Jun 28, 2016 City Council on 2016-06-28 1:00 PM

Meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, June the 28 th, 2016. It is 104. Moving down through our work session reports, we work session, which is receive a presentation, hold discussion regarding the Texas Woman University's master plan. So, President of TWU, yes, come on up to the podium. And then if you want to, if you would introduce the guest that you have with you. >> Sure will. Hi, I'm Corinne Faiton, Chancellor of Texas Woman, people. I'm my CFO, BJ Crane, Dr. Mendez Grant, VP for Student Affairs, and Joe Standridge, charge of our facilities. And I wanted to thank you first for giving us a little bit of time with you today. I wanted to follow up on the meeting that we had with you, I forget how many months, where we talked about the golf course and what we were planning on doing and thinking about, etc. So I thought it would be appropriate to give you a follow up, chapter two of the story. And tell you a bit, we've done a little work in terms of our campus master plan and what we would like to do, where we would like to move. Brought in a consultant to give us a presentation with ideas about what it could look like. And I thought you might find this interesting to kind of see what the big vision is for the future of the campus. And we weren't thinking just limiting it to the golf course , but really once you think golf course, you have to think of the whole. If the golf course is no longer a golf course, I should say , then what does the whole campus look like? And what's the plan for the whole idea? So I'm going to introduce Dr. Monica Mendez-Grant. I think you're the one giving the presentation, Monica or BJ, are you doing that? >> Well, it's- >> It's here. >> It's self contained. >> It's self contained. We made their job really easy. >> Okay. >> A recording from what we presented to our Board of Reg ents. And the consultant came, gave a presentation, and you will have to excuse me, but the beginning is an introduction that I gave, so just, you know. >> [LAUGH] >> I'm sorry about that, it's part of the recording. But this is exactly what we presented to the board, and it 's got the visuals, and so we thought it'd be best if you heard it directly from the board's mouth. Because I think it's more powerful. So thank you. >> You bet. >> And tell you, we've been talking about the golf course and the campus as a whole and whatnot. And you all know Ralph Hawkins, our dear friend to the university. And also, the awardee winner last year from the Virginia Chandler Dykes. So I had, and Ralph obviously was the CEO of HKS Architects that had done a lot of work that Ralph, several months ago, and told him, I said, we have this challenge. And really could use some help with someone to help us think through this whole issue. And we talked about maybe working with some students at Rice University since he graduated from Rice or from UT Arlington. And we explored a variety of options. And then one day, Ralph calls me back and he says, I have a much better plan. He says, I know this guy, he's about the best in the world. That's exactly what he said. And he said, he is a master thinker about visioning, really , a design for the whole campus. He does this a lot. He lives in New York. That's nice, but it's probably a little above our pay grade . And this is, HKS, by the way, is the fourth largest architect firm in the country. So as Ralph describes this, as I said, I started to lose hope. So he says, but you know, we could do this pro bono. I'm thinking, wow, this is the best Christmas gift ever. So named Randy Morton, who heads the--let me see, what is your--director of the HKS Urban Design Studio. That's you, Randy. And Valerie has joined us with him, too, Valerie Carroll. Anyway, as we started talking with Randy and talking about how he approaches this and conceptually thinking about the campus and what can be done, really at a conceptual level, long term, not specific details at all, it became really exciting. So we've been working with Randy and Valerie and Bogdana, who is another one of his partners, came to campus, met with us several times, and then he gave a presentation to cabinet. And we all were just really, at the end of cabinet, it was just, wow, poetry. So we thought you would enjoy listening to this vision and the concept that Randy and his team have kind of unfolded for us. I will leave you with one little sentence about Randy. This is what he says on his website. He says that he gets his inspiration from beautiful cities in the world. So Randy, that's all yours. Thank you very much. I don't even know how to follow that up, to be honest. So please don't get your hopes up. But Madam Chair and Regents and to the cabinet and everybody in TWU community, it's really great to be here because it's 80 degrees. 80 degrees where we're from. I'm already winning. And it's interesting you bring up the pro bono thing. And I will say it doesn't really mean anything. You will see that we put our entire heart and effort into this. So that thing, I'm just going to let you know that you got our best effort here. So it is not a monetary issue. And when we were asked to think about the golf course and the transformation of a golf course into a campus, one of the very first things we said is what an amazing asset. And I guess before I go on, I just want to say to the Bra ilsford people, connections between that fine pointed thinking and some blunt ideas. So I hope your idea cup is not running over because we're going to stuff a lot in there. But the golf course at 100 or so acres is an asset and a burden. And as you heard, because it's going to require a lot of work on your -- but really what we try and do is think long term to take land that's what I like to say is at the outset worth $1 and by the time we're done and you plan it out, it 's worth the value. So we look at it that way as the creation of value as that 's what your asset is. And we're going to talk to you today about thinking in terms of say a 50 year horizon in 10 year buckets. It's about the scale that we like to think about. And this very first image is up here and we have to say that you can never think about the golf course without thinking about the campus as a whole. So the idea is to take these two things that are different materials and blend them together, blur the distinction between what the two things are. A little further, and the entire region is a combination of two things with kind of an urban area and Lewisville Lake. And it's so interesting the way the ecosystem and the urban system meet right here at the campus. And that's so important to take those two different materials and bring them into one idea. So in the big scale and then little scale, they play right into the heart of where the sustainability thinking is going these days and with Dr. F aiton's vision about health, wellness and nutrition as being really the programmatic drivers of the way to think about the golf course. You just heard a whole bunch of numbers. Their numbers had a lot of digits. My numbers have a lot of zeros and I'm rounding everything off, but conceptually what you're going to see is that where you are today and in addition to beds, you see the categories. We're going to talk about growth of students' beds, academic space and everyone's favorite topic, parking and how that all works together to create a vision. And in the first 10-year horizon, these numbers largely flush out with what we just heard. But the thing that's interesting and where a lot of universities are going is to get less commuters and more students living on campus. And that goes right to the point of trying to create a community. And there's a number of reports about cars and parking. And in the 20-year horizon, you can kind of see that we're nominally doubling the percentage of students who live on campus. So we're going, you can see the addition of a great number of beds here and that's what we're projecting. What's interesting about it is you add all that stuff up and it won't bore you with the math. You need about 37 acres of land over the next 20 years to do that. And you remember you just inherited a 100-acre golf course. So the first thing that it tells us is you're going to be land rich, which is the developers to be able to throw the land in. So that can be the first thing that you do. And it's really going to be a big park and open space problem, which is really true about a lot of campuses. And when we try and understand campuses, we divide them up into three buckets so we can account for every inch of land. All campuses are composed of buildings. When you look at the roofs, the drawing on the left, there are streets and parking areas. That's all the gray asphalt areas. And then there's open space. And they come in various combinations. And if we look just kind of quickly at the building cover, there is only 18 acres of roof area on your campus out of the 150 or so acres that you've got. It's usually a surprise how to make roofs for buildings and how much other land there is and what do you do with the other land. And the other thing is your buildings on Camadus are grouped into three predominant uses. The residential group at the north. And if you squint, you can see there's a composition, which is so much different than the academic core to the south. And then in the middle is where all the communal buildings are, the student center and buildings that we're in and everything kind of feeds in. So there's a structure and there's a real simple growth idea as we start to think about the golf course, that those simple uses just simply extend to what they are. It's really logical to help us decide where we put things. Quickly is if we start to look at the streets and parking lots, this is a pattern also much different than the pattern of building roofs. The number that's key here is that unlike the 18 acres of roofs, you have 60 acres of asphalt spread. It's probably a surprise to you when we tell you this, but it's never a surprise to us. This is fairly typical and you've got 4,500 parking spaces. And in fact, you've got parking everywhere. In front of the beloved statue, parking is everywhere. And so there's got to probably be a better way to manage it . And the first thought that we have is if we go back to that land use idea, let's think auto free about the heart of campus and in general. In that red circle there, if you count up all the cars in there, it's about 1,000 cars that need to be relocated. And you end up with a new diagram that looks something like that. So you go from asphalt in the center of campus to no asphalt in the center of campus. We have to relocate 1,000 parking spaces. You get about 100 cars per acre, so we're talking 10 acres of land. So the next--and the reason you do that is so that you can start to think long term about environments like this. Whether you're at University of Virginia and you just have lawns or you have events or you have athletics fields, you're trying to clear out that area. And then that auto free area is surrounded by the extension of residential units, academic space. And on here you can see an idea of a campus drive because eventually we're going to have to be able to get to the golf course. And we're going to have to do it in the most traditional way. We're going to have to build a street. And so we don't want to be auto free, meaning no cars at all, but we want to manage the cars. So there's a way to think about creating a campus drive. And in fact, it can be a really beautiful thing, whether it 's like a transverse here in Central Park or whatever park drives are, we can model after something like that. And then now back on the topic of cars, there's just the general impact of Bell and what it does to your campus. And it does something pretty interesting. It cuts your campus in half. This is a photograph of Mass Ave at MIT, if you know that campus. And they managed to--fairly prestigious. And they managed to live with Mass Ave running through the middle. And I was saying to Dr. Faiton when we think Bell go away, if it's not possible, there's certainly a way to live with it. And in fact, if you take a knife and cut through Bell, what you see is a cross section that looks something like this. The immediate piece that I notice is the median in the middle. The problem with the median is it's street wide and harder for people to cross. You're a pan and you ask them to design a street. They love to put a median in because they think that that makes the street seem more important than it really is. And take the land that the median possesses and just put the median on the outside where the pedestrians want to be and shorten the distance across the street. And so now you have a narrow--what was the median and you could start to introduce it and use that land for bike lanes. So what we haven't changed is the right of way that the city owns. They still own and possess it. But you reconfigure the ingredients that are within it. And so that's what that yellow band is where we're talking auto free. So now it's better auto management and laid on top of this diagram which basically says like a lot of campuses, you park at the perimeter and then you feed your way into the center and you put the parking wherever the parking needs to be. So eventually, use or apartment use is going to require parking. So the thousand cars that we were talking about earlier, that's where they go. They go where they need to be so they can be with housing. And you probably need 2,500 new cars over the next 20 years based on our numbers and you're seeing 3,000 here. So--and it barely looks like it made a difference in the drawing. And in fact, once you start thinking about golf course and how you park, you end up with parking lots that look something like this long term. And what Bell really does is it divides your campus into what I like to say three campuses. So it isn't really just your campus and the golf course side by side. There's the west campus which is the campus that we know which feels like a campus and it's full of quadrangles. And then there's the east campus. And when you look at the west and you look at the east, you can see what stark differences are between the two. And the reason the east campus is important because when you expand your campus to get to the golf course, you're going to have to move through the east campus. So it is not only a golf course problem that you're dealing with, it's now going to be what are we going to do with what I'm calling Bell and the golf course. And there are a number of issues also that we were asked to look at about what if we on the left kept Bell which we just went through. Because you have the golf course, you actually could recon figure the route of Bell and you can begin to move Bell and you see how it kind of moves more and more and more to the right. So that says you actually could relocate Bell all the way to one end of the campus and consult Bell in with a campus drive. There could be thought about including working with it where it is today. And the next subject that we want to talk about is open space and open space is really critical because it's what really drives the character of a campus. And I love this diagram that Valerie made. This is just a simple drawing of not all our green pieces are your beloved quadrangles. And those quadrangles are the spaces that really define what the institution, what the university feels like. And you've got a big open space problem and whether they're hardscape or softscape, that's really what makes the campus happen. And then there's a wetland that's on the golf course which is a new kind of open space that you're going to be dealing with that looks something like this today. And if you're a golf course architect, you think about wet lands like this. But if you're starting to think about campuses, you think about campuses differently. And what's interesting is the wetland is there because that 's where the--and if you've ever walked around here, you know it's hilly. And the topography is really interesting. And so that diagram of the topography from the wetland up to the top of campus is a 60-foot difference. That's the height of a six-story building when you walk from the golf course up to the part of campus that we're on. And you can see the pattern that the topography takes and when you lay the buildings on top of the topography, you can see the way the campus has grown . And you've learned how to live with a campus on the side of a hill and sometimes it's been successful or not. In fact, that topography has determined the growth of the campus largely in the north-south direction. In that north-south direction, slow--is there a building with a beautiful dome? >> All the way up. >> Thank you, yes. Which top of the hill which is sort of a campus classic decision with a long slope recession up the hill, something like that. There's cars there, you know. >> Nice. >> Yeah, exactly. But what's interesting about your new problem is instead of going north-south, you're not going to have to go east-west direction and now you have to move into the other direction. And what that means is when you take a knife and cut through the land, the land is shaped differently in that direction. In fact, it steps in terraces from zero to plus 20 to plus 40 to plus 60, almost like little shelves or like a giant--organize their landscapes that way. So your future growth in one direction is going to be different than the way you've been going for the last number of years. And when you start to look at--in fact, get from the campus over to the golf course, there really are two logical corridors and they sort of go around pioneer just in a very practical manner. And universities have been expanding on corridors for many, many years and those corridors and pioneer really start to define a whole series of open spaces, call them manicured terraces for now. They all need a whole series of ideas and you can think about a landscape that looks like that and would turn into something like this, into the open space idea. And as you start to make your way down the hill, it doesn't have to be an expensive proposition. There can be small investments and eventually even contempl ative gardens if you think about what that red box is all the way. And it would be important to do something in the early days into the depth to using all of that land. The second thought is engaging the wetland. And what do you do with the wetland so that it's not a golf course anymore? But it starts--this is a kind of an open space maneuver that you can make which is bulldozer for two weeks and that's it. And they just move it around and the water comes in. And it's important to think low cost because with a hundred acres, land--open space can easily get to a million dollars an acre, easily. That's a hundred million dollar nut and that's not a realistic number. So this kind of--the strategy of creating wetland and letting the wetland--about sustainability and then there are a number of ideas that have gone on on campuses and how that all works. If you remember the campus drive, in between the campus drive and all these campus lawns and here's a thought now about taking what's the golf course and turning it into places of enjoyment, places where students can do what students need to do in a longer term sustainability strategy whether it's the most passive piece sitting in the chairs or whether it's back and forth with what the dormitories are. And then the last piece is outside of that campus drive, just another thought but you can kind of see the ABCD of the ideas too. If you took a can of spray paint on on the golf course and drew that curving line and did nothing on the outside of the line, the woods would actually grow naturally. So the woods would occur in a low cost way the same way the wetland occurs. And with the woods you start to get environments like the-- and it will naturally occur and within there we can do paths and winding pieces. In fact, dormitories would be beautiful in there and it's a tradition on campuses everywhere where students are living in the woods. And then the other category open space wise are your sports fields. And the sports fields sit right in the middle of campus and there are a lot of campuses that do that. This is the University of Cincinnati. Right smack in the middle of the University of Cincinnati sits their stadium and their rec center. And so there are a number of precedents that how do you make that work. And you start to put it all together and you get a simple ABCDE of how do we think about open space categories that deal with expansion ideas. A lot of discussions about, well, they don't have to be manicured terraces. They can fill out to be any series of ideas but there's a composition that's starting to happen now that has a low cost idea and that can be programmed from health, wellness, and nutrition perspective and have a whole variety of different spaces. And in fact, inside of everything there are walking paths that need to be laid out. There are jogging trails. There are bike paths. And when you put them all together, all these lines, they all want to intersect. And the way people move and use that open space so that, and you see how important it is that these dotted lines engage the existing campus. And this is the beginning of blurring the distinction. There's no longer in this drawing a golf course and a campus. There's now one idea. And you start with the way people move. And this is a photograph of a sketch model that we made and it's floating around your campus somewhere, probably in BJ's office or in Dr. Faiton 's office. There you go. Okay, it's in her office. But this model is about this big. And if we have to see three dimensionally now the blending of ideas. And the characteristics are like this. What was the golf course isn't exactly like we're repl icating your existing. Feels different and it should feel different. And in fact, maybe it's nice to introduce what would be, what would a woman's university of the future want to be like. And it takes advantage of all the natural characteristics. And what we haven't talked about yet are all the buildings that would go on, partly residential and partly some other buildings. So now we'll just, we'll start to think about those buildings, but you can't think about the buildings without how they're structured by open spaces . You can never think about Columbia without development around its great courtyard. You can never think about Harvard without the yards and all the building. You need an open space structure when you start first. So I'm going to go back and forth between here and here. And you see the very first phase and as Dr. Faiton pointed out, we surrounded her house with some residential units. Which I didn't like. Yes, which she didn't like. But there's a certain logic, which is the phasing and we've heard a little bit about phasing should start near campus and eventually start to proceed away. And that's a discussion that you could all have is how does that happen? And you can take land that looks something like this today, which is, this is where the one of those corridor lines are that we're talking about. And you can start to turn it into something like this. Now we're looking at a residential community that is the buzzing needs are that you have that meet the needs of future students and an older student population and all those open space ideas and blending in all the topographic ideas that we talked about. And so in the first phase, you want to do some new beds. You certainly have to think about what academics are as a contemplative piece. And then the phasing, and you talk about thinking about why 's. You just think about that. Right? It sort of makes sense. In the early days, we tackled the East campus. You don't even really get, you start to transform the open spaces on the golf course, manipulate the wetlands a little bit. Then you can start thinking about introducing in the next 10 year batch, say in your 10th and now you kind of work your way around in 30 years, you can continue to, whatever your growth needs are, you have plenty of really great building sites. And then there's one other idea, very, very long term, because we spend so much time working with developers and universities, opportunity of transportation and transit. You can get on the Dart in Dallas. Valerie got on the Dart in Dallas last night. Got on the Dart and she rode the Dart all the way up to the Denton Downtown Transit Center and I picked her up in my car and met her at the hotel. But when she got off there, after going 37 miles from Dallas, she was about a half a mile from this campus. So within a half a mile, there's the ability to start to think about how do you leverage the future transit system so that you can actually have transportation at the foot of the campus. And what's really interesting, you see that red line on there, it lines up perfectly with the diagonal of the library where you just had your Starbucks opening this morning. But it's the only building on your campus that's twisted at an angle. And it's twisted at such a perfect angle that it lines up with one corner and is almost perpendicular to the railroad tracks and it sets up an entire transportation. And this is much, much longer term now. But you think about it now and an area in the village and a series of stepping stone parks that would link transit back to the campus. And you see those other red dots on, red rectangles on there. There are also a lot of donor opportunities. We notice there are not a lot of donor buildings here. And one of the virtues of thinking long term and long now, the great donor opportunities. And you can help donors envision what they would be donating for rather than somebody saying, "Well, here's a check for $30 million, but I don't know what it should be." Now you can outline what some of the great sites in the future would be that are befitting of a long access or donor opportunity. So another way to think about the campus. In fact, here they are. And when you put that all together, you get, like we had an open space framework, you get a development framework. And you can think about this as a land use diagram. So now we're seeing a little more specificity about yellow where residential, blue where some of the academic expansion could go. You certainly see donors. One of those yellow sites, for example, when we're hearing earlier from the Brailsford group, kind of an RFP that you could put out to private developers. And I think you can put in the land. You've already created the demand and you can bring in the development community and let them do what they do, put the $2 million in, maybe you have to, because developers like it when they know what's coming after them. So creating certainty for them actually adds a lot of value . And so you take all these things, the buildings and the paths and the open space and the transit, you separate them into layers and then you put them all together and you start to get a vision for a campus. And this is the model that's a photograph of the model that 's floating around. And so that's about, I'll say, a month and a half or so and a way to think about the future of the campus and make a goal. Any questions for the Chancellor? Councilmember Hawkins? In the model, it looked like Bell was still there just as it exists right now. Would you all ever really entertain the thought of moving Bell? I mean, that's a pretty interesting thought. Well that's the thought we really liked initially. Yeah. We've been moving Bell and so we've been working actually and getting some traffic studies and it looked like it might be a little more complicated and more long term than what we anticipated. And so I kind of like the compromise. I thought Bell where it is now and just think differently about how it is built instead of having that median in the middle, move the median to the side, make it safer to cross, have a bike path that can really enhance so it's moving it all around. But that might take us 10, 15 years and I'm a little impatient so I'd like to see something a little sooner. Yeah. But if we can work on this idea of changing Bell the way it is now and making it much more aesthetically appealing and safer more than anything else, I mean you've heard all issues so this is something that we have to address anyway. So yeah, we are very interested in entertaining that with the city. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs? Hi. Hi. I love that. It's nice for the open spaces and thinking green. I have a question. I really like how your campus now builds up. I think that's really unique and it's part of our skyline. To keep that, the idea of rising up. The towers you mean? Yeah. Well, as you expand. I don't know if we're thinking of necessarily like high rise tower type things. I don't know the golf course because they were really thinking of housing, student housing, which would not necessarily be in the towers but in terms of communities with areas for meeting. I mean the towers are built in such a way that there's not that much room for students to have a community feel. We're really looking at and when we surveyed our students, that is something that's really important to them. So create environments where they can have cooking together and having living room space and that. And so those types of student housing are different today and they're not coming in those high rises. Is that mostly just because you have them? You know, I don't know why they build it that way. I mean I love it because you could find Tito Yu no matter where you are. No, yeah. When you think it can fill, you think it will go up. Right, right. But now that we have more land, we may not need to go up so high. I have one more question that isn't necessarily about this but it's about the temporary parking lot. I say temporary so I'm just trying to get confirmation that that is District 2 and so there's a lot of people over in that area that are kind of concerned. Right. And they're building the parking garage which is temporarily going to take away spaces so we had to relocate those spaces. And so they located across the street but Joe is here. Do you want to respond to that, Joe? Yes, ma'am. Well, if you could just go to the microphone because we're recording this and it's going at live. Yes, as the Chancellor said, we're moving the parking over there. Hope to have it online by September this year. We're proceeding forward with the design of the new parking lot. The high rise that will be over on the east side of campus, I mean the west side of campus. Building our students back and forth from those areas until we get that building constructed. And then we'll either turn it back over to a green area or depending on what other construction goes on on the campus because, you know, again, we have the green areas, we have the golf course but a lot of construction comes to get our students to and from their parking areas so they can get to our campus safely. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you for keeping the trees. You've done a really nice job with it. Yes, absolutely. Yes, that was one of our main parts of the project. No trees go away. We appreciate it. Thank you. Councilmember Begarry. Chancellor, thank you for the presentation and thank you for all of the work that went into visioning this process. My question was also about that north seven acres and not just that portion with the parking but also the old, I think it was the early childhood development site that had been a daycare and was raised. So I had a question about that and then I also had a question about Riddell Street which is the eastern boundary of the golf course and if there were any plans to, I mean, the Bell Street, I wonder if that's something that could be replicated on the periphery with Riddell as well. I imagine that it would become a more major thoroughfare as more people are living there. And that was one of the original plans is to think about how can we go around the campus and Riddell obviously would become really crucial in that regard. So we decided to see what's best, how can we partnership, right? And so how can we improve the safety, the aesthetic of the campus? Right now, I don't know how many of you have driven Bell but I have said this before. It feels like a really bad. So there's not even a straight line, it goes every direction, potholes everywhere. So if we could really streamline that, make it part of the campus and then also work with Riddell and what do we need to do in order to make that more accessible for everyone. I'm totally open to working. Above, north of University Street, is that going to be a staging area during the construction part of this? I want to address the area, the staging area is a good question and something I wanted to address and I've told our campus this too. It's going to be wonderful but it's probably going to get worse before it gets better because obviously there's going to have all the staging areas, construction. So we anticipate, we're trying to minimize that by not have all the construction going on at the same time, staging it. But nevertheless, so I'll let you talk about specifics. Yes ma'am, we've got three major projects. We've got the, we have the new student union that we're going to be building right on the heels of that. And then we have a tuition revenue bond project which is a new science technology building that's going to be going up on campus, south end of campus where we have a parking lot right now. So space is going to be limited on the campus and we're going to have to move around and give the contractors lay down areas so that they can work through it. We're hoping we can work between the projects but you know nothing ever works like you want it to. So if we get some of these catching up with one another, we may have to use some of that area over there for temporary lay down and storage areas and so forth. So we haven't gotten that far down the road yet but it is in our mind and you know again it's part of our planning process to work through the what ifs as they come up. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Any questions? Thank you Mayor. Thank you guys for coming to visit us. This is the second time I've been privileged to see this presentation and it's very visionary and it's exciting to see the potential of what that could become. And you know TWU is one of those assets to the city for architecture but also for landscape. I remember when you're walking through your gardens at the north end of campus and the little ponds and there's like this, my kids call it the castle area because it's near where the chapel is but it's like all these rocked interesting things to explore. I mean it's just somebody put a lot of thought into that over the years. And what it reminds me is I feel like you guys have a good foundation for that upon the bill for this. Especially interested in thinking through this Bell Avenue question with you all and even that transit connection which I think is great. You said 40, 50 years and I thought gosh I want to still be alive when that happens. I did too. So my question is met with you and your offices and your team and we tasked our team with saying you know we know money's an object but let's imagine money's no object and we know it's not currently in the plans to do something major like that but we said let's put some numbers together because to me it strikes me as a great partnership between them, us and even RTC given that transit connection, its connection to downtown. Where are we with that from the staff perspective? Well as you mentioned staff was tasked with taking a look at that particular layout for Bell Avenue and we're in the process of that. We had numbers that I think it's going to take a little while for us to firm up but it's based on the layout that you're seeing there in Bell Avenue. So we should have that here soon. Maybe as you're aware we're reconstructing Bell Avenue but we're going to stop at Texas Street so from Mingo to Texas and once we finally get to what the ultimate configuration is of Bell then we'll move forward with the, we can move forward with the remainder to university. I will say that I really appreciate the partnership that we 've had with the city and the open mindedness in exploring change and from the perspective of the university I want to say that we want to do everything and anything we can to facilitate, to facilitate the process, to speed it up, whatever it takes, let us know. I'm very, very interested in making this happen. I think it'd be great for the city. It fits within the whole philosophy of the bike lanes and everything else and it would be great obviously for the university especially when we bring new students and families to the campus if they see a nice safe environment which is something that's really critical for our students, for every student that we'd imagine on college but ours particularly when we do surveys it's one of the top items for our students so we want to really make sure that we give that image and so anything we can do, I'm game . Well thank you so much, I want to just tell you it's been a pleasure having you leading the helm of TWU. You are a visionary. The things that are going on in that campus are just extraordinary and you're just a great person. Well thank you. And your staff, they've been so good to work with and really look forward to helping you make that campus something you want because in doing that it improves dent. Exactly. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I know we would find this exciting but we just thought it was really fun so thank you. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. You bet. Okay I want to ask the council for some direction. We've got a closed session item which is, which one is it? Is it C? Yeah, C. Deliberations regarding personnel matter that I was wanting to move that up just so that that would refresh. You know we haven't had a lot of work sessions and wanted to move that forward in the closed session at this time. Is that something that y'all would be agreeable to? Sure. All right. Okay. All right with that then we will go ahead and convene into C. 45, Texas Government Code Section 574. Good evening. Wanted to reconvene this work session of the January, June, excuse me, 28th, 2016 at 524. We've already proceeded through agenda item 1A so we're going to move to agenda item 1B but before we do that I wanted to ask council. We've got three work session items here and maybe you guys as far as interest of time want to go ahead and proceed with these work session items? Well I'm seeing, yes. Yeah mayor it seems to me that several of these items are actually foundational information for our budget work that we'll be doing when we come back from break. Okay. And so I think that we probably need to hear this either today or as soon as we get back from break and I suspect that our July meetings are going to be pretty loaded up. Sure. All right. Just wanted to get people in. Yes, council member, mayor Pro Tem wrote. Is there any interest in switching up and doing the items for individual considerations? You mean going into the regular items for individual considerations? That's right. Okay. Since the other ones are going to take a considerable length of time. All right. So Madam City Attorney, we can move those items up. It's a pleasure. What's the council's pleasure on that? Everybody go? All right. All right. So then we'll move then forward to our agenda item of, I need to call it a special call. Okay. All right. Add in individual consideration which is agenda item 1A considered option of ordinance the city of Dent Texas authorizing the city manager to execute a professional service agreement with the Sacramento Borough's PC for professional services related to collection of delinquent taxes. Thank you, mayor. For council tonight. Okay. Okay. Thank you, mayor, members of the council. I do want to spend a few minutes with tax collection services item. I have a very short presentation. I hope it will answer most of the questions that were raised in the last meeting on June 21st. Just as a recap, the current contract was originally awarded to Saucon Boroughs back in 2008. And following extensive, we did that. We went through a very extensive process to award that contract, the initial term in 2011, and it was renewed through various actions through June of this year, June of 2016. As a reminder for you, all fees for tax collection services are paid directly by delinquent taxpayers. A 20% fee is added to delinquent accounts. So this year, we initiated a request for qualification process, an RFQ process. The RFQ, as you may recall, in January, we had sent the council an informal staff report detailing the criteria that we were planning to use for that RFQ. The proposals were due. Then on March 15th, I evaluated the proposals according to the following criteria here that I've shared with you before, the demonstrated qualifications, experience, and credentials of the firm. The final 20% historical performance levels and demonstrated capabilities was about 60%. And then the remainder of the final 20% was their procedures, technological capabilities, available legal services, and oral presentation. We did receive four proposals. These are the firms that we've talked at Link That, McCree Firm, Purdue, Saco, and Lineberger firms. Staff conducted on-site interviews with all of these firms on April 1st and went through about an hour presentation from each of the firms with our evaluation panel. As I mentioned to you before, staff is recommending the firm of Saco and Burroughs for the contract. I did go through the rationale in detail for you back on April 26th for our recommendation. I won't do that for you today, but I have that if you'd like to spend some time on it. And following this work session, council did direct the staff to put forth an action item on the agenda to consider the contract. So we did that on June 21st, just last week. And at that discussion, there were a couple of items that the council asked for some clarification on. And one was they wanted each firm to provide a clarification on collection rate. And they also, the council also wanted to know what is the value of the 70% guarantee or any other figure that's proposed, excluding what we're calling legally uncollectible accounts. These were the bankruptcy accounts over 65 deferrals. And I'm going to go through that information with you. So first of all, the clarifications from the law firms, we did get some of those. McCreary, as you know, submitted a 70% guarantee as part of their proposal. The Saco guarantee and also offered to match any higher guarantee that was offered by any other competing firm. It responded with a guarantee of 80%. And Leimbarger responded that legal matters. So to give you a little bit of information about the numbers involved in this, last time, this is for our 2014-- And we got a question, I'm sorry. Yes, sir. If you go back to the last slide, when you say guarantee, what does that guarantee mean? A guarantee of money? A guarantee of we'll end the contract? What does that mean? The guarantee was to have a collection rate in excess of 70 % or 80%. And if they didn't achieve that, then the contract could be terminated. That's the proposal. So this is 2014 tax collection information, tax year 2014. So the gross delinquencies that we had as of July 2015 were 575,000. The legally uncollectible accounts that I mentioned to you before, about 102,000, so it's 473,000. If you apply the 60% collection rate on the gross delinqu ency in the RFQ, $345,000 would be what we would need to see collected. The 70% guarantee or collection rate on adjusted delinquent accounts, excluding those legally uncollectible accounts, would be 33 1,000. So the point of that analysis is to show you that this 331 is actually less than the 345 of gross collections. The actual collections that we've actually seen so far this year, this is through April 30th, and this is 12 month period that the law firm's able to collect on these accounts has been 372 thus far. And I'll show you some percentages on the next slide. So excluding the legally uncollectible accounts, Sackleton Boroughs has collected on the current year basis, 80.85% for tax year 2002, for tax year 2013. I do want to point out that's based on information through May. We don't have that report just yet from Sackleton Boroughs, but this is provided to the council. Those are the collection rates. The figure before that I showed you, the 372, was through April 30th, and that was about 79% already with two months to go. For all accounts of the gross collections, the figures that I've been talking to you about, the 30% for all prior year accounts and 60% for all current year accounts. These are our collection rates over the past five years that are represented here. We've exceeded those benchmarks in all years. You can see the 64.64%, that's the current figure as of April 30th, 2016. So the 372 figure that I was showing you just a moment ago, that's what that figure represents. So the conclusion of this from a staff perspective is after evaluating all this information, we continue to recommend the Sackleton Boroughs firm. We don't believe analysis of the collection rate information or the guarantees that have been proposed would change our recommendation at this point. With that said, what I've emphasized to the council throughout this process is the selection criteria is flexible enough for the accountant alternative firm. But I believe the decision would need to be made on factors outside of the collection rates based on the performance figures that I've shown you and how the figures are structured. And we're looking for direction at this time on this contract or any questions that you may have. So with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. >> Any questions for staff before we take public comment? >> Yes, I'm sorry, Council Member Wasme. >> How did we arrive at the five year contract and what have the contracts been in the past traditionally? >> The last contract that we had had your options and so each one of those options was exercised and what we had looked at was simply just going to the five year contract but we're keeping a termination provision in the contract if the collection rates did not achieve what we wanted to then we could terminate it. But that's the reason that we had it as five years. >> And other contracts that the city writes with other vendors traditionally, what are the length of those contracts? >> It depends. It's typically between three to five years that we will have. And we typically also have the termination provisions in there as well. >> On the collection criteria, difference between the four firms when it came to collection procedures, technology, legal services, and overall response, is that right? >> That's correct. >> Can you go into a little bit of detail about where the differentiation was? >> Sure, I'll be happy to do that. In your AIS, the agenda information sheet on page two also provided some details on the recommendation and the reason for that. Obviously there was strong history of collections that we had with Denton. In our opinion, there had been a strong level of respons iveness to the city for legal issues and legal matters. The principal tax collection attorneys work here in Denton, maintain a strong local presence, which we felt like was important for us as a city as well as for the taxpayers themselves. Saucon Boroughs, as you know, also collects for Denton Independent School District, which we felt like was an advantage for us in terms of collections. There's also various evidences that we were able to talk about in terms of taxpayers in difficult situations, work through issues, and we felt like that was a benefit. We also were very instrumental in leading some efforts related to a couple of very difficult collection activities and bankruptcy accounts. We had also a taxpayer which had some sensitive type of materials that were stored here in Denton that they had to work through. And finally, we were able to collect on that and they were the lead firm on those activities in which we felt that was very helpful. And from 1987 to 2015, they had initiated more than 65% of the delinquent tax property auction proceedings across the city. And so we felt like all of those things together was a differential. I admit it is a small differential between the other firms. I will tell you, as I've said, throughout this process to you is all these firms are qualified. They're all experts in this process and know what they're doing. And so any differential is small. >> Thank you. >> Hope that helps. >> Slide please, it shows the 2013, 2014. >> This one? >> So just to emphasize the 2013 was almost 82% and the 2014 was almost. >> On that adjusted basis, excluding those legally uncoll ectible accounts that I mentioned to you, yes. >> Thank you. >> Question of clarification on that. When we were talking about the 70 rates, those aren't the same. But if we were to convert that 80 and 81 to just sort of the same formula that everybody's sort of working off of when this whole issue came up, do you know what those figures would be? >> The total collection rates? >> If that's what we're using for the 70, 60. >> I want to make sure I understand your question. If it's gross delinquencies, these figures to the right, these current year figures, those are the total collections . So 64% as of April 30th, 62% so forth that you can see here . If you exclude out those legally uncollectible accounts and change the basis for that, then the collection rate goes up . Does that answer your question? >> Yes, it helps me understand. So when we're talking, when you showed your slide about the differential between 60% and 70% guaranteed, you're talking about all accounts. >> Yes. >> Okay, so it would be more in line with this column down at the bottom if we were going to say, well. So let's say for instance there was a firm that submitted an 80% quote unquote guarantee. I'm not sure I agree with that term, but. And then the higher guaranteed rate. So if we had 80%, then if we went down to that current year , you're saying we'd be compared to 64 to 80. We're saying that's the apples to apples comparison. That percentage guarantee based upon all the accounts. >> Well, the guaranteed figures were related to this 80 and 81% figures that I have here. >> Okay, so excluding the non-collectible accounts. >> Excluding the non-collectible accounts, that's right. >> If you include everything, so let me go back to this slide and make this hopefully a little helpful. So if you took the 372, the actual collections that we received, it's depending on what's the denominator. Is it 575 or the 475? Question of how you calculate these. >> Sure. >> The 575 is the 64%. If you take it from the 473, that's the higher percentage. >> So in the RFQs that have come in, what are those 70, 80% guarantees based upon the adjusted delinquent accounts or the gross delinquency? >> The guaranteed figures that you've heard for 70% or 80% are all on the adjusted delinquent accounts. >> Okay, that's what I needed to know. >> But the RFQ for all prior year accounts and a 60% for all current accounts. >> Okay. >> And they've all said they would meet those too. >> I appreciate that. Thank you. Council Member Hawkins. >> So I just don't understand why we're showing the gross delinquency, the uncollectible accounts. Collectible account? >> No. >> Okay. It's just confusing. >> I was just trying to respond to the question, so. >> Okay, any other questions for staff before we take public comment? Before we take public comment, I want to sort of give some parameters. Speakers who are representing the law firms that are, it's been determined that what we need to do is allow you to speak only with the limitation on the guarantee to all of the other aspects of the RFQ. The same limited subject that was presented at the last council meeting from the firm that spoke. Is that, am I saying that correctly, Madam City Attorney? Okay. Whereas Mr. Willie Hutsmith, who signed up for a card, you get to free rein, all right? So we'll go ahead and take the representing attorneys for the firms first. Just because of that limitation, Ms. Jill Jester, you've signed up to speak. If you'll approach the podium and state your name and address and your time will begin. And again, if you could limit it to that guaranteed sort of term of the RFQ. >> Good evening, I know it's been a long night. My name is Jill Jester and I'm here on behalf of Minor and Jester as well as Purdue Brandon. And we were one of the finalists for the tax contract. As I understand it, we are limited to, as most of you know, I could talk to the guarantee. And what I would like to say is that we came in higher than anyone else reached out to. And giving just an unequivocal anything anyone else can do, we can base a decision on. However, with our coming in at the 80% guarantee, we were actually just talking about how we wish we had said 87 because we have every confidence. And with the other firms that have had an opportunity to exercise this contract, we are the only group that has not been able to prove themselves here. And so we would very much like the opportunity with the winds of change to show that citizens will have trust in our firm and what we can do for the city of Denton in collecting taxes. And we very much appreciate you looking hard at the numbers and asking the hard questions to determine what is in the city of Denton's best interest now and in the future. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Yes, please. And again, if you would please just limit your comments to the guaranteed portion of the terms of the RFQ. >> I will. >> Okay, I can talk about more, but I will respect. >> My name is Matthew Tepper. I'm with MVBA and we have been partnering for many years with Hayes, Berry, White, and Van Zandt to provide delinquent tax collection services in the greater Denton area. When the RFQ first came out that you all were looking for delinquent tax lawyers, we were the only firm that was confident enough in our ability to offer a guarantee where we would write a check back if we fell short. This is something that the city of Denton has had historically in its contracts. It's had it in its contracts prior with us. Guarantee is because we know that our firm, our firms in partnership, can out collect any. And they showed the 2013 numbers up there where your current firm, Saco and Burroughs, collected 60. Well, that's the last complete year we had. We collected over 68% of the taxes for the county in that same period of time. And it's that kind of long term, successful collection rates in Denton County that allowed us to make that guarantee right off. We all gave everybody else another bite at the apple to see whether they would match or beat our guarantee. And some people come back higher than we have and happy to negotiate the guarantee at a 60% of everything, at an 80% or whatever those numbers would be. But if what this council is looking for is the law firm that can do the best job collecting risk by having a location in the tax office and offers the best combination of a statewide firm. >> If you could limit your comments to the guaranteed portion of the RFQ, please. >> Then I appreciate that. >> Considering those things, you all would very seriously consider voting no on the contract for Saco and Burroughs today and having this thing reposted wide open for all four firms that responded. It's very close, as staff said, and make a selection based upon those criteria. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> The next speaker is Mark Burroughs and Mayor. Basically, we stated in the beginning that because the comments at the last council meeting addressed the guaranteed portion specifically, based upon legal counsel, that we thought that we needed to limit those comments, give everybody a 90%. So I wanted to sort of share that with you. >> That's awesome. And I appreciate for everyone to have a say so in response to what came up in the citizens portion comments. RFQs are, you're trying to determine the most qualified law firms. That's a difficult thing. It's a professional service. There are a lot of elements that go into it. This guarantee collections rate has a lot to do with what you define in what you're leaving in and what you're pulling out. The city's criteria as it exists was at 60% target for current, 30% for ones that are beyond the most current year. And two targets, okay? The only target that's being discussed is the current year delinquent, which are frankly easier to collect. So that's point one, point two. The 60% was a target for the entire delinquency role. There are a lot of accounts that are, for various reasons. There's attorneys on the council that understand that. And it's not just the ones that were excluded by the other firm that was presented during the last meeting. Although those were the ones that we were asked to respond to. And so excluding furls, which actually the tax office does not classify under one classification. It's also under different delinquency date. We've checked through and they're not totally consistent historically as to what is under different delinquency date . And we get our designations from the tax office. Up until last week, it was not important. This was not something that we really ever can. Delinquency date because it's an over 65 deferral or a different delinquency date because it's a quarterly pay or payment agreement. All of those are different delinquency date. We can't collect them. And so those are, if you exclude those, the ones that are legally uncollectible, we're well over 80% already with what we do now. We're over 70% already with what we do now under the criteria that taking out just the bankruptcies and over 65. So our best way that we respond, we responded in two ways. We said that yes, we'll guarantee the 70% we already meet it. We also said we can expand that to include all of the withdrawals and we're already at 80%. That was in our backup. And then also we said we will match any other total confidence that we do this work and do it in an unparall eled way. And there's competing thoughts about that guarantee, about the percentages. There are some accounts you don't want to hurry on folks that might have difficulty paying. So that's a compete. >> Okay, thank you. And I think that's our time. >> Sure. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Willie Hutzpeth, if you'll state your name and address, your time will begin and you'll hear the- >> I have an open floor. That's what I like. >> My name is Willie Hutzpeth. I live at 623 Newton. Mayor and council members. Man, this is a good opportunity. Lawyers are trying to get this money. You do. And since you're sitting in the driver's seat or stools or whatever you want to call it, let's negotiate. Here's the deal. A three year deal or a five year, make it one. They're confused. Where'd he go? That guy's confusing everybody. That staff person. Let me tell you what I understand. Here's what I understand. 70%, you can't tell me and I know math. 70% is not the same as 60%. I don't care how you do it. 70% is higher. Excuse me. I don't even understand what he's talking about. But here's the thing I do understand. When I was here at the other meeting, the firm who started all this in the beginning said, we'll guarantee 70%. I heard what he said. If he doesn't meet it, he didn't say as the guy that the contract is void. That's not what he said. He said, well, Matt's going to give you the money that we didn't collect of the 70%. That's good business. So my suggestion as the leader of my household, no heck no, my wife. As a second leader of my household, I would suggest you just negotiate one year. Or put this thing off and then come back with some questions that you are sure you understand the percentages and the percentages of what. There is no rush. This is my money you're dealing with. Taxpayers. You're, now one thing I did, Leroy, is he really does, and I suspect the others probably will too. I don't know. He works with delinquents tax payers. Worked with me and people that I know. I think they would all do that if you negotiated it. There's no rush. Just get some more information. Understand the percentages. That would be my suggestion. >> Thank you. Thank you. Have no more cards? Any questions for staff? Comments or, yes, Councilmember Hawkins. >> Maybe for the city attorney. So a firm promises a certain level, certain percentage level of collection. And they don't meet that and then they state that they're going to write a check back to the city to cover that. Am I understanding that correctly? Can you just go a little into your opinion on that or? >> It's the pleasure of the council. I'll be glad to go ahead and discuss that. I have reviewed the law on that matter. And excuse me, I think there is an issue with regard to the guarantee and a disgorgement of fees associated with that collection. I have a legal issue with that and I would recommend we not go in that direction. On the other hand, if there is some type of guarantee and some kind of provision in the contract, the contract would be terminated under certain conditions. I think that is an entirely different issue. So in that, that we distinguish between those two approaches in the contract. I think that makes sense. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> Our city attorney needs to explain the issue of the discouragement in non-legal terms so that us other people can understand what you mean. >> Was a non-legal term, but let me make another run at that if it's your pleasure. >> Yeah, well. >> It's on. You need to pull your mic in. Sorry. >> Thank you. The issue on the table then becomes the fact that in the tax code, the legislature has allowed the local government to assist on top of the delinquent terror in the several attorney opinions that I have read. That 20% for the attorneys who collect the tax, that money is not to come back to the city in order to secure the contract. And so when I say discouragement of fees, I mean the discouragement or the return of those attorney fees back to the city to secure the contract is the issue that I'm identifying as a problem. Does that help? >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Thank you, Mayor. It seems like our current tax attorney has been through this RFQ process and during several iterations still continues to be recommended . Looks like their performance has been exemplary. On that basis, I will move approval of agenda item 1A. >> Okay. All right, before we vote, I struggle with the five year contract. I mean, we've got three or four firms here that are represented locally. This is one of those contracts that the city has to do. I mean, if we're going to collect delinquent taxes. So I certainly, I'm more inclined to the one or two year because I think we need to find a way. I don't know if I want to be in the entities here have. So that's nothing about the Saco & Burrows law firm at all. It's more of this is a contract that's going to keep coming up and we've had as staff has said, four firms that most likely can deliver the same level of service. So how do we not give an opportunity? And there may be some creative ways to do that. So the current recommendation, but I'm not okay with the five years. So Council Member Wasney, then we'll come back to you. Mayor Pro Tem. >> I concur with the mayor on a shorter period of time for the contract. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> What was the RFQ for? Was it four or five years? I mean, is everyone responding to a five year RFQ? Or were some people offering to do this for less? >> No, we didn't indicate it in the RFQ of five years. But if the council's pleasure, we could do any term that I 'm sure that you were interested in. >> Council Member Gregory. >> Well, I would be okay with amending the recommendation to three years if the motioner would. >> Council Member Begay. >> I'd just like to reiterate what you were saying about having a long period of doing the same work for the city. And it's certainly, I mean, I've worked with just about all the law firms that are in this room today. I think truly what we have is a situation where the law firms are equal. And given that, in my mind, something that's a benefit to the taxpayer is having that accessibility. I can think of at least one case where I worked on that having an office in the tax office would have prevented unnecessary legal delay and less backlog at the courts. I strongly recommend that we have an open mind in terms of how we approach this contract. And for that reason, I'd say that I would not be in favor of either a three year contract or a five year contract. >> I don't know if I want to do three year. I mean, I can do two year. I really want to do one year, but I can do two year because that gives us some time to look at it. But I think it behooves us to have a conversation about the RFQ process. And I mean, admittedly, there's some subjectivity in that, which there's going to be subjectivity in almost anything. So I'm okay with that. At first, I was probably not okay with it at all. But hearing the different discussions, I don't think it would necessarily be fair to make that decision in mid stream without more notice in that regard. >> So on that basis, I will amend my motion to approve agenda item 1A with a two year contract. >> I'm agreeable. >> I guess so, Madam City Attorney. You had mentioned that this is a contract, so that has to be something that is the potential awardee. >> It is a negotiated term in the contract, and I don't know what, if any discussion has been had with regard to that particular term. >> The negotiation with Saucon boroughs about a potential shorter term, but we had not discussed anything shorter than three years. So that would be the discussion point for that firm. >> Okay, well, I guess that, okay. Would you mind saying that sort of on the record? >> The two year, and there's also just for your information , there's also the 30 day out clause at any time that the council makes the call. So you have that flexibility, but I'm sure this is fine. >> Okay, all right. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Mayor. Okay, we have a motion and a second for a two year contract term. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. We've got five, all opposed, signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries five to two. >> Okay, we're going to go on to individual item 1B, which is considered option of ordinance authorizing the city manager or is authorized as a need to execute an agreement or agreements by and between the city of Denton, Texas and the Texas Municipal Power Agency. >> Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to call on Phil Williams, our general manager of Dent Municipal Electric. >> I didn't know if we could do it anymore. >> Steady. >> Do we vote? >> Steady. >> Good afternoon, council. Tonight we bring for you an item for an agreement with Texas Municipal Power Agency. Texas Municipal Power Agency is a joint power agency. Denton, Brian, City of Brian, City of Garland, City of Greenville. We have been in a power sales agreement with Texas Municip al Power Agency for over 30 years as we reached this stage of our agreement with Texas Municipal Power Agency. The member cities and the agency recognized the need to address some issues that were not addressed in the original power sales agreement. The power sales contract does an excellent job of regulating just that, the power sales, but it didn't address some issues that we see need to address at this time of the life of the agency. So this joint operating agreement was developed by the member city attorneys. And the attorney from TMPA. It provides structure for future operations with or without generation in the future. And provides the terms for sale or distribution of assets. Defines each member city's interest in those assets and addresses the procedures for disposition of assets, decommissioning, environmental remed iation, and environmental liability, indemnity, and dissolution of the agency. This item was brought before the TMPA board last Thursday and voted on and approved. It was also brought yesterday and they voted 6-0 to recommend approval. So staff is ready for any questions. >> Madam City Attorney, you had a- >> Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to point out and ask the council to kindly act on the joint operating agreement we passed out rather than the one that was in your backup. The difference being that the one we passed out actually has the attendance schedules at this point in time and those only came in yesterday. So that would be the only difference in the item. >> Council Member Begarry. >> I may need some help with the agreement. If a sale were to be instigated, I guess, what is the process for starting that? Is that in the joint operating agreement? >> So the agency did issue a request for proposal from different organizations and is considering all options at this time. That was one of the issues we had with the existing power sales. A sale of majority or a significant part of the assets would be addressed. This operating agreement does address that and addresses how those proceeds are first utilized to pay off any debt. And then in remainder, set up reserve funds. It's only distributed to the cities, member cities. All debt and obligations have been met. >> Okay, so I wasn't here, I think, but was that by virtue of board action or council action that that request for? >> That was based on TMPA board action. >> Okay, all right, that was at board direction. And then I'll reserve the rest of my questions. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mayor. I move approval to execute the joint operating agreement as presented to us at the meeting today. >> We do have a card for public comment, so I will, if there's a second, I will entertain that, but before we vote, we will hear public comment. Council Member Oden. >> I second. >> We have a card wishing to speak, Mr. Willie Hutsbeth? You'll come? No? Okay, all right. Mr. Hutsbeth withdraws his blue card. Any questions for staff prior to taking a vote? Missing somebody. Yeah, hold on, we'll see. It's a great picture of the plant. Did you make the motion? Could you repeat your, who made the motion? Okay, could you make the motion one more time? >> I move that we approve the ordinance for the city manager to sign the joint operating agreement. >> Okay, Mayor Pro Tem. Who seconded it? >> Second. >> Okay, yeah. All right, we have a motion and a second for agenda item 1B under items for individual consideration, all in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries unanimously. 7-0. Moving on to agenda item 1C, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, authorizing the city management services agreement by and between the city of Denton, Texas and Teague, Knoll and Per kins for engineering and surveying services relating to the fiscal year 2015 through 2016. >> Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council, this is really just a, more or less an addition to scope of an income Perkins for the inclusion of two original scope of service. We have staff here to answer any particular questions you may have, but in the interest of time, presentation. >> Anybody have any questions on this agenda item? >> Yes, sir. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> This is typically, this looks like a consent agenda item , but we just do not have a consent agenda. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. >> That's it. >> Thank you, that's all I had. >> Any other questions for staff? Do we have any cards to speak on this? >> No. >> No, okay. All right, seeing none. Councilmember Bosney. >> I would like to make a motion to approve item 1C. >> Okay, we have a motion. Councilmember Hawkins. >> I'll second. >> We have a second. We have a motion to see. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Councilmember Bosney. Yeah, okay, everybody who's in favor, please raise your right hand one more time so I can get the, okay. All right. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. >> Move into item 1D, consider adoption of an ordinance regarding settlement of the pending litigation entitled the city of Denton, Texas versus NRG power marketing. >> Yes, I'd like to call on Phil Williams again, general manager of DMA. >> Mayor, city council, you have tonight an ordinance authorizing the settlement with NRG. This settlement was reached after a very successful med iation that was led by our mayor, meeting with the mayor in Dallas to meet with NRG's council and their lead executive management. And due to your direction and in the mayor's actions along with the city attorney, they gave us a favorable, what I feel a favorable position to mediate this case and bring forward a settlement. So staff stand ready for any questions. >> Any questions for staff? Okay, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Thanks to all involved. Thanks, Mayor, for stepping up and representing the council as part of that negotiation and for the whole legal team and staff for their help in bringing this to a successful completion. So in that point, I move approval of agenda item 1D. >> Councilmember Wasney. >> I second the motion. >> We have a motion and a second for individual agenda item 1D. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item 1E, consider approval of resolution of the city of Denton, Texas, appointing interim city manager, setting forth the terms of the appointment, setting forth the interim city manager salary, and providing an effective date. >> Yes. >> Councilmember Gregory. >> Mayor, I would move approval of a resolution appointing Howard Martin as our interim city manager, effective. And during his term of service, his pay will be increased by 5%. >> Madam City Attorney, did you have a comment? >> It is pursuant to the alternate resolution that was handed out, rather than the one in the back up. >> Yes. >> All right. We have a motion on the resolution. Councilmember Hawkins. >> Yeah, I'd like to second that and two, I just want to thank Howard for being willing to step up to this, so. >> All right, and before we take a vote, we have a blue card wishing to speak. Mr. Willie Hutsbuth. >> Mayor and council, my name is Willie Hutsbuth, I live at 623 Newton. I want to just voice my opinion and my thoughts about the city manager. Not necessarily interim city manager, the city manager, but he's interim, so it's addressed to him. For years, the African American community and the Hispanic community has just been slighted within the law. Meaning, the law said so, and we are within our rights. But sometimes, just like Jim Crow, the laws are not good. They hurt people. I just want all of you, the manager, to consider that. When we, meaning me, I don't see anybody else, bring up issues to you. Please, just say listen, you'll say you mean stare at you and don't interrupt you while you speak and then ignore you and act like you never spoke. No, that's not what I want you to do. Please put it in the process. I.e., in the history of Denton, and I don't know how many years that is, two African American firefighters. Come on, something's wrong, I think. Maybe not. My sons say, don't discount the fact that, and I don't know , that they qualify. Then I guess I just want to know, what are the qualifications that they're not meeting? What don't they meet? Well, I know one thing, you got those two criteria with the fire department, that they have to have certification in EM T and firefighting. That's over $3,000. Before you're saying, city manager and council people, please be a little bit more sensitive to the minority population here in Denton. Not just give us time and then ignore us, but at least pay attention. So city manager acting, I ask that you would please consider that as well. And I'll be visiting you whenever. >> Thank you. All right, we're voting on agenda item 1E for the resolution handed out for modified resolution. All in favor of that resolution, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you. Do we want to, we've got concluding items, we want to do those after the work session, session or council's pleasure . We can just go through concluding items right quick, it's just the next agenda item, then we'll circle back around to the agenda, to the work session. Yes, council member Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. I need officer Hoban to do a thorough investigation of the city hall. My favorite coffee mug with my name on it is missing. It was last located in the council member's office on top of the filing cabinet, so please see what you can do. >> I'm sorry, surveillance cameras were able to catch the culprit. Any other concluding items? Yes, we're going to go to council member Gary and then we 'll go to you, Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. >> I just wanted to bring up that I haven't seen the particular issue regarding possible consolidation of dispatch facilities. So if that could be entered onto the matrix, I would appreciate it. And I think that's it. And I'm sorry. For the July 19th meeting, if we could address the issue of hiring a city auditor, perhaps in concert with the search that we undertake for a new manager. >> Okay. Pro Tem? >> I just wanted to congratulate on his appointment as interim city manager. Congratulations, but thank you for stepping up in your service to our city. We've got a great staff, and I know you'll lead them well during this time. >> Thank you. >> I think we failed relating to our desires of council to ask the staff to start the motions of getting us a firm selected to do a national search. >> Thank you. Any other concluding items? Councilmember Hawkins. >> Yeah, she wasn't a really close friend of mine, but a friend of mine, Anita, who owned Cool Beans and Rip Rocks and helped with the crawfish boil. She passed away here just recently. And she was a big staple, you know why Fry Street was the way it was. Kind of that old dent in that you know, like when you think of the flying tomato, and you think of the Fry Street Fair. She was all a part of that. So I just wanted to say publicly how much she meant for Denton. And just I know some of her family, you know, are just they're struggling right now and just say a little good thing about her. We just wish all the best for her family, so. >> Absolutely. Thank you, Councilmember Hawkins. Councilmember Wasney. >> And just a reminder to keep the heat on the consultant compensation study, because that's going to be a big part of our budget discussion. Thank you. >> Any others? I've got just a couple. Wanted to give everybody a chance. All right, well again, I share Mayor Pro Tem's sentiments. Mr. Martin, congratulations or condolences, we'll find out soon enough. We will get you a new chair, so that it doesn't quit sinking on you. And one thing, and Phil is gone, but maybe you know. But Phil had mentioned to me, Phil is here. Phil. Well, Phil is here, sorry. >> I was worried when you said Phil was here. >> Yeah. Well. Well, Mr. Williams had mentioned to me, and this is a concluding item, so I would report it. But I may let him report it about a celebration on the number of hours without any type of safety issue as far as how y'all define that. So if you could just, in my stead, report back what you shared with me about that achievement. >> Yes, last week we celebrated DME's 111th birthday. But in addition, more importantly, we celebrated one full year without a lost time injury. And that's a first for us. And that's a very significant utility achievement. It's a very dangerous business. It's one that we've required extreme amount of training because we want to make sure everybody goes home in the same shape they came in at. But that's a great tribute to my staff who has worked very hard to our safety managers. And it's a challenge to all my staff that facilitate their safety. But safety is everyone's responsibility very seriously. >> Thank you. You and your team are to be congratulated for that because I think that's a great achievement. It shows a real commitment to safety. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Okay, any more concluding items? Let's go ahead and I was going to say let's take a little five minute break. But let's talk about, we've got some work sessions that, items that we need to move through. So we've had a suggestion just to go ahead and keep moving forward. Council Member Rhoad, you might have had some alternative plans, or Mayor Pro Tem. Okay, so we're just going to move through them, if that's council's pleasure. I'm not getting any negative signs? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, well, council just take care of whatever you need to and we'll press on. And these aren't action items, so agenda item, work session item, which is receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding goals, accomplishments, and upcoming strategy. I'm sorry, excuse me. It is getting late and it's not even 620. And upcoming strategic priorities. >> Thank you, Mayor. Amy Bissett will be presenting this item. She's our Director of Development Services. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mayor and council members. I would, in courtesy to our, might suggest that we go to the next item first. They kind of integrate this one first and then talk about the economic development report. But I know we've been here since one o'clock, that might appreciate us going straight to that particular item. >> Okay, sure. >> The objective of this work session today is to review the Novasis Agile Economic Development Report that was prepared earlier this spring. About how it ties into our strategic plan for economic development here in a moment. But I will present the recommendations that were made in the report. We can talk about those recommendations and how they align or don't align with the economic development priorities and goals for the coming year. And then receive council direction regarding the implementation of the recommendations. To give a little bit of background, the economic development strategic action agenda was created in 2015. It was that facilitated Dan working with the city of Denton and the chamber in the economic development partnership board in about the middle of 2014. There was a strategic planning retreat that was held that many of you participated in. And other stakeholders in the community participated as well. It's a three year action agenda. And out of that agenda, there were five priorities that were established. And the economic development partnership board created action teams that are in the process of implementing each of those strategies today. We created in the beginning an admin at that and now we're underneath 16. Two of the teams, one of them being focused on recruitment and one of them being focused on becoming a business friendly community. Recognized an opportunity to engage a similar to each other . He was to take a holistic review of the development process from the first contact with a prospect to the issuance of a CEO. So we engaged no basis there that have some of the same team members that did our original 2014 and 2015. They came in for three days earlier this spring and did extensive interviews with members of the chamber of commerce economic development office. As well as development services staff, both internally in development services but also other staff members that work very closely with the development process. Specifically, fire and DRC engineering were involved in this process. We also provided an extensive number of materials for them to review and just to take a look at our process from beginning to end. Their report is fairly straightforward. It was included in your backup. Essentially, they identified or created what they called a goal tree. With one primary objective being the outcome of the report and then identified some necessary conditions in order to accomplish that objective. So the goal is to effect a change in culture from regulating to facilitating economic growth. By making the aspects developers and contractors stand here and personally tell you that that is a very challenging goal. By quantifying the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, by clearly defining and articulating priority industry sectors and ensuring constant and robust communication among all parties involved. >> So you commented that it's very challenging and I believe it was to that first point making interaction among chamber city prospects, developers, contractors as seamless as possible. Are you saying that that's sort of pie in the sky or what are we to achieve that goal? And if you've got it in the slide coming forward, then I'll be quiet and wait on the slide. >> I do have some kind of tactical elements in the slides, but just generally speaking, our development process, as you all know, is complex and involves a number of parties, both internal to the city and external to the city. It is, there are a number of different development processes that we, in finding a way to make us all communicate well in effects through that entire process is what I mean by saying that it's challenging. >> Okay. >> And while what we're talking about in this specific work session is the report as it relates to economic development. And what we had them do because they did, their challenge was to look at from the first point of contact to the issu ance of a CO. That is a massive undertaking. And so what we asked them to do was focus on some areas that we weren't already undertaking with other processes. We do have the lean government initiative that was already in the process of analyzing a portion of our development review process. And we wanted them to focus on areas that weren't already being covered under that initiative. >> I think we had a question. >> I was reading through the report. What are some specific Kaizen steps that were taken within the economic development department? >> Well, we've focused our Kaizen lean government initiatives primarily in the planning division. >> Okay. >> Which are a part of the development services process as a whole. But they're further down the line closer to CO. And in fact, you'll hear from the Kaizen team in our next presentation talking about the recommendations coming forth on that. So this is one piece of the puzzle and then the Kaizen team 's recommendation is another piece of the puzzle and trying to streamline everything. >> Okay, so the next presentation will be actual things that have been implemented? >> Yes. >> Or are- >> Councilmember Gregory. >> Thank you, Mayor. I remember at least five years ago, a council field trip, a dark light. I don't know where we were. Plano, something like that. And we really started talking about moving from a culture that was only focused on regulation to a culture that was balancing regulation with facil itation. Now, I don't see that term balancing. I just see to effect change in a culture from regulating to facilitating economic growth. In the other presentation, you point out that regulation is still necessary because we have some issues with standards that protect the health and safety of our citizens. So I suppose you'll mention this more in the next one, but I just want to say that I'm given a little bit of pause that it looks like that we're the way that that moving away from regulating altogether and I don't think that's what you mean. >> Absolutely, you're correct. It is not what I mean. I think that in reversing these two presentations, you might get that impression. But you'll see in the next presentation that we take a more global perspective of protecting neighborhoods and regulating growth, facilitating smart and deliberate growth specifically. So here in this presentation, have economic growth. >> I just wanted to mention that while that slide was here. >> Absolutely. So within the Galtree, the consultant has identified four critical success factors in order to accomplish that goal and I named them in the previous slide and now I'm going to go through some detailed recommendations about what they are recommending that we implement in order to accomplish these objectives. So the first one is the seamless interaction among all the parties involved in economic development. From the chamber to the city departments to the contractors and the prospects. And this is really focused on that first interaction with a prospect. And what the consultant is recommending is that we streamline the incentive application process. Our application process to date is manual. It is a stack of paperwork. We have not moved to an online application or integrated it into some of our other software systems to date. So that's one of the recommendations that they make here. They're also recommending that we have a very clear understanding of the interaction between prospects and all parties involved in the economic development process. One of their first tasks with us was to [INAUDIBLE] for a prospect from beginning to end. And it became obvious to us that we had a hard time artic ulating what that exact process should be. It was a little less defined than it should have been. And so us all understanding how the interaction is going to go and what the steps are in the process is important. Also, cross training staff on other aspects or other steps in the development process. This is challenging because it takes a wealth of knowledge and information to understand or be able to articulate to a prospect everything from what impact fees might be to whether or not we're going to ask you to widen a road or sewer capacity that you need to, you might qualify for, or how long your zoning case would take. Those are a lot of questions that involve a lot of different disciplines. Can do that's certainly something that we want to undertake . And you'll see in my next presentation some ways that we're working on that internally. We do lunch when a prospect engages us because we have to have a room with about as many people as are in this room right now. To really be able to accurately answer questions. And in fact, many of the people that are in those meetings are in this room right now. Our marketing activities. We were very fortunate with this consultant to have someone who is an expert in the economic development industry. Who is a professor at the Economic Development Institute, practices all around the country and around the world for quantifying our prospect activities and how we would go about doing that. And they made two very simple impactful recommendations to us. And that is to qualify conversion of leads to prospects, then to successful location through the evaluation of marketing activities. And you had in your backup a score card that was created by the consultant to help us quantify those activities. And they recommended integrating that scoring system with the utilization of a CRM system. Which is a customer relations management software. Different departments and people need to communicate with a prospect through the process. And having a software that communication that we all had access to would be really important for us to be able to keep up with what information we've already shared with a prospect and to be able to check them . >> Amy, is that sort of similar to when you call different companies? Phone company, cable, and you can tell that the last time you called somebody entered notes to the system. And so they can go back and is that sort of the basic? >> That is, that's the most well known one would be Salesforce. There are actually some CRM systems that are customized for economic development efforts that we've had some come in and do some demonstrations for us. And there are some systems that are less complex and less expensive, or what we're attempting to do very easily. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Systems, I don't know in particular this, but this is across all businesses. Beyond just keeping track of that contact and being able to foster that relationship and know what's all been said in the past. You can also set up certain pipelines to say, hey, after we got a hot lead on this prospect, within a month we want to make sure and it'll ding them with a reminder or something like that. So it seems like that's probably all part of that process. >> You're correct, absolutely. >> Did I see, did you have a question? Yes. >> So with the CRM system, how would that work? Part of our economic development is out of house and part of it's in house. >> It would have to be a system that could integrate all of those resources together. And so, for example, I would need to be able to access the system when I'm interacting with a prospect. But Tim Fisher sitting behind you in our water department would need to as well because he's engaged and John Davis from engineering is engaged and Adam from the chamber is engaged. And we've got all different types of representatives that are interacting with that prospect. So our goal would be to have something that would take all of our departments and our internal and external participants and have a seamless communication system among all of them. >> Good. >> So for example, one of them that we're looking at that's specifically for economic development is web based. So it would make it simpler to integrate between the chamber and the city. The third critical success factor would be prioritizing our end to pretty good job of doing this to date in our strategic action agenda. We've identified the broader industries that we find to be desirable for Denton for a variety of reasons whether it's that they're focused on green energy and that aligns with our goals and what's important to our community or whether it's higher wage jobs or utilization of our skilled workforce that is coming out of our educational system. And we know what those targeted industries are, but we need to create some more specific parameters for those industry sectors specifically so that we can be very targeted in our outreach and recruitment efforts. So if there are certain aviation sub-sectors that we'd specifically like to see in Denton, because we've already got some of their vendors or suppliers out of Denton Enterprise Airport. We would identify those down to the next and find where they go do their trade shows or they're going to be opportunities to engage with them. The last success factor is communication and that may sound broad at first, but I think it's a really important opportunity for us to better our engagement with prospects. And that's a complex undertaking, but there were some specific recommendations that I think would be very helpful . Creating an opportunity for constant and regularly scheduled communication among all the parties involved. I think the CRM system is one way to improve that. And creating an economic development response team that can provide all necessary information during the recruitment and location selection process. Finding the right person to answer your question as a prospect is extremely difficult. Knowing who in the city of Denton organization of the 1,500 employees can take the time and understand what it is you need from them in order to really, truly know whether or not we have the infrastructure to support your project. It's not an easy undertaking and I think that that's part of where we've really struggled with delivering good information to prospects quickly is the exp anse of the city or then the chambers attempt to pull that information out of us frankly is responsive to the chamber. And they are not privy to a lot of the information that the city has that would make the communication more streamlined . So I want to maybe help you visualize what I mean by that. >> Just got one question, Council Member Gary. Why do you think it's hard for prospects to find exactly the information that they need within the city? >> I think because they're, to be frank, and this is not intended to be disparaging in any way, but I think it's just the way that our process is set up today. I think it's that their primary point of contact is the Chamber of Commerce. And that's not a bad primary point of contact, except that there's a bridge between the chamber and then finding the right person in the city to answer the questions. And I can tell what I mean. So the way that our current process works, a request for a proposed contact is the Chamber of Commerce. They've been doing all the marketing and recruitment up until that point. It makes a point of contact for the RFP. But when the Chamber of Commerce receives that lead, their job is to assemble a proposal. And the contents in that proposal is largely, if not completely, get from the city of Denton. And examples just here, and this is not fully inclusive, are electric rates, electric rider information for economic development incentives, water and sewer information, engineering requirements, impact fees, incentives that are available, workforce and demographic information, taxes, wage data with the city. And all those things together, when you put them all together, should help us calculate the economic impact of that prospect and their suitability for the city of Denton. So for example, if, as for information about whether or not we have the capacity to suspect from a water demand perspective, and the answer is no, he's just going to say no, right? Because that's all his question is, with this demand per day. No, we don't have the ability to do that. Well, what Tim may not know in this evolution of how information flows through all the different departments is, well, that prospect, it's a billion dollar capital investment. Would we put a water line in for that? Probably. But we may have missed the opportunity to communicate that appropriately because we've dispensed questions through in the city. And they're not looked at holistically in the sense that, well, what's it going to cost us in terms of infrastructure or housing? Or how can we support this project? Incentives might we offer, but then what? And so one of the recommendations today is going to be an economic impact analysis software that looks at all these factors, allows us to take a look at what are our targeted industries, do we meet these criteria before determining whether or not we want to submit a proposal. >> Question on that. Did you have a question? >> You may have a slide, because I think what you just described, sort of that example of the departments get, there's a request coming in and so the departments respond, do we have enough land somewhere? Do we have water? Do we have electric? And they're answering it based upon the current capacity without any more information. So you're saying, because I think that's really a, I won't say a flaw or a kink in the system, because not knowing who it is, what it is, the impact, we 're sort of answering a question in a vacuum. >> Absolutely, yeah, that's correct. >> So you're saying that what you're talking about now and what you may be going to show in the next couple of slides is, how do we approach that to fix that problem so that we're not responding no until we've had a chance to analyze it prior to responding? >> Or we're not responding that yes, we would offer an incentive and might determine that we wouldn't. The cities, what the cities disjointed bits of information to the chamber. And the chamber's putting it all together into a nice proposal. But our ability to look at it holistically and say, wow, when we put all these puzzle pieces together, how do we quantify what we're really dealing with in terms of a prospect and its desirability for the city? >> Councilmember Briggs, you had a question? >> Well, not really a question, just a statement. I guess I didn't realize that, in the report it says, at the point of transition from the chamber to the city, normally incentives have been discussed. And I just assumed that it wasn't discussed and that it was discussed within the economic development rising to me. >> That's a good observation and another area of where we learned through this report that there may be some disconnects on when and how we're communicating information . So the prospect when they come in, I want you all to have an opportunity to speak and correct me if I'm wrong. Depending on the complexity of the prospect, they may assemble a response, making some assumptions about what incentives the city might offer just based on our basic policy. And if it's a more complex proposal, we will do an incentive analysis, an early incentive analysis to provide them with some more concrete information about what they might qualify for. It really kind of depends on the specifics of the prospect as they come in. But that is one of the challenges that we observed was that the incentive information that's being provided isn't always accurate, just because we're not communicating well between the two entities. >> I can see that. >> Okay. >> So just to illustrate this a little bit further before I get down to some key points, Justice, but there's a lot of back and forth between the city and the chamber during this process. So if you start at the left side of the screen, and this is simplified to a great extent, but it'll give you an idea of some of the challenges that we face. When an RFP is received by the chamber, the questions that are asked in it are parsed out to different departments in the city. Oftentimes, the context of the overall proposal is lost in that splitting up of questions across the city. Specifically, again, I'll go back, Tim may not know that, and I'm picking on you Tim, but that's because I like you. Tim may not know that if he knew who this prospect was, that the answer would be yes instead of no. Or we may not know that if, or the chamber may not know that if we understood that this specific prospect is not desirable by the city council, regardless of their capital investment, then we wouldn't offer them an incentive. We're not doing a great job of making sure that the context isn't, and I put that on our shoulders, providing the context that they need and vice versa. >> Yes, ma'am, pro tem. >> As I think about that example, maybe that's not the best example. But you've got a lot of folks at his level, if he does know the context, I mean, are they now empowered to say, yeah, I think that's worth giving them this, that or the other. In other words, it seems like there's a way to solve it by just saying, ask a few more questions. Like, is there sufficient wastewater ability out there? How much would it cost to put a line in that's being requested? So you're getting some data that someone else at some other level, not saying you're not, I'm just saying somebody else who's thinking from an economic development point of view, not just a technical here's your answers to your questions, looks at the context. >> Absolutely, and I think that's where we're headed. When the information is disseminated to the various people that need to compile it, then the city will receive that a lot of times. It's often coming to many of our different departments. And the sense of urgency or the importance or the priority of the request is often lost. Just because again, we don't have all the context that we need to determine who's the right person to give that information or make that judgment call and how important is this prospect to us. And I also think that the relationship of information between departments is often lost. In other words, there's a direct relationship between incentives and infrastructure needs. But if those questions are answered by two entirely different departments and the- >> So, okay, you mentioned that there were some areas that are priority areas within economic development for the city , and those are what? >> Put me on the spot right off the top of my head. >> I'm new here, so I don't know this stuff. We focus on high tech jobs, high wage jobs, on companies that have some of the same priorities that we do in terms of sustainability. And we focus on companies that are high capital investment and in often cases high energy users because they generate a significant amount of income with us through DME. There's a variety of industries that we target. Aviation and aerospace is an industry that we target, as well as transportation and logistics. And because they're great places, because Denton's a great location for them, and others are more of a certain kind of job in Denton than we have today. >> Okay, that's kind of surprising for me, given some of the high profile economic incentives like Buckies and WinCo that I've gone through. I didn't see that they actually fit in any of those, so it 's news to me. The second part of the question was, so when you say that there isn't an appropriate context for information as it's going out to the various city departments, am I understanding correctly that you can say this is category one or category two? >> That's something that we've been attempting to move towards is let's take a look at it and try to rank it. But we haven't gotten there, and I think part of that is a need for better communication between the city and the chamber in order for us to really truly rank those different prospects . And determine which ones we want to put our all into and which ones we wouldn't necessarily respond to at all. >> Okay. >> Well, isn't it fair to say that we also do some calculations when we're determining our priorities on the return on investment that we're likely to get? >> Yes, so inside our incentive, we receive points for that would determine whether or not you qualify for an incentive and how much of an incentive. I think you're relating back to Ms. Bagheri's question. And so you have a base incentive point system that's based specifically on capital investment. And then you receive additional points for a variety of factors such as contributions to the local community, hiring local employees, building construction, things of that nature. >> Sorry, can I ask a follow up? >> Okay, so I guess I'm confused on the timeline. What I thought I was asking was even before you get to the part where you're calibrating or checking off what qualifies for an incentive. So I thought that's what we were talking about. Before you even get to the incentive part of things, you're trying to figure out does this person qualify. >> Yes, absolutely. We do a cursory look at whether or not somebody would qualify. And so taking WENCO and Buc-E's for example, the WENCO distribution center, and I'll talk more about it in my next presentation actually, is the largest economic development project we've ever seen in both terms of capital investment and square footage. And they personally paid for $8 million worth of public infrastructure to go in and spark the development of our entire industrial park that had no public infrastructure prior. So while they may not, we were targeting, they had a lot of other factors that made them desirable. Specifically, opening up the rest of our industrial park for development and the capital is huge on the tax rolls for us . So when the city compiles information, we often lose or fail as a city to look at it holistically as we're putting that information together. And then when we send it back to the chamber, they edit it and compile it into a proposal. But in their capacity to assess it for quality control and accuracy of information, they don't have the greater context either because we've lost it through the compilation of the proposal process. So without somebody that can look at the entire proposal and say, we've missed here that there's a connection between this particular question and this particular question that infers, for example, if we had looked at all these questions together, that we were dealing with a data center or a high tech industry that any individual department might not pick up on based on their request. But when you look at it holistically, you could make an inference that it was more of a target industry than you might have thought at the face of it. >> So on this last sort of piece, response prepared by chamber. So currently, we being the city, whoever would do this, we don't look at that to sort of make sure that it's accurate from our perspective. Just to look at the proposal in general, especially if we 're sort of submitting a joint proposal. Do we not see that before it goes out finally to take a look at that? And if not, is that a proposal that somehow we work that review into the system? >> We do see that as one of the areas that we have a major opportunity for improvement. And that we typically do not have an opportunity to review a total final component. It's been something that's been a very high priority. And part of that is just the coming of proposals that are often very quick term. Frankly is an assumption on everybody's part that we've kind of got the information right when maybe we were missing opportunities to be more deliberate and more accurate now that we've stepped back and taken a look at all of this. >> Okay, thank you. >> So a few key points and I'm almost finished here. I do think that the fact that we've already combined the expert inspections has created a lot of avenues for better communication. We have had opportunities in the last year where I guarantee you if economic development hadn't been a part of the development services department, economic development would have jumped out to go get something or try to say yes, we can do this when there may be more regulatory need or more obstacles than we would have realized otherwise. We've had to try to look at it more holistically, better work the kinks out on that. >> Quick question on that. >> Yes. >> Because this is something that I've wrestled with because when I first got elected as mayor, to me I saw the problem was that economic development being under planning was problematic. That there were several instances where there was sort of a competing interest and then because of that linear kind of organizational structure, it created problems quite frankly. And so we split it up. Now it's put back together and conceptually I still think, I mean I hear what you're saying from a mechanics perspective, from mechanical operations and just communication. But I still think in some ways we could find a way to resolve that issue. But I still struggle with that linear approach because they 're two very different functions. And in some cases they're just naturally going to be opposed to one another. There's gotta be a way to figure out how to take the best of both worlds and make them more autonomous and independent from an organizational perspective. But not lose this communication because that's really what you're saying in a lot of what you're talking about is communication. Whether, and most of these departments aren't under one another. It's communicating with engineering, it's communicating with utilities, it's communicating over here. So that's one that, you know, and you and I have talked about that at length early on. So I only say that just to sort of just share my thoughts on that. >> Sure, so I do think that I address that, the integration of economic development with the rest of my latter presentation to some extent, just talking about how those things work together or where. But that's something we can continue to discuss. >> Oh yeah, sure, absolutely. >> So one of the recommendations from the consultant was to basically create an economic development response team that communicates consistently and meets consistently. So that that team or that team lead is reviewing all proposals. But it's in the context of the entire team participating as a group rather than individually. Right now what's happening is that we're individually providing pieces of information and not reviewing them as a group or looking at where we may be missing opportunities or pursuing opportunities that we would not want to. And they have absolutely made the recommendation of utilizing economic impact software, the CRM system, and a marketing scorecard to quantify our effectiveness and our efforts and to improve our responsiveness. And I point that out because we do have that contemplated in our budget for the coming year. And it is something that we do think would improve quite a bit our communication among the various representatives that respond. >> Any questions? I've sort of shared that sometimes I wonder if in the planning department, and I'm going to get tying it into this, that our software is less than adequate to fill in some personnel in those gaps, which causes our cost to go up and where we might be a little bit more efficient. So if we were to utilize something like this, would we see the reverse effect in the sense that this allows the people that we have to be more efficient, to be more productive, and doesn't require us to, I mean if we continue to have large economic development projects and the growth that we have, if we don't find some way to streamline this whole thing, we just have to keep adding people to sort of solve the problem. Is this one of the ways to try to avoid doing that so the cost of this would be more than offset by the potential personnel we'd have to have or the increase in productivity that we would, and maybe even economic development deals, because they can just get lost in the shuffle. >> Absolutely. The short answer to that question is yes. Specifically the economic software, we have on staff an economic impact, or full time manually runs calculations to analyze the impact of an economic development project. And those calculations are, and they don't encompass all of the factors that a software program can encompass specifically. We take a look at your basic ROI, capital investment minus cost of the incentive itself if we offer one. What that doesn't take into account is capital investment minus cost of any infrastructure improvements, or impact from a housing standpoint, from a school system standpoint, sales tax of, from spending of discretionary income of the employees that we add. So there are a lot of things that make it a little more objective in a software program like that. That in a lot of things that we're doing by hand today. The CRM system would help us make sure we're not losing economic development deals. Just that are falling through the cracks. And the marketing efforts so that for every dollar we spend , we're seeing a greater return. >> Do you think in the CRM system, using the example of Ald i, if you were just going to look at them as just an isolated store, but based on that attracted other business around it, would there be something like that to quantify that in the CRM? >> Yes, at all of those factors, that's correct. >> So in some ways on the marketing scorecard, would that help? Because in our partnership with the chamber, they're doing with their marketing strategies. Would this help both of us determine what is it that's working and what is it that's not working? And I don't mean that in a disparaging kind of way, but instead of a shotgun approach, it could be more use of fire arm, an arrow. Let's say, I don't know, but so it helps us really narrow down. >> It does. >> The effectiveness of those marketing dollars . >> For example, something that we might do as a city is spend a couple thousand dollars on an ad in a regional economic development magazine. We would then take and score. So you get a certain amount of points for the fact that they contacted you, and then you get more points if they actually come for a site visit. You get more up into the point where you actually land the prospect and they're one of your target industries. And the same on the chamber side, they may go to a specific trade show and we can look at the dollar amount spent on that. The number of leads that were generated from that and how many of those converted into actual prospects and then converted into site selection. And so it would help us all take a look at our activity and determine where our dollars are best spent in a very objective way. >> Mayor Proctor. >> Go back to a couple slides back where you went through the process. The next one, next one. This is the ideal process. >> Now this is a simplified version of the process as it is today. >> Because I was trying to translate, you have in your backup a much more complicated flow chart between the current state and the ideal. And in the ideal, it doesn't specifically kind of call out kind of, or at least it's using terminology that I'm not privy to as to kind of how the chamber's position and how our team works together. >> Mm-hm. >> All right, so I know you probably don't have that up there to show us. >> So. >> But just one question, because this might help me. When it refers to someone as the assistant director, who is that? >> That's Caroline here in our office. >> Okay, because the other one refers to the vice president of the chamber. >> Yeah, that's correct. >> And I don't see the vice president in this. >> So their, let me rephrase that. Our recommendation after looking at this report thoroughly is that we think it would be the most efficient and effective thing to actually compile the proposals inside the city office. And that's just simply because all of the information is coming from city departments. And that would help us be more effective and efficient and be able to quantify leads in terms of whether or not they're a priority that's aligned with the city council's priorities. And determine when we're going to respond and when we're not going to respond rather than to everything that comes in. I think we'd be able to streamline that and really create some efficiencies there because almost everybody has need to respond. And we all work very closely with each other, but then it's the burden. It's only how that makes sense in the end. Regardless of whether we go that route or not, I do think that the economic development response team is a critical part of the recommendations here because it gives us an opportunity to engage and communicate on a weekly or very regular basis and review proposals together. >> Well, let me dig into that just a little bit more. Because I mean, if I was looking at this from the outside, how things worked, I would say, well, you've got two entities. Probably not the ideal situation. Came about as a result of a relationship. I'd want to understand what's the reason for the two entities, condundancies you're adding, inefficiencies. You're trying to fix all these things because of the fact that you've got two entities. Doing that, as we're moving forward, I mean, from your perspective, who's been kind of doing this now for a couple years, how do you understand the value of having that parallel entity in terms of both, in terms of going after leads, fostering those proposals, coming to kind of coherent proposals at the end of the day. What's the value of that? >> Originally formed. The roles of each were pretty clear and had some, has historically been marketing and recruitment. And when they quote unquote land a deal, then it transfers to the city. And we close the deal, providing the additional information that's needed. With that is that the way that the site selection process works today, the prospect needs engagement with the city. And when all of that engagement and information is funneled through the chamber, there are disconnects that are going to be inherent. And I think we've worked very well together and we've worked very hard to try to eliminate those disconnects. And I think what I envision about what we're commenting on here today is that the transfer would still take place, but it would take place at the beginning of, we have a lead that has now engaged us. And so the marketing and the recruitment aspect could and would still fall on the chamber side. Information from us, then we would take it from there rather than taking it from, we think we want to move there, start talking to us about incentives and water lines. Right now there's about a 90% crossover between, I would say between the city's time that we're engaged. But the majority of the activities that chamber staff engage in are activities. It's that point at which we have a lead that we need to respond to that I think where we're getting tripped up in terms of disconnects between the two. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> So at this point, you have the recommendations of the consultant and we're looking for direction from you on how you'd like for us to proceed. And obviously, if we take over the proposal response with that and there's some contract impact with that between the city and the chamber. Which is why we wanted to have this conversation early on so that there was an opportunity to have that discussion now, rather than when it's too late in that process that the fiscal year budget as well. >> Councilmember Wasney. >> I support the recommendation to have the proposals done in house through the city. And I support that strongly and I think it's an excellent. I think the software implementation is huge. Anything that'll make things efficient, not just for the future jobs that may come. Because I know there are companies who kind of take a look and because there is a kind of a disjointed communication they pack up and I think we can do a better job with that and I appreciate the time that staff has spent analyzing all of this. 90% of solving a problem is to isolate the problem and you 've done a great job at that. One other kind of broad stroke thing that I think as we move forward is this combination of each we move forward. What that does for us, what it doesn't do for us as we again continue to grow and develop and add a lot of moving pieces to a fast growing North Texas. To see if that's too big and too cumbersome, that would it be more efficient in terms of each of their job descriptions. To have two separate entities each pursuing their because while they do work together I think their goals are different. So something again just in terms of my vote for council direction. I like this presentation and I want to thank you. >> Okay, thank you. >> Councilmember Hawkins. >> Yeah, I too, I think that I want to move forward with this if council decides to give direction. But of course we're not in some of the details, but just to know a little bit more about the software, the cost, how difficult it will be to implement. Is it a beating just to implement any new software? They're like great. Who's on the response team and how do we compose that team? Are those new FTEs or those in house people that we already have? And maybe to get chambers opinion of this too, want to make sure that we're in a great relationship with our chamber of commerce. So I just, and I know this is a little bit more 30,000 feet , but just. What are the next step when we start digging into what those details actually mean, how much they cost, who do they affect, those kinds of things, but I would think to move. >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. So you mentioned the budget implications and I'm not sure what all those are. So I would imagine the purchasing of the software that you refer to and you also mentioned the contract with the chamber. But what's specifically relating to that contract with this makeup budget? What would be the budget implication there? >> Well, in terms of the software, it's in the overall scheme of things relatively minor costs. I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Caroline, $37,000 or something like that for something in that ballpark. Go ahead. >> No, I guess my question is more specifically about, I know that there's probably a cost to the software. So I get my question, as you mentioned, also an impact to the contract with the chamber. Is that related to the software or is that- >> The contract itself calls out what we ask of the chamber in terms of their scope. And what they deliver to us for the funding that we provide to them. And so if you wanted to look at funding related decisions with the contract, then that was what I was specifically referring to. But the contract itself as a whole, I would think based on the conversation today would remain intact. And they would continue as the marketing recruitment arm. >> Gotcha, thanks. >> So let me try to dig into that just a little bit, because that was sort of my question. What I thought I heard you say was that the way we're doing it, the recommendations. We'll bring those proposals in house and you said it will have a budgetary impact. I'm just going to say, okay, if we're going to do more work , we either have to put it on somebody else or we got to hire somebody to do that. Whereas right now with our financial budget contribution to the chamber, are you saying that if somehow we take in house some of those duties that may have been being performed by the chamber. Then we may be looking at decisions of do we modify that compensate or to adjust for maybe some additional duties for the city that the chambers, is that sort of what you're talking about? >> That is what I'm talking about. I think we would need to work with the chamber to look at their proposed budget and which parts of that are associated with proposal preparation and how that might impact. >> Okay, all right. >> Councilmember Brueger. >> And when would we see those numbers? >> During the budget process, that's correct. Between now and then. >> Councilmember Gary. >> I've seen the proposed budget. I think it was recently adopted by the board and I didn't see any way to break down what part of the work is proposal and what part is not proposal. It was 20 or 30 conference visits and then overhead and things of that nature. But to say this is a line item for the work of the proposals, I did not see that in there. So I think it might have to be reworked if that's what we 're talking about. >> I think you're absolutely right. I think the way that the budget is written today, we would need to sit down and visit with the chamber and see how do we quantify that proposal preparation piece if you choose to do so. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Yes, I'm for compiling the prospects in the city. I think that's a great idea. We do advert in so prospects do come in to the city directly rather than the chamber. So you have two different areas or two different departments doing the same thing and that can be awkward sometimes. >> Absolutely, yes. >> Yeah, I got you. >> Okay, so is it the direction of council to move forward with the recommendations as presented in the report? And then we'll have impacts of that in the future. Is that the consensus? Okay, all right. Okay, thank you. Okay, so we skipped item B. Anybody need a break? >> I do. >> Okay, let's take a five minute break. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> All right, we are for the Denton City Council meeting Tuesday, June the 28th, 2016. It is 727. We're now we're going to circle back around to item B. We skipped over for item C, receive report, hold discussion , give staff direction regarding goals, accomplishments, and upcoming strategic priorities for the Department of Development Services. >> Thank you, Mayor. Amy's gonna handle this item for us also. >> Thank you, Mayor and council members, just as a big picture discussion here. This item is being brought to you as a part of the outcome of the retreat you had this spring, where you had asked for departmental updates prior to budget presentations. So that you had an opportunity to have some discussion about the priorities for the coming year for the department and provide some input on that before we really got into the details of the budget . So that is the purpose of this presentation today. I'll spend a little bit of time reviewing our accomplishments and achievements for the past year. Priorities we have for the upcoming year, the city's overall strategic plan and then receive here. So, just as a little bit of reminder, it's been a very busy year and a half for the department and for me personally and for the managers in the department. As you may recall, in March of 2015, so just 15 months ago or so, I was asked to step in as interim planning director for that department. And in June of 2015, in fact, it was a year ago this week, on June 30th, we met at City Hall West to talk about the observations and the recommendations that I was making to city management and to you all about the planning department. And to talk about upcoming priorities for the year. And at that point in time, you gave some direction about what you'd like to see us begin to implement and move forward. Is you at that time gave direction to start looking at space to lease to relocate the department out of City Hall West. And in August of 2015, the two departments, Economic Development and Planning and Building Inspections were all merged into one department, the Department of Development Services, as I know you know. And I was named the director of that time. Caroline Booth was appointed as assistant director for Economic Development. And Manal Maladad was promoted to deputy director of development services. And she has the scope of building inspections, planning, and gas wells as deputy director there. So when that happened, the scope of the department changed. And I've spent some time over the last year helping the public understand the dynamics of the department as a whole . I know what the planning department was, which is what it was called at the time, really did. And did that include building inspections? Was building inspections something else? Where did gas wells fit? And there was a lot of confusion from the public in general as well as from our customers who would come to the front counter or come in the front door looking for some help. And so I do want to do a little overview with you of all the different things we do in the department. Because I think that most people don't know and it's more complicated than the general public realizes, I think. So, department, although they are still housed here in City Hall, they still accomplish all their same functions of recruiting businesses to Denton, working with our existing businesses to retain them, help them expand, provide assistance to businesses in any way they might need in order to help them be successful here and to do, administer our incentive programs. The reason that that integrates, and this is kind of a flow chart until you get to gas wells, it doesn't really fit in line here, but is that if the economic development department recruits a business to TAMS , the responsibility of the planning division and others to help get them open and operating in Denton. And so the planning division regulates land, you lay there very intentionally. Our comp plan calls out our future land use plan and it is our planning division's responsibility to make sure that the development that occurs in Denton is consistent with that comp plan, consistent with our vision for the future, and implements the goals of that comp plan. So they regulate land use and that ties into economic development because we don't want to recruit a prospect to a specific piece of land that is not zoned appropriately and that we would not want them operating in. And I can give you an example. Just today I was talking with a developer who's interested in putting a prospect in a specific business, or in a specific existing building that's empty, and it is not zoned appropriately for it. And it would not be consistent with our future land use plan. Because our departments are all one, I was able to immediately say location for this prospect, but on some more appropriate locations. There are examples all across the line where something like that might happen. And the planning division also is responsible for implementing the comp plan, not just the future land use plan, but all of the components of accomplishing the vision of what our community wants to see Denton like in 2030. And one component of that is historic preservation. So we have two components in the planning division. You have your long range planning, which is responsible for that comp plan implementation, and neighborhood planning, and protecting land use. And then we have our development review team, and their job is to process development applications as they come into the city. Building inspections is a division within the department, although most people think, they think that it's either an entirely different department or it's the same thing as the planning division. And really building inspections has its own entire set of responsibilities. In building permits, so you go from the land use component to the actual built environment. So their job is to make sure that all buildings are safe and inhabitable for our residents and our businesses. And they issue COs, certificate of occupancies. They perform inspections for safety. And they do actual building plan review. And then Gaswell administration is a component of land use planning, but it's one that most cities don't have to face, obviously. And that is where we regulate surface development and mineral development at the same time and look at and resolve conflicts in that area. We enforce and educate as it relates to our Gaswell regulations, both locally and at the state level. And we perform biannual inspections on every Gaswell in Denton, of which there are over 500. So last year when we did this- >> I was just wondering how many inspectors we had. >> We had a Gaswell administrator, a Gaswell coordinator, and a Gaswell inspector. The Gaswell administrator performed some inspections, as well as the inspector. So we inspect every well twice a year on a schedule. We inform all operators beforehand, and then we issue compliance reports at the conclusion of every inspection. We have limited regulatory authority, obviously, because of House Bill 40. So a lot of what we do is educate operators about issues that we see with compliance with the Railroad Commission or TCEQ, where we say we note that you have this issue, which would be within the authority of TCEQ. So what that does is it encourages them to comply willingly to state regulations. And then we have the authority to notify the state if they don't come into compliance. I want to review our workloads for the department, specifically for planning and for building inspections. because that's where the volume of our development pressure comes in to the department. And that's where you most often hear from people that aren 't happy with us for one reason or another. Last year, you saw this same data exactly, only I updated it for the current year. So the planning division workload, and I'm differentiating these here because they're entirely different types of reviews. The planning division does zoning cases, SUPs, anything that's related to land use specifically. That, about 45% in the last year, and well over 50% in the last couple of years. Those are the most complex cases that we take. They're the ones that take the longest time. They're the ones that you often that comes 90 to 120 days after we've received- Regarding that, I don't recall seeing this in the backup. But looking at the workload, last year in our budgetary cycle, I think we approved a number of new full-time equivalents for your department. How far along are you on filling those? Have they all been filled? Mostly been filled? They have all been filled. Okay. These workloads and how it relates to those FTEs that were funded last year. Okay, thank you. When you say is increased, when you say the workload, I'm assuming that you mean, I'm just putting it to go up. It looks like it went up about 500. This is number received and processed annually. So from 1415 to 1516, we had an increase of 500. From about 1100 to 1600 and some change. That's correct, yes. And so is that measured by somebody puts in an application, there it is. So whether it falls off after a week or it takes six months , it's at the time that the application is submitted. This is- Regardless of what happens to it later on. This is cases that would be applied, applications that we 've received. And this is projected through the end of the year based on our current pace that we're- Do you analyze this also by, because I'm sure some fall out or maybe not. I guess that's part of my question is, once we get the app, do we have a breakdown of what happens with 50% of these? It takes a month. Within three months, it's reduced, some of them fall out. So I see the 500 app in time. We're going to address that a little bit later in the presentation to track more of that data. Not only in terms of the time that it's taking, but also closing out applications that expire because of no activity within a certain amount of days. Or reaching out to them, having the case manager reach out and determine whether or not the application is still alive and active after 45 days or so. So we're going to do a better job of tracking that data in the future. So we don't know that data. We have some of that now, but I'm not going to report on it today. If there's something specific that you want, then I'll be happy to come back and we can look at it. >> Okay, yeah, I may, yes, go ahead. >> And in fact, when the Kaizen team, they're going to do a very brief summary at the end of this presentation of their recommendations moving forward. A lot of that is associated with data tracking and reducing . So there were a couple of things that happened last year that you will recall that have helped increase in volume and keep up still. So the first one in the planning division was that you funded two new efforts and those positions are utilized to handle a lot of the day to day walk in. Zoning verifications, questioners that zone for it. Handle an activity that takes that workload off of the planners who are doing development review and actually processing these applications. So we've been able to realize some significant efficiency there by taking some of the workload off of the planners that are responsible for these cases. We've also implemented the team approach that we've talked about for more than a year now. Which is where we have a team that is made up of an engineer, a plans examiner, somebody who's doing fire review and then a planner who's serving as the case manager. And you can see that in this middle box right here. So what happens is when a case comes in, the supervisors of those four functions review it and distribute it. And then by workload. So what that does is it allows us to triage applications based on the experience level of the team that's reviewing it. And allows us to move those quicker reviews through faster. They don't get in line behind a review that's going to take a lot longer and be more complex. So that case is assigned a planner who's the project manager who oversees it from the very first meeting that we have. To the time that they have whatever their case is approved and they're ready to move into building permit phase. That's so that team is a team that works together every day . And they have the same cases every day and they know each other and function well together. And then at the time that it becomes necessary when it's actually starting to be built. Then it passes on to the inspections operations where it's then again assigned to a building inspector, fire inspector and if applicable a health inspector by complexity and by location of the project for efficiency purposes. Looking at the building inspections workload, we're going to look at a couple of different things here. This is the number of permits issued annually. We expect this year to hit almost the same number as last year, which is will be two years in a row that we have issued over 7,000 permits out of that division. It has gone up every year, but not as significantly as that planning caseload has. However, I will say before I move on to the next slide that one of the things that we've done a few things. We are triaging so that if it's a quick review like a fence permit or simple remodel, all those get in one line and it's a separate line. Then the residential reviews that are more complex like a new home construction and then the commercial reviews are in a separate line and so what that does is it allows us to facilitate those things. What we've also done since authorized overtime for the residential plan reviewers because we have just continued to see a massive influx of residential permit applications. And we want to try to be as responsive as we can with those . We're also cross training some of our inspectors to do the more simple plan reviews so that we can streamline some things. For example, we have one inspector who's a commercial irrig ator. And so he's doing all the irrigation plan reviews and all the irrigation inspections. And those are one type of inspections that take a lot of time unless you're the one that's doing them all the time. So this is a particularly interesting slide. Last year one of the things that we talked about was the number of inspections per day per inspector. And to remind you all, we have a policy that is intended to help us be responsive. So if you call in AM, you get a same, it doesn't matter whether we have 100 call ins or 300 calls. Is it puts us in a position where we have inspectors who have been historically assigned more than 20 inspections per day. The ICC recommends no more than 10 to 15 per day because that is how we can be through and make sure that we're not missing anything. And last year was funded additional inspectors so that we could get the number of inspections per day down to something more reasonable. And the line that I want to point out to you here is the dark blue or black line represents the percentage of days that each inspector was assigned more than 20 inspections per day. Six months, we have distributed that much more evenly and much more days out of the month. The inspectors are getting, the majority of them are 15 to 17 a day. So we've really been able to staff up there and get the number of inspections down to something that's more reasonable. That's important not just for health and safety purposes, but also for consistency because an inspecting important. And then when they come back, they're going to catch it and the contractor's going to be very upset. Because they should have caught it the first consistent with our inspections and catching things the first time around. So what does all this mean and why does it matter? >> I'm sorry, Council Member Hawkins has a question. >> And you just said this, the inspectors are paid hourly because of the cold. >> Yes. >> So this matters because related to economic development. And we say economic development, but what we really mean when we define it is being responsive to development and changing the culture as it relates to development. So in the KFA 3 for economic development, which again is the city's strategic plan, we call out several things that we're charged with doing as a department. Creating target, desired growth, not all growth, but what we actually want to see happen. Make it a destination for visitors. Promote a business friendly environment and encourage development, redevelopment, recruitment and retention. So we really do, in this realm we focus on desired growth and smart growth. We focus on changing the perception of the community about the services that we provide and being more proactive about how we communicate with them and implementing the comp plan so that we [INAUDIBLE] way that we should be. Also within the strategic plan, there are several key action steps that are identified that relate directly back to our department. The first one is implementing the economic development strategic action agenda. You just had a lengthy discussion about one of the ways that we've done that this year with the Novasis economic development report. You'll have another discussion tonight about you to have our five teams meet on a regular basis to implement their full action plans for this year. Implementing the Denton 2030 comp plan is going to be something that's going to always be on our strategic agenda . Because it is one of the most, if not the most important thing that we will do as a department. In this last fiscal year, we initiated planning and zoning commission rezoning project. So that we begin to look at rezoning areas that need to line up better with our future. The Fry Street small area plan and we are looking at other small area plans as well. We created the long range planning division. This was one of the most critical things that we did this year. A year ago, we were in a position where we had this in terms of workload for our planning division. And every one of our planners did development review. What that means is that we never have the long range objectives of the city. We couldn't implement the comp plan. We couldn't protect neighborhoods and do small area plans, transition plans by our universities. Because development will always be a pressure and it will always be something that's urgent. And so by creating the long range planning division, we now have planners whose job is to implement the comp plan and do neighborhood planning. And they're not responsible for development review and that allows us to accomplish our long term objectives. You also received an informal staff report on Friday that was about 70 page update on the implementation of the comp plan. Ron put that together. He did an excellent job. We are making quick and that stays on our radar for a long time to come. Another key action step that was called out in the strategic plan is assessing the development review process and implementing improvements. Under Minal's direction, we've done multiple brown paper mapping sessions of the entire development review process. We had a Kaizen event, which is a week long event where we analyze the process from start to finish to eliminate ine fficiencies. You'll hear briefly tonight from the team who participated in that event and the way that we're going to implement the findings from that. And we've already started to pilot some of the recommendations that came out of that event and out of the brown paper mapping sessions. For example, implementing pre-development meetings, which is an opportunity to meet with the developer before they ever file an answer and really understand the timeline and the process that's ahead of them. And introducing the team concept that we just talked about. The Kaizen team will give you some other recommendations that we're in the process of implementing as well. Assessing and rewriting the DIN development code is one of our key action steps. We are currently closing out our phase one scope of work with Clarion, who's the consultant that was originally engaged a couple of years ago to do this rewrite. This particular scope of work is associating the code and we're currently working on a second phase, which will be the comprehensive rewrite of the entire development code. So we'll be coming back to you with that in the near future . They have, the Clarion consultant has made recommendations for content changes. We've worked with them back and forth on what is consistent and works well with us and what we're still trying to work through right now to eliminate conflicts. And our key action step is creating a master plan for rede velopment of the I-35 corridor. We heard from you last year that you want us to do this, but we also heard a lot of different definitions about what that means to you all. And so one of our next step is to really engage you in terms of what your vision is for that redevelopment and specifically what you're looking for in terms of a plan. Are you looking for special zoning districts, overlay district, corridor view planning, design standards, legal noise that we can address in this plan. But we heard some different ideas and we want to make sure that what we deliver to you. The way finding signage project is complete in terms of the design phase and is getting ready to go out to bid. Also under KFA 3, we have begun to take some measures or some stock of what we're doing that the 2015 National Business Survey will use as a benchmark to begin to look at changing the perception of being a positive place to work in Denton. We implemented open counter. Some of you may recall that we funded that a couple ago with a supplemental proposal. It is a very simple tool for small businesses to use to get online and log in an address and learn if their zoning is correct and what their fees will be and what they need to do in order to complete the permitting process. We're automating some of the things that we currently have staff members doing through this program. One of them being zoning verification letters. That's something that just takes some time of our staff. That's a super simple thing. >> I have a question about open counter. Okay, so in the last presentation, there was some talk about not really knowing what qualifies, what type of use goes where, but it sounds like open counter perspective businesses to find out. >> That's correct. Yes, so open counter, one of the easy things you can do is determine whether your use will work in a specific zoning district or not. Sometimes there's some translation, not translation, but some interpretation that needs to take place where, but this will work for most small businesses. >> So how many businesses are using open counter? >> We're putting it to a place that it's public facing and we're encouraging the use of it. So I don't know off the top of my head how many are using it today, but by automating things like the zoning verification letter, we're hoping to increase that activity and help people know that it's there and that it's a tool. One of the things when we first launched it is it looked like an advertisement on the city's page. People were unlikely to use it because it didn't look very inviting and so we've been working with the vendor and have gotten that corrected. All the information and it's as accurate as possible so that when somebody uses the tool they get the right information. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And I've seen this tool in action in other cities as well. And I think the distinction between the previous presentation when she was referring to these large scale proposals of wanting to come and do business big projects in town. I'm a Joey and maybe I'm setting up my first coffee shop for the first time and I'm looking in this neighborhood. >> You wish. >> And I just need to know if this building is even in the right zoning category or something. Does that make sense? The scale is significantly smaller. It's meant for. >> That's correct. It is meant to be a small business tool that gets a lot of questions answered without having to come into City Hall West and talk to four or five different people. In the last year. >> I think we had a question. >> I'm sorry. >> Our new proposed website vendor as well, because I know that these are really critical to be able to get to on the Internet. >> We do, yes. In fact, we just formed a content collaboration team that will be working directly with the vendor. >> Okay. >> And we're on a content creation schedule to make sure that we get everything produced for them at the right time to be able to integrate into the new website. >> Thanks. >> Other things that we've done to try to improve our communication with our customers is we created a residential contractor's guide to permitting and construction. We've started a commercial contractor's guide and we're working on but not track it, which is our program that our customers use to essentially apply for permits and engage with us from an electronic standpoint. We had this upgrade is a major upgrade and we had some minor, some things that seem like minor issues with it at first, but they have major implications. For example, it's going from being computer based to being web based and the save button takes longer to actually save than it used to. And when you have a permit tech who's processing 100 permits a day and it goes from one minute to three minutes to be able to process an entire permit. It's an invitation of that so that we can work out those bugs so that when we do actually go live with the upgrade, it's a major improvement rather than creating some issues for us. So we're also looking at, in the tech services budget for the upcoming year, some project docs upgrades, which is another area we struggle with. Being frustrated with it being easy to use and understanding all the little quirks associated with it. >> On that point, how did we solicit or identify the major obstacles in some of these software comm ons? I know that you have to upload all your plans, but you have to upload them one page at a time. So that they can be parsed out, but that sometimes some of them don't go through and you don't know it until somebody says I didn't get it. So how did we solicit the problems that we're trying to compile that information? >> We had, so because it'll be in next year's funding cycle potentially. But with TrackIt for example, we had and it was to test every aspect of the system and document every little. We compiled it into frequency and organized it by importance. And then started working with the vendor to get quotes on what it would take to resolve it and what the resolution would be. So we've done several things to, like there's strange things, like there's not a submit button. Or you have to, once you've entered your information into TrackIt, you have to wait for a vendor number before you can upload to Project Docs. And we're automating a lot of that so that that back and forth and the permanent tech is eliminated. >> Okay, so you had testers, but I mean are we, and that might be passed on that. But if not, then I would suggest this, but also with Project Docs. I mean, it's good to have testers, but the people who are using this every day could probably tell you within seconds what would be helpful. So are we planning on soliciting information from either a select few who we know really use the system a lot , or how are we planning on doing that? >> When I say testers, I mean those of us who use it every day, all day, and know what all the quirks are associated with it. They go in and systematically document through repeated testing where the issues lie. In terms of the customers testing it or providing an opportunity for engagement. If we haven't done that, we certainly will. >> Okay, all right. >> Also associated with KFA 3 is some of our economic development activity. This year, as you would see when you see the number of planning cases spike the way that it has, you would see that the number of incentive applications would also spike. We've had a huge amount of development activity this year compared to previous years. Nine incentive agreements were approved in 2015, including five construction projects, four expansion projects, and a total capital investment of $349 million and 780 new jobs created. A few of them that I'll just highlight real quickly, the W ynn Co. Distribution Center. We talked about it a little bit earlier, $135 million capital investment. That is not a picture of the one in Denton. It's still under constructed, I believe, in Atlanta, which is twice the size of our biggest project in Denton today, which is Peterbilt, 77 acres, and it has spurred the funding necessary to put the infrastructure in for our industrial park. And what they did was they advanced the funding in for all of phase one, which is left razor investments, the property owner with the opportunity to phase two, and they're already in the design phase of phase two, which then will be starting construction on that probably by the end of the year. Razor Ranch, you're very familiar with. The Hotel and Convention Center, if you haven't been out there or driven by it lately, is vertical with a huge crane out. They are under very rapid construction. And in addition to that, several pad sites are already operating on the south side. And we do have a site plan submittal in for the major department store. And we have a submittal on its way for, so this is rocking and rolling out there and under very fast construction. >> Joy, before I- >> Just- >> Who's the guy that's not working out there? That looks like Fortune. >> I don't think he can prove that. >> Okay. I think we can. I don't even know what you're holding. It looks like you're holding a microphone. >> That's a champagne glass. >> Okay, all right, okay, all right, okay. >> Okay. >> It's hot that day. >> Oh. >> And I'd like to spot out Amy's form too. Very nice form. >> I was the one that was actually working. >> Yes, very good form, not using your back but your legs, so yeah. >> Yeah. >> Peterbilt undertook a major expansion this year, $50 million expansion project in two phases. Been very supportive and helpful in locating and expanding multiple suppliers here that we have worked with to move into Denton or expand in Denton from other locations. And as you know, they're our largest private employer in Denton. We are getting ready to launch Stoke Coworking. Oops, let me go back to that. Which is our assistance program. I don't know why it keeps turning on its own. There we go. It is, we actually just received a CO for it last week. I'm going to show you a little video of what it looks like on the inside. All we're waiting on at this point is the delivery of furniture and we'll announce an opening date as soon as we know when the furniture is going to be delivered. But it's all been ordered at this point. And getting ready to launch just as a remindership with the developer who redeveloped this old industrial warehouse right next to our transit center. And it's also a partnership with the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, which is a non-profit in Dallas that is leading in supporting entrepreneurs across the country. They'll be providing the management oversight of, and this is like five seconds so you can see what it looks like. On the inside. I was just in there last week. It actually does look like this. Except there's not furniture in it yet. We'll have an event space, which just really briefly showed their offices that can be you can get a membership for an office or for a permanent desk or a daily drop in desk. Is that the painting that's going to be on the wall? There's no painting. We've also undertaken, as you know, several innovation initiatives and lean accomplishments in the last year. We will be relocating to what we're trying to name currently calling it City Hall Annex or City Hall South. That's two buildings on the other side of the square. And we actually get the keys to the buildings this Friday, some minor construction that we need to do to either demo some walls or add some walls. And tech services needs to run some data drops and some fiber. And then we'll be relocating somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 to 85 people into that building between now and October and November. I talked about the brown paper mapping sessions. Here's photos of sheer. And the goals for the upcoming year, obviously, we're going to be focused on the implementation of the comp plan. We have because of development, we focus on some small area plans for some critical neighborhoods that are either getting new substations or getting growth from the from neighboring colleges. There's a variety of reasons that we need to to focus on small area plans. Creation of overlay districts in order to accomplish those goals, writing read town area and updating our preservation plan and just finished our historic resource areas of town. It's time to create new. They're not new areas of town, but they're new, newly historic and time to create some new historic districts. Just want to support the small area plans that as we grow and grow. They're going to be how we preserve our neighborhoods and create distinct areas of character. Absolutely correct. We want to continue to improve service to our customers and improve our image as we get ready to relocate. We are working on launching a communications plan and branding initiative. Historically, this department has been told who we are by their perception of us rather than us telling the public who we are and what our goals are and how we want to be. We want to serve them better. We're working on that. We are looking at creating a customer service division, which would be all of our front counter staff would be cross trained to answer questions regardless of what kind of development questions they were. Most people that come into the building or planning question or an engineering question. They don't need to know we should be able to answer their question regardless of what it is. We're working on training modules and doing some cross training there. We're also exploring the possibility of combining the utility customer service front counter with our operations. This would streamline commercial processing. Right now, if you need a CO, you're going back and forth between City Hall East and City Hall West. And interacting with multiple departments, this would streamline our, the customer service division would take over all of it and we wouldn't be processing finances as well as transactions. And it would alleviate some of the parking issues at City Hall East and create an area where there's more parking for customers to come into their front counter. We also want to continue to improve plan review times and building inspections. We've really struggled this year with residential plan reviews because of the onslaught of applications. And we've taken a lot of steps to improve that. We're going to measure that now and see if it improves and if not, we'll be talking about ways that we would just, if the levels stay where they are now, we may be talking in the future about additional FTEs. We are asking for one FTE in that particular area. And we want to provide better in field service from building inspections. Specifically, what we're looking at doing right now is standardizing and making consistent our, what you can expect from an inspector, depending on what kind of inspection it is. You know exactly what's going to be looked for and what's not going to be looked for. And there's consistency between inspectors. You know you're going to essentially get the same report, no matter who it is that comes out and does your inspection . And you know they're going to shake your hand and call you by name and help you move your project through efficiently and safely. And as we're standardizing a lot of those, turning them into checklists so that the customer knows what the inspector is looking for when they come in. And lastly, we want to implement the findings and the recommendations of the Kaizen team. And in short, they're taking on the same goal that the DRC engineering Kaizen team took on a year ago or so. And that is to approve 90% of the applications. This is by the second submittal. Those are the more complex ones that require a lot of collaboration and back and forth between the applicant and city staff. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask the Kaizen team to come up and share that with you very briefly. And then I'm happy to answer any questions that you have or any direction or further discussion that you'd like to have . Manal, would you come up, please? >> The short version. >> Yes, it even says it in the title, short version. >> I saw the 28 slides, I thought wow. >> We're going, we're going. >> Thank you, Amy. Mayor, members of the council, I wanted to piggyback a little bit on some of Amy's presentation. And one was that I believe some weren't present when we initiated this brown mapping session. And if you notice, there was a photograph of around the room where you held one of your council meetings. And that exercise was just not a one time event, but it took several meetings, several months. And that identified from start to finish where the disconnects or in the development review process. So it took all elements of development review, all types of applications to determine where those inefficiencies were. As a result, we need to correct these operational measures that exist. We then went into a Kaizen process or Kaizen implementation process to discern what do we need to do, how do we need to do. We are improving the development review committee process. The development review committee comprises of subject matter experts, discipline experts, engineering, water, waste water, DME, planning, building inspection, all those arenas come into. Discipline is necessary at that time. Therefore, anybody who wants to develop, whether it's a citizen or a business entity within the city, they have to submit plans. And these plans have to be reviewed by this development review committee. This process right now, as we've discerned from our mapping session, from our Kaizen session, it's cumbersome, it's slow, it's very frustrating. Not just for the developer, but it's the same case for the teams that are involved in this process. What we want to do is assess and determine where are these inefficiencies? Where are our green flags and where are we going to eliminate those red flags? We have noticed that there's lack of culture in terms of collaboration, in terms of having a flatter organization to review these aspects. Instead, we've had a very silo of vacuum or compartmental ized way of reviewing application sets, so we're trying to eliminate that. And that in itself will definitely improve the land development process in Denton. As I've mentioned, we have several issues which I've touched on. There is lack of clear guidance of the processes and associated timelines that we can give to the development community. It's inefficient, unpredictable as far as the development review process is concerned. We talked about lack of internal collaboration, which goes back to the culture that Amy was discussing. That's something that we have to work on on change. During the intake process, what does that mean? That means we don't have standardization and we don't have structure and we don't have specificity as it relates to timelines. And then we have the inefficiencies created with concurrent submittals. When we talk about concurrent submittals, we currently enable or allow someone to submit all the steps of an associated development application at one time. And what happens is that the review becomes disjointed and fanning out or parsing out the review, then the comments come back in a disjointed manner and then the timelines aren't hit because components of that full application might warrant plotting, might warrant rezoning. So all those elements streamline that a little better. In the development process right now, this is exactly what it did. So if I were a developer or someone who wanted, I want to do, I need to get a CO. So what do I need to do that? If you notice, there's no clarity where to submit and when to submit. We must standardize the review thing and beta testing some of those as Amy. So these are the typical steps that you see in most large communities such as ours. The customer centric standardized review process. You have a pre-development meeting. That's typically a reconnaissance meeting where you enable the developer to come in and you explain the criteria that are pertinent to the project. At which point the developer then discerns whether they want to submit their project or not, and in this case, a check on their application. So the first step is where we do a completeness check. Where everything is in order, a kickoff meeting where we basically announce what team is working with the developer. We also have then the project review where the specific review occurs and the associated discipline experts review. If there are any disconnects during that review period, we welcome a solutions meeting. We will continually be in touch as the project manager would be to ensure that the clear vision and eventually project approval. This standardized process that you see can be embedded in the entire development review process. And that's where we're leading. We're leading in that direction. And if you notice, this is the short version. So what is the typical land development process? As I mentioned, you have your pre-development meeting. You dive into your preliminary and final planning. To the average citizen, they may not know what that is. That's why the pre-development time, so we can explain that to them. And eventually, your building permit review, which leads to your CO, your certificate of occupancy. And create these standardized elements achieve a very efficient, 100% streamlined, they will be bumps along the way, but we would have a development review process that functions very , very well. With the parameters that we have, very strict audit guidelines associated with it. So every six months, it is important to audit where you are in terms of assessing your data and determining from a qualitative and quantitative manner where the disconnects are so you can further improve. >> Question, Councilmember Wasley. >> How do we get to this pointy efficiency, not just for, because it's a win-win when all of this is in place. >> Absolutely, and so we look at two things. One is the operational aspect from our internal, with the internal divisions or division as it's related to that. So from an operational perspective, what do we have to do? We have to work on standardization, which means we have to create energy works with us. We have to make sure we know what we are responsible for when it comes to reviewing what type of application. We've already started doing that. So in terms of, we're not waiting, what we're doing is we 're already improving and creating and enhancing some of our application forms, some of our intake processes. We have just recently hired two planning techs as a result of our past budget and our past meeting. And they've become our primary intake. We've created the current and long range planning functions to ensure that there is a true sleep line process in terms of submission. Now let's go to the other side, those that need something from us in terms of the development community. We have initiated the developer luncheon. We've met with them. We've talked to them about this. We've heard their concerns, not just from this meeting, but we've actually amassed their information and their concerns associated with the development review process. And what we also bring to the table is knowledge from those of us who've had experience with other larger communities on how they do development review. And where they had issues so that we don't fall into that same trap. So as each week goes by, we are actually implementing certain steps associated with this process. >> Any more slides? >> Yep, that was it. >> Okay. >> It said short version, so. >> Any other questions? I guess, go ahead. >> Is that a question for Amy? >> Yep, I guess, and this may be for both of you. Because I know, and this is good. I mean, this is what we've been wanting to do. I guess from people with specific issues, just little crazy issues. Somebody submitted a comment that wasn't there after this. And I'm not saying that to be critical. I'm saying, that's why I'm talking about how do we or where do we compile specific observations from the developers. Because if it's a real big issue, if it's a systematic issue, if it's a process issue, those can become pretty glaring. But when it's some kind of issue like that, those are the things that really drive people crazy. And so how are we soliciting, or are we soliciting, instead of people just working out, because what happens is people forget about it. And then it might pop up again in some other context. So how are we trying to facilitate a more comprehensive solution to those kinds of things that people are still running? And sometimes, I mean, look, I submitted a permit and it was my fault on some of those. And so we have to own that. Developers have to own that. On the other side, how do we ensure that, well, if our comments are sort of come in from untimely, how do we really address those issues? Not perfectly, but just better. Yeah. >> Right, so you've asked me several questions. >> I have, I'm sorry. I'm so fried, I don't even know what day it is, so I apologize. >> Thank you. Appreciate that, Councilman. >> I'm going to address those that were glaring in my opinion. >> Yes. >> One was, how do we address where the disconnects are? Let's start with intake. You notice, you must have heard through complaints, I have heard those that, well, I turned it in or project docs wasn't working for me. There was a technical issue. How do we address the technical issue? We've already started addressing the project docs technical issues as it relates to upload for planning documents. And we've automated that better. However, what do we do when you've mentioned comments come from everywhere and they come in an untimely manner? Let's take that from staff. Staff is providing comments in an untimely manner. We're now auditing to determine when comments went out, how many did not go out, which department was deficient in sending out their comments on time. So we can start addressing that and discerning why are we having difficulty in sending certain comments out in a timely manner? Well, on the flip side, what happens when a developer subm its plans or professors to have submitted plans and says I've uploaded them and somehow they're somewhere in project docs and we can't. Those are the things we're looking into to determine what they are. We're also trying to, through the project manager style development and the team network, you will have a pre-development meeting all the way to the issuance of your CEO when you go vertical and then the inspection team takes over. So you always have that one point of comment. What are the major comments? What is the consistency of those comments in terms of what they are, who are they coming from, and where and how do they need to be fixed? >> Okay, all right. >> Can I say one more thing to that? >> Yes, go ahead, I'm sorry. >> And I would say is that one of the things that we've observed with our front counter staff specific, when they're walking in the front door, is that we as a department have created a castle with a moat. You can't get to us. And it's been a historical model of the way that we've handled things. And I think the reason for that is because the volume has been so overwhelming that it's hard to analysis. And at the same time, you got 30 people walking through the front door and your phone's ringing and your email's filling up. And so we've created our own problem in the sense that we 've made ourselves unavailable. And then a customer gets frustrated and they call you instead. And so that's one of the, we're trying to reverse that approach completely by empowering our front counter staff to say, I'm going to find you somebody, period. And creating an expectation in the entire building that if somebody needs you, you need to go down and talk to them. There's no way to change that perception of us in the community without changing our responsiveness. And so we're looking at it from customer service problem solving. >> Fantastic. Council Member Hawkins. >> Yeah, earlier in the slide presentation, there was a slide about building inspectors and just their workload. And they're just overwhelmed. And I mean, that's so concerning for a number of reasons. Just burnout, morale, I think you can handle it a little bit, but when it's just how it is all the time, that's got to just be so frustrating. I wonder if entering this budget process, if we could figure out how many overtime hours we had hired X number more inspectors, we could have lightened that load on that people and not cost as much money. >> Sure, so I think we've accomplished that with the inspectors, actually. The workloads look crazy, but in the last year, we've gone from 6 to 12 inspectors. And so we have considerable resources there to lighten that workload. Where we still see an incredible volume is in the plan review side, which is approving building plans to be able to start construction. So right now, we're trying to analyze that and look at the overtime, and we're also looking at adding additional- >> I must not have read that graph correctly then, because I know it was getting better. >> It is getting better. >> So we're, okay. >> It is getting better. The reason that it looked like it spiked like that is because it was actually total number of days within that measurement. And so the fact that it went from a whole bunch that were blue to more that were the yellow or the other colors, meant that it was a fewer number per day per inspector. >> Gotcha, well thank you. >> And how many, you said that we went from 6 to 12 building inspectors. How many planners did we add this past year? >> None. >> None. >> No. >> We added two planning technicians to take some of that less technical stuff off of there. >> Okay, because I thought we had added somebody or some positions there, but okay, thanks. >> The show that we talked about, about the 1800 applications. Delve more into that, because when I was sitting here thinking about that, I thought, now that's applications to come in for planning, I think it was. Even if we just took that on a yearly basis, as a council member, as a council, we're not seeing 1800 development agenda items. So I analyze that data, because coming in is one thing, dropping out is another, and then what happens. And so, because I want to start thinking about the sheer numbers, I thought that would, that just, there must be a ton that are either becoming stagnant, and they're just staying out there. And if that's in that number, how many is that? So it'd just be nice to analyze that data a little bit. But I don't think that the good benchmark is how many are coming in. It's more like, what's the time interval number one, if they're getting, how many actually get through, and how many just fall out, and at what time frame? >> Absolutely. If we have a standardized process such as this. And we can measure those through our track it system right now, but it's a very tedious task. But now that we have this standardization, we are actually able to review each type of application, determine if it's become dormant, and the action we took. So you're actually going to have several different measures associated with each application. Not just denied or approval, but you're going to track it from the day you had a pre-development meeting, and if an application indeed was submitted. You know, how it continued on, or where it stalled, and why it stalled, or was it. And those parameters or those numbers will give you accuracy in determining. So Amy's graph right now showed that that's truly what's happening. But her graph then, she'll have a scattergram associated with that, which will then identify how much is really being put into each application. Which just exemplifies or magnifies what's really going on with each application. >> Well, and I think that's important, especially from a budgetary perspective, because it gives us a little bit. >> Yes. >> Clearer picture of what the needs really are. Because let's say if you've got 30% of those at application , nothing else happens. You know, somebody's got to look at it, somebody's got to process it, but other than that it's done. And I don't know if that's the number, but obviously when we're going to be considering those numbers in the budget, if there's some request for some help. For me, it'd be nice to have a little bit better breakdown of those moving forward. Any other questions? >> And you're looking for direction? Or is this just a presentation? Just a presentation. >> I would like to introduce our core team. We have Shandrin Jarvis, our DRC administrator, Ron Mingita behind her, Arlis Rodney Patterson, our building official. This is our core team associated with our process improvement and implementation. >> Fantastic. >> And I'm sure you'll continue to see a lot more of them. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thanks guys. >> Any other questions for this item? All right, thank you. >> Thank you, Amy. Guys, I gotta tell you, I'm fried. I don't think I can do D&E. I mean, I'm just out of my mind. Well, sorry about that, Tim. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yes, yeah, well we can accommodate that. >> Do you want to just meet like tomorrow morning? >> No. But, well when we were talking about it, Howard, we were talking about that one, so we still need to have that present. So is that okay with council? >> Yes. >> All right. All right, thank you. All right, so having postponed the agenda items D&E, we will now stand adjourned.