors Bureau. Briggs, Gregory, Hawkins. If somebody else wants on that, it's fine with me. As well, me too. And I don't mind being on it. I like it. I'll share, but I'll stay. Okay, anybody jumping in? Okay. Okay, go ahead. Sure. Okay, so Briggs is off. Okay. Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition, Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Lakebury Rabbit PNZ, Briggs. North Texas Commission, Mayor Watts. Hey, don't laugh. I do. The Regional Transportation Council is Mayor Pro Tem Roden with an alternate vacancy. Team PA is Mayor Watts. And with our ad hoc, we have the Council Community Event Center, Mayor Pro Tem Roden, Councilmember Gregory, and a vacancy from Johnson. Okay, all right. Put you in. Council Historic Landmark Committee. That's going away. It's going away. As a point of, we had a meeting, what, three weeks ago, after meeting with our new hired Historic Preservation Officer, kind of looking at the landscape moving forward and realizing kind of the charge of that committee. Once we have that expert in place, we saw the need for that committee. So it's in the process of being officially dismantled. Okay. All righty. And then the last one this evening is the Development Code Review Committee. It's currently Briggs and Wozni with a vacancy from Johnson. I'm okay. I still haven't had a meeting in over a year on this committee. That's good. I forgot that I was on it. All right. So this list will be updated and will be at your seats upstairs and you will be able to vote on later on in the meeting this evening. Thank you. Great. Thanks. That was painless. All right. We'll move on to agenda item D, which is Receive a Port Hold Discussion, Provide staff with direction concerning road diets and implementation of road diet on Eagle Drive. Thank you Mayor John Davis. This is our Direct Engineering Services who will discuss this item with the Council. Thank you, John. Thank you, Mr. Manager, Mayor and Council Members. What's more exciting than road impact fees, council committees, and gas insulated wall substations? Road diets. Correct answer. All right. Thank you. My purpose this afternoon is to explain what road diets are for you, and I need to back up some. Here we go. It's to explain to you about the road diet concept, identify advantages of a road diet for Eagle Drive, and to ask for any direction that you might have to us. In its simplest form, a road diet would be like taking a four lane undivided street, as Eagle Drive is now, and reducing it to three lanes with the center turn, two way turn lane and bike lanes are parking along each side there. Roadway diet is really a misnomer for the process and the conception, the theory here, the techniques and all, they 're really better referred to as roadway reconfigurations, because as you can see from this illustration here, roadway reconfigurations could be a four lane to a five lane, adding a center turn lane, a two lane to a three lane, adding a center turn lane, a three lane to a three lane, where you add narrow the lane, and narrow the lanes, and add bike lanes to it, and also a five lane to a three lane, where you reduce the number of lanes, add a center turn lane there, and have bike lanes and possibly parking or transit stops on each side. Road diets have been around for a number of years. They've been in use and implemented in the US for over 20 years. They've in fact proven to be so successful in the safety area that the Federal Highway Administration has identified them as one of their nine proven safety county counterme asures there. And also this year or last year, they were identified as one of the 12 FHWA proven innovations that FHWA is promoting nationwide in their everyday counts round three during the year of 2015 and 16. Some of the major benefits of roadway diets include improved safety for all roadway users there. Searches indicated a reduction in crash occurrences there of 19 to 47%. A study that you have in your backup material for the city of Austin of fire projects in the city of Austin indicates a 22 to 38% reduction in crashes along those streets. It improves pedestrian... I'm sorry John, just a quick question. Sure. Thank you Mayor. Does that have anything to do with the improved safety? Does that have anything to do with the fact that the lanes become more narrow and therefore drivers of automobiles tend to drive a little bit slower? So it has a traffic calming effect? Primarily it's due to the reduction in number of conflict points. In a couple of slides more I'll show you those reductions there. Okay, thank you. It improves pedestrian crossing safety because you generally reduce the number of lanes that a pedestrian has to cross in the roadway there. It provides an opportunity to install bike lanes along the roadway. It provides traffic calming as you indicated Councilman Gregory there. For a four lane undivided section people tend to dodge from one lane to the other to get around traffic there and a three lane section you can't go any faster than a vehicle ahead of you. We had a question. Yes ma'am. How wide will the bike lanes be? The bike lanes on this roadway are planned to be six feet. Five feet. Five of the one on the top of them. So six. On the eagle side? Six feet. On the eagle tribe, yes. Okay, thank you. They provide an opportunity with a reduced lane width and lanes there to add parking and bus transit stops there. They also allow motorists entering the roadway from the side from either side streets or driveways a better opportunity, an easier opportunity to scan only one lane or fewer number of lanes for gaps in the traffic there. To your point Councilman Gregory, a reduction of the vehicle conflict points there, the exit conflicts and all that exist on a roadway. This depicts a, this drawing depicts a four lane undivided and a two lane street crossing there. And you can see there are eight potential conflict points there. Reducing it to three lanes with a center turn lane reduces that to eight or four conflicts there. Cuts it in half. Another better illustration there for one of the situations is a left turning vehicle. In a four lane undivided you have the vehicle turning left going north on the slide here, going up on the slide turning left. They see the vehicle in the lane next to them, but they can 't see the vehicle in the outside lane. They might turn left and get broadsided there or sideswipe the other vehicle. In a three lane section there, that vehicle is, they only have to watch for one lane there. Along the street it also reduces the conflict points there. You can see six conflict points here from turning movements , stopping, turning movements here in rear end potential conflicts, side conflicts from changing lanes. And that becomes three conflict points under a three lane section there. A few more illustrations there. You see in the red car it stopped for a left turn here. And there's a potential for a rear end from the blue car behind it. With a center turn lane that removes the turning vehicles to the separate turning lane there and the traffic continues to go by without any conflicts there. Another. Yes, sir. So then why would you ever have a four lane divided road? Based upon what you're saying is there, I mean unless it's just the amount of traffic that's happened to be. Yes, sir. Four lane undivided. Yeah, the one that we've got now. So you're showing the advantages and the disadvantages of what the proposal is and all the conflict points and such. Yes, sir. Is it then primarily the only reason to have that configuration is you don't have the cost to put it to something different? And or you've got too much traffic to actually make that work. Yes, sir. Generally it would be the traffic volume there. Okay. Council Member Briggs. And so I'm assuming with this the traffic study has been done and there's the volume is okay to decrease to this diet. Yes, ma'am. I've got a couple of slides there to show you on both of those points there. With the road diet situation, a four lane undivided, you have the car going up towards the top of the page stopping, the red car stopping for a left turn. And then you have the blue car going around it to the right and missing the yellow car in its blind spot there and possibly side swiping. Again, the three lane section changes that. And you've seen this one at the intersection so I won't go through it again. Why would we consider it on Eagle Drive and why would it benefit Eagle Drive? Eagle Drive has had 340 accidents over the past five years between Carroll and North Texas there. Your agenda item and all has data all the way to Dallas Drive and I've cut it down just for the section we're talking about here. During that included in those 340 accidents, 61 accidents for failure to yield right away when turning left. That included the 340 accidents included three incapac itating accidents, 25 non-capacitating and 15 potential accidents there. To your point about the road diet and volume there, Mr. Mayor, a lot of research has been done in that area and different cities have set different thresholds there. The city of Pasadena, California has set 15,000 average daily traffic as their maximum that they would consider road diets for. The city of Lansing has set 18,000. The city of Seattle has jumped it up to 25,000. In our case, Eagle Drive has just over 7,600 vehicles in the area of Welch Street and just under 12,000 in the area of Carroll Drive, Carroll Boulevard, which is well below the threshold here of the lowest threshold that's been adopted there. Okay, let me make sure I understand. So what you're saying is from Eagle to Welch, either which direction is 7,600? That's both directions from in the vicinity of Welch Street . Okay, so that's where the little counter was. Yes. And so then the counter up at Carroll was put right there at the intersection? Yes, sir. Just west of the intersection for both directions. Okay. For the section that we're speaking of here between Carroll and North Texas. That little span of what is that, a mile or less for me? Yes, sir. Less than a mile? It's right at a mile. You get an extra 5,000 cars a day? I mean, is that, am I looking at that wrong? About 4,000 vehicles. No, sir, you're correct. A difference of about 4,000 vehicles there. Okay. Here are some key points for the Eagle Drive road diet and there are some disadvantages to it also. Of course, we've mentioned the increased motor safety. It would also allow us to implement a city mobility plan bike lane project, which calls for a bike lane along Eagle Drive there. It improves the pedestrian safety by reducing it to three lanes they would have to cross, the traffic calming because you can't go any faster than the vehicle in front of you, and if in the future we ever want to change back to because of the volume increase, we can simply do it with restriping and resigning of that. I also left out we'd have to adjust the traffic signals, move them on the mast arms across there or the span wires, but we could just relocate those in the future if we want, when we get to the need of returning to a four lane if we get to that point in the future. Now, there is a disadvantage. We've had a traffic consultant model a road diet. What would happen to Eagle Drive with a road diet for us here? And their model, they go through a very sophisticated process using traffic counts and turn counts and all of their, and their model indicates that from North Texas to Carroll Boulevard in the section we're speaking of, that during the noon and PM peaks there, which are the two highest peaks, the morning peak is lower, I assume because UNT students aren't going to class that early in the morning, but that it would increase the travel time from North Texas to Carroll Boulevard by 25 seconds in the noon peak and 35 seconds in the PM peak there. And you would, of course, have a little bit longer queues at the signals along that stretch of roadway there. So there is a disadvantage there. It comes with the traffic calming and slowing down of the traffic there. Just in conclusion, I hope I've explained the road diet concept to you adequately. I'd be glad to answer any questions. And those I can't answer are, pedestrians are here and she can answer them for us. And we'd like to hear any concerns you might have about us implementing a road diet on EGLE Drive. A comment and a question. First of all, I really appreciated the staff taking the initiative on this particular section of the road as a way of addressing our bicycle mobility plan because in the past most of the initiative has been citizen or council driven on that. So I really appreciate that. Number two is this is not our first rodeo with a road diet. We did one on Windsor Drive between Locust and Hinkle. And I had a citizen who wanted to explain to me what a terrible idea that was. So we had a rolling conference. I went over to his house and he made me get into his Lincoln Continental with him. And we drove the whole distance. And he told me about all of the good spots and all of the bad spots and all of the problems. And he drives, he uses Windsor regularly to get from the neighborhood around Woodrow Wilson all the way out to the airport as far as he can go before he gets on University Drive. A whole lot more people have been using Windsor since the construction has been going on. But I have not received any complaints about Windsor since we've actually reduced it from four lanes to one lane each direction, continuous center turn lane, and the bike lanes on either side. I've not had one complaint. Have you received many or any? No, sir. Not after the initial shock, if you will, and people got used to it. Changes hard. And you did road counts on Windsor also, did you? Yes, sir, we did. Does anybody recall what those were? Were they? I'm sorry, I do not. I can get those for you later if you'd like. No, thanks. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. So yeah, on Windsor, the only complaints we're getting are really just speeding. And I think I have a concern for the stop sign, and I think we've been on that. But my question is, I think it's great, and adding bike lanes anywhere we can is good. So there's going to be bike lanes on either side of Eagle, but what happens when you get to Carroll? Like, what is there anything in place to make that crossing there or bike lanes to attach to? I'm just kind of curious what happens there at that intersection for safety for those that are on bikes. Well, you would of course use the bicycles would adhere to the motorist's rule of road there and all to cross the road . We're proposing a road diet for Carroll Drive, this section of Carroll Drive from North Texas to Carroll Boulevard. Excuse me, for Eagle Drive between North Texas and Carroll Boulevard because right now we're reconstructing the road way there. And it would be a lot less cost to restripe the road when the reconstruction is done at this point with a road diet. In the future, next year, we will be doing a drainage project along Eagle Drive east of Carroll Road between Carroll and Helden Street there. And we will look before then to see if that's potentially a possible section for a road diet also there to extend the bike lanes further east. Okay, thanks. Mayor Portin. You know your question, Mayor, earlier about what would determine why would you do a four lane versus a two lane with the center turn lane. And there's a whole other, we had a presentation on this in mobility committee and I've heard about it in other contexts as well. But the idea of context sensitive solutions was used, which is when you know you're kind of coming in for a project, you can make these determinations as what makes more sense based on your surroundings essentially and the community needs. It's always been my thought that as we see the growth of UN T and we see a lot of the pressure for business on the north side of campus, where you see some of the new apartment developments, Fry Street area and all that sort of stuff. I've always thought there's a huge potential for that on Eagle Drive as well given how many students live over there , the number of apartments, how many students have just as many academic buildings on that side of campus as well. But Eagle Drive has always occurred to me as kind of this great dividing line as opposed to Hickory on the other side of campus, which is much easier to cross, much easier to get to. It feels safer in terms of going across to grab a cup of coffee versus trying to traverse Eagle Drive. So from a context sensitive point of view for here and thinking about the growth of that campus and the potential of new mixed use on that side as we see more development projects, because we've even talked about as we've seen apartments come in there, having that conversation of can we encourage student retail on the first floor like we see in other areas of town and there's always been that concern. So I think beyond the obvious benefits and implications to pedestrians crossing, cyclists who we know there's a lot of in that area, and then just kind of the calming of traffic in a pedestrian high area, I think to think about the potential this has to rethink development on that side, which we know is going to happen for a number of reasons between there all the way to I-35. So just my thoughts. >> Robert Hawkins. >> Excuse me. >> A little on the fence on this one to be honest. I'm not sure about congestion with the traffic count there, but I think it's worth a try having the bike lanes there. I'm definitely looking at the multifamily, the apartments and all the students that go there connecting those apartments to UNT. But I'm not totally on board, but I think it is worth a try . >> Can you move back to the slide with the bar graph with the trips, road trip? >> At the Texas Trails and Active Transportation Conference put on by Bike Texas, there was a very interesting conversation about trip counts on some roads in Dallas. And they were talking about Mockingbird, the area of M ockingbird that actually goes through Highland Park. It's two lanes and it's 19,000 trips per day. And that's an east-west road. Now, Mockingbird intersects with Hillcrest, a north-south road that has four lanes and it's divided, and maybe it's six lanes. And they have 17,000 trips per day. Clearly, a road that is overbuilt, and they were talking about that in terms of great potential, because you talk about dividing in an area, an area where there are more lanes that are necessary, which creates a terrible barrier for pedestrians. And it is very inviting for bicyclists in that area. So it's always looking at the possibility of real data, real counts, and what roads can accommodate. And then making lanes the right size so that you can accommodate other things, whether it's parking or whether it's a bike lane or a side path to encourage more active transportation. And it's great to have these kind of numerical touch points so that we know when it's really not a feasible solution to have a road diet, when it would add to road congestion, when it would add to time on the road, more automobiles running for longer periods of time adding to air pollution. So it's all the factors that we have to take into consideration, and I thank you for doing the presentation. Councilman, there wasn't. Oh, we had one. Sorry. Go ahead. Our police chief is here, and I'd like to get his take on this proposal. I think the proposal is worth a try. I think the bike lanes are a good idea. There's a lot of bike traffic in that area. With the studies that John has just presented, I don't see a real issue with the volume, and it still allows for emergency vehicles to traverse down the road through the center lane. So I think it's probably a good idea to try it. Thank you. Anybody else? Yeah, I mean, I asked for this just because I think I was not on council at the time this was considered, and I'm sort of like with Councilmember Hawkins, I'm not 100% on board for this. It's more of okay. I'm willing to try it and see, because there's a lot of traffic on Eagle Drive, and there's a lot more traffic to come on Eagle Drive. And if all it takes is redoing it later on, if we find that it's a big issue, then because I drive Eagle Drive all the time, and sometimes it gets pretty challenging, especially if you're not turning left. Most people are going straight through there. You've got some turning at Benard. So I'm okay with it. It's sort of a wait and see, but I don't have any problem moving forward with it, for sure. Any other questions or comments? Thank you very much. All right, thank you. You bet. Okay, we'll move on to agenda item 3E, which is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding amendment of Chapter 18, Section 1838 of the Code of Ordinances, use of wireless communication devices while driving. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Lee Howell, who is our police chief, will present this item for your consideration. Thank you, Chief. Okay, good afternoon. Thank you for having me back. I'm going to continue the discussion regarding the proposed amendment to the current wireless ordinance. I'm going to quickly skip through the portion of my presentation here that we already covered last week, but we can certainly go back to it if you have any questions. In review, after the last discussion, some council members requested additional data and information, and in your AIS, I provided a synopsis of a number of different studies and surveys and articles and provided some links to those, some of the more informative ones. I'm going to discuss some of that data here today and go over just a few of the finer points very quickly. In summary of that data, you'll see a lot of different conflicting conclusions in it. You'll see some things that say that there is no connection to wireless ban laws that people can draw in terms of reducing crashes. In some of the data you will find or some of the articles and surveys, you will find that there is, in fact, probably some connection to existing laws in conjunction with a number of other elements, and I'll go over those in just a moment, that can be effective. So just to give you an idea, again, the background, I don't think I discussed this entirely last time, but there's over 300 million wireless subscriptions in the United States. A couple of surveys show that somewhere around 88% of people have cell phones and about two-thirds of those people have smartphones. The early median age that I saw where people or kids are getting cell phones now is six. So people are growing up with a cell phone attached to their ear or carried on their person just about all the time, which would include the vehicles. The data, again, shows a number of many, many variables that result in the causation of crashes and the frequency of crashes, and we went over a little bit of that last time just to give you an idea of the breakdown in terms of demographic breakdown, in terms of people who are surveyed that have been in a near crash or in a crash that was a result of a wireless device. This chart shows that the near crash and crash response from the males in the survey is slightly higher than females, but the stark thing there is you'll see the tallest columns that show that people that were in crashes were of an age group predominantly between 18 and 30 to 34. Those are the highest categories, but certainly in the younger category, there is more frequent involvement in crashes as a result of wireless devices. I think that's somewhat significant when you consider that our demographics of our city is about four or five years younger than the average demographic of the state, and we have, of course, the large college population. This is another graph that illustrates a survey of drivers who admit to texting or emailing. You see again a little bit higher on the male side than the female side. Again, the stark image of people who are predominantly texting are the younger drivers, 18 to 24 in particular, and again, that hits right in the middle of our demographic . So this table shows a number of cities that I looked up the crash data for in Texas. That crash data is really only reliable back to about 2008, so that's where I started and through the complete years of 2015. At the very bottom, first the top where it just lists the cities, that is overall crash data numbers, just sheer crash numbers that occurred in those cities, regardless of the cause. At the bottom, I've put in a statewide total for wireless crashes, and specifically wireless crashes for the whole state. Over under the law and year, you'll see that this is a variation of different ordinances and laws in effect in those cities. So where it says, like Amarillo, for instance, complete ban 2008, that means that they enacted in 2008 a complete handheld ban, similar to the one that we're proposing. Arlington, Austin, Galveston, and San Antonio have texting only bans, and those are the years that they implemented those. And of course, our city has the texting only ban. It was implemented in 2014. So let me make sure I understand the data. So it says Texas City's wireless crash data, but are you saying that, like let's just do Denton, 2008's 2250. Those are crashes that just involved some kind of wireless device, or are those total crashes? Now, those are total crashes. The wireless crash data is specifically to the whole state. And I did that again because we, you'll recall that in 2009 and 2014, there were changes in the way we reported wireless crashes. And so data is scattered out through different cities, how they reported it, so it's really not reliable until recently. But the state did compile those stats generally before that . So just gives you an idea, you can see from this table, there's some of these cities are very heavily, very heavy crash numbers. Of course, that's directly correlated primarily to the size of the city. So I lined these out in a line graph just to better illustrate. And there's some adjustments made in here to get them all on the same scale. As you saw, some of those were in five figures, some of them were in three figures per year. So I just set them out just to show you the trends. Beginning in 2008, we will call that a sort of a benchmark where you see on the left side of the scale. And then almost in all the cases, you see a slight dip in the lines, a slight dip in the numbers. With the exception of the kind of magenta line here in the middle, this is again the statewide wireless crashes represented just the wireless crashes statewide. So you see the trend lines going along 10, 11, and 12, sort of down or sort of even somewhere in there. And then a marked increase in all these cities and in the state within the last two years. So in about 14 and especially in between 14 and 15, you see market increases in all the crash numbers. I think there's a number of reasons why that's significant. There's some other conclusions that you might be able to draw from this little scale here. In 10 and 11, as you recall back from the previous slide, 10 and 11 is when most of those major cities were implementing their ordinances. And also the state at that time was engaged in two sessions in a row of that where they actually passed a texting ban. You recall from the previous discussion, one of those texting bans was vetoed by Governor Perry. The second one that the state passed just died in committee and never went into law. So that all occurred between 10, 11, and 12 pretty much, slightly into 13. I could not find any data that would indicate necessarily that that had an effect in dropping those crash numbers. However, you could draw that conclusion. Again, there's a number of reasons why crashes go down or up. One of them could be the presence or the enactment of laws. One of them could be the attention that was brought to those laws being enacted and especially attention brought to the laws being enacted or the discussions in the legislature statewide. There's also another reason, and I'll show you that one on this one. I found a lot of discussion about just the volume of traffic as the biggest driver of the crash data. And this is a chart that shows gas prices in the United States. And you kind of find a parallel. This is about every two or three or four months. But if you start in the area there of 2010, where gas topped about $2.59 a gallon and continued up into the three , almost a $4 range for about three years, you take that line and turn it upside down with the other data that we had on the other trend lines. And it's just about the exact opposite. So gas prices went up, fewer people were driving. So there were fewer crashes. And then the same thing happens in '15, where you see the market drop in gas prices . There's more vehicles on the road. We've perceived it now for over a year that there's way more traffic all over our city. And there's more people driving and it's cheaper to do so. And so that's a natural thing to happen. So a couple of studies that I did find where deliberately enforcement and campaigns, PSA campaigns and other things were implemented that actually did show an effect in the people that were observed using phones or manipulating phones while they were driving. So those were in the states of Connecticut and New York. This one's for the Connecticut study and it just shows the trend lines again. They're in two different major areas where they initiated some enforcement efforts. Now Connecticut and New York both had wireless, complete handheld wireless bands in place for a couple of years at this point. And you'll see where it says the waves and the lines, that is when they, that's a median point in about a month long concerted effort of enforcement on those laws. And again, this is a statewide law. And again, these went along with a significant amount of PSA, public safety announcements and other awareness campaigns. So in the median line you see that the, again, these were observational surveys where people went out and just observed drivers and did nothing else but observe drivers either on the phone or manipulating a phone. And it shows that there is a direct correlation in time to the middle of those efforts and that there's a market drop in almost every case during that campaign time. So in some cases when those campaigns were over, the observation of the people using phones went back up. In some cases it sort of leveled out. But this is one of a couple of studies that would indicate that a combined concerted effort to reduce cell phone use by drivers on a number of fronts could in fact have a positive effect. This is the New York study and again, you see some variations in the trend lines but in almost each case with the exception of the device manipulation in the Syracuse area, they all were in a downward trend before and after that wave line which again indicates the middle of that effort time. So just sort of in conclusion, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a few years back put out what they call their blueprint to reduce distracted driving. And it's a six step recommendation that has been followed in some of the examples I just gave there that they recommend to be the best way to curb cell phone use. And it includes the enactment and enforcement of tough state laws as a recommendation but you see there that they 're raising public awareness. You know, I think in your backup I mentioned that DTV is running a couple of really good PSAs right now. We have some things up on the websites and Facebook pages. There's, you know, there's some gain if it were a statewide law rather than a city ordinance but we can probably do a little bit better in the city ourselves with a few things. The public policy on distraction part, that's kind of, you know, what you're contemplating now. Implementation of ordinances or local ordinances or even policies that we could recommend to other businesses or here in the city. Now research and development, there's been a number of what they call naturalistic driving studies done. You know, we haven't really conducted anything here in our city that you could equate to that but there are, as I've provided, a number of things out there. Technology, I think I mentioned last time, is continuing to improve not only in hands-free devices and their function, trying to find, trying to reduce the eye and hand distraction time to manipulate those. They're getting better. There's also crash avoidance technology that's being improved. And then of course the final recommendation is another education factor but this one targeted at young drivers. These are school programs. We've done some things in our high school and middle schools but primarily high school. Many of you participated in the RILA program. We just had one last Friday for this year's Rotary Youth Leadership Program where we do a mock city council exercise that contemplates the adoption of an ordinance similar to what you're contemplating. And that is really a very enlightening and informing kind of exercise when you see about 130 high school students contemplate what your exact thing that you're doing and what they come up with in that couple of hours of exercise. Things like that could certainly lend to a better understanding of the problem and overall hopefully set a culture and attitude change toward distracted driving that in connection with these other finer points from the blueprint could lead to a long-term reduction in these type of crashes. I will stop there. I'll be glad to answer any questions with just the last thing that I think the only thing I'd add right up is that whatever you contemplate doing I think we should focus on whether or not we believe that this law or this ordinance in our city will have an impact on our community and not try to compare it to data from other cities or other states. There's some comparisons you can make but our situation is unique and I think an ordinance obviously would have to be the best thing that we could do as a community. Councilmember Riggs. Okay, so I have a few things on this but mainly the one question I had for you is because I was researching it and I realized that I found Austin has had this hands-free policy in place for over a year and a half and have had some issues enforcing it and recently have taken to like police stings where the policemen officers ride in a bus and radio back to pull the people over because the cell phones are still being used. They're just in their laps. They're trying to get around the hands-free which to me seems to be a little bit more dangerous to put it in your lap and try to use it than something else and so I'm wondering is that something you see us having to do like for enforcement purposes and do we have the resources to do that type of thing? We would have the resources to do that type of enforcement action on a limited basis. I've seen similar things like that. There's some other cities in the Metroplex area who have just dedicated two man units around to one to drive and one to just observe traffic. I've seen also some cities that have done what we call PACs which is where you probably have seen and some of you know have gotten perhaps calls on it where you see officers standing out kind of at the side of the roadway or on the sidewalk just observing traffic and then they signal ahead to or radio ahead to another unit to stop somebody they observe violating the law. Certainly all of those enforcement efforts we could do on a limited basis. To answer the first part of your question, yes, people trying to dodge being observed is an issue and there's been studies on that. In fact, there's in some of your backup data I think there 's some references to the idea that in some places especially the ones that implemented an initial texting only ban that when people were trying to hide that they held their phone down their lap and had their eyes off the road for a longer period than they would have had they been holding it up in plain view. So that certainly is a consideration and again that's where I think to counteract that we would have to implement or affect a attitude change just toward the dangers of it and impress upon people that it's not safe at all. Are you finished? No, I'm sorry. I don't think she's finished. I apologize. On that I was just curious if are there laws already in place for distracted driving that an officer could pull someone over for looking down or swerving or like just observant or you know just observing a distraction period. Well, not just observing a distraction, but there's the results of that distraction, as you said like swerving not maintaining lane speeding run off the road. Following too close all those things can be symptomatic of distracted driving, and we can obviously stop and cite people for those violations. So it's the violations for what the distraction causes not necessarily being distracted. That's correct. I found one state in my research and that was a state of Maine that actually has implemented a state law in their traffic code that prohibits you from doing some of the activities that we discussed before about distracted driving like eating and putting on your makeup and things like that. Well, just by the observation of that act rather than another violation of a traffic law as a result of it. So counsel last time we talked about this asked for statistics. So I told the chief that I would spend some time online also looking for statistics. California enacted hands free in July of 2008. It is the largest comprehensive study that I could find out there and they studied the two years prior to enacting hands free versus the two years after enacting hands free. Overall traffic deaths declined 22%. Handheld device death down 47%. The National Safety Council came out and said that between 2014 and 2015 traffic deaths across the country rose 8%. It's the highest yearly increase in this country in 50 years. So you say what was happening between 2014, 2015 and its smartphone ownership that in 2011 52% of drivers reported owning a smartphone. But by 2014 that number was up to 80%. So you see a correlation between technology and traffic deaths. And laws are often behind technology so that technology comes at us and then we're left to react to it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also said the drivers in their 20s are 38% of the distracted drivers who were using cell phones in fatal crashes. We're a college town. If you look at the age of the people who are in and out of this city, if you look at 38% of drivers in their 20s using cell phones in fatal crashes. So let's talk about also a part of our ordinance that excludes Interstate 35. And if we do anything else with this ordinance, it should be to remove that exception. And here's why. Five seconds is the average time your eyes are off the road while texting. When traveling 55 miles per hour, that's enough time to cover the length of a football field blindfolded. So there was some conversation when this law was passed. Well, we don't want people just driving through. But people are getting killed on 35 because they are distracted with a cell phone. If I'm in the country and I'm driving through and a speed limit changes from 55 to 35 because I've entered a town and I get stopped and I'm ticketed, the excuse doesn't stand. Well, I didn't see the sign. I didn't know the law. It's my responsibility as a licensed driver on the highway driving a vehicle that can kill people to know the law. So if we do nothing else but remove that I-35 exception, that would be a step in the right direction. But I would encourage this council to seriously consider hands free. Because this is what I think we've done to our police department. We passed a law to save lives, to protect our citizens. But we've tied one hand behind the back of our police department because it's so difficult to enforce this law. And when you talk to Chief Howell and you talk to any of our officers who are out there on the streets, that's what you're going to hear. So if you're going to have the law that we have, we need to nudge it just a little bit further and turn it into hands free. So I'm going to ask the chief point blank, does the Denton Police Department support changing this law to hands free? Yes, I would support that. I think, you know, it's difficult, it's always difficult for us to predict or measure what is prevented. And I think, but I think it's intuitive and certainly could be backed up by other data that an overall hands free prohibition will reduce crashes and fatalities. Mainly because you're hoping for compliance with that law by people who will not do it because they understand that it's dangerous and understand that it is against the law. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. In the backup in the AIS under options, option number one and option number two are no different from one another. I have a feeling that one of the options is supposed to say to include the interstate highway and another one is supposed to say to exclude the interstate highway. I just bring that up because I was thinking I had to read it two or three times to verify that we didn't see any difference. Do you have any concerns about and I appreciate your comments, Ms. Bosney on the interstate highway. Is it easier, harder to enforce on the interstate than on the regular city street. The texting ban is almost impossible to enforce on the interstate, just because the speed required out you know and the speed of the vehicles and the observation required. I think a handheld ban would be easier to enforce in any location. Now, two more questions. One is the other day I was navigating in an area of the metropolitan area that I'm not accustomed to. I pulled over into a parking lot. I typed in the address. I got it. And my phone started telling me where to go. But as I was driving, so that I did not have to look down into my lap, I was holding my phone up so that if I needed to look down, I could glance down very quickly to see where I needed to go and then I could just pay attention to the road. If I'm doing that, because I've got a map in here that's giving me the directions, the little lady telling me when I need to recalculate and I need to go a different direction, whatever. Am I violating our ordinance as it's written if I'm holding this up in order to see it so I can navigate? Yes, sir. The current ordinance prohibits anything except dialing the phone, using it as a phone, or looking for a phone number. So this would be legal according to the current ordinance. Would it be legal for me to do this on the new ordinance? No, actually it's illegal now. Oh, it is. Yeah, right. It's illegal now. Right, I wasn't doing it in Denton. Well, yes, under the proposed ordinance, if you have to hold it in your hand for any kind of activity on it, unless it's an emergency. So what I would need to do is get one of those things that those little holders. That's one way to make it legal, yes. Pardon me? What? No, I'm looking for advice. I'm elderly and I need some help with this. The final thing is signs. After we passed the texting ban, it took us a good while because we were trying to find a sign that TextDOT was comfortable with us using. Do we have some signs already in mind that would work for a complete ban? Or is that going to be quite a lag time to find signs that would be appropriate? There's some recommended versions of those that are already in place in other cities. And I think we probably wouldn't, we would just have specialize it with our ordinance number or something like that, make sure that it's consistent. And the biggest lag time though, the last time, was the implementation of the signs. And part of that was due to TextDOT roadways getting their approval on it. That should be a little quicker this time because the polls are already in place in most places. And all we'd have to do is swap the sign itself out with the exception of the interstate. And that presents a unique problem just because of the construction and the project going on there which won't be completed for a little while yet. But I think we can swap out the other signs faster than we did before. Okay, thanks. I don't have any more questions. Chief, since we've implemented the no handheld in a school zone ordinance, are we giving out fewer or more tickets than when we implemented that original date? The tickets written in those categories have gone down over the years since that law went into effect. So you'd consider that it is working? I would think so, yeah. I think it's widely known now that that's a state law and people are aware of it and I think they've reduced that activity. And two, maybe just throwing this out to council, if we were to wait six months to a year to implement this, would that - I just wanted to throw that out there to see what everybody thought about it. If some people needed to - some people use their vehicle as their office and if they need to get a handheld, I know they can pull over and that sort of thing. But I just wanted to throw that out there as just something to think on there. So thank you. Mayor Coatam and then council member Baguero. I wanted to ask, I guess the chief and any of us too, as to understanding of the level of community conversation we've had on this issue. So if you think about the last time we've had this conversation, there were several front page articles and then we're chronicled, or so it seemed. We had every major news channel from around the Metroplex come and cover this story. I mean, you just do a Google search, text band Denton and it's all 2014 stuff. Nothing from current, very little. Such that I remember at that time there was a flurry of feedback that we were getting just because it was on the airwaves, people were paying attention to it. We had it on Engage Denton and it got kind of a lot of attention back then when we had that platform. And also, I'll stop there and ask my question and I'll probably have a couple other things to say. So in terms of a way to get this word out to the community, have we done anything? Have we had any concerted efforts to do that outside of having this conversation in the context of council meetings ? In terms of just warning people that it might be coming? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, we really haven't. Yeah, because my concern is we have some very high profile, just on today's agenda alone, high profile issues that have captivated the attention of local media, Facebook groups, what not. I'm certainly comfortable with continuing the conversation. I'm quite curious to hear what my fellow citizens think about this issue. I'm just a little concerned that with lack of some big outreach, people waking up tomorrow and saying, man, I've been doing this for 20 years. Been doing this. Certainly because the advent of smartphone technology, that 's created a lot more distractions than just this. But there's still a lot of people doing just this. I have a great amount of heartburn about making a decision on this tonight in such a way that people might wake up tomorrow morning and say, Denton did what? What? Just because I think it would have a pretty interesting backlash. So I'm not opposed to continuing the conversation and continue to look into it. I'm just wondering if the timing is such, obviously there's no pressure to get this done today or tomorrow or next week . But given how many things we have that the community is talking about right now, if there isn't a reason to give this a bit more space. Chief Allison, since the last time you came here, I gave this a lot of thought in terms of what we have on the books already that could possibly address this particular issue. And it occurred to me it's already illegal to cause a crash through distracted driving. And if you injure or kill somebody, that's manslaughter. It could be potentially manslaughter. So knowing that, then I thought, well, who knows about that ? Not too many people. And that comes back to the better education and public engagement part of this. I think if people were actually, especially young people, were aware that picking up that phone and texting could potentially land them in jail for a very, very long time. I think you would see, I'm hopeful that you would see a sea change in behavior using public education. From strictly a jurisprudence standpoint, just how laws work. I'm concerned that we're starting with basically the most restrictive alternative. We went to texting ban, but to me, I don't really see that we've spent the time and energy and money educating our young people, especially about what all we're actually talking about. I would like to start that least restrictive part, which is an education campaign, and spend the money that we need to spend to educate our youth. If that doesn't work, I'm certainly open to the idea of going into more restrictive alternatives. But to start at the most restrictive alternative to me seems, I can't do that. So thank you. >> Okay, any other comments? And I guess on the question of timing, obviously that can be addressed unless we want to address it now and do something. But it can be addressed on the agenda item if there's any motions and so forth. Any other questions on this item? Seeing none. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. I think that concludes our closed session. I mean, excuse me, our open session work sessions. So we will now move into, and I know dinner's ready, so we 'll get dinner after we go ahead and convene in closed session. We'll now convene at closed session at 5.35 PM. We will consider the following items, consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section 551.071, and deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code section 551.072. As soon as we get the blinds drawn and so forth, we will move into closed session. Good evening. I wanted to welcome everyone to this meeting of the Dent City Council, June 21, 2016. It is now 6.35. If you would, if you're able, please stand with me as we pledge allegiance to the American in the Texas flag. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivis ible, with liberty and justice for all. I pledge allegiance to the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. I've got a proclamation that we will read. Okay, we have a proclamation for the Denton LGBTQ Pride Month. Is someone here to come down? Okay, well, what I'd like to do first before I read the pro clamation is if we could have a moment of silence for the families and the victims of the shooting in Orlando. If you'll just take a moment of silence with me, please. Thank you all very much. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. 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I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. I'm going to read the proclamation. My name is Sharon Wilson. I live in Plano, Texas. I am a certified expert in taking infrared video that makes visible, normally invisible, oil and gas air pollution. Let's say like at a natural gas power plant, for example. At the request of Denton residents, I took this video at a power plant that uses the same Wurzilla engines DME is proposing. It shows a dense pollution plume of hydrocarbons and possibly particulate matter. The bright white you see in the video is heat. It should not be the focus of your attention. The gray cloud that wafts away from the heat is the pollution. The camera does not quantify emissions. The video makes visible the hydrocarbons emitted only during this four-minute video. The camera I use, a Flare Gas Finder 320, is specifically designed to detect these emissions large or small. It is used for this exact purpose by state regulators like TCEQ, the oil and gas industry, and by the federal government. The proposed Denton power plants have received a permit by rural permit from TCEQ. TCEQ used the GF 320 to detect leaks at 20 facilities, 14 of which eventually confirmed emission rates that violated their permit by rural limits. Attempts to discredit this video have surfaced on the internet. In response, I sent the video to Flare's, the camera's manufacturers, senior thermography instructor and principal engineer. He said, "If you sent in the video as a field assignment, I would rate it A+ without question. What the video shows is this, cold sky and a warm plume away from the exhaust, way away from the exhaust. The filter absorbs at 3.3 microns, which is where hydrocarbons absorb. If there were no hydrocarbons in that plume, you would likely see distortion in the high-sensitivity mode, but not much in auto mode. Since you are seeing a huge plume in auto mode, it is my professional opinion there is a large presence of hydrocarbon in the plume and/or particulates. A mass spectrometer measurement should confirm this." In short, this video shows plants like the one DME wants are air polluters. TCEQ verifies that in the 14 out of 20 cases where they detected pollution using the same camera that I did those facilities polluted in violation of their permit. Which means if the council votes to proceed with these plants, you are voting to permit much of the same pollution that spurred the overwhelming vote to ban fracking. Unlike with fracking, the council is going to force voters to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to pollute themselves for decades. Councilmember Briggs. I have a couple of questions. You said the camera does not quantify the emissions, so how do we know the quantity of them? Well, it doesn't quantify in that I can't tell you how many tons per hour it is emitting in this video, but I can tell you, as the FLIR representative said, there's a large presence of hydrocarbons. It is a very dense plume. The way to actually quantify the emissions is before you build the plants, you should do a photochemical modeling that can pretty accurately predict or estimate the emissions, but DME refused to participate in that, unfortunately. I just have one more question. Why is the video--do you pan away from the smokestacks, or why is it just where you see the gray on the video instead of the smokestacks the whole time? Yeah, as I mentioned, what you see where the smokestacks are, that's very intense heat, and that should not be the focus of the video. I pan away to show that the emissions are not just at that point, they are moving on out away from the source and out into the community. And, you know, as I said, it is a very dense cloud of emissions. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you, Sharon. Appreciate it. Next person on the agenda is Eric Pruitt regarding a technical assessment on gas detection videos. State your name and address, and your time will begin. Thank you. Hi, Eric Pruitt, 2111 Westwood Drive. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening. For many months, the Renewable Denton Plan has provided an opportunity for our community to come together to discuss an important issue about our future. We Dentonites pride ourselves on our university-inspired freedom of thought and skeptical challenging of norms to realize revolutionary ideas that give our city a future of diversity and charm. Except in many cases, this has not happened. I have seen passionate citizens and activists on both sides of this issue engage in heartfelt evangelism for what they truly believe in. But many have sought out evidence to support their view rather than seeking to challenge their views through sincere dialogue with those of other persuasions. We are choosing tribalism over humility, and I fear the long-term consequences of such actions. Over the recent months, I have offered analysis where I felt my understanding could aid the discussion. Recently, a video of the Pearsall Energy Center offered me a unique opportunity to offer my professional expertise to add important context. I'm an electrical engineer who has designed near-infrared sensing instruments for the past three years, and I'd like to present the summary of a technical analysis I've performed over the past two weeks. As Sharon said, the FLIR GF320 is designed to detect small leaks in hydrocarbons, but not to measure the quantity of these detectable gases. The TCEQ has analyzed similar videos and agrees with this proposition. The permitted emissions for the Pearsall facility in the analyzed video are between 10,100 percent and 26,000 percent greater than the minimum detectable leak rate of the GF320. The proposed DEC, when viewed with a GF320 camera, is likely to appear in a similar manner as the Pearsall video. Emissions impacts should be evaluated quantitatively, not qualitatively. An initial analysis shows that the maximum amount the DEC could increase ozone pollution by in the DFW area is 0.0085 percent. With that said, cameras like the GF320 should be routinely used to check for hydrocarbon leaks from infrastructure in order to preclude any unnecessary methane emissions within the city of Denton . It should be noted that the displacement of other generation capacity, which releases more pollutants than the DEC, is highly likely within a certain local geographical region. There are also nuances about the length of time and atmospheric conditions required for NOx and VOC emissions to result in generating ozone, and they're not comprehended in this aggregate environmental analysis. The net result is that the percent of ozone in the DFW area attributed to the DEC is a worst case upper bound when viewed as a system level delta compared to the status quo. A TCEQ report shows steep declines in NOx and VOC emissions from automobiles over the past decade. That decline combined with the displacement of other generation capacity gives us great hope for a cleaner air in Denton's near future. But my motivations in speaking tonight go far beyond the R DP. I want to live in a city where diversity of ideas exists. I want people to disagree so that we won't miss out on good ideas. But I believe we will arrive at better solutions if we disagree on priorities while holding to a common and testable set of facts. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory has a question. I was lucky in that I saw your email with the attached analysis that you did early enough that I actually had a chance to read it, and I think I understood it, which is pretty good for me to understand what you, the electrical engineer, wrote. And I thank you for that. I thank you for what felt like a very balanced reflection of the emissions that are going on. I always like to, as an amateur, as a non-science person, a non-technical person, I spend particular attention looking at the summary at the beginning or the synopsis at the beginning and recommendations at the end. I found one of your recommendations at the end to be particularly interesting where you said, "When compared to the projected rate savings of the RDP, policies to reduce automobile emissions or other environmental goals may also be, or by orders of magnitude, be cheaper than forgoing the RDP in favor of other options." Talk about that just a moment, if you would, please. Sure. So just as a point of clarification, my area of expertise is, as an electrical engineer, about cameras of this type and other instruments. But I was somewhat annoyed that I couldn't find quantitative analysis about the potential air impact in a percentage case. So that's why I took upon that task. As far as to your question of the other efforts that we might be able to do, I don't have that TCEQ report printed out here, but it is referenced in the report that I wrote. And it shows pretty remarkable graphs that right now the NO x and the VOC emissions coming from automobiles in the DFW area dwarf any other man -made or non-man-made source. The managing thing, like I said, is that has been declining . So I imagine the entire council would be in a better position than I would to envision what types of policies could do that. I know there are some efforts to increase bike lanes and other sorts of things, and I think those are great efforts. I think I would suggest trying to have testable metrics so that you can see over years whether those efforts are working. Thank you very much. This was very helpful. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for taking the time out to speak with us tonight. I just wanted to make sure I understood. You were giving a percentage of 0.0085% emissions of what number? How did you come up with that? Yes, so that TCEQ report I mentioned quantified the sources that they attribute ozone to in parts per billion from various sources. So some of them are from the DFW area, some of them are from other areas. So that number is arrived at by looking at the total NOx and VOC emissions that the DEC is scheduled to emit maximum compared to the total NOx and VOC emissions that are emitted in the DFW area as a whole. Again, it's an aggregate analysis. And then to get at that final percentage, there's a -- the percentage of those emissions that are attributed to ozone within the whole area as a whole, I think it was about 65 or 70% was attributed to non-DFW sources. So those two numbers or those two ratios are multiplied against each other in order to arrive at that number. So just -- I'm a restaurant owner, so I'm not technical like you, just to make sure I understand. 0.0085% of the emissions that are going to come from the Denton Energy Center are a percentage of all of the DFW area's emissions. Exactly. Thank you. Thanks, Eric. Sure. Councilmember Briggs. Just because we had a presentation before this for the camera and then you as well, I just want to clarify that you do support the use of this camera for the job that it does. Absolutely. As I said in my summary, it is an excellent tool for finding previously unknown sources of hydrocarbon leaks. I wish everybody at every oil and gas industry location had one so that they could find these things and stop them more quickly. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Patty Hayworth regarding protecting city assets. If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin . Mayor. Oh, yes. Just a point of clarification. There are rooms in this building, the council work session room and downstairs that have TVs that are broadcasting for those folks that are standing up. If they don't want to have to stand up, they could sit down . And if it's their time to speak, they would have time to get here. So we just might make them aware of that. Okay. So we do have some overflow rooms available if anyone would like to take advantage of that. Ms. Hayworth? Oh. Patty Hayworth, 1506 Highland Park Road. One of Denton's finest, although least visible assets is our public safety training center. I've been concerned for some time about how the proposed event center will affect the training center. So I decided to do a little research and I brought my findings to you today. The training center opened in mid 2014. In 2015, 3,550 law enforcement personnel received 3,565 hours of comprehensive training and classes in the facility . Those who use the training center include not just the 1, 000 law enforcement and fire personnel based in Denton, but also personnel from throughout the Metroplex and across the state. For example, last year Plano's SWAT team trained here, as did SWAT teams of Carrollton and Saginaw. IRS personnel trained here, as did individuals from the U.S . Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice . A Denton County MOU from 2014 shows an event attended by personnel from Collin, Dallas, Tarrant, and Harris counties . They come here because although in its infancy, our training center has a stellar reputation. Those 365 hours, however, do not include regular monthly training for the Denton Police Tactical Unit or the 760 hours of classes on 24 different topics that comprise our T. Cole Certified Basic Training Academy. In 2015, the academy trained new recruits from 10 agencies in the Metroplex. All those hours also do not include a variety of law enforcement meetings, the Citizen Police Academy, or any community events, such as the annual faith-based crime prevention conference attended on a Saturday in May this year by 160, or the Storm Spotters Skywarn seminar, which was attended by 250. Training center courses are presented seven days a week. About 30 percent to date are multi-day courses. Some span Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. More than $3 million has been invested in the training center thus far. $1.6 million for the building and the remainder in equipment bought by both federal funds and the 100 Club. Because so much is funded, the center is prohibited from making a profit. So benefits to taxpayers are not measured in revenue. They 're measured in savings. In 2015, having our own police academy saved us $26,000 in fees we didn't have to pay for our new recruits to train out of town at $1,500 a course. We save on equipment maintenance costs because overage from class fees goes into an equipment maintenance fund. We save when our officers stay home for recertification. We don't have to pay for hotel or meals, and our department vehicles remain on our streets. Conversely, those who come from out of town train here to train here, pay class fees, stay in our hotels, and eat in our restaurants. Our training center has not yet reached capacity in its current space, and it has 10,000 square feet waiting to be put to use. Just like any other city facility, the training center, however, was built with a tacit understanding that adequate parking would always be available. But that understanding seems to be in jeopardy. The exposition street parking lot is now being claimed by the proposed event center, which is pushing $750,000, not counting a potential purchase of additional land. Also, the $28,000 square foot rail yard project across the street was granted a 25% parking variance. The conversion of that parking lot to an event center will cripple the training center's ability to service today's users, force it to cancel classes and events already booked in 2017, stunt the training center's ability to fulfill its mission, and ensure the training center can never reach its full potential. So before any more staff time or dollars are spent on the event center, I urge council to insist on having an in-depth report made in person by the head of the training center directly to you on how the proposed event center stands to affect the training center. We have too much invested and too much at stake. Please protect the work of those who protect us all. We have a question. Councilmember Begarry. Thank you, Ms. Hayworth, for your presentation. Two questions. One, who is the author of this report that's come out? I wrote it. Okay. And are you here in a volunteer capacity? Totally. Okay. And just curious, how did you accumulate the information on this report? I had a close and intimate relationship with the city website, which I'm so glad is being redone, and Google, and various people that I talked to. Last question. Do you have some specific suggestions for this council? Huh? Do you have some specific suggestions for this council? Yes. I would like for the council to hear from the training center about how the event center will affect it. Thank you. Councilmember Wasney. Is this available in a digital format? Yes, it is, and I will be happy to send it to all the council. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Ms. Hayworth. Thank you. And we are at our additional citizen reports portion of agenda item three, and we have three cards. Ken Gold, if you'll come down, 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 Neches Trace here in town. And just for the record, I am not speaking on agenda item 5 E or 5F. That's the rule. I can't talk on any agenda item. So I'm going to do the first of my lecture series on best practice regarding the public and public debt. As I've said here before, the best practice is to rely on the voters on issues of long-term public debt, particularly when there's an issue the public is clearly following and where there are strongly held opinions, as the gentleman previously said, heartfelt evangelism is in the community. It's particularly relevant when it's an important issue of public policy, especially where a fundamental change in operations is proposed that requires financing a large-scale capital asset. A good, solid, healthy approach on public debt is to ask the voters directly whether or not they support that kind of debt obligation. Some folks may be concerned that a possible referendum slows down the process. We may find we are smart after all to be going so slowly. The voters may determine we are going in the wrong direction. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Oh, we can't. On this portion, we can't ask questions. I'm sorry. Thank you, Ken. The next speaker is Shula Amator. Is it Shula? Hello. Hello. If you'll give us your name and where you live, your time will start. Hello. My name is Shula Amator, and I live at 2003 Misty wood Lane. And I, first of all, I like that they added time to the speaker time and not three minutes, four. But also, I want to talk about the gas plants. And my mom has been really talking about them, saying they 're not good. And I understand that, that they're causing pollution to the air and people are getting sick. And they will cause damage and people may not be able -- and people won't be able to drink the water. And people need water to live. So it may cause people to get really sick. And they are just there because we want to reduce more energy and we don't want -- and the people who want them are not seeing -- maybe not seeing the causes that they may come to everybody else that drinks the water here. And that may -- and that may get sick from it. Also, they are paying a lot of money to have these just to make energy for our light and electronics and gas -- and gasoline for cars and not health for people who can actually live and may be like really sick from this cause. Oh, thank you. Anybody have any questions? Thank you very much. Thank you for coming down. Our next speaker will be Jonah Armentor. Tell us your name and where you live and your time will start. I am Jonah Armentor and I live in 2003 Mistywood Lane in Denton, Texas. So -- start. Are you ready for the timer? Oh, I guess you want to start anyway. Yeah, go ahead. So I brought these stuffed animals, Peppa Pig and George, to the city council meeting and they're going to talk. I'm going to talk for them. Okay. Hello. I am Peppa Pig and this is my little brother George. So today I'm going to be talking about the gas plants that TME is planning to build -- or gas plant that TME is planning to build in Denton, Texas. This gas plant -- the city council -- It's okay, George. Denton gas plants. So now, everyone, these gas plants will cost us $265 million. Million dollars. Yes, George, quite correct. George, what is it? Asthma. I'm George. And we can't do your -- These gas plants will worsen our air quality. And also these gas plants -- and also these gas plants will make a lot of noise. George, stop. Stop it. Yes. Say goodbye. Say goodbye, George. Bye. Bye. Are there any questions? Thank you. No questions. I'm sorry. That's right. Okay. I believe that ends our public portion of agenda item three . Councilmember Hawkins. Yes. We're on the consent agenda? Yes, we're on consent agenda item four. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. All right. I move approval of consent agenda items A through X, but I think we're going to be pulling E. Okay. Councilmember Gregory. Second, and just to note that we're pulling E so that we have a chance to have a full workshop discussion on the public art master plan that is being presented by our consultant. All right. We have a motion to second on the consent agenda item with pulling agenda item E. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, seven zero. And an announcement on the agenda. We've got sort of a duplicate agenda item at five B and also at six B. Five B is agenda item five or individual consideration. Agenda item six are public hearings. So we will be -- I think it should be an individual item, item for individual consideration, I believe. So we won't be doing agenda item six B as it is really agenda item five B. So moving on to agenda five, which is items for individual consideration. Agenda item five A. Do we have a staff -- oh, we do. Okay. >> Yes, mayor, I'd like to call on Brian Langley, our assistant city manager, to present this item. Thank you, Brian. >> Thank you, Mr. Campbell, mayor, members of the council. The purpose of this item is to consider awarding a contract for delinquent tax collection services. Their current contract in place with Saco and Burroughs was originally approved back in November of 2008. It was renewed through some various actions of the council and now expires on June 30th of this year, 2016. For this contract, all of the fees are paid directly by del inquent taxpayers. There is a 20% fee added to delinquent accounts. And just in terms of process, I did want to let you and the public know that staff developed a request for qualifications to make a recommendation for you today. The selection criteria was developed and provided to the city council back in January, as you may recall, in an informal staff report. Proposals were due then in March from interested firms. Staff did evaluate all of these proposals and held individual interviews with each of the firms that did submit a proposal. And after considering all of this information, staff has recommended the firm of Saco and Burroughs be awarded a new contract. On April 26, the city council held a work session on the process and the staff recommendation and went through all of the items in detail with you. And at that time, staff was directed to bring this item back forward to the council for consideration. So in summary, staff is recommending award of a contract for delinquent tax collection services to the firm of Saco and Burroughs. And I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. I've got a question, and I don't remember if it was brought up in the actual meeting last time, but I went back and read through the proposal. So help me understand. I think there was one, and I don't know exactly how the collection rates go, but there was one that had a guarantee of a collection rate, I believe it was . Which one was that? Do you remember? I believe that was Limbarger Firm, if I remember correctly, that had the guarantee. It may have been McCreary. I don't remember off the top of my head. One of the two had the guarantee. However, it excluded accounts that could not be legally pursued and bankruptcies . Okay. And so after looking at those accounts, we felt like those could be significant issues. And so we asked that firm, again, I don't remember which one it was off the top of my head. We asked them, excluding those accounts and considering all things equal, what collection rate would you be able to provide? And they answered the same, 60% for all current accounts and 30% for all prior year accounts. Okay. So then help me understand the whole, you said it was bankruptcy and something else. What was it? Bankruptcy and accounts that couldn't be otherwise legally pursued. So these would be accounts such as deferments for seniors who have deferred paying their taxes as an example that they couldn't, they may be delinquent, but they couldn't be legally pursued. Okay. Do we have a lot of that? I mean, we do. Okay. I believe over 40% of the delinquent accounts that we have are senior deferrals somewhere in that neighborhood. Oh, okay. So that's the statute that allows them to defer until? Until their estate pays the taxes, yes. Okay. So they're considered delinquent, but not collectible . Correct. At least until some triggering event. Yes, that's correct. And then so the bankruptcy, I guess, is self-evident that if you're in bankruptcy, it pretty much stays all collection efforts on all kinds of fronts. Okay. All right. And so then the question was if you excluded those, because you're saying that 70% included those accounts, that number . So if you took those out of the equation. What we had asked all the firms to do was to hold to 60% collection rate on current accounts and 30% collection rate on all prior accounts. In past years, we've been able to do that high 60% on current accounts and over 34% to 35% on prior year accounts . Once we went through and excluded those accounts, if you exclude those difficult to collect accounts, that firm did say, well, we could actually meet those metrics, but we wouldn't be able to reach the guaranteed amount that we gave you if those accounts were included. So that was the discussion that we had with that firm. Okay. And maybe, but you don't remember, I think, well, if somebody comes up to speak on it and it's their firm, we can ask more questions. I can certainly go back and look at it, yes. Council Member Wasney. Just a clarification on the seniors. We spoke last week about the tax freeze and you gave us a number of seniors in Denton, 65 and over, who are property owners homesteaded, 6,700. So population of Denton, approximately what, 127,000 people , so that even though we're talking about, oh, a lot of seniors are in default, we're still talking about a very small percentage overall of the people in Denton, 65 and over, homesteaded seniors. I'm just saying to use that as a matrix in this conversation, it's still a very, very small portion of the population. Ms. Wasney, I wouldn't disagree with that and I didn't mean to paint that in any wrong context. I was just trying to indicate in terms of how it was quoted to us in terms of the collection rate that could be achieved, that's a factor that we took into account, so hopefully that makes sense. Okay, any other questions for staff before we take public comment? Seeing none, thank you. Our first speaker is, well, let me go ahead and say that we have five cards that don't wish to speak. I think there were five in opposition. Council, and then we have a speaker that's wishing to speak , Mr. Richard Hayes. If you'll come down, state your name and address, your time will begin, please. I might need some technology help. Can someone assist Mr. Hayes with the computer? Just tell me where the USB grab is. Yeah, where is the -- We can do our council karaoke that we did the other night. I'm Richard Hayes. I live at 819 West Oak Street here in Denton, and I'm the founding partner of Hayesbury White and Van Zandt. And since 1997, we have partnered with McCrary, Baselka, Bragg, and Allen to do delinquent tax collections here in Denton County and the surrounding area. We jointly represent 45 local taxing jurisdictions, cities, school districts, water districts, emergency service districts, including the county of Denton. We appreciate the opportunity to bid on the RFP to collect the delinquent taxes for the city of Denton. The committee did receive the proposals, as you heard, interviewed law firms, made some ratings, and then made a recommendation. In the analysis, the committee did acknowledge that the ratings were subjective, and that in its final analysis, really the five points difference between the top two firms was essentially a tie. I would like to highlight three points, two of which were not included in the staff committee report to the council. Now, the first was in the report. McCrary, Baselka, Bragg, and Allen represents over 1,000 different taxing jurisdictions statewide. And we're the largest law firm in the county, and of course then by default in the city. We have nine local lawyers, and McCrary, Baselka, Bragg, and Allen has four full-time staff members locally. We have 20. Our office is located in the northeast corner of Carolyn H ickory, and that brings us really to the second bullet point here, which is taxpayer convenience. We've jointly held an office in the Denton County Tax Office for about 15 years. It's very convenient for the taxpayer to come in when they are dealing with the tax assessor collector to be able to come into the law office there and deal with their payments or other issues that they may have. And then the third point is the 70% collection guarantee. I'd like to address that. What we did say is, look, if the account is legally collect ible, we'll guarantee you 70% of it. And that exceeds the RFQ standard of 60% right now. And if you can't collect it, you can't collect it by law. So if they're in bankruptcy, if they're on deferral, if they're over age 65, that cannot be collected. What the information we provided to the committee showed, that countywide we collect 6% more taxes than your current provider does within the city limits. And we would disrespectfully thank you again for the opportunity to bid. We're very interested in trying to be your delinquent tax collector. And that's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Any questions? I've just got a couple. So now I'm a little more confused with the 70%. So, and I might have just misunderstood staff. I thought it was 70%. But if you took out those, that it comes down to 60%. So it may just be a math issue I'm thinking about. But you're saying of the legally collectible accounts, that means not the deferred accounts, not the bankruptcy accounts, whatever that number is left, you're saying that there's a guarantee of 70% collection on those. Is that my understanding? That's correct. And I'll tell you what, we had enough confidence in that percentage that under the current RFQ, RFP, there's no consequence if you don't hit the 60% number. But we had enough confidence in our 70% number that we're willing to back it up with, if we fall short, we'll cut a check to the city of Denton to make up the difference. And then help me understand in that local office, in the Denton County Tax Office, is that staffed by a lawyer? Is that, I mean, how's that staffed? Well, it's staffed with full-time employees and part-time employees, and then the lawyers, we come in and out of there. We're not staying there all day long. We come in and out of there, as you know, there are hearings from time to time. There are times when we have to meet with taxpayers. So is that staffed? Good grief. Is that staffed not just during tax season, but it's 365, or whatever, whenever the tax office is open? 52 weeks a year. Okay. All right, we have a question, Council Member Begarry. Mr. Hayes, thank you for your presentation. Can you talk a little bit about the way that delinquent taxpayers can contact your office when you represent the taxing entity, particularly with regard to Denton County? Well, currently, the process begins with writing a letter. It will have phone numbers on there where they can respond if they have a question. If it goes to suit, also under the signature block, there's phone numbers for the attorneys. But if they're in the tax assessor collector's office, they can see the sign in the hall and just walk into the office and ask, you know, whatever they need, and then if they need to talk to an attorney, an attorney will talk to them. Okay, Council Member Rodin. It's a question for legal. This is an odd way to adjudicate an RFP or RFQ process. Do we typically hear directly from those who bid as part of this process? In other words, is this allowable under the rules to hear directly from those participating in the RFP process as we deliberate? Council Member or Mayor Pro Tem Rodin, I don't think there 's a problem with hearing from the individuals who have presented. Sometimes that occurs. Sometimes it doesn't. We have done that in the past, one of which recently, as you know, resulted in a protest. That, too, was an RFP. So I don't think that there's anything improper about it. Some may wish to speak. Some may not. But it does give the Council a little more information as far as their consideration. Any other questions? Thank you, Council. We have one more speaker, Cindy Spoon. Please state your name and address. Your time will begin. Cindy Spoon, 2210 Westwood. How's it going? I am here to speak in opposition to this item because I think it's inappropriate for the former mayor to get this city contract. I know that it's not illegal. I know that a conflict of interest isn't inherent with that . But I guess I'd just like to see a little bit more information about what other law firms were considered for this. I think the onus should be on City Council to prove to the public that this choice is being made on merit and not, like, because of social relationships. I know this isn't the first time that this law firm has had this contract and that they were given it, I believe, first in 2005 after Mr. Burroughs had already been on City Council and it was re-granted in 2008 when he was the sitting mayor. So it feels like a little inappropriate. But like I said, I know that it's not inherently inappropriate. So yeah, I think that's all I have to say. I'd still like more transparency about why this choice was made. I'd like to know what other law firms were considered. Can you show the public that this was made on merit? I already said all that stuff, right? I'm just repeating myself. Of all the law firms in Denton, doesn't it seem like the former mayor is the most likely to have a conflict of interest? That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? You know, I guess for me, I'm sort of still confused about the 70%. I'd sort of like to be able to put some values to that, some actual numbers, because I don't know if that's a -- that could just be $5,000 or it could be $50,000. Do we have that number offhand or is that -- because I'm struggling with trying to vote on that because I'm just wondering about having at least some -- because let me clarify with you first. You heard Mr. Hayes' explanation of that. That seemed to -- and maybe I misheard you. Was your understanding that if you took out those uncollect ible accounts or noncollectible accounts that there was not a guarantee of 70% on the collectible accounts or what? No. I think as Mr. Hayes represented it is how I understood it. Maybe I didn't explain that well, but it's -- after you exclude those accounts that are uncollectible, 70% was that guarantee that he represented, which is what we discussed. That's just -- the difficulty for us was looking at all of the accounts that we have to collect for and getting a collection percentage in the contract versus that number, which is two different things. I don't know what the value of that is. I can certainly look at that for the council and bring it back, but I don't know that off the top of my head. Okay. All right. Councilmember Begarry. Mr. Langley, so if I'm understanding correctly, was the other guarantee provided by the recommended firm 60% of all accounts, including the bankruptcies, and what exactly -- I 'm not clear on that. Well, no other firm provided a guaranteed amount, but in the RFQ, it required that they be able to demonstrate that they could collect at least 60% for all accounts. And so each firm had indicated that they could collect that percentage. The McCreary firm had provided an additional guarantee, excluding some accounts, but that's difficult to compare because they're not the same figures in the same types of accounts. Okay. We have a councilmember Rodin. Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of agenda item 5A. Councilmember Gregory. Councilmember Hawkins. Yeah. Before I vote, I think what my issue is is I know three of these firms. I'm sure all of them are excellent firms. I especially know three of them very well. If I -- I need to vote by how staff evaluated these firms. I have to. I think that's where I'm struggling with. But what I would like to look at in the future is maybe a way to differentiate the firms a little bit, if there's a better way to do that. I don't know what that is, and that's where my struggle is, is I feel like if we have a problem with how the scores were come up with, I wish that we would have been able to look at that two months ago. I'm going to be voting for Saco and Burroughs, too, just because they're all great firms. I have to go on how the staff evaluated this. I do hope that it changes in the future possibly to give a bigger gap somehow. I don't know how to do that, but I just wanted to say why I 'm voting the way I'm voting. Sure. I'm going to struggle with voting without that information. I mean, I'll vote. But if I don't have the information, I feel like I'll be directed to vote a certain way. So I just don't know what that value is. And it really wasn't mentioned in the staff presentation as far as the guaranteed rate, what that is, how much is it, because it could be de minimis, which impacts a decision, and it could be not de minimis, which would impact the decision. So I just put that out there just so my colleagues will know. Councilmember Oden. It's a lot of time on an RFP that doesn't cost the city anything in terms of money. I do have a question from staff to that point. Should this vote -- should my motion fail in a voting situation? What happens? What's the result of that in terms of this? Is that a denial of not only your recommendation, but it's certainly not a picking of another winner? Does this go back into an RFQ process? Well, I think we would need to take a look at that. We would likely bring back another work session and try to get some direction from the council on how you did want to proceed. We could do that. The contract could extend on a month-to-month basis until we make that decision. Are we able to legally proceed? In other words, can council just unilaterally pick another winner? Or does this have to by law go back through another RFQ process allowing everyone -- I'll defer to the city attorney on that issue. Well, I think we have gone through a process. So we've got four well-qualified firms before the council. This is -- as we've discussed this matter at the staff level, this is posted specifically to make the award to the law firm of Saco and Burroughs. So if the council desires to go in a different direction on this, you could direct us to repost it either with a broader posting or geared toward a more -- a different firm . But for tonight, it's posted with specificity to make the award to Saco and Burroughs pursuant to staff recommendation. Councilmember Wasney. The 70% guarantee, it was not part of the matrix. And so my question is, I have a problem that it was not part of the matrix. And if not, why not? Well, we certainly looked at that as an evaluation committee. The feeling was is that each of the firms were giving specific instructions in the RFQ about what the minimums were that we needed. They all provided quotes that saying that they could provide collections that meet that minimum. This firm provided additional information that the other firms didn't consider. We just feel like those two numbers are not comparable. I think if we gave all of the firms the ability to go back and look at what would be their guarantee, if they excluded those accounts, they might well be all over 70% or some other number. I don't know. We just did not feel like that those were really comparable figures. When we talked about those, realizing the size of those, we just -- again, we went through and say, well, excluding those accounts, trying to make this an apples to apples comparison, could you meet the 60%? And the response from the firm was yes, that's what we would be able to meet. It was not the 70%. It was more in the 60% range. So that was the comparable figure that we looked at. Okay. You had a comment, Madam City Attorney? I think if I'm reading the council correctly in the staff comments, it's raising the issue as to whether or not it was a fair opportunity for the other three firms to actually put forward information, which would be consistent with that which was presented by Mr. Hayes. And I think this may be where the council is going. If the council desires us to look at that a little bit more deeply, we could do a little more analysis and go out with a clarification and come back with a little more information. That might be a possibility as well. Well, and let me be clear that if I were to vote no because of just a lack of information, that is not me deciding to pick a different firm. It's more of when you say you evaluated it, and I don't doubt that, but I don't know what those numbers are. I don't know because I still, when I hear you say that you asked them if they'll do the 60%, and they said, yeah, they can do it, I don't know if that meant that there wasn't a guarantee or there was. So as far as giving everybody else the opportunity, I'm just asking for a little more information. That's all I'm asking for. I'm not trying to decide who goes today or not because, I mean, I don't know what it is. And it seems that as I reread the proposals and I saw that, I didn't recall it coming up. So it was just, it was something that is an additional piece of information I'd like to have. So I don't equate, for me at least, a vote to deny needing some information as a selection of the firm who maybe gave the 70%. That's not the message I'm sending. Go ahead, Councilman Pro Tem. Yeah, and I appreciate that. Again, I think the consequence to the city budget of this selection is so minimal from the point of view of what we have to expend. This will be the third time we address this particular issue. But is there a certain price tag upon which the information that you would get as to the impact of that 70% versus something else that would sway you one direction or the other? I can't say that at this moment. No. Apparently I heard that there's a month-to-month capability if somehow this either gets delayed or something happens that we do something different. But no, I can't tell you if it was 10,000, then it would be this. If it were 20, it would be that. If it were five, it would be this. I think it's safe to say the lower the number, the impact, probably inures to the benefit of the recommendation, but I don't know that because I don't have the facts. And I feel like I'm getting different kinds of understand ings of what that really means. So I'm not trying to delay it. I'm just looking for some just clarification. Council member Rodin, you're still up for a request to speak. Well, I guess for the sake of where I sense the vote heading and it sounds like there's a need of additional information, I withdraw my motion. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, the chair would if we've got to take either some action or a continuance or so the chair would entertain a motion. Council member Pro Tem Rodin. I move that we continue this item for I guess it would be a date certain upon getting that information that the mayor's requested. I wouldn't think that that I mean, could that information come within a day or two? I mean, where's Brian? Okay. So, I mean, depending on I'm not sure on the fourth Tuesday , which is the 28th, which is next week. I'm not sure what that agenda looks like or if we even have action items on that agenda. But I mean, that's why I said this isn't a delay tactic. It's more get some information. Council member Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. If that's the case, then rather than just finding out the financial consequences of the difference between a guarantee of 70% and the current performance, I would want the other firms that responded to the RP to have a chance to make the same kind of information available to us in terms of are you going to be willing to guarantee 70% of those taxable those collectible taxes? Because that's the only way that you can compare apples to apples. I'm okay with that. I mean, I'm not sure. If that's the case, then I'll second. Okay, we got a motion in a second for do you want to still date certain or do you want the next council member council , Mayor Pro Tem? I think the next council meeting is fine. And so that means all the other firms need to respond by that time as well. All right. Okay, we have a motion to continue to June the 28th. I'm sorry, Brian. Mayor, I just want to be clear. So you're looking for us to get that clarification from each of the firms and bring it back next Tuesday. Is that correct by the 28th? Yes. And just put some numbers to the to the proposals. I mean, just give us some brief of here's here's what this means. These are the implications. Yeah. All right. That and bring it back. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. We have a motion in a second to continue to date certain of June the 28th with instructions to have firms submit additional information. And that's all the firms that submitted under the RFP. Is that correct? Okay. Yes. All right. Let's vote on the board. Oh, Councilmember Hawkins. I'm sorry. I missed you. I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm frustrated about this. I'm going to be voting against this motion just because I wanted us to vote tonight. But I'm not. That's all I'm saying with that. All right. Thank you. Thank you for that. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries four to three. I guess. Yeah, there it is up there. Yes. All right. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item five B conduct a second of two readings and take the final action of ordinance to annex and approximately twenty three point twenty four acres properly generally located on the west side of Gisling Road approximately seven hundred feet south of East University Drive. Thank you, Mayor. I'm gonna ask Amy visit our director of development services. She would present this item and reiterate that this is the item we had duplicated on the agenda. It's items and item six B will not be considering. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and council members. Pull up my presentation. I'm located on the west side of Gisling Road approximately six hundred feet south of East University Drive and the overhead screen states that it's the first of two public readings. But this is actually the second and you can see the annexation timeline posted here as well. With a first public hearing taking place on April 5th and a second public hearing taking place on April 12th. And as a reminder this particular piece of property was a part of our annexation program that began in 2010. At the time it was in an agricultural exemption and therefore received a non annexation agreement. That agreement does not expire until 2020. However the property has been acquired by a developer who wishes to build on this piece of property and in order to do so that would trigger the annexation which they have requested in this case. They've come forward and asked for this property to be annexed so that they may develop it. I'm going to read the caption of the ordinance into the record. An ordinance of the city of Denton annexing approximately twenty three point two four acres of land generally located on the west side of Gisling Road approximately six hundred feet south of East University Drive US 380 more specifically described in Exhibit A and illustrated in Exhibit B providing for a correction to the city map to include the annex lands providing for a savings clause and an effective date. And this is the second reading of this ordinance and therefore your opportunity to take final action at this time. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Any questions for staff? I see no blue cards wishing to speak. Council member Haw kins. Thank you mayor. I move approval of item 5B. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. All right we have a motion to second. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries seven zero. We're now coming to agenda item 5C. Which oh council member Wasney. I'd like to entertain a motion that we continue this to date certain August 16th and I would ask that our police chief delay his presentation until August 16th. So I'm going to make that motion. Okay so council member Wasney you made a motion to continue . To August 16th date certain. Council member Gregory and we got some blue cards and we'll address that here just a sec. Council member Gregory. Second. All right we do have some blue cards which means they requested to speak. Madam City Attorney I know with public hearings if people speak at a public hearing that's continued then they may be unable to speak when we reopen the public hearing or continue it. How does that work with items for individual consideration? Mayor we have really allowed those items of individual consideration to stand on their own and we have from time to time taken multiple comments on them. If we do have individuals here they might not desire to come back so it would be the pleasure of the council perhaps to let those individuals speak. Okay. Well I'm going to go ahead and as I call your name if you'd like to speak please come down and state your name and address and we will hold the vote on the motion until all the public comment has been made pursuant to the cards. Now I know we ran out of blue cards. Are all these wishing to speak or? No. Okay. Okay these are non-speakers. Okay. All right we do have two cards wishing to speak. Eric Pruitt if you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin. Eric Pruitt 2111 Westwood Drive. Short and sweet. 20 years ago we didn't have cell phones. 10 years ago we didn't have smart phones. I think it's irresponsible to launch legislation based on technologies that we do not understand where they're going to go. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Ron Seifert. If you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin. Hi there my name is Ron Seifert. I'm at 1400 Moran Drive. Yeah I would encourage this also being delayed as I have a couple proposed amendments to consider. I would say that this potential ordinance provides lots of or extends policing to drivers in Denton quite a bit and the ability of police officers to pull over residents is really discretionary. Of course it's going to result in a lot more traffic inc idences and I would like to propose that if this passes that it be amended to include a mandatory data collection of who gets policed by this ordinance. I would like to know exactly who it is that's getting pulled over by this new ordinance so we can keep demographic information of which populations in Denton are being policed if this ordinance does pass. And additionally instead of a $200 fine I would love to see an amendment where some sort of community service or some sort of alternative to incarceration is offered so we don't see people who can't pay a fine ending up in jail just for talking on their cell phones. So if those two amendments would be considered while this was being delayed I would be very pleased. Thank you. Thank you. And then we have nine cards wishing not to speak two cards in support and seven in opposition. And so those are all the cards that we have so we will now entertain the motion from Councilmember Bosney for continu ance till I'm sorry could you repeat the date. August 16th August 16th and a second by Councilmember Gregory. Would you vote on the board please. Okay we had. All right, let me. We had one blue card that apparently was. I don't know if it's it's Mr. Linton do you wish to do not wish to speak. Okay, nevermind. Thank you. Did we vote. Oh, it's seven oh okay. Thanks. There we go. Thank you all. Let's see we'll go on to agenda item D which is consider appointees appointments I'm sorry to Council committee. Thank you Mayor I think the city secretary Jennifer Walters is going to address this item for you. Thank you Jennifer. Thank you Mayor and Council at your work session you determined who would like to do which committees and that assignments have been placed at your seats. The revised assignments and if you wish you can vote on those and we will process the assignments per your discussion in the work session. All right, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mayor I move approval the committee assignments as discussed in work session today. Council member Wasney I second we have a motion to second let's vote on the board please and this time I'll get it. Motion carries seven zero moving on to agenda item F consider adoption. Oh, sorry. Yes. I'm sorry agenda item E we're moving on consider approval of resolution of the City Council to the city of Denton Texas regarding the proposed renewable dentin plan. Mr. City Manager Thank you Mayor Mr. Phil Williams our general manager of DME is here to open this discussion for the council. Thank you Mayor. Good evening Mayor and Council. So renewable dentin plan has been presented by DME and confirmed by the Brattle Group. We've appointed or as described in the agenda information sheet. This is an item that we had a press conference on in October of last year. After that we've had two open houses. Two public hearings one with the public utility board and other with the City Council. We've had a question and answer session as well as numerous meetings with community meetings with various city council member community hosted neighborhood meetings and other groups. The renewable dentin plan meets the direction for a city that City Council provided a balancing rates renewables reliability. It is not a plan that I know it's a plan that has to balance those needs of a diverse community, a community that has diverse viewpoints of what they want of someone in more renewables, someone in more emphasis on competitive rights. And this plan we believe provides that balance between those different directions. The agenda is on your agenda as a resolution. And then the next item up is for financing to finance the plan. This is a list of other steps that would follow that land purchases, the engine request proposal design build request for qualifications, as well as the renewable energy public power agreements and planning or connections. So these are the steps. We have presented on this item several times and stand ready for questions, if any from the council. Council any questions for staff? No, we'll go ahead and take blue card testimony. Thank you. Okay. What I'll do is I will call the first name and then the next person who will be up. So y'all can be standing by. The first one to speak is Adam Dunstan. If you'll please come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Is Adam here? And the one that will be after Adam will be Tiffany Hutzp eth. Is this the proper place to address? I actually haven't been to one of these before because I'm new to Denton. Okay. Thank you. Mayor, council people, I'm here to oppose a renewable Dent on plan. The reason I do so is not because. Did you state your name and address? My apologies, Adam Dunstan, 2425 North Locust Street, Dent on, Texas. Thank you, Adam. Yeah, no problem. So I oppose the renewable Denton plan, not because I oppose the overall idea of it. And I think shifting over to more renewables is definitely extremely positive. I oppose instead the gas plants that would be going in. I oppose this on the grounds of the potential health effects on my child. So my wife and I moved here last summer. We've been really enjoying Denton. I have a dream job here teaching at UNT. We have a small child. We plan on having more children. In a couple of years, my contract will be up for renewal, and we'll be talking about if we want to purchase a home and stay here in Denton long term. When we talk about that decision, we talk about all the things we love about Denton. The great park system, the great people, the great local businesses. But the one thing we come back to again and again for the one reason we would leave Denton is because of the air pollution. Denton, as you know, has extremely high levels of ozone already, which is partly the result of NOx and various other kinds of chemicals that are partly the kinds of things that come from gas plants. We're just very concerned about the long term effects this would have on our child. As you know, Denton already has about twice the rate of childhood asthma as other parts of Texas. Again, air pollution is a serious concern here. We love Denton, but this would be one of the few reasons we would want to move here. I think it's undeniable that having these two gas plants would significantly increase our pollution. For that reason, I oppose it. I really can't in good faith say that I care about the health of my child and think that this is a good proposal. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Tiffany Hudspeth and then Dr. Kinney is Ron Seifert. Please state your name and address and your time will begin . My name is Tiffany Hudspeth. My address is 316 North Bonnie Bray Street. And I am speaking in support of the Denton Renewable Energy Center. One of the things that's really important to me is facts. I want information and I want it from people that know what they're talking about. So I noticed on the Denton Renewable Energy dot com website that there has been an extensive amount of research done by experts in the field. And it's not something that's been taken lightly. Years and years of research has been put into this. So I am very confident that their research is good. It's reliable. I think that not only are these gas plants going to benefit us in that they will produce less pollution than the alternatives that we will have to use if we don't have the Denton Energy Center. It will also benefit us with our rates. We won't have to see our rates go up as we continue to have . If we don't have those plants and we have to rely on other places to get our energy, we will see our rates raise, which will be harmful for people either lower income or maybe on a fixed income. So I think that's really important for people to not see their rates go up and also to see that these gas plants are very efficient. They are not going to create a huge amount of pollution. And they'll also, we will also be using a lot more renewable energy in this. So I am in support of it. I think I trust the people that did the research and I think it's a good plan. Thank you. Thank you. Ron and then up is Aleta Thomas. Hello again. My name is Ron Seifert. I'm at 1400 Moran Drive. So I'm going to speak in opposition to the renewable Denton plan. I echo what has been said about renewables. That's great. I also hope that we can increase our use of renewables. I'm sure you're going to hear a litany of reasons to oppose this plan tonight. So I'll just briefly try to touch on two reasons. One was just mentioned before me and air quality. It's I understand that the ozone levels in Denton aren't solely Denton's fault. I mean, we might even be a minority cause of all that ozone pollution currently that we're breathing. But I mean, my question is what actions can we take to actually improve our air quality and not make it worse? And certainly adding gas plants is not one of them. I mean, we do have some of the worst air quality in Texas. And it impacts the, you know, the marginalized individuals in our society already. So we're just kind of picking on the little guy by adding more bad air to the mix. You probably saw that already this week we've had a few bad air days where children, where seniors couldn't even be outside and feel safe about it. And we're just going to increase those days. We're going to be forcing people inside. And that's just not something I'm comfortable doing. The other reason is that I'll touch on right now is just simply the idea of planning 20 years out right now with what we see in the changing energy sector. I mean, we're at the edge of, you know, an industrial green revolution. Green energy is coming online all over the place. We just saw the historic repeal of our oil export ban last year or earlier this year, I suppose. We're seeing so many tremendous changes. It just seems rather foolish to plan 20 years out in long- term energy strategy, especially when hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line. There are middle options available to you all to plan eight to 10 years out. And that seems like a far wiser position to be in instead of committing right now when there's so much volatility in the future of the energy market and the energy sector to be committing us to something into the late 2030s or 20 40s. It's just not a very smart decision. I would argue that you all would be much better off planning eight to 10 years out. And we've heard experts at DME testify that on that timeframe it'll be a different market. A lot of battery technologies, other alternatives to fossil fuel generation will be viable. So I would encourage you to vote no to any plan that includes gas plants. If that's not in the cards, I would encourage you all to approve as few number of engines so that we're not committing ourselves to really long-term infrastructure. And we can stick with something eight to 10 years out and try to work again from there to move forward together. Thank you. Ms. Tomas and then up after Ms. Tomas is Eric Pruitt. Alita Tomas, 1700 Willowwood Street. Oh no, I've said too much. I haven't said enough. I have written to council on many occasions and have made myself clear. I oppose the building of two gas plants in the RDP because of the negative impacts they will have on the health of our children and the negative impact on our environment, contributing to climate change. I urge you to not get caught up in this race to build gas plants. Wait for three to five years. Wait until better cleaner technologies are available. The power of our city literally lies in your hands. Please have the humility and the wisdom to vote against the plans. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Pruitt and after Mr. Pruitt is Hugh Coleman. Eric Pruitt, 2111 Westwood Drive. Just two short items. One, a concerned citizen did mention to me, and I think it 's warrants in the report that I submitted to clarify that the short amount of emissions study that I did was based on ozone. It was not based on other emissions and other contaminants. Just to clarify that. Also, I don't pretend to understand all of the site planning and one versus two site questions that you had before you, but I would encourage you to maintain the priority of future options when they do occur so that you're not tied if you only choose one site and then you can't get land for something you need in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Coleman and after Mr. Coleman is David Wright. Please state your name and address and your time will begin . Good evening, Council. I'm Hugh Coleman. I live at 506 Ridgecrest Circle. I've lived in Denton County since 1998. And I came here to speak to you all to urge you to adopt and adopt the plan that is presented before you. As elected officials, I urge you to listen to experts, not advocates. You all are charged as our representatives. You all are in the weeds and you need to listen to the people who know and then based on that make a well-informed decision. Listening to people who are advocates rather than people who are engaged in science is the equivalent of denying climate change. You're engaging in that kind of hyperbole if you wish to believe that there's going to be some sort of magic batteries that are going to appear in the next five years and solve all of our problems. If you guys really wanted to do something about air pollution here, you would do something about Acme Brick rather than picking on the gas industry. Except the fashion of the day is to go after natural gas. It gets people elected and makes sure that you have people who are passionate about your cause. You all need to stand up and do what is right for our community. You need to work on having a functional plan to improve our rates, to help our rate owners, the people who pay them like myself who's been here since that time, 1998. I urge you to make the hard decisions that we elected you to do. You all need to do that tonight. You all need to decide whether we go with COs as opposed to revenue bonds. And don't engage in hyperbole and appeal to the emotions and pass the buck. I voted for you guys. You need to make that decision. Don't pass it off to the voters. Don't pass off the political buck. You guys make the decision. If you all make a decision to have an election, to have COs versus revenue bonds, you're just not having any intestinal fortitude. You guys need to make a decision tonight. You guys need to move forward. And you all need to make a decision based on the technology available today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Coleman. Mr. Wright and then Rita Binning. Good evening. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the council. Appreciate your time. My name is David Wright. I live at 1819 West Oak Street. And I wanted to just go ahead and comment on the item. You see my badge. I'm an owner of DME. They're handing these out at the front. I think that's just another word for rate payer. But anyway, apparently everyone here is an owner in some form or fashion. And I wanted to express my support as an owner of DME that I think the RDB plan is a great idea. I'm really forward thinking and appreciate you guys supporting that. I think there's plenty of other people with similar stickers. Anyway, my point being is I know that you all have heard a lot about this, a lot of talk, a lot of things on the Internet, various discussions. I think we've all heard more than we care to hear. My request is that the council not give excessive credence to a lot of the activists and the type of rhetoric that you tend to overpower the dialogue in volume but probably not in substance. I think some of this, we appreciate people's passion and their feelings about the environment and their feelings about debt and these type of things. But these type of opinions, this activist type mentality is not a substitute for subject matter expertise, the kind that's been delivered by DME, the type that's been reaffirmed by the Brattle Group, and what you all have been privy to throughout this whole lengthy discussion. So I don't -- and another point I'd like to make is, I mean , really just regarding the -- not giving too much influence to the minority in their vocal opinion. We've recently had an election here for the city council that was almost effectively a referendum on RDP. I think all the candidates campaigned on that. And I think it was very clear how that election turned out. So in my opinion, the citizens of Denton have already spoken on this matter and been very clear. It's not really relevant necessarily how many people show up tonight one way or the other. We took a formal poll. The poll was beyond clear with regards to who campaigned, what they campaigned for, some of those contests. I mean, anyway. Anyway, point being, I think that's just where we need to go. And I would like to just encourage the council to really listen to the citizens who elected them and spoke clear at the ballot box and continue to go with that vote. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Rita Beving. Then on deck is Todd King. Good evening. My name is Rita Beving. I'm with Public Citizen. And I live at 13214 Glad Acres Drive-In Farmers Branch. Public Citizen is in support of Denton securing more renew ables. But in fact, when it came to the Brattle Report, you had options left on the table that were never examined. Frankly, some of that was demand response. There were just a few lines about battery storage. Just so happened that about a month ago, I ran into someone by the name of Jack Farley from Apex Battery, compressed air energy storage because I'm planning an energy conference in Dallas. Jack told me when I talked to him about the potential of battery storage for Denton that he had actually contacted the DME in December. He got no reply. So because he got no reply, I encouraged Jack to write the Denton City Council. And for the sake of the people in this room, I want folks to know what was left on the table on compressed air energy storage because I've heard all these comments that compressed air energy storage or battery storage is in here yet. In fact, Jack is doing a project breaking ground this year and it's up and running in 2019. Compressed air energy storage uses 50% less fuel and produces 50% less emissions than rice engines. It has greater and faster ramping ability. It has 96 hours of storage, not two to four like conventional battery storage. It has a 30-year life, not a 10-year life, and therefore your capital costs are 40% less. Like I said, he's breaking a project this year and it's up and running in 2019, not five, not 10 years from now. You are looking at building rice plants next to the worst air monitor in the region. You are part of a 10-county non-attainment area. This will only contribute to those emissions, no matter how small it has been portrayed to you. We will still have Gibbons Creek up and running because it will probably be sold. It will still contribute to the DFW air quality for all 10 counties in the region. And the reason I know that is because I served on the Clean Air Steering Committee for more than a decade at COG. So for those that want to make comments about advocates and groups trying to help Denton, you know, some of us have been in this field for over 20 years. So again, I think Denton left their options, some of them on the table, and this was an opportunity you missed. Thank you. Thank you. Todd King and then on deck will be Ashley Hansco. I apologize if I got that wrong. Good evening. I'm Todd King. I live at 2222 Houston Place in Denton, Texas, District 3. I'm here tonight to speak to you, encourage you this evening to try to encourage you to vote no on the Denton renewable energy plan. For me, it's not about the amount of money that we're proposing to spend. The $265 million is a significant amount of money. Don't get me wrong. But for me, it's more of an issue of outdated technology or soon to be, very soon to be outdated technology. And unhealthy technology at that. Two analogies that speak to that that I wanted to share. One on the unhealthy aspects of the technology and how the DME promotes that this is going to save these two gas plants are going to save the city of Denton or the rate pay ers money. To me, that's analogous to the city of Denton being able to offer their citizens discounted cigarettes. In terms of outdated technology, the analogy that I can think of there is saying that we can get as Denton citizens , we can get really good discounts on our VHS machines or our Betamax machines when the rest of the world is streaming video. And just to conclude, I want to apologize if these two analogies are are over simplification of a very complex matter. I hope that the council and the mayor understand the spirit of my words and I hope that you vote to oppose the two gas plants tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Ashley and then up is Christina Harris. State your name and address. Your time will begin. My name is Ashley Hanna. I live at 2319 Ballard Drive. Hello, I'm Ashley Hanna. So citizen owner of Denton Municipal Electric. I first would like to thank you for your efforts to increase renewable energy in our city. If the RDP proposed here tonight is truly the best method for achieving the 70 percent renewable portfolio, you should trust that citizens would arrive at the same conclusions you have. If we are granted access to the same information, you are the technical aspects clearly explained and the plan put to a citizen vote. Since 2011, citizens have been denied information and opportunities to vote that they are entitled to slowly and quietly putting into motion a plan to vertically integrate our municipal electric company now cleverly called Renew able Denton Plan. In 2012, the state Senate passed SB 1230 granting it permission to develop a power plant near the airport, denying citizens their right to vote on public utility development as clearly outlined in the city charter. Last year, HB 40 and then HB 2595 were passed, denying citizens the fracking ban they worked so hard to pass, which violates citizens' rights granted in the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in Article 1, Section 16 of the state constitution. Now in 2016, this council is denying citizens the right to vote on a debt that will ultimately be paid by the taxpayer or DME rate payer, if that's the term you prefer, for energy from the very source we voted to ban. The RDP would not have been possible if these specific circumstances were not in place. For any citizen questioning why their voice has been sil enced the last few years, you are witnessing now the end result of the carefully structured environment we now find ourselves in. With the freedoms DME and city council have granted themselves, there's nothing to stop them from spending more than the suggested $265 million and eventually transferring those two certificates of obligation to be paid with tax dollars, running the engines not 20% of the time as stated, but as much as needed to meet financial obligations, and raising utility rates to not only shore up DME accounts , but continuing transferring funds to the city's general account, another violation of the city charter. Alternatives to this plan have not been discussed with the public, so we do not fully understand why DME isn't helping everyone like me, who can't afford solar panels, but would happily rent roof space and pay marginally higher rates for true actual renewable energy we can see with our eyes instead of credits which do not translate to actual renewable energy use. We also do not understand why if Brattle can forecast a 20% engine run time to cover shortages, we cannot purchase energy futures piecemeal to achieve the same outcome. Although the proposed units could be taken offline and sold when no longer needed, this huge investment on all 12 engines is not justified as we cannot be sure that the future energy environment predicted by the Brattle group will materialize. And especially because in the same breath, we justify all 12 engines to ensure we can produce gas energy past 2025. Disrupting technologies are by nature, unpredicted. Take for example projections about the growth capacity of New York City. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950- Actually that was your time. If you could just, if you got us some concluding remarks, that'd be great. Do not be the city council that does this to Denton. Be the city council that shows the new city manager what it's like to represent citizens. Do not pass a proposed resolution. Do not pass the proposed ordinance. Thank you. We have a question for you, I believe, Ashley. Council member Briggs. You mentioned something about rental of solar. Yes, ma'am. Can you explain that a little bit? There are companies that are emerging now which provide a service to people who wish to get their energy from renewable sources such as solar. One example of that is Solar City. They have a plan. And they provide opportunities to people like me who cannot provide, who can't afford the upfront cost of solar panels. And basically what it does is it allows you to, it allows them to essentially rent your roof space. So at zero cost to a customer, you would have enough solar panels installed on your roof to provide enough energy for your home use. And then they would provide you a bill, just like Denton Municipal Electric does, that should be around competitive rates. But that's not allowed here in Denton. It is not allowed here. That's correct. It's not allowed in non-deregulated cities. Thank you. Thank you. Christina Harris and then Sean Jacobson. Hello, Council. My name is Christiana Harris. I live at 35 00 Cooper Branch West and I am opposed to the Denton RDP. I oppose the Denton Renewable Plan simply because it is a misleading title. I find it misleading to build gas plants and calling it a renewable plan and only taking renewable credits as you're, as you're, I would say, greenwashing the public and believing that that's your way of being green. This is Denton, Texas. We banned fracking. And you want to be leaders in renewable energy, but you're building gas plants. It sounds ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It's an outrage to the public citizens who banned fracking. It's an outrage to those that want green energy. It's an outrage to the parents who struggle on a daily basis with their peak flows of making sure that their kids are breathing right, that they're taking their albuterol. It's frustrating. You say that they're trying to save rate payer money when they are costing us in medical bills. It is ridiculous. It is laughable. I cannot believe that you actually think that voting DME to give them more money after they're racking up basically an $820 million deficit with the RDP and the $265 million that possibly could be on the plate. How many times are you going to let DME make mistakes? Honestly, I honestly don't understand how you could allow them to get this far into a hole and to think that we wouldn't stand by and not notice, that we wouldn't stand up and be outraged and not have our voices heard. I don't consider open house meetings as a way for the city to engage their citizens. It is a way for DME to come in and to tell the public what they are going to do and what they will do without even hearing, obviously, alternatives from other companies that are willing to give us the battery storage, they're willing to help with the getting us real renewables, real solar. $240 million would buy about 80 megawatts of actual solar panels that would power 16,000 homes. You want to keep rates low for those that can't afford it? Put those solar panels on the lowest, you know, payers of the electric bills that are homesteaders. I cannot believe that you're going to pass on DME debt and health problems onto the citizens of this city. It is appalling. It's very cause behavior. And I really hope that you will vote no on these gas plants. It's appalling. It really is. I'm disgusted. Thank you. Sean Jacobson and then Jody Ismert. Sean Jacobson, 1122 Bellamy Drive, Denton, Texas. It's good to see you folks. I'd like to start with a reading from one of my favorite writers, slightly adapted. The wishes of constituents ought to have great weight with you. Their opinion, high respect. Their business, unrem itted attention. It is your duty to sacrifice your pleasures, your satisf actions to theirs. And above all, ever and in all cases, to prefer their interest to your own. But your unbiased opinion, your mature judgment, your enlightened conscience, you ought not to sacrifice to anyone. To deliver an opinion is the right of all citizens. That of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which you as representatives ought always to rejoice to hear and which you ought always most seriously to consider. But our representatives owe us also their judgment. And you betray us instead of serving us if you sacrifice it to public opinion. You have before you tonight important questions. DME employees have given you detailed information about the renewable Denton plan. You have given Denton citizens ample opportunity to express their opinions regarding this plan and how to pay for it. And I believe you've listened closely. At their request, you've also had an outside consultant examine the plan and report to you on its merits. And I'm sure you've discussed it with each other. You have all the information. The time for discussion and debate has come to an end. The time has come to decide. I can't tell you how to vote. I can tell you that I believe the renewable Denton plan is the best way to help improve our renewable capacity, to get coal plants offline in Texas much more quickly, to protect right payers and their costs. That's what I believe. But you have to make this decision for yourself based on your judgment and your concern for Denton's future. I would ask you, if you do vote for the plan, to also vote for revenue bonds. As Mr. Coleman stated, please don't pass the buck to voters and give us another acrimony selection season. I barely survived the last one. We elected you as representatives to make decisions. Now it's time to represent us. Do that. You know what I want. But at the end of the day, you have to live with your conscience. I don't have to. These folks don't. I would ask you to make the decision that you believe is right, that you can live with. I have faith in you. Now I have 38 seconds and I'd just like to say briefly, the hardworking employees of Denton Municipal Electric have come in for a lot of undue attacks and questioning of their motives. I'm sick of it. These are good people who want to run an efficient, effective operation and consistently believe they do that. Our electricity is reliable. Our rates are low. Year in, year out. Many of these folks live here and they use this service themselves. They have no motivation to harm us. Folks, good people are not going to want to work for Denton or be our city manager if this is how we keep treating them. We have a right to free speech, but civility matters too. Thank you. We have a question. Councilmember Begheri. Thank you for your comment, Mr. Jacobson. Who is the quote from? Edmund Burke. Thank you. Thank you. Jody and then Michael Hennan is on deck. Jody Ismert, 819 Anna Street. I just wanted to say that DME owner, just kidding. No, really though, I am technically DME owner. I'm a citizen here. I'm not necessarily just an advocate. I'm also a mother. I've lived here for 20 years with my husband, who was actually raised here since he was three years old. I'm not just someone who's trying to polarize the city. I feel like the city is very polarized right now with this regarding this issue. It's many, many people in the city are against having gas plants for good reason. Asthma rates, as has already been mentioned, are twice. Twice as common here than in other areas, even within Dallas as well. I'm not going to go over everything that everyone else has already gone over. I know we're going to hear this all night. I want to split this up into two sections, what I really, really want and then the pragmatist in me. Essentially, I do not want you to build these gas plants. I want you to vote no. I absolutely want that. I do want renewable energy. I wish that when the Brattle Group had done their report, that we could have truly gotten a comparison on what it could have looked like without gas plants. So we could actually take a look at the RDP and then also the Brattle Report on what the plan could look like without gas plants, but we didn't get that. Anyhow, I'm not happy about the debt. I'm not happy about the pollution. I'm not happy about the fact that people are asking for revenue bonds because I really do think this needs to go to a vote. I really do. I think the citizens need to vote on this. This is an additional $265 million of debt. That's a lot of money. We really do need to vote on this. And I know I have a minute left. The pragmatist in me just wants to say, I know you guys already have on the table that you already have the votes to put this through potentially. I know that six engines get baseload. That's already been discussed. Why would we go for 12 engines all at once when we are so close? We are at a technology disruption at this point. We are so close. Why would we spend so much money on 12 engines when we are at the cusp of having large scale battery storage? It just doesn't make sense to me. So I'm hoping that you will let the citizens vote on this. And I'm hoping that you will just say no to 12 engines. Please. Thank you. Michael Hennan. And on deck is Stephen Shait. Michael Hennan, 724 Thomas Street in Denton. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for all the work you've done on this. I know that many of you have spent many, many hours considering this question as have our good employees at DME . I am proud to be a citizen of a city that owns its own municipal electric company. In many cities in the state of Texas have large outside corporations that rule and that set the rates that they have to pay and they have very little say in the issue. Here in Denton, we do have a say and I'm very proud that we do that. I have often heard members of Council refer to this as a full service city and I'm very glad I live in a full service city. My opposition to the plan that's before you tonight is based on the principle that cities and states and nations, for those entities, for the people of this country, for the people of the world, the time has come for us to stop making investments in fossil fuel technology. We must get away from a poisonous technology that poisons our water, our air, that we breathe, and the very soil we live on and that makes the earth beneath us tremble. This is not a matter of experts versus advocates. There are plenty of experts. In fact, if anything, this is a battle of the experts that you have heard all along this debate. You've heard experts from each side giving you the best information that they have available to guide you. I think, not based on advocacy, but based on history, that the history shows that in the early part of the present century, the projections that were made about how far we would be now in renewable energy, how far we would be now in ability to store energy, has far outpaced what the projections were . And we now are at a position where we can look forward to those new technologies and leave behind the poisonous technologies that fossil fuels represent. I think the analogy to offering the people of Denton discount cigarettes as compared to the power plants was a good one. Because basically what this plan would do is give us the cheap way to continue to poison ourselves. And very quickly, you're not passing the buck if you choose a financing option that allows the city to choose how it's going to finance these plants, if that's the way you go. It is a responsible thing for you to do with such a high debt load possible to let the citizens decide. Thank you. Thank you. Stephen Shade. Then on deck will be Linda Carras co. Stephen Shade, 1902 North Belle Avenue. Good evening. It's a pleasure to speak to you all tonight. I would like to start off by saying I completely agree with the previous speaker and all his points, but I'd like to emphasize the part about DME being owned by the city, owned by its citizens, and I do appreciate us living in a city where that's the reality. On a more personal note, I moved here 21 years ago, but before that I'd lived in five different states and two different continents. Denton has by far the worst air quality I've ever experienced. I used to run a lot when I first got here and had to switch from running in the evenings to running in the mornings because of the ozone. After a while I had to do an albuterol inhaler. And then about 11 years ago it got so bad that I had to shift to something else and that's one of these adver discs . It's a steroid, not crazy about taking it, but I have to, not to run, to breathe. I have to do it twice a day now. This is the worst air quality that I've ever experienced. It's nearly third world in my opinion. And there's no way that we in good conscience can add gas plant and its pollution to that. I have to do an inhaler twice a day just to breathe. Not just the little folks, the little kids. Sometimes it's big people too. Thank you. Linda and then Brighton Carruthers is on deck. My name is Linda Carrusco and I live on the corner of Kings Row and Cooper Branch East. I am an owner of DME supposedly. Two years ago my neighbors and I opposed the placement of the Kings Row substation so close to our neighborhood because of one of the reasons documented health risks. And we were opposed when so much land is available to place such a substation a safe distance from homes. At the time we were told that it was a done deal. Years before DME and City Council said that the neighborhood had been informed of plans and we were told that no one objected. We found out later that there was not enough public notification of DME plans even though it was documented by DME that there was and that there was no opposition. We were given very little time to rally our neighbors before the final Kings Row substation plans were presented to you, the City Council, for approval. But we managed that night to bring to City Council over a hundred signatures on a petition opposing placement of the substation. Sadly, our experience was that we found out that DME and City Council have a reputation for getting deals done despite citizen disapproval and objection to their energy plans. DME's company overview says that it is Denton's community owned electric provider and that being community owned means that DME pays close attention to what customers value and DME is supposed to work hard to deliver that. As citizens of Denton and DME customers value clean air, clean water, and freedom from worry about possible earthquakes, fire, or toxic spills, DME and City Council, who oftentimes work as one, have been given two choices today. You can publicly vote for the present renewable Denton plan and all the bad things that it could possibly bring to Dent on or vote no on the RDP and vote in favor of the citizens of Denton and DME customers who value clean air, clean water, and freedom from worry about possible earthquakes, fire, or toxic spills in our city. Thank you very much. Thank you. Brighton and then up next is Adam Goworski. Hi, my name is Brighton Carruthers. I live at 2101 Savannah Trail. I am a sixth generation Dentonite. In 2040, I will be 34 years old. I might be married. I might have kids. I might still live here in Denton. Denton might be 100% renewable if we are lucky, but we will still be paying off gas plants. Denton air is already bad. I know this. My brother has asthma. Gas plants will make our air worse. Please reconsider what you are doing to my city, my air, and my future. Thank you. Thank you. Adam, then Phyllis Minton. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Adam Goworski, and I am the Chamber's Vice President for Economic Development. I am here on behalf of our Board Chair, Glen Carlton, and our President, Chuck Carpenter. The membership of the Chamber of Commerce represents most of the largest rate payers of Denton Municipal Electric, and accounts for the largest employers and highest property taxpayers in the DME service territory. During its regular meeting on June 16, the Board of Dire ctors unanimously endorsed and recommended adoption of the Renewable Denton Plan, which was proposed by DME and advocated by your independent consultant, the Brattle Group. I brought a copy of this resolution, which lists the signatures of the directors who took part in the vote to be placed in the record. There are several members of the Board of Directors here with us as well. Glen Carlton, Mark Burroughs, John Gilmer, and Lee Ellison. And I apologize if I miss anybody in the group. We appreciate your time and consideration. And you're going to leave that resolution with the City Secretary? Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. How many members do you have in the Chamber? How many total members? Yeah. I'd have to get that exact. Like business. Is it a lot? It's approaching over 700. So do you send out notification to all those 700 business owners that you're going to turn in a resolution to approve this? Is it? I'm just curious how that works. Or is it just a few board members decide to approve the resolution? This was signed by just the Board of Directors. Okay. And do you send out notification to all the people that belong to the Chamber? I don't believe it was sent out to the whole 700 plus. No. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. Phyllis and then up will be Jane Piper-Mont. Good evening. My name is Phyllis Minton. I live at 2005 Burning Tree Lane. My husband, David, grew up here in the 1940s and '50s. He then went off to live, study, and work in Tacoma, Washington, El Paso, Texas, Austin, Texas, and Falls Church , Virginia for 40 years. He persuaded me to retire here in 1995. That turned out to be a good decision for us. I have very much enjoyed being welcomed to this community. I love the vibrant arts community, which includes community theater, senior bands, middle school performances, hundreds of performances at UNT and TW. I'm a master gardener who shares my love of sustainable gardening with the community. I love to use the Denton Beneficial Reuse Programs, recycling everything that can be recycled, especially I love the soil and mulch that's produced by the City of Dent on picking up yard waste. What I do, what I think what I can, I do what I can to make our community a better place. I volunteered for 16 years at Roost Room Thrift Shop, which benefits Habitat for Humanity, the ultimate kind of recycling and reuse. I worked at Our Daily Bread. I care about the quality of life right here and around the world. As a citizen owner of DMA, I truly fear for all of us if the gas plants are built. I have informed myself as best I can about the pros and cons. Others have said it better than I. I just have to speak my concern about committing Denton to the $265 million expense of building these polluting or this polluting plant. The time seems right to invest in solar and wind, not more fossil fuel burning gas plants, which would require the fr acking, more gas. The voters have already spoken on the subject of fracking very clearly. Could $265 million install solar on every roof in Denton? Please do not commit us to this debt and pollution the gas plant construction would bring. The future of Denton and the future of the world is in your hands. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Jane, and then up is Christopher Farman. My name is Jane Piper Lund. I live at 207 North Elm. And first I would like to say that to betray all the people that are against this plan as liberal environmental advocates is simply not true. I am a Christian. I am conservative. I am a business owner and I am a citizen of this town. There was a time when each of you was not on this council, which made you just a common citizen of Denton. But now because you are on this council, you are denying us a right that at one time you would be denying yourself. And that is the ability to decide whether we want this gas plant or not. I want to read a portion of a letter that all of you received from someone else. At least you have a vote, which is more than we the citizen owners have. When you deny us our right to vote on a plan that you support but that the majority of voters do not, we become your hostages. The ones who have no vote deny the information and conversations that you are privy to on a weekly basis in closed meetings. Even if you love the RDP plan or see it as the lesser of two evils, the fact is the people of Denton are counting on all seven of you to grant us the same liberty to say yes or no on this unprecedented debt burden whose benefits are based mostly on projections. And this is still part of the letter. I refuse to accept that citizens must abandon all control after they elect representatives to serve them. That is not how democracy is supposed to work. These gas plants are not a basic human right or a municipal right. They are an option, an excessive option at that. Grant us a choice on the direction of our future. Or at the least delay your vote until all alternative options are explored, considered, and exhausted. Thank you. Thank you. Christopher Furman, then Carol Soaff will be on deck. Hi, my name is Christopher Furman. I live at 2924 Longfellow Lane here in Denton. And thank you all for your service to our city that we all love so much. I'm here today mainly over concerns of our air quality. And, you know, I understand the benefits. I've looked into the proposal as fairly as I can, and I understand the benefits to it. At present, it seems to me that a large share of our electricity comes from coal plants that are located far away from Denton. And I think it's extremely irresponsible to consider a plan that would move that combustion of hydrocarbons from far away into Denton into right into the city. And I also in react also in partly want to react to the second speaker of tonight, Eric Pruitt's presentation about what he claimed was a low level of ozone pollution that could result from this plan. He said nothing about hydrocarbons. He said nothing about methane that might escape, which is a bad greenhouse gas in itself, but most of all the production of carbon dioxide that is the natural product of burning methane, which is going to be imported. You know, that pollution, the production of that pollution to be imported into the city where air is already terrible is just the height of irresponsibility. I understand that you guys have worked hard on this plan that has some good things to it. But the basic public health aspect of it and the basic air quality, I think means that you've to be responsible. You guys really got to vote no on this. I'm begging you. You know, I've got the anecdotal, you know, evidence also of the way my own respiratory systems collapse since moving here over 10 years ago. I could have brought my asthma meds in too, but also just subjectively with our air as bad as it is. I'm begging you guys, don't vote this plan tonight, please. And it's just an added irritant that it would, in my, I mean, the way a lot of us look at it would be the kind of final victory of the fracking industry over the voters of the town where they've treated us as unfairly and malicious ly as they've had already. That the last thing we want to do is to do anything to reward them in these circumstances. Let's hold off some more years. You know, us cutting, us trying to switch the sources of our energy doesn't mean that coal's not going to get burnt. It doesn't free us from our contract necessarily. So please, you know, let's hold off and not vote on this plan tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. And then on deck will be Ed Soap. And just to sort of give you all a heads up, I'll try to plan to take a short break at 9 o'clock. So just very briefly, but wanted to let everybody know. My name is Carol Soap and I live at 1620 Victoria in Denton . I am speaking tonight to oppose the Denton Energy Center as now proposed in the renewable Denton plan. I am in complete agreement that we should be moving toward 100% renewable energy, but with certain facts in mind as we do so. To have a safe, reliable, and fiscally responsible plan, we must assess a few things that are not in the Brattle report . The three options that the Brattle group presented do not address a plan that envisions a clear direction of how Dent on achieves 100% renewable energy by 2030. It does not address that or any other 100% goal. Is there a goal? Why is there no consideration of a fiscally sound balance of renewable credits, ERCOT, and bond financing to build our own solar or wind facilities for our own energy use? We could sell that energy that we don't need to offset the capital costs, eventually generating energy free and clear. There's no guessing and no price volatility with solar or wind because there is no fuel cost. Our nine-year-old installation has consistently provided a 40% decrease in our electricity cost over every year. Our installer told us out front that that was what our unit would produce. With the 80% decrease in the price of panels and the massive investments in wind and power and Bloomberg Renew able Energy's 2016 projections, it makes good sense to thoroughly investigate the possibilities. The Brattle report did not provide that scope at all. Of all the questions about this project that you have heard and will hear tonight, one stands out for me, one that the Brattle report did not address. When will this $265 million investment in fossil fuel technology pay for itself and generate revenue as solar and wind can do? Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Stove. Then on deck will be Ariel Harris. My name is Ed Sofe. I live at 1620 Victoria here in Denton. And I thank you for your attention and your extreme patience. I'm speaking in opposition tonight to the Renewable Denton plan as currently structured. The goal of an electricity portfolio of 70% renewable energy, real 70% renewable energy, by 2019 is without question a meaningful step toward a renewable future. But that is a short-term goal. What happens beyond 2019? Given the accelerating development of storage and transmission capabilities, the continued drop in the cost of wind and solar, and the opportunities for DME to initiate community and industrial solar installation, what is the big picture? What is the timeline or is there a timeline for 100% renewable fossil-free portfolio? Initially, in earlier resolutions, 2030 was given as the target year. 2030 isn't in this resolution. Why is that? Another question is, will the $265 million spent on the Denton Energy Center make Denton 100% renewable by 2030? What could be done or just has it been explored? What we could do with that $265 million to achieve 100% renewable energy? Those questions and any mention of the 100% goal by 2030 are not to be found in the Brattle Group's report. It is just what its title states, a review of the Denton Renewable Plan. Citizens were asked to provide questions regarding options and resources that they wished the Brattle Group to address . City Manager Campbell dutifully sent those subjects to the Brattle Group and apparently the Brattle Group just as dut ifully ignored them. There are other concerns besides the gross inadequacies and biases of the Brattle Report. The last 13 months have progressively broken heat records. Erratic and violent weather patterns, wildfires, species extinction, a dying Great Barrier Reef, all indicate that climate disruption has begun. And it is happening so much faster than initially modeled by climate scientists. The Denton Energy Center's minor source classification of greenhouse gas pollution is meaningless. It is all the world's minor sources that have culminated in this major life-threatening dilemma that we face. The DEC's engines will not, they will not improve our terrible air quality or help mitigate climate change. Natural gas is not the bridge to a 100% renewable energy. Like all fossil fuels, it is a bridge to a future of wors ened air quality, accelerated climate catastrophe, and economic chaos. And we must work together to identify the long-term environmental and economic ramifications of the RDP so that we can chart a defined timeline toward a specific adoption of a 100% renewable fossil-free energy portfolio. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ariel Harris and then Jesse Hemner. Get your name and address and your time will begin. Hello. My name is Ariel Harris. I live at 3500 Cooper Branch West, and I am opposing to the Denton Renewable Plan and pollution and everything that is going on. I have asthma, and the struggle that I have to go through every day is kind of hard. I have to take peak flows. I have to take, I have to take l ortotine. I have to take my QVAR puffer. I have to take albuterol. I have to take all these medications. I am restricted from exercise, and when I go into an asthma attack, I can't go to school. And usually, almost every year, I have to go to the hospital because I can't breathe. And it's very hard. And after three years of moving here, I started to have asthma. Like, I did not have it when I was growing up. I had it when I came here. And it's very hard for you guys because you guys are all saying that it's green, or the Denton Renewable Plan is saying that building these gas plants is green, but it's really not. It's putting green into the air. And I don't want to be like Robert J. Smith, the 11-year- old Woodrow Wilson student that died of asthma in the 1990s. I really don't. I don't want to die. Thank you. Thank you. Jesse Hamner. And on deck will be Cindy Spoon. Good evening. My name is Jesse Hamner. I live at 1815 Maple . Thanks for your attention this evening. This is obviously an emotionally charged issue. And if emotion and politics weigh into your vote, I understand. I don't envy your position or the vote you have to take. I know you'll face angry citizens, probably from all sides, regardless of the vote you make. I do think this plan is built on solid research. It was written by people who specialize in this kind of economic and municipal operation. More importantly, I think the plan splits the difference between the ideal position for one group and the ideal position for another group. By giving no side everything they want, a vote for this plan will show a commitment to serving all your constituents and to compromise. I confess, I am a bit conflicted. As a runner and an outdoorsman, I despise our poor air quality. Most of the known world understands that CO2 and hydro carbon emissions are undesirable for reasons of pollution, respiratory health, and climate change. But we cannot blame our poor air quality exclusively on electrical generation, especially in a large metropolitan area with lots of cars. More hopefully, the proposed plan checks off lots of positive boxes, environmentally and financially. It maintains local control. It cuts our net output of pollution and CO2. It benefits both citizens and prospective businesses by providing stable energy costs. And if we buy from the market, we lose a comparative advantage. Our energy decisions and prices will no longer distinguish us, and our aggregate environmental impact will go up. The plan creates redundancy and resilience in the energy grid for our town. We will avoid paying emergency rates for power should a disaster knock one side offline. A 5% increase cost for fully renewable electricity presupp oses no external changes in energy markets and does not account for peak or emergency pricing, which can be thousands of times the price for a kilowatt hour. Adding 50 megawatts of photovoltaics every five years is a landmark by itself. We should be proud of that. And as the installation price for photovoltaics continues to drop, efficiencies continue to rise. Now they're up to 30%. So despite real concerns about fracked natural gas, methane losses from fracking and fracking fluid, natural gas is useful as a bridge fuel as we and other responsible municipalities support better and more sustainable electrical generation as we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. We must look over the horizon and plan for the city's clean success. By capturing mine share as a forward looking and renewably minded city, Denton captures the all important first mover advantages when competing for green businesses. Coupled with an energy cost that is resistant to market spikes, which is good for all utility customers, Denton can chart a course that is unavailable to many cities towards a more sustainable future. In some, I think I can see both sides of the argument. I think that a strong emphasis on renewables coupled with a practical bulwark against market conditions and demand growth is best for Denton. Thank you. Thank you. And next will be Cindy Spoon. And after Ms. Spoon, we'll we 'll take our short break. How's it going? Cindy Spoon, 2210 Westwood. I am speaking in opposition to the renewable Denton plan. I do support Denton increasing renewables in our portfolio. Before I start, I guess I just want to acknowledge being here and like packing the city council meeting and asking city council to do what's best for our health and safety. It like just reminds me of so many other nights. I've done that here in Denton. And just the Denton voters have been through a lot in the last couple of years, and I can't believe so many people continue to show up. I can't believe that we haven't given up yet. So I'm really thankful to my community that keeps showing up. So thank you. So a specific concern that I would like to speak to is. The renewable Denton plan will peg our utility bills to the price of gas on the market. And so therefore, if DME or city council in the future, if this passes in the future, if city council is compelled to keep our rates as low as possible, it aligns Denton's policy positions with the fracking industry. So that's a concern that I have any regulations that might be proposed in the future at the state level that would improve safety or air quality. You know, safety regulations are expensive. They'll drive up the cost of gas. So therefore, if the renewable Denton plan goes through, it puts Denton in a position to oppose regulations like that in the future. That makes sense. This means we're creating a conflict of interest for ourselves to oppose the fracking industry, something that we know the residents of Denton want to do. Our city will no longer be pursuing positions that make us closer to being a frack free Denton if we have the renewable Denton plan in place. That makes sense. Besides that, I guess I just I don't know . This has been an emotional line of speakers already. Like, I just don't know how many asthmatic children have to come up here and talk about the fact that they have asthma before we start to take that into consideration. I don't know what's happening here. DME's projections of 100 percent renewable plan also shows that that would be cheaper for ratepayers than the status quo. So I don't know. I guess my ask is to make this process more democratic. The first time that we heard about this plan was at a press conference. We now know that DME was working on this for the last several years, which is great. I am glad that you all were giving this direction to increase renewables. I am really thankful about that. And I just wish that the voters would have been brought in sooner, that we could have been a part of this plan sooner and crowdsourcing this because now there's this sense of like every day that we don't pass this is a huge thing. And you all are obstructing. And it's like we could have been brought in sooner and working on this altogether for a long time. So because of that situation, I hope that this goes to the voters. I understand that our community is really polarized and that I might not get everything I want if a vote happens. I understand our community might vote for gas plants. They might not. I think it will sit well with everyone. It will sit better if the voters make this decision and not the council. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We are now reconvening. It is nine to 13 and we 're proceeding on with agenda item five E public testimony. The next speaker is James Ramos and on deck will be. Is it Darren or Darson Renzer? I'm sorry if I'm pronounced that. But is James here? James Ramos. North Loop 288. All right. Well, he James was in opposition . So we'll go with is it. Darson Rinser. I'm sorry. R.I.N. S.E.R. 3504 shadow trail. Going once. All right. In opposition. Set these aside just in case they show up. The next speaker would be Deb Armator. I know she's here. Yes. Yeah. Go down there and tell people they need to start . Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll put her on Lee Allison. I know I leave here. I know I see Lee coming down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Good evening. Lee Allison with Allison Engineering Group 4 401 North I-35. First, I'd like to apologize for extending the meeting another three minutes. I originally signed out a white card, but after hearing some of the citizens agendas items, I felt compelled to speak, particularly when somebody mentioned evangelism and I had that opportunity. I couldn't resist. I haven't heard yet any comments for DME or compliments regarding that Denton and DME is probably already has the most aggressive renewable energy program in the state. And this new plan is even much more aggressive, 80 percent more at least than what the current plan is. DME and Denton may be the most aggressive renewable energy program in the country for all I know. And that I think deserves some attention, some recognition. Also, as we attract industry that is looking for quick start capabilities, if we don't have that ability in-house, many of those might install their own individual generation plants, gas powered and as a result by smaller plants not have near the air quality regulations that our larger plant would. I was intrigued by the camera technology and I'm sure our staff would say duh to this, but I'm sure in the design RFP , we will require the most innovative and up to date detection technology that's available to be installed in our plants. We could also be looking into design efforts that would include computer modeling of the plant as well as laboratory testing, benchmark testing or bench testing, pilot programs, other things that could help us develop and predict how that plant is going to work in this particular area. I'm familiar with that mostly with water and wastewater plants, but I'm sure it can be done in that arena as well. There's a lot of discussion about air quality and it's important and I don't deny that, but are we really getting down to the nitty gritty? Are we ready to regulate lawn mowing equipment, that it all be electric, that we have all electric homes, that we no longer have gas grills, gas heaters, gas stoves? There's a lot of contributors to the air quality that individually are tiny, but altogether any one group of them could be greater than what this plant poses as a problem. And so we need to look at the entire matrix of contributors to our problems and our issues and not just focus on one and use an issue like air quality to try and stop something that we have a prejudice against and not look at the issue as a whole. Thank you for your time and I appreciate it. Thank you, Lee. Tara Hunter and on deck will be Gina Felker. I apologize for mispronouncing that. Hi, my name is Tara Hunter. I live at 918 North Bell Avenue . I'm speaking to you tonight in opposition of this item. In this plan, I no longer see a clear and defined goal to reaching 100% renewables. I see our city investing in $265 million on what will soon be obsolete infrastructure, making it far more difficult to reach the people's goals of renewables once we have built and invested in these. This has been sold to many with shiny expensive flyers with windmills titled with the greenwashed word renewable. So any polls that have been taken gauging approval of this plan must be seen in the truth of that context. We have worked tirelessly just to share the truth with our neighbors that this is that part of this plan includes gas plants. Over 900 letters were turned into you opposing this plan. Hundreds more have spoken before you in this room. I personally turned in 300 of those letters last winter calling for an analysis of this plan and to look at an alternative option that did not include gas plants. Why was the main request of hundreds of people not even given lip service in the battle report? I was very disappointed to learn that the same guys selling the gas plant engines were the ones hired to approve them. When the city manager hired Ira Shable and his firm, the Br attle Group, to review the RDP, it was not the first time DM E had seen Shable. They attended a symposium in Portland last summer where his presentation made the case for gas fired power plants. This was not the independent review that the people called for. I cannot believe that you would spend thousands of dollars on this report and not find the time to review the main request of the people. It is senseless to build infrastructure that will be fueled by the very process that the voters voted out. On top of this, our buyer, Aircott, has clearly stated that this is not a financially reasonable plan. They have encouraged us to not build these plants. Our F-quality air here, our sky-high asthma rates, these are not just statistics. For many of this, this means expensive health bills, daily preventative and emergency medications, and having to limit our time outdoors. I have an air alert on my phone that sends us warnings when the air is so dangerous that it's not safe to go outside. I got two of these warnings just this weekend. This plan leaves the most vulnerable behind. This added methane into our air, these added VOCs will directly translate into another child's life being full of asthma attacks, life with limited time outdoors, and a my riad of prescriptions. Without a health impact study or the analysis of how these chemicals in the air are going to translate into higher medical bills for families, you cannot be justified in building these plants in the name of the poor or the vulnerable. Lastly, just to wrap up, I want to say that you are not backed into a corner here. This is not a choice between the lesser of two evils. You don't have to vote on 12 or 9 engines. You don't have to decide how much poison is acceptable. You can choose a different kind of bonds to finance these plants that would require a public vote. I don't know how that vote would turn out, but we would certainly feel better about the outcome if we were left up to a vote rather than to this current system. Thank you. Thank you. Gina? I think it's F-E-L-K-E-R. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. And then on deck will be Deborah Armator. Hello. My name is Gina Felker. I live at 2017 Parkside Drive, Denton 76201. I am here to express my concerns about the gas plants. And excuse me for not looking up at each of you while I read this, but I'm going to lose my spot. I've lived in Denton for 15 years. I met my husband here. We owned a photography business here. We played music here for the majority of those years. Then I got cancer here. I have an environmentally caused cancer. I'm trying not to cry. It's caused by radiation exposure. It is no secret that radioactive material spilled where fr acking and drilling sites are. The radioactive material will be around for generations to come. It can't be cleaned out of the soil. Several of our own animals have died from cancer since my diagnosis. They have all died in the last four years. They all had radiation caused cancers as well. I'm so sorry. Several of my neighbors were diagnosed with cancer in their animals as well. This was at the same time four years ago. I was diagnosed with an incurable cancer at the age of 36. Last year they found another tumor in my neck. I can't sing anymore. So that income and joy has been stripped for me. We had to close our photography business because of my initial cancer treatments that weren't even effective, made my vision blurry. So that income and joy has been stripped for me as well. I have asthma and I currently use a maintenance inhaler twice daily and a rescue inhaler is needed. When things get really bad I have to use my nebulizer or go to the hospital. I have cancer. This means I have a weakened immune system. So when we have bad ozone days I can't breathe, which puts me at risk for pneumonia, which I've had several times since my diagnosis. I am begging you to put this to a citizens vote rather than for all of you to decide tonight. Fracking has already affected my life this way and now you want more infrastructure that will be fueled by fracking. We are already in an F in air quality. This leaves the most vulnerable behind like me, the poor, children, babies with developing lungs. The $7 savings, the monthly power means nothing to me when my medical bills run thousands of dollars a month. All this will do is make my family pay thousands more after I'm dead. I'm stuck here because my medical bills are so high that we don't have a savings anymore. We live hand to mouth and from an amazing community that has donated to my medical fundraiser. The odds are that had I never moved here that I wouldn't be dying right now from cancer. I am begging you to take this to a citizens vote. You should not bypass the voters because we are the owners of DME. I know I won't be around to live through the effects of these gas plants, but I don't want other people to go through what we've been through. We are broke. We are sick. We are stuck and we are dead. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] So I'm Deb Armantar and I live at 2003 Mistywood Lane. And I too am a citizen owner of DME. I'm really proud to be an owner of DME. I'm proud that we have our own publicly owned electric company. I think it's wonderful that we get local control over our electric company, at least in theory anyway. I would really like to be seeing more of that. I wanted to talk a little bit about some things that have been said about emotions versus facts. Everybody who has spoken so far, including Gina who just spoke about her own cancer, including County Commissioner Hugh Coleman who spoke about how good he thinks this plan is. He spoke about how we shouldn't listen to emotions and yet he was very emotional as he spoke about the importance of not being emotional, or rather not listening to emotions. I don't have a problem with his being emotional. I don't have a problem with Gina being emotional. This is a very emotional subject for all of us, those for, those against. Gosh, I wanted to read to you just this error alert that I got the other day. I too get these and I recommend all of you sign up for these too. This was from the 19th error alert for June 19th within 50 miles of zip code 76209. Smog levels are unhealthy for sensitive groups. I don't know what counts as a sensitive group. I think we 're all a sensitive group. We all have vulnerable bodies, vulnerable emotions, and that's okay. I agree with what Tara Lynn was saying about not having to choose between the false choice of the decision between two evils. You do not have to choose between 12 engines and nine engines. This is like the false choice that I give my children when I say, do you want broccoli or do you want carrots? I'm telling them you're going to have a vegetable. That's not really much of a choice. You can say no. You can. It's a yes or no vote. You can say no. It doesn't mean that you're saying no to a new future, to a new kind of energy plan. It just means this particular plan. People work really hard on it, and that's great. They still got paid for that, but people don't like it. Maybe we should just try something again and learn from this experience. This has not been a waste. Their time has not been in vain. It's been a learning experience for all of us. We don't have to go forward. You don't have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Thank you. Greg Johnson and then Adam Dunstan. Please state your name and address and your time will begin. My name is Greg Johnson, 3813 Granada Trail. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council. Thank you for your service. I don't need to be in your position tonight because no matter how you vote, you're going to get some ugly emails tomorrow. As you know very well, your vote should be a real vote. It should not be a protest vote. It should not be a statement vote. It should not be a vote to endear yourself to any group. It should not be a vote for your own ideals. And of course, you should never consider your reelection when voting on anything. Work for me. Who does that? Citizens have been fed misinformation by environmental groups for eight months now. Every facet of this plan has been held up to intense scrutiny. My son, too, has asthma. And we don't have these plants yet . What we do have is a ton of cars and manufacturing to our south with winds that prevailingly blow to the north. Those are the facts. No fall prey to the drama. The renewable dentin plan decreases emissions by 74 percent , reduces coal use by 100 percent, and gas usage by 37 percent. It does not increase fracking. But this discussion is not about fracking. 100 percent physical renewables is not possible. A lot of discussion about 100 percent renewables. A lot of discussion about Georgetown. 100 percent renew ables isn't possible. You got to back it up. So do you buy it or do you make it? It's a simple buy versus make analysis. And that's been done. What it does do is allows us to move to 100 percent physical renewables when it's technologically possible and financially prudent. That day is not today. City leaders should listen to DME and the Brattle Group and approve this plan as proposed because it benefits the city most from the perspective of the three legs as stated in the 2010 goal. Delaying this plan as the Sierra Club continues to advocate for will most likely mean that cheap wind power will no longer be available due to the expiration of tax credits. And that's a topic that's lost on this discussion often. Municipal owned utilities can't receive tax credits. And that's why we don't have our own wind farms and solar farms. Without tax credits, wind and solar are not economically feasible. Engineers and market experts should determine the number of sites and engines. Not elected officials or citizens without the required expertise. Revenue bonds, however, keep the debt off the backs of the taxpayers and put the debt solely on the revenue on the rate payers, even those outside the city limits of Denton. And we have those customers. It allows us to free up the debt for other projects. I would urge you to vote in favor of this plan because it's a good plan. It's a well thought out plan. It's researched, created and checked by experts. It's the right thing to do. And you can hold your head high knowing you did the right thing, keeping Denton as a leader in our nation of renewable energy while ensuring reliability and low rates for our customers. I'll stand for questions from anyone other than Joey. I see no questions. Thank you. Adam? Adam Dunstan? Is Adam here? Adam is in opposition. John Ryan? Good evening. Kind of ironic that John Ryan, 43 Wellington Oak Circle, Denton, Texas, 76210. Kind of ironic as to who I'm following. I was watching on TV and felt I needed to come up because there are a few points. I'm going to try and keep this very brief. A few points that haven't been made. Most everyone looks at the fact that we are at a large percentage of wind power. We're gaining solar power. As a former electrician, I can tell you electricity seeks its closest point to ground. But most likely the Spencer power plant that we sold off several years ago is actually providing a large amount of power to the city because it's all put on the grid and comes to the closest point. The concern I have is if we do not have power plants like this close to the city and again as a part of our renewable plan, if we get cut from the grid, we do not have power for our city. Where is the next closest Spencer cannot handle all of our city at one time. So you need reliable power that if you have grid issues, you have a power source close by. I believe that at some point down the road, we will get to stronger and stronger renewable. But the efficiency of these power plants, I saw what they were like some time back presented by DME, is extremely fantastic. The emissions from them are extremely low. The scrubbers on those are the most modern out there. The pollution presented by them is so insignificant that if you what we get from just the traffic on 380 because of the construction, the added emissions we have there is much stronger than what you get from this plant. Again, as the previous speaker said, most of our air quality issues are because of our neighbors to the south. In Texas, the wind blows from the south in the summertime and all that air comes up here. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Those are all the cards wishing to speak that we have. We do have cards wishing not to speak. 52 opposed and 31 in support. So those are the cards. So council, colleagues, what's your pleasure? We start discussion or? Well, let's all speak at once. Mayor pro tem rodent. I have a couple questions of DME just following up on some of the concerns raised by the public comments, if I may. Yes, sir. One of the comments was that we were just kind of using the word renewable but actually using gas plants as part of this. Can you describe what's actually renewable about this plan? Yes, sir. Mayor pro tem. The renewable didn't plan and contains 70% of physical energy from solar and wind farms in the future. It's anticipated the program would first entertain additional wind power purchase power agreements that we would buy the energy from the wind sources, not backed up. Like our present contract has been, that is a much more economical fashion to buy the wind power purchases. We issued a request for proposal from various wind farms and received those proposals that confirmed the pricing we assumed in the renewable didn't plan. The reason it's an integrated plan that would support those wind power contracts and then add to it for growth for the next 20 years. We anticipate meeting that growth with additional solar power contracts that we would also back up with these engines. And the engines are the insurance that we need to back up the intermittency of those renewable energy sources. So the value in this plan is that we're able to secure very low cost renewable energy, long term contracts. But it's risky because that's not something you can control . You can't turn on when the sun comes out. You can't turn it on. You can't ramp up. So in order to secure the value of those renewable contracts, we need something to secure that for us to hedge against spikes in need for our load during really hot days or really cold days or something else. Is that an accurate way of thinking about it? It is. The term that's used in industry is dispatchable energy that certainly all of our customers want reliable energy and want the energy to be there when they turn on the switch. And in order to meet those needs, we need some energy source that is dispatchable that will respond when the load increases. And so solar and wind is phenomenal and certainly a way we want to take advantage of all the renewable energy that's available to us. But this would provide us a dispatchable form of energy that we can depend on for those times when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. And there was also a comment made about the technology we 're investing in. Again, we're doing 70% renewable. So in terms of what we're investing in for our portfolio, 70% renewable. That's significant. A small percentage, 13%, I understand, will be coming from the DEC, Denton Energy Center. Is that somebody had made the point that very soon that's to be outdated obsolete technology? Some people said within a year. Some people said within five years. Some people said within eight years. How do you respond to that notion that what we're investing in, in terms of the gas generation portion of this, is just right around the corner to be completely obsolete? And I understand to be the gist of that is that somehow the assumption is the entire Texas grid within five to ten years is going to be powered 100% by renewable energy. To understand that being an outdated. So from your professional expertise on the matter, how do you respond to that? So these units are 225 megawatts of capacity. And in all of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, there are over 60,000 megawatts of generation. So when these units come into play, they will be the most efficient, most modern plants just put into the market. So as other technologies come forward and as those other technologies knock out other less efficient generation sources, fossil fuel generation sources, they've got 60,000 megawatts of capacity that they would replace before they got to the point of replacing this generation. Thank you very much. Council, there was one card that I called that wasn't present and they are here. So with your indulgence, I'd allow them to speak. If that's, and it's, is it Dyson to answer? I probably didn 't pronounce that correctly, but if you'll come down and state your name and address, your three minutes will begin. Thank you. And that will be all the public testimony. That's the last card we have. Hello, my name is Dyson Kinser. Sorry about that. No problem. I apologize for the intermittency. I hadn't realized you've called me. I want to thank the council for tonight and their consideration of this plan and for DME for coming up with this plan. I support the spirit of this plan and committing more to renewables. I feel that this plan is very hard to understand and the public should have been more involved. What I understand is that this plan has been in the works for four years and I'm sure DME has worked very hard on it. But I feel that citizens could have been incorporated more into the process. This was spread on us last October. We've had less than a year to deliberate with you to get involved in this plan and talk about it. And there's been a lot of talks about experts, about how you shouldn't listen to activists or people trying to disrupt this process. The fact of the matter is none of you on this council, to my knowledge, are engineers, experts in the energy industry . You're businessmen, you're parents, you're citizens of this city that we elected to have an unbiased nature to look at all this information by experts and see it. And we can do the same through public records and we have and we're not drawing the same conclusions. Maybe we don't have as much information, but I think we could have. And it's very sad to me that we don't, we didn't have that time because we have a time constraint. You're right in that. We do need a new energy plan because we have to did our stake, decide what our stake is in Given s Creek by January 2017, if I'm not mistaken. And if this had been introduced to the public earlier for debates, then we could have compromised more. I also take issue with the claim that this reduces Den's emissions. It reduces our portfolio emissions, but it does not reduce the city of Den's emissions. Our emissions are mainly tied to Givens Creek, which has more emissions than the fire coal pile, than the DEC. But that is 200 miles south of us. And these plants that you want to build are right here in our city and will have more of an effect on our air. So I just want you to take that into consideration. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Begay. Thank you, Mayor Watts. Would it be possible for Mr. Williams to return to the podium? Thank you. I just wanted to be clear about some of the underlying assumptions that we're working on when we make our decision tonight. And the reason for that is after you were so kind to take me to the coal plant, I do appreciate that visit. I went back and looked at, you know, how TMPA was started and what some of the assumptions were underlying the decision making process to build that coal plant. And I thought for the record, it's very important for people to understand what set of facts we're operating on as we make our decision. So first, regarding the coal plant, since we're on that topic, just to be clear, I've heard a lot of reference to this coal plant as a dirty coal plant. Can you just describe how much life you think is left on that coal plant? So the board of TMPA, Texas Municipal Power Agency, has commissioned engineering studies periodically. And the last one indicated the mechanical life of that unit would be to 2030. The question right now for that coal plant, other coal plants, is the economic life compared because of the very low natural gas prices that natural gas plants are just placing those coal units as base run units, which is what they originally designed. But in answer to your question you didn't ask, but I'd like to address if you don't mind, is the dirty coal plant. This coal plant is at Gibbons Creek is one of the cleaner coal plants of that vintage. Other coal plants built in that same time frame emit 15,000 , 12,000, 8,800 tons of nitrous oxide a year. That coal plant, because of it burning powder-revasing coal and because of it utilizing scrubbers that were put back in play back in 2010, only emits 349 tons a year. These gas reciprocating units we're talking about emit 40. And so the displacement of that generation, whether it's that coal plant or more likely would be other older, less efficient coal plants, will improve the air quality. The other thing I wanted to talk with you about since you mentioned it was the gas prices. My reading of the Brattle report is that both in the low gas scenario and in the base scenario, our assumptions are that we have already hit the bottom of the gas market and that we have nowhere to go but up. Base scenario states that there's a higher trajectory of upwards prices. Low gas scenario has a lower trajectory. So we're clear today gas is 2.62, something around that, per million BTU, and nowhere in the Brattle report is that assumed to be the price. Are we clear on that? So I believe the prices have increased some. I just asked earlier before I came in this room what the current market was. It's up to $270, $280. And so it is increasing some. And the projection is I think that it will moderately increase. The assumptions that DME made in our original projections assumed that this plan over a 20-year period would save $ 500 million. And Brattle came back with a low gas scenario of it saving $410 million, I believe up to $785 million. And so the higher gas prices were compared to our fixed-pr ice purchase power agreements would create more savings if you have a higher gas price. Right. So sticking back to the assumptions, underlying assumptions of our decision-making process tonight, regarding renewables prices, my reading again of the Br attle group report was that renewable prices have hit a bottom as well. Is that clear? We certainly think that's the case for wind. Solar keeps coming in lower with each quote that we get. So we think there's still a little bit more room for solar prices to maybe go down a little bit more in the next few years. But certainly wind at this time seems to be at a bottom. Last assumption is that every year there will be a 2% increase in the energy needs of our ratepayers. And so over the course of 20 years, we'll never see a decrease in our energy needs. Is that the assumption? That's a trend. Each year our energy needs vary up and down based on the weather. So the year that we had a 2011 heatwave summer, certainly our energy needs for the community greatly increased. And then the next year it did decrease. But the trend of that over a 20-year period is a 2% increase in trend. Okay. So I just want to be, again, reiterating there's three basic assumptions that are being made. And essentially what this is amounting to is a very long-term 20-year buy call. So we're saying we're going to purchase and we think that the bottom's been hit and we're going up from here. Is that right? 20 years. That would be correct. Over the past 20 years, we have spent $1.6 billion on purchase power costs. And this plan assumes business as usual, staying the status quo we are now, we would spend $2 billion over the next 20 years. And so that seems like a normal trend line that we're assuming on. Thank you. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you, Mayor. While you're here, I found some of the comments by Mr. Pru itt very interesting, especially comparing our proposed generation with that at Parasol. Now they use a generation engine by Warzilla that's called the 20V34. And we're proposing an engine by Warzilla called the 18V50. What's the difference? So the units down in Parasol were built for that area. It's a non-attainment area. I mean, excuse me, it's not an unattainment area. Ours is an attainment zone. And so the specifications we issued for our request for proposal issue stricter specifications as far as the emissions. And so it has more strict emissions requirements and noise abatement than OSHA instead. So these these plants are more efficient. There's less emissions and they are quieter plants. Yes, sir. Okay. There's been discussion about finding room for compromise. Instead of having nine of the generation units, the rice units to have 12. But on page 52 of the consultants report, they indicate that that won't work. Could you go into the details of that? I believe the table that you're referring to, we propose 12 units to take care of us for the next 20 years. As I described before in a previous question, our plan is to mostly at this time go out for additional wind power contracts and our growth in the future would be met by future solar contracts. All those contracts require some ability to firm up to provide for the intermittency of renewable energy. By building all 12 at one time, we believe we believe we gain the most economies of scale and then we don't have to come back and add those later at a more expensive cost. And when you use the term firm up, that might mean to someone that's less technical like me backing up those renewables when they're not available with with dispatch able energy from the fossil fuels. Yes, sir. Our priorities will be to initially meet our load requirements with renewable energy. When there's not enough renewable energy available, then we would go to the market if the market prices are low cost at a time when the market prices are not cheaper than running these units, then we'd run these units. We can use the market for some of the backup, but at sometimes, especially at peak hour times when the renew ables aren't available, not just to us, are not available to the rest of the market. Therefore, the ERCOT wholesale prices increase and these provide a financial reliability hedge for our citizens. That chart says that if we had nine units that we could back up our purchase power agreements for renewable energy at 70% only through the year 2024. And after the year 2024, because of projected growth in our city, the projected additional customers, the projected additional energy demands from the growth that we're going to experience, that after 2024, we couldn't remain at 70% renewable. By 2068, by 2032, we could only support 59.6% renewable. By 2038, at the 20th year, we could only support 52.9% renewable. So the nine RICE units would not allow us to achieve the goal of 70% renewable all through that 20 year time period. That's correct. That's why we proposed 12 initially. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Briggs. So I have a few questions. There has been discussion and I recently just learned the difference between physical renewable and RECs and this plan calls for 70%. So my question is, that is supposed to be physical renewable, correct? Correct. And so do we have any intention with this plan to obtain R ECs from the trading market still? Only if our load grew faster than we anticipated, and to maintain 70%, we need to true up some last remaining amount , but we would do that while we were at the same time trying to engage other solar contracts to meet that need to get us back up to the physical amount. Okay. So onto renewable PPAs, do we have a certain megawatt that we are trying to generate with those? Yes, I mean, essentially our load is one and a half million megawatt hours a year, and we would be meeting 70% of that with these renewable PPAs. So I guess what I'm saying is because I feel like 140 meg awatts firm renewables will represent 83% of our annual energy. Is that correct or no? I don't know. Sorry. I can't calculate the top line. I guess what I'm trying to say is because if we did 100 meg awatts firmed, right, and 200 megawatts from the market, or 200 megawatt PPAs as well renewables, would the 100 megawat ts firmed, because that's supposed to be more expensive, would that fill in for our peak energy? If you only did certain amount of those renewables firmed. So there will be certain times of the year when even with attaining 70% of the physical power, we will have more renewable energy than we can use, and we'll have to sell that energy back into the air-con market. The problem is the intermittency of hour by hour predicting when that's going to produce. Yes, for an average over the year, you know, that energy could be there, but such as the Georgetown case, they have about 145 megawatt peak load, and they've bought solar and wind power contracts far exceeding that peak. So if they have enough, most of the time available, but even when they've overbought the number of megawatt hours they have, they've had to buy a contract for firming those few times when those megawatts are available, when that capacity is not available. That's the same thing we're looking to do here. So just a couple more questions. Sure. Okay. It was mentioned, and I've heard also that the rate decrease of this plan for an average rate decreases between $7 and $12 a month for the gas plant. Is that correct? Yes, overall, I mean you're talking about for residential customer rates, for overall, what we anticipate in 2020 is starting or 2021, 2020, I'm trying to remember which year, but we start two and a half percent rate decreases a year from that point forward. So I would assume that's the kind of dollar amount that's what you calculated. And is it possible to say or to allow an amendment that says that our rates will not increase, they will continue to decrease? I mean, are we that confident in this plan? So we're confident in the base rate part of the plan. What's unpredictable is the natural gas prices. So natural gas prices, our rates are made up of multiple components, a facilities charge, a base rate charge, and the ECA, the energy charge adjustment. The energy and charge adjustment is the hardest part to predict because that's based on what the fuel cost would be and what the cost of natural gas will be going out over 20 years is volatile. So sometimes there are some years it will go up, some years it will go down. That's why we change that rate more frequently depending on that market. So our rates could possibly still increase with this plan? They would increase on this plan less than they would without it. So last thing, the Brattle report said the renewable PPAs are what make the gas plants a viable option, that the gas plants wouldn't necessarily stand on their own when we were talking about the aircott report. And I do realize that this plan has been worked on for many years, four years. And so I'm just wondering, did you guys realize this when creating the plan or is this something recent because renew ables are so cheap now? Well, certainly a decrease in solar has made this a real izable plan and decrease in the wind power. I mean, solar from 2010 has decreased from around $200 meg awatt hour to below 40. And so that's certainly helped improve the economics of the plan. Like I say, but what creates the ability to obtain those renewable sources at such a cheap rate is being able to have a methodology to firm that up. And having, I mean, the value of these plants isn't so much when they run as it is when they don't run because they're there and allow you to buy non-dispatchable energy. Okay. Council Member Wasney. Renewables are great, but you've got to back it up. And that's what this plan is all about. How are we going to back up the renewables? So we can back it up with one plant and not two. We can back it up, so let's talk money. We can back it up with one plant at a cost of 201 million. The annual budget for Denton Municipal Electric is 175 million dollars a year. That's money in, money out, 175 million dollars a year. So we're talking about an expenditure of 200 million to do one plant. One thing, the Brattle Report and the mayor sniffed this out. If we amortize over 15 years and not 20, we can save another 20 to 30 million by not doing the 20 year debt. So again, just looking at the numbers, they're big, they're scary. You mentioned 20 years and 2 billion dollars. So we're talking big numbers here. But I've lived in third world countries where I go to the light switch and turn it on and it doesn't work. So again, if we're going to do renewables, great, but you 've got to have the reliability. So when you turn that switch, for whatever reason, you have reliable power. I've seen it. I've lived in it when I didn't have that. Thanks. Councilmember McGregor. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to ask a question about compressed air energy storage. It appeared from the emails, goodness, that we got from Mr. Farley. I think there was some information shared with you. There were some comments back that he's not had an experience of trying to produce that kind of storage at a utility scale like we would need. Did I read that correctly or not? Our investigation of that revealed that what's been done so far is pilot projects in other countries. And those projects have not been at utility scale, certainly could have an opportunity to install this type of technology at utility scale. It hasn't been done at that level, whereas these reciproc ating engines have been deployed thousands of times at this scale. So I guess the concern we have about the compressed air storage is that you still got body energy to put into it. In addition to the capital cost to invest in the storage, it is a possibility. And certainly any kind of storage, this kind of storage and battery storage and other storage are technologies that we want to pilot and investigate. And by having these units as backup, it gives us an opportunity to do that. And part of this plan is to buy enough land as a buffering area around these plants that would allow us space that we can install this kind of technology on a pilot basis and test it and see how it would work for the future. Well, you anticipated my next question because I was going to ask how much this compressed air energy storage, it's stored underground, correct? It can be or it can be in above ground tanks. Okay. So would the fact that the portfolio that the Denton renewable plan is proposing, 70% renewable, 17% off the market, and 13% generated by our quick start plans, does it preclude in the next five years if we did more research and found out that compressed air energy storage or some other storage technology was available, it appeared to be cost effective? Does our plan that we would pass, that we're considering passing tonight, does it preclude the opportunity for us to substitute some of that 17% that we would be buying off the market or maybe some of the 13% that we would be generating with a storage alternative instead? No, sir. I mean, that's exactly the room and the plan for when these new technologies do become available and they become competitive with the market, they could displace that 17%. So, and that leads to the other question about our discussion about one site versus two sites. Would one site be large enough for us to really do some type of utility scale storage operation in addition to our generation operation? I mean, one site's going to cut the amount of space we'd have for that kind of exploration of new technologies in half. And so, certainly, we'd have more room for those. The main emphasis for two sites from a utility perspective is just reliability to not have all of our units at one site that one tornado can take out the electric lines, transmission lines, and make all your units worthless because you can't get electricity out. And so, that's the main, that's just a standard utility practice is to have that kind of redundancy built into your system. Great. Thank you. Councilmember Baguieri. Can you talk for a moment about negative pricing of renew ables? The adverse renewable paragraph that was in the Brown report? Yes. So, what Brattle was assuming, I think, in that was that there could be periods where renewables wouldn't be available to us. Again, if you have a West Texas wind farm, and the transmission line coming out of that wind farm was taken out by a tornado, then there could be a period of time where you wouldn't have that wind power available to you. It was anticipated, I think it stated in the report, that was not an area or a time that they would expect to happen over a whole 20-year period. It was just indicated that in any given year in that 20 years, you could lose the advantage of those power purchase agreements because something could happen to your renewable source. Okay, let me follow up a little bit. The renewables market pricing is heavily dependent on federal incentives, is that right? Correct. And because of that governmental interference with the pricing, that sometimes causes the prices of renewables to go into negative territory, does it not? Yes. Okay. The wind power is based on how much it's a production credit, so it's based on production. And so there are times when they will bid a negative price and give up part of their, say they're getting $20 worth of credit, they'll bid $10 and split that so they still make $10. Okay. So we're clear when we talk about a price being $40 or below on kilowatt hour, there are times when things are negative $22 for renewables. And again, going back to our underlying assumptions, we're relying on specific actions by the federal government regarding pricing of renewables, is that right? Yes, the practice for the federal government so far is once a wind farm is qualified, they continue to get those tax credits for that farm. And so the criteria is they have to have it built by a date certain. And so the concern is, is that right now, those wind credits are forecasted to go away and I'm going to look over at Germany. By what date did they start going away, Jim? Next year. Is it 20% a year? Yeah. So the wind credits start going away, but it's far, wind farms built after a certain date. So once they're in, they have it. So solar farms on the other side get their tax credit as an investment tax credit. So they get their tax credit up front when they build it. And we actually had this, well, we didn't, but this discussion about tax credits happened once before in 2012 when they were about to expire at that time as well. And the Congress then, our Congress decided to renew those tax credits for an additional five years, is that right? Correct. And so we could very well be in a situation where we don't know what Congress is going to do. We don't know what a new administration is going to do and prices could continue to be subsidized by the government and thus put downward pressure on the pricing renewables. It certainly could happen that way. Certain indications from, I think our legislative consultants indicate there's more of a tone to not renew these credits more so than there has been in the past, but it's certainly possible they could. Thank you. Councilmember Hawkins. Phil, if we were going to decide we're not going to build these plants, we're just going to go to the market to back this up. What is the problem with doing that? Why is that so risky? I mean, at those times when those renewables are not delivering all the way, those are the peak times, right? Correct. So just go into a little bit of that. We did look at an option of not building these units to go to 70% or 100% without the unit, without the engines, and to go to the market for a firm contract to back up these units. And that was considerably more expensive and we wouldn't have rate decreases in the future. We'd have rate increases because of that in the near future. So at those times that we're going to need that power generation, we're at a peak level and that's when prices would be at their highest typically. Yes, sir. I mean, whether you're buying a contract for someone, a firm contract for the future for them to take that generation that they usually would save to use during those peak times and sell at a peak price, they're going to charge you a high price to reserve that unit for you to use it for this source, for a backup source. Thank you. Council Member Riggs. So to that point, we still have a certain percentage in our little pie chart that we are buying off the market. Correct. And what percentage is that? I believe it's 17%. Because I'm confused because if it's so expensive or a little risky, why aren't we buying more renewable PPAs without 17% or trying to get the energy from our energy center rather than selling that energy to aircott? Why couldn't we just use that energy ourselves? So that is a forecast of what we think our energy purchases would be in the future. And as I said before, we'll attempt to meet all of our load with renewable energy production that we have. Second choice is the market when the market's cheaper. So 17% represents the time of generation we think that the market will be cheaper. Then there's 13% where we think the market won't be cheaper. And we would save ourselves the risk of high prices by having the units. Council Member Hawkins. So would we buy more on the market day of generation with the model that we have in front of? So the market definitions are day ahead and real time. Okay. And so right now we're very fairly risk adverse. And so we buy most of our -- a lot of our power in day ahead or with third party contracts way ahead of our needs. And we don't leave very much of our energy at risk in the real time market. The real time market is usually many times cheaper than the day ahead. But the risk is when something happens, that price can go up to $9,000 a megawatt hour. It hasn't, but it has the possibility of doing it. But it has gone up into the thousands of dollars a megawatt hour. Thank you. Council Member Rodin. Just when you think you're done. Thank you, Mayor. Bill, I just want to say while you're up here, thank you for all the time you've given us as a council and to the citizens. I mean, you're dealing with a bunch of amateurs, myself mostly included in that statement, telling you how to run a municipal power agency. And you've done it with a tremendous amount of grace, professionalism, expertise, and so has all your team. This has been a valuable community conversation. We're talking about RECs. We're talking about TMPA, NRG. It's kind of like normal vernacular now for citizens in Denton. And it's been a remarkable community conversation. But thanks for the part you played on that. And thanks for being receptive to the council who were pushing you for years, well before I got on council, after the historic 2009 move to 40% renewables, to say that's not enough. That's an ambitious community that says 40% is not good enough for us. Move further and move faster. And you came up with a plan that's going to do that in three years, take us all the way to 70%. And it doesn't seem like there's any stopping where we're going from there. So thank you for your service to our city and your service to our citizens. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes, I want to echo those sentiments because I know this has been a long journey and it's been a lot of number crunching, a lot of second guessing and the like. So I just have a couple of questions. One, and I've never really quite understood this, when we talk about needing to firm up renewables with whatever. In this case, we're looking at the rice engines. It could be some people proposed other things. But when you're looking at firming up renewables, do you have to have a match of megawatt capacity? Like in other words, 70% of our 1.5 million megawatt hour is a million fifty. It's about 70% megawatt hours. And that's, let's say that's the amount you anticipate getting from some type of renewable source, either solar or wind. So to back that up and that's a sort of a we're going to buy what you produce. So we're anticipating this is what you can do. So then to feel like you can back that up safely, reasonably, do you need to match that megawatt hour capacity one for one? Or let's say, for instance, if you've got a million megaw att hours of renewable sources, is 500 megawatt hour capacity safe enough to back that up? I'm just trying to understand how does that does that does that make sense? I mean, I don't want it to be too long, but is it a 30 percent? Is it a 40 percent? There's got to be some kind of factor that you use on when you're calculating renewables, how much you need on standby to sort of be able to pick that up if it doesn't show up on an average. Correct. So DME as a qualified schedule entity with our car has a responsibility to schedule a power supply to meet its load requirements on a minute by minute basis. And so some of those power supply or contracts that we've arranged for years ahead of time. Some of it is six months ahead, three months ahead, two months, day ahead. Some of it's real time. But we have a requirement to maintain it. And what happens if we don't schedule enough power supply to meet our load? Well, ERCOT's an integrated grid that we're a member of, and they're not going to let lights go out. So we'll get the power from the ERCOT market and we'll be paying whatever the real time market price is at that time. And so the financial responsibility is to make sure you have covered most of your load requirements through some source. So if you're going to turn to that source now to be 70% renewable energy, which is very intermittent, then you're going to need some backing. And for most of the days, 220 megawatts will cover most of our load. For summer peaking, we would cover the remainder part of that. If we don't anticipate the renewables being available for us, we would cover it with fixed price contracts and do that. We reached this balance by looking for how much of this -- I mean, like I said, there will be the off peak months, the fall and spring months, where load is not as high that we'll have enough renewables , more than enough renewables. They won't be selling some of that renewable energy back to the ERCOT market. But during the peak, we'll be using all we can get and buying more from the market and possibly running these units, all in addition. So it's a balancing of what's the best matching of when can I cover most of the load with this amount of generation? And that's why we came up with that amount of generation. Well, I'll just sort of share, and I shared a little bit last time, where my thoughts were on this in the work session. And I think I've said all along that I was uncomfortable with 12, so I'm okay with 9. And I understand the chart saying that it decreases our renewables, but I think that's -- I think if you were to peel the curtain back a little bit on that, especially if you look at the chart right beside it with the 12 units, you see the renewables sort of going up and down as you move down that chart in the years, whereas the one with the 9 is a linear, quote, unquote, reduction. But really, a lot of that has to depend on where you allocate the energy produced by those plants. In other words, if you're allocating most of it to meet peak time, well, then your renewable farming is going to suffer. I mean, it's basically you got energy. How are you going to allocate it? So I'm okay with 9. I think given 10 years from now, certainly what you guys have done without these and with Gibbons Creek being so unreliable has been remarkable. I mean, how you've been able to balance the portfolio and really keep energy costs down in an environment that is very volatile because if Gibbons Creek either doesn't show up or it's really out of the money, you guys are having to do this kind of buying ahead, planning this kind of -- these energy needs, especially as a QSE now without these. So I'm okay with the 9. I have a lot of confidence that you guys would be able to make that work and probably make it work really efficiently. I think I would be more favorable for two sites because I think as you talked about, one site really puts all your eggs in one basket. And also you're able to, if you have an odd number, to diminish the amount that you might put out by the airport where the air monitor is, you know, just in case that that 's going to potentially impact that. The bond rating -- I mean, when I looked at the Brattle Group estimates, because I think with the 12 engines, they estimated with the high gas scenario, whether one site or two, I think they were almost the same. Either one of those numbers were the same. If I don't have the report in front of me, but I thought it was like $975 million. It was almost double what your -- y'all's projections were. The 9 engines was $800 million in the high gas scenario, about $300 million I think in the low gas scenario, which tells me the higher gas prices go, the more savings we get with the renewables that are in place and then the reciprocating engines. So I'm okay with that. I really struggle with the 20-year financing of the debt simply because I think with those types of savings, with the interest rates the way they are now, I built my business on debt. So debt is not -- you know, I don't have an issue with debt , but you have to manage it responsibly. But my goal is pay it off as quickly as you can, if you can , and still maintain the cash flow. And I think in this situation, there's two things that that accomplishes. Number one, it saves you about $30 million over the life of the debt and interest savings. And number two, it hedges against to some degree that technological obsolescence. In other words, if you've got those things paid off in 15 years, if something comes along in 10 or 12 or 13 years that really is whiz-bang and allows you to really take advantage of that, you've paid it off. And that debt is included in those savings. That's not -- I mean, that's included in that. And so even if we go with the 12, even if you all go with the 12, I still would encourage to really look at the 15- year financing because I think it really diminishes a lot of risks in that regard. So people can say 12, 9. I've said all along before we even got this Brattle Group, I remember talking that I was more comfortable with something that was a little bit more flexible in the sense of, okay, we can do 9. We can do 9. We can do it. We can make that work. Not only can we make it work, it will work well. But it also allows some room in case new technologies come on. It also allows just sort of a sense of listening to, okay, how can we do this? Lowers the initial debt because people seem to be concerned about that. So I think it tries to hit on many of the concerns now. No. For those who don't want anything, it wouldn't matter if it was 6, 3, 5. But that's what I can support. I really would be unable to support 12 at one site because I think -- I just can't support 12 and then I think one site has really put you at a disadvantage no matter how many you got. And when you think about the cost differential of two sites , so you got two 10,000 square foot buildings or whatever they are instead of 120, your maintenance costs are going to be about the same. You might have a little bit more personnel in one. But then you might not have to run some of those as much. And you said something. You've said it all along, which is quite an interesting statement, that the value in these plants are when they're not running. And so when I hear that, I get it. I understand what you're saying. In other words, all your wind is showing up. It's cheaper to buy power on the market than it is to run these things. So my thought is, well, if that's the case, then wouldn't we -- I think that's another reason why I think I go with the 9 is because it's like, okay, if our goal is to run them as little as possible, then I also would want to really try to balance that debt component. So I haven't said much during this whole discussion, so I'm sorry I've taken so long. But that's sort of where I am in this whole. So it's not so much against -- I'm for the general plan. I don't know if I support the implementation of it as what was expressed in the work session. I think it was a week ago. So I'm not saying anything that's not already known. Councilmember Wasney. There was a citizen that came to the microphone and looked at the seven council members and said, you're not experts. And that citizen was correct. And it's why I held out for months to hire a consultant. Held out for months from October until, gosh, two months ago. Held out for a consultant. Because I wanted to hear from outside experts about this plan. So I really looked at the credentials of these people who came in. And these were MIT graduates. And if you're familiar with MIT, they're the best. They're the best. This wasn't just a group. These were MIT grads who came in here and did an exhaustive report on all of this. They're experts. I'm not. Everybody up here, good person. But we're not experts. The consultants were. I wanted that consultant report. And I'm not going to second guess consultants from MIT who have told us this is a plan. If you want renewables, you must back them up. Councilmember Baguieri. Does council have any further questions for me? I'm sorry, Phil. I apologize. Does council have any more questions for staff? You don't want to stand up there and sort of -- okay. All right. Sorry about that, Phil. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I just wanted to dovetail on the discussion about experts. Coming from the legal field, we have a really set way of determining who is an expert and who is not. And that's using Dober. And basically, just because you don 't have an MIT degree doesn't mean that you are not entitled to look at the underlying assumptions and biases of an expert report. And that's how the justice system works. It works very well . So the idea that somehow because none of us carry an MIT degree, we're not entitled to take a close look and question the assumptions, biases, and credentials of this report, it doesn't apply in the justice system. I don't think it should apply in this chamber as well. Councilmember Gregory. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilmember Hawkins . I'll be quick. Mayor, would you consider one site if we went down to nine units or are you on two sites? As I said, I think two sites. I think if you were to ask DM E if they preferred one or two sites, now you could ask them . But I think DME would say we probably prefer two sites. Yeah. They'd probably say they want 12 units, too. Well, that's true. But that may be so. Yeah. Yeah. Councilmember Briggs. So I have a question for you guys. It was mentioned that over 900 letters in opposition were sent to council. The first 300 I never saw. But 600 of them are sitting here in this box. So I'm wondering if anybody up here read any of them besides myself. I'm just curious. I read some. Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Bosney. I think the argument for one site is still solid. Construction costs for two sites and it's the long term maintenance for two sites. It's like owning two homes. You know, you're still going to have the maintenance repair . You're still going to have the crews to run two different sites. Another issue to look at is security on two sites instead of one. There are a lot of discussions now about power grids as a target, water systems as a target. So now you're you're really spending the money on securing two sites, not one. And I'm still still looking at the one site as an option. I think it's fiscally feasible to do one. And yes, we talk about tornadoes, but I don't get up every day and worry about a tornado taking out my house. I know that there were two reasons in case a tornado hit. Gosh, I just still think that's a long shot. The other was if there was a gas line disruption, the gas industry has all of that on computers. They know immediately when there is a pipeline issue, they 're going to be on it. So I just don't see that as a real threat. So I still support the one site. Councilmember Gregory. I was going to make a motion to approve the ordinance, but I was as doing it, I had planned on making two amendments. I was going to make one amendment to Section two, adding an item for talking about the configuration of one side or two sites and the number of units, nine or twelve. I don't think I want to make that amendment to this. I think that we could prolong this discussion for a good bit. And so I'm satisfied with Section two as it is at the time. I think that we're going to have time when we come back in a week or so and talk about issuing debt that we can decide on one side or two sites and we can decide on nine units or twelve units. So I want to make a motion to approve the resolution on agenda item 5E with one amendment. And that amendment is to Section three. And I gave you copies of it. I would like to replace what's written in Section three with the following wording. Nothing expressed herein shall be deemed to limit the city 's use of renewable energy in the future to the amount of 70 % of its load. And the City Council specifically endorses and sets a goal of achieving 100% renewable by 2035 while continuing to offer competitive electric rates and electric reliability to its customers. So I'm sure that's my motion with an amendment to Section three. Before I recognize the seconder, I have a question. You said when we come back next week to talk about the debt, we 've got an agenda item following this one on the debt. So to me, that's we're deciding that today. Okay. Well, I'm just making an amendment. That's my motion. Okay. All right. Councilmember Rodin. Well, that was going to be my question as well before I made the motion. I mean, I don't know what the absence of saying I don't know what the absence means in this resolution of not deciding one way or the other. The absence could simply mean we're giving direction to them to determine it as necessary. Moving forward, we're going to have to make some decisions in the future in terms of land purchases, in terms of contracts with possible. So there's one way to interpret this in terms of it's going to come back in one form or the other. I do not like the idea of continuing on the community conversation on this. That's we provided policy direction in the affirmative, assuming that's where we're heading tonight towards this goal. I tend to think that the policy questions, which is what we are policy makers, is do we head in this direction with 70 percent renewable? Are we comfortable with the fact of creating the Denton Energy Center in the city limits as to the mechanics beyond that? Frankly, I feel like we're getting into the weeds and playing engineers. If we've got experts telling us we want to two sites, we need 12 units. That's what we think is going to be best to be able to sustain 70 percent in the long haul. I could second guess that based on very little knowledge in the field. Now, others may have more than I do on that, but I think once we have the policy direction of it, in my opinion, the mechanics of that, I think we're going to have to trust our staff to say here 's what we're giving you the policy direction to do, go and do it. So that's my thought, but I'm fine. I guess my clarifying question, and I'll ask this to the city attorney, the absence of anything in this resolution relating to number of sites or number of units. Where does that put us in terms of the direction on that moving forward? Well, there's been a lot of discussion with regard to the number of sites and the number of units. And of course, as the staff has looked at this, we've tried to decipher the intent of the council. As we wrote this resolution, we recognized it was fluid enough that we did not put any language in. So if language is omitted, I believe we would read that. I believe the staff would in the future read that as being close to what you are suggesting. And that is you've provided the policy direction and you're leaving the implementation open and not specifying precisely how it would be configured in the future. So I would read that absence of information is not necessarily giving clear direction. Now, you could clarify that at this point in time and say, notwithstanding what is in this resolution that you expect it to be in a certain way, we will be looking back at these minutes, looking back at this record and trying to clarify what the council's intent was. But the discussion has been in several different places as this issue has evolved. So it's not clear even to me as I sit here and even as we wrote this resolution. So here's a suggestion to an amendment to the motion. Understanding that, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to have opportunities to review contracts for purchasing a property. We're going to have the opportunity to look at contracts for purchasing of the gas generation units in the numbers of those. So there's going to be plenty of council oversight moving forward. Should we decide as we're moving forward with this plan that we need to either increase, decrease or do whatever, based on circumstances on the ground direction that council wants to give at the time. So my suggestion is, Mr. Gregory, would you be comfortable with amending it to include the number of units and number of sites as proposed by staff? Understanding that that still leaves open wide latitude for the council and those future decisions just described to be able to scale up or down as we see fit. Mayor? Yes, I'm sorry. Yes. May I? You sure can. Thank you, sir. When I had scratched out my written out what I was going to amend for Section 2, I was doing it based on what I thought was the consensus from the matrix that we'd set up last week. What I thought I heard last week was that the majority wanted 12 units at one location. So now I'm hearing two locations and I'm not sure that there's 12 units. So I'm not at all clear what the desire is of the council is regarding configuration at this particular moment. But I think that if we passed this resolution now, the major part of the discussion has been done and we'll work out the details as we move forward. And maybe there's more clarity that can come soon. But right now we need some clarity on the direction that we 're going. Councilmember Wasney? I'm not comfortable just signing a blank check. I'm sorry. I want clarity from this council on number of sites, number of units. Based on that, then you decide on your financing. So you're not -- I can't just say I'm going to vote for this and then hand it to staff and let staff do whatever they want to do. Number of sites, number of units, that's our job. That's our job to make that decision and give council direction. And so I would ask that we come to clarity on this issue if we're going to vote on this tonight. But I am not comfortable just saying, you know, hand it over. We've been talking about this for months and months. Number of sites, number of units. That's going to determine the cost. Councilmember Hawkins? Maybe this is for legal, and those specifics are embedded in what we're about to vote on. So can we vote on this and then move to the next one? I think that's what my question is. Well, Councilman Gregory mentioned the possibility of adding some language, and I understand that's the issue right now on the table. He's mentioned the section three, which would add the goal of the 100% renewable. He also mentioned the possibility of adding an item number four to your section two, which would more clearly specify the configuration of the plan itself, including therefore the number of sites and the number of units. So if you desire clarification with regard to that issue, my suggestion would be that you consider adding that section and give the clarification. If you want to not do that at this point and allow the issues to evolve and you will consider it on a piecemeal basis as it comes to you for consideration, then that's a decision as well. But if you do desire the clarification, my suggestion is added in section two as a number four. Councilmember Gregory. Thank you. I don't think that leaving that specificity out is giving the staff a blank check at all, because we have to approve the contracts. We have to approve the purchase of property. I don't think that that does that at all. We still have oversight over it all the way. I mean, my count was that a majority of the people wanted a majority of the members of council wanted 12 units. My count is now that a majority of council wants those two sites. And I'm happy to amend this and add a section an item four to section two saying configure the dent and renewable plan on two sites with 12 generating units. But I don't think you want to vote for it with 12 two sites you want one site. The mayor does not want to vote for it with 12 units. And we're going to end up without a plan at all. Well, if we do that. Well, council member, I think in the work session, what was the consensus at least coming out of the work session, if I remember so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, was that you council member Hawkins and mayor Pro Tem Roden were OK with 12 units on two sites. I said, and who? No, no, no, no. She was only one. So I think I expressed an opposition to that. I think council member Briggs, I don't know if y'all really weighed in, but I think you had four. And then when council member was and he said, well, I can do 12, but I only want to do it on one site. And all three of you said, okay, we can do that. Now, if I'm is that a correct recollection of that? That that is what I was originally going to put in there. Twelve units at one site. But then I heard you change. Well, but you don't need me. I mean, I mean, that's if you have four, because I'm not going to I can tell you without specificity, this resolution will not pass. Okay. Then I would if you don't mind, I would in my motion amend section two to add item four, configure the dent in a renewable plan with on one site with 12 generating units. And so that's your amended motion. Yes. Okay. And including the adding the additional language for the 100 percent renewable. Yes. Yeah, that that I've not changed that amendment to section three. Okay. Council member. What an evening. Good, good council discussion on this topic. Look, before I make my motion, I'll make a couple of comments and that is your second before I make my second of the motion. I think this is an historic plan. You know, it's involving 100 percent reduction in coal. Thirty six percent reduction in our need of natural gas. So if you're concerned about our reliance on fossil fuel, this is the plan. The thought that somehow the fossil fuel industry wins when we only rely on it for 30 percent of our energy is an absurd conclusion in my opinion. Seventy five percent reduction in emissions. Forty percent all the way to 70 percent investment in renew ables is historic. So I gladly while I would prefer the two spot, the two plant configuration, because I think it gives us the maximum amount of flexibility for the future. I'm certainly not going to let this plan die on that front. So I gladly second that motion. I guess I have a question for Council member Wozniak. So if if DME's preference was to size, that doesn't change any of your determination. I think we can do it with one because it's number of engines. The reason they wanted the two was because of tornadoes and because of a disruption in gas pipeline supply. And I address both of those. So I'm comfortable with one. I still think it's going to save money in the long run to do one plant and not two. Council member Gary, I just wanted to chime in that I think 12 units at one site is the worst possible outcome. Council member Gregory. Well, we do have a motion on the floor. I know. You said that that was the worst possible option. So what's the best possible option? Well, I have my opinion about the best possible option, but I don't share. I don't have a majority of that opinion. It's probably time to share that. I disagree fundamentally with the assumptions that we're making. I think it is a historic decision. I feel like Detroit in the '70s right now, and I don't want my name anywhere near this plan with a 100-foot pole. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Y'all been really good all night. I appreciate that. I'm glad that's -- I'm sorry. We have a motion on the floor with a second. And if it's my understanding, we've got the amendment for renewable, 100% renewable up to 2035, and then you've specified 12 units on one site. Is that correct? All right. All right. Let's vote on the board. Oh, Keely, do you want to say something? Well, I feel like I want to say something if this is my last chance. I mean, I'm not in support of this at all, and I agree with Councilwoman Begarry that 12 sites -- 12 engines on one site is the worst possible thing we could do. But I also want to say that I believe that we all have good intentions here, every one of us, DME, the citizens, those four, and those against. But I also think that this plan started five years ago, and I think we were in a lot different place environmentally five years ago and with technology. So I really honestly feel we're making a big mistake, but that's just what I have to go on with the information that I have. But I honestly -- I really hope I'm wrong. I hope and pray that you guys are all right and the vote that you're going to make tonight is right, because if not, it's very worrisome to me. We're about to commit ourselves a big investment to fossil fuels and to dangerous greenhouse gas of methane for over 30 years. I have heard a lot of negative comments tonight regarding public opinion, activists, advocates. But what I want to say is I really appreciate everyone sending me emails and coming and speaking, whether you're for or against. I appreciate your voice. I'm not going to label you one thing or the other, and I just appreciate all of you being here. And that's all. Okay. Councilmember Begarry. Okay. Now we're making speeches, so I'll do mine. I refer back to the original goals that we as a city want to expand our renewable portfolio. We want more renewables. But we want reliability and we want affordable rates. And that's exactly what's happened. I've asked this council two or three different times during our deliberations, are those still the goals that we want? No one objected to the goals. Most spoke in favor of the goals. When we met with the public utility board, the same thing happened. Most of the concern that's been raised is over 13 percent of the energy portfolio. 13 percent. I think that we should invest more in wind and solar. A lot of people that spoke here tonight said the same thing . And the way that we're able to do that and keep our rates lower is through that 13 percent generated through the quick start plans. I think that we should increase our renewables because I think that we need to reduce our emissions. And this does it by 74 percent. It seems to me that if you are for improving our air quality, you would be for reducing our emissions by 74 percent. I think that would be something to celebrate, not something to denigrate. We've heard folks say people would gladly pay more for their electric rates to get 100 percent renewable right now . But right now, that's an option, and less than one half of one percent of the 50,000 DME customers have made that a choice. I made that a choice. Several people in this room have made that a choice. But for most folks, rates are very important. To say that this plan is a pro-fracking gas plan seems a ludicrous statement to make when we're reducing our use of natural gas by 34 percent. And to suggest that by building new infrastructure to generate electricity using natural gas uses more fossil fuels would be to say building a new gas station is going to increase the use of gasoline. That just doesn't happen. It may change the place that you buy the gasoline, but it doesn't increase the use of gasoline. Your gasoline is used by how much you drive and how fuel efficient your car is. The amount of natural gas that's used has to do with how efficient the generation is and how little you're using in your portfolio. So I think it's a great plan. I think it really does a great job of addressing the goals that were originally set out, the goals that people have spoken in favor of over and over again. It's a balanced plan. And so I'm enthusiastic about the plan and moving forward with it. Councilmember Hawkins. Thank you, Mayor. I hope it's okay, but I'm going to read my statement. The city of Denton and DME is in a moment in history where it must decide our future identity. Do we want to continue getting power from Gibbons Creek, a 30-year-old coal plant, continue our partnership with the Texas Municipal Power Agency, invest in renewable and storage technologies that may not be viable or economical for the 52,000 rate payers, or move forward with the progressive, aggressive, and well- thought-out plans such as the Denton Renewable Plan? The Denton Renewable Plan will bring us from 40% renewables to 70% renewables by 2019, which many cities could only dream to be. Since renewables are not always available and battery storage is not at the scale we need it to be or economically practical for all rate payers, we must figure out how to get the other 30%. Buying the 30% off the market puts us at a very risky position. Yes, there will be times when buying off the market makes sense, but without our own backup, we are leaving ourselves open for huge price break peaks as we would be going to the market to buy energy when demand would be at its greatest. At these peak times, if we are able to turn on our own plans to generate this gap in energy, in a matter of minutes we stay in control of our own rates and future. These units are considered a minor source of emissions by the TCEQ using national ambient air quality standards. These units also use very little water, which is an important item to consider being prone to droughts in Texas . I have a seven-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter, and I care deeply about the environment I am handing over to them. These power plants will be environmentally cleaner than the majority of other plants across the grid. All that being said, I am very concerned about the rate pay ers. This plan will save the rate payers millions of dollars over the next 20 to 25 years. Even in a projected low gas price scenario, the savings are very substantial. Revenue bonds use a pledge of city utility system revenues rather than property taxes to guarantee the debt. Many entities in Denton do not pay property taxes such as UNT, TW, and even the city of Denton, but are very substantial customers and they would be helping guarantee this debt. However, there are some Denton residents who do not use DME like Robeson Ranch, and they would theoretically not be guaranteeing this debt. This debt can still be capitalized during construction and are able to sell debt in more than one series, and no notice is required to sell, giving the city opportunity to take advantage of market rates when they're at their best. This plan has been recommended by DME, the city of Denton staff, the Brattle Group, the Chamber of Commerce, the Public Utility Board, and I am also in support of it. So thank you. Councilmember Briggs. Sorry. Oh, I had a question. I do have a question. It was for Councilman Dalton Gregory. So the rates part, when you said Council continued to agree with rates reliability, well, as far as the renewables, I was under the impression we were already at 40 percent. So going from 40 percent to 70 percent was good. I found out we were just at 10 percent, and going from 10 percent to 70 percent is a lot more difficult. And so we're in this situation. If I would have known we were really at physically 10 percent, I would have probably said, well, why don't we just get to 40 percent and see what we can do? We can go incrementally. I didn't have all the facts when I was making those confirm ations. And also my question to you is for seven to twelve dollars a reduction in a monthly bill starting in 2020 or 2021. I'm not so sure that this three hundred and thirty million dollar debt that we're going to end up paying for with interest is going to be worth that reduction right now . Well, I think what you see up here is what's reflected in our community. I mean, this is an issue that has very many moving parts, many different sides, many different approaches, many different solutions. In my mind, I hope it's not a historic decision because historic decisions mean they either land or fall as an all or nothing. And that means they're either wildly successful or they're a dismal failure. And my hope is that this land somewhere in the middle, because if we're hanging our hat on this particular plan to get us through the next 20 or 30 years, and this is the only one that I think we are making a mistake because there are going to be things coming along. So if that allows some flexibility, I can't support the twelve simply because whenever I see this kind of polarization on any issue, it's not just this issue, even in a financial decision, when I see things on really ends of the spectrum, there's usually somewhere in the middle that can try to not meet everybody's interests, but meet some of what most interests are. So that's my reason. I'm not going to say that I don't want to be around this plan with a 10-foot pole. If it's something that was a little bit more conducive for what I think would be appropriate for where we are, I can support it. It's just at this particular time with the particulars, I can't. And I will say, I think, and I'm not going to put Phil on the spot, but I really think that if the truth were known, this, of all the options that could be had, one side is something that's very, that they've really talked about, and I don't think so much, Council Member Wasney, it's about tornadoes or gas lines. I think it's also about capacity and flexibility. And I guess when it comes to the number of sites, I mean, you talked about experts from MIT and the Brattle Group and their education and the like. But I know that DME, who are the experts, at least on our staff, with, in DME, that's what their preference was. And so, but I'm not going to be able to support this plan, not because I don't believe in something, but because I don't believe in the final details of this. So I will go down as a no vote, and there's no asterisk that will be beside that. But I know for myself there will be an asterisk. So that's, those are my thoughts on that. Council Member Rodin, or Mayor Pro Tem Rodin, I'm sorry. We're calling back to the conversation we had last week that got us to the point of even considering one site to begin with. It was a suggestion from you. Yes, it was. So I feel like you're a bit of a moving target as we're trying to reach consensus to get you on board, as many people on board with this as possible. And I think in a good faith effort, that's why Council Member Gregory, so is there something that you'd be willing to put forward as an amendment to make you comfortable with this to get more folks on board with this plan? I mean, I can't imagine you'd want to vote against this. Well, well, I'm not sure about that statement, but you're right. I did say one site originally. You're right. And as I thought about it over the week and as I talked with some people at DME, I realized that now they didn't like my idea of the nine sites. They didn't like my idea of the nine engines, all right, because it just didn't get all the way to the 12. So the number of sites isn't the issue for me. I mean, I wouldn't want to do nine engines on one site because I still think that, especially if they're all going to have to be out at the airport, that's really in the end because I didn't know when I said one site last week, I didn't know that. The fact that our permit at the second site is limited to seven or six to seven. So you couldn't put them all out there. You just couldn't. So I agree. I guess when we're trying to kind of reach consensus, there 's only one person now in the majority that wanted one site. The rest of the three wanted two. We thought you wanted one, which is why I think that's what was motioned. So that's why I'm just trying to get us to a point where we can get comfortable. I prefer two sites. I prefer 12, and I've been clear about that from the beginning. So I guess there's nothing that would make you comfortable by means of a magnet, I guess. Yeah, because the site selection isn't necessarily my non- negotiable, so to speak, if that's what you want to call it, which is a little inappropriate term. But Council Member Wasney. So are you comfortable with nine and not 12? But nine at two sites, is that what you're talking about? Sure. I think I said nine at two sites and a 15-year bond. I think I said that was what I said when I first started talking. Yes. I could support that. We need to bring closure to this, so we've got to figure out where that common ground is. Well, I thought you all had it, actually, but maybe I was wrong. Well, I tell you what, we have a motion on the board, which is for 12 engines at one site with 100% renewable by 2035, and we have not voted on that yet. And that's still on the floor. Council Member Gregory. This is a resolution, right? Yes. And if as we move forward, we decide that there needs to be a change to the resolution, to some of the details in the resolution, majority of the council can modify it. Is that correct? Yes, sir. It's a resolution. It's a resolution. It can be amended. I think I count four votes for the resolution as amended. I think we need to move forward with that tonight. I think if we move the other way, if we go to nine units, I think that becomes problematic because then we're not able to stay at 70%. That's been that has become an important goal for a lot of people in this community is to make that next step. So I think that we need to move forward with with the let's have the vote on it as it is. Council Member Hawkins. Okay. Council Member Briggs. But what it does do, the nine, it gets you to 20, 25 with the renewables and then you can ree valuate. You can add more at that point or you can find out where we are with the technology. You can there's a lot more options you can do. It's incremental. And I have I do have a question. Let's say, for instance, we vote and I don't think this is going to be the outcome, but let's say this resolution, this particular resolution as it's made doesn't pass. That doesn't mean we can't in a week come back. I mean, we're not locked into some one year wait time like you are on certain zoning cases. I mean, I'm not I'm just is that correct, Madam City Attorney? Yes, sir. You can pass it tonight and you can amend it next week. Okay. You can not pass it tonight and you can pass something next week. All right. So you've got complete latitude here. All right. Well, we're going to we're going to vote. I'm going to repeat the motion and make sure I've got it accurately. So if I don't, somebody please correct me. I have a motion for the resolution with amendments to a particular paragraph to increase to move towards 100 percent renewable by 2035. And then there's an amendment to with some specificity about the 12 rice engines on one site. Is that correct? Councilmember Gregory, Councilmember Rodin, do you agree with that? Let's vote on the board, please. Council. No, what I'm struggling with is all if Councilwoman Wasney, if you're now okay with two sites with nine units, but we 're voting for 12 units on one. It's just everything just got mucked up. Like I'd rather vote. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like this. I don't even know where we're at as a group anymore. I mean, we can vote on this right now, but I'm just I'm perfectly I understand what we're voting on. But I just I want to know why we're voting like this now. If it's changed. Well, I'm sorry. He addressed you directly. Councilmember Wasney. I'm still more comfortable with one site. So let's go with the resolution one site 12. All right. All right. Let's vote on the board, please. And we will take a break after this. Oh, wait, I need to I need to read. I need to change that because I hit the wrong button. Sorry. I hate. Yes. I went. No, I apologize. It's habit. Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Is that the proper procedure, Madam City Attorney? Correct. OK, because it's a resolution. All right. OK. Now I just can't do it again. Motion carries for three. It is five after eleven. I thought we'd be out here by midnight. I might be a little wrong. Let's take a break till eleven fifteen. Now, eleven twenty. We are on agenda item five F considered option of Nordens considering all matters incident related to the issue in sale and delivery up to two hundred sixty five million dollars in principal amount of city of debt and revenue bonds. Oh, councilmember Gary, I'm sorry. I just wanted to make a point of clarification. Councilmember Rodin's request, I just want to be clear. I don't have a problem with fossil fuel infrastructure. I really don't. I think we should keep the coal plants in perfect condition to operate. That is. And in terms of a plan going forward, I truly believe that we would be wise to do a holding pattern until the market stabilizes on renewables. That doesn't mean that this isn't a good plan. It just means that the timing is wrong. So I wanted to be very clear about my views on this plan and not not allow people to walk away here from here with some assumptions about my feelings about fossil fuels or the coal plant. I really don't. Those things are not playing into my decision making process at all. So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Mr. City manager, we've called item five F. Thank you. I'm going to ask Chuck Springer, our director of finance, if he would come introduce this next item for your consideration. Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, George. Members of the council. The item in front of you is known as a parameters ordinance . It would authorize up to 265 million in utility system revenue bonds. The maximum stated maturity of the bonds under the parameters ordinance would not be allowed to exceed 20 years. The bonds would have to bear a fixed interest rate with the net effective interest rate not to exceed 4 percent. The delegation authority will expire one year from now. And prior to delivery, the bonds must be rated by a rating agency, one of the four highest categories or an investment grade. I should also offer that with revenue bonds, it allows us to issue these in more than one series over that one year period so that we could match the dollars necessary for this program with the issuances. It also allows or federal tax law limits us to only issuing the amount that's necessary for the project. We can't over issue revenue bonds above that. So we've built in some cushion for contingency in this 265 million. But the issuance will just be the amount that's necessary to complete the project. With that, I'll answer any questions that the council has regarding this ordinance. Councilmember Briggs. Is it possible that you would, I guess, sell these or switch them over to refinance them as CEOs in the future? Well, the city council would have that option if at some point, and it wouldn't be certificates of obligation, it would be general obligation refunding bonds. At some point, the council can refund these with refunding bonds. The city's debt policy clearly states that that's only done for savings and a minimum of 3% present value savings. So normally, a refinancing would be because interest rates are even lower. So you could refinance it at that point. Councilmember Wasney. Can we talk about the 15 year versus the 20 year and for the 15 year that it would save 30 mill? Yes. In terms of, this is estimates based on current interest rates at the 265 million for 20 year debt in terms of the dollars. We're projecting about 335 million and once we finish construction, it would be about 19.2 to 19.3 million a year for the last 17 years in terms of payments. If you go down to 15 year, it drops to about 301 million, so about 33 million less in total interest paid out. But the debt payment increases from about 19.2 to about 24. 4 million. So it's about 5 million more a year in debt payments in terms of going to the 15 year. So I think in discussions with DME, the 15 year, it's going to have the impact in terms of rates where there's more savings with a little bit longer term than there is with the 15 year term. I should also mention this authorizes up to 20 years of maturity. We normally have a 10 year call, so the city can pay those bonds off faster if they would like to. Just because it has the 20 year maturity doesn't mean you can't pay those off faster. If there's some savings that are accruing to DME and the council would like to pay that debt off faster, they still have that ability with 20 year debt. So initially we could sign the 20, take a look at it along the way, pay it off faster if we can. But I think initially to keep those rates down, it probably needs to be the 20 and not the 15. Yeah, I mean it's about a 5 million annual dollar difference upfront to pay sooner with the 15 year debt versus the 20 year debt. The goal is to keep the rates down, so we've got to keep that in mind. Thanks. And if the savings are, you know, I know there's a wide range in terms of estimates of the savings. If those savings are greater, you could take some of those savings and direct staff to apply it toward paying off the debt early. Any other questions for staff? We do have some cards wishing to speak. No more questions for staff. We'll go ahead and go through the cards. We'll do it as we did before. I'll call name and then call the runner up. Ron Seifert, you're up. And Jody Ismert will be on deck. Hi, my name is Ron Seifert. I live at 1400 Moran Drive. I'm really discouraged right now. I mean, obviously I spoke in opposition to the gas plants and didn't want that, but I'm primarily discouraged to learn that there's a box of hundreds of letters here that the majority of folks, in fact everyone that supported this plan did not read. I am well aware that there are members of council who feel that a small vocal minority of residents opposed these gas plants. And I'm really just disappointed that hundreds of letters came in and not a single one got read. These people's opinions are disposable. Your opinions are more important than the hundreds of people that wrote in, the hundreds of people that spoke out here, a porous applause to the opposition to these plants. Just really disappointing. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my time talking. It makes me feel like when I read blogs from council members that say they're already ready to vote before they even hear from residents speaking, that I'm wasting my time. You know, it just makes me really sad. I just wonder who y'all represent. And I know there's just a few hundred people here and there 's over a hundred thousand people in Denton. But when people take the time to write handwritten letters, children maybe that have asthma that you heard speak here that just rip on your heartstrings, and that wasn't even important enough to consider before you made this important decision, not worth your time, just disposability. It's a politics of disposability. And everything that was said in support of this plan, no one contested all these air quality issues. Yeah, sure, our portfolio has better marks, but it doesn't air will get worse. No one had anything to say with that. All these people are just disposable. At least one person is going to get asthma and going to get sick and have hospital bills because of these plants. That person's just disposable. They don't matter. I mean, I suppose we could still approve a bond that would only allow for six or nine engines to be built. And that could be a way to remedy this and send a message that you actually do care what people that come before you have to say, that their letters aren't meaningless, that their feelings aren't meaningless. We could approve a bond that's not $265 million. We could approve one that would only pay for six or nine engines. I guess it's up to you, but my voice, I don't feel like it matters. I feel really disempowered. Yeah, I'm just really sad. It's bad news. Thank you. Jody Ismert and then Christian Harris is on deck. Jody Ismert, 819 Anna Street. And I just want to say I agree with Ron. I feel like my voice doesn't matter anymore. I come here, I speak to you guys often. I write emails quite often. And I feel like it doesn't matter. I feel like it doesn't reach anybody. Sometimes I receive responses back. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I feel like maybe they're a little smug, you know , intentionally because I do voice my opinion so often. And I feel like it's on deaf ears half the time. And I'm not a vocal minority. I'm not. I'm not part of any kind of vocal minority. And I resent the fact that that is something that's rhetoric that is pushed out to our community. We are so polarized right now. And I'm so disappointed that , yes, there are 900 letters sitting right there. 900, 600 sitting right there. But 900 people wrote in and nobody even read them except Keely. Not all 900. But that's that is quite amazing to me. And yet here we are. We are moving forward with the RDP plan, even though there is quite a bit of opposition to it. And so I want to ask, please do not vote for revenue bonds. Please let the citizens take this to a vote. Let us have a voice. Let us matter. I want to feel like I'm part of this community and like my voice matters. And I want there to be some kind of unity again. That's all . Thank you. Thank you. Christiana and then Linda Carrasco is on deck. Christiana Harris. And here. OK. Linda Carrasco. Michael H innan. Let me read those in. I apologize for that. It's getting late. Linda Harris is in opposition. Linda Carrasco is in opposition. Michael Hinnan didn't check either one. James Ramos. James here. Please state your name and address and your time will begin. James Ramos. I live on 517 North Loop 288. And just like the previous speakers before me, I too feel disposable right now. And coming from Tarrant County, I was very reminded of that fact thanks to the fracking over there and the voice of the people in Tarrant County. They weren't even heard. And so we had our oil rigs and everything along 20 and 35. Noise pollution, you know, just like tremors here and there. Well, it feels pretty bad. And, you know, to be reminded again over here in Denton, Texas is pretty appalling. And to, you know, see, you know, this small oligarch trying to delegate authority to even a smaller oligarch is pretty app alling. That's pretty much all I got to say. Deborah Armantar. Come down and state your name and address . Your time will begin. Deborah Armantar. Sorry. 2003 Mistywood Lane. So obviously I'm very I'm emotional about this. I was expecting this after last week's work session. All I can say now is please vote for vote no to revenue bonds. I know that a lot of you have stated that the right that citizens right to vote on large expenditures on large expenditures is extremely important to you. Because I want you to search not just your heart, but your sense of what democracy is, your sense of justice, your sense of what your job is as a public servant. Even if you would prefer revenue bonds, just please give us the vote. And with the rest of my time, I have two minutes left. I just wanted to to demonstrate for you how it feels to be silenced in this way. I'm not talking about me, but all of us, the people by not being allowed a vote. I'm talking about this, you know, those of us who are here now today, but everybody who's out there who could have had a say, who are being denied a say. So I brought this with me. It's just some duct tape and I'm just going to put it over my mouth and we can all have a minute and 20 seconds of just silence and thinking about what it feels like to not have a vote. Because you all are very lucky that you you get to vote. Yes or no. [Silence] [Silence] That lasted a long time and it really sucked didn't it. Thank you. Thank you, Deborah. Melissa Stevens? Is it Stevens? And then up will be Kimberly Nala. Good evening. I know everyone's exhausted. I can imagine. I 'm exhausted. This is my first, my second event to be witnessing this. So, oh, I'm so sorry. Melissa Stevens at 1226 May Street. I graduated from here. I left for 10 years, lived in multiple countries. I speak multiple languages and when I decided to settle down and have a family, I came back to the town. I went to college and because it was innovative and artistic and inspiring, despite all the amazing things that I'd seen. I have to admit that now being a citizen here for about 18 months, I'm a little bit disappointed in our elected members and I did vote for some of you. So I have the reports that was requested just didn't fulfill our needs as citizens to be informed about what your options were. I think that if you, I can sit here confidently and stand behind your decision if you guys had exhausted all other possible and given it to us as the people to decide. That's still within your power. It's still within your power to let us decide. You guys can still make a more informed decision, give us alternate options, let us look at what the rates would be one way or the other. If this is such an amazing plan that you're incredibly confident about, then why won't you give it back to the people to decide? If you love it, if it's great, if it's our best option, then go ahead. Give us a voice because right now I think most of us that are still in this room feel pretty disenfranchised. And I think that you owe it to us as our elected members to make a concerted effort to inform us more of all of our options. And then if this is your position, stand by it. We don't have to, why can't we be like Sarah said and be in a holding pattern? Look at a few different options. I understand you guys have spent so much time, so many hours, you're so exhausted you want it to be done and move on. I get that. I feel that we even being here one night. But on the other hand, this is something that affects us for the next 20, 30, 40 years. This is not a time to jump. This is a time to pace slowly. To allow, I can say that right now, I mean I only knew about this meeting two or three days ago. The amount of information that is getting out there about when these events are happening is rather limited. And I don't know if that is a concerted effort, but why can 't you guys just put all of the information that you have, make it more accessible to the public? And then if you have such a great plan, we're going to pass it with flying colors and it's great. But at the very least, let us feel like all the time and effort that everyone has spent means something to you guys. Allow us a chance to vote. Okay. Kimberly now and on deck will be Cindy Spoon. Hi, I'm Kim. No, I live at 1211 North Austin Street. There's been a lot of talk since we started talking about this ordinance about voice. And I guess from the beginning, that's been the most troubling part of this issue for me because it's been emphasized repeatedly that having a municipal electric company gives citizens in Denton a voice and energy decisions that many other US citizens do not enjoy. And I agree with that. It's true. So how can you now in good conscience silence that voice? I'm a high school teacher and despite my best efforts to educate my students about the importance of civic responsibility, the importance of participating in the political process, when you're a teenager, it's not cool to care about politics or anything. Maybe it's cool to be cynical and disillusioned and think that no matter what you do, it won't matter anyway. So it's cool or not to care. And how can I convince them otherwise? When I have to go back this fall and tell them that local governments where they have the most voice not only can but are willing to make unilateral decisions despite the conscientious involvement of their citizens. If this plan is truly the best you can do for our city, why wouldn't you trust the citizens to vote in our own best interest? I urge you to listen to your constituents now and allow us to make this crucial decision regarding the health and prosperity of our community. Please vote no on the revenue bond ordinance and allow the RDP resolution to go to a citizen vote. Thank you. Cindy Spoon. State your name and address and your time will begin. Thank you. Hi. Cindy Spoon, 2210 Westwood. I oppose the revenue bonds for $265 million. Like, oh my God, that's so much money. That's so much money. $265 million. So bonds isn't really my forte. So please correct me if I get this wrong. But my understanding is people here that are testifying, it seems like they're just like don't vote for revenue bonds, if CO bonds so that we can have a vote. But if I understand if it's CO bonds, you have to get 5,000 signatures before you can actually have a vote. It's not like an automatic residence can have a vote, right? We would have to collect 5,000 signatures for that to be possible. So for me, that's even more of an incentive. Like, can we not do revenue bonds and do CO bonds and just see if there's that interest? Do 5,000 residents of Denton, 5,000 voters of Denton want to have a vote on this? Because we could do CO bonds and that might not even happen . So can you all at least give us the option? And if the answer is no, and you're only going to do revenue bonds, I think $265 million is absolutely ridiculous. I know when this plan started it was like $220, then $240, now we're at $265. I'm wondering if we can put some kind of cap on that. Like, what can we get done with $150 million? What does that get us? What can we get done with $200 million? So I think this is too much. We shouldn't do it. CO bonds, let residents decide. I have no more cards that are wishing to speak. I do have a stack of cards wishing not to speak. 22 in support, 45 opposed. Okay. So that's, did you fill out a card, Mr. Husspeth? Yeah, this is an item for individual consideration, not a public hearing. I'm sorry. Unless council wants to. Okay. Yeah. That okay? Everybody all right? Just wanted to make sure. My name is Willie Husspeth. I live at 623 Newton. What happened here tonight in the vote that you took is what I have dealt with since 1980. But it was just me that you did it to. I looked at your faces and you can tell the ones that genuinely felt like they should do something. Then I looked at some of your faces who didn't look at the people, by the way, that was speaking. And you were saying, I am in charge. Tough. Just get it together and move on. That look I've gotten lots of times. Let me just tell you what you're missing. You're sick. Set something in. You're elected. People voted for you to be there and represent them. Oh, the other thing I noticed too, because I'm doing that to you too as well. I'm lecturing you. Really, we shouldn't do that. You're grownups. You're really trying to do the best you can do. I believe. I think you try to do the best. We shouldn't lecture you. I shouldn't lecture you. Let me just think aloud. They voted for you. Did you not feel any -- or let me just -- let me see. I'm lecturing again. I felt for that girl, little girl who came up here and said she has asthma. I really had a problem with the lady who had cancer and she 's dying. She's dying. I'm wondering -- I'm wondering aloud again. Did that smug look on my face to say, her up and finished lady with the thing around your head and get out of my face ? Let me not look at you all just for a second and look at somebody out here that understands what I'm trying to say. My goodness. Mr. Houspits, could you speak in the microphone so that it can be heard? No. Thank you. There are 600 people who wrote you and you didn't read any of the letters. Do you understand what that means? Well, you will. We're going to have a meeting right after this meeting here. No. Those of you here, we're going to have a meeting. We're going to talk about what we're going to do. Do not underestimate the people. Don't underestimate the people. Especially when you do them like you did tonight. Don't you underestimate us. We're going to have a meeting right after this one. And we 're going to plan what we're going to do. Thank you. We have one more card. David Wright, if you'll come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. Thank you all. David Wright, 1819 West Oak. Sorry for the -- getting here late. I had to shuttle people back home. I know it's -- not everyone can stay until midnight, so we appreciate you. I don't know what's been said before because I just got in, as I said, but I wanted to speak in favor of the revenue bonds. I think for a variety of reasons. Number one, most importantly, as a matter of principle, capital improvements should be paid for by the customers that use that product. You know, when you go to Wal-Mart and they remodel the store, the customers are the ones that pay for that expenditure. Same thing with any kind of utility. Anyone who's investing in any infrastructure, the customers should be the ones that bear and absorb that cost along with the company that put those forward. I don't think that it's fair or right to have a big infrastructure project that benefits the ratepayers of DME, but then saddle the entire city with that obligation with the CO for all the taxpayers in general, especially because some of the largest employers here in the city don't pay taxes at all, including the city itself, the county, University of North Texas, T.W.U., several churches. You know, those are not good sources for tax revenue. So anyway, I think just as a matter of principle, that's kind of where I'm going from. Also, I don't think it's fair to push that off onto Robeson Ranch residents who are not DME customers. And I think that's just how we should approach that. And I think that the idea to go to vote against this and go with COs as a way to force a vote is really misguided. I think that vote will go down in the public the same way that it went down here with the funding still being approved. And then the voting, I mean, the debt is end up being sad dled with the citizenry in general, as opposed to the DME specific ratepayers. So anyway, I think it's a mistake to kind of go down that route as a, you know, three, some kind of shot from half court to, you know, scuttle the plan. I think that would not work out favorably for those who oppose the plan. And I think it also does not work out favorably for the citizens if that were to go that way. That's all I have. And I did forget I'm a Denton Municipal electric owner, citizen owner, I think. So just like many of the other people here. So thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, David. Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Thank you, Mayor. I did have a question for you. Chuck, you were the one that presented, right? Sorry, I'm getting confused at this late hour. And I appreciate Cindy Spoon, I think, clarifying kind of what's being decided here, because it's not as if we're anything on the agenda is posted for us to put this to a vote. It's about how we're financing specifically the Denton Energy Center portion of this plan. And that's crucial. So if this went to CO, just to kind of carry on with that thought, and then there is a provision in state law that would allow for citizens to petition to get this on an election. And I'm sure there's all sorts of dates set and whatnot. What exactly would go before the citizenry in that election ? What would be stated on the ballot? I'm going to let our bond council come up and answer that one. You probably have a little bit more in terms of the exact language. It's Greg Shaker. Welcome, Greg. Good evening. Hello. Greg Shaker with McCall Parkers and Horton, bond council for the city. So if it went to an election, the bond proposition would describe the exact project. That's the subject of the bond proposition. So we'd come up with language appropriately describe it in whatever detail the city wanted to present to the voters. So it wouldn't be anything about a comprehensive energy plan. It wouldn't be whether or not they want so many percentage renewables versus so much percentage of fossil fuels or anything like that. It's just specific to what's being funded, being proposed to be funded by those bonds. That's correct. It would, excuse me, it would describe the project itself and only the project. Thank you. I appreciate that. That goes to my concern with the vote on this project period from the beginning when that was first proposed. Is that a vote on whether or not we spend money on these particular gas plants? If that wins, that doesn't give us any clarity of what we 're supposed to do with our energy future. If that goes down, it gives us no clarity of what we're doing with our energy future. Renewable debt's been presented to us as a package deal, as a comprehensive energy plan. And so again, I think council has listened to the citizenry . I know sometimes we don't always get our perspective passed . That happens at all levels of government. And that's part of democracy is sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. That's part of democracy. And we hope to compromise as much as possible to meet in the middle. And sometimes we don't do that either. So my opinion has been for two reasons. One is the risk of this being kicked down the trail to perhaps a May vote puts a lot of this plan in jeopardy and then doesn't even give us any clear guidance on what we 're supposed to do from a plan. And then to the point of securing this on the back of the very utility that is putting it forward seems to make the most sense for me. So that's why I'm in support of pursuing this via revenue bonds. Councilmember Baguerre. Thank you, Mayor. Just going back to our work session last week when we discussed this, I think you brought up the idea that the differentiation between a taxpayer and the city of Denton and a rate payer is not necessarily one that you would agree with. I don't know if I'm mischaracterizing. Oh, you're talking about something. I think you said that in work session. And if I'm mischaracterizing that, I'm sorry. But I would actually share that opinion. And even more so now after having received information from Brattle that I requested regarding how intertwined the city of Denton's finances are with DME's finances. So I think that the differentiation between a rate payer and taxpayer is just one that I disagree with fundamentally . The second point I'd like to make is that when we're talking about debt of this nature on top of other debt, and it's I don't I'm not going to pick on DME really any type of debt that's this large, I believe should be put to voters as a matter of policy. We are a policymaking body. So in the future, everybody's on notice where I stand on these large projects, I believe they need to go to the voter. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs. So I just want to get some clarification because people are saying that with revenue bonds, it is the rate payer only to pay for it. And that's true. But with CEOs, they can also administratively be paid with be paid for with utility revenue as well. Correct. CO stands for certificates of obligation and it's a combination tax and revenue pledge. So it has a property tax pledge and can also have a pledge of utility revenues. It's usually a limited dollar pledge, but administratively the utilities can pay that debt service. And we do that with certificates of obligation with the utility on other projects. Yeah, because we have been doing that and we did that for the 400 million or so with the CEOs. And so that's how the utility revenue is going to be paying for that. Administratively, yes. Administratively. But it will not work for this option? I mean, it's a possibility that could be done. Okay. Legally, it's a possibility that you could authorize certificates of obligation with a revenue pledge for this project. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Hawkins. Yeah. At the last meeting, we were handed this packet by Brian from Brian and it debt service savings of approximately four point million, four point. I'm sorry. Four million due to lower interest rates. How does that work if revenue bonds have a slightly higher interest rate or do they not? In the market, they'll probably have a slightly higher interest rate. I think that's delta was between certificates of obligation over the life and revenue bonds. And historically, what the city's done is the utilities have contributed that lower interest rate because of the taxpayer pledge to the street maintenance fund. And I think that's what the difference was, was the revenue bonds would have a slightly higher interest rate. So if the utilities were paying, they would pay that difference in interest rate to the street improvement fund. Okay. And then I probably have a question for Phil, I think , just regarding timing of renewable contracts and if this was to be pushed to May. It's getting late. I'm just getting a little forgetful. What was the question? Some of the renewable contracts that we are kind of counting on to be there, if this were to get pushed out to May, would those still be available? How does all that play? So to verify the cost that we have assumed in our proposal and our plan, we did put out a request for proposal from the various wind farms. One of those wind farms, the lowest, what we were considered the best value farm has since been subscribed out to another buyer of that energy. And so that's one of our concerns is as we get closer to production credits for wind power, limiting and starting to erode away that the number of wind farms available will start to decrease and there's decreasing number available. It could drive the cost back up again. So we've had one expire, hopefully it'll be replaced by another wind farm. But that's the concern is as we get closer to the date that those wind production credits go away, that's the number of wind farms available decreases. And if we approved 265, that would kind of be the ceiling because you only issue debt as you need it or as you have an expense. Yes, sir. All the list of items I had before as far as land purchases, the engines, the design build contracts, the air connection cost, all those items will come back to the council as individual items to approve. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Mayor Pro Tem. Well, seeing the end of discussion, I'm going to make a motion to approve item F. Council Member Gregory. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries for three. All right, we're going to move on to agenda item 5G. A resolution of city council of the city of Denton author izing mayor of city of Denton to sign a notice of non-reserv able and expressing appreciation in the area 10 years of dedicated service and leadership of city manager, George Campbell. Madam City Attorney. Thank you, Mayor, Mayor and Council. This is a resolution which would authorize the mayor to issue a letter notifying the city manager of non-renewal of his contract. This is pursuant to the manager's contract, and it also expresses appreciation for his excellent years of service with the city of Denton and also recognizes his distinguished career over the last 40 years. And so I'll be glad to sample questions and answer any points that you might have to ask of me. All right. We do have some cards wishing not to speak. For in support, I think one that was wishing to speak just left who was in support as well. Jody is more than Jody. Okay. All right. Thank you, Jody. You bet. All right. Okay. Any questions for staff or chair would entertain a motion. If there's no questions for city attorney. I make a motion to approve. We have a motion. Council member was knee. I second the motion. We have a motion to second council member Hawkins. Yeah, I wanted to publicly take this time to say a few words to you, George. And I wrote it down. Once again, I wanted to start off by telling you publicly how much respect I have for you and the work that you've done for the city of Denton. You've been a great leader during some very trying times. Under your guard, the city has been given countless awards and honors and is recognized nationally as one of the greatest towns in America. The last three city award banquets I attended gave me a glimpse into how the staff feels about you, too. Many have worked here 20 years, even 30 years. And if Howard Martin was here, I was going to make a little joke about how long he's been here. But I think you are excellent at spotting talent within the organization, mentoring and believing in people before sometimes they even believe in themselves. There's never been a time you haven't dropped everything you were doing to talk, find me an answer, or just listen. And for that, I'm so grateful. I'm so disheartened that you are leaving. I'm sure having seven bosses can be very trying at times, but I think you've always shown a lot of class during that. Lastly, I think that you are a great family man. I don't know how being a city manager became a family business, but somehow you instilled this work ethic of yours to your children. How involved you are with your kids, your grandchildren shows what a quality individual you are. I'm very sad to see you leave, and I wish you and Sandra so much joy. You're a great man, George, and I really thank you. The reason why I'm going to be voting against this resolution is not what it says. It's just I don't necessarily agree with you leaving. Councilmember. Okay, I have to be fair. I have to be fair. Councilmember Gregory. Well, I oppose the motion also, the resolution, because I don't want to non renew Mr. Campbell. He's had almost 10 years of excellent service to the city. He's demonstrated an understanding of the city charter, and he's performed his job in accordance with the charter. He has done a great job of following the goals and direct ives set forth by the council. He has sometimes been criticized by some members of the public for doing exactly what the council has asked him to do. Yet he's taken it all in because that's his job. He's respected across the state. You go to Texas Municipal League meeting, those city officials, professionals from around the state know him, and they respect him. The staff respects him. Staff morale has been great. He's encouraged staff to be innovative and to find ways to improve their service to the public and operate more efficiently. And when I first got on council, 2009 to 2011, the U.S. And the world was in a pretty difficult financial crisis, and this city sailed through. And it wasn't because of the technical skills or the policies set forth by this council. It was due to the experience and the skill of our city manager, George Campbell. Now, George, I think you're crazy for wanting to continue working at a certain point in your life because I know how you love your kids and you love your grandkids. But I will miss you. And I would love it if you were staying around a while longer. I respect you and I thank you for your job here. Councilmember Rodin. George, anyone who's served not just this city but all the cities you've served and devoted your life to public service in a variety of ways. You were a garbage man at one point, weren't you? I mean, it's tremendous, and that's laudable. And I wish more kids would grow up wanting to serve their community like you have. Thanks for your service to this city. I think you're a great leader. You've been a great mentor to me, even though that's not the role. But I've learned a lot from you. You've been candid with me about my own role as a city council member. Help shape even my perspective on the city of Denton. The amount of contacts, emails, texts I've gotten from your staff over this last week is tremendous. They love you. They love you. You've led them well. So you're a great man, and I won't be supporting this resolution either. I want to say a few comments. George, you and I came on at about the same time, about eight or nine years ago. I mean, you were here a couple years before I was. And you probably led us through one of the most difficult times in city history, through that great recession that we had. And you did it with innovation. You did it with conviction. And we fared better than probably any city in the Metroplex . And I respect you highly, first of all, as a man and as a father and as a grandfather. And you have been the consummate professional. You are the consummate professional. You have taught me so much about city government and policy making. And I thank you so much for that contribution. I thank you for the contribution you've made to the city of Denton. I thank you for the contribution that you've made to my life personally and wish you nothing but the best. And I know that -- I hope you can take this in which the spirit is said, because I really do mean that, Mr. Campbell . You're a great man. Thank you very much for your time here with us. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 4-3. We now move on to agenda item 5-H, which is an ordinance approving a professional consulting services agreement between the city of Denton and George Campbell. I mean, from Madam City Attorney, I'm sorry. Mayor and Council, this is an item which is a companion to the earlier item. It does effectuate the terms of the manager's contract, including the severance compensation contained therein. It specifies that Mr. Campbell will resign on a certain date. It does offer and effectuate a consulting contract with the manager and sets the compensation there for. And finally, it is a waiver of all claims associated with the period of employment. I'll be glad to stand for any questions. Any questions for City Attorney? All right. Council Member Briggs? A motion to approve. Council Member Waschne? I second the motion. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. We'll move on to agenda item 6-A, public hearing, continuing public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, adopting road impact fees. Mayor, may I ask, are you opening the public hearing? I'm sorry, yes. We will now open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor. May I ask Mr. P.S. Arora if he would present this item for your consideration? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Good morning. You have about a five minute presentation. Yes, I do. Actually, I won't do a full presentation. I just want to -- Good morning, Mayor, members of council. We had a presentation in the work session, and what I would like to do is go to the actions that we need to take today. It is the continuation of the public hearing number 2 from April. As part of the presentation, I had shown you the data on different levels of impact fees. The numbers you see there on the item number 1 amount to $3 ,000 for single family with a 25% discount for non-resident ial. You have with you two other ordinances that reflect a $2, 500 and a $2,000 impact fee. And it will be your pleasure to direct us which direction you would like to go. In addition to that, we will want to adopt the additional recommendations which you have in your possession. And then adopt the impact fee ordinance with the correct impact fee. I would like to point out two other things. And if I may -- Overhead is not working? Oh, yeah. There you go. Can we zoom in a little bit? Okay. This is the item number G, which is on page 7 of the ordinance. And in this one, what you see here is that the road impact fee for any general light industrial, general heavy industrial, and industrial park will be the same as a use of 1.92, which will be capped at 1.92 acre miles per development unit. The second thing that we have is a change in use that generates less than 10 times the number of service units attributable to the immediately proceeding use as exempt from the payment impact fee. This addresses the desire of the development community. I had a presentation to Den County Developers Alliance. And they wanted to have something in the infill area that would allow for development and not be encumbered with impact fees. So any adjusting use that is out there in the infill area, if they're going to upgrade it, going to add to it or redo it, so long as the traffic generation from that new use does not exceed 10 times the current use, there is no impact fee. And with that, I'll stand for any questions. >> Councilmember Wasney. >> We talked in work session that there were options at 2, 000, 2,500, and 3,000. And I would just like to share with my fellow council members that I feel more comfortable at the 2,000 mark and that it allows us to come back after year two or three and reevaluate. If we opt or feel the need to increase or decrease, it's, I think, a sensible starting point for this ordinance. >> Councilmember Begheri. >> I would also state that 2,000 is my preference and in addition to that, I'd like to see at least a one year waiting period, I guess we called it, in work session before it takes effect to give the developers some notice about when and how to plan accordingly for this fee. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> I too think I'm more comfortable with 2,000 because I just want to make sure that there's not some hidden implication that we're not understanding. And I appreciate your work so much on this PS and we've been at this one a long time. So I too would be more comfortable with 2,000, starting at 2,000. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> I'm going to be the contrarian, I would prefer 2,500, but I'm looking at the ordinance that was given to us, the substitute ordinance. But for exhibit B, I see the service areas, A, it says 2, 200, B, it says 1,260. >> That is the maximum accessible. >> Impact free, but that's not what we'll be charging. >> Yes, city manager, I'm sorry, city attorney has a comment. >> Mayor, I did hand out a substitute ordinance from what is contained in your packet. So let me make a comment with regard to what that ordinance does. This ordinance before you adds the language that Mr. Aurora referenced. It also adds a whereas clause. It is written to implement the $2,500 fee. If you desire to go with the 2,000, then what you would need to do is work off the ordinance that we handed out, but substitute exhibit B into the substituted ordinance that we passed out to you. So the handed out exhibit B is written for the $2,000 impact fee. >> Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff? Mayor Pro Tem? >> Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of the- >> Oh, wait, we got a public hearing, I'm sorry. This is a public hearing. Apologize. I'm getting, I'm tired. I apologize. This is a public hearing. So anybody else wishing to speak on this item, feel free to come down, state your name and address. And David, yes, you did fill out a card. You were probably wondering, what are you doing, Mayor? I apologize. >> I know you are. It's a late hour. I appreciate you guys waiting around to address this issue. >> Well, I appreciate you waiting. >> Oh, well, it's, Dolph Channel's just running reruns tonight, so I'm in good shape. >> State your name and address, that'd be great. >> Yeah, my name's David Latham, Director of Government Affairs of the Dallas Builders Association, 5816 West Point o Parkway. We're a person in the seven county region, including Denton County. As you have your information in front of us at this later, I don't think it's, you know, where to go through all of it . We do want to point out that we stress it's important to come through lower. We, per council questions in the last hearing on this, we reached out to our builders and really pushed them to give us the answers on what they saw in the Denton market. There were some things that startled us that we were concerned about. A is when they deal with an impact fee even at a lower amount. They start having to ask questions about what amenities they may trade off. And that may be, usually the first thing is landscaping and trees. This concerns me because at the same time, the city's reviewing a tree ordinance. And that could be a further challenge that I'd like to avoid at all possible cost because those are never less than controversial issues. Another item is things like open space or recreation facilities that people look at when they come to the area. And that's a quality of life decision that affects a homebu yer's choice. And then the final one is they get higher. We start getting into issues where they look at where do you save cost of trade off because you want to keep the quality of home. And the last thing you want to address is home size. You look at exteriors and then it gets into yard space and then it gets into garage space areas in size. And then finally get into the area that really we fear a lot is getting into redesign of the interior, which impacts the decision of a growing family. And what it comes down to is they're coming to Denton because they are price conscious. I like to consider it price smart. They know what they're getting. They want the same size house and they're getting a good deal for it. They like the schools in the areas and things like that. But even builders at a homebuyers at affluent levels come victim to mortgage lending rules and other things where they have to qualify for a mortgage. To point out that a fee is not the same in each area, why it was one of the reasons we brought up and if again, I know it's a little hour, but I feel like I should explain it since I'm part of the reason this kind of took a little longer. So I need to explain myself to counsel in Denton. We were seeing median home prices of around two hundred and forty six dollars or two hundred forty six thousand hundred eighty nine dollars median home price for a house in Frisco was four hundred seventy six thousand five hundred five hundred eighty six dollars. So the three thousand dollars is still a greater percentage of the overall total price of the home even compared to a higher thirty six hundred dollar fee in Frisco. So when we always look at comparison of cities, that's one thing we like to point out. It's a little different from city to city. It's like comparing Texas to California on the economics market. They come to Texas because they get the good deal. We're seeing competition between city or city, maybe not intended, but just how they are working out that it comes to that. So for every thousand dollars you add to the price of a home and the median price level, Texas A&M Research does the real estate center estimate that you price about twenty thousand Texas families out of that median market. It breaks down for city for city. But when you look at it, that's a lot of Texans that might not choose Denton to come live. And another big issue is while they're dealing with these costs with this new fee, they're also dealing with recent fees that happened in 2013 and 2014 increases. And then one thing that we've seen a pattern growing over the past two years is where we've seen a steady increase in lot prices, some lot areas that are matching prices on the Frisco side. But, you know, they're getting the same different price home and those people we've even had a builder go, well, maybe we'll just stick over to Frisco, which is something we don't want to see. So these are some of the concerns we have because as you diminish those home sales or if it slows the rate of the pace of the sales, it diminishes the ad valorem to the city . And that's, you know, money that can be used for services in other areas. So, again, I thank you for your attention on this. I think PS and his staff are looking at this and we appreciate the opportunity to be heard. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you, David. Appreciate it. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? Come down, state your name and address and your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak? Okay, we'll close the public hearing. Now, Mayor Pro Tem, I apologize. No, I apologize for jumping in. I appreciate it, Mayor. I move approval of agenda item 6A at the $2,000 fee level. So substitute with the exhibit B that we have with us reflecting that. All right. Councilmember Briggs. I second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. We have agenda item 6B was a duplicate. So we'll go on to agenda item 6C, excuse me, which is hold a public hearing considered option of ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, regarding a rezoning request from downtown residential 1, DR 1 to downtown residential 2, DR 2, West Eagle and McCorm ick Street. We will now open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor. Amy Bissett is our Director of Development Services. We'll present this public hearing. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Mayor and council members. I'm going to take a liberty at this podium that I've never taken before. And just I want to say thank you to George. And it has been an incredible privilege to have 10 years to work with him. And your leadership and mentorship has changed not only my career, but my life. Thank you. Our item tonight is a zoning request, a change, a request to change from downtown residential 1, DR 1 district to DR 2 district on approximately 0.3 acres. This property is located on the southeast corner of West Eagle Drive and McCormick Street. It is essentially immediately adjacent to UNT. The surrounding area is currently a, the character of the surrounding area is mixed use. It includes some single family homes, a residence hall, laundry facilities, and institutional use, and some vacant land. It is currently zoned DR 1, and it is proposed that the zoning be changed to DR 2. You can see by the exhibit above that there's a variety of zoning categories within this area. They are all downtown university core related zoning categories, some of which allow more of a mixed use than others. The DR 1 category is single family only. DR 2 does allow for some, some mixed uses that support the university core that are appropriate in terms of scale for this transitional area between neighborhood and university. The Denton plan does identify this area as a neighborhood/ university compatibility area. Those areas are defined in the Denton plan as the area that should provide a gradual transition between the universities and surrounding neighborhoods. And mixed uses are encouraged and intended to facilitate walking and bicycling. The considerations on this request are that redevelopment at the block level in this neighborhood has signaled that the area is transitioning away from single family development. And DR 2 district is consistent with the future land use designation of this area. Additional considerations are that the density and uses associated with DR 2 are desirable adjacent to UNT and would contribute to the walkability and are consistent with the character. The redevelopment must be sensitive in scale to nearby established neighborhoods. And the DR 2 district would enable the subject property to redevelop while maintaining a scale that would be appropriate for nearby neighborhoods. Here are some site photographs. Public notifications were sent out on May 4th. Ten required certified public notices were sent within 200 feet and an additional 55 courtesy notices were sent by regular mail. To date we've received one response that is neutral. The Planning and Zoning Commission recommends approval of this and based on the considerations presented staff recommends approval as well. The applicant is here tonight if you have any questions. She does not specifically have a presentation to make but she's here to answer questions if you'd like. Oh, let me switch to any questions for staff. Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem Roden. Well, I just wanted to say to the applicant, I assume, is that you? I just want to say thanks for sticking with us tonight. What a long marathon you had to stick through. Thanks for sticking it out. All right. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak? Please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak? Does the applicant wish to speak? Okay. All right. One more time. Anybody wishing to speak? All right. We will now close the public hearing. Councilmember Begheri. I move to adopt. Councilmember Hawkins. I second. We have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Agenda item 4C carries unanimously. Moving on to agenda. Not 4C, 6C. I apologize. Agenda item 6D. Hold a public hearing. Consider an application for historic landmark designation for the property located at 1120 North Locust Street. We will now open the public hearing. Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Bissett will also present this public hearing. This is the consideration of a historic landmark designation for a single-family home located at 1120 North Locust Street. Normally you would have the privilege of hearing from our historic preservation officer, Roman McAllen, tonight on this. And he would probably be a lot more lengthy about it than I 'm going to be. But because I'm a nice boss, I told him to stay home and sleep and that I would take care of this this evening for him. And that he would have the opportunity to present a historic landmark designation in the near future and to provide you all with some additional information. This property is located on the east side of North Locust Street and is approximately 20 feet south of the intersection at North Locust and 2nd Street. Here is a larger global picture of where it's situated. It's near TWEU. Sorry. This is an image from, I believe, in the 1940s. The original date of construction of the home was 1924. The original owner's name was Ina and H.G. Brown. And I read in the backup that the mayor pro tem lived here at the time that the home was constructed. These are site photographs today. The mayor pro tem at the time. Yeah. In order to receive a historic landmark designation, one of several criteria must be considered and met. You can see here there's 13 criteria. The vast majority of them have been met with this specific home. It does have the character, interest, and value as a part of the cultural characteristics of the city. It has distinguishing characteristics of an architectural type. It embodies elements of architectural design and a number of other criteria have been met with this specific home. Staff recommends approval of this home as a historic landmark, as does the HLC and the Planning and Zoning Commission. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Any questions for staff before public comment? Seeing none. All right. This is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak, please come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak on this item? One more time. Seeing none, we will now close the public hearing. Council Member Hawkins? Thank you, Mayor. I move approval of item 6D. Council Member Wasney? I second the motion. We have a motion to second on item 6D. Let's vote on the board, please. The motion carries unanimously. We'll move on to agenda item number 7, presentation from members of the public. 7-1. Mr. Willie Hutsmith regarding the lack of African American firefighters. Mr. Hutsmith, if you'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Mayor and Council Member, my name is Willie Hutsmith. I live at 623 Newton. I have two concerns, one I've mentioned here about the firefighters and others. Just a quick statement, how you make me feel and how you treated that issue with the not reading of the letters and the kids speaking and ladies speaking. It's just not good. Last time I said something about that, tonight. I want to talk about the firefighters. Did some research and Gerard, my second birth son, lectured me. I went wrong somewhere with that boy. I don't know where. He's got a mind of his own and he states it very well anyway. He said you need to do some research before you start just talking because it becomes white noise, he called it. Why does the noise have to be white, I wonder anyway. White noise, he said. Anyway, so I'm going to start researching this a little bit more. What I did find about the lack of African Americans is the union has got a lot of power given to them in the past and they still have it. You're limited by that contract that they have negotiated. And I think they're in a position where they shouldn't be. They are public servant. You shouldn't marry being a public servant with having power to create policy. And that's what's happened. They create policy. And so they have written into the rules to where they can legally have exclusive power to keep the fire department segregated. And they don't do it just necessarily by the race and the color of the skin. They do it by who they like and who they want to be in there. Now, that's going to have to stop. That's going to need to be changed. In fact, I do need to make sure that's right. That's just me doing a little bit of research. But I think after I get the rules, there are some rules that they -- not rules. They negotiate these things that you're going to pay for and they're going to do. And I'm going to get them from way back when it started and when I started trying to get one firefighter in this organization 10 years ago. I'm going to go back and get those and I'm going to look at those rules. They call them labor -- I forgot what they call them. But it has something to do with they negotiate the contract and they come up with things that's in the contract. Well, bottom line is it shouldn't be there. You have actually created -- someone's created a position now where an African American trying to get into the fire department is almost impossible because of these rules. And I'm not going to stand for that. So I will wait until I get some black noise and I'll bring it back to you later on. >> Good morning. >> Morning. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That brings us to our agenda item 8, which is concluding items. Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. You know, it was about a year ago that our City Council revised our gas well drilling and inspection ordinance. Part of that new ordinance called for leak inspections by a third party consultant and that those leak inspections, that the fees that that consultant charged would be collected from the gas well drillers or operators. So what I'd like to do is get a report on how many of those third party leak detection inspections have been done in the past year. The results of those inspections and charges made to the gas well operators for those inspections. >> All right. Mayor Pro Tem. >> Thank you, Mayor. And this is a request I'm assuming for the planning team and perhaps for legal as well because I think you're intertwined as it relates to annexations to some degree. If you guys recall about a year ago, those of you guys who are on council, we started getting emails of concern about a proposed department complex across from Geyer. It was right on the edge of the city and I think some of the proposed development was internal to the city, some was external. Seems to have gone away, but I've heard that the proposed project's still there. They're just moving to the other side of the city line. I've come to understand that there's perhaps a couple other of these sorts of projects kind of looming right on our out skirts, tying in the city streets, tying in the city utilities. It strikes me that we're doing a lot to annex places where we don't see any potential development at all going because of ranches. But here you have some real significant impact to the city. And I don't know why we're not going after them from an annexation point of view. So if we could get some report onto that so we can understand the consequences of these developments and to know what our options are relating to annexation in order to control development on our outskirts. Thank you. Thank you. Any other concluding items? I've got about 10. Just kidding. All right.